xkcd

by **yurell** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 12:43 am UTC

Okay, besides the standard 'problem with macro' issue, I find I have no idea what I'm doing, especially later in the game. When I play zerg, if my opponents don't kill me outright they tend to leave me alone long enough to get a bunch of BL and win; the problem is that when I'm playing against zerg I do the same thing. How do I know when to attack someone, especially if they haven't attacked me at all?

by **Yakk** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 2:54 am UTC

Do you probe and harass the enimy? You should be shutting down expansions and forcing the enimy to respond while building up your forces and scouting theirs. Either you gain serious map dominance, in which case you force army trades until they cannot keep up, or one of your harass attacks is not stopped, or they attack you and you stop them and counter. You should know their resource base tech level and unit composition.

Brood lords is an army trade force. You attack knowing they do not have hard counters and knowing you have resources on your side...
But that is probably over simple.

by **yurell** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 4:01 am UTC

Whenever I try to kill an expansion, I find that their army usually kills mine (a combination of 'not knowing what I'm doing' and 'can't macro to save my life')

I just can't wait 'til it demotes me from Platinum.

by **Yakk** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 1:24 pm UTC

If you are expansion-harassing, your goal is to either attack with a cheap enough force that you can afford to lose it, yet still destroy the expansion (or do significant probe damage) before they destroy it (ie, a zergling force hits a bunch of probes and a base that is half way through transforming into a planetary, while another force hits an expansion without a planetary) or a force that can retreat in the face of the enemy attack and lose little (ie, mutalisks, or zerglings with a secure retreat direction).

If you are committing your entire army to taking out an expansion with no viable retreat plan, that is forcing an army trade, not taking out an expansion.

by **Koa** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 3:55 pm UTC

That's too vague to comment on, and since you say your macro is bad there's not going to be a very well established frame of reference to explain why an attack would or wouldn't work. I think what Yakk is talking about provides that you know whether or not a head-on attack would fail, but if you knew that it would fail I think you would be asking a different question.

If you're actually looking to be good at the game then you should lingbling all-in every zvz. It's the core of zvz. Only when you're proficient at it can you defend it, and only when you can defend it can you reliably get into the midgame to see the rest of zvz. It'll also help with getting used to injecting while under pressure and general micro.

by **yurell** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 11:15 pm UTC

So far, ZvZ is the only match up I've been able to win (one base roach all-in). Every other match-up I just die (especially TvZ and PvP)>

by **Iceman** » Tue Jul 24, 2012 7:13 pm UTC

Post a link to a replay and I'll break it down in detail, just any game.

by **You, sir, name?** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 12:54 am UTC

Seems like blizzard's had security problems, and data has been compromised, including email-addresses, hashed passwords, but probably not credit card information.

http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/securityupdate.html
http://eu.battle.net/support/en/article ... update-faq

So now may be a good idea to change your blizzard password.

by **Kain** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 7:47 am UTC

You, sir, name? wrote:Seems like blizzard's had security problems, and data has been compromised, including email-addresses, hashed passwords, but probably not credit card information.

http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/securityupdate.html
http://eu.battle.net/support/en/article ... update-faq

So now may be a good idea to change your blizzard password.

Not to mention changing any of your other passwords that are a variant of said blizzard password.

by **You, sir, name?** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 10:17 pm UTC

ST_Life vs ROGelfi

Most hilarious series of games I've seen in a long time. Just gets better with every game. The last words dApollo utters in the series is "What... oh my god... what are we watching?!". A very astute summary.

Game 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHUM2T9i-7A
Game 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO6FmMVZme0
Game 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm3KnwyMsbk
Game 4?

Spoiler:

Game 5?

Spoiler:

by **Koa** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 2:39 pm UTC

Reminds me of Catz's showmatches. They're always a determined cheesefest.

