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.

Roadblocked

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

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

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

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

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

Late Game TvP is hard!

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

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

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

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

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

Download Replay here.

Trials and Tribulations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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