Day 2 - SUCK BANELINGS, TERRAN SCUM

Game 1 - Crabarms (Z) on Shattered Temple

I hate ZvZ.

This is something that is very important, so I am going to say it again. In bold.

I. Hate. ZvZ.

So, on to this game.

Pretty boring, standard opening; I got my pool on 13, he got his gas before his pool (which I didn't scout; I need to work on keeping my scouting going a lot longer, it's probably worth sacrificing my scouting drone to get that info). I kept getting distracted by something shiny on yonder horizon and forgetting to do things like actually build drones, he kept fairly on task.

His pool went down a bit later than mine, but that didn't really matter because they were close enough that by the time anything I could pump out would get there, he would have had his lings out already and it would've been repelled fairly easily. I pushed to expand reasonably early on, he did not; this should have given me an advantage, but...

I build a total of 4 lings to defend with. Not gonna lie to myself, but this is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really,
really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY retarded of me to do. He began pumping lings like a bastard.

And he got speed. This is important because if he hadn't had speed, he wouldn't have been able to reinforce quite as quickly and I would have held it at the cost of my expansion.

And I got flattened.

The only other highlight of the game is when I got myself supply blocked and got annoyed enough by this that I built 3 overlords. At once.

Bitchin'. -8 points!

Game 2 - Tspite (T) on Shattered Temple

Everyone seems to like Shattered Temple for some reason. I don't quite get why. It's like Metalopolis but I can't scout them out as quickly. Maybe that's why. I like Scrap Station but I'm pretty sure every single person who plays on the ladder has it on their veto list except for the cool people who in general tend to play like flaming twats. (As a quick, completely unrelated aside, sal***er aquarium is the best auto-censor ever)

I think I said yesterday that muta play is the way to go against the idiot Terrans I'm matched against. This time, muta play didn't come in all that handy until much, much later.

I shouldn't have really won this one; I played really, really sloppily and made a lot of simple mistakes, I could have spread my creep much much better, I could have expanded sooner, I wasn't spending my minerals effectively enough, etc.

It's funny because I decided this time that since every terran I'm matched up ever ever ever goes for quick cloaked banshees backed up by an army of marines or isn't allowed outside without a helmet, I'd go for banelings backed up by an extra queen for support against cloaked banshees (which I've learned to build stuff against now because nothing sucks more than losing every single game to fucking cloaked banshees). I may have forgotten the extra queen bit.

Well, let me back up a bit actually. I had planned on 10 pooling him (I even did the extractor trick. I feel dirty inside now) until I noticed that not only is the rush distance on Shattered Temple insane anyways, but that we'd drawn far positions. My lings got halfway to his base and then turned around and ran back home because my scouting drone showed that his wall was up.

This presented a small problem because I couldn't figure out whether he was one of the bio ball n' banshee terrans or one of the helmet terrans. The answer, as I would soon find out, is a bit of both.

I plopped down my baneling next, he went for 3 barracks and a factory, which was both for seige tanks and so that he could get a starport for medivacs. He was going for marines only, no marauders. People going marines only when I'm going for banelings and eventually mutas make me very very happy and very very sad at the same time. People then building seige tanks when I'm eventually going mutas make me very very happier.

As I found out while watching the replay, he'd sent an SCV ahead to build a bunker in hopes of I'm guessing slowly leapfrogging his way up the bunkers because he is a prick. Unfortunately for him, my creep was spread too far out for him to be able to build said bunkers.

Sensing the rush coming (and it was, 40 marines, 2 seige tanks, and 2 medivacs), I build some more lings and morphed some more banes. My 7 banelings and 17 lings would have to hold off the rush.

Have you ever seen 7 banelings hit a really, really tightly compacted bio ball? I have now.

The marines stimmed.

40 marines down in an instant by 5 banes. In the span of 4 seconds, he went from leading by 15 supply (75-60) to being behind by 22 (57-35). The seige tanks soon followed against the lings, because they were of course not seiged.

