Can You Beat Starcraft 1 Without Losing a Unit?

after completing all of Starcraft 2 without losing a unit the natural Next Step would be bringing this challenge to its predecessor so uh I spent three years doing exactly not that while on paper Starcraft 2 deathless should be harder because it sends significantly more enemies at you in practice having units that actually do what you tell them to is a pretty big benefit in a micromanagement challenge fortunately for us the beginning of Starcraft 1 deathless starts off pretty easy Wasteland is the first mission and we really don't have to do anything I get some units meet Jim Rayner go build a base in the bottom right and get a tutorial on how to build five Marines I do decide to be super safe using Jim's vulture bike to clear out every circling on the map it's not like I've ever actually seen them attack but I'm not taking any chances and this is a good opportunity to practice some good old Starcraft 1 micro once the Marines are built the tutorial is done and we get to move on to Backwater station this Mission isn't that complicated but it does start to show off one of the big problems that's going to plague me for the beginning of this run Terran units in the early game suck Fire Bats are squishy and have no range and Marines are even less durable and Medics just don't exist until the brood War expansion so for the early stages I use Jim to clear out all the enemies because his bike is mechanical it means that if things get rough I can use SUVs to repair him this is the only way that I can restore HP once the initial Zerg forces are cleaned up I have to push to the Northeast to an infested Command Center doing so brings up one of the biggest issues I'm going to have in this run High Ground in Starcraft 2 if you can see a unit on The High Ground you can shoot it in Starcraft 1 attacking onto The High Ground Has a 46.875 Miss chance this absurd level of Randomness can be absolutely devastating while the enemies in mission 2 are obviously not that bad in later stages of the campaign when enemies have much more going for them a string of bad luck shots can absolutely end a run fortunately things don't get out of hand here and I can make my way over to the command center but turn it down and move on to the most boring mission in Starcraft welcome to desperate Alliance it's a defense mission where the enemy forgets to attack no seriously this mission is 30 minutes long and the enemy attacks with about 180 units total that is one enemy every 10 seconds from the Zerg and they're not Sport and ultralisks here so let's use this time to talk a little bit about the rules of the run if I'm not allowed to lose any units then what exactly am I considering a unit what I decide to use as my definition is anything that either costs Supply or has a health bar is considered a unit this means that everything you normally would think counts as well as things like spider mines or hallucinations which means that if I just don't use those abilities then the score screen at the end will give me an accurate representation of what I lost or hopefully didn't lose while there's absolutely no challenge in what I consider to be the last of the tutorial missions there are some interesting things to talk about here namely pathing the game starts me out with a defensive bunker at the entrance of each base and strongly suggests using those to defend but it's not really the best place to do it Starcraft 1 pathing is bad units are constantly lost and confused ramps are a nightmare stairs require an actual PhD and even microing around corners is a full-time job fortunately this is true for everybody well mostly just the Dragoon but everybody has to deal with it to some extent which is why building a firing light of bunkers stalked with Marines Behind These bends is basically unbreakable anytime the Zerg Attack they get stretched into a thin line and mowed down as a result the only attack in this 30 minute slog that's of any danger is the final one and uh it's because this attack is supposed to hit the top and the bottom at the same time but this is StarCraft 1 and the AI is just an absolute treat in its First Act of rebellion this run it just decided to send both waves to the bottom it does that sometimes the Marines do manage to hold but it does get close not because the damage was overwhelming or anything but because of some something that absolutely drives me mad in this game scvs don't have Auto Repair you have to manually tell them to repair and if they top something off they'll stop repairing even if it's still being attacked it didn't go wrong here but it's one of those small things that could absolutely blow you out of a deathless run if you're not careful the final joke mission is the Jacobs installation this is a mission where they filled every nook and cranny with enemies but forgot to do so in the main hallways so you can just walk to the end with Jim the dude's got six armor so his battle cruiser pants just shrug everything off with no issue alright the first four missions are done and now we can get into the actual tough stuff Revolution is where the run really starts and strategy actually becomes a thing the mission begins with Jim and a few Marines I quickly meet up with Sarah Kerrigan and realize that I was wrong in My Age of Mythology retrospective and Starcraft 1 is actually the first RTS where you get to play as a swine said anything to you yeah after Kerrigan sneaks past the defenses and commandeers a base I get to building the mission here is a bit tricky We Must Destroy All enemy buildings and their base is on a giant Islands to the South ranked by missile turrets and anti-air wraith Fighters and below that are a bunch of spider mines to kill my ground units in order to break the base I'm gonna have to build up for a bit which works out because I start out with a ton of bunkers to defend myself except for up here uh ignore this everything is fine there is no crisis at all nobody even got close to dying I don't have a whole lot of options in this Mission the strongest Heron units are The Siege tanks science vessel