So I Suck at Starcraft

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T13:42:00.001+01:00

I just wanted to post a little Christmas greeting and to get everybody in the holiday mood I’ll include the farewell message from my last opponent, before I head out for our family gathering.

Here is to hoping our present tonight will be the skills to get promoted to Grand Master league soon!

SQ Insight

2011-12-04T14:25:00.001+01:00

I’ve just read the interesting article about SQ ratings on teamliquid and simply had to see if there was anything in this number that I could learn from. In order to do that I calculated the SQ ratings based on the last 8 games that I, Bartokaj and Sethos have played in 1v1. Bartokaj and Sethos being two of my friends.

I’m gold looking to advance to platinum, Sethos is a solid Diamond player and Bartokaj is in Silver. According to the article, there is a an expectation that the difference in SQ rating are reflected more or less in league. Bronze: 45’ish, Silver: 45-50, Gold: 50-55, Platinum: 55-60, Diamond: 60-70, Master: 70-80 and Grand Master: 80 and above.

	Me	Bartokaj	Sethos
1	66	55	72
2	60	47	75
3	55	62	73
4	65	48	50
5	63	43	55
6	66	58	53
7	54	77	65
8	63	60	49
Average	62	56	62

I don’t know whether the expected values are because the data for the original analysis is from the North American ladder or what. I don’t think the values I found in my own small study reflects the expected levels very well.

However, looking at my own numbers, I wonder why I have so high an unspent average as I do. Right now I play Zerg, and as a Zerg you are often limited by the number of larva and I am often not so concerned about how much money I have in the bank. Holding my money there allows me to instantly make 25 supply worth of what ever I need. Had I already spent the money, my options would be more limited.

In the early game I can see that I could work more on having enough larva available. I’ve already started working on that recently by getting my third hatchery quite early compared to a month ago.

Anyways, it is really interesting to compare your gameplay via a analysis like this and look at what you can easily do to improve this aspect of your game.

Back to Basics: I Still Suck at this Game

2011-11-27T14:10:00.001+01:00

I suddenly realized that I have been living in a gaming illusion for the last year. When the beta came out, I found myself in Diamond even though I never made it higher than C- on iCCup. I told myself that I was only good and high ranked in comparison to all the new players on battle.net, but despite that the feeling that I belonged in the top was so easy to get used to.

I guess that the two times I have dropped down to Bronze to make my way up was a way of feeling good about my skills. But right now I have a hard time making it higher than platinum. That is embarrassing.

I guess I will have to take some time to recalibrate my expectations. That sounds tough.

BarCraft in Nørrebro

2011-11-25T14:33:00.001+01:00

Check this photo album out! I went to BarCraft Copenhagen for the MLG Providence Final. It felt like an odd experience, but kinda cool too. I wish I could have stayed longer than I could, but unfortunately I only got to see about 10 games at the bar.

Getting Predictable

2011-11-20T14:18:00.001+01:00

Most games goes like this:

Drone and scout
Expand
Tech to Lair
Expand
Get Spire
Tech to Hive
Double Expand
Get Greater Spire
Max
Attack

The steps are basically just interrupted by making exactly enough units to survive what ever my opponent has and maybe some harassing as well. But the predictable thing is that everything revolves around the target for a greater spire.

The two reasons this is so single-track like is the need for air defense coupled with how hard the Ultralisk blows. A 1-1-1 from a Terran requires Mutalisks or extreme luck. Anything that includes either Void Rays or Collosi requires air units too. Hydralisks are nice as a supplement, but they are fragile and slow.

Even Zerg, which for the longest time was just roach/infestor battles have turned more and more towards Muta/ling battles. Not quite the same as the two other matchups, but close enough for it to feel a little stale.

Another Run From the Bottom

2011-11-13T09:52:00.001+01:00

This season I’m trying to make another run from bronze and up. I still have no clue as to how a Zerg beats a good Protoss, but right now I am trying to side step that problem by working my way up and learning from the experience.

Getting my alternate account to bronze was not a problem, but I probably should have settled on silver instead. For now I have played and won about 75 games in bronze and still not really started to meet any silver players. I kinda think that the system is punishing me for intentionally getting into bronze.

In fact I think my behavior is wrong and that Blizzard should do something to prevent yoyo-ladder players. Players that one day is in a high league, then has an amazingly long losing streak followed by an equally long winning streak.

Another phenomenon I think is messing up the ladder are the portrait hunters. People in bronze that have 3000 wins and no game longer than 5 minutes. They are clearly either win-trading or something similar. I hate to think about what this does to the gaming experience of someone who really is bronze level.

Great Balls of Fire

2011-10-25T21:58:00.001+02:00

My gameplay versus Protoss has progressed to a completely unbearable state. For a while in gold I won approximately 80% of my ZvP games and when I got promoted to Platinum that only dropped slightly. But then I started meeting Protoss player with a seemingly unbeatable strategy: They do _nothing_!

At first I thought my problem was I was too passive and let them probe up too much so I set out to improve my harrasment. It works fine, but make no difference.

Right now most of my games goes something like this: I get 3 bases to their two. I get a nice ball of mutalisks and kill about 20 probes in one of the two bases before they get too many stalkers. Mean while I max out on 200/200 mostly roaches and save up around 5k in minerals and gas. When they move out they usually mostly have stalkers and we meet and my army dies to their limited loses and I max out again. My next wave of units dies for little more return than the first time around. So does my third max-out and then I am out of money and unable to hold back their attack anymore.

I’m a little baffled by this. I’m quite often ahead on upgrades as well and going ultras or broodlords seems to have no positive effect. The feeling I have is that I am way ahead before the first engagement, but when we meet we exchange units at the rate 120 to 30 or so.

I’ve been told I should have 5 bases and even more money. I don’t see the wisdom in that. 2 more bases (as opposed to just two more hatcheries) would either spread my drones thinner or leave less supply for army units. And even if it didn’t and just gave me more money, then I don’t see the point in being able to max out 5 times before dying compared to just 3.

I assume there is some trick I need to discover as pros are not quite this lost to the great Protoss deathball. I just wonder what the hell it is.

Dwight has left the game

2011-10-15T11:36:00.001+02:00

I had a really strange game yesterday. When I scouted my opponent base his SCVs were idle in the pattern that they spawn next to the command center. I thought that he was trying to lose on purpose to get down to a lower league, so I started streaming in zerglings to take out his command center.

When it died there was an immidiate “Dwight has left the game”. However the text looked odd and when I hit F10 I was only offered the opportunity to surrender.

So basically he was trying to see if he could get a free win assuming that I would thing the game was over and quitting the game thus giving him a win and me a loss.

It took me about 6-8 minutes to find his floated second command center.

Casual Mondays

2011-10-11T21:49:00.001+02:00

Yeah, to some extend that headline is stolen from Day9. It’s where we dick around.

A side effect of the lovely new battle.net 2.0 is a clear lack of community in Starcraft II compared to the old Brood War-days. AiurAdun and I have taken it upon ourselves to do something about it. Step 1 in that plan is to get Danish players to play each other and hang out. For that we have created Casual Monday. A recurring tournament open for all Danish players of all skill levels. People are matched up against those of similar skill levels and no one is “out” of the tournament. We don’t really declare a winner either.

So far we’ve been around 25 players participating which I think is quite a lot. And it seems like people appreciate it.

Getting Better at It

2011-09-14T20:16:00.001+02:00

I’ve been a little inactive lately. Initially due to out vacation to the US, but that is – unfortunately – over now.

I still haven’t quite recovered from the fact that I fell from Diamond to Gold after my switch to Zerg. At some point you realize that you are doing something fundamentally wrong and in my case it seems like it primarily has been by trying to play a macro game as Zerg. Either than cannot be done or I just haven’t figured out how to.

The problems have been greatest against Protoss. In the late game Protoss seems close to impossible to beat even when you have a 200/200 army and 5k in the bank.

My reaction have to try different timing attacks and the earlier the attack, the more successful I have been. It works especially well against Protoss that fast expand behind a wall-in.

I’ve even been going back to the 7RR build although I consider that an all-in kinda opening. You end up with 7 roaches, no speed for the follow-up zerglings and only 16 drones mining. With such an opening you pretty much have to win right there or you are left far behind.

Anyways, the result of my tighter openings have been a massive winning streak and yesterday I got back to platinum. I don’t plan to stay there, but whether that is wishful thinking I don’t yet know.

Season 3 Switch

2011-08-08T17:22:00.001+02:00

I don’t know why, but starting season 3 I have switched to Zerg. I suppose that completes my journey, that started out with me as Protoss in season 1 (and the last years of Brood War), Terran in season 2 and now Zerg in Season3.

Initially I lost a lot. First I got demoted to Platinum and then to Gold. I assume that I am actually better than that in the long run, but a lot of my loses came from droning to hard. And the further down I fell, the more this happened! I think it is because that in Gold a 1-base play is way more common than in Diamond.

In Gold, people are remarkably polite! Or something.

I find ZvZ fun and fast pased. ZvT a little scary and ZvP puzzling hard. But I’ve stopped falling down the ranks and are figuring things out on my way back up.

AiurAdun Back on Battle.Net!

2011-06-28T00:04:00.001+02:00

Seriously! You have friends who play Starcraft and their companionship is huge part of what keeps you interested in the game. And AiurAdun is one of my oldest Starcraft-friends.

Lately he has been traveling a lot. I like that as I too like to travel the world. But the problem of travel is that it disconnects you with the online community of Starcraft and suddenly you feel that getting back on the horse is kinda difficult. People have gotten better and you have lost your skills.

I think AiurAdun is in that spot now and I want the online community to encourage him to get back in the game and become part of the community. In an active form.

I know that you may not personally know AiurAdun, but I am sure that if you are reading this you too have friends who you’d like to share your passion of the game with. Let this be an open invitation to all who find the world of Starcraft hard to keep up with: We want you back on Battle.net!

Multitasking Trainer

2011-06-13T00:54:00.001+02:00

I’ve been lazy today and not played any 1v1s. Instead I have tried a couple of attempts at beating the multitasking trainer map. Its annoying to say the least. Especially since I don’t multitask well enough.

Basically the map challenges you to do three mini games at once.

You need to keep a probe alive on an island while it is being chased by a zergling.
You need to build a transport and pick up a high templar on another island.
You need to defend your base against an attack from a Terran base.

And while doing all this you need to spend your minerals and your “macro” energy (in my case on Mules/scan).

In my third attempt I succeeded in completing the map on easy. My APM was 128 on average over the course of the 18 minutes it took me to complete the map. I’m sure that playing this map is a good exercise, but it feels way more stressing than actually playing.

Especially the part of the map where you have to keep your probe alive. It seems that you spend way more time at that, than you would in a real game. Managing your base is fun. Picking up the templar is fun, but keeping a probe from being eaten is not fun. And in a real game I’d let it die in a heartbeat and concentrate on something important.

Still, getting stuff done is a challenge and I suppose it helps you become faster.

