Stone is a Brood War bot which performs an SCV rush. It first came to the scene in 2015, but its first tournament didn’t go very well. It ended 19th out of 22 during AIIDE 2015. The next tournament was SSCAIT and here it did much better, getting 3rd place.
Despite the somewhat silly strategy – on paper a worker rush simply should not work – it is still a very strong opponent. The SCV micro is absolutely amazing, attacking the enemy worker line and retreating when too many of the workers start to fight back. It also makes very good use of repair to keep its SCVs alive. Due to the great micro it gives many bots problems.
Igor Dimitrijevic, author of stone, was not done yet, though. After Stone, he started working on his next bot, Iron. Iron does play a full strategy instead of just a worker rush. It has some interesting skills. For instance it knows how to build a wall and float his command center to the natural. Its truly amazing aspect is its Vulture micro. The Vultures are amazing at picking of single units that get too far away from the rest of the army. They constantly harass the opponent and whittle them down little by little. They also know how to do the occasional runby.
Combine the deadly vultures with a strong tank push and you have the nearly unstoppable bot that is Iron. It managed second place during its first tournament, CIG 2016 and it got first place at AIIDE 2016. It led the SSCAIT ladder for a time in 2017 and since then it has rarely dropped below second place.
I believe that the key to Iron’s success is the attention to detail. It only realy knows one strategy; Terran mech, but it has refined that strategy to an art.
Tyr 