Does anyone here still ladder? It seems like the few who were still active have moved on to reddit. I've though about doing some analysis of the team maps but I'm not sure that anyone would be interested.

by **You, sir, name?** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 3:28 pm UTC

I'm back to laddering after a fairly long break partially related to Diablo III. Though I'm switching races, so I mostly suck at the moment.

by **Yakk** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 5:37 pm UTC

I play most days on the multiplayer ladder.

Know the "double crab" 3v3 map? They really need to trash it, or rework it. Ditto with the 4v4 map with the "sacrificial base" with the exposed mineral line.

In both cases, the cheese is too strong. On my cannon-rush teams, I can take out diamond players sometimes on the crab map...

by **You, sir, name?** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 6:53 pm UTC

Jesus TSL4, start with the games already!

by **Jesse** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 11:41 pm UTC

I play, on average, five ladder games a day, as part of the new 'Bronze, to the Top' series I'll be writing shortly.

by **EvanED** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 5:23 am UTC

Jesse wrote:I play, on average, five ladder games a day, as part of the new 'Bronze, to the Top' series I'll be writing shortly.

Three or four years ago I was tempted to start a video series of me playing Brood War on ICCUP; I wanted to call it "Starcraft: from D to D- and beyond!"

[Edit: For those who only joined the scene with SC2, ICCUP was an alternative to Battle.Net for multiplayer in Brood War. In addition to other things which aren't so relevant, it provided rankings and stuff like that; you were assigned a grade based on your performance. (That part is a little like bronze/silver/etc.) New players started with a D, but the lowest grade was D-. My impression was that grade distributions were heavily skewed toward the lower grades and that most people were D or D-.]

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, neither the video series nor me playing on ICCUP materialized. :-)

by **Jesse** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 9:26 am UTC

It's really fun, but I started it at a really bad time (Having just lost 8kg in weight and adjusting to a new diet, so I had no patience whatsoever) and there now exists a video of me looking incredibly angry after losing four games in a row :P

by **Koa** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 1:58 pm UTC

Alright, guess I'll get these thoughts out. I'm going to start with the 2v2 maps and order them from most standard to most bizarre/broken. When I can. I'll also be speaking from the perspective of "high" master (top 1-2% of the playerbase) play in each team league. It should still be relatable information to anyone below that, but it will seem increasingly less true the further away you are. I'm also going to make the assumption that both teams are absolutely equal at all times unless I state otherwise. If the two teams' armies clash in the middle of the map, it would be a draw. That's never going to be the case but it's important to draw any conclusions about the map's design.

Scorched Haven

: 150px-Scorched_Haven.jpg (10.09 KiB) Viewed 3838 times

This map has been in the map pool since the beta and is pretty much the only one that hasn't failed the test of time, though it hasn't particularly exceeded either. It's somewhat like the metalopolis of 2v2. It's a decently small map, with two fairly close ramps facing inward to expansions for both players. That's really all it is, though. The rest of the map is almost irrelevant. The outward third base in the corner of the map is surprisingly defensible if you can keep it alive long enough to where you can get some cannons/spines/pfs. If you can get enough defenses to where only a large army movement is capable of killing it, any attack your opponent might make towards it puts them in a exploitable position. Even if they manage to kill the expansion, as long as you can out maneuver their army to force a favorable engagement you can make them pay for it or even outright win. All of the expansions down the center of the map only exist to starve your opponent if they're turtling. I wouldn't recommend ever taking them unless you're going for an economic win and you know you can't break your opponent... or if you're just screwing around. They're far too vulnerable in a close game.

The natural looks inviting but holding the area below your ramp isn't as easy as it might look. The choke is just a little too wide, and the attack distance is just a little too short. This means that any sort of early one base attack that can cut off one of the ramps is powerful (forcefield for instance). It also means that any expansion before, say, 6 minutes can be suicidal. This is pretty much true of most team games on all maps. You need to be able to defend a quick rush, and assuming your opponents don't rush, you need to be able to put on pressure in case they decide to expand too early themselves. It's just the nature of it.

