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United States20661 Posts
So I hear there's been a bit of buzz about the game Kevin and I played last week. It was a fairly entertaining game, albeit with mistakes on both our parts, but I suppose it's worthy of a brief battle report.
The map was that... I forget what it's called, but it's the 4player one that has the four corner starts; a battle report was played on it. We both opened pylon gate pylon obelisk; I gassed earlier while he went for his second gateway. We both proceeded to stalkers, and then diverged - him to Dark Templar, me to cannon expand.
His harass was unsuccessful due to my cannon placement. From then I obsed and moved out with my stalker force, but saw that he hadn't taken his nat and didn't want to push into his main (should have checked for hidden expos  ). I decided to set up a soft contain with my stalker force while getting charge and storm, transitioning to the classic SC1 temp/zeal/goon PvP army.
Taking advantage of this timing when my tech had yet to kick in and my templar were still gathering storms, Kevin pushed out with masses of chargelots and immortals. I backed up, blinking with my stalkers while retreating towards my nat. He established his nat around then, and his army size led me to realize he had a secret base somewhere.
His huge army rampaged into my natural, but with stalker blink and cannon / gateway placement I repelled his attack. He set up some cannons and a robotics outside my base, but I was content to wait for storm energy to gather, after which I figured I'd kill him with a hanbang attack.
However, I didn't quite make enough gates, and warpgates produce units faster than gateways. This meant that my resources started piling up rather quickly as I planted 5-7 gateways at once to keep up. Really impermissible on my part, as I should have ramped up pylon/gateway production as soon as I went over 1k.
At any rate, I put together a very shiny archon/zealot/templar/stalker force augmented with some observers; I sent a phase prism around back for some cannon/warp in harass, and busted out, killing his buildings and what units he had guarding. Unfortunately, once I was halfway across the map, a huge red army poured into my main and started killing everything - there was a backdoor entrance protected by destructible rocks that I hadn't noticed.
Thinking it was a bit late to go back, I pressed on, razing his natural and annihilating his probes with the thunderous wrath of my Templar. His main, too, took damage, but by then my main was essentially gone. I figured I'd return home, kill his army, and then finish killing his buildings, since my army was the stronger.
With some assistance from storm, I was able to destroy his forces, but then bad news - colossi with thermal lances on my nat cliff. Not much I could do there, so I went all in against his main, in an attempt to kill him before he could kill me. Producing a couple HT from my last functional gateway, I went into his home base and started blowing things up. His colossi continued killing my base, but then that secret expo of his that I never dealt with proved to be my undoing.
Units started warping in around my army and then I realized he'd produced infrastructure at an outside base and the game was irrecoverable; I tapped out.
Overall I felt it was an entertaining game to play, with a varied mix of units from both sides - him with immortal/zealot/darktemp/col, me with stalker/zealot/hightemp/archon. I feel that the separation of the light/dark templar buildings locks you into one path - I never got the covert warriors but he forewent the power of storm.
The obelisk vs pylon choice is still very interesting; due to the rampless map neither of us wanted to go obelisk before second pylon, but I can see this changing around as more people play the game.
Overall he outplayed me; I felt my army control was better, but his understanding of SC2 definitely exceeds mine and led to his win despite losing most of the battles. I think this is good, as mechanical SC1 players will not necessarily prove dominant in SC2 if they don't know what's going on, but SC1 mechanics will still assist you in the sequel.
If there's interest I can share a more 'strategic' type battle report of a game I played against another Blizzard dev; it's a much shorter game but I feel it shows how SC2 cheese will be more varied and viable than SC1.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
Cool write-up. Write more Louis!
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thanks. nice write-up.
i still have yet to see an screen shot of HT, storm, current, archon or new DT
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louis babo chobo fat american psionic storm
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United States20661 Posts
Looks like that. [that's at the end of animation, too. The initial strike is so gratifying]
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United States20661 Posts
Actually ima move this to SC2 since it's more game-related than me-related.
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Terrible terrible damage. Nice write-up.
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Calgary25977 Posts
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Does storm still only harm units and not buildings?
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Great write up I was curious how that game worked out since a lot remembered it, thanks for sharing.
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NICE writeup!!
