Hi,

I'm a silver league protoss, regularly playing gold players. I recently played against a zerg in the bronze-silver Incup tournament and got destroyed 0-2. After watching the replays I'm still perplex at why my army got crushed so easily and would gladly accept some help!

Here is my thinking process step by step during our two games, the replays are included.

Metapolis

We spawn with close ground positions, nothing too out of the ordinary happens. I supposed that he was eventually going to expand so I planned to go for the 3 gates sentries and expand build.

He did some agression with his early zerlings and 3 drones who passed behind my hold-position zealot. I have to pull some probes to defend.
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I push back his agression without taking too much damage.

My army takes a quick glimpse of his natural, but feeling that I couldn't take down his army yet with 3 spine crawlers incoming I pulled back and took a second base myself.

At that point, I was feeling great and I might have made the biggest mistake of the game by taking the third situated between both our bases. I take down his hidden third base with some stalkers though

Our army looks quite equals at this point, and the ramp (in my opinion) make it easy to negate an eventual attack with force fields

As he snipped my observer earlier, I'm not quite sure of his army movement; I get baited out of position as I thought he was going directly for my natural.

My feeling of that final battle is that he overmade corruptors as I only had 2 colossus, my robotic was far behind because of my failed DTs but I usually feel safe with only gateway' units and forcefield. nonetheless, the engagement was probably less than optimal for me as I was baited away from the ramp.

Could I have possibly survived that attack if I only warped gateway units at that point or should I simply have tech colossi directly after taking my natural (do I absolutely needed a decent amount of colossi to defend this attack) ? How can I take a third while feeling safe with close position on Metalopolis ?

Shakuras Plateau

Cross position, he decides to fast-expand because building his pool this time and I start again with my usual 3 gate expand

but what happens this time is that he takes a very quick third that I left unscouted for a very long time.

When I finally see what's happening, he begin to take his fourth at the 2 o'clock position.
My reaction is to directly engage his army before his economy kicks in as his ground army looked way behind mine.

I easily take down his ground army and rush to his main base to try to snipe the hydralisk den and the roach warren, but his reinforcements eventually takes down my army with me doing absolutely no damage to his base

He goes for the counter-attack and I'm incapable to reinforce fast enough

So basically, I think my greatest mistake in this game was not going for the 100% certain damage I could have caused by taking down his natural when I had the upperhand. I know my macro kinda slipped away during the last fight, and my minerals count was so high when I actually came back to my senses. My response was to add 4 more gateway but at that point I had already lost.

Killerbot

United States106 Posts

April 13 2011 22:05 GMT

I will watch full replay when I get home but it looks like your zealot was really late which didn't help. As soon as that gateway completes you need a zealot. Also you allowed his drones and lings to surround your lot which is bad news for it.

mczbot

Germany70 Posts

April 13 2011 22:18 GMT

there is no way you cant deny a surround by drones killerbot, cause if the zerg clicks on the mineral patches, the drones will bypass the hold position zealot.

accaris

98 Posts

April 13 2011 23:35 GMT

You've done a pretty good job of identifying your own mistakes. The early zergling harass isn't what set you back, it was just the series of blunders that followed. At 6:40 you had 3 probes not mining for over a full minute of game time. That's HUGE, that alone could have been several more gateway units. You could have had a lot more sentries a lot earlier, and been able to expand much earlier as well.

Generally your macro could be improved a lot, but you know that already. Imagine how many more colossi you could have had out if you had skipped the DTs! Your double forge was also pretty late from what I recall, and if you're going to do double forge at all, you need to commit to it right after you expand and get more gateways a lot earlier. Double upgrades increase the value of your gateway units significantly.

Why wasn't the Incup using the tournament version of this map?

Kaitlin

United States2958 Posts

April 13 2011 23:54 GMT

Silver League, huh ? Were these games played at some speed slower than 'Faster' ? I know APM isn't everything, but it was WAY higher than I'd expect, and not all spamming, as there was a lot of moving around between control groups. Not something I'm used to seeing at Silver League levels. You didn't lose a bunch of games to get into this tournament, did you ?

DragonDefonce

United States790 Posts

April 14 2011 05:09 GMT

Versus zerg, always go 9 pylon, chrono on 10, 12 gate, 14 gas, zealot BEFORE cyber. That first zealot is key in PvZ. You don't need it on PvT although its nice to do a zealot stalker poke, you really do want that first zealot in pvz.

Also, you are very stalker heavy. You never want more stalkers than you absolutely need. That money is better spend on upgrades and tech. Basically, you should get just enough stalkers, just enough sentries, and spend rest of the gas on ht/colossus/air and upgrades. I cannot stress this enough. This might seem ridiculous and people will argue with me, but just remember: Stalkers suck.

iChau

United States1210 Posts

April 14 2011 05:33 GMT

On April 14 2011 14:09 DragonDefonce wrote:
Versus zerg, always go 9 pylon, chrono on 10, 12 gate, 14 gas, zealot BEFORE cyber. That first zealot is key in PvZ. You don't need it on PvT although its nice to do a zealot stalker poke, you really do want that first zealot in pvz.

Also, you are very stalker heavy. You never want more stalkers than you absolutely need. That money is better spend on upgrades and tech. Basically, you should get just enough stalkers, just enough sentries, and spend rest of the gas on ht/colossus/air and upgrades. I cannot stress this enough. This might seem ridiculous and people will argue with me, but just remember: Stalkers suck.

Getting the zealot delays your cybercore. You don't ALWAYS want the zealot first unless you see faster lings.

You actually want the sentries A.S.A.P.

DragonDefonce

United States790 Posts

April 14 2011 05:42 GMT

On April 14 2011 14:33 iChau wrote:

Show nested quote +

Getting the zealot delays your cybercore. You don't ALWAYS want the zealot first unless you see faster lings.

You actually want the sentries A.S.A.P.

It delays it by like 3 seconds. If you want you can go cyber then zealot, but then you have to wait a bit before you can start your stalker/sentry production can start on the gateway so I like zealot first (I'm assuming you would agree with me that going straight for stalker/sentry is a bad idea in pvz). Personal preference I guess. And honestly, good simcity+zealot block+chronoboosted stalker will block pretty much all zerg early aggression that can come at that time. You don't need sentry out super early. Its a better idea to spend the first 100 gas on warpgate+stalker than on a single sentry, unless you really really really want additional gateways few seconds earlier.

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