Some people decide to do a wall-off between the ramps to secure their natural right away. It can work but you'll lose to some relatively common rushes like a 6 pool. The choke is too wide to get enough units out to defend while making a full wall. I feel it's too risky and not terribly rewarding, as your opponent can just expand sans the defense you had to make.

Other than that the map is really standard and simple, no strategy works better or worse on it and nothing really stands out.

Molten Crater

: 150px-MotenCrater-950.jpg (8.87 KiB) Viewed 3838 times

This map is very similar to Scorched Haven in that it has a main and natural, where the rest of the bases on the map are primarily for starving your opponent and winning an economic game. The difference is that the natural is considerably more defensible. Not only is the choke much smaller (and longer), not only is the map larger, but even the area around the natural is much smaller as well. This is one of two maps in the entire pool of team games where you can consider fast expanding. You can even do a basic 1v1 FFE on this map. Some people might try to metagame that aspect of it and have a nice one base cheese awaiting you though, and it'll probably involve those cliffs that I'll mention.

Turtling on the main and natural on this map is extremely effective. Moving into the main choke with a large army during the mid/late game, when splash damage is copious, can be suicidal. This makes the cliffs along the main considerably more vulnerable terrain than the main entrance, which is pretty unusual for most maps. Until the game advances beyond the main and natural, things such as: drops, banshees, blink stalkers, muta, floating buildings, tanks along the bottom of the cliff, warp prisms, etc... are all quite powerful. If you're economically focused you'll want to put most of your defenses and awareness along your cliff more so than the main choke.

Once your natural is secure you'll want to move out to take the gold expansion next, but you'll note how very exposed it is relative to your natural. Generally games are won and lost at this stage. If you can get your gold expansion up and deny your opponent's, you win. Maybe not always right away, but eventually.

This is the expansion path you should take:

: expansionsMotenCrater.jpg (60.87 KiB) Viewed 3867 times

Red means a more vulnerable base, or simply the further away from the main choke means it's more vulnerable to harassment. A lot of people take the expansion I marked with a red dot because it seems more natural for a third, but it's actually very risky and unstable. It has to be a hidden base or you have to be ahead to hold it. It's only a small walk from the opponent's gold, and it's not a very forward expansion that you can defend while pushing.

Tyrador Keep

: 150px-Tyrador_Keep.jpg (6.73 KiB) Viewed 3838 times

And this is the other map where you can consider fast expanding. If you're confident that one player can hold the ramp, the other player can safely expand. The rocks will hold quite a bit of damage and will buy enough time for the expanding player to catch up in army to defend a rush. The ramp is only a slightly weaker point than the rock entrance if your opponent chooses to rush but it should also be defensible if you can see the attack coming. The other player can take the low ground expansion once the fast expansion starts paying for itself.

There is some rotational symmetry imbalance on this map. When players are trying to take the expansions at the empty spawn point, it favors the team who has rocks nearest the rockless ramp of the neutral high ground. For example, if team (a) spawns on the southern high ground, and team (b) spawns on the eastern high ground, team (a) has the advantage in taking the neutral western high ground (c). This is because not only does movement in that direction coincidentally protect (a)'s gold (with the (b)'s gold fairly vulnerable), and not only is it a relatively short distance from the rocks, but because (b) can't break down the neutral high ground's rocks without a serious army commitment. There should never be a large army commitment over the neutral high ground because it will leave important locations very exposed. You can't have a few units attacking the rocks either, because it'll take too long for those units to be doing something the other team doesn't have to. Unless you're already ahead, it's a good idea to allin as (b) if the game gets to the point where the neutral bases come into play.

You'll also note that the map isn't even entirely rotationally symmetric either. The distance from (c) to (b) is a lot further than (a) to (c). (a) > (b) > (c), though (a) < (c) if they're both occupied. I wouldn't mention any of this if it hadn't lost me games.

The only other thing to mention about this map is that the high ground natural's mineral line is very exposed. It can be fungal'd and sieged and so forth. There's not much you can do to defend it other than to be ultra aware though. I say it as more of something you can take advantage of.

