Currently I'm on the front page with my Heart of the Swarm drone Only run on Brutal. I was also the person who inspired the Wings of Liberty no units run, which some people really enjoyed participating in, one dude even going as far as to speedrun it.
I just love doing these stupid challenges and I hope I can make a YouTube video about them relatively soon. However, every time I do one I receive a barrage of questions. I'll explain the rules of the run, the difficulties, and the things that surprised me.
Firstly, the rules I used for the Drone Only run. Many of the comments I received were something like "I see (blank unit) on the bottom right" or "You're using Kerrigan". My overall rule set was that you could only produce Drones and Overlords out of hatcheries. The challenge should realistically be called "Drone production only", but it just didn't sound right. This means that any units I get throughout missions or through various means (Talents, morphing, etc) are entirely eligible to use. Also, Drones mutating into buildings is entirely eligible. Spine and Spore crawlers were obviously great, but the MVP of this run ended up being the Hatchery.
I don't know what Blizzard did with their A.I., but they fucking HATE hatcheries. They don't go around it (even if there's units on the other side attacking them), they always attack it at highest priority. Some missions I've won just because I spammed Hatcheries around the mission objective. The final Narud mission was very tough because the final wave had Colossi, Carriers, Archons and Hybrids. I just put 13 hatcheries down and they decided Stukov was no longer a concern and attacked them for a minute straight until I beat the mission.
Another thing I hear a lot is "This is entirely possible with only Kerrigan". Let me divide this into two parts.
1 You can not beat the entire game with ONLY Kerrigan. The beginning planets are simply too hard , and if you manage to get past them, on Zerus you're stuck in a cocoon where your only defense is 5 Swarm Hosts and an occasional ability. It is entirely impossible
2 However, if you manage to get past Zerus it seems very possible to beat the game with only Kerrigan, with a couple of exceptions. I don't know if you've ever watched a speedrun of HotS, but there's a strategy called "Ninja Kerrigan". All it revolves around is doing a mission as quickly as possible with only Kerrigan. The prominent two being the last Korhal missions, where you can finish the final mission with ease in under 5 minutes. Trust me when I say the final mission was a bitch to play , but I didn't want to finish it so anticlimactically.
The last thing I see a lot is "Which missions were the hardest", there were two that came to mind as bullshit.
2. Phantoms of the Void.
This is the final Narud mission, and it's a defense mission where Kerrigan is entirely unusable. This mission I had to get very scrappy, as the armies that were thrown at you were massive, including Colossi, Carriers, Archons, and of course Hybrids. The way I beat the mission was with Hatchery spam. Yes, Hatchery spam. The final objective I completed exclusively because I spawned 13 Hatcheries outside the defense point, and the Protoss Army focused them, and ONLY them.
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The Reckoning.
In most accounts this mission is easy. An all out assault on Korhal with Brood Lords or Ultralisks is trivial. However, with Drones... not so much. Static Defense was a joke, you had to turtle for the first 20-30 minutes until every attack wave from Mengsk was completed. You would normally make Spine or Spore Crawlers, but the problem revolves around the army compositions. Siege Tanks and Reapers (yes, Reapers. Remember Explosive Charge?) kill any chance of your Crawlers staying alive without help. The MVPs of the mission were the 3 Hydralisks you start with , which I morphed into Impalers. Out of the multiple attack waves, the ones with detection were the most vulnerable to Crawlers, so they were very effective at holding opposition. Also, Drones are not supposed to engage against BattleCruisers, Hell Bats, Siege Tanks, and Ravens with the old AoE missile. Most of the mission revolved around freeing the 3 Avenues so Dehaka, Zagara, and Stukov can start joining in the fight. Stukov was great at shoving them out of the left side, while Dehakas Ultralisks ravaged the right side. It eventually escalated to where I picked off the high priority units with Leviathan and Kerrigan, and charged in with over 300 Drones. The Drones weren't doing much damage, but with the sheer amount of them, and reinforcements trickling in, they did the job. The screenshot thats currently on the front page is what the mission finally ended on. It felt great to beat this challenge.
Anyway, with that said, I've done a challenge for both Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm. My last question is what would you like to see in a LotV challenge. I was thinking about an Aiur only run, or a Probes only run, but I'm not sure. Feel free to give suggestions in the comments. I love you all, have a wonderful day :)
