It's 2v2 with PEG again!
Game 4 - thefourthman (T) and nilhaus (T) on Scorched Haven
We'd tweaked our strategy to be a bit better, we think, although we realized later that it doesn't work against certain opponents. The new idea was for me to 7 pool, cripple them early, while PEG hid a proxy pylon near or even in their base for a 4 warpgate rush following mine.
Unfortunately, if you look back at the whole Game 4 thing just above that last paragraph, there are two very, very important letters to note as to why my 7 pooling failed in this game. If they're not outright obvious to you, they should be. You see, Scorched Haven has a really, really small ramp. Got it yet? Yep, they were both walled off and I couldn't get in.
I power droned and transitioned into banes, while PEG continued his 4 gate stalker army building. We then both took our nats. PEG popped out an observer while I started transitioning towards mutas.
Then his observer spotted my archnemesis. Thors.
I immediately cancelled my spire and began pumping out one metric fuckton of lings to deal with them, hoping they'd do the nitwit thing and not use scvs to repair them mid-battle. Without us having any air units, the thors would be mostly useless. They were also going bio and seige tanks, something my banelings would chompchompchomp happily on.
They then threw BCs into the mix. I decided now would be a good time to throw down that spire again and build a few corruptors, however, I wouldn't get the chance because shit went down right then and there. We pushed across the map knowing that letting them turtle would be a badthing. We swooped in, my lings ate their thors, my banes busted down one of their walls. In the end, they lost both BCs, 4 thors, 2-3 tanks, and a ton of marines. I had a few speedlings left over, which is when I got clever.
In the middle of the gigantic fray that was going on, I morphed my speedlings into banelings, rolled into their expansion, and blew up their mineral line. PEG continued to just curbstomp. One of them tried to hide a command center which I spotted, and it was over.
+30 points!
Game 5 - rndm (T) and zarthur (R) on Monlyth Ridge
I believe in a post I made earlier I talked about a game where my 10 pool met another Z's 7 pool. Random guy was Zerg this time, so guess what he did. You see, this was me being on the other end of things; my 7 pool failed to his 10 pool. This is the second time tonight my 7 pooling failed (and not the last, I kept with it like a true soldier!)
Thankfully I didn't have the biggest failure of the game. The distinction of that went to PEG and his scouting, but at least we knew that unoccupied corner of the map wasn't hiding anything. I managed to take a queen down, but aside from that, no luck. More importantly, because he was Z as well, I wouldn't be able to just drone up massively and gain a quick economic advantage while PEG defended my ramp, because he could equally pop 7 drones at a time and outeconomy me anyways (or build enough units to shut anything down).
Zerg tried to do a speedling runby which was quickly shut down by the combined might of PEG's army and my banelings. Zerg then teched to mutas, and terran then did a seige tank + marine drop in my main that I was caught way out of position for. I essentially lost my main and spent the rest of the game trying desperately to not die for as long as I could.
My pool had been killed, but my spire was still up. This was somewhat fortunate as a good counter to mutas is having more mutas than the other guy. I did not have more mutas than the other guy. We sent a counterpush with my mutas for backup. PEG's 5 colossi pretty much evaporated, and I lost my entire army again. He then swooped his mutas across the map and finished off my lair and spire. We did manage to knock his muta numbers down a lot, though.
PEG expanded to the gold while the terran came in and took down my third, leaving a one base zerg and a two base protoss against a three base zerg and a two base terran.
Things weren't going well for us. I'd rebuilt my pool and my baneling nest at my nat, but I wasn't a factor anymore. PEG was now up to three bases, but the zerg's third base was a gold as well - we were down 1 base on them combined, and I had lost all my tech as well. This did lead to the quote of the night, "IF THEY WANNA DO THAT THEY CAN SUCK ON A HUNDRED OR SO BANELINGS AND IT WILL BE GLORIOUS". Which was my strategy at that point.
Unfortunately at the time our gold base was essentially killed off, I only had gotten to 38 or so banelings, which is a lot less catchy. The terran had just taken his third base, which I took out all the workers at. I also took out half of the zerg's lings at that point. PEG lost his push, I rolled some more banelings back to the terran's third and took out six mules and all his SCVs again.
Unfortunately the whole "PEG lost his push" thing meant the terran just came over and flattened us both.
-8 points!
Game 6 - Chenzo (T) and saladfingers (T) on Scorched Haven
We came to the easy decision to not try to cheese them and instead to play a more macro-oriented game. This is unfortunate because for the duration of this match we were struck with a severe case of the retardeds. By which we mean I was struck with a severe case of the retardeds.
I decided it'd be best for PEG to put down a quick forge and build some cannons while I fast expanded and macro'd up to terrifying heights. This was mistake #1. It managed to throw PEG's timings off completely and marginalize him for the remainder of the game.
Big mistake two was me deciding to go with roaches against 2 terran players. Any time there is two terran players, they alwaysalwaysalwaysalways go MMM + siege tanks + a thor or two. Banelings would have ripped them apart, but no, I was going to play it properly. Properly in my mind apparently means roaches. I did gas steal one of them though, which was entertaining enough.
They pushed a bio ball, my roaches melted, the cannons got shut off as the pylon got sniped right as I spread creep under them thus not allowing us to reactivate them, we lost quickly.
-8 points!
Game 7 - VonVonVon (P) and Horn (T) on Scorched Haven
We were finally getting to put our 4 gate + 7 pool strategy into full effect now that we wouldn't be walled off or outpooled by the other guys. I missed my drone timing slightly because I was busy being a bit of a cunt, which slowed us down by a negligible amount.
It's a funny thing, because they did try to wall off; they tried to share a wall on the massive stretch between their two ramps, which would allow them to both take their nats really quickly as well. My rush hits perfectly. I take down the pylon powering his first gate before he can get a unit out, and then proceed to take down all but 2 of his probes. We're in a huge lead already.
Fortunately, them walling off with their production buildings let me see that the terran was going for everyone's favorite mostly bio based build. Baneling time! I also decided to tech towards a spire after changing my mind on my original decision to head towards hydras.
