Season 8 Status

According to tradition I kinda owe a posting on how Season 8 ended for me. End result was about 150 1v1s plated and a end result as around #15 in my Platinum division (not that you really can compare that to anything).

I think it was a confusing season. Statistics shows that I did slightly better against Terran and Protoss compared to in Season 7 (and slightly worse against Zerg, which is annoying as ZvZ for a long time has been my best match-up).

I still find it extremly hard to beat both Terrans and Protoss as they can be so passive and just roll me over in the late game. In ZvZ I’ve decided to become better at taking my 3rd base, as I’ve run into some limitations to my 2-base muta opening. Not to the extend of it costing me games, but because I can see an opportunity to be even better at this matchup -- I wish I could see similar oppertunites vP and vT.

Total Career Games 3000

Finally:

Still in Platinum though… Will I ever learn?

Streaming Sucky Games

I’ve been playing around with xsplit and twitch settings a lot and finally made my stream work. The key breakthrough as actually been something so simple as to clean out the fan attached directly on my aging HD4870 graphics card. Yeah I suck at cleaning up my computer cabinet too.

In order to celebrate this amazing feat, I’ve redesigned my stream logo.

The channel is located at http://twitch.tv/fafnerx . Go Subscribe if you want to have a cheap laugh at my expense.

Just to show how amazingly bad my play can be, check out this recording where I can’t even select the correct race and end up playing as Protoss.

A Counting Game

For a while I have been counting my win. I don’t care too much about achievements in game, but I am kinda looking forward to my 500th win as Zerg on the 1v1 ladder.  I don’t know why, but I am.

At the moment I am at 298 wins and I’ll probably reach 300 tonight. I also know my velocity, which is around 50 wins a season. That should guarentee the 500th win about 4 seasons.

But there is a catch: I pretty much assume there will be separate ladders for Wings of LIberty and Hearth of the Swarm. And so the question becomes, will we have another 4 seasons before HOTS is released? I don’t really think so, which puts me under some kind of pressure.

If I didn’t suck at the game I could simply improve my win rate. Then I would get there sooner with the same number of games  ;–). I don’t think that will happen though…

Managing Your Temper

I find that not letting wins and loses get to you is one of the most important things you have to accomplish. Not letting the loses get to you is obvious, but the wins can get you too! I think having a plan to each matchups and being able to modify it to match the map you are playing is the trick.

After a couple of loses it is easy to get angry and then you start gambling. I.e. you’ll not play safe enough hoping to get ahead by cutting corners or you’ll over defend all set on not getting wiped out early. Either will cause you more loses.

Winning a lot builds confidence and suddenly you are not playing against an opponent, but just by yourself. And something this opponent does may be totally unexpected and even if you did see it coming, you did nothing to handle it since you were mentally in a whole other game.

The important thing is to treat each game as a new game. Being alert and aware of the signs you see from your opponent as well as sticking to your plan.

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.