Tactical Tuesday: Destiny is better than you or me
Long live the queen.
So, I’ve been practicing Starcraft 2, and I think I’m well on my way to understanding the game. Here are some of the most important lessons I’ve learned so far:
- I will never be good at this game.
- I will never win a single match in this game.
- Destiny exists to show me that which I will never be.
Destiny is a professional SC2 player who also hosts a popular stream of himself playing the game, that is, a stream of him humiliating players who are themselves far better than I could ever dream of being.
Recently, Destiny outdid himself:
He showed the world that he could win a series of games using only Zerg queens.
If you don’t know, the queen is a unit whose job is usually to putter around your base, shitting out larva, or something. It’s not a unit that you would ever use to attack, much less a unit that would compete with an entire army. And yet, Destiny is Destiny.
According to the commentary accompanying the videos, Destiny did this in order to make the point that the mechanics of efficiently managing your economy and micromanaging your attack are far more important to winning games of Starcraft than having a sound strategy with the perfect units. All I took from the lesson was a crippling blow to my self-esteem and an even more crippling therapy bill. I dream of Zerg queen rushes every night, and wake up screaming. This will be my life forever.
You, however, should watch all the videos! You’ll like them. You’ll be fine.
This is a playlist of all Destiny’s Queen-only games.
A few notes from WiNG
As someone with slightly more Starcraft 2 experience than Space Hamlet,* I’d like to drop in some additional thoughts about Destiny’s Queen-only gameplay. Right off the bat, the Queen is the perfect unit for massing, though perhaps not obviously. Yes, it’s hideously slow and it’s generally fairly low on the damage-output scale, but it does have several things going for it:
- The Queen unit can attack both ground and air from a considerable range
- The Queen is one of the lowest tech units in the game, meaning all extra resources can be used on upgrades and defense
- The Queen, though slow, can produce creep, which speeds it up to a reasonable gait
- The Queen can heal other units, including other Queens. Thus a large swarm of Queens, if properly micro-controlled, will be extremely hearty
- Zerg can easily produce mobile detection, rendering threats like Banshee harassment or burrowed Roaches null
All things considered, producing only one unit is still a large handicap, especially since it invite the opponent to hard counter your build. A Protoss player with a large number of Sentries and Colossi could use Force Fields to deny Queen aggression while whittling them away. A troop of cloaked Ghosts could quickly dispatch Queen energy and use Snipe to destroy detection-bearing Overseers. And of course, there’s always Banelings.
That said, Destiny certainly proved his point. He relied on tight control, good scouting, and excellent economic development to continually produce more Queens. And more. And more.
*Rest assured, I’m still quite terrible.
I watched the videos and I saw things moving around, do I win at Starcraft yet?
No, because you must still construct additional Pylons.
NOT ENOUGH MINERALS
Wow…as I watched dat micro and general skill of his, I jizzed a little spy juice into my pants, then I cried, because I will never be even half as good.
Augh. So, I want to play this game, but I don’t even own it, and stuff like this keeps me from wanting to start. It looks fun, but I have no idea what they’re saying or doing. I’m pretty intelligent (opinion, obviously), but just don’t know enough about the way the game functions to even have a starting point. Still, fun videos.
It’s definitely not easy to get into, but there are actually a lot of very bad players on there just like you and me, and the matchmaking generally works pretty well. Moreover, there are plenty of helpful resources for new players!