Tuesday, August 17, 2010

8. 1v1 Strategies

Hey Guys, thought I would list some great strategy threads and guides for easy access in the various different matchups to make it easier on you guys laddering hard. These have all helped me a lot in my matchups, Hope you find some of them useful. You can find most of these in the links section, but I thought I'd put them all together to save the trouble of searching for the best ones.

PvT
Grial's PvT Stlaker-Voidray- Worked for me pretty well against players of equal skill level (~500 Diamond)
kcdc's PvT FE- Fast expand build supposedly works well against 1/1/1 build

PvP
HuK and Whiplash explain PvP - HuK is the best NA (North American) Protoss bar none. Interesting and very helpful guide

PvZ
4Gate Tutorial by HD - I find this build especially strong against Zerg, I disagree that it lets you beat better players, because most players even at high-platinum to low-diamond handle it fairly easily (especially T and P) but I find that it may let you beat higher skilled Zerg opponents.
Nonys phoenix build PvZ- Great build to exploits Zergs lack of anti air early game.

TvT
Day9 on TvT


TvP
Silver vs HuK Marine Marauder Tanks- very deadly vs Protoss
Brat_OK MM Ghost Push - This push is fucking deadly vs P

TvZ
TLO's TvZ play - I think TLOs TvZ is very strong indeed.. Also go to Teamliquid's SC2 Strategy section and listen to what like 90% of Z players complain about and just do that :)
Surviving the Baneling Bust

ZvT
Artosis "Suave" ZvT - Zergling, Baneling, Muta with Infestors seems to become pretty standard. Credit this guy. Infestors are sooo underused its not even funny. 
Baneling Bust: Breaking the Terran doors - Another HD tutorial for Zerg.

 ZvP 
Survive the 4 Gate


ZvZ
Day9 ZvZ Baneling/Zergling



If you have any good guides that have really helped you, I'd be interested to see them also.
 8/17/2010 

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

7. The Importance of Scouting

Playing a lot of melee custom games, a common mistake I see amongst newer players is the lack of scouting they employ throughout the game. I wanted to go through some basics methods for scouting as each of the 3 races. It is extremely important that you scout and be aware of what your opponent is planning to do and respond accordingly. Games at the highest level of play are often won/lost due to insufficient scouting and/or map awareness.

Initial Scout- All Races
Around 9-12 supply you should almost always send a worker (SCV, Drone, Probe) to go scout your opponents base to get a basic feel of what's going on. This is very helpful in determining what you will build depending on what information you gather. Usually you want to keep your worker shift+moving around the base in a circular motion as long as possible. Against Protoss you can keep it in there before the first Stalker comes out. Against Zerg, try to get your worker out before the first zerglings are out. Against Terran you can usually keep him there until the first marine is out. After the initial scout I usually take my worker to one of the Xel'Naga watch towers for some recon. Even after the initial scout, you could always risk sacrificing a worker to poke around your opponents base and see what's going on. It's often worth it, especially versus Zerg due to it being damn near impossible to wall off early game. Most Terran and Protoss players seem to have an easier time denying this method however.

What to make of your initial scout- When you keep playing, you will notice patterns occur when your opponents are going certain builds. For example if by the time you get to your Z opponents base, his spawning pool is already done and he has 3 eggs morphing in, 9/10 times he built his spawning pool before 10 and is now going to be rallying those 6 zerglings to the front of your base. If your T opponent has 2 gas up and is throwing down a reactor, be ready for Reapers, Banshees (or Both) , quick Tanks etc. If your P opponent has built 2 gateways and is chronoboosting his initial one as soon as it spawns, get ready for 2-gate pressure. I think the best advice is to just pay attention to what your opponent is getting and where he places his buildings and then see what comes out of it. Also go to Teamliquid.net and check out the 'Liquipedia' build orders and familiarize yourself with them. As you keep playing you will start to see patterns in the build orders. 

