Disclaimer: I am not an expert player, and won't ever claim to be - that being said, I say with the utmost humility that I hope that this write-up can help you.
First of all, if you're still playing BroodWar in 2012 and beyond, awesome! Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) BroodWar remains a very challenging game that requires a lot of practice to improve. Because of the game's inherent difficulty, it can be enticing to want to find a "magic button" type of play or strategy that will help them win more games. Usually, this type of person will go people who are better than them and ask for advice on how to play, and receive a vast array of varying answers. This write-up isn't really a "How To Win" guide, but more of a "Why You Won/Lost" general analysis. Understanding why certain strategies work in situation A but fail in situation B is very helpful to comprehend what's happening in replays when you review your own play and others' play.
A big pet peeve of mine is when there is a new player looking for advice. Like, for example, say there is a Zerg player who just does not understand ZvP. Someone might tell him or her: "Well, you need to learn 3-hatch spire into 5-hatch hydra". Or if they're a Terran player who is struggling with TvZ, someone might say to the new player, "You need to learn early +1 into 5rax build." Now, I have absolutely nothing against those strategies, but the advice is not very practical in reality. The new player will learn the early +1 into 5rax build, and start using it, and will still lose. He or she will show the replay to a friend and ask "What did I do wrong? Why did I die to mutalisks if this build is supposed to stop mutalisks from killing me?" and the friend might nit-pick a little bit and go "Well, I saw you got your range upgrade a little bit late, and you lost one medic to zerglings earlier, and you lost a few marines behind your mineral line because you didn't scan over the cliff." but completely ignore that the Zerg went 2-hatch mutalisk instead of 3-hatch mutalisk.
Before I get into specific details about why X seems to work against Y, I want to clarify a few things:
- First, no matter how good you think your strategy is, it will fall apart quickly if you do not have the mechanics to carry it out. If your primary problem with your gameplay is mechanics, then no amount of theorycrafting can solve that.
- Second, when you're being self-analytical, it really hurts to have a bad mindset and think, "Well, I just lost because my opponent was good and I suck." because that's an enormous oversimplification of what should be a thorough self-analysis. You can't objectively analyze your play or someone else's play if you have an extremely negative attitude towards yourself, or an extremely negative attitude towards someone else's play.
- Just because someone is "good" at playing BroodWar does not automatically make them a good teacher. It's really easy to get stuck doing something stupid in your games because you're just blindly doing what someone told you to do. It's a trap!
Okay, if you haven't listened to the Day[9] Podcasts, I highly recommend you do, because they will make you think about StarCraft in a way that you wouldn't normally do just by reading liquipedia or getting advice from your expert StarCraft friend.
Note: Your expert StarCraft friend might be a really good teacher, and if he or she is, then I totally apologize to them.
Advantages
Day[9]'s podcasts provide a lot of insight into his game theory, in which he talks a lot about using your play to secure advantages in games. An advantage (and this is just me talking here now, not Day[9]) can be anything. Any time you have any single element of game play that is greater than your opponent, you can use that to give yourself an edge in a game. It can be as simple as simply having more self-confidence than your opponent (which is can be difficult to gauge) or something more tangible, such as having more gateways than your opponent. Just to list some potential advantages, here are a few:
You can have more (for example)
- Map vision - Bases (most obvious one to everyone) - Battlecruisers - Resources - Scouting information - Knowledge of the map - Air units - Harvesters
There are some exceptions, such as
- I have more critters on my side of the map, so I can use this somehow - I have more burning buildings than my opponent - I have more distractions in real life than my opponent, like my cat knocking grape soda all over my keyboard
The point is, all plays and strategies are or should be tailored to give a player an advantage, and that he or she has the option to compound that into more advantages, which will snowball into a win later on.