Magma Core

: 150px-Magma_Core.jpg (5.89 KiB) Viewed 3838 times

I'm unsure about this map. The obvious natural is very exposed and hard to take right away, making it very one-base oriented to start. But once the natural has been taken and secured, it protects the ramp for you to take the expansions in your other possible spawn location. You can take them almost for free, which turns the game into a very turtly macro game.

It's also kind of hard to break the other team if they're on one base since they're so close to each other and share the ramp. So the crux of this map comes down to denying the natural and taking yours first. From there, it's macroing, defending, and picking the right time and place to fight. If you can take and secure either gold, you win. It's... kind of dull.

: 150px-Magma_Core.jpg (6.54 KiB) Viewed 3867 times

The cliffs marked in red are vulnerable. There's not much else to say about this map. It's not a bad map but it makes for bad gameplay in my opinion.

Desolate Stronghold

: 150px-DesolateStronghold-950.jpg (6.09 KiB) Viewed 3838 times

This map is about 30% too big. It takes a while to travel from base to base, which makes expanding favorable... but then the expansion is very open, which cancels it out. When I play on this map I feel like I'm traveling between islands. I have the island that is my main, the island that is my ramp, the island that is my natural or other expansion, and then the similar islands of the opponents'. Everything in between is a sea of nothing that is suffocating me while I struggle to make sure that I have enough on each island. It's definitely different.

Everything that does area control is weaker because you can always move around it: siege tanks, defensive structures, anything slow. Then everything that is fast and benefits from flanking is stronger: bio, zerglings, zealots, etc.

Expanding on this map spreads you very thin, but it's something you will need to do most of the time. What expansions you decide to take depends on what strategies are chosen. If your opponents have drops or air, you might want to expand very close to your ally. If you're going ling+muta, you might want to expand in the corner to make your opponent commit to either your expansion or your main ramp, given that they're so far apart by ground but close by air.

This map is playable but it feels wrong to me. I'd veto it but there's definitely worse...

Here's the three that I veto.

Lunar Colony V

: 150px-Lunar_Colony_V.jpg (5.74 KiB) Viewed 3838 times

There's only two things you need to know about this map.

The first thing is to not expand at the 3 and 9 o'clock positions. It feels like it should be the second base your team should take after the natural, but it spreads your armies too thin and doesn't give you much to work with as far as a staging ground or future expansions.

Spoiler:

As you can see, if you take (4) instead of (2), you have a much larger area that you have to keep protected. For instance, if you have your whole army at (4) because of a drop, and they come in to attack your ally's natural (1), your allies army or expansion could be mostly dead before you can reposition to help defend. Likewise if some lings run into (1) and they all attack at (4). All it takes is one moment where you're out of position for you to lose. Also, if you take (2) instead of (4), (3) and (5) suddenly look a lot easier to take, whereas (4) is always going to feel like a liability. It's true that it'll protect your main from drops, but just put a couple defenses down and you're fine. Hell, even if they attack (2) from the further ramp, there's that nice choke, LoS blocker, and vespene gas position that makes it difficult to attack into.

The second thing is that the majority of what I just said is largely irrelevant because you can't take your natural unless you contain your opponent. The natural on this map is the hardest to hold of any map I've covered so far. It's too open, and it's too easy to get between the natural and the ramp, cutting off anything attempting to defend the natural. If you stay on one base and your opponent expands, and you put the money they spent on the expansion into one siege tank, you need only get that one tank in range of their ramp to kill the natural. Not that that is the only way to do it... Just about anything works, but for different reasons which you can't premeditate with any certainty. That's why I veto these three maps, the best way to win is to do a one base allin and pray.

