Day9:
Hello there ladies and gentlemen, it is currently February 19, 2010, and I am Day9, and this is the teamliquid.net Starcraft 2 beta podcast. Uh, rather than just blab at you for like thirty minutes, I actually invited a good ol' buddy of mine, my friend Tristan. Say hello to everybody, Tristan.

Tristan:
Hey everyone!

Day9:
Alright, and for any of you who don't know who I am, and who don't know who Tristan is, let's just go ahead and do a handful of introductions. So, I'm day9, my name's Sean Plott, I've played Starcraft forever. I've been playing for the last eleven, twelve years, I have my own show at livestream.com/striderdoom that all of you should watch every day of the week. Um, but yeah I've pretty much only played Starcraft. I actually kinda missed out on most of the other games. I haven't even played any of the Dawn of Wars, uh, and Tristan I'll let you introduce yourself.

Tristan:
Sure! I'm Tristan Brand, aka mantra, I've actually been playing for forever times two, uh, I started work with Warcraft 2 in cali league at the tender age of ten, in 1994-1995 I went from there to Starcraft to Warcraft 3 back to Starcraft, and on to Starcraft 2, and don't really see any reason to stop.

Day9:
Yeah seriously, you are an ancient dinosaur among gamers. I'm actually curious, did you play Dawn of War at all, when it came out?

Tristan:
I did not. I am a blizzard RTS elitist.

Day9:
Well in that case, let's talk a little bit about general impressions of Starcraft 2. So, I don't know about you but I'm just, I'm like the luckiest human being in the world to have a beta key, I don't even know how we both got it on the same day, um, I mean for the most part it just looks like a really solidly done strategy game. I currently don't really have any qualms except for the fact that it's a pretty complex system so I need a while to just sorta study it. I dunno if you have anything more to add, but...

Tristan:
Yeah, I mean, just first impressions it's just a fucking blast to play. It's really, really fun, um, it's fast paced--

Day9:
Oh it's so fast, yeah.

Tristan:
It feels-- It doesn't feel like an alien game, it's like hey this is definitely a sequel to Starcraft, your intuition from Starcraft lets you jump into it, but at the same time, once you sort of get past the uh, um, once you get into it a little bit there's actually a lot of very very significant changes, which cause it to play quite-- not significantly differently but different enough that it definitely can be a tough transition, but man it's just really fun. I was supposed to be doing work today, and all I could think about was playing Starcraft 2.

Day9:
Yeah, it's so fun. Even with like the Day9 daily, like today was the first, or um, yesterday was the first day that I actually did a replay of myself, I was literally like smiling the whole time 'cause I'm just so giddy that it's actually like 'oh, look, it's my own Starcraft 2 game!', and of course it's a game of you just completely demolishing me. So, I want to move on a little bit to talk about like beginner mistakes and stuff, and also... I mean, you played Starcraft right when it came out, and you've played a lot of games right when they've come out, and you've also have the opportunity to come back to Starcraft in the last two years, I know you've been playing a lot, so I'm curious if you can, um, first talk about what beginner mistakes that you've seen, in like every single strategy game that you've played, and also we'll get to the Starcraft question in a little bit about that big gap in time, but let's talk about newbies man.

Tristan:
Sure. I mean, I think the sort of classical beginner mistake is over reliance on passive defense, and what that turns into as they go from complete newbie to sort of a well-warmed beginner is just passive gameplay. And not only are they playing passively, but they've sort of either subconsciously or consciously assumed their opponent is playing passively. And the idea of the fact that the game is much more dynamic and aggressive and is actually just this sort of constantly flowing there where people are building early units, they're attacking, they're transitioning, um, it doesn't quite sink in.

Day9:
Well, like, what about a community of people like teamliquid.net, where we're all like obsessed with the pro matches and everything, and we think that we get it, you know, and that sort of thing, do you think that that static defense or the general passivity still bleeds through?