and battle cruiser exactly zero of which I have unlocked so I make The Wraith if you've played Starcraft 1 or 2 you have a good idea of how powerful my Army is going to be raids are phenomenal glass Cannon anti-air Fighters with what I would generously call a back scratcher for a ground attack but it flies and the base is on an island so I gotta work with what I have while I'm building up I wall in Kerrigan at the top right this is the first time that I'm going to be doing a trick that we'll see a lot in this run breaking the magic box the brief explanation is that units try to stay in formation when they move in this game if you send a group of Flyers somewhere they'll all reach their destination in approximately the same formation that they left this is called the magic box but there's a way to break it if you have the group of flyers and one other unit inside of the group that is very far away then the magic box breaks instead of staying in formation my raids will now converge on the point that I clicked causing them to become one giant Clump as long as I keep the clump moving I get to keep the stack this lets me Micro 11 raids as if they were a single one and while one wraith sucks and 11 raids is also pretty bad it's microbial enough that I can find an opening into the Terran base and start peeling them apart from the inside volleying down their Marines and goliaths as I inch towards their production but there is a problem uh missile turrets fun fact 11 raids can't act actually reliably beat a missile turret without a wraith dying and while 22 raids can it's very hard to manage two stacked control groups of Flyers simultaneously without losing something to you know like an enemy wraith or a second missile turret of course I could just use a drop ship to send some Marines over and clean up the turrets but this base is covered in cloaked spider mines so I have to use another tactic that the game just doesn't tell you about spider mines are laid by the vulture when they see a nearby ground enemy they Scurry over to it and make me restart the mission while the mines are deadly to ground and the turrets are deadly to air there's actually a third classification of units in Starcraft 1. hovering all workers vultures archons and dark archons are hovering units they're basically the same as ground units but they don't trigger spider mines so I grab a drop ship bring Jim and his vulture over and while my Raves Camp through Confederate production Jim gets to work on the turrets it's not fast but it does work perfectly safely and allows me to eliminate the remaining Terran forces without any risk after revolution comes NORAD too where I almost lose at the 5 Second mark from the spooky zergam Bush the objective here is a bit interesting I have a base and I have a Duke Duke's crash battle cruiser has a few Defenders and SUVs I have to simultaneously make sure that Duke holds on while building up a rescue force that can clear through the Zerg and get to him bringing both gym Rainer and two drop ships but the path to Duke is dangerous and the area around him is filled with Spore colonies and Scourge which are basically the hard counter to drop ships this is a mission that I don't want to let get on too long the Zerg waves threatening Duke can pretty easily kill one of the Defenders while I'm fighting somewhere else which would be a really lame way to have to reset and the main base is incredibly open meaning a Zergling in the wrong place could also quickly end my career so I opt to go for a Goliath composition in the base game goliaths aren't great they have moderate bulk and anti-ground Cannon and anti-air missiles but they're really lacking until they get the range upgrade in The Brood War expansion but they are my first unit that can actually take somewhat of a hit so why work with what I've got as I build up an army I decide I want to tackle the open base problem and get to show off why I just love Starcraft 1. I try to build a bunker next to my best being geyser to protect it for some reason when the bunker starts building the SUVs then start going up and above the bunker to harvest gas I pull the scvs away and then try to reset their harvesting and it doesn't work so I flew to Barracks over here to block that pathing hoping that it straightens everything out which also doesn't work and my SUVs continue square dancing so I try to build a Depot on the right hand side to stop this but building Collision in Starcraft 1 is a myth and the SUVs completely ignore my attempts and continue their nomadic lifestyle at this point I've given into the sunk cost fallacy so I make another Depot above the bunker which causes my SCB to have a complete meltdown where he starts rapidly vibrating and now all of my other scvs will do one gas return trip and then get stuck in this corner which did technically fix the square our movement issue so I guess I got my wish eventually I give up destroy my bunker and move it somewhere else hoping the dessert don't find their way into my mineral line thanks StarCraft one during this Fiasco I build up a nice group of goliaths and start my push against the enemy but I come up against a problem sunken colonies are just ridiculous defenses they do a ton of damage and have fantastic durability the only way I can push through them is by letting Jim tank while the goliaths provide fire support repair gym after rinse and repeat this strategy can barely beat a sunk without issue and if there's anything else going on it is not safe and there are multiple songs together later on so I'm gonna have to get a bit tricky if I want to do this Jim is a vulture hero which means he gets the benefits of vulture upgrades so why get the vulture speed upgrade making him the fastest ground unit in the game Sorry hovering unit in the game and then I YOLO charge him through everything towards Duke at the same time and do Luke's encampment I decide to be a bit cheeky why fly in dropships when I can just make them on site while the entire area is ringed with anti-air that isn't my problem as Jim dashes through the defenses and barely makes it alive my two