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Wine and Cheese.
I have no idea what's going on during the platinum and diamond leagues, but silver/gold is plagued with cheese every game or two. Maybe it's because my idea of cheese is different from others, but I just want to test my skills in the macro and late game. Defending against this stuff is really difficult for a new player. I guess it might seem to some to be a good strategy to cheese as far as they can to get a respectable ladder rank, but I feel differently. I want to be the best player I can be in my current bracket. Why should I resort to cheesy all in builds to get what I need?
So I'm wondering why people cheese at all. Eventually you're going to get to a point where you'll find someone good enough that you can't cheese anymore, and they completely dominate you if your first push fails. The back and forth game is what I love about SC2. Generally, you have an idea of what the other guy might be doing, but you still fret that you might be behind somehow on resources or units, so you bust your ass trying to improve your forces just to find out the other guy was way behind and just made a bunch of dark templars because its SO FUNNI CUZ THEY R INVIZ.
Perhaps I'm asking what shouldn't be asked. Maybe the cheese keeps the game fresh. Makes it so that there's not one big powerful macro build that dominates everything from cheese to late. Lots of diversity in zerg openings. I choose the most macro intensive one that starts my pool after my hatch.
http://tomcatania.com/TomC-ZNC.SC2Replay
My build VS Protoss 3 gate all in sorta proxy. Started out normally, 10th drone to scout hatch at 15. There was no scout from protoss which made me uneasy. Saw nothing but probes in his base so I expected a hidden something. Found it with my drone and noticed -oh shit- 3 gates. I had no time to react. My spine crawler was too late. I usually drop it right after my expo morphs up. How could I have won that game? The scout was perfect, exact time I should scout. The expo was dropped a little later than I wanted. Regardless of that I would have been fine. I couldn't produce more lings than I had available on 1 hatch to counter 3 gateways worth of zealots. Roaches would have taken too long. The only real thing I can think of to counter this would have to have been a way early pool. 8 pool or something. I hate 6... You guys can see his base. Completely undefended. He would have lost before he had time to make more probes. He built 3 gates and only 1-2 zealots before his 3rd dropped. He would have had to hit me with 2 zealots and hope for the best and hope I'd fall back for him to beat an 8 pool.
But I shouldn't have to counter cheese with more cheese. It just makes things sloppy and each game has no meaning to them other than to see who's got a faster opener. With that said. Is the difference between someone in diamond and someone in silver just better preparation? Dark Templars, Void Rays, 6p Zerglings, Banshees, Proxy cannons, Bunker rush. Does the best of the best prepare for all of this stuff? I guess it couldn't hurt slipping in the occasional spore crawler on my bases for stealth detection or an overseer. But resources devoted to those things could be better spent on forces if you're running behind, right? Where's the fine line between good and great?
How hollow would my victories be if I cheesed every game? I don't think this would be worth playing if that's how I did things. Like school in summer, man, no class.
 
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Get getter micro and multitasking. If they have nothing in their base, then send whatever units you have to theirs instead of fighting them. Then it is just a matter of who has better micro and multitasking.
You should also immediately start a spine when you notice he has nothing in his base, (I didn't actually watch the replay, but i'm assuming you started it when you saw his gates... I could be wrong, spines take an hour to build..)
And no, aggressive openings are not sloppy with no meaning. Its a test of micro, which you apparently lack. Macro is not the entire game, there are other facets to it that you need to learn.
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"The back and forth game is what I love about SC2."really? I always thought sc2 was just one big battle and whoever won that won the game.
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Downloading the replay now, expect analysis soon, but from what I am getting you went hatch first, which is a huge coin flip in SCII.
And the difference between someone in diamond and someone in silver is that the latter don't know how to make units
EDIT:
Okay dude, srsly, you scout nothing in his base, and still went for 16!! hatch, which is like pumping one extra drone, you scouted something, and didn't react to it. So, my question is, Why do you scout?
You send the overlord str8 forward and the drone went str8 to his base, use one of those to scout around, like for instance send the overlord to the natural if you intend to drone scout, that way you maybe could have seen the gateways earlier and if there were no gateways, you will have an ovie in front of his natural and you will see him when he moves out
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The reason plat/gold are cheese is because players want to get as many wins as quickly as possible to actually get to the level where it's challenging to win.
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First off, you're going to face cheesey builds in the lower leagues predominantly because players in those leagues don't have the same understanding of the game as guys in plat/diamond.
Think of your mindset when you first picked up Starcraft. It was either:
a.) Build a ton of static defense while teching to carriers/battlecruisers/flavor of the month OP unit
b.) Get units in his base faster than he can get guys in your base, because that's how you win, amirite?
These guys aren't cheesing just to win... They're cheesing 'cuz they don't really know better.
The bad news is you're going to see lots of it, and you just have to muscle through it. The good news is learning how to deal with all-in plays like that is pretty easy. It basically comes down to scouting, and playing safe.
One tip: Scouting early. Even if you scout on 7, 8, or 9, the economy you lose is going to be negligible. At your level of play, it won't make any difference at all. In return, you're guaranteed to get a look at their base in plenty of time to know if they're up to something cheesey.
