My Random Win-Rates: Part 1

I rarely ever cheese, since I find macroing as each race quite an engaging challenge to help me improve as a player. It also helps a lot to be aware of how a matchup feels from the opposite perspective. And of course, it’s fun to build nothing but drones until 60 food, or to just spam marines like there’s no tomorrow, or steamroll people with Colossus.

I tried sc2gears, but I can’t get it to display stats for random. Also, in Excel, I can make it pretty (all those presentation skills from high school put to good use).

The first thing to strike me was my extremely low winrate as Zerg. 15 games are enough to have a general idea of how things are going, and the answer here is clearly not well. No wins against Terran, a single win against Protoss. I did realize, upon watching my replays, that I wasn’t adding a 4th macro hatch after taking a 3rd base, which would lead to my money creeping up to 2k, but with me unable to spend it, despite nailing all my larva injects.

In ZvT, I was having trouble with large amounts of marines in the mid/late-game, whether they came with tanks, or whether they were dropped in 3 different places at once.

For ZvP, I came across the problem I’m sure all Zergs have experienced – the Protoss “deathball” push, which always seems to hit right before you can get your broodlords up.

I also distinctly recall losing a lot more ZvZ’s than were shown, but they got cleared out of my match history, so it actually looks like my best Zerg match-up – an unfortunate side-effect of statistics. In any case, it’s clear that Zerg is my weakest race, and I’m not in any position to say much more until I fix up my Zerg a bit first.

This is where things start to get a bit more interesting. I know for certain that I am most confident with Protoss, but I actually have a higher winrate as Terran. It’s obviously due to an insufficiently large sample size, but on top of that, Terran “feels” easier. Now, I’m not saying Terran is over-powered or imbalanced – I’m just saying that I have an easier time getting to grips with the human race than with the Swarm (I’ve played too much Protoss to comment). Maybe it’s because of the campaign, maybe it’s just that the flexibility of the Terran race, coupled with their “standard” macro mechanics (ie. compared to other RTS games), makes them more straightforward to play.

Certainly, the TvT mirror feels this way. Where PvP and ZvZ is vicious, often come down to a single misplaced forcefield or well-placed baneling, TvT is much more forgiving. So much, in fact, that it feels like a normal match-up instead of a mirror (if anything, I treat TvT as one would TvZ). Going pure bio is somewhat risky, but both bionic (MMM + tanks) and pure mech allow for the player to rely on his skill alone, rather than a combination his skill and an intimate understanding of the TvT match-up. The lethality of TvT just seems tame compared to the knife’s edge that is PvP and ZvZ.

Commenting on TvP is like kicking a beehive, so I’ll try and keep this short. I like to play straight for the late-game against Protoss – I’ll only do midgame aggression to confirm whether he’s going for Colossus or storm, and then prepare accordingly. Oftentimes this results in the Protoss getting up their deathball, and then a-moving into my well-positioned army due to over-confidence, losing everything, and complaining about Terran being imba. Additionally, in the two games I lost, one of them I didn’t scout his hidden expansion, and the other…a single Dark Templar picked up 40 SCV kills, because I told myself I didn’t need to deal with it because I have MULES anyway. Such over-confidence. In any case, I know that I can stim, a-move and chew through everything the Protoss can throw at me, bar Colossus and Storm (and heavy amounts of Zealot/Archon, which specifically requires Marine/Ghost).

Back to something a little less sensitive. TvZ, oddly enough, also feels somewhat "safe". Opening hellions, and then going into tank/marine is quite straightforward. It’s also extremely effective, and easy to pull off. Sure there are cute things like multiple drops, banshee/Thor/Raven play, etc., but straight-up Marine/Tank is what I fear most as a Zerg, and what seems to be getting me the most wins as Terran. Maybe it’s the zergs in diamond that I happen to play against aren’t actually that good. But for now, don’t fix what ain’t broke!

Probably the most-complained about race. Having 3 of the 4 current GSL semi-finalists isn’t making things easier (not to mention that the only Protoss who got knocked out of Ro8 was Naniwa, the only non-Korean). But that’s not relevant. What is relevant, is that Protoss is my most played race, and so probably has the most reliable statistic. Probably.

My PvT and PvZ winrate is ridiculously high. I have to say, PvT used to be my worst match-up, but I've worked on it a lot, and the results have been showing - something I would be quite proud of, if it wasn't greeted with a sneer more often than a cheer. PvZ is a little bit more “formulaic”, for lack of a better word. It almost universally starts as a FFE vs 3base Zerg. At this point, I like to take a fast third myself, while applying a little bit of pressure, unlike most Protoss players, who commit hard to an attack, and delay their own 3rd. I feel like what I’m doing only works at the lower levels, but it’s hard for me to fix a weakness I don’t know I have, since my opponents aren’t taking advantage of it (Zerg takes a fast 4th and goes straight for Broodlords…?)

PvP is clearly the Achilles heel of my Protoss play. When I expand, my enemy kills me off one base. When I play safe, my opponent already has an expansion up, and my push doesn’t break through. When I go Phoenix, he overruns me with Chargelot/Archon, but when I try to reciprocate, he somehow still has enough to defend. He also always seems to have a few more Colossus than me at any given time. I would not call PvP “coinflippy” – I simply acknowledge that I don’t understand the match-up that well, and need to work on it (a lot).

Taking a look at the last row, my overall win-rate is actually looking quite good against Terran and Zerg, but meagre against Protoss. In terms of averages, it seems that my Terran and Zerg winrates more or less balance each other out, and then my Protoss play is actually the deciding factor. Interestingly enough, I presume the same thing is happening to my MMR – my PvT and PvZ winrates are likely to be highly inflated, since my terrible Zerg play drags my rating down. So until I improve my control over the Swarm, the total winrates are going to be a little bit misleading, as I’ll be playing against players worse than my skill with Protoss, but better than my Zerg.

I’ve found that the best way to improve, for me, is to pick a player, and just watch him play. Do what he does, but try to understand the nuances and subtleties of why he does what he does, and why it works for him. Inspired of course, by Day[9] – more precisely, #367: Becoming Nestea.


For Zerg, I’m going through most of Nestea’s replays from IPL4, as well as random bits and bobs of Stephano’s play.

Terran I’ll leave on the backburner for now, since I can’t see any glaring errors as of yet. But I want to play a more aggressive mid-game, and SlayerS_MMA’s extremely multi-drop style seems perfect for this (not to mention I like to play greedy in the opening if I can get away with it as well).

For PvP in particular, I’m considering looking into HuK, Naniwa, and Oz, all of whom have with different styles, but Parting looked unstoppable against Oz in the GSL Ro8. Of course, this is a much longer quest, since PvP has no easy answer, but the above mentioned players seem a good place to start.

I'll post part 2 at some point in the future, when I find time to play enough games to have a meaningful effect on my statistics (or when I've lost another few dozen games as Zerg).

As ever, I appreciate all thoughts and comments. Especially if you can offer some tips to help me improve my weaker match-ups. Except TvP.


Because Squirtle is kicking so much Terran arse with his 2-base Colossus timing push at the moment, I want to see how that plays out first. I'm surprised that at IPL4, he managed to defeat Bomber, MMA, Jjakji, MarineKing, aLive (the 1st series), and is still continuining to rampage with it in the GSL. You'd think that Taeja would have prepared against it, but he collapsed as well. I love Parting and have absolute confidence he'll make it to the finals, but I almost wish MVP would make it through, to see if the King of Terran can stop this madness.