The other guys were going bio and mass void rays. Nothing really interesting happened until we were ready to push. I morphed a bunch of banes to bust their wall with, and then we set off. It went really heavily in our favor, and I still had 21 banes left by the time the main skirmish was over.
I carpet-bombed the protoss' mineral line at his nat, and then pushed mutas into his main, taking out a few more void rays as I went. The terran tried to expand right near us. This lead after the game to another quote of the day, "MY FAVORITE UNIT IS THE SENSOR TOWER!". He built four of them over the course of the game. It was hilarious.
Undefended expansion vs mutas + protoss ball is also hilarious.
We ended up taking down 2 more attempted expansions (and an attempted attack on PEG's third), at which point PEG gg'd them, which I took as my cue to go help end it right then and there. And so we did.
+34 points!
Game 8 - Starven (T) and Mecca (P) on Scorched Haven
This was the first of two times we managed to actually do the strategy we'd planned on from the start. I got my 7 pool off great. The terran's scouting SCV saw my lings as they were marching across the map, which was just too late. My rush wasn't quite as successful as I'd have hoped it would be. I didn't take down all that many probes, but I did completely defuse their 2 gate rush before it even happened.
PEG then started warping stuff in from his proxy pylon. The toss was forced to send the probes to try to hold if off, I waited and massed lings with speed. The second my ~26 lings ran into the toss' base, they gg'd out.
+28 points!
Game 9 - elmatador (T) and Venom (P) on Discord IV
This is the craziest game I've ever played. To begin with, we were very motivated going into it - win and we'd likely be 5th in our division, which would be amazingly awesome (and the highest ranked I've ever been in anything as far as SC2 is concerned). The issue is that the rush distance on this map is very, very long.
They left a hole in their wall by mistake; my lings got in and didn't do much damage, but PEG put down his pylon and got ready for the 4 gate rush anyways. They went for a marine ball because every terran ever ever ever goes for marines, as well as a zealot/phoenix composition. This is notable for a reason.
We continued our heavy, heavy pressure for as long as we could before giving up. This is also important for a reason. PEG went for a gutsy move and took his first expansion at the gold.
While PEG's entire army was across the map, the phoenixes swooped in and I didn't really have much of anything that hit air. This began the most bizarre quasi-base trade situation ever. I had just double expanded to a position south of us, figuring nobody would notice it had even happened. Unfortunately, they noticed. They went to kill off my expansion with pure marines, which I took out with banelings. Phoenixes were harassing my other mineral lines. I ended up sacrificing both expansions so that they'd be kept busy while we worked our way up (I could easily work off of two bases at the tech level I was at anyways).
We counterpushed. They took out the pylons on most of PEG's production buildings, but they didn't manage to kill them off. Phoenixes sniped my overlords. Our push would have to work if we were going to survive. Thankfully, it did. We broke down their wall with ease. My banes and speedlings took out all of the terran's SCVs at their main. My remaining speedlings then ran around the base, taking out all the pylons of the protoss and the supply depots + production buildings of the terran. The protoss was dead, whether they were ready to admit it or not.
I started a spire to shut down the phoenix harassment. PEG continued to recover from the losses he'd suffered through the earlier battle. The protoss attempted to double expand to get back into the game, having lost an attempt at taking the other gold base. The terran went into hardcore turtling mode. My taking down their depots and pylons at their former mains helped immensely, supply blocking them both and slowing them down.
I had mined out both of my mains and didn't yet expand (although I could have, the phoenixes gave them map control until my spire finished and I could get some mutas out, and I didn't want to risk it being spotted and losing it again). The terran had turtled to become almost impenetrable. We were still in for a very, very rough match. I morphed the speedlings I'd been using to take down his supply into banes, and rolled to bust down his defenses. I failed at this, and began building a whole bunch of mutas to wrest map control from the phoenixes.
The funny thing about this that although I didn't realize is that at the time I went to do this, there was only one phoenix left. I could have expanded ages ago, but I didn't need to except for gas anyways - I had failed to do any macroing whatsoever during the massive battle and was sitting on a huge 10k bank of minerals. No point in wasting 300 of them right now to get more. PEG figured out that they didn't really have any detection and went for DTs. The toss finally went down.
It was now 2v1, with the eventual odds heavily stacked in our favor; as long as we could continue to deny expansions, we had full map control and would choke out the terran. We spent our time thinking up creative ways to kill him instead. The terran had built a raven to stop the DTs. Our plan was for me to swoop in with my mutas, take out the raven, and let the DTs mop up from there.
The raven survived with 12 health. Plan B! We'd forced him deep enough into marines only territory that he had no real backup plan for an assload of banelings. Which was what I started making, alongside 10 more mutas. The mutas swooped in and began their endless harassment plans. The final push included 55 banelings. 55 is very, very many banelings.
I still had 28 left when the guy finally gave up.
+12 points!
Summary:
So my second major 2v2 night ended really, really well, with us going 4-2 overall and gaining a total of 88 points and putting us 5th in our bronze league division. Our play has improved considerably team-wise, we're completely on the same page in most everything, and I'd expect us to be silver sooner rather than later. Exciting!
Stats so far:
vs PT - 4-1
vs TT - 1-1
vs TZ - 1-1
vs PP - 0-1
vs ZP - 0-1
with PEG - 6-5
Discord IV - 1-0
High Orbit - 1-1
Khaydarin Depths - 0-2
Monlyth Ridge - 0-1
Ruins of Tarsonis - 1-0
Scorched Haven - 3-1
Days 4-5 Replay Pack: http://rapidshare.com/files/455677572/d4-5replays.zip
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Day 5 - Thor-ny Situation
Game 1 - KingKong (T) on Shakuras Plateau
Those of you loyal viewers may remember that I said something about terrans never being able to deal with muta play. The astute among you can see where I'm going with this.
I messed up my overlord timing and supply blocked on 10 due to a small issue remembering what I was doing, which put me slightly behind schedule to begin with. This also had the effect of throwing me off, causing my queen to come out waaaay way way late. That's ok though, I was right on top of everything else to the point where I was further ahead than I usually am by the time I started with my mutas.
That's where things sort of fell apart.
He went thors.
-12 points!