The rest is just learning how to execute after you scout it. As a Zerg player myself (900 diamond), when I get cheesey toss shenanigans thrown my way I like to pool around 12 or 13, gas on 14, overlord on 15 and stop.
Save larvae. Queen + 6 lings + roach warren as soon as your pool finishes. Throw down a spine. Defend with lings if the pressure has already started. Once you start pumping roaches, just send lings past the pressure to his base, and smile gleefully as he folds like a wet paper bag.
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On August 23 2010 18:21 MrBitter wrote:
One tip: Scouting early. Even if you scout on 7, 8, or 9, the economy you lose is going to be negligible. At your level of play, it won't make any difference at all. In return, you're guaranteed to get a look at their base in plenty of time to know if they're up to something cheesey.
That is a really bad tip. It is like saying "You are not a pro, don't try to play like one". This neglects any progress. He should scout at 10 or w/e it is standart
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On August 23 2010 18:33 Mortician wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2010 18:21 MrBitter wrote:
One tip: Scouting early. Even if you scout on 7, 8, or 9, the economy you lose is going to be negligible. At your level of play, it won't make any difference at all. In return, you're guaranteed to get a look at their base in plenty of time to know if they're up to something cheesey.
That is a really bad tip. It is like saying "You are not a pro, don't try to play like one". This neglects any progress. He should scout at 10 or w/e it is standart
I disagree. Do whatever it takes to win. Don't pretend you're playing against pros if you're playing against silver noobies. Just make sure you know that as you get better you will need to change your play, which really goes without saying.
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On August 23 2010 19:06 thopol wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2010 18:33 Mortician wrote:On August 23 2010 18:21 MrBitter wrote:
One tip: Scouting early. Even if you scout on 7, 8, or 9, the economy you lose is going to be negligible. At your level of play, it won't make any difference at all. In return, you're guaranteed to get a look at their base in plenty of time to know if they're up to something cheesey.
That is a really bad tip. It is like saying "You are not a pro, don't try to play like one". This neglects any progress. He should scout at 10 or w/e it is standart I disagree. Do whatever it takes to win. Don't pretend you're playing against pros if you're playing against silver noobies. Just make sure you know that as you get better you will need to change your play, which really goes without saying.
How can you say such a thing? Doing your best everygame is what make you better, you shouldn't let you guard down, no matter who do you play, you have to be in the mindset that your opponent is not going to fuck up and is doing everything perfectly so to win you need to do everything the best you can. This way you will be improving even if you don't play people on your level.
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On August 23 2010 19:16 Mortician wrote:
How can you say such a thing? Doing your best everygame is what make you better, you shouldn't let you guard down, no matter who do you play, you have to be in the mindset that your opponent is not going to fuck up and is doing everything perfectly so to win you need to do everything the best you can. This way you will be improving even if you don't play people on your level.
Nope. Starcraft is a two player game, and "doing your best" involves adapting to what the other guy is going to do. If your opponent is going to play imperfectly, the best strategy is to take that into account and exploit whatever weaknesses he actually DOES have, not play a game against some imaginary perfect opponent that isn't there.
There has been more than one occasion where Idra has complained that he has been beaten by noob strategies by foreign BroodWarriors that were inferior to the "pro" Korean builds that he was expecting and had guarded against (For a hilarious example, look up the 'Foreigners still suck' blogs by Rekrul). He lost precisely because he had the same attitude as you of trying to play some utopian platonic-ideal of a perfect Starcraft game, instead of realising that half the game is really about two randoms trying to mindfuck each other. You're not improving if you're not working towards 'doing what wins'.
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On August 23 2010 18:05 Sadistx wrote:
The reason plat/gold are cheese is because players want to get as many wins as quickly as possible to actually get to the level where it's challenging to win.
lol if that were true, no one would cheese at diamond. Half my games are diamond, though I guess some people wouldn't classify terran one base all-ins as cheese since they take more than 5 minutes.
To OP
On August 23 2010 17:33 tomc wrote:
But I shouldn't have to counter cheese with more cheese. It just makes things sloppy and each game has no meaning to them other than to see who's got a faster opener. With that said. Is the difference between someone in diamond and someone in silver just better preparation? Dark Templars, Void Rays, 6p Zerglings, Banshees, Proxy cannons, Bunker rush. Does the best of the best prepare for all of this stuff? I guess it couldn't hurt slipping in the occasional spore crawler on my bases for stealth detection or an overseer. But resources devoted to those things could be better spent on forces if you're running behind, right? Where's the fine line between good and great?
There's no reason you shouldn't be able to hold off 3 gate with 14 pool unless it's proxied really close to your base. 3 gate also means that the first zealot is going to come later than 2gate, which means you have more time to get up spines and lings. Not if you throw down the hatch after you scout, though. Start spamming lings, get your queen asap, and throw down some spines when you can afford it (need to make sure you can afford constant ling production as well). Send a couple lings at a time to his base to distract him and bide time, but leave most of the force at home until you either have enough defense to hold even if he attacks when you move out, or he goes in. If it doesn't look like your army by itself can hold, pull drones immediately until the spines that will presumable be building are up. If you hold without losing half your drones, you're significantly ahead.