Tristan:
I think it does bleed through, it probably goes, definitely. It's no longer a conscious thing, because I think the people that are more well-informed are definitely, um, I mean they're better than that level, at least in terms of intellectually better, if not able to actually execute. You know, the root of the mistake that the newbies are making is that they're making assumptions about the game, and are letting those assumptions stick in their head, and then become part of their instinct, uh, part of their intuition. So everyone has kind of an intuition for how they play the game and how they think the game works, um, and what people need to realize is that it's really important that your intuition matches up with reality, matches up with how the game actually works.

Day9:
Yeah, I mean like with mutalisks, I remember when I just saw that you could select infinite units, I was like 'Oh, well mutalisks are imbalanced'. and then of course the instant I spend at least thirty seconds to a minute playing with them I'm like 'Oh, okay this is just not nearly as big a deal as I thought.' Because in Starcraft 1, if I had like 30 mutalisks stacked, then I would say that that's fair in my book because I wouldn't have to think of any new builds, I could just only make mutas and that would be totally kickass. But oh man, I think that that's the best way to describe it, that people are just applying their good ol' Starcraft 1 logic, to Starcraft 2 not as a way to help them learn but as a way to just point at things and be like 'that is so unfair.'

Tristan:
Yeah, and what's dangerous about that is that, a lot of people if you press them about this will probably just say 'Well, I'm just complaining it's not a big deal', but the problem is if you get stuck in that mindset where you, you know it's like 'Man, this matchup's unfair' or it's this unit's unfair or this strategies unfair, uh, your brain focuses on that and sort of defuses the blame away from yourself, it's like, well, what could you be doing to stop this?

Day9:
Are you making an Artosis reference? Are you trying to let me know that DTs really are a fair unit?

Tristan:
Maybe. I mean, I don't...

Day9:
Yeah, I mean like um... I used to do that, especially as a young little Starcraft nerd, I would say things like 'Oh, just a bunker rush, oh it's a dumb loss, not gonna worry about bunker rushes.' And then I went to like a major tournament and my first round opponent bunker rushed me, and just won, and I was like AY9 GASP*. I just couldn't believe that I had just lost like that easily first round. And the best part is he immediately lost second round to a nobody. 'cause it's Protoss and you can't bunker rush that stuff so well. So I was just like so embarrassed. And I was like wait a minute, let me just practice against bunker rushes. There's no such thing as fair and unfair anymore, there's just me needing to stop bunker rushes, 'cause I know that same nerd's gonna show up to the next tournament. And that, I think, has just been like super helpful, to never assume just imbalance or unfairness, just to always direct the blame at what your play was, sort of work things out.

Tristan:
Exactly. I mean it's hard, it's very very difficult to sort of objectively uh, consider things like that and work stuff out.

Day9:
Yeah, I'm not to happy after I lose anyway, so I don't go 'Oh cool, I'm gonna look at things clearly!' You know, put on my carebare T-shirt...

Tristan:
Yeah, I mean, it's hard, it's really really really really hard. Um, and it's something you have to just be absolutely focused on to try to fight the sort of biases that are constantly sitting in your head, um, but I think it's absolutely essential to improve.

Day9:
Yeah yeah, and one thing I wanted to ask you, 'cause I've like played Starcraft from like the very beginning of time, so we'll talk a little bit about that right now, just that um, the ways Starcraft elevated over tithe, at first it started out with just every little weird rush strategy in the book, every opening possible was thrown right out the gate,s when Starcraft first opened up, when I sayy opening I don't mean like 'On day 2, some guy was going one vulture fast expand against zerg and then having beautiful medic marine transition', I mean people were just being like 'oh, well can I bunker rush all three races?' 'Oh, I can float factories, I guess I'll make that my standard play!' so there was a lot of that junk going on, then we had boxer doing all his stuff with micro, and you know Starcraft just kept evolving and evolving and evolving, and then there was this big long period where iloveoov learned how to macro really well, and then until we hit nowadays, where everyone is assumed to have phenomenal macro, amazing control, and these really really clever builds with these hard-to-break transitions, and I am super interest to see how it's gonna happen with starcraft 2, 'cause I don't really think that anyone knows, 'cause I mean with Starcraft 2, someone like me can look at the way that strategy works in Starcraft 1 and say, 'Hm, how can I try to make that work right away?', um, and I don't know if anyone's gonna jump in and just do like the cheesing type stuff right away, and I'm curious if you can comment a little bit, becaus I know you played Starcraft right at the start, didn't play for a few years, and then, at the end. Uh, you've been playing for like the last two years or so again, you're just hoppin' back in, thanks to my peer-pressuring. First I drew you in with a little BGH, and now you've been playing iccup.

