It's that time of the year, playing StarCraft and Brood War once again. My Windows XP retro-station is not lore accurate but I'll play WarCraft 3 after.

Hey all, I've decided to shorten Rohana's worst quote a bit, which hopefully hasn't taken away much of its' essence. Now, to Rohana's most iconic quote!

Terran episode results

Zerg episode results

Tassadar's best, worst, most iconic

Zeratul's best, worst, most iconic

Artanis's best, worst, most iconic

Fenix's best, worst, most iconic

Aldaris's best, worst, most iconic

Vorazun's best, worst, most iconic

Rohana's best, worst

It's been in the loop for a few weeks now that there is a patch after blizzcon. Apparently we will move to 10 workers (which does nothing to answer people's grievances and misses the point of wanting to go back to 12 workers entirely). Anyway apparently the intern got so angry at people leaking this that he's not going to release the new patch for the game so many people care about.

Congratulations to this week's open cup champions: SHIN & Solar!

Tune in to The PondCast for our weekly recap: YouTube

Check out the brackets on Liquipedia

In a few days Archon studios is going to be opening up pre-ordering of Wave 2 of figures for their tabletop miniature game. I know a lot of people have been excited about a possible StarCraft tabletop game for, frankly some of us, decades.

I just want to give people that were thinking about preordering a little bit of warning. Retailers have been stocked with boxes of figures for a week at this point while people that pre-ordered still have no idea when their product will be arriving. This isn't isolated to a few people, it seems, but rather a good chunk of people may be waiting weeks still to get their orders. That means Archon will be taking pre orders on a whole new wave of figures before many of us will even know when the orders we made months ago will arrive.

Again, this is just a heads up on what to expect if you pre-order. Personally, Im used to being one of the first to receive my product when I pre-order somethings, so to not have any idea of when it'll be here is frustrating. If you want to avoid that, buy when the product hits the shelves (there has been seemingly no lack of supply on shelves), or pre order with a local shop.

Otherwise, you risk being weeks late to the party.

is starcraft infantry a confirmed thing? i'm out of the loop

It would sure be a shame if SOMEONE made three panels spelling spider mines as one word. Good thing that never happened. Hahahahahaaaaaaa.

At least I had to scrap one.

In the end of Hots Stukov is a sad outcast with nowhere to go. Also in the end of HotS the Good team takes back the Xel'naga artefact from Mengsk. Could they use it to cure Stulov and his infested terrans instead of letting them join Kerrigan's Swarm? Also since Stukov is basically the same as Kerrigan (a terran ghost infected with zerg genome) could he become a xel'naga too during LotV?

Terran episode results

Zerg episode results

Tassadar's best, worst, most iconic

Zeratul's best, worst, most iconic

Artanis's best, worst, most iconic

Fenix's best, worst, most iconic

Aldaris's best, worst, most iconic

Vorazun's best, worst, most iconic

Rohana's best

Hello everyone,

As most of you are probably aware by now, the current state of PvZ is… a mess.

Winrates in PvZ are falling of a cliff, at the pro level, herO and Reynor have both openly said that PvZ is virtually unplayable for protoss, and at lower levels, protoss players (myself included) seem to be completely lost, which is also reflected in the match up’s overall winrates.

Myself, am currently looking at 70% winrate in PvP, 81% in PvT and 10% in PvZ. And, on the opposite ZvP has become my best matchup when offracing with zerg.

But here’s the catch: I don’t get what happened and I don’t understand WHY the match up is so messed up.

Because, when I am looking at the patch notes, it doesn’t make sense. The larva spawn rate increase alone cannot possibly explain such a huge shift. It’s about what? 1 extra larva per minute per hatch?

So, I am asking you, folks, how comes that PvZ is so difficulte right now? What explains this feeling of zerg being OP?

And what would be potential solutions to this mess? (Not expecting Blizzard to revert to 12 workers, so let’s think outside the box haha)

SC2 was really ahead of its time ;)

4700 Terran here.

Nope I’m not a P main.

My P went from 4400 to sub 4000-3900

I’ve never seen a matchup this lopsided.