Statistics

2011-06-02T14:11:00.001+02:00

Sorry for being absent for a while. I’ve been busy and not playing so much, but have have been playing a little. And I have also collected some data about my games and I think is interesting:

OVERALL
TvT Win%: 63,3 (30 games)
TvP Win%: 54,8 (42 games)
TvZ Win%: 54,5 (44 games)

MAPS
Xel'Naga Caverns     Win%: 50,0 (14 games)
The Shattered Temple Win%: 62,5 (16 games)
Metalopolis          Win%: 50,0 (20 games)
Scrap Station        Win%: 63,6 (11 games)
Delta Quadrant       Win%: 52,6 (19 games)
Shakuras Plateau     Win%: 62,5 (16 games)
Slag Pits            Win%: 00,0 (1 games)
Backwater Gulch      Win%: 73,3 (15 games)
Typhon Peaks         Win%: 33,3 (3 games)
Tal'darim Altar LE   Win%: 00,0 (1 games)

MAPS BROKEN DOWN PER RACE
Xel'Naga Caverns     v T - Win%: 33,3   (3 games)
Xel'Naga Caverns     v P - Win%: 100,0 (3 games)
Xel'Naga Caverns     v Z - Win%: 37,5   (8 games)
The Shattered Temple v T - Win%: 100,0 (2 games)
The Shattered Temple v P - Win%: 40,0   (10 games)
The Shattered Temple v Z - Win%: 100,0 (4 games)
Metalopolis          v T - Win%: 50,0   (4 games)
Metalopolis          v P - Win%: 20,0   (5 games)
Metalopolis          v Z - Win%: 63,6   (11 games)
Scrap Station        v T - Win%: 75,0   (4 games)
Scrap Station        v P - Win%: 75,0   (4 games)
Scrap Station        v Z - Win%: 33,3   (3 games)
Delta Quadrant       v T - Win%: 50,0   (6 games)
Delta Quadrant       v P - Win%: 71,4   (7 games)
Delta Quadrant       v Z - Win%: 33,3   (6 games)
Shakuras Plateau     v T - Win%: 60,0   (5 games)
Shakuras Plateau     v P - Win%: 62,5   (8 games)
Shakuras Plateau     v Z - Win%: 66,7   (3 games)
Slag Pits            v Z - Win%: 00,0   (1 games)
Backwater Gulch      v T - Win%: 83,3   (6 games)
Backwater Gulch      v P - Win%: 40,0   (5 games)
Backwater Gulch      v Z - Win%: 100,0 (4 games)
Typhon Peaks         v Z - Win%: 33,3   (3 games)
Tal'darim Altar LE   v Z - Win%: 00,0   (1 games)

I find it a little surprising that Backwater Gulch apparently is my best map, but even more surprising that Shakuras Plateau is one of my good maps. I don’t feel comfortable playing that map.

That Metalopolis and Xel’Naga Caverns are my worst maps is no surprise. That’s pretty much aligned with my gut feeling.

Punishing Others for Taking a Risk

2011-05-08T23:29:00.001+02:00

Today I have been laddering a lot. Well, what amounts to a lot for me, as the total number of games were just 14. I lost the vast majority of the games, which of course annoys me a lot. I don’t think I should lose this much when I am not even in Diamond yet.

I’m still learning Terran and there are certain things that I just don’t seem to be able to get right. Today my pet annoyance have been people who have done risky things and when I tried to punish them for taking those risks, I got rolled. Examples includes a protoss that fast expanded on Delta Quadrant and so on. I’m of the firm belief that that should just not be possible to get away with and yet he did.

I have also tried to loosen up my Terran vs Zerg game play which has a tendency to become a little passive while I max out on two bases. But apparently moving out early is something I haven’t mastered yet.

I streamed a lot of the games I played to, but I don’t think my loses are especially interesting to watch as they are not even close games.

Here are a couple of the good games:

Terran vs Terran on Shakuras Plateau

And another which was also kinda okay:

Terran vs Protoss on Scrap Station

If I have to mention anything positive from today, it should be that my Terran vs Terran is still my best matchup and the games I won against Protoss were all due to good use of EMP.

EMP is currently the corner stone of my mid to laIte game vs. Protoss and I wonder why I didn’t see it more back when I played Protoss?

Streaming Games

2011-05-04T23:34:00.001+02:00

I find setting up a solid video stream to be one of the most frustrating exercises possible. And yet I have actually managed to set one up. Quality is not fantastic as I am limited to uploading on a fairly crappy ADSL line, but the quality is acceptable.

I’m playing very casually these days, so actually catching a moment where my stream is online is probably not that easy. I can however upload the videos to YouTube after the stream is done. JustinTV has that nice feature.

TvT on Backwater Gulch – Opponent is in Platinum.

So far I’ve recorded one ladder game. I’m mostly talking to myself in Danish though, so it might not be for an international audience.

The game is quite good I think. At least there is a lot of action all around and while I am sure my gameplay can be criticized for a lot of things, I’m actually mostly satisfied with it for now.

I especially like some of the big battles where I have to counter a ton of siege tanks using mostly marines. Coming from a Brood War background, it really surprises me every time it works.

What is up with Infestors?

2011-04-25T20:08:00.001+02:00

I’ve encountered a new phenomenon: Zerglings and infestors in huge amounts. At first I was a little bit surprised by this new development, but the more I think about it, the less sense it makes.

What is this supposed to accomplice? Fungal growth is nasty and all, but it still need backup from something that is able to absorb some damage. And neither zerglings nor infestors can do that.

I’ve just encountered this matchup twice in a row, and the players using this was fairly high rank platinum players. I haven’t figured the brilliance of this out yet…

Noob l2p

2011-04-16T18:39:00.001+02:00

I’ve taken a brief break from playing Terran to practise some Zerg on my main account. I’ve played 6 games so far, got placed in Diamond (probably thanks to all the protoss games I played on that account) and have done decently well after that.

At least one sign of you playing “ok” is that your opponent is bad mannered. Notice how I’ve basically rushed his base and run it over since he had no units, and he is implying that I am a cheesy noob! The pinnacle of it all is the Dark Templar Shrine he was going straight for while only building 2 units before putting it down!

I find that hilarious!

Season II

2011-04-06T19:53:00.001+02:00

I really haven’t played since season II started. That is I played my placement match on the very first day and got placed in platinum. I kinda knew that would happen as only the season lock-down kept my smurf account in gold.

A couple of days later I played 3 games in a row and won two of them. The one I lost was basically due to me being stupid.

I’m finding that playing TvT has lost its charm. I’m still winning most of those games, but it feels kinda tough now compared to silver and bronze (I suppose that is only fair). TvZ is dominated by banelings which I find to be a very annoying unit that kinda breaks the game. TvP is still fun although very, very hard to win.

I guess I will eventually play some more game as I‘m very curious as to whether I can make it into diamond as Terran.

I’ve also contemplated what to do with my main account? Should I go down to bronze and reroll as zerg? I’m not so sure I would find it as much fun as what I have been doing with Terran.

The Ladder Lock-Down Makes no Sense!

2011-03-27T14:38:00.001+02:00

I cheated the system and deserve no pity. I know that, so that is not my point of this posting. But the recent ladder lock-down makes no sense and I am amazed that Blizzard insists of the madness that we have today. I realize that they are trying to limit competition to small closed systems so move people can have achievable goals, but it would be nice if they made sense to. Removing loses from statistics is just another way of obscuring the problems rather than fixing them.

So I am in gold and heading up. That I got here by losing a lot on purpose is besides the point. I could have been a valid gold level player who recently improved a lot. Assume that I am.

I am about 1500 points away from the top spot in my division and I have a little more than a week to get there in competition with all those ranked about me. That is fine. Normally I would get the first spot as I would be promoted before that. That is fine, but it isn’t like that anymore. Due to the lock-down I am competing with those in my division. I’m clearly the better player ‘cause I am playing platinum and diamond players and winning about half of those games.

Number one in my league is also winning about half his games, but he is just playing gold-level players. Assuming we both mass games from now until season’s end, he will still by ranked above me simply because his opponents are easier than mine. Out wins will give us the same number of points since we have both reached our level – I just haven’t been promoted yet! Result is that the season will end with wildly inaccurate top 10’s in all but master league.

What is the point of that?

Cracking the next Level of Terran vs Zerg

2011-03-06T00:09:00.001+01:00

I’ve finally started to get platinum level opponent and that has led to a whole new range of problems. Which is good and exactly what I wanted. I consider myself a macro player and my micro is sub-par. I have been experimenting with different opening vs. Zerg. Early aggression (which I suck at), pure mech play (which is really, really hard, and a mixed build that for a long time has felt really vulnerable to baneling/lings.

But finally I seem to have discovered what everybody else probably already knew. That skipping tanks almost completely and going for a thor/hellion mix to supplement a pure marine army, is fairly efficient in this scenario.

Looking at the screenshots above from a random game of mine, its obvious that the mech portion of the army absorbs most of the damage from the banelings. I probably ought to have my thors in front though. As the hellions are better against the zerglings.

Right now it seems inevitable that I will soon be promoted to platinum myself. If my Terran play is good enough to get me further than that we will have to see.

Oh, and for the record, I am now 82-54 or 82-29 when I remove the 25 games I initially lost on purpose.

Roadblocked

2011-02-28T17:03:00.001+01:00

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!

2011-02-16T22:27:00.001+01:00

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

2011-02-07T21:17:00.001+01:00

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.

Two Protoss vs Protoss games

2011-01-22T22:24:00.001+01:00

I’ve played two PvPs today as well as a range of other games. But those two games exemplifies some of the problems I am having. Probably problems everyone trying to improve at Starcraft I having.

In the first game I put on early pre assure, he blocked his ramp with force fields and captured some of my units and killed them. I killed some of his as well. A fairly even exchange. We then both expanded twice and the game turned into a heavy macro fest. I tried to attack his 3rd base and had significantly more collosi than him, but he had a couple of void rays. I lost that exchange by a tiny margin, but in the next major battle he had 4 or 5 void rays and my lead in collosi was completely nullifed by that. I ended up losing the game like that.

Im not so impressed with patch 1.2s upgrade of the void ray. Yeah it hit collosi harder now, but it is slow as hell and there will always be stalkers around too and they die quite fast. That is my take on it anyways.

On to game two. Early game was pretty much as before, except this time I went stargate instead my second robotics. I got out fewer collosi and a couple of void rays and was ready for the first engagement. We met and the exchange was fairly even. Hard to say who won or lost there. He was clearly pumping out collosi from more robotics facilities than me, but on the other hand my force of void rays were growing fast now. We finally met in one big battle and my void rays died fast after which his superior number of collosi wiped me out.

Wtf! And I repeat: WTF!?! What lesson regarding the relative value of a pure collosi build versus one where void rays are mixed in should I learn here? I’m baffled. Sure I may have lost du e to bad unit control or due to me just sucking in general, but I was clearly ahead in the early game and my macro was clearly better than both my opponents. How come I lost both the games then?

Knowing what to learn from a given defeat is hard. Way harder than actually playing the game. And it makes me frustrated and very much aware of my suckiness. Bah….!

Going Against the Trend

2011-01-18T21:21:00.001+01:00

I know PvZ is considered slightly in Protoss favor at the moment. That is not what I experience. I’ve lost 9 of my last 15 games – the majority of those against Zergs. In my frustration I have probably been a little on a tilt too. Not a pretty thing.

