Ladder Blog #14

Okay, I freaking HAAAAAAAATE ZvT right now. I HAAAAAAAAATE it. I've pretty muched stopped going hatch first because of all the bunker rushes. I'll probably just wait for the patch for the barracks. I know it doesn't change THAT much but it'll help a little.

Also THE ****ING LADDER MAPS ARE STUPID. STUPID. They were nowhere near this bad at release. You cannot take a game off of a meching Terran on Antiga because they just turtle up and take their third and fourth bases secured with tanks and you can't do anything about it. If this were BW, I'd expand ten mroe times but in SC2, you can only get like 4 expos mining minerals at decent saturation AT MOST and still have a substantial army. You can't do anything except MAYBE drop, but if he gets a couple of turrets, he probably would just clean it up with a few tanks on the highground and support from the lowground. Here's a replay of a game I just played. Yes, I could've done things better but his play was absolutely average imo. Nothing out of the ordinary and he still crushed me completely.

Other maps aren't much better. I feel VERY uncomfortable on Typhon peaks, just beacuse of the wacky layout. The rocks are a threat, reapers are actually pretty good on it and the backdoor feels unsafe. I've vetoed all the terribad maps but even after that I still seem to be getting a lot of close positions on shattered.

Yeah, I wish there were better maps in.

Things have been going well. Just 14 gas 14 pool and either do a defensive roach play or fast banes. Both seem to work but I haven't had a chance to use the 10 pool that often. Yeah, because of a lack of games, I haven't really played that much ZvZ. No problems.

Okay, so I'm having a tough time deciding my build on Shakuras. After reading up on the recent drone drill discovery, I tried to go for hatch first. Unfortunately, having never actually tried such a build before, I found that the hatch would 100% get blocked by the scout probe. So I screwed up a few times like that. I think I should be going 15 pool 16 hatch but I don't want to stop using my 11 pool. I think 15 pool will get me a better economy since I get the third base faster but I'm still not sure if it's worth giving up my standard play. In hindsight I guess it is the best decision.

I'm also having trouble against something like a 7 gate. Before, I figured that with burrowed banes, I'd be completely safe against a build like that but it turns out that adding a robo and waiting a few production cycles completely nullifies the banes (who would've thunk it?). A ling army generally doesn't do well against forcefields.

I contemplated roach play, just to be safe. The other option I had is use Ling/Bane as a counterattack tool instead of a defensive one. Of course, it's a lot harder on Shakuras since one forcefield can lock you out of the base, and there's pretty much only one path between the sides of the map, so a pushing Protoss army can funnel your units pretty well. I think the roach solution would be best, transitioning into mutas if I scout that there's no massive gateway push coming.