40:00 The OG Reaper was freaking insane. I remember one tournament where pretty much every Terran went 3 rax reaper in every matchup. The combination of murdering every light unit, blowing through buildings, cliff jumping, and being almost as fast as speedlings with nitro packs was just WAY too much. I would both love and be terrified to see what pros with today's skill could have done with them.
I think it was already in a beta tournament when the first player just went 5 rax reapers against zerg. Early WoL was weird, IdrA was a pretty big deal and he brought this mindset of "the game is supposed to work that way", and reapers were not supposed to bet a queen and roaches. Except if you had enough of those, they did.
It always made me a little sad that there was no Expert Zerg challenge. It was an even spread for the first two tiers, then suddenly on Expert it's 1 protoss 2 terran...
yeah, its like 3 terran mission even, considering the last one is 2 stages. And seeing it heavely leaning towards terran, is it likely they considered doing those challenge packs for every expansion, but then just ditched the idea?
You can absolutely go Planetary Fortress only with no deaths against the Zealot rush in Rush Defense. I tried it after the first one of these and it worked.... not great, it was pretty sketchy, but I got it to work! ^v^ After the rushed PF to hold off, I built a second CC off to the right to float it below the cannon and have an scv to keep it healthy when all the zealots started slowly pathing over to it. Once the cannon and pylon were down, I made a second low-ground PF to hit the remaining pylons and middle gate, then PF 4 on the high ground to finish off the two remaining gates. It was really silly, very sketch, and took a while, but it was fun! I might need to see if I can make the BC thing work effectively, but MAN they make a lot of zealots, and eventually get pretty upset at repairing workers... 0 v0 Immediate edit: The criteria for silver and gold on rush defense are unit losses! sub 10 between the two phases for gold. ^v^ Second edit: I've been able to get up to a completed fusion core on Rush Defense without building a combat unit or PF and only losing the terribly placed starting depot, pretty sure there's no way to save that. Eventually their damage density is too high to out-repair, but I also kinda suck at macro and walling, so I'm sure someone good could successfully pull out a BC! Might still lose, but I'm sure you could at least build one! Would really help if there were an actual expansion. '^v^ Third edit re: second edit: You would be able to win once you had the BC out because you could just lift an single building and be fine. Doing it and getting gold I'm not sure on. There would be a LOT of 'lots by that point. OH! You'll wanna use your Starport and Fusion Core to seal off the openings in your mineral line, otherwise there will be zealots in there. They will start looping around to the back eventually, but not too many of them by the time the buildings are done. I might go and try to tech up to a Thor first to get a win and then try BCs again later.
First (4th) mission starts at 0:17 Second (5th) mission starts at 6:36 Third (6th) mission starts at 7:00 Fourth (7th) mission starts at 12:44 Fifth (8th) mission starts at 17:44 Sixth (9th) mission starts at 31:56
Thanks for playing these again grant, it was so nostalgic. I remember my favourites were covert ops and infestation although I was really terrible at them because I had a tendency to babysit every fight. 32:36 I definitely remember this map too! It was some of the first competitive starcraft I ever watched. I especially remember this one TvT(?) where a player busted down the rocks late game and walked in with thors. It felt super revolutionary to watch at the time! Thanks for the nostalgia trip grant!
Grant dealing with these challenges with the most random of unit combinations and build orders makes me think of that time I tried the Auto Chess mod for Starcraft 2. I wonder if that one is still around. On another note, I really wish someone made a "Grant's Challenge Gauntlet" mod and packed a lot of these, especially with callbacks to Grants more famous videos or mod playthroughs. Gold could be something like taking down all the enemy combinations deathless.
These challenges were so great to me back in the day. I remember wanting to get gold because of that I learned there is a option to group army units and pressing tab to cycle between different units.
Wow. For that base defence macro mission i remember sweating so hard, a tried everything, playing as fast as possible (I'm a campaign only smuck), googling a "perfect" build order, pratice, pratice, pratice for days aaaaaand 3 minutes remaining. I gave up
I remember it being the case that if you press the '+' sign on the numpad, the game speeds up to fast, then faster after pressing again. This might be useful information for those trying to play the challenges. This also works in the campaigns, not just these challenges. Edit: I remembered incorrectly, it only works in the campaign.
