Hello everyone.
I’m currently extremely busy due to some exams, and will be until the 20th of January and I really don’t have time to study, play enough games to have material for an article and write my articles. When I’ll be back, I’ll be sticking to my three articles a week schedule hopefully.
Hello everyone. Since I’ve entered the Platinum league, I’ve been struggling with the ZvP match-up. What used to be my best match-up in gold, when mass infestors was a viable strategy against pretty much any composition a protoss could send against you, turned into my worst match-up really fast. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with decaf’s Roach Ling Muta style. I don’t think I master this style and can use it to its maximum effect, but I’ll quickly introduce it to you and present you three different games I’ve played earlier today, when my opponents used three different strategies against me.
Game 1:
The first game we’re going to talk about was against an opponent named daweed on the map Shakuras Plateau. He opened with a forge fast expand, which is standard on this map. I opened with a 12 pool/19 hatch and took my third base at around 32 supplies, as described in decaf’s guide. He tried to 4 gate-Robo pressure me (which is not a great pressure build, he could afford 5 gates and a robo IMO while still having room for an expansion, but as you’ll see in the replay, his macro was kinda bad) at the 10-minute mark, which I repelled pretty easily (this build is specifically designed to be safe against 2-base all-ins, to the exception of 2 Stargate all-ins, but we’ll come back to it later).
I then took a fourth base, denied his third and started to produce some mutas to harass him. At this point, the game was pretty much won already since he couldn’t get off two bases, and the goal is to harass his main base and natural with mutas while denying him from taking a third base with your roach/ling army. I managed to do just that, denying two of his attempts at taking a third base, and he quickly typed-out. My opponent in this game was kinda bad (sorry daweed), his macro was off and his timing-push was a little too late, but it demonstrates pretty well how this roach/ling/muta style should be played: constantly denying a third from your opponent while harassing his main base with mutas.
Replay: http://drop.sc/83583
Game 2:
The second game I played was against an opponent named Burstcloak on Metalopolis. He opened with a forge fast expand and I did a 12 pool/19 hatch as you might have expected. In this game, I scouted that he had three gates and was chronoboosting them around the 7-minute mark. I expected heavy zealot pressure, but he never really attack with them (apart from a lonely zealot who killed two drones in my third base). Still, he did some damages: I panicked, produced some roaches when I should have been droning and suffered from it later.
He pushed me with a delayed 7 gate push which included two immortals. My economy didn’t really have time to kick in since he forced my to produce some roaches earlier, and I forgot to throw down a macro-hatchery. His push slowly took the upper-hand on my army and managed to take my third down. From that point, I didn’t really have enough production capabilities (once again: no macro-hatch) and quickly got taken out.
I guess I should throw down a few spine crawlers when I see that neither a push nor an expand is on its was at the 10 minute mark.
Replay: http://drop.sc/83584
Game 3:
This third game was a little bit special, and is not going to take long to describe: my opponent went blindly for a 3-stargates all-in off of two bases, I scouted it, tech-switched to mass-hydras and Nydus off o three bases, and went for an all-in knowing he couldn’t have any tech that counter hydras.
The thing is, multiple-stargates all-ins is the hard-counter to the roach/ling/muta style presented in the first two games. Luckily, if scouted properly, a stargate all in is easily counter by simply throwing down a Nydus near his main and mass-producing hydras, rallying them into his base and just a-moving. This strategy is very all-innish, and you must be sure that your opponent doesn’t have time to transition to either colossus or storm to counter your hydras.
Replay: http://drop.sc/83585
Conclusion:
This style of play seems really powerful and safe against a lot of things, but the decision making that goes with it is kind of tricky. I’ll need a good 10 or more games to really get used to it (I had only played four to six games with it prior to this post), but I already feel more confident stepping into a ZvP. I really recommend this build to people who struggle with this match-up if they are at least in the platinum league. The timings are really tricky and you need spot-on injections to make them work, and if you’re a silver league player, there’s probably more important things to focus on in your game than this.
As always, feedback is appreciated.
Hello everyone. Today we’ll be reviewing three very different games: two ZvPs and one ZvZ.
Games 1:
The first game we’ll review today is a ZvP played against a player named BBOSS which was pretty frustrating. He opened with a proxy 2 gates, which I scouted by entering an empty base. I didn’t expand, tried to destroy his pylon with my drones, but didn’t have time to do so. I gained some time with my drones while dropping two spine crawlers. I managed to stay alive thanks to some lings popping out and he retreated. I tried to pressure him but he walled his expansion off with a lot of cannons and a forge.
