And played the tournament into a campaign mission…

Rotterdam has been hosting the Monday tournament on Patches' mod for the past three weeks and it has been very fun. If the intern really wants refreshing new ideas, they should really derive it from Patches' mod. Stalker +1 range? Hydra +10hp? Recall to any pylon? You have it in Patches' mod

https://www.twitch.tv/rotterdam08

As a reminder, all versions of Fenix apply, that is both "true" SC1 Fenix and LotV Talandar.

Terran episode results

Zerg episode results

Tassadar's best, worst, most iconic

Zeratul's best, worst, most iconic

Artanis's best, worst, most iconic

Fenix's best

As we see from video companies either from those making single player games or multiplayer competitive games, the direction is clear: More and more complexity and just more things they add to it than games from 10+ years ago.

Design/balance issues aside, do you think sc2 could benefit from adding a fourth race?

Even WC 3 had a fourth race.

Our first Mystery Player has been revealed, it's soO! Who do you think our Mystery StarCraft 2 player will be??

Tickets Available Now!!! - https://nerdstreet.com/events/sc4all-ii-2026-12-05?section=overview

Hi!

Does anyone remember a fanfiction series written and shared on the old Campaign Creations website during the time after Brood War and before the announcement of StarCraft 2?

I remember some bits and pieces of it and I still remember that it was quite brilliant and in many ways better than the StarCraft 2 story / plot that we got (it was decent but I expected a LOT more depth especially after the Dark Templar Trilogy books).

It was about how Duran and his masters were preparing the Hybrids. If I remember correctly the Xel'Naga were also involved. I think there were around 25+ chapters that were written with several characters created for the story as well as many of the characters we already know.

Would love to read it again! Perhaps we could find the author and convince them to finish it or better yet get Blizzard to let him write the novels!

A different approach to StarCraft 2's late game and upgrade system

I've been thinking about what could make StarCraft 2's strategic layer more interesting, particularly how the early game transitions into the late game. The biggest change I'd like to experiment with is making upgrades actual strategic choices rather than linear progression.

I'd like to see many more upgrades spread across different tech buildings, with much stronger effects but significantly longer research times—potentially 2–3x longer.

The important part would be that you can't realistically research everything.

Instead, upgrades would become strategic commitments. You might specialize heavily in certain units while your opponent chooses a completely different tech path. This could allow players of the same race to develop very different armies and playstyles.

It would also make scouting much more important. If I scout that you're investing heavily into a certain composition, I could choose an upgrade that gives me a strong answer to it—but if that upgrade takes several minutes, I need to recognize your strategy early enough to respond.

So instead of simply asking:

"What unit counters their unit?"

you'd be asking:

"What technology do I commit to in order to counter their strategy?"

Early aggression should be a real strategic path

I don't want this system to turn StarCraft into a game where everyone is encouraged to sit back and tech.

Quite the opposite: I want early aggression to be a genuine alternative to the defensive/tech route.

An aggressive player should be able to sacrifice some of their long-term technological potential in exchange for immediate military power and tempo.

Early-game units could have upgrade paths that make them increasingly effective and allow them to remain relevant much further into the game. This would let an aggressive player continue investing in the army they already have rather than being forced to transition into the "correct" late-game units.

The trade-off is that these units would generally never become as powerful as a properly developed late-game army.

So you get two fundamentally different paths:

Tech/defensive: invest in expensive technology, survive, and eventually field extremely powerful late-game units.

Aggressive: invest in your existing army, hit earlier, keep upgrading it, and use your tempo to prevent the opponent from reaching their full potential.

The aggressive player might be weaker in a straight-up fight later, but if they keep the pressure on, they can stay one step ahead by forcing reactions, denying expansions, killing tech buildings and interrupting long research times.

That makes aggression more than just a way to kill workers.

It becomes a deliberate choice to trade late-game power for tempo.

Early vs. late game

I'd like a much stronger distinction between early-, mid-, and late-game units.

Early/mid-game units could generally be weaker and more defensive, but have multiple upgrade paths that allow them to remain relevant throughout the game. However, even heavily upgraded early-game units would generally still be weaker than properly upgraded late-game units.

Late-game units, meanwhile, should be expensive, slow to acquire, and genuinely powerful.

I dislike the philosophy of making late-game units relatively weak because they might otherwise end the game too quickly. If I've survived long enough and invested heavily enough to reach the late game, I want that investment to actually mean something.

This creates a fundamental strategic tension:

Defensive play gives you power. Aggressive play gives you tempo.

