EPTI know this probably sounds ridiculous to alot of the browsers of TL as after all it is a SC forum, people wouldn't be here if they didn't play right?
Well let me introduce myself! Ive been "playing" sc2 since it was released over a year ago. I say "playing" because really I've been playing maybe 1-2 games a season for the last 8 months. So what happened? When the game first came out I was really motivated having switched over from WoW to my first RTS. I got placed in silver and started to play a few games every day and slowly moved up in the rankings and into gold league. The day I got promoted to gold league I was so happy to see that I was improving and moving forward. After a few weeks in gold league I went away on a cruise around the Pacific Ocean to some of the nicest island and places I've ever been. The trip was amazing and I recommend it to anyone that I meet.
This is where the problems started. Having been away for an extended period of time I came back and started getting into watching things like GSL which with so much content from other tournaments around as well started to become very time consuming. My play as was to be expected wasn't even close to how I was playing before I left and this quickly became frustrating. After more and more loses I'd slowly turned to watching more games than I'd actually ever play, which eventually turned into me watching a few hours of games and totally ignoring being a player at all.
Skip forward to today, I haven't played any games for over 3 seasons (I think, its hard to keep tract when you don't log in) and I have what people have coined as Ladder fear. I love Starcraft 2 as all of my friends know from my frequent ravings about how amazing a game was or a players run through a tournament bracket. Now with a fresh slate for 2012 I decided this was the time to get over something as silly as being worried about a video game (that I love) and to get back onto the ladder and enjoy myself. Taking advice from a Day[9] Daily about getting into Starcraft I started off with 2v2 as a way to ease myself into play and have abit of fun in the process.
Abit about my placement games in the spoiler below with replays!
+ Show Spoiler +
Game 1
First game was actually really enjoyable I just tried to concentrate on what I was doing and made things up as I was going along. I opened 10 pool because I remember that being an alright opening for a teams game. Then decided i wanted banelings and eventually mutas. My team won with a baneling bust to get into the other teams base and just overwhelmed with units.
Game 2
I did basically the same strategy. Mutas seem to catch alot of people by surprise and ended the game. Still feeling pretty good having won the first two games, I did realise that my macro was pretty weak and I sort of just tried to dump money into mutas to make up for the fact that I didn't really have a crisp worked out build order.
Game 3
Was the first lose. My partner got cannon rushed with neither of us spotting it until it was too late, he relocated and I tried to break it but my zerglings got demolished by a heap of cannons. At this stage I started to panic pretty badly. The cannon rush continued to block my second base leaving me stuck on one base. I chose to go roaches to try again and bust the cannon line, but attacked with a tiny roach force and ofcourse didn't break it. I noted that the cannoner had taken the gold below so I sent a roach force to deny that but by this stage the other team had enough to just take us out with a push.
Game 4
Was paired against double zerg. We got baneling busted and managed to hold. I went burrow roach while my partner went stargate. Spotted they were going spire, so I overreacted made a heap of spores and started hydras. I was really panicky after the bust and my gas income skyrocketed because I didn't produce drones to gather minerals properly. I finally got a force i was happy with a pushed across the map while going for infestors. We broke their natural and I embarrassingly forgot all about my roach/hydra army when I could of just pushed and ended it right then. After my partner yelling at me for a few minutes while I was getting attacked by a few roaches I realised and we won the game.
Game 5
I was paired with another zerg. Opened 10 pool again went into roaches and then mutas, I think my play was better this game. Although my multitasking and awareness is really lacking. I spent most of my time just staring at my base and trying to figure out how to spend my money. We ended up winning when we crushed the enemies push after I attacked their mains with my mutas.
First game was actually really enjoyable I just tried to concentrate on what I was doing and made things up as I was going along. I opened 10 pool because I remember that being an alright opening for a teams game. Then decided i wanted banelings and eventually mutas. My team won with a baneling bust to get into the other teams base and just overwhelmed with units.
Game 2
I did basically the same strategy. Mutas seem to catch alot of people by surprise and ended the game. Still feeling pretty good having won the first two games, I did realise that my macro was pretty weak and I sort of just tried to dump money into mutas to make up for the fact that I didn't really have a crisp worked out build order.
Game 3
Was the first lose. My partner got cannon rushed with neither of us spotting it until it was too late, he relocated and I tried to break it but my zerglings got demolished by a heap of cannons. At this stage I started to panic pretty badly. The cannon rush continued to block my second base leaving me stuck on one base. I chose to go roaches to try again and bust the cannon line, but attacked with a tiny roach force and ofcourse didn't break it. I noted that the cannoner had taken the gold below so I sent a roach force to deny that but by this stage the other team had enough to just take us out with a push.
Game 4
Was paired against double zerg. We got baneling busted and managed to hold. I went burrow roach while my partner went stargate. Spotted they were going spire, so I overreacted made a heap of spores and started hydras. I was really panicky after the bust and my gas income skyrocketed because I didn't produce drones to gather minerals properly. I finally got a force i was happy with a pushed across the map while going for infestors. We broke their natural and I embarrassingly forgot all about my roach/hydra army when I could of just pushed and ended it right then. After my partner yelling at me for a few minutes while I was getting attacked by a few roaches I realised and we won the game.
Game 5
I was paired with another zerg. Opened 10 pool again went into roaches and then mutas, I think my play was better this game. Although my multitasking and awareness is really lacking. I spent most of my time just staring at my base and trying to figure out how to spend my money. We ended up winning when we crushed the enemies push after I attacked their mains with my mutas.
Placement matches over and I'm placed into Platinum. Which really I feel isn't in anyways accurate! I always felt like I played terrible but somehow we managed to come out on top.
After the matches I was feeling quite stressed and could feel the adrenaline pumping from just continually queuing after getting rattled in the 3rd game. Does everyone else feel this sort of pressure when something goes wrong? From my first 5 games back playing SC2 I really do appreciate just how much work it must take to get to the top levels. I've only played at the lowest levels for a few games and I was already stressing like crazy about what I was doing wrong!
Anyway I have been rambling on for way too long (one of my bad habits) thanks for giving my blog a read. Id really appreciate any feed back or if anyone wants to play some games or anything of that nature I'm on NA/SEA.
). 
Maybe one day I'll see you on the ladder!