Tristan:
You did. It's all your fault.

Day9:
I'm quite the temptress.

Tristan:
It's interesting because I mean, so Starcraft 1, the only real competitive RTS was from uh Warcraft 2 and I guess red alert, and I'm not gonna speak from the Red Alert perspective 'cause I never played it, uh...

Day9:
Yeah, what did the Warcraft 2 players do? Did everyone just try to tower rush?

Tristan:
Yeah, stuff like offensive cannoning definitely was a thing people were doing from the start. What's interesting though is that stuff we consider so stupidly fundamental and obvious was actually like a big deal. Like , I still remember the first few months Starcraft came out, someone, uh, and I was playing mostly on cali at that point, and at the time, since the cali players were the experienced warcraft2 players, uh, they were mostly battle.net players. And there was definitely this sort of cliqueish feel to it, like 'Oh I'm a cali player, we're gonna play on cali instead of these stupid bnet newbies.'

Day9:
Good thing those cliques don't exist anymore!

Tristan:
Yeah, I know. I'm glad that we got reversified.

**TALK OVER EACH OTHER**

But yeah, so like I still remember, and again I don't remember the exact timetable, probably the first few months, but the concept of three hatchery zerglings.

Day9:
Huh. Oh, like one base three hatchery zerglings.

Tristan:
Yeah. One base, three hatch zerglings. 'cause if you make three hatcheries, you can make a lot of zerglings. This does not seem like a monumental event, but when someone started doing it, and I mean obviously people probably were doing it from day one but it didn't catch on, um, it was just like 'Wow. That's amazing.' And I remember like I found out about it fairly early somehow, and I still remember, I played against Tillerman, who um, oldschool people may remember as a top Warcraft 2 player for a while.

Day9:
And if you don't remember him, he is a big goddamn deal!

Tristan:
Yeah. He was a top Starcraft player for a while as well. Very, very good. Well, when he first made the transition from Warcraft 2 to Starcraft, I managed to catch him before he got particularly good, uh, which was probably like six games so I probably caught him on like game 2, uh, and I uh, I did this three hatch zerglings, and it just crushed him. And I want to be clear, you know, I'm pretty good at RTSes compared to the general population, but I was never competing with anyone for like best player ever, which Tillerman was. And this was not ever close, and like, I remember he said 'Wow, how did you do that?' and I said 'Oh, I made three hatches', and he was like 'Wow, that is so many zerglings, I had no idea.' And this was a top Warcraft 2 player, and he was surprised by this concept, and it wasn't because he was a moron, it was because everyone just wasn't thinking about the game the way we think about it now, and it's very very difficult to go back and understand that perspective. I mean, I would say it's really impossible. But that's what it was like, um, fast expanding with Protoss against zerg, when grr started doing that, when he publicized-- he had this um, big build order where he fast expanded and got like 25 speed zealots and then rushed the zerg, that was a major revelation. Like, it was just huge! Um, again, it wasn't like people hadn't fast expanded, but it was relegated to the sort of gimmicky, like, 'I guess you could fast expand, but it's probably just gonna get rushed out.' But no, grr is like 'screw this, I'm gonna absolutely crush everyone who's ever played this game--

Day9:
With only zealots!

