Hate you. SO MUCH.
We play Terrans. Happily, in most cases. We like the variety of options available to us, and can’t help but enjoy the feeling of perennial under-dogginess. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, or at least more apt to nerd-rage after losing a match. Our extra strength also lets us flip chairs and break dog kennels. We’re not kidding.
Anyway…
With the advent of the newest patch and server wipe, we’ve landed ourselves a spot in the Silver league, which is really just the Bronze league in a sexy dress. We know this, and everyone else knows this, but we still feel cooler. We are cooler. Our moms totally say so. Plus, the Silver league will totally go out with us. Did you see that dress?
Despite our newfound sideways “upgrade”, we still get pwned. A lot. Our biggest issue is with Protoss opponents, who despite the high cost of their units, always seem to produce twice as many as us no matter how fast we work or how many SCV drivers we get loaded up on space whiskey and Protoss tobacco.
We’ve been to the mid or even end-game a few times with Protoss, but their Colossi tend to smack us down fairly regularly when we get there. Initially, however, our problems lie in fighting off the combined mass of Zealots and Stalkers that come knocking at our door. By skirting the edge of our Planetary Fortress’ range, these Protoss early-gamers have had great fun destryoing everything we worked so hard to create.
Thinking we were so smart, we changed our tactics and went straight for a Starport. Three or four Banshees took to the skies, engines screaming, and slipped into the Snuggie-like comfort of their cloaking shields. Over to the Stalkers they flew, only to be…shot down.
W
T
F
We checked the Stalker info, both in game and online. They cannot detect cloaked units. We knew this, but had to be sure. Then, we played a 2v2 against a few Protoss-using gentlemen and our partner, a far better Starcrafter than us, told us to “watch out for Observers” in our base.
Wait, what now?
We looked it up. And we felt realllly stupid.
Turns out, Protoss can build a little fella known as an Observer. This thing has no weapons, but is permanently cloaked, and it can also fly.
Also of note is that it can DETECT CLOAKED UNITS.
All of the this time, we thought we were being so smart, building up an unstoppable force to take down those smug, slightly reptilian posers, and now we find out that in probably every game we’ve played, they’ve snuck an Observer into our base and laughed as they watched our every move.
Oh sure, we’ve used the Orbital Command upgrade a time or two, but never to scan our own base unless we were being actively attacked. Apparently, this was a poor choice.
Now that we know about the Observer, he’s easily to deal with. A few potshots from a Marine or two and he’ll go down. Not only will this prevent the enemy from seeing the carefully-crafted Banshees we’ve prepared, but it can also prevent Stalkers from blinking “up” cliffs. They are able to do this if they can see where they’re going, but by disabling their Observer, they will be limited to Blinking around on the ground below our base, laughing about how hilarious they are while our Siege Tanks reconfigure their parts into something resembling modern art.
Clearly, there’s a reason we’re in the silver league, but at least we learn.
Slowly.
Plus, she cancelled our date. Wonder what the Bronze league is doing tonight?
