Unit Control

I’ve been playing a lot 1v1 versus D+ level Terrans lately. And my win ration is way down. I smile every time a defeat sends some 2900’ish opponent up into C-. Thinking: Good Luck up there suckers!

But I still lose. I kind of think that RushFlush’s advice solved my early game timing issue, and my build and macro is almost on the level that it needs to be.

Months ago the most common feedback I would get was to have better unit control. Back then I was certain that I had bigger issues than that and I have worked systematically to get them resolved. They are almost resolved now, which brings me back to unit control. Once the Terran breaks out with his 100-130 supply army, my similar sized army just vaporize. I have no idea how you face a Terran army head on.

Some argues that I need to work on my flanking and prepositioning . I mainly play Neo Medusa and while the center is not exactly narrow there really is no space to flank from. The front is literarily as wide as the open space in the center!

If my opponent is late in pushing out I get time to start recall harassment. That usually ends up winning the game for me and he will never push out. But that is a different story.

So how to proceeed…

Top 50 at Last

Today I made it to the list of the 50 best players in Denmark. It shouldn’t really impress anyone much, ‘cause Denmark is a very small pond when it comes to Starcraft. But it means a lot to me. For the last couple of weeks this has been my main goal. Especially after the following line at DailyRush.dk:

Tror der er 51 aktive spiller i DK. Fafner kommer end ikke i top 50.

Or in English:

I think there are 51 active players in Denmark. Fafner will never get in the top 50.

Kind of funny, but I really had to prove them wrong. Which I did. Today. I am now number 49, but I probably have to win even more in the future just to keep my position. At least until Avi-Love switches all his smurf account over to be marked as Danish. I think he likes to do that at the end of the season. My only hope is that he is to busy being defeated by Ret, Draco and Dreiven in ESL.

RushFlush has helped me get so far. While I don’t think his skill is that far ahead of mine, he has consistently helped me get better. After having watched my commentary below he simply said: “What you need to do is go a 10/15 dragoon build and then switch to dark templars”. I did. It helped a lot.

An FPVOD commentary

So I got a new computer which now can record Starcraft games as they are played without inducing too much lag. It has not made me better at the game in any way, but there is hope of improvement.

So I have tried to make an FPVOD and even done an audio commentary of it afterwards in my broken English. Sigh. It is so embarrassing to hear yourself speak a language foreign to you. I speak English every day and yet I still have a thick Danish accent and make a ton of grammatical errors. It will probably improve my English dramatically when I reach Olympic rank on iccup ;-).

(Part 1 & Part 2)

The game itself is rather annoying as it does not follow the standard of most of my 1v1s. In that sense it is a bad example of my play.

New Computer and New Delay

I finally got around to place an order for a new computer. I got it last week and have spend some time setting it up. Ready for the now even more delayed Starcraft II Beta.

Basically what I got is the following:

• Intel Core i5 750 2,66 MHz.
• 8GB of ram.
• ATI Radeon HD4890 with 1GB of onboard RAM.
• 1TB of disk space (7200RPM).

A pretty nice rig and Stacraft is running fine on it. Actually I think this is the fifth consecutive computer I have owned and used for playing Starcraft. Pretty weird.

So now I got this fancy new machine and Starcraft II is even more delayed. It is getting ridiculous.

I’m all mined out

I want to report about some impressive 1v1 feat, but to be honest I have experienced two kind of 1v1 games lately: The ones where I get run over in a very embarrassing fashion and those where I do the same to another. Not really worth taking about.

Talking about 2v2 seems more interesting right now. My team still suck so bad, but we are approaching C-. I say that now, because I am absolutely confident that we can make it that far.

For instance: Yesterday we played a 2v2 that turned out to be more than an hour long. The matchup was PTvTT on Python. I was the Protoss. None of the Terrans seemed to have any idea how the TvT matchup should be played so it was all defensive mode for a really long time. From time to time we switched ownership of the bases in the corners, but eventually we had it all mined out. Then it came down to an elimination match with what we had left. And a lot of tanks in siege mode.

It was absurd and hilarious.