StarCraft II Strategies: The Offensive Nexus

Today I'm glad to be talking all about StarCraft II, a game that brings back an abundance of happy memories for me. It is the game where I met the Day[9]TV community, which I can say, without doubt and exaggeration, is perhaps the coolest community I have been a part of to date. You guys are seriously awesome, and for that you get a shout-out! I have played it on and off for the past few years, although I have only made it as far as 1v1 Platinum league, and I've been getting back into it lately, trying to brew strategies that can be safely considered unorthodox just to see how they pan out on the ladder (as well as giggle incessantly at my opponents' priceless reactions).

I will be sharing with you a strategy that I have devised and that you can take to the 1v1 ladder to see how well it does for you. Despite the fact that I originally came up with this for fun, it actually seems to be winning me most of my matches. Whether it is because it is actually a legitimate strategy or I simply played well will remain a mystery, although I'm sure someone who has mastered the art of strategy can lay the answer upon me. Regardless, if you find the StarCraft II 1v1 ladder to be intimidating, and you have somehow developed a phobia of hitting the 'Play' button, do give this guide a read, try out the strategy described, and see how hilariously badly you fail (or be surprised at how well it works)!

If you have read the title of this post, you would already have gathered what the strategy revolves around. It involves placing your second Nexus offensively, i.e. right next door to wherever your opponent is, and making use of the Mothership Core's Photon Overcharge ability to turn it into a sturdy Nexus cannon. This of course unfortunately means that you will need to be playing as Protoss, but worry not, for I will in the future write up a strategy for the Terran and Zerg players out there.

The basic strategy is to get a Mothership Core as quickly as possible, save up 400 minerals for the surprise offensively-placed Nexus, research Warp Gate, get a Forge, reinforce your offensive Nexus with a Pylon and Photon Cannons, then begin warping in Gateway units at your offensive Pylon and begin knocking on your opponent's front door with an army backed up by a Nexus cannon that can shoot targets from the other side of the world. If done right, your opponent should then be trapped on one base, unable to move away without being shot down. If done very right, your opponent will then congratulate you on pulling off the weirdest strategy, or express their dissatisfaction at losing.

The red Terran player dismisses the Nexus as being non-threatening...

...until this happens.

The build order can be found right here for you to follow. You don't have to precisely follow this step-by-step, but generally this is the order in which you will be building things:

• 9/10 Pylon
• 11/18 Chrono Boost on Nexus for Probes
• 13/18 Gateway
• 13/18 Send a Probe away to scout for the opponent's location. This will also be the sneaky Probe who will bring our second Nexus in
• 14/18 Assimilator
• 15/18 Chrono Boost on Nexus for Probes
• 16/18 Pylon
• 16/18 Put 3 Probes into Assimilator
• 18/26 Cybernetics Core
• 20/26 Mothership Core (around this time you should have 16 Probes mining Minerals and 3 Probes mining Gas, at which point stop building Probes)
• 22/26 Warp Gate at Cybernetics Core
• 22/26 Chrono Boost on Nexus for Mothership Core (use your Chrono Boost on Warp Gate from now on)
• 22/26 Offensive Nexus time!
• 22/26 Forge
• 22/26 Offensive Pylon (next to second Nexus)
• 22/26 Gateway #2
• 22/34 Photon Cannons at offensive Pylon
• 22/34 Start warping in Zealots/Stalkers at offensive Pylon

After being surprised by Photon Cannons and warp-ins, your opponent may start massing up defensive structures like Bunkers or Spine Crawlers. If this happens, build a Robotics Facility where your offensive Pylon is and start pumping out Immortals to deal with them. Most importantly, remember to keep your Mothership Core alive; if it dies you will lose your only source of reliable high-ground vision, and without the Mothership Core's Photon Overcharge, your Nexus will just be a miserable idle Nexus.

Since I'm not an expert on strategy, I shan't dabble on any further. Hope you have fun with this silly build, and remember, this shouldn't work.

Funnily enough, within minutes of uploading this blog post, I hit Platinum league using this tactic, so I guess it does work after all!

Hearthstone Decks: The Wind-lock

There is no doubt in my mind that Hearthstone is an insanely fun game. You know a game is fun when you find yourself resisting the urge to hop on and just play one more match, and your mind is telling you things along the lines of "no, you must do important things" or "you have chores to do", but the dark voices inside of you echo within, chanting "just one more... just one more... ONE... MORE...". I myself have spent quite a bit of time on this darn game; as of today I currently have 500 wins with a level 60 Priest. Seeing as I wanted to write about something, why not write about something I have played a lot and that many folks who play games may have played at some point, and which I assume have garnered at least some interest in the game? Seriously though, if you haven't played this game yet, I do recommend you get it and at least give it a try. It is free to play and in my personal opinion is a barrel of fun waiting to be opened*.

I may write about a deck for absolute beginners in the future, but for now, and for the sake of simplicity, I will assume that you, the reader, has played through the tutorial, know what at least half of the keywords in the game mean, and have become familiar with a fair number of cards in the game. Just throwing that out there right now in case anyone who has barely played the game continues to read this, only to be showered in technobabble and gobbledigook.

