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Hi TL,
By "the top," I mean the top of Bronze league, of course. I've been 1st in the division for over a day (I'd say for more than 8 cumulative hours of play), and while I do love seeing that big 1, it's getting a little boring.
Updates have been few this week because I've been dealing with new job stuff (part time, so I'll still be able to ladder!) and writing things about MLG. I have a couple more article ideas floating around in my head, but they will take some time to emerge, nydus worm-like, from the recesses of my brain.
I'm going to lump all of the games from the past few days (the 9th, 10th, and 11th) into a more unified list of stats. It's more interesting to aggregate, anyway.
Day: Tuesday, Nov 9
Number of games: 14
Day: Wednesday, Nov 10
Number of games: 6
Day: Thursday, Nov 11
Number of league games: 17
(I'm switching to a different build so I played against the AI a lot today)
Wins/Total (Nov 9-11): 20/37
Starting Rank: 3
Ending Rank: 1
Highest Rank: 1
Lowest Rank: 3
Wins/total matchups (as Terran) vs.:
Zerg: 6/14
Protoss: 4/6 (where have all the Protoss gone?)
Terran: 10/17
Total League Games to date (since Oct 15): 145
Total League Wins to date: 77
Well, that was slightly unexpected. I have the feeling I do a lot worse against Terran than against other races, but there don't seem to be significant differences. I kind of want to take a day and get all this data into a spreadsheet so I could do some real analysis on it.
The New Build
At MLG, I met a lot of extremely good StarCraft players, some of whom advised me to go 3-rax instead of 1-1-1 or 2-rax fact. I headed over to Liquipedia and found a page on 3-rax builds and wrote the timings down on a little piece of paper which is sitting between my keyboard and monitor. I probably played around 10 games vs. AI today on standard maps - they were all Zerg and Protoss, since I figured that this build should be optimized to defeat them. In retrospect, I should've also practiced against Terran. I do think the practice helped, though - today my win rate against Zerg and Protoss was 6/9, while my win rate vs. Terran was 3/8. Small sample sizes, but I think it's made a difference.
Next steps include watching replays and analysis of TvT provided by my friend Kaiz and help from CuLane in the form of custom games against his guildmates. Then tomorrow night I'm going to a GSL finals party - super exciting!
Shoutout to Temporal and all of my new friends from MLG :D!
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Woohoo on #1  Keep on practicing lots Peanut! If you need any help vs Z or just any help in general in any of the matchups just let me know! I'd be glad to watch a few replays and see if I can find some small improvements for you to work on (It's easier starting small :D)
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great to see you still at it! =D
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GSL finals party sounds so sweeeet!
Keep up the practising, looking forward to see you win the next ESL Female SC2 Cup 
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Glad to hear I'm not alone. I'm also doing my journey towards the higher grades. I was sitting at #1 in Bronze for like a week and then finally got promoted =] Keep on fighting!
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Ugh... 3 rax won't teach you how to macro or use tech units so you will eventually hit a wall where you can't beat anyone who can stop your 1 base all in
that wall won't come until you reach mid diamond though
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lol? Lies. Do your thing man.
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3 racks is one of those builds that doesn't really make you a better player, its like blind 4 gating every game, or blind baneling bust every game.
Especially at Bronze league you could probably focus on scouting and unit comp wins more often, al the way up til high gold or low platinum. Non stop building scv's and taking expansions when you need to, and constant unit production. No micro is really needed if you out macro them.
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On November 12 2010 23:57 ZlaSHeR wrote:
3 racks is one of those builds that doesn't really make you a better player, its like blind 4 gating every game, or blind baneling bust every game.
Especially at Bronze league you could probably focus on scouting and unit comp wins more often, al the way up til high gold or low platinum. Non stop building scv's and taking expansions when you need to, and constant unit production. No micro is really needed if you out macro them.
I agree, you can probably 3 rax/4gate your way to diamond in < 50 games or so. Once you get to a certain point in diamond, it doesn't work as well and you'll be screwed because you didn't learn how to do the other things well (scouting, macroing, expanding, mini map watching, etc). Just take your time and enjoy the game!
<== 4 gated to diamond in like 25 games and I really regret it because I didn't learn how to scout or any of those things listed above. Plus I discovered that I rather random and my zerg was so weak (Couldn't beat a very hard computer with it) :x and it was too late/too fustrating for me to learn the zerg basics in diamond.
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Such useful comments, lol. But seriously, name change in SC2 to Aym just can't figure out how to change my profile here so I'm stuck as CuLane on the forum lol.
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To all the 3 rax haters: the build doesn't inherently prevent you from learning other RTS skills, it merely relies less on those skills to secure victory. I believe it's more important to reach diamond than to learn RTS fundamentals in the lower leagues since the lower leagues are simply not conducive to recognizing patterns that will be notable later on. Consider scouting for one: at Bronze you may see players doing wildly different, often invalid builds, missing build items, getting supply blocked, or what have you. An experienced player may recognize a proxy play by seeing a missing pylon in a Protoss main, but a Bronze Protoss may simply just be forgetting his pylon.
At least in MLG games, 1 base plays or late expo plays have shown themselves as effective even against highly experienced players. Take Jinro's PDD/Banshee/SCV push or Nazgul's blink play, essentially a variant of the widely decried 4 gate.
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Blindly going 3rax/4gate lets you just focus on your macro. You do not need to have any crazy strategy to beat or out think your opponent, just focus on your mechanics like macro and micro to win. Countering your opponent's unit composition comes next.
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Hmm, back when I played Terran I found doing 3 rax every game for awhile to be pretty useful, and I was already in Diamond. Its a good way to practice macroing on one base, not getting supply blocked, balancing gas/minerals etc. up to 50-70 supply or so.
In addition, sticking to one basic build is a great way to learn its strengths and weaknesses from personal experience, which is really the only way to properly understand them.
In my mind its not all that different than the advice of several strong ZvZers (Darkforce and Artosis) that you should start learning the matchup by doing a 14 pool baneling every game, and then move on to other strats after you have mastered that one.
The difference is of course, that the baneling build would continue to be part of your arsenal as you improve, while 3 rax might not be. Even so, I think that its a good idea for a bronze player. As you advance (maybe around gold/plat) you will probably get more mileage from finding a long-term viable build for each matchup.
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EPT