Game 2 - Ninjistics (P) on Shakuras Plateau
See last blog post on 7 pooling. This guy was even better mannered than the last one I did this against; I think I'm going to try to start actually playing against toss again because:
A) 7 pooling everyone isn't teaching me anything, and
B) It's kind of douchey.
As an aside, I'm tempted to veto Shakuras just so that I don't have to play it every single fucking match.
+17 points!
Game 3 - iTzBuBuS (P) on Slag Pits
Speaking of maps that need to be vetoed, having played on this more and actually taken a real good look at Slag Pits, it needs to be vetoed from existance in the map pool to begin with.
But yeah, same as before. Last time, I swear!
Except in 2v2s.
+12 points!
Summary:
I'm continuing to do reasonably well towards my goal of making silver league by the end of the month. I've also decided on another short-term goal - getting enough wins under my belt to get the baneling portrait, because banelings kick ass. I need 28 more as of right now. Ended this day in 30th, with 100 points. More importantly, vs Protoss is now statistically my best match-up, and my overall record since the start of this experiment has reached 7-5, which I'm rather proud of.
Stats so far:
vs Protoss - 4-1
vs Terran - 3-2
vs Zerg - 0-2
Shakuras Plateau - 2-3
Shattered Temple - 2-1
Slag Pits - 1-0
Typhon Peaks - 1-1
Xel'naga Caverns - 1-0
Anyone reading along at home that's interested - I'll be 2v2ing with PEG for the next couple of hours probably, so hop on if you want to join us.
Those of you loyal viewers may remember that I said something about terrans never being able to deal with muta play. The astute among you can see where I'm going with this.
I messed up my overlord timing and supply blocked on 10 due to a small issue remembering what I was doing, which put me slightly behind schedule to begin with. This also had the effect of throwing me off, causing my queen to come out waaaay way way late. That's ok though, I was right on top of everything else to the point where I was further ahead than I usually am by the time I started with my mutas.
That's where things sort of fell apart.
He went thors.
-12 points!
Game 2 - Ninjistics (P) on Shakuras Plateau
See last blog post on 7 pooling. This guy was even better mannered than the last one I did this against; I think I'm going to try to start actually playing against toss again because:
A) 7 pooling everyone isn't teaching me anything, and
B) It's kind of douchey.
As an aside, I'm tempted to veto Shakuras just so that I don't have to play it every single fucking match.
+17 points!
Game 3 - iTzBuBuS (P) on Slag Pits
Speaking of maps that need to be vetoed, having played on this more and actually taken a real good look at Slag Pits, it needs to be vetoed from existance in the map pool to begin with.
But yeah, same as before. Last time, I swear!
Except in 2v2s.
+12 points!
Summary:
I'm continuing to do reasonably well towards my goal of making silver league by the end of the month. I've also decided on another short-term goal - getting enough wins under my belt to get the baneling portrait, because banelings kick ass. I need 28 more as of right now. Ended this day in 30th, with 100 points. More importantly, vs Protoss is now statistically my best match-up, and my overall record since the start of this experiment has reached 7-5, which I'm rather proud of.
Stats so far:
vs Protoss - 4-1
vs Terran - 3-2
vs Zerg - 0-2
Shakuras Plateau - 2-3
Shattered Temple - 2-1
Slag Pits - 1-0
Typhon Peaks - 1-1
Xel'naga Caverns - 1-0
Anyone reading along at home that's interested - I'll be 2v2ing with PEG for the next couple of hours probably, so hop on if you want to join us.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Day 4 - What Defense?
Game 1 - Shamoo (T) on Shakuras Plateau
My weak point against Terran is that I don't defend against anything at all.
Literally.
I'm thinking I need to start throwing up a spine or two at my nat if I'm trying for two base muta play. I've been trying to defend with some speedlings + banelings but I just don't make enough.
The funny thing about this game is I made the guy do a double-take with his scouting SCV; I always send an overlord to one of the other bases then scout the other two with a drone, then float my overlord to just outside their nat where they can't really see it but it can see if there's an SCV mining things there, and especially if they take those gases.
My overlord started heading towards his nat the second his SCV scouted the base I'd send the overlord to scout to begin with. This caused him to turn his SCV around thinking he'd somehow just completely missed my base. This meant that by the time the SCV got to my base, my lings were out, and he then wasted a scan to scout. This also meant that he didn't know I'd just expanded. I also took this opportunity to put down a baneling nest.
Unfortunately, pretty much however you slice it, a 2 basing Zerg without much to defend with pretty much always loses to the gigantic freaking bio ball breaking down their front door. I did see it coming, but I managed to forget to change the rally point for attack units from my main to my ramp, and left half my lings over in my main where they weren't doing anything.
-12 points!
Game 2 - Sevy (T) on Shakuras Plateau
Well, I flew my scouting overlord the wrong way and it got sniped; fortunately, I'd seen that loss coming and started another one the second it began to be fired on, so it didn't cause me any problems.
He went, rather oddly, for 2 factories and 2 barracks - something he couldn't really keep up. He mostly left me alone, which was a big, big mistake on his part.
See, I'd learned a bit from my mistakes on the last game, and so I build more lings to defend my ramp should he push. He waited, and waited, and didn't push, and didn't push. I got my mutas up and he still hadn't pushed. At this point in time the supply was exactly even at 58-58, which is deceptive; I had 20 more workers, he had 20 more supply in units. However, I had mutas and banelings, he had a bio ball backed up by a seige tank.
My first 5 mutas hit, and he sent 4 marines to try to deal with it. I did what is perhaps my best bit of micro to date and forced a stim before running away; I swooped back in (although a little too soon) and cleaned up his marines as their stim wore off, not losing a single muta in the process.
Bitchin'.
At that time he decided it would be a good idea to counter-attack. I had 5 banelings and 16 speedlings vs 15 marines, a seige tank, and 5 marauders. This heavily favors him, but I also had some more mutas on the way which I sent over there the second the battle started (I also turned my 5 mutas at his base around, figuring that I needed to hold off his attack and he would be dead anyways). He of course lost most all of his marines instantly to the banes, the speedlings surrounded the tank (and the ones that couldn't get around the tank caused him to splash damage a good number of his marauders), and the push was repelled really, really easily.