Tristan:
Like, when he started doing that, like I don't know, people know how dominant grr was and let me tell you it was not close when he did stuff like that, and it changed how people saw the game, and these were moments in the first six to eight months that Starcraft was uh, was out. That might have even been a year out. Um, it's just these monumental events in terms of how people viewed the game, and then those event just sort of started happening faster and faster and faster until they no longer became decipherable, um, but at the time it was like, they were very discreet. It was like, wow. This happened because this player said this. And oh, I guess I should mention, probably one of the big reasons for that is that there were no replays back then.

Day9:
Oh, yeah! And now, Starcraft 2...

Tristan:
So information was very very different.

Day9:
Yeah, seriously. And like here in Starcraft 2, I don't know if any of you have actually heard about the replay features, you get like every information about every APM, unit, income, everything... and you know, you know what's bullshit? The APM, I think is artifically low. Like I'm playin' as fast as I can, and the observers are like 'Woah! Go Sean, you have a solid 80!', and I'm like 'Wwwwwhat?', so that really sort of humiliates my e-penis.

Tristan:
I think it gives you negative APM when you read the tech tree.

Day9:
Oh man, oh god, I've actually been doing a lot of that. Except now I'm actually good enough to pause it. I know what that hotkey is... But um, you know this makes me wonder, 'cause I think that like the first big revelation that people are gonna have are with these new macro mechanics in Starcraft 2, um, oh my god, it's just like outta control. So, so Tristan and I were actually talking about this before the cast, um, there's some people who've been arguing that macro is now easier in Starcraft 2, because you can multiple building select, I'm actually starting to think it's gonna be a lot harder, like, to have no fear about not having enough, or excuse me, about having too much APM. It's just like absolutely outrageous. Okay so Protoss, their nexus has energy, and for 25 energy you can do a chronoboost, which speeds up any building by 50% for 30 seconds. So you know, that means you can be building your zealots faster, you can be upgrading at your forge faster, you can be making your probes faster, and I have no idea how to do it! I mean, I don't know what the right way to do it is. Do you have any thoughts on like, cool stuff that's come out of that? I know it's really hard to remember every 25 energy to use it again, or whether I should be using it that often.

Tristan:
Yeah, I mean it's trick because when you just start even theorizing about all the little timing pushes this can cause, um, like uh, you know, you can do basic stuff like every 25 energy you use it on your nexus to speed up your economy. Or, you can just not use it on your nexus, use it on your gateway to try to speed up an early rush. Uh, or you can do stuff like, I mean, I'm theorizing here, I've no clue if this is effective at all, but you can save it up and uh, get maybe like an early forge and go for a super-fast +1 attach upgrade.

Day9:
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. You could do some kind of cute timing push. I have no idea if there's any like, good critical upgrade that's based on that +1 attack and then you upgrade 'em, in Starcraft 1 you could get it to pump your zealots up against zerglings. Already zealots are a lot better than they were before, either that or zerglings are worse, I dunno, it just feels unfair. I just want to be able to only make zerglings and get away with it.

Tristan:
Yeah, it's definitely uh, it just opens up a lot of possibilities. Um, and then later in the game it's just practically impossible to keep up using it, especially when you have multiple nexus.

Day9:
Part of me feels like just, um, using it on gateways over and over again just to produce is not like, the best way to go about it. Because in a sense, if you just saved up 150 minerals and built another gateway, you would be accomplishing essentially the same thing. So basically that chronoboost is just like, 'Oh nononono, you just get to save that 150 dollars and use it on something else.' But, you know, if you can like use it on an upgrade, that to me feels like a lot better, especially for like lategame situations. Just like, keep casting it on your upgraders.

Tristan:
Yeah, I mean it can sort of uh, it can speed up various aspects of your build order, and it can sort of, I mean, it might be too subtle of an effect to actually be as big of a deal as we're making it out to be, but you can imagine having this sort of standard set build order where you have a good idea of what you're doing for the first six minutes, but depending on where you use your chronoboost, that makes a little differences to your timing about when you can attack and how many units you have when your opponent attacks.

