Season 7 Results

Something happened to my ZvT and ZvP in season 7. And not something good. It is kind of embarrassing, but if it wasn’t for my solid ZvZ I would probably be crying.

I blame the new maps that have come with the last couple of seasons. The only one I liked was Korhal Compound and now it seems as if that too has gone from season 8. Nasty.

I guess I really need help in the two other matchups. Unfortunately I don’t know any accomplished platinum level Protoss and Terrans on EU to practice against. It is a bit of problem, but I suppose I have to study some pro-players and make their builds work for me too.

Queens

I got a link to a VOD where Illusion does a spine crawler/Queen-rush and I just had to try myself. Basically you never build gas and not many drones either. When you have your first queen and a bunch of Zerglings out, you take three drones and go for the Protoss entrance.

Once you get there you plant a hatchery, cancels it and place a creep tumor where its creep was. Then adds spine crawlers and reinforces with Queens and more Zerglings.

With the new Queen speed and range it is remarkably efficient and I quickly got three wins with this cheese. Most players made comments like “Wow, that is a cute strategy” or similar. That is rare when you do a cheese.

In my fifth game I met someone who knew how to counter this. Apparently it is possible to stop, although not necessarily extremely easy.

Mutas in ZvZ

I’m playing an extraordinarily amount of ZvZ. It seems like slightly less that one out of two games are ZvZ. Last season I did badly in this matchup, but due to the high number of games I think I slowly got better at it. This season it is my best matchup.

My standard build is a safe early expand followed up by defensive banelings. Then I drone and tech towards mutas while slowly adding spine crawlers for defense.

Its important to attack with the mutas as soon as the first batch is out and to be prepared for the inevitable roach/ling counter. If you survive the counter, the game is won.

 

What I don’t like about this is that it feels slightly cheesy. You basically depend on doing knock-out damage with your mutas. Kinda like a lurker drop in Brood War. However, if you do just marginal damage or your opponent has infestors with fungal out, you can still win by playing the game out carefully and transitioning to roaches supported by your mutas.

I think this style has its limits, but since I suck at this game I have until now not encountered many players who can stop this instantly.

Season 6 Looking Good

I haven’t actually played much so far in season 6, but after getting promoted to platinum, I feel that everything has become much easier. I think this is a misconception and I have just gotten better, but maybe it is too early to tell.

The matchup I feel most confident about is ZvP and that is the one with the lowest win rate. Maybe my improvement in ZvT can be explained by the nerf to ghosts, but it seems to me that I have figured out how to drone harder in the beginning of a ZvT game. This has given me some wins I didn’t get two months ago.

ZvZ is just a mystery. Easier opponents in Platinum compared to Gold. That is the way it feels.

Season 5 Status

This is just a short update of the recently finalized season 5. I ended up playing exactly 100 games (somehow I lost one replay in the process). I had clear impression that I did reasonably well in ZvP, but terribly in the two other matchups. The numbers, however, tells a different story.

Apparently I did okay vs. terran and only really had problems in ZvZ. I guess I had a lot of fairly quick wins vs. terran that I just forgot about and only remembered the long drawn out games that didn’t end so well for me.

Anyways, I played roughly half my games vs. platinum players and the other half vs. gold players. With a 50% win rate I hoped for a promotion to platinum. That I didn’t get in season 5 (it came 5 games into season 6 though).

Merry Christmas

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

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.