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Transcript of GLHF Magazine April Issue
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GLHF MAGAZINE
CONTENTS
EXCLUSIVES
INTERVIEWS
4
7
9
10
14
16
20
22
28
31
34
38
IntroductionMessage from the Staff
A Question of CastersJacob Harrison
CombatEx Talks DirtyEvan Crothers
HomestoryCup IV RoundupBenjamin Fisher
Matt “LookNoHands” FinkChristopher Kinniburgh
Peepmode BreakdownGLHF Magazine
Starcraft 2 Mod Toolsmegabuster
The Future of Starcraft 2 as an eSportDavid Lo
DaisyPrimeAndrea Chiang
KellyMILKIESWilliam Dahlstrom
ThorZaINChristian Hanner
Gosu.RumDavid Litts
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GLHF MAGAZINE
STRATEGY
GUIDES
42
44
46
48
49
50
54
59
63
66
68
Ladder AnxietyJoseph Chen
Conquering Ladder Anxi-ety and Becoming a Better GamerNick Ippolito
On Time in Starcraft 2Stephen Chiu
How To Get The Most Out Of Your OverlordsJonathan Baldwin
Why You Should Never Forget To Research Combat ShieldMark Bevan
Newbie CornerJacob Harrison
Roach-Ling Baneling BustTim Clark
Leenock MLG Finals BuildEvan Crothers
Positive MindsetTim Clark
Xsplit Casting GuideAli Haghani
Terran Bronze To Diamond Video Guide TeamTrebis
All artwork and characters are copyrights of Bliz-zard Entertainment, Inc.
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GLHF MAGAZINE
IntroductionBy Jonathan Lee
MESSAGE FROM THE STAFF
Hot damn. We finally did it.
It is April 2012 and you are reading the very first
issue of GLHF Magazine.
For our first issue, we are bringing you a mix of
articles from many writers who are making their
first publishing debuts. We have interviews with
pros, helpful guides, build examinations and some
features. Before you read on, I want your permission
to get on my soapbox for a second and let you know
a little more about what we at GLHF are all about. If
you’re not interested, this is the point where you can
skip past this opening feature and begin enjoying the
contents of the magazine right away.
I’m trying to think of something insightful or witty
to say but nothing is coming to mind. Maybe that’s
a good thing. As a reader, I always appreciate raw
honesty more than punchy quips, so I’ll be honest
here. I’m pretty scared. Our ship, still wet from the
wine of a fresh christening, has set off and is sailing
towards an uncertain horizon. Now our commit-
ment and passion will be put to the test. Like any
start-up, there is the constant fear that this will not be
a sustainable project. That it will fail. That we might
make horrible, horrible mistakes in the future that
permanently alienates the community from us. The
only thing that keeps us going is our belief that we
are fulfilling a role that the eSports scene sorely needs
more of: Independent eSports reporting, especially
reporting that really focus on the biographical and
social aspects of the scene.
When FruitDealer won the very first GSL tourna-
ment, he said that he would be using the money to
pay for his father’s medical treatments. Whatever
became of that? Has his father gotten better? When
Naniwa performed his infamous probe rush against
NesTea during their BlizzCup match, the SC2 com-
munity was swamped with statements from both
foreigner fans and players. What did the Korean fans
and players think about the situation? With Naniwa
adjusting well now to life in Korea, has this percep-
tion of him changed? These are the stories that GLHF
wants to follow up. This is one of the reasons why
we love eSports so much. eSports, just like any of the
traditional sports, is a vehicle for cultural understand-
ing and heartwarming stories.
To the staff, GLHF is our baby. There is no analogy
more appropriate, and as they say, it takes a village to
raise a child. We were born from the community, so
it’s only natural that as we keep doing our thing, we
will be nurtured by the community. We need your
support to bring you content at the high quality that
you deserve, in the form of exposure, contributions
(writing, reporting, design), story leads, suggestions
and donations.
In return, we promise never to compromise quality
for quantity. We will never try to pad our issue out
with fluff articles, bland features and sensationalist
reporting. If we have a great month, then we’ll print
a huge issue full of great content for you. If we have
a slow month, then we will give you a leaner issue
while maintaining the same level of quality. We will
never bore you or insult your intelligence with any-
thing less. However, we are human, and we will make
mistakes. Sometimes, we’ll just have bad months.
This particular month might be one of them. All of
our contributions have been from unpaid writers
looking to get their starts. Please be understand-
ing about their level of skill. We have chosen these
articles for our first issue because we believe in their
potential, but if the magazine ever begins to turn a
profit, we will be adamant about paying our contribu-
tors. You can keep us accountable to that right here,
right now. We want to reach a point where everyone
working and contributing to GLHF gets paid because
that is what good content deserves.
GLHF has an eclectic staff. Most of us are students.
I myself was an editorial contractor at Major League
Gaming until I became one of the casualties of the
mass layoffs last holiday season, and I have yet to find
paying work since. There are some of us who have
rebuffed offers of non-competition, salaried jobs from
bigger publications because we believe so strongly in
the future of this magazine. In short, GLHF is a labor
of love, born out of a strong belief that we will deliver
eSports content in a way that fans never knew they
wanted. Yes, I’m scared. We’re all scared. But we’re
also hopeful.
Enjoy the first issue. Shoot us some e-mails. Tell us
what you think.
And above all, good luck.
Have fun.
“This is one of the reasons why we love eSports
so much. eSports, just like any of the traditional
sports, is a vehicle for cultural understanding and
heartwarming stories.”
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GLHF MAGAZINE
“StarCraft” broke into the Guinness Book of World Records for being the best-selling PC Strategy Game of all time, topping 9.5 million copies sold worldwide.
MISCELLANEOUS FACTS
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GLHF MAGAZINE
exclusivesA Question Of Casters
CombatEX Talks Dirty
Homestory Cup IV Roundup
Matt “LookNoHands” Fink
Peepmode Breakdown
SC2 Mod Tools: An Abandoned Playground?
The Future Of E-Sports
Jacob Harrison
Evan Crothers
Benjamin Fisher
Christopher Kinniburgh
GLHF Magazine
megabuster
David Lo
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GLHF MAGAZINE
A Question of CastersBy Jacob Harrison
Day9, Tasteless, Artosis, Rotterdam, Mr Bitter, DJ
Wheat, dApollo, TotalBiscuit—what do all these
people have in common? There are three possible
answers:
• They’re all casters
• You’ve heard of them all
• They, in some way, helped you get into StarCraft
If you got all three answers, then congratulations!
You can have a biscuit. The point of the question
is this: These people are some of the most famous
individuals in the StarCraft 2 world. As much as we
would like to believe that StarCraft 2 appealed to
us because of our natural affinity with the cognitive
playing behind real time strategy or because daily life
simply didn’t require enough brainpower, I really
don’t think it was either of those things. It’s likely that
the catalyst that got you involved within the StarCraft
2 community were the aforementioned casters and
people like them.
Casting is proving itself integral to StarCraft 2 as
an eSport. Whether you like it or not, people aren’t
coming to watch StarCraft 2 just because of the pretty
colors or the explosions. Watching StarCraft 2 isn’t as
simple as watching tennis or some other commonly
understood sport. In order to really get the most out
of the viewing experience, the audience must pos-
sess a level of basic knowledge. Unfortunately, this
knowledge is often lacking.
Now that’s absolutely fine if you’re a player of any
standard at all, and you follow the professional scene.
However, if you’re just a frequenter of YouTube and
you happen across HDStarcraft’s channel, it isn’t
the game that draws you in, it’s HD himself. Casters
provide that necessary stepping stone that allows
anybody to watch and understand the game. They
are, in effect, conscientious middle-men, providing
a service that broadens the range of StarCraft 2 as
a spectator sport, and enriching the experience for
those of us who follow it regularly. Another example
GLHF MAGAZINE
might be that very first time you watched Husky
nearly asphyxiate with excitement, slurring his words
into a nearly indecipherable mass of sound. I’ll admit
that was what got me into the game. The idea that
anyone could be so unashamedly passionate about
something that most people regard merely as a nerdy
pastime was liberating—I won’t deny.
The quest to become more mainstream has a strange
presence in StarCraft 2. It is greeted by most as a
pleasant inevitability, but by some as a terrifying
worst-case scenario. Either way, casters carry the
brunt of bringing StarCraft 2 to the public. Are we,
as a community, comfortable with this? Do we think
our crop of casters is up to the task? Do we have the
right to judge?
The answer, to me, comes down to an assessment
of what casters today actually are and what they do.
What are the qualities that make them so appealing
to us as a community? An eye for timing, an ability to
give the happenings of the game that extra dimension
of drama and consequence. Enthusiasm. A great voice
helps as well (TotalBiscuit anyone?). But that can’t be
everything. There are millions of people out there in
the world, and probably thousands who follow Star-
Craft 2 that fill all of these descriptions. Despite this,
there cannot be more than fifteen really high-level
casters. What sets them apart from the rest?
What quality, or qualities, do they have that allow
them to bear so much responsibility, at least in terms
of the growth of StarCraft in the mainstream? It
seems very difficult to pin down. Perhaps a kind of
odd charisma? You cannot deny that Day[9] has this
quality in some quantity. But other casters who are
perhaps not quite so obviously charismatic—dApollo
or Painuser for example—are both informative and
entertaining casters.
Perhaps then, it is a knowledge of the game that
allows a charismatic person to become a great caster?
This is certainly the case with the casting duo Tasto-
sis, who together are possibly the most knowledge-
able personalities in the StarCraft 2 community. But
“There are millions of people out there in the world […] Despite this, there cannot be more than fifteen really high-level casters. What sets them apart from the rest?”
what of TotalBiscuit? It’s well-known that his knowl-
edge of the game isn’t as great as some other casters
but still, the community finds him to be a thoroughly
worthy and highly entertaining caster.
Through trying to dissect what makes a great caster
there seems to be only one conclusion to be drawn;
that no one thing makes a great caster. In turn, the
conclusion we can draw from that fact is that we can-
not know if our casters have the qualities necessary to
take eSports to the general population. This might be
the cue for us to drop everything and start panick-
ing because casters are killing eSports. Don’t do
that people, it’s undignified and there’s no use in it.
Furthermore, if hundreds of thousands of people can
watch Artosis getting “nerd chills” at Major League
Gaming and tens of thousands of people can watch
Bitterdam affectionately bickering like a married
couple at Homestory Cup IV then by Tassadar they
must be doing something right.
As a member of the community, I’m not in the slight-
est bit worried - I’m excited. Besides, if being a great
caster requires no identifiable qualities, then that
means there are countless people out there who can
do it, and that only means good things for StarCraft
2.
8
GLHF MAGAZINE
COMBATEX TALKS DIRTYBad Manners And Strategy
By Evan Crothers
Who says you don’t learn anything useful at school?
I recently had the pleasure of attending a particularly
informative lecture at the University of Waterloo.
The subject? Abusing Protoss. The professor? None
other than the infamous Wasif “CombatEx” Khan.
The self-proclaimed “God of Protoss” gave a few
hours of his time to impart some wisdom upon the
Waterloo StarCraft community. Pen and paper at the
ready, I took notes until my hand cramped more than
after the longest of laddering sessions.
CombatEx covered a variety of topics in his lecture,
from the under-utilization of warp prisms, to the best
way to engage (or more precisely, to avoid engaging)
a Brood Lord and Infestor composition. However,
by far the most fascinating—and most controversial—
part of the lecture was a segment on an element of
strategy for which CombatEx is world renowned: his
bad manners.
You see, for CombatEx, BM is an essential part of
StarCraft strategy, especially in multi-match sets.
It’s no secret that the outcome of a StarCraft match
is highly dependent on the mental state of the indi-
vidual playing the game. CombatEx employs a va-
riety of mind games in order to throw his opponent
off in his matches. Among the ones he elaborated on
during his lecture were “Shit-Talking”, “Pausing”, and
“Cheese”.
Shit-Talking
Shit-talking is a simple concept, but it has powerful
results. Even when an opponent knows that you are
trying to aggravate them, they can still fall into your
trap. According to CombatEx, shit-talking causes
your opponent to stop thinking about the game, and
start thinking about the things that you’ve said (or
how badly they want to murder you). A frustrated
opponent is a distracted opponent, and a distracted
opponent is a substantial advantage.
Pausing
CombatEx is also a firm believer in using the Pause
feature to ruin his opponent’s micro during a fight.
While this may be frowned upon as poor conduct in a
tournament, CombatEx is happy enough to do it dur-
ing ladder matches—if only for a laugh. The Pausing
Game begins simply enough. You Pause the game in
the middle of a huge fight. Your opponent hesitates,
his finger poised precariously over Neural Para-
site. He doesn’t want to type, for fear that you will
immediately unpause. He doesn’t want to unpause
because—well, he’s too damn nice. A few moments
pass, and a baneling tumbles across the Mar Sara
desert, before you say “sec”. Your opponent starts
to relax and moves his finger away from his Neural
Parasite hotkey to respond.
You unpause.
According to CombatEx, the best “counter” to the
Pausing Game is to employ the tactic yourself, creat-
ing a ten second Pause Metagame, in which both
player attempt to throw one another off by pausing
and unpausing at opportune points during the fight.
While CombatEx is quite proud of his own expertise
in this area, he also jokingly saluted a certain RatZ-
Deezer for his mastery of the Pausing Game.
Cheese
For those of us without the stomach for BM, the
most useful tactic that CombatEx can teach us about
throwing off our opponents is to use cheese. Com-
batEx uses cheese to his utmost advantage during
a game, citing its fantastic applications when used
in conjunction with shit-talking. A frustrated and
rattled opponent is more likely to make poor deci-
sions. Taking your opponent out of their comfort
zone through cheese only exacerbates this. Even the
reputation for being a “cheesy” player is an advantage
in a tournament setting, as it can force your op-
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ponent to play more conservatively than they would
normally.
I hope that the fruits of my notes have provided some
knowledge into how BM and cheese can work to a
player’s advantage, or at the very least, provided some
insight into the merciless mind of one of StarCraft’s
most infamous players.
Special thanks to Wasif for his contribution to the
Waterloo StarCraft community.
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GLHF MAGAZINE
HOMESTORY CUP IV ROUNDUPBy Benjamin Fisher
One of the first invitational tournaments of 2012,
HomeStory Cup IV ran from January 5th to 8th.
Held by Dennis “TaKe” Gehlen, it featured an
impressive lineup of both players and commentators.
While much of the community’s focus has been on
interviews, fan-boy inanities and… well, MC, there
was some serious gameplay worth analysing and dis-
cussing. After all, StarCraft is about tactics and critical
thinking, and the pros have much to offer.
MC took home first place for Team SK with $7,500
USD from the prize pool ($20,000 split between the
top 8). He demonstrated an unmatched mastery of
the game, excelling particularly in his blink stalker
micro as well as game awareness and timing. Coming
in at second place was Sound, representing Korean
team StarTale. Sound displayed an impressive ability
to adapt to altered circumstances, bouncing back at
whatever his opponent had to offer. It is a skill much
desired at all levels of StarCraft, but demonstrated
with ostensible ease and intuition in higher tiers.
In third place was JYP from team Evil Geniuses, an
excellent Protoss player whose creativity and versatil-
ity never ceases to surprise and amaze. The standings
were as follows:
1. MC (P)
2. Sound (T)
3. JYP (P)
4. viOLet (Z)
5. MarineKing (T)
6. ReaL (P)
7. DIMAGA (Z)
8. Nerchio (Z)
With over 170 match-ups and 32 participants,
HomeStory Cup IV is one of 2012’s biggest live
tournaments yet.
This is definitely one of the longest professional
StarCraft II games I’ve ever witnessed, running for
a total of 55 minutes. Both players start a standard
build: Dimaga droning until 15 for his spawning
pool while JYP opts for a forge fast expand (FFE).
There isn’t much excitement until the 15 minute
mark, wherein Dimaga assaults JYP’s second expan-
sion from 3 different angles, spurring a long micro-
intensive confrontation:
The rest of the match was a back-and-forth
showdown between the two, each countering one
another’s units effectively. Once they were both
mined out, Dimaga stood the victor, having spent
his minerals wisely, as opposed to JYP, who argu-
ably wasted his on two lost motherships.