Day9:
Yeah, we let's move on and talk a little bit about Terran 'cause they're also weird. Well, all the races have like weird additions. Okay, so, first of all just note for Protoss that even if you're able to go back and select all your gateways and spam like crazy, you have to select ally our nexuses individually, and tell them what you want them to be chronoboosting, so that's funky. So, with Terran, you can upgrade your command centers so that they can do a scanner sweep which is, you know, totally normal, but then you can summon this mule that's like a super SCV that only stays there for 90 seconds, or, and this is like my favorite thing in the universe, it is the uh, 50 energy for a supply depot. What you do is you take 50 energy and you cast it on one of your depot,s and it doubles the amount of supply that that supply depot provides for like the rest of the game, so it's so great for me because I always forget my depots, it's just the easiest thing in the world when I was like playing against you and of course because I'm awful I haven't spent a single drop of energy at either of these command centers so I just like spam it on all my supple depots and then just like, you know, ignored it for much of the game, but you can kinda see that, again, the add eight supply to a supply depot is equivalent to saying just hold on to a hundred dollars, you don't have to spend that hundred bucks on another supply depot, you can just use energy instead. So I think that there might be some sort of cute timing rushes where you end up getting an extra barracks that you wouldn't normally be able to support, and then instead use your command center to just constantly be adding on little supply boots for a little period of time.

Tristan:
Yeah, I definitely agree with that, um...

Day9:
Have you used the mule much? I mean, you've actually played a lot more than I have.

Tristan:
I've actually only just started using it, I was just ignoring it, not because I didn't think it was good or anything, I just hadn't, it hadn't entered my brain.

Day9:
Yeah, it's like my brain's already full up trying to remember that everything is on the left side of the keyboard, like you don't b-p to build pylons anymore, god.

Tristan:
But then I read somewhere that someone was like hey, it's a really good idea to add around sixteen SCVs to upgrade your command center and start using the mule. And I was like, well that sounds extremely reasonable, so actually my most recent game with Terran I did do that, and it definitely felt like there was an impact.

Day9:
Huh. So wait, did he say like get sixteen SCVs and then just instantly upgrade the command center?

Tristan:
It was something along those lines. I think it was a teamliquid thread, I'm not positive, though someone said they have a replay of David Kim doing this, and I think if David Kim is doing this I should be doing it.

Day9:
Yeah,I mean he's like the bonjwa of sc2 and it's not even out yet. He's like, done it now. No Kespa power outage to steal his soul.

Tristan:
Yeah.

Day9:
Haha, just had to sneak that one in there. I couldn't resist that, could I. Shameless! Um, are there any other like notable macro mechanics. I mean there's just so much new stuff in the game...

Tristan:
Zerg queen!

Day9:
Oh, but what about for terran? Oh, I'm more than ready to talk about queens.

Tristan:
Uh... nothin' coming to mind.

Day9:
We're awesome. I mean, we just nail it on the head. Oh yeah, but oh yeah I did want to say that it's interesting to note that because you have the mule and the supply depot options, you always have to weigh that against not having your scanner sweep, which is a pretty fundamental resource for Terran in Starcraft 1, I mean you scan around like, see if he's going carriers, you scan expos, if you're playing against a zerg player you scan the zerg's main to see if he's going hive, that sort of thing. TvT you scan every 5 seconds because you have 30 command centers so why not, and in this game, in Starcraft 2, is that okay, to just have lying around, or you know, I can conceive of situations where you get a bunch of mules and then bunch of cloaked units would come in and you'd just smack yourself. I mean it's really interesting, the sorts of decisions you have to make about like managing your resources. So I'm hoping they remain as interesting as they feel right now, because right now they're just this big, unknown abyss, and potentially it's just like, naw, never gonna gonna use those, they're awful. They're just like the worst thing in the game. It's kind of like AvP 2, I remember I was actually talking to Johnathan Wendell, who's fatality, very well known FPS gamer, and we talked about avp 2, and he's like 'Oh yeah man, I wish they had more avp2 tournaments, that game's awesome man it was so good' and I'm like, 'Oh, what do you play?' and he's like 'Oh, I play the predator, everyone plays the predator, the other ones are awful!' and I'm like 'oh.' Sound like a nice balanced competitive game, a bunch of predators running around invisible. But yeah, so like, the zerg queen, I can't macro that many larva. It's just like too many larva.