drop ships finish and I get a victory that really shouldn't count but it does because Starcraft 1 is an older game the mission design isn't as consistently tight as later blizzard releases there are a handful of missions where you're given a new super powerful tool that allows you to run straight to the objective on the right hand side of the map despite needing to go through an enemy base to get there they just don't have enough going on in the early stages of the mission making it a complete walkover in normal RTS gameplay big open macro missions are my favorite the Strategic variety coupled with tons of units smashing into each other is really freaking cool and honestly the reason that I play the genre but in deathless these missions are horrifying when you have 20 places to keep track of and hundreds of enemies to kill it is so easy to lose something and have to reset the run or even worse not notice something died and keep going fortunately the big push gives me a few tools to prevent disaster the most biggest of them all is General Edmund Duke and his battle cruiser this bad boy has 40 more HP and twice the damage of a normal battle cruiser the mission has two main Terran forces that I have to totally eliminate my first goal is to peel apart the brown player so they can never attack me as I get a base setup this is where Duke comes in this High Ground position near the enemy base allows me to send the General in poke around a bit and then safely back off when I get a tactically close to dying some SUVs compared them right up and get back into the action while I'm harassing I start building my second disaster prevention tool after building a few up I use my two drop ships to Ferry them over and drop my newly unlocked Siege tanks on The High Ground the enemy then proceeds to die with The High Ground Miss chance and cover from The Uber battle cruiser these Siege tanks can easily mop up the remaining Terran forces and barely take a scratch once the Defenders are down I unsiege my growing tank force so waddle them down the stairs and clear through Brown's infrastructure the mission makes me kill everything even errant missile turrets so it's good to be thorough here once I reach 12 tanks and get some solid defenses at home I do something very weird that's gonna happen a lot in this run ice stop building stuff the combination of bad pathing only 12 units to a control group and it being difficult to track if my units die in Starcraft 1 means that it's often the correct decision to just get fewer units and control the heck out of them no deathballs needed in addition to the mic benefits it just makes it a lot easier to tell if a unit died because my Supply is no longer going up so I just have to remember one number in the top right and if it changes I get upset the knot building is really different than any other Devils run that I've done and honestly I like it quite a bit having a squad of Special Forces Commandos feels awesome as brown is gone and the small Outpost in the top left is cleaned up All That Remains is the main orange base and uh some people say that video games aren't art and none of those people have seen 12 Starcraft 1 Siege tanks on a ridge annihilating five times their cost in cataclysmic volleys of Doom orange sends everything that he has at me a good 100 supply of Army and it all gets smoked Siege tanks freaking rule new Gettysburg is maybe the most historic mission in Starcraft 1. it's where Kerrigan betrayed menx it's the first time that the Terran encountered the protoss and most importantly it's the first time that I struggle in this run so far we've mostly been playing against forces that are weak to Siege up tanks but that changes here the protoss are too clever to be beaten by an immobile blob of artillery but first I have to set up my defenses against the Zerg the Zerg base cannot be killed but sends occasional raids against me they aren't particularly scary but the two-second rush distance between me and them means I have to have pre-placed defenses there's no time to react to win I have to eliminate all protoss on the map in order to do this I decide on a composition of goliaths and science vessels the Goliath is a well-rounded fighter and the vessel can use defensive Matrix to Shield the front line soaking the high-powered protoss attacks as I eliminate them in the beginning this actually works out quite well but once I start pressuring one of the protoss bases everything falls apart the enemy uses a huge number of shuttles to swap units between their two bases this means not only reinforcements but also large attack angles that are inconsistent as they drop around me things quickly become a melee there's no front line and I can't defense a matrix all my goliaths so one eventually Falls giving it another go I tried shooting down the shuttles instead but Goliath attack range upgrade doesn't exist until brood War making them very average anterior at best after a couple attempts with this composition I realize that it's just not going to work out the enemy is in weird positions combined with the Goliath's famously horrible pathing meant it was too much to manage something would inevitably go wrong every time so I went back to the drawing board and took a look around the core issue here is that paths leading to each enemy base put my Army in between the two protoss bases so if I attack up them I'm always going to get surrounded if I'm gonna attack I have to do it from an angle that doesn't follow a ground path and that is when I realize I can solve this problem with one of the most famous Maneuvers in Starcraft history so I restart send Kerrigan on a cloaked mission to poke some dragoons build up my defenses and two factories then I lift them off float into the protoss base and start proxying some tanks I don't actually utilize Siege mode much during this push opting to harass the enemy mostly with normal mode tanks this is because shuttles like to drop zealots right on top of my forces which would be obliterated by friendly fire but in tank mode we don't do Splash damage so it's not an issue additionally because we're