EPTAs of my writing this, I'd like to say I'm not a complete Starcraft newbie. I mean, of course, based on the context of everything I'm about to say, I still have yet to truly grasp the game, and having first PLAYED Starcraft my first, RTS, in May of last year, I definitely don't have the grasp of the game the average D+ or (I think, IDK) D level player. But I still know some important things; pretty much enough to watch professional BW matches and understand what's going on, and of course I also love watching GSL, mostly following foreigners, but also following a few of my favorite players (read:July).
So, having first gotten Starcraft in May of last year, I started off, like everyone, a complete newbie having absolutely no idea what to do. Originally I played Protoss because a friend of mine with some experience said that it's the easiest race starting out, and told me to always build probes (of course, as a newbie, this meant "QUEUE!!!"). He directed me to Team Liquid, and I did a quick read up of a ForgeFE build and played a game against a computer, only to get demolished by my atrocious timings and ignorance to the computer's rush first strategy. While there, I learned two things:
1. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing, what all the tech structures are, how to use them, etc.
2. Probes are awesome!
Distraught, I looked again to the internet, googling beginner starcraft guides, and hearing advice such as "play through the campaign so you have some idea what does what"
Of course, again, my incompetence with the game resulted in myself attempting the Brood War Toss campaign and getting decently distraught that I couldn't beat the first level and that the "first level" had absolutely no introduction to the game and didn't tell me what units do what.
Well damn, this is going nowhere. I really didn't have any idea of how to use the plethora of information around me (god forbid I make an account and ask, I didn't want to be seen as some completely clueless newbie, and I liked the stronger, more authoritative guides). Regardless, I still enjoyed the game, and liked watching pro games in my spare time. English commentary, of course, so I could have some idea of what was going on.
Well eventually I found the VERY beginning campaign, and started playing through the Terran campaign. I disliked the race though, so I soon dropped it. I then tried out the Zerg race, and for some reason just fell in love with it. Using it felt much more natural than the other races, and after alternating the campaign and watching some BW matches, I started trying to play against the computer again. Of course, my timing was horrible and I still got rocked, but I had a much better understanding and started to learn the game. Unfortunately, about this time was mid June, and I would end up going out of town until July, with no access to a Windows computer (to my knowledge, if you have one version of BW you can't use it on the other OS?).
So of course, I ended up quitting the game by the time I got back to try to get in the front of SC2 when it came out. I bought the game soon after it was released and stuck with Zerg. After playing a few games, I decided to play my first few placement matches on Battlenet, and after going 2-3 I ended up in Bronze league. Not deterred, I continually tried to improve my game, but didn't get too far. By this point I had probably a better understanding of what to do but had a lot of trouble with the execution. I used hotkeys and whatnot but a major problem was knowing WHEN to do stuff. Of course, over the next few months and a generally bad record (slowly improving to silver league, but not getting really much above a 50% win rate).
I discovered Day[9], and using his show and just a general go and go and go mindset I believe I've gotten to be a better player. Of course, I also had a concept of macro and expanding, so in the lower leagues whenever I could get to a long game more often than not I could win simply because I had some ability to macro and the opponent had close to no ability. My APM has also improved significantly, around then I could usually keep APM average above 100 in an SC2 game and right now its around 150-180 average in BW. Part of that came from spamming, but also a general game awareness developed, and as my mental checklist (as Day[9] puts it) develops I generally have gotten quicker. However, a lot of my losses came in the early game, and despite having not played SC2 for about a month I get the feeling that most of my losses will come from the early game, namely early game aggression. Multitasking is also a weak point of mine, as when dealing with aggression my builds (SC2 and BW) fall apart, and in BW I've found myself with 600 minerals at 15 supply and wonder "well now what the fuck do I do?" (answer: gg within the next couple of minutes). Simultaneous micro and macro is also a problem, while I no longer have to look at my base to trust that I'm building, managing muta harass or battles and making units at the same time is coming slowly, and managing the units after they're made but before the battles also hasn't really come until recently.
Anyways, I stayed on SC2 until around Thanksgiving when I found myself out of town for a few days without a computer with a decent internet connnection and SC2, so I brought along my USB with Brood War on it and practiced against computers. This kind of built of better fundamentals, but also managed to create a small spark for my love of the game. The spark hasn't caught fire until recently, but here I am now. I didn't get on RIGHT away, however, I started playing BW again around Feb 8, and I've been working on my BOs against computers on again and off again for the last few weeks.
So yesterday, in the midst of a new season, I decided to try my luck on iCCup. While I've definitely read advice not to do this, I couldn't wait and was eager to get rocked in the first few games. That, of course, did happen. My first game was against some Korean 350 APM monster in a ZvZ... lol. And of course my next few games haven't gone the best since then. I've won a few, had a few disconnects, some of which didn't get recorded, but I think I've definitely learned more in the last few days. I learned the importance of timing EVERYTHING, and how I need to watch to see that I get things ready to go down the instant I can. I also learned how much more concrete build orders are in such a competitive environment. On bronze/silver battlenet, keeping a kind of vague impression of your build order and keeping money low is going to give you a good structure for the game, but in Brood War I've found it harder to keep money low if I stray from the build order a little bit. This could be because there's less options or I'm less aware of them, but I know I need to learn the variations built into the BO instead of trying to switch BOs completely, at least at this level (like changing WHERE my 3rd hatch goes instead of not placing it in Overpool vs 2 gate). Of course, being a player like this, the early game harassment by any competent player on iCCup has been deadly to me, and in the middle of any harassment I see myself fall apart, something that I hope goes away the next time I experience it. I guess a reassuring thing right now is there are plenty of major areas to improve upon, so I know plenty of things I am doing right and wrong and what I can do to fix them.
Anyways, this is going to be a long iCCup season. My goal is to be a solid D or reach D+ by the end of it, I'm hoping to get better, and should hopefully keep this updated as the season progresses.
I knew going in that I wouldn't have much, if any success starting out, I just felt that I needed to dive in sometime, and I got tired of waiting. I kind of wish I could better gauge my skill at this point, but I know the only thing that will do that is time.