I love these little history lessons we get whenever you play classic versions of the game. I'm curious what you'd have to say about older arcade games and ladder map designs, if that was your scene!
as someone with almost no familiarity with sc2, it's wild to hear you say stuff like "man it's so crazy that pylon power reaches the high ground" and "oh right, I have to research siege mode"
Grant, you're a drunken master. In the macro mission you made a wall with a hole. Then built ten (10) tanks and didn't use the tech labs from the factories to build ghosts. And yet you still got gold. :D
Man this was a blast from the past! I cannot believe I never was able to beat any of these even after watching so much sc2 I remember still struggling and failing most of them. and seeing grant play through these is making me feel nostaglic and now I wanna try them again see if after all these years I will be able to beat them now
I'm 100% expecting that all the stormgate previews are going to be at "normal" speed like how Blizzard keeps (kept) showing their RTS gameplay in normal speed while the actual competitive speed will be fastest and micro is going to only be for people with 5000 apm while everyone else relies on deathballs.
during the infestation challenge, you can keep that collosus by moving it outside of the channel range into another infestor's range & neuraling it again & if ur done with a unit, esp a siege tank, have another infestor throw eggs at it then end the neural & burrow away re: 22:30, thats why i like regiments. no unit production, merely bringing into battle the units you made and then replenishing them from a limited pool of replacements when needed, & the units are reactive enough to micro but slow enough to react to your micro that you can achieve a focused, 100% micro on almost your entirely army for most of the time. i get that sc being so hectic that you can never be in 100% control of your army is nice for having an infinite skill ceiling for the pros, but as a normal player its really nice to be able to achieve that level of control in a game where the armies are small enough that it's reasonable for a normal person to be able to do it. and when you've increased your skill past your army, you can invest points to increase your supply cap & make your army bigger
On that last rush defense against protoss, you can make a comfortable defensive setup if you make a bunker with reapers, who pretty can pretty much eliminate any zealot that comes close. Then, since the whole tech tree is enabled (I think it was a developer oversight), you can just work your way up to any unit, including Thors and Battlecruisers (I actually beat this challenge using that just for the sake of it)
Though im super late to this, you can beat Rush Defense with just BCs and SCVs* I just did it by pulling ~4 workers immediately to gank the top probe, and then intercept the second probe, so that the enemy only has 1 gate. Then, while walling myself in with baracks, factory, depots, and engi bays, I had one SCV run in a loop near the gateway, pulling any spawning Zealots onto it, buying me time to tech up and get an economy going. By the time that hero died my fusion core had finished, I was fully walled in and I had just started up the BC, allowing me to pull most of my guys off mining to repair until he could spawn and slowly work his way through the ~10-15 zealots chopin at my walls.
I feel sad how bad reaper feels now compared to old xpacs. The last change that Reaper got was the grenade damage nerf from 10 to 5 after Byun won the finale in LotV and then they got forgotten.
Great video, the challenges completed and gold rank achieved on it. I wonder what SC2 has left for Grant to play around with, because this was fun to see.
41:15 I tried and it wasn't that hard, even if I'm unable to finish the campaigns in brutal, it was fun but a bit long, thanks for the idea! I posted it if you still want to see it.
same! It felt the most achieving out of all the challenges, you really had to optimize the mana across your units... and the game would keep throwing insane enemies like the mothership towards the end, like HOW TF DO I DEFEAT THAT
I struggled a lot with the macro one. I always figured orbital command centers would be wasteful and expanded late because I was focusing on worker production. I don't get this game lol.
Alright, 2 methods to rush BCs and no other combat units/PFs. Engineering bay walls is boring but easy. The other method is to use SCVs to kite zealots infinitely while macroing up. If the zealots get away and start going after buildings, attacking the gateways with the SCV usually pulls some or all of the zealots back onto the SCV's trail. I have a recording of a sloppy attempt with this method that ended up with 3 units lost.
I wonder, on the last mission, if it would be worth it to pull an SCV or two to take out the probe before it can warp in any buildings. They have a Gateway already built, but cutting down two more Gateways would lighten the pressure.
