EPT
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Mind Games
by Rage
TeamLiquid Final Edits
The Job
Every time I watch a StarLeague game, I get a little hyped up. After all, there is much at stake: tens of thousands of dollars in prizes and eternal fame. But the main reason I get that sensation is because I know those two players you’re watching on your GOMTV / Daum stream have been training for years to become this good. They have practiced for this single game for days or even weeks. They monitored their opponent’s style, prepared a build order, studied it, and practiced it. Never has being a pro-gamer been as hard or as intensive a job as today.
Things have changed
One of the main rules applied in StarCraft matches used to be “If you’re the better player, play safe. If you’re not, do something unexpected.” This “rule” was formed on the basic principle that the advantage of being a better player expands over time. You used that one build to counter it all, with some small adjustments for specific scenarios. In iloveoov’s prime, he always fast expanded, no matter his opponent’s build. He just adapted the Engineering Bay timing a bit and he had a “worry-less build order” until the midgame.
The pro-gaming scene has changed. The skill gap between players is smaller than ever. These days, being safe means being predictable. And being predictable means trouble. Yes, you have your build order that can be adapted to soft counter / get soft countered by everything, but without scouting you can’t properly do so.
Another disadvantage of these “counter-all” build orders is preparation. If your opponent knows you’re going to use a certain build or style, he has to practice against only that certain build. On the other hand, you have to practice against the variety of build orders he can use. As I already mentioned, match-specific preparation is more important than ever these days, and having to split up your time in four parts dealing with every build order he can do puts you at a disadvantage that is now bigger than three years ago.
With this article I shall try to elaborate on how important match-specific preparation is. I want you to realize the moment you see a tech building going up, the player in question considered that action for weeks leading up to that game. I want you to not only watch the game, but feel the weeks of preparation your favourite player put in to that game.
Psychological ping-pong: the highest level of StarCraft warfare
Monitoring your opponent’s style. Knowing that he’ll be monitoring yours. Adapting to your opponent’s style. Knowing that he’s again doing the exact same to you. It’s hard to predict his strategy due to the complexity of this all. Is he confident in his macro? Does he think a timing push will make my possibly greedy build crumble? No question can be answered with certainty, but you’ll have to pick something to prepare your game.
If you choose your build order to force your opponent into a situation which you are more familiar with than your opponent, you get a huge advantage before even starting the game. As previously mentioned, the skill gap between the top ten Korean players and the top fifty keeps closing, and every small advantage makes a bigger difference than ever.
This mind game is hard. It requires a lot of studying of your opponent and his reactions to opponents similar to you in the recent past. It also requires luck, because in the end, everyone remains unpredictable to a small degree. But what it mainly requires is confidence. You need confidence to make that build order work the way it’s supposed to. You need to see yourself as a smarter and better player to be able to outplay your opponent. Look at Bisu, constructing a build that perfectly countered sAviOr’s style. He predicted a 3-0 win before the critical MSL games, and that’s what he got.
Both the complexity and importance of these thoughts can be best displayed through an example. The OSL finals between Flash and Stork was the perfect demonstration of this. Every single win was a build order win. Flash’s victory was because of the psychological play, not on stage, but weeks before it.
If we look at Flash’s road to the OSL finals, we immediately notice that, while everyone tried to timing push on the Carrier-friendly maps, he showed confidence in his late game play against Carriers. Because of this, he simply took fast third expansions with quick upgrades, held off the Carriers, and tried to stop Protoss from grabbing any more bases. He was successful. Almost every single time his build succeeded where a timing push would have failed.
Stork realized Flash was confident in that build order, and thought he would probably play it again. He thought that because Flash is so confident in his late game play against Carriers, he would not timing push like the other Terrans. Why would he? It failed almost every single time against the 2 base carrier build that was so popular. So Stork, thinking that a timing push wouldn’t come, prepared some greedy builds, trying to get an economical advantage out of a safe-playing Flash.
If you saw the games, you know Flash anticipated this. He predicted that Stork would count on his ‘predictability’ and played every game the exact opposite of what Stork was preparing for. Three times a timed, practiced rush against a greedy build order. And all because of a double psychological game. He knew how Stork would analyze him; he knew Stork would react to his specific style in previous games, and “double-backed.”
It was a build order win, much like build order wins can be achieved in ZvZ and PvP. But the psychological play behind this build order win is why it was not 100% luck involved. It is a factor of increasing importance in today’s pro-gaming.
Stork vs Flash OSL finals:
+ Show Spoiler [Show Games] +
Game 1
Game 2
Game 3
Preparing the build order
Obviously, your psychological play needs to be reflected in your build order. You need to force your opponent into doing what you’re countering. Let’s take a small look at the gameplay mechanics of StarCraft before talking about how such a build order is prepared.