You have to realize that 14 pool 15 hatch is a risky build, however. The "safe" ZvP build is not 10 pool or 8 pool or 6 pool, but speedling expo, which would deal with 3 gate no problem if you scout it in time.
The difference between diamond and silver does include preparation, though it also includes multitask, apm, decision making, and so on, but not in the sense that you mean. You have be aware that the opponent can cheese you, or exploit an vulnerability. Rather than give up, you should know your build well, and how your build reacts to rushes. For instance, I gave you a response to 3 gate. Against a bunker rush, you need to pull drones, against banshee, get another queen, and so on. You just need to know how to respond in what situations, and that just comes with practice and time, so don't give up and declare it unbeatable, because in most situations, it's not. There are very few auto-win situations in starcraft.
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On August 23 2010 20:25 Aim Here wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2010 19:16 Mortician wrote:
How can you say such a thing? Doing your best everygame is what make you better, you shouldn't let you guard down, no matter who do you play, you have to be in the mindset that your opponent is not going to fuck up and is doing everything perfectly so to win you need to do everything the best you can. This way you will be improving even if you don't play people on your level.
Nope. Starcraft is a two player game, and "doing your best" involves adapting to what the other guy is going to do. If your opponent is going to play imperfectly, the best strategy is to take that into account and exploit whatever weaknesses he actually DOES have, not play a game against some imaginary perfect opponent that isn't there. There has been more than one occasion where Idra has complained that he has been beaten by noob strategies by foreign BroodWarriors that were inferior to the "pro" Korean builds that he was expecting and had guarded against (For a hilarious example, look up the 'Foreigners still suck' blogs by Rekrul). He lost precisely because he had the same attitude as you of trying to play some utopian platonic-ideal of a perfect Starcraft game, instead of realising that half the game is really about two randoms trying to mindfuck each other. You're not improving if you're not working towards 'doing what wins'.
You don't quite understand what I meant, what i mean is, if you see a delayed core, or a missing gateway, you should not assume that he has fucked up, but that he is doing this on purpose, and is doing something funky. I didn't mean that you should play like a robot
And the last statement -> 6 pool wins games, should you do it every game and will it help you to improve?
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On August 23 2010 20:34 Mortician wrote:
And the last statement -> 6 pool wins games, should you do it every game and will it help you to improve?
If 6 pool was what always wins, then yes. Improving any other skill would be irrelevant masturbation.
6 pool doesn't always win though.
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Goddamn DTs. Dem DTs man, dem DTs.
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Thanks for the replies, and quick ones at that.
It's basically just bad map choice to do that 16 hatch shit. This was originally posted just a few days after launch, and none of us had played XelNaga before that. I should have realized that fast expanding on such a small map would hurt me in the long run. On stuff like Blistering sands, sure. But nottt Xelnaga! Always 13 pool on those smaller maps, except vs zerg, then it's 10p.
I don't know why that loss made me rage enough to write about it. Now I know better when I see a fucking barren base, lol. DT's aren't so much of an issue to me anymore either. I've made it a habit of making at least 1 patrolling overseer once my lair pops.
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The reason why hatch at 15/16 isnt standard against protoss is because you run the risk of loosing that hatch to any 2 gate agression even if the map is fairly large.
i dont understand why you would do early hatch against protoss, just put it down at around 20/22, get your 14 pool, 16 gas, queen, overlords.
untill you find something to scout for or if you decide you will make gas steal a standard against protoss (delays robo or stargate play) you dont really need to scout against protoss, just send out your overlords and beware of proxy pylons. Just note that they can be there and check for things with your initial lings.
brb replay:
edit: nope, i think i have nothing of notable interest to add.
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Are you kidding?? There are tons of differences between silver and diamond. You proved it yourself by doing a dumb risky macro build, scouting late, noticing an obvious non-standard build and STILL dredged along with your dumb build. And then you get all indignant because he cheesed and you didn't bother to react.
Gee, I wonder what the issue is.
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My cousin made it into high rank platinum doing nothing but proxy hatch rushes. Kinda sad actually.
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I'm a diamond zerg, in response to your game- On smaller maps or 2 player maps I NEVER FE against a protoss. It's to risky and can be so easily beaten by either proxy gates or 4 gate rushes. Instead, to be safe go 13-14 pool crank out ling and get ling speed also a spine crawler for extra insurance. Make sure to scout really well. but yea,,, I never FE on small maps vs protoss, you will die. Also, you don't need to 'cheese' in order to win. Just learn from your mistakes. You know that FE on small map vs. protoss would ENSURE a win for protoss if he proxies or 4 gates right? Then the diamond level player understands this as a real and true risk and does not FE. Instead get pool early, scout very early (is he using chrono boost on his nexus? great no rush!) and always, always, always get speed ling early vs. toss.
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On August 24 2010 03:23 GreatFall wrote:
I'm a diamond zerg, in response to your game- On smaller maps or 2 player maps I NEVER FE against a protoss.
haha I almost forgot about that... that's just plain common sense. How is it cheese when you know the map you're playing is predisposed to goddamn rush and micro play??
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EPT
