Hots was released today, and after school I got about sixteen multiplayer games in. I'm not interested in the campaign, I've never even started the WoL campaign; I bought both games for the multiplayer. And after getting a small taste of the mulitplayer, I have only one clear thought about it: this game is awesome.

On the surface, perhaps Blizzard didn't add an incredible amount of content to the game, just a few units per race, but, at least for terran, the entire feel of play has changed radically, for the better. At the heart of this, I think it's the widowmine. The first thing that the widowmine does is gives terran a view of the map that previously only belonged to Zerg and Protoss with Overlords and observers respectively. I can now, spiritually, poop creep on my opponents third and I can see when armies pass certain, arbitrary thresholds on the map. This alone makes me feel so much more in control of the game as a Terran. I can see everything, full units, not just red dots as per sensor towers, and I can put them in any arbitrary location, as opposed to Xel'Naga towers.

Even further on that point, unquestionably my favourite new maps is Neo Planet S. When Proleague first came on months ago I saw Neo Planet S and turned to my roomate: "If this map was on ladder, I would literally jizz myself". Now it is on ladder, and it's everything I've dreamed of and more. The best thing about Neo Planet S is that there are no Xel'Naga's. The second game of HoTS I played was on this map (you can check out the replay here) and even though I played badly focusing on new units and what to build and what to do, I still felt a good deal more in control of the game without Xel'Nagas. The map didn't dictate where I should scout, I dictated where I should scout. And if I don't want to scout, that's fine, it's a choice to keep my units at home for defense, one I can easily justify. Not putting a unit at the Xel'Naga when I can look at the minimap and pull back before it gets me? That's not justifiable: that's bad. And maps shouldn't dictate a way for every player to play on every map - each player should interpret a map different based on race, matchup and playstyle. And that's exactly what Planet S gives us. This map also brought out my love of the widowmine - it seems like this map was designed for the widwomine. There's two common paths to cross the map, the higher and the lower one. Widowmines can go on both of those and help take out pieces of army, give vision. There's metagaming to be played here - will there be a mine there? Should I take a different, longer path? In maps like Daybreak and especially Ohana, there's generally very little thought into which path one would take moving across the map. It's just take towers, a-move and go. This thought onto pathing on Planet S is such a huge deal in where you should take your third too: depending on where your opponent has shown that he likes to go around will determine where you s hould get your third. Do you go up on the ridge or on the lowground? Both are roughly equidistant from the natural, but the ridge one could prove difficult if your opponent manages a siege on the lowground between your natural and the third, so a meching opponent would be a count against it. Just the fact that those thoughts now must go through players' heads on a ladder map is fantastic.

And widowmines - sheesh these things seem like they might be nerfed later on but I absolutely love them for defense. I've heard people say things like widowmine drops and army incorporation is great but I haven't been able to make that work for me yet - but what I have been doing is using widowmines in my main to prevent ling runbys/marine assualts or muta flocks flying in. In fact on that very same game in Neo Planet S, I scouted mutas across the map and I had neither an engineering bay, many marines or any thors.

I thought I was screwed, but I looked at myself having about six widowmines and I thought "well, lets see what this new unit can do".

I was fine. But I was only fine because my opponent clumped his mutas up the whole time and biffed some control - and that is how the game should be. If I a-move into banelings with a pile of marines, I deserve to lose my whole army. But if I can split and trade cost-efficiently the game becomes more mechanically intensive and exponentially more interesting. Now I don't feel as bad about overcontrolling my army vs zerg: I know he'll have to do the same with his in my base.

I haven't played many games vs protoss at this point in the game (they've all been Terran and Zerg for some reason), but I'm not sure if I'd want to include widowmines in my main against protoss in the case of warpprism harass. Typically protosses drop in some zealots, usually with charge, in which case the friendly fire from my mines would do more damage than the actual attack would have done. However, I do think that widowmines have a place in holding off gateway aggression (I so intensely want to be able to use mech TvP) - and I'm eager to try that when the time comes, sending out widowmines in possible pylon/warpin paths and seeing what I can get done/what information I can get.

TvT is fantastic now with widowmines because the terran army has to be careful for more reasons than just tanks - the game is a literal minefield. Sending 1 marine ahead of your army just got so much more important (it's something that I always intend to do as it's good practice, but never had enough negative reinforcement to consistently do it - I'm sure widowmines will provide this negative reinforcement. A lot).

That's how one terran completely stomped me on ladder replay here (again on Neo Planet S, have I mentioned that I love this map?).

I haven't been this excited about Starcraft 2 for a long time - I hope this isn't just a "it's new" feeling. I hope this sticks, because if this is how I'm going to feel about playing HoTS, I am excited for the upcoming season.

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