StarCraft Cheese Academy

“Protoss. And I wouldn't do it against any other races. There's certain reasons, I think you want to do it against Protoss, which I'll get into. I could be wrong. And I've never tried against other races, but I would definitely stick against Protoss this build.”

“And then what you do when the creep is reached the closest part to your entryway. And when you have your hive complete, you send three drones over, you build a Nydus, you build an infestation pit, and behind it, you build a spore crawler. All as a wall off, right?”

“Honestly, my, my, like, I think for myself, my least favorite things to play against this is sky toss. That's the number one favorite thing. So if they have like mass void rays, mass oracles, that really shuts it down pretty good, because they're so mobile, right?”

“Well, I think it's more effective in team matches just because you have more vision as a team. When you hear, if it's not scouted right away, when that noise comes out, both players have to panic and try and figure out where the Nydus is, and then what are they going to do about it? You have occupied two people for about 15-20 seconds without doing anything.”

“Do you know what the least used Zerg unit in the game is? Swarm host. You got it. At least at the highest levels it is. You can watch Wardy TV for four or five hours, and even when there are like two or three Zergs playing, you won't see a single swarm host.”

“And then in regards to pro-toss, the big thing with pro-toss, they can still do it, is these blank stalker oracle pushes. So I don't know if you play it, Battling Bard, but oracles lay down their stasis wards. The pro-toss units, for some reason, don't get caught in the stasis wards. So then the lings come and try to attack the pro-toss stalkers. You get half the lings that's stuck in the stasis ward, and then the pro-toss all of a sudden only has to fight half the army.”

“Like the observer thing, the reason they did that is basically people play Protoss because we don't want to micro. We don't want to have to mass manage. So we'd put the observers in the observer mode and forget about them. And then you could F to your army. So now you can't do that. So you have to be a better Protoss player to play Protoss.”

“Well, at the age of 11, I became the Junior Chess Champion of Northern Ireland.”

“Yeah, that's my recollection with chess, was that I tended to play it aggressively and not worry too much about what the opponent was doing as dictating what I wanted to do. But then since I've gotten older and learnt more, then I have, you know, you start to think of what's in your opponent's head.”

“It really is a fool that, the person that the fool's mate has perpetrated on really is a fool, because he has to move his pieces in the position that enables the opponent to checkmate him in two moves.”

“So you build a fort in your enemy, in the enemy's space. A bit like the wooden horse of Troy.”

“And the reason why you would sacrifice your queen is because it's rare that the defender would leave themselves open to this attack from the knight, unless there is something so tempting as the queen open for attack. So you lure, you bait them with the one thing that they can't resist, which is taking your queen. And in doing so, their piece that was defending the king from this attack is out of position. And then the knight swoops in and ends the game.”

“Well, here's the neat thing too. I was looking up about it. So it was called Chaturanga. And it actually is kind of the predecessor for lots of different games, like lots of Chinese games, and the Indian version of chess, and all sorts of other games, but including our chess today.”

“So that's kind of the, so we're now in the computer and AI era of chess. The computer would run all the analytics on it, do all the calculations, and come up with a move different than what the classic strategies or even the hyper modern strategies would have been. And people became aware of all these new approaches to the game that you really wouldn't have figured out without a computer doing all these calculations on it.”

“The main thing I that I take away from applying sort of chess strategy to StarCraft is to take some more time to actually think about having that sort of chess players' attitude about the game. Because usually, like I said, StarCraft players, we tend to just think like, oh, I just need to do things quicker than my opponent and then I'll win. But we very rarely step back and think, oh, how can I trick my opponent?”

“if we don't end the game, even though like usually things are maybe sometimes, you know, a little bit quiet from you, usually, not always, but usually, you know, the first five, seven minutes, you know, there's not really too much to worry about, but around eight, nine minutes, if the game hasn't ended yet or if we haven't like decisively won somehow, then we know it's kind of, it's kind of over for us, because by that point, you get the, you know, you're the Protoss, and you get the, your Tempests, and sometimes your Carriers and your Voiders, your Skytoss Army, and it just marauds around, and there's just like nothing we can do. It's almost feels like, almost like, you know, it's not so much like we're like trying to beat your strategy. It feels like we're just sort of like, like we're not even like trying to beat you. We're just trying to like beat the clock.”

