Great Balls of Fire

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.

1. You need to keep a probe alive on an island while it is being chased by a zergling.
2. You need to build a transport and pick up a high templar on another island.
3. 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.