poking from this left angle it's pretty safe the protoss aren't able to hit me from the top or the left giving me Safe Harbor to retreat my damaged Vehicles unseaged tank DPS is surprisingly high and when combined with the Tank's relatively decent pathing I don't have many troubles clearing through the protoss once there's a single pylon remaining I have to evacuate my main base as soon as the protoss are gone an enormous swarm of Zerg will spawn anybody left behind will be taken out before the mission ends but that got me thinking there's absolute absolutely no reason to do this but can I take out the giant Zerg deathwave without losing a unit after finding a suitable location I build what can only be described as an AI level fortification knock down the final pylon and brace for impact and it goes a little something like this All Ships prepare to move away from toss on this on my mug boys don't do this it's done signal the fleet and take us out of orbit the base is under attack what the hell is going on up there not even close usually when I'm making a challenge run I try to keep the compositions varied and interesting throughout the missions if it's not specifically a monotype unit challenge then it can get pretty repetitive making the same couple units over and over so it's the final Taran Mission and I haven't made battle Cruisers yet so uh that's variety right it turns out they're pretty good the mission has an eye on Cannon at the top with two Terran players guarding it one scary and the other red the path towards the cannon is fairly open but I can't just float my fleet over there this is because balance wasn't really a thing in Starcraft 1 and that means overpowered spells are everywhere DeVos as a whole is going to suffer is going to take great care to avoid many of these spells in the future and after floating over to red and killing them and narrowly dodging a nuke I get to experience the first of these fantastically fun abilities this is lockdown lockdown is a 44 second stun on mechanical units fired from cloaked ghosts not only does it completely immobilize a battle cruiser and stop it from firing it also can still take damage while it's stunned if you can't tell from my voice I really love being hit by this ability I could float all my forces to the end and hope that I just don't get locked down in a bad spot but it's not worth the risk so instead I do something that every gamer fears learning in Marines only this white base was a monster it was the first real challenge of the Run largely because it calls reinforcements away from the final objective to assist this time instead of accidentally stumbling upon some weird AI Quirk I abuse it I transition into Siege tanks and create a firing line to cover my battle Cruisers and start the fight just as planned the Terran charges everything they have at me blocking my battle Cruisers down and then getting melted by the artillery once it looks like the Defenders are gone I don't even bother cleaning the base up I just walk over to the empty objective and knock it down and with that we move into the Zerg campaign there isn't much to say about Zerg and Starcraft 1 honestly but this is mainly because English doesn't have enough good adjectives for being in extreme levels of pain Starcraft 2 deathless Zerg was carried by the immense power of Sarah Kerrigan as well as having access to the Queen's early healing power with transfuse in Starcraft 1 we've traded those for a swarmy glass Cannon faction with 12 units per hotkey yay but that pain is for later among the ruins isn't too bad after learning how to construct additional hydrolus dens I'm tasked with eliminating a Terran base and get to doing so the hydralisk in Starcraft 1 is really fluid and microbial there are a few select units that just work really well in this game and the Hydra has always been one of those the Taran opponent here has a decent number of goliaths and Marines but this is the first time in the Run that I can smoothly pull units back and Retreat them to safety it feels amazing which makes even more impact for the realization that as I get into this campaign the massive number of things that one shot hydrolisks means I need to savor this moment it won't be happening again but that's for future me to worry about right now I get to micro my little heart out and Crush through the Taran base and in doing so I enjoyed the mission quite a bit because Starcraft 1 is an older game the mission design isn't as consistently tight as later blizzard releases there are a handful of missions where you're given a new super powerful tool that allows you to run straight to the objective on the right hand side of the map despite needing to go through an enemy base to get there they just don't have enough going on in the early stages of the mission making it a complete walkover after that Blitz we move straight into the new Dominion which continues Starcraft 1's trend of incredibly Early Access to Flying units now we have the mutilisk and now we can micro which is good because the rest of this campaign is going to be siege tank and Reaver Central without Flyers here the Run would basically be impossible the mission is pretty simple on paper and designed around the muta the enemy has a long ridge they sit on top of with tanks and bunkers guarding the approach most of the forces are not an issue but the AI does prove their keyboard has an m key because they spam out about 500 Marines and are not afraid to stem them the burst damage from these guys is way too much to fight straight up with mutelisk so I have to adopt a system of swinging back and forth around the base forcing the Infantry to get pulled apart and then sniped in smaller groups each time a skirmish ends I take all the damage mutas and swap in some healthy ones my base ends up becoming the first official Zerg retirement home as all these bruised up guys flap around after their service all in all the mission was pretty fun once I got the hang of it the insane burst of upgraded Marines is scary but Micro immutalists with the magic box is really gratifying in Starcraft 1 so the victory