Hivemind high five!

Dran came up to my office after work today to have a crack at this whole SC2 beta thing. Apparently being Korean he is genetically endowed with awesome RTS skill right off the bat. We were mutually surprised and delighted to discover that we both prefer Zerg. Go hivemind! Dran’s first game was on Lost Temple against a fairly passive Protoss who mostly stayed in his base whilst Dran expanded like a madman and grabbed 2 expansions, one crossmap, and then proceeded to power drones and zerglings. Unfortunately for him, the Protoss player managed to mass air in the meantime, and Dran ended up losing a base race with zerglings and ultralisks vs a blob of void rays. His second game was much more successful though. He managed to fight off early pressure from a double proxy gating Protoss and then counterattack with speedlings into his opponents base, killing all his probes and forcing a GG. Defeating the proxy gate cheese won him a hivemind high five from me.

We alternated playing and my games were pretty solid. In particular I managed to win convincingly against cannon pushing Protoss who tried to block my ramp by countering with a fast tech to banelings. My opponent was amazed that I managed to beat my way through 4 cannons so quickly and asked how I’d done it, which I good-naturedly explained. I then expanded and teched to hydras, eventually overrunning his base with speedlings and hydras out of a nydus tunnel, winning me a high five from Dran.

Actually, pretty much all my games involved horrendous backdooring via the nydus network. I’m really digging that play. Usually my opponent will have a well defended ramp, but I can completely bypass it by spawning a tunnel exit, often right next to his workers by scouting with an overlord. Even if he counters, I can just hop back in the tunnel and defend, plus I can pump units through the tunnel throughout the attack - it’s like having a proxy gateway right in my opponent’s base. It seems vaguely unfair, but it sure it a hell of a lot of fun.