Playstyles
Different players have different "styles" of play. Some Terran players, like Fantasy, like to build a lot of vultures and be very aggressive. Flash tended to play less aggressive and would play very safe. This, of course, is just a generalization, because Flash can play an aggressive game and Fantasy can turtle all day if he wanted to. Here's where I'm going to make a very bold statement: in terms of very general playstyles, certain styles will automatically give you an almost-immediate advantage over other styles. In terms of what-kills-what:
This doesn't mean "If you pick scissors, you will always beat paper 100% of the time", because that would be stupid. What I'm saying is that by reading your opponent, you can make slight adjustments to your play to give yourself small advantages to help yourself win. Sometimes, you can't read your opponent, and you can just gamble, and then do your best from there. The most cited example of this is in ZvZ:
12 Hatch is considered the 'greedy' build 9 Pool is considered the 'aggressive' build Overpool is considered the 'safe' build
Therefore, if 'Aggressive > Greedy', a Zerg player going 12 Hatch will be at a disadvantage to the other Zerg player who went 9 Pool. This advantage that the 9 Pool Zerg just attained can be compounded upon by the fact that his gas extractor was built earlier than his opponent's, which will give him mutalisks or zergling speed much sooner than his opponent.
This sort of rock-scissors-paper rule has a lot of exceptions, but generally works like this:
Greedy > Safe
The Safe Player is investing in defense that he or she may not need, while the Greedy Player is taking an extra expansion, or making more harvesters. Later, let's say in the middle-game, both players' armies confront each other. The Greedy Player will simply have a larger army because he or she chose to start building an economy for a huge army while the Safe Player wasn't.
Aggressive > Greedy
The Aggressive Player uses a timing window to deal a serious blow to the Greedy Player before that later stage in the game. This type of play almost always immediately kills off the Greedy player, or can cripple them seriously. A good example of this is in TvP, when the Terran player sees the Protoss is double-expanding with very few gateways or tech. The Protoss is playing "greedy", and the Terran player goes 6-fact to attack the Protoss player before the benefits of that 3-base economy kicks in.
Safe > Aggressive
A "safe" play is to prepare yourself for possibilities that may arise by building defense of some sort. For example, let's say you're a Zerg player who has double-expanded, and you're against a Protoss player who has forge-expanded. You fly an overlord into his or her base and see 8 gateways, so you know the Protoss is going to produce a huge army to attack you. You would start playing "Safe" and building the appropriate defense to deal with a huge incoming attack, whether it be a thick sunken/spore/lurker field, or a huge flank of hydralisks and lurkers. You wouldn't play "Greedy", and just mass drones willy-nilly, or take two more bases.
In this match (Thanks to TL's nevake for VOD) Midas uses a very greedy strategy against Bisu's safe play on Fighting Spirit. This play is a very calculated gamble by Midas, but it pays off in the late game.
During the early, middle, and late stages of any match, you can change the pace of your play. For example, many Zerg players see a Protoss fast-expanding, and therefore, play "Greedy" in the early game by double-expanding and massing up drones, then play "Aggressive" by building a bunch of hydralisks in the mid-game after they're done making drones.
In this match (Thanks to Moletrap for VOD) Flash and Zero play on Match Point. Zero's play starts very aggressive, and then transitions into a very greedy play. This illustrates beautifully how you can use this principle at varying stages of your play to create a strategy.
Part one:
Part two:
In the Midas vs Bisu game on Fighting Spirit, as soon as Bisu starts threatening Midas with arbiters, Midas plays safe and turtles up a bit in the mid-game.
This kind of understanding of a person's play has huge implications when analyzing replays. Sometimes, you'll see a progamer replay or a semi-pro do something awesome and think "I want to do that!" but miss the context in which they did it. What was their opponent doing? How were they playing at different stages in the game?
To go back to the TvZ +1 early attack upgrade vs 3-hatch mutalisk scenario that I mentioned earlier, there is a difference when facing 2-hatch mutalisk. Of course, mutalisk micro and marine/medic control is incredibly important in both cases, but with 2-hatch mutalisks, the mutalisks can arrive a full game minute sooner than a 3-hatch mutalisk build. By staying on a single barracks for so long, you will naturally have less marines, because getting the early command center and then the +1 attack upgrade is a greedy play in the early game, so early aggression by the Zerg player can give the Zerg an advantage, especially if your timing is off. Against a 3-Hatch Mutalisk play vs your +1 attack upgrade into 5rax build, you take advantage of the fact that Zerg players want to play greedy and take their third base as quickly as possible and an aggressive mid-game play from a Terran player will shatter a greedy Zerg opponent.
