The art of cheese. - Page 2

On January 30 2013 18:14 Hezzina wrote:
The hope of this thread is to shine some light on what a good cheese is and if I am able to convince even 1 person that cheesing can be a legit way to get better and win then this thread was worth it.

Cheesing from the Liquipedia broodwar article is listed as "an expression which refers to a strategy that is highly unconventional and designed to take one's opponent by surprise. In general, cheese is hard to beat if not scouted but easy to defeat if it is scouted." Cheese has always had a bad reputation in almost any game due to the fact that a cheese can be extremely easy to execute and is not reliant on your own skill but the skill of your opponent. However today I will come to the defense of cheese and the level of skill it can be.

First off - Yes there are bad players that cheese to higher brackets then they are in because their opponents do not react or scout properly, now lets get that out of the way and look at what skills the cheeser can have.

Second - Good cheese is not an all-in in most cases it must do something or else you are behind but there does tend to be a follow up to cheese.

Economic Cheese - Many terrans cheese without even thinking about it yet no one will call them out on it as cheese. A build that is seen many times in tournaments especially by Flash in many proleague games vs zerg is an ultra fast 3cc in order to get a large economic lead above your opponent and overwhelm them with cost efficient units. This is called "Greedy Play" but I call it no different then doing a 7 roach rush. Why because you are relying on your opponents to not scout it early and abuse the timing where your army will be weak by pushing in with an all-in, so under that first listed definition of cheese it is there to take your opponent by surprise and gives you a huge advantage if unscouted.

Meta game cheesing - This one is also often seen inside of games where a player will proxy a building in a normally unscouted position in order to gain faster reinforcements or a hidden tech advantage. There is also the cheese style from it that you will blindly attack at X timing because 95% of the time they are weak during it.

What is done during a good cheese - Many people will look at the cheese as they fact that its 100% reliant on the opponent messing up, but I would disagree. There are many things a good cheeser can do in order to gain an upper hand against their opponent by feeding a steady chain of lies and deceit to their opponents scouts, as well as its the job of a good cheeser to be able to read and understand very well the meta game currently existing inside of the game in order to be able to abuse it. The lies and deceit form a very simple and every race can do it a quick example would be that you make a drone attack the probe at your natural while doing a 7 roach rush you can even go as far as to hatch and cancel just to make your opponent think that everything is fine and this is just a small example of many things that can be done in order to deceive your opponent making a large amount of the skill of a good cheeser come into effect. As well a good cheeser always has a follow up and is only using the initial cheese as a tool to get ahead not to win the game.

The defence of the cheese!
Why is abusing fast expands a bad thing? In this current meta almost everyone is fast expanding why is it a bad thing to punish greedy players?

Since when does not going into a macro game mean you have less skill? The goal of every build in the game is very simple WIN. If my goal is to 3 base 200 food push and kill you at 11minutes (Stephano roach flood style) how is that any different then saying im going to attempt to kill you at the 6 minute mark? I am simply choosing a different time that I wish to win the game, as long as I plan to follow up on it as zerg I still need to inject, I still need to expand and drone behind it, and while doing all this I need to micro the units I am attacking with I'm just choosing to have the game become active faster.

Just because the meta game is macro and I don't play macro I am apparently worse of a player, right next to the scum of the earth according to many people I play against lots of which find out I am a very nice person and I can in fact beat many masters players even without cheesing.

The conclusion: Cheese can be done by anyone and is pretty easy to pull off, however a truly good cheeser can bring it to the next level and at that point why do we still call it cheese we should call it what it really is and what the commentators call it during a pro game as well it is simply "early aggression".

On January 31 2013 00:39 threshy wrote:


Sadly, we won't. Despite what many believe, high-level aggressive cheese is much more cerebral than macro play, which is essentially a clicking/focus contest until you get to the professional level. Stupid people can't pull off high-level aggressive cheese, but even stupid people can learn how to macro by rote through grinding out games. There are a lot of stupid people out there whose only chance of winning is to play this way, so chances are good that the prevailing view will continue to be that macro play is "skilled" and aggressive cheese is "unskilled."

