Road to Masters (5)

[spoiler=What is this column about?]

I am crAzerk, and I've been playing Starcraft since the original. I love the game, and I love writing, thus the chance to combine both passions excited me to no end. So here I am, providing (hopefully) entertaining writeups for you guys!

I aspire to be in Masters League. And I will strive hard to fight my way out of Diamond. This column will document my journey. Each time, I will write about five or more games that I've played on ladder, and discuss my struggles and thoughts about each game.[/spoiler]

By popular demand, I will include more Terran games (1 of them custom that I played with my friends). The rest are all from ladder.

Also, I have decided to make this a weekly column.. just that I'm not sure which day I should post it on. Is Friday good? 

Anyway, I haven't been playing the past two days, due to work just starting for me and busy with other RL activities. So after a 2 day break, I resume my quest to get out of Diamond! (upwards, not downwards)

1) vs Ryan (Protoss) on XNC
[spoiler]

I opened aiming to go for a fast speedling into hatch build, but after getting my gas I saw that his Probe came out late, so I decided I could get my hatch up in time before he could block it, and I did!

I stole his gas, and this forced him into a 4gate blink stalker rush. I didn't scout the Twilight Council, but after 6 minutes he had not expanded or got sentries, and I spotted him warping in Stalkers in his base, so I guessed it.

I quickly started pumping mass slings and roaches while putting down 2 spines. You kinda need spines to deter them from just blinking on top of you, because chances are they will be pushing with the stronger army.
(I think i mentioned this before, roach/ling > blink stalkers up to a certain number, then blinkstalkers>>roach/ling)

I spotted the proxy pylon so I sent in all my lings to take it out.. I don't know if this was a good move  but it did delay his push, but I lost alot of lings too.

He pushed with a big wave of stalkers and with some blink micro, I have to run back to the cover of my spinecrawlers

He unwisely followed me and with 1-2 transfuses I was able to eliminate his stalker army and send him fleeing, with my bigger roach army.

I thought this would be an opportune time to make a counter attack, so I kept rallying units forward and began moving out. However, he had THREE proxy pylons in 3 different areas and stalkers kept warping in from all directions, and the individual group blink micro was sufficient to deter me from blindly rallying my units forward

Amidst all this, I had teched to Lair because I knew once i had hydras i would have no problem with his gateway army. When he backed out, he expanded, and I took the time to pump drones while applying some pressure.

I didn't know that 19 stalkers beat 14 hydras 14 roaches but ok...

With some blink micro he easily held this off, and I knew it was pointless running so I just did as much damage as I could. I still had a solid harvester lead at this point so I began clearing my rocks to gold and my other expo to prepare for a 3rd

While I expanded towards the other expo, he expanded towards the 3rd, backed up with 6 gate blink stalkers. When I saw his gold, I knew I had to hit soon, before his gold expo kicks in and he overwhelms me with mass blinkstalkers.

He got some decent FFs off to cut my army roughly in half, but the problem was he himself was fighting in some sort of choke (see the stalkers at the back not doing much?)

I continually streamed roach/hydras, and the position we were fighting at allowed me to snipe quite alot of probes. He was even with me before this, and after this he was 10 behind again.

Ok I realize his mistake now - he forgot to put probes on the 2nd gas at his expo! That's why he couldn't get colussus out all this time since he was constantly warping in stalkers to deal with my pressure at his gold. Eventually I took out his gold expo

Knowing I was ahead, I decided to press the issue and kept rallying units forward while expanding at my gold at the same time.

Talk about window of opportunity... look at how close his Extended Thermal Lance was to be done ! If I had hit like 10 seconds later he would be able to roast alot of hydras instead of having to run from them

Anyway, I already had a Spire up because I was expecting Colussus instead of 6 gate, so I just began making corruptors.

Once my Corruptors was rallied in, it was all over. GG

Well, not before some BM:

At least learn to spell 'blink' before ragequit.

[/spoiler]

2) vs TADanny (Terran) on Metalopolis
[spoiler]

Close air spawn

I scouted the 2 rax while I opened with the 13 hatch/15pool spanishiwa style opening.

When you see a  2rax, you can almost ALWAYS expect some sort of bunker harass. Should I even have written 'almost'? Fine, ALWAYS.