feels earned Fury of the Swarm is a mission that I was initially pretty concerned by it starts with a defensive segment masses of Terran drop all around my base and have to be fended off the number of angles that they can hit from makes it pretty sketchy in the early game to defend after holding on for long enough Kerrigan hatches and now I have to destroy the command center in the top right hand side of the map the island base that it's on would be a monster to attack if I hadn't figured out something really stupid you see how the main Terran enemy is blue and the objective is deal those two players don't actually share Vision so a cloaked Kerrigan can walk right over to this Command Center surrounded by detectors and slap it down the missile turrets reveal me only to teal who has no units to defend with Starcraft 1 is doing its best and I sort of feel bad for bullying it sometimes now that we have Kerrigan the Zerg is a little bit less scary to play with for a bit the Amerigo is another no build exploration Mission it has a lot of Terran through a lot of corridors what it doesn't have is detection and Kerrigan can cloak so why walk past like 80 of the mission kill a couple of these missile turrets walk to the end find some ghosts and get killed by them pretend that that never happened and in my second attempt wait for Kerrigan's Health regenerate then I tear through some of them and walk to the end the dark Templar comes next and it's a special Mission because it doesn't include any dark Templar which is a shame because I actually feel pretty confident fighting against them what I don't feel is confident against are reavers and this Mission has a lot of them the objective is pretty simple there's bass in the bottom right and after it dies I have a duel with tacitar in the center to Aid me are two bases on plateaus allowing me to very safely produce a lot of units until this Reaver somehow shows up and kills all my drones in one shot fortunately on my second attempt I have a new unit the guardian a flying long-range Siege crab that lets me fight a little bit more straight up okay it's time to be a bit real here Zerg has like two units in this entire game that are viable to play deathless the mutilist and the guardian I don't have the lurker until brood war or the Devourer the defiler's dark swarm is amazing but Splash damage still gets through it which means that the units I have on the ground right now just don't cut it I just have to make flyers there isn't really enough other good option not on this Mission or the next or the next I usually try to feel the variety of compositions during a run leveraging specific unit strengths for particular challenges that's what I find fun and enjoy playing but the Starcraft 1 Zerg campaign particularly pre-brude War just does not allow that for this Mission I get two control groups of Guardians one of mutilists to hit air and slow push through the protoss base once that's done Kerrigan floats to the middle slaps halluc tacitar and zaws dies off screen but he is not our friend anyway so it doesn't count the culling is the only Zerg vs Zerg in the entire base game and thank goodness for that because this matchup is silly this is almost a mission where big altruist energy could actually be a viable strategy deathless but there's a tiny little problem the enemy Zerg have a unit called the Queen the Starcraft 1 Queen is a spellcaster that can One-Shot any non-robotic ground unit with the spawn broodling's ability it doesn't even do damage it just kills them on the spot so ground units are illegal cool I uh I make Guardians and mutualists because they're the only things that can't be targeted by spawn broodlings the enemy isn't even really that tough here there are a couple Scourge on this Plateau vase that scare me but for the most part Zerg vs Zerg is all about Flyers anyway so I'm golden here oh yeah and the insanely powerful spawn ruling spell I can't use that here because it spawns units with a short time to life so I can't even get my comeuppance Ivor and I is a pretty interesting Mission design when it eventually gets remade in Warcraft 3 The Starcraft version has a few problems there are canyons on three corners of the map we have to defend all three of them from fleeing dark Templar while simultaneously destroying all the protoss Nexus the problem is that the enemy barely ever attacks and those attacks are almost always a single dark Templar the mission gets you really afraid of all these dark Templar that could be sneaking around and then there's just none of them I asked my friend Ace who speedruns this game for a list of attack timings and they're very rare the Nexus that I have to kill also just have no defenses from behind six entire Guardians can kill the main base and the expansion Nexus does have some Scouts guarding it but Kerrigan was in the mood for some acupressure so I sent her over for an hour session with the flyer I like the idea of this Mission and I can see why blizzard gave it another shot in The Frozen Throne I think that what most likely happened here is that play testers a really hard time managing three bases at once and attacking with an instant loss condition so blizzard took the mission and nerfed it really hard as a result it's basically a free win all right I'm bored I know from a logical perspective that the correct thing to do for these final two remaining Zerg missions are make more mutilists make more guardians but I just can't do it it is absolutely totally without a doubt within the rules but the rules don't account for me having the attention span of a squirrel and wanting to make literally anything else so I'm not gonna use them for these final two missions no matter how dumb of an idea it is first up the invasion of hire the objective is an odd one and for that reason I can abuse it first I have to take a drone to the middle of the map and then a countdown starts after it's over the Drone pops out with a crystal and I have to escort him back home the chord my plan is based around the fact that you don't actually have to defend the crystal during the harvesting if