JYP’s take on a FFE is definitely effective. It’s not a
skill easily mastered, but he seems to have it down
pat:
He places the cannon behind his buildings, so that
they act as a shield. This requires him to place only
one pylon to power the cannon, gateway, cybernet-
ics core and forge, which is good for his economy.
In order for zerglings to attack probes or the can-
non, they would have to travel around the nexus,
and without upgrades, they would be destroyed
in two hits. Making them run further while in the
range of the cannon means that their numbers will
be whittled down with ease.
On the other hand, a good tactic employed by
Dimaga to get around this was to use brood lords.
Later in the game JYP walls off completely with
gateways. To break them down, out of range of
cannons and other units, Dimaga employs brood
lords and their broodlings.
This is definitely a good tactic for all Zerg players to
remember, it can be applied in many situations. For
example, it could be used as a harass - sneaking
brood lords behind enemy lines, taking out produc-
tion structures in your opponent’s main while as-
saulting his/her natural. Assault on all fronts can be
confusing and halting for your opponent; it leaves
you in total command.
Dimaga v. JYP Game 1Quarter-finals, Dual Sight
GLHF MAGAZINE
This was a mid-sized game, running for 20 minutes.
Both players begin with the standard starters for
PvZ: JYP goes for FFE while ViOLet drones. There
is a lot of back and forth: expansions destroyed
and rebuilt, with very little consequence. Both
players, however, are very responsive, so there
is a lot of creativity and flexibility in response to
unit composition. For example, being assaulted by
zerglings in his natural expansion, JYP warps in two
dark templars (DTs) to destroy them. Anticipating
that ViOLet will spawn overseers in response, JYP
morphs them into archons, and creates a templar
archive, researching psionic storm to deal with
ViOLet’s zerglings and infestors.
While there were a lot of random and short-lived
counter-tactics employed by both sides, JYP’s
force-field placement stood out above all else.
For example, in one situation after taking ViOLet’s
second expansion, JYP moves his stalker/zealot/
sentry combo to ViOLet’s natural. On the ramp he
is faced by two spine crawlers in front and a mass
of zerglings from behind. His immaculate force-
field placement allows him to cause some serious
damage by prolonging the attack.
Not only does JYP block off the zerglings from
attacking his stalkers and sentries, but he even
manges to squeeze a zealot in-between two blocks!
This allows him to reduce the amount of zerglings
facing his stalkers by the time the force-fields ex-
pire. This kind of placement is very difficult to carry
out and requires an immense amount of practice.
Using a mothership at any level of StarCraft is risky.
Costing 400 minerals, 400 gas and 8 supply it’s defi-
nitely a unit that requires much training to employ
efficiently. As mentioned earlier, Dimaga effectively
won because of JYP’s motherships: JYP threw away
800 minerals, 800 gas and 16 supply - all because
he couldn’t support it in combat. JYP lost them eas-
ily to Dimaga’s mass corrupters, which just stripped
it apart
If you ever find yourself stuck in this situation,
for whatever reason, the most important thing to
remember is that your mothership is exposed, so
it’s the likely (in fact only) target for sniping. JYP
could have countered the corrupters with anti-air
units, or just re-directed his stalkers to attack the
corrupters.
This may seem like nit-picking (in fact, it is) but it’s
still important to note. In their Bo5, a common
scouting tactic employed by MC was a feign-leave,
with a probe. In the early-game he would scout
around Nerchio’s mineral line and then back off.
He’d wait a few seconds out of Nerchio’s vision,
and then run around the line again. The purpose
is to trick your opponent into revealing their build
strategy. Nerchio assumed that the scouting probe
had left and responded by building an assimilator.
MC scouted this with his feign-leave, and was thus
prepared for Nerchio to tech up. It’s an interesting
tactic to take into consideration, because even little
details such as these can have disastrous implica-
tions.
Violet v. JYP Game 2For 3rd Place, Antiga Shipyard
Dimaga v. JYP Game 1
Quarter-finals, Dual Sight
Nerchio v. MC Game 3
Quarter-finals, Tal’darim Altar
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GLHF MAGAZINE
This was one of my favourite match-ups of the tournament. Sound and ReaL truly displayed all that we expect from pro gamers. Each game was just as interesting as the next, all featuring an equal mix of technique and flair.
ReaL v. SoundQuarter Finals, Best-of-Five
MATCHUP SPOTLIGHT
Game 1Shattered Temple
Game 2Antiga Shipyard
Game 3Tal’darim Altar
Game one is definitely a match to see, if you can. It
had everything: from bunker rushes to DT drops, it
really had it all. Sound was the victor, having an ad-
vantage with his contain right from the beginning:
Unexpectedly, he didn’t follow it up with an expan-
sion, but kept pumping out units. ReaL’s response,
of course, was to send out DTs for Sound’s rela-
tively unprotected main:
A well played move indeed. It forced Sound to
withdraw his units, allowing ReaL to take back his
natural. However this minor victory was short-lived,
as Sound returned with siege tanks, to resume the
pressure, forcing a cancel on ReaL’s expansion.
Meanwhile, ReaL decided to sneak in a nexus at the
field north of Sound’s natural, acknowledging that
his natural is a lost cause:
Much back-and-forth ensues between the two, and
Sound’s continual pressure proves to break ReaL -
at 25:17 he calls GG.
In this game, Sound attempts to set up a contain
with a bunker once more. Yet ReaL has learned,
and has a zealot ready to take out the SCV and
bunker before any marines arrive. ReaL shifts
his game plan, expanding very early. By the 10
minute mark he has 2 expansions up and running.
However, Sound scouts the second expansion with
his factory, sending in a marine/marauder combo
to force out ReaL’s army. At the same time, he
drops two medivacs full of marauders into ReaL’s
main, taking full advantage of his frontal assault.
A rewarding tactic: the drop destroys two forges
(both researching +1 shield/damage upgrades)
and a twilight council while the expansion assault
significantly cuts ReaL’s mineral collection rate.
The game continues with such marine/marauder
drops and frontal assaults until ReaL’s main and
expansions are slowly destroyed. By the 16 minute
mark only the natural is left, until finally it falls, and
with it, ReaL. While ReaL resisted valiantly, Sound’s
macro is to be commended: at one point he set up
two expansions while dropping into two separate
bases. It’s not often that you see that kind of skill.
Surprisingly, it is ReaL who begins to put on the
pressure. At the 6 minute mark he’s already put-
ting pressure on Sound’s natural expansion. Here,
Sound’s bunker proves useful, suppressing the
push.
ReaL persists with his gateway units, massing
stalkers, sentries and zealots, while Sound adds
marauders to the mix. At the 11 minute mark a
confrontation occurs at the centre of the map. Re-
aL’s force-fields allows him to divide and conquer
Sound’s units with minimal losses. He pushes the
attack, forcing a GG from Sound. This match just
goes to show how effective early-game aggression
can be in deciding the outcome of a game.
GLHF MAGAZINE
Game 4Terminus SE
Game 5Shakuras Plateau
SCV rush at 7 minutes... enough said. But seriously,
a bit of a wacky game on both players’ parts. The
SCV rush failed, although it did take out ReaL’s
expansion, which is quite a set back early game.
Fighting cheese with cheese, ReaL returns with his
dark templar harass. At least this time his micro
is better, splitting them up as to force Sound to
spend more orbital energy on scans. Not much
more excitement occurs, except for unfortunate
force-field placements by ReaL, resulting in a zealot
massacre:
The desired effect was probably to push the
marines out of range, but it was ineffective. zealots
were taken out as they walked around the force-
fields in range of the marines. But 4 DTs were sent
in as the payload, so the real damage was done in
a greater sense.
ReaL won the match by forcing his way into Sound’s
main. Sound had little defence because he, at the
same time, was on his way to drop into ReaL’s. Un-
fortunate for Sound, ReaL’s units destroyed much
of his main and out-numbered his army.
Again, ReaL opts for dark templars, and this time
Sound knows it’s coming. ReaL showed some
really good warp prism maneuvering, pulling DT
and zealot drops, but to no avail. The ever-faithful
marine/marauder/medivac combination serves
once more. With three orbital commands and
scattered missile turrets, Sound countered those
DTs quite effectively. When the final push came by
ReaL with sentries, chargelots, stalkers and archons
it was quashed with relative ease by the stimpack’d,
shield-wielding, shell shootin’ M/M/M. ReaL called
GG once his army was obliterated - 37 supply to
111.
HIGHLIGHT MATCHES
PROS TO KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR
Here are a few of our favourites. They’re definitely worth a look:
• MC v. JYP Semi-finals
• Grubby v. Ret Group H, Group Stage #1
• HerO v. HayprO Group F, Group Stage #1
• ThorZaIN v. Nerchio Group A, Group Stage #1
• MarineKing v. ViOLet Quarter-finals
1. MC He has once again demonstrated the extent of his skill, upholding the title of most consistent Protoss player out there.
2. ReaL While he didn’t get into the top 3, ReaL displayed some really impres-sive talent. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a lot more of him in the future.
3. Dimaga One of the top Zerg players out there, Dimaga’s confidence and game awareness are always impressive.
13
MISCELLANEOUS FACTS
It takes 26 banelings to destroy a pile of
destructible rocks.
14
GLHF MAGAZINE
Matt “LookNoHands” FinkPLAYER SPOTLIGHT
Born without a spleen, Matt was vulnerable to in-
fections at a young age. At one and a half years old
he had an infection and his arms and legs had to
be amputated. Dealing with a disability has been a
challenge Matt seems more than willing to take on.
He’s a competitive StarCraft II player who hopes to
eventually qualify for a major tournament and beat
a top tier pro player in a best of series. Outside of
StarCraft, Matt Fink is a Political Science graduate
of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and
is planning on studying Public Health in graduate
school at the University of Minnesota.
I was able to talk to Matt earlier this week. In that
hour, we discussed a number of topics, from his
time in Korea to his goals in graduate school and
beyond. One thing which stood out to me through-
out the interview was the level of excitement and
joy Matt exuded as he discussed everything he was
doing. When I asked him about his charisma, he
described how competition had always driven him,
and made him more pleasant. He uses competi-
tion as an outlet for his over competitiveness and
stubbornness, and by playing StarCraft, he is able
to calm those features of his personality. He’s
always enjoyed mental exercises. When he was
in school and studying for a math test, he would
go over all the possible math problems again and
again until he could answer them all. Just as he
found the mental work of math in college relaxing,
he finds StarCraft an emotionally relaxing pursuit.
The remarkable thing Blizzard has done with
StarCraft, according to Matt, is that they created an
equal playing field for someone with a physical dis-
ability. Matt’s competitive nature did not start with
StarCraft, but it’s the first sport he felt was possible
to compete at the same level as any other competi-
tor. His previous experiences with competitive
debate were still difficult, as he found ‘flowing’, a
note taking technique used in debate, took a great
deal of effort and he never felt equal to other
competitors. The power of StarCraft 2, according
to Matt, is the game’s ability to reward brain power
rather than physical prowess. The game relies on
the speed of the brain rather than the speed of the
fingers. By playing and practicing at a competitive
level throughout his travels, LookNoHands has
experienced “a journey of self exploration” into the
concept of being truly competitive.
Matt’s travels through Europe and Asia are being
sponsored by The Watson Fellowship, “a one year
grant for independent study and travel outside
the United States.” Matt’s project with Watson is
to travel throughout Europe and Asia to interact
with disabled gamers. Though the high language
barrier has made it difficult to meet and interact
Matt, as he played a game with Mr. Bitter on ESL TV
Matt “LookNoHands” Fink is an American StarCraft II Pro currently living in Korea. LookNoHands has been travel-ing the globe, spending time in Europe and Asia, experienc-ing the StarCraft II commu-nity through interactions with players, fans, and community leaders. Throughout all of his travels, he has had a spe-cific goal—to experience and interact with disabled gamers around the world.
By Christopher Kinniburgh
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GLHF MAGAZINE
with many disabled gamers, he has still learned a
great deal through his discussions with people with
disabilities who are not gamers. Despite the small
number of disabled gamers Matt has met, he is still
excited about his project and its future. He hopes
to raise awareness of gamers with disabilities
worldwide, an awareness which might lead to the
eventual creation of more communities of disabled
gamers. One plan Matt has to promote com-
munity building is the formation of a BarCraft in
Seoul, Korea where disabled attendees could drink
for free. Though this would be a great first step,
Matt is quick to point out that he doesn’t see his
yearlong travels with Watson as the end of the line,
but rather “investigatory work” for what he might
do in the future.
Matt’s team, Tilt Gaming, is based around the
principles of being a competitive, community
oriented team championing the causes of players
with physical disabilities. The team is in its infancy
and Matt has a number of plans for its future. One
of the projects Matt has is the idea of setting up a
team house in Korea for foreigners without a team
to live as they practice in Korea. To pay for the
cost of the house, as well as transportation, cook-
ing, cleaning, and other amenities for players, the
house would produce content such as streams and
other videos. Matt’s worried about the possibility
of a separation forming between Korea and the
West, a problem which existed in Brood War. Matt
sees a house open to foreigners as a way to com-
bat that separation. He believes that it’s possible
to be successful as a foreigner in Korea due to the
open qualifications to compete in tournaments and
the lack of license requirements. By providing an
open house, he could give many players the chance
to practice and qualify for GSL who otherwise could
not afford to without a team.
The challenge currently facing Matt and his ability
to continue to stay in Korea is his ability to pay for
a Personal Care Attendant. Matt needs assistance
with some activities on a daily basis, and the cost of
these PCAs is not covered by his Watson Fellow-
ship.
As I was finishing up my conversation with Matt, he
said something which caught me off guard. He was
discussing his upcoming fundraiser and the people
he had assisting him—everyone from casters and
players to GomTV and Blizzard—and he explained
why he thought the community would support him.
“I symbolize everything the community wants to
believe is true about itself,” he told me. He is living proof that StarCraft 2 is a mental, rather than physical
game. Through his interactions with them, he demonstrates the kind and generous side of all the casters
and players he’s met. And through the StarCraft community’s support for him, we as a community will prove
that despite the gossip and disagreements we may have, we are a great group of people who care deeply
about each other because of the common bond that is StarCraft.
“Despite the small number of disabled gamers Matt has met, he is still excited about his project and its future. He hopes to raise awareness of gamers with disabilities worldwide…”
16
GLHF MAGAZINE
PEEPMODE BREAKDOWN
PeepMode is a melee spectator system that is quickly
gaining popularity. GLHF was able to interview its
creator IcculusLizard about his experience developing
content with the SC2 engine, and how it could extend
to full-scale mods.
BY GLHF MAGAZINE
Your project exhibited a unique condition -- it
exceeded its direct competitors in features
and polish, but still could not break through to
the public due to the quirks of the publishing
system. Could you explain how you managed to
findastrategytobreakthroughthishurdle?
PeepMode was directly inspired by Slime’s 1v1
Xel’Naga Caverns. I played that map in early 2011 and
was amazed that some of the features were possible
via modding. I thought it was a great concept but
suffered from user experience issues and lack of
polish. I tried to contact the author to see if I could
suggest improvements or work with him, but I was
not successful, so I set out to see if I could create my
own system. I originally expected development to last
2 to 4 weeks. It ended up lasting more than 60 weeks
(and counting!). During that time, iCJug maps came
out (by Rodrigo), which added some cool features,
but it lacked a smart cam and also had a few UX is-
sues. In general, I strive to create outstanding
work and I don’t generally get caught up in thinking
about “competition” or “popularity.” I just worked on
making the system as good as I could, incorporating
as many features as possible. I knew that when I was
done, it would sort of be in a class of its own. I’m not
trying to sound self-important, it’s just that I
invested much more time than those other authors
did, and I think the product
At a previous Blizzcon, Blizzard made state-
ments that suggested the experience you went
through should perhaps be typical, that a map
maker use a guerrilla marketing campaign to
popularize his map. Do you feel like this is a
realisticroutefortheaverageperson/project?
