intro the allegations of spades maphacking that popped up after his showmatch with lucifron has been all the rage the last days. replays surfaced with dubious decisions, mysterious movements and peculiar positioning. people on both sides of the argument hold nothing back and defend their side to the ban.
what if i told you there's another explanation for all of this... something unexpected, something out of this world. unfortunately noone can be simply told what this other explanation is, so i added a lot of pictures as well. welcome to the real world.
the precog
during a tvz versus goldenlight on dualsight, spades showcased some of his immense psychic abilities. after spawning bot left and pumping out a few hellions he approaches goldens natural from the west. here he's presented with 2 roaches, one spine, 6 morphing cocoons and some drones being pulled away from the hellions.
besides the spine, the roaches, 2 queens and some scouting lings spades is in the dark. golden's main is completely shrouded in the fog of war. what he has scouted didn't really provide any definitive answer to what his opponent was doing, but the contents of the cocoons at the natural might have. however spades doesn't stay long enough to check, he doesn't need to. wasting no time he quickly sends his hellions back to the northern watchtower and promptly asks golden why he is all-inning.
and indeed, golden was all-inning. there is no greater crime than all-inning in starcraft 2. spades used his precog powers, not mere scouting, to sniff it out before it even happened.
the chosen one
in the recent, much talked about series versus lucifron, spades found his hellions in an awkward position. at 16:40 a group of hellions at the empty 9 o'clock expansion were about to be in a world of hurt with an angry ball of marauders and medevacs approaching from behind the shrubberies.
sensing this, spades quickly lays out an escape plan for the unlucky hellions by issuing move commands hugging the egde of the southern chasm. all but one hellion escape to fight on.
in the heat of late game battle it's impossible to pay attention to every little detail, like a medevac or two changing direction at the edge of your minimap. when things heat up around spades he uses his chosen one powers to slow down time and easily dodge incoming attacks.
the cerebro chamber
playing a meching devil terran cross spawns on artifice is no simple task. being down on bases and down on supply with an inferior composition, spades is hard pressed to make something happen. using his custom built cerebro chamber, fine tuned on demuslims meching units, he stims in blindly at a perfect time to catch most of demuslims tanks unsieged and clears up a dangerous push.
after cleaning up the push spades preforms a sequence of manouvers so amazing that i had to include snapshots of the minimap to convey the scale of them. navigating across this vast map he forces a lift on demuslims 12 o'clock 5th.
shifting focus he avoids his opponents units and moves his army all the way to the other side of the map to stim in and pick off 3 lonely tanks and demuslims 9 o'clock 4th.
moving south to dodge demuslims army he then turns around and goes north east towards the 12 o'clock again, only to catch a smaller task force on an intercept course.
sniping a tech lab and juking around to the 12 o'clock again, he stims up a ramp to pick off a handfull of sieging tanks before moving back to the expansion to kill some scvs before he finally gets cleaned up.
this entire sequence of amazing moves was done using no scans at all, but who needs scans when you have a cerebro chamber.
closing words this was mostly an excuse to put spades face on a precog. the thought popped up in my head when i was looking through spades vs goldenlight on dualsight trying to form an opinion about the hacking accusations. the examples used in the text are not necessarily evidence for or against that, and are portayed in a way that makes spades look like he has superhuman powers.
pointers on formatting, pictures, grammar, spelling, etc are welcomed. help me write better blog posts.
and indeed, light was all-inning. there is no greater crime than all-inning in starcraft 2. spades used his precog powers, not mere scouting, to sniff it out before it even happened.
Got to say Spades is the luckiest player in the world. How I wish to be that lucky. Like this dude probably has won the lottery a few times with that kind of hit rate. So possible causes for this kind of thing
1. Deal with the devil 2. He can see the future or is of powerful psychic ability enough so to see through the eyes of his opponent 3. (really unlikely) he map hacks
Do what they say on Greys Anatomy says "think horses not Zebras".
Ha, This blog post was hilarious. Do we have the next evolution in Starcraft 2? Imagine two Superhuman physics going at it in a game of SC2. There would be epic battles or maybe it would be extremely boring.
Between super powers, dumb luck and maphacking I know which one I think is more awesome, and which one is more likely, but that is for wiser men than me to decide!
Blog was absolutely hilarious, Neo Spades sold me.
Kind of funny really. Thats EXACTLY what you see when you scout a ling roach bane or just ling roach allin. When playing v mech you also do not engage main army but try to drop main and pick off expos.... oh wait...
i thought the state of the witchhunt stream catz and co was pretty convincing until i read this. now i understand. personal cerebro chamber pretty imba
Thanks, it all makes sense now. We need more people like you, no need to accuse people of cheating when they might have psychic powers out of the ordinary.
i come from a gaming community where capitalization is reserved for social deviants and verbal harassment, but i will consider it for future blog posts.