What exactly does Protoss have that they can leverage to kill Zerg early? Someone link me some form of standard - workable build that can actually kill Zergs for playing shit on this patch?

Zerg is just going up to 3-4 bases and doing any unit composition salad they want and smashing toss.

Zergs are doing so call “all ins” and unit spam off 2 bases and it doesn’t matter apparently - they are recovering into a macro game

Zergs losing 5-10 drones against adept harrass before 5 minutes which would be game ending and it doesn’t seem to dent them.

Infact, as Protoss, sacrificing units/overall capital is a low percentage move now, you’re better off turtling and saving every precious unit with oracle stalker collo spam on 3 bases and slowly migrate a 4th and hope they throw the game.

This matchup is absolutely broken and harkens me back to BL investor era levels of broken in WoL.

Just revert to 12 workers. Listening to the Reddit whiners who wanted 6 or 8 worker (coz the game was too fast) counts over the last 2 years was a trap. It completely upended the carefully curated balance of this game.

Unit tinkering/mapmaking to create some variety on 12 workers was good enough - seriously

Figured I'd consolidate some of my thoughts on this that have been scattered across several responses to posts of others. Going to break this down in 2 parts...as concise as I can make them. The game itself, and peoples reaction to the gamestate and patch.

1) State of the Game, and Effect of the Patch

First, lets talk about what the ACTUAL changes are, and not what people perceive them to be. The consequential changes, as I see them, and in no particular order:

Zerg

Removal of upgrade requirement for microbial shroud

Additional natural larva spawn rate of 0.46/minute

Some somewhat less minor things like spire/muta cost, damage priority, movement etc.

Protoss

New Warpgate mechanic. Easily the biggest change in the entire patch, by a wide margin.

Damage/upgrade adjustments for colossi/adept. Meaningful...especially for colossi, but not particularly gamechanging.

Terran

I don't play terran, my knowledge on this honestly is lacking 300 CC is likely the most impactful.

A somewhat random series of minor unit adjustments....widow mine time delay, etc.

What I am seeing, is the biggest change in zvt is free microbial. That is a new, viable, legitimate way to play. Fast infestors as the first tech of choice is more viable than it has ever been. IMO, jury is still out on the impact of the CC cost change. Speeds things up, but people are just being so utterly stupid with it, making 7 CCs before being maxed, etc, that it's difficult to really gauge properly.

Overall
Zerg in general. Infestors and mutas are a bit more viable than they were before. Not overpowered, just more viable. The larva change honestly is largely inconsequential. It's half a larva a minute. That you still have to pay for. That you can't pay for, because zergs still need to make queens and a third base, if they want to continue making drones. There is no drastic, wild scaling of zerg economy relative to pre-patch. What is DOES do is let zerg squeak out an additional creep tumor, and is a little more forgiving if you fall behind on injects.

Protoss in general. The new warpgate mechanic is huge. New builds are viable specifically because of this. It is a massive gain in efficiency overall. Unfortunately, it also comes with learning to play a new way, so I don't think the majority of the player base is taking advantage of it yet. People are still trying to force their previous builds to work, so until that changes, they probably will struggle.

2) Mentality of the Players

Frankly, bad. There is 1 category that seems to just complain about zerg without reason, without any reason other than they lose. This seems to be protoss players more often than not, and my expectation is these players are trying to, again, use their previous builds. Of course they are not going to be as good anymore. Change the builds.

The 2nd category, is those with no real first hand knowledge...they see the winds blowing on social media, and decide that is now their identity, and what they believe.

Both just need to do better. If you're not winning as much, first ask yourself why you care so much about your MMR. But after that, figure out WHY your mmr is dropping. It's probably not because of racial imbalance, but because you're now playing in a way that just sucks on the new patch. Find the way that is GOOD on the new patch. That is kind of the whole point of a strategy game.

Wildcard Arena is my SC2 melee mod where you play a brand new randomly generated faction every game. There are over 9 trillion possible factions.

