EPTStarting off with my real life.
To put it frankly it's been boring and almost shit in every possible way. The work I'm doing is not only heavy and very monotonic but also mentally tiring. The fact that I leave home shortly after 5 in the morning and am not home until 16.00ish doesn't make it any better. I've also had some issues with my health and last Wednesday I went through a colonoscopy. I'm still waiting for the results but I hope the doctors find something cause I can't stand going through any more tests. Tomorrow I have an appointment with my surgeon. What we'll discuss and do I don't know, but it is regarding the wound I mentioned in my previous post. Eventually things will turn out alright. Waiting for it however is a pain.
Moving on to gaming - Starcraft to be precise.
Due to work I haven't been able to put as much time into the game as I've wanted to. Not only due to having long days at work but because I'm exhausted mentally when I come home. I have managed to squeeze in a few games however. I've done a lot of weird stuff in the games I've played. I've attempted every possible proxy as I could come up with as I didn't feel like playing long games. This hurt my scoreboard quite a bit and the results hasn't been what I would've liked them to be but it also taught me a lot about my flaws as a Starcraft-player. As long as I stay away from attempting proxies and prepare myself for a standard macro-games instead I feel that this season could be really, really good for me.
This post's a bit shorter than what I would've liked. I can't seem to find enough stuff to talk about so I figured I could drop show some replays and share some basic buildorders that have helped me in some match ups. The play is nowhere close of top notch but someone might find the replays useful?
Starting off with a PvT. I went for some mindgames in this game. Started off by playing it very standard and teching for Colossus but I skip range and drop a Templar Archives instead. I build and keep 2 colossus with my army to force the Terran to build Vikings, and hopefully overreact a bit.
Replay - http://drop.sc/328851
Build order
+ Show Spoiler +
9 Pylon
13 Gateway
15 First Gas (Fully saturate the assimilators)
16 Pylon
18 Cybernetics Core (Warp Gate research asap)
21 Nexus
21 Mothership Core
23 Second Gas
23 Stalker
24 Pylon
26 Robotics Facility
30 Forge
Build your Robotics Bay around 7.30-8.15 (whenever you feel safe to do it and/if resources let you.) Do not be afraid of showing your Colossi.
Drop your Templars Archive when you're building your second Colossus/when you feel safe. Research Storm asap.
Add additional gateways whenever you feel comfortable.
You should take your third base whenever you feel comfortable/hold off a big attack from the Terran. I use the following as a thumb rule - if I oversaturate my natural heavily it's time to seek to expand. In this game I drop my third around the 13 minute mark. I could've put it down both earlier and later.
1) Continously build probes
2) The unitcomposition is up to you. What do you feel that you need? I always get a stalker or two together with a few sentries early game. The hallucinated phoenix provide great scouting opportunities.
3) You want 4-6 Observers on the map. Put one with your main army, send one to your opponents base for scouting and spread the rest out around your base to keep an eye for potential drops.
4) If you are scared of Widow Mines or just want to play it really safe - put a cannon or two by each mineral line.
5) In terms of upgrades - research +1 Armor as soon as possible followed up +1, +2 and +3 Weapon (If you have a single Forge). Charge is far more important than Blink. You shouldn't opt to get the Thermal Lance from the Robotics Bay until you have Storm researched, and preferably a few High Templars on the field.
Now why do I use this opener in PvT? I find it safe against any kind of early aggression. You get early observers which provide great scouting opportunities, you get access to cannons early to fend off any potential Widow Mines and a Mothership Core with high energy whenever a push in the early game is coming.
I think this is it for this post. I'll cover more replays, build orders and other stuff in my upcoming post(s).
This was Sparkles. Signing out.