“the Protoss air army is very unique compared to the other races. Because the Zerg air army is kind of like, you get your Mutalisk that are good at harassment, and you got your Corrupters that are just anti-other air. And then I guess you got the Brood Lords, and I guess they're kind of a siege. And then the Terran has got like some cool air stuff going on too. But like none of them are like all-around good at, you know, for example, most of them can only attack air or they can attack ground, or in order to like switch between, they got to like transform. Whereas, yeah, the Protoss one is just like, just go blow everything up.”

“Yeah, normally I get the pylon, or I think I normally go for two pylons right away. Well, because it takes time for the pylons to kind of warp in. Then I think I get a worker or two out before they get in, and then I normally build a forage or a gateway. One right after the other.”

“I normally take out the Medivacs first. Or if you take out the healing, I kind of, the Marines kind of drop a lot faster. Yeah. So especially for Carriers, especially against the little interceptors are flying around shooting, I think they do like 10 damage each shot or something like that. So yeah, the Marines have plenty of time to heal between shots. So it's probably important.”

“Now, I don't think Phoenixes, I think their attack, I think they have a bonus damage against other light units, which wouldn't really be Void Rays or Carriers or anything. But I think, so I don't think they're necessarily that, you know, they don't have a strong advantage, but what they do have going for them is that they're fast, and they can, you know, they're the fastest units in the game. And if it's early enough, like, you know, if you've only got like one carrier out, and they've got like five Phoenixes, yeah, they can probably pick that off. Whereas later on, once you've got like 10 carriers, I think then, you know.”

“I watched a couple of replays of like, some people, I think it's like Pigger, someone is giving a tutorial on how to counter it as Zerg, how to counter a Protoss Skytoss army. And yeah, obviously there's the Infestors you can use, but if they have observers, that doesn't work. And you can have Corrupters, but like really the ideal, yeah. But what he was saying basically is like, no, he just, he said his strategy was like, don't even build anti-air, just like ignore the Skytoss army and just like send Zerglings everywhere else that the Skytoss isn't. And just rebuild the bases after they've destroyed it.”

“the most useful thing I have for the application I have for the mothership is to just use its recall ability. Because I know the the Nexus can recall, but they have such a small recall area, like when I'm teleporting out my units back to one of the Nexus, I only get like I usually only get like half of my army, which is kind of annoying. Whereas the mothership's recall area, it can recall a ton more. So as I just use that, I just like leave it in my home base and just use it to recall my army when I want to get them out of a pinch.”

“I'm going to say Roquefort. It's a type of blue cheese. It's from the hills of Roquefort. The legend of the Roquefort cheese. I went to visit there once because my mom is French. The story of how Roquefort cheese was invented. He was saying, like, all right, so the story is, this man went up into the hills and he brought some bread with him and, I don't know, some, like, cheese curds or something like that. And he had a picnic up in the hills, then he came back down, but he forgot his cheese and his bread up in the hills. Then he went back several months later and he was very hungry, and he forgot his lunch or something like that. And so, he ate this moldy old bread, and he found it was delicious. And that's how they had Roquefort cheese at its start.”

“Practice makes perfect, I guess. Well, I don't know. Yeah. I think you're not going to get it. Sometimes, you can only watch so many tutorials and stuff without actually trying stuff.”

“People can't rush because they know you hate it. That's why many people do it. When players are cannon rushing other players, they're not trying to really you're really not trying to out micro the opponent. You're just trying to outsmart them with a, unseen tactic. You're not trying to actually fight a fair fight, which is why everyone hates it so much.”

“And then the first cannon isn't there to do anything except protect the second cannon. That's why I think it's two two steps ahead.”

“So if you're playing someone and they're cannon rushing, there's no point in insulting them because they know exactly why they're doing it. Every time you insult them, they get a kick out of it even more because they know they're getting under your skin. Don't encourage them.”

“This really famous guy, he's got a really good podcast, Tim Ferris. He got dared to enter a Wushu, tournament in China. Wushu is the Chinese martial art. So he looked at the rules. So he looked at the rules, and he also thought about playing with strengths. So he's not good at wushu. He doesn't he can't flip. First rule is if a competitor falls off of their platform three times in the competition, they're disqualified. And the second rule was they did the weigh ins 24 or maybe even more, like, more than a whole day before the actual event. So he dropped a whole bunch of weight and then weighed in, and then as soon as done that, started eating the the salt and the water and the starches and bulked up. And sure enough, he wins the tournament.”

