Monday, April 28, 2008

Going too far

I do this a lot: I gamble with my opening moves, and overextend myself with whatever I try and loose to a more conservative player than my self. I assume it has something to do with a desire to avoid a prolonged game that drags out. I want to do the unexpected and then steamroll my opponent. It rarely works.

Today I played two games as Terran against different Zerg players. I didn't pick Terran, I got that race through picking random and ending up as Terran. I wanted to contain the Zerg and push in on his base as soon as I got my first tank. In theory this should work, but the first one simply ran his Zerglings past my forward bunker and killed my base, and the other teched straight to Mutalisks, which then raped my base.

I could have been more conservative and built some defenses, but I wanted to believe that I was in control. I obviously was not. Maybe part of the problem was that containing an opponent does not really put pressure on him the same way attacking him directly does.

In another game I ended up as Zerg on the map Hunters against a Protoss player. I thought I could hide an expansion at one of the other starting points and then out-produce him in units. The problem here was my assumption was wrong and he did discover my expansions and killed it off. Then I was way behind.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

So I Suck at Starcraft

It is just a fact and nothing to be all hot and bothered about. I just suck. I can't win a one-on-one game and if I join a team game I get called n00b more times than I can count. Of course being called n00b does not really mean you suck - it just means that some other player is venting his frustration. He is probably a n00b too anyway.

It has been a while since I last played on Blizzard's excellent gaming service Battle.net, but nothing seems to have changed. The support for Starcraft is significantly worse that it is for Warcraft III and the offered games are still ruined by money maps. I take some small satisfaction in knowing that Warcraft III was ruined by DOTA, so it is nothing special.

I vow to not play any money map and although it is comfortable to just join team games, I believe they do not test your skills the same way that one-on-one games do. I aim to suck less in the future than I do now, so I have to play games I may very well loose. That means risking defeat on my own.

So welcome to my new blog. I'll write about my endeavors in the world of competetive gaming and I hope that someone will read it.