I think that the main reason for my loses is an overall shift in the meta game. And that I feel that I am behind on the learning curve here. A couple of months back it was all about mutalisks and using the mobility of Zerg vs Protoss. That has caused me to go light on zealots which now has become a problem when mass zerglings into roaches seems to be the new standard opening.

I suck at this game and often feel that I mis-click more than I should. Or mis-judge the situation when in hindsight it was obvious what I should have done. That becomes frustrating after 6-7 loses in a row. And everything just builds on top of that.

Now I am simply dreading playing versus Zerg and at the same time I find Protoss vs Protoss a really complicated and scary matchup. I’m considering a race-switch, but I also know it is a huge change and that there is a lot I would have to re-learn. I wish I didn’t suck so much at this.

Time is Up

2011-01-09T11:42:00.001+01:00

So I have only about 3 minutes left on my Trial Account which means that I won’t be playing any more games on it. At least not for now.

In the end I managed to get 38 games done in the 7 hours of play time. 10 games I threw on purpose, 5 I really lost and 22 I won. From a confidence building perspective, playing in Bronze is certainly good! I didn’t manage to get out of Bronze, but in the end I was mainly playing people in Silver and even got one match against a Gold player.

I think this has a lot to do with me encountering a lot of other players considered for promotion. I think the match making system prefers people of similar MMR-rating and of the same league. This means that people who are close to being promoted will more likely meet each other and those who do well in those matches should be promoted first.

Another factor is probably that you don’t get promoted before you have leveled out in skill. As long as you still do good even when matched up against higher ranked players.

So what did I learn playing these games? First of all the level in Silver is actually a lot higher than I had imagined. Or I got to play a segment of the Silver league, which is. People have decent macro and at least try to copy builds from higher leagues. I really think that the level of play that I encounter in Diamond is only slightly better than what I have met in Silver.

One difference is that barracks play is a lot more popular compared to mech-builds. Especially in TvT this is the case. There are also Protoss’ going mass carriers. Something I actually lost to once and I think my mistake was to think that I could just ignore it since I obviously was the better player. That kind of hubris will get you killed even in Silver.

I think I’ll end this post with this little gem: In my third game I SCV rushed prezemo and killed 4 of his probes, then I attacked my own in order to not win. He obviously thought that he was pro and I was not.

Download the last replays here (28-38).

Welcome to the Bronze

2010-12-29T18:26:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I did something that I probably shouldn’t be too proud of. I created a new account on battle.net using one of the free guest passes you got when you bought Starcraft 2. My goal was to lose about 10 games in a row, get placed low in Bronze and then see how far I could go from there in one setting.

This is kinda low, especially considering how I have whined about pros abusing newbies: Like here back in November 2009.

The closest I can come to a noble purpose is, that I have been trying to help out a couple of friends improve and an important part of it is really to know what they are facing in the lower leagues.

I lost my 5 placement matches by SCV-rushing with my 6 initial SCVs. After the two initial loses I had to take care not to win doing this, which says something about how low the level of play can be. 10 straight loses brought Battle.nets expectations of me to an absolute low.

After that I turned on my live stream and tried to win for real. Unfortunately I was unaware of what some of the hotkeys did and the two first sections of the stream got pretty messed up (They are here: 1, 2 and the last one which is okay here 3).

I got 16 wins in a row after that and learned a few things along the way. First of all: The cheese that many people in Bronze experience is entirely due to them being too passive. I was unable to sit back and wait for a cheese to happen, so I saw almost none of it. The first 5-8 games were against really bad players, but after that the level of play improved dramatically.

I finally got a real loss as my game #27 of the night. The loss was kinda stupid and probably due to me being careless rather than my opponent being insanely good.

The series was the first time I have played Terran on the 1v1 ladder. It took me at least 15 games to get the basic build-order down, but Terran seem to be a fun race to play.

Download Replay Pack here.

(To be continued ?)

Dealing with Cheese

2010-12-27T20:38:00.002+01:00

There are a lot of annoying cheeses around in Starcraft. The first one as well as the sequel. As a player you have to deal with cheesy plays all the time. On option would be to be angry about it a rage-quit the game all together. Another option is to overcome that particular challenge.

Void Rays are a nuisance on the lower levels. Hell, I suck in Diamond and even I have problems when I am surprised by a couple of these nasty units!
One way of dealing with this threat is to ignore that cheeses are there and just try to figure out to beat them on your own or with the help of friends who have already figured it out.

I chose a different option: During the beta and a good part of the time right after release, I did all the cheeses I could. I Void Ray rushed as Protoss, Banshee rushed as Terran and 6-pooled as Zerg. I got some wins on this, especially in the beginning, but quite fast I encountered people who took it upon themselves to show me that my cheesy plays – and me by extension – sucked.

Having my nice Void Ray rush defeated countless times is not a nice feeling. On the other hand I now had the replays so I could learn from my opponents what I should do when I encounter a cheese myself. Problem (partially) solved.

How to Improve at Starcraft

2010-12-26T14:06:00.001+01:00

I’ve been looking a replays from the Silver league a lot these last two days and I am really amazed at what I saw. I actually think the level of play in the lower leagues have become quite high compared to all the junk you read about on forums and the like.

I was looking around for a particularly obnoxious and condescending post on teamliquid.net, but was not able to find the one I had in mind. Here is another one though, that tries to outline the difference between players in the different leagues.

I’m not so sure. My impression on the Silver league games I’ve seen so far is, that people are honestly trying to play the game right. They apply sound reasoning and do not rely on cheesy 1-base strategies too much. They actually do that far less compared to what I see in Diamond and I think it is because they don’t realize how powerful a punch they could deliver to their opponent when he is weak.

Many games in Silver are played partially blind. As a Terran you should really consider sacrificing one MULE in three in order to scan your opponents base. It would free you from preparing defenses against Void Rays that never comes and so on.

You can read countless of postings on how you should make more workers. That is sound advice, but often not really the problem it is made up to be. What is the purpose of making more workers, when the fundamental problem is that money is not being spend? There seem to be a tacit understanding that your economy grows linearly and to some extend it does. That means that when you are on one base you should gradually add on production facilities, but when you expand you should know, that 2 minutes from now your economy is going to boom.

I’ve tried to convince people that when they expand they should also add on at least 3 to 4 new production facilities. That is something that will help out most silver-players.

What is up with Terrans?

2010-12-11T19:10:00.001+01:00

Lately I’ve been experiencing something very weird in Protoss vs Terran. Pushing out with marines, marauders and a lot of SCVs seems to have become really popular.

It doesn’t even feel that threatening. You just have to survive that one attack and then you’ve basically won.

Once you’ve experienced this once or twice, handling it seems very easy. Attacking up the ramp is a bad idea even with SCVs. I wonder why they even try.

100 Wins and Bonus

2010-12-05T15:52:00.001+01:00

So today I finally got my 100th win as Protoss (and incidentally my 100th win on 1v1). It wasn’t that hard.

It really wasn’t that hard as I have met a lot of Zergs recently and my PvZ seems okayish. It also gave me the final points to get above 1400. I am chasing 1500 and have been for a while as I have a competitor, who at the moment is at 1490 and I need to beat that!

But I think that the system used for the ladder is kinda flawed. The system is aiming at matching you up against players of similar skill which should eventually give you a win percentage of 50. That is fine, but if you lose the same amount as you win and then add the bonus pool component on top, then you can easily deduct what your rating should be.

It is your current points plus the bonus pool? In my case I have about 600 points in bonus pool, which should make my score 2000 assuming that I am currently leveled out at 50% win rate (it is slightly higher).

This seems stupid.

Download Replay here!

So Close to 100 Casual Wins

2010-12-02T19:04:00.001+01:00

Yeah, it is not a lot and I have really debated holding of posting about until the 100th win was achieved. Unfortunately my life has not allowed me to play as much as I would like to.

I’ve realized one thing about playing 1v1 casually: You are simply unable to keep up with current trends in strategies. I’ve probably played less than 20 games since last patch and although the new roach range is not new anymore, it is to me!

So I am facing new challenges against Zerg. Even when I win, it doesn’t feel right anymore. It feels awkward and like bad games now and I haven’t felt the satisfaction of a win well played for a while.

I wish I had a week of vacation I could just spend on playing the game so I could finally improve a little bit.

PvP Adventures

2010-11-14T21:59:00.001+01:00

Okay so this is one match-up I do not understand. Yesterday I lost to a guy who build a pylon right next to my nexus and then continued with a gateway. I killed his pylon with probes and yet he just built a new one!

I realize that I should have just built my own gateway. It would have been done before his and the won, but I panicked and used too many of my probes.

Today I had another amazing PvP on lost temple. A guy went fast blink stalkers and kept me in my base for far too long. In the end I won, but mainly because he entered in a few battles he shouldn’t. And the annoying thing is that only after the game was over, did I realize that the only reason he could blink up in my base, must have been because he had an observer there. An observer I should have been able to kill.

Expanding in PvP is something I never seem able to punish other players for doing and something that is suicide if I try it myself. It seems imba, but I guess it can’t be.

DSC#5 Coverage

2010-11-02T20:06:00.001+01:00

So yesterday the Danish tournament DSC#5 started and I was asked to do live casting for the opening rounds. That is actually pretty overwhelming and I had to accept that.

So I started the live stream at around 6pm and did commentaries for about 4 hours straight. I’m amazed that the stream was stable for that long.

As for doing commentaries I think that it takes a time to warm up and be enthusiastic and in the flow. And as the show progressed I could feel that I was getting tired and basically losing my voice. All in all an interesting phenomenon.

As for the games I did:

Round 1: StrinterN vs PzYs on Lost Temple
Round 1: xDkFat vs Benya on Xel’Naga Caverns
Round 1: FreshAJ (aka ActionJesus) vs Kamse on Blistering Sands
Round 2: xDkFat vs CStorm on Xel’Naga Caverns (only the second game of the set)
Round 2: eXe vs Rusten (aka RustenKokos) on Metalopolis, Xel’Naga Caverns and Scrap Station
Round 2: PyZs vs Combi on Shakuras Pleateau
Round 3: Navn vs Failo on Xel’Naga Cavers and Shakuras Plateau

The best part is that I also learned something about how to play PvZ on Shakuras Plateau. I think the Combi vs. PzYs game there was very educational.

Link to stream.

Terran Mirror Troubles

2010-10-22T20:00:00.001+02:00

I has been playing a few Custom Games after I realized that you could smurf there and be matched up against people without a clue. It’s a good place to practice my Terran gameplay which by far is my weakest.

So today I met SouL in a Terran mirror match on Xel’Naga Caverns (download replay).

I tried a ghost rush which he stopped cold and then I was in trouble as he was containing me a pushing in with tanks. I thought that I had lost the game for sure, but tried to play on and it turned out to be a really exiting and long game.

For a long time I was under pressure and forgot to build SCVs, and yet I slowly clawed my way back into the game. One point I found particularly exiting was when I expanded before I had cleared out his containment and had to attack while building my command center under fire.

Eventually the game turned into covering the entire map and with two maxed out Terran armies.

What I still wonder is whether his tech switch to thors was cost effective versus my tanks or if they again were countered by my marauders? At least I think I conclude that in viking vs. viking battles you cannot run away and the guy with the lowest number will always lose.

After the game was over I looked up my opponent and realized that he like me, played Protoss on the ladder and that our score there was about the same.

