EPTWhen the Geforce ProAm was announced, I knew I had no chance of winning it as I'm still in silver league and struggling with my PvZ. I entered anyway for the experience and possibility of playing some plat-masters level players to see for myself what the difference in the leagues really is. My division contained the following breakdown:
1 player profile that did not exist on Bnet
1 Masters Zerg
1 Diamond Protoss
2 Plat Protoss
1 Gold Protoss
1 Silver Protoss (me)
1 Bronze Terran
Only 4 of us ended up playing any matches: the Masters Zerg, both Plat Protosses, and myself.
My first real match was against a Plat Protoss. I checked his match history prior to preparing for the tournament and noticed that while he plays Protoss primarily, he had several matches as Zerg. He also liked to 4-gate in PvP matches and my micro skills in this matchup have been needing improvement. I thought to myself that this could pose a problem as I would not know whether or not to focus on PvZ or PvP strats for the match.
My tournament approach is to have a core standard build for each matchup, a general simple build is applicable for all 3 matchups, and a cheese/quirky build for each matchup. As a silver league player, I'm still focusing on my macro and general mechanics, so I try to keep things as simple as possible with builds. When I ladder, I use my core standard builds in each matchup so I don't have to think as much about that and can focus more on macro, scouting, expanding, etc...but doing the same thing over and over in a BO3/BO5 doesn't make much sense to me.
Going into the PvP matchup I spent quite a bit of time working on my 4-gate for maps with wide ramps, and my 2 gate-robo anti-4-gate build (Tyler/Day9's build) for maps where you can FF the ramp to buy time for that second immortal to pop. I felt good with my build orders and knew it was going to come down to execution.
First Map was MLG Metalopolis: I went for the anti-4-gate and got roflstomped due to getting supply blocked when I was ready to start my first immortal for about 7 seconds. Immortal popped late and I did not have enough units to hold. Now if I had Huk's micro skills I could have pulled it off, but if I had Huk's skills, I would not have gotten supply blocked either
Second Map I selected Xelnaga Caverns: Expecting him to 4-gate again, I decided to proxy 2-gate to force a 3rd match. I spawn lower left and set my proxy pylon up just south of his base and warp in two gateways to wallin the pylon. Chrono out my zealots and attach with the first two. He had scouted my base at this point, but already had his Core down before adding a second gate to match my production. I chrono out 2 more zealots rallied to his base while my initial two take on his lone zealot and pulled probes. After my 5th and 6th zealot join the battle I've managed to power down one of his gateways and kills about half of his probes and he GG's. Onto game 3.
Third Map my opponent selects Taldarim Altar and I'm already thinking, "great, here comes the 4-gate again". I'm already feeling nervous because his hit about 15 seconds sooner than mine usually does, so if he gets his proxy pylon up before I can scout it, I'm dead. As the game is loading, I noticed he switched to zerg and my immediate reaction is "WTF? Zerg? Why not 4-gate me for an easy win?". Having not practiced my PvZ at all that week, I pushed the panic button and grabbed the nearest build order I had scratched out on a sheet of paper for PvZ. It was MC's FFE w/Stargate build that he used to destroy Idra at MLG Columbus. I had practiced it only a few times and only used it once on ladder, but crossed my fingers and hoped I could at least deny his 3rd and get a chance to make it past the 10 minute mark.
I was expecting a roach/ling allin based on his match history and was glad I had this build handy. We spawn in cross positions, him top left and me bottom right. I get my forge up and after scouting no early pool on his part, throw down my nexus and proceed to get a good amount of probes while executing the build. I had noted timings on the build when MC was able to get key tech completed and at the 7 min mark, I was already about 2 minutes behind MC. Fortunately, my opponent appeared to be just as behind on his build as I was. I was able to get the first void ray to pop about 30 seconds before he attacks my base with a healthy supply of roaches and lings. I had two cannons, a few sentries and about 7 zealots at the time. It was more than enough to hold, but I figured that since he had seen my void ray, he was either throwing down plenty of spore crawlers and getting a few extra queens, or he was switching to hydras. I got two more voids out and a pheonix while throwing down a robo and a robo bay to switch to colossus myself.
Sent the Voids and Pheonix to check the third...no expansion...decided to check the main to see if I could snipe the hydra den, and lost 2 voids and the pheonix in the process as he had as I guessed massed up some hydra. During that attack, I had managed to get a 3rd and 4th up as I was floating about 1500 minerals (I know...way too much) and put down 2 more gates. At this point I had started colossus production and thermal lance (about 14 minutes into the game). There are a few back and forth skirmishes where it appears he is slowly wearing down my gateway forces and I begin to fear that my normal PvZ experience is playing out - He's outmacroing me and I'm getting overwhelmed.
