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I bought SC2 on April 25th, and today I got promoted (August 23rd). I got promoted to Plat.
I have never played any other RTS online due to a whole host of factors (never had fast internet as a kid, as a college student I couldn't afford to buy the games and didn't have the time in general.) I didn't even know that much about the Starcraft community when I started playing.
So here is a step-by-step guide of how I got into 4 different leagues in 4 months.
Step 1: Pre-Bronze: Before you start playing anybody online learn the hotkeys.
When you start playing in the bronze league you'll will either be playing people who have only point and click, or can barely use the hotkeys. You'll quickly rise through the ranks of the bronze league if you know how to use your hotkeys.
Step 2: Mid-Bronze to High Bronze: Learn a general build.
You'll have the edge if you can produce units faster and more efficiently than your opponent. This will also become the foundation of all your future play, so learn a macro-orientated build. This means that you want to be making an expansion in some part of your build.
Step 3: High-Bronze to Top Bronze: Know your units.
If you play zerg, terran or protoss you have to know which unit hard-counters and soft counters each unit, so if you see Marauders at your base, you want to be producing Lings, if you see Hydras at your base you want producing Collossi... etc.
Step 4: Getting into the Silver League: Unit compositions.
From this point on you will need to know that having a bit of every unit is more of a hindrance than it is a help.
-Terran, who have the most variety in units, are designed to be defensive power houses, so the most common unit composition is marine/tank, the counter to this from zerg is ling/bling/muta. Some other builds from terran, which are becoming very popular, are Mech builds (hellion/thor/viking) and the response to this from zerg is roach/infestor.
-Protoss on the other hand are a power-overwhelming race, when they get a 200/200 army, there is little any race can do to stop them. The most common unit-mix for Protoss in called the death-ball which is Zealots at the front to take damage, Stalkers/Sentries in the middle to wall off and defend your most valuable unit, the collossus, collossi in this mix deal huge amounts of damage. Zerg's response to this is roach/hydra/festor/corrupter.
-Zerg are, as outlined above, a responsive race, whatever your opponent builds you want to be considering a definitive counter to.
These compositions above are merely a handful of the possible compositions that are available in the game, consider exploring the many, many others, and never become too invested in your unit composition because the game is always changing and eventually your unit composition will become dated, and everyone will know how to beat it.
Step 5: Establishing yourself in the Silver League: Know your opponents builds and scout them.
This is where things get a bit more difficult. You may have only 50 games or so under your belt at this stage, but you should be able to start predicting what your opponent will be doing, even if it is the most basic sort of predictions.
-He has got gas early, he must be getting tech.
-He has no gas he might be expanding or he might be cheesing me. Is he building lots of unit producing structures? No. Then he is expanding. Then I should expand too.
If he has a lot of unit producing building then he is cheesing.
-He has got both gas geysers early. He is going heavy tech possibly air units (Banshees, Void Rays etc.) get some static defence.
Step 6: Low-Silver to Mid Silver: Learn more builds.
The overall build you learnt in the bronze (whether it be 1 Rax FE, 15 Hatch, or Forge Fast Expand) will start to become too rigid for all the varieties of play you will start to encounter, so now you'll need to learn race specific builds. Spend sometime learning a new macro orientated build, (Hellion Expand, 2 Rax Expand, 14 Pool - 18 Hatch, 3 Gate Expand Etc.)
Step 7: Mid-Silver to Top 8 Silver: MACRO, MACRO, MACRO.
If you can out Macro your opponent; produce an army faster than he can, you should win nearly every match, no matter how you control your units.
Step 8: Cementing yourself at the top of the Silver League: Learn how to beat the 4 gate.
This may be a slight deviation from all my other steps, but this one is quite essential. From Mid-Silver to Low-Gold, 90% of all Protoss players will 4-Gate you, if you can beat the 4-Gate you will win 90% of your games against Protoss.
Step 9: Getting into the Gold League: Refine your scouting.
You need to be scouting almost constantly from this point on.
You will need to know when your opponent will be pushing out, or what units he is constructing, or what tech path he is going down. Observers, Scans and Overlord/Overseers, should become an integral part of your play-style. You should be now playing so you won't lose.
The two most important times to be scouting with your 9 worker (to know where your opponent is, to make sure you get a unit into his base before he walls off, and to see if he is cheesing you) and at the 6 minute mark (at this point your opponent will be choosing his tech route and be moving into the mid-game.)