Custom Game is the New Place to Smurf

2010-10-20T21:11:00.001+02:00

Battle.net was kinda unstable on Monday, so I suggested to Qvist that we play a custom 2v2 against some random opponents. He warned me that people were pretty bad in custom games and he was right.

So we were Terran and Zerg vs a Terran and Protoss combo. At one point our Protoss opponent complained that his ally was a noob. That was true, but he was not any better and I kinda felt like writing it down. It all descended into funny name calling. Not too serious, but rude and funny as we totally steam rolled our innocent victims.

2v2 Frenzy

2010-10-17T11:17:00.001+02:00

So I finally finalized the code that makes the Danish 2v2 ladder list work. That motivated me to take up team games again. Not permanently, but just to get my own name a little bit higher up the list. Anything else is too embarrassing.

So AiurAdun and I set out to play a truly epic series of games yesterday. And we lost. A lot.

We lost to people in lower leagues and won against teams in our own. Totally unpredictable. Maybe our race combination is a bit off. At least it seems to me that the early Marauder/Roach combination has become extremely dangerous after the last patch. Maybe we just suck. I feel so embarrassed by our expectation of rising quickly through the ranks, when in fact we did nothing like that.

Learning Curve

2010-10-10T11:36:00.001+02:00

Learning something is never easy. Starcraft least of all. I know because I am constantly trying to improve and I also watch a lot of my friends try to improve. Watching them makes me realize how much I have learned in the past and which have become so natural to me, that I have forgot that it was something that had to be learned.

I remember back in the early days of Starcraft I, I won a lot of games simply because I knew how to a-move, rather than just move my units! Amazing difference.

So I watch a friend play and I realize how much of a difference it makes that you move your screen by double tapping a control group. I.e I double tap 0 to get back to my main nexus (and that in itself is a bad habit from Brood War) and I double tap 1 to get to my main army. I do this all the time and it allows me to be in two places at once to a much larger degree than scrolling by putting the mouse courser at the edge of the screen. At Bronze level you can probably win games by doing this better than your opponent. I think.

Making enough workers is a relative simple improvement in comparison because it does not require you to learn something physical in the same way. And even though it is simpler I still see friends who have major problems making more than 20 workers. How hard can it be?

Both of the above steps is something you don’t learn gradually. One day you pass the invisible boundary between not doing it and then getting it to work and you will take a jump up the ladder as a result.

At my level I am struggling with when not to make units. I know that in some matchups like PvP a secret is that you don’t need that many units before your fourth gate, but how many do you need? And when? I’m sort of stuck at 1000 points in my division and I think I need to “get to that next level” in my PvP in order to break the barrier that will take me 200 points up the ladder.

Starcraft in India

2010-09-28T19:43:00.001+02:00

I was in India and as reported got my account locked from out there. Laughs all around. So what do you do Starcraft related in India when your account is locked?

Well, you can go to a mall to check out the local shops selling Starcraft and to see how the game is promoted there. Unfortunately that quest turned out to be in vain as I simply couldn’t find a game shop. And that got me thinking.

Is Starcraft even viable in India? Most of my co-workers out there are in IT, yet they are not into gaming at all. Why? Because to them software development is more about a good career, than about being nerds. Good for them I assume, but they are missing out on the wonderful world of eSport.

And then there is the common loss of all electricity and network connectivity. At least I experienced a lot of that so I assume it is common all over (I might be wrong). How would the “always online” experience of Starcraft II work out? I assume losing electricity would be bad enough for LANs, even though it is not unheard of in professional tournaments either

I wish it wasn’t about the clicking

2010-09-21T11:49:00.001+02:00

If you read any Starcraft II site you’ll find this argument. That Starcraft II is a bad game since it is all about the speed and not about strategy. Even on teamliquid.net the hordes of new-comers to the scene will reason like this.

They will say: “It is so unfair that my opponent won. At this point in the game he had so many units simply because he clicked on stuff faster than me. I should have won, since I was better at strategy than him”.

One some level I follow this line of reasoning. Back in the early days of the original Starcraft I was a huge fan of the faster rather than fastest speed setting. I would argue that no one could execute good strategy at the fastest speed setting and the game became poorer due to the too fast speed. I know better now, but there is an important distinction. I didn’t claim that I lost to an inferior e strategy due to my lack of speed. I claimed that the game became poorer overall. I still sucked back then though!

In the first example the complaining n00b reveals that he does not understand what strategy is. First of all: His opponent is probably not a whole lot faster due to having a set strategy from the start. He who complained had not. Also his opponent had a strategy optimized for getting more units at certain time and the complaining player was looking to overcome that with “tricks”. I.e. doing something sneaky.

The problem with sneaky play is, that they assume that your opponent is bad! He may be, but it is simply not a solid strategy rely on it. I may suck at the game, but I know better than to complain about the game for lacking strategy. Doing so, would only reveal my own lack of understanding for what strategy is.

My Account is Locked

2010-09-13T19:19:00.001+02:00

So I am in Delhi and like the noob I am, I started up Starcraft II and tried to login. Result: Now my account is logged due to suspicious activity. I guess playing Starcraft II from India was a bad idea.

I hope I can have it unlocked once I get back to my own Country.

There is Something Wrong

2010-09-07T22:08:00.001+02:00

At the bottom of the Bronze League there is a strange phenomenon. Players can be up against a player who is favorite and win and earn 2 points. Only one of those points are real. The other is taken from said players bonus pool.

On the other hand when they lose, they lose all their points. As if they were playing someone where they them selves are considered the favorite. Although they were not.

It completely baffles me, and I think that Blizzard risk scaring away the players who have still a lot to learn. Its very demoralizing to not get rewarded for the few wins you really do manage to get.

Say Hello to Lambda

2010-08-27T20:44:00.001+02:00

I was on a serious tilt yesterday. I lost a series of 1v1 games against Terrans and was trying out more and more extreme variants of my opening play. It didn’t help and I kept losing.

Suddenly, after one of the game my opponent send me a message: “Are you Fafner the blogger"? I guess I am and that mark the first time I know I have played and lost to a lurker on this site.

So everybody, say Hello to Lambda. He is a Terran, who likes to drop Hellions in you probe line. Just to let you know (and if I remember the game correctly) ;-).

I Suck at Adapting

2010-08-22T22:38:00.001+02:00

I thought I did well in this one game (replay). I wanted to write a long post detailing my epic win and yet, when I watched the replay, I realized that I sucked.

The problem is that I have become so happy about fast expanding against Zerg, that I do that almost automatically. And the game I just played was on Delta Quadrant. The map, just below your ramp is not very easy to see due to the extremely dark textures and I’ve thought that there was a small plateau there. It seems that there isn’t. Defending your expansion is kinda hard on that map. This is why I have had to put extra effort into defense, thus delaying my tech and push too. But the same goes for the zerg I suddenly realized and facepalmed myself for not systematically trying a two gate push into immortals against Zerg on that map.

Suddenly my epic games where I defeated Ultralisks and Broodlords en masse, wasn’t that cool.

Following the Ladder

2010-08-18T07:57:00.001+02:00

Recently a number of ladder tracking sites like sc2ranks.com have sprung up and that is great, since it allows you to get a better feel for who is good and who is coming up in the scene. Unfortunately there is no obvious way to break it down on a country-by-country basis.

Back in the early days of Warcraft III I ran a similar tracking site just for the Danish Warcraft community. In other words it is obvious for me to do the same now for Starcraft II.

The above screenshot is from www.teamladder.dk/ladderwatch, which now shows the standings in the Danish Starcraft II community. It is currently updated whenever I feel like it (which is often, but not really predictable).

Working on a service like the one above really makes you realize how much more you’d prefer to have the hidden ranking behind the scenes and not the points accumulated due to bonus pools and whatnot. It’s obvious to me, that a top gold player very well can be significantly better than a low platinum player, so it is a bit annoying to put the first, below the second.

On the other hand, this gives an overview over who have done the most to climb, and over time it should all sort itself out.

Teachings

2010-08-14T22:27:00.001+02:00

I know a lot of people who either didn’t play Starcraft: Brood War at all or only very little. Now they have bought Starcraft II and are struggling to get any results at all on the ladder. I know how demoralizing it is to play and (almost) never win and I have seen replays of just how much these people still have to learn.

At present their level can best be described by this instantly classic Penny Arcade strip. And while it is funny, it really doesn’t have to be that way.

It is my firm belief that what a new player need is an easy trick or two, that can a) win him games from time to time and b) provide a foundation to build further understanding of the game on.

So while this is by no means a full tutorial on how to become gosu at Starcraft II, I’ve made a short video tutorial on how to play Terran and win.

Mandatory disclaimer: I suck at this game. If you take my advice seriously it is your problem; not mine. But maybe, just maybe, this will actually help someone. Ok, right?

Lessons Learned

2010-08-13T20:34:00.001+02:00

I have serious problems in Protoss vs Protoss and what is worse: I don’t really like the matchup. It seems so fragile. One little mistake and it is all over. Okay, most other matchups can seem exactly like that too, but the mirror matchups are more so than others I think. So I set out to become better at the matchup. In Brood War on iccup I would simply chose to play only PvP on the ladder, but that is – for good and for worse – not possible with Starcraft II.

I played a long series of games with AiurAdun yesterday. Just to discover exactly what was possible and what was not in PvP. Mainly centered around proxy gate rushed as they are still amazingly common.

So normally I’d go gateway on 12 supply and scout then. If I see nothing in his base, I will assume that he is proxy rushing with two gates and throw down another gateway of my own and pump zealots. Since I am not the one rushing I would assume that I can do this, be ahead in probes and win. On small maps, it is a bit more complicated than that.

So lessons learned (assuming a map like Steppes of War):

You have to scout at nine supply. Just when you put down your pylon. If you see his proxy at your natural, then you are lucky. If not then you will get to his base at exactly 12 supply or right after you’ve put down your first gate.
If he is proxying you, the only safe thing to do is to put down your second gateway on 12 supply too. You do not have time for your 13th probe before doing this.
After having put down the second gateway you can afford to build two more probes, before you switch into all out zealot production. I assume he can do the same?
Chrono Boost is only for zealots (after having spend the initial boost on 10 supply of course). This is a no brainer.
You can use your probes to defend, while he cannot. This means that you should be able to defeat his attack. The downside is that while you have zealots left and he does not, you have have lost a couple of probes.
It is hard to tech to stalkers while skirmishing with a ton of zealots, but as the defender you should be able to get them out first. Just 3 stalkers completely turns the tide of the battle.
A failed proxy rush is 95% guaranteed to be a lost game.

We also confirmed a couple of intuitive understandings I had of this matchup. For instance, if you both go gateway at 12 in your own base and you go gas at 14 and then realized that he cut probes to get his second gateway at home at 12 too, then all is not lost. You simply have to put down your own second gateway as soon as possible and pump zealots. Then you’ll be just fine.

I think this structured investigation of a matchup is extremely rewarding and we need to do more of it. And then I’ll (not) dominate the ladder …. muhahahaha!

Me vs Zerg

2010-08-11T23:18:00.001+02:00

I really like the Protoss vs Zerg matchup. And to my utter surprise it is more and more turning out to be exactly like in Brood War. I fast expand, get templars and hopefully dominate in the mid to late game.