If you can answer this question, Is is true that units are not very responsive(read from zatics cologne report), ie time to do an action or click to move actions,is there a small delay built in, or is it more like an immediate response like in SC1?
Would be great if could answer this since youve played the latest build, which zatic did not.
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On July 02 2009 05:14 Chill wrote:
didnt you lose to sc2gg?
didn't you lose to combat-ex?
+ Show Spoiler +no ban plz! 
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On July 02 2009 05:32 LaughingTulkas wrote:didn't you lose to combat-ex? + Show Spoiler +no ban plz!
According to combat-ex latest video, he is "1-1agaisntchillfromteamliquid.net"
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United States20661 Posts
On July 02 2009 05:15 qaswedfr25 wrote:
Does storm still only harm units and not buildings?
I wasn't intentionally storming buildings to test, but I would assume so since my cannons didn't explode from storming on top of them.
Re: unit response speed, it appears to be a little slower than in SC1, yeah. Not sure if it's due to 3d or inherent latency. But it's around... I guess 'fixed' bnet latency, or something like high lat on iccup.
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Does storm really block vision that badly? Or is that white mist just a temporary thing?
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That was a very nice read, thanks for taking time to write it up. Sounds to me like you didnt know the map all that well, that game could have played out differently if youd known about the destructible rocks.
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nice read, and that storm looks imba ;0 so much blocking
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Yeah
LR gave Karune a run for the money (in some kind of level, but he gave a good fight!)
NICE :D
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Nice write-up, thank you.
I'm assuming you got observers at some point to fight the DT, or maybe that wasn't needed?
Also, how fast can Colossi chew an expansion? Are they more reliable than Reavers as peon-killers?
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United States20661 Posts
Yeah the opacity of the storm is something that might be a little confusing, but it's a pretty safe assumption to say that 'everything under the blue-white sheet is now dead'.
re: observer, yeah I went basically 2gate forge expand robo 5gate pressure 12gate allin.
Colossi are really good against workers esp. with range + weapon upgrades; they can like... 1hit drones/probes/marines.
Building razing speed is not quite as good since 100 is naturally more than ~50 but it's respectable.
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Very interesting. I'm happy to see such varied protoss armies holding their own against each other.
I would love to hear about the other game.
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Great BR, more please 
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dammit dammit dammit
I'm really hyped for sc2.
but also there is no lan
T_T I am so conflicted.
edit: really awesome writeup.
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Thank you for the excellent report. Although I am not sure how good it is to report on a game won through cheese (some people might go "Oh, so SC2 is a lame cheese game"), I personally would love to hear it.
Also, I think the Map you mean is Kulas Ravine. Did you take the easy natural that is blocked by rocks?
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Nice LastRomantic, sounds like it was really fun! When do you graduate btw? Also, how do drops work (can you still moving drop)?
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I'm confused, does a replay or video exist of this game? Forgive my ignorance but the OP implied that everyone saw the game since there is a "buzz" about it.
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United States20661 Posts
@Tom Phoenix Yeah, it's Kulas Ravine. Thanks. And yeah I took that one, and I knew about those rocks. Just not the ones in my main ._.
@SupWolf I graduate May 2012 and yes moving drop still functions as in the original [click on the transport while moving]. I was glad to see that.
@ShaperofDreams I imagine the replay is on the Blizzard computer but ofc. will not be released; there's no video afaik. The 'buzz' is purely word-of-mouth, apparently the other site reps that were watching/obsing the game talked about it on their sites so I wanted to elaborate on what actually happened in game.
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This was an intense post. IT was really nice to get kind of an in-depth view of a mirror match since they probably would never make a battle report for that one. Its impressive that you remembered so much from the game. Thanks for the post!
Protoss ftwwww
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I like that you both seem to have gotten a lot done with different builds and compositions. I think variety is at least as important as balance in SC2. Do you think the variety is there?
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My other games against devs, despite being all wins, were not nearly as interesting. -LastRomantic
This is taken from your news post. I want to hear more of all the other Devs you played. Because. You know. There were SO many in that little room we were cramped in. Could you name them please?
I had a chance to play Rob and Kevin 1v1 as well. They ended in losses for me but were still enjoyable. I felt the same way as LR in the sense that they know counters better then I did.
