EPT
It's conceivable, for example, that you may have interpreted certain statements regarding Protoss as singling the race out in a negative light. The word 'fuck' might have been deployed once or twice. After twenty or so more games, I decided that I was being unfair, and that Terran and Zerg could go fuck themselves too.
If someone had merely described to me the series of games that directly followed Ep.6 of this blog, rather than subjecting me to them directly, I would have unholstered a casual 'Cool story bro' and got on with my life, dismissing it as hyperbole. They included:
A drone rush, to which I somehow managed to lose despite seeing it coming from halfway across the map.
An early pool ling/spinecrawler rush which I shut down emphatically, delayed his expansion, massed ling/roach/hydra to get past his panic-walls of spinecrawlers, and lost a base-race against mutalisks.
A walled-in Protoss on Delta Quadrant, against whom I made queens, spore crawlers and a hydralisk den, and still lost to void rays because I left all my goddamn overlords out at the front where they had rallied.
A terran, whose double-gas and mineral-only units I scouted, whose banshees were duly denied, whose expansion was delayed by lings, who had to slow-push with tanks to his own natural, and to whom I still managed to fucking lose because, while slaughtering his first army and prepping my fourth base, I completely forgot to make any more units or spawn any larvae.
A Protoss who built his 2-gate at the back of his main, so that my scouting drone went up and down his ramp without even realising the base was there at all.
A Zerg whose roaches and lings squeezed through a one-square gap between my scouting overlord's vision and the edge of his ramp and thus arrived entirely unannounced.
A Protoss, whose DT rush I scouted and prepared for ~5 seconds too late. I cleaned it up, denied his first expansion attempt, droned, harassed with mutalisks, killed ten or so stalkers he obligingly drip-fed to me while sacking his main from the air and then - when I moved out two minutes later with ~20 roaches and ~12 mutalisks to pressure his natural - ran everything into the maw of a completely inexplicable ~20 zealot, ~20 stalker, ~8 sentry and 3 colossus deathball he had found in his ass somewhere.
A terran who didn't take the hint when he scouted spinecrawlers in my main and natural and roasted half my drones with an armada of hellions (Seriously, Terrans, don't let a little thing like four spinecrawlers put you off).
A Zerg who overran me while I frantically tried to make units to defend, not realising until too late that my natural hadn't been added to my hotkey and was swimming in unused larvae.
After these and several other debacles, he final straw was a Protoss. He made one pylon, one gateway, one cybercore and one stargate, and a single Zealot. All these buildings were in his base. I scouted them because none of them were anywhere near his ramp. When I ran 18 lings into his base and killed all his probes, he said simply, "Retard", and quit.
Now, when the matchmaking system has to spoonfeed you a win like that, you feel pretty shitty, let me tell you.
But - oh, but...
I gritted my teeth, watched my replays, and saw that, in reality, it was the same problem over and over: tunnel vision. I'd start each game performing the early stages of the build on autopilot, but the moment I scouted my opponent, my decision making would go completely to shit. I'd forget to macro, forget to tech, forget to inject, forget to make larvae, forget to spend them, forget to position my units, completely forget my plan - something huge would just go right out of the window and any chance of executing a sensible strategy with it.
So I sat myself down to play some more games, and for the next two hours I did the following:
If I realised I'd made a huge mistake, like getting distracted by aggression and banking 1200 minerals at the 6 minute mark, or forgetting a building or getting massively supply blocked, or simply losing sight of where I was going, I would thank my opponent and GG. I played some ladder games like that, and then I played some practice macro games against the computer opponent.
And the oddest thing happened.
When I went back to the ladder and played another game, it didn't feel like a ladder game. I wasn't thinking 'Man, I really want to win this one', because for the last ten games or so winning hadn't even been on the agenda. All I wanted to do was avoid having to quit because I'd done something stupid. I wasn't worried about my opponent because my opponent wasn't what was making me lose - I mean, that had always been the case but now I'd made it official.
I made a couple of scouting lings and dropped three spinecrawlers at my natural in case of 4-gate. Then I worked up to 20 drones and made a couple more lings to poke the front of his base, because I noticed he seemed to be setting up a 3-gate expand. Satisfied that he was actually going for it, I decided to saturate my bases and attack with roach/ling/baneling. So I did. And despite him having a couple of Colossi and several sentries with his zealot/stalker force, I was able to all but reset his gateway count before pulling back. And I even managed to make more units at the same time. And remember to expand. And get upgrades. So the next time I pushed in, it was with +2 attack burrow roaches with tunnelling claws. And a ling flank. And mutalisks on the way.
And I won.
Literally my first legitimate ZvP win in three months - longer, if you don't count 3RR as 'legit'. I watched the replay just to be sure, and you know what? I could have done even better. He had more probes than me throughout, kept his money fairly low for most of the game, and I still won, because I was only trying to beat myself.
It's 3:16 in the morning now, so I'm going to call it a night. But for the first time in ages, I'm actually looking forward to playing tomorrow.
Thanks for reading.
