The fourth Battle Report has been officially released! The battle report has been leaked to the net a couple of days ago, but now’s your chance to download a high-quality version straight from Blizzard’s official page, where you can also opt to watch it streaming along with the transcription of the shoutcast. The current Battle Report takes place in the StarCraft 2 incarnation of the legendary Lost Temple – an original StarCraft 2v2 ladder map that was extremely popular for 1v1s as well.

StarCraft 2’s version of the Lost Temple has the following distinctive terrain features:

• Very narrow main base choke points
• Unlike the classic version, the top player’s natural expansion is placed to the left, at 11:00, instead of 01:00
• Two Xel’Naga watch towers are placed at key center locations
• Destructible Rocks block high yield mineral mining spots
• High ground locations have been “standardized” to eliminate the original Lost Temple’s slight imbalances

The match itself is as fast and brutal as all StarCraft 2 games we’ve witnessed to this point. However, it was different in some key aspects, many dependent on the nature of the map, which has most of the minerals in the surrounding areas and a large open space in the middle.

It was very apparent that the Terran player, David Kim, prepared for a long game. He invested in an Orbital Command to call down Mules and gain an economic advantage very early on – just after constructing his first Barracks, in fact. Later, only 5 minutes into the game, he builds two command centers concurrently, floating one to his natural and another to the island. The Protoss player, Yeon-Ho Lee, had his natural expansion up at that point as well. The Terran also carefully blocked the entrance to his main base using the crucial “Gateway” Supply Depots, denying the Protoss important information about his base and making any early attack virtually impossible.

The battles between the two opponents went back and forth with their large standing armies, but also took place in their naked home fronts. Both players successfully harassed each other’s mineral lines many times, scoring important hits and damaging the enemy economy.

In a devastating move, the Protoss player easily sent an undisturbed Phase Prism over to the Terran’s island expansion, knocking it out without even needing to load it up with troops first – just by acting as a power generator and warping in four Zealots from four Warpgates. The Terran player was the clear master of harassment, though, using the superfast Hellions to sneak past defensive lines, dropping units all over the enemy mineral lines and hidden cliffs, using stimmed reapers for hit and run attacks, and finishing with some extraordinary terrible, terrible damage…

The two players were able to set up impressive economies, and the battle remained undecided very late into the match. The Protoss player made impressive use of the new Psi-Storm, making short work of the Terran player’s tier 1 army, and did a great job constantly being on the attack.

Unfortunately, his late game unit use showed that he’s not an expert Protoss player, choosing to use Colossi and Stalkers against the armored Thors and against Marauders, which have a bonus against armored units. As well, and as Dustin comments, he fails to use the High Templar’s new Phase Shift ability, which would have taken out individual Thors out of battles, leaving the reduced Terran army crippled. A smart use of Immortals, which are resistant to the highly damaging attacks of the Thors, coupled with Phase Shift, might have made all the difference in this one.

However, what really sealed the deal was David Kim’s expert use of a single Ghost riding in a single Medivac Dropship. This successful team managed to drop 5 Nukes in succession, utterly devastating the Protoss Player’s economy, Warpgate farm, expansions, and will to fight. No screengrabs for these, since it will not do the effect justice! This paved the way for the Terran forces to walk all over the leftovers, prompting a “gg” from Yeon-Ho Lee.

Indeed, Nukes are no longer the “coup de grace” weapon of StarCraft 1, but an amazing tactical weapon to be used in normal games, with the potential to turn the tide of battle if used correctly.

A very interesting and intense game, once again dominated by David Kim. When will he be dethroned? Perhaps in the upcoming beta…

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14 Comments to “Battle Report 4: David Kim’s Terrible Terrible Damage”

1. SikTh — October 21, 2009 @ 4:12 pm
   

   FINALLY an interesting game!
   The last ones were cool, but this one was a GAME. Hell yeah.

2. musicjunkie300 — October 21, 2009 @ 6:18 pm
   

   that was one sweet sweet game…. i’m desparetly waiting for any indication on a date for beta

3. Mercutio — October 22, 2009 @ 2:16 am
   

   Okay, time for a post-mortem here.

   This battle wasn’t really so much Kim winning (although Kim is, very very clearly, a dominant player) but about Lee LOSING. Kim made a mistake or two, Lee made more and in sufficient numbers that spelled his doom.

   Let’s start with Kim’s initial economy raid, 4.50-5.15. This wasn’t a huge deal damage-wise or in terms of impairing Lee’s ability to resource, but what it DID do was keep Lee inside his base and -away from- Kim’s. Kim was incredibly week at that point; I believe that literally all he had after that raid was that surviving Hellion, a second one that spit out at 5.36, and his one siege tank. Everything else had gone into buildings. Had the Protoss shown up any sooner, he may have been in real trouble; his raid ASSURED that they would not.

   Now, at this point Lee is still unable to get into Kim’s base, so he can be forgiven for not knowing what Kim has; the Hellion raid on his supply lines at 6.50 means he knows that Kim has built a Starport, and that Zealot which dies at 8.05 means that more Hellions have been built. Given that knowledge, sticking with the Stalkers is a smart move.