Moletrap and I did 2v2 Rob and Kevin after we won the tournament. I decided to open with a different build then what we had used throughout the tournament to mix it up because they had obs'd our last 5'ish games. I did FE with Cannons but it didn't work and they crushed us. Moletrap berated me for the poor choice but in all honesty. It was 8pm PDT and I had work at 9am PDT the next day and a 14 hour drive ahead of me. (I did it in 12 hours by the way. Gogo speed reaver!) Hence, I didn't want to get into a long game with them. I'm sure we'll get another chance.
I wish I would of had a chance to play other Devs though. That would have been cool. I wonder where they all went after LR played them. I mean. We were there the WHOLE day.
All in all, I did watch some of that game you had against Kevin. It was very entertaining and it's too bad you never found his expo. =(
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Wait, so after the event you drove for 12 hours and then went to work without any sleep? :O
Heh, I was curious if Blizzard provided any travel help to fan site attendees. I think this answers it
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On July 02 2009 04:58 Last Romantic wrote:Looks like that. [that's at the end of animation, too. The initial strike is so gratifying]
hmm, looks like a good strategy to storm the units sucked in by the erm.. sinkhole/tornado things that motherships r now able to cast
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When units are sucked into a "Vortex" as the spell is now called. They are placed into a "Stasis" like appearance. Think of Vortex as a Stasis that constantly casts and sucks in new units for about 45sec.
Storm wouldn't hurt anything in it. Now if you casted Storm in a Time Bomb... Different story. ^^
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On July 02 2009 10:35 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:
When units are sucked into a "Vortex" as the spell is now called. They are placed into a "Stasis" like appearance. Think of Vortex as a Stasis that constantly casts and sucks in new units for about 45sec.
Storm wouldn't hurt anything in it. Now if you casted Storm in a Time Bomb... Different story. ^^
Yeah, what you'd want to do is time it so that your storms pop up just as the vortex is ending. If your lucky the other player will not have his focus on them at that exact moment while we was doing other things when they were vortexed.
Yeah Storm + Time Bomb (Storm bomb?) and Shields + Storm (Shtorm? haha) are going to be so painful from the enemies point of view, haha. Can't wait.
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Very nice post LastRomantic. How do you feel about storm's changes? With more damage, over less time and on a wider radius, how big a factor was it for winning your battles? Do you feel storm is overpowered, just right, or maybe too situational (tech tree, cost or w/e)? Also, how was the dark pylon mechanic? Did it felt tacked on, or was it really a nice macro tool?
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Question. Any idea how much APM you were maintaining during play?
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United States20661 Posts
Doodoodoo I love storm so I'm super biased and am going to say 'it's just right!'
but to be fair it's a little OP and Browder says it'll be toned down a little bit. I just don't want it to be too nerfed, because the old SC2 storm was pretty weak and uninspiring.
@ Psyonic I don't like naming people I beat since I find it oddly self-serving, but iirc I played every dev in the room except for Jun, some twice. I had more time to do this since I got eliminated haha.
Regarding variety, it's definitely there for now. But there's a possibility that people will work out a unit composition that is considered 'best' just like they have in SC1. And then kids like Fantasy will break out underused units and make them popular and things will go round and round in cyclical fashion and generally be fun.
@ Tom Phoenix APM was definitely on the low side because I kept getting distracted by the pretty units and what the guys were saying. [I would guess around 150ish compared to SC1 where I'm capable of ~250 in a serious game] David Kim has I think 130-140ish apm and he's tops on the Blizzard ladder. However, I feel that a 300 apm pro could still find ways to use his 300 apm, especially as zerg.
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Ah. I was just curious. The only devs I saw were Rob, Kevin and Joong. I didn't get a chance to play Joong. TT
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United States20661 Posts
Yeah a couple more came in [well not rly devs, e-Sports; Joong is w/ e-Sports I think?]
o-oi
They thought my proxy gateway game was the funniest thing ever.
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damn i so wanna watch that game =(
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More of this please! Thanks for this
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Hmm, is the new storm anymore difficult to dodge? Looks pretty scary. Makes me wanna go play some Protoss.