I then shoved my mutas down his throat.
+24 points!
Game 3 - IrishTank (P) on Xel'naga Caverns
I feel sorry for this guy. He's clearly really, really not good. And he fell victim to my new vs P policy.
Every time I play vs P, they go for cheesy shit like mass void rays, cannon rushes, and the like. So I've found a way around that. You see, they never wall off properly. Ever. They're also a bit slow on their timing. So I've been practicing my 7 pooling.
I find that on Xel'naga the initial 6 lings hit at ~3:00 each time. This guy hadn't even started on a gateway yet, rather sadly; he was producing really slowly. I rolled over him with ease.
And then he gg'd.
Let me back this up as to why this is impactful at all; normally when I do this, they quit out (and I would imagine swear angrily in real life) without any courtesy towards me whatsoever. This guy, who is almost certainly just out of placement, gg'd me on his way out. I wish I'd played a standard game against him instead.
<3
+16 points!
Summary:
Things went rather well today; I hit on things I can improve on in my already pretty good vs T play, managed to avoid vs Z play, and managed to avoid actually playing vs P. Up 28 points on the day, I am now 33rd in my bronze league with 83 points.
Stats so far:
vs Protoss - 2-1
vs Terran - 3-1
vs Zerg - 0-2
Shakuras Plateau - 1-2
Shattered Temple - 2-1
Typhon Peaks - 1-1
Xel'naga Caverns - 1-0
My weak point against Terran is that I don't defend against anything at all.
Literally.
I'm thinking I need to start throwing up a spine or two at my nat if I'm trying for two base muta play. I've been trying to defend with some speedlings + banelings but I just don't make enough.
The funny thing about this game is I made the guy do a double-take with his scouting SCV; I always send an overlord to one of the other bases then scout the other two with a drone, then float my overlord to just outside their nat where they can't really see it but it can see if there's an SCV mining things there, and especially if they take those gases.
My overlord started heading towards his nat the second his SCV scouted the base I'd send the overlord to scout to begin with. This caused him to turn his SCV around thinking he'd somehow just completely missed my base. This meant that by the time the SCV got to my base, my lings were out, and he then wasted a scan to scout. This also meant that he didn't know I'd just expanded. I also took this opportunity to put down a baneling nest.
Unfortunately, pretty much however you slice it, a 2 basing Zerg without much to defend with pretty much always loses to the gigantic freaking bio ball breaking down their front door. I did see it coming, but I managed to forget to change the rally point for attack units from my main to my ramp, and left half my lings over in my main where they weren't doing anything.
-12 points!
Game 2 - Sevy (T) on Shakuras Plateau
Well, I flew my scouting overlord the wrong way and it got sniped; fortunately, I'd seen that loss coming and started another one the second it began to be fired on, so it didn't cause me any problems.
He went, rather oddly, for 2 factories and 2 barracks - something he couldn't really keep up. He mostly left me alone, which was a big, big mistake on his part.
See, I'd learned a bit from my mistakes on the last game, and so I build more lings to defend my ramp should he push. He waited, and waited, and didn't push, and didn't push. I got my mutas up and he still hadn't pushed. At this point in time the supply was exactly even at 58-58, which is deceptive; I had 20 more workers, he had 20 more supply in units. However, I had mutas and banelings, he had a bio ball backed up by a seige tank.
My first 5 mutas hit, and he sent 4 marines to try to deal with it. I did what is perhaps my best bit of micro to date and forced a stim before running away; I swooped back in (although a little too soon) and cleaned up his marines as their stim wore off, not losing a single muta in the process.
Bitchin'.
At that time he decided it would be a good idea to counter-attack. I had 5 banelings and 16 speedlings vs 15 marines, a seige tank, and 5 marauders. This heavily favors him, but I also had some more mutas on the way which I sent over there the second the battle started (I also turned my 5 mutas at his base around, figuring that I needed to hold off his attack and he would be dead anyways). He of course lost most all of his marines instantly to the banes, the speedlings surrounded the tank (and the ones that couldn't get around the tank caused him to splash damage a good number of his marauders), and the push was repelled really, really easily.
I then shoved my mutas down his throat.
+24 points!
Game 3 - IrishTank (P) on Xel'naga Caverns
I feel sorry for this guy. He's clearly really, really not good. And he fell victim to my new vs P policy.
Every time I play vs P, they go for cheesy shit like mass void rays, cannon rushes, and the like. So I've found a way around that. You see, they never wall off properly. Ever. They're also a bit slow on their timing. So I've been practicing my 7 pooling.
I find that on Xel'naga the initial 6 lings hit at ~3:00 each time. This guy hadn't even started on a gateway yet, rather sadly; he was producing really slowly. I rolled over him with ease.
And then he gg'd.
Let me back this up as to why this is impactful at all; normally when I do this, they quit out (and I would imagine swear angrily in real life) without any courtesy towards me whatsoever. This guy, who is almost certainly just out of placement, gg'd me on his way out. I wish I'd played a standard game against him instead.
<3
+16 points!
Summary:
Things went rather well today; I hit on things I can improve on in my already pretty good vs T play, managed to avoid vs Z play, and managed to avoid actually playing vs P. Up 28 points on the day, I am now 33rd in my bronze league with 83 points.
Stats so far:
vs Protoss - 2-1
vs Terran - 3-1
vs Zerg - 0-2
Shakuras Plateau - 1-2
Shattered Temple - 2-1
Typhon Peaks - 1-1
Xel'naga Caverns - 1-0
Friday, April 1, 2011
Day 3 - And There Was Much 2v2age!
IT'S THE 2v2 WITH PEG SPECIAL EDITION!
Yes, some delicious PZ action tonight. My main strategy was:
1. 7 pool
2. Cripple opponents
3. ???
4. Profit!
Step 3 was where step 4 tended to not happen if step 2 didn't cripple them enough. Or outright kill them. This is how our placement went.
Game 1 - Monkeez (T) and Likwid (P) on High Orbit
Go look up High Orbit and take a look at the ramp on it. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Why the fuck do terran players consistently try to wall this massive fucking ramp off? Seriously. You are never going to wall that off in time to defend most anything, and even if you do, one good set of banelings and you're doomed anyways. Perhaps a TT pair could wall it off in tandem, but that's so inefficient.
