Road to Masters (7)

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[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]

[spoiler= click to read the usual game recaps :) ]

Game 1 - vs onsHirako (Zerg) on Metalopolis

I had actually just met this guy on ladder the game before this, which I won with speedlings/banelings and he just went for a macro hatch speedling build.

For this map, it is possible to 15 hatch safely because the ramp and expo are closeby, unlike previous game on Tal'darim. So I wanted to get a 15 hatch, but

His Drone JUST manages to block it!

Ugh, how annoying. I threw down my pool/gas first then, and just got a hatchery after those two. He was also going for a 15 hatch, straight into Roaches.

Since I had my pool/gas up early, I decide to pump out a round of speedlings to pressure him and and see how to follow up.

I saw he had 8 lings on his ramp, which indicated some ling heavy or bling build, so I immediately put down a Baneling Nest

Lucky for me, I darted back in again to check out what he was doing and:

Oh crap, he has Roaches

I immediately CANCELLED my Baneling Nest and made a Roach Warren in response.

Now I had a bunch of about 16 speedlings from earlier, and if he pushed out and attacked I may have been in trouble due to his higher Roach count, thus I kept him pressured by doing ling runbys

Darting in to snipe a Drone

When my Roach Warren was in production, I spent the whole time Droning up, while he was making units and queens and stuff. Thus, I began this next phase 5 drones ahead! This would prove to be the key factor of the game.

My gameplan from here on was very clear - I'm going to flash my speedlings around his entrance to show him that I am waiting for him to move out and I'll counterattack him, so as to contain him.

At the same time, I was hoping this would pressure him into putting down more spines.
All this while, I was pumping roaches non-stop from both hatcheries with the occasional drone, maintaining my 5 drone lead all the way.

Dancing my lings around also served another key purpose - it prevents him from hiding his Roach count! I would just run into his expo to kill drones if he didn't keep enough Roaches there, so he rallied all his Roaches down his ramp to block it and defend his expo.

Because I had the 5 Drone lead, I could produce more Roaches than him. Then at one point, I noticed his Roach count was actually much lower than mine, and I figured he was Droning.

Good call! He actually made a wave of NINE drones! And teching for +1 too!

Anyway, I knew I should push at that point, since I had a bigger roach count, before his macro advantage kicked in and he could outproduce me. So I moved out quickly, and I was right - I had 17 roaches to his 10 roaches.

1 Spine won't save him

I crushed his defences, and kept rallying roach/lings to deal with his popping roaches. He pulled his Drones but it just wasn't enough. GG.

POST EDIT: I actually met this guy in GPD Tournament and LOST to him when he used the same macro Hatch mass lings >< Made a bad decision with my banelings/speedlings at the start, which cost me the game. sigh.


Game 2 - vs munky (Terran) on Slag Pits

I scouted the wrong direction and reached his base last. (I need to get a hang of marine timings - I think I actually had time to fly my OL in to scout the barracks , gas, and fly out instead of using drone)

Anyway, I spotted a Maka Rax (barracks/depot on low ground) and ...

I SNIPED the SCV!! Hoho look at the construction time.. rofl 99%

Oh my opening build was a modified FE, after a 14 gas (which I didn't start mining until my pool was down). This was because he was actually Random, so I had no idea what race he was, and 14 gas/pool is probably the safest choice, but I managed to scout that he's Terran before I put down the pool so I decided to just get a hatch.

He actually sent more SCVs than usual (4-5) with a decent pack of marines, so I pulled more drones and with my queen out I managed to fend this off JUST barely, thanks to my spinecrawler that went up. (The bunker did finish)

I decided to go for an eco baneling bust because I'm lazy to play long drawn out games, and my mentality is that you should always aim to play shorts games on ladder anyway since you are aiming to complete as many games as possible.

Unfortunately, he had pretty decent Simcity, so I couldn't do much

And on hindsight, I should have just dodged this first bunker and ran around it towards the expo and take out the bunker there. But then again he can just Lift off and flee his SCVs towards the other bunker... but may have done more damage I guess.

At this point I droned up heavily and got a 3rd, while my sac OL spotted his Starport-TechLab... meaning banshees!
I did the necessary defences - extra queen, some spores at my main and expo, and quickly got a Spire down.
However, he also had a reactor-Starport hidden and his initial Vikings took out some of my Overlords!

His Banshees took out my 3rd! 

This map is annoying as your 3rd is too far away from your expo to be able to defend it with Queens and such.
Anyway, I popped out 10 mutas when my Spire was done but he got Turrets up in time so I couldn't do much harass. I don't really like Mutas! I normally go Infestors but this game I went mutas because of the Banshees.
Anyway, I dropped down an Infestation Pit once I saw that my harass couldn't do much, and I saw his Armory too so that means THORS. I don't like magicboxing, I find Neural Parasite (NP) MUCH easier.

All this while I've been droning like a boss because he has shown no aggression, and was THIRTY drones above him. Wow. How did the game turn out like what it did later on...

He finally makes a push at the 20 minute mark, with a pretty scary army.

Banshees with Vikings, a few Hellions, Tanks, 4 Thors, and infantry. wtf 

Neural Parasite wasn't done though as you can see, so I tried to stall him and landed a solid Fungal right on top of his marines - This actually deterred him from pushing and he backed out.. :S

At this point I was maxxed out and teching to Hive, but I decided to do some infestor harass before engaging him

Well-placed Turret/bunker denies the harass at his expo , but I managed to kill 12 SCVs at his 3rd ! Woot

Wow this is ridiculous. 85-37 harvestors now!
I wanted to engage him asap but he sent blue flame hellions to harass my 4th so I had to deal with that.
Once I cleaned that up, I made a push to his 3rd and this made him come to engage me.