Finally, let me close this with a story about what inspired this whole piece into being. I was watching a friend of mine practicing playing TvP. He would scout the Protoss player going double gateways with a robotics facility to build observers, but he chose to push with a fast fake-double push (5 marines, 1 tank with no siege, 1 vulture with mines) and would get crushed instantly. The Protoss' play was relatively safe from early Terran aggression, and the fast FD push is an idea that revolves around the Protoss player playing Greedy and staying on one gateway for a long time. About a week later, against the same practice partner, my Terran friend had abandoned going fast FD, and was doing a very super-safe siege-expand. Meanwhile, his practice partner, being aware of this, simply double-expanded while having only one gateway and no robotics facility yet. The Protoss player was just abusing strategies to gain an advantage - which is exactly what you should try to do when you play. This write-up exists to help give you a very general idea of how you look at your replays, someone else's replays, or VODs, and be able to unravel the mindset of the player that you are watching. Of course, there are a lot of strange situations that don't fall into a rock/scissors/paper mold, which is one of the many aspects of StarCraft that make it an awesome game.
Very cool writing. I learned the whole Greedy > Safe > Aggressive > Greedy concept during watching Diggity commentary of incontrol vs Artosis WGC game waaaaay back when (probably 2009). Diggity liked the Chinese players as Greedy, Artosis as Safe, and Incontrol as Aggressive, and that analogy stuck in head ever since.
The build Midas used against Bisu is not greedy, its a safe macro build. Its actually the most fundamental and standard TvP build on macro based maps (ex: Jade). The reason why pro gamers can get away with going for a third CC off of 1 Factory and non professionals can't is because non professionals run their SCV around the opponent base until the Dragoon kills it and doesn't actually determine what the Protoss is doing. Professional Terrans scout to learn where the Protoss base is before the Dragoon finishes, then scouts at a critical timing that guarantees the Terran can deduct exactly what kind of build the Protoss is doing.
When a Terran player discovers a Protoss player goes for Dragoon Range and a Nexus, its 100% viable on macro maps for a Terran player to go for a 1 Factory 3 CC build. Whereas, on a non macro map, a Terran player will go for a soft 2 base 3 Tank + 3 Vulture push.
hi, ive read it twice, seen the vods and would like to add something. i guess i spoiler it because its big.... + Show Spoiler +
i agree with that Greedy > Safe > Aggressive > Greedy concept (early game), but if we look at play styles in games which reach into (late)midgame or lategame, i think the better way at describing it would be Agressive and Defensive.
my current "definition" of your terms is: Aggressive: being aggressive, attacking with units, harassing with units, often sacrificing an expansion or worker in order to get out more units to attack/harass with. you have to do "damage" based upon your "sacrifice in economy" in order for it to not end in a disadvantage position.
Safe: being defensive, placing units in defensive positions to stop attacks/harass attempts, trying to be as greedy as possible based on your current scouting information in order to get more bases/worker/tech than the agressive player.
Greedy: being risky, to neglect possible strategies the enemy could use in order to skimp on defense/units in order to get an economic advantage/unit advantage. very often a defensive way of "playing greedy" where you hope he doesnt attack or scout your "greedy play"
in the Midas vs Bisu game, it feels that Midas did play risky by placing the 3rd cc before ebay without even scouting Bisu's 3rd or his natural/main. But because my understanding in pvt is more or less nonexistant, i kinda agree with tryummm and say that his build was safe, but i dont know for sure.... in the Zero vs Flash game, Zero did play aggressive by going the 12 pool 2 hatch muta variation, but how do you know if his mass expo afterwards was "greedy"(read: risky)? if agressive would be making more mutas/lings and attack, and greedy would be taking more expansions, what would "safe" be? not expanding? how do we know that he didnt know that he is safe doing what he did? maybe he practiced various 2 hatch muta variations for 3 months on this map and knew how to take advantage with his mutas to buy enough time at all those ridges in order to go for "safe" 4 bases? that exactly makes it hard to look at a single replay/vod of progamers, because we very often dont know if his defensive build was risky or actually safe. it makes it even harder if a rather new player simply copies progamer builds without exactly knowing why he does it, or how he makes his build "safe" (very good macro, good unit placement, very good micro, distracting/buying time with harass/units) simplest example of this safe/greedy(risky) scenario would be:
For example, many Zerg players see a Protoss fast-expanding, and therefore, play "Greedy" in the early game by double-expanding and massing up drones
if they scout the protoss going ffe, then placing 3rd hatch on 3rd base is "safe", but if they place down the 3rd hatch at 3rd base before they scout protoss, they play risky/greedy. (if u know how to win even if u scout his base after u placed your 3rd hatch at 3rd base, then your play is not risky anymore)
apart from early game, its very hard to simply play greedy in mid/lategame, apart from randomly jamming in expansions, or never building any defenses at all against drop or so. Because of that, i see it more of a Aggressive - Defensive scenario the Aggressive player tries to attack/harass/tech to gain an advantage. the Defensive player tries to defend/expand to gain an advantage. Both styles can aim for the lategame, but with the aggressive style you can aim to end the game (if enemy played greedy or enemy couldnt scout your all-in). in that sense, Fantasy is more an aggressive player (vult drops), while Flash is more the defensive player (fast 3rd). Kwanro is aggressive (mass ling, all ins, flowchart to success) while Great could be defensive (hive zvz) this aggressive/defensive concept applies even more to zerg, because they have to always decide: drones or units. you can go 2 hatch muta (aggressive), but u can either mass ling before your mutas (aggressive) or make just few enough lings to survive while you make drones (defensive). every time you make a decision, you have to decide between the Aggressive variation or the Defensive variation. if you play 2 rax vs zerg, you have to decide between 2 rax mnm or 2 rax into expansion. if you play 2 rax mnm, you have to decide between 3 rax mnm or 2 rax tank push or 2 rax mnm into expansion. if you play 3 hatch hydra vs protoss forge fe, you have to decide if you want to keep making hydras in order to break him or if you want to make drones while "containing" with your hydras. if you go 2 fac vs protoss, u have to decide if u go 3 fac (or 4 fac) or expand afterwards.
In all these examples, u can decide between aggressive or defensive followups of your build. Agressive builds still have to do enough "damage" for their aggressiveness to pay off or else u will be at a disadvantage, whether it be an aggressive or a defensive followup. The most important point to make is that 95% of the builds have followups, regardless if they are aggressive or defensive. I see sooo many "not good players" go for... lets say, forge fe into +1 speedzeal against zerg, and they dont have cannons against mutas, and even if they do, they are completely lost at what to do next and just sent their zeals into death at a sim city with 2-3 sunkens and mutas/lings on top of it. they most likely think, "alright i have to make damage (read: big amount of damage, kill expo or kill many drones), or else im screwed because he has mutas and i have no tech" when i see them play, they have good macro until they start attacking with their build, then attack, 100% focus on getting the most out of the attack, often more than 1k minerals and a late/bad followup which puts them in a big disadvantage. he could, for example, followup into 2 stargate corsair (harass, check out fold's guide) or into archons (aggressive) or take an early 3rd and defend with cannons first (defensive). if he completely "blocks" your aggression (he has simcity/sunkens/mutas, you dont waste your units), you might be in a small disadvantage, but dont just submit to that disadvantage (a-move units into death) and fight your way back. you may think that his advantage is big, but with a good followup, he has a really hard time to keep his advantage because he has to at least keep up with you in order to not lose it. i generally have longer games (me z...) against 8 rax compared to my games against depot first builds, because the 8 rax person cant just simply bunker rush and cross fingers, he has to follow it up in some way or another if i somehow hold his bunker rush. So its often about who can followup his stuff better and longer than his enemy, not who gets the first advantage.
im kinda bad with formatting so i guess i just leave it that way...
Honestly despite being terrible at playing BW myself, I think I have a pretty good understanding of the game. Between lurking in threads at TL and watching tons of professional games I think it is possible to understand the game on a better level. This doesn't directly lead to wins, I'm still awful because my mechanics are terrible. But it is nice to understand the game. I found after a while I didn't even want to watch english commentaries anymore because they missed so much anyway and koreans are so much more exciting. If you watch enough games just watching what the game observers focus on should let you know what is going on in the game.