you have nothing over there the enemy attacks will go to your main base instead so I don't bother to clear through the protoss bases instead I upgrade drops on my overlords load up two drones and skim between two of the fortification stations one of my drones heads on over to the objective and another burrows for later now I have to defend against the onslaught early on my options are really sunken in sport colonies but as I Tech up I grab some ultralisks and for the first time in this campaign I have the ability to be hit by a Reaver shot and not instantly restart the mission and it feels good the AI gets pretty wacky with its pressure here but excluding the time where my drone decided to go on an adventure and meet a Reaver I managed to hold on as the countdown nears completion I unburrow my second drone and start what can only be described as the world's stealthiest Hatchery nobody can see it it's basically invisible I don't know what the Zerg Engineers did but it's amazing once the Hatchery completes I build an itis Canal send by Ultras through to run interference for a Reaver camping my drone spawn and as soon as a crystal boy pops out he goes through the nidus and is delivered directly onto the beacon for the mission's end that was way more fun than make finger units I'm glad that I changed it up full circle is the final mission of the Zerg campaign and it has what may be the greatest present in Starcraft history a protoss opponent without any reavers I can I can actually make units and not get cheesed out of the game it's a miracle I am so happy this mission is actually a joke compared to the previous one there's a temple in the middle of the map I have to destroy it and then bring Crystal drone over to it and because there's very little splash damage in the mission I get to bring out what is arguably the strongest spellcaster in RTS the defiler is cheap Canberra has insane energy regeneration with consume which I can't use because it kills my own stuff and one of the best spells ever dark swarm I make some hydros and Ultras head on over to the temple and start attacking things go very well because when you're under a dark swarm you take zero damage from ranged attacks it is a symmetrical effect sure if you really want to avoid my hydrolysis damage by running under a blanket with ultralisks B you my guest the route to the temple being a corridor does not help the protoss in any way either the invulnerable swarm quickly quashes The Defenders Gores the temple down and I roll out the orange carpet for our drone hero to stroll on over and finish off dessert campaign I really liked the way that this campaign ended even if it was painful to get here let's hope the brood Wars org missions are fun like these last two ones I don't see any way that that won't be the case so let's just move on to the protoss it turns out that protoss has some problems of their own that make deathless a little bit rough but as always the first mission is pretty simple I clear out a couple Zerg meet up with Phoenix build an army and attack the base of the top left I only have two available units here the Zealot and the Dragoon while zelds are bulky I want to avoid melee stuff in deathless when I can so I focus on Dragoon production dragoons are bulky long range high damage and cheap they are the perfect unit for this sort of challenge if they didn't have one small weakness holding them back because pathing is really just a suggestion for them if you click to move a Dragoon it will absolutely move and if they're feeling it they might even head in the direction you clicked but sometimes they need a vacation will decide to clip through the terrain or decide to fuse into a giant immobile blob that would make show Tucker proud but today they decided to be good boys and did their job as essentially mobile Photon cannons I use Phoenix's Elite Zealot stats to protect them and they tear the through the Zerg base easily it dies and I move on next up is Into The Flame which is more of the same and I know that it's lame but no more units can I claim sorry no I'm not doing this for the entire Mission not because I don't want to but because I can't come up with enough Rhymes it really is a shame let's get back to the game this mission is boring I have to defend for 15 minutes as Phoenix is getting overnight delivery on an army to help me out the only viable unit is still dragoons but the enemy just cannot contest them despite it being a defense Mission I eventually get impatient and try moving out the right side of the map is all Zerg Phoenix will eventually spawn on the top with some reavers whose scarabs are not units by my rules and then the Zerg just died to him in his forces but I wanted to do something so we decided to meet up I managed to gut most of the Zerg before Phoenix arrives but after he gets here he will Proclaim that is the cerebrate we shall maim so my forces Take Aim and kill him next up is higher ground the third mission of the protoss campaign and if the third Terran mission was too easy and the third Zerg mission was too hard this mission is just right there are two Zerg bases one anti-ground and one anti-air they both gotta go and to help out we have a new unit the Scout is a big bulky brawler and by brawler I mean that it's anti-ground DPS is so low that it can't help but get stuck in incredibly prolonged fights the Scout is such a bad unit that last time I told my stream it was inviable somebody responded that no it's good because one player and one matchup made one of them and then won the game once so yeah if a unit is so rare that people can tell me specific games where they showed up it's a meme but because the Zerg are split into an anti-aeronautic ground base the Scout is actually a fantastic choice here the Scout is actually an acceptable Choice here when I played this mission in zeld's only I was quite shocked at how bad the anti-airbase was so I Cannon up this choke point for safe D make a bunch of Scouts and blast through the base and then laugh at the much scarier anti-ground vase and its inability to hit me because sometimes memes are actually