Step 10: Establishing yourself in the Gold League: Base Management.
You do not want your opponent out-producing you/getting a better economy than you. So you want to make sure he does not get a third base up and running. And you want to be constantly probing and prodding the place where he'd be most likely be getting his third base, and occasionally checking the other places where he could be establishing a base. You also want to be expanding yourself, so move your army into a position where you can secure a third.
RACE SPECIFICS (Zerg): As Zerg you want to be at least one base ahead of your opponent at all time, your units are weaker than the Terran and Protoss Units, so you want the economy and the Hatches to be able to produce as many units as possible at the drop of a hat.
For other races you want to be harassing the bases of the zerg as much as possible. And keep this thought in mind: "You can never out-macro a Zerg."
Step 11: Mid to High Gold: Everything has to be crisp. You want to be refining your mechanics at this point. If you are not using your grouping keys, start using them. You putting down your expansion at 450, make sure next time you are putting down exactly at 400. These minor, minor things will eventually add up and you'll find yourself losing to a lot of timing attacks, and early pressure.
Step 12a: Getting into Platinum (Part 1): Know your maps. Every map in the game has weaknesses and strengths for each race. For zerg you want to be engaging your opponent in open areas. For terran you want to be engaging your opponent at a choke so you can draw them into areas where you can out range him. And Protoss wants to be engaging at a place where he can easily retreat because your army is so strong at 200/200 you want to save as many units as possible for the mid-late game.
Step 12b: Getting into Platinum (Part 2) Positioning.
This is pretty much an expansion on the last point because when you know the map, you will know where to position your army properly, now comes the how.
For Range units you will want them spread out in a wide concave so they can all deal damage at the same time.
Also remember stronger/cheaper units at the front, and the more fragile more damaging units at the back. For example: Roach/Hydra in ZvZ, you need to make sure the roaches are at the front, they have a much shorter range, but are much harder units to destroy, the Hydra however deal way more damage and out-range the roaches, but die quicker.
Tools that will help you improve:
-Your own replays. Your own replays are an invaluable source of information, it always has the answer to the one thing you'll also want to know; "Why did I lose that Match-up?"
-Day[9]. Day[9] is possibly one of the greatest the strategists in SC2 at the moment, he has a very natural and deep understanding of the game, and he covers both advance and beginner methods in his videos.
-Pro-replays. These people play starcraft 2 at the highest possible level, they know every little possible detail about the game, and by watching them you will understand how they approach match-ups, and they scout, and what unit compositions they use.
-Communities. Communities such as Teamliquid offer and invaluable service to all players involved. If you can't see why you lost a game, than maybe a better player will know what you did wrong, never feel ashamed to come on to these websites and ask for help, because we all started off in the bronze league. I also know that I don't spend a contributing to Teamliquid, but that's because I spend a lot of time on the Irish SC2 website (and yes I'm irish) boards.ie
Advice:
-Forget about cheese. If you lose to cheese don't worry about it that player will never become a good player, they may win a few matches, but eventually they will meet players who know how to beat them, and they will never win again, and stay indefinitely in the league their in.
-Losing streaks happen to us all. If you go on to SC2 ranks and look at my profile you'll see huge dips, at one stage I lost 9 games in a row and almost got demoted back into bronze. These things happen, it just means that you are not thinking straight, and keep on making the same mistakes you use to make. Just take a break from the game. Maybe 1-2 days, when you come back to the game, all the fundamentals you have learnt will return and you'll quickly get back into the swing of things.
-Never be afraid of the ladder. A lot of players say they are "afraid to return to the ladder" after a long hiatus, the ladder is not that daunting, you are put into a division with players that have just as much ability to play the game as you, and if you lose, you lose, the game will re-calibrate itself and you will eventually start to play people of equal skill.
Finally, have fun, because it is a game after all, and a great game at that.
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Great Write up for new players, Making the transition from Campaign to online ladder play!
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Really nice
Will help a lot of people!
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Wow. With those steps you should even get to masters league ezpz. I was doing only one build until masters and some of those things are stuff i've been only recently starting to work on and i've been masters almost from the beginning.
Good write up!
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Very good write up! I Love it, I'll try to use that as a reference!
Many thanks!
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Thanks! This really encouraged me to try laddering again 
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Its so nice how many people on TL want help eachother either by helpinng them in their threads
or by making great guides themselves.