On October 25 2012 07:02 tryummm wrote: The build Midas used against Bisu is not greedy, its a safe macro build. Its actually the most fundamental and standard TvP build on macro based maps (ex: Jade). The reason why pro gamers can get away with going for a third CC off of 1 Factory and non professionals can't is because non professionals run their SCV around the opponent base until the Dragoon kills it and doesn't actually determine what the Protoss is doing. Professional Terrans scout to learn where the Protoss base is before the Dragoon finishes, then scouts at a critical timing that guarantees the Terran can deduct exactly what kind of build the Protoss is doing.
When a Terran player discovers a Protoss player goes for Dragoon Range and a Nexus, its 100% viable on macro maps for a Terran player to go for a 1 Factory 3 CC build. Whereas, on a non macro map, a Terran player will go for a soft 2 base 3 Tank + 3 Vulture push.
There's a problem with your assessment, which is that Midas expanded without having scouted Bisu's base or outlying area beforehand. Furthermore, Midas took the second expansion before having turrets or siege mode, and only had one tank at his natural and a second one on it's way when he took the expansion. That's not a "safe macro build" by any stretch of the imagination.
On October 25 2012 07:24 Bakuryu wrote: hi, ive read it twice, seen the vods and would like to add something. i guess i spoiler it because its big....
i agree with that Greedy > Safe > Aggressive > Greedy concept (early game), but if we look at play styles in games which reach into (late)midgame or lategame, i think the better way at describing it would be Agressive and Defensive.
my current "definition" of your terms is: Aggressive: being aggressive, attacking with units, harassing with units, often sacrificing an expansion or worker in order to get out more units to attack/harass with. you have to do "damage" based upon your "sacrifice in economy" in order for it to not end in a disadvantage position.
Safe: being defensive, placing units in defensive positions to stop attacks/harass attempts, trying to be as greedy as possible based on your current scouting information in order to get more bases/worker/tech than the agressive player.
Greedy: being risky, to neglect possible strategies the enemy could use in order to skimp on defense/units in order to get an economic advantage/unit advantage. very often a defensive way of "playing greedy" where you hope he doesnt attack or scout your "greedy play"
I pretty much agree with you on everything. When I use the term "aggressive", I mean it in a very general way, though. In the early game (and even the mid-game), you have to sacrifice some potential economic growth in order to execute your aggression. A good example of mid-game aggressive play is a Terran going 6fact in TvP. The Terran player is giving up the prospect of taking a quick third base, and thus generating more income, in favor of a mid-game attack. This attack will pay big dividends against a greedy Protoss player, who will have too few units to defend his bases, but against a Protoss player who is prepared for a Terran push by getting 6 gateways and arbiters, will be much more apt to deflect the Terran's offense.
in the Midas vs Bisu game, it feels that Midas did play risky by placing the 3rd cc before ebay without even scouting Bisu's 3rd or his natural/main. But because my understanding in pvt is more or less nonexistant, i kinda agree with tryummm and say that his build was safe, but i dont know for sure....
Actually, tryummm is just wrong. The reason I picked that particular game is because it is an extreme example of a greedy build, because without having full knowledge of Bisu's motives, Bisu could have gone with any number of aggressive plays and came out with an advantage. Midas felt confident that Bisu would not go for a reaver drop or dark templar rush, or bulldog, but rather, would double expand or play safe until the late game.
in the Zero vs Flash game, Zero did play aggressive by going the 12 pool 2 hatch muta variation, but how do you know if his mass expo afterwards was "greedy"(read: risky)? if agressive would be making more mutas/lings and attack, and greedy would be taking more expansions, what would "safe" be? not expanding? how do we know that he didnt know that he is safe doing what he did? maybe he practiced various 2 hatch muta variations for 3 months on this map and knew how to take advantage with his mutas to buy enough time at all those ridges in order to go for "safe" 4 bases? that exactly makes it hard to look at a single replay/vod of progamers, because we very often dont know if his defensive build was risky or actually safe. it makes it even harder if a rather new player simply copies progamer builds without exactly knowing why he does it, or how he makes his build "safe" (very good macro, good unit placement, very good micro, distracting/buying time with harass/units)
Here's why I picked this game as an example: As I said in my post, "all plays and strategies are or should be tailored to give a player an advantage, and that he or she has the option to compound that into more advantages, which will snowball into a win later on." Because Zero felt he could gain an advantage by playing aggressive early, he used that advantage to compound itself into more advantages, allowing him to double expand and produce a lot of drones. Zero could played that game much differently. Instead of transitioning into a more greedy play, he could have sent speedlings to Flash's natural to help kill turrets and infantry units, supporting the mutalisk aggression. Simply put, Zero could have simply poured on more aggression as a means of potentially winning.