He tries with 2 bunkers, but my spine was up early and so I just pulled 5 drones, and with my initial lings i was able to hold it off well

I made just 6 lings, just nice number too, and once I had surrounded the marines and killed them, I took out the building SCVs and he had to cancel both bunkers

I followed this up by droning up heavily till I hit about 40 supply or so before putting down my 4 gas, and my sac OL actually spotted 3 rax. I got worried about some sort of mass marine all in so I got baneling nest + ling speed before my Lair, and also added more spines, and pumped a bunch of ling/blings.

He wasn't pushing though, and was expanding behind a 3rax with fact for siege tanks.

Fancy marine split

Shortly after this, he actually moved out with a big pack of marines with 2 tanks. It looked like a siege tech timing push.

I spotted his army on creep, and he began leapfrogging tanks, and so I knew I had to quickly engage before he got too near and could begin a solid slow push. Thus I engaged with lings running in from the front and blings rolling in from the side

And I had infestors popping too, so with some fungal to clear out the remaining marines, i was easily able to clear his army.

Amidst all this, I had taken my 3rd, and had a solid drone lead.
At this stage of the game, the gameplan is simple - Infestor harass till tier 3 comes out. (or use infestors/ling/blings for defence if he pushes)

Also, blocking his 3rd with a burrowed zergling is always good :)

Fungals + IT = win:D
I also took my 4th base during this

He wisely went for Ghosts.. which taught me an important lesson later. Not sure what triggered him to push but he decided to push at about 19:11, when I just started 5 ultralisks :)

And I was moving 2 infestors over to do more harass at the same time when I spotted his army moving out, so I moved them slightly out of range of marines, then unburrowed and fungaled :D

I slightly mistimed the fungals though, and didn't kill his marines :S (2 fungals typically can kill off marines, but you need to stagger about 2-3 seconds) 

Anyway, he was rather near and tanks were unsieged and he was still abit jittery from the sudden fungal, so I decided to engage him now.

Lings flooding in first followed by blings. Notice how low his units are ? Gonna be easy to pick apart!

And the next thing made me go mad:

Yes, that blue puff is an EMP going off. !@#$%!^#&

That's like 7-8 infestors with FULL energy! ARGH

NOTE TO SELF - Try to split infestors up next time? Maybe move them in different control groups or from different directions.

Anyway my lings/blings killed most of his army, and my slower roaches followed up behind and cleared up the remaining tanks /ghost.

And erm, immediately after this I was rallying my 5 ultras + mass lings forward to make another push, while moving 4 infestors to his 3rd to harass, while tech switching to broodlords... but he actually ragequitted when he saw my ultras LOL.

I would have won anyway, had so much resources banked up and was about to get a 5th, while he was mining off just 2 bases (main mined out, expo oversaturated so he would have mined out really fast too)

[/spoiler]

I lost quite a few early pool ZvZs too.. wtf. I couldn't hold a 7 pool and a 10 pool. Those games were really short so there's nothing much to say. I know one game I missed a spine crawler going up in my base so it's my bad, but the 7 pool... probably bad decision making in microing my drones? Think I haven't faced them in awhile so my split-second decision making isn't quite solid, need to practise them abit.
Any BSG player wanna 6 pool me all day? lolol.

3) vs Jason (Zerg) on XNC
[spoiler]

As it's harder to defend 15 hatch on this map, I decided to go for a 14gas/14 pool opening, and I scouted my opponent going for a 10 pool too! Whew.

I spotted the 6 lings coming out, but after some time the lings had not entered my base to poke around so I thought something was wrong.. and indeed..

BANELING RUSH!

I only spotted them when they started walking up my ramp so I quickly sent 2 lings at a time towards them hoping to catch a few.. but he wisely had them on move command and was going for my drones!!

Decent drone split, yes? You see one on the far top, 3 on gas (keeping as many on gas while doing this is best, since 1drone is always safe). 3 on left minerals, 3 on right minerals, 1 on right.

He killed 7 drones, which IS cost-efficient for him (just barely) but I guess it could have been worse for me.

I rushed roaches the moment I spotted the banelings btw, (since if i won't be able to outmass him on ling/bling), and he tried to sneak in a few more blings but I spotted them:

No blowing up my drones!

