The 3rd, and best yet, StarCraft 2 Battle Report has been officially released. An epic clash between the Protoss and Zerg on Scrap Yard – a brand new StarCraft 2 map with very distinctive design and terrain features. The game is fast-paced, with the first conflict taking place just two minutes into the game.

David Kim, associate game balance designer, has shown that he can handle the Protoss race just as well after winning the last Battle Report game as the Terran. He shines with the Protoss, handling their forces in an intelligent manner and beautifully micromanages his few units to inflict maximum damage on the Zerg enemy. It’s so good, in fact, that in some points it’s hard to believe the game wasn’t orchestrated in advance.

Consistent with previous Battle Reports, this game also includes the unveiling of a new terrain feature, which was likely introduced due to the fact that Brush wouldn’t fit well on the metallic platforms where the battle at hand takes place.

This brings the list of StarCraft 2 terrain features to:

• Destroyable barriers
• High yield minerals
• Xel’ Naga Watch Towers
• Brush
• Smoke
  

*Green – Smoke . *Yellow Squares = Starting Spots. *Red = High Yield

The map’s topography puts the opponents very close to each other, separated by a gap of space and a bridge with a destructible rock barrier. Scrapyard’s smoke placement is somewhat similar to the brush placement in Blistering Sands of Battle Report 2, providing enemy forces with a retreat/regroup/ambush option at the very entrance of the main bases’ ramps. The ramps are wider than “normal”, which makes sealing them early on more expensive and complicated.

Battle Highlights:

• Expansion harassment takes its toll on the Zerg player, preventing an early expansion and forcing the Zerg to expand 2 minutes later than planned.
• The Nullifier, recently renamed “Disruptor“, is showcased as a potent defense and trapping tool, easily dealing with Zergling harassment at 6:05, and demonstrating beautiful divide & conquer tactics at 7:25-8:10 to cut the Zerg forces into manageable batches time after time. This unit has been used extensively and skillfully throughout the game, defensively and offensively, and looks to be a great addition to the Protoss arsenal of powerful units which benefit greatly from smart, precise use.

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• A Dark Pylon is seen in “action” near the Protoss main mineral line, enhancing the Probes’ harvest rate. This is a remnant from earlier build, before the Dark Pylon was replaced with the Obelisk.
• Stalkers and Roaches clash around 9:00, with the Protoss micromanaging the Zerg forces into oblivion while continually warping in more and more forces to aid his outnumbered army, eventually chasing the Zerg forces down by blinking into range. The Roaches have also been used well, burrowing in and out of battle to avoid the death blow and quickly regenerate their health.

• David proceeds with some Overlord hunting using his single Phoenix, but the Phoenix’ true value is shown when its Graviton beam renders the Zerg Queen helpless while a Void Ray quickly melts it down at 11:00.

• Banelings deliver a massive blow to the Protoss economy at 12:00, evaporating around a dozen Probes in a second.
• The Protoss, on the counter-attack, decide to cut through the destructible rocks and make a shorter land path to the Zerg base… only to run into more cleverly burrowed Banelings, which quickly obliterate an entire company of bunched up Zealots.
• The Zerg employs its mind-controlling Infestor for the first time at 14:12 to take control of the Protoss Immortal - a portent of things to come.
• Total pwnage ensues at 15:55 when two Neural Parasite controlled Colossi “team up” with a hoard of Zerglings to eradicate a large self-trapped Protoss force.

It’s at that very point of the Zerg’s triumph that the true nature of StarCraft becomes apparent. StarCraft 2 is first of all a macromanagement RTS, and virtually no amount of micromanaging will save a player lagging behind from defeat. The Protoss player has maintained an economic advantage throughout the game and is able to sustain heavy losses for the purpose of distracting his opponent while pressing the offensive on two other fronts, completely obliterating the Zerg’s economy just seconds after losing the major battle by warping forces right into the Zerg’s nearly-defenseless expansions. The Zerg quickly yields with a “gg” as this excellent match comes to an end.

This Battle Report represents StarCraft 2 a lot better than the previous two instances. Both players keep the pressure on each other throughout the match with every available resource, from the first Probe blocking the Zerg’s expansion to the Phoenix/Void Ray combo picking off key Zerg units. It’s very apparent that the Blizzard players have had a while to work on their game and have reached the point where they’re proficient with both the tactical and strategic aspects of it. No unit goes to waste and every ability is used to maximum utility, from the Stalkers’ Blink to the Disruptors’ well-placed Force Fields.