• Up to 14 players can join a game and partici-
pate in standard 1v1, 2v2 and FFA matches
while spectators watch, bet, chat and learn.
• Many tools are provided for observers includ-
ing an Auto Cam that follows the action,
advanced stats readouts, standard Blizzard
Replay UI, a betting system, a global rating
system and much more.
• Includes graphical team selection and unlock-
able avatars, pets and turf markers.
Peepmode Features
17
GLHF MAGAZINE
The new logo for PeepMode is part of a roll-out
of new content, development, and community
interaction.
I was unaware of these statements made by Blizzard,
but it does seem that it is up to the mapmakers
to promote their own maps. In my opinion, the
popularity system used in Bnet 2.0 was not well
designed and makes it difficult for maps that are not
already popular to become popular. This necessitates
web-based promotion. Although I originally tried to
promote my map at sc2mapster.com, very little inter-
est was generated and so I stopped using that site
as a promotional tool. I posted PeepMode details on
TeamLiquid for many months before eventually mak-
ing a breakthrough on reddit.com/r/starcraft when
a gracious user from TL x-posted my PeepMode
Overview video and it was upvoted to the top of the
first page. I then launched a reddit-based campaign
to popularize “PeepMode Metalopolis”, which
was very successful and quickly overtook the other
“obs” maps.
Several things were necessary for this to work:
1. The product had to beat the competition
hands-down in features and polish
2. A critical number of hours (~3,500) needed
to be played on the map within 36 hours to
ensure it made it to the front page on Bnet
3. The product had to be effectively presented,
which I was able to do by creating the
PeepMode Overview video (on YouTube). My
previous promotion videos took the form of
“music videos” as other map makers have done.
I found that my “talking head” / presentation
approach in the Overview video was ultimately
what conveyed the product successfully.
Promotion of the maps took considerable effort and
was, of course, in addition to the hundreds of hours
of development time required to create the system. I
was able to leverage my skills as a web developer to
create PeepMode.com in support of the project and
I plan on leveraging more web-based mechanisms for
supporting the map (such as voting for map rotations
and/or a makeshift laddering system).
The existing StarCraft communities right now
have a large focus on competitive play. Your
map does have some application there as a
practice tool or viewing environment. Did you
experience any waning in community support
over your time pushing your product or could
you see similar projects failing to do the same
irregardlessofquality?
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GLHF MAGAZINE
In general, I feel that PeepMode is still on the rise as
far as popularity goes. I am getting requests to use it
in tourney situations, which I am eager to support. I
am also going to launch “1v1 Obs – Map of the Day”
which will provide a means of rotating the maps on a
daily basis to keep things more interesting. My feeling
is that if that map can make it to the front page, it
has a high potential of remaining one of the most
popular customs. The reason for my confidence is
that PeepMode honors and builds on the standard
melee game, which so many players love already. It is
an attempt to enhance the SC2 eSports experience,
unlike many other customs that set out to create an
entirely new game using the SC2 engine. In a way,
PeepMode is in a class of its own.
With this type of marketing, how important is
timing?Youfocuseddevelopmentduringthe
competitiveoff-season.Didyoupurposelywork
aroundlargeeventtimings?Couldyouseethat
beinganissue?
During 2011, I was focus-
ing on development and
testing and was only
moderately interested in
promotion as I knew that
PeepMode was still in a
pre-beta phase.The only
reason I was promoting
the map in early 2011
on TL was so that I could
get testers to give me
feedback. It is impossible
to test Battle.net functionality on one’s local machine
(computer players do not adequately simulate real
players
on Battle.net), which makes testing a map like
PeepMode extremely difficult. I essentially had
to “put it into the wild” and fix bugs as they were
reported as quickly as I could. This makes for a very
bad marketing campaign since you’re publicizing a
product that isn’t done yet. As a software developer,
it is disappointing and frustrating to face this kind of
testing situation. My general feeling is that marketing
techniques and promotional timing take a back seat
to some of the larger problems of the ecosystem
and that real marketing campaigns can’t even be
attempted until the software development issues
are addressed. Blizzard has promised substantial
improvements to the testing/debugging tools in the
Editor for HotS, so I am looking forward to those
changes. I am also hoping that Bizzard exposes more
of the back-end to modders so that I can fix some
long-running shortcomings with PeepMode features
(such as wireframes not “un-researching” and inability
to see other player’s fog of war vision).
Any mod/map project stands to be dismissed
from having a buggy release. Since making a
community impression has been so key for
yourself,isitdifficulttoacquiretesters?Ifso,
how did you handle this or what issue did it
cause?
My key to success was being extremely responsive
and grateful to early adopters who were my main tes-
ters. These were often groups of friends or clans who
used PeepMode for practice. I am very appreciative
to these fine folks; without their feedback and sup-
port, PeepMode would have died in pre-beta stage. I
also want to thank VYEStone for publishing the map
under the “1v1 Metalopolis + Koth Obs” slot on EU,
which catapulted my de-
bugging and optimization
efforts. This action allowed
me to “take over” the slot
of my main competitor,
thus giving me the advan-
tage of having my map on
the front page on EU. It
is a bit sad that this type
of action was necessary. I
have the utmost respect
for Slime, but his maps
were dropping players
regularly and no fixes were forthcoming, so I didn’t
refuse when Stone (the publisher) requested my map
as a replacement.
PeepMode had quite a long development cycle.
Was this because of the limitations of the map
editor?
I have been a professional programmer for about
ten years now. I work on web applications using Ruby
on Rails and PHP. In the past I used more strongly-
typed languages like C++ and Java. I am accustomed
to enterprise-level IDE’s (or the lightweight power of
TextMate or Sublime text editors), source control (git),
support libraries, documentation, and communities
that are well-informed. None of these exist in the SC2
modding scene.
While sc2mapster.com was very helpful in “getting my
feet wet,” much of the work I did for PeepMode was
either original research (outside of Blizzard of course)
or stumbled upon by asking many questions
from other modders. I’d like to give a shout out to
BasharTeg and grenegg on sc2mapster.com. One
of the biggest hurdles in SC2 modding is the time
it takes to boot up the Editor and to boot up the
Client to do testing. In many cases, I have to upload
a test map to Battle.net and use a combination of
Computer Players, two machines, two accounts, and
friends’ accounts to properly test a new feature. At
~50,000 lines of Trigger code, the editor takes ~40
seconds to validate my Triggers every time I open
a map (and I have a fast machine). This means that
to publish 10 maps across 3 regions, you have to
multiply that by 30 every time I make an update. And
this does not include copy/paste time between maps
and saving the maps, which adds several minutes to
every map update.
Right now it takes me approximately 2 hours just to
publish my maps, which is very frustrating. I also
had to purchase accounts on NA, EU, and SEA, as
I found I could not rely on others to publish maps
in a timely fashion. This cost me over $200 just for
the privilege of publishing a map to other regions.
This process also discourages me from making the
PeepMode map pool any larger than 10 at a time so
that I don’t have to spend hours publishing for every
update.
There are other approaches to publishing, such as
converting Trigger/Data modification to a Library or
Mod, but then the developer is limited in his/her abil-
ity to make updates readily. Since PeepMode is still
in a beta phase, I have not taken that step and will
continue to copy/paste my Triggers to propagate to
other maps. I’d also like to point out that developers
need to be very careful that they open the correct
Editor or else all of their work will be unrecoverable
since all strings (including variable names, function
names, etc) are stored in separate Locales, and when
one Localizes these to publish in all regions, all other
Locales are overwritten. So if you do a bunch of work
in a map on the NA editor, and then open it in EU,
then open it back in NA, all the work you did in EU
is unrecoverable since all your variable names are
gone.
I’d also like to mention that the editors crash on a
regular basis. The undo feature often does not work.
It is impossible to test Battle.net functionality on one’s local machine, which makes testing a map like PeepMode extremely difficult.
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GLHF MAGAZINE
I truly believe this is one of the greatest games ever created and I am honored to be a part of the commu-nity that has sprung up around it.
Orphaned trigger parameters are commonplace. I
can’t use built-in AI anymore because after a cer-
tain amount of code being run, using AI crashes the
game client. All of these problems slow down the
development process.
Most sane developers wouldn’t deal with this. I
must be crazy in love with this game.
Let’s say you had a large scale mod project com-
posed of multiple individuals, perhaps making
large time commitments and risks to produce
somethinggoodtothecommunity.Withsignifi-
cantly higher stakes and pressures involved, do
you see any of the issues with StaCraft 2 as a
publishingtool?
I don’t feel that the current state of modding in
SC2 is supportive of large-scale projects. I vastly
underestimated the time and effort it would take
me to create PeepMode. I originally thought that I
could implement my original vision in 2 to 4 weeks
if I worked hard at it. I am now at week 60 and
counting, and it wasn’t until week 40 or so where
I felt like I had a product that was worthy of large-
scale attention. I estimate it took me 600 hours of
professional-level work to get the system to a beta
stage (by professional-level, I mean I have a lot of
experience as a programmer and system designer,
although I had no previous experience modding
a Blizzard product). Add
other team members
(and take into account the
Mythical Man Month), and
development time gets
to be so long that it just
doesn’t make sense.
You may be thinking ‘Why
would someone do so
much tedious technical
work for free? The reason
is that I truly believe this
is one of the greatest
games ever created and
I am honored to be a part of the community that
has sprung up around it. I also genuinely enjoy
programming for hours by myself on evenings
and weekends. I also happen to have gotten out
of a long-term relationship a little over a year ago,
which enabled me to spend more time in front of
my computer.
I’d like to close with these thoughts: I may have
complaints about Blizzard’s lack of support for
the modding scene and may disagree with some
of their design choices, but the fact remains that
I am very grateful to the
talented folks at Blizzard
for creating such a won-
derful game and to all the
players who recognize it
as such. I am also grateful
that Blizzard provided a
means for modding the
game, even if they don’t
provide documentation or
support. I will always have
fond memories of the
hundreds of hours I spent
developing PeepMode on
monitors 1 and 2 while
watching MLG, IPL, NASL, GSL, Day9, and SOTG
out of the corner of my eye on monitors 3 and 4.
I also look forward to years of continued develop-
ment and support for PeepMode; I’m not going
anywhere, folks.
GLHF MAGAZINE
STARCRAFT 2 MOD TOOLSAn abandoned playground?By megabuster
StarCraft 2 has always felt a little lonelier
than it needed to.
Sometimes it is easy to not completely notice.
Amidst a vivid competitive scene full of heroic
struggle, and significant intrigue the average
StarCraft fan and user has many distractions avail-
able to them. If you glance away from the shining
lights long enough to analyze, there is some rise for
concern. The source of this loneliness lies in the na-
ture of the user experience offered by the current
incarnation of Battle.net. 2.0, as its known.
Many discussions have been had on why exactly
StarCraft 2’s online arena is not an ideal sequel to
its predecessors. Certainly by now, even those not
present to experience a vintage Blizzard multi-
player community have been brought in the fold
on its inadequacies. If you hadn’t encountered this
topic before in summation Brood War’s battle.net
was a favorite restaurant, full of your best mates,
a roaring fire nested in an brick chimney, and the
smell of your favorite meal in the air. StarCraft 2’s
user experience is a sterile doctor’s waiting room,
your chair is moist, the man next to you is coughing
up… something. We can move on from pointing out
the same flaws.
I’d like to pose a question for the purpose of il-
lustration.
Had the Brood War and WarCraft 3 battle.net’s
suffered the same issues as Battle.net 2.0, where
would the competitive StarCraft scene be today?
My perspective is that it certainly wouldn’t be as
rich and entertaining. So much of the evolution
behind the character of the scene happened in
those old hallowed halls. If you enjoy the history
between the personalities, the culture behind the
competition, the overall sense of community, they
wouldn’t be the same without the meeting grounds
the online component of StarCraft 2’s predecessors
provided.
The foundation of StarCraft culture happened or-
ganically and is a credit to its players, but it needed
a fertile environment for that to occur in, which
was a success of its developers at the time. The
future of the culture isn’t in peril however, certainly
the boom of secondary communities such as Team
Liquid or Reddit with StarCraft 2’s beta and release
have given it an environment to grow in.
StarCraft should extend beyond competition and
eSports though, its important for its overall liveli-
hood. Iin fact nearly ever title in the storied history
of Blizzard RTS has played key parts in another
track, that is the game developmental scene. This
is the side of StarCraft which has been most threat-
ened by a tepid battle.net iteration. In just a single
generation removed from Warcraft 3, Blizzard RTS
has moved from an important, fertile development
platform a shadow of its former self.
Every cultural movement has a variety of key des-
tinations where the story began. And in retrospec-
tion Brood War/WarCraft 3’s custom map systems
were to the mid- late 2000s indie gaming boom
as CBGB’s was to the punk rock movement. These
systems are now a locale of legends. Simple design
tools and pre-made art assets were made available
to a new generation who had instant access to a
wide multiplayer playerbase.
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GLHF MAGAZINE
Beyond that commercialization wasn’t even so
much of a thought, there was no way to speculate
really on profiting from your creations, it was sim-
ply part of the agreement working in the medium.
It was the equivalent of “Being all about the music,
man”. Many things were also equivalently open
source. The lack of sophistication in encryption,
and its general indesirability for reasons other than
ego, made many projects freely reviewable, allow-
ing others to easily pop open your code and learn
from what you had done. Projects bore children,
copies, and knockoffs all spinning the original con-
cepts. Sometimes this caused improvement, some-
times it trashed the orginal’s vision, equivalent to
modern music remix practice. These elements in
coincidence created something special, a unique,
strong, free, pseudo open-source development
platform.
This allowed creators to well, create. Imagination
was abound, and it was oftentimes quite easy to
cobble together a game quickly and get it in the
hands of some random strangers to test with.
Usually a very rewarding and fun process for the
designer as well as the player, making sure both
parties explored the system beyond a single experi-
ence.
The impact of this system rippled deeply into the
mainstream gaming community. Luminaries of
battle.net such as Lurker Defence and Defense
of the Ancients gave way for entire genres, that is
Tower Defence and the MOBA/Action-RTS.
Now its worth noting that one thing gaming in gen-
eral is fairly poor at is crediting its own inspirations,
their are career historians making note of this
sort of thing. As such following the genealogy of
specific games can oftentimes be difficult. For true
history fiends some of the earliest exposed cases
of these genres can hark back to games known
as Rampart and Herzog Zwei, but I will leave that
reading to the interested. Nonetheless the rapid
development and exposition of these games in
battle.net caused explosive growth in interest and
innovation in the genres.
Over an exorbitant amount of time this interest
eventually attracted professional development.
Much like record executives licensing punk rock,
allowing it to go mainstream from the night club
circuit. Game developers made entries into various
genres which had evolved on battle.net exposing
what was once in independent and underground,
perhaps without the exploitation of its music world
equivalent. The influence is
indisputable. Tower defence
gametypes have been a
killer APP for mobile gaming,
becoming hugely important
in its popularization and
acceptance. While MOBA/
Action-RTS’s are now the
realm of millions of players
worldwide, even presenting
a blooming sister sport to
their RTS sibling.
By no consider the offerings I’ve mentioned an
exhaustive list, in fact the breadth of available cus-
tom maps and mods to previous Blizzard titles is
perhaps the most astonishing quality, beyond even
the potential in certain luminaries. Anyone who
has spent time in that space probably has their
own personalized list of favorites. Just as anyone
who has searched the corridors of battle.net 2.0 for
similar spoils could tell you of shocking opposite
state of the scene now.
It’s an unusual condition. With StarCraft 2 the tools
are hypothetically sharper than ever, in fact what
is available should empower creators more than
ever. Scripting which finally approaches a realized
coding language, opportunity to import fully cus-
tom assets such as art, sound, or effect, exportable
libraries, and more.
Of course there are technical issues that currently
make operation much more difficult than ideal,
but the age of the platform and promised fixes can
excuse this to a degree. Most importantly what has
departed is the freedom to demonstrate a project
on the open field. Battle.net 2.0’s lobby system is
restricted to a popularity system akin to what is
scene in many modern digital storefronts.
