EPTRight, so where was I? Ah yes, my continued adventures in the land of bronze. Over the past few days of laddering I have noticed that 75% of the games I play end up with the other person trying some kind of cheese strat. The very first game I played yesterday I got double extractor worker rushed, of course never having seen this idiocy yet and not having spent any time practicing my micro, been working on macro mechanics first, I ended up losing by a narrow margin as I had chrono'ed out extra probes when I saw his workers coming. I looked up the record for this player and out of 1000 games he has only won about 250. I stopped and thought about it for a minute, what would drive a player to attempt to win by using underhanded tricks? besides the obvious, I like to watch people rage, or I think its funny. Would someone who just cannot grasp the mechanics of the game turn to cheese in order to at least secure a few wins? I would be interested to hear your answers.
Things I need to work on:
Timing: I lost a PvT despite having contained him early game and prevented him from expo'ing, taking my expo early and having a good unit comp against his bio ball and it came down to timing. I caught his ball out of position in a choke where my collosi would have the best splash arc they could, but when I pushed into his ball, I didn't realize my psi storm hadn't finished upgrading, nor had my second weapons upgrade. They were both literally 5 seconds from being done and I just got impatient and pushed too early. It was entirely my fault and I gave up an easy win despite having executed a good early/mid game.
Upgrades: Yet another PvT, except this time, I just was not focused and ended up handing him the game despite a numerically superior army because I didn't get upgrades. I just didnt drop a forge or templar archives, he had turtled up hard with turrets all around his base and tanks, I had plenty of stalkers, just didn't have the blink. Once again, I had a very good early/midgame when I scouted his fast banshee and was ready with an obs and stalkers, denied two of his expansions, contained him to his base and took the gold. But, as in the last game, I pushed and tried to break his wall and without having storm to knock down marauders, or blink to sneak up the cliff, or even chargelots for sniping his tanks, my army just melted away and I had to gg out.
Defending cheese: I can stop most proxy builds, cannon proxies because I scout my base and around my base well, scout early and often is something I try to do. But, some cheese just catches me off guard like the worker rush or a 6pool (yes, I generally lose only to zerg cheese) and I either under or over react and I am unable to stop it. Like forgetting to put my zealot on hold when he is part of my wall-in, or panicking and just a-moving at his workers when they attack instead of trying to kite one and snipe them. Basically, I will only be able to improve on this by playing a lot more games and getting a feel for the micro.
So, these are the things I have written down in my notebook from watching my replays, the things I will remind myself to do when I'm playing, post-it notes are great. Hopefully I can work my way into silver soon and continue my march to diamond.
Random: The Tron: Legacy OST is absolutely amazing to listen to while playing, Daft Punk make a great soundtrack and Derezzed just gets me pumped.
-Nervegas
Go Go Ladder Fighting!