I almost wonder if they stop once they get their hard-coded 2 depots and a barracks there because their mind is trained to build those any time they see the word zerg. Or if it's because that's when my lings hit and they usually die.
PEG scouted the wrong ramp. Good going. My rush started across the map right at the 3 minute mark. They died quickly. 1-0!
Game 2 - Kreemation (Z) and Ripewater (T) on Ruins of Tarsonis
Rush hit on near-perfect timing (although I did make one mistake which delayed it by a few seconds). Forced the terran to send his SCVs, he lost them all but I wasn't quite able to kill him before I was forced out by lings. PEG started going for stargate, I started teching towards mutas. Knowing the terran was cripped and wasn't going to be able to tech for quite a while, we took our naturals while I at the same time put down a baneling nest.
Terran rather bafflingly went for a planetary at their main instead of an orbital. This is good because I was going mutas + banelings and PEG was going void rays + chargelots. The banelings would take out any terran infantry + lings, the chargelots would take down any marauders + turrets, then the air would swoop in and take out the planetary.
When our push went across the map to take out the terran, PEG's supply was at 115 and my supply was at 92. The opposing Z's supply was at 58 and the T's supply was at 44.
This couldn't possibly go well for them at all.
I admit that in my "well there are turrets there that is bad" reaction, I may have slipped a bit in my grammatical structure that is normally spot-on during heavy micro situations when I should be paying more attention to what's going on. PEG went off to go do some macro things and wasn't paying attention, leaving me to spout what will inevitably be a new catchphrase, "get the turretz".
But I had enough mutas to take down the turretz anyways. And then OH NO THE OTHER ZERG HAD MUTAS TOO!
THREE OF THEM!
AGAINST MY THIRTEEN!
AND THEN HE EXPANDED AS HE WAS LOSING ALL HIS TECH!
So that's how that one ended. 2-0!
Game 3 - Math (P) and Raven (P) on Khaydarin Depths
Allow me to tell you something neat.
One of these guys (Raven) is a master league 1v1 player, and a diamond league 2v2 player. The other (Math) was diamond league 1v1 last season. So you can see how this is going to go already, I would imagine.
Both of them proxy gated us. Had I just run to their bases with my lings and killed a good number of their probes off, we probably would have been fine.
Guess what I didn't do. 2-1!
Game 4 - Liviana (P) and wilsonusopen (Z) on Khaydarin Depths
I hate this fucking map. wilsonusopen is currently 12th place in his 1v1 master league division, and is a platinum 2v2er.
PEG decided to try DT rushing this game to continue our all cheese all the time strategy. I'm thinking that the optimal strategy as a whole for us is (if I insist on going 7 pool all the time, which I do because 2v2 is my funtimes and it is extremely satisfying) for him to 4 gate, but that's something to figure out later.
I realize now that attempting to 7 pool someone who is way, way, way, way, way better than I am was always doomed to failure. And I couldn't get up the toss ramp because it had cannons on it.
Whatabitch.
So yeah, suddenly there were 19 million billion speedlings eating us alive. 2-2!
Game 5 - CrisisManMSP (P) and Skyler (T) on High Orbit
We went with the necessary overreaction to the past two games by having PEG go with a forge opening to get some cannons to defend our ramp with while I once again had all the fun.
We then proceeded to play really, really poorly. The replay will speak for itself, but highlights include the really, really awful timing attack wherein PEG ran ahead and I got distracted by something shiny and forgot I was supposed to be sending my lings too.
Mass carriers aren't fun. 2-3!
Summary:
So we got placed in bronze which is kind of neat because we'll likely be high bronze if not silver soon enough, and I ended my 2v2 day rather happy with how well things went. I rather like 2v2 - if anyone wants to partner up with me sometime and isn't already friends with me, add me and leave your name + numberthing in the comments.
Just as long as you don't mind me 6 pooling.
2v2 Stats so far:
vs PT - 1-1
vs TZ - 1-0
vs PP - 0-1
vs ZP - 0-1
with PEG - 2-3
High Orbit - 1-1
Khaydarin Depths - 0-2
Ruins of Tarsonis - 1-0
In addition, here is the replay pack of the first 3 days of this experience, plus a bonus one of me vs PEG from a few days ago.
http://rapidshare.com/files/455382447/d1-3replays.zip
Yes, some delicious PZ action tonight. My main strategy was:
1. 7 pool
2. Cripple opponents
3. ???
4. Profit!
Step 3 was where step 4 tended to not happen if step 2 didn't cripple them enough. Or outright kill them. This is how our placement went.
Game 1 - Monkeez (T) and Likwid (P) on High Orbit
Go look up High Orbit and take a look at the ramp on it. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Why the fuck do terran players consistently try to wall this massive fucking ramp off? Seriously. You are never going to wall that off in time to defend most anything, and even if you do, one good set of banelings and you're doomed anyways. Perhaps a TT pair could wall it off in tandem, but that's so inefficient.
I almost wonder if they stop once they get their hard-coded 2 depots and a barracks there because their mind is trained to build those any time they see the word zerg. Or if it's because that's when my lings hit and they usually die.
PEG scouted the wrong ramp. Good going. My rush started across the map right at the 3 minute mark. They died quickly. 1-0!
Game 2 - Kreemation (Z) and Ripewater (T) on Ruins of Tarsonis
Rush hit on near-perfect timing (although I did make one mistake which delayed it by a few seconds). Forced the terran to send his SCVs, he lost them all but I wasn't quite able to kill him before I was forced out by lings. PEG started going for stargate, I started teching towards mutas. Knowing the terran was cripped and wasn't going to be able to tech for quite a while, we took our naturals while I at the same time put down a baneling nest.
Terran rather bafflingly went for a planetary at their main instead of an orbital. This is good because I was going mutas + banelings and PEG was going void rays + chargelots. The banelings would take out any terran infantry + lings, the chargelots would take down any marauders + turrets, then the air would swoop in and take out the planetary.
