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As many of you know, I commentate a decent amount of Starcraft 2 content and have been for half a year now. Although I have seen great success so far, I have noticed my ability to commentate early game is not the greatest - for the most part due to a lack of play myself.

For a long time I have had ladder anxiety and little time to invest into a long term goal of developing my 1v1 level. I have always wanted to spend time on 1v1 for three main reasons.

1) To enjoy the game more
2) To get the monkey off my back about being a gold caster "who must know nothing of the game"
3) So I can contribute more effectively to the first 10 minutes of a game and improve my commentary.

One month ago I spoke with the people I needed to and have for the most part cleared my schedule between January 1st and February 20th (my 22nd birthday). It is my goal to be Masters NA by my 22nd birthday - and although I might not make it, the progress I make towards it will no doubt be of benefit.

This was a great start to the campaign. Spending the week leading into 2013 dusting off the cobwebs playing 1v1s really made a difference. I felt relatively confident in my play from the start and had my first game of 2013 against VBWhiplashJC! He won because Protoss is a nice race (more so because as I soon found out my direct engagements against Protoss are not the best).

This was the first fight (my EMPs were blanket vs focused on HT which I need to start doing) and although the fight went relatively well my lack of macro punished me later.

Watch on TwitchTV http://www.twitch.tv/baldie24/c/1811028

After losing to VBWhiplashJC I played 3 more games before dinner and tied things up at 2W 2L.

After dinner we returned for a longer session. Having noted I had not really set my sights on any given build I did some research and decided for TvZ I was going to learn mech and for TvP I was going to do the Bomber 1 gas expand into 3 rax.

Naturally given I had never played mech in my life I was terrible at it and lost 4 straight games to zerg due to not having any clue how to play/macro the style. Although this hurt the win/loss ratio I was willing to push through the urge to go back to bio where I knew I could win.

The highlight of the night and the week was my nuke landing in this TvP. I had already lost due to a bad composition and a lack of macro but landing the nuke was so satisfying!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bonMZIO6-SE

Chadmann was in chat as he often is and wanted to have a few games so I practiced mech a few more times with Ruined and tgun watching (nervous!) and felt more and more comfortable with mech play.

At the completion of the I had 5W 8L for a total of 37 points gained (bonus pool exhausted) for a total point score of 553.

I decided that I would continue with mech in Zerg and with bomber style in Protoss but I had no TvT build. After speaking with Spook I landed with a 1 rax fe into 3 rax then whatever. I am yet to try a tech based opening (something I will like to look into when I feel comfortable with FE builds).

My first game of the night was against a Zerg called Chesthair. Being my first game of the night I was a little shaky mixed with still learning mech but I managed to pull through with a win! My night was ruined every time when I played Protoss. I continue to die to storms (either my Ghosts are too late - which happened this night, or my EMPs don't connect). I think I lost every game against Protoss!

Alas Zerg was going strong as it seems lower tiered players struggle to deal with mech now that I am using my hellions offensively now. An example of this is the final game before placement match where I kept a zerg on 2 base for 16 minutes and 3 base for the entire game on Ohana.

After the game against my zerg opponent I was going to play one more game to try hit rank 2 Gold before bed - when to my surprise I saw the placement match there. Excited I decided to play and unfortunately hit a Protoss.

This time I lost to a 4 gate. My 2nd bunker was just too late and my SCVs didn't get to my bunker in time. He even offensive gg'd me which frustrated me a bit but it didn't matter because at the completion of that game I was Platinum and he was still Gold