Disruptors are definitely the surprise of this game, being built and magnificently used by the Protoss player before any other unit, replacing the Zealot in its traditional role as the Protoss’ first offensive unit. However, this does not mean that Disruptors are now required to play an effective Protoss game – both Zealots and Stalkers could easily be used alone or together in their stead to produce a viable early-game strategy.

With all signs pointing to the beta starting in the very near future, this Battle Report is great for exhibiting how far StarCraft 2 has already come. It shows that the game features all the strengths that made StarCraft 1 a masterpiece – and then adds some more into the mix.

Watch:

Battle Report 3 on StarCraft2.com

Download for Windows

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Related Posts:

• » Two Massive Q&A Sessions: Battle.Net and Beta In-Depth
• » StarCraft 2 Beta: Protoss Strategies Overview
• » StarCraft 2 Beta: Yo Mommaship Got Nerfed
• » StarCraft 2 Beta: First Gameplay and Battle.net Impressions

37 Comments to “Battle Report 3: StarCraft 2 is Freaking Awesome”

1. Battlarmd — June 24, 2009 @ 10:20 am
   

   good fight, first time we are seeing higher tech units in battle report.

   at a glance though, the neural parasite of mind control seems to be quite powerful. It can easily turn any unit biological or not.. and turn it against the enemy for a while…

   so if a zerg player has investors, teching seems pointless, cause high tech units usually comes in small numbers, and the zerg player exactly take over them… maybe there should be some limit to the mind control…

   that’s just at a glance.

   and once again, the colossus really did nothing.

   I do wonder why the zerg player never went to mutalisks, they really need to take out the phase prism or warp in WILL KILL them… guess it was a vast over sight.

2. SikTh — June 24, 2009 @ 10:34 am
   

   Holy shit, what a spectacular show.

   I was also expecting the Zerg player to get some anti air after the Phoenix/Void Ray stuff. Queens are certainly not enough to defend against that. I wonder how many dead Queens/Overlords we missed in the replay…

   I hope the mind control can be broken if the “controlling” Infestor is killed. This is way too powerful otherwise.

3. Nikolai — June 24, 2009 @ 12:03 pm
   

   mind control too powerful?

   what about in sc1, where the dark archons had mind control that permanently stole your opponents units?

4. SikTh — June 24, 2009 @ 12:29 pm
   

   Dark Archons were very weak and almost useless in most circumstances. Infestors will be more abundant and the ability probably costs much less energy.

5. chrysrobyn — June 24, 2009 @ 1:27 pm
   

   Seems like the Infestor is more powerful, but the ability times out. Dark Archons’ mind control was permanent, but a mind parasite is only 10 seconds long. I thought it was clever that he used the two Colossi to destroy the zealots and then turn them on each other.

6. BarGamer — June 24, 2009 @ 3:32 pm
   

   Yeah, that was the only odd thing about this BR, that there were no Mutalisks, no Hydralisks, no Observers… It’s like they agreed beforehand that they wouldn’t use them. What does SAL SAL mean??

7. Etherkaii — June 24, 2009 @ 6:08 pm
   

   It doesn’t make sense that NEURAL parasite can affect a colossus or any other unit that is ‘purely robotic’ since there would be no neurons to control. (Dragoon units are fine since they have protoss units within them.) Blizzard should tweak it such that it affects only organic and ’semi-robotic’ units.

8. Joe — June 24, 2009 @ 7:28 pm
   

   Yea, I think these changes should be considered with the neural parasite:
   - infestor can not use ability while burrowed
   - neural parasite takes x seconds to take affect
   - should only affect biological units

   The way it is showcased at the moment seems OP as well as unconventional – I’d like to see the infestor spit something at the unit, so I know a mind control is taking place, and can micro/kill the soon to be taken over unit before it turns on my troops.

   Great battle report I like the enthusiasm of this blog post

9. apharion — June 24, 2009 @ 9:03 pm
   

   the sc1 mindcontrol was BS, i really hope SC2 will be better. Mechanical units should totally be immune, it doesnt make sense otherwise. i will propose seeing the infestor spit something out that charges a unit like the alien facehugger, if it connects, it takes control of the unit for 30 secs.