When our push went across the map to take out the terran, PEG's supply was at 115 and my supply was at 92. The opposing Z's supply was at 58 and the T's supply was at 44.
This couldn't possibly go well for them at all.
I admit that in my "well there are turrets there that is bad" reaction, I may have slipped a bit in my grammatical structure that is normally spot-on during heavy micro situations when I should be paying more attention to what's going on. PEG went off to go do some macro things and wasn't paying attention, leaving me to spout what will inevitably be a new catchphrase, "get the turretz".
But I had enough mutas to take down the turretz anyways. And then OH NO THE OTHER ZERG HAD MUTAS TOO!
THREE OF THEM!
AGAINST MY THIRTEEN!
AND THEN HE EXPANDED AS HE WAS LOSING ALL HIS TECH!
So that's how that one ended. 2-0!
Game 3 - Math (P) and Raven (P) on Khaydarin Depths
Allow me to tell you something neat.
One of these guys (Raven) is a master league 1v1 player, and a diamond league 2v2 player. The other (Math) was diamond league 1v1 last season. So you can see how this is going to go already, I would imagine.
Both of them proxy gated us. Had I just run to their bases with my lings and killed a good number of their probes off, we probably would have been fine.
Guess what I didn't do. 2-1!
Game 4 - Liviana (P) and wilsonusopen (Z) on Khaydarin Depths
I hate this fucking map. wilsonusopen is currently 12th place in his 1v1 master league division, and is a platinum 2v2er.
PEG decided to try DT rushing this game to continue our all cheese all the time strategy. I'm thinking that the optimal strategy as a whole for us is (if I insist on going 7 pool all the time, which I do because 2v2 is my funtimes and it is extremely satisfying) for him to 4 gate, but that's something to figure out later.
I realize now that attempting to 7 pool someone who is way, way, way, way, way better than I am was always doomed to failure. And I couldn't get up the toss ramp because it had cannons on it.
Whatabitch.
So yeah, suddenly there were 19 million billion speedlings eating us alive. 2-2!
Game 5 - CrisisManMSP (P) and Skyler (T) on High Orbit
We went with the necessary overreaction to the past two games by having PEG go with a forge opening to get some cannons to defend our ramp with while I once again had all the fun.
We then proceeded to play really, really poorly. The replay will speak for itself, but highlights include the really, really awful timing attack wherein PEG ran ahead and I got distracted by something shiny and forgot I was supposed to be sending my lings too.
Mass carriers aren't fun. 2-3!
Summary:
So we got placed in bronze which is kind of neat because we'll likely be high bronze if not silver soon enough, and I ended my 2v2 day rather happy with how well things went. I rather like 2v2 - if anyone wants to partner up with me sometime and isn't already friends with me, add me and leave your name + numberthing in the comments.
Just as long as you don't mind me 6 pooling.
2v2 Stats so far:
vs PT - 1-1
vs TZ - 1-0
vs PP - 0-1
vs ZP - 0-1
with PEG - 2-3
High Orbit - 1-1
Khaydarin Depths - 0-2
Ruins of Tarsonis - 1-0
In addition, here is the replay pack of the first 3 days of this experience, plus a bonus one of me vs PEG from a few days ago.
http://rapidshare.com/files/455382447/d1-3replays.zip
Thursday, March 31, 2011
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
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
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Day 1 - Knowing my place!
Game 1 - RHYNO (P) on The Shattered Temple
"Bad, really bad" is unfortunately the only way I can describe this guy. This was my placement match for the new season, and as is such was expecting to get paired against a REALLY REALLY EVEN MATCH, but unfortunately I did not. But let's march onwards.
His entire strategy seemed to be to build fucking everything at once, since apparently the one base 5 gate robo build is all das rage amongst the toss hardcore nowadays. He seemed to hinge solely on cheesy shit that in the end didn't work. Let's get an account of it.
First of all, my standard build against toss has been lately to open with speedlings + roaches, and pump out a shitload of hydras and a few mutas for support against colossi. This has worked out incredibly well, since the mutas also have the fun side effect of ripping probes to complete shreds in mere moments.
The first real action after a sleepy opening came when he took his dreaded warp prism and used it to warp exactly 3 stalkers into my base. Unfortunately, I don't think he meant to attack with that, but one of the stalkers started firing on my extractor which popped up that lovely OUR BASE IS UNDER ATTACK warning (and thankfully not the OUR DRONES ARE UNDER ATTACK one, because the queen voice saying drones is about as bad as Day9 saying "Dr. Seuss"), which kind of gave him away. Up marched my hydras + roaches + lings, down went warp prism + 3 stalkers.
A bit before this point, I began what is easily the best creep spread I have ever accomplished in my SC2 career to date. This will come in handy later.
I began building my spire, deciding that my best bet would be to max out and eat him alive since he'd obviously wrecked himself trying to get that up. I took my third at the gold base, then proceeded to pump out mutas + hydras + a couple more roaches and a few more lings.
Soon enough, having cut drones fairly hardcore knowing that at any time I really could just stomp him into dust but deciding to wait until it would be the most hilarious to do so, we hit my push. You know that beautiful creep spread? The hydras got there near-instantly despite their reputation for being "slow as shit" due to it, and I proceeded with my 153 supply worth of army to crush his 56 supply army. (This does not include workers, but for those who are inclined to see I had almost double his.)
Which consisted of a mothership, a colossus, 4 immortals, 3 zealots, 4 void rays, and a couple other things that died too quickly for me to notice. Eesh. Placement done, I found that I ended up in the same division as one of my e-friends, pickemgenius.
The war is fucking on.
Game 2 - starvty (T) on Typhon Peaks
Let me give you a bit of background information before I even start telling you about this game.
When I first started playing, I started playing as Zerg for two main reasons.
1. Amongst my group of e-friends that play SC2, the two best players of them are/were Zerg players (although I believe one of them plays random more often than Zerg nowadays).
2. Zerg is fucking cool. Like, literally. The Terrans are fucking America IN SPAAAAACE and the Protoss are a bunch of uppity psychic dickheads. The Zergs have banelings, It is impossible to hate banelings.
Unless you play Terran.