The first step is finding the weakness in his style. Overly safe play, greedy play, cheesy play and even very tight, but predictable play, all have their weaknesses. Never in the history of StarCraft has there been a style of play that couldn’t be exploited by the other player in one way or another.
In StarCraft there are three main pillars: economy, tech, and unit count/composition. These three are also the three main advantages you can have in a game. Almost all so called “catch-all” builds rely on a good balance between these three, adapting to counter which of the three possible advantages the other player is trying to achieve. While “cheese” builds, timing builds, and greedy builds rely on getting a certain advantage in one of the three pillars at one point in the game.
So when you see a generic cheesy build used against an adaptive build, the cheesy player is trying to maximize his timed advantage in one of those three pillars while trying to keep the other player from knowing what is going on. The adapting player will rely on scouting and bend his adapting safe build towards a counter of the cheese build.
Knowing this dynamic, and having experienced it in thousands of games, progamers make their build order in such a way that it either has a very specifically timed strength, or has a continuous strength.
A common misconception is that upon using a specifically prepared build order, progamers barely adapt to their opponent. When preparing their build order, they will try to cover all possible opponent reactions, and practice a nice follow-up for every possible reaction. Even when their build order fails somewhat, they’re still in a familiar and trained situation from which they could come back.
Every build order has its weak moment in a game. Expanding build orders are quite weak before their macro kicks in, tech builds before the tech kicks in, and so on. If you’re planning on a hard counter, your build order has to be constructed in such a way that it reaches its advantage peak at the time their weakness peaks. Doing this requires a lot of experience, trial and error, and enough practice to perfect even the smallest details.
Scouting is very important in StarCraft. Everybody knows that. When you are doing a perfectly prepared build order, sometimes preventing the other person from scouting is even more important. If you are doing a hard counter to a pretty standard build, you do not want him to deviate from what you are countering. You do not want him to realize it until it is too late.
You can even play this very tricky, and try to deceive him by purposely allowing scouting of misleading information. Of course this deceit has to be carefully constructed based on your build order. A popular general example is probably the double tech deceit in ZvT, back when Terrans didn’t fast expand and only had a very limited number of scans to check for Zerg tech. Back then, it was not uncommon for a Terran to scan a Hydralisk Den, save his scans for the Lurkers, and setting up a small contain with his MnM force to delay the lurkers from getting to his base and to delay Zerg from expanding. Twenty seconds later, Mutalisks enter the undefended Terran main. I need not tell you how powerful this deceit can be. Even though progamers’ scouting abilities and game feel are better than ever, when a build order is well-practiced and your deceit is brilliant, a win can almost be guaranteed.
A good example of how a carefully constructed build, in combination with denial of scouting, can win you a game is the famous July vs Bisu OSL game on Blue Storm. Bisu had been showcasing the use of his Bisu build in PvZ on Blue Storm in both the Reaver variant and the Dark Templar variant. The Bisu build is a good example of a counter-all build. If you adapt it correctly, it has no real counters. The worst thing you can do is coming into mid-game slightly behind when you fail to stop a fast fourth expansion. This adaptation relies heavily on scouting. Probe scouting first, followed by possible Zealot scouting and later of course Corsair scouting. July sought the weakness in this dependence on scouting. He opened 9 pool speedling to be able to deny any form of scouting by a Probe or a Zealot. Bisu, seeing the denying of scouting and fearing July’s aggressive style, starts adding Cannons. By the time his first Corsair was sent to scout, a dozen Hydralisks were already killing the Cannons at his natural. The Hydralisks razed everything right before the first Dark Templar completes. When Bisu realized all hope is lost, the Protoss gods made him disconnect.
July timed his Hydralisks so well that they literally killed the gateway a second before the DT came out. That, in combination with his denying of scouting, made his build order not cheesy, but smart.
Bisu vs July on Blue Storm:
+ Show Spoiler [Show Game] +
There’s tons more examples out there, ranging from the old and classic Boxer vs Yellow on Blade Storm to Pimpest Play Casy vs July on Reverse Temple.
Pure Beauty
StarCraft has evolved over the past few years, everybody knows that. A lot of people think the macro-style of the past 4 years have made a game of StarCraft more boring than it used to be. The average progame is coming closer to the perfect way a StarCraft game can be played. Along with that, it has become way more complex than it used to be. Although the game seems more mechanical than ever, it’s more often the preparation, confidence and decision-making that makes one player win over the other.
These days there’s so much more in a game than what meets the eye. I hope I successfully opened your eyes to ‘what lies beneath’, because only then will you be able to look deeper in to strategy. Only then will you realize how deep this game can go.
If you liked this article make sure to thank Chill for his editing suggestions and grammar help and XeoFreestyler for the awesome cover image.