10. Anonymous — June 25, 2009 @ 7:23 am
    

    the force fields on those disruptors could be crazy for a mining line that’s lined up perfectly or set in a concave way. just cast them on the front and end of the line and pick off drones/probes/scvs as they sit there.

11. gotmagog — June 25, 2009 @ 9:05 am
    

    I wonder about the usefulness of my 2 favorite protoss units by looks:

    -the colossi, is it still too weak, 2 colossi died easily to around 12 zerglings, which seems totally weak, price and tech compared.. maybe their power is veery nonlinear, so 4 colossi with better placement could kill 100’s of zerglings…

    -the immortal, how strong is it, from the battle report it seemed that 2 shots kill everything…

    Besides this, the battlereport was fun to watch, protoss vs zerg is my favorite matchup

12. Elokane — June 25, 2009 @ 10:23 am
    

    I think the Infestor should have to be burrowed directly beneath the unit for it to use the parasite on it. This would make it so the big units in battle (i.e. Colossi) won’t immediately be disabled and could also move away (if moved quickly enough) if there’s a detector around.

    I’m not sure about the biological aspect.

    Can it also infest air units?

13. Chronos — June 26, 2009 @ 9:36 am
    

    I think that the neural parasite just works fine, if you don’t want your units to get parasited, get a detector, It’s like nerfing the Nuclear Missile just because you can’t see the ghost. Besides, changing which units will affect, only because the name? pf…

    Besides, protoss players seems not to understand the role of the colossi, surely because they are not used to have support units in their arsenal, if you amass Colossi, you can’t win, the colossi is an extremely powerfull unit, BUT YOU CAN’T ONLY HAVE COLOSSI, full colossus is not an option !

14. Joe Cool — June 26, 2009 @ 10:10 am
    

    The parasite hardly make sense, and a parasite controlling a mechanical unit is absurd. Whoever this infestor parasite is alright, is probably a zerg player.

    I am fine with the colossus, but yes, looks week for it’s size. Misleading indeed. they could have been a dragoon size unit shooting lasers for all that they do.

    I would agree to uping the colossus damage to reaver level. Just have them fire our a sacrab, would look cooler, and less plagarising of the war of the worlds. Besides, Warp ray is already laser, do we really need another laser unit? further, the horizontal swee thing is also stupid….

    seriously, SC2 has lots of fix.

    don’t even get me started on marauders or the thor.

15. shrooman — June 26, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
    

    damn this battlereport was incredible , but well, not perfect after seeing map layout i guessed that we will see quite a lot of air combat, but oh well

    imho observers were not used because map was too small, building them bould be just like wasting resources

    I agree with chronos, neural parasite should work on every unit, it would be just stupid to block targetting of this skill because of skill and targeted units names if “neural parasite” is wrong, just change it to “psi parasite”

    collosi looks like a perfect weapon to destroy mass amounts of low tier units like marines and zergling, but it MUST be supported by other units (to slow down zerglings, trap longer range terran infantry)

    i really hope that in next battle report we will see three player battle (protos vs protos vs terran/zerg), or 2 vs 2 team match. higher amount of players could show us more high tier units

16. George — June 26, 2009 @ 2:00 pm
    

    We don’t need more BRs! We need a beta!

17. Jon — June 26, 2009 @ 8:08 pm
    

    I agree with everyone but at the same time I do not…I am undecided. Mind control or neural parasite (NP) seems fine to me considering it would be largely unfair for the Protoss to remain completely free from the effects of Neural parasite due to the fact that many of their high end units are mechanical. Do we know there is not a toss inside the colossus or is it 100% mechanical…i don’t know. That would make the zerg 100% open at any level to an others neural parasite because they are all biological. I think in order to maintain balance blizz opted to make any unit of any race susceptible to NP. However I do agree that being able to use NP from underground is a little unfair. Then again, Blizz made the observer unit available in early game…

18. Mercutio — June 26, 2009 @ 11:10 pm
    

    Hmm, it looks like SC2 is getting close enough to a locked-down state that I can take the time to comment on it again without knowing that the units and tactics in question won’t exist in a few weeks.

