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Road to Masters (3)


Hey hey it's the 3rd post in this series... and I'm sucking so bad I should rename it 'Life of a Diamond Noob' or something.

Anyway Blogger is being a bitch by being down for like eternity so I can't post the games I played yesterday, so I'll just do the blog entry of the one I did TODAY, and post it tomorrow. Confusing? Nvm it's not important.

Yup so I'm using Photobucket for my photos and I can't resize them! So sorry if they're all BIG and IN YOUR FACE.

Let's get on to the games today!

1) vs KRAZE (Zerg) on Backwater Gulch
Let me start off by saying I never liked this map - both before and after the change. Be it the numerous chokes, the distance from ramp to expo (before change much worse), etc.
I never even liked the precursor to this map, Blistering Sands, even though I've heard some people said it favored Zerg. Really? How do you stop a 4 gate which pushes up your backrocks? (typical 4gate held by spines, which will be at your expo)

Anyway, I opened 15 hatch as usual and he went 14 pool into an early hatch when he realized I had FE.
Then his followup made me realize a potential gap (or a flaw) in my build order.

What he did was to pump mass speedlings, and while doing that he puts up a roach warren. His aim was basically to keep me pinned to my ramp by threatening a run-by, then use his speedlings to take out my hatchery.

I was amidst the transition to banelings (when my scout OL saw alot of lings continually running out) and my roaches just didn't have enough DPS to take out his mass lings before he took out my hatchery -_-


Boom goes the hatch


Following that I made a push to his base and he managed to get enough roaches out in time, and with very good speedling micro (sending 1-3 lings to get blown up by my baneling) he was able to hold off my roach bane push.

Wow ok now rewatching the replay I wanna kick myself.

I realized he had actually more units lost than me the whole time, and although he droned up earlier than me and was 10 drones ahead for awhile, I caught up quickly and we were even. I even got +1 attack first.

BUT. I only had one evo chamber, and I started on my +2 while he completed both +1s at the same time.


The big roach fight that ended it

On rewatching the replay, I'm really quite confused as to why I lost. Anyway, in that fight, he outnumbered me by 8 roaches (how can you tell while playing -_- ) and had better upgrades (my +2 wasn't done yet).
I was even doing some contaminate shenanigans on his hatcheries so I REALLY DONT KNOW HOW he can still produce so much and more than me!

Granted, I missed some injects, but HE MISSED MORE. I really don't know. hmm.

( I did try to take a 3rd but his speedlings denied it and i never had time to get it again later. I should've got an aux hatch because my resources were getting way high. But how did he still outproduce me when I was contaminating his hatches!? HAX.)

NOTE TO SELF: Get double evo chambers for upgrades next time.

2) vs Kain (Protoss) on XNC
I opened 14 gas 14 pool for fast speedlings (into 21 hatch) and stole gas as usual, and he went for a 3gate expand. Perfect. (for me)

My 2 lings at his expo killed his Nexus probe so I delayed it for abit.

Now a silly little mistake of mine gave me the lead here. I forgot to put Drones back on gas after pulling them after the first 100, thus I realized it when I had shitloads of minerals. So I just pumped a wave of lings with them (about 24) since I had so much. (I was going for roach/ling all in)

With those speedlings, I decided to poke at his expo to see what he had.
and..
Thanks to the new warp gate timing, his warp gate had only just completed and he hadn't warped in the next set of units:


You know you're in trouble when your early sentries get surrounded like that.

Anyway, I killed all 3 sentries, AND forced the nexus cancel, AND killed the pylon and forget on the low ground.


You know there are games where you feel super nervous and you make many silly mistakes? Then there's the opposite, games where you feel really confident for some reason and you feel like you're totally reading the game and you are going to win.

At this point, I was feeling an overwhelming feeling of the latter. I had a clear game plan - I was going to continually deny his expo, and drone up hard.


Hit him with the next wave of slings and roaches, forcing another cancel as his army backed up into his main, and killing the forge and pylon AGAIN.

With the confident feel comes clarity of thought - What will a Protoss do when contained in one base? DTs or Stargate.

