EPTSee, I was reading around on the SC2 Strategy forums, and I stumbled upon a thread called "Bronze to Masters". Now, I've always believed that learning fundamental mechanics are the key to playing SC2, but I've never really sat down and figured out what those are. I can say, after watching some of the videos in that thread, and then applying them to my gameplay, I saw incredible amounts of improvement.
The first benchmark that was set up was "51 SCV's at 10 minutes" and "expand by 3:45". I thought, well, hey, if I already do that, I can skip it! So I load up my replays, and I am struck by horror. At 10 minutes, I have 29 SCV's. I leave the replay and load up some AI games to practice my macro. After I get a solid feel for that, I go into some ladder games.
Now, the first couple video's don't really have a strategy behind them, they're just very basic foundations for macro. So, instead of having real unit compositions, the suggestion is to just spam marines. I do so, and even though I'm having a good worker count as well as a good timing on my expo, I just got rolled 3 games out of 4 because I only had marines.
So, naturally, I look toward the next couple of videos, and a build order is more fleshed out. I go into some AI games, learn the build order, and decide to take it into ladder once more. I was definitely surprised. I ended up going 5-1 in my games, the only loss being to roach allin that I didn't react to correctly. I was absolutely flabbergasted at how well my games were going now that I actually had standards of macro.
After every game, I loaded up my replays to make sure I was hitting the correct timings, and I ended up being a little behind on everything, but I will try to make that better in the future. All in all, today was a good day of improvement: I learned how to build workers better, and I learned a solid build that I can use in all 3 matchups. Hopefully, with this foundation, I'll be able to improve and branch out!
I am very excited about this rapid improvement that I am experiencing because it feels like something just "clicked" today. I am very very happy because I want to be the best I can be, and to be experiencing growth like this so early is very awesome for me, as I am just a lowly Gold player ^^ even when I lose, I keep my manners, I stay positive about the game and go into it with confidence. I always remind myself that it's about improvement and not about the ladder wins!
As always, thank you for reading, it means a lot to me that you're taking time out of your day to hear about someone else's.