The Boneyard aka Even Smaller Delta Quadrant

: 150px-The_Boneyard.jpg (7.05 KiB) Viewed 3838 times

Pick a one base allin. That's basically all this is. If you do a strong timing with your ally you'll probably win, but sometimes not. Why? The map is too small to react to anything. It takes less than 20 seconds to travel from ramp to ramp. All you need is a way to break up the ramp, and there's so many different ways to do it that require different reactions to defend. You can't prepare for everything, so the only thing that makes sense is to always be the aggressor. The expansion in the back is quite safe, indeed the only safe expansion, but put too much money into it and you can die to a strong push. Or not. Roll the dice.

The Ruins of Tarsonis

: 150px-The_Ruins_of_Tarsonis.jpg (12.9 KiB) Viewed 3838 times

Yeah, this one is worse. I think this is the worst map in the entire map pool for all leagues. The only other map that might be worse is Frontier (3v3, I'll cover it), but the reason I think this is worse is because it's making me angry just looking at it. Those "natural" expansions, those gold bases, the LoS blockers, that little slit that lets smaller units travel from the two expansions outside the main, the weird low ground between the mains, the watch towers that give vision over everything but the only important attack path. Someone got paid to make this garbage. And it has been in the map pool for over a year... I need to stop facepalming to finish this post.

Anyway... Terran dominates this map. 1-1-1 is unstoppable. Siege tanks can go from a very defensive position to assaulting your base in just a few seconds. There's no delaying it, no counter attacking, no cutting off reinforcements. You just die unless you're also terran and are doing the same thing.

The expansion behind the ramp blocked with rocks is your real natural if you're not terran. But if you're expanding and the enemy team has more terrans than you... I don't know what you're hoping to accomplish. You're already dead. If you happen to get double terran yourself and build siege tanks, congratulations. If there are no terrans, it's still an awful map. I'd rather play on steppes of war.

--------------------------

So, that's the 2v2 map pool. I've included some replays that help illustrate my points. Some of them are decent games. I'll do both 3v3 and 4v4 a little later. There's not much to say about the 4v4 maps because they're so variable but there's a few things I can point out.

by **Yakk** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 2:51 pm UTC

You need to download and attach the images. They are hotlink blocked.

by **Koa** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 3:01 pm UTC

Ah, my browser is pulling from my cache. Bleh.

by **You, sir, name?** » Fri Aug 31, 2012 6:34 pm UTC

Thinking of seeing WCS Europe live in Stockholm. Just gotta square it with my manager whether it's ok to work from the stockholm office the Monday after.

by **Ixtellor** » Sun Sep 02, 2012 9:57 pm UTC

I asked a month ago with no response...

Anyone know what happened to our leader AKA Psilon ?

I might start playing again as I am getting burned out on other stuff.

by **You, sir, name?** » Mon Sep 03, 2012 7:26 pm UTC

Fuck, I'm doing this. Got the go-ahead from my manager to work from Stockholm. Tickets and hotel visit is all arranged.

by **Xeio** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 1:01 am UTC

Not sure if anyone is following the HotS beta maps (and the tourney run on them), but this game is pretty funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sqFdrj30pY

I'm looking forward to see how the beta progresses and the changes in the metagame from it.

by **J the Ninja** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 1:09 am UTC

HOTS beta rollout is starting! The first round of keys has gone out. Several people on reddit report having them, DjWheat has it as well. You can check your account at https://us.battle.net/account/management/

I didn't get one yet.

by **Will** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 2:37 am UTC

Got mine, downloading now.

by **You, sir, name?** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 6:46 pm UTC

No HOTS for me :-(

by **Vaniver** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 7:48 pm UTC

I have a friend that works at Blizzard, and so have a beta invite.

So far, the experience has not been as fun as expected: which I attribute to this being a multiplayer-only beta. I haven't played SC2 in months, and I get the impression that most of the people with beta invites are active players (who are, consequently, way better than I am). But, perhaps I'll find the time to load up the base game and practice a bit.

by **Xeio** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 7:50 pm UTC

Yea, I'm most looking forward to the single player campaign myself. I mean, I'll probably play some 3v3/4v4/FFA games, but I've never ranked in 1v1 because I just got bored of it after the original starcraft 2 beta.