So let's recap that battle 1 more time. I took down 40 marines, 1 SCV, and 2 seige tanks. He took down 7 banes and 2 speedlings. I lost 5 supply, he lost 48.

I made my tech transition into mutas, he made his into banshees. Here's where things got a little bit tricky. You see, he'd built a sensor tower out by where his gold expansion was. I took this to mean he'd taken the gold, and so flew my mutas over there. Had I flown them straight to his main instead, I probably would have both taken out his first banshee, and probably taken down a good number of SCVs. Instead, I went for the gold thinking he had an expo there, but instead he just had the sensor tower.

My 9 mutas met a good number of stimmed marines, and I didn't retreat quickly enough. I took my third on his gold base at the same time he started massing banshees. Take a step back and think about that. Mass banshees vs the guy who you should know is going mutas.

He stopped at 7 banshees and began building a raven, after which he build 2 more banshees. I massed a huge baneling/speedling ball, not knowing he was going air. This was a boon. He scanned my ball, at which point I decided to shove it down his throat before he could react and try to counter it.

131-112 in his favor going in because I took too long to take my 3rd, missed a lot of injects, and got outproduced. I had more drones than he had SCVs, so my army was way behind his in terms of strength. My banelings swooped in and took out his marines and seige tanks. He swooped in with his banshees, I pushed more banelings into his SCV line at his expansion and took a good number of them down. My speedlings took out the orbital at his expo, and with that down, I ran them home. It was now 79-78 in my favor, noting that his army was at 64 supply to my army's 27, but I had 51 drones to his 14 SCVs. Things were in my favor if I could hold on just long enough.

Having seen the banshees, I reacted by building first more lings to hold off any ground army he may have had that I didn't know about (and eventually bust down his front door and rip him to shreds). This was a mistake, but...

He waited to push his banshees. He got 19 of them. 19 is excessive; you can't effectively even use 19 banshees unless you split them up massively, and there is no bronze league terran I know of who can actually effectively micro more than 1 group of units at a time (usually all of which are tightly clumped together allowing my 5 banes to take down 40 marines in 4 seconds. I will never shut up about this one).

I pushed my ball across the map, took out a small group he had holding the watchtower. This is when he pushed his banshees, and when I finally took the lead in army supply.

I knew that when he pushed his banshees, I needed to keep as many drones alive as humanly possible because I could remake my speedling/baneling army in an instant (although it would be a massive waste of gas). I brought my banelings and speedlings along with my mutas on the attack on the banshees in the hopes that they'd tank some of the hits that would otherwise be killing drones. They did this very effectively.

I'm not going to lie (mostly because I plan on uploading these replays and I can't lie). I lost pretty much my entire ground army. I also lost about 28 drones. But I held it with my entire lead intact. He was going for his last resort.

Remember that raven? He flew it over to my gold and started planting autoturrets. I went lolwut and blew it up with my mutas. He then tried to push some marines to my gold base in a bit of a last stand. Mutas killed those off real quick too. At this point I just flew across the map and started to eat his face off, at which point he just quit. +24 points!

Game 3 - Rhythmz (Z) on Typhon Peaks

His 7 pool vs my 10 pool generally means that he gets quicker lings that I do, and I don't get a chance to press the economic advantage that I get. I actually really, really liked this guy. We seemed fairly similar. The issue is that he was quicker than I was. Kind of anti-climactic in the end. -12 points!

Summary

Went 1-2 today, rather obviously. Learned quite a bit, will probably improve a good deal on the backs of these sort of lessons I learned today. Those of you asking for replays: I plan on uploading them in 3 day packs, so expect the first one of those tomorrow. With that in mind, I am now 54th in my division, but up 4 points.

Stats so far:

vs Protoss - 1-1
vs Terran - 2-0
vs Zerg - 0-2

Shakuras Plateau - 0-1
Shattered Temple - 2-1
Typhon Peaks - 1-1