Immediately I threw down an evo chamber as well as a hydralisk den, and promptly put up a spore and spine at my expo (near my ramp)

After getting my gold expo rocks down, I pushed his expo once again with my big swarm of roach/ling:


So one-sided.

And lo and behold, he indeed tried DTs, but my spore/spine AND overseer easily dispatched the 2 DTs he hit my base with.

With 2 waves of hydras pumped up, I made a final push to his base


GG

Was overall pleased with this game, because I didn't force the issue, just denied his expo and backed, denied his expo and backed (instead of forcing up his ramp.. nydus.. etc) Just played it patiently.

3) vs sgaguns (Zerg) on XNC
After losing to that early pool mass lings build, I wanted to try it too. So I went for fast speedlings, and my opponent 15 hatch.

Unlike me, my opponent used lings + fast baneling nest to defend it, and I unnecessarily lost some lings before my speed was done (those 4v3 lings situations)

On hindsight, I shouldve adapted to what I saw (mass lings) and went straight for baneling nest instead of trying to end with mass speedlings. With my early gas I would have both faster (sling/bling) and woudl have won

But yea he managed to get a ling advantage and with more banelings, he pressed the issue and won. (outdroned me too )


4) vs JiEWDO (Zerg) on XNC
I didn't want to give up on it after just one try so I went for a fast speedling opening again. However, my opponent didn't 15 hatch but also opened with gas/pool, thus I decided to go roaches.

For some reason, he tried to hide a spine but i spotted it.


You actually only need 3 drones to outDPS a spine's production, but I pulled 4 because I spotted it slightly late. If you spot it immediately I think 3 should be fine.

So after my initial roaches popped, my gameplan was clear - tech to roachspeed, get +1 attack quickly, and push hard with a timing attack, and expand behind that. (this was actually my strat last season that got me from low-mid diamond)

He expanded before teching to lair.. which more or less cost him the game


SPLASHHH.
My upgraded roaches pushing him back into his base. He didn't have time to get his spines from his main to his expo.

When executing this build, the timing window is REALLY small (before your opponent gets spines or +1 himself) so you have to hit fast and be decisive.

Anyway as I saw spines on the high ground, I just pulled back and gradually took down his hatchery while dancing back and forth when his roaches moved down his own ramp.

Once I backed out, I droned up hard and was 10+ harvestors ahead for quite a while. After massing more roaches I went for infestors, not knowing that I had already greatly outproduced him. I was also keeping contaminate on his hatch.


It's quite clear who's going to win this battle. I had +2 to his +1 attack. (both of us had +1 armor) I also expanded at my gold while moving out.
GG
(Infestors hadn't even reached yet!)

5) vs JiEWDO (Zerg) on Metalopolis
Yes, same guy. He QQs about ZvZs, and I empathize with him haha.
This time I went for 15 hatch again, and he stuck to his gas/pool build.

He hit me with early ling/blings, and it was JUST before roaches popped. He managed to kill only about 3 drones, thanks to my drone split heh.


I am no Terran, but I managed to split my Drones up into 3 packs, and so the banelings only hit the first pack

You really need to take down the hatch or do some econ damage if you don't hatch first and your opponent does, if not you're gonna be way behind.

Anyway, this map was SO much easier to defend the hatch because the ramp is considerably nearer to the expo.

Roaches on patrol between ramp and hatch.

I transitioned to banelings as normal, and kept making a few roaches, and I saw he expanded so I was planning to push. Then I did a little trick:
I deliberately moved my roaches away from my ramp, leaving it 'clear', and let him see it and baiting him to do a run-by

Unknown to him, I had 3 banelings at the top waiting

BOOMZ

Remember what I said about narrow timing windows? My roaches hit his base at the nice window before he got defences up:


If those 3 spines went up, it would be a different story.

Managed to deny those 3 spines from going up, and by constantly streaming lings/blings/roaches I took him out soon after.

~~~

All matches were 'Even' matchups.. guess I'm playing so badly they can't match me with Favored/Slightly Favored ones anymore haha. Decent showing today, perhaps tomorrow I'll get some 'harder' matchups. (harder in terms of MMR)

Thanks for reading!
As always, feel free to add me up crAzerk.187 for some practice games or just chitchat!