[ToRPandarine]

So, I've been in the last month trying to get from to (cause people have been ribbing me for staying in the same league for THREE seasons ) and to keep myself going I started a blog here.

Recently I don't know if its Blizzard's Matchmaking system is trying to **** me over or its gotta do with the time I play or I'm actually improving . I've been placed with Top 25 s, Top 8 s and s. So, here's the game that I think I'm pretty pissed about. It is a vs which recently has been a slight problem for me (that AND vs . Get into deadlock, go mass BC but that's a different story for now).

http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=774

I believe this is my opponents placement match as he is immediately put into with just 1 win.

I go with a 1/1/1 with Medivacs instead of Banshees. I realised that I should've gotten my Stim and other upgrades quicker but I was all over the place. I also think that sitting in those Storms and maybe getting a few Marauders would have helped.

I would however, appreciate the Replay Feedback Team's opinion on what I could've have done better.

Thanks and GLHF,
ThePandarine

[Nemo]

Panda, I will look at it sunday, when I'm back home.

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by ThePandarine

So, I've been in the last month trying to get from to (cause people have been ribbing me for staying in the same league for THREE seasons ) and to keep myself going I started a blog here.

Recently I don't know if its Blizzard's Matchmaking system is trying to **** me over or its gotta do with the time I play or I'm actually improving . I've been placed with Top 25 s, Top 8 s and s. So, here's the game that I think I'm pretty pissed about. It is a vs which recently has been a slight problem for me (that AND vs . Get into deadlock, go mass BC but that's a different story for now).

http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=774

I believe this is my opponents placement match as he is immediately put into with just 1 win.

I go with a 1/1/1 with Medivacs instead of Banshees. I realised that I should've gotten my Stim and other upgrades quicker but I was all over the place. I also think that sitting in those Storms and maybe getting a few Marauders would have helped.

I would however, appreciate the Replay Feedback Team's opinion on what I could've have done better.

Thanks and GLHF,
ThePandarine

I have made the replay analysis: http://www.twitch.tv/nemoulysses/b/310739727

Summarize

• If you're going 1-1-1 don't expand before attacking him. That's a super aggressive build and you need to make as many units as possible before your first doom push.
• If 1-1-1 and you see your opponent 1 basing for a long time, make a bunker because you're vulnerable at the begining.
• If 1-1-1 and no hellion drop, make banshees. They rule at the begining to harass, kill immortals etc.
• Don't spread your tanks too much as you did. It's not TvZ.
• Spread your marines in a concave to avoid being stormed like that or Colossi splash damage.
• You're playing well. You will be soon .
• I recommand you ging bio into medivac ghost vikings for TvP

Quick Comments

breadfan:

Awesome advice, I want to add that SCV production should be improved

[Next_rim]

Need help with very late game pvt. I can't seem to be able to put together enough stuff to crush the damn terran. Here are two replays of PvT's gone wrong, one is 58 mins, other is close to 50. What have I missed?

Game 1: http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=465
Game 2: http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=464

In game 2 I actually disconnected, but the mere fact that it lasted for so long, and I wasn't able to win is eloquent enough.

[Nemo]

, that's a job for you delete.

[xGKingdelete]

onto it!

10char

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by Next_rim

Need help with very late game pvt. I can't seem to be able to put together enough stuff to crush the damn terran. Here are two replays of PvT's gone wrong, one is 58 mins, other is close to 50. What have I missed?

Game 1: http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=465
Game 2: http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=464

In game 2 I actually disconnected, but the mere fact that it lasted for so long, and I wasn't able to win is eloquent enough.

I don't think we need any indepth analysis for this one.

Game One: PvT Shakuras
It's important to remember with unorthodox games like these that the problem isn't your micro, or your macro. It's more about your decision making and scouting.

In this game, he got an economic lead in the beginning, and maintained it all game. The end result was him mining out about 5 bases, and you mining out about 3. It didn't matter that at one point you had lost 10k resources and he had lost 20k, because his economy was so far ahead.

1) Your opponent did a gasless opening. This means either 1rax expand or some kind of marine scv all in/super aggression.
4:15 game time. You notice an engineering bay with 750/850 hp at your natural. This means it's a 1rax expand. If he was going to all in you, he would want you to put down the expansion and slow down the production of your units. He would want the extra 125 minerals to maintain marine production after he pulls scvs.
Any engineering bay in your natural means it's a 1rax expand.

So from here you have to decide whether to all in him or try to catch up economically. You decide to play it from behind. Note that his third cc (hidden expo) is done before your natural is finished. So you're playing from behind this game. This guy economically cheesed you.