I've managed to maintain my colossus count at 4 and have added 2 voids and 4 pheonix to my deathball of mostly 2-1 chargelots with a handful of stalkers and sentries. I hit 170ish supply and decided to push and see what happened. I arrive at his 4th (north expansion) as he is transferring drones and am able to take most of them out along with the hatch before his army of roach/ling/hydra/corruptor shows up. Fortunately, there were only 4 corruptors at the moment so I felt like I had timed my push just right as I was able to take them down while preserving 2 of my original 4 colossus and adding a 3rd during the battle. I establish some forward pylons at his 4th as well to reinforce. He sends a significant sized army to my third (south expansion) as a counter attack. I don't know if it was meant to draw my army back, but I felt I was out of position to defend my third and since my 4th was well saturated at this point and I was still floating about 1k in minerals, I was not worried as much about losing the third, so I pushed into his natural. I think at this point his inexperience with zerg was beginning to show as I suddenly felt like I had more units than him. His second goes down as my third goes down and his army meets mine at his third (west expansion). It is almost an army swap as I lost focus while trying to get my third back up, but fortunately, I had also just built 5 more gateways and now had a total of 18 gates and was able to warp in 2 rounds of units rather quickly to hit his 3rd again. Our armies meet again and it's mostly ling/roach at this point and with a couple good forcefields (rare for me) I see "GG".
I've won my first match and against a platinum ranked player no less. After the game he messages me: "Are you smurfing? You can't really be silver, are you?" I said, "Once upon a time I may have had to skills to smurf, but not now. I am really in silver, but am mostly playing gold players now so I should be due for a promotion." I asked why he switched to zerg when he so easily beat me with the 4-gate earlier. He said he prefers zerg on Taldarim. I truly believe I would have lost if he had not switched. This game proved to be pivotal in my 1st round results.
My other games are less exciting to report on. I did manage to push each game against the Masters Zerg player to the 12 minute mark with one game going to 18 minutes. I considered that a moral victory even though I got 2-0'd.
Going into my final match, I'm 5-1
The Masters Zerg player is 5-2 with both losses as FFL's
The Plat Protoss I beat is 6-1
The remaining Plat Protoss is 4-2 with 1 FFL, and the other loss 1-2 to the Masters Zerg.
Both of the other players FFL to the 6-1 protoss player, and I felt both players should have won those matches if they played them, so I was a bit ticked off when the guy shows up to our final match to play me after missing the previous week against the 6-1 guy. He had no mathematical way of advancing and by FFL'ing to the 6-1 guy, he insured that by beating me, I would not advance. I would have no problem with the Masters Zerg and Plat protoss players that beat me advancing if they were better players, but it didn't seem right that the guy I was better than was going to advance because he didn't actually play his matches (not his fault mind you as he showed up for all of them).
Anyways, long story short, my last PvP was again MLG Metalopolis PvP. I had refined my 4-gate, though and felt like I had a shot. I was right...turned into a base trade. I was only able to get out about half of my probes and establish a new base at the north expansion, while my opponent got about 3/4ths of his probes out and setup his base in my original location. He scouted my base as the last possible place for me to expand which gave me some time to rebuild an army, but his forces were just too many and I had to GG. It was the first ever 4-gate base trade game I had played that lasted 25 minutes. I went for the tried and true proxy 2-gate on Xelnaga to force game 3, but he scouted it and defended perfectly and I had to GG 0-2.
I was frustrated because my whole purpose in entering the tournament was to get more experience against higher ranked players and maybe identify a glaring hole in my gameplay to focus on to make that next big leap in skill. All I ended up getting was 3 matches out of 7 and getting eliminated due to non-skill reasons.
But wait...I login this morning to see that I have actually advanced to the next round!!!..Apparently CPI ratings are affected negatively by FFL's and it was enough to push my ranking above the two 5-2 players I lost to. I don't expect to have much success in the next round, but I do expect to actually play my games and am looking forward to refining my game even more. Since the first round of the tournament, my ladder win-rate in PvP has skyrocketed, and my PvT and PvZ have slightly improved. I'm hoping for a gold promotion at the beginning of season 3.
Edit: Round two should be fun, one player profile does not exist and aside from a silver protoss, all my opponents are high masters (2 zerg, 1 terran, and 4 protoss)