The reason I picked this particular game was not to illustrate if Zero's play was risky or not. The point was to show a transition from an aggressive play to a greedy play. This is, by no means, a thread that focuses on how to scout and calculate risks. Nor do I say "If you see your opponent play X-style, go Y-style.", and I say in my post that it's a way to look at different styles of plays during replays and VODs.
That being said, the reason I believe Zero picked his strategy on Match Point had to do with the map. The "safe" transition for players opening with a 2-Hatch Mutalisk would be to take a third base and then add a nydus canal so it can be defended with lurkers and defilers until the Zerg player can take the natural of wherever that third base for the Zerg player is located. Since Match Point doesn't have a "natural" with a 4th gas downramp from the 3rd base, the standard 2-Hatch Mutalisk play (starting from a 12 hatch opening) wouldn't be inapplicable on that map. Therefore, Zero used a timing even earlier than a 12 hatch opening to 2-Hatch Mutalisk by going 12 Pool instead, and then using the aggression from his mutalisks to keep Flash pinned back as long as possible so that he could double-expand. Now, was this strategy risky? Absolutely, but the risk Zero took by being greedy paid off in the late game when he was able to field a huge army.
In my post, the definition of "safe" is not equal to "no risk". When I say "safe" as a playstyle, I mean that the Safe Player is taking precautions and building what he or she feels is the appropriate amount of defense. This type of cautiousness is meant to prevent your opponent's aggression from putting you at a disadvantage and/or killing you. Without the proper information from scouting, you run a risk of being at a disadvantage anyhow because your opponent has chosen to play greedy. A very extreme example of this comes from super-noobs who start playing, and just build tons and tons of defense almost immediately, like 10 cannons protecting their ramp. They have no information on what their opponent is doing, so even though they would stop a 9-Pool build from killing them, a slightly better Zerg opponent will simply take an expansion and maybe take another one, so that the Protoss player is at a huge disadvantage. Playing overly safe presents you with a risk of being put at a disadvantage by your opponent's greedy play.
Also, I should point out that there are varying degrees of safe/greedy/aggressive builds. There is a whole rainbow-spectrum of playstyle levels that you can plan with.
The point was to show a transition from an aggressive play to a greedy play.
for me, "greedy" or "greed" has this negative feeling, like it is something bad, in a sense of "risky", but even worse. thats why i tried to avoid that word. the risk of a greedy player (or "risky") i was talking about is something uncontrollable. like flipping a coin. if the enemy is picking an aggressive build or is scouting your hidden expo, then u have 0 means of defending it and u either lose the game or are behind. That way your giving away your chances at succeeding into the hands off your opponent and have nearly no way of using your whole skillset of macro/micro/multitask to deny it (except maybe denying scouting or pretending to play standard). if u 12 hatch zvz, u just hope he doesnt 9 pool and find you on the first try. If he goes 9 pool and finds u, u have very slim chances at surviving without a big disadvantage. (based on map, but on fs this is the case)
i think Zero played "safe", not greedy/risky, because he controlled the outcome with his mutalisks control, buying time at all those ridges for the lurkers. I think Zero is able to replicate that build mutiple times with the same success against the same opponent. Zero also pressured Flash with his Muta harass, so if Flash didnt go for his "counter-aggression" with his mnm, the mutas would pick of more and more scvs until Zero is able to mass out lurker/ling of his 4 bases. Because of the pressure, Flash has 0 ways of playing greedy/risky, unless he goes for hidden 3rd at top left base before factory or something like that, but then he would be hoping that Zero doesnt just send 1 ling to scout. The safe way of playing would be to add on more turrets and staying at home, going for a faster tech, i guess. It's only safe on match point, because on other maps, u wont have all that features which enables easy places to muta micro at, so going 2 hatch muta into 4 base on other maps would be risky.
if ur saying that a build relying on muta micro to work is risky, then.... i guess many micro oriented builds are risky.
Without the proper information from scouting, you run a risk of being at a disadvantage anyhow because your opponent has chosen to play greedy.