Protoss
I feel like Protoss has less early-mid game scouting options than the other 2 races. Terrans have scan and delayed reapers, Zerg have Overlord spotting and Zergling mobility on their side, Protoss can Hallucinate a Phoenix, but it takes a while to research so by the time it comes up because you would almost always want to get it after warpgate.. You should have observers around the same time. Once Protoss have observers, I feel it more than makes up for their lack of early game scouting options. Often when I play PvT I poke up his ramp with my army to see what I can see. You can tell a lot by what units he has already. For example, if he has a bunch of Marauders and a couple of marines, he may be going a 3rax timing push with stim and concusive shells. This composition might be vulnerable to voidray harass. If he has a few marines and a factory coming up, he could be going 1/1/1 build or be going a MM+Tank build. etc. It's dangerous poking your army up a ramp in PvP because of Forcefields. PvP has often been described of having a Roshambo type quality due to the fact that in many cases if a player goes for a quick observer to scout, he can sometimes be overpowered by a 4gate build. If a player goes 4 gate, he gets countered by a Dark Templar build etc. I think this is due to a lack of early scouting options on both sides. PvZ I like to hide my probe somewhere outside their base after the initial scout and run in maybe a minute or 2 later to see whats going on, a lot of zergs place their armys at the top of the ramp, but many times they are being active with their army.. doing things like harassing, destroying destructable rocks etc. Again once you get your observer out it becomes pretty easy to see what your opponent is up to and where his army is.

Terran
To me, Terran has a lot of early-mid game options in terms of scouting. My favorite is the semi-delayed reaper. It works pretty well in all matchups and on most maps. All you have to do is just skip one in your normal build order and instead make a sacrificial reaper to run circles around the opponents base and maybe earn his keep by killing a few enemy workers in the process. It's important however that you remember that the primary function of this 'delayed reaper' is to gather intel, not worker kills. As the game goes on however, and especially if you keep sending reapers to scout his base, A good player will start to deny these scouts. Scan is also a very viable option for scouting, however I have heard that one Mule mines ~300 minerals in its lifetime so in many cases I'd rather sacrifice a Reaper (50/50) to get the job done instead. Also it's sometimes nice to save a scan for emergencies, for instance if your P enemy hid his DT tech somewhere ridiculous like at the corner of a 4 player map. Another great and underutilized method of scouting is the Sensor Tower. The Sensor Tower reveals enemy movement in a pretty large area, it's especially useful If you're going for Siege Tanks because it prevents you from getting caught out of siege mode or out of position.

Zerg
Early-Mid game one of the great things you can do with Zerg is place overlord 'spotters' on high ground to detect enemy movement or incoming proxy (buildings built in close 'proximity' to your base) cheese. Zerglings are also great sacrificial scouts, costing 50 minerals for 2 of them and moving slightly faster than probes. Many good players place their first 2 or so Zerglings at Xel'naga watch towers asap and often catch their opponents workers there. Good Zerg players will also sacrifice an Overlord to get a good idea of what the enemy is doing before he has an Overseer. Once you do have an Overseer, they make excellent scouts (especially with the speed upgrade. You can also spawn changelings which turn into an enemy Zealot , Marine or Zergling depending on the opponents race and have it follow his army around. In addition to all these options, A Zerg player can see wherever his creep is, so a defining feature of many pro Zerg players is constant spreading of creep 'highway' in all directions.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

6. Sentry/Forcefield Use

Hey Guys, I thought I'd write a post about The Protoss Sentry. The Sentry is a support unit created out of the Gateway or Warpgate. It requires a Cybernetics Core to be built and requires 50 minerals and 100 Gas. I often build Sentries early so they have time to charge by the time i engage.

The bread and butter skill of the Sentry and arguably Protoss  race as a whole is Forcefield. The spell basically creates a dome of energy that enemy units cannot pass through over ground. (However, Massive units such as Colossus, Ultralisks and Thors destroy forcefields upon coming into contact with them.) First I'll go into some ways the spell can be used.

Forcefielding the Ramp-  Using a forcefield on a ramp is a great way to cut an army in half. If an enemy army is in the process of moving up or down a ramp, use forcefield directly in the middle to effectively cut his forces in two. This technique is especially effective against players who try to push up your ramp early game. It is also good for containing a player in his base. Many times I've had a single corsair harass a zergs overseers in his main to draw his army back there.. Moved my army to his natural.. Forcefield his ramp and leave his forces stuck in his Main while I killed his natural and all of the drones there.

Versus Zerglings- Zerglings thrive on being able to surround the enemy units. Use your forcefields to create less surface area for the zerglings to attack by placing forcefields around your army so that there is no space for them to attack. This makes dealing with zergling heavy armys much, much easier.

