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In this game, TY opens with a CC first into a gas before his barracks. This is the most greedy you can be in the early game. He only has one marine out before the 6 minute mark (which he uses to deny scouting). The reasoning behind this is the fact that snutes reaction to the CC first is to go 3 hatch before pool. This is a dream scenario for TY. He quickly adds his second gas to get access to fast tech.
This is a game where TY gains small leads off of early harass. His first mode of harass is the hellions. He makes 4 hellions off of his factory, which ends up roasting 4 drones. This is not a big deal, but it sets snute slightly behind. TY also keeps his hellions alive, to use for more harass throughout the early game.
TY’s second mode of harass is the viking. He uses this to deny overlord scouting, forces snute to spend money on non army related units, and take map control. In the early game, droning up to 3 1/2 base economy is the most important thing for a macro zerg. Setting that back at all can delay the army/tech and make follow up pushes game ending.
TY’s third mode of harass is a widow mine drop. He sends out a medivac with 2 widow mines and 4 marines which kills 8 drones.
All of these small edges that TY gained puts him in a position where Snute’s tech and saturation is delayed. Behind all of this harass, TY is researching stim, making tanks, adding gas, starting double upgrades, and adding more barracks.
The viking is used to push back and kill overlords out on the map, making it so snute does not see the move out with marines, medivacs, and tanks at around 10:30. TY takes a third behind this.
Bridgehead is known as a map where the terrain can be abused. The rocks at the natural have been an issue for many players. TY sieges his tanks behind these rocks while he drops the marines on Snute’s side of them. This creates a strong and very difficult to defend position for snute. It is a very similar strategy to the deadwing one, where you siege behind the rocks in between the natural and the third. This is why zergs always break the rocks there and have also started breaking the rocks on BridgeHead. TY kills Snute’s natural with this push and gains a large supply lead. Snute has almost triple the units lost compared that that of TY after this maneuver.
The aggression doesn’t stop here though! TY keeps dropping in Snute’s natural and 4th, denying the bases and denying mining! Snute does not successfully retake his natural until the 17 minute mark, only to be quickly denied again by TY. Throughout all of this, TY continues to drop marines and widw mines killing drones constantly!
Snute holds on well, but in the end TY’s early game lead, mechanics, and micro prove too much! This is one of my favorite games of all time, I think it’s a must watch!
~MorN_sc
TY CC First Into Two Base Tank Push
- 9 Supply Depot
- 14 Command Center
- 15 Refinery
- 16 Barracks
- 19 Orbital Command, Marine
- 20 Factory
- 20 Orbital Command
- 20 Barracks Reactor
- 22 Supply Depot
- 23 Starport
- 24 Refinery
- 25 Hellion x2
- 31 Marine
- 31 Supply Depot
- 34 Hellion x2
- 34 Marine
- 38 Viking
- 42 Supply Depot
- 42 Widow Mine
- 42 Barracks Tech Lab
- 46 Widow Mine
- 46 Medivac
- 46 Supply Depot
- 51 Marine
- 52 Stimpack
- 55 Supply Depot, Barracks x2
- 55 Marine
- 56 Barracks
- 58 Starport Reactor
- 58 Factory Tech Lab
- 58 Supply Depot
- 58 Engineering Bay
- 58 Engineering Bay
- 60 Marine
- 60 Refinery
- 60 Refinery
- 62 Siege Tank
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I chose this build for a replay of the week because of the similarities it shows to Heart of the Swarm. The only main changes are what you can afford and when. Also, in Legacy of the Void, CC First is a much more viable build because of how fast you can get the command center down, compared to the rush distance on maps. The economy change made it so every race can get down buildings and expansions faster, but the time it takes for a unit to go across the map still stays the same, making greedy builds more viable in this new expansion.
Legacy has been pushing towards a more micro and agression based play. With all of the changes, it is harder to get maxed because of how fast your enemy attacks or you attack. Also, in my opinion, upgrades matter even more because turtling is harder to do.
This build starts off with a CC First into a quick 3-rax play. The point of the build is to try to get +1 attack, stim, combat shield, two medivacs, and 16 marines out as fast as possible. When you get these units, you have a ton of utility on the map to do one big attack, multi-prong attack them in their 3rd and main, or just force units out of them. After the starport goes down, I add a quick 4th and 5th barracks to create a strong followup push. This makes the build very all in. It is very hard to transition when you are constantly building out of 5 rax, a factory, and a starport. The amount of units that come for the followup push make up for this though.
One important thing is to stop producing SCVs once you get two base saturation and 3 gases.
Again, this is a very micro oriented build. Misclicks lose games with builds like this. I managed to get lucky and snipe his morphing banelings this game, but if they had formed, I would have split, picked up, and then kept on with the multipronged attacking!
~MorN_sc
MorN CC First Hyper-Agressive LotV TvZ
14 0:25 , Supply Depot
16 0:58 Command Center
17 1:13 Barracks
18 1:32 Refinery
22 2:12 Orbital Command x2
22 2:18 Bunker
23 2:34 Barracks
23 2:36 Barracks
23 2:45 Refinery, Barracks Reactor
26 3:03 Supply Depot
27 3:20 Refinery
29 3:24 Barracks Tech Lab x2
29 3:27 Factory
33 3:42 Engineering Bay
33 3:47 Stimpack
38 4:01 , Supply Depot x2
38 4:05 Combat Shields
39 4:12 Starport
39 4:13 Factory Reactor
39 4:20 Refinery
45 4:31 Terran Infantry Weapons Level 1
49 4:47 Supply Depot
52 4:59 Barracks
52 5:01 Barracks
58 5:18 Supply Depot x2
60 5:29 Factory Reactor
67 5:51 Barracks Reactor, Supply Depot
67 5:52 Barracks Reactor
This past week, ESPN launched FiveThirtyEight, a website dedicated to data journalism. The lead for the site is Nate Silver, a statistician and writer, who most famously correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states in the 2012 US presidential elections. Roughly, the site is dedicated to to the use of quantitative methods in journalism across politics, economics, science, life, and sports.
Silver outlines a manifesto for the site, and I want to draw attention to a few points he makes. First, he leads with the point that his presidential prediction was not impressive by comparing it to other models, but instead by comparing it to pundits. I think the framing of his argument is very important here because it points out the type of thinking that we’re used to. Second, he points out the spectrum along quantitative and qualitative approaches to journalism. Both types of analysis are important, but he sees quantitative as being under-represented, hence the creation of FiveThirtyEight. Third, he outlines an approach to journalism as collection, organization, explanation, and generalization. Particularly, he criticizes the last two steps in in conventional journalism. Explanation in often missing as journalists fail to properly attribute causation, and predictions (as part of generalization) are under-scrutinized and often inaccurate. Continue reading