Tristan:
I have the same issue.

Day9:
Yes! It's just too much. I'm used to havin' like, three, four, five hatches, you know just off two three bases or something like that, and I don't know if the queen's supposed to be like a substitute for a hatchery, whether that's okay, because that's the sort fo thing I'm trying to consider is, um, you know, if I like, go for just one hatch with a queen, is that equivilant to two hatches? Is it better, is it worse... It feels a little bit better than one hatch, just 'cause you can get four larva extra at a time.

Tristan:
Yeah.

Day9:
And I mean, that just like can't be bad. And also the queen gives you like anti-air and stuff. But I guess the queen's vulneralibity is the fact that you can just kill her off and have your economy so hampered as a result. Have you, like, in your games have you experienced anyone doing anything like that, like rushing to kill a zerg queen or something? Or are the just, like, not getting it?

Tristan:
Yeah, I havent run into that particular um, problem. Uh, I've only played like 15 ladder games, and most are me rushing my opponent.

Day9:
And they're just shocked. They're just like, 'What? This isn't a novice map?'. Yeah, 'cause like with zerg I want to play around with queens, like trying to use them and stuff, but it really makes me wonder, do I need to early expand? Can I get away with one-hatching? 'cause, the one that that for some reason just blows my mind is how much it actually changes the game, is the fact that zerg don't have scourge. Zerg cannot just claim air control like they can in Starcraft 1. So, it makes me feel a lot more tentative with moving out with my overlords, I feel a lot more tentative about expanding all over the place, because the air units are super good in Starcraft 2, and I just, that's another thing I think I want to research a lot more, is just how different the races are in terms of behavior from Starcraft 1. 'cause I know that I'm definitely suffering from that. That, applying my good old-school logic to my new game and going, 'Well why doesn't it work?'. Hopefully we'll see it emerge. I'm actually curious, how were you fifteen ladder games that you've played? Because I know that we've mostly been playing against each other...

Tristan:
Uh, I mean, it's been fun, I guess I played sixteen, I'm thirteen and three, managed to qualify for one of the platinum divisions, number five, um, you know, I mean most of the players I've played have not been particularly good so the games weren't interesting, but I've played some really good-

Day9:
They've been sub-platinum

Tristan:
Yeah. But I've played some really good games. Uh, I definitely... I wish the replays were sharable just so I could show them to people and talk about them some. Um, but yeah, I got my ass kick a couple times, uh, and uh played a couple games, had a really fun thirty minute Terran vs Terran last night, probably the most interesting game I've played.

Day9:
What happened? And also, tell me about that game, and then I wanna hear about on eof your ass kicking. Like, one of those experiences.

Tristan:
Sure. So the Terran vs Terran was fun, I mean, I'd never played the matchup, uh, I'm coming in with a whopping maybe six games with Terran under my belt, uh, and um, so I mean it's all guesswork, and I think one of the things that lot of people have noticed is that reapers are, uh, really really nice, and--

Day9:
Are awesome? Are really, really sweet?

Tristan:
Yeah. So I"ve been starting most of my games off with a reaper harass, and against most of the Zerg and Protoss opponents I've played against, uh, that's pretty much the end of the game right there. I wanted to see how they work against Terran, so I decided to do the same thing, um, turns out that Terran can get a siege tank by the time I had reapers in their base, I don't know if that's because my build sucked or if that's just the way it is, and they really aren't that effective against a siege tank.