Short answer, it can work. Long answer: You need to pull several SCVs to surround the probe while it is out of cannon range. You then need to catch the second probe that starts down by the cannon and do the same. You lose a lot of mining time, so it's not the most effective strat, but it can get the job done. Then you only need to deal with 1 gateway worth of zealots.
I know the reaper wasn't that great in hots, but there was this dude at my local community center that would rush them and had this weird style where he would make the game so irritating for the opponent, they'd either quit at 5 minutes, or die a death of 1000 cuts where this reaper ball keeps getting bigger and more difficult to ignore.
It’s probably just the challenges - but I think the lack of rocks on that desert oasis map might be related to the map variants of some of the OG melee maps that would have fewer entrances to main bases. I think they had the same name but with “novice”?
Grant I think Achievements in SC2 are bugged. Like a while ago I remember logging in and getting rewarded with an achievement for completing Conviction... even though I didn't have Heart of the Swarm back then
I think some of the achievements got redone at some point and all previous achievement got that same date also for that last mission the threshold was to not loose 9 units (12 for silver) in both defence combines
It is indeed possible to get battlecruisers on Rush Defense. I tried it but I had to use Planetary Fortress to survive cuz they really target fire your repairing scvs.
If I had to guess, the achievements weren't added untill 2022, so that's when you "earned" them, since it would have checked and seen that you had completed the challenges
The thing about playing this slow, it's more time in your own head. So much time going "Gotta do _something_ ", and the best course of action is to... not. Which feels wrong.
Am i missing something or did grant not do the "kill x amount of units" in an earlier video? I distinctly remember him spamming snipe close to the end of the first part to kill a couple units
Honestly, I think I'd enjoy the game more at this speed. Starcraft 2 is just too fast for me in general. Too stressful, and therefore not actually fun to play. Finding out that I've been playing on fast-forward certainly explains it.
yeah, when I used to play I hated that the default speed for online was nearly double speed. Be much more fun if the strategy game gave you time to, you know, strategize.
Grant got a new screen\monitor and it messed up DoW in obs i think, since game is old and can't handle the widescreen support. So it's on hold, until he figures how to make it work.
I have a new, likely pretty easy SC2 challenge type. the buildings only challenge. so only workers and whatever you can build. no other units (cept overlords in zerg cause you need supply?)
![Grant Plays: The StarCraft Micro Challenge Missions [First 3]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/GCCVtc3MT1o/mqdefault.jpg)
40:00 The OG Reaper was freaking insane. I remember one tournament where pretty much every Terran went 3 rax reaper in every matchup. The combination of murdering every light unit, blowing through buildings, cliff jumping, and being almost as fast as speedlings with nitro packs was just WAY too much. I would both love and be terrified to see what pros with today's skill could have done with them.
I think it was already in a beta tournament when the first player just went 5 rax reapers against zerg. Early WoL was weird, IdrA was a pretty big deal and he brought this mindset of "the game is supposed to work that way", and reapers were not supposed to bet a queen and roaches. Except if you had enough of those, they did.
Siege tech was removed even further back; it was in Heart of the Swarm.
Even before the big bang...
one of the worst decisions for sure
0:41 Novice: Covert Ops
6:41 Psionic Assault
7:07 Infestation
12:54 Harbinger of Death
17:56 Opening Gambit
32:02 Rush Defense
42:59 Ending
"I really made a mistake warping in more units over here," Grant says as he's over the gold goal with 45 seconds left. A true challenge runner. XD
It always made me a little sad that there was no Expert Zerg challenge. It was an even spread for the first two tiers, then suddenly on Expert it's 1 protoss 2 terran...
yeah, its like 3 terran mission even, considering the last one is 2 stages. And seeing it heavely leaning towards terran, is it likely they considered doing those challenge packs for every expansion, but then just ditched the idea?
@@ko71k52 Terran was free to play in super early WoL, so it makes some sense the teaching challenges funnel you there.
You can absolutely go Planetary Fortress only with no deaths against the Zealot rush in Rush Defense. I tried it after the first one of these and it worked.... not great, it was pretty sketchy, but I got it to work! ^v^ After the rushed PF to hold off, I built a second CC off to the right to float it below the cannon and have an scv to keep it healthy when all the zealots started slowly pathing over to it. Once the cannon and pylon were down, I made a second low-ground PF to hit the remaining pylons and middle gate, then PF 4 on the high ground to finish off the two remaining gates. It was really silly, very sketch, and took a while, but it was fun!
