I played Starcraft 2 a great deal a few years ago. After months and months of play I eventually got to Diamond league and promptly hung up Pneumatized Carapace for good. Occasionally I’ll still watch a game or two but when I was dedicated to it I used to watch loads of them.
While digging through some old posts I made on the forums at the time I found the following about watching a game with my wife. It’s a “my race is not as cool as the other races” whine but at least it’s by proxy!
(I’m a plat Zerg with the Queen of Blades portrait for context; i.e. I play a lot, I’m just not very good.)
I heard how good the Stephano vs Kiwi Game 2 was at IPL 3 so the wife and I sat down to watch it together. She’s a semi-gamer but doesn’t play or watch SC2 at all. I talked her through some of the bits of the game and some snippets of the conversation are below. Some spoilers about unit compositions if you’ve not watched it but not the result!
Me : So Kiwi is killing Stephano’s 3rd while Stephano kill’s Kiwi’s 3rd. That’s worse for the Zerg though.
Her : Why?
Me : Well, in order to keep up with Terran’s or Protoss’ production the Zerg normally needs to be on 1 extra base or hatchery.
Her : Isn’t that unfair?
Her : Wow, that was cool. What are they?
Me : Forcefields. They’re invulnerable bubbles which a good protoss can use to protect it’s units. It stops most of the early Zerg units working very well.
Her : They look awesome. What does the Zerg do then?
Me : Well, burrow works a bit of Roaches.
Her : That doesn’t sound very exciting.
Me : Well, you can keep secret units round the map with them, or tunnel to stop bases being built.
Her : Hmm.
Her : What are they?
Me : They’re Hydralisks. They’re really good against basic Protoss units.
Her : Why don’t you make them? I never see you with those.
Me : Well, they’re very slow off creep and they get mulched by Colossus.
Her : They don’t sound that good.
Me : No, they’re not except in very specific circumstances.
Her : Wow that was awesome!
Me : Yes, Stalkers can teleport if you research it.
Her : It looks cool.
Her : Pink has a bigger base at least/
Me : That’s the creep.
Her : So it spreads automatically?
Me : No, you have to spread it yourself. You can place a creep tumor and every 15 seconds you can use it to make another. Each can only make one though so you spread it like a chain.
Her : That sounds difficult. Does the Protoss have to do something like that?
Me : Not really. They have a different macro mechanic called warp which is like the Queens.
Her : So do Zerg units do more damage on creep?
Me : No they move faster.
Her : Really? That’s all?
Me : Well, they do go a lot faster.
Her : They don’t seem to be going much faster.
Me : That’s hydras and roaches. They’re not too fast to begin with. Zerglings with speed can go so fast it’s a bit like teleporting.
Her : Unlike the Protoss, who can REALLY teleport.
Me . Err, I suppose, but..
Her : Pink’s getting killed a lot.
He : Protoss has Colossus. They’re good against everything Zerg has except Corruptors.
Her : Corruptors?
Me : The flying things with tentacles. They can turn into something good too.
Her : So why doesn’t he just make them?
Me : Because they’re useless against most other things the Protoss makes.
Her : So Colossuses are pretty good against most things and the thing to beat them is pretty bad against most things?
Me : Well, yes but they can turn into Broodlords…
Her : It doesn’t sound very fair.
Her : Why’s everyone cheering?
Me : He’s getting a mother ship. They’re very hard to get and hard to use, but everyone likes them.
Her : What does it do?
Me : It makes everything invisible, can teleport his entire army and can do a vortex that pulls everything out of combat for a while.
Her : That sounds brilliant. What’s Zerg’s one?
Me : <cough> Well, we don’t have one.
Her : So what’s Zerg special thing? Protoss has teleport and warp in, what does Zerg do?
Me : With the larvae thing they can bring lots of stuff in at once. Also, Zerg stuff tends to be fast so you can attack multiple places at once.
Her : Kiwi’s army keeps winning.
Me : A Protoss army is stronger but slower. You need to hit different areas at once which is something Zerg are good at.
<We watch Kiwi attack one half of the map with his army then teleport the whole thing across the map to hit the other>
Her … <Gives me steady look>
Me …
Her : So what cool stuff does Zerg have? A lot of their stuff seems boring or useless.
Me : Banelings are very cool.
Her : So, if I wiped all your records out and you started again, would you REALLY go Zerg again?
WTB more exciting units so I don’t have to apologize for playing my race to my wife.
😀
Herring's Fishbait 