EPTI’ve never intentionally smurfed. For one thing, I never had a lot of spare money to spend on a second Starcraft account, and anyway I always thought it seemed a little messed up to intentionally trick the matchmaking into putting you against easier opponents just so you could showboat or something. But going back to WoL and being forced to advance from the bottom of the ladder, I started to see the appeal.
My fourth placement match was a TvP on Daybreak. TvP was always a problem matchup for me in WoL, but at least back then you could safely 1 rax FE, then build two more rax, take gas, and head for stim, +1, and medivacs (usually known as Bomber style TvP). If that was good enough for Bomber, it was good enough for me, so I took that as a gameplan and went forward.
I don’t know much about scouting Protoss, but I remember in WoL there was a thing where you hid your SCV in his third or something until about 4:45, and then you could send it into his base and usually, his stalker would have just left and you could get a full scout. So I sent out an SCV on 12 or something with the intention of scouting him, then running out and hiding until almost 5 minutes. But what it found was… unusual.
It was 2:30 or so and he didn’t have a gateway or cyber core or any other kind of tech. Ordinarily I would think that meant either nexus first or a proxy, but I had just come in through his natural and there was no nexus, and he wasn’t missing any pylons. In fact, he had too many. I sent the SCV around to count all the pylons, and he had four with only like 10 probes.
I spent long enough staring at his base confused that my CC was actually a bit late, but that hardly mattered. I sent the SCV home to mine, built an extra bunker just in case, and went ahead and killed him when my medivacs were out (by which time he had a second nexus, a few cannons, and a couple zealots). I never had a very good understanding of TvP, but I knew there was no way this was normal.
I had to go back and check the replay to see exactly what had happened. He built four pylons before building any other tech. Here’s his build:
+ Show Spoiler [l33t PvT build] +
9 pylon
9 pylon
9 pylon
10 pylon
12 gateway
12 pylon
12 assimilator (x2, but don’t put probes in them when they finish)
13 max your queue for probes on the nexus
13 max your queue for zealots on your gateway
20 nexus
9 pylon
9 pylon
10 pylon
12 gateway
12 pylon
12 assimilator (x2, but don’t put probes in them when they finish)
13 max your queue for probes on the nexus
13 max your queue for zealots on your gateway
20 nexus
There was something disturbing about that replay. It’s wasn’t that he was bad at the game, it was that there’s no rational reason for him to make the decisions he made. There is no rational reason to make four pylons before making any other structure. And it’s not like getting supply blocked, where you can do it by mere inattention – he had to explicitly decide to build those pylons. Somewhere in his brain, he had to make the conscious decision “yup, I need another one of these right now,” grab a probe, think about where he wanted the pylon to be, send it over there, and place it.
A player that makes 5 barracks on one base and doesn’t attack might just be unaware of the production capacity that one base worth of income provides, and might not realize that since most builds are more economically focused on that, he really ought to take his marines and go try to do damage. A player who goes forge first and makes cannons at his natural ramp might be ultra-terrified of early cheese, and might not realize that there aren’t any cheeses that hit that fast, or if there are, there are more reasonable responses. A player who gets supply blocked on every overlord for a full minute might just be inattentive, be bad at remembering to build overlords, and bad at hearing the audio cue telling him he’s supply blocked.
But no mere lack of macro skill or misunderstanding of game mechanics could make a build like this happen. The only way someone could decide on a build like that is if their actions have no rationality at all. When pressed for a reason that person might say they don’t want to get supply blocked, or they need power to be able to place buildings, but really the answer is that there’s no reason at all. They’re just kind of doing things to do things.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/3J3YD.png)
Even Uniden must have been better than this if he qualified for the GSL.
The scary thought is, how much stuff do I do that is equally irrational? Why did I send out that SCV on 12? What was I hoping to learn about the Protoss base that early, other than that he presumably had built a gateway and was gonna start a cyber core (and if he hadn’t, like in this game, he was probably just doing something weird and I could just go kill him)? Why do I use my turn signal when I’m in a turn only lane? How much more stuff do I do in my life that’s totally irrational, and I’m too stupid to even consider for a moment the reason for my actions?
No no no, let’s not think about that. I won! Easily, in fact. And after I got placed in silver, it was obvious I was going to need to win a lot of games to face opponents on my level – if those even still existed on the WoL ladder. Until I climbed the ladder enough to play actual games, I needed to find a way to entertain myself.