I might need to see if I can make the BC thing work effectively, but MAN they make a lot of zealots, and eventually get pretty upset at repairing workers... 0 v0
Immediate edit: The criteria for silver and gold on rush defense are unit losses! sub 10 between the two phases for gold. ^v^
Second edit: I've been able to get up to a completed fusion core on Rush Defense without building a combat unit or PF and only losing the terribly placed starting depot, pretty sure there's no way to save that. Eventually their damage density is too high to out-repair, but I also kinda suck at macro and walling, so I'm sure someone good could successfully pull out a BC! Might still lose, but I'm sure you could at least build one! Would really help if there were an actual expansion. '^v^
Third edit re: second edit: You would be able to win once you had the BC out because you could just lift an single building and be fine. Doing it and getting gold I'm not sure on. There would be a LOT of 'lots by that point. OH! You'll wanna use your Starport and Fusion Core to seal off the openings in your mineral line, otherwise there will be zealots in there. They will start looping around to the back eventually, but not too many of them by the time the buildings are done. I might go and try to tech up to a Thor first to get a win and then try BCs again later.
For the Rush challenge silver is losing less than 16 units, gold is losing less than 9
During WoL, an army of these fast boiz would make the enemy base look like a speed bump
First (4th) mission starts at 0:17
Second (5th) mission starts at 6:36
Third (6th) mission starts at 7:00
Fourth (7th) mission starts at 12:44
Fifth (8th) mission starts at 17:44
Sixth (9th) mission starts at 31:56
5th mission "starts"
Thanks for playing these again grant, it was so nostalgic. I remember my favourites were covert ops and infestation although I was really terrible at them because I had a tendency to babysit every fight.
32:36 I definitely remember this map too! It was some of the first competitive starcraft I ever watched. I especially remember this one TvT(?) where a player busted down the rocks late game and walked in with thors. It felt super revolutionary to watch at the time!
Thanks for the nostalgia trip grant!
Grant dealing with these challenges with the most random of unit combinations and build orders makes me think of that time I tried the Auto Chess mod for Starcraft 2. I wonder if that one is still around.
On another note, I really wish someone made a "Grant's Challenge Gauntlet" mod and packed a lot of these, especially with callbacks to Grants more famous videos or mod playthroughs. Gold could be something like taking down all the enemy combinations deathless.
These challenges were so great to me back in the day. I remember wanting to get gold because of that I learned there is a option to group army units and pressing tab to cycle between different units.
Your thank you to the terrain AI at the start of the video was so genuine!
Wow. For that base defence macro mission i remember sweating so hard, a tried everything, playing as fast as possible (I'm a campaign only smuck), googling a "perfect" build order, pratice, pratice, pratice for days aaaaaand 3 minutes remaining. I gave up
That dentist time joke was an instalike.
"hey do you know how to use force field?" No, I don't :D
I remember it being the case that if you press the '+' sign on the numpad, the game speeds up to fast, then faster after pressing again. This might be useful information for those trying to play the challenges. This also works in the campaigns, not just these challenges.
Edit: I remembered incorrectly, it only works in the campaign.
It works in the campaign... but not on the challenge missions.
@@SquallLionhart409 You are right, I just tested it! Apologies to anyone who I might have mislead :(
I love these little history lessons we get whenever you play classic versions of the game. I'm curious what you'd have to say about older arcade games and ladder map designs, if that was your scene!
as someone with almost no familiarity with sc2, it's wild to hear you say stuff like "man it's so crazy that pylon power reaches the high ground" and "oh right, I have to research siege mode"
hear tof the swarm has eternal neural parasite...you don't even need to stick around in the campaign, once its neuraled, tis yours.
