You are listening to Three Moves Ahead, the official podcast of Flash of Steel.com.

This is episode 77, and I am your host, Troy Goodfowl.

And with me today is my regular panelist, Rob Zakeney.

Hey, everyone.

And Tom Chick.

If I can get anyone a coffee, let me know. I would be happy to pull a nice shot of espresso for you. I'm really good at it, and I'm at your service. So Tom, you want to tell our listeners, where you've been? Because I've been getting a lot of emails asking, where's Tom? Yeah, and then you say, right, and then you say, oh, I don't know where Tom is. I don't know. I thought I told me. I mentioned a couple of times you've had a very busy life. You've had a lot of stuff going on in this podcast. You know, it slips aside and that's okay. Right. I have you able to have you back. I thank you. I'm glad to be here. I've missed you guys as well. And I appreciate you every now and then saying, oh, where's Tom? Yes. Well, you did make the Game Shark podcast three times in the last two months. Yes, I'm hoping to be kind of a regular there. They have a more sort of broad docket. They talk about a bunch of different things beyond strategy games. You're saying they're more interesting than we are. I'm saying they're more... No, no, no. You've said quite enough, Tom. You've said quite enough. No, they've got a great show going over there. They're a great team, but please don't forget your home over here. But we're happy to have you to talk about StarCraft 2, probably the biggest strategy game of the year and certainly the biggest PC

game, a PC exclusive of the year, I would argue.

And with us, to help us cover this topic in our summer of guests, we're very happy to

have with us from X of Gamma Sutra and from the Idol Thumbs podcast, heading to a rational Mr. Chris Ramo,

Chris, glad you can make it.

Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. Really love the podcast.

So you want to talk about Starcraft 2, not just about the game, because my review is up,

and Tom, you have a review up at GameShark correct correct yes and I'm

doing a I'm in the middle of a what looks like it's going to be at least a two-week series of

game diary entries on fidget that's fidgit.com so yeah I'm still up to my elbows in ink about

Starcraft 2 and there be links to all of those at the bottom of the podcast on the podcast post at Flash of Steel.

Before we get too far into discussing what StarCraft 2 means, this is our second podcast on StarCraft 2.

We did one about the beta.

A few months ago talked about how it is a very traditional old school economy based RTS.

We don't need to cover that ground again.

So let's start with our guest. Let's start with Chris.

You were saying before the show started that you're not really a heavy strategy guy, but you were in the beta for StarCraft. You've played a lot. You're on a gold

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