    Anyone else notice that in all three battle reports, David Kim won, and he always did it the same way; he LOOKED like he was losing most of the game, spending large amounts of time either trapped in his base or coming out on the losing side of the mid-field battles, until suddenly he had five production buildings, a ton of cash, and a panoply of unit upgrades, with which he then proceeded to steamroll the poor bastards he was fighting. So, kudos to him.

    I think the concerns about neural parasite are a little bit overblown. There’s one important thing that the announcers, oddly in my view, never pointed about; after about the fourth or fifth time that burrowed units bone you, BUILD AN OBSERVER. A single observer would have allowed that force to blow those Infestors away without breaking stride. Now, Kim made the calculated (and correct) gamble that he wouldn’t ever need to bother. But its relevant to the discussion about how OP or not the Infestors are that their hard counter is ranged + detectors. You might still argue they’re too powerful, but start from the proper point.

    Finally; I question the use of this particular battle report for Blizzard with regard to the Collosi. Very few units have generated as much angst and controversy as this one, with Karune having needed to comment on it repeatedly in the Q&As to reassure people that, no, they’re not crazily underpowered, actually they rock. Given this… maybe you don’t want to release a battle report where a player invests lots of resources and time teching to and building them… and then they murder his OWN army. And not only do they do that, they do it in a method where there are so many zerg swarming around its hard to tell how much ass the Collosi are kicking even when turned against the Protoss.

19. Joe Cool — June 26, 2009 @ 11:46 pm
    

    I agree on the colossi’s point.. This BR and the first BR just totally make people go nuts.

    reason: Protoss loss the reaver, gained the colossus.. supposedly an upgrade.

    then protoss players out there sees these units getting rapped EVERYTIME without destroying much of any enemy forces. A reaver could have at least blown out a sacrab and kill the 5 zerglings that’s surrounding it.

    the colossus’s attack makes it useless for it’s selfdefense, especially when it is surrounded, more so, air units can attack it too!! air to air!

    So far, the colossus just doesn’t do what it is suppose to, with too much weakness… how about a late game upgrade? First upgrade you turn the thermal lance into a concentrated blast of a bigger area. (tier 2.5)

    unless the protoss players sees one unit of their’s able to do at least 100 damage on splash, they will just complain until the end of time. (Terrans has seige tanks / nukes / thor for heavy dices. Protoss gets nothing so far.)

20. Mercutio — June 27, 2009 @ 12:58 am
    

    At the risk of turning this into yet ANOTHER thread about the Colossi… I’m not saying that this battle report and the first battle report prove they suck. And I don’t know if they rock either. And there are certainly larger issues when it comes to what makes a good battle report than ‘does it make this one single unit make good.’ But given the controversy surrounding them, it might not kill them to release a BR where we see the Colossi in their element. We would have seen them be so in this one; they had a screening force and were fighting the Zerg; we would have gotten to observe them doing what they’re supposedly BUILT to do, which is fire into large masses of low hp units with their sweep lasers. But then they got infested. If that hadn’t happened we’d have gotten a firsthand look at their power.

21. SikTh — June 27, 2009 @ 5:48 am
    

    An Observer wouldn’t necessarily help. The Zerg player can leave his Infestors behind and slowly move them into battle (while burrowed) at the appropriate time when the armies are already engaged and it doesn’t take much effort to target large, key units like the Colossus. Observers WOULD help if killing the Infestor breaks the control, which should be the case.

    Another good option would be to require the Infestor to be within a limited range of the controlled unit, meaning you can’t “hit and run” with them.

    I like the idea of the Colossus, which needs SUPPORT to work. It’s not like the Reaver who could blow up wave after wave of Zerglings even if they surrounded it almost completely (especially if there a couple of them). This unit has to stay back behind a wall of Zealots and pour down heavy damage – which is exactly what David did, only he got infested and it screwed his attack completely.

22. Battlarmd — June 27, 2009 @ 8:32 am
    

    I think the best solution for neural parasite..

    will be:
    1, cannot cast while burrowed
    2, channelling spell, so if u kill the infestor, it is off.

    that should do about right.

23. Jack of Donners — June 27, 2009 @ 11:08 am
    

    It should be either 1 or 2, not both.

