EPTI load up SC2 today kinda late-ish, around 7pm. I want to dedicate myself more and play for about 5-6 hours, but I'm finding it hard to do right now, so I'm keeping it down to about 2-3 hours a day for now.
Instead of playing for the first few hours, I watch some TvZ of EmpireHappy vs AcerBly. They were interesting games, and I noticed EmpireHappy opening with a lot of Hellions and then switching to Marauders after Zerg goes to Roaches. Then, he sets up a contain with MMM + Tanks at the Zerg's natural so he has a hard time taking a third. Something I'll have to work towards!
Anyway, my first game today is a TvZ on Entombed Valley! I open standard, and both of us take a pretty defensive stance and just tech up. He does a ling run-by, I kill it. He takes over the middle of the map, but then I see that he doesn't have anything but lings holding the tower, I go and take it away. Then he does a huge ling run-by and it kills my third, my PF. Well that sucks. I kill some of the lings, the rest burrow, I didn't have enough energy to scan, so I leave a few marines there. I begin to push up with my army, I seige up and try to bait him into my tanks. However, all of my marines get fungaled and subsequently killed by Broods and Infested Terrans. He makes a mistake and loses all of his infestors, but it makes no difference. He builds a few more, and rolls over my newly made army with ling/infestor/brood lord. Shortly thereafter, he denies my third once again and kills me.
Ahh, well, game 2 is a new chance for a win! Game 2 also turns out to be a TvZ, this time on Ohana. In this game, I try to go for an MMM + stim timing attack that I was practicing in YABOT yesterday. However, I see a large amount of zerglings and banelings moving out, so I delay that, get my Factory's tech lab up, and research seige. For some reason, the zerg didn't bust down my ramp, which was really odd. I guess he wanted to just contain me. I break it easily and expand to my natural. I follow up with a drop in his main that killed 18 drones and his spire, so I was feeling pretty comfortable. He already has about 9 muta's out already though, so I play defensive. I get some turrets up and spread marines around my base. This is where things begin to take a turn for the worst. He uses that muta pack to pick off seiged tanks, and some buildings that aren't protected by turrets. I eventually get some more turrets up, and deny his third base with a drop, he cleans it up with muta's and roaches. He moves across the map with his Muta/ling/roach army, and we engage at my natural. We trade armies, I try to rebuild my army, he does the same, and he was able to get more units up faster than I was. I say my gg wp, and leave.
At this point, I had a mild headache, but I didn't want to stop playing, because I didn't want to make any excuses for why I didn't play a certain amount of time. Game 3, here we go! TvZ, on Daybreak. Spoilers: The outcome shifts in this game :D I decide to open up 2rax and try to apply some early pressure. However, I scout pool first, so I bring my marines back a bit, run around with them, and eventually lose my first 6 to a pack of 8 lings. During all this, I'm expanding, so I build 2 bunkers at my nat, I'm also halfway through getting stim and I'm finishing up my Factory techlab. So I'm in a decent place. I decide to ignore my opponent for a while and just focus on my own base for a bit. And you know, my macro is actually really solid when I'm not focusing on battles haha. I guess that could be said for anyone though ^^ I get my 2/2, take my third, fail some drops. He does a baneling bust on my third, and takes out my Planetary. I scan his front though and see that he has a Muta/Roach composition like my last opponent. This time, I take the fight to him, seige up at the ramp with the destructible rocks on it, and CRUSH his entire army. I reinforce, he builds a giant amount of zerglings and tries to clean up my marine/tank army. However, his units are 1/1, and mine are 3/3. I kill his lings, he reinforces with Roaches and FINALLY kills my army. I scan his front again and see nothing but roaches and muta's, so I go in with Marine/tank and kill his army again, seige at his natural, and he calls gg! Yay, first win of the day ^^
I decide to do one final game for the day. I don't know if it was a good decision or not. It was a TvT on Ohana. I once again go for that MMM + stim timing attack. I get the drop off, and it's a pretty big success. I kill 9 workers and a techlab! I was feeling good. I decided to take a third, because my macro is awful and I could afford anything with the trust fund I had. Watching the replay, I could have won easily at around the 13 minute mark, but because I was scared, I just stayed back. I moved out my marines, but if I brought my entire army and set up a contain, I could have killed him right then and there. Something to work on. Well, eventually he catches up because I didn't do anything with my advantage, and we literally have a Marine/Tank/Viking stalemate in the middle of the map for around 50 in game minutes, which I end up winning because I constantly denied the 4th and 5th bases. He tried banshee's, I killed those with vikings + scans, I tried nukes, didn't work. At one point he pushed through with Marauders + Tanks and killed my army and I thought I lost there, which would have been disappointing because I felt like I had a pretty good lead, but I recuperate and eventually take out that army, and take a commanding position. I'm about to win, he says "fuck tvt" and leaves. ): intense match, my friend.
So for today, something I did better than yesterday was try and take more bases. However, I still don't add more production facilities and this hurts my lategame in that I can't remax as fast as other players. Also, I need to get more APM so that I can deal with drops/muta harass faster, as right now I move excruciatingly slowly in order to respond to those. Also, my building placement needs to be better ^^
Outside of the game, I'm trying to keep a positive mindset, even when I lose. If I don't stay cheerful about the game, I wouldn't be able to handle losses as well. My friends are telling me to just 3rax SCV allin all of my games to make it into diamond+ or whatever, but I refuse to give into the temptation for easy wins! I'm going to learn to play standard, and when I'm good enough to win consistently with standard play, I'll learn how to cheese. I understand that cheese is a good strategy, but not when that's the only thing you know how to do. So, in general, I'm trying to keep a mindset of improvement over just getting ladder wins, and a positive outlook on everything sc2 related. I'm going to try and watch as many terran games as possible to try and pick up on things. Finally, I've heard a lot of people talking about how terran is the weakest race right now, but I'm going to keep playing them because they're my favorite (people are better than bugs
), and I think that at the tip top level of play, race choice comes down to preference ^^ if something is truly too weak, blizzard will change it, so I'm not worried. Once again, improvement is my focus ^^Thank you for reading my very long post, it means a lot to me that you took time out of your day to hear what someone else has to say about themselves. Thank you everybody for any kind of response ^^