The move to the popularity system is built to
eventually hold a com-
mercial infrastructure.
That is something
called the Blizzard
Arcade, an eventual
market which could
offer creator`s an
opportunity to com-
mercialize their indie
projects themselves.
The promise of this
service is something that from the onset, alongside
the power of the SC2 editor, and the historical
allure of developing for battle.net I`ve mentioned
previously should have poised SC2 very specially as
a development platform.
Starcraft could feasibly be a preeminent mod tool
in the space of independent videogame creation as
a whole. It should extend beyond strong conven-
tional top down capable engines like Unity for its
readily available playerbase and ease of market-
ting. It would outclass other free popular platforms
like GameMaker and BYOND in sophistication. As
well its pedigree for indie development and softly
available commercialization options would set it
ahead of FPS oriented environments like UDK, Half
Life, or anything conceivably down the pipeline.
The lack of an expensive developer license would
be an absolute plus as well.
Battle.net 2.0’s lobby system is restricted to a popularity system akin to what is scene in many modern digital storefronts.
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22
GLHF MAGAZINE
THE FUTURE OF STARCRAFT AS AN ESPORTHas it had its fifteen minutes of fame?
its growth has been incredible. Since 2010, there were
tournaments in the beta and VODs of games released
on YouTube, but there was no real way for the mass-
es to be exposed to Starcraft 2. The Brood War scene
still dominated a lot of the Starcraft community and
many people were skeptical about who would switch
over to Starcraft 2 and whether or not it would be
worth it. Even the names seen in beta tournaments
were all mostly established professionals in Brood
War. At a financial standpoint, it did not make sense
to switch over to Starcraft 2 as it was too new and
as a result, the number of Starcraft 2 supporters was
confined to a niche community.
Fast-forward one year to 2011, a year that many
called the “year of e-sports”. Not only did 2011 mark
the first full year of competitive Starcraft, it set the
standards that we have come to expect from Starcraft
as a spectator sport. The year was filled with constant
tournament coverage around the world. MLG, GSL,
IPL, Dreamhack, Homestory Cup, IEM, and Blizzcon
all provided us with countless hours of entertain-
ment. Tournaments were being hosted at least every
month and as often as every other week. From a
spectator point of view, we had everything we could
possibly want. But aside from watching our favorite
players duking it out on the battlefield, something
more important was happening behind the scenes.
Production crews, casters, and tournament organizers
were actually responding to the community. Take
MLG for instance, we all remember the disaster that
was MLG Dallas and if the same performance had
been repeated at Columbus, I’m sure MLG would not
have as much support as it does now. If the organiz-
ers of these tournaments did not try to fix the prob-
lems that plagued their streams or events, Starcraft as
an e-sport would cease to grow.
2011 was also a year of streams, in terms of the sheer
numbers of players streaming their ladder games. Ap-
parently streaming is the cool thing to do nowadays,
even the Koreans are getting into it. It gives players
that extra little bit of income and gives the viewers
BY DAVID LO
Considering the fact that Starcraft 2 will be two years old in just a few months,
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a chance to watch their favorite players outside of a
tournament setting. It also increases the fanbase of
Starcraft 2 in general in that people who have friends
that are interested in playing can watch a Day[9]
Daily or watch Dragon doing crazy shenanigans on
stream. The great thing about streams is that they
aren’t confined to a certain date. They’re on basically
all day every day except tournament weekends.
2012. A whole new year. Is the growth of Starcraft
going to stagnate? The short answer is no, but here’s
why:
1. RELATABILITY
Starcraft 2 as a game is not only aesthetically pleas-
ing, it is quite easy to pick up. There’s plenty of
guides to help people get into the game plastered all
over Reddit and Youtube. But there’s also the excite-
ment factor. People who play the game can appreciate
the incredible amount of skill the pros showcase.
The audience also gets to see the entire game unfold
while the players themselves can only guess what will
happen next. This creates a sense of anticipation in
that we as spectators think about scenarios that could
happen or will happen. The anticipation continues
to grow and so does the excitement. What makes
Starcraft 2 such a great spectator sport is the fact that
the audience can relate to what is going on. Whether
it’s eagerly anticipating a hidden nydus or cring-
ing at a whole base full of harvesters getting nuked,
Starcraft provides a lot of entertainment both visually
and mentally.
2. COMMUNITY
No, not the show on NBC, although we sometimes
get carried away with drama. As a community, we are
one of the most helpful and friendly groups around.
Pro-gamers actually interact with their fans on a daily
basis, whether it is at meet and greets or through
stream chat. While there are the occasional trolls and
ragers on ladder, most people would love to offer
advice on how to improve and possibly offer to be
practice partners. At the end of the day, it is the cohe-
sion we have as a community that allows us to de-
velop connections with other players and profession-
als that strengthens the foundation of Starcraft as an
e-sport. What I think is amazing about the Starcraft
community is how vocal and helpful the community
is. If something is wrong with a tournament or with a
player’s behavior, rest assured it will be heard. While
it might lead to potential drama, it always dies down
and at the end of the day we all learn from it. The fact
that mistakes do not continue to repeat themselves
proves the fact Starcraft has the potential to continue
growing as an e-sport.
3. HISTORY
If you listen to State of the Game at all, one of the
things that frequently comes up is how to improve
on tournaments. With the sheer number of tourna-
ments that have happened over the past year, we
have begun to see story-lines develop. The history
of MMA, the rivalry between Hero and Puma, the
American hope Stephano. With every tournament,
players develop even deeper story lines and spectators
cheer for their favorite players whether it is based on
skill, personality, or previous matches. With these
story-lines comes a greater fanbase for the pro-
players. After Homestory Cup IV, the spotlight was
on Grubby, the incredibly mannered protoss from
the Netherlands. After IEM Kiev, the spotlight was
on Kas even though he didn’t win the tournament,
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his run was incredible. What Starcraft 2 lacks iin
comparison to Brood War is this history. Brood War
players would spend months training for an MSL or
OSL and in that time, fans were anxiously waiting to
see their favorite players battle it out. Now Starcraft 2
is nowhere near as rich in history as Brood War, but
with so much coverage, we as spectators are exposed
to players more frequently and our opinions of them
begin to develop. This history helps the growth of
Starcraft 2 in that more fans will tune in to watch
their favorite players in hopes that they make a deep
run or see the beginnings of a rivalry develop.
4. SKILL DISPARITY
When I say skill disparity, I don’t mean that there is
a huge gap between top Koreans and top foreigners,
it is quite the opposite. If tournament results have
proven anything, it is that foreigners have what it
takes to conquer the Korean powerhouses. Compared
to the Korean dominated Brood War scene, foreign-
ers have proven that they can compete. Huk winning
MLG over MC, Naniwa tearing Nestea a new one in
the Blizzard Cup, and Stephano’s win over Lucky in
IPL 4 are just a few of the examples of foreigners tak-
ing down Koreans. But what does it mean? It means
that the foreigner community in America, Canada,
France, Sweden, Ukraine, and many other countries
are going to have a vested interest in Starcraft 2
namely because their players represent their country.
It also creates a sort of David and Goliath situation in
which fans want to root for the underdog. If the for-
eigner wins its an incredible upset but if the Korean
wins, it is to be expected. Either way, it provides a
reason for people to watch while in the process creat-
ing a more enthusiastic community.
If you want more proof, just take a look at the num-
bers. On average, the most popular streamers have a
couple thousand people watching them at any point
in time, and it is sure to grow. MLG reports that
attendance records are being broken at every single
event they hold. Starcraft 2 is making headlines in the
news in America, Sweden, and Germany. What we
need now is time. Time for all of this to unfold. I’m
not saying that Starcraft 2 will become mainstream
overnight, but the factors that are influencing its
development are strong advocates of it. Ultimately
it comes down to the community and what we are
doing to fix problems with tournaments or even
what we’re doing to spread the awesomeness that is
Starcraft.
“With every tournament, players develop even deeper story lines and spectators cheer for their favorite players whether it is based on skill, personality, or pre-vious matches.”
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A roach will survive a nuke if it is in the outer radius.
MISCELLANEOUS FACTS
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While you play the Liberation Day mission on Mar Sara you will see a STOP sign when you move Raynor and his troops to East. Near the sign you can see 8 crashed vehicles in a chain accident.
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INTERVIEWSDaisyPrimeAndrea Chang
KellyMILKIESWilliam Dahlstrom
ThorZaINChristian Hanner
Gosu.RumDavid Litts
Up and Coming Pro-Gamers
DaisyPrimeby Andrea Chiang
Pro gamers like Tt eSPORT’s White-Ra and
Evil Genius’ HuK seem to have effortlessly climbed to the top of the StarCraft 2 scene as some of the most talented and popular players of the game. They started playing during the beta and became well known for their prowess and play style by dominating the tournaments they were invited to. Now, there seem to be so many more people qualified to play professionally, especially with the introduction of the Grand-master league on each server. So how do you find people who are truly qualified? How can a small-
-time gamer make it to the big leagues?
There is a relatively unknown gamer who is on a quest to be-come a professional in order to spread awareness. Winning events helps pro gamers show up on the radar, but the most important and popular events are often live, such as the Major League Gaming Pro Circuit. FXO’s sixteen year-old Zerg player Leenock demonstrated just how quickly a gamer could become famous. He tore through all of his opponents in the open bracket and defeated NaNiwa to take first place at MLG Providence. Having a char-ismatic personality can also help you gain viewership and popularity, as QxG.Destiny and EG.iNcontroL demonstrate on their streams. We hope to continue featuring play-ers on the rise, and note players that the community should keep an eye on. And so without further ado, we will be introducing our first featured player.
His name is Jong Hyuk Lee. He is a Korean Protoss player on Prime, and the teammate of the legendary MarineKing. In-game, he goes by Daisy. DaisyPrime is a very friendly guy who tries to interact with his viewers as much as he can, though he speaks limited English. He is cur-rently trying to find a foreign team in order to travel to and compete in foreign tournaments. In the inter-view we conducted with him, he explained more about his play style and his goals for StarCraft 2.
When in a tournament, or match, what types of strategies do you useoften?
Against Protoss, I send a scout and get a cybernetics core. It’s quickest for me to get 4 warpgates. For a slower build, I’ll go the safer way of getting up 3 gates, robotics facility, and then twilight council. Against Zerg, if it’s on a map where double nexus is possible, then I go double nexus without question, and maps where it’s not I usually fake going
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Credit: DiMano from TL
double nexus and then cancel. I’ll build 3 gates with sentries or 1 gate with sentries if I have to. After double nexus, I’ll get a stargate up and then after sending a scout, I adapt my game according to my opponent. Against Terran, I’ll send a probe scout and if I see he’s not doing a 2 Rax cheese or an all-in, I’ll go 1gate, 1 zealot, 2 stalkers, and double nexus. After that I’ll gradu-ally work up to 3 gates and get up my robotics facility, then just adapt to my opponent’s play.
What are the reasons for wanting tojoinaforeignteam?
It can be hard to compete in foreign tournaments. In Korea, the GSL is the only tournament scene, and only the star players get invites to foreign tournaments through it. I
also want to learn English because it is a required subject in Korea. For the most part, Korean players don’t get paid a salary right now. The funding is really bad. So basically, I want to join a foreign team to com-pete in lots of foreign tournaments and because I want to learn English as well.
As a SC2 player, do you a desire for further progress and achieve-ments?Whatplansdoyouhavein order to achieve these goals forSC2?
Yes, I have a lot. A while ago, I received an invite to CPL and went to China to play there. I heard the deafening roar of the crowd and felt a shiver go up my spine. I want more fans so I can experience that feeling again. My plan is to get good
tournament results through lots of practice and to join a foreign team…Hahaha.
Thank you for your time. Are there any last comments you wouldliketoadd?
I feel good after doing this inter-view! I’m sad that I don’t have very many viewers on my stream, but even so, I’m very grateful to the viewers who always watch me.
If you would like to check out Dai-syPrime and encourage him as he works towards breaking into the spotlight, check out his Twitch TV/DaisyPrime stream and Twitter@DaisyPrime.
(See next page for Korean translation)
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Credit: From Daisy’s Facebook
DaisyPrime Interview (Korean)
Effie: 대회나 경기에 나갈때, 어떤전략을 자주 사용하나요?
Daisy: vs p 정찰을 가서 사이버네틱스 코어가 제가 월등히 빠르면 4차관을 하고, 비슷하거나 제가 느리면 안전하게 3게이트->로보틱스->시타델을 올리는 편이에요
Daisy: vs z 더블 넥서스가 가능한 맵은 무조건 더블넥서스를 하고 불가능한 맵은 보통 끄고 플레이를 해요, 해야될 경우에는 3게이트 파수기멀티나 1게이트 파수기멀티를 사용합니다. 더블넥 이후에는 우주관문을 올려 정찰을 한 이후에 상대방 플레이에 맞춰가며 게임을 합니다
Daisy: vs t 프로브 서치로 상대방의 2배럭 치즈 올인이나 초반올인러쉬가 아닌것을 보면 1게
이트 1질럿 2추적자 더블넥서스를 하는편이고 그 뒤는게이트를 3개까지 늘리고 로보틱스를 올리고 상대방에가 맞춰가는 편이에요
Effie: 해외팀에 입단하고 싶은 이유는 뭡니까?
Daisy: 한국은 GSL 하나만 있고 해외대회 같은 경우에는 스타급 플레이어들만 초청을 받기 때문에 많은 대회를 참가하기 어렵습니다. 그리고 한국에선 영어가 거의 필수기 때문에 영어를 배우고 싶은 마음도 있구요, 지금 대부분의 한국팀 선수들은 급여를 지금 받지 못하고 있어요 자금력이 굉장히 안좋은 편이에요. 정리 하자면 많은 대회를 참가하고 싶고 영어를 배우고 싶은것이내요
Effie: 스타2 선수로서, 발전과 성적의 욕심은 있나요? 스타2
에 대한 목표를 위해 어떤 계획을 세웠나요?
Daisy: 네 많아요. 예전에 CPL이란 대회에 초청을 받아서 중국에 갔는데 그곳에서 게임을 하는데 함성소리가 엄청났고 전율이 일어났어요. 그때 그 기분을 다시 느끼고 싶고 많은사람들이 저를 알아줬으면 좋겠어요, 계획은 해외 팀에 입단해서 많은 연습을 통해 대회 성적을 좋게 받는것 인것 같내요... ㅋㅋㅋ
Effie: 시간 내줘서 감사합니다. 마직막으로 하고싶은 말은?
Daisy: 인터뷰까지 하게 되고 기분이 좋내요. 스트림에서 아직 쓰레드로 되지도 않았고 시청자도 조금 적어서 슬프긴 하지만 그래도 저를 꾸준히 시청해주는 분들께 감사드립니다.
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She does it all. SC2, WoW, CS1.6, Rock-
band, DotA 2, HoN. She’s a player, com-mentator, and a Zerg. KellyMILKIES everone. What got you into gaming in the firstplace?
I started when I was five. My dad was really into video games, like Sega Saturn cartridge kind, Atari, GameCube type, so I got into these games really young. When I grew
The Multi-talentedKellyMILKIESBy William Dahlström
up, I just happened to have high school sweethearts boyfriend types who plays games, really smart. I’ve always loved nerds.
Could you walk us through a typi-caldayforyou?
Right now, when not travelling as much: I wake up, drink very hot black coffee, brush my teeth, have orange juice while checking e-mails, replying Skype messages about work that I had missed, read a few gaming forums, check a few social forums, start replying e-mails and non-work related Skype messages, continue conversation and work for the whole day, optimally spending one or two hours at the end of the day watching TV shows/anime, play some guitar with my boyfriend, play
some games, and go to bed.Next day, same.
What was your favourite part of castingfortheGSL?
It’s all about the backstage baby! During GSL, before every single day it starts, everyone has to go at least an hour before to get make up and hair done, including all the boys. So all of us will be in this make up/hairstyling room sitting on plastic chairs, all Korean, English, players, commentators—chilling, busy on phone, being awkward and gossip-ing.