Day9:
Unsurprisingly!

Tristan:
Yeah, so my little reaper harass was mostly my reapers dying and I think maybe I killed like a SCV. Uh, so he was going a very typical Starcraft 1 strategy, double factor, um, straight to siege tanks, in short he tried to control the map, so I immediately did the same thing, um, we both expanded, we both started playing siege tank games, the terrain... I don't remember the name of the map we were on but the terrain was very interesting, so there were some really cool siege tank placements going on, and he was actually doing a better job than me predicting where to put his tanks on, and which ledges, and uh, we had a standoff for a little bit, I managed to take a upper hand for a little bit with a medivac which is the dropship, um, I dropped on his highest tanks, and...

Day9:
Were you doing anything like mass medivacs, similar to mass drophsips in Terran vs Terran?

Tristan:
Uh, no, I was trying to do a lot of siege tanks at the time, I wanted a couple medivacs to mess with, and at one point I probably did consider doing more drops, but uh, that idea ended up just not happening in that particular game. Um, and then what I did is, well, I felt like his macro was better than mine, watching the replay it turned out we were about the same, but I was worried he was going so hardcore siege tanks, so I was like, 'Well, I'm gonna try these banshees out'...

Day9:
Haha, just give 'em a whirl.

Tristan:
Well, I mean, one of my very first games involved me just dying horribly to six banshees, uh, because they cloak and then they obliterate everything on the ground, so I was hoping that I could build up six banshees without him noticing, so he'd keep pumping out his siege tanks. It worked out exactly the way I planned, there was this really beautiful moment, and it's the main reason I wanted to show people the replay, uh, where he has just massive amounts of siege tanks, and um, I come at them from an angle with six banshees, and he naturally starts moving them, and he moves them straight into the path of my siege tanks, which he didn't see because I was hiding them behind one of those grass lines, and I just like, destroyed half his army in about to seconds.

Day9:
Oh, that is like so awesome. Some of these new features and just super-cool.. .like the shrubbery, I don't know what to call it but you can't see past it. And that's so sweet to hear that you did that sort of nice little tactical abuse. One of my favorite experiences is actually what you did to me, which is uh, so it was a zerg vs terran on Blistering Sands and I was trying to do my fancy-schmancy queen jank and I'm like early expanding, doin' a perfect job and I did not miss a single larva injection, I was like seriously pro, and then you come in with one void ray and just target fire my hatchery and kill it. I had both my queens wailin' on it, and it just instantly killed me. and I was like '*whine whine whine* not fair!', I was freakin' out, and that's actually the point in time where I was like, where's my scourge? Where my scourge at? And I couldn't get it, hydras are tier two, and all of a sudden I realized that it's really hard for zerg to have super-solid antiair early on. Um, so, I don't know if that's going to have a huge effect on it, but it makes you realize how much you, I guess how much you just didn't appreciate, how much you took for granted that those hydras were tier 1 in Starcraft 1. So, you know, we've been going for about thirty minutes now, so Tristan, I want you to either share like a cool opening you're thinking about, a cool idea you're thinking about, or your favorite Starcraft 2 experience.

Tristan:
Um...

Day9:
If you want, I could tell the story of me watching you play against psyonic reaver.

Tristan:
Okay, why don't you go first, since I'm uh...