Versus units with shorter range- You can make a wall that allows your longer range units to attack them without being attacked back. For example Stalker vs. Marine you create a make shift wall at a choke point move your Stalkers out of the Marines range and go back to attack them. Forcefields work especially well with Colossi in play. Placing barriers between the enemy force and the colossi allows the colossi to further take advantage of their extremely long range because the enemy force either has to funnel throught he small cracks in your wall or cannot get through entirely to do damage.

Creating a Tighter Choke Point- This is very effective when the enemy is a lot more 'melee heavy' in his army composition. What you want to do is create a 'funnel' so that not all of his melee units can be doing dps but all of your range units are dealing damage. Most of the time enemy players will retreat in this situation in which case you can make another wall to slow their escape and further maximize the amount of damage you're inflicting.

Disrupting Your Opponents Concave- I'm sure you've noticed that most fights between ranged units result in a sort of concave or semi-circle shape in the armies, In this case forcefields can be used to disrupt this formation and force your opponents forces to reposition themselves. Just place the forcefields right in the middle of his lines. A little trick I've been experimenting with is when the opponent retreats from the forcefielded position, place on more forcefield on top of the other 2 forming upside down V's, or a checkerboard.

  X  X        (place these when he may retreat)
X  X  X     (place these initially to break up the Concave)

There's really unlimited ways to use forcefields, but these are just a few that I try and use regularly. Also note that you should try to get as much of your army as possible under your GS (Guardian Shield) so you have more forcefields to use.

Some things to note about Sentries
Sentries have 40hp and 40 shields and die fairly quickly. Sentries have a range of 5, meaning they can be placed in front of Stalkers and behind Zealots for a 'Triple Layer' of damage. They do almost as much DPS to light units as a Stalker, but have trouble killing armored units. A Sentry has 200 energy meaning you can get off 4 forcefields off of one fully charged Sentry (Or 2 and 1 GS). Typically you want to have 4-6 sentrys in your army, Although some top level Protoss such as HuK preffer having more. Good Luck, Have Fun guys :)

8/4/2010

Thursday, July 29, 2010

5. My Favorite Starcraft 2 Sites (Links)


Day9 Daily Archives 

“High level commentary on competitive Starcraft matches from an 11-year veteran and top player. Day[9] has been rated A+/A on ICCUP/PGT on multiple accounts over multiple seasons, has qualified for the WCG USA finals 7 times, has qualified for the WCG Grand Finals 3 times, and won the Pan American Championship in 2007. In Starcraft 2 Day[9] is a top rated diamond player as random.” 
-Daily tutorials, tournament casts and high level analysis 5 Days a Week! This guy really helped my game, he's also pretty funny.


GosuGamers 

“GosuGamers is a computer game community with 50,000 visits per day. The community, which has existed since 2002, focus on high quality eSport news and user created materials for the best-selling games by Blizzard Entertainment: StarCraft and WarCraft.”
-Gosugamers is where I go to check out replays. It’s cool cause you can check them out at your own pace and look anywhere you want unlike a cast. You can also check the overall rankings of the top players in the world. Get replays of the best/ your favorite player and learn from their build orders, strategies and tactics. What more could you want!

HD and Husky Starcraft 

“Meet HDstarcraft and HuskyStarcraft, or just HD and Husky, two dudes in their twenties who voice commentate (think football announcers) over recorded rounds of the computer game Starcraft 2. If you know nothing about Starcraft it matters little, these two guys are killing it without being mainstream. Nearly every video of a game that either commentates will rack up at least 75,000 views. If a game runs longer, more than 10 minutes say, it will get those 75,000 views per installment. A 40 minute game can blow past 300,000 views.” -TheNextWeb.com
- These guys are very entertaining, I always check up on these guys at least once a week.

Starcraft 2 Unit Stats
"Anything and everything you need to know about any units or structures for any race"- www.starcraft-source.com


TeamLiquid

AKA: Teamliquid.net or TL.net. A pro-gaming site dedicated to Starcraft and the Korean professional scene. Up-to-date, comprehensive, and dedicated coverage of the OSL, MSL, Proleague, and more with VOD's, replays and strategy discussion. Founder of one the largest foreign SC tournaments, the Razer TSL with over $10k dollars in prize money.
-The Forum of choice for the Starcraft 2 Gamer. Their strategy section is very helpful. 