Grant, you're a drunken master. In the macro mission you made a wall with a hole. Then built ten (10) tanks and didn't use the tech labs from the factories to build ghosts. And yet you still got gold. :D
Nice wave of nostalgia
Man this was a blast from the past! I cannot believe I never was able to beat any of these even after watching so much sc2 I remember still struggling and failing most of them. and seeing grant play through these is making me feel nostaglic and now I wanna try them again see if after all these years I will be able to beat them now
I'm 100% expecting that all the stormgate previews are going to be at "normal" speed like how Blizzard keeps (kept) showing their RTS gameplay in normal speed while the actual competitive speed will be fastest and micro is going to only be for people with 5000 apm while everyone else relies on deathballs.
Planetary Annihilation: Titans music for the background music is insane
during the infestation challenge, you can keep that collosus by moving it outside of the channel range into another infestor's range & neuraling it again
& if ur done with a unit, esp a siege tank, have another infestor throw eggs at it then end the neural & burrow away
re: 22:30, thats why i like regiments. no unit production, merely bringing into battle the units you made and then replenishing them from a limited pool of replacements when needed, & the units are reactive enough to micro but slow enough to react to your micro that you can achieve a focused, 100% micro on almost your entirely army for most of the time. i get that sc being so hectic that you can never be in 100% control of your army is nice for having an infinite skill ceiling for the pros, but as a normal player its really nice to be able to achieve that level of control in a game where the armies are small enough that it's reasonable for a normal person to be able to do it. and when you've increased your skill past your army, you can invest points to increase your supply cap & make your army bigger
These look like theyd be fun speedrun categories to optimize
Opening Gambit is my favourite challenge. I played it around 15 times.
On that last rush defense against protoss, you can make a comfortable defensive setup if you make a bunker with reapers, who pretty can pretty much eliminate any zealot that comes close. Then, since the whole tech tree is enabled (I think it was a developer oversight), you can just work your way up to any unit, including Thors and Battlecruisers (I actually beat this challenge using that just for the sake of it)
36:40 That's the famous refinery trick!
Though im super late to this, you can beat Rush Defense with just BCs and SCVs*
I just did it by pulling ~4 workers immediately to gank the top probe, and then intercept the second probe, so that the enemy only has 1 gate. Then, while walling myself in with baracks, factory, depots, and engi bays, I had one SCV run in a loop near the gateway, pulling any spawning Zealots onto it, buying me time to tech up and get an economy going. By the time that hero died my fusion core had finished, I was fully walled in and I had just started up the BC, allowing me to pull most of my guys off mining to repair until he could spawn and slowly work his way through the ~10-15 zealots chopin at my walls.
36:37 ah yes, the infamous terran extractor trick.
I feel sad how bad reaper feels now compared to old xpacs.
The last change that Reaper got was the grenade damage nerf from 10 to 5 after Byun won the finale in LotV and then they got forgotten.
Great video, the challenges completed and gold rank achieved on it. I wonder what SC2 has left for Grant to play around with, because this was fun to see.
"Sir? Ma'am? Baneling?" New gender neutral greeting just dropped!
The missing challenge would be great background for the next Q&A
double gas into cancel gas late rax is optimal starcraft
41:15 I tried and it wasn't that hard, even if I'm unable to finish the campaigns in brutal, it was fun but a bit long, thanks for the idea! I posted it if you still want to see it.
I actually really loved psyonic assault. It probably has the most replay value out of all of them.
same! It felt the most achieving out of all the challenges, you really had to optimize the mana across your units... and the game would keep throwing insane enemies like the mothership towards the end, like HOW TF DO I DEFEAT THAT
I struggled a lot with the macro one. I always figured orbital command centers would be wasteful and expanded late because I was focusing on worker production. I don't get this game lol.
I forgot that siege mode was an upgrade as well, right up until grant tried to siege lol.
Here before Grant censors the Spooks joke at the begining ala the "spaz" unit from the Mauradur campaign.
wnen I saw [The rest] and a 45minute video I chuckled to myself
Alright, 2 methods to rush BCs and no other combat units/PFs. Engineering bay walls is boring but easy. The other method is to use SCVs to kite zealots infinitely while macroing up. If the zealots get away and start going after buildings, attacking the gateways with the SCV usually pulls some or all of the zealots back onto the SCV's trail. I have a recording of a sloppy attempt with this method that ended up with 3 units lost.
I wonder, on the last mission, if it would be worth it to pull an SCV or two to take out the probe before it can warp in any buildings. They have a Gateway already built, but cutting down two more Gateways would lighten the pressure.