Good write-up. I'm really interested in obelisk vs regular pylon. Even just thinking about it I'm finding it a little hard to choose.
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On July 02 2009 14:32 derbz wrote:
Hmm, is the new storm anymore difficult to dodge? Looks pretty scary. Makes me wanna go play some Protoss.
Well it sounds like it has a short warning animation before the actual damage effect, so it might be even easier to dodge? I can't wait to see blink vs. psi storm
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So question about storm...
You can still manually target it, correct? (aka the storm drop worker harrass is still viable, yes?)
Or if when you get 75 (?) energy to cast it will automatically do it for you against clumps of units?
If there's only a couple units or one unit does it still cast storm on them?
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On July 02 2009 14:42 Tsagacity wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2009 14:32 derbz wrote:
Hmm, is the new storm anymore difficult to dodge? Looks pretty scary. Makes me wanna go play some Protoss.
Well it sounds like it has a short warning animation before the actual damage effect, so it might be even easier to dodge? I can't wait to see blink vs. psi storm
Oh I suppose that's true. Was only thinking about hydra micro, but considering Romantic said the hydras move really fast, it may be easier. Blink vs strom sounds pretty cool though. :D
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United States20661 Posts
On July 02 2009 15:08 eshlow wrote:
So question about storm...
You can still manually target it, correct? (aka the storm drop worker harrass is still viable, yes?)
Or if when you get 75 (?) energy to cast it will automatically do it for you against clumps of units?
If there's only a couple units or one unit does it still cast storm on them?
Oh smartcasting =/= autocasting.
It's just that when you select multiple temps and tell them to cast, only the closest one to the cast location will actually do it.
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On July 02 2009 15:16 Last Romantic wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2009 15:08 eshlow wrote:
So question about storm...
You can still manually target it, correct? (aka the storm drop worker harrass is still viable, yes?)
Or if when you get 75 (?) energy to cast it will automatically do it for you against clumps of units?
If there's only a couple units or one unit does it still cast storm on them? Oh smartcasting =/= autocasting. It's just that when you select multiple temps and tell them to cast, only the closest one to the cast location will actually do it.
Oh excellent. That did always annoy me somewhat that if you selected a group and casted with all of them if they all wasted their energy for a storm on the same spot.
But at least we still should see some awesome storm placement from pros again.
Bad reading comprehension on my part, hah.
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United Kingdom2674 Posts
Thanks for the excellent report, LR.
Of course it is also a kind of torture, since I am aching to play the game myself. 
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Great report. I'm more excited than ever because of how much like the original it sounds.
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Could you imagine if HTs actually automatically cast when they had 75 energy and saw an enemy??
The pubescent nerd rage explosion on this forum would be felt on Neptune.
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I think it would rival the nerd rage auto build would create!
(Auto build is when you can set a structure to continuously queue up new units as it produces more without you needing to do anything for the rest of the game)
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On July 02 2009 18:22 EximoSua wrote:
Could you imagine if HTs actually automatically cast when they had 75 energy and saw an enemy??
The pubescent nerd rage explosion on this forum would be felt on Neptune.
And here goes 1 scouting ling and your 75 precious energy f***s off. It wouldnt be too much of treat IMO, PC wont choose better target for storm than good player, thats why prolly noone would complain.
On July 02 2009 21:07 Klockan3 wrote:
I think it would rival the nerd rage auto build would create!
(Auto build is when you can set a structure to continuously queue up new units as it produces more without you needing to do anything for the rest of the game)
Yeah that would be more annoying, however only game i've found that had autoproduction was Warlords BattleCry series. And it wasn't that great - it sucked money at constant rate so you had to have adequate number of prod. facilities, and protect mines even more. Plus differences in certain unit's build times made getting good army composition hard (but yeah, there were races like DE, whose best army composition was mass sorcerors anyway, etc;p). Not mentioning problems with saving $$ for upgrades.
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Not sure this is the right place to ask this (but it's an active thread, compared to the news topic threads).
Anyway: was the new SC2 music in the game, or was it still SC1's? Also, are there still any sound effects that are just taken directly from the original? (Stalker death = Dragoon death, etc.?)
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The new SC2 Music is fucking awesome.
