EPT
The NASL has had some amazing games where I've learned a lot... I highly recommend anyone thinking about purchasing a pass to check it out, it's great! Few kinks to work out like lower quality VODs rather than just 1080p, but that could just be my bandwidth cap speaking
Alternatively I've been watching Artosis' stream... and I can't speak highly enough of him, or his ability to teach SC2. Somehow Artosis is able to stream, talk, theory craft and play all at the same time... I hope to get there one day! But while he's been talking I often find myself trying to figure out what he should do next.... and then compare that to what he actually does, and how it works out. It's been a great experience and I can feel my B-net nervousness start to subside. I no longer care about losing, I just want to make sure I'm losing for the right reasons.
It was a long day today... but before bed I figured I'd give SC2 one quick whirl... and I wanted to try and break out of my old habits and try to play SC2 a bit slower (I already play slow! lol) and try to process my scouting information to make intelligent decisions. I ended up playing against a semi-standard terran.... my current weakest matchup.
I took a deep breath and decided to open with a loose 3 gate... and react to whatever the terran did. If he went into a macro game, I'd oblige and expand and tech up.... if he came at me hard... I'd respond in kind. I never expected to actually discover my own "killer instinct"...something that's been severely lacking in my games.
I really focused on keeping my scouting probe alive to try and figure out if the terran had expanded, and if so when he planned on moving out. I scouted his ramp with 2 zealots (can take a few more shots from rines before taking hull damage compared to a probe) to try and determine what the terran was doing behind his wall-in... I saw what I perceived to be two rax going down (actually a rax and fact) and saw a pack of marines.... though the pile didn't seem that big yet. I decided to wait a second and scout again with my probe... lo and behold he expanded.
In the back of my mind... I felt I should 6 gate him and see how that worked to punish a terran who had literally just expanded. I quickly threw down 3 more gates, and set up a semi-forward pylon (could have been placed better... but I'll work on that stuff when I get my basics down). When I had a round or two warped in, I pushed in with my force and was able to bust his expo, and then charge my way up into his main for the gg. A very small step... but I finally had one of those "attack" moments. Normally I throw my army away on some pathetic attack.
My macro was pretty bad, my probe production went bye bye for some reason when I was processing scouting info.... and my micro is as terrible as it could be... but I definitely feel I've improved from this match!
Exciting times. Here's the replay if anyone's interested.
http://drop.sc/11044
Cheers! Any advice is always welcome. I really enjoy the RTS genre and strategy games in general... I'd love to push into higher tiers of SC2 to really enjoy what it has to offer.