You see, I know this firsthand because my noob mind decided immediately upon getting repeatedly roflstomped by every person I was matched up against that the real problem wasn't that I was a poor player (nay, I was clearly a candidate for at least GSL Code A). I instead decided that the problem was the race I was playing as.
I tried playing as Protoss once, and quickly developed the only necessary skill one needs to play Protoss which is resisting the desire to throw one's computer out a fucking window every time pylons and the construction thereof is mentioned.
So instead I switched to be the TERRANS! YAY TERRANS! A lifetime of dull grey and machine guns for me, then.
So I quickly noticed a pattern. Vs Terran? I'd win about 60% of the time. Vs Protoss? Oh hi oh shit. Vs Zerg?
FUCKING. MUTAS.
So by the time I'd switched back to Zerg, I made the deduction that every low-level Terran I'd play against would be just as ill-equipped as I was to deal with said mutas. I hatched a brilliant strategy.
I would rush to mutas as quickly as humanly fucking possible.
So, with that in mind, on to the match!
The first thing that sticks out on the replay is the overlord timing. I usually try to get my overlord out on 9 (as I vaguely recalled somewhere reading that popping your o-lord out on 9 is a net gain over popping it out on 10 and using the extractor trick, which always made me feel kind of douchey anyways), but in this game my inability to read got the better of me and I built it on 8 instead. Whoops!
I as is usual took the early worker lead, scouting that he had no gas, which meant DUN DUN DUN BIO BALL almost certainly. Or he is a massive tool, which is better. I had just started building my pool, so knew my best bet for my short-term defense was to get a few banelings.
Nothing really happened for quite a while, I maintained my worker lead and expanded once. I did get myself supply blocked on 26, however.
There was a point where he had 1 marauder and 14 marines to my 3 zerglings and 3 banelings. Defense defense hurf durf. Glad he didn't decide to push. Here's where the funny part happened.
I decided to pump out 6 more lings to go along with my 6 mutas that were building. He took his marine + marauder ball and promptly walked right into my 3 banelings. Then the 6 more speedlings ran in and cleaned up. He lost almost his entire army in one push.
While he was sitting there in complete and utter shock, my mutas swooped in from behind. He proceeded to stim without medivacs, and proceeded to die quickly. +20 points!
Game 3 - Brandon (P) on Shakuras Plateau
I can sum this up in one sentence, really, cause it's all you need to hear:
"Everything he's doing points to a robo build. I SHALL BUILD MANY HYDRAS"
And so I built many hydras.
The end. -12 points!
Summary
So by going 2-1 today, I ended the first laddering day of the new season with 8 points in 44th in my bronze division. PEG has 32 points and is somewhere up where I should be.
Fuck him.
Stats so far:
vs Protoss - 1-1
vs Terran - 1-0
Shakuras Plateau - 0-1
Shattered Temple - 1-0
Typhon Peaks - 1-0
"Bad, really bad" is unfortunately the only way I can describe this guy. This was my placement match for the new season, and as is such was expecting to get paired against a REALLY REALLY EVEN MATCH, but unfortunately I did not. But let's march onwards.
His entire strategy seemed to be to build fucking everything at once, since apparently the one base 5 gate robo build is all das rage amongst the toss hardcore nowadays. He seemed to hinge solely on cheesy shit that in the end didn't work. Let's get an account of it.
First of all, my standard build against toss has been lately to open with speedlings + roaches, and pump out a shitload of hydras and a few mutas for support against colossi. This has worked out incredibly well, since the mutas also have the fun side effect of ripping probes to complete shreds in mere moments.
The first real action after a sleepy opening came when he took his dreaded warp prism and used it to warp exactly 3 stalkers into my base. Unfortunately, I don't think he meant to attack with that, but one of the stalkers started firing on my extractor which popped up that lovely OUR BASE IS UNDER ATTACK warning (and thankfully not the OUR DRONES ARE UNDER ATTACK one, because the queen voice saying drones is about as bad as Day9 saying "Dr. Seuss"), which kind of gave him away. Up marched my hydras + roaches + lings, down went warp prism + 3 stalkers.
A bit before this point, I began what is easily the best creep spread I have ever accomplished in my SC2 career to date. This will come in handy later.
I began building my spire, deciding that my best bet would be to max out and eat him alive since he'd obviously wrecked himself trying to get that up. I took my third at the gold base, then proceeded to pump out mutas + hydras + a couple more roaches and a few more lings.
Soon enough, having cut drones fairly hardcore knowing that at any time I really could just stomp him into dust but deciding to wait until it would be the most hilarious to do so, we hit my push. You know that beautiful creep spread? The hydras got there near-instantly despite their reputation for being "slow as shit" due to it, and I proceeded with my 153 supply worth of army to crush his 56 supply army. (This does not include workers, but for those who are inclined to see I had almost double his.)
Which consisted of a mothership, a colossus, 4 immortals, 3 zealots, 4 void rays, and a couple other things that died too quickly for me to notice. Eesh. Placement done, I found that I ended up in the same division as one of my e-friends, pickemgenius.
The war is fucking on.
Game 2 - starvty (T) on Typhon Peaks
Let me give you a bit of background information before I even start telling you about this game.
When I first started playing, I started playing as Zerg for two main reasons.
1. Amongst my group of e-friends that play SC2, the two best players of them are/were Zerg players (although I believe one of them plays random more often than Zerg nowadays).
2. Zerg is fucking cool. Like, literally. The Terrans are fucking America IN SPAAAAACE and the Protoss are a bunch of uppity psychic dickheads. The Zergs have banelings, It is impossible to hate banelings.
Unless you play Terran.
You see, I know this firsthand because my noob mind decided immediately upon getting repeatedly roflstomped by every person I was matched up against that the real problem wasn't that I was a poor player (nay, I was clearly a candidate for at least GSL Code A). I instead decided that the problem was the race I was playing as.
I tried playing as Protoss once, and quickly developed the only necessary skill one needs to play Protoss which is resisting the desire to throw one's computer out a fucking window every time pylons and the construction thereof is mentioned.
So instead I switched to be the TERRANS! YAY TERRANS! A lifetime of dull grey and machine guns for me, then.
So I quickly noticed a pattern. Vs Terran? I'd win about 60% of the time. Vs Protoss? Oh hi oh shit. Vs Zerg?