If a terran is hiding a quick third, it's possible to scout it by looking at his main.
-no mules at main or natural, yet orbital energy is low (tbh I never bother to do this)
-he has way too much stuff.
-he has 5 bunkers at the front of his base (it means he's really worried about an attack, either because he is hiding something crazy like 3port banshee or because he doesn't have much units. In this game, the 5 bunkers was because his production was so delayed by the super quick third.)


In this game at 10:40, he has 3 engineering bays (you should have scouted more thoroughly with the observer as you missed this), 6 rax (two in production), and a "third" CC in production. He adds an armory shortly after.

Normally when you scout you're looking for starport timings, engineering bay timings, the amount of rax, and whether a 3rd CC is on the way. Since you're so focused on that, it's not easy to realise that he has more things than he should have. But hopefully after this you'll be able to identify that terran's hiding a third somewhere judging from the amount of buildings (the 3 engineering bays was just ridiculous).

So after you realise he's hiding a third, you can look around at the likely locations for a hidden expansion, and if you manage to find and kill all of the scvs, you'll be miles ahead.


2) Your third was too late. It's generally harder to take thirds when going for collosus off two base, but you still have to try and get it. 2-3 collosus with thermal lance should be enough to secure the closer base on shakuras, with good forcefields. Also, unless you're going for a two base all in, try to continue probe production. It's okay to over saturate your natural (sometimes I have like 40 probes at my natural) as long as you take a third base and transfer those probes to saturate it immediately.

So yeah. Your opponent had his fourth before your third. Also, after the 14 minute mark, he was generally ahead by 20-30 SCVs for the whole game. He ends up sniping your third at the 18 minute mark, as well. It's almost impossible to catch up up to his economic lead.

If he ends up with 3 planetary fortresses splitting the map in half, it's almost impossible to beat. You can try drops or something like that, but most of the time you won't be able to break it.


So in summary, in this game you did a two base play transitioning into a late third, while he took a pretty fast fourth and secured his half of the map. You'll either have to attack before his 4 base macro kicks in, or take faster expansions yourself.

Just a few things in general, I suggest getting a second obs, and using prioritising feedback over storm (unless you have a really good opportunity to land blanket storms). Also, remake probes when you lose them. When you lost all of those probes to the nukes, you had 7k minerals to spare. Might as well spend 1k of those minerals to remake 20 probes.

I think there was one point in the game where you could have won, 32:40 game time, if you go back to the replay. You're about 40 supply ahead, with a couple of collosus and 9 templar (most of the time you'll only need 4-5 templar, so use the extra templar for archons). But then you attack into his planetary wall and lose your entire army when his reinforcements arrived.

If you just walked past the wall, you could have sniped two of his mining expansions, plus three orbitals. That might cost you your army, but you had enough of a bank to remake an army of zealots and templar.
it's usually a bad idea to attack into planetaries


That's pretty much all I have to say, sorry if there are any grammar issues, I haven't edited it. I'll get to game 2 tomorrow.


P.S. Your late game PvT is fine, it's actually pretty good. This game was just a bit gimmicky because he economically cheesed you.
I suggest making a second robo, or even a third if you build up a huge bank of resources, so you can remax on the tech that terran doesn't have (if he overmakes vikings you can stop collosus and go for templar archons etc, and if he overmakes ghosts you can go for double collosus production)

P.P.S. where's the triple stargate carriers, I am disappoint

Quick Comments

	Nemo:	Awe-some !
	ToRPandarine:	learned tht splitting the map in half with pf is good :P
	Next_rim:	thank you comrade

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by Next_rim

Need help with very late game pvt. I can't seem to be able to put together enough stuff to crush the damn terran. Here are two replays of PvT's gone wrong, one is 58 mins, other is close to 50. What have I missed?

Game 1: http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=465
Game 2: http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=464

In game 2 I actually disconnected, but the mere fact that it lasted for so long, and I wasn't able to win is eloquent enough.

Game 2:
I can see a lot of similarities in this game. You seem to cut probes completely once you get 2 saturated bases (46 probes). Unless you are planning a 2 base all in, don't cut probes. It's worth it to have those extra probes for a couple of minutes so you can have a fully saturated base once you take your third.

5-6 templar max in your main army, rest go to archons (unless you are planning some warp prism templar drops or something like that). you can have some templar at bases to fight drops, but only 5-6 templar in your main army. The rest go to archons.