Im in the gold league right now and ill definetely try the things you pointed out
mfg
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Nice write up. You should do one for plat to diamond, cause I'm stuck lol.
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gold league aswell. very helpful
thanks
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I wouldn't mind a write-up like that for getting into GM.
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@falconfano2 When/If I get there I will certainly give it a go. :D
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After Release I started in Silver but was demoted to Bronze quickly, because I never played a competetive RTS before.
I thought Bronze => Silver was harder than Silver => Plat. But I'm stuck in Plat now for 2 Seasons and have lost any motivation to improve.
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A nice succinct and accurate description of skill levels throughout the lower leagures of play. Kudos. I think part of the upside of this write-up is that it may help some players compare their their level of skill to others in leagues around them. Also, it may help players in higher leagues understand that upon reaching Gold/Plat, most players are fairly good (rather than being garbage for not being a GM yet) but simply need more experience and refinement under their belt to go from good to great.
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Same here, got into plat in 3 or 4 months.
I would like to add something about analysis replays.
Your own replay:
-did you scout what units he is going for?
-how long until you realise he is moving out from his base?
-did you scout whether he is expanding or not?
-how is the worker count?
-were you prepared for the attack coming?
-did you have enough map vision to know he doesn't have any hidden expo?
-how much unspent minerals/gas did you have? did you have any plan on how to spent them?
-upgrades, how were they?
Two more things I find very useful is watching a progamer stream. You can learn so much by just watching. As any new beginners would spread too much focus on things that aren't the top priority, the pro will show you what their attention focus are on.
you can also take note of when to scout and then identify what the following action should be (or why the progamer took that action after getting that amount of info)
Also, hotkeys setup. Make sure you are familiar with all your hotkeys and you know what control groups work FOR YOU.
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Good write-up and well organized. I liked the advice section as well.
I think if a beginner really applied these steps they would definitely get to Platinum.
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Very accurate description of the process and steps needed to be taken to get past the initial learning curve from the lower tier leagues into a more solid mindset and preparations into even some of the higher diamond areas. Then Progressing past plat diamond comes experience and repetition. The write up over all extremely enjoyable and well written.
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Nice, wish i read this when i was in bronze lol
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Just wanted to throw in that, cheese might be worthless but on your way up the ladder learning how to defend it isn't worthless, you'll learn what they are and how to scout better. Cheese does have its place.
Also if you have no friends(maybe new player!)/no one on to practice with you can cheese 2 races and macro game the race you want to play 
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I disagree with most of this, especially the orders. Learning more builds is far less important than getting solid macro. You can have millions of builds and if you can't macro that won't get you anywhere. Also, Micro isn't on this at all? seriously? Plus, it is so dependent on what race you play, you can't act like it's the same for the different races. For Zerg, scouting can be bronze to masters, it doesn't matter how good your mechanics are, if you can't scout well it only takes a single banshee, void ray, hellion, phoenix, viking, ghost, 2rax, etc etc etc and you will lose every time.
Also, the entire concept of the guide is false, in my opinion. You don't get to mid silver with no macro and you certainly don't get out of bronze without good scouting. And it's different for every metagame aswell as race, and everyone has their current strengths and weaknesses.
Here is a far better guide: Improve what you're weak at and then refine it.
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@EneMal These are the steps I took and the order I took them in. I have little notebook with all the mistakes I made and what I planned to improve on in each week, and this is the order it came in.
It might not be for everyone, but that's like every learning style.
Also I play zerg, I don't even slightly micro (well except positioning), because my APM is only like 60-70. If I micro my macro always skips.
And I do say Macro is important in the bronze league. I said pick a macro build, the thing is I have watched a handful of my low silver games recently and after like 10 minutes I have 1000+ mins and still win.
Another thing is as a person who recently went through the whole process of getting through these leagues I know that seeing "You need to improve your Micro" as possibly one the most daunting piece of advice.
And as for scouting in the bronze, well I use to try to do it in the bronze league, but I never knew what I was looking for, and I didn't know what to do to counter it.
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First off, I'd like to say thanks for the post -- you are outlining a number of really important points here for sc2 players who are looking to rise up in the lower leagues.
I would however like to underscore a couple statements:
On August 24 2011 03:04 wikipal wrote:
Step 7: Mid-Silver to Top 8 Silver: MACRO, MACRO, MACRO.
If you can out Macro your opponent; produce an army faster than he can, you should win nearly every match, no matter how you control your units.