I quickly expanded to a third at a gold and took a fairly fast fourth, but faced mass phoenixes from my opponent. I dropped two spores at each bases and teched to spire while replenishing my drones, produced a few corruptors and repelled his harass. I tried to pressure his front, but was repelled by some carriers. I mass produced corruptors and engaged him. It turns out carriers with some decent upgrades are pretty good against corruptors only.
We exchanged a few armies before he took me out. I guess I should have gone hydralisks when I scouted his carriers.
Replay: http://drop.sc/80106
Game 2:
In this game, I played against a Zerg opponent named jAyJaY. He opened with a 7 pool spine crawler rush, while I did my standard 14 pool 15 gas build. I killed his spine with my drones and managed to stay alive long enough for my lings to pop. Since cheesy players usually follow their cheese with some king of all in, I didn’t expand until I had my own baneling nest.
I spotted some banelings morphing down my ramp and managed to make him cancel them with some lings, then proceeded to hold his push with some banelings of my own. I expanded and started pressuring his front to prevent him from expanding and forcing him into producing units instead of drones while I was droning at home. I then teched to roaches and pushed him before he could catch up on economy.
Replay: http://drop.sc/80107
Game 3:
In this last game I’m going to review today, I played against another protoss opponent. I opened with a 14 pool/15 hatch but was blocked by a pylon. He opened 1 gate expand and made enough unit to defend it properly. At the 10 minute mark, he dropped four sentries in my main with a warp prism and warped a few zealots. I managed to pull probes in time but a few of them were trapped by the forcefields. I cleared his units with a few roaches a few moments later and checked for a potentiel third from him with my remaining forces.
He had already expanded and had a sizeable force, managing to repell my roaches. I took a fourth base but he started to pressure me with another warp-prism harass and some stalker pressure, eventually taking my fourth out. We then exchanged a few armies while I was teching to brood lord. I finally managed to secure a fourth, but so did he. I pushed him with a maxed army which included around 7 brood lords, but he managed to hold and defend his gold base. I then remaxed and pushed him, but he had his end-game composition ready: Stalkers, Archons, High Templars and a Mothership. He archon toilet’d my army and won the game.
Replay: http://drop.sc/80108
Conclusions:
The first game was by far the most frustrating game of all because I feel let him win the game by getting so many carriers. I also didn’t use the appropriate counter, I should have gone mass hydras in retrospect. The second game was pretty easy: I defended his cheese properly and didn’t let him catch up (he also called me a map-hacker after the game, which made my win even more enjoyable). In the last game, I was simply outplayed during the whole game, props to him.
Once again, feel free to comment and to give me some feedback both on my writing and my games.
Hello everyone. I won’t be writing any report today because it is Christmas Eve and I didn’t have time to play enough games, and the few I played weren’t interesting enough to write about them. I wish everyone a merry Christmas/happy holidays and will be back Tuesday with three more game analysis.
Today was the first day of the fifth season on the european Starcraft II ladder. While a lot of people are hyped by the beginning of a new season, hoping to get a promotion or fearing a demotion, it wasn’t very exciting for me. I finished 23rd in my division last season and wasn’t really close to a promotion or a demotion from the platinum league. I proceded to click, without any particular pressure, the infamous “Find Game” button.
Game 1:
My placement game was against a Terran player named Qwan, on one of the new maps available on the ladder, Arid Plateau. I opened 15 hatch 14 pool, as I would normally do against any terran opponent. I quickly made two queens, two sets of zerglings and proceded to scout his front, hoping to find some valuable scouting informations. Reactored-factory. Hellions it is then, I started producing some lings and carried on droning.
The hellion harass was easily held off, I lost a few drones, but overall I think the engagement was beneficial for me. I started my Lair tech and took 3 additional geysers to prepare for a standard ling/bling/muta composition. I scouted another hellion harass incoming, whith a little bit more hellions then the first time. I tried to hold my ramp but he managed to get in before I could reinforce. He roasted a few more drones, but my zerglings reinforcement and my queens managed to put an end to his harass attempt right before I could start my muta production. I also took a third in the process.
Knowing he wouldn’t have a huge army defending his natural, I sent the remaining lings
that I had to do some damages to his economy, which was a great move since it allowed me to scout his composition. Four thors and a few hellions, mech it was. I stopped my mutalisk production (I had about 10 at that point), switched to roaches and took a fourth base. I also took down the rocks near his third, which was empty. I was ahead. I mass produced roaches until he tried to push me with 7-8 thors and some hellions, I crushed him and he proceeded to GG.
I was placed in platinum again, which didn’t surprise my all that much.