Still fun to watch though. :mrgreen:

by **Jesse** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 12:57 am UTC

HotS betas are currently limited to friends of developers, key people in the scene (PR managers, some players, some casters) and people who play a bunch of multi-player. Thus, if you're not too into the multi-player you will not get much out of the beta.

by **Nylonathatep** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 7:17 pm UTC

I actually watched Whitera stream HOTS last night. He plays protoss and is currently Platium on the beta server.

He did a PvP with DavieKy... Whitera went Mamaship core, with oracle, and then went tempest. The two oracles shut down mining a few times but was shutdown. The mineral lockdown really didn't affect the game that much as it seems to be more of an annoyance. The Oracle's other ability (gain vision from enemy's units) is actually pretty useful in combination with Tempest's long range and it kept the opponent away for a while. However tempest lost their splash ability and it's just pretty useless and Whitera lost to mass stalkers, his own bad tempest placement, and Mothership vortex.

Someone said on chat that Davidky is actually David Kim and he wants to chat with Whitera about game balance. Whitera never replied and just kept streaming. He then went on a BO 7 with QXC. He lost 1-4. QXC just made early Warhounds and park them outside Whitera's base and expand behind it. Whitera lost the first game when QXC just mass Warhound/Viking and Whitera just can't go toe to toe with that army combination. Warhound seems pretty strong as it got bonus dmg vs armor and some splash dmg, and it looks like it can soak up a lot of damage. The next game Whitera tried to apply pressure and made a fast stalker to harass his opponent. However a warhound was already out in his base. The stalker go killed of as it tries to retreat... apparantly a warhound is also faster then a stalker. Still Whitera keep applying pressure and was able to pick off Warhounds one by one, trapping them with forcefield. He Kept harassing the mineral line with DTs and eventually won the game with archon toilet. Whitera lost the third game as QXC went heavy marines and Whitera lost the base exchange race. I didn't watch the 4th game.

He also played a PvsZ on ladder. Whitera outbase him like 6 vs 3 and he kept harassing the zerg with Warp Prism Zealot drops and snipping off Hives. However the zerg have a lot of Swarm Host and it kept the zerg in the game... crackling from swarm host also got range attacks and a carpet of crackling is pretty deadly. They just kept burrowing in frount of the protoss's base and spawn crackling. One storm can pretty much finish off a swarm host. In the end Whitera have enough for a protoss deathball and it just rolled over the zerg's army, but it shouldn't have been close to begin with. A combination of Swarmhost and Corruptors with a few infestor mix is pretty deadly mid to late game.

by **Spambot5546** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 2:50 pm UTC

I've been watching HotS beta games too. One of my favorites for an example of abusive use of a new units is this one between TLO and PainUser.

Spoiler:

by **BlackSails** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 6:50 pm UTC

Spambot5546 wrote:I've been watching HotS beta games too. One of my favorites for an example of abusive use of a new units is this one between TLO and PainUser.

Spoiler:
He uses vipers to chain-abduct thors and siege tanks, and almost gets a Raven. He also built a couple evo chambers at the front for the sole purpose of being consumed for energy by the vipers. He even had queens tranfusing them!
Then he transistioned into mass burrow charge ultras which, coupled with some abducts, completely demolished PainUser.
Anyone knows what was happening at 23:29? There's some weird flashes of what appears to be yellow flame, but I don't recognize them as any unit's death animation.

I think that animation is the end of the ultralisk burrow charge.

by **Koa** » Sun Sep 09, 2012 8:25 pm UTC

The flame is a scaling bug with siege tank fire.

by **Koa** » Wed Sep 12, 2012 1:07 pm UTC

I suppose I'll continue the team games map analysis given that Blizzard changed the 3v3 and 4v4 map pool while conveniently leaving 2v2 alone. For whatever reason they decided to reintroduce a lot of the old maps for this season. I don't see any logic behind the map pool changes, it seems like they only changed it for variety's sake and simply had no other maps to switch in. So, here's the 3v3 maps, again organized from best to worst.