It still feels like Zerg is a little bit screwed balance wise, but I’m enjoying it while it last. Or maybe it is just that the Zerg opponents that I get are very bad.

If you guys like you can download 3 replays from my recent games.

So Many Protoss

2010-08-07T11:48:00.001+02:00

If you can consistently beat Protoss, then I think you are in a good shape for taking the top spot on the ladder. There are so many Protoss’ out there. In fact I just finally ended a PvP streak of 8 by meeting a Terran. That felt so wrong somehow. It is like Starcraft II is just for Protoss and no other faction at all!

I like to play Protoss too, but I don’t like that all games are mirror match-ups and I don’t do particularly well in this match-up either.

Currently I find Protoss vs Zerg the most fun match-up. Maybe because Zerg is a little under powered here, but I prefer to think that it is because the matches tends to be drawn out macro games more. That I like.

A stone killer

2010-07-29T17:02:00.001+02:00

That is what Starcraft II single player is. I’m about two thirds through and enjoying it far more than I anticipated. The story is a little boring (but that is basically because a video game will never tell a story as well as a good book), but the missions are really varied and do not encourage turtling nearly as much as I feared.The midnight launch event was great as always. I’ve tried to photograph similar events before, but it is really, really difficult. Especially when you are also eager to get your copy and get home to play. I tried nonetheless, but don’t know well this photo conveys 40+ young men waiting in line at a Gamestop shop about 10 minutes walk from my apartment.

I saw about 4 girls and maybe one of them was actually there to pick up a copy for herself. The 3 others clearly weren’t. I, as usual, was the oldest guy around and I was even wearing my 12 years old Starcraft I t-shirt (which is pretty worn down by now). In other words: I took the liberty of geeking totally out this one night.

Right now I’ll concentrate on completing the campaign and then play ladder. It may take a couple of more days.

Zealot Rushes – Final Beta Game

2010-07-25T19:23:00.001+02:00

I don’t know how many I encountered in the Starcraft II beta. A lot. I never really tried one myself as I considered them a bit cheesy. I don’t mind cheesy plays; I just feel that I don’t improve a whole lot doing them myself, so I don’t.

But I was online the final Monday night of the Beta and didn’t really feel up to laddering. On the other hand no one I knew was online for a 2v2, so I entered a 1v1 and ended up Protoss vs Protoss on Kulas Ravine. One minute into the game someone messaged me asking for a 2v2 and I really wanted to do that much more than just play my 1v1.

Tempted to get my game over quickly I just zealot rushed and won. Amazing. But what I learned here was much more valuable. My opponent tried to counter my rush with zealots too. The scene was set for a massive zealot battle. At first my thought was that this was a losing proposition for me as he had less distance to travel (I didn’t proxy as it wasn’t my initial plan to do a rush), but it turned out to be a good thing.

In previous games I had tried with zealot pressure plays and often been countered by the defenders stalker micro. With no defending stalkers it much more became a question of who had the most zealots and I had 3 gateways to his two and a cybernetics core.

The best thing was that I even had good enough macro to get my tech up while attacking and the finishing touch to the game was the arrival of my own stalkers in his base. Beautiful!

Beta Waves: Down - Status

2010-07-20T01:56:00.002+02:00

What a night and what an end to the Starcraft II: Beta. My phone is broken. I hate IP Telephony. It just doesn’t feel as robust as the old school analog version. I want it back. In sheer frustration I broke my keyboard and had to play my last few games with an extremely wobbly keyboard and a broken S-key. Sigh.

So what is the status of the game. Whether Battle.net 2 is up to par compared to the version that shipped with the original Starcraft is still up for debate. On one hand, the automated matchmaking is extremely nice and just about everything else is worse. Except I do remember the chat room splits and frequent disconnects that plagued Battle.net for the first year of vanilla Starcraft.

Race balance-wise I expect many more play styles to be discovered and patches to come. I primarily play Protoss, but have more than 400 games as random behind me in the beta. I’m not sure that makes me qualified to speak about balance, but I’ll do that anyways.
Protoss vs Zerg is probably slightly in Protoss’ favor. I' like that, but don’t know what to change about the game to fix it. Maybe buff Hydralisks slightly? Protoss vs Terran is just ridiculous in Terrans favor. I expect that once people at large figure out how to play Terran they will have an out-of-this-world win rate against Protoss. Basically too few Terrans at the moment understand when to expand and how to transition from the early harass into a solid mid game. That will change and hopefully there will be a patch :-/ How Zerg vs Terran play out I don’t quite know. I suspect that the early game is more fair than in PvT, but that the mid-to-late game is still in Terran’s favor.

I like the smaller national scenes we have here in Denmark and probably in other small countries too. I especially like how we already have starcraftii.dk and sc2replays.dk, who are active and covering the scene as it is. And of course www.dailyrush.dk, which have been here for 10 years or so. Amazing.

Climbing the Ladder (Again)

2010-07-17T14:35:00.002+02:00

I’m massing games this weekend. Okay, that just means that I plan on playing 5 games or more, but just the same: I’m trying to make an effort to climb the ladder that so unjustly placed me in Gold Division.

I play all 1v1 maps (except Desert Oasis) and I am always Protoss. Are the above 6 games a coincidence? All opponents were Terran and at least four of them reaper rushed. Blizzard can’t of course predict what strategy a given player will employ, but it seems to be a stretch that this is all random.

There are 6 maps I play. The likelihood of getting the same one 6 times in a row is about (1/6)^5 if I remember my math correctly. Or 0.012%. Getting Terran opponents on all matches is even less likely.
My theory is that Blizzard wants more hard data on certain match ups and maps and are deliberately stacking the matches this way.
Tinfoil hat on!

Starcraftii.dk’s 3rd Tournament

2010-07-15T20:55:00.001+02:00

I’m eagerly following Starcraftii.dk’s 3rd tournament. I’m not playing myself, but I wish I was as the first couple of rounds definitely looks like a level I could compete in. The most exiting thing is trying to guess who will make it out of which bracket.

Among the obvious favorites are Mywa aka Phobos. Hein has won the first two tournaments and is also a good candidate although I think Mywa is a clear favorite.

And then there are the players “I know”, but where I don’t have any idea of how good they actually are. Combi aka Larry-the-Weird is the one I’m watching the most.

Exiting how it will al turn out.

Placement Matches Gone Crazy?

2010-07-13T00:17:00.002+02:00

What has happend to placement matches after beta phase 2 started? They seem to have become seriously harder. In fact Sklent and I managed to go 2-3 in our 2v2 placement matches due to us mostly encountering Diamond league teams. I don’t mind losing, but the end result seems to be a pretty bad indication of our level as a team. Now we are in bronze, and surely we are a lot better than that?
In fact I managed an perfect 5-0 in 1v1 and another 5-0 with Qvist in 2v2. Both landed us in gold. It seems fair that you can’t place into the very best league, but it kind of leaves all those who are truly bad at the game in an awful situation: Stuck in bronze with a ton of players who are actually decent.
I wonder what Blizzard is up to.

Recommended VODs while SC2 on hiatus

2010-07-01T00:06:00.001+02:00

There really isn’t that much to write about while we are waiting for us being able to play Starcraft II again.

I watched Husky and HDStarcraft’s 2v2 commentaries here. I’m normally not that excited about the stuff they do, cause I think they are to colorful and not analytical enough, but those games are not that serious anyways.

Commentaries while we wait

2010-06-16T20:08:00.001+02:00

I’m kinda bored since the Starcraft II beta went offline. So what did I do? Installed World of Warcraft again and tried it out. Kinda fun, but not really what I was looking for.

AiurAdun and I have talked about doing some dual commentaries for the Danish Starcraft community and suddenly one night we went ahead and did some. Damn, we are amateurs at that, but hopefully it is still fun!

The videos are all in Danish, so they may just be funny for that reason alone, but hopefully other Danes will find them interesting.

The games are from the tournament held by www.starcraftii.dk on May 28th. The players are not that amazing compared to what we see in international tournaments, but probably pretty good representatives of the enthusiasts here.

So here are all the games:

We know that there is a lot of issues with the production quality. The first game has the sound up way to high, there is some stuttering here and there in the video and we didn’t research anything about the tournament or the players before we began :-). We will probably improve all that in the future.

50%

2010-06-05T21:38:00.001+02:00

This is a comment on the new match making system of Starcraft II. In some ways it is better than what I hoped and in some ways very disappointing.

The good stuff is that it actually does a decent job of protecting players against being smurfed to heavily. The curse of better players either resetting their rank (iccup) just to get series of easy wins, has been efficiently countered by the new Automated Match-Making.

On to the not so good stuff. The stated goal of the AMM is to ensure that players (more or less) always plays people of a similar skill level. This should lead to a win rate for most players around 50%. I think the 50% goal is reached, but the similar skill level is more questionable.

To me it seems that you are never in a situation where you play someone and think: I really think this game can go either way. Either it feels overwhelmingly unfair for you or for your opponent. And it seems to be a streak of games too. For instance you win a game easily and go on to another which you also win easily. At some point you encounter an opponent that is vastly better than you and from experience I can now tell, that the next 5-6 opponents will be of similar caliber too.

I want close games every games. Not a long win streak followed by a long streak of loses.

The Battle.net 2.0 Discussion

2010-05-30T10:38:00.001+02:00

I’ve been following the bnet 2.0 discussion too. I think what got it started was the teamliquid article, which again referred to incgamers.com. As can be expected the discussion quickly became an all out flamewar. That is always fun, but I don’t really feel like I want to join in.

I just saw that Gosugamers.net had a way more balanced approach in their posting on the same subject. I think that my own position is more along those lines.

I am a software developer myself. I work on an application which delivers time critical data across the globe and I think I know a little about the challenges that you face when doing that. I also think I know something about the process you go through when you design a piece of software.

First of all: It is all about tradeoffs. I’m sure that on the list of priorities for the designers of Starcraft 2, then it looks something like this:

Make a cool and fun game.
Make it really hard to cheat.
Ensure that games are smooth and free of lag.

While 1) can be achieved in isolation the two other items carries serious tradeoffs. For instance they have decided to route all net traffic through the servers rather than having it peer-to-peer like in Starcraft 1. This makes it easier for them to inspect the traffic and prevent tampering of data, but it also increases the potential latency by a factor of – at least – two! To counter that they probably gave up on having cross continent game play.

Just to give some numbers: The latency from Denmark to Asia is on the order of 2-300 ms. If you take a country like Singapore, that has a firewall around the entire country, that can easily add another 100ms. It varies from day to day, but imagine the worst case scenario you would have a 400 ms time of a message being send from Denmark to Singapore and back. That is obviously way too much for competitive play (and seriously annoying for casual as well).

The above considerations makes it understandable that they do not have cross realm play as a high priority, but still leaves me baffled as to why they would have not chat channels. I assume they expect a ton of players, so if the “new” chat channels were just a naive Starcraft 1-like implementation you’d probably end up in chat rooms like “Wings of Liberty US-196372”. That obviously builds no community.

We, who come from smaller countries, are in a different situation. Back in the days it was rare that there were more than 100 Danes online so we fit into about 4 chatrooms. It might be 10 to 15 when Starcraft 2 comes out. That is still small enough to give a sense of community. So I really want chat rooms back.