A horrible horrible engagement for so many reasons.

Firstly, my slow infestors (gosh I hate the nerf) were lagging behind and 2 full energy ones got sniped by his army that was coming in.
Second, my roaches formed a line quickly during the engagement and basically blocked my Banelings entirely for quite a while.
Third, I only managed to land one NP thats to my awesome roach wall -_-
My army was obliterated.

But I was back at max almost instantly by pumping 9 Ultras, infestors, corruptors, mutas, lings.. I was just spamming everything lol. I had banked up quite a bit by maxxing out earlier so ... yup.
He continued his push, and sieged up and threatened to kill me before my ultras could pop!!

I had literally nothing besides what you see here - his army killed my roach/ling that was replenished and sniped some Infestors rallying from the 3rd/4th. FFFFF

Wait a minute. Do I hear a RAWRRRWARAWRRARR?

Ultras to the rescue!

That was after ploughing through like 7 tanks on top, and they came down to clear this main army, and together with my constant stream of speedlings popping out, I only BARELY managed to clear this up.

I decided to launch a counterattack on his 3rd at this point.. Ok I need to memorize this - it takes 19 banelings to blow up a PF - less if you have attack upgrades.

I sent only like 13-14, and the PF killed some too with its imba attack, so the baneling bomb didn't do what I expected

Lucky for me, I had ultras and roaches and lings streaming in to clear it up, and I took down the PF along with all the SCVs.

However, he had a pretty decent sized army and pushed towards my expo/main

With my poor unit control (didn't get a good surround with ultras), he actually managed to plough through all my ultras with his Thors/tanks, and suddenly it looked like I would lose

I continually rallied ultras and roaches and lings over though, and thanks to my superior macro, I managed to produce just enough to clean it up yet again

Ultras savoring the bloodbath

And soon after, I grabbed the gold, all this while preventing him from getting a 3rd, and I remassed up an army and went in for the kill when I hit 200/200 again

With ultras, and NP on Thors, there's nothing much he can do. He graciously GGs and leaves

This game would have easily been a thrashing by him if he had decent macro - there were periods of time he was floating SO much minerals/gas! Lucky for me, he didn't macro well this game, and I was pretty much on top of my drone production and expanding, so that won me the game.

Need to work on my unit positioning to not throw away units like that.. ugh. Oh, he was a Diamond 1200ish player. Guess Terran isn't his best race.

Game 3 - vs Xzer (Terran) on Typhon Peaks

I used to not like this map just because of my initial feeling about it, but it's actually a pretty decent map. The 3rd is near enough, the bases are not too far apart for any baneling busts, no abusable cliffs, all in all a balanced map IMO.

One thing I've started doing is to always set a Drone to follow the scouting SCV. This serves a simple purpose - to deny that bunker.

He still puts up a Bunker for some reason, and my Drone picks off his SCV obviously, and he loses 125 minerals

My opening is standard 14hatch/14pool (I don't know why but I'm always hesitant to go 15 hatch even though it should be fairly safe) while he goes for a Command Centre off a Barracks and Factory.
It was walled off, so I was wary of an all-in from him and put down a precautionary spine as well as a Baneling nest, before getting speed and lair.

My scouting OL saw his CC building in his base though, and so I proceeded with another round of Drones before pumping a round of speedlings.

He tries to poke in with blue flame Hellions, but well-placed Spines force him one direction which my speedlings cut off. I only managed to kill one hellion though, but he does back off.

I swear watching Glade stream and play has taught me how to defend Hellion harasses properly - from the well-placed Spines to the Queen ramp block, etc, because he seems to ALWAYS face it (especially in that series vs cArn in the ESL which you can read about [URL="http://www.sc2sea.com/blogs/showentry.php?e=44"]here[/URL])

After pushing that off, I decided to try something that Glade always does against Terran - the Roach /Baneling bust. 

The wonderful thing about this is that it is MUCH stronger than a ling/bling bust due to Roaches tanking damage, and Roaches do fairly well against marines too. Also, with a blue flame Hellion opening, ling/bling probably won't work as well.

How it's done is you saturate both of your bases quickly with Drones, then you just mass Roach/Ling from there. Once your baneling nest is done you can just morph everything into Banelings. Yes, everything. Then you push out when you think you have a sizeable force (up to you to gauge, but DON'T wait too long!), and you can either grab your 3rd or keep rallying lings/roaches in if you're succeeding.

The aim is not necessarily to end the game, but to do severe economic damage and clear his expo.

This game my attack was triggered when his scouting hellions caught sight of my roach/bane at the watchtower, so I had to move in straight away. Lucky for me, he was also moving out with a marine/tank force, so I quickly swarmed in.

Luckily for me he had virtually no marine micro so banelings easily wiped out the marines and my roaches cleared the tanks.

I moved in to his expo but saw that he had a well sieged Tank so I backed out and waited for my wave of lings to reinforce, THEN I moved in.

Ling surround on tanks and go to work on SCVs, while Roaches cut off Marines coming down the ramp!

I killed a bunch of SCVs, and forced the liftoff of the CC, but he still had his wall-in with a tank so I couldn't go up the ramp without banelings.

 I decided to fake a retreat, and morphed banelings out of sight, and moved in again with Roach/Bane.

He must have thought I was really backing out, as he unsieged his Tank to prepare to move down below... and my Banelings roll in and smash the depot.

He pulled a ton of SCVs and survived this roach attack

By now I was waay ahead - I can either sit back and macro up and crush him with a massive army... or just crush him right now. Which I decide to, and rallied another Roach/Bane ball.

Caught him trying to set up defences again, and this time he GGs out

[/spoiler]

[spoiler= So what's next?]That's a