EPTWe get some good results behind the scenes. My APM is up to around 270, which is higher than it has been in more than 10 years, and only 30 less than my career high average.
The builds are showing a lot more finesse.
the first replay
We get a win here with Reaver-Carrier which is looking a lot better to me than Reaver Scout. Regardless of our opinions about The Stove™, the Scout remains somewhat dubious in the PvT matchup.
The opponent is a little slow as you can see from the replay he has high static resources. I don't think this playstyle is as bad as it appears and might be quite good for Zerg especially.
the second replay
We get another win against a slower opponent on Python. I am surprised at the robust-ness of the positions as we get to use some 12/3 LT tactics in reverse. Granted we probably could have won without the Shield Batteries, but it opens some more options for our Carriers -- actually we see that in this situation a point of Armor is not much better than a point of Shields...
an aside: For new players it interesting to note that Starcraft Armor is quite different than the system used in other games like DotA and WC:TFT. Because the Damage Reduction is handled arithmetically, 1 point of Shields is quite a bit worse (other reasons notwithstanding) than 1 point of Armor. I am talking about Carriers which have a base 4 Armor. 5 Armor is much better than 1 Shields, Shield Batteries notwithstanding.
the third replay
We get another Terran opponent. This player is a bit better than the previous two. We explore Scout-first in PvT. There are some advantages to this with our planned opening. Since we aim to use Reavers to support our Carriers, one option available is to forgo the Reavers in favor of earlier Carriers. I don't like this option much because of Vultures, and it doesn't allow us to contain at the third. One advantage is the opponent is almost required to start Goliaths earlier which gives us more opportunities with the Reaver-Carrier combo.
We look at adding Arbiters. Arbiters are like drugs. You're not supposed to use drugs, and you're not supposed to know how drugs work. That's how Arbiters are. I don't see any reason to block the ramp with ice block when we can just Reaver the main.
as an aside: Trolling (fishing) -- Trolling, in proper English refers to fishing. in other words, the statement "I am a troll" is nonsense in the context of the meme. The role of fish in global causation is not nonsense. The bizarre superstition, discussed below, that fish are responsible for generating bizarre and nonsensical memes is at most not-unique.
I'm writing a book about causation. If you are interested in what constitutes trolling and what doesn't constitute trolling you can read my book. As the book is at great length to explain, there are a great many paradoxes. You can find the list of paradoxes on Wikipedia. There are a great many paradoxes, and they're not all the same. Each paradox creates a "blind spot" in our cultural vision and people get frustrated and act retarded. This is the trolling phenomenon. The paradoxes exist because the questions are complicated. Presumably there is some inexplicable link between the ocean, which we don't live in, and fish, which we aren't, and the propagation of fish which eventually led to humans who play Starcraft through a tentative process we don't really understand called evolution. If we understood the process we wouldn't have a wondrous fixation upon fish, however interesting they are, because as everyone knows there is a much more extensive list of living things. This list is available on OneZoom which displays a very comprehensive diagram of life on Earth.
If you have worries about trolling please express them somewhere else. My blog is about Starcraft. If you want to talk about philosophical paradoxes and their empirical implications, we can discuss them mathematically within the context of the game. I do not wish to be trolled, and my intention is not to troll anyone. In fact, I chose the name Ayatrollah specifically because the Ayatollah lives in a desert and fish are not common in the desert. Paradoxes, mathematical, philosophical, logical, scientific, and so on are welcome on my blog, and I am happy to talk about them directly if you feel compelled to discuss them. If you are interested in trolling I do not want to hear about it directly but would be happy to entertain your opinions about how memetic properties or emergent systems are represented in Starcraft. I think Mutalisk micro, Dragoon glitches, Reaver glitches, Spider-mine dodges, Probe-transfers, Dark Templar walls, Mind Control, Dark Swarm, hold-position Lurkers, and so on is sufficient empirical evidence of paradoxes at work in the theory of computation and complexity. If you want to talk about trolling, confine the discussion to these interesting Starcraft-related events.
I plan to keep the thread updated as I play games and record replays.
edit: the thread has received updated VODs. let me know if they are viewable.