EU is Down

2010-05-22T22:21:00.001+02:00

No not financially like the New York Times writes, but much, much worse: the Battle.net server for EU is down :-(.

I really wanted to write about the horrible content of Patch 13. Protoss needed a buff and – as usual – got a nerf. I wanted to actually play the game. I wanted to know when I could start practicing my Terran gameplay, but no. Battle.net was down from late Thursday until this morning. Then it has been unstable as hell ever since.

I even managed to get in Silver in 3v3. 2 wins, 5 disconnects of which 3 counted as loss. People who managed to qualify for a league at all, must have ended up in totally random leagues. N00bs can get in Diamond League due to their opponents disconnecting and competent players end up in Silver or Bronze.

But while they are trying to fix this, they could consider some of the absolutely necessary thing they still have to fix in the game:

Terrans needs to be nerfed compared to Protoss. Not like the (small) buff they just got.
It needs to be made clearer where you are placed on the global ladder. Not obfuscated even more like Patch 13 did.
The friend-invite is right now horribly broken. I do not have a facebook account, nor do I want one. Sigh.
Chat channels. Give them back to us, kthnx bai.
Let a party online watch a replay. Make this a priority please!

I feel more and more concerned with the direction Blizzard is taking battle.net. I hope something happens soon to restore my faith in them. All I really wanted was Brood War updated and available on iccup.

Patches

2010-05-14T18:08:00.001+02:00

I’m a little bit in shock over patch 12. Not that I have tried it yet, but I don’t really want to either. Maybe there is something of which I am not aware? Roaches were no longer a problem as far as I know and Protoss have serious problems with how late they get their technology enabling buildings.

Twilight Council, Dark Shrine and the Forge seriously needs to cost less and in some cases take shorter time to build. And yet the patch went the other direction! And while the roach used to be silly, the armor nerf was just fine. They just need to fix the marauder and reaper too!

I think what I like least about Starcraft II is the marauder for its concussive shell upgrade. A passive slow destroys game play as it makes it impossible to disengage in a battle. I know Terrans feel that the force field is insane too, but at least it is not a passive ability.

Slow feels like something belonging in Warcraft III, and even there they had the wand of negation to cancel it out (at least in Reign of Chaos).

Lost Confidence

2010-05-02T21:21:00.001+02:00

I play a lot of 2v2s with a guy I know as Sklent. That is fine even though I think our cooperation is less than stellar. The games are still fun especially when we are winning. Rarely do we play 1v1 against each other as it is subtly understood that I would win easy. That misunderstanding was corrected yesterday.

In a series of two games he took me down so badly that it wasn’t even funny. After the games I have been reflecting on why I lost.

One thing is that his Terrans are easily the race that gives me the most trouble, but I doubt that is the whole explanation. Maybe part of it is, that what set me apart from him in Brood War was my superior macro. Due to the way Starcraft II is different from Starcraft: Brood War, I don’t think I get the same out of that advantage :-(.

But I lost a whole series of games to Terrans that day. Either I didn’t get Collosi out in time, in which case Terran infantry tears up a Protoss ground army, or I got them out and then he had like 6+ vikings and it didn’t matter. I’m starting to lose faith in my ability to deal with Terrans in general.

Oh and last, but not least. When a terran lifts his command center on Metalopolis he will land at the high yield expansion when I am at 8 probes. Then he will mine with 5 SCVs at double the income to my 8. I find it absolutely crazy that a Terran can pull off a stunt like that and be ahead right away. And it only gets worse over time.

I’m in Platinum

2010-04-25T12:25:00.001+02:00

Yeah! So I redid my placement matches after the big reset and went 5-0. Directly into a Platinum League. It seems that while I get better all the time, the placement matches still manages to get a lot tougher every time you have to redo them. I wonder if it will be like that at retail too?

Among the 5 games there were none that were simple walkovers. The first game was against another one doing his placement matches. At that point he was 4-0. I felt bad about sending him to gold division. There there were two good silver players followed by two gold players. I even almost lost to a super early reaper rush, but fortunately he fucked it up in the follow up. I still think reapers are totally unfair.

I got to play then new map “Incineration Zone” twice. I really like it even though I anticipate a lot of reaper rushes on this one.

It feels very inspired by Outsider, although it is only a 2-player map and obviously a lot smaller.

I take pride in playing Starcraft is not a casual hobby and yet I have found myself to like the new achievement system. I want to unlock that next reward, get another badge and basically be an achievement whore. Really strange!

Outage

2010-04-23T22:16:00.001+02:00

The Europe Battle.net has been pretty screwed for the last week and a half. 2v2 teams are randomly reset or is made to redo placement matches even though the team is still ranked! My 1v1 ranking disappeared after a while. Yesterday instead of a patch, I just became completely locked out.

Now I am reading about patch 9 on the US servers while waiting for something to fix my account. At first I thought they were insane. In patch 8 Protoss really needs a boost against Terrans (primarily due to the f*cked up crazy Reaper). Instead they buffed the Marauder and nerfed the Immortal. Sigh!

Due to the aforementioned issue I was already considering switching to Zerg for awhile. Judging by the feedback from the US servers this seems to be a good idea. The new larva bug, should make this extremely entertaining – for about 2 minutes at least :-(.

3 Replays

2010-04-13T22:27:00.001+02:00

I wanted to share a couple of my better replays with readers of my blog. They are all games I’ve won as those where I lose tends to pretty disgusting examples of me failing epicly.

One of them is a Protoss vs Terran on Metalopolis. I fast expand in a haze of confusion and he tries to bunker rush my expansion. It narrowly fails and I counter. I have mixed emotions about the value of bunkers and watching this game should showcase why I have doubts.

The two other games are Protoss mirror matches. In one of them I get pressured a lot early on and he get an expansion up and running way before me. Knowing I am in a lot of trouble I warp in dark templars in his base. Probably my first successful use of that unit which was the core of my Brood War play style.

In the other game you get to see two player stumble around with a huge ball of units. The game is decided in one final game where position and collosi owns more units mixed with immortals. I don’t like Starcraft II’s tendency to be all about having a ball of units and just going for the attack when the position is right. Feels too Warcraft III’ish.

Download the replays here.

We are the Champions

2010-04-03T23:33:00.002+02:00

At least until tomorrow. I formed a 2v2 team with TS-Buzz (aka Qvist) this afternoon and we went undefeated through the placement matches. This is quite common and you end up in platinum league. Here it usually gets tough, but not so today. Probably because TS-Buzz is quite good and probably because we both have gotten quite a bit better since we got into the beta. At least we ended up as the top team of our platinum division after 23 games.
Notice the team at the place just below us. A dual Zerg team (which is just as imbalanced as in Brood War). We even played them on Twilight Fortress and lost to mass roaches and mutalisks. You basically have to go all out to counter one of those builds and they then hit you with the other.
Oh well, we were chatting over Skype admiring our lead position when I suddenly had to refresh the list.
Apparently the bastards had gone on playing and had now overtaken. I really wanted to go to bed with a lead position, but we both had a cold and were more coughing that talking. It made getting into another game less attractive than just relaxing a bit.
I refreshed the list again and now we were in the lead again.
It seems that I have discovered that staying cool and letting the other players lose their position on the ladder is an equally valid strategy to that of playing!

Protoss vs Terran

2010-03-31T10:30:00.001+02:00

I play Protoss in the Beta. I did about 100 games as random before switching to Protoss. I realized that I just sucked too much to do the random thing. And I win a lot at the moment. Part of the reason is that the beta is full of people who basically don’t know how to play RTS games, but that is only part of the reason.

If you, as Protoss, can get that mix of about 3 immortals and some support units you feel pretty invincible. AiurAdun, who for now play Terran, and I set out to test this yesterday in a series of three games.

His idea was that with early ghosts you could counter the Protoss army. In the end I think he was fairly optimistic about this approach. I’m not so sure. I think the secret to dealing with this lays more in using the marauders to slow down the Protoss army, retreat and get a around of fire in and then repeat. This level of micromanagement is completely absent from gold league and down.

The game that I lost, I did a pretty aggressive zealot opening. That I thought had a good chance of Steppes of War, but apparently not. This has led my to believe that the only feasible opening for Protoss is fast immortals, attack and win.

He Suck at Starcraft II too!

2010-03-31T10:15:00.001+02:00

I feel related to this guy here. I don’t think I suck quite as badly, but still I share his pain. Check out his videos. He has 7 up so far.

Promotion

2010-03-30T13:59:00.001+02:00

I started out trying to experiment with the new league promotion features. I lost – on purpose – so much that I got placed in a Copper league initially and hope to abuse that in a series of n00b-bashing games. Unfortunately this is not how the system plays out.

I got to play maybe 4 games before the match-making system started pairing me up against people in silver league. At first you think: Ah, I guess this is a side effect of not having a ton of people online to match me up against, but after a while it dawns on you, that maybe the system suspects you cheated in your initial placement matches!

After about 8 games I was exclusively being paired up against Gold and Platinum league players. At this point the race for the top spot in my Copper league started to get interesting. A couple of players in my league had obviously done the same as me expecting to get easy wins and others in the top really struggled with win rates around 50%. At this point I started to see some of my competitors being promoted and I knew it was just a matter of time before my number one position in Copper would be yanked away from me in favor of a lower position in a better league. But what league would it be?

This morning I was 13-2 after having joined my league, and I set out to play another game. I had lost only two games and won a few over people placed in platinum, so I guess I thought I was heading for gold league at least. The final game that led to my promotion was a very typical Protoss vs Terran game on Scrap Station. My opponent was in the top tier of his Gold league and rated “favored” before the game began. When the game was done, I got promoted into Bronze league and was deducted 273 points. I guess they think I got all those points too easy, when I was posing as a Copper player? The punishment seems kinda harsh, but maybe that is just me.

The game itself was rather uneventful. He went marines and marauders and tried to spice it up with a little harassment with banshees. I had my defenses up and was already on the fast track to immortals which counters marauders pretty badly. Game over and the promotion was a done deal.

Replay Pack added.

Danish Starcraft II Tournament

2010-03-28T16:50:00.001+02:00

I hosted a Starcraft II Beta tournament for the Danish Starcraft II community last Wednesday. I’ve done that a lot back in the days and I also held two tournaments about a year and a half ago on iccup. Usually we would have about 20 sign-ups and when it came to actual participation the number would be closer to 15. Not so here… We had 38 people signing up and in the end 36 of them did participate. That is really great!

In the end PhoboS.cruel won after about 5½ hours of play. I casted some of it too on livestream. Apparently I suck at it, but part of the problem with my casting is most certainly all the administrative work I had to do while playing, observing and keeping track of scores.

The tournament was held on the patch 5 version of the game, but replays can still be viewed.

Lame Strats are Lame!

2010-03-26T17:38:00.001+01:00

Blizzard finally pushed out a new patch and reset the ladder. Great, it is time to test out the game anew.

I wanted easy opponents and to get a feel for what it took to be moved from one league to another, so I started out on the (now only 5) placement matches with the intention of not trying too hard.

So I made up rules for myself:

No units before a Mothership
Only one production building of each type
Don’t win anyway.