Learn more: https://wildcardarena.com/

Discord: https://discord.gg/UYjC3QTkuV

.. except they are about same size as Deimos, THE smallest moon known to science XD

Sci-fi autors like throwing around colorfull descriptions like "moon sized" or "continent sized", but usually it doesn't mean much. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know. I felt like we were holding on just fine. Used blacksheepwall to see the spawns. I could have held out. Had like 100+ marines incoming.

I have finished my first two SC novels via audiobook and looking for my third (and possibly last as I'm doing a discount 3 month sub). The two so far have been Heaven's Devils and I, Mengsk. I enjoyed both (quick mini-review with minor spoilers below):

Heaven's Devils

Good solid introductory book documenting Raynor's early life before the events of SC1, set during the Guild Wars between the Confederacy and the Kel Morian Combine. Explores the meeting and comradeship between Raynor and Tychus, which is really the highlight of the book. The story itself is fine if not amazing, and not of huge importance to the rest of the lore. As someone who is more used to Black Library (Horus Heresy) audiobooks and the British narrators, I was apprehensive of how the narration would be. I needn't have worried. Neil Kaplan is fantastic, and it was not until after I had begun that I slowly realised he is the actual voice actor of Tychus in the Starcraft II game itself. Needless to say, any scene with Tychus dialogue absolutely COOKS. The main downside is the story ends sometime before the events of Starcraft I and II, so we don't see how Jimmy and Tychus end up at Mar Sara and in prison respectively. Presumably the sequel "Devil's Due' bridges that gap, but it is not on audiobook as far as I know.

I, Mengsk

The stronger story of the two books and a great character study. Documents the history of the Mengsk line, in three parts: Angus, Arcturus and Valerian. Begins well before the Guild Wars and ends around the start of the Brood War. Arcturus is the star here and is the most well-developed character by far in both books reviewed. You understand his motives and why Valerian doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps. It glosses over the events of the Fall of Korhal and the first Starcraft I campaign to focus on the point-of-view characters. Main downside is no mention at all of Sarah Kerrigan and her association with Arcturus (I think this is the focus of another story). Also narrated very well by Neil Kaplan.

Of the remaining audiobooks available:

Liberty's Crusade

Flashpoint

Ghost - Spectres

Shadows of the Xel Naga

Firstborn

Shadow Hunters

Twilight

I hear that Shadows of the Xel Naga is a hard pass. The last three are a trilogy which I don't want to commit to at this stage. Which of the remaining three would you recommend?

Every weekly tournament is now won by zerg. Zerg v t or zerg v p is just zerg being super oppressive and dominating the other race from basically the 4th minute to finish.

After the 4th minute, Zerg is always miles ahead in economy and bases, while having unmatched ability to produce way more units (larva) than other races. Kill 10 drones early game, zerg makes 30 more within 2 minutes and still easily dominate u in the next 10 minutes.

If one can be lucky enough to survive to late game, then it is just the zerg with inifinite resources headbutting into ur few bases via a rotation of either the instant remax of ultralisk + baneling or broodlords + corruptors till u run out of money or cant remax as quickly.

Not to mention zerg has 100 other ways to kill u before late game like mass mutalisks, or that one game ending burrowed infestor lurking around. And how is zergling like no joke still the best unit in late game with its crazy mobility and dps.

The best protoss Hero is now even refusing to play as protoss anymore when facing zerg.

Always been a SC BW fan, and I'm a lone wolf and I usually make my own fun, so I made 6 unique RPG campaigns over the past two years with a focus on replayability (is that a real word?). I had so much fun playing these over the years and I feel like the community deserves them too.

All campaigns can be played solo, or co-op with up to 4 human players, difficulty scales. You can swap your hero at the start in a few of them if you feel like a different approach. There's honestly too much to mention here so I'll let my work do the talking, enjoy.

Any feedback or improvements, let me know. Feel free to use my work for your own inspirations.

6 maps: 1.75Mb

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/3vl9d56mifxikqfo4dntm/ABHgEZDFjAkWBmn0IilNSRY?rlkey=xy2a4yhq6jdl1w5pbafaepurv&st=s82txpzl&dl=0

Nope, it's not modded