What you can do is transition from HT into collosus. I can't remember but you had like 11 templar or something. If you cut templar at 7, that would be 600 gas you could have used to get your collosus tech up. What's happening in these games is you're attacking too late. He was maxed out long enough to have a huge bank of minerals, which he decided to put into those planetary fortresses. If you can get your ultimate deathball up faster, you can kill him before he gets to do that.


Also, cloaked ghosts. They are unbelievably annoying late game, as I'm sure you have noticed. Try to have multiple observers with your army, with observer speed researched from the robotics bay. You'll need to put cannons around your mining bases as well.

There was one point in the game where he had a ghost at one of your mineral lines, and you had two cannons warping in. And you thought to yourself something like "I can't be bothered to run my probes away, I'll wait for the cannons to finish so I don't lose mining time".
probes are worth more than mining time The same with drops and mutas. Run the probes away as soon as you see that you're going to lose some. Maybe you'll lose 200 minerals in mining time, but losing 10 probes is like losing 500 minerals, plus those 10 probes won't be harvesting for the rest of the game.


If you can't attack into his army safely, and you're both maxed out, consider teching up to a mothership. It helps, if you can get one out.


Notice in game 2 you were kind of keeping up on economy with your enemy. And if you didn't DC, you had that game easily. So the loss in the first game wasn't really anything to do with your style or tactics, it's just that he took an economic lead and you couldn't catch up.

Quick Comments

Nemo:

Excellent

[Next_rim]

Thanks delete. Play greedy and win moar gamez, got it.

If you noticed in game 1, I was a bit hesitant when I saw the bay. I had a strong itch to put down TC and gateways for a blink all-in, then got a strong desire to do double nexus. But then was like ahh screw it, let's put down 2x gates just in case and foreverdiamond more.

Originally Posted by delete12

P.P.S. where's the triple stargate carriers, I am disappoint

I found them kind of map-dependent, and Shakuras is not the map. I've had great success on Korhal and Entombed, but I get 0 terrans on those maps for some reason.

[Lewis]

I have looked at this replay but It never hurts to have an outside opinion.(If you don't have time dont worry)

http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=555

I think its mainly down to engaging too early/creep spread and not going back at the end. Notice anything else?

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by Lewis

I have looked at this replay but It never hurts to have an outside opinion.(If you don't have time dont worry)

http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=555

I think its mainly down to engaging too early/creep spread and not going back at the end. Notice anything else?

About Lewis
Race
Zerg
Location
New Zealand
League:
Platinum

Apth Job especially since your er. ^^

[Apth]

Originally Posted by Lewis

http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=555

I think its mainly down to engaging too early/creep spread and not going back at the end. Notice anything else?

You're quite right about engaging too early, and I think this heavily contributed to your loss, but I'll go through some other things I noted down aswell.

Things I Liked
Up until things started to disintegrate significantly, your injects were spot on. Hitting injects and scouting will take you a long way.

Your defense of that 2rax was really solid as well. Nice.

Keeping up your expo scouting in the late game was awesome aswell, that's an important thing to do - nothing worse than watching a replay to find out your opponent had just randomly expanded a bunch of times without you noticing.

Scouting
OL Scout
It's always worth saccing an OL to get vision of your opponents base. Always always. At 7.30, you know your opponent is expanding but don't have any vision of his tech. This made me a bit scared. A 9min OL scout is too late, even for an FE terran. Around the 7min mark is probably better, 5 if they're onebasing. Ish.

Towers
There's no point not taking that other watchtower. Lings are free.

Scouting OLs
Keep OL's in the airspace between bases to scout drops - it wasn't such a big deal this game, but against drop-heavy opponents it's almost mandatory.

Tech
Lair
Your lair was quite late, and as a result you were on pure ling/bane for the majority of that extended engagement, which made things difficult. Getting your lair also allows you to scout with Overseers and Changelings, or Speed OLs, which is insanely helpful.

Upgrades
Your upgrades were ok, but only because your opponent didn't upgrade at all (imba terran, wtf). Against an opponent who hammers down on the upgrades, 2/0 lings against 2/2 marines gets ugly real quick. Dem upgrades.

Engagments
This is the part I'd prefer you paid the most attention to.

Sieged Positions
Warfare 101 - if you're attacking into a heavily entrenched position, expect heavy losses. For this reason, it's always preferable to engage terran opponents out on the map, so that

• If you lose the engagement, your opponent isn't within siege range of your base
• Your opponent is less likely to be sieged when you hit him

This is why creep spread and scouting are both imperative for Zerg players.