Replay: http://drop.sc/77702?pass=fb473916-f48c-45d6-87e4-ffaa34e6f493
Game 2:
My second game of the day was against Minimi, a Protoss player on Metalopolis. There’s not much to say about this game, it was a pretty standard ZvP for me. I scouted him in the close-air position, and noticed he was forge fast expanding. I took a quick third at 19 supplies, droned up as much as I could without being disturbed. I constructed a roach warren, teched to lair and dropped two evolution chambers. I then scouted him around the 8 minute mark and saw 6 gates and a twilight council. Probably blink-stalkers.
I massed roaches, and realized I didn’t check if he was taking a third or not. I sent a roach to scout it, saw a saturated expansion. I had to push and do some damages, now. My timing couldn’t have been more perfect: his robotic bay had just finished, colossae were on the way. I quickly took his robotic facility (which was in his natural) down and just kept on rallying roaches into his stalker army, eventually out-numbering him. He tried to hold on for a while, but I took his natural and killed all the probes at his third, he GG’d out.
Replay: http://drop.sc/77703?pass=e2a78dfd-1c6e-41b3-9020-1d9b207161a9
Game 3:
My third game of the day was against XtinZ, a terran player on Shattered Temple. I opened up with a hatch on 15, and dropped my pool on 16 supplies. I scouted his base and noticed he didn’t wall off, which to me mean only one possibility: he was commited to pushing me early. I immediatly started to produce lings, skipping the queens, and dropped 
a spine crawler in my natural. He tried to build a bunker near my ramp, but I quickly took his SCV out. His marines manaded to take my lings out with the help of some stutter-step micro and marched right into my main. My queens popped out and I had time to produce a few more lings, and I managed to take out his force with the help of a few drones that I had to pull.
I then tried to pressure his front with a few lings that I had overproduced, but his marine count was quite substantial and I quickly retreated to my base and built a second spine crawler. I sent a few lings to scout his front, and noticed he was taking the rocks near the gold out and already took his natural. I had to react, and fast.
I started taking the rocks blocking acces to my third out and teched to lair, started massing lings in order to take out his gold with the help of a few banelings. I managed to kill some SCVs but his marine/marauder/hellion composition was too much for my forces, I started to take out the rocks blocking acces to my gold out in order to take a fourth, scouted his “natural third” and saw nothing. I teched to mutas and tried to pressure him with my mutas. But he had enough turrets to take them on, and some poor decisions on my side made my muta count go down.
He finally took me out with a marine/hellion/tank push that was too strong for me to take 
on. After his initial pressure and the threat from his hellions, he managed to stay ahead in workers and in bases the whole duration of the game. Some poor decisions from me and his overal good defense made this a difficult game for me. He really took me by surprise and played with me the whole game, always being one step ahead of me.
Replay: http://drop.sc/77704?pass=626eafa2-bc34-4e70-8453-d3bc545d9383
Conclusions
I finished my session with a record of 2-1, which is not bad at all. I don’t feek like I wasted any game, even if I made some really bad decisions in my last game, it was more a result of his unusual than a “bad game” from me.
Please feel free to comment and give me some feedback. Stay tuned for more Starcraft II action.
Hello everyone. I am rooran, a Starcraft II fan and a platinum Zerg player from Belgium. I will be writing on this blog about my journey on the european ladder.
To give you a little introduction, I started watching Starcraft II during the beta, watching casts from Husky and HD on Youtube daily, not always understanding what was happening since I had never played a single game of Starcraft II or Brood War before. In July 2011, while I was bored on holiday, I finally decided to give it a try and bought the game. Aside from playing age of Empire II when I was a kid, I had no prior experience in RTS, my mechanics were terrible, I quickly played a few games against the computer to test the different races and units, picked Zerg because they looked cool, jumped right in and, surprisingly, won 3 of my 5 placement matches. I was placed in the Gold League. Then, I started losing game after game, and was quickly demoted to the silver league, and then to the bronze league. I just realized that playing this game is pretty hard, and trying to play like the best players in the world was no easy task. I was terrible.
But this didn’t kill my motivation. I started watching Day[9]‘s dailies, worked on my mechanics, searching for every piece of information I could use to get better, laddering for hours to finally get promoted back into the gold league by August. Then finals happened. I had no more time to play as much as I wanted to for the next 6 weeks, and I felt it in my game. I stagnated in gold for the whole duration of season three. I picked up the game more regularly during season four, not playing as much as I did in July, but at least I was playing regularly, and my game improved again. I managed to get promoted to the platinum league early in the season four, where I still am.
Now, here we are, just as the season five started, I decided to write this blog not only to narrate my journey on the european ladder, but also to share my struggles in hope to get some feedback from other players, and to force me to play regularly in order to have material to discuss on this blog. I plan on writing a report on three of my games every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
I hope you’ll enjoy reading my blog as much as I’ll enjoy writing it, next up, my season five placement and a two other games that I’ve just played.
