We’ve got a great game for you today, a Battle Report between Yeon-ho Lee playing as the Blue Protoss versus David Kim playing as the Red Terran. They will be playing on Lost Temple. Yes, it has been re-done for StarCraft II. This is a classic map from the original game that we have done a few changes on for StarCraft II. We have David Kim on the right side as the Red Terran, and the players are very close together by air. A few of the map features are the narrow choke point leading out of your base, a great place to defend. There is also a natural expansion where you can get some additional resources, followed by a wider choke point to defend that natural expansion. There is some high ground as well to use against your enemy one way or another. There are also Xel’naga watch towers to help establish map control and understand what is going on around the map.

This is a high yield expansion, blocked by destructible rocks. It is important for a player to control later in the game to gather some additional resources, and will often help a player make enough forces to do their final push onto their opponent. As you can see, all of these features are mirrored across the map, you can expect the players to use all of these features throughout the battle. It looks like the scouts are out, the players are moving their workers to try to see what the enemy is up to.

Up on the production overlay we can see the Red Terran player is working on his barracks as well as a refinery. The scouts pass right by each other, David may now have a better idea of where exactly Yeon-ho is positioned. David Kim is working on blocking the front of his ramp with a barracks and supply depots. This is a good move for Terran, especially against Zerg or Protoss opponents, as it can buy you time to defend against early zealots or zerglings. In this case, it has also blocked this probe. Yeon-ho is keeping aggressive with his probe, dealing some damage to David Kim’s SCV. The SCV barely makes it away. We can see that David Kim is going for an orbital command very early, as he wants to have his resource boost.

There’s the lower on the supply depot to let the SCV back into his base while he uses a marine to prevent the probe from walking up into his base. David Kim has managed to scout the Protoss base successfully, but the Protoss player has not been able to see the Terran player’s base which could hurt him as the game progresses. Yeon-ho has gone for a single gateway, obelisk, and cybernetics core, so this means that he’s going to be going for stalkers and warp-gates very early in the game. The stalkers can do quite a bit of damage early in the game, so the Terran player really needs to get marauders out on the field to counteract that threat. Meanwhile, the Protoss player still has been unable to see what’s going on. The marine holding the watch tower is forced to run from zealots, and is killed. Back in David Kim’s base he has lifted off his barracks and replaced it with another supply Depot, he’s also built a factory and used an existing reactor to lift off that factory and build two hellions at once. There may be some very early resource harassment.

This is very dangerous against the Protoss, the zealots really can’t do much because the hellions are too fast. A stalker comes into play but the hellions are too fast as they run into the probes. probes are forced to run! David needs to keep pressuring the probes; the hellions have been using their firepower on the buildings and one of his hellions goes down. Yeon-ho is focusing on the Hellions to prevent from losing any more Probes. Yeon-ho made it out of that attack only losing three Probes. Really good moves by keeping those probes away and keeping his pressure up. David Kim may have been a little early only going in with two hellions, a little harassment but not as much as there could have been. David has now lost a good amount of map control as the Protoss move across the map. The Terrans are now back into their base, waiting for the inevitable attack.

The Terran player just finished researching siege mode, exactly when he needs it. His siege tank placement is just barely out of Stalker range, so it is firing down onto those Stalkers, forcing Yeon-ho to retreat. That is the kind of damage he does not want to take right now. Interesting move by David Kim, he is now going for double command centers to fly them to any location on the map to have expansions. David was able to see that Yeon-ho already had a base established at his expansion, so he really needs to play his A-game and will likely expand to the island, taking advantage of his lift ability. That’s something that is very common in StarCraft II, using the Terrans’ mobility with their command centers to have access to some high-yield locations, and the Protoss doesn’t have many units to harass those expansions with.

We see some hellions sneaking all the way behind Yeon-ho’s base, microing all the way behind Yeon-ho’s mineral line with a medivac. David Kim performs very good micro and escapes practically unscathed. David gets into the game in just the way he needs to, harassing and just trying to really stack up those income harasses. Yeon-ho just wasn’t able to be fast enough with warp-ins to keep up with the speedy hellions and medivac. Now David has a couple of siege tanks in that medivac, let’s see where they go.

This is one thing you saw relatively often in the original StarCraft, using Siege Tanks in combination with dropships to micro. It seems like this is what David is going for, and with the way that stalker fire works, if the stalker shoots at the tank, but the tank is picked up before the shots land, the tank will not take any damage. This will give the Terran player a real advantage if he can get those siege tanks into a good position to do a lot of damage. Hellions are doing a good job killing that zealot, and there is the siege tank landing position, taking advantage of that cliff on Lost Temple. High ground is even more powerful than in the original StarCraft in some ways because you cannot fire on higher-ground units unless they are 100% visible.