Last Second
If your opponent is sieged outside your base, engage at the last second possible.
The advantage you have as a defender is that you reinforce quicker than your opponent, because your opponents reinforcements have to walk across the map. The longer you wait, the more reinforcements you will get compared to your opponent.

This, IMO, is why you lost. You made lots of little trickly attacks instead of a couple of massive ones, thus negating the defender's reinforcement advantage. While this put you on an even field, your opponent had better positioning, was in siege range of your stuff, and most importantly -

Positioning
Attack from multiple angles. Always always, especially with lings. Split your lings into two groups, a-move them in from two different angles, and then micro your banes. Attacking from a single angle gives your opponent more time to shoot the crap out of you while you get a surround.


Hope that's helpful. WP man, gl

Quick Comments

xGKingdelete:

lings are free

[Lewis]

Originally Posted by Apth

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=555

I think its mainly down to engaging too early/creep spread and not going back at the end. Notice anything else?
You're quite right about engaging too early, and I think this heavily contributed to your loss, but I'll go through some other things I noted down aswell.

Things I Liked
Up until things started to disintegrate significantly, your injects were spot on. Hitting injects and scouting will take you a long way.

Your defense of that 2rax was really solid as well. Nice.

Keeping up your expo scouting in the late game was awesome aswell, that's an important thing to do - nothing worse than watching a replay to find out your opponent had just randomly expanded a bunch of times without you noticing.

Scouting
OL Scout
It's always worth saccing an OL to get vision of your opponents base. Always always. At 7.30, you know your opponent is expanding but don't have any vision of his tech. This made me a bit scared. A 9min OL scout is too late, even for an FE terran. Around the 7min mark is probably better, 5 if they're onebasing. Ish.

Towers
There's no point not taking that other watchtower. Lings are free.

Scouting OLs
Keep OL's in the airspace between bases to scout drops - it wasn't such a big deal this game, but against drop-heavy opponents it's almost mandatory.

Tech
Lair
Your lair was quite late, and as a result you were on pure ling/bane for the majority of that extended engagement, which made things difficult. Getting your lair also allows you to scout with Overseers and Changelings, or Speed OLs, which is insanely helpful.

Upgrades
Your upgrades were ok, but only because your opponent didn't upgrade at all (imba terran, wtf). Against an opponent who hammers down on the upgrades, 2/0 lings against 2/2 marines gets ugly real quick. Dem upgrades.

Thanks for the very helpful comments. My timings on builds are quite off, I only started playing again recently(since season 1). I didn't send that OL in quite so early since after a 2 rax you have quite a big break period between the next attack.

Anyway thanks again.

Originally Posted by Nemo

About Lewis
Race
Zerg
Location
New Zealand
League:
Platinum

Apth Job especially since your er. ^^

Kiwi pride

[wTlzq]

Race: Zerg
ID: wTlzq.495

Having some troubles with ZvP where
1) protoss goes for a 2 base all in with 3-4 immortals.
2) Mass sentries with 1-2 immortals

I thought of using hydras, but roach ling seems the most viable option, i would like some tips on wat i did wrongly in this replay

This replays shows a toss going for a 2 base mass sentry push with 1-2 immortals.*

http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=782

edit: both players are in masters league, and my profile details were wrong since i switched to zerg 2 season ago

[Nemo]

Guys give your level of play (league), it makes repartition of work easier for us.

Izq:
BnetID.code
lzq.397
Race
(here it's )
Location

League:


Signature
its a small L not a capital i

Who is the girl in your profile ?

For FutureBoy, a replay analysis:
http://www.twitch.tv/nemoulysses/b/311569193
and the following : http://www.twitch.tv/nemoulysses/b/311569894

[wTlzq]

Originally Posted by Nemo

Who is the girl in your profile ?

Just a pic of cute TW girl

i just removed it, afraid of causing unwanted issues

Quick Comments

	ROOTPetraeus:
	Nemo:	Haha, I had a doubt suddently when seeing it :-))

[Apth]

Originally Posted by lzq

Race: Zerg
ID: wTlzq.495
http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=782

Disclaimer: I'm a plat zerg analysing a masters' replay, so someone clever should probably look at this.

Scouting
Not a whole heap of tech scouting done, no idea about his tech path other than what you can extrapolate from his build order at 9.30. You had blind spore crawlers up to deal with potentialities, but personally I would prefer some OL saccing.

Positioning
This is really the only criticism I feel comfortable giving.

