Roadblocked

My smurf account was promoted to Gold league and suddenly I hit a bump in the road. This bump coincided with the new 1v1 ladder maps, which has undoubtedly made games more macro intensive and generally played hell with the timing attacks which have served me so well from Bronze to Gold.

To my surprise I’ve suddenly started to lose to Zergs and I suspect that is because Zergs in Gold has perfected most one base plays and I am still not comfortable enough with to Terran to know when a safe expand is possible. I could just do one base plays myself to counter this, but that is sucky in the long term and I won’t be trapped into that.

Anyways, while contemplating what to do against Zerg, I’ve tried to experiment with banshees vs. Protoss. They are fun!

But they are also really hard to get when faced with a determined 4-gate by a competent Protoss. There is definitely some work ahead of me before I start not sucking as Terran.

On and for the record. My stats are 71-49 by now or 71-24 if I take away the 25 loses I took on purpose.

Late Game TvP is hard!

That is a seriously hard match-up. Playing something other than Protoss is enlightening in a way I had hoped it would be. My smurf account is still in Silver and I just had an epic game against a player from Gold. Yeah, I know it sounds pathetic, but that is where I am at the moment.

In this game I was a victim of a dual gas steal. I countered fairly well and then met up with his dark templars. Even that did I survive, just to be met with a torrent of high templars and psi-storm. Annoying.

At the same time did my multiple ravens kill one base outright, harass another and simultaneously did a cloaked banshee get 21 kills in his main. And yet he kept coming. I find that mech works best late game, but without spider mines the matchup feels more shaky than in Brood War. Maybe I should have had more hellions and gotten ghosts earlier? I don’t know, but in the heat of the battle it is kind of hard to tell.

I was constantly short of gas, but his zealots requires no gas. Right now I feel tempted to go back to playing Protoss for a few games just to see if I can make it work from that side.

51 game minutes for one game. Probably my longest and most nerve wrecking game so far.

Download Replay here.

Trials and Tribulations

I’ve grown a little tired of Protoss. Honestly, I think the race is broken and will need some serious changes to become fun to play again. At least the race is no way near as much fun as it was in Brood War. My guess is that we will have to wait for the expansion to see anything but minor tweaks.

In the mean time I have decided to try my luck with Terrans on a new account. I’ve basically upgraded the trial account I used in January to a full account and I am now working my way up from bronze. I hope I will learn how to play Terrans on my way up.

I have played around 80 games on the account and lost 25 of those on purpose. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t advance too fast for me to learn.

Here is a replay pack with 4 of my latest games. It consists of one TvZ, one TvP and two TvT. The reason is that there seem to be a lot of Terrans in bronze and silver.

Terran vs Protoss
This game is kinda funny. I wanted to do a fast banshee harass and then expand all over while keeping him in his base. Unfortunately he hit me with blink stalkers at the same time and I had very little defense. I lost my main and the game became weird from there. Fun game all around though.

Terran vs Zerg
This is a good macro game with drops, banelings and tanks all over. I don’t think my opponent was anything special, but the game demonstrates why I think Terrans are fun to play. You have some many options all the time.

Terran vs Terran
By far the most fun mirror matchup to play in Starcraft II. That in itself is reason enough to play Terrans. I do however feel that I miss something in my game here. There is an option to be aggressive with mid-game marauders and I just don’t feel like I know how! That is why most of my TvT turns out to be: create a tank line, expand like hell and then mass battle cruisers to win. A little one sided, but effective so far.

All in all I am having a lot of fun trying this out. Not sure if I am completely done with Protoss, but that I will decide later on.