And here is the Protoss response, an observer, able to get vision on the cliff with the cloaked unit, as he waits for blink. The Protoss player is just biding his time until blink is finished, trying to keep his stalkers out of range until blink is finished. Blink finishes and there goes the surround on one siege tank, but as the stalkers go in for the second kill David Kim micros with his medivac. David Kim gets in a few extra shots but the siege tank goes down, David trying to make the most of his units but the aggressive blink from the stalkers enables Yeon-ho to finish off the medivac. David wasn’t able to get too many kills there, but he didn’t need to, we saw him take down a pylon, but what really matters is that Yeon-ho was forced to stop mining from that base.

All of those workers not mining is a huge loss, that could be hundreds and hundreds of minerals that he isn’t gathering. David Kim did lose resources by losing those units, but it was still an effective raid, and may make Yeon-ho do a tech change to help him deal with another similar assault. Yeon-ho is trying to establish map control, David’s front is very well defended, but he is probably unaware of Yeon-ho’s nine’ o’clock expansion. Yeon-ho has taken a slight resource advantage in terms of well-established bases, and is now scouting David’s base with an observer. Yeon-ho moves in some stalkers, takes out a siege tank, but there is a cooldown on blink so he’s losing more units. There is the blink as he just gets away, and took a little bit of a beating for not much of a gain.

Here is Yeon-ho’s warp prism and can warp in units anywhere he wishes. David Kim is retaliating a little bit by bunkering up the front of his base. We can see that the warp prism has made all the way to David Kim’s island expansion and warps in zealots to kill David’s expansion. Those zealots are causing massive economy losses for David Kim. Only a few survive the attack and the command center is forced to fly away. David Kim’s response is quick and brutal, trying to pressure with reapers but is pushed off by stalkers. Yeon-ho is doing a very good job of overall map control, we’ve seen him take an expansion and simultaneously defend his base from reapers. Reapers are now pushing into Yeon-ho’s expansion, and are now using stimpack, dealing huge damage.

The stalkers can’t blink where they can’t see so the reapers are absolutely dominating right now. Here comes an observer, gives him vision, and the reapers are thwarted. David tried to harass by jumping down, but was denied by the looming observer. David Kim now has a huge force and has also built a planetary fortress at the high yield expansion, and zealots are keeping an eye on that other expansion. Meanwhile, a large battle is about to occur on the left side of the battlefield. Stalkers trying to blink away, Yeon-ho is trying to fight a two-front battle. David is now setting up camp in the center of the map, and is in very good position. David Kim really wants Yeon-ho to move out into his forces so he can decimate him, but David moves up to try to pressure Yeon-ho’s natural and is hit by a psi storm, and here come the Protoss going in for a hit to finish off David Kim.

Yeon-ho had very good placement on his storms, and has the perfect army composition to counter any low-tier army with his storms. That psi storm really turned the tide of battle, and he had enough high templars to land multiple psi storms. The Protoss have a significant advantage, a massive amount of board control, and an enormous army. The Protoss are moving out to engage the planetary fortress, trying to tear it up, but the Terran are repairing it, even as the SCVs are being stormed. It isn’t looking very good for Yeon-ho, he is now sandwiched between a planetary fortress and a large army, just trying to finish off that fortress, but the fortress lives with sub-100 HP. Unbelievable, huge amounts of damage to David’s army, he lost a ton of SCVs, but he still pulled away ahead after destroying the entire Protoss army. The Protoss are trying to storm the natural for David Kim, but David is now nuking with a ghost and a medivac over on the Protoss player’s expansion. The nuke lands just as stalkers are trying to kill the ghost.

The ghost just barely gets away, David Kim scans to finish off the last stalkers, and uses the Thor special ability to destroy the nexus. Yeon-ho comes in, using the storms on the Thors is a bit of a mistake, they should probably be phase shifting the Thors to take them out of the battle for a short period of time. The colossus are now in, not doing very much damage to the Thors, but they do high damage against the marauders. Another nuke drops, doing TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE. Yeon-ho has taken significant damage, after a couple more nukes he only has one base to mine from as his main has been mined out. The Protoss are desperate for some blood, but it looks like the Thors and marauders will just power right through the Protoss force. It is just far too many units for the Protoss force to deal with, and the marauders deal far too much damage to Armored units, which is all the Protoss army was made of.

And there’s another nuke! You can see the warp-in, trying to stop the ghost from nuking, but they are unable to kill the ghost in time. The ghost loads back up into the medivac and continues his one-man-army attack. David Kim and his addiction to terrible damage has really paid off this game. The Protoss are in a lot of trouble right now, and there is another nuke! It has bought the Terran player some additional time to get into position. The Terran force is just too overwhelming. If there had been a couple zealots mixed in, it really could have changed the tide of battle. Yeon-ho is having a lot of trouble keeping up anywhere on the map, and has even been forced to remote mine from his natural expansion. He might be able to get back to a tech advantage, but he knows David Kim has outplayed him, and there is another win for David Kim. A fantastic game between these two players, I love nukes. What a great game, thanks for joining us for this StarCraft II Battle Report.