Before I came, the makeup/hair-styling ladies only had the Korean female commentator Lee Hyun Joo and she usually had the same style.
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Credit: DeL from teamliquid.net forums
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Me, being the newbie, unwillingly became their tester for all crazy K-Pop related hairstyle/makeup. I think if you watch the season when I was casting again, you can see I had a different style every day. I was too shy to say no and also curi-ous to what they could think of. To-wards the end I even came in with pictures of Hollywood actresses’ hairstyles and they obliged happily to trying some crazy stuff out. While all this happening, them yelling at me in Korean and me speaking ex-citedly in Konglish (Korean-English pidgin), everyone is filing in and out of the room. Most people tendrf to leave us be, some watched warily, and others just start coming over and talking together as well. That was where I mostly first met all the foreign players who were playing at that time. Loner was really shy even though I spoke to him in Mandarin, Nada was really friendly, that was also the first time I met Chris (EG HuK) in real life and spend many fun times with. Also met Jinro and Ret in the backroom. I always tried
to get the hair stylist to change Chris’s hairstyle. One time he said I could tell them to spike his hair up like Super Saiyan. When the day came, he chickened out and re-fused to say yes when they asked if they could do it!
Whenyoufirststartedcasting,you received a lot of criticism. Doesthisstilltendtohappen?Howdidyoudealwithitbefore?Howdoyoudealwithitnow?
I think the general shock of Tasto-sis not being on every single GSL SC2 match for the first time since it started had a lot to do with the massive amount of criticism. This doesn’t happen as much anymore. Before, I think I’ve done a few things wrong. At the start I got really upset by a lot of it, and I wishthat I learnt sooner that ignoring it and listening only to my mentors was enough. I think the gossip and rumors affect-ed me more than criticism. I hated dealing with unnecessary drama. Now I usually just laugh about
almost all of it. Mostly it is thanks to me recognizing the people I can trust and learn from who has been advising me wisely along the way.
Who’s your favourite person to castwithandwhy?
Every person that I have ever casted with before. Shout out to all the boys and girls whom I’ve worked with before from start till now! Each person I have casted with had many traits that I pick up (the good ones), and the ones that I get wary of thus avoid (the bad habits). I am still improving and learning every time I cast.
You’re currently working as the community manager for Own3D.tv. What has been the most ex-citing or interesting part of your job?
The most exciting part has been getting the job itself. At the start
“...no one mentions that working in eSports means no time for eSports. I haven’t had much time to play...!”
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Credit: ESL
Credit: DivinO from teamliquid.net forums
of 2011, I promised myself that if I didn’t get a real career in eSports, I was going to just stop and help with my family business. I felt really lucky and happy to get an offer for the job in Own3D. The most inter-esting part is how no one mentions that working in eSports means no time for eSports. I haven’t had much time to play games for the last three months!
You are of course best known for your work pertaining to StarCraft II, but what other games do you play?
I used to compete in CS1.6, then DotA for a while. Played WoW most-ly PvP for a year, Rock Band, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, then SC2 and now Dota 2 as well.
Wheredoyouseeyourselfinfiveyearsfromnow?
Owning a professional gaming team. Hopefully by then eSports has become one of the biggest sports in the world and America has a new “Favorite Pastime.”
It’s still quite uncommon to see female gamers in the competitive gaming scene. How can we, as a community, help get more girls involved?
Stop shitting on them. Stop blowing things up. The community tends to often overreact to any news about a female. Be it relationship drama, being picked up by pro teams, commentators, laptop stealers, pro players. Ever heard of, “If you have nothing good to say, don’t say any-thing?” In the community, the rule of the thumb should at least be, “If you have nothing constructive to say, don’t say anything.”
Most girls are actually scared of breaking into become a competi-tive player because of all the trolling and bashing.
What do you feel is the biggest obstacleforfemalegamers?
The misunderstanding that most female gamers get what they do because they are female. Many female gamers end up having to work twice as hard or more as male gamers because they are forced to “prove” themselves.
Do you think in a few years fe-male professional gamers could becomecommon?
At the rate the eSports and casual community is going at the moment, I honestly doubt we can use the word common to describe it.
What would you tell other aspir-ing female gamers about the stigma generally associated with onlinegaming?
Video games are really really fun. It is definitely one of the best hobbies
to pick up for any girl. Just remem-ber if you ever want to go pro then be ready for whatever might hap-pen and remember you should be looking to gain respect more than the want of gaining attention.
If you could say leave one mes-sage to the girls who are inter-ested in the gaming scene, what wouldyousay?
Hi girls! You and I are not much dif-ferent. I like most of the things you do too—I go shopping, eat way too much coconut yogurt, and spend too much time looking at pictures of Ryan Gosling. But on top of that, I love playing video games, too. It’s a great way to spend your time, whether it’s by yourself or with your friends.
I have made so much friends and met so many of them all over the world. I hope to one day meet you too!
“Stop blowing things up. The community tends to often overreact to any news about a female.”
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Credit: dota.uuu9.com
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ThorZaIN Speaks His MindBy Christian Hanner
This month we went up close with 21-year-old Swedish Terran player
Marcus “ThorZaIN” Eklöf.
Marcus is an former professional Warcraft 3 player who made the switch to Starcraft 2 during its beta phase. Marcus is mostly known for
his 4-3 win over NaNiwa in the 3rd Team Liquid StarLeague finals. During Marcus’s stay in Korea he received the nickname “Spoon Terran” for the slow methodical way he plays out his games. In this interview we get to know ThorZaIN and his thoughts on the future of Starcraft 2.
First of all, nice to meet you. How areyoudoingtoday?
I’m doing fine. Thank you.
How did you get the ID, “ThorZaIN?”
I don’t exactly remember. It was during my Counter-Strike days. I just remember that the nickname that I used before Thorzain hap-pened to mean something in Japanese, so I changed it. I don’t know why i ended up with Thorzain
Credit: IPL3
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though. It doesn’t have anything to do with the Norse god of thunder, Thor, which many people seem to think is the case.
Whereareyoucurrentlystaying?
In Sweden. I still live with my par-ents.
What does your practice sched-ulelooklike?Isitallstreamed?
Haha no, I don’t stream it all. I think I only streamed like five times. It would be strange if I played so little. It depends on the day. But I gener-ally play maybe 4-5 hours per day.
Doyoupracticeonallladders?
No, I play almost exclusively on the European server.
How would you compare it to the Koreanladder?
It’s easier but it still provides a lot of practice. The quality of the top players are almost the same (Korea still ahead though), but the quantity of good players is much bigger in Korea
If you have a set opponent in a tournament, what do you do to prepare, and who do you usually practicewith?
I would practice a style suited to do
well against the player I have to pre-pare for, but also take into consid-eration things as how he thinks that I play and such. About my practice partners, I basically just ask anyone that is online of the desired race. There are too many to actually list them.
Do you plan on going back to Korea to train more and perhaps qualifyforCodeA?
I don’t have any immediate plans
on going back, but I would like to go back sometime in the future. I like Korea very much, it’s a very nice country.
We’ve seen you play mech, bio, and marine/tank in TvT. Which styledoyoupreferandwhy?
I prefer marine/tank. It has the most flexibility and works well vs everything. Bio almost only works against mech, but since i generally don’t have any problem with mech with marine/tank I don’t use bio at all TvT. Sometimes I can mix it up with mech however.
Do you feel the same way about TvZ?
I think that marine/tank is the best, but also that mech is too unex-plored for a game that has been out for so long. I think that if both mech and marine/tank would be of the same exact strength, I would play mech in TvZ, and marine/tank in TvT.
Credit: R1CH from teamliquid.net forums
Credit: MLG Winter Arena
“Iprefermarine/tank.Ithasthemostflex-ibility and works well vs everything.”
What is your favorite match-up atthemomentandwhy?
I think that all match ups are equal-ly fun at the moment. They all have something appealing. For example in TvZ you can basically never die until brood lords come out, unless you fuck up (though you can be behind). I know the TvP match up quite well. TvT is fun when there is a lot of running around with ma-rine/tank and trading armies while macro-ing like crazy behind it.
You’ve been to one MLG. Can we expect to see you at more this year?
To be honest, I have no clue. I guess I will go to at least one, but that’s just a guess. As of now I’ve no plans to go but no plans not to go either.
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As a former WarCraft 3 player, what do you think about Moon committing to Starcraft 2 full-timeandjoiningFnatic?
I’m very excited about it. I wasn’t really a huge fan of him in WC3, but I think that he has what it takes to become great at SC2. Also, I lived and practiced with him in the WeMadeFox house when I was in Korea. Even though he was mostly playing WC3 at the time he still was on of the best players I played against during my month in Korea.
In another interview you said you would keep studying if Starcraft 2 didn’t work out. Where do you
think you would be today if you weren’taStarcraft2progamer?
Well I would still be studying, I don’t know what or where though. There’s not much more that I could guess to what I would be doing.
What are your goals for your progamingcareerthisyear?
I don’t really have any big goals. Just take it as it comes.
What unit are you most excited about in Heart of the Swarm, and why?The battle hellions. I am just excited to how they will be used. Also, I think that the tempest will be a very interesting unit. I think that mech might become too strong though.
Why do you think mech might becometoostrong?Becausetheadditionofnewunits?
Because every new terran unit is a factory unit.
Well, thank you so much for the interview ThorZaIN. Any last shout outs for your fans and sponsors?
Thanks for the interview. Also a shoutout to Mousesports and our sponsors. Razer, GeIL, Medion, Intel, Sansibar, and Thortech.
Photo Credits: PUT HERE
Credit: Silverfire from the teamliquid.net forums
Credit: R1CH from the teamliquid.net forums
“...battle hellions. I am just excited to how they will be used...I think that mech might become too strong though.”
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Photo Credits: PUT HERE
On Planet Xil you will play The Dig mission. You will gain access to a laser and you will be asked to use it to dig for an artifact. If you zoom in the view you can see the control panel of the laser. One of these screens shows the blue screen of death from Windows 98.
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Interview with GoSu.RuMBy David Litts
Could you state your name and your position with It’s Gosu?
My name is Scott Ball. In-game I go by GoSuRuM. I handle business development
and team management. I guess I don’t really have an exact title but these are the
roles I am responsible for.
So what are your day to day responsibilities with the team?
They vary every day, generally they consist of reaching out to and speaking with
companies we are interested in working with. I also deal with the players on a
regular basis, anything from handling their invites to events, to making sure they
are training the way they are supposed to be. The main thing that never changes
day to day is the communication, the most important and regular part of my job
is having a constant flow of open communication between my peers, as well as
companies we are speaking with. I also make our clan war lineups and take care of
an issues that have come up. On top of managing the SC 2 team, I also manage our
Dota 2 team as well as oversee the HoN and LoL teams.
What are you feelings on how It’s Gosu grew in 2011?
I think overall it was a great year for us. We could have done better in some ways,
but overall I am very satisfied with this last year. We are a really new organization
when it comes to team in professional eSports, we are also into multiple games.
The fact that now many people know who we are, is wonderful. I do know for
a fact that 2012 is going to be twice as big for It’s Gosu as 2011 was. People can
expect big things from our organization and our players this year.
How big was the acquisition of Gretorp for It’s Gosu?
Having Gretorp come on board was huge for us. Gretorp is a good friend of mine
and someone that has the ability to analyze and dissect games at a very high level.
This is a wonderful thing to have because he can actually show the players what
they are doing wrong, then help them to understand it to improve. After all, one of
the most overlooked things is not just knowing your mistakes, but actually under-
standing why it is a mistake. Gretorp is also someone that has a great deal of respect
It’s Gosu started out as an eSports community site, hosting tournaments, forums and publishing articles articles. In June of 2011, It’s Gosu acquired ALL4ONE Gaming and formed It’s Gosu eSports, fielding teams in League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth and StarCraft 2. Players like Kyhol, dde, ViBE and HwangSin make up It’s Gosu’s 14-man StarCraft 2 roster, all coached by caster/player Gretorp. I had the pleasure of interviewing It’s Gosu’s team manager, Scott “GoSuRuM’’ Ball.
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GLHF MAGAZINE
from our players, which I think is very important
for a coach to have. Really, I can’t say enough about
Andre, I am just so happy to have him here.
How do you feel It’s Gosu will continue to grow in 2012?
I think our players will have even better results then
we did last year. Last year at pretty much every MLG
we put 2-4 people from the Open Bracket into the
championship bracket. Our best finish was WBC,
who cracked the top 20. That being said, this year
all of our players aren’t looking for top 20 anymore.
They are looking to push into the top 10 and really
get themselves out there to the community. On top of
that, we have an incredibly talented Dota 2 team that
is competing with all the best teams in the world. We
also have a HoN team that is doing the same thing,
attending Dreamhack and showing that they are one
of the best on a regular basis. We are running a ton of
events, whether it be HoN, Dota 2, SC2, or LoL we
are creating events that people will want to tune into
and participate in. I expect that with all the hard work
every one puts in here, the growth is exponential this
year.
Will It’s Gosu become more competitive in 2012 at major tourneys?
I don’t really know how to answer this question other
then by just saying yes. We were competitive last
year. We will only be showing better results this year
then we did in the previous. Our motto is to always
be improving, never declining, never being content
with the current level we are putting out. We are also
planning on attending more international events this
year.
Which player on It’s Gosu will have the most impact this year?
Ha ha, I can’t answer this question at all. We have so
many players between the games we are competing in
that all work so hard. I think all of them will one one
way or another be making an impact on the eSports
seen this year.
What’s your team to watch in 2012?
It’s Gosu. Duh. Just kidding. I think there are two
teams: Light and Vile. Both of them are training
really hard and have many very underrated players.
Light has Xeris behind them to and I don’t really
know of anything Xeris has done that hasn’t done
really well. So I’d say keep an eye on Light and Vile.
They are both incredible teams that deserve more
credit than they get.
Whats something you would like the community to know about It’s Gosu that the majority of us aren’t aware of?
Just how much we care. All of our players and staff
put so much effort towards becoming bigger and
better each day. It’s incredible. Keep us on your radar
and please cheer us on when we make some big
things happen. The amount of heart that is poured
into everything we do is really amazing.
If you could fantasy draft anyone to It’s Gosu right this minute who would it be?
Wow, probably Hero. Hero is one of my favorite
players and I had the honor of getting to know him at
the NASL finals this year. He is someone that handles
himself very well, is an amazing player and a fan
favorite. He is so humble and puts forth a great deal
of effort to his play. One thing I will never forget, is
after he lost in the finals, he actually apologized to
me for not winning, purely because he eliminated
HwangSin, one of my players. That just showed me
how much character he really has.
Once again thanks for taking the inter-view, any shout outs?
I want to say thank you to our sponsors, MAXX In-
tegration and MAXFrag. Also thank you to all of our
players and staff. Without them, we are nothing. Ev-
ery person here plays such a key role to our success.
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Many conveniences in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty that were not avail-able in StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War were actually carried over from WarCraft III, rather than separately developed
MISCELLANEOUS FACTS
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Credit: Starcraft 2 fansite kit
STRATEGYLadder AnxietyConquering Ladder Anxiety and Becoming a Better GamerOn Time in SC2
How To Get The Most Out Of Your OverlordsWhy you should never forget to research - Combat shield
Joseph ChenNick Ippolito
Stephen Chiu
Jonathan BaldwinMark Jean
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Frustrating.
“The horror, the horror!”
Ladder anxiety
I don’t care about what terrify-
ing sights you’ve seen during your
trip around the world. I don’t care
if you’ve survived jumping from
a burning building or fended off
an armed robbery in your home
with the rest of your family held
at gunpoint. I don’t care if you’re
Samwise Gamgee and you repelled
Shelob with a pretty-looking dagger
and a lightbulb. That’s all fine and
dandy, but if you have ever played
StarCraft, at some point or another,
this has been your greatest fear.