7-29-2010

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

4. New Player Help

Since it's the first day of retail, and I've been playing against some new players who haven't quite got the hang of the game, I thought I'd help out and post a few some tips, tricks and a few build orders to help you guys out. I'll start out with some standard all purpose build orders for each race.

(What the build orders mean- When you start out you have 6 probes/scvs/drones, keep pumping them until you have the first number then build that.. For instance the Protoss standard would be keep pumping probes til you are at 9 supply then build a Pylon as the 9th probe is being made.. Then keep pumping probes again and while the 12th probe is being made, make a Gateway)

 Protoss 9/12
9- Pylon
-Chronoboost Nexus as Pylon completes
12- Gateway
-Chronoboost Nexus as the first wears off
14- Assimilator
16- Pylon
16- Cybernetics Core

Then continue building probes.. start building zealots when the gateway finishes,  adding on more gateways (or robo facilities or stargates as the situation dictates) as you have excess money. You usually want to expand when you have the advantage in army.
Note: A fully saturated mineral field can support about 4 gateways/warpgates


IdrA's Opener (Zerg)
9- Overlord
14- Spawning Pool
15- Hatchery at natural expansion
16- Queen
16- Extractor
18- Overlord

Then produce as many Drones as you can get away with. This build is fairly weak to cheesey all in rushes like a 6-pool zergling rush, but with scouting you should be okay if you scout. You may want to alter the build if you suspect being harassed early by getting Zerglings instead of Drones after the spawning pool comes out.


Terran 1/1/1 Build
10- Supply Depot
12- Barracks
13- Refinery
15- Orbital Command
Marine+ 2nd Refinery
16- Supply Depot
Optional: reactor or tech lab on barracks
@100 Gas get factory

When Factory completes get starport
The beauty of this build is that it allows you to quickly get one of each unit producing structure in the terran arsenal, hence the name. It allows you to quickly respond with whatever composition you need. Add on more unit producing structures as the situation dictates.


Tips and Tricks for new players

1. Scout early and often- Usually around 9-12 supply you'll want to send a worker to go check out the enemy base, try to keep tabs on what he is building and get a feel for what composition you need to make.

2. Don't forget to build workers!- I've seen a lot of new players with resources score half of what it should be on one base. Pretty much the only time you want to cut making workers is when you're gearing up for a push, cheesing or are already saturated. Other than that ALWAYS MAKE WORKERS. A good practice is to keep your nexus/hatchery/command center on a hotkey

3.  Micro. Pay attention to things like choke points, ramps and open areas and try to realize what position it would benefit your army to fight from. Turn health bars on and micro dying units and try to save them. You'd be surprised how often you can win an uneven battle by microing.

4. Use rally points.. Rally your Nexus/Command Center/Hatchery (Orange Line) to your mineral field and the drones will automatically start mining.During a push Rally your unit producing structures (White Line for Hatchery) to your army so they automatically start heading toward them and group up.

5. Don't put all your units in one control group. I usually put Melee units in 1, Range units in 2 and Casters in 3 Air Units or Special Units like Warp Prisms I usually put in 0. Put your buildings in groups, for instance I put my Barracks as 4, Factories as 5 and Starports as 6 when playing Terran. But do what works for you.

6. Watch your replays when you lose. Try to pinpoint the exact time you started to lose and why

7. Play often and play to get better. Doing the same exact thing and expecting different results is insanity - Albert Einstein. Try to experiment and see what builds, unit compositions etc. work in what situations. Don't just do the same exact thing every game in every situation.

8. Don't be afraid to lose. When you say to yourself, If I attack I may lose, just try it out if you aren't sure. Losing is part of learning and getting better. After awhile you will KNOW if you will lose or win with the attack.

9. Try to control Xel'Naga watch towers. The extra vision is SO good.

10. Spend ALL of your rescources. Having high mineral count doesn't make you good, you want to stay as close to zero as possible while continuing to produce workers.