dreams the hunt for tacitar is one of those missions that's always felt weird to me and now that I know how to cheese it I always do I'm gonna assume that you've seen my zealots only video and skip the detailed explanation of the trick used here but basically I get a crew of protoss forces clear to the top left of the map a few of the fights can be a bit sketchy but no time limit means that I can be slow and smooth here once I find the Templar I put my screen down the cutscene drags it over I pause on the frame that the audio starts save reload and walk to the end during what should be a pause easy and choosing sides is maybe even easier all I have to do is bring tacitar and two zealots to a beacon on an island while this Mission can actually be beaten at the 30 second Mark by hallucinating copies of a shuttle to soak the hits I would prefer to avoid using hallucinations if possible because it's a bit of a gray area on being units so instead I get shuttle speed bolt down to the bottom right Force lightening some of these Guardians and finish off the mission with no issues into the darkness is a bit of a nightmare the missions got some real spooky Vibes a Terran facilities Infested by the Zerg the protoss strike force must crawl its way through the tunnels being ambushed by the Swarm and most importantly by infested Darren why do infested Terran do 500 damage because they hate me and they want this run to die I actually love this mission's design in theory but the Practical Parts make things a little bit frustrating I was initially hoping that to deal with infested Terran I could just learn where they all are and then use tacitar's psionic storm to snipe them from range and move on this worked well for the first few infested that aren't burrowed but there are a bunch of burrowed guys well that's not a problem I can run Zealot around until the infested Terran pops out and then storm him right nope because the infested Terran aren't actually burrowed on this Mission instead they spawn based on triggers then they instantly unburrow and charge into you and kill your army it's a fun experience for the whole family this took me quite a few tries to get right the difference between being blasted by an infested Terran and sniping it is very small but eventually I do manage to make progress at the crossroads there are three paths first up is the Northwest this hallway leads to a door control that we need later there is an infested Terran spawn up here but if the game is going to cheese me with infested Terran I can cheese it back the spawn trigger here requires specifically Marines so I send three zealots instead and the villain never gets to exist these zealots can easily clean up the hybrid and get the door controls in the Southeast things are much worse there's an event to rescue a bunch of Terran Marine allies and then gain control of them I had to reset quite a few times here figuring this out because the moment that they're rescued the Zerg swarmed them it's basically guaranteed death every single time but eventually I figured out that if you position tacitar just right around this corner it's possible to not rescue the Marines and be able to toss a few size storms on the ground cleaning up the observed because these guys actually follow the rules saving the Infantry after that is pretty simple the final of the three hallways is infested Terran Boardwalk I take my new friends build a firing line and send the world's bravest Zealot to pull the infested Terran back to be eliminated once that's all dealt with All That Remains is the Uber death wave at the end this wave is far too scary to fight straight up so I grabbed two zealots to activate the fight and pull them back around to bend and down some stairs this pulls the Zerg into single file and a bit of Stormy Weather and Rain of bullets takes them out the large majority of this mission was actually a really fun puzzled workout I'm not a fan of the infested Terran spawning in but I'll give it a pass because everything else was really quite a treat because Starcraft 1 is an older game the mission design isn't as consistent no I'm not doing this joke for a third time in a row it's dark Templar this time zero tool hits for like a hundred and he just mops up this Nexus no problem every RTS has a couple enemy fortresses that you look at and you go wow this is actually really well designed and fortified the trial of tacitar is one of those missions in addition to the two protoss enemies that are nearby the bottom right has a base that I need to breach that is full of all of the highest Tech the protoss has the idea here is that this is the mission where we get the carrier and with some capital ship power there really isn't that much that can defend against it but the carrier's interceptors die a lot meaning they're completely and totally inviable for a deathless run so I'm stuck finding another strategy no matter what I choose to do here I'm going to need gas and a lot of it and unfortunately the base that I'm given just doesn't have much the two nearby enemies are also a bit too strong to be busting without some good Tech options so I end up stuck looking for better options as I was looking around with Jim Raider's battle cruiser I found a little bass in the bottom left a base that has not one but two vespine geyser this place seems like my best bet but to claim this base I'm gonna need a plan so let's talk about our old pal Hadrian there's a bit of a misconception that Hadrian's Wall was built by the Romans to defend themselves from The Barbarians to the north but the Romans were a little bit more clever than that the wall existed to separate some of the more powerful Clans apart from each other controlling and monitoring their movements and as a good student of History I've spotted some shuttles roaming between the main Fortress and the base that I want so I start building my wall as it finishes the Hyperion is now free to start harassing the base this angers The Fortress who attempts to send aid but is stopped by my fortifications the protoss ends up sending more and more but is never able to crack me and