On January 31 2013 00:40 Scootaloo wrote:



CombatEX might have been a bad example but it does show the mindset rather well, the pure cheesers tend to be assholes that don't give a shit about their opponents, hence why streamcheating and other forms are so often used by them.
I suppose one of the big jokes here is that there are no pro players who only cheese, for you to even qualify for pro status you need to master more then a single aspect of the game.

One trick pony's are indeed boring, but that is exactly what the OP is/is about, this is his second thread he made mostly to show off he got into masters by just spamming cheese (which people have done a million times before, OP was clearly incapable of using the search function).
And personally I have never minded cheese much, it's usually easy enough to counter with basic scouting, resulting in free wins, but boring games, sometimes in pro games it can be interesting if there are interesting followups or great feats of micro, sadly enough, in most games the cheese will either win or lose the game right then and unless you're at the highest echelons, don't expect any interesting micro.

On January 31 2013 01:20 LuNa. wrote:
I don't see how you could classify cheesing as an art though. Cheesing is simply an early all in and yes I would say there is little skill involved in doing one. I don't see how executing a 4 Gate is skillful when it's one of the easiest builds you could possibly do but regardless cheesing is simply coin flipping and I don't see how taking a chance requires some sort of skill. Yes you can out micro your opponent while performing a cheese but the actual cheese itself requires little effort to pull off. I would say cheese is good to do from time to time if you were in a tournament but if you cheese every game then I don't see how you can say you're a skilled player. You rely on chance to win games

On January 31 2013 01:20 LuNa. wrote:
I don't see how you could classify cheesing as an art though. Cheesing is simply an early all in and yes I would say there is little skill involved in doing one. I don't see how executing a 4 Gate is skillful when it's one of the easiest builds you could possibly do but regardless cheesing is simply coin flipping and I don't see how taking a chance requires some sort of skill. Yes you can out micro your opponent while performing a cheese but the actual cheese itself requires little effort to pull off. I would say cheese is good to do from time to time if you were in a tournament but if you cheese every game then I don't see how you can say you're a skilled player. You rely on chance to win games

On January 31 2013 01:36 Yorbon wrote:
the word cheese needs to go. All strategies/tactics are equal. It's just that some work better than others.

On January 31 2013 01:48 blackbrrd wrote:
I really like early agression, but I do think that the early agression options from Protoss is a bit to all-inish and that they should have some better options. I enjoy watching early game agression from both Zerg and Terran.

On January 31 2013 01:48 blackbrrd wrote:
I really like early agression, but I do think that the early agression options from Protoss is a bit to all-inish and that they should have some better options. I enjoy watching early game agression from both Zerg and Terran.

On January 31 2013 01:53 Blargh wrote:
Cheese is bad because it adds elements of randomness to the game. You are hoping your opponent cut a corner, trying to outsmart what they are going to do, but that's just taking a risk, which should never be in a strategy game in the first place. With chess, the game is based off of knowledge, there are "correct" or "perfect" moves at points in the game, so you should never HAVE to rely on luck if you truly that intelligent, but since it has such a high skill cap in terms of strategy/thought/pieces, even moves that aren't "perfect" can still be a good move, but will require the opponent to also fail to make a "perfect" move.

The more chance the game, the more often a player may win despite being a less skilled player. You can consider it skill to be able to predict what your opponent is going to do, but since you have no certainty, it will always be a risk. But since SC2 uses imperfect strategy (cannot see opponents tech, builds, etc.) risks will always be used, and thus, cheese will.

On January 31 2013 01:56 Mortal wrote:


Stopped reading right there. This is completely wrong and a ridiculously awful way to look at the game. I doubt you even know what you're talking about when you say "cheese," as most people get it wrong anyway. It's not random, it's perfectly legitimate, and adds depth and interest to the game, when a "cheese" is performed.

On January 31 2013 02:03 AnomalySC2 wrote:


You must not have been around during the early days of SC2. Bitbybiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit