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Road to Masters!!



Exams are over and so I'm making a push to Masters (I'm in Diamond at about 60% win rate) and I thought it'd be fun to document the process. If you're bored or something you can just have a read through for fun, and see(read?) some of my thoughts on ZvX matchups.

This series of blog entries will follow my journey from May 9th 2011 until I hit Masters or until I die from playing lol. I will give the summaries and my thoughts on the games

1) vs FrOstar (Terran) on Backwater Gulch
Some bad-mannered Masters dude who started off with 'hey noob' and 'ready to get smashed?'
Just mind games so I just shrug it off with self-deprecating comments like 'sure smash me hard' or something.

I opened with Spanishiwa's 13 hatch 15 pool as usual, and held off his bunker harass easily with only about 1-2 drone casualties


SCV on bunker blows up, drones going for marines


He then poked at me with a pack of marines + hellions but my 3 queens + spines held it off fairly well.

Then came the surprise - He did a Thor drop in my main - which did pretty much shit loads of damage killing more than 10+ drones and a few queens..


Thor dominates my mineral line

NOTE TO SELF - Queens fail against thors. wtf it took out a queen in like 6 hits or less.
ANOTHER NOTE TO SELF - To handle Thor drops, just put a freaking spine crawler and maybe a spore in mineral line.

After this harass it was pretty much over. He was so far ahead in harvestors and army. When his siege tech was done, he moved out with 2 Thors, some tanks and a bunch of marines and began his slow push.


Terran slow push is probably the most stupid and imba thing in the game

Left the game after he constantly reinforced with more mech and marines.


2) vs Hilakpopcorn (Masters Zerg) on XNC
I opened my standard 15 hatch 15 pool while he went for a 14 gas 14 pool.
He pressured quickly with slings while I rushed roaches after my initial 4 lings.I saw that he had many lings so I got a Baneling nest as well

Then came my stupid move of the game that cost me the game - I decided to push out with all my roach/banelings, and when I saw his lings runnign to my base, I didn't bother to run back and decided to baserace.

Two reasons why this won't work - 1) I had not enough banelings on defence, and didn't put a spine in my mineral line (If i had these 2 instant win for me)
2) He actually had quite a bit of resources banked up and had just got a roach warren.

So yea basically I killed all his drones and he killed all my drones and our armies ended up with me having nothing and he had 5 roaches + a whole bunch of lings. I had to gg out.


I had 1 baneling left! Wonder if I would still win... -_-

Had this game so easily... sigh threw it away.

3) vs Hilakpopcorn on XNC
yes same dude again. I kinda like how the matchmaking system sometimes does this.. It makes it like a Bo3 or something haha.
Exact same builds from both of us.
Once again, my roaches popped before he could do much damage with his sling/bling initial poke

Got too anxious to end the game again and engaged at a bad spot, losing all my roaches


Don't get cornered

Then I made another stupid mistake - I proceeded to drone up about 6-7 drones while he kept pumping roaches.
NOTE TO SELF - Put down 2 spine crawlers to defend against a push if you want to drone up

Because I DIDN'T, he hit me quickly and simply had more roaches than me. gg.

4) vs Tobzino (Terran) on XNC
As always, opened with Spanisihiwa build, and he went for a 2rax opener.I don't get why people still go 2 rax into 3 rax expand, 1 rax with bunker harass into mech harass works so much better.
(Yes I know Jinro recently won a game in GSL with it w few SCVs)

So his initial poke failed, and he got a CC during the time. My sacrificial Overlord revealed his 3 rax, so I quickly put up a baneling nest and got a bunch of lings.

He decided to do a timing push when his stim + combat shields was done, but marine/marauder is really laughable nowadays, all you have to do is wait for them to come on creep and do the simple ling-surround-baneling-rape trick that all decent Zergs should know:



Step 1 - Command Banelings to move in first, then slings (because slings move faster)


Step 2 - Run AROUND the infantry ball, don't even bother attacking with slings yet. Blings should be on move command towards infantry


Step 3 - Once you got a good surround like this, you can Attack command your slings, as well as move your blings in.


Step 4: BOOM


So I cleaned out his entire army with plenty leftover, so I just counterattacked hard with mass slings/blings and eventually won the game. gg


5) vs BossDaddy (Terran) on Shattered Temple
It was close spawn, and I saw he didn't use his barracks to wall off. I stupidly thought I could roach bust this easily and went for a roach rush (without expand).
I should've gone sling/bling, I think would have been instant win.

Anyway, he pushed with 3 scvs and some marines and realized there was no expo so backed off abit. Then i stupidly left some roaches at my ramp so he ran up and saw it, then immediately walled off his ramp with supply depot +bunker.

No way I could get in now.

Retreating roaches

I did what I had to do - pump drones and expand quickly, get some spines for defence. I would have held pretty decently had he not gone this unexpected route:


WTF 3 PORT BANSHEE
Talk about a good tech switch.

So yea this caught me totally offguard and despite my valiant efforts at queen micro and frantic spore crawler throwing down... I couldn't hold off the banshees. gg


6) vs Narsue (Protoss) on Metalopolis
This guy is actually my online friend so we exchanged some greetings. He knew I always did Spanishiwa build, and it was close spawn, so he opened with 2 rax to try to do some pressure. I held it off fairly easily with lings and a spine.

I quickly put up a few more spines and his 4 gate followup from that.. well he didn't even try he just backed off after seeing my spines defence. (my sac OL spotted his 4gate)


When you see so many spines, you should back out.

He expanded after that, and I was going for baneling bombs (OL speed + drop) .
Once I had a sizeable ling/bling army, i engaged him while doing simultaneous bling drops on his mineral lines. This move is SO devastating, just that you must have the right follow up.
For me I always expand before pushing, and transit quickly into roach hydra. This close spawn made expanding to a 3rd more difficult :S


Dropping bling bombs on him while he spams FF to try to trap my blings

Then I also kinda messed up the engagement, with my ground forces moving in ahead of my bling bombs
This is VERY bad because the idea is that blings will rape the sentries and weaken the units, and lings will finish them up. Doing it the other way round just doesn't work.

My mineral line bomb did SO much damage - I was ahead by 10++ harvestors. He counterattacked but my roaches were out already and with my spines and queens I could hold it off.

He came again when he had 3-4 colussus, and toss being toss, with well placed FFs he won that fight even though I had a bigger army of roach/hydra.


Zapped to oblivion
(about 2-3 seconds after this screenshot I had nothing left lol)

He spotted my 3rd and instead of kiling me he pulled back to kill it off at the same time grabbing his 3rd. I used an OL to drop some drones off at the base next to mine instead to hide an expansion there.

He made another push when Thermal Lance was done, and I'm really not quite sure how I held it


Basically roach+ queens spamming transfuse, and bling bombs dropped on top of his army

THEN the deciding moment of the game - I actually cleared his army with plenty of roaches left over. BUT. I . DIDN'T. PUSH.

If I had pushed there and then, I would have won the game. He had virtually no army. Of course in-game, I didn't know this (should've read it though, Why would he have much army elsewhere) and after holding off his attack I was more concerned with establishing my hidden 3rd properly and getting a 4th so I didn't push.

With his earlier 3rd, he macroed up an army quickly. Then he made another final push with a tech switch to mass immortals and killed my roach/corruptor army easily and won

BAD DECISION NOT TO PUSH THEN UGH. Threw the game away yet again sigh.
I don't mind losing to a more skilled player who outplayed me, but losing because I failed to seize the opportunity to win like this just makes me SAD.

Took a break after this depressing game for lunch, then went on to ladder more.


7) vs Supertofu (Zerg) on Backwater Gulch
Both of us went 15 hatch 15 pool, and when I scouted it I decided to put on some ling pressure.
Once I scouted that he was making lings (seeing 8 or more) I immediately threw down a baneling nest.
(if you see very little lings, he's probably going roach warren. Scout his base with lings to be sure)

In fact, he WAS going roaches, but I had already committed with alot of lings. So i quickly made the push with speedlings. He was caught offguard - in fact, he was supply blocked hence he couldnt get his wave of roaches out in time.


Swarmed

I killled a shit ton of drones before he made enough lings to counter my lings (yea dunno why he didn't pump out a round of roaches)
But yea with his lowered worker count, I just kept streaming slings in, and with blings i easily handled his own slings. GG pretty soon after.


8) vs Supertofu (Zerg) on XNC
Yes, again. I love these repeat games. Seeing that he went 15 hatch the previous game, I took a gamble and went for the build order win against 15 hatch - the 10 pool.
There is really no way to hold it off assuming the aggressor knows what he's doing.
yea so basically rush zerglings to his base and put down 2 spine crawlers spread out. He can pull drones but your zerglings can just poke at them and kite them. Your spines will finish before he manages to get his own out, and your lings should have already raped his drones.

Easily won in about 5 minutes.


9) vs Terran (Terran) on XNC
Rofl right at the start of the game I started trash talking him about his nick haha.
me: "Hey that's an original nick"
"Who would've thought of that!"
"I should probably leave now since clearly you dominate me in creativity"
"I mean .. wow"
"The name is genius!"

hahaha.

So anyway, I spotted a gas opener from him and stole his other gas, and i opened with my spanishiwa style which I think he scouted.
He gets a hellion or two with some marines and a medivac or two and I thought he was trying to drop into my main, so I brought my 3 queens over and pumped out a wave of lings to deal with it.


No coming in noobiesss

Little did I know.. he was actually... going for..

.
.
.




.
.

BATTLECRUISER RUSH WTF!?

Lucky for me, I had like 4 queens out already so with transfuse I was able to hold off the BC

But he knew with my build I didn't really have map control, so he actually double expanded at his natural and the gold >< Ouch. Before i even got my own 3rd (not at the gold)

I was going for my usual mix - sling/bling/infestors against his marine + tanks + some hellions + 1 BC -_-

Because he got the gold so early, he was exploding with minerals and couldn't spend them. He threw down his 3rd-6th rax too late and was stuck with alot of minerals.

I couldn't do any infestor harass on his mineral line because he had turrets up with tanks nearby :S So I just massed up an army as quickly as I could, at the same time grabbing my gold (4th base) asap too.
When I was close to max supply I tried to trade armies with him in a pincer attack which failed horribly because he moved down to the right side of the centre gap in XNC and my timing was off.


One group attacking into buildings -_-


Another group with 0 micro :S FULL ENERGY INFESTORS. zomg. If I had just fungaled and Neural Parasite the 2 Thors I wouldve had this clash easily (Yes i had NP researched)
But I basically just moved my infestors in and let him kill it because I was trying to micro the left side army


He made a quick counterattack but my macro was on top of it - i had infestors and lings ready to handle his army. This time, I remembered to use Neural ;p


Neural Parasite ftw.

After this clash, my hive was done so I got an ultra cavern and got ultras out with some infestors + lings.
With ultras, you can just auto-attack into the terran army haha. Well, infestors to fungal growth the infantry is important too.


Swarrrmmmmm

It didn't kill him though, because he had alot of marines and tanks and thors streaming out. And yes that 1 BC is still alive. At this point I went for a tech switch to broodlords, while taking my 5th base, and using lings to deny/delay his 4th base


I love how scary Broodlords look. RAWRR

He had just got only 2 vikings out, and my ground army with my broodlord's help managed to exchange off with his army.


Carnage!

After this clash, he actually prematurely GGed and left the game.

He still had quite abit of marines, and a BC + 2 vikings to deal with my leftover 5 Broodlords. However, I did have 6 corruptors coming out , along with my 2 idle corruptors and 2 ultralisks at the watchtower, so I suppose I would still have won eventually.

Good, long, game!


10) vs Dellward (Zerg) on Shattered Temple
I opened 15 hatch to his 15 gas 14 pool, it was close position.
He actually went roach warren immediately after his pool (my drone was there scouting it), and teched to lair after getting just 3 roaches while I had pumped out 7. I tried to pressure abit but he saw me coming and got out some roaches. I spotted his lair and was worried about mutas so I threw down an evo chamber and got a few spores.

It was unwarranted though, because he was merely getting burrow + roach speed.
I hate how you can never properly scout a decent zerg in these situations until you have overseer! Just have to guess their tech. :S

Because he was on one base this whole time, naturally my econ was stronger and I pumped out roaches quickly. He tried to do some Contaminate shenanigans though, luckily for me I still managed to pump out enough roaches to deal with his roach push


rawr

He kept up the roach pressure for a while, but because I was on 2 base (and 10 drones ahead), I could easily crank out more roaches than him. So I made a follow up counterattack when he pulled back when he realized he had fewer roaches. I just kept streaming roaches in.


Contaminated him as well. As you can see on the Production tab, my +1 was done too. He didn't have any upgrades.
Kept streamign roaches, and he eventually GG out.


11) vs Air (Zerg) on XNC
I open 15 hatch as usual. He also tried to, but I got a minivictory here by blocking his expo with my drone

Drone wars!

This just resulted in him putting a pool down first, then a hatchery immediately after, not much difference.

Again, I decided to go for ling pressure and pumped lings, and seeing he had quite a few lings of his own, I put down a Baneling nest.
Unknown to me, after his first 10 or so lings, he got out a roach warren. And he wasn't bad enough to get supply blocked like the previous zerg i faced, so he pumped his wave of 6 roaches out quickly.

At this point, I made a TERRIBLE engagement.


This was our units at our engagement

His roaches were popping out as my lings engaged his lings head on WITHOUT my banelings (they were slowly running over..) BIG mistake. This probably cost me the game.
If I had just waited on the blings, and the 4 blings killed his 12 lings, 25 lings will easily take out 4 roaches.

Sigh, potentially game winning clash. Anyway, he won that fight because of his roaches that came out, by the time my blings came there was not many lings left to blow up on so they blew up on roaches/lings.

I threw up a RoachWarren in response but it was too late. He rushed with roaches and lings and I ranby to clear his drones. It was not enough though, as his roaches cleaned up my base and his mass of lings killed everything.
lost

12) vs papasoftee (Zerg) on Shattered Temple
I don't know how he guessed it, but he opened 10 pool against my 15 hatch. As mentioned earlier, it's a build order loss, even though I cancelled my hatch and managed to defend his early push. He expanded himself and contained me with lings, and eventually won with more army.

13) vs BIGGUN (Zerg) on Typhon Peaks
I 15 hatched again and he went for a standard 13 pool or something. Didn't matter, he went roaches but I rushed roaches as well, and i held off his early pokes. He expanded then, but I had the econ lead already and never let go of it.

The game did drag on to a rather long game of about 20 minutes, but I won eventually with a better econ in a roach/infestor vs roach/infestor fight.

Ouch 6/13 today that's bad. Hope to do better tmr!


I made this original entry on my personal blog here, but migrated it here.