Ladder anxiety is something we’ve
all experienced. For some of you,
the anxiety grew inside of you like a
slow-growing cancerous tumor, los-
ing game after game before finally
succumbing to your frustration. For
a different crowd of players, maybe
your ladder anxiety was onset by
an opponent who completely de-
stroyed you, demoralizing you from
ever playing the game again. But
it doesn’t have to be this way. The
Button is merely a graphic, made
up of pixels. It only elicits anxiety
because we give it the authority to
do so. By the time you finish read-
ing this, I will have convinced you
why the ladder (and ladder anxi-
ety) should not be any reason to
dissuade you from playing one of
the most challenging and exciting
games of this day.
Be CoolRemember to take a chill pill once
in a while. StarCraft 2, a career for
some, is just a game for the masses
of casual players. Even with a Match
History page full of lost games and
ladder points, one must realize that
these statistics mean nothing. Your
win/loss ratio and your continually
growing bonus pool are arbitrary
numbers that exist solely so
Tasteless can take them away from
you. In fact, I would find it much
more stressful to continue playing if
I had a page full of wins rather than
losses (an event which has admit-
tedly never happened), because I
risk the possibility of having a single
instance of minus points and a skull
interrupt a perfect run.
However, the problem with this hy-
pothetical is that I will inevitably fall
victim to the ladder system’s work-
ings and be matched with an of-
fracing Korean and lose. Games are
supposed to be fun, not something
to worry yourself over. StarCraft,
however competitive it may be, is
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More games means more points. More points means promotion. Play more!
no exception. So relax, just play
your heart out.
Losing is okay.It’s extremely gratifying to pull off
a difficult win over a skilled oppo-
nent. Conversely, it can be demoral-
izing to lose a long and close game.
But we must realize, as Ukrainian
progamer White-Ra famously stat-
ed, that with “more GG, more skill”.
As with mostly everything in our
lives, we learn from our mistakes.
Just like how we learn to check
for ample toilet paper before
we use the bathroom, we slowly
learn from our mistakes playing
StarCraft. Blindsided by a 6gate?
You should’ve sacked your over-
lord to scout those extra gates. Lost
to a baneling bust? Now you know
what that extractor before spawn-
ing pool means. In fact, if you find
yourself losing pretty frequently,
you should play even more games
to increase your ever-growing pool
of knowledge. You’ll be able to re-
spond to situations better and fast-
er than before.
The ladder is your friend.The ladder is a measure of your
progress and your current skill
level, crafted specifically to pit you
against players who are statistically
just as good as you are. No amount
of correcting mistakes and strat-
egizing will convince a bronze-level
player to continue laddering if he
gets matched with grandmaster-lev-
el players every game. This is exact-
ly why the different tiers of leagues
exist. It might make you feel bad
if you’re in gold league and you
feel like you should be in platinum
and unable to find that promotion,
but you’ll get there eventually.But
remember, someone out there is
always going to be better than you.
This statement isn’t meant to scare
you. If anything, it should moti-
vate you, because you can always
overcome an obstacle. Think of it
as if you were back in high school.
We can try however hard we want
to try to succeed in our classes, but
there’s always a concept or piece of
knowledge out there that we know
exists, but can’t understand at the
moment. Through structured and
stepwise learning, like the methodi-
cal advancement through the lad-
der system, we eventually gain the
knowledge and skills necessary to
surpass what was originally too
daunting to understand.
Be nice.This one is probably the hard-
est to do. Bad manner (BM) and
ROFLstomping your opponent can
be very fun, but never are when
you yourself are a victim to a foul-
mouthed player’s antics. That being
said, players should be nice to each
other. Sure, trashtalking is a neces-
sary part of any sport, but people
become generally happier when
complimented instead of ragged on
all the time. Haven’t you ever found
yourself in a situation where you
decisively defeat your opponent
and he responds with a “gg wp”? It
feels incredible. With the minimal
effort it took for your opponent to
type an extra “wp” after his “gg”,
you now feel lighter than air and
brimming with confidence.
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Conquering ladder anxiety and becoming a better gamer
Want to move up on the ladder, but having a tough
time hitting that find match button? Well, you’re not
alone, but you probably already know that due to it be-
ing the number one question amateur players ask pros.
Pros are not suited to answer that question because
they are, in fact, pros. People tend to just mass games
and assume it will make them better, but that is not the
case in anything.
Look at real sportsDo you think a professional basketball player like
Gordan Hayward got to where he is by just setting up
a lot of skirmishes? No, he worked on each aspect of
what he thought would make him a better player. Bit by
bit, he improved his game. Of course, having a friend to
practice against helped him, but he still would practice
dribbling and shooting by himself. Did this make him a
better player quickly? Again, no, but eventually the piec-
es would come together.
I am a very analytical caster but last year I was stuck
in diamond and scared to hit that button. Since then
I have completely changed my mindset and have hit
master with every race on three of the big servers: NA
as Terran, EU as Protoss, and Korea as Zerg! How did I
do that? The simple answer is that I changed the defi-
nition of a loss: just because I lost all my buildings did
not mean I lost the game. I had a goal for each game,
and as long as I accomplished that goal, I was perfectly
happy.
Your current StarCraft mindset is to just win games.
I know you may think you are playing a macro game,
but once you smell blood you go for the win. Going for
a forge fast expand in PvZ and notice the Zerg trying
hatch first? Sucks for him; I will just build a cannon and
win the game. I’m not cheesing; he is just stupid. Well,
congratulations. You won the game, but did you really
win it? Do you consider that knowing how to win is actu-
ally a measure of your skill? How do you know that you
earned that win? Your opponent made a mistake and
you said, “get out,” and you got a little bit higher on the
ladder, but you gained absolutely nothing else in terms
of your skill set. Do you really consider it a win if you
cannot measure it? I don’t.
The system is rigged; Battle.net is designed to keep you at a 50% win rate.So if the system is going to force you to lose, why would
you ever use it to measure your skill? Additionally, you
don’t know how you place against the entire continent.
A gold player is better than 50% of the people on battle.
net. If your goal is Masters, then you’d have to be better
than 95% of the people on your entire server.
If you want to be the top 5%, you are going to have to
learn how to train. Let’s compare IdrA and Stephano,
the two biggest Zerg names. When it comes to bal-
ance, Idra says Zerg is not meant to beat Protoss while
Stephano says it comes down to player skill. Which
player do you think is going to succeed? The one who
accepts defeat before playing, or the one who says “I
just have to play better?” Over the past few months, I
would say the person who mass-gamed (IdrA) has not
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increased his overall skill nearly as much as the person who just trained for a few hours a day (Stephano).
A good mindset is all you need to improve. You lost a game on ladder? Who cares? You were working on improving
and can measure that; winning doesn’t mean anything. Losing should be good; it means you are pushing yourself.
No pain, no gain. Here are some example goals that I created for myself. Start off with just one bullet.
Multitasking• Kill one of your opponent’s workers with your scouting worker. This is easiest to do against a Terran player.
As long as you have done this, it is a win. If you are having trouble doing this, play the “Multitask Trainer” on
Battle.net. Just 30 minutes a day, for a week, and you will notice a huge improvement if you are anything be-
low Masters.
• Never attack in a ball; if you want to attack or harass it must be from multiple areas. If you don’t botch up a
double pronged attack or drop, you win. However, if you end up losing units because you are not looking at
them, you lose.
Macro• If you go above 1000 resources, you lose. Once you get decent with that: If your resources differ by 400 at
any point in the game, you lose.
• If you have too many production buildings, you lose (until 200/200). Oftentimes when people get use to
keeping their minerals low, they will end up having too much production being on 12 gates on 2 bases.
• If your energy on any of your “macro mechanic” goes beyond 125, you lose.
Misc• Speed: Have double your normal APM redundancy. This is, by far,
the hardest one. This means you have to SPAM the entire game; you
can check your redundancy using SC2Gears after the game. I found
this to be the best way to become faster; eventually that redun-
dancy will go down as you will be finding more actions to do instead
of mindless spam. Also note, this one will make you lose the most
games and take the longest to notice any results, but if you want to
work on your speed this is the way.
• Micro/Macro: Build only 1 unit that requires micro. I prefer marines,
lings, and stalkers (blink) and don’t attack until you are on 2 bases (3
for Zerg). This is by far the hardest one.
• Scouting: Predict when your opponent is going to attack, watch
streams, and note the times certain things finish.
• TvZ: 9 to 10 minutes, this is just before mutas would come out.
• PvT: 6 Minutes, warp gate finishes
Feel free to make up your own sce-
narios, just remember to ensure it
is measurable on yourself and not
your opponent. Trying to measure
your progress by Blizzard’s lad-
der system is like measuring your
overall intellect via simple math
test. Sure, there is a correlation be-
tween smart people and mathema-
tician, but learning math is not the
only way to become smart.
Remember, you are going to lose
while trying to improve; if you need
motivation, forget about goals one
day a week. That is the day you go
back to doing whatever it takes
to win, and you should now have
massive winning streaks.
46
On time in Starcraft 2
In StarCraft 2, time is the measure of how a long a game
is. It is also a tool that can be used by both observ-
ers and players in order to deepen their overall under-
standing of the game. Generally there are three types
of time I’ve categorized while playing SC2: supply time,
actual time, and relative time.
Supply TimeThe first type, supply time is generally used to map out
build orders. These are the most useful in the early
game, but generally lose importance around then 20-
40 supply mark. The exception to this is a specific 2
base all-in such as the 6-7 blink stalker +2 timing attack,
where a forgotten pylon will make the difference of 1-2
extra cycles for a Terran or Zerg opponent.
Actual TimeThe second type is actual time. I feel this is the least
important of the three types, but it is useful when doing
a catch-all build with limited scouting or aggression. An
example is a 1 rax expo into double gas against Protoss.
General timings a player should know have mostly all
been chronicled on the Team Liquid forums.
Relative TimeThe third type of time is relative time. Relative time is
time defined by how far along you are militarily, eco-
nomically, and technologically compared to your oppo-
nent. This type is probably the most helpful in learn-
ing builds, in scouting properly and most importantly
in helping you recognize your position in the game.
Relative time is also one of the easier ways to learn a
build after the 30 supply mark as generally there are
too many things to deal with.
Basically, the best way I’ve found to remember a build is
to plan the next step of the build relative to the previ-
ous step. I used this method to learn Nada’s TvZ build
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from the Open Season 2 when he tore off his jacket and
beat Leenock.
Each part of the build is logical. After the 1 barracks
expansion into double gas, you go double factory blue-
flame hellions because you need a way to gain map
control at the same time as denying a possible third.
Then you get an armory and start to upgrade +1 vehicle
weapons as this makes hellions a serious threat, while
at the same time the armory is a cue to start making
thors as the general timing of mutalisks is coming up.
At the same time, the next logical step is that mutalisks
will take map control, therefore I need to prepare for a
third base and you start building the command center.
At this time, money is building up, so you need extra
production to keep up with Zerg, in this case you add 2
more factories for hellions, and then 4-5 more barracks
and get the infantry upgrade for a super powerful push
as you take your third and secure your fourth at the
same time.
Of course if I was using this build now, I’d probably get
a faster third off of the backs of the hellions and instead
of teching back to infantry, I’d tech up to air to pre-empt
the eventual drop tech or brood tech. Then I’d go into
5 barracks ghosts after securing the fourth. But the
thought remains the same. You change the build to ac-
commodate the current trends of the matchup and use
logical steps to plan out the next steps of your build in
an easy to remember way.
Relative time can only be used for scouting and determining position in the game when scouting is possible.For instance, in standard PvZ Protoss will forge fast
expand (FFE) and zerg will get 3 base hatch. The cur-
rent standard of the matchup is to skip early game
shenanigans and go into the mid game. But if the
Protoss does not get the third or fourth gases after
a FFE while chronoboosting the forge, then the Zerg
knows that he has to drone 10-20 less drones as com-
pared to a toss that gets both the 3rd and 4th gas. At
the same time the Zerg must also get a roach and evo
chamber up. By doing this, Protoss has forced the Zerg
into the mid-game earlier but with less drones or opti-
mally with one less base. On the other hand Protoss is
going into the mid game with less tech, and therefore
must gain some advantage out of this attack.
Another example is when a Terran scouts a half-fin-
ished spire. Generally speaking a Terran will make a
blind engineering bay and turrets against Zerg. But if
the Terran sees that the spire early or late, the Terran
knows how fast the mid-game is coming. If the spire
is early, there is a possible chance to push and cause
some damage to the Zerg, since Zerg is trying to force
the mid-game early. On the other hand, if the spire is
late, then the Zerg is probably droning up more, while
getting more units and upgrades and is therefore delay-
ing the mid-game, and generally a timing attack at that
point is harder than if the Zerg got an early spire.
The best example I know of is the six pool on Tal’darim
Altar. The general PvZ standard here is FFE vs 3 hatch
Zerg. But a Zerg can 6-pool and delay both players mid-
games and instead forces the early game to extend by
an extra 4-5 minutes. By doing this, the Zerg throws
out all of the general timings that can happen on this
map. At the same time, Zerg is at a slight advantage be-
cause of the lings in the Protoss base, which gives him
constant scouting and he can therefore rightly assess at
what stage the game is in.
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Art: Nathan Boyd (nathanboydart.com)
How to get the most out of your overlords
The overlord. Misunderstood, the overlord is often
branded slow, bloated, and useless. However, while de-
nying his lack of speed is futile, the overlord has many
uses and abilities that many people overlook. As a
Master League player who has played over 2,000 games
as Zerg, these are my favorite tips and tricks that can
help you get the most out of your overlords.
On maps like Metalopolis, The Shattered Temple, and
Shakuras Plateau I would always recommend send-
ing your initial overlord to the closest possible spawn
location of your opponent. If they spawned there, your
overlord now has a front row ticket to watch your op-
ponent’s opening. This information will prepare you to
know if you need to continue to build drones or pre-
pare for a 6-pool attack. Just make sure your overlord
makes his great escape before a marine, stalker, queen,
or sentry comes out! After you’ve seen and understood
his opening, you can rest your overlord outside his ex-
pansion to see if he intends to take it. If he does, you
could take your own, or punish him for taking his.
Having a wide overlord spread is a necessity for Zerg
players. Zerg relies on map vision, so having overlords
conveniently placed around attack routes or expan-
sions will ensure you’re never in the dark. Also, use 4-5
overlords to secure the vision of the entire perimeter of
your base. This way, you wont be caught off guard by a
medivac drop, warp prism, or nydus worm. Using over-
lords for vision effectively is critical to playing Zerg, and
is a skill that all high-level Zerg players share.
What’s better than knowing exactly when your oppo-
nent is trying to expand? Not letting him. Spreading
creep onto your opponent’s possible expansions is an
incredibly underused tactic that separates good Zergs
from great Zergs. With the optimum amount of creep
you can drop on one expansion, you can delay an oppo-
nent from expanding for almost a minute. Burrow a zer-
gling there too and you’ll have your opponent breaking
his/her keyboard in frustration.
At first glance overlords may seem slow and weak, but
learning how to use them efficiently is what makes Zerg
players great. Using overlords to scout, for vision, and
to deny expansions are three tips that have helped el-
evate me to Master League. Incorporating them into
your gameplay could put you on that next level. So get
out there, ladder, and always remember that one of
your bloated, balloon-shaped supply could potentially
win you a game.
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D’aww they upgrade up so fast!
Why you should never forget to research combat shield
I’ve noticed in many lower level games that combat shield never gets re-
searched as much as it should; it can easily get forgotten but is totally worth
getting. You shouldn’t underestimate the power combat shield can grant
you. Don’t believe me? Read on.
With combat shield, marines take an extra hit from banshees and unsieged
tanks, and an extra two hits from a marine which makes it extremely useful
and in most cases better than stimpak in early game TvT.
Okay, so firstly let’s see what the upgrade actually does. It gives every ma-
rine an extra 10 hit points and a cute little shield.
Number of marines Total cost of marines Added HP from CS
5 250 50
10 500 100
20 1,000 200
- x x/5
As you can see there is a relationship between the amount you spend on
marines and the added HP from combat shields you get x/5 added HP. e.g.
If you spend 850 minerals on 17 marines, you’ll get 170 equivalent addition-
al hit points. That’s a little over 3 marines for 100/100 in terms of hit points.
