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I'm Wolfie and I'm trying to get over my ladder fright. So here's one of the games I played, for you guys. Read the first blog post for info on what I'm doing here.
Replay
VOD
What Happened?
Playing against a Zerg, I decided to do a 3-gate expand. Zerg prodded me once in the beginning, but left when I had a wall-off with a zealot and a sentry. I expanded, and after getting a small force, I decided to put pressure on the Zerg, in the hopes of getting him to waste larva for something else than drones. Unfortunately, he was already behind me in drones (29 vs 22) at this time, and had 35 lings instead.
So with the awful micro that I had (and I do blame some input lag as well ^_^), my force fields continued to fail me completely and I lost my whole initial force of 6 sentries, 6 stalkers and a zealot. I decided against it being a good thing, and was sure that I lost the game then and there. But as I saw that he countered my main with only 12 lings, I felt I was pretty ok. I mineral-walked into a bunch, and a-moved my probes on the zerglings. I lost only three probes, while he lost 12 lings. I was amazed by how that trade went.
Being worried of follow-up attacks, I tried to get an army. I can't remember whether it was a conscious decision, or a gut-feeling-thing, but I teched quickly to colossus, and got myself blink to boot. As an after thought, being stalker heavy wasn't probably the best of ideas, since I've seen only lings and a few hydras thus far, but that's what I went with - Stalkers, Sentries and Colossi. Deciding to avoid the mistakes of previous games, I got myself up to six gates on two bases, and I had a pretty perfect saturation. No money floating was going to happen this game.
But, then I got supply blocked at 99/100. I decided to use this as a timing to push (no use at waiting, is there?), and attacked his third, that just now got up and running. Always stunned at how much supply a colossus eats, I continued to excel in supply blockage, but that didn't matter. With a small amount of back-and-forthage, I managed to kill his whole army, and thus win me the game.
What Were My Greatest and Worst Things In the Game?
The worst thing was definitely losing the initial poking force. I lost 2050 resources just in that one encounter. It should've killed me. On the other hand, I liked my two-base saturation, which was considerably better than game one, posted yesterday. I like also the fact that I used my first colossus as a trigger for my first attack. It did as much psychological damage as real damage to my opponent.
What Could've Made Things Go The Other Way?
It seems like the lower level Zerg feel very unsafe, and opt to have a standing army, instead of massing drones in the beginning. This prohibits the zerg to get an awesome economy that the race needs to win. At no point did the zerg have more harvesters than me, and yet he was trying to get his third.
I don't think there's one particular thing that I can point that was game changing. Overall, it seemed that I had a more effective economy and macro than the zerg. Being most of the time ahead in food as a protoss is a pretty sure demise for most zergs.
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Hi, first of all, I admire the effort you put in these blogs. Providing a VOD, replay, battle report and analysis is pretty much perfect. However, I think it is a good idea to make one blog entry for each day instead of a new one for each game. This will probably give you more comments and it wont clutter up the forums as much.
Now to provide some feedback on your play, I'm not the best player myself but I think I can give some general tips.
-Your probe production is decent, but can still improve. I've noticed you usually go back to view your base whenever you make probes, but all you need to do is press the hotkey for your Nexi once and press E.
-You started to research warpgate about 30 seconds after your Cybernetics Core finished, even though you had enough resources to get it straight away.
-You should have taken your third a lot sooner. If you have map control, use it.
-Try to use the Xel'Naga watchtowers, they provide a lot of vision.
-Don't forget to macro during a battle.
Hope this helps. Good luck getting over your ladder fear 
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I considered making one post per day, but eventually decided against it, because the post would be even longer. In hindsight, though, one post a day could be better. It wouldn't hurt for me to try to be more concise with my analysis anyways. The format is still forming.
As far as your other pointers, you're hitting the nail on the head on each. I can't really recall why I tend to jump back to my base when building probes. I'm definitely using my nexi as camera hotkeys, so some of the times I'm just checking back to my base to see whether I can build something nifty. At least to chronoboost stuff. But thinking about it, I might be able to check less to the base.
Also, macroing during a battle is something I really really really need to start working on.
Thanks for the input, you're awesome!
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You were right about the first trade. It should have been an insta-gg in the zergs favor. Much greater macro skill got you ahead, however. Next time you get into a stalker/sentry vs ling fight, IMO don't try to split them up in two, but rather forcefield around your own units very thightly so that the area of attack against your ball is minimal. The worst that can happen at that point is that the lings retreat and you get to keep your army.
I agree with bartus88 on all points, except taking the third sooner. There was hell of a lot speedlings out and you had lost your whole army. The lings could easily just jump back and forth between the nat and third, giving you a hard time. Putting the pressure on him was in my opinion a much wiser decision. The third came when the natural had enough buildings to block run-by:s.
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You should scout the zerg after/during your 3gate expo to see if they have either an army or no army so that you don't lose your first army as you did  . Either hallucination or sac a probe/zealot (zealot is more irrelevant, like for forge first my first zealot is rallied to the main so that i see their tech)
Base wise, might want more pylon spread and sim city outside your nat with the forge?
Your initial force is really stalker heavy too, and without scouting that he had an army of lings i think that was a mistake. Lings = zealots.
^_^
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I'm going to echo Fluffy here by saying that I didn't feel like I really had the map control to expand. If I did have the map control, do tell me otherwise, since these things are what I try to learn. Also, I was _trying_ to FF around my units, but I kept botching it up. I usually am better with my FFs 
Thanks for the timing idea Juliette. It really makes common sense, right? But still I don't do it. I guess these things are holding me back . Thanks for the timing idea, I really should put that into my repertoire.
Thanks again, guys! You too are totally baller-awesome ^_^ People like you all really make me feel that having this blog is a great idea!
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On June 01 2011 15:22 Juliette wrote:You should scout the zerg after/during your 3gate expo to see if they have either an army or no army so that you don't lose your first army as you did . Either hallucination or sac a probe/zealot (zealot is more irrelevant, like for forge first my first zealot is rallied to the main so that i see their tech) Base wise, might want more pylon spread and sim city outside your nat with the forge? Your initial force is really stalker heavy too, and without scouting that he had an army of lings i think that was a mistake. Lings = zealots. ^_^
I wonder where I've heard 100% of this advice before... oh wait... jules -.- lol at least you are listening ^^
Nice game though, you played really well to win this. As Juliette said if you forge FE vs Z and send a zlot to scout what they are doing and you see a lot of speed lings, throw down a few more cannons and support your wall to prep for an attack. if you 3 gate expand, try to keep a probe near their nat hidden to later scout and see if you are in any danger of a lot of lings streaming in to kill you generally my ff's turn out looking like yours when I fight lings x.x Gotta remember to surround yourself almost in a semi-circle type of thing to lings can't get full surface area attack on your units ^^
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The thing about 3gate expand is that you can't do it the standard way against a good Zerg player. It worked here cause the zerg pushed out so much lings. If a good Zerg doesn't feel threatened by you, he will drone up like hell and you will be after economy wise, guaranteed. 3gate exp isn't threatening. You either have to push out with two or three gates to force out units from the zerg, without losing your own army, or then go something like forge expand to keep up with the macro.
All in all, defensive 3 gate expand works well against Terran and Protoss (sans cheese) but is pretty much economical murder in high level games versus Zerg.
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EPT