   Then comes the Siege Tank raid on his natural at 8.20. Here’s where I think Lee makes a misstep that will cost him later. Kim has now conducted no fewer than three raids on Lee’s backfield, and as Lee well knows Kim is incredibly good at micro. At this point, in my opinion, he NEEDS to invest in a Photon Cannon or two on the high ground. This will absolutely force Kim to either cease his harass or to come with more firepower, especially since a Cannon needs a Pylon, and that means even if Kim DOES come in force Lee can do a quick warp-in. Ideally, he forces Kim to cease his harass in other ways, but build the tripwire; its a trivial resource investment.

   Actually, speaking of resources, Lee has been out-resourced by Kim at that point. Lee’s third expo went down at 8.02 (watch the mini) just after Kim’s second and third went live; however, he has less workers than Kim and even once he swings back into the saddle Kim is outmining him (see the overlays brought up at 9.30 – 9.52.)

   Now we’ve got Lee’s second misstep. He sends an Observer into Kim’s base at 10.25 (and he MAY have done so earlier but this is the earliest we KNOW) and then there’s that raid he conducts at 10.34. He now knows that Kim is pursuing a heavy armor strategy; he saw very clearly multiple Thors fielded against him, the many many factories all tech lab’d up, and that there wasn’t an equivalent field of Starports and not nearly so many Barracks. Kim won’t be taking to the skies and while he’ll have ground-pounders they core of his force is very clearly gonna be armor.

   Lee needs to be heading for Immortals and forgetting about any plans he might have had for Colossi right NOW. Sticking with Stalkers is still smart; Kim has been using a LOT more Hellions than Marauders so far and the Stalkers are a good counter there (and a screen for potential Immortals) but he needs Immortals on the field and something with a bit more oomph than the Stalkers; in that vein he DOES make a smart move, in that he heads for High Templars. But right at the moment he’s stuck in Tier 1 while Kim has LONG since moved on, and not only that, when Lee moves on it will be to a unit that counters… Tier 1. Specifically large hordes of individually weak Tier 1. The exact OPPOSITE of Kim’s army.

   Of course, this isn’t immediately obvious. In fact, Lee SURGES at this point. He makes his raid onto Kim’s island at 11.30, and absent a Missile Turret or Planetary Fortress that place is TOAST. He is briefly outharvesting Kim to a tune of two to one.

   However, he doesn’t push it home. The Command Center manages to live, and about a minute later it’s fully ensconced at the high yield, being built into a Planetary Fortress and surrounded by happy little SCVs.

   Now, there’s more to the upcoming massive battle mid-field than meets the eye. Watch that Reaper harass Kim does; around 12.30 you’ll see that Lee’s amassed a FORMIDABLE army of Stalkers. Watch them again at 13.24; they get a bit stung but are still there.

   The camera pans up to watch Lee’s psi-stormapalooza, then pans back down at 14.00 just in time to watch that big Stalker force end up mostly dead. They charged into the teeth of those Siege Tanks and while they WON, died nearly to a man.

   Credit where its due; Lee had a great counter-unit to the low-tier units that were supporting Kim’s Thor’s and Sieges, and Kim walked RIGHT into it and got his ass kicked. However, he did not get his ass kicked DECISIVELY, taking a big chunk of Lee’s army with him.

   Lee chooses to hit back with what he has left, a NOT insignificant force. It’s clearly superior to what Kim has left to him. Watch the camera pan at 14.30; two Thors, a handful of Marauders, NOT the unit mix you want against a large pack of upgraded Zealots and some Templars.

   Lee makes another couple of mistakes here.

   14.34: Lee hot-drops a couple Templar into the back of Kim’s workerline at this natural. These Templar have full energy stores. The workers do not flee; Kim is clearly unaware of their presence.

   No psi storms are cast. Why? Because at that exact same time Lee is moving on Kim’s Planetary Fortress at his high yield.

   Lee can be forgiven for doing so; its a natural target. He can also be forgiven for blowing all his energy psi storming the workerline (watch the battle closely; ONE more psi storm on that Marauder line and things might have been VERY different). But it’s pretty clear he underestimated the Planetary Fortress’ robustness and dangerousness; it was two or three shotting units while Kim’s army sandwiched him and annihilated him. The game wasn’t worth the candle.

   At this point (15.13) we see that Lee still has that Prism hiding out near Kim’s base, with two ready to go High Templar and nary a combat unit or base defense in sight. Yet nothing is done with them. In fact, if you check out the mini-map, those Zealots Lee used to force Kim to vacate that island are STILL THERE and will remain there for the entire rest of the game. Wasted pop.

   Lee’s last gasp is the battle at 15.50, of which the kindest thing that can be said is that its maybe not the TEXTBOOK definition of Pyrrhic, but it certainly comes close. As Browder said, he was indeed using all the wrong weapons. He’s teched all the way to Colossi and is producing them, and is STILL investing in Stalkers. Had that force been composed of an equivalent amount of resources of Immortals and Zealots, things would have been far different, as would the other two late-game battles in which Lee’s unit mix really just told against him.