Here’s another reason why this upgrade should never get forgotten...
Unit vs Marine # of hits to kill a 3/3 Marine
# of hits to kill a 3/3 Marine with CS
Zergling 23 28
Zealot 7 8
Marine 8 10
Roach 3 4
Just goes to show if you get ahead in upgrades you’ll benefit not only just
from the upgrade itself but also make combat shield exponentially better in
this matter.
I hope you enjoyed my article and if you
have any comments, questions or ideas you
can contact me at
Example scenario: Say you’re
playing against a forgetful Zerg op-
ponent who for arguments sake
only builds zerglings and forgets to
upgrade their units, with 3/3 ma-
rines with combat shield they will
take an extra 5 hits! And because
of the +3 damage, that’s an extra
~36 damage per marine there just
between the time it took a zergling
to kill a 3/3 marine with combat
shield than if it wouldn’t.
It’s also important to note that a
baneling will one-shot a stimmed
marine without combat shield, so
opting for stimpacks without com-
bat shield is a somewhat risky ma-
neuver against Zerg.
Unit Fact: Did you know Terran’s average unit distribution for marines is 54%?
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Newbie corner
Can any of you split harvesters?No?Good.Come in to my humble abode, sit
down, and make yourselves com-
fortable. This is Newbie Corner, and
I am your host, Faydra. Now I’m
sure many of you consider your-
selves dedicated players - followers
of StarCraft! Sons and daughters
of the StarCraft 2 community! But
perhaps you’re a family man, who
can only play late at night when
your kids are in bed. Perhaps you’re
a student? Perhaps you’re simply a
lonely nerd in a basement? Never
fear, you’re all welcome because
when you’re with me, we all have
something in common.
We’re terrible Noobs. Now I know
what you’re thinking – you’re think-
ing “PAH! Who is this Faydra? Who
does he or she think he or she is?
I hate these Master-level players
always roflstomping me with their
greater knowledge of the game.”
Stop that thought right there. I am
no Master-level player, I’m a top 8
silver, and do you know what? I’m
damn proud of it. And you should
be too!
The point of all this is to introduce
to you this article, which will cover
everything that concerns all you
bronze-to-gold level players out
there, with a lighter spin on things.
I’ll make something clear straight
off – if you’re going to be a jerk or
any other of the assorted types of
troll I see out there on the inter-
net on a regular basis then you can
leave, you aren’t needed or wanted.
This is just light relief for those who,
like me, find blink-stalker micro
difficult.
But enough! I suppose I better get
to it before I waffle on any further.
This week on the ladderThis section will be regular, and will
cover my own and others’ experi-
ences on the ladder. Now I’m no
Artosis, but I can chat about things
that I’ve seen, things that I’ve been
trying, and holes I’ve noticed in my
own play. You can do the same.
There will be an e-mail address you
can send all your stories, hints and
tricks to and I’ll fit as much as I can
into the article every week.
So, what have I been up to this
week? Well, most of the time I’ll play
Zerg on the ladder, but a couple
of times a month I’ll foray into the
realms of playing random (and
my ladder rank suffers because of
it). This week was one such, and it
hasn’t gone so well. I knew from the
beginning that my Protoss was bad.
And I don’t just mean bad, I mean
Bad (notice the capital B?). I mean
bad as in building colossus to coun-
ter thors because I thought bigger
units meant more damage. I’m not
exaggerating; I have actually had
this thought process before.
So I needed practice before I was
goingv to go into battle against my
fellow Noobs, and the obvious an-
swer was to go up against the AI.
Through the hours I spent play-
ing against the AI I felt an epiphany
come upon me. It seemed to me,
that if you could beat the “Very
Hard AI” with your race, then you
could beat any but the best of silver
and bronze leaguers. Why? Because
after I beat “Very Hard” for the first
time as Zerg I went to on to get
promoted to Silver. This was some
months ago. Thus, I had it in my
head that there was a link between
the two and if only I could beat the
Very Hard AI with my offraces then
they would both be silver-league
standard!
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GLHF MAGAZINE
Didn’t work out.
Art: Blizzard Entertainment
Flushed with the victory of this
knowledge, I promptly spent
around a dozen hours trying to
beat the Very Hard AI not only with
my Protoss but also with my Terran.
I succeeded. By now I was positively
wetting myself at the anticipation of
the ownage I was sure to hand out
on the Noobs that would bow down
before my might.
So what have I learned? I’ve learned
that people are often more inven-
tive than the computer, I’ve learned
that people like to macro and not
just all-in at ~7:30 as the AI seems
to enjoy doing. Also this: mutalisks
are really annoying aren’t they?
How on Earth am I supposed to
ever take a third as Protoss? Maybe
you guys could let me in on the se-
cret. This week I intend to stick to
my Zerg, repair the damage done
to my ladder Rank and then, hope-
fully, embarrass myself by going
Random again.
Absolute basics: Zealot
The Zealot. His meditation is over.
He’s warping over millions of miles
just to serve your needs, and he’s
damn good at it.
The zealot is the melee mainstay of
your ground army. With so much
health and shields he tanks a ton of
damage as well. He owns zerglings,
and all this for only one hundred
inerals? For these reasons alone
you should have plenty of them
knocking around. A great use is to
finish your wall-off with them, but
be SURE to put them on hold posi-
tion. They’re also great for dropping
in your opponent’s mineral line, as
they slice straight through harvest-
ers all kinds – be sure to target
MULEs!
There is, as always, a downside.
To start with, they’re slow, so slow.
roaches are faster, marines are
faster, marauders are faster, and
zerglings are faster. In the first ten
minutes of your games, you’re go-
ing to have to worry about all of
those units. Furthermore, they don’t
“shoot up”, meaning they aren’t
anti-air. In the short term all this
means is remember to get stalkers
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Notice the supply afterwards.
Cancel extractor after starting a drone
and sentries as well as zealots. Not
too hard right?
Zealots are at their best when they
can slash through an army with-
out having to chase after them on
their little legs. Because of this, you
should always be conscious when
using forcefields with your sen-
tries – can you trap some units? Can
you slow them down? sentries and
zealots go well together, my protoss
friends.
Zealots don’t do well against fast
units or air units. If there are muta-
lisks in your base don’t send your
zealots back there, they’ll just get
nom-nommed into oblivion – send
your stalkers. On the other hand, if
you get a Terran drop in your base
and you can snipe that medivac?
Get those zealots in there because
your opponent has nowhere to run.
For next time, tell me your funky
zealot uses!
The extractor trick (Zerg)
As I’m worried most of you aren’t aware, drones take up supply (It’s true,
check it if you don’t believe me). Now, economy is important. If you take
nothing else from reading all of this then it’ll still be worthwhile. So, have
you ever wanted that one extra drone? Those few extra minerals to get that
slightly faster queen and hold off that slightly meaner 10-pool? Well now
you can! By reducing your supply by from 10 to 9, you can squeeze in an-
other drone at the beginning of your game. It goes like this:
Supply Steps10 Extractor
9 Drone
10 Cancel Extractor
You will now be at 11/10 supply! Where I slide my overlord in here changes
every time I play, though I’m sure there is an “economically correct” way of
doing it which is way beyond my ken.
You should all bear in mind that this technique may only be useful for cer-
tain builds, or for countering certain builds. If you want to play it safe, al-
ways go 9 overlord, 14 gas, 14 pool!
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Credit: Starcraft 2 fansite kit
GUIDESRoach-Ling Baneling BustLeenock MLG Finals BuildPositive MindsetXsplit Casting Guide
Terran Bronze To Diamond Guide
Tim ClarkEvan Crothers
Tim ClarkAli Haghani
TeamTrebis© 2007 Blizzard Entertainment
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We’re going to look at the following
timing attack:
8 Roaches, 6-8 Banelings, and 30
Zerglings by 8:20
Now I know what you might be
thinking...”How the heck can you
get that strong of a push at 8:20
without being all-in?” Well, surprise
surprise, this is an all-in build - you
will not go beyond 22 drones with
this attack. There will be some ex-
ceptions where you do the push
and decide to drone afterwards, but
for the most part this push is de-
signed to outright win the game.
I know that many players frown
at all-in aggressive builds, but it is
my opinion that all serious StarCraft
2 gamers should experiment and
perfect a few all-in timing attacks
for two reasons: it does improve
certain skill sets and it does add an
element of unpredictability to
your play. Should you make it your
exclusive style of play? Of course
not - but don’t ignore it either. I
encourage you all to keep an open
mind to new strategies that deviate
from what is considered “standard”.
There is more than one way to play
successful StarCraft, and you’re put-
ting yourself at a disadvantage if
you limit your arsenal of strategies
to exclusively macro builds.
The Build:
Opening Step 1: “Scouting and Planning”
You want to keep very precise
timings on your buildings, over-
lords, and drones to ensure maxi-
mized mineral income. It’s also very
important to scout to determine
whether Terran is planning to pres-
sure you so you can plan the re-
sponse to hold that pressure with-
out losing drones.
15 Hatch (Drone Scout)15 Gas15 Spawning Pool17 Overlord
When the spawning pool finish-
es, you should have already deter-
mined your opponent’s opening
build. Against any build with gas,
you’re going to skip spine crawler
defense and go right into 2-4 zer-
glings and 2 queens. The only time
you will build spines is if your op-
ponent is putting on 2 barracks
pressure. Builds like 1 barracks
“light” marine/SCV pressure, reaper
pressure, hellion openings, etc. can
be shut down with proper queen/
zergling/drone micro until roaches
are out. However, if your opponent
has proxied his barracks or both his
barracks finish by 3:00 (11/11 2rax)
then you will immediately need 2
spines at your expansion.
Roach-Ling Baneling Bust
by Tim Clark
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GLHF MAGAZINE
Opening Step 2: “Responding”
You should now have an idea of
what your opponent is doing and
planned your response accord-
ingly. You should be practicing thin
early game defenses while sticking
to the following steps. There are a
few tricks to make defense easier
(against hellions, for example).
17 Queen x221 Ling(2-4)23 Drone to 2828 Roach Warren27 Additional Drone
Opening Step 3: “Preparing the Push”
At this point, you’ve scouted
your opponent’s opening, you’ve
easily defended all early pressure
and you’ve kept all your build or-
der steps the same so your roach
warren is already on the way.
Everything is in place for you to ex-
ecute a well-timed all-in, you just
need to start the upgrades and
build the units.
28 Zergling Speed (Delayed)28 Overlord x228-44 Roach x844 Baneling Nest43 Additional Drone44 Overlord x244-60 Mass lings, rally to roaches
Morph as many banes as you
can in front of the Terran base at
8:00
8:20 - 8 Roaches, 6-8 Banelings,
and 30+ Lings
The Execution:
Execution Part 1: Disguise your Attack
Whenever you’re executing a
build like this, you want to make it
as much of a surprise as possible
for your opponent. Here are a few
ways to deny his scouting:
1) Kill his scouting SCVs with
zerglings/queens.
- Use your opening zerglings to
make sure he doesn’t sneak an SCV
into your main. (See example 1 on
following page)
2) Build your warren in your main
and your baneling nest at your ex-
pansion, he’s less likely to scout
both.
3) Don’t show him all 8 roaches. If
he’s pressuring with hellions, don’t
reveal all of your roaches - just use
3-4 to push the hellions back to his
base and then move out with your
roaches
4) Plan to move your roaches out
so that they arrive near the Terran
front at 8:00 and morph the banel-
ings right away so you can move in
to attack at 8:20.
5) Don’t morph banelings too close,
try to morph them outside of your
opponent’s vision. You want to
group up as close to the Terran
front without giving his units/build-
ings vision of the impending attack.
NOTE: Between 5:30-6:20 reac-
tor hellions are a threat. Since your
roaches don’t spawn until 6:20 and
you haven’t built zerglings or spines,
you could potentially be in a hazard-
ous situation to even 2 hellions. It
is never a bad idea, when you scout
the hellions on the way, to wall your
expansion ramp with your 2 queens
and bring any drones from your
expansion to your main. You will
lose some mining time and you will
miss a bit of larva-inject time, but no
drones/queens will die before your
roaches are out and that is the most
important thing.
NOTE: If you struggle with early pres-
sure because your drone micro is
weak or if you for some reason don’t
get the scouting information, it’s not
the end of the world to build one
spine to be safe.
NOTE: Use your opening zerglings to
make sure he doesn’t sneak an SCV
into your main. (See example 1 on
following page)
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GLHF MAGAZINE
Execution Part 2: Micro your Attack
The micro of this push is fairly
easy, but you do have that constant
element of keeping up with larva
injects and producing constant zer-
glings rallied to your roaches.
The first thing you must do
is scout with a zergling before
engaging.
Determine where his bun-
kers are placed, where his units
are, where there are gaps to run
through, etc. Each time will be
different.
As a general rule if they’ve taken
their expansion, aim the banelings
into either groups of clumped up
units, clumps of SCVs either repair-
ing or attacking, or even through
bunkers themselves while your
roaches absorb damage and your
lings surround units. If he hasn’t
taken his expansion and he’s walled
the top with a depot/bunkers, you
can either break through the depot
with the banelings and then break
the bunker with the roaches or
break the depot with the roaches
and the bunkers with the banelings.
The latter requires a bit more micro
and is a bit harder to do, but can be
very successful.
Kill those annoying scouts before its too late!
Ready for some micro?
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GLHF MAGAZINE
Transition:
Because you commit so much to
this attack, your best option if your
first push doesn’t work is to essen-
tially commit to an all-in by continu-
ously stream lings off your 2 hatch-
eries with 2 queens, then morphing
as many banelings as your one gas
geyser allows. Proceed to constant-
ly zergling/baneling bust until you
win or lose like in the games be-
tween Smaug and OscarMike:
http://drop.sc/98510 http://drop.sc/98446
If your opponent somehow holds
your early push and gets 2-3 tanks
out, you’re sort of forced to start
pumping drones off 2 bases and
2 queens. He probably hasn’t ex-
panded, which means theoretically
you could transition into a macro
game from here (it’ll be in very rare
circumstances and honestly you’re
probably behind).
Terran Responses:
This build is incredibly difficult
for Terran to stop, even if they
know it’s coming. It’s not impossible
though - here are a few examples of
some top level Terran players put-
ting me in my place.
In this example, I see a sturdy marine/tank/bunker defense. The bunker is placed close to the depot on the left, so I decide to lead with banelings through that depot and then flood in with the roaches and lings.
The end result.
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Terran Responses (cont.):
Game 1: Tang vs SiN
SiN is a top-master/GM Terran on
the NA server. His build utilized
bunkers, banshees, and mass hel-
lions to defend his expansion.
http://drop.sc/98443
Game 2: Tang vs YoonYJ
This Korean pro made me look
silly. He took a very fast 3rd base,
and with solid defense and micro
he held the attacks and counter at-
tacked me later with marines and
marauders.
http://drop.sc/98445
References:
To perfect your opening build
up to 44 supply, I suggest read-
ing Step 3 of the Zerg Guide to
Macro-Aggression:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/
viewmessage.php?topic_id=301616
Replays:
“Big Bust” Roach/Ling/Bane Stream Tutorial:
http://www.twitch.tv/tangsc/b/306466364
Tang vs Frego (Reactor expand)
http://drop.sc/98513
Tang vs Svane
http://drop.sc/98444
Tang vs OscarMike (Mass Marine Expand)
http://drop.sc/98446
Tang vs Jray (Bunker/Hellion/Marine/Banshee)
http://drop.sc/98447
Tang vs Pulimuli (Marine/Hellion Expand
http://drop.sc/98448
Tang vs Smaug (Tank/Marine/Bunker Defense)
http://drop.sc/98510
Tang vs bnYParadise (Hellion/Marauder)
http://drop.sc/98449
Vanrake vs FreeWare (2Rax)
http://drop.sc/98514
Special thanks to Tim “VPTang” Clark for submitting this article to
be adapted for use in the magazine. Please check out tangstar-
craft.com for more of Tang’s excellent Zerg strategy guides.
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GLHF MAGAZINE
Naniwa is clearly telling us that if
you want to win [in Protoss versus Zerg], you can actually fast expand all the time. - Nicholas “Tasteless” Plott during the MLG Providence finals after Naniwa won game 1.