24. Rondy — June 27, 2009 @ 2:10 pm
    

    does anyone know how the replay mineral display works?

    it looks like: Minerals 435(+1035)

    what does the number with the ‘+’ mean?

25. THE_BANANA_REPUBLIC — June 27, 2009 @ 3:36 pm
    

    The colossus is just fine.

26. Mercutio — June 27, 2009 @ 8:04 pm
    

    Rondy-

    Inferring from the play-by-play announcements, I believe the + number is an average showing how many minerals you’re gaining per minute. I could be wrong about that, but at one point (I’ll try and find an exact moment in the replay) I believe they specifically refer to Kim gathering twice as many minerals per minute as Lee, and the overlay is up at that time.

27. Mercutio — June 27, 2009 @ 8:46 pm
    

    Yeah, check between 13.30 and 14:00 and listen to the play-by-play. Seems pretty clear that number is minerals-per-minute.

28. Rondy — June 27, 2009 @ 10:38 pm
    

    awesome, thx

    that’s pretty clever showing the rate at which minerals are gathered rather than just the instantaneous values

29. anlide — June 28, 2009 @ 1:01 am
    

    Thank you for great site!

30. Chronos — June 28, 2009 @ 5:54 pm
    

    In any case, about the power of the infestor, just kill it man, we all non pro zerg players have been complaining about the same sh** abou te HT and his Psi Storm for more than 10 years. Just play well, Kill it, find a way, finally the zerg have a Caster unit powerful enought to turn the battle by itself.

31. Mercutio — June 29, 2009 @ 1:49 am
    

    Well, things like mind control are always very… iffy. In my experience many people who are perfectly willing to accept being beaten in a knock-down drag-out absolutely loathe anything they feel removes control of their situation from them. When your own army is turned against you, or half of it is encased in floating blue prisms in the air (Arbiter, I won’t miss you) while the other half is nuked, it feels like all your opponent had to do was push an ‘I Win’ button in order to knock you down.

    In the specific case of the Infestor, we know so very little about it I feel unqualified to judge. We do know how long the mind control lasts, which isn’t long. We also know that the Infestor isn’t in a dead-end of the tech tree; you can get them on the way to further upgrades. What we don’t know is the cooldown, the energy cost, we can GUESS at the range but lack hard numbers, if there’s a dispel mechanism for it in play from any of the three factions, the specific list of things that can or can’t be infested… the Dark Archon had a similar but much more potent ability in SC1, but Dark Archons sucked and building them was a colossal waste of resources. There were also mind-controlling units in WCIII, and they were not really regarded as gamebreaking.

    I’m personally kind of biding my time for the beta, when we’ll finally get real hard numbers, and we can all go from arguing about vague abstraction to launching lengthy, bitter, vitriolic flamewars about how the terran marine combat shield is absolutely broken at a 10hp upgrade and needs to be nerfed to a 5hp upgrade, and if it doesn’t that’s proof Blizz loves Terrans and hates Protoss.

    I can hardly wait!

32. Jack of Donners — June 29, 2009 @ 5:08 pm
    

    Great comment, Mercutio. You should write for the blog!

33. Guy — June 30, 2009 @ 12:28 pm
    

    Did anyone else notice the “Mantaling,” which is seen hatching or morphing for a brief second towards the end of the report – specifically where the zerg player was losing his third hatchery. Perhaps we are going to see zerglings fly or climb walls in the next report.

34. xapti — June 30, 2009 @ 7:13 pm
    

    Mantalings are the units that spawn (I think about 4) when a (major) zerg building is destroyed. This information was known already, but possibly not their names. The video shows they seem to have 20hp.
    It’s also very possible that a hatchery will spawn at least one more mantaling than something like a spawning pool, but that’s just a supposition.

35. colerbird — August 4, 2009 @ 5:00 pm
    

    did anyone else notice that at about 16:30 there was a zerg unit called the mantaling highlighted?

