TL;DR - Mellow post voicing thoughts on how to improve motivation. Two fun replays with short synopsis provided at the end for...you know...fun.

I'm not sure how many read my blogs. I don't see many views and get rather few comments, but I'm ok with that. I haven't really been making much progress as I haven't had a ton of time to play.

Actually, to be honest, I have had time to play but lacked the motivation to ladder. I think I need something to help motivate me to move forward and improve my skill and ranking. I need friends to play with.

Friends!

I should probably clarify that. I don't just want friends I can play with. I want friends who are serious about the game and know what they're talking about. Why? I want to be able to be able to grind games with specific training habits and such in mind. If I have trouble against in PvP and early aggression, I want to be able to pump out several games to practice my play in that particular situation.

So perhaps just a 'friend' isn't enough. I'm sure I'll find players I enjoy playing an occasional match with. What I need is a practice partner!

Practice Partner

Great, so we have a practice partner thread here on TL. I can just go into the thread, pick a random stranger I've never spoken to or played against before and start. Right? I'm going to guess no. Chances are, I would probably search forever before finding someone who wants to train. I'd also know absolutely nothing about this person except league, ID and race. That may seem like everything I need to know, but there's a lot more to it than that.

So what do I really need? I honestly can't say. I'd love to start a team of players that are about my skill level and willing to learn and help me learn.

Making a Team...?

After that, I'd be struggling with the purpose of my "team." Should we try to compete? Should we just practice together and go separately from there?

To be honest, I have the resources and abilities to setup a forum and website for a small community related to such a team. Unfortunately, I've made TL my home and have no intention of lighting any sparks to draw attention from it in any amount whatsoever. I could certainly make it work, but I would still need the people first.

Remaining Undecided. To be continued...

Oh well. I went on a losing streak last time a played and none of them were much in the way of a learning experience except that I still need to improve my mechanics. I just haven't refined them enough to attempt Stargate builds against most opponents with skill levels anywhere near mine.

However, I do have a couple of games to present. They are quite fun and I definitely recommend watching them. One of them was just me and my brother fooling around in some 2v2, since we don't get to do much together very often. (Note: As you can see, I've switched to gamereplays.org for linking my replays, rather than my personal mediafire account.)

As you can see from the title, I was hit with a Bunker rush in this game. My opponent also decided to throw down an additional surprise -- a Factory in my base!

One of the best games I've ever played if you exclude that I let this happen to begin with. Sadly, even though I was completely on top of my game, I only played one match that day and this was it.

This game requires a disclaimer. There was so much lag in this match, from start to finish, that we might as well have been playing on slow. Unfortunately, it was very choppy and hard to control, so no benefit was gained from playing it so slowly.

That being said, my brother -- who, by the way, has amazing talent...I wish he had the desire to play competitively -- decides to take a suggestion I had for a Terran strategy and use a Hellion drop. Whether it be our opponent's fault or the lag, it was hugely successful.

From there, it was quite one-sided, despite my brother's base taking some heavy damage during some counter attacks.

As always, enjoy!

- Raislin