The Bio Lab

I find it difficult to write anything about this map. It feels very standard to me, there's nothing particularly bad about it and it's very playable. Just about everything is viable to some degree. You can do a quick rush and it's not going to be ridiculously powerful but it's also not a terrible idea. You can do a slow siege push and play very positionally. You can do drops and things like that. From a terran perspective, both bio and mech is equally viable, which is unusual for the majority of the team maps.

Expansions are somewhat vulnerable but, again, fairly viable. Even taking a third isn't a bad idea in some games. The few things that I can think of to improve this map is to make all the spawn positions the same as far as walloffss. In some positions you can do a two building walloff, and in others you need the usual three. The map isn't perfect, but I liken it to Xel'Naga Caverns from season 1. It's one of the few maps that isn't obviously bad.

Cinder Fortress

I rather like this map as well. The design isn't very refined or succinct but it still works. The terrain just outside the main ramp makes it fairly difficult to attack into, so rushes aren't usually advised until your opponent takes at least one base. Not to say that rushes can't work, but it's never guaranteed to garner any returns unless you have a clever plan.

I've played several games on this map where every single base has been taken, which is almost unheard of in the rest of the map pool for team games. There's certainly a strong defender advantage granted from the terrain. All of the expansions are tucked in to some extent, and a lot of the main attack paths are very narrow, especially in the mid/late game for 6 players. If I were to make changes to this map, the first thing I would do would be to open up some of those attack paths because it's actually too defensive and constricting. Splash damage is exceedingly effective.

Some of the mineral lings are exposed along the cliffs. Storm, fungal, siege tanks, colossi, and so on can all take advantage of that, though not many people do. It'd definitely be a problem if anyone took advantage of it other than me. Since the game is so defensive and usually culminates in a big death ball battle, getting ahead in workers using the cliffs can solidify your win.

Green Acres

I generally do a one base tech push into expand on this map. Doing a quick frontal attack is questionable given that all three players share the same ramp, so using tech to give you some more options is ideal in my opinion. The cliffs on either side of the main high ground for both teams is very vulnerable, so drops and air is strong and is the main terrain feature to exploit. I've played some games that turned into crazy bio drop fests. I'll include a replay example of that at the bottom since it can be pretty amusing.

Apart from the obvious naturals, the expansions on the sides of the map and the bases by the xelnaga towers in the middle are very hard to hold. You kind of have to rely on the bases being hidden or passivity from your opponent. It's the worst thing about this map. There's a short clock on any game after the two low ground bases are taken. In an evenly matched game, once the mains and the two low natural bases are mined out, that's usually it. Whoever can get a single mining base or an army advantage at that point is the winner.

Temple of the Preservers

This is one of three 3v3 maps in the map pool that share a similar design, and is the only one that is playable. All three bases are isolated with their own ramp. Two of the ramps are nearer to each other, one is further away. All of these maps suffer from some critical issues. One is what I call the ZZXvZXX problem (two zergs on one team, one zerg on the other, the rest being anything but zerg). If the lone zerg spawns on the further away ramp, and the two zergs on the other team get a fast pool, then the game is effectively over. The lone zerg won't be able to survive the two players rushing him, the rest of the players can't do anything to help defend against the rush, and that zerg will lose everything. 3v2 is an insurmountable advantage.

Another problem is forcefielding the ramp and attacking the other player. It's pretty basic but can be very effective. It's largely the reason players share ramps in most team maps.

I feel like this map is slightly asymmetric and favors engagements towards the left side of the map. That could be psychological in the sense that either the players are predisposed to make engagements towards the left side of the map or that I'm noticing a pattern specific to my experiences, but in the majority of the games that I play the left side rocks are broken and that attack path is often used, while the right side rocks are left intact and seldom ever used.