“The big the big idea with cannon rushing Azure is you have to kill the natural. Because if you don't, well, you're too far behind on tech. But to kill the natural, they have to build the natural. So if you can rush too early, and you put a can within range of the natural right away, they'll see it coming up as the natural is complete. And then they'll just cancel the natural build one somewhere else.”

“Anytime an opponent sends up more than four SUVs or five SUVs and they've gone down to the natural just to kill that pile on, Sometimes, I'll say, okay. Well, fine. But I'll lock out those SCVs with a wall of, pylons and then just cancel the cannon when I feel like, okay. They've been down there long enough. So you lose the cannon rush, but you kill a lot of their mining time. And then they're so usually, they're so tilted and, like, they're confused about what's going on.”

“Feta. It's feta because it's the saltiest. It gets the most salt. People get the saltiest cheese, I think. A black hole. The black hole feta. Because it leads to so many different things. It sucks you into this dark place. Doing it sucks you into a dark place. Losing to it sucks you into an even darker place.”

“Protoss doesn't have much going on in the early game. For the first two and a half to three minutes, Protoss really doesn't have anything. You really don't have anything. So I almost always not always not always, but almost always start my games with a four. Because diamond players know how to beat the cannon rush, but you have to have at least that threat of a cannon rush to buy you enough time to actually do something good.”

“I actually think Taren is one of the harder races to cheese with. You know, their whole, I guess, philosophy with the Terran race, though, is is kinda like to, you know, root into any given position and to hold a position and and to do so really well. Whereas if you compare that to the kind of the philosophy of the other races, like the Zerg Girl about obtaining overwhelming numbers and just, you know, getting a ton of units on the map and surrounding everything, and the Protoss are more kinda, like, tech intensive and, like, really kinda specialized units. But the Terran are all about, like, rooting into any given position and, like, holding that position fiercely better than any other race.”

“So what you would do is, you're gonna start by just building SCVs, of course, and then immediately sending two of your SCVs out across the map. Even before you build the supply depot. It's the very first thing you do. Yeah. So you get these two SCVs across the map. As soon as your first SCV comes out of the command center, it's then building a supply depot wall, at the top of your base there while your other two SCVs are heading out across the map.”

“I think the magic number from what I researched today is three marines. As soon as you've got three marines available, which really you'll have about three or four at the same time is when you wanna immediately start heading into the enemy's base. And you gotta be careful here. You don't just want to, a, move in and and kinda see what happens. You know, three marines at this early level of the game can definitely cause a lot of damage, but, notably, SCDs, drones, and probes actually have a higher speed than marines.”

“Best case scenario for me against the Zerg is, that they totally don't scout the bunker going up in their natural and that they let their expansion finish, actually, which may sound counterintuitive, but by letting it finish, they effectively lose 300 barrels because it's you're gonna immediately let it finish, then load your marines into the bunker, and immediately, they're gonna have to respond to that right away.”

“If you kinda roll up to a terrain base and you see no barracks as part of the wall, you know, my red flags are going off at that point. My flashing red warning light is going off at that point. Even if you see three depots and you go up to the top of the wall, but your vision doesn't reveal anything in the back, that kinda tells me that, there's either a proxy somewhere on the map or that the Terran player is hiding something in the back corner of their main base.”

“The trap that people may fall into with this cheese is overinvesting into it. And, again, you know, those early level marines are are kinda terrible the longer the game goes on as you start getting upgrades for them and stuff. But if you've got a whole bunch of bunkers, well, that's that's great. It's definitely gonna keep them contained. But, you know, as soon as, like, a ravager comes out or, like you said, a spine crawler that outranges a bunker, well, now you're just giving the enemy free kills at that point.”

“One time, I'll mention it for kudos' sake. Like, I think I did make it to master league one time. I like to think it was a technical error, though, because I did one placement match, and it's just like, you're in the master league. And and I've just, like, never touched a ranked game again that season because I was afraid I would just immediately lose everything. And it wasn't my my main race is Taren, but I was playing in under a random as well, and it's, like, for random, you're in the master league.”

“We were doing a three and three match, and it was myself. I was Zerg, and I know one of my opponents was very consistently did cannon rush. So I was on the lookout for cannon rush. And sure enough, I, used my overlords, and I spotted a pylon being warped in right next well, yeah, right next to my, my my expansion. So I sent a bunch of drones off. This is very early game, like, only, like, a minute into it or so. They went and took out that pylon. They did a great job. Came back. Victory was well, at least I felt like I felt pretty good. And then lo and behold, though, I noticed that, additionally, there is also a bunker being built right next to that same expansion.”