EPTChronicles of a noob – Part 1 – The quest for the beta key
Before I write about my experiences in Starcraft 2, I would like to tell you a bit about myself. I am, and have always been a gamer. Despite this, I have never played at a particularly high level before (and judging by my learning curve in Starcraft so far, probably never will). I have never liked RTSs in general, mostly due to my complete lack of any form of multitasking ability, and have absolutely no experience of Starcraft, so when it comes to Starcraft, I couldn’t be more of a noob. Even though I never play RTSs, I still enjoy watching them. Therefore I watched the replays I found on youtube, and in just a few days I was completely hooked. After a few weeks I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore, I just had to get a beta key. Unfortunately, this was already a few months into the beta, so the chances of getting a key from Blizzard were next to none.
The quest for the illusive beta key had begun. The next few days I spent hours and hours looking for contests for beta keys that I could enter, but I never managed to win anything. After days of failing in contests I found out that by preordering the game, I could receive a beta key. Straight away, I placed an order, but unfortunately for me, the company I ordered from ran out of keys before I got mine. More keys were on the way, however, so after a few more days of waiting I finally had my Beta key. My quest fulfilled, I couldn’t wait until I could start playing, but more about that in the next part…
Chronicles of a noob – Part 2 – Practice league
Before I started my first practice match I felt pretty confident, anyone who started playing so late into the beta must also be a noob like myself. I had also watched quite a lot of replays, so I knew the basic strategies of each race.
For my first match, I chose zerg, not because I planned to play as zerg later (in fact at the time zerg was the race I was the least likely to play), but to make use of the rocks blocking the way as part of my defense for a fast expansion. The map was steppes of war, and my opponent was terran. From watching the replay, I could determine that he also knew a bit about Starcraft, but wasn’t familiar about the mechanics of practice league. Even though I knew many strategies, I had problems incorporating any of them. For example is a spawning pool around 20 supply is never a good idea, even if you have rocks to protect you. Luckily for me, it was the first time playing for my opponent; otherwise it might have ended badly. With my early expansion I soon gained the economic advantage, and after a bit of tech I went mass mutas. The first engagement in this match was the last. My opponent had around 50 total supply when I had around 120. My mutas overwhelmed him in a matter of seconds, and I had won my first Starcraft match ever.
My second match progressed in pretty much the same way, only this time I met an even worse opponent (his first building was an engineering bay). For most of the game, my income was 4 times higher than his, and by the time I attacked with my mutas and speedlings, I could overwhelm him without much of an effort. His four bunkers in the middle of his base complicated things, though…
After winning my first 2 matches rather easily, I decided to mix things up. This time I was going to play as terran, the race which I planned to use later, and do a reaper rush. Once again the map was steppes of war and my opponent was terran. Apart from the very sloppy execution of the build order, I also faced another problem; there aren’t really that many places where you can jump your reapers up into the opponent’s base. Partly due to my poor planning and bad execution, and partly to the fact that for the first time, I faced an opponent that knew how to play, I jumped my reapers right into his small army, and lost all but one in an instant. From there on everything went downhill. By the time i was ready to attack his base, I felt pretty good, but before I could break through his rocks, he had dropped his entire army in my expansion’s mineral line. By the time my troops got back, all that was left were the charred corpses of my dead SCVs, and the burning wreckage of a once glorious command centre. When my own army was annihilated due to my awful micro, there was nothing left to do, but to call gg, and move on to the next match.
My ambition crushed, I decided that I would rather be safe than sorry, and once again went for a zerg fast expand build. I had practiced some against a friend who plays terran and was getting better at executing my build order, so even though I lost the previous game, I was still pretty confident before my next game. As usual in my practice league games, I went for mass mutas, however my plans were thwarted by an early attack from my terran opponent, luckily I managed to hold my ground using a zerglings and a few roaches with backup from a queen. Thereafter I went for mass roaches, but seeing how my opponent countered that with marauders, I decided to go for a roach/hydra combo. After massing up a pretty big army of roaches and hydras, I didn’t really have any problems dispatching of the small remainder of his army. Once again my economic advantage won me the game.