Angles
You do make attempts at multiple-angle engagements, but the problem - IMO - is that you're attempting to get multiple angles with one group of units. I'll try to explain -

In most of the engagements during that replay, your army walks around in one group, then when you encounter your opponent you try and split up a bit to get a good surround.

What it might be worth trying is walking your army around in two groups, and coming from two completely different angles.

Forcefields
This applies to the very last engagement in particular - if one half of your army gets FF'd out, walk the other half out of range. Else it's just your opponent killing half your army, then killing the other half.

The only time I'd feel comfortable committing to an engagement where half my army gets FF'd is if my opponent FF's units inside, rather than outside, the engagement, and retreating will lose me half my army anyway.

I don't think that using half your army to engage while half of it just stands around on the other side of some FF's is the best use of your forces.

Overall
I think you had a long series of uneven trades, which is OK against Protoss, but unfortunately they were uneven enough that you wern't able to put pressure on. 200v200 battles are never much fun in ZvP.

My advice to you would be to try and get multiple angles on your opponent with two distinct army groups, rather than one. It's a lot harder to forcefield efficiently when you're being attacked from the left and right, rather than just left and slightly-not-left.

Cheers yo

Quick Comments

Nemo:

Don't be shy, you can indeed give huge advice even to Masters

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by lzq

Race: Zerg
ID: wTlzq.495

Having some troubles with ZvP where
1) protoss goes for a 2 base all in with 3-4 immortals.
2) Mass sentries with 1-2 immortals

I thought of using hydras, but roach ling seems the most viable option, i would like some tips on wat i did wrongly in this replay

This replays shows a toss going for a 2 base mass sentry push with 1-2 immortals.*

http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=782

edit: both players are in masters league, and my profile details were wrong since i switched to zerg 2 season ago

+ Show +

pvz korhal


I agree with the things Apth had to say. I think you should consider the saying from War3 "never fight a battle you can't win". It applies a bit less in starcraft, but it's still important.

With his first push off two bases with 12 sentries, you shouldn't have tried to engage his army when you didn't have enough to crush it. It's fine to try and bait out some forcefields (you definitely have to bait out some forcefields), but if you're losing a chunk of your army each time you do it, you'll never build up the mass of units you need to actually kill the army. Because he kept on taking out chunks of your army just by using his sentry energy, you ended up with more than double the resources lost.

I don't play zerg so I can't really say much about expansion timings, but I think you shouldn't have taken the fourth. Or, when you spotted him push out with an army too big to handle, you should have cancelled it and just had a macro hatch in the main or something. Also, you were floating a bit too much resources the whole time, if the extra 500 minerals had been 20 zerglings you could have held it.

Anyway, the reason you don't want the fourth is because of how hard it is to defend. Just the map layout. This is what happens when you instinctively run to defend it.




On the other hand, if you were just defending the third, you could have got a relatively easy flank depending on how good your opponents forcefields were.



red diamonds are spine crawlers (from the extra 500 minerals you had)
blue ellipse is the deathball
red lines are your potential attack paths. He can't run into the spine crawlers, so you can kind of kite a bit there, and maybe bait a few forcefields, and once he's run out of forcefields you can get a group of lings to flank from behind. Of course all of this is just dependent on how good your opponents forcefields are. If his warp prism is out of position and doesn't spot the highground, you should be able to flank easily with lings as well.


And yeah, he takes out your third as well. When a protoss is up in supply and economy in the midgame, you aren't going to catch up. You'd have to verify this with an actual zerg player, but I think going infestors against stalker oriented armies is better than hydras.


I might steal that guys build. forcefields are pretty fun

Quick Comments

Nemo:

[wTlzq]

Thx alot to delete and apth

1) seems like me trying to bait ff by sacrificing some of my army is a bad idea
2) my engagement, with so much sentries, i should try to surround as much as possible

i would work on those details in the future, thx alot

edit: i dont sac overlord cause i read the toss strat by his expo's gas timings

[pkat]

Race: Zerg
Names: Pkat.541 on SEA and NA
Rank: Bronze 1v1 on both

Issues I am actively working on during matches: Droning, Injecting, Creep Spreading, unit control (mainly with infestors)

I could be better at binding bases and queens I am just too adjusted to this method though and I feel it holds me back alot.

Tips on any of the above would be awesome.




Replays (12 of my latest matches) won 10 lost 2 http://www.mediafire.com/?eg6hixzhvqb07t0

Here are the two matches I lost for those just interested in those.

Defeat1

Defeat2

Update: Defeat3

Sorry if you don't accept mediafire links I can change it if you want.



Thanks in advance

Pkat.