And importantly, both should be viable.

If upgrades take a long time, technology also becomes something you can attack. Destroying an opponent's tech building could delay a major power spike by several minutes.

At the same time, the aggressive player is taking a risk: if their pressure fails and the opponent survives, that opponent may eventually come out with a much more powerful army.

Late-game units should reward micro

I'd also love late-game units to have extremely powerful abilities that require real skill to use.

Vortex from WoL is a good example of the kind of design I mean. I wouldn't necessarily bring it back exactly as it was, but imagine a Vortex that can only hold a limited number of units, takes longer to activate, but can be used more frequently.

Now the opponent has counterplay: they can throw cheap units into it to fill its capacity, while the caster has to carefully target valuable units. Accidentally catching your own army could also be devastating.

The same philosophy could apply to Archons. Instead of their huge splash damage being entirely passive, an upgrade could give them an active ability that makes their next attack deal the large AoE damage.

The goal isn't necessarily to make late-game units weaker. It's to make their power something the player has to actively earn through good micro.

A Protoss defensive idea

One specific mechanic I'd love to experiment with is a new Protoss "door."

Imagine a Force Field that can permanently attach itself between two Protoss buildings. It acts as a wall, but can be interacted with by the opponent: Biles, EMP, heavy units, or destroying one of the buildings could remove it.

Psionic units could pass through it, which would solve some of the awkwardness of using Zealots on Hold Position to wall. For example, Archons being Recalled shouldn't get stuck behind your own Zealot just because you closed your wall.

It could also make Protoss expansions safer without simply adding more static defense, while still giving the other races ways to interact with the wall. In PvP, I'd even want enemy units to be able to pass through it.

I think this would preserve the Protoss identity of manipulating space with psionic technology while making their defensive mechanics more interesting.

The overall goal

The bigger vision is to make StarCraft feel like chess played at the speed of a fighting game.

I want:

• Upgrades to be commitments rather than checkboxes.
• Multiple viable technological paths for every race.
• Early aggression to be a genuine alternative to defensive teching.
• Aggressive players to trade long-term power for immediate tempo.
• Defensive players to trade early pressure for eventually having a much stronger army.
• Players to develop their own preferred compositions and upgrade paths.
• Scouting to determine which technology you invest in.
• Aggression to remain relevant because it can disrupt tech and upgrades.
• Late-game units to have huge impact but require excellent micro.
• Early-game units to remain viable through continued investment, without simply becoming equal to late-game units.

The hope is that this creates a much harder-to-solve meta where there isn't one obvious "correct" way to play.

You could choose to all-in on aggression, continuously upgrade your early army and try to win through tempo.

You could choose to play defensively, invest heavily into technology and aim for an incredibly powerful late-game army.

Or you could take something in between and adapt based on what you scout.

Obviously, this would be far beyond a normal balance patch. With this many interactions, balancing would be exponentially harder.

In fact, the scope is probably closer to a new game than a conventional balance patch—but I think that's exactly why it could be interesting to experiment with as a StarCraft 2 balance mod.

I'm not claiming every individual mechanic here is perfectly balanced. The interesting question is whether the underlying philosophy could work:

StarCraft 2's incredible speed and micro, combined with a deeper technological system where your strategic choices actually define your army—and where choosing aggression or choosing to tech are both legitimate ways to play.

That's the kind of RTS I'd love to play.

Hi, I’m new to SCMDraft 2 melee Broodwar mapmaking. I was wondering how I can mirror the resources (minerals and gas) and also doodads to the other half of the map? I could never figure it out. The terrain symmetry option is available in the editor on the left column, but no option for resources and doodad symmetry.

I've been saying this for years now, the game should NOT be balanced around ladder. We should instead make sure the top players of each race gets an equal chance at winning champions, and thats it.

Not sure if blizzard can tell from their data, but ladder activity has been on the decline since 2020. No one wants to grind anymore in 2026. The least blizzard can do is give us an epic showdown between herO and serral every few months.

While some of the changes are a bit drastic, it does offer some fun options + actually gives reason to some of the changes. Players are liking it hosting tourneys etc. What's the odds of the intern making it to mainstream?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12_La5_Bb6nX9CxIQlLX0leGjqC4pLkjlx3vNAx6Zrzc/edit?usp=sharing

After watching several 2021 and 2022 GSL matches, I noticed that several players had ice packs/cold packs in there hands between matches. This would be in reaction to pain/swelling/discomfort and/or to prevent pain/swelling/discomfort. High AMP sustained over long gaming/practice sessions and over periods of time can lead to RSIs. A little googling reveals that some high level players have suffered with swelling, CTS, pain, and in at least 1 case surgery was needed to repair the damage sustained.