Yes i agree, scouting information is very crucial, because after aggressive/safe/greedy decisions in the early game and beginning of midgame, 99% of the greedy options can be stopped by simply scouting the map and the opponent.
i just want to mention again that i do agree with the concept of: Greedy > Safe > Aggressive > Greedy but only in the early game, when u have only very few ways of scouting your enemy. if u then manage to somehow scout the enemy, u first evaluate each players strengths/weaknesses and react according to the current state, so u either move into an aggressive position or into a defensive position (in PvT, 1 gate range goon vs 1 rax cc,u scout him with probe and u see bunker/cc, u contain him outside his natural with your goons) and then u decide "should i follow up with an aggression build (nony gates) or a defensive build? (placing nexus)". After u place the nexus, u can decide to go more defensive by going fast 3rd, or u can add on gates + robo. if u decide to play risky by skimping on defense even though u scouted him playing aggressive, then u will probably be dead. yes i know my example was in the early game... but the aggressive/defensive question in mid-lategame is always a matter of style, while playing risky is just... playing risky (risk u cant control) and ye i also think there are many different variations of aggressive/defensive playstyles
The point was to show a transition from an aggressive play to a greedy play.
for me, "greedy" or "greed" has this negative feeling, like it is something bad, in a sense of "risky", but even worse. thats why i tried to avoid that word. the risk of a greedy player (or "risky") i was talking about is something uncontrollable. like flipping a coin.
I just want to focus on this because I think you've brought up a good point. When I say "greedy", I'm very specifically talking about resource income, which you can increase by adding expansions or workers to your fold. You could call this "Economic play" because this part of your play focuses on increasing your "money". Simply put, being "greedy" means you're trying to make a lot of money, or in a more literal sense, mineral ore and vespene gas. Good examples of "greedy" early plays would be like 14 CC or 12 Nexus.
A middle/late game greedy build is a bit more arbitrary, but it's basically where you reach a position where you're in an advantage and feel like you can take an expansion. You say to yourself "You know, I might be able to defend myself if I double expand right now." and it's that element of uncertainty that makes it a "greedy" play.
I consider all plays or strategies (not necessarily 'builds') to carry a certain amount of risk with it. Any time you let any one single element of your plan be reliant on some aspect of your opponent's decision-making, you run a higher risk. For example, let's say a Protoss player decides to do a high templar drop. Much of the outcome of this play will be determined by how well the Protoss player's opponent can react to the situation. I consider any harassment to carry some element of risk, because as you eluded to earlier, aggression must do damage. Zero's mutalisk harass needed to be able to hurt Flash for his plan to work, and he was successful. Zero was essentially betting that his mutalisk control would be able to stop Flash from successfully attacking.
On October 25 2012 10:08 Gerbilkit wrote: Honestly despite being terrible at playing BW myself, I think I have a pretty good understanding of the game. Between lurking in threads at TL and watching tons of professional games I think it is possible to understand the game on a better level. This doesn't directly lead to wins, I'm still awful because my mechanics are terrible. But it is nice to understand the game. I found after a while I didn't even want to watch english commentaries anymore because they missed so much anyway and koreans are so much more exciting. If you watch enough games just watching what the game observers focus on should let you know what is going on in the game.
If you're terrible, your understanding is probably also terrible. Being able to follow a game is not the same as understanding how to play.
I'm enjoying the discussion between Bakuryu and Ninazerg. Thanks, both of you!
On October 25 2012 10:08 Gerbilkit wrote: Honestly despite being terrible at playing BW myself, I think I have a pretty good understanding of the game. Between lurking in threads at TL and watching tons of professional games I think it is possible to understand the game on a better level. This doesn't directly lead to wins, I'm still awful because my mechanics are terrible. But it is nice to understand the game. I found after a while I didn't even want to watch english commentaries anymore because they missed so much anyway and koreans are so much more exciting. If you watch enough games just watching what the game observers focus on should let you know what is going on in the game.
If you're terrible, your understanding is probably also terrible. Being able to follow a game is not the same as understanding how to play.
I never said it was the same, and I never claimed to be an expert. Maybe you could learn to read what people actually say and take it for what it is instead of slamming people to assert your own superiority. If watching pro games was all that was necessary to know and play the game then everyone would be an expert. All I said was I can understand the game when watching. As in knowing the metagame and understand basic ideas of counters, macro, greedy and aggressive play, timing attacks, and the basic idea behind most standard builds. Not exactly a claim to professional skill.