Naniwa looked invincible.
Reaching the championship match
in the winner’s bracket, Naniwa had
plowed through some of the best
Zergs that the world had to offer –
including the renowned IMNestea.
Due to extended series regulations,
the champion of the MLG Global
Invitational was one game away
from winning his second tourna-
ment that weekend.
The only thing left in his way
was a 16 year old Korean from the
open bracket under the username
“Leenock” – and having already lost
the first game after a failed roach
all-in, things were looking grim.
But after his roach aggression
failed the first time, Leenock did
something that nobody, least of all
Naniwa, had anticipated.
Leenock did it again and again.
With that, Leenock turned a se-
ries one game away from defeat
into a best of 7 with an advantage
of 2-1. How did Leenock decide to
play from this advantage?
A six-pool into roach pressure to
decide the fifth game and one last
rendition of the roach all-in from
Leenock MLG ProvidenceFinals Build
Credit: wellplayed.org
by Evan Crothers
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GLHF MAGAZINE60 GLHF MAGAZINE
Naniwa holds Leenock’s all-in in game 1 and is poised to win a quick BO3 finals.
the first game to finish the sixth.
And in an instant it was done.
Leenock swiftly won 4 games in a
row and became the youngest ever
champion of MLG Providence SC2,
and he relied on very similar strate-
gies in 4 of the 5 games he played.
Below are the roach pressure builds
that Leenock used versus Naniwa.
Game 1 – Cross map on Shakuras
Naniwa goes for 17 Nexus10 Overlord14 Extractor14 Pool15 Zerglings(4) and Queen100 gas Metabolic Boost19 Drone20 Hatch19 Overlord x219 Roach Warren
Followed by:
1. Hatchery is cancelled
2. Roach warren finishes, injected
larvae available.
3. 8 roaches
4. Buckets of speedlings
Leenock hits at 6:50 using his
roaches to bust the wall so that his
speedlings can flood in. When the
attack appears to not be working,
Leenock drones hard, takes his nat-
ural and uses roaches to poke down
buildings to get token damage.
Naniwa held the all-in using addi-
tional cannons. He makes sure that
his wall is zergling tight at all times
to ensure a buildup of mass speed-
lings don’t finish him off. Naniwa
won this game when he scouted
the roaches coming across the map
using a lone zealot. This highlights
the importance of hiding the all-in
and denying scouting.
Game 2 – Close Air on Shattered
Naniwa goes for 17 Nexus14 Extractor14 Pool15 Overlord15 Lings(4) and Queen100 gas Metabolic Boost19 Drone20 Hatch
Due do his expansion being
blocked Leenock droned to 22 sup-
ply, while losing his initial 4 lings.
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GLHF MAGAZINE
Leenock safely exerts pressure on Naniwa’s expansion, sniping warp gate before it finishes.
20 Hatch19 Roach Warren18 Drone x3
Followed by:
1. Build 8 roaches ASAP
2. Drones behind it
3. Hits at 7:00 minutes
4. Use roaches to focus down cy
ber or other valuable build-
ings (delay warp gate)
5. Build a beautiful economy be-
hind it
Game 3 – Dualsight
Naniwa opts for a Forge Fast Expand
After his six-pool is repelled,
Leenock conserves his surviving
zerglings and makes 7 roaches to
pressure down Naniwa’s expansion
at 8:20. Naniwa is stuck on one
base and an economically ahead
Leenock seals his victory.
Game 4 – Positions 11 and 5 on
Tal’Darim Altar
Naniwa Builds 17 Nexus
10 Overlord14 Extractor14 Pool15 Lings(4) and Queen100 gas Metabolic Boost19 Drone20 Hatch19 Overlord x219 Roach Warren
Followed by:
1. Hatchery is cancelled
2. 8 roaches
3. Plenty of speedlings
Leenock handily broke the wall
for a quick win as his speedlings
poured through.
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Game 5 – Xel Naga Caverns
Naniwa Builds 15 Nexus
10 Overlord14 Extractor14 Pool15 Zergling(4) and Queen100 gas Metabolic Boost19 Drone20 Roach Warren19 Drone x221 Overlord
6 Roaches33 Hatchery32 Zerglings(4)
Leenock expands and drones up
as he already destroyed the forge
with his first four lings. Rather than
going all-in, Leenock uses his 6
roaches to destroy Naniwa’s nexus
and returns to a defensive stance.
From here, his economic advantage
and constant poking allows him to
handily secure a victory.
Leenock safely exerts pressure on Naniwa’s expansion, sniping warp gate before it finishes.
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Leenock safely exerts pressure on Naniwa’s expansion, sniping warp gate before it finishes.
As some of you know, I’m an
experienced and professional
StarCraft 2 coach. A lot of people
ask me: “What’s the one thing you
can tell me that will most drastically
improve my game?” Now, there’s
a million subtle in-game tips and
tricks I could tell you about, but
perhaps the most crucial yet often-
overlooked idea is your MINDSET.
You’ve probably all heard certain
sayings repeated over and over like
“The Power of Positive Thinking”
and “Healthy Body, Healthy Mind”,
and there’s a reason they’re repeat-
ed: they’re true! Think about IdrA,
he’s among the most phenomenal
StarCraft players of our time. His
mechanics and game-sense are on
a whole other level than the aver-
age player, but you still see him
struggle in tournaments and make
bad decisions when he’s in pres-
sure-filled situations. Anger, you’ll
find, is a StarCraft player’s worst
enemy.
So, how can we apply this to our
game? It’s simple:
1) Be Good Manner
Oftentimes, people get so
caught-up in the stress of the game
that they forget to have fun. At the
start of every game, don’t be mute
and don’t be rude: put out the GL
HF. If he doesn’t respond, that’s fine
- you’re probably in a more posi-
tive mindset and now you know
you have that edge over him - so
smile to yourself. Take it a step fur-
ther every game by wishing your
opponent the best of luck and tell-
ing him to have a blast, and leaving
every game with “GG nice timing
push” or “GG wp, that harrass was
killer, man!” If you stay good man-
nered, you’re more likely to stay
in a focused and positive mindset.
Then, instead of rage-quitting and
queuing another game while you’re
angry, you can take the reasons
you lost and apply them to your
game to further your growth. And
who knows, maybe that player to
whom you showed respect in your
gracious exit from the game will
provide you with a couple tips and
practice games to really help you
overcome that flaw in your game.
2) Be Confident
Now, I’m not saying everyone
should point at IdrA and do the
throat-slash like oGsMC did at MLG,
but StarcCraft 2 is competitive
and you have to know you have
an edge over your opponent
to play your best. When I play a
game, I use positive self-talk to stay
pumped and focus. Yes, it sounds
like something an insane asylum
resident would preach, but I assure
you it’s been proven effective. There
are two types of self-talk I recom-
mend. The first is motivational self-
talk: say something to get yourself
into the zone like “I’m going to win
this game” or my personal favor-
ite “The way I see it, those are my
ladder points - you’re just holding
them for me”. The second type is
instructional self-talk. For example,
say “I’m going to get my speed up
early, then expand, then I’m going
to drone to 27 get a warren down
and grind this guy’s front door with
ling/roach. Man, I’m going to force
the issue until he makes a mistake,
and when he does, I’m going to cap-
italize on it.” Therefore,
Positive Mindsetby Tim “VPTang” Clark
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GLHF MAGAZINE
talking to yourself doesn’t mean
you’re crazy - it keeps you focused
on your specific goals in the game
and gives you that oh-so-critical
mindset advantage.
3) Focus on YOUR game
How many times have you heard
someone complain about how
strong colossus are, how slow hy-
dras are, or how this guy or that
guy is a maphacker. Ignore this type
of thinking. Every StarCraft 2 play-
erwouldlearnandplaysignifi-
cantly better if they considered
imbalance, hacks, and cheese
non-existent. If you stop focusing
on things you can’t control, you’ll
start focusing on the things you
can. When someone cheeses you,
treat it like you played a 30 minute
game and still be polite and good-
mannered. When someone marine/
scv all-ins you, avoid thoughts like
“What a cheesy noob” or “Can he
not win a real game?” When you get
cheesed, exit the game with class,
and pay attention to how you could
have scouted a little earlier, how
you could have reacted a tad faster,
and how the execution of your
defense could be improved upon.
Cheese is a part of the game; you
can’t get rid of it but you can be ad-
equately prepared for it.
4) Be Healthy
This last tip isn’t absolutely nec-
essary to success, but if you want
to play at your best you have to be
at your best - both physically and
mentally. I have celiac disease, so
my diet is heavily restricted, but
ever since the diagnosis I’ve paid
very careful attention to what I eat
and I feel and play the better for
it. I’m not going to lecture you on
working out and eating right, but
you will notice a difference in your
focus if you’re properly nourished
and you will notice a difference
in your stamina if you’re in better
shape. Something I do frequently
is workout in between games. You
don’t need a strict routine - but do
some pushups, situps, planks, what-
ever - get the blood flowing and the
heart racing in between games and
snack on blueberries and yogurt
instead of nachos and ice cream.
There’s no reason someone who
plays 12 hour days in StarCraft 2
can’t be in excellent physical condi-
tion - try to apply your in-game ded-
ication to other areas of your life!
Question: How many losses do you usually go before you needtowalkaway?
I think what you experience is
similar to the psychology behind a
gambling addict (I don’t mean that
to offend you, bear with me). You
start to lose and you think “I need
to get my money back.” It’s like in
poker when you’re playing well for
an hour, and then you lose a huge
hand (or get bluffed) and you go on
tilt. You start thinking about that
hand and how you should have
played it, and your overall focus
deteriorates. You start to bluff too
much and you don’t stick to your
planned strategy.
The same things happen
in StarCraft when you’re los-
ing. People start to blindly all-in
and they deviate from the game-
plan that usually leads to success.
People place a lot of importance on
points/ladder rank/win-loss ratio,
so there’s a certain level of stress
when you start losing. You’ll start
thinking about the game where you
got cheesed and lost while play-
ing new games, and that’s basi-
cally like a poker player being on
“tilt” - you won’t be “In the zone” so
your timings/execution will start
so slip. That’s why you need to GG
after every game and review (with
an open mind) the games you lose,
carefully looking over your mistakes
and your opponent’s build/thought
process.
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Near the top center of the map during the Zero Hour mis-
sion, you will find a unit called LVL80TSM. Click on him and
he will retreat into a porta-potty. Continue to click and it will
countdown before launching into space.
EASTER EGGS
If you find yourself rage-quitting
games, being bad-manner, or even
just having those familiar “Ugh this
guy sucks, what a cheeser” or “I
suck, I should be winning, what’s
wrong with me?” thoughts, it’s time
to take a break. It doesn’t have to
be a long break - just do something
that’ll renew your confidence/focus.
Coffee and a light workout do won-
ders for me. Some players save
replays where they perform really
well, so they can watch that and
remember how well they’re capa-
ble of playing. When you sit back in
front of the screen, you should be
focused on your strategy and your
mindset: the only thing you should
think about yourself is “I’m a great
player and I’m going to win these
games; nothing is going to stand in
my way.”
If you make these changes in
your game, what’s the worst that
could happen? Thank you all for
reading, I wish everyone the best of
luck in their games, and hope you
all have a blast!
Special thanks to Tim “VPTang” Clark
for submitting this article to be
adapted for use in the magazine.
Please check out tangstarcraft.com
for more of Tang’s excellent strategy
guides.
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GLHF MAGAZINE
Streaming Guide:
Starting up a stream can be dif-
ficult if you don’t know what you’re
doing. This video guide accompa-
nied by a written article will walk
you through the basics of starting
up your own stream.
There are two programs that
are generally used for streaming
games:
• XSplit (by Splitmedialabs):
Currently in beta, XSplit is the most
user-friendly streaming application
for Windows. It has all the capa-
bilities of its competitor FMLE and
more. XSplit is specifically designed
for streaming games and it’s an all-
in-one package for all your stream-
ing needs. You can currently down-
load XSplit in beta stage free from
xsplit.com.
• Flash Live Media Encoder or
FMLE (by Adobe): FMLE is also a
great program that can be used for
streaming but it does lack some
of the features XSplit is equipped
with. That is to be expected with the
“Free” price tag. For example,
FMLE cannot capture your screen it-
self and it requires a separate third
party program in order to achieve
what XSplit can do on its own. FMLE
can be downloaded from adobe.
com/products/flashmediaserver/
flashmediaencoder.
What you’ll need:
• A computer capable of running
the game of choice and streaming it
simultaneously. (Minimum: A dual-
core processor with a clock speed
of at least 2.3Ghz and 4GB of RAM)
• An account on a streaming site.
(TwitchTV, own3d, Ustream, etc.)
• Upload bandwidth sufficient for
streaming. (Minimum: 0.7mbps)
For this guide, we’ll be using XSplit.
Let’s get you broadcasting:
1. First, make an account to join
the Beta Crew and download XSplit
from www.xsplit.com.
2. Once the download is finished,
install XSplit.
3. When installed, run ‘XSplit
Broadcaster’ from the start menu.
4. Login with your XSplit account.
5. You now have a blank presenta-
tion, click add on the bottom left
and select ‘Add screen region...’
6. Box your whole screen by hold-
ing down click from the top left
corner to the bottom right, now you
may release the click button.
7. Double check to make sure the
resolution under the scene sourc-
es matches the resolution of the
screen you’ll be streaming from.
8. Maximize the preview of you see
of your screen to fill up the whole
screen in XSplit.
9. Now we will add our account
from the streaming site of choice by
clicking ‘Broadcast’ followed by ‘Edit
channels…’
10. Click ‘Add…’ on the right side of
the window and select your stream
provider.
11. Type in your username and
password to your streaming
account.
Xsplit Casting Guideby Ali “iAligator” Haghani
67
GLHF MAGAZINE
12. Click “Test Bandwidth” on the
bottom and wait for the test to
finish.
13. Once the test is finished, you
will get a recommended total band-
width for your video and audio
bitrate combined, remember that
number and close the Bandwidth
Test window.
14. Set the maximum bitrate for
video and audio so that the two
add up to the number you got from
the Bandwidth test window. (About
80% of total for video and 20% for
audio, so if you have for example
1000kbps total, ~800kbps max for
video and ~200kbps max for audio.)
15. Your stream properties should
look something like this.
16. Click ‘OK’ to close the properties
window.
17. Click on the resolutions tab on
the top and check off the desired
resolution(s). Make sure the aspect
ratio matches that of your screen.
18. Click ‘OK’ to close the resolu-
tions window.
19. You’re pretty much done! You
can set your frame rate and reso-
lution from the view menu, play
around with these to get the best
performance in-game and best
quality on the stream.
20. To broadcast, simply click
‘Broadcast’ and select your channel.
Send me your questions and
streams with the times you usually
stream and you may be featured in
a future issue! (Twitter @iAligator!)
Happy Streaming!
-Ali “iAligator” Haghani
@iAligator
video: http://vimeo.com/35280829
68
GLHF MAGAZINE
Team Trebis is a YouTube channel and community of gamers dedi-cated to helping each other own noobs and school noobs at the same time.
This week, they will be offering advice and analysis to help you get from the Bronze League all the way to the Diamond League using the Terran race.
Day 1: Bronze League — Decisiveness and Macrowww.youtube.com/watch?v=TnDz3c_Z7wI
Day 3: Gold League — Engagements and Unit Comp.www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvaxfZdC6Y4
Day 5: Diamond League — Scouting and Reacting in TvPwww.youtube.com/watch?&v=1Cr7Skuzo1g
Day 2: Silver League — Build Orderswww.youtube.com/watch?v=gKQH4T_kWsM
Menu Videowww.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOaQpBoFmCw
Day 4: Platinum League — Aggressiveness in TvZwww.youtube.com/watch?&v=axskwJ_sgwk
Terran Bronze To Diamond GuideBy TeamTrebis
69
GLHF MAGAZINE
Why did the Zealot win the staring contest? Because the Stalker blinked first.
DUMB JOKES