   This battle, and the ongoing nuke harass (wow, it felt REALLY REALLY weird to type that) illustrate my former point; Lee left his high ground open to harass and Kim went STRAIGHT for it, both in the early game and during the endgame. A few sparing defenses up there and that Ghost would have had a much worse time of it, as would his getaway Medevac.

   It also seems like Lee was having a bit of trouble controlling his High Templar; check out 16.05 and 16.50 to 16.55; you see Templar’s that clearly have the energy to be doing psi storms wander right through the Protoss lines and get blown up, being completely ineffective. My best guess is that he tried to psi storm ground and misjudged, leading the Templar to try its level best to manage to carry out orders. Couldn’t say; but at that point a few more psi storms wouldn’t have made a big difference.

   I’ve dumped on Lee a lot here, and I should say that it is to his credit that the game could still very very easily have gone his way; he blew himself a huge opening at one point with massive potential for exploitation. It was just, sadly, not to be.

   Unit-wise, I like what I’m seeing. The High Templar is as High Templar-y as ever. The Planetary Fortress is a DAMN sweet Command Center upgrade, even considering the opportunity cost; by your third expo or so you don’t NEED another Orbital Command.

   I have concerns that the Thor may be overpowered. It’s a heavy ground assault AND counter-air unit; its presence in a Terran army SIMULTANEOUSLY provides a hard counter to Void Rays and Carriers and provides significant striking power on the ground. That seems like a lot for just one unit to be doing. That said, without it the Terrans are forced to rely on the Viking to hard-counter air, which may not be enough on its lonesome. So I dunno.

   It would be nice to see a game that goes long in one of these BRs sometime, gets into the real end-game; Carriers, Battlecruisers, Ultras, Motherships, etc. I suspect the next BR will feature the Zerg again, and that they’ll produce their sexy units.

   Good BR all told. Beta now, plz?

4. Chef — October 22, 2009 @ 2:45 am
   

   tl;dr Mercutio
   awesome br

5. The Lost Firebat — October 22, 2009 @ 4:53 am
   

   tl but I did read. Wow, that was some analysis. Most of it was said more succintly in the post though, no?

6. Arthur Santana — October 22, 2009 @ 5:52 am
   

   I guess the Thors’ AA is kinda like Corsairs’ AA. It’s not high damage per se, but does splash. If I’m right, it wouldn’t be a counter to Carriers and Void Rays, it would be a counter to Mutalisks.

7. Yokelassence — October 22, 2009 @ 9:38 pm
   

   If the Thors are overpowered I am sure Lee would have struggled with them much more than he did. Instead he seemed to be able to take down Thors as quickly as Kim could take down Colossi using just Stalkers and Sci-storm.

   If he used Immortals instead of Stalkers then the Thors would have been even more short-lived.

8. George — October 23, 2009 @ 3:06 am
   

   The only problem was that it looked like it’s sufficient to just build Thors and Marauders and get away with anything. A core army that covers almost all your bases (or even all of them in many situations).

9. Agehn — October 23, 2009 @ 8:26 am
   

   Those Thors and Marauders looked incredibly badass on the field against weak counters. I can’t wait to get into some intense, fast-paced battles like this one. Jerry Bruckheimer would probably want to shoot a movie starring that Ghost if he saw this BR.

10. Mercutio — October 24, 2009 @ 8:47 am
    

    You know, that comment didn’t SEEM as long as it ended up BEING when I was typing it out. I was trying to thoroughly justify myself and I guess I went overboard. I should have taken it to the forums really. I apologize for the block ‘o text.

    George – I disagree, actually. The Thors and Marauders were strong… against an army primarily composed of WEAK counters. That’s as it should be. As has been said, if the Protoss army had been Zealots/Immortals instead of Stalkers/Colossi, I feel a far different battle would have emerged.

    Yokelassence – I feel that the Thor’s MAY (stress the may) be overpowered not so much because of how they preform versus other ground units, which seems to be in a good place, but because they’re also an AA unit. This means they can fulfill their job as a heavy ground assault unit (possibly even COMPLETELY obviating the need for siege tanks) while SIMULTANEOUSLY keeping mutas and such off your back. That’s a lot more potent than a Goliath ever was.

11. Yokelassence — October 24, 2009 @ 8:02 pm
    

    I see. Mind you, Thors cost much more than Goliath’s and Tanks combined. David Kim could only have so many on the field at once. He stuck with Siege tanks for the rest of his army so it looks like tanks were not totally pointless for frontal assault.

12. Björne — November 9, 2009 @ 11:46 am
    

    It has to be said…

    Nerf David Kim!

13. Ben — November 10, 2009 @ 2:12 pm
    

    Ghost ride the medivac

14. Mike — December 9, 2009 @ 10:35 am
    

    Al jugador protoss se le olvida q tenia y podia hacer dark templar, un ataque con dark templar a una base terran desprotegida hubiera retrasado suficiente para reordenarse con unidades como inmortales y stalkers, ademas tenia q haber puesto observers en la partes altas de su base, por si un ghost se filtraba a hacer daño q al final lo hizo, se defendio con lo q pudo y retraso al terran pero al final pago por su falta de prevision y estrategia