He didn't manage to kill any drones despite 2 banelings getting into my mineral line.. just that they were all in the red. By that time I had like 6 roaches out so I was safe from any more banelings.

From then on, I had a clear gameplan - tech to lair and get upgrades quicker than him, and more roaches.
He expanded before me, but we were fairly even!
Ok up till about 14 mins + when he had more drones than me.. I need to work on understanding the window to drone in ZvZs.. Because every time i DO drone hard, I get pushed by a all-units rusher and lose. So i get scared. sigh.

But anyway, I had the upgrade advantage, and I made a timing push when I had +2 attack +1 carapace.. and I have NO IDEA WHY I LOST THIS FIGHT.

Ok fine it may have been the fact that he had a better concave, but my roaches WERE indeed shooting most of the time despite being at the back! Is the +1 attack/+1armor advantage I had over him (he only had +1 attack) so insignificant that even concave > that?
(We had equal roaches)

So yea after more or less losing this fight and his own roaches streaming out, I had to pull out.

He expanded to a 3rd, and with his better drone count lead (i did catch up ) earlier, he was able to make more roaches and hit my 3rd before it could go up and forced the cancel.

And another engagement occurred:

OK TEST YOURSELF NOW.  Without actually counting, who would you think would win this fight? Oh, red roaches have 2/2 upgrades, blue have 1/1. And no blue roaches do NOT use burrow at all.

I'm pretty sure our concaves were equal, and upon watching the replay, I realized he had 6 more roaches than me -_- How do you make such a gut decision whether to engage or not just by looking? By my own evaluation, I had thought it was roughly equal, PLUS I had my upgrade advantage and I had overseer too for burrow.

So anyway, he got his 3rd base saturated and with a strong economy lead, he powered ahead in roach count and made a final push to kill me off. I did try to rush infestors after that to try to stall for time but he hit just before my infestors popped - his 40 food lead didn't help me much either :(

GG
[/spoiler]

4) vs edw (Zerg) on Metalopolis
Yes yes, another ZvZ I'm sorry Battle.net pairs me up with so many zergs it's not my fault. It's not like I'm omitting Terran games! I like ZvT! I'm like 66% in them haha. Compared to ZvZ which I'm like 50%.

It was close air spawn, and I had originally wanted to go for 10 pool banelings but these spawn positions means his OL will scout me easily so I couldn't do it.
We both ended up opening 15 hatch, and after the hatchery we went slightly different paths:

I went for a 6 RR, while he droned up, which was a mistake (his mistake)

The thing about a fast expand is that you ALWAYS should make units after in a ZvZ. This is because you have no idea whether your opponent is making units as well, and if he's not, you can always hit his base quickly and do some damage.
Even if you don't do damage, let's say you pumped a wave of 12 speedlings or something, you will have map control and keep him feeling contained and guessing as to whether you are droning or not.

His drones had to evacuate as I hit his expo

At this point, he was actually TEN drones ahead wow. Even after losing those few drones while evacuating.

Anyway I had to press the issue, so I tried to do some damage

Surrounded one queen

And basically rallied a few more roach/lings over... but the thing is during this time his own Roach Warren came up, and out of nowhere popped 12 roaches! Wtf!

So he cleaned out my army easily , but I managed to even out the drone count in my early push, and I went ahead in drones for a while.

Now came the 'MUST DRONE' period.

I noticed this critical period in many ZvZs which I have lost. Basically this 'MUST DRONE' period is the period after the early aggression is over, and both players sit back abit to drone. I notice a good Zerg knows exactly how long he can drone for in this period (during which if you pump units it's pointless because by the time you reach your opponent's base, he will be able to get enough defence out), and whether to add Spines or not.

Both of us droned for awhile, but he continued droning longer than me. So we ended this 'MUST DRONE' period with him having TEN more drones than me! ugh.
This was when Lair is done, and you start pumping your upgrades and pumping more units and maybe getting a 3rd. Which was what we both did, but he actually rushed Infestors+upgrades too, while I stayed on roaches.

And with his early drone lead, he was able to macro up a bigger army faster. And he hit when his +2 was done,

Hmm. While I had the better concave, and I also had +1 armor lead on him, he had INFESTORS. 