7/27/10

Monday, July 26, 2010

3. Which Race Is The Strongest?

For a totally new player with minimal or no RTS experience, I think the best advice is to pick the race that you like most or seems the coolest and play it until you get the feel of the game, you will enjoy the game more if you’re playing the way YOU like. Don’t worry about which is the ‘Strongest’ race, Because in the end Blizzard will make the game as humanly possible. Or so we can hope :)

Say you don’t care how the race looks right? You’re more of a performance type of guy or gal. I can give you some advice in that case too. If you’ve played some RTS games, I think the race that would feel most familiar to you would be Terran, because they have a sort of typical playstyle when compared to other games on the market that would make sense to you. Many consider terran the most versatile race because ALL of their units are viable in high level play. If you’ve played games like DoTA, Warcraft 3, HoN (games that are more about micro managing units and not too heavy on macro) you may feel comfortable with Protoss. Protoss armies rely heavily on spell placement and micro management. If you like ‘Massing’ in RTS games, Zerg may be for you. Zerg typically has the easiest time securing additional bases on most maps than any race, they are the most macro intensive of the 3 races taking a lot of APM (actions per minute) to manage their bases. Zerg units die quickly but are easily replenished.

Protoss (Aggression, Powerful spells) 
+ Have shields that quickly regenerate
+Observers are a great scout once you get them
+Forcefields and Storms when well placed and especially when your army is in a good position in relation to your enemies are devestating
+Warpgates allow units to be warped in anywhere there is a pylon or warp prism.
+Chrono boost allows for the player to speed up unit production and upgrades (Often used for aggressive timing pushes)
+Gateway units are very powerful (cost for cost vs other tier one units)
+Buildings warp themselves into play allowing the probe to do other tasks during it’s construction

-hard to scout early game (terran gets scan, zerg gets overlord)
-lack of versatility outside of gateway builds
-Units are expensive
-Extremely weak to EMP


Zerg (Highly Mobile, Overwhelming) 
+Reactionary macro- able to devote all production to one type of unit if need be making them very adaptable when responding to enemy compositions. Because all units come from the hatch and hatcherys can build many units at once
+ Highly mobile, especially with creep tumors spread, nydus worm and deathdrop options
+Units are easily replenished
+”Masses” the quickest of the three
+ Spine Crawlers are able to uproot and change positions
+Land units have the ability to burrow underground becoming invisible
+Units heal slowly on creep and gain 30% movement speed on creep

-proxy strategy or hiding tech is difficult
-drones lost when creating buildings
-units are fragile and die quite easily
-diffucult to defend against air without static defense because hydralisk is a tier 2 unit

Terran (Defensive Prowess, Versatility) 
+Can build structures anywhere
+Can repair vehicles and buildings with SCVs
+Buildings can lift off the ground
+Supply Depots can submerge under ground
+MULES are the easiest of the new ‘Macro Skills’ to use
+ALL of their units are viable In high level play
+Bunkers can be salvaged for their full worth
+Two separate VIABLE ground tech paths MMM ball and Mech
+A siege tank “death push” is almost impossible to beat head on

-Buildings burn to the ground if low health
-Siege tank compositions (Arguably Terrans bread and butter unit) makes their armies fairly immobile
-MMM balls are weak to any form of AOE
-Difficult to use both Factory (Mech) and Barracks (MM) Units effectively, many times Terrans will overuse their versatility and leave themselves a little weak in one area. 

For all of you saying to yourselves "This post was a rip off, I want to know what the strongest race is!" I would Again Strongly suggest you to play the race you LIKE. That being said.. If I had to pick one.. I'd say Terran is currently the most Overpowered Race. I know I'm going to get a lot of shit for this but remember I said 'If I had to pick one'. Honestly imbalance can only be decided at the highest level after months of programmers testing it out. 

Many extremely high level SC2 players have also hinted at Terran being OP

Tester "Terran is the Strongest Race"  (6:50)- Tester is often regarded as the best player in the world currently.  This video is fairly old (2 months) and there has been a mech nerf since then. I haven't of him changing his stance on any of the sites I've visited.

Idra "I might switch to Terran, Just because they're so good" (Start watching @ :50 til around 2:30)- Idra is widely regarded as the best Zerg playing SC2 currently.

There have been numerous posts on Teamliquid.net regarding Terran being OP. Here's One such poll off the top of my head.
Starcraft 2 Ladder Rankings - You might argue that many of the top players are Protoss and Zerg on ladder, but I would remind you that ladder isn't the highest level of play. Most of that happens in tournament LANs.


BTW: You guys HAVE to check out this new Iron Maiden video.. It's the title song off their new upcoming album The Final Frontier. I had to post it because it has kind of a Sci Fi theme to it and the song is just plain awesome!
THE FINAL FRONTIER

7/26/2010









Saturday, July 24, 2010

2. A Quick Guide To Upgrade Your Rig For SC2




The system requirements for Starcraft 2 have been out for awhile now, but just in case you need a quick reference to them I'll repost them here.