without the reinforcements the bottom left Falls the enemy ended up sending a lot of stuff in small groups to attempt to defense when I poke inside their base I realized they sent basically every Defender they had besides the carriers so I start pumping out Scouts and realize they have a lot less carriers than I thought and the AI was actually hallucinating fake carriers to make it seem like they had more which is hilarious and I love it with an enemy starved of resources I slowly rat tat tat down castar's prison without any problems thanks Adrian Shadowhunters is the second to last mission in the base campaign and it's surprisingly simple the bottom 20 of the map is mine with two mineral bases and two gas bases giving me a jump started economy in the center is a valley that leads to a network of canyons around the map all filled with Zerg and at the top are two cerebrits who must be killed with zero tool nearby the Canyons make fighting tough and the middle of the map is filled with a bunch of powerful high-tech Zerg forces and a lot of static defense but it's not really a problem because I have unlocked the Arbiter and if you've ever watched artosis's stream you know that the Arbiter is both a fair and balanced unit you also probably know a little too much about Mario about places weird once my Army is built the Arbiter heads to the north taking Spore fire along the entire way but not caring because for some reason this flying spellcaster has infinity health once I reach the top I recall my Army the Reaver ball this mass of caterpillars are armed with scarabs and supported by the Arbiters smoking field they're not fast but they don't need to be they create a force field of death where any Zerg bold enough to enter is returned to its constituent atoms before landing a shot it might take them literally 10 minutes to cross the map but they blast everything in their way and it just works until I run out of money while Reaver shots are ridiculous they also cost 15 minerals a pop and right as I reach the final cerebrate I realize that both of my bases have run out of cash and I have no income with under a hundred dollars to my name I slowly dropped the cerebrate to one shot from death and then casually run one HP zero tool in to get the killing blow and we're not going to talk about the time that I killed the server it was aerator right next to it but it respawned that never happened promise we finally made it to Eye of the storm the final mission in the base game of Starcraft 1 and a nightmare to manage deathless I have two bases a Terran base in the top left and a protoss in the bottom right the center of the map is an enormous Zerg Hive cluster consisting of an aggressive red player and a defensive purple player the overmind is our Target he has 5000 HP is surrounded by layers and layers of every possible Zerg unit and has a ton of hives to produce from as well as all the tech and an unlimited amount of money at his disposal but before we finish this final deathless mission I have a confession to make while I play all three Starcraft factions pretty evenly these days I've always identified as a protoss player I know this is the sort of Revelation that can get you crucified in the Starcraft Community but I do like protoss better than Teran or Zerg and for that reason I have the desire to no I have the duty to not just defeat the overmind without losing unit but by doing it in the most protoss way possible after fortifying my Terran base and abandoning my starting protoss location in the bottom right I moved to the bottom left and if you watch zealots only you know that there's an unreasonably large number of mineral Fields here but no gas and you might also know that it took a good hundred dead zealots to win this Mission so minerals alone aren't exactly that useful well they wouldn't be if zealots were the only thing that cost minerals I grabbed provious and Jim's battle cruiser bring them to the center of the map and start building my cannons I start fairly far back so I can get a first lineup once they're being finished I start rapidly building pylons and cannons b-lining towards the Heart of the Swarm red stumbles across the Cannons pretty early and the raids begin the Hyperion can SWAT away the long-range Guardians keeping the Cannons safe as I get closer to the overmined larger and larger waves observe crash across my Cannon crawl the front and the flanks are being hit simultaneously but probius stands strong and continues his Rush after 100 of kills the Cannons reach the enemy creep and I threatened their hive the Zerg sends raids backed up with every tool that they have but I can keep provia safe in a shuttle healed by Shield batteries preventing any major threats to his safety and as a left Hive Falls the creep starts to recede and I can get in range of the overmind and that is when something amazing happens while the red player is still macroing building armies and sending ultralisks and Guardians to defend the overmines purple Zerg they just stopped I don't know why but their drone stopped harvesting their hives stopped producing and their Scourge aren't even being pulled when the Hyperion isn't that far away did did I make the overmind rage quit I've never seen this before the AI just turned itself off it isn't doing anything despite having unlimited money still having a bunch of tech structures and production it just gave up I don't know how I don't know why but the OU overmined lost to a cannon rush and then went AFK and this is the single funniest thing I've ever seen in StarCraft one what a phenomenal ending to this campaign as my cannons drop the overmines HP to zero beating the strongest Zerg defenses and breaking my opponent's will tacitar decides that we can't possibly win and decides to sacrifice him no I mash Escape skip the voice line and the cutscene so he is fine nobody died deathless accomplished and the overmind didn't Gigi

Channel: GiantGrantGames

Views: 14,492

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Id: 6_iV0BZ60gs

Length: 46min 46sec (2806 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 04 2023