Short answer, it can work.
Long answer: You need to pull several SCVs to surround the probe while it is out of cannon range. You then need to catch the second probe that starts down by the cannon and do the same. You lose a lot of mining time, so it's not the most effective strat, but it can get the job done. Then you only need to deal with 1 gateway worth of zealots.
I know the reaper wasn't that great in hots, but there was this dude at my local community center that would rush them and had this weird style where he would make the game so irritating for the opponent, they'd either quit at 5 minutes, or die a death of 1000 cuts where this reaper ball keeps getting bigger and more difficult to ignore.
It’s probably just the challenges - but I think the lack of rocks on that desert oasis map might be related to the map variants of some of the OG melee maps that would have fewer entrances to main bases. I think they had the same name but with “novice”?
Come for the gameplay, stay for the dentist humour
Grant I think Achievements in SC2 are bugged. Like a while ago I remember logging in and getting rewarded with an achievement for completing Conviction... even though I didn't have Heart of the Swarm back then
Time to kick ass and shew bubbelgum!!!!
I feel like siege mode as an upgrade disappeared earlier than LotV, I'd say HitS
I think some of the achievements got redone at some point and all previous achievement got that same date
also for that last mission the threshold was to not loose 9 units (12 for silver) in both defence combines
After looking at Psionic Assault I completely agree with Grant. Man is that a boring mission when you go for gold.
deathless on brutal with a slow speed might be interesting
It is indeed possible to get battlecruisers on Rush Defense. I tried it but I had to use Planetary Fortress to survive cuz they really target fire your repairing scvs.
If I had to guess, the achievements weren't added untill 2022, so that's when you "earned" them, since it would have checked and seen that you had completed the challenges
Hmm, I remember Psionic assault being interesting
The thing about playing this slow, it's more time in your own head. So much time going "Gotta do _something_ ", and the best course of action is to... not. Which feels wrong.
Hah I saw this and knew you would crush them
Fun fact the missions Grant listed spell out ICHOR.
captain?
I don't get the joke.
@@Granas1988 No joke, just an observation.
You should do all the challenges deathless 😂😂😂
Am i missing something or did grant not do the "kill x amount of units" in an earlier video? I distinctly remember him spamming snipe close to the end of the first part to kill a couple units
Nvm I was rewatching the same video 😂
Iirc you can send enough scvs to destroy the gates before they produce while mining.
So Grant skipped the only mission I was eager to see to finally learn how to beat it on gold. What a shame. =(
Can you beat it deathless?
Where Dawn of War Winter Assault Good Sir? Will you still play that?
Honestly, I think I'd enjoy the game more at this speed. Starcraft 2 is just too fast for me in general. Too stressful, and therefore not actually fun to play.
Finding out that I've been playing on fast-forward certainly explains it.
yeah, when I used to play I hated that the default speed for online was nearly double speed. Be much more fun if the strategy game gave you time to, you know, strategize.
26:24 - doesn't the tank has more DPS unsieged?
Against a single target, yes. In most circumstances, no.
You should be able to set game speed to "faster" in menu.
Can someone tell him he can change the game speed in game options?
Ever thought about branching out to different games
The rest? Lair!
The achievements don't transfer between servers, so maybe you played in a different region in 2010
Je t’aime 🥰
Ggwp
Is it the my English as second language or is thumbmail unreadable
thumbnail is entirely legible
First! A minute ago
I'm sorry but it was painful for me to watch how you played the terran macro early game challenge. The rest were entertaining.
Why did you play on slow motion? Seems like cheating to me :P
It’s the default and can’t be changed
So... is Dawn of War dead or what?
Grant got a new screen\monitor and it messed up DoW in obs i think, since game is old and can't handle the widescreen support. So it's on hold, until he figures how to make it work.
@@TheKillianKanVT Ah ok, I knew about the OBS thing. On hold, cool, thx!
Day 85 of asking Grant to try out battle realms
I just remembered
Hey Grant what happened to the hybrid edition?
I have a new, likely pretty easy SC2 challenge type. the buildings only challenge. so only workers and whatever you can build. no other units (cept overlords in zerg cause you need supply?)