And also I had pretty  much fail burrowed roaches micro.. which wouldn't have done anything anyway since Infestors can fungal to negate burrow. And with his better economy he had more banked up resources so he kept rallying roaches!

And I think it was his infestors that pretty much won this clash for him. Damn fungals!

He kept rallying roaches, and it was GG. :(

I think this game I learnt the important lesson - have to drone hard during the 'MUST DRONE' phase. I just find it so.. unsettling. Like you have no idea whether your opponent is getting units or not (A good Zerg will hide his units) and so it's a guessing game.
Is it ALWAYS better to drone hard in this 'must drone' phase?

5) vs fur (Terran) on Slag Pits
So I open with my 13 hatch/15 pool spanishiwa build (Is it odd that I used the possessive pronoun 'my' before this?) while fur went for a 2 rax bunker rush standard Terran play.

With the initial 6 drones that I transfered to my expo I managed to defend it quite easily. 

Once I pushed it off, I plopped down a spinecrawler (for any follow up marine pushes) and droned up heavily. Seriously that one Spine investment gives you alot of psychological comfort lol.

He went for an expansion off that, and followed up with 2 Factories! It wasn't straight mech play as I thought though, as he researched siege tech and made Hellions first.

His hellions spotted me trying to get a 3rd!

In response, I threw down a Roach Warren. Roaches are pretty strong against Marines too! (assuming you're not outnumbered badly)
Because of the low DPS of Hellions on buildings, he didn't manage to take it down before my Roaches pushed him away. Did manage to snipe 2 of them too!

In the meantime, I was teching to infestors while he constantly made Marines, and eventually began a slowpush near my base.. oh no.

I had one thing going for me though - My creep spread was fairly decent, and he hadn't been saving scans for this push, so he can't clear my creep and slowpush from a more aggressive position. 

When a Terran begins to slowpush you, you either need to break it before he establishes a foothold, or be getting some really awesome tech, or have a macro advantage. If you are even and he contains you and leapfrogs forward, you're pretty much screwed.

Good unit spread

At this point, I was sitting on 3 base with my 4th base getting up, and teching to Neural Parasite (NP), so my gameplan was to stall for time until i get NP and try to break the contain by mindcontrolling his tanks.

Can you spot the Infestors? heh
Part of my plan to stall for time was to do some mineral line harass with the Infestors!

Indeed, while he was inching forward, my infestors took out 15 SCVs! He couldn't advance forward and had to pull some marines back to deal with the infestors.
Once NP was done, I decided to move in and try to break the contain.

This was actually the 2nd layer! The first layer was like 4-5 tanks with some infantry, which I actually killed with just roach/banes, by the time my slow Infestors reached the tanks were all dead so nothing to NP.

I had to pull back after this though because he had tanks/marines streaming in and the bunker was too much.

I made 2 more bad attempts to break it (sending it too little) and lost some units, while he went for a drop on my 4th/3rd which didn't really have anything =X Also, I put up some spines at my 3rd when I saw his dropship flying there, so it wasn't that badly hit.

He tries a small drop into my main mineral line , and badly messes up his control:

Fungal + Roaches easily clears the mineral line marines

And he must have misclicked his marines here as all his marines began walking into my base.. and my Roaches gladly clean them up

Another huge mistake he made here was not expanding, and so his main began running low and I began to surge ahead in food count. I made another attempt to break the siege

But failed! Too many tanks, too little lings!

As you can see my macro is failing and I have 3k minerals banked up. I was larva blocked, I need to remember to throw down proxy hatches!

I massed up another huge force, and with my 7 new infestors popping, I decided to try again. He only decides to expand now btw, when it's about 22:00 in the game.

With a bigger army AND Neural parasite, I easily smashed whatever remnant siege he had from his 2 base army.

After this I just rallied my roaches/infestors/ilng/blings to his base and cleared it out, and he GGed soon after.

It felt more fulfilling playing it than watching the replay, as I didn't know he was actually that far behind from the macro, and in game, fighting a slow push is always very frustrating as it seems just SO strong.
If he had better macro and could constantly rally troops to bolster the siege line, the results may have came out different.