r/starcraft

Two weeks ago, sad that the next StarCraft won’t come until 2030, I half-jokingly made the mini-game those mobile ads promise and never deliver, and posted it here (https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1wqdabw/). The feedback was really positive!

I’ve pushed a bunch of small updates since then, and this one is a big one, so I wanted to share it: a new commander, Artanis, a new companion, Wildcard, and a lot more endgame stuff. If you played it last time, it’s pretty much a new game.

Then something I really didn’t see coming: it somehow got really popular in China (for a few days). Over a million runs, and over half a million people played it there, in two weeks. I’d love to say that’s all the game, but honestly it hit a critical combo: it launched right before Golden Week, and StarCraft is a generational IP.

The part that made me happiest was reading some of the comments. A bunch of people played StarCraft for the first time through this, and now they want to play the actual StarCraft. Some asked why the mutators make the Zerg stronger. That made me really happy.

Also, before the "Artanis DLC" release, I made a mock trailer to poke a bit of fun at Blizzard. If you’re gonna copy Blizzard, you might as well copy the whole package, right?
trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVDao71LC7A

Game link (works for mobile and web): https://starcraft-shooter-2026.pages.dev/

Feedback always welcome! And thanks so much for all the emails and comments. Some I haven’t answered yet, sorry about that. I’ll get back to you.

"It sounds hotter than Georgia asphalt down there"

Never forget what they took from us...

in may 2007 an accounting student at hainan university who played warcraft 3 as miss got an invite from colagirl to join first, a women's team in beijing. that summer she bought a hard seat ticket and sat 37 hours on the train from haikou to get there.

that same summer, training in beijing, she ran out of money and was too shy to ask anyone for a loan. she went two days without eating. when she went to the team to collect her wages, her bus card had one yuan on it. the bus took four mao of that and she walked the rest of the way. once she had the money she found a small restaurant, got a bottle of minute maid and a plate of rice with shredded pork and potato, and poured the lot down while the middle-aged men around her stared.

women's tournaments were rare, so she kept entering men's events. opponents she'd never met mocked her before matches. a few of them smashed keyboards or cried after losing to her. up to 2010 she'd bought almost no clothes and mostly played in an oversized team jersey that hung on her like a bathrobe. in 2010 she came out of a suning men's event as the top woman, and at the shenzhen esports open she was the only woman to get through the group stage. by the time she graduated she'd been paying her own way for years on prize money and pro wages.

the one player she could never beat through the whole warcraft 3 era was colagirl, the friend who brought her to beijing. they met again in a starcraft 2 final in 2012.

(from a chapter i wrote in 2013 after a five hour interview with her. it's free to read, link in the comments)

Heyo SC2-fans,

I've got some discoveries to share.

After Serral's latest winning spree against Zerg I thought it was worth taking a step back and looking at what he's actually been accomplishing lately.

And... yeah. It gets pretty ridiculous.

After the competitive scene developed, only six players in StarCraft II history have ever managed to be the best player against all three races at the same time:

Mvp, TaeJa, INnoVation, ByuN, Serral and Reynor.

Serral, however, is the only player to have done it repeatedly. On Aligulac list #433, after more than two years since his last time at the top against all three races, the Finnisher has done it again.With yesterday's update, he has now accomplished this five times.

And it isn't just a quirk of a particular patch or era. On Aligulac, these five occasions span 2019, 2020, 2022, 2024 and now 2026 - across years and multiple iterations of the game.

He's been sitting at or near the summit against Terran and Protoss for what feels like an eternity, often with absolutely ridiculous gaps to the next player. And now, following his recent Zerg-killing spree, he's once again the #1 player against all three races simultaneously. It is also worth mentioning that the arguably most coinflippy match up of ZvZ has often times been what Serral denied this feat. But this time, he once again pulled through. This level of consistency is absolutely unmatched.

And October brings another milestone:
Serral has now gone roughly three and a half years without being overtaken as the highest ranked player in Aligulac points.

His latest dominance streak (90 lists) has him sitting consecutively at the top longer than other player's accumulated rank 1 appearances (Mvp with 77 lists)

He's also been ranked #1 in more than 45% of all Aligulac lists since the beginning of the entire game.

And then there's the current tournament streak: Serral has won the last six tournaments he entered - including a team-format event.

The GSTL 2026 was particularly ridiculous. With Reynor losing all three of his games, Serral was left with his back against the wall. He then had to win:

- a Bo1 ZvZ against Shin
- a Bo1 against herO
- a Bo1 against Maru
- the revial game: Also against Maru
- and finally the Ace Match... against Maru again.

Five straight wins to keep the team alive and ultimately take the title. Int he finals, he dropped one map to Shin. Otherwise, he would have repeated his all-kill-final feat from Summer 2024, where he defeated Ryung, Maru and Solar.

Four of his other five recent tournament victories were stacked with international competition as well: PiGSty 7 & 8, RSL 6 in Anaheim, and Maestros of the Game 2. The one exception was HomeStoryCup 29, which didn't feature any Korean players, but the two European powerhouses Reynor and Clem.
It is also worth mentioning that no Zerg won a relevant tournament besides Serral since mid 2024, which makes the latest run even more impressive.

So when you put all of this together, we're not really talking about one impressive tournament run anymore.

We're talking about a player who has repeatedly managed to sit at the very top across all three matchups, multiple eras of the game, years of competition, and completely different tournament formats - while simultaneously maintaining a #1 ranking for years on end.

Serral has been doing this for so long that "another incredible achievement" is almost becoming redundant.

Thanks for the read and cheers!

It’s SO annoying. I actually hate it.

Shout out to the nerds who thought I'd cave.

We are so back boys.

See you on the ladder.

I think a lot of my issues with the story stem from "the prophecy". I never got to Legacy of the Void, but I feel like they pulled it back a bit as a fake prophecy made by the Xelnaga that stole Tassadar's ID.

But without the prophecy the characters have to come up with plans to push the plot. The Terrans come up with a reason to save Kerrigan. They need to uncover the Xelnaga/Amon plot.

It could turn having Kerrigan human as a plot to use the Zerg against Mengsk.

SC1 didn't have prophecies and psychic powers didn't grant foresight as far as in game showed.

What happened?

Just played my first PTR game, if you're used to the 8 worker start it's quite a shock to the system. Of course I was used to it before, will just take some adjusting.

Didn't you guys watch his video last week? Clearly, he had absolutely nothing to do with the 8-worker start. Why do some degenerates keep saying that he advocated for it? The community should be forever thankful to him, not accuse him.

Also, what's wrong with the patch? It's perfectly fun and enjoyable. It got me back into playing after being AFK for years. I've played like 10 games this season, and everything feels exciting and fresh.