Punishing Others for Taking a Risk

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

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?

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

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

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!

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

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.