I'm enjoying the discussion between Bakuryu and Ninazerg. Thanks, both of you!
From your post I can explain why I love Bisu's play so much vs Zerg.
Bisu is always playing multiple play styles which makes it hard to choose how to play against him.
Bisu is aggressive the whole game but that is not his only playstyle. . He creates tools from corsairs and eventually +1 zealots as tools for harassment. He will continue to use both corsairs and zealots to stay aggressive and terrorize the zerg. But staying aggressive also allows him to scout his opponent. Scouting will dictate his other play styles.
Bisu opener: Bisu is always greedy first. To him, the match up means forge expand. He plays greedy to get his harrasment tools up. Unless he scouts something crazy he tends to lack cannons and that is one of his actual weak points in the matchup. However Bisu has the most OP unit "probes" to help defend.
Bisu's third: At this point Bisu plays it safe. He loves securing 3-4 cannons on his third and that allows him to get far ahead. He's usually ahead at this point also because he can prevent the zerg from taking to many expansions.
Late game: Bisu is now aggressive/aggressive. He makes a death ball of archons ht's and zlots to attack the throat of the zerg bases. Meanwhile he usually sends dt's to expansions and picks of overlords at the same time.
In summary, Bisu is just unfair because he has the ability to play many styles. So be fortunate you won't ever play someone like this in your lifetime while you're on iccup.
On October 25 2012 12:52 Bakuryu wrote: i think Zero played "safe", not greedy/risky, because he controlled the outcome with his mutalisks control, buying time at all those ridges for the lurkers. I think Zero is able to replicate that build mutiple times with the same success against the same opponent. Zero also pressured Flash with his Muta harass, so if Flash didnt go for his "counter-aggression" with his mnm, the mutas would pick of more and more scvs until Zero is able to mass out lurker/ling of his 4 bases. Because of the pressure, Flash has 0 ways of playing greedy/risky, unless he goes for hidden 3rd at top left base before factory or something like that, but then he would be hoping that Zero doesnt just send 1 ling to scout. The safe way of playing would be to add on more turrets and staying at home, going for a faster tech, i guess. It's only safe on match point, because on other maps, u wont have all that features which enables easy places to muta micro at, so going 2 hatch muta into 4 base on other maps would be risky.
Here's what I would say regarding this, which is kind of a continuation of a thought I gave earlier regarding my definitions of "risky" and "greedy". For example, a 'risky' play would be going Greedy vs Aggressive, since aggressive play tends to hurt greedy play that skimps on defense. For this reason, you could call what I call "Safe" play something like "Cautious" or "Defensive" play, because it would be really confusing if I said "Safe play is safe against aggressive play".
Notice my post is not about risk management. It's mainly about recognizing playstyles, and some playstyles are kind of arbitrary. If the terms are too confusing, you can look at them more like this:
You're completely right when you said "Because of the pressure, Flash has 0 ways of playing greedy/risky [...]" which means Flash has to play what I would call "Safe", or what I've presented here as "Defensive". If Flash plays defensively, he can stop further aggression from Zero and come out ahead. Since Flash was forced to play defensive, Zero switched his focus from building more units to pour on more aggression into an Economic (or "Greedy") play later, because the principle that Economic > Defensive would give him an advantage later on.
Flash was consistent up to the mid-lategame, a slight deviation from safe, IMO. He applied something that would inherently give him an advantage for every bite-sized situation (but not something that any player could just dig up from the back of his head).
Fantasy's map control (which is more of 'opponent army control') with his vultures weren't so much as aggressive as they were part of the general sequence of things. That is, I would say that a +1 5rax timing or the EVER 2009 anti-3rd squad-group TvZ play presented by Flash would be aggression, while standard things that you simply do because you can such as the first 3rax TvZ timing with 2 medics and vulture scouting/attacking would not be aggression.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8sA5B.jpg)
Fantasy, like to build a lot of vultures and be very aggressive. 
Bisu's safe play on 
Fighting Spirit. This play is a very calculated gamble by Midas, but it pays off in the late game. 
Zero play on 