FUCKING. MUTAS.
So by the time I'd switched back to Zerg, I made the deduction that every low-level Terran I'd play against would be just as ill-equipped as I was to deal with said mutas. I hatched a brilliant strategy.
I would rush to mutas as quickly as humanly fucking possible.
So, with that in mind, on to the match!
The first thing that sticks out on the replay is the overlord timing. I usually try to get my overlord out on 9 (as I vaguely recalled somewhere reading that popping your o-lord out on 9 is a net gain over popping it out on 10 and using the extractor trick, which always made me feel kind of douchey anyways), but in this game my inability to read got the better of me and I built it on 8 instead. Whoops!
I as is usual took the early worker lead, scouting that he had no gas, which meant DUN DUN DUN BIO BALL almost certainly. Or he is a massive tool, which is better. I had just started building my pool, so knew my best bet for my short-term defense was to get a few banelings.
Nothing really happened for quite a while, I maintained my worker lead and expanded once. I did get myself supply blocked on 26, however.
There was a point where he had 1 marauder and 14 marines to my 3 zerglings and 3 banelings. Defense defense hurf durf. Glad he didn't decide to push. Here's where the funny part happened.
I decided to pump out 6 more lings to go along with my 6 mutas that were building. He took his marine + marauder ball and promptly walked right into my 3 banelings. Then the 6 more speedlings ran in and cleaned up. He lost almost his entire army in one push.
While he was sitting there in complete and utter shock, my mutas swooped in from behind. He proceeded to stim without medivacs, and proceeded to die quickly. +20 points!
Game 3 - Brandon (P) on Shakuras Plateau
I can sum this up in one sentence, really, cause it's all you need to hear:
"Everything he's doing points to a robo build. I SHALL BUILD MANY HYDRAS"
And so I built many hydras.
The end. -12 points!
Summary
So by going 2-1 today, I ended the first laddering day of the new season with 8 points in 44th in my bronze division. PEG has 32 points and is somewhere up where I should be.
Fuck him.
Stats so far:
vs Protoss - 1-1
vs Terran - 1-0
Shakuras Plateau - 0-1
Shattered Temple - 1-0
Typhon Peaks - 1-0
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
How This Crap Works
Figured it'd be best to start off with a quick description of what I'm doing here.
The idea is that if I force myself to play enough, I will eventually somehow (probably through magic) become a competent and reasonably good player. I began this experiment a bit over a week ago with some success. What I've been doing is dragging myself to my tired, haggard computer and forcing myself to play 3 (and no fewer) ladder matches per day. This gives me a chance to experience such things as getting matched up against cannon rushing tosses thrice as often, as well as measure my worth based on league and rank like a proper person should.
Phase two of this project is starting a blog in order to publicly shame myself on my poor plays, and hopefully glean a few tips from the SC2 coolpeople. This will also force me to do more in-depth analysis of what exactly I did wrong in the hopes that writing it out here will drill it hard into my head.
To give a bit of introduction, prior to SC2 I had almost 0 RTS experience as a whole, limited to a bit of dabbling in LoL (although I never played any actual real matches, scared off by tales of a community most charitably described as a bunch of douche-and-a-halfnozzles) and some Age of Empires way back in the days when Windows 98 was the cool new OS.
I started playing over Christmas (and sucked), sort of fell out of practice and started ignoring it for the longest time. Then I eventually became one of those people who wakes up at ungodly hours to watch a bunch of Korean nerds mash keyboards and mouse buttons. Having given up on such former luxuries as sleep and real people food for a few days, I decided it would be great to devote my time to trying to become a better player instead of trying not to fall face-first into a concrete walkway or trying not to fall asleep at the wheel of my car and crash into a cypress tree.
Keep in mind that part of that account is fictional as there are no cypress trees around here, and it was actually one of those massive live oaks.
So for the last bit of my introductory hoopla and bullshittin' which should probably be at the start of the post, my name is JD, I'm one o' them useless major undergrad students, I play Zerg, prior to the ladder reset I was ranked 54th or so in my Bronze league division, I suck against Protoss, I suck against other Zerg, I suck against any Terran players that have a counter for me shoving a shitload of mutas down their throat.
And this is my chronicle.
The idea is that if I force myself to play enough, I will eventually somehow (probably through magic) become a competent and reasonably good player. I began this experiment a bit over a week ago with some success. What I've been doing is dragging myself to my tired, haggard computer and forcing myself to play 3 (and no fewer) ladder matches per day. This gives me a chance to experience such things as getting matched up against cannon rushing tosses thrice as often, as well as measure my worth based on league and rank like a proper person should.
Phase two of this project is starting a blog in order to publicly shame myself on my poor plays, and hopefully glean a few tips from the SC2 coolpeople. This will also force me to do more in-depth analysis of what exactly I did wrong in the hopes that writing it out here will drill it hard into my head.
To give a bit of introduction, prior to SC2 I had almost 0 RTS experience as a whole, limited to a bit of dabbling in LoL (although I never played any actual real matches, scared off by tales of a community most charitably described as a bunch of douche-and-a-halfnozzles) and some Age of Empires way back in the days when Windows 98 was the cool new OS.
I started playing over Christmas (and sucked), sort of fell out of practice and started ignoring it for the longest time. Then I eventually became one of those people who wakes up at ungodly hours to watch a bunch of Korean nerds mash keyboards and mouse buttons. Having given up on such former luxuries as sleep and real people food for a few days, I decided it would be great to devote my time to trying to become a better player instead of trying not to fall face-first into a concrete walkway or trying not to fall asleep at the wheel of my car and crash into a cypress tree.
Keep in mind that part of that account is fictional as there are no cypress trees around here, and it was actually one of those massive live oaks.
So for the last bit of my introductory hoopla and bullshittin' which should probably be at the start of the post, my name is JD, I'm one o' them useless major undergrad students, I play Zerg, prior to the ladder reset I was ranked 54th or so in my Bronze league division, I suck against Protoss, I suck against other Zerg, I suck against any Terran players that have a counter for me shoving a shitload of mutas down their throat.
And this is my chronicle.
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