EPTEveryone makes basic tips threads for how to improve in Starcraft and basic tips for newer players or reminders for older ones. I decided to have a little fun with it to make it more relateable, readable, and well, fun. Which is what Starcraft casual play is all about!
Dream One: The Samurais
The first battle involves a brute samurai using a large and cumbersome Naginata weapon. Our hero "Babydoll" uses speed to out maneuver him and take him down. Now, imagine that you are Babydoll and the Naginata wielding opponent is your Meching Terran opponent. While super powerful, even able to launch you into the air in a single volley, the trick is to never get hit. The Meching Terran is slow, and needs to be in position to strike. When playing against a Terran who wishes to go Mech against you, whittle them down slowly while out expanding and harassing them. Baby doll doesn't just go straight for the throat, she goes for the knees first: cripple your opponent through harassment and counter attacks, and in the end they will have nothing and you can go for the jugular when they are out of position.
Next is the minigun wielding enemy, with a constant stream of bullets, you just have to survive getting closer and closer with each second that passes. In the world of Starcraft this is the opponent whom you are 8 minutes into the game with and he seems to have a never ending stream of units to attack with (think four gate). You have your expansion down and he just won't stop attacking. Against this opponent all you have to do is ensure that you are surviving and scouting. The first thing you'll want to do is watch if he has expanded, and then you can determine that something will be coming. The best example of this in lower leagues is the Terran three barracks attack. Early on in your protoss or zerg play this attack can make you feel like terran is imbalanced as a constant stream of stimmed marines and mauraders constantly assault your front. Against this opponent, all you need to do is survive. An important concept to become aware of is if you're constantly making workers, not being supply blocked, expanding, and keeping your money low, then there is no way that your opponent can have more units than you unless he is cutting something to do it. Just like our heroine, if you just survive, clawing your way forward, you will suddenly surge forward and win (Warning: epic music and buildings collapsing may not be included).
The final samurai warrior is the katana wielding speed demon. The samurai charges forward, and Babydoll waits for the perfect time and launches her attack. To me this speaks to zergs about remembering the power of counterattacking. In lower leagues especially, most people will not leave anything back at their base when they are moving out, just run 20 or so zerglings around your opponents army, and you can force them to be all in. Counter attacking is also a great way to scout, as we see IMLosira often use it for that very purpose. So if Zergs want to be like Babydoll (and honestly who doesn't
), then they just wait until the opponent is committing to the attack and then leaping up from the ground with a counter attack that seals their opponents fate.Summary: Defeating mech and counter attacking
Dream Two: TvT
Trench warfare, talk about a TvT! Both sides often end up in a big tanks stalemate and oftentimes, even at the pro level, the game ends when one guy takes all of his units and suddenly attacks into a numerically inferior, but tactically superior force. There are two parts of this scene worth mentioning, the effectiveness of sniping and the importance of air control. "The wise man" is able to snipe out a couple of germans and nuetralize a huge machine gun from the germans. This is the use you want for banshees, blue flame hellions, and drops in the match up. Going cloak banshee in combination with your typical marine tank force can work very well if you can use the banshees to snipe out enemy tanks and workers. As terran in TvT it is very important to have an e-bay timing that accommadates the fastest of cloak banshees to deny it kills if you even suspect that one may be coming. If a cloak banshee catches you with your pants down, it ends games pretty convincingly. Combine this with drops, forcing your APM to improve through constant harassment rather than spamming, and your Terran opponent will feel defeated from constant harass and be too busy defending to attack.
Next is the importance of air control. The ever important mech suit piloted by Amber in the movie is nearly destroyed when a bomb explodes right next to the suit. This demonstrates the importance of air control in the matchup. In TvT, if you surrender air control, your opponent will just go battlecruiser and kill you, it is important that if you are falling behind in air control you either take steps to neutralize it or end the game before the air battle gets to be unwinnable. In lower leagues since macro is generally much worse, you will often find times that you should just go battle cruiser. If your money gets too high then ya, just throw down 4 or 5 starports and go viking battlecruiser, but as you progress in your play, you'll notice that you can oftentimes just kill opponents who try and do this as long as you attack and scout at the right time.
Summary: Harassment in TvT and air control
Dream 3: The Dragon
To me the aerial battles in this scene could only remind me of the one most dreaded thing in any Zerg's aresenal, the mutalisk. If you play Zerg in lower leagues, be active with them, mutalisks are extremely easy to micro in SC2 and very challenging to micro against. Most low level terrans or protoss' don't have the kind of control to prevent a flock of mutas from decimating their mineral line. An important thing to remember about mutalisks however, is just like in the movie, you can lose them all in one hit. Babydoll manages to get a perfect sword hit on the dragon, and it is important to remember that a couple storms or thors can decimate your whole muta ball very quickly, so you need to be paying attention to them. Working with mutalisks is also a great way to force an increase in your apm if you are always remembering to be active with them.
Summary: Using fast soft units like Mutalisks to increase apm and reminder to watch them carefully
The Bomb, Codename: Kitchen Knife
This battle on the train was probably one of the best directed fight scene's in recent memory. To me it demonstrates the important of micro management. You will be shocked how much more you can do with your units if you pay more attention to them. Stutter stepping MM, selecting banelings and using them to chase marines, microing weakened blink stalkers back. All of these small micro tricks will get you out of hairy situations. There are just some basic micro tips to help improve your small attack force, aside from the above mentioned are focusing down colossus, using spell casters, dodging splash damage, and more. In the movie, director Zach Snyder chose for some of the scene to be over the shoulder and in first person, to make the audience an active participant in the action. These will take time to develop in your play, but you need to work on not just watching the battle, but being an active participant in it.
Summary: Basic micro is important to get used to
A common tip given to newer players is "you can win through macro alone," but there are some important strategy and micro guidelines along that. No matter how good your macro is, if you attack into siege tanks, let your opponent get air control and battle cruisers, or don't watch your army in an engagement involving AoE units, you will under perform. In this write up I talked about defeating mech, holding all ins, counter attacking, Positional TvT wars, air control, mutalisks and other harassment, and basic micro tips. You have all the weapons you need for your journey, NOW FIGHT!
I had some fun with this write up, mostly just because I loved the movie so much. I realize macro is important, but so are basic micro and strategy tips and I thought this would be a fun way to write about some of them.
Here are links to my other, more serious, stuff:
MarineKingPrime.WE vs. oGsMC
EG.Idra vs. TLAF Liquid'Huk
TLAF Liquid'Tyler vs. TLAF Liquid'TLO
MLG Dallas Group B Analysis and Predictions
EG.Idra vs. coL.Cruncher
GSTL 2 Finals
IMLosira's Ability to hold all ins as Zerg
GSL Finals Ogs_MC vs. ST_July
