EPTWho I Am
Hello, my name is Aron Times. I started playing Starcraft back in 1998 as Terran, before we had Medics. That's right, kids, we had Stim Packs before we had Medics or Medivacs, just like how canned food was invented before the can opener. It was a Dark Age of 150 mineral Spawning Pools and 200 mineral factories, of Engineering Bays that could fly and a complete absence of permacloaked combat units (yes, Arbiters existed, but they themselves were not cloaked, so you had a way of dealing with them even without detection).
Starcraft 1
I experienced multiplayer Starcraft primarily through 4v4 continental maps. These were UMS maps which forced teammates to spawn next to each other, on their own respective islands (continents, really, considering their massive size). That was the only way of ensuring that teammates spawned next to each other. If played as a Melee map, starting locations were completely randomized, to the point of allowing one enemy to spawn around three allies.
Warcraft 3
I later moved on to Warcraft 3, where I played RT 3v3 on Kalimdor (the Asian server). My friends all thought that I was crazy because playing team games would not only limit my self-improvement, but also pair me up with trolls and griefers and other troublemakers that would make for a frustrating gaming experience.
In reality, once you got past the first few matches, you eventually moved to a point where everyone generally knew what they were doing. The worst games I had were when I got teammates that didn't speak English (Koreans and Mongolians, primarily), or those new players who came from 1v1 and had no idea how to play team games (team games generally require less mechanical skill and more strategy and much more communication than 1v1).
Starcraft 2
Eventually, I moved on to Starcraft 2, where I played 1v1 almost exclusively from the beginning. Despite having dramatically improved in mechanics and strategy and decision making over the past 18 years, winning in 1v1 felt hollow. This wasn't how I played Starcraft. This wasn't how I enjoyed the game.
A few days ago, on a whim, I decided to test out RT matchmaking in LotV. I started with 2v2, then 3v3, and then 4v4. To my surprise, queue times were very fast (4v4 ranked is faster than DotA 2 ranked), and most of my teammates knew what they were doing (even during the placement matches). Even better, my preferred playstyle (Rush) was actually viable in team games, while my least preferred playstyle (Boom) was risky, the way it used to be back in the day.
After playing my placement matches for all three team game modes (2v2, 3v3, and 4v4), I searched for SC2 team game strategy online, only to find... nothing. The most recent guides for team games date from 2013, and they're only for 2v2. The latest 4v4 guide dates from 2011 (and is the only one I can find after digging through several pages of Google search results).
Team games in LotV are therefore an uncharted territory. There are no established standard build orders, no concrete meta, no idea of what you should or shouldn't do. So far, I've been going by my experience in Warcraft 3 team games and DotA 2. It has served me well so far, but eventually, I hope that the community will establish a standard of play in team games.
Returning to My Roots
That's where this blog comes into play. I will be chronicling my adventures in SC2 team games here. What works, what doesn't work, what I tried, and what I plan to try. Eventually, I plan on writing a guide on how to play team games in SC2. Despite a complete lack of coverage about team games in SC2 websites, team players do exist. I exist. You exist. We exist.
After returning to my roots, Starcraft 2 is awesome once again.
nice...