Step 11: Mid to High Gold: Everything has to be crisp. You want to be refining your mechanics at this point. If you are not using your grouping keys, start using them. You putting down your expansion at 450, make sure next time you are putting down exactly at 400. These minor, minor things will eventually add up and you'll find yourself losing to a lot of timing attacks, and early pressure.
Step 7 does not just apply to silver league players. I'm mid-Masters and my macro is far, far away from being anything remotely close to optimal. Step 7 isn't so much a step as something that has to be thought about every step of the way up to GM or going pro. As P or T, are you always making workers? As Z, are you fully saturating your bases as quickly as possible? As all 3, are you keeping your money low?
Step 11 I actually take issue with a bit. Gold league players do not need to ensure that everything is "crisp". Maybe they could focus on a crisp opener, for the first 5-6 minutes of the game, but after that larger macro and micro concerns come into play. Many lower level players, for example, will start to float 1k+ minerals/gas as they attack, because they forget to macro while attacking. Fixing the big things is much more important than worrying about keeping one's play "crisp", outside of the first few minutes of the game (e.g. you don't want to 15 hatch at 400 minerals, and then drop your pool at 400 minerals -- you will probably just die)
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On August 24 2011 04:07 EneMal wrote:
I disagree with most of this, especially the orders. Learning more builds is far less important than getting solid macro. You can have millions of builds and if you can't macro that won't get you anywhere. Also, Micro isn't on this at all? seriously? Plus, it is so dependent on what race you play, you can't act like it's the same for the different races. For Zerg, scouting can be bronze to masters, it doesn't matter how good your mechanics are, if you can't scout well it only takes a single banshee, void ray, hellion, phoenix, viking, ghost, 2rax, etc etc etc and you will lose every time.
Also, the entire concept of the guide is false, in my opinion. You don't get to mid silver with no macro and you certainly don't get out of bronze without good scouting. And it's different for every metagame aswell as race, and everyone has their current strengths and weaknesses.
Here is a far better guide: Improve what you're weak at and then refine it. This seems like a silly response -- the OP is giving a concrete list of things to improve upon and whether it be exactly the same order as everyone else needs, this seems WAY more helpful than "Improve what you're weak at". He is trying to identify common weaknesses of low-level players and help them out. Also, I disagree with your point about scouting as Zerg. As a low level Zerg, you really don't need to scout if you build a couple extra queens, get a spore at each base, and macro well. Sure, you can't afford to do these things at higher levels of play, but that's why scouting becomes more and more important as you reach higher levels.
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I agree with ene. Learning more than one build in silver is silly. If you are in silver its because you cant do 1 build well. If you could execute a 3 gate expand almost perfectly most times. Youd win every pvt you played in silver.
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@Squigly well I am only speaking from my experience. When I was in silver was FE all the time. But when Toss started putting down a pylon at my expo, it use to mess up everything, and use to lose to the most ridiculous things.
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I am top 8 diamond and I didnt do any of these steps. I only cheesed like once out of every 5 or 6 games, mostaly with dt's, but thats about it. Getting to diamond takes little to zero thought or knowledge about the game, at least for me.
I've never watched my replays, i never really cared what I did wrong, I only have like 1 build per race. I usually dont scout past the first few minutes. How was it that I was able to make it to diamond playing 80% standard games if I didnt take a single one of your steps?
Sure I'll never get better than I am, but hey it doesnt really matter. I'm not trying to be a pro, that would just be an impossible task since I can only devote 2 hours max per day to this game. I have zero motivation to even "get better" at a game that I wont really get anything out of. Im actually quite bored out of my mind with sc2 unfortunately. My infinate attempts to get the 4 people I call my friends to play is useless. I even got them so far as to buy the game but they all just quit after like a month lol.
At this point I am 95% watching gsl and other tournaments. I hardly even play anymore. I have lost most of my interest in the game sad to say. It's hard to keep interest in a game you play by yourself, esspecially an online one. And before you say "go make friends you retard?!?!" yeah ive been in those chat channels, all i see are a bunch of highschool kids trolling and talking about body parts with their little emoticons.
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@ishyishy I am just trying to provide what I think is the best possible platform for people to improve upon.
as for the rest of what you said... mmm... okay.
