Starcraft

The other day I was talking to mobbsy about how I would like to watch some really high-level Starcraft games being played. As it happens, the BBC's technology section have just pointed me in the right direction to achieve this, so I downloaded and watched some replays of the recent WCG Starcraft final and semifinal games (available from http://www.worldcybergames.com/). You need the relevant game installed on your computer to watch the replays (they also have a range of other game replays available to watch e.g. Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament).

Some of the strategies involved are astonishing. For instance, all the players (the games were Terran-only) build a barracks very early on, lift it off the ground, and use it for scouting, observing the enemy's base, and irritating the enemy by destroying their concentration and making it hard for them to select units or buildings in their base! I suppose a barracks makes quite a good scout: it's available to build right from the start, it's not enormously expensive, and it has loads of HP so is hard to destroy with early offensive units. The players make no use of bunkers, but extensive use of vultures and their spider mines (often littering the central "crossroads" of the map with dozens of the things). I was particularly impressed with the players' rapid response to sudden attacks on expansions e.g. a bunch of tanks would be dropped into the enemy expansion, and I would expect all to be lost, but within seconds a host of dropships would soar in (which I never noticed the player making in the first place) and a defending host of tanks and goliaths would be in place, wiping out the attack force (until the attacker's own unexpected dropship fleet hove into view to remove them to safety!).

It's certainly given me some interesting ideas.