If you do push along the sides, though the path is tighter and and leaves you more vulnerable, you can lock down one of the player's ramps to make it more than worth it. They won't be able to reinforce or engage properly into your push.

There's an island base that some terrans like to expand to early on, but I'm a bit indifferent towards doing that. You can't transfer workers and I value expanding towards your opponent and securing the low ground. I haven't seen it used to great effect despite some terrans swearing by it as being powerful. I can understand that it would seem powerful but I don't think that it necessarily is.

Silent Dunes

This is a new map that replaced Frontier, which was in my opinion the second worst map Blizzard has ever created. This one isn't as bad as Frontier but it shares a lot of the same problems. The player that spawns in the middle gets a big fuck you from Blizzard with the double ramps. Scouting army movement can be difficult. If even one army is out of position for a big engagement the game can be immediately over. The watch towers are useless, they don't reveal either attack path. At least there's two chokes that split into two ramps, unlike Frontier's one choke into two into three ramps.

I've only played one game on this map where I spawned as protoss in the center and got promptly fucked. Though it's a pretty bad map for that reason alone, sadly there's only three vetos and this map may be a lesser evil.

Ulaan Deeps

This has the same base design as Temple of the Preservers and has the same issues. The difference is that this map is even smaller, which obviously compounds the problems. I don't consider it playable. Not much else to say.

Monsoon

I was hoping I would never have to see this map again. They added this back into the map pool for god knows why. It's a low tech rush map for the most part. It even shares some of the issues with the above couple maps. Unlike Dig Site, you can actually expand, but you or someone else will probably die if you don't do an early rush of some kind, so... Rush or die to a rush. The map is too small for anything else.

Dig Site

Same as Ulaan and so on. The only way this map is different is that it has even less viable expansions. There's only one low ground natural that is worth taking (the one in the middle of the three players), and then the two islands. Everything else is a waste of resources unless you have completely mined out your main. I suppose the cliffs are also more vulnerable and harder to defend. It's even pretty good for cannons and proxies and such crap. It's just an awful, awful map.

by **Nylonathatep** » Wed Sep 12, 2012 5:11 pm UTC

Bio Lab:

You have a protoss go forge first, and cannon the enterance to the opponent's two base while your allies rush and 2 v 1 the other guy. GG quick win.

Green Acer:

This map is air harass for me. DT rush with warp prism works, along with Muta, or banshee. Alternatively if you zerg and protoss cooporates they can send an early Overlord at the ledge while the protoss goes pylon and one cannon at low ground, and then go into their base and cannon rush their base from along the ledge.

Temple of the Preservers:

Pretty balanced map. I had some epic 3 vs 3 games there.

Monsoon:

Horrible map. Once one of your allies' base got run over it's pretty much over... All your base is technically connected thru the back door which is also where your natural expansion is. I used to have fun as protoss to sneak a probe and make pylons back door, and then warp in DT to single handedly win games.

by **Yakk** » Wed Sep 12, 2012 6:34 pm UTC

On Green Acres, there is a little "nook" beside the side bases that is a ridiculously good cannon rush spot. Like, ridiculously good.

You don't even need an overlord to help -- I think the high ground cannon+pylon might be warping in before it gets there.

(In comparison, that 4x4 map with the exposed back of base line needs the overlord).

by **Spambot5546** » Fri Sep 14, 2012 10:43 pm UTC

The carrier is back! Hooray!

by **Will** » Sat Sep 15, 2012 12:32 pm UTC

Yessssssssss. I would still like to see them do something to make the carrier more viable, though. But I'm glad it's back in (and with that, none of the WoL units are being dropped. Woo!)

I also didn't really realize until they did it, but taking out the warhound is a good move. The fact is, Terran in WoL already has a lot more strategic diversity than the other two races, so adding even MORE units for them is a bit excessive. Let the other two races "catch up" so to speak.

by **Yakk** » Sat Sep 15, 2012 12:51 pm UTC

No you are not allowed to say carrier is back. Clearly is has arrived. Sheesh.

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