Well, what do smurfing players do? They try to pull stupid shit and get away with it becausetheir opponents are awful. I began trying to remember every stupid, gimmicky, impossible-to-win-with strategy I had ever seen in a Funday Monday and laughed about, but never been willing to try. I would reaper rush my opponents. I would PF rush my opponents. I would proxy BC rush my opponents. It didn’t seem to matter what stupid thing I did, I just couldn’t seem to lose a game.
Here’s a more or less representative game: I open PF rush on Ohana, but he spots the CC and comes down with an SCV to stop it from building.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/VYoCYpg.png)
Why do you hate fun?
Luckily I had more SCVs nearby that I was planning to send in to repair it while it morphed, so I sent one over to finish building. Then I pick the thing up and float it into his main, but he’s got 4 marines and all his SCVs attacking it as soon as it lands, and my SCVs didn’t make it into the main in time to repair.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yBUl6cs.png)
Seriously, why do you hate fun?
So now I’ve got one base, two refineries, an engineering bay, an almost-complete barracks, and like 500 gas. Oh, and half my SCVs are across the map. Meanwhile he’s sending marines across the map to come kill me. Uh… uh… okay, so as soon as the barracks finishes, I’ll get a bunker and a tech lab, and then I’ll start making reapers! This seems like it would almost certainly be too slow, but and it probably should have been.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2lTDaCf.png)
This doesn’t look good…
But he decided to sit there attacking an empty bunker while I repaired it long enough for the reaper to make it inside.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Ksk1fJk.png)
Best unit in WoL, hands down.
Of course I’ve still got nothing but a reaper, and way too much gas. So here’s the plan: keep making reapers, and try to keep him back with them. Meanwhile, I’ll tech toward 2 port – scratch that, 3 port banshee on one base, since I have so much gas. The reaper thing didn’t go too well, however.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jImwsQK.png)
Where’s Admiral Ackbar when you need him?
Let’s talk for a moment about what my opponent was doing. I managed to get one reaper into his base and scout around his main, and he had three barracks (two with tech lab, one naked), two factories (no add-ons yet), and was just starting to try to get up a new base. As I ran the reaper back out of his base, his army gave chase and I got to see that he had actually built a reaper.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/z0vTUu0.png)
Maybe the saddest part of all this is tricking this poor guy into thinking this unit is actually good.
Meanwhile I fucked up and accidentally got a reactor for one of my starports, so only 2 cloak banshees showed up at his base to find the expansion freshly planted down, and no units around. I started killing SCVs, meanwhile I glanced at the minimap to see a big red blob from my watchtower. 2 tanks and a bunch of marines were on their way to my base, and a bunker full of reapers couldn’t save me now (particularly since all my rapers were now dead). Okay, what do I have to defend? …a single banshee, and 2 vikings.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/AYDLSP4.png)
This shouldn’t end well for me…
I set the banshee on the tank and went back to microing now 3 banshees in his main, partly to check how much energy was on his orbital. Oh, he’s just now starting the orbital in his main.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ESayOZq.png)
Oh, never mind.
He brought his whole army home to defend, but scanned the banshees when his army was not close enough to kill it. He chased me to the edge of his base, where he had built turrets, but I turned soon enough to get out with only some a bit of damage on one banshee. Then I went back in to start killing marines.
He actually got out a raven pretty quickly, which meant he must have been teching to starport+tech lab already (I wonder if he wanted to tech to BCs?) But marines and a raven can’t kill 3 banshees if you kite even moderately well. With theoretically perfect micro the banshee can kite forever and kill infinite marines, but even if you fuck up, and just trade one volley for one volley each time, you’re killing a marine and a half with every volley while he probably just gets the front couple marines firing.
And then, with all his marines dead, a second raven flew over by my banshees to watch me kill his supply depots.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/egryBU7.png)
"Take thy cloak from out my base, and let me tech to fusion core!"
Quoth the
Short of “he sucked,” why exactly did he lose that game? By all rights I should have been dead when that PF rush failed. Then I should have been way behind, so he could have gotten way ahead on economy. Then I should have died to his marine+tank push.
But none of those things happened, because of a lot of nit-picky little things, like that he shouldn’t have shot my empty bunker for so long and should have just run by, or he should have expanded before building 5 production buildings, or he should have had an orbital and been able to scan my defending banshee, or he should have run away and then attacked me again when he had scan.
Or here’s a nit-picky little thing: he had turrets at home when my banshees attacked. You might not think so because they’re not visible in any of my screenshots and they’re not in his mineral lines, but at the right edge of his main and behind the mineral line, turrets were just waiting to unleash their fury.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/P1hYkMv.png)
But boy are that starport and tech lab safe.