Today I will not be covering any of the decks that you typically see on the ladder, nor will I ever do that. At some point in the ladder you may have found yourself facing off against someone with a deck you have actually seen repeatedly; decks (or at least variations of decks) such as the infamous Zoo-lock, a Warlock deck based around throwing minions at you endlessly until you die, and often times your death will be a swift one too. These decks are strong and is a great way to bag yourself a set of quick wins, or if you play the slow-and-steady decks like the Control Warrior that aims to beat your opponent in the face with a metaphorical handful of cash, reliable wins. I can talk about these decks, but nothing explains them better than getting hands-on experience with them yourselves. By that, I mean experiencing the brutality of being absolutely mauled by them during your laddering session which you inevitably will.

We will be having fun with a deck that has been named the "Wind-lock", of which the deck-list can be found right here:

Within the first few seconds of glancing at this deck, you may already be thinking three words, the first beginning with the letter 'W', the second 'T', and the third 'F'. This deck has the components of a typical Zoo-lock deck, with attack-boosting cards like Power Overwhelming, Abusive Sergeant and Dark Iron Dwarf all bound. The damage will begin to really swing in as soon as they are used on our minions that have the property Windfury, which means they get to attack twice during the same turn. Think about it: if a minion is given extra attack power, and it attacks twice, the benefit of the attack boost is doubled. That's right. Doubled. Think about the value...

I'd also like to make a quick note that this deck actually doesn't work very well, but if it was made in the name of fun, who cares if you lose with it and essentially lose the right to be able to tell a stranger on the Internet "I am better at this game than you are"? In fact that will be the general theme of the decks that I will be posting here in the future, just fun silly decks that you can take to the ladder just to see how well it fares. I love playing with unorthodox decks and beating opponents with cards that are rarely ever seen just to spice up my Hearthstone experience, and I hope that you too will be inspired to have fun and just not take the game too seriously.

With that said, I will quickly go through the bits and bobs of the deck and what role they play so you can at least understand what is going on with this abomination of a deck.

Mortal Coil, Darkbomb, Siphon Soul, and Twisting Nether are our standard removal spells for the sake of not dying, or not dying too quickly. Twisting Nether can be replaced with Shadowflame or Hellfire, although it's there because, let's face it, nobody ever expects a Twisting Nether to come and ruin their plans. We have the attack-givers: Abusive Sergeant, Dark Iron Dwarf, Defender of Argus, Power Overwhelming, Dire Wolf Alpha. These guys will give our Windfury minions, as well as other minions that benefit from extra attack power, some extra juice.

Speaking of Windfury minions, I decided to throw in a selection of them: Thrallmar Farseer, Flying Machine, and Windfury Harpy. I decided to cut out the Young Dragonhawk because it is too flimsy and literally dies to anything that can deal damage, while the Raging Worgen only has Windfury if it becomes damaged, which none of our cards except Mortal Coil can do.

Other cards that work great with the attack-boosters are Nerubian Egg, Haunted Creeper, Harvest Golem, and Voidwalker. I probably should replace Voidwalker with the Dragon Egg which spawns a Whelp when it takes damage. Apart from that, these cards, once played, are generally a little harder to remove, which give you time to throw in the attack-boosters. There is also a Void Terror in the deck which eats your own minions and gains their attack power and hit points. It works amazingly with Nerubian Egg and anything that is affected by Power Overwhelming. Interestingly enough, if it is used on a minion that has received a temporary attack boost like an Abusive Sergeant, it will even gain the attack boost as permanent damage.

Last but not least, Lord Jaraxxus made it into this deck because the Infernals he spawns with his hero power can be used with a Defender of Argus in case you're in need of a big guy with Taunt. Oh and also because he is Lord frickin' Jaraxxus. If you don't have Lord Jaraxxus, you can throw in an Ironbeak Owl for the Silence effect, although personally I like Jaraxxus because... Jaraxxus.

Hope you enjoy this deck that the mad scientist inside of me has created, and as a disclaimer, I take no responsibility for the loss of any stars or ranks. (if you win though, please thank me later. And give me a cookie next time you see me)



*Warning: Game may partially or fully consume your soul. Proceed with playing with extreme caution.

And so the writing shall begin...

Hello friends, hello viewers and readers, hello visitors of this page! Let me say first of all that you are an outrageously beautiful person, and I welcome you to my humble blog about generally random stuff. I am just your average peasant, more commonly known as manbon. The URL appears to be "manbonn" because someone else took "manbon" which was what I originally wanted, so I had to go for the next best username, of course without making it too difficult to remember by throwing in a random assortment of digits or inserting an arbitrary word in the middle (seriously, I would not want to be known as "manbon" on one part of the Internet and "mancowbon" on another). Just a nice extra letter 'n' tucked neatly on the end to let it flow nicely with the rest of the name will do.

I'll mainly be writing about my gaming shenanigans because I, as a matter of fact, invest a sizeable portion of my time in the art of fun, and just playing games and having a good time. I do like to read up on strategies, write up some strategy guides from time to time, but largely I just hop into a game and try to extract as much happiness from the time spent as possible.

I also figured that I haven't been writing nearly as much as I should lately, and since I figured if I want to write while enjoying writing what I write, it would have to be in a blog where I can write what I bloody well want. Introductions aren't quite my forte, so with that said, I hope you enjoy reading what is basically my brainchild in the form of neatly laid paragraphs, carefully crafted using hand-picked words and elegant letters typed beautifully using a keyboard that does not compromise on quality... umm, yeah.

Enjoy! :D

Extra shout-outs go to the people who literally told me to just go write about whatever I want. Steph, Darth, Auraswap, and people who make my life awesome, you're all awesome! ;3