StarCraft 2 Beta

So, I received a beta key for StarCraft 2 from a friend about a week ago and the game instantly brought me back to high school years playing the first version of the game.  Mutabomb is still highly functional, 6-pool rush also is great.  Carriers are still the best all around air support, but Battlecruisers are now a functional substitute on the Terran side as well.

While I love the RTS genre, I would hesitate to call myself 'good' by any stretch of the imagination.  'Good' and 'Bad' are relative, but I do watch how it functions.  My RTS gaming got started way back with WarCraft 2, so I have a long history with Blizzard's style of RTS (though I skipped WC 3 due to various factors).

In WC 2, Horde and Alliance had the same units.  The only difference was in the late game where Paladins and Ogre Mages had different spells.  (I think the dedicated spellcasting units had different effects as well, but I forget).  Bloodlust or Healing?  Take your pick.

StarCraft was a leap forward with 3 factions and different basic units.  That must have been a horrible pain to balance.  Between Zerglings and Zealots, it was probably an easy thing, but toss Marines into the mix and you'll have some serious headache as you consider the power of ranged attacks.  Is 1 Zealot equal to 4 zerglings equal to 2 marines?  In the end, the balance cannot be perfect, but it can be "close enough".  What is "close enough"?  The point at which the player skill, tactical situation, and luck determines the outcome between equally resourced armies rather than some unfair advantage.  That is what we call "balanced enough", and StarCraft 1 certainly achieved that for me.

In StarCraft 2 (yes it's still a beta, but nothing is outright broken from what I can tell), new concepts have been added.  So before, you had your 'basic' units.  Marines, Zerglings, and Zealots.  Don't worry, they're still there.  From there you had your 2nd teir, Firebats, Hydralisks and Dragoons (alternating the melee with the ranged).  While the second tier is similar (Stalkers are effectively Dragoons, and Hydras are still around.  Terran get Mauraders instead of Firebats), they added "skirmisher" tier between.  Skirmishers are units that excel at getting behind enemy lines.  The concept of a "semi-flyer" was introduced with Reapers and Stalkers w/ Blink upgrades.  Lurkers are gone and instead Zerg get Roaches (can move while burrowed).  Rather than performing air drops, now you infiltrate by way of these "skirmisher" units.

Skirmishers add an entirely new dynamic into the game.  Perimeter defense strategies fall victim to skirmishers very easily as the Skirmishes excel at getting around to the back of the base and harassing the workers until it's too late.  Before, just adding a healthy amount of anti-air to your perimeter defense would suffice to defend against drops, but now you must add defense internally to your workers, or merely station some anti-skirmisher units near-by or else suffer a humiliating defeat as your workers die and your economy grinds to a halt.

That's all I have for now about SC2.