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Good post. I agree with most of the post. I am in plat. right now. Improving my builds/micro/macro has gotten me to where I am at as well as scouting. Unfortunately I think I'll be stuck in plat forever because blizzard is to retarded to find people I can beat. It has become a very bitter disappointment. ZvZ is my worst matchup and what does blizzard do? Give me more ZvZs! Thank you blizzard. I would like to say you did a great job at math. Losing 8 games in a row, then winning 1, then losing one, then winning 2, then losing another 7 is really a 50% win/loss ratio...math must be so hard.
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On August 24 2011 03:43 ETisME wrote:
Same here, got into plat in 3 or 4 months.
I would like to add something about analysis replays.
Your own replay:
-did you scout what units he is going for?
-how long until you realise he is moving out from his base?
-did you scout whether he is expanding or not?
-how is the worker count?
-were you prepared for the attack coming?
-did you have enough map vision to know he doesn't have any hidden expo?
-how much unspent minerals/gas did you have? did you have any plan on how to spent them?
-upgrades, how were they?
Two more things I find very useful is watching a progamer stream. You can learn so much by just watching. As any new beginners would spread too much focus on things that aren't the top priority, the pro will show you what their attention focus are on.
you can also take note of when to scout and then identify what the following action should be (or why the progamer took that action after getting that amount of info)
Also, hotkeys setup. Make sure you are familiar with all your hotkeys and you know what control groups work FOR YOU.
Agreed. I was watching Jinro stream earlier today, and I just noticed how little time he spends looking at his base. The only times he looks at his base for more than 7 seconds at a time is when he's establishing a defense and if he's getting attacked in his base. Now, I'm silver league, and I find most of my time spent in my base, so just by watching his stream, I've picked up on something I need to work on. I don't even pay much attention to his build orders, mostly just watching for how he responds to what he sees or what he's focused on producing and trying to guess the strat he's attempting.
This is something you can pick up on even by watching higher level streams (Masters or GM). By paying attention to the details and focusing less on trying to learn their builds, you're able to pick up on a lot of subtleties that separate you from them.
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I honestly feel like day9 is trying to make this game way harder than it has to be. I admit I used to find his shows entertaining when I first started when the game hit the shelf, but now I cant stand to even hear his voice.
I like what he is doing and I hope he keeps doing it, but I cant watch it.
Its like he is reading off a science testbook to you and hopefully you catch everything he is saying. with the exception of the past 3 weeks or so, I have watched every daily up until that point, and Ive litterally learned absolutely nothing from it.
When I started watching his shows, I was probably bronze since I just started playing. In the past however many seasons we are up to, ive alwyas been in high platinum, and now high diamond, and its been pretty easy. I didnt watch any of my replays where I lost, I only watched the ones where I smashed my opponent to relive that moment . I feel like I went from bronze to diamond just from playing and maybe trying to copy 1 or 2 builds i saw from a youtube tutorial, but thats about it.
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On August 24 2011 04:36 wikipal wrote:
@Squigly well I am only speaking from my experience. When I was in silver was FE all the time. But when Toss started putting down a pylon at my expo, it use to mess up everything, and use to lose to the most ridiculous things.
If you dont know how to deal with possible P counters to your build, you dont know the build well enough.
For instance if you are learning a banshee build you need to know what to do in case of a gas steal
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On August 24 2011 04:07 EneMal wrote:
I disagree with most of this, especially the orders. Learning more builds is far less important than getting solid macro. You can have millions of builds and if you can't macro that won't get you anywhere. Also, Micro isn't on this at all? seriously? Plus, it is so dependent on what race you play, you can't act like it's the same for the different races. For Zerg, scouting can be bronze to masters, it doesn't matter how good your mechanics are, if you can't scout well it only takes a single banshee, void ray, hellion, phoenix, viking, ghost, 2rax, etc etc etc and you will lose every time.
Also, the entire concept of the guide is false, in my opinion. You don't get to mid silver with no macro and you certainly don't get out of bronze without good scouting. And it's different for every metagame aswell as race, and everyone has their current strengths and weaknesses.
Here is a far better guide: Improve what you're weak at and then refine it.
I made it to plat with my s3 placement and i can honestly say i have 0 micro. army control is by far my biggest hinderance. i have lost so many games that i should have won because i a-move and watch the fight.....
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Easiest way is just play, play, play, Terran.
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nice write up
irish starcraft community <3
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On August 24 2011 03:04 wikipal wrote:
If you play zerg, terran or protoss you have to know which unit hard-counters and soft counters each unit
What if I play a race that is not zerg, terran or protoss?
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EPT
