It’s baffling how Mengsk actually felt more of a threat to Kerrigan than to Raynor.
Seriously, at no point in WoL does Mengsk looks competent at stopping Raynor : He wakes up and takes Backwater Station, Tychus says “Let’s take that Alien Artifact” and they just do it. They break into New Folsom despite the guards knowing about the attack, he successfully manages to raid Korhal and leave without a scratch (and during the prior mission the obstacle is Tychus’s recklessness rather than the Dominion) and he singlehandedly saves the Dominion army on Char. And the only justification is a convoluted plan where somehow a Marine with a 9 second life expectancy on the battlefield, and a reckless one at that, can somehow survive several battles with the Swarm to get a shot at Kerrigan.
And suddenly in HotS Kerrigan believes the battle to kill him will be the hardest of her life. Because BW never happened right ?
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And I very much dislike fillers.
I agree with the Journey part and the bigger universe part.
In a sense Tychus would be more Chosen One than Kerrigan had he succeeded. Mengsk banking on him despite the unprobability of him succeeding…
I actually like WoL the most out of the SC2 main saga.
I prefer stuff that has things going for me, but has flaws over something with less flaws, but also less good stuff (for me).
Ferals in NCO are result of Zagara not having Kerrigan’s level of psionic strength and control.
What you dislike about WoL is to me a mistake of post-WoL writing. These choices were made inconsequential later. Imagine there was full-scale rebellion against Mengsk while Kerrigan is after him and she has to navigate Swarm between Terrans she wants to murdercide and Terans she doesn’t. Could have been cool.
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Only after they beg her to not just kill everyone in her path you mean.
At which point she gets a Nobel Peace prize for her humanitarianism and benevolent acts of mercy.
That probably explains why I don’t like brood war or kerrigan.
WoL has some solid high points for sure, Havens Fall and Breakout in particular are phenomenal and the whole rebellion arc is rock solid. It’s just a bummer that the best storytelling is either stuck in cannon purgatory or the B plot.
The way the rug gets pulled when you find out that the artifacts you were collecting for cash on the side were the real main storyline all along is pretty clever though. It’s just a shame that the storyline of that arc (operating under the assumption char counts as it’s own thing.) is pretty weak.
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Oh, that’s easy. At the point where she has a murderous swarm ready to kill the entire committee, but decide to hold them off.
Yes, and that’s another thing I liked about “Heart of the Swarm,” the fact that Kerrigan is now free of Amon’s influence and (most of) the Zerg infestation, yet chooses to go down that dark path.
Her reconciling and accepting the darker parts of her personality was something I enjoyed, as well as Raynor coming to terms with how after everything he did for her, they still aren’t able to be together and she still chose to be a monster.
He doesn’t look competent at trying to stop Raynor though because he’s not trying to stop Raynor. He was using Raynor the entire time, even at his own short-term expense at points since he was banking on the long-term gain.
So basically he’s ready to sacrifice his reputation (therefore the basis of his power) and let Raynor gain access to a group of dangerous and unpredictable men who nearly killed him (and failed because one of them made a stupid mistake) all in order for a single lone Marine who is close to Raynor and can die at any time on the battlefield (and who’s not trying to be safe, at all, seriously a single Hydralisk spine or Marine shot could have ruined the entire plan at several points throughout WoL) to be in a position to kill Kerrigan. This is so convoluted you would expect Doctor Strange to have come up with this idea.
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Which is funny because Kelthar was telling me earlier this week how it’s fine for Mengsk to have only 50 (or 30?) battlecruisers because his power is an illusion that comes from his reputation. 
And yet, according to Blizzard Entertainment, that was what he was doing. He didn’t care about his reputation because he knew he could clamp down via martial law. He is a dictator and a psychopath, after all.
For the Spectres, during their titled novel, that was the first time the Dominion came up against them and it was a surprise. This time he knew about them and what they were capable of. Mengsk was also counting on Narud and the Hybrids to be his ultimate weapon against any remaining enemies once he wiped out Kerrigan and Raynor. Remember they were nearly ready, and he believed he would be able to control them. Obviously that would have proven fatal, but he thought otherwise since he was also being manipulated.
For Tychus and Raynor and the overall plot, it was a crazy gamble and he already let his son set himself up to be the fall guy. I agree it’s a plot that relies on a lot of assumptions and people acting/responding in exactly a certain way, but it is a video game plot after all and one with a more light-hearted tone than the original titles.
Is Tychus and Raynor really that bad of a plan, though? It’s far from perfect plan, but I think when you’re trying to take down the most powerful entity in the entire Universe, the plan will always have to be a very long shot.
Moreover, Tychus isn’t just some new recruit. He is a veteran. It’s not that odd to think that he would survive for quite a while. Long enough to kill Kerrigan.
With Dr. Duran working for the Dominion, I think Mengsk was convinced that the Xel’Naga artifact is capable of weakening the Queen of Blade.
Additionally, it wasn’t like he sacrificed a lot. He is pitching two of his worst enemy against each other. The only way his plan failed prior to that moment is that somehow Tychus is dead while Raynor succeeds. Any other outcomes are acceptable.
Well it sounds bearable if he had like… multitude of other plans and this one somehow had the best potential.
It’s a plan that’s a big gamble, and the kind of thing I’d only expect to see in an entertainment medium and not in reality since it does indeed rely on so many things happening in exactly a specific way.
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On the other hand, the only situation where Mengsk doesn’t at least break even on it is the one that happened, and that frankly wasn’t a hugely likely outcome to begin with. It requires Raynor to win, Tychus to fail, Valerian to betray Arcturus, and Narud and Mengsk both to fail to kill Kerrigan while she’s weakened, vulnerable and in their territory. Even the second worst case scenario, where Kerrigan kills the crap out of Valerian and gets the Keystone, doesn’t actually make the situation any worse, because Arcturus wasn’t in a position to take her in open battle to begin with.
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Yes, the Emperor sum up my point about the other Emperor’s plan nicely. It’s like when you drawing a card from the deck; while it’s quite unlikely to be in any particular sequence, there must always be one for each shuffle.
Really, when dealing with problem with randomness, you need to think of all the foreseeable outcome and think if it’s worth the investment. Although the odd of everything ends up the way it is is fairly low, there are serval other outcome just as unlikely. The Emperor simply need to wager his reputation for the chance of satisfying outcome and weight each consequence.
It’s not a terrible gambit. Perhaps, even the best one where taking out the Queen of Blade is concerned.
I can think of 10 better plans off the top of my head. The one picked was overly convoluted and not actually explained or even alluded to in the game. It’s almost like the game itself was just a series of random acts of stupidity that were only rationalized after the fact.
I still think that Mengsk would have those 10 plans in mind pursuing them at the same time as this stupid gamble.
It had no resources at all invested into it (except the fleet, but Valerian was going to try that regardless of what Arcturus wanted) which automatically makes it a good plan.