Learning Terran and Improving As a Player

About Me:

Hello TL community, I am sm0b, a long time RTS player dating back to the original Warcraft days. I have been active here on Team Liquid since right before the SC2 beta was announced (good time to want to come back to Starcraft

). I have almost always been a casual RTS player and gamer in general up until... well... recently. I am currently attending college pursuing my degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. I have a reasonably social life with friends, class-mates, my girl friend, dog, etc. I also have other hobbies outside of video games, I regularly go to the gym and enjoy some outdoor sports as I live in San Diego. I have always been a competitor, even from a very young age competing with my two brothers. I played sports like baseball and football all through high school and somewhat in college. I think being competitive is healthy, and I use it as a tool of self-improvement. Either it be lifting heavier at the gym or earning the starting spot on the football team in high school, I feel it is important to always push ones self to be a better human being. Now as I get older, I no longer have things like team sports to keep me competitive, I think this is what drew me into SC2 so much in the first place. So what's the point of this blog? I want to use SC2 now as a tool of self-improvement, not just to be a better gamer but to work hard on something and have it pay off. By creating a blog that others can view I feel like I will have another level of accountability for seeing my goals through (much like having a partner in the gym or a coach or something). I feel like if there is any time I can do this, now, over the summer when school is out is the best time for me and before I graduate and move on with my life.

My Starcraft Experience:

I started, like most players, playing BW though I did not play very competitively. Most of my BW experience was BGH, Zero Clutter, SCV football (please someone make one for SC2), and other UMS games. Not until January of 2010 did I start playing on iccup, even then the highest rank I ever got was C+. Then as you may or may not know, the SC2 beta started in late February of that year and I was lucky enough to get in one of the first few beta invite waves. I stuck to the same race I played in BW, Zerg.

I quickly climbed up the ladder, placing in Platinum League(when that was the highest) then Diamond when it was released. I played pretty well in the beta, although I didn't have a ton of time to play that often. I got lucky and got to play a couple well known players during the beta, one being aTnDarkForce. After the game got officially released I took a few months break and came back after the Masters league was released. During the first season I got in, I was still playing mainly Zerg at the time, I say mainly because I did occasionally play random even though I didn't know how to play Terran or Protoss. After reaching Masters, I took another break, logging in here and there to play as Random or whatever I felt like playing.

Then, last year I heard about MLG having SC2 so I thought, what the hell, I'll try it out it should be fun. I didn't get a lot of time to practice before MLG and I actually tried playing Terran at MLG which was a terrible idea bc I only had a week to try to learn Terran. I made it through the first round then fell to the losers bracket and lost there. Shortly after MLG I heard about a local company that holds LAN events in San Diego and they were featuring SC2 so I decided to go and compete. I went back to Zerg for that and lost 1-2 in the finals there. More time passed and I played SC2 on and off, School picked up again and I got busy again. I went to more of the LAN Diego events and got second three more times but I never actually practiced seriously or really had any builds.

So now in my Starcraft story we're at the beginning of this year, and thanks to Team Liquid I learned about the CSL and I was able to gather some class-mates to make a CSL team or SDSU! Now that we were in the CSL, I had a game to play every weekend so I tried to practice a bit more. I will still uncertain about my race at this time, Zerg was my best but after the fungal growth overhaul I didn't like Zerg anymore. Somewhere in the semester I decided that I was going to try Protoss (as much as the Zerg in me hated the idea) and practiced a bit more than I ever did as zerg on improving as Protoss. By this point, LAN Diego became much bigger and GMs were starting to show up so my second place finishes stopped but I was sticking to Protoss and actually working on builds actively and it started to pay off. In the CSL regional LAN at UCSD, I took a game off of my first GM and a month later I beat another GM at LAN Diego.

Since then the amount of time I've had available to play has gone down, I did some coaching for a while but as the semester went on I found less and less time to play. Now as the school semester is finishing up I will be able to practice more and focus on improving. So that's where this blog comes into play, I want to improve and compete at a higher level in SC2. I was able to compete with GM level players after only practicing Protoss for a few weeks and now I want to spend even more time honing my craft.

My Goal For The Summer:

It's simple, I'm not going to be a pro-gamer, I'm not going for rank 1 GM, and I'm not quitting my job to stream full-time. My goal is just to improve and reach a level of play that I will be able to compete better with GMs and maybe win a small LAN. I feel like now that I have the time over the summer I should go for it, and really try to improve.

Playing as a Random player for a good while casually made me realize how terribly poor my Terran play was. I honestly had no idea what I was doing, I'm also not really sure how I was able to beat the Master guy I did at MLG last year. Also, I have always thought that Terran is not only the strongest race but the hardest to play well. So I will be learning Terran and choosing Terran as my main race to compete as and play in HotS.

TL DR: I want to learn Terran and play at the GM level.

My Stream and Why I'm Streaming:

Things are a lot different for gamers these days. A lot of people watch stream more then they actually play, I was one of these people during the semester when I was trying to stay current on the meta for the CSL matches. I have seen multiple threads, and talked with multiple people about how they've wanted to get better, learn a new race, or just wanted to practice more efficiently. So I am going to b streaming all of my practice sessions.

I am not a pro, and I will be playing a race I am unfamiliar with so my play will be flawed for a while but maybe if someone one day wants to learn Terran or just try to "be better gamer", they can use my vods as a reference of what works and what doesn't and see first hand a person doing just that, improving.

My stream is located on twitch and my user name is Smob or you can find it on the non-featured list on the side of the page.

I don't have a twitter or anything, maybe I'll get one to update when I will be streaming if I get some followers.

If nothing else, having a stream will make me feel more accountable for seeing my goals through.

How and When I Will Start:

I still have a couple finals ahead of me and I won't be officially done with school until Tuesday night. I may turn on my stream between now and then to tweak some stuff and get ready for a regular broadcasting schedule. As soon as I know when ill add another blog entry with all that info.

Here is how my practice will be structured as I start:

I will be sticking with only three builds, one against each race as I learn mechanics and program the macro algorithm in my head. I figure this will take some time to master but I will do this for at least two weeks and my emphasis will macro and general decision making. I don't want to focus too much on strategy or map specific builds as I think this will be counter productive until I have the macro and bread and butter builds down.

For now, that's all I have. If you are interested great, if not that's great too. I'm doing this for myself, but I want to stream my practice in hopes that I can help some fellow TLers improve themselves. I love theorycrafting and talking about starcraft so if you do decide to check out my progress feel free to say hi in chat or in game. I also am free to the idea of coaching/replay analysis during down time while I'm streaming so if you are interested in that let me know via chat or PM.

Thanks for reading guys and to all the other students out there, good luck with finals!

Smob Hwaiting!

Learning Terran and Improving As a Player

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