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United States20661 Posts
Some things are still holdovers from the original [zerg upgrade icons are the most obvious]
but it's slowly getting phased out and the new sounds are really cool.
edit: storm is... iono, units clump up so it's harder to dodge but it's definitely possible. I feel we're going to see a lot of predicting where storm is going to land and dodging beforehand.
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Nice. We would like more detailed BR for sure!
Dont even ask!
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I'd really like to see a report of the strategic game. It's a short game from the sound of it, so hopefully it wouldn't take up too much of your time.
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Yea I second that request for the short and strategic game. Great report of the first one.
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Great post, really getting excited.
New storm is interesting (I may have to sit in awe the first few times I cast it though, wow @ the graphic).. MORE damage over LESS time, sounds op with the new pathing...
Can't wait to start balancing this beautiful game
More reports please :p
And on the music, glad to hear it's great, nothing gets you immersed like a good soundtrack, i'll never forget how cool the Terran soundtrack in SC1 is.
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Did you find it to be more interesting that there was such a distinguishable difference in the PvP between yourself and your opponent due to the different tech routes you two made compared to the PvP in BW?
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On July 03 2009 00:07 Kaniol wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2009 21:07 Klockan3 wrote:
I think it would rival the nerd rage auto build would create!
(Auto build is when you can set a structure to continuously queue up new units as it produces more without you needing to do anything for the rest of the game) Yeah that would be more annoying, however only game i've found that had autoproduction was Warlords BattleCry series. And it wasn't that great - it sucked money at constant rate so you had to have adequate number of prod. facilities, and protect mines even more. Plus differences in certain unit's build times made getting good army composition hard (but yeah, there were races like DE, whose best army composition was mass sorcerors anyway, etc;p). Not mentioning problems with saving $$ for upgrades.
Supreme Commander also had this feat
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On July 03 2009 02:37 Last Romantic wrote:
Some things are still holdovers from the original [zerg upgrade icons are the most obvious]
but it's slowly getting phased out and the new sounds are really cool.
edit: storm is... iono, units clump up so it's harder to dodge but it's definitely possible. I feel we're going to see a lot of predicting where storm is going to land and dodging beforehand.
does storm really give a warning animation like that other guy said?
does it show where the storm is gonna be or does the ht do a rain dance or what
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United States20661 Posts
This is going to sound really dumb but I never got stormed =/
However, I DO NOT think there is a warning animation. It's just that when you cast it there's a huge targeting circle [that only you can see afaik]. Also the HT's casting/response speed seems a tad slower.
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lol rain dance :D
how strange you never got stormed despite its being so powerful
ICI PLZ~!
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On July 08 2009 16:46 Last Romantic wrote:
This is going to sound really dumb but I never got stormed =/
However, I DO NOT think there is a warning animation. It's just that when you cast it there's a huge targeting circle [that only you can see afaik]. Also the HT's casting/response speed seems a tad slower.
Like in WC3? That's a nice feature.
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Hey Last Romantic, I know this is somewhat un-related but were the in game sounds good and distinguishable? I feel like one of the things often overlooked that made SC1 so great was really recognizeable sounds. For example, the zealot's attack is extremely recognizeable, as well as DT slashing (which is very important tactically). Siege mode is thunderously loud and really awesome.
Every different attacking unit sounded different from one another and so even when there's a huge mess of a battle going on, you can still HEAR every unit in the battle, and you would know what is fighting in that battle with your eyes closed if you wanted to.
From the videos that i've seen for SC2, it seems like everything sounds kind of .. similar, and so when huge armies clash, it just sounds all jumbled and fuzzy. I know SC2 zealot's attacking doesn't sound anything like SC1 zealots.
In your experience, were the sound effects adequate?
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Nice writeup. We want more
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United States20661 Posts
ICI YAY drive up loogz
Battle noises are adequate and violent for the most part, though stalkers' little pew pew and zealots' lack of manly grunting is not so cool.
PvP differential b/w DT, HT, Immortal, and Stalker is a nice change from the relatively homogenous PvP armies of the first game. But I still think some unit mix will come to be seen as 'ideal' once people play it more. The inability to easily switch tech is both good and bad - it forces a conscious choice early/midgame, but also prevents quick change in army composition.
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