I am blogging my progress in Starcraft 2. It's my first RTS, and frankly I kinda suck. Currently I am in the Silver League, trying to break into gold. I played a lot of Zerg last season and made a race switch to Terran. I still sometimes regret this, but frankly I can get away with my lower APM with Terran more easily than Zerg.
Anyways I like Bio quite a lot, and it is my bread and butter even versus Zerg. I am blogging to try and reflect on my replays, and possibly get the opinions of others. I'm picking out a replay each post, and looking for where I could be a better player. I know this is a lot, but I'm looking to triage hemorrhaging wounds of failure before patching the smaller holes in my play.
Without further adieu, my first replay.
http://sc2rep.com/replays/(T)AgentComet_vs_(P)Swell_slag_pits_sc2rep_com_20110508/8027
This is a TvP on Slag Pit. My opponent is a Silver league player who seems to be at about my skill level.
Initially I did not wall off because I knew my opponent was Protoss and I have been burned many times with a 4gate sniping that depot. I think I opened with a good 1/1/1 build for the first 6 minutes. I add the E-Bay because I will throw down turrets if I see a fast VR or DT. I hate cheese and like to avoid it where I can. I'd rather not hold back the scan as that could be a MULE instead.
I get my banshees with cloak out by the 9 minute mark, I think i could do this faster, but on cross positions I wanted something I could harass with easily, while keeping my bioball together in case he pushes me. I threw down my expo when I harassed, and while I could have done it earlier, I prefer to poke and see what he has before I expand. I probably should have scouted earlier to do this, and that is something I need to work on.
I had 11 (21+ later) probe kills, and forced turrets so the harass was a success. However my macro stunk during the harass, and my micro during the harass wasn't to the level where it precluded me from tapping 5 and making more marauders. I also could have landed my expo and begun mining from it. My minerals piled up during the harass and while it was a success, I wonder if I would have been better off with focusing on my macro and ditching the banshees?
My macro died again around the 13 minute mark because I was trying to repair my banshees. I think I just forgot to repair when they got back and between transferring probes and tryign to repair it was a little pathetic. My queing was terrible as well, and I needed to throw down another 2 rax. 6 Rax marauder is okay off 2 bases, and I could have expanded as well. It is also apparent that I need to call down supplies less often, and focus more on spamming depots.
I could have easily gotten my 2 expo gas, and then throw down a couple more starports and gone mass banshee to support my Marauder ball. It would have dealt well with the colossi I knew he had, along with being very high DPS to help clean up his stalkers.
As for the final battle, I pushed out at 200/200 and 1a'ed. My computer is on the low end and craps out during large fights. So the lag made my stim late, and I almost lost. I had many more reinforcements than he did pouring across the map, and I was prepared to double expo. The BM continued after the game was over.
So I needed to focus on my macro, expand more frequently, and put down more production structures. My openings are okay, but my mid-late game is terrible. Its harder to pratice that because not every game goes that far. So my goals for this week are:
1) Expand more.
2) Always be building stuff.
3) Scout around the 6 min mark.
We'll see how that goes and I'll check back in later this week. Feel free to comment if you'd like, I always welcome constructive criticism. Thanks!