I almost won my first game and had to stop making more units. So I fell back on just canons for defense. Even that was almost too much for my opponent who spend about 50 minutes destroying my canons with Brood Lords. In the end I ended up 1-4 in my placement matches. The win due to some guy who quit like 2 seconds into the game.

Now I started playing in earnest, and quickly secured the number one position in my copper league. This is fun and actually not quite as much newbie-bashing as I thought it would be. After my 2nd win, I started getting matched up against silver league players, so the system might already consider me placed in the wrong league. It is exiting to see what will happen now!

A couple of Replays

2010-03-24T15:29:00.001+01:00

I haven’t played that much the last couple of days, primarily because I have been busy organizing the first Danish 1v1 tournament. It is tonight and is going to be great!

But I have collected a few games, for others to see. They are probably not anything particularly exciting, but here they are anyways.

I really like the TvT where we both end up losing our bases. That seems to happen a lot for me in TvT and can potentially lead to deadlocked games. Not something that the system can handle as of now.

So I Suck at Starcraft II too!

2010-03-21T15:47:00.001+01:00

I’m quickly approaching 100 games of Starcraft II and I suck at this game too! I’m stuck in Silver League, with no firm understanding of the game. I play random and have promised myself that I will do this for a while. Just to get a feel of the different races.

On request I tried to do an FPVOD. Here it is. I apologize for the lousy video quality, but this is my first Starcraft II VOD and I probably haven’t figured out the best approach to making them yet.

(Part 1 of 2 and Part 2 of 2)

Take a look, and remember that there is a lot of basic stuff that I still don’t quite understand about the game yet.

I’m in the beta!

2010-03-19T08:24:00.002+01:00

So I got in the beta thanks to a friend who got an extra key from Blizzard. Thank you, AiurAdun!
I’ve only been back a day and I am extremely jetlagged. Yet I have so far managed to play 54 games (40 1v1 and 14 2v2). My first impression is that the game is fun, but still have a long way to go before it will get close to Brood War in terms of quality. I’ll probably post more on that later.
The features of battle.net are still a little rough in terms of usability, but I have really been looking forward to automated matchmaking and now it is here.
And I love the placement match system even if it by some weird mistake sent me to the Platinum League in 2v2. Pretty strange!
My Silver League placement for 1v1 seems much more sensible to me. Stay tuned for more SC2 Beta updates here.

Urge to Game when you can't

2010-03-03T05:48:00.000+01:00

So we are about one week into our south-east asia travels and I am following the Starcraft 2 Beta on the sideline thanks to the free wifi (and my trusty HTC Hero phone) from Chiang Mai. Admittedly that this is probably a mistake as the news from the beta is just making me want to play and reducing the enjoyment of our vacation (which I still enjoy btw.).

The day before yesterday, while sitting in a restaurant in Chiang Mai, I observed an enthusiastic RTS gamer. The closest I have gotten to fulfill my own urge to play. The screen on his computer is rather dark, but he is playing Red Alert in single player. With one arm constantly behind his back and with a huge cup of ice and soda in front of him.

And no, he was not 1337 as to not need the keyboard. He was just a very, very n00bish player. Still fun for him though.

Leaving for Warmer Countries

2010-02-24T11:58:00.001+01:00

In a couple of hours I will be leaving this cold country and the Starcraft 2 Beta (that I didn’t get into) for Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I’ll be back in a month but hopefully get time to comment on that “thing” from different internet cafés wherever I go.

It seems like everybody else got in. AiurAdun got in thanks to some shady dealings. I hope this will make him update his gaming blog a bit. A ton of n00bs at DailyRush got in too. It really doesn’t seem fair when you have dedicated as much time to this game as I have.

Hopefully I will get a key and a second chance when I come back.

Until then I will enjoy the warmer climate of South-East Asia and Starcraft 2 at a distance.

Starcraft II Beta Impressions

2010-02-20T23:48:00.003+01:00

I have of course been following the beta. I got lucky this time around. No beta key in the first wave means that I don’t have to test an unfinished game. I find way too many bugs in far more exiting financial applications as my day job, so I sure got lucky here.

(Well, yeah this line of reasoning does not work for me either. I just had to try).
So far I am pretty underwhelmed by what I have seen of the beta. I clearly remember getting Starcraft in April 1998 and upon starting it realizing that “it really didn’t look that great”. And Neither does Starcraft II in 2010.
This is a disappointment to me, but hopefully the game will be so great that we can ignore that it isn’t the prettiest it could be.
In game the units seems fragile when you look at them. Like stick men. Annoying when compared to the first games more solid and robust units. Everything also seems to take up less space and bases mine out faster. Will we ever see a Protoss base in Starcraft II with 15 gateways? Now there is definitely room for them in all bases.
Take a look the top screenshot. This is from a 2v2 where two allies are advancing together. Hard to see when the colors are so much the same. The second screenshot is showing how a red Terran almost look the same as the purple Zerg and the creep.
I’m sad that the original much brighter color-scheme of Starcraft II was ditched in favor of this.

80 Games Status

2010-02-19T09:55:00.001+01:00

I have played 80 1v1 games on iccup thus far this season. Last season I only played PvT on Medusa and got to high D+. This season I have been mixing it up by playing one map-of-the-week and against any race.

As you can see my win rate against Protoss and Terran are around 50%, but against Zerg a lousy 27%! The decent results against Terrans i attribute to the practice I put into that match-up last season. Against Protoss I think it is mostly due to this match-up not being very well understood. Its like people aren’t even trying to understand mirror match-ups. I’ve found that I kinda like Protoss vs. Protoss games.

The insane number of loses to Zerg I simply don’t understand. I have a feeling that I out to work on putting more pressure on my opponent in the early mid game. Right now it is to comfortably to stay contained after you fast expansion. This leads to long games, but in the end I get run over.

(And yeah, I will comment on Starcraft 2 Beta soon. So far I’m one of the lucky guys who don’t have to test an unfinished game ;-()

Cut the Crap

2010-02-17T19:48:00.001+01:00

So the comments to the previous posting were hilarious and all, but this is my blog and not the site where people go to flame each other (and more importantly me). In the future I will delete comments I find annoying.

So what do I think is okay?

Comments that directly and in a respectful manner deals with the topic of the posting.
It’s okay to hijack a comment thread with one comment to introduce yourself (if you are a new reader or old lurker).
If you engage in a conversation that is already approved (i.e. have not been deleted by me), that is also okay.

When offering advice – which is something I do appreciate – try to do so where relevant and in a useful fashion. This basically rules out most of Babytoss’s reviews of my old games. Also, try to notice the date of the posting you are commenting on: I have improved dramatically compared to back when I started this blog.

Player with a Fever

2010-02-08T22:38:00.001+01:00

Taken literarily this is not a good idea. I wish I could report on a game frenzy, but unfortunately this is just fever.

I played a Terran tonight and misclicked so many times that I lost. No leg upgrade, no psi-storm and on and on. Just a mess.

Why do you scout?

2010-02-04T21:47:00.001+01:00

Inspired by Babytoss’s posting frenzy I have wanted to write about why you scout. The reason why this question comes up is due to the discussion on whether the liquipedia is right when it suggests that 13 supply is the correct timing to start the cybernetics core or whether 14 supply is more optimal? The answer basically boils down to when you scout.

(Note that this posting assumes maps like Neo Medusa or Longinus).

If you scout at 8 supply (right after your first pylon), then you can’t afford the cybernetics core before 14 supply, but if you delay the scout to after you start the core, then you can afford it at 13 already.

So what are the pros and cons of scouting early?

If your opening is risky and have to adapt to whatever your opponent does, then you should scout early. If not, then your early game economy and the speed of your build is increased a lot, the more you delay.

The risk of the 10/15 gate opening against Terrans is mainly if they decide to cheese you by building proxy barracks. That is a real risk, but I have never once seen that done on the level where I play. So by scouting early you could see the cheese and decide that your first unit out should be a zealot and not a dragoon. Since zealots builds faster, that might give you a combat unit out slightly faster to defend against marines in your base.

Scouting earlier would also allow you to get inside his base before his wall-in is completed. When you do that you could potentially figure out whether he intended to fast expand or go double factories. Unfortunately your probe have to survive being chased by marines for awhile before you can figure that out. And to make matters worse, some of the signs are not reliable on my level of play.

For instance Terrans rarely takes SCVs of gas even though they are fast expanding, so you can’t really deduct that 3 SCVs on gas means a double factory. So usually my probe ends up dead before it figures anything out. And it was not that I cared that much anyway. My first 4-5 dragoons + 2 dark templars are both useful for delaying a fast expand and to stop a two factory push.

Basically my conclusion is that I don’t see the point in a very early scout. It delays my first dragoons, risk the scout getting killed and will rarely yield any information that I wouldn’t get equally well when scouting earlier.

Photo of the Day

2010-01-29T19:40:00.001+01:00

Oh, how I love stasis…

Especially when an opponent does not spread out his tanks.

Celebrating defeat

2010-01-28T22:19:00.001+01:00

Sometimes I feel that I suck more than others. Like lately I have lost a lot. I think I was like 24-22 on iccup and now I am 25-34. Sigh.

Some of it I can blame on encountering multiple 270 APM players with a record like 13-1, but most of it is just me not being good enough. Last season I mostly played against Terrans and developed a certain comfort in this match-up.

Against Terrans:
I almost always go 10/15 gate timing it so that I have dark templars out right after my 3rd or 5th dragoon. I don’t always know why I go with one over the other. I rarely win outright with the dragoons, but sometimes the dark templars will give me a free win. Recently I have started going straight for arbiters on just two bases. So far with decent results (I still lose, but hey… it is because I am bad).

Against Zerg:
I usually do a fast expand. I’ve learned that you need to cut probes around 15 supply to get enough canons and tech up in time. I havn’t been doing too great against zerg so far, but I mainly think I have issues of timing my build correctly. If I can secure my 3rd base and make it to the late game I win.

Against Protoss:
I used to two gate into robotics facility a lot, but I simply love the easy victory a 4-gate build sometimes gives me. Unfortunately that build tends to hand me some stupid loses too. Like when my opponent decides to do a 2 gate zealot opening and is very aggressive.

All these openings works great on Neo Medusa, which is map-of-the-week this week. It should offer me some opportunities. So far it has mostly given me loses :-)

TV to make a Nerd Happy

2010-01-19T23:54:00.001+01:00

So I was totally geeking out last weekend. I had hooked my laptop up to the TV and was watching TSL live (or as live as it was). Nerd heaven!

The games were reasonably good and will probably only get better as the tournament goes on. And I like the commentators, even if I don’t quite agree on everything they say.

I may suck at the game, but it is absolutely not true that the level shown here is anywhere near the level in Korea. It may be more unpredictable due to less uniformity in strategy and nerves of people not used to playing in tournaments, but you rarely see Koreans completely screw up like we sometimes see among foreigners.

All in all the entertainment was still great. I only wish I some of my friends appreciated Starcraft enough for me to invite them over for Starcraft-on-TV and a beer. Alas Starcraft is still a minor thing here.

The Value of Prepositioning your units

2010-01-17T17:34:00.001+01:00

I suck at the game. I suck at macro, I suck at micro and I suck at keeping up my motivation. This season I have abandoned last season strategy on staying on one map and one match-up. I’m just playing on the most familiar Map of the Week against anyone about my own level.