Day9:
Oh, thank you. Oh my god, it was so cool, so, I'm chattin' with Tristan, on uh, ventrilo, and Tristan says I think I'm playing someone who i think streams on teamliquid.net. I think it's psyonic reaver. So I put up psyonic reaver's screen, and I get to see Tristan playing against psyonic reaver from psyonic reaver's point of view. And it was like the sweetest thing I have ever seen in my life. I mean, I see everything, I could cheat but I'm not gonna, but the fact that I could just makes my heart rate go up. I'm gettin' all excited, you know. So it was Protoss vs Protoss, psyonic reaver opened up with a two gate zealots, as did Tristan, and psyonic reaver instantly transitioned to like, three or four gateway stalker. So basically, like the zealot-into-dragoon style, and then was taking an expansion, and Tristan's going mass zealots, from my point of view. all I'm really seeing is zealots, and I don't know if Tristan's expanded or not, psyonic reaver wasn't really able to check that at the early parts. So I don't know what's going on in Tristan's base. Psyonic reaver's being super-aggressive with his zealots, like attacking up the ramp to Tristan's concave and like doin' pretty good, so I'm thinking wow, I know psyonic reaver's been playing like nonstop for the last few days, you know, he must know something I don't because man, he's just being so aggressive, and then there are these big dances, and Tristan's army just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger... and so do the stalkers armies, and the stalkers are microing, and Tristan keeps getting repelled. So then I see Tristan get the sentry witch has two abilities. And the one I thought Tristan was going to use was the... um, what is it called? It's like the gravity defender sphere...?

Tristan:
Yeah, I don't remember the name.

Day9:
It's generic sci-fi title, but it's like a sphere and all of your units in the sphere take less damage from range. It's like a protection spell. So, I thought Tristan was going to be using that so his zealots would be pretty good against the stalkers, but oh-ho-ho! did he have a little present in store-- instead he used the sentries to create force fields behind the stalkers, so his zealots would be able to surround the stalkers really easily. And it messed up, like the first three or four tries, but then it worked just on etime and like nine of psyonic reaver's stalkers fell. And I was just like AY9 SCREAM*, I felt like I was watching my son win the starleague finals. I like freaked out. And of course psyonic reaver's like 'Oh, oh cool' and just has a friendly little like, question session, just trying to learn the game and I'm like 'YES, GET HIM TRISTAN, SHOW HIM WHO THE BOSS IS!' you know, so that was uh, an incredibly rewarding experience. It motivated me to go play.

Tristan:
I mean that was a, I guess that was sort of one of my favorites too, and I want to give props to warblade, who absolutely stomped on me using the same thing, so I'm just passing on the information to psyonic reaver, who can no go on and obliterate another unsuspecting Protoss player.

Day9:
Yeah, it's almost like telling jokes. You know, someone tells you a great joke, what you do is you go tell someone else and you don't give them any credit for it, I mean that's the way Starcraft 2's gonna work. There's just gonna be people stealing builds from other people who stole builds in the first place, so. A nice little good ol' chain of plagiarism. Hopefully it'll eventually churn out some brilliance. Do you have any other particular favorite moments you'd like to share?

Tristan:
Uh... man, we covered my two favorites. Or your two, with the void ray and that PvP, that TvT which I talked about was probably my favorite game I've played so far, um. It's hard to sort of narrow in on particular moments just because I've been having so much fun.

Day9:
Yeah, I will admit, I'm having a lot of fun with the reapers, so right now what I'm currently trying to do is against zerg, develop a one barracks reaper rush straight into an early expansion. And I've been playing around with that quite a bit. Problem is, that my macro is awful. I'm having so much difficulty dealing with the ability to select multiple buildings. I might just abandon ship and go back to hotkeying one at a time, straight up. But you know what, we've been going for about thirty five minutes it looks like right now, so you know what, that will wrap up the very first teamliquid Starcraft 2 beta podcast, um, I'll be doing this once a week every single Friday so that way on your big drive home from work on the way to the weekend you can listen to the soothing sultry voices talking about Starcraft 2 to get pumped up for your obvious weekend of nerdism. I mean, I guarantee that no one listening to this podcast is going to be like 'Friday night, let's party!' No way, Friday night, time to get some Dr. Pepper, turn the lights out, and turn on that reassuring blue light from the Starcraft 2 beta (YEAH I WISH JERK). So you know what, uh, I'm sean 'Day9' Plott.

Tristan:
I'm Tristan 'Mantra' Brand.

Day9:
And uh, that wraps up the very first teamliquid Starcraft 2 beta podcast. Cheers!