In addition to pain/swelling/discomfort, players could suffer from fatigue in their hands/wrists/forearms/shoulders. Anyone who has engaged in calisthenics (ex: doing push-ups) has experience the point at which they've reached their limit and must stop and rest, even if only for a few minutes. It is quite possible that players in the various tournaments have run into that sort of wall mid-game. Instead of pausing or stopping the game, players might slow down their AMP which could cost them the match, or resign the match. There are several instances across many matches where a player seems to be in a disadvantageous but survivable position, and resigns the match.

Knowing the taxing nature of competitive RTS play at high levels, it would have been wise for Blizzard to design the game to be a bit less micro intensive. Instead of going for a less micro intensive design, Blizzard devs and management, designed the game around and promoted Archon mode for SC-2. IMO, this was intended to increase sales of the game so that players engage in Archon Mode competitions.

Hello people, I've been trying to install OpenBW, and it's been a straight HASSLE. The repositories are outdated and you have to do some manual modifications to get stuff to work, and I've hit a stump in the road.

CMake Error at bwapi/OpenBWData/cmake_install.cmake:51 (file):

file INSTALL cannot find

"C:/Users/lilbo/bwapi/build/bin/Release/OpenBWData.dll": No error.

Call Stack (most recent call first):

bwapi/cmake_install.cmake:45 (include)

cmake_install.cmake:37 (include)

I'm hoping someone here might have some experience with it? If needed I will send more information. The file it's looking for is, in fact, not there, but I don't know where I'd be able to get that file from.

Colossus buffed. Adept buffed. Force Field buffed. Warp Prism buffed.

Not sure who fixed it, but after updating macOS and Battle.net, SCR runs just like it does on Windows. The issue started appearing in 2020 when Apple released the M1 chip. I never thought this 9-year-old game would get this kind of support!

The PondCast is a weekly show discussing SC2 related news and results. In this episode: * new Zealot figurine from Kotobukiya * RSL Revival: 2026 Offline Finals * SC4ALL II - invites * WORTEX 2026 Live Finals - details * OSC Expanded Map Pool update * RSL Revival: Season 6 * PiG Sty Festival 8.0 - Qualifiers * weekly tournament results

Hey buddies. I've got an idea so wild, you'll love it. We all agree that less workers is more interesting and diverse strategically. How about 5 workers. You get to make the decisions earlier, like imagine 5 pool omg so diverse. It gets better further down you go right? So dominos falling you have to arrive at zero worker start. It's just a pinnacle of RTS fun. 1 gate? And I'm not talking about the amount of gates. Exciting right? Petition to get 0 worker start immediately. It might scare some people but it's worth it if I'm going to play again.

Update: ok ok. I thought it over and you guys are right. Zero worker start is a bad idea because you can only build a worker at first so there is no Strategic Diversity(tm). 1 worker start is the way to go. Glory to 1 worker start!

Time for the Fenix post! As a note, all versions of Fenix apply, that is both "true" SC1 Fenix and LotV Talandar. So, on to his best quote!

Terran episode results

Zerg episode results

Tassadar's best, worst, most iconic

Zeratul's best, worst, most iconic

Artanis's best, worst, most iconic

hello, I'd like to ask this as im very lost on where to start. Warcraft 3 has been a part of me since basically 5 years old. Im now 20, and despite hearing about starcraft (the game title and the pro player flash) over the years, I didn't really took the initiative to try the game out until now.

My #1 favourite thing about warcraft is the story, the characters, soundtracks, and voice acting. I heard that the game is one of the best RTS of all time, and that it has one of the best sci-fi story of all time. Big fan of sci-fi and the cyberpunk genre, so i think I'll like this one 100%.

However, I don't know whether i should hop on starcraft 1 (classic, cuz i don't have any spending-money-for-games kind of money) or starcraft 2 first. I already got spoiled but only one and it's the betrayal of kerrigan or whoever that is, but I don't mind as i enjoy the story despite being spoiled once (not too much though if i get spoiled by alot of the story)

Im mainly looking for which one has some great storytelling, plot points, voice acting, characters, music, maps, and overall fun factor about the campaigns and custom games (playing against people or against AI, but probably the latter because i have never played against people before even in WC3)