Amazingly enough I seem to do best in Protoss vs Protoss and not against Terrans. Is all the effort I put into that match-up last season totally wasted? I don’t know.

Some days ago I played this game where the opening did not go as well as I had hoped. He had his expansion up earlier than me, his tech-level was further ahead and yet I did not have an overwhelming unit advantage as I should have. So what do you do?

My 14 dragoons and 1 zealot was outside his base and (as I later found out) he had 13 dragoons and one photon canon. Even odds and with him having shorter distance to his reinforcements an all but lost battle.

So I thought: let me arrange my units in this nice semi-circle in front of his expansion. After all, that is what the pros do. Shortly after being done with that he moved out slightly and I decided to meet him in battle.

To my utter surprise it went extremely well. His units came out in a line and were attacked from all side my my units. His army melted away. In fact he lost everything he had and my casualties were just 4 dragoons and my zealot.

After that engagement I simply killed him of in a matter of a minute or two. And the game provided an object lesson of how much prepositioning of units can mean. A lot. Apparently.

YouBetterBeJedi

2010-01-12T19:59:00.001+01:00

A reader of this blog sent me a replay link on twitter. I’ve just finished watching it. It’s pretty entertaining without being very good. What surprised me the most was how high everybody’s APM was despite the ton of mistakes made. For instance BeJedi had an effective APM of about 120 without using hotkeys much and in fact most of his actions were move, rather than select? So different from my own style of playing.

There are certain highlights of the game though. A Protoss+Terran vs. Dual Protoss tends to be nothing but dragoons and psi-storm. Not so here. Instead Avisek makes one attack after another with tons of dragoons just to have everything stasised! It is so ridiculous. The game could probably have ended sooner if not for the number of mind controls used at the end too!

But I have some advice to give as well:

Make more probes! Avisek was the only one having prober probe saturation in his mine fields.
Stasis, zealots and mind control are fun, but mass dragoons and psi-storm win this matchup.
Recall is less useful than stasis in this matchup. I think you found out during the game.
Hotkeys, they are your friends. So is a lot of gateways. I usually get at least three gates per base. When I max out at 200/200 I get more.

And keep playing. It is always fun when someone else joins in the quest to master the game of Starcraft.

Bugged Replay

2010-01-11T19:32:00.001+01:00

I was about to write a post about a Protoss vs Zerg game on Collosseum I played recently. I loaded up Starcraft prepared to take notes and screenshots from the game. But that was no good. Everytime I the replay got to the 40 second mark, my computer froze and I had to kill Starcraft with the Windows Task Manager.

So no screenshots this time around. Basically the game was a standard fast expand. It is hard to figure out your opponents build on Collosseum, so I had to do a forge and 2 cannons before my first nexus. Just to be sure. I have gambled too many time on that map and lost to a fast pool build and concluded that the canons are necessary.

So the problem is: You make your first gate way as fast as you can after the nexus. You need to produce at least two zealots to block the gaps in the wall-in and while making those I also start the cybernetics core. Once that finishes I make a Stargate, a Citadel of Adun and probably a couple of more canons.

This is point is where I become most vulnerable to mutalisks or a hydra break. If I think he will go for hydras I need more canons at the front; if not I need them inside the base. At the same time my economy is really starting to be strong, but I have still only one gateway.

In this game I wanted to show here, I suspect that if my build had been timed slightly better, I could have produced 2 or 3 more gateways that would have been done right before his attack arrived. I ended up making a ton of money while watching my bases being torn down.

In this the second game in R2 of TSL2 of Avi-Love vs. Kabel, I see that around 15 probes, Kabel stops making more probes for a while. I don’t like cutting probes, but I assume that it makes the gateway go up faster. Maybe even by a lot? Is it really worth it? Cutting probes early in the game tends to lead to huge disadvantages later in the game.

Iccup TV

2009-12-29T13:02:00.001+01:00

I don’t really know what to say about this new feature. On one hand I am insanely impressed by the technical accomplishment and on the other hand the actual experience falls short of what I had hoped.I’ve seen a couple of games and it takes a while to figure out whether the players are any good, the game exiting and I don’t really trust the statistics reported in game. At least I have seen a few games where the players had 1500+ in APM. I doubt that is correct.

It is like watching a VOD with no commentary. Not even the implicit commentary of someone directing the view to where the action is. And it is like observing a game only only with out being able to chat with anyone.

I know they have future plans and want feedback (which is good), but I have my doubts. My strongest wish is that Blizzard are paying attention and will come up with a similar system for Starcraft II and will make it work right.

Hey Blizzard

2009-12-15T20:41:00.001+01:00

Hey, Blizzard! Have you been following the TSL2 qualification fallout? Do you learn anything from that? I suddenly feel scared about tournaments being run on battle.net 2. Will you provide sufficient guarantees that no one will cheat in tournaments now that you will own the data that the community can’t check? Or will all data be public (including players IP-addresses) so that we can check it on our own?

Do you already now have tools in place to catch abusers, win-traders and hackers? The old Starcraft ladder on battle.net was a joke from day one. I know you did better in Wacraft III, but it was still a ladder for casual players rather than the basis for an eSport.

How will all this turn out?

Map dedication

2009-12-08T22:29:00.001+01:00

I have played almost exclusively on Neo Medusa this season. I started out thinking it was a Terran map. Mostly because I used to have a lot of trouble against Terrans on this map. The destructible tempels, the ledge drops and so on.

The only two things Protoss have going for them is the wide open center (good for flanking is a plus, can be totally dominated by enough tanks is a minus) and the fact that there is a relatively open entrance to the start positions.

So I set out to abuse that for an entire season and it was okay. In the beginning I went 3 dragoons into dark templars. Then 5 dragoons into dark templars. Sometimes an odd amount of dragoons due to me messing up my build. It got better during the season too. RushFlush pointed out that I really ought to do a pure 10/15 opening and then transition into the dark templars and it helped. Later I came to realize the power of a pure 10/15 opening into enough dragoons was very powerful. “You could have won if you just pressed on” is a common comment on my replays.

But too many times I saw 3 already hurt dragoons get one-shot killed by a lonely siege tank and I dared not press on. I have come to suspect that the timing is extremely sensitive in this opening attack. Forget putting probes on gas for just 5-10 seconds and he will have siege mode when you get to his wall-in. My opening build has to flawless and it rarely is.

I am starting to get the hang of it and wonder how I would do on a map with a ramp. Destination is popular for instance. I will need to dedicate at least as much time to that map. I feel I ought to explore reaver control too. I used to do reaver drops and it almost never worked out. Maybe 50 games could fix that?

Season Goal 50 Games Played

2009-12-05T01:16:00.001+01:00

I’ve reached my season goal. To play 50 games as Protoss vs. Terran on one map. Well, almost as I played 2 games on Longinus and one on Othello. My statistics right actually says that I’ve played 52 games, but I have lost two games due to watching replays – really frustrating. So I am really 30-20 which means a win percentage of 60%. It feels pretty good even though I do not take my defeats lightly.

I’ve also come to realize that I am not very reliable in my game play and I tend to mess up in situations where winning means more to me. For instance when I play against people I “know” online. RushFlush, TS-Buzz. and 1pq: I don’t think you’ve seen my best yet.

And still I owe you guys a lot in teaching me what little I know about this game. My final and 50th game was fittingly epic. 38 minutes of action and me on 200 supply most of the game.

I don’t think I will surpass the 83 games I played in last season, but there is about a week left of this season and I am at D+ 2744 points. Suddenly I realize that I am only 2 or 3 wins away form the coveted C- at 3000 points. TS-Buzz. could jump from D+ to C. Should I not be able to make it to C-?

Unit Control

2009-11-22T11:41:00.002+01:00

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

2009-11-16T22:55:00.001+01:00

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

2009-11-14T17:03:00.001+01:00

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

2009-11-08T23:07:00.001+01:00

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

2009-11-02T19:44:00.001+01:00

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.

eSport reporting

2009-10-25T21:43:00.004+01:00

I have had a really weird weekend and have not gotten around to get into weekend mode at all. I tried desperately and turned on my TV early this morning. While I was channel surfing I ran into "eSport '09", a program on DK4. I tried to watch it, but apparently they only cover Counter Strike.

I may be totally wrong here, but the only game worth considering as an eSport is basically Starcraft. It is so for two reasons: 1) It's top-down perspective makes it a better spectator experience and 2) the level i Korea is so high, due to the professional league. It can be interesting to cover the local Stacraft scene as well, but mostly because of the Korean level it aspires to.

Speaking of eSport coverage. I have been around for ages and remember surfing the net on NCSA Mosaic around 1993. And I remember all the sites that sprung up while Blizzard and Wacraft II fans were eagerly awaiting Starcraft i 1997 and 98. Especially Station17 which were the first fan-site I became addicted to.

Now while we are waiting for Starcraft II I see the same thing over again. Maybe a bit different since the time and technology change, but in spirit it is just the same. I absolutely love the enthusiasm that people display and do understand why people want to contribute to the community, but I really wish that people would create more original content - think independent thoughts. There is too much copying going on.

If you follow Starcraft on twitter (which I do) then you probably follow all the big sites and celebrities as well. Retweeting any of the major sites should be punishable ;-).

I also tried to check out Husky's newest show. "eSports Report" I think it is called. So far I am not convinced. I like Artosis's show better for the sole reason that he offers more insight. I think that is what we are missing - not better production quality.

But some of all the new sites, video shows etc. that have sprung up will develop into something cool over time and others will perish. That is probably the natural order of these kind of things.

Learning 2v2

2009-10-24T17:23:00.001+02:00

I haven’t figured out how to study and become better at 2v2. I don’t think that it is as much a question of timings and build orders as in 1v1, but on the other hand it is. At least in the beginning where you have to know how to defeat a dual-Zerg-5 pool-rush (not even sure that it is possible to counter that).

Part of the problem that either your ally should be very good or at least have the same attitude towards learning the game. A team can’t significantly improve by one of the players getting better. The weakest link is what defines the overall quality of the team.

Lately I think playing 2v2 is about as satisfying as the parking tickets I got Friday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

I want the satisfaction of playing with someone as well as the satisfaction of the 1v1. I don’t know how to get that? The closest I can come is hanging out in the chat taking breaks with your friends while you all try to do some 1v1s. I don’t know that many people who are up for that.

If that is not possible then I would like to improve my 2v2. Are there any resources available on the net to do that? Most seem focused on 1v1s.

The Epic Failcall

2009-10-17T13:36:00.001+02:00

I have been experimenting with recall harassment in late Terran vs Protoss and with some success. Vulnerable expansions and the place where the Terran keeps his factories (and armories) are the prime targets. It does not always work as intended. Usually because I have a wrong estimate of the number of turrets and units.

Yesterday for instance in a 2v2 with Darkan (replay) I did such a recall in to the mineral line on the east most expansion on Gaia. In less than 2 seconds I went from having an arbiter and a ton of units to having blue goo in another players base. It was epic and probably what lost us the game.

Gaia is, by the way, becoming one of my favorite 2v2 maps. In a way it is just another variation over the Lost Temple/Python template, but it is still very cool.

And the game taught me that PPvTT is even more unfair than PvT already is. Late game there are so many tanks and vultures that there really is nothing that the two Protoss players can do.