36. mars — September 14, 2009 @ 4:01 pm
    

    THE FACT IS THAT THIS “NEURAL PARASITE ABILITY IS COMPLETE BULLSHIT AND I’M TOTALLY DISAPPOINTED THAT BLIZZARD CAN’T COME UP WITH SOMETHING MORE zerglike and ORIGINAL. you people are comparing it to SC1’s Dark Archons. This is totally different. Do infestors cost enormous amounts of minerals/gas? Do they lose most of their HP or shields, when the ability is used? It simply destroys the game.
    Let’s say a protoss player brings in templars and stalkers. As a zerg player, you can use Neural Parasites to take away his templars, (similar to the effect of the SC1 Arbiters’ STASIS FIELD, except the NEURAL PARASITE is much cheaper than this) use all their energy in psionic-storming the stalkers. 10 seconds, or 5 are all you need. After the stalkers are all gone, you can get rid of the hightemplar. Why would the protoss player use any of the mothership/carriers/archons/immortals/Collosuses/Voidrays/hightemplarin this situation? In every zerg vs. protoss games, protoss players would only use zealots/stalkers.

    This applies for Terran players as well.

    the idea of the neural parasites working on archons makes NO SENSE as well. Archons are purely psionic entities. They don’t have neurons or even brains.
    Blizzard contradicts itself everyday. They said the Protoss banned the ability of mindcontrol/darkarchon for a thousand years. and now, the zerg can do it easily. (regardless of whether it’s permanent, neural parasite IS a mindcontrol ability) Dark archons look like jokes now… How do they explain why the protoss suddenly stopped using dark archons? There are many situations where 10 seconds are all you need. Mind control the mothership for 5 seconds, destroy their force, after that, take care of the mothership. All attention diverts to the mothership and you can use this confusion to use more infestors.

    Why do the zerg need another mindcontrol ability when corruptors have a similar ability? Aside from the psionic storm, the protoss don’t have any powerful offensive ability. Look at the Forcefield, hallucination. Terrans/protoss just have big air/ground units, ready to be mind controlled by the Zerg.. Can you imagine your own marines getting slaughtered by your own battlecruisers’ new abilities? 10 seconds are all the Zerg players need..

    Instead of this annoying, shitty neural parasite, they should come up with something more interesting, zerglike and reasonable. Blizzard sucks like they’ve never done before. Aside from the fancy graphics, there’s not really anything “excellent”. Infestor’s abilities- they either similar to SC1 dark archons & queen’s abilities. THERE’S NOTHING ORIGINAL.

    with infestors, zerg players can build other species techs. The problem is that, they can build normal marines using this method when they have infested marines in their arsenal. Again, this neural parasite is bullshit

    What about the mothership’s cloaking ability? This is lame as well. What kind of player would draw all the fire into his own mothership by hiding the rest of his units? Again, the mothership is just a big, powerful arbiter. What makes it so special from SC1 arbiter? The fact that it’s stronger? The wormhole transit is just the recall ability slightly modified.

    By the way, the Medivac Dropship doesn’t make any sense at all. You know what’s so special about SC1 Terran infantry? They are different from hydralisks as their success depends on how medics and marines are properly microed. Now, in SC2, Marines must save their precious HP from using stimpacks. They are just smaller hydralisks..

    Don’t tell me “if you don’t like this game, don’t play it”. I would be happy to ignore the game if Blizzard decides to be a bunch of idiots and don’t fix these things.

37. mars — September 15, 2009 @ 12:03 pm
    

    So much for the Protoss’ psionic/psychic strenghths & capabilities. They could perform mindcontrol, maelstrom in starcraft1, now they are so vulnerable to little pesky stuff like neural parasite. Robots & Archons do have neurons, don’t they? They can’t make decent, original games and now, they think they can make it up by using fancy warcraft3 graphics…
    Wasting so much money on randomly generated units like the mothership, thor… Dustin Brower still wonders what kind of role he would give the thor. In other words, Blizzard simply wastes money/time on creating units without planning properly. and now, they’re using Warcraft3 graphics to save money…
    BLIZZARD SUCKS!
    Have you seen the Terran siege tank, thor, battlecruiser. They’re either from Toys R Us or Transformers.
    To Hxxx with their “trilogy bullshit”. Blizzard is absolutely corrupted. 50 dollars for 30 maps? 150 dollars for 90 maps? They think they’ll get all that money just by creating fancy cartoons, shallow eye candy… That’s pathetic
    Get a lesson from the “team” that created Starcraft1. Learn to differentiate an adult’s game from a child’s game.