EPTThings focused on: Steps 12 of the Staircase
Completion of Focus: Good day
End of Day Placement: Silver 539 (up 50)
I haven't updated this in a couple of days, because I haven't played Starcraft in a couple of days. Makes sense, right? I've just been hanging out doin' other stuff. Caught up on the Walking Dead and read a couple more books in the Dresden Files. (Those books are so awesome)
Recap:
It was a pretty good day. I don't say that just because I won 5/5 games tonight but my play just felt pretty good. Things were clicking in my head nicely and my APM was pretty high for me. (~60 according to SC2 gears).
I started out trying to set up and see if I liked a 1 barracks fast expand thor attack at 10:00. I played around with it for a while, and it turns out I don't. The best I could do is like 15 marines and 2 thors at 10:00 which is so slow that I couldn't attack till 12 and that army sucks to attack at 12:00. So I went back to my MMM attack at 10 and then started making Thors afterwards, and oh man did I like that! Though oddly enough I never got to have my 10:00 attack actually attack because my opponents always tried to attack first.
Also one of my favorite things happened. I was accused of cheating. This is awesome for a couple of reasons. Firstly it's great because I played well enough that the dude thinks I cheated, that's a nice compliment. Secondly it's hilarious because the thought process has to be something like "He beat me! Well I'm awesome, and therefore he MUST be cheating!" This is the greatest most egotistical thing that anyone can ever think. And it means that he will NEVER improve because he already thinks that he's perfect. Way to stagnate at silver, impressive. It would be a lot better if he looked at the game and realized that when 4 gating you need to attack the fast expanding Terran asap rather than waiting till 9:30 when he's almost got his upgrades (I had 1/0 and stim was 4s out) and a decent army.
I also had my first defeat of a Diamond level player. I have no idea why I was playing a diamond, and I don' feel like he played like a diamond. It almost seems like he was trying something new (hellion banshee rushing from a single base). I managed to hold it off thanks to a well timed Thor popping out and as he kept attacking I kept holding him off until he ran out of resources and then GG'd. Yay me!
Other than that nothing really noteworthy happened, I had a single pass of the Thor micro/macro step. Mostly my problems revolved around gas control. I do well when I'm in my planned stages early, but then after everything goes down I tend to end up just making more and more marines for one reason or another. (Usually I'm in a hurry and need LOTS of dudes.) Which lets my gas skyrocket. So that will be my main focus.
Objectives:
Gas Control: As stated above, I tend to let my gas skyrocket later in the game as I make lots and lots of marines. Strangely I usually start making lots of marines because my gas is too low to make something else and I get stuck in this "mash a" (well "j" but whatever) mode. So I need to do a couple of things. I need to start making something other than naked barracks (which can only make marines) when I start making more buildings after taking my 3rd/4th. I need to watch my gas and start using it if it starts to climb later in the game or pull dudes out of gas if my factory and starport get destroyed from a drop or something. (As happened in a base trade game I had)
Control Groups: I use the Core.. I love the Core it's gonna seem weird when I say control group keys. Just sayin' before hand.
I've been working on this one a bit with mixed results. I"m using 9 for my medivacs, L for my thors and P for either the whole army or just marines and marauders. L especially feels kind of wonky as I just haven't had much experience with using it yet. So I want to use L more often and throw in a few ; groups as well, those are the strangest (aside from =) so far.