This is maybe one of the most discouraging things about learning Starcraft for new players is that there are so many goofy little things you need to learn, and if you don’t learn them, you’ll just lose games you shouldn’t. Noobs never want to put turrets in their mineral lines, probably because they think it will slow down mining too much or something (and of course, it does slow down mining a little bit). But as a result they put it behind the mineral line, and then the banshee or oracle or mutalisk flock or whatever can just plant over the command center and murder all their stuff.
This guy was all about figuring out what I was doing and then finding the proper response to it: he actually successfully scouted the PF rush, and brought everything out to defend. Against a lot of reapers he started positioning marines on cliffs and such to prevent me from sneaking in and killing a bunch of workers (and even got a reaper of his own). Against cloak banshees he was immediately ready to get out the raven and negate cloak.
But he just didn’t know basic stuff about the game. He didn’t know to expand before you make 3 barracks and 2 factories, because you can’t support that on one base. He didn’t know to run by the bunker because that was more than enough marines to kill a single reaper. He didn’t know to make his orbital command basically as soon as the option wasn’t grayed out, because MULEs are way better than the two SCVs you would have made in the time the orbital takes to complete. He didn’t know how to place turrets effectively. If he had messaged me after the game and wanted to talk about how he could improve as a player, I wouldn’t even really know what to tell him – sure his macro sucked and such, but really he just had a million little tidbits about the game that he didn’t know.
By the way, to anyone thinking that game seemed very lucky and I won on chance or something: I played a good 30 or so games in this period, and I’m not going to bother battle reporting the rest of them, but this game was pretty representative. General formula was this: I do a dumb cheese, it doesn’t really work, I should be dead but he fucks it up somehow, I do some other dumb stuff and win anyway.
And boy was I winning. I knew it didn’t really matter, that I was essentially just smurfing and winning against these players was no accomplishment at all. But I, like anyone who plays much Starcraft, am pretty competitive, and somehow it still felt good to win. My gameplans started to degrade as it went to my head a little bit. When I started out I had these thorough gameplans like “I’m going to open fast expand wth a quick gas to get a reactor on my barracks, transfer it over to a factory, and make a bunch of hellions. Then I’ll get a viking in case of cloak banshee, and get tanks if he’s on one base, or get double armory if he expanded. Then once I have tanks I’ll go for a third base, and push once I have a decent number of vikings while I take my fourth. Then I’ll finish out the game with an air transition.” Twenty games in, my gameplans were more along the lines of “Let’s see what’s the fastest I can get out a tank.”
Until in game 21, I lost the first time. It was a TvT on Ohana, and I decided to make a single reactor barracks and factory with tech lab, and make as many marines and tanks as I could, and then see what happened. When I pushed with them he had a couple tanks of his own at his natural ramp, which probably should have signalled to me to just go home.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/V9PLUqP.png)
Can I break this with 13 marines and 2 tanks?
But I figured I’d run around and break his rocks, and attack from there. As the marines were running up the ramp by his rocks, a couple tank volleys blasted them to bits, and then he killed my tanks, which were, for some reason, attacking his refineries instead of his units.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hQZ7xr8.png)
No I cannot.
I still fell back to two bases and macro’d out a bunch of MMM, but he pushed his tanks across the map to my natural and contained me from the watchtower. Then he started expanding all over the map with planetary fortresses. I was dropping expansions as much as I could, but with his tanks camping my natural I couldn’t really take a third base.
Eventually I lost. Unsure of how to react, i let the matchmaking search for another game for a few minutes before I decided to just cancel it and go to bed. I hadn’t even been gotten out of silver yet, so I couldn’t have capped yet, right? There was no way that a diamond player on HotS ladder was equivalent to silver in WoL.
The next play session I was a little less insane. My reign of terror wasn’t over quite yet, and after I returned to more sober-minded (if sloppy) builds I kept climbing consistently. By the time I reached platinum, I was 38-3 (one of which was a disconnect). Not long after I was in diamond with 68-19 or something. I don’t know how smurf players handle things, but I suspect they have to play on something like a 50 game cycle – smurf and win for 25 games, then leave 25 games, and repeat. I had no interest in remaining in those lower leagues, and just kept trying to win as much as I could.
So before long I found myself exactly where I was two and a half years before: sitting in the diamond league of Wings of Liberty with a ~50% winrate, wondering what to do next. But I’ll leave off here for the next blog.