PC Minimum System Requirements*:
· Windows® XP/Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 (Updated with the latest Service Packs) with DirectX® 9.0c
· 2.6 GHz Pentium® IV or equivalent AMD Athlon® processor
· 128 MB PCIe NVIDIA® GeForce® 6600 GT or ATI Radeon® 9800 PRO video card or better
· 12 GB available HD space
· 1 GB RAM (1.5 GB required for Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 users)
· DVD-ROM drive
· Broadband Internet connection
· 1024X720 minimum display resolution

PC Recommended Specifications:
· Windows Vista®/Windows® 7
· Dual Core 2.4Ghz Processor
· 2 GB RAM
· 512 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better
*Note: Due to potential programming changes, the Minimum System Requirements for this game may change over time.

Mac Minimum System Requirements:
· Mac® OS X 10.5.8, 10.6.2 or newe
· Intel® Processor
· NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT or ATI Radeon® X1600 or better
· 12 GB available HD space
· 2 GB Ram
· DVD-ROM drive
· Broadband Internet connection
· 1024X720 minimum display resolution

Mac Recommended Specifications:
· Intel® Core 2 Duo processor
· 4 GB system RAM
· NVIDIA® GeForce® 9600M GT or ATI Radeon® HD 4670 or better

For a brand new game, the system requirements are fairly low. Any rig built within the last 5 years or so SHOULD be able to run it. My brother was running SC2 fine on low settings on a Pentium 4 2.0 ghz cpu (Well below the system requirements) with some crappy FX 5600 I think it was . It worked great in 1v1 matches on all low settings until you got upwards of 150+ supply at which point it was still very playable but a little choppy. My main rig was using an 88000gts 320mb and a E6400 Duo core 2.14 ghz cpu, The default settings for the gpu were all damn near ultra!. It was capable of running everything on high-ultra in 1v1 matches without being choppy. I never really pushed it in 2v2+ because I was afraid of it overheating, an issue I had when playing Heroes of Newerth. Most people on hardware forums I've visited say that 4GB of RAM is the sweet spot for most gaming rigs nowadays, so keep that in mind. Also, I'm not a hardware nut, I'm just sharing my experiences with you to save you the trouble of registering and posting in tech support forums or the like. Hope I help at least someone. :-)

For all the people who know their computer won't run SC2 but are still trying to play or are just generally trying to upgrade theirs, I thought I'd link some useful articles from tomshardware.com. This site has been really useful while I was helping my brother upgrade his PC to run SC2 at a higher level.

Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart

Best Graphics Cards for the money- July 2010

Best Gaming CPUs for the money- July 2010

The GPU and CPU are the most important parts of your computer so I'll just link these, but definitely check this site out for any advice on updating your rig.

Oh, and for those of you who still run 2002ish era pentium 4 rigs and on an extremely tight budget, you can get a 3.0ghz cpu for around $40 from various sites and a graphics card capable of running SC2 on low settings for around $40 as well. 8400gs just for example. My secondary rig uses a radeon 4650 which was $55, I could have gotten a better gpu, but my secondary rig is a Vostro 220s i got for cheap and only has a 250w power supply. Nice thing about this card is that it's low profile too and fits in a slim case.

7/24/2010

Friday, July 23, 2010

1. SC2 almost out! Checkout the countdown party!

Hey Guys, I'm just trying to stay sane before the release of SC 2. Luckily there's been a lot of interesting games being casted in the Razer King of the Beta tournament which showcases some of the best players duking it out for the title of "KING OF THE BETA". If you guys are interested in checking out the matches from this tournament go to the 'Day9 Daily Archives' Link and check them out.

If you guys are new to Starcraft 2 you probably don't know about Day9, the commentator on this tournament. He's a high level player and is very well respected in the SC2 community, he does daily tutorials or commentaries that will really help your game. Anyways, he's hosting a livestream on his website to countdown the 'birthday' of SC2. It's an actual event that you can attend as well.

You can buy tickets here.

If you can't make it you can always watch it here

I know it sounds lame watching a party, but actually they're going to be showing some high level match ups.. Including the finals and grand finals of the Razer King of the Beta tournament.

7/23/2010