My last practice game was once again on steppes of war against, yep, you guessed it, yet another terran. Seeing how well my roach/hydra combo worked in the last game, I quickly decided that was the way to go. This time, however, I got reaper rushed and lost all the drones in my expansion, although at the time there were only 5-6 workers there. I then managed to intercept the reapers in my main and kill them off using a few zerglings and a queen. I macroed up and focused on increasing my income and gathering my army. Just as I was about to move out I got attacked, but my army was way bigger and overwhelmed the enemy quickly. This was the time to strike! However, being a gunshy noob, I waited for more reinforcements to arrive before I attacked, allowing the enemy to rebuild some of what he lost. However the majority of his force was still in his main, and I managed to take out his expansion without any resistance. Since he was almost mined out in his main, he realized he had no hope of winning and gged out.
The uplifting results of my practice matches was 4 wins and 1 loss, which resulted in me choosing zerg as my main race.
Chronicles of a noob – Part 3 – The placement games
Before I played my placement games, I decided that whatever my skill level indicated, I wanted to start in the bottom and work my way up to where my opponents were at the same level. I am ashamed to admit that I wanted to end up in copper league. A friend of mine ended up in silver league, and he soon find out that the other players there were way out of his league, figuratively speaking, of course. I didn’t want to end up in the same way, so I decided that if I won a game, I would play reaaally badly in the rest of the games, to make sure that I didn’t win enough games to end up above copper.
In my first match, I played yet another terran on scrap station. I went for fast expand and just droned up. Thinking back, it was probably not such a good idea having 2 zerglings guard my main and my expansion for 5 minutes. However, my opponent, much like me, was gunshy, and by the time he finally sent out a hellion as a scout, I had already gotten quite a few roaches, with hydras on the way. As usual, when I finally moved out, my economic advantage showed itself in the army sizes, and I won an easy victory.
Fearful of what would happen if I won another game, I decided to play as badly as possible for the next few games. In my next game, I finally met an opponent that wasn’t terran. My opponent was zerg and went with mass speedlings, however, I could easily outproduce him, and I was halfway across the map with my clearly superior army when I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to win this match. Therefore, I moved my army back and just stockpiled minerals and gas and let him kill me off with his next wave of zerglings.
In the next three games I met much harder competition, I didn’t have to try at all to fail, my opponents simply crushed me like the noob I am, and to my great satisfaction, I ended up in copper league.
Chronicles of a noob – Part 4 – Copper league
In my first match after the placement matches, I immediately regretted my decision to lose on purpose. It was like bering back in practice league, only worse. The map was lost temple, and I faced off against yet another terran. I won’t bore you with the details, but basically I went for my usual build, roach/hydra. By the time I had amassed the army required to give me the courage to move out (somewhere around 40 units in total). My enemy had a grand total of 8 marines, 2 reapers, 1 ghost and a medivac. As you can imagine, I won that battle pretty easily, the most interesting thing in this game was probably a nuke at my expansion, but I managed to pull all my workers away in time.
My second match progressed much like the first match; again I met a terran player, but this time on scrap station. Much like the last time I was afraid to move out until I had around 40 units, and again my opponent didn’t have that much to defend himself with. The only minor annoyance was the five siege tanks that bombarded my force for the 10 seconds it took me to dispatch of his entire army.
There really isn’t anything to write about most of my games in copper league, basically all progressed in the same way as the already described games. However there was one match, where I met challenging opposition. It started off as pretty much all games do, but there was something different about this match. The first clue that my opponent was a capable player was that he used a scout. 7 matches in copper league and this was the first time I was being scouted. There were more clues to his capability, not only did he scout, but he also tried a proxy pylon in my base, which I luckily discovered before it was too late. I therefore assembled an army before starting to tech, which was lucky, because soon he attacked me with a small force. He attacked me lots of times, and I had to try my hardest not to get completely overrun. A while into the game my superior economy started to kick in, I managed to drive him back, but all of my attacks were fruitless, due to his superior micro. He also managed to counter my army quite nicely. By this time I was completely out of ideas, I had never encountered a force where roaches and hydras were worthless. I decided to do the only other thing I knew how to do, produce mutas. Thankfully for me, he had invested heavily in zealots and immortals to hold my ground army back, so the only anti-air he had were his sentries. After flying between his main and his expo and harassing for a while, I managed to take down both his nexuses. Luckily for me, his dark templars in my base hadn’t done enough damage, even though I had no form of cloakdetection. After this match, which was no doubt the only interesting match in copper league this far, I viewed his profile, and it turned out he was in silver league, the very league I hoped to avoid.
So here I am steamrolling my way in copper league, playing boring matches, and waiting for the next reset so I can face some real competition. I will never lose a match on purpose again…
