Hello! Last weekend me and a friend decided to work on a micro bot to push the potential of the in-game units to the limits. As of today, we've implemented two common scenarios: bum rushing siege tanks with zerglings, and splitting Marines. Our bot is now capable of : 40 speed banelings vs. 20 marines (no marines lost) 20 spread siege tanks vs. 100 zerglings (all tanks dead, 19 zergling survivors) To liven things up we made videos with footage using the bot, combined with some decent music and scenes from GSL. Here's the scenarios:

Glitch

While messing around in unit tester I noticed that building a lot of nydus worms (20 for me) will cause Starcraft 2 to crash. I don't mean lag. I mean actually quit and go into the error report menu. At first I thought it was just the unit tester that was the problem but I tried this glitch on the standard blizzard maps (Shakuras Platou and Blistering Sands) and it had the same effect. So far i had 4 of my friends try this. Their computer crashed too lol. They told me that their SC2 quit after 16, 18, 23 and 19 worms. Another interesting thing about this is that you don't have to be the person building the worms to make another person go to the error report menu. *building a lot of nydus networks will also cause SC2 to crash Feel free to try this and post your results here. (its easiest on the fastest maps possible) Edit: This bug has been around since the beta

Overview

This is a 1 base roach build order

Goal

To bust through a wall and decimate the opponent's mineral line to get ahead economically or even out, considering the heavy early investment into army.

Build Order

• 9/10 Overlord
• (scout with 10th)
• 13/18 Spawning Pool
• 15/18 Extractor (+3 Drones asap)
• 16/18 Roach Warren
• 15/18 Queen
• 17/18 2 Overlords (resist the urge to make that one drone; you need all larvae for 8 roaches)
• @100% Queen injects larvae (inject twice, then creep tumor 3rd time around. You don't have the minerals to use larvae while getting hatch and lair)
• @100% Roach Warren: 3 Roaches, send to choke ASAP.
• @Larvae Pop: 5 more Roaches (move out to pressure when finished)
• 33/34 Overlord
• @ 100 : Metabolic Boost
• @Larvae Pop: make 7 pairs of Zerglings and rally to Roaches (this leaves just enough minerals for Lair on 100 gas)
• @ 100 : Lair
• @ ~200 minerals: send out drone to make Hatchery
• pump drones and overlords
• get Extractors depending on your lair tech plan.

Execution

• The way to attack is by moving your 8 roaches up the ramp and sniping a pylon or a supply depot then allowing your lings to run in. If you manage to destroy the garrison of troops behind the wall, leave a few roaches there to prevent any sneaking out and send the rest to the mineral line to kill as many drones as possible. But it is important to keep in mind macroing and making a metric buttload of drones is more important than controlling your units at this point, since the units have paid for themselves already. Your economic advantage is what wins you the game usually.

Note: This build does cut quite a few drones early on, so if you don't think you can break the ramp, preserve your units, and retreat to set up to defense at your natural. If you commit to the attack and it fails you will be hard-pressed to make enough units to defend and still have an economy.

Adaptation

You can opt to skip zergling speed and instead get a faster lair, but any follow ups with speedlings will not be so "speedy"

]Maps

Pro features

When to do this build:

• 2 player maps
  • Steppes of War
  • Blistering sands (you can knock at the back door)
  • Xel-Naga Caverns
• Your opponent is walling in and teching (this includes a fast 4-gate that cuts sentries and stalkers early on)
• Your opponent is 2-gateing (see above) on close positions (also see above)

Con features

When not to do this build :

• Your opponent is getting sizable army early on of sentries and stalkers or 3-raxing (You can sometimes do it vs a marine heavy 3 rax)
• If your opponent is 2-gating defend first then counter (This build is very 2-gate safe)
• You are on Scrap Station, Desert Oasis (Seriously, who hasn't thumbed down this one?), Kulas Ravine, or Delta Quadrant vs T (At least I have had little luck with it)
• They are going Speed Reaper

Tree tag

Hello everyone. I will be writing about my custom map in SC2, Tree tag. Its almost a clone of the Warcraft 3 map of the same name. I wanted to port it because it was such a great map. 

Description:
Terrans are coming to invade your Taldarim homeworld. You must prepare defences as a probe and hide until your mothership arrives to fend off the attack.
Protoss players start with a Probe which can summon a variety of structures.

Terrans: You start with an Odin/Thor/Loki. Your task is to kill off all the probes so you can claim the Terrazine Gas on the planet. 

Captured/Dead probes are placed in the middle of the map. They can be rescued by a team mate. 
Terrans can win the game by capturing all probes.

Search Tree tag Alpha in NA or SEA server to play this map.


Feedback is much appreciated.

Patch 1.2 Coming soon?

Some notes from Justin Bowder, the lead for Starcraft 2.

The balance changes in our next patch will primarily focus on improving the zerg.

Here are a few of the changes we currently have planned: 

•    We're increasing roach range. This will allow roaches to be more effective in large groups, giving the zerg more options in the mid to end game.

•    Fungal Growth will now prevent Blink, which will give zerg a way to stop endlessly Blinking stalkers which can be very challenging to deal with in large numbers.

•    The Barracks are going to require a Supply Depot, which will impact a lot of early terran reaper pushes.

•    The reaper speed upgrade will require the Factory, which is meant to weaken a lot of the early terran reaper attacks that dominate so many matches, especially in team games.

•    We're making a number of increases to the health of zerg buildings, which will make the very vulnerable zerg technology structures more resistant to raids.  We don't expect these hit point changes to have a super significant impact on the game, but the current numbers felt way too low.

From these changes, if they are all implemented, I think reapers would be useless, unless they make another use for them.