Legal, Gray-Area and Banned Tricks in Brood War

The video is in Bulgarian. This page sums it up in English.

Allowed, disputed and banned StarCraft: Remastered tricks: Total Recall, Manner Pylons, Hold Lurkers, mineral locks, the worker stack and allied mines.

Try these in your next game

Tick a lesson once you have practised it.

• For Total Recall, gather your army in a big clump and mineral-walkMineral walkA worker ordered to mine ignores other units, so it can pass through a blocked ramp or a surrounding army. a Probe through its middle: the units bug out and stack on top of each other, so far more of them fit into one Recall.
• Place a Manner Pylon tight against the enemy minerals so his workers have to walk around the patch and his mining slows down.
• To stop a Manner Pylon in your own base, build a Pylon next to your Nexus that fills the 3-tile gap to the minerals.
• For Hold Lurkers, give burrowed Lurkers Hold together with an Overlord, or an attack order on a building in the fog of war, so they don't fire until the whole enemy army is in.
• To lay two Spider MinesSpider MinesVulture mines that burrow and jump at enemy ground units that come close. Observers or scans reveal them. fast, give the second mine order right away, in the direction the Vulture moves off after the first.
• Don't use the build-cancel glitch to find your opponent on the minimap in competitive games: it costs close to 100 minerals early, delays your build order and sits in a gray area of the rules.
• If a worker stack of SCVs comes at you, find the unit they target, pull it away and step aside: once their target is gone, the workers spread out and you can pick them off one by one.
• Allied mines are banned everywhere: if someone uses them against you in a league or tournament, go to the organisers, who should award you the game.

What this episode covers

1. Grast opens episode 24 with news about the Bulgarian national team and the theme: legal, disputed and banned tricks in StarCraft.
2. How the national team is organised, and a coming qualification show match between Cold and Wallace, with Marine commentating.
3. Total Recall, from a practice stream by Best: a mineral-walking Probe makes a clump of units stack on top of each other, so one Arbiter Recall takes far more of them than usual.
4. The Manner Pylon, which blocks and slows the enemy mineral line, with examples from Grast's own game on Peaks of Baekdu.
5. A geometric rule of the game: minerals sit exactly 3 tiles from the base.
6. The disputed Hold Lurkers: burrowed Lurkers that don't fire at passing units until ordered; JulyZerg used it against GoodFriend in a final.
7. In single player, two allowed Zerg tricks: going over the supply cap (11 of 9) with the Extractor trickExtractor trickAt 9/9 supply, Zerg starts an Extractor to free a supply slot, makes one more Drone, then cancels the Extractor and gets the Drone back: 10/9 before the Overlord., and moving Larvae to the mineral side by selecting them with a Drone or Overlord and pressing Stop.
8. A microMicroControlling individual units in a fight: focus fire, pulling back hurt units, spreading out. trick for laying two Spider Mines in quick succession with a Vulture.
9. Flash's famous mineral lock against Bisu on Medusa, which let him build a proxyProxyA building placed outside your base, near the opponent, for an early attack. Barracks and a Bunker on the high ground in the Protoss base.
10. The disputed trick of parking an Observer right on top of an enemy Missile Turret.
11. A recently found bug that reveals the opponent's position and race on the minimap by cancelling a building under attack at the last moment.
12. The worker stack, banned everywhere: workers clumped through an AI bug attack as one unit, and how to defend against it.
13. Allied mines: the opponent is made an ally, walks over your Spider Mines, and they explode when the alliance ends; banned everywhere except in one televised pro game.
14. The episode ends with a preview of the show match between Cold and Wallace in the next show.

Test yourself

4 quick questions on this episode.

Questions this episode answers

Full summary

Episode 24 explores the tricks, bugs and mechanics of StarCraft: Remastered that are allowed, disputed or banned outright. It looks at the limits of the engine, the stories behind tournament rules and the tricks progamers have discovered over two decades.

Grast opens with news of the Bulgarian national team and a coming show match between Cold and Wallace, then works through three categories. Among the allowed tricks are Total Recall, shown in a practice stream by Best, where a mineral-walking Probe sent through the middle of a big clump of units makes them bug out and stack on top of each other, so a single Arbiter Recall takes far more units than usual, and the classic Manner Pylon that slows the enemy mineral line. In the disputed group come Hold Lurkers, which keeps burrowed Lurkers from firing until the whole enemy army walks in; a fast way to lay two Spider Mines in a row with a Vulture; workers walking through mineral lines; and Flash's famous mineral lock against Bisu with a proxy Barracks. In single player Grast also shows two allowed Zerg tricks: going over the supply cap with the Extractor trick, and moving Larvae to the mineral side of the Hatchery.

The gray area covers blocking a Missile Turret with an Observer and a recently found glitch that reveals the opponent's position and race on the minimap by cancelling a building. The episode ends with the two tricks banned everywhere: the worker stack, where clumped workers attack as one unit, and allied mines, where the opponent is briefly made an ally so he walks onto your Spider Mines.

Players mentioned

Keep learning

• EP 08: Brood War Protoss Guide: Tricks and Micro
• EP 02: StarCraft Hotkeys, Controls and Mouse Setup
• Spotting maphacks and bots in replays