Starcraft 2 Thoughts: Corps d'armée: FXOBratOK vs Mill.Stephano

BratOK vs Stephano cast by Husky

My comments and spoilers below the VOD.

This post ties in with Starcraft 2 Thoughts: Reality of Fighting: Maneuver vs Attrition to see more post similar to this one, click Starcraft 2 Thoughts, you can also find that Label in the Label Cloud at left side of my SC2 Blog.



Corps d'armée may be unfamiliar to you unless your a military or military history person.

If your unfamiliar with it, short description can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corps#France

At ~11:59 game time (8:28 VOD time), Stephano moves out with some truly beautiful maneuvering with his Roaches.

With some extremely well coordinated movement of 2-3 groups of Roaches he manages to trap and destroy BratOK's Hellions.

The Hellions were there to Pin Stephano in his base for a while, with the threat of roasting a critical number of Drones, the minute they were gone, Stephano was free to attack with all of his combat power.

This attack was successful because BratOK was planning on using the time the Hellion Pin porvided to tech up and expand his army, he didn't have enough forces to directly defend vs Stephano's army.

For more on the Corps d'armée see http://www.napoleon-series.org/military/organization/c_armycorps.html

Starcraft 2 does not translate 100% with real world armies, I would not claim that Roaches by themselves are a combined forces composition, which is a core concept of Corps d'armée, in general.

They can't handle flying units or things like Immortals or Tanks in any numbers, without support.

But in the EARLY GAME, before those units can appear in any numbers, the Roaches can deal with anything.

They are cheap, so you can outnumber enemy units, and with speed upgrade they can outrun most things they can't fight.

And with Burrow, especially combined with Tunneling claws, they heal very quickly, which makes them cost effective.

And because they are relatively cost efficient you can safely risk small numbers of them, or risk other units, like Zerglings or Banelings, since those are a small % of your combat power.

The enemy can't counter attack and beat you just cause you lost 20 lings or banes, if you still have 30+ full health Roaches.

To see more of my posts on strategy click on Starcraft 2 Skills, you can also find that label in the label cloud at left side of my SC2 Blog.