[G] Learning from a Bad Game #1

Killer opens with a 12 gate (1 cb before gate) which is probably not the most favorable opening on tel darim. There's no need to sacrific economy for a slightly faster gate. This, however, is nothing to huge to nitpick on.

He scouts Bomber last and is denied scouting of the natural which is not too great--good play by bomber. He keeps probes on gas because he is not sure if he's safe to drop the nexus just yet.

He then makes a zealot. This, I think, is quite far from optimal. This zealot really serves no purpose on very large maps as it's main goal to poke in conjunction with a stalker for additional scouting information up a ramp. But this map has no ramps, so he can freely scout a walled off terran (even one that has shells) with just a stalker and he is not afraid of losing it. On the other hand, the terran may opt for a 1 rax fe or even cc first. In this case, the zealot is 100% useless because it cannot kite rines outside of a bunker and can't be microed away from bunkers to apply damage without taking any hull damage.

At 4:02, he scouts the expansion by seeing the bunker. He should know it's 1 rax gasless expand at this point. He doesn't pull off gas to establish a slightly faster nexus. He instead queues up a 2nd stalker. This is a mistake. You can't pressure the expansion with a zealot and 2 stalkers. You just cannot. The bunker by itself hold pretty well and an scv or 2 on repair shuts it down entirely. He expands at 4:50, standard timing for a 1gate fe and bomber's expansion finishes shortly thereafter.

Killer then adds a second gas and a robo. This is pretty much saying: I'm not going to apply any pressure whatsoever. Bomber has an economic advantage, and Killer is simply letting him take it. He doesn't even chronoboost probes to try to close the gap.

Killer follows this with an absurdly fast robo bay which has the potential to be quite strong. I figure at this point Killer realized he was behind economically and is going to try to hit a colossus timing. But then the robo bay finishes at 8:30 and he makes nothing. In fact, he had the money to start range or a colossus but instead opts to make 3 stalkers and begins his first colossus at 9:05 and range at 9:15. This is extremely inefficient. If you are going to sacrific economy (he cut probes before the robo bay finished) you had better damn well hit your timing. He then resumes probe production. I was hoping the korean caster would show the harvestor count at this point because I think it would make for some lols and some /facepalms

Killer starts his 3rd at 11:20 and adds some more gateways so I figure there is no timing coming.

So just from his opening let's assess: Killer cuts pressure in order to get faster robo tech. He even cuts probes for more units. And then he doesn't have enough resources to start his colossus production and range on time. He then refrains from attacking and begins a 3rd base.

He could have either hit a really good 2 base timing, or took his 3rd without having invested so much in tech and without having cut probes. Instead, he's somewhere in between with units/tech that does not serve to apply any pressure nor establish any map control. He has a bad 2 base economy from cutting so many probes and won't even be able to saturate his 3rd timely.

Back to the action.
At 12:00, bomber loads up 2 marines for a drop. This drop serves 2 purposes: it threatens a scarier drop of 8 marines to kill probes or mauraders to snipe tech, or some combination of the two. It can also scout if the protoss, with 2 observers in the terrans base doesn't see the drop load up and kill 5 probes, apparently. Killer sees the medivac and what does he do with the colossi that are right under his natural with which he can just walk over the cliff and shut down? Nothing. If that drop had 8 marines in it, he would have killed every single damn probe. Instead, Killer warps in 2 zealots which wouldn't have been able to do such a drop and continues pushing. But after he sees it is just 2 marines, and one ran into his main, he decides to call the entire push off. He doesn't even kill the 2nd marine. He leaves 3 stalkers nearby to watch the marine kill 5 probes uncontested.

So now not only is Killer behind from his own inefficiencies, he is now letting Bomber put him further behind with a cute little drop that wasn't supposed to do any real damage in the first place.

Anyway.

At 14:00, Killer starts charge, and then cancels it. Who needs charge right? More on this later He gets blink instead.
At 14:14 we get a glimpse of his 3rd. Terrible saturation resulting from poor economic timing and probe cutting. He soon finishes 1:1 upgrades at bomber is finishing 2:1. Not horrible considering he opted for such fast colossus play. His templar archives is also finishing at this time, which is a good move since colossus alone will be hurting against a large viking count.

19:00 SNAP SHOT: Both players are maxed, Killer is starting a 4th. Killer is banking 3k/1,5k. At this point, it wouldn't hurt to add in observer speed as well as a 2nd forge to try to keep up with bomber in upgrades. He is going to need observer speed and perhaps additional observers to at least be in a position to feedback ghosts before they get their emp's off.

The first real engagement begins at about 19:30. Killer has no charge, which is really inexcusable at this point. Bomber kills all of Killer's colossi with his +2 vikings before losing the vikings. Killer retains energy on his HT and is able to fend off the bio that is leftover.

21:10 Killer pushes up Bombers ramp into a concave. This attack was probably the worst decision Killer could have possibly made in this situation. Sure, he killed off all of bomber's vikings in the battle. But how many colossi does Killer have right now? Zero. He has a handful of high templar, no charge, and some stalkers that serve to tickle medivac-supported bio unless you're 3/3 vs 0/0 or something ridiculous. Not to mention, Killer has no vision up the ramp so his ht's obviously get EMP'd immediately with no chance of getting off any feedbacks, regardless of whether or not the ghosts were cloaked. So, the engage goes as expected, with Killer suffering the loss of his entire army and not doing any real damage whatsoever. Killer was 181 food against 190 at the start of the engage. Killer is 117 food against 170 food after the engagement.

If you're a competitive player looking to learn from vods, go ahead and turn it off now. Bomber might as well have a-moved across the map and killed Killer via attrition at this junction but instead, he is going to stick around and troll Killer along with the viewers. I, however will continue so we may learn from the series of engages that follow. What could Killer do to come back? What could he have done to engage more effectively?

23:00 Killer engages Bomber's 4th base, a PF. Against a PF, in most cases you can just blink 3 stalkers behind the minerals to shut down the mining until the terran comes to clean it up. But instead, he engages with his entire army, blinking his stalkers in a little ball infront of the PF so the damage can splash onto all of them. If you're going to try and engage it to take it down, make a concave and blink away injured stalkers for god's sake. In the end, he fails to kill the pf but does shut down mining from it for a couple of seconds. He runs a couple of stalkers away to the PF and bombers 5th, and instead of blinking behind the minerals to shut down mining there, he just runs away.

24:20 Bomber kills the expansion in the bottom right main and then pressures the natural expansion there. If not for getting your zealots in the fray in a big fight, charge is amazing at engaging small groups of bio units, especially marauders. The slow zealots essentially just chase them back into the medivac without killing anything. The stalkers he had there to defend? he blinked them right in the marauders faces so they could die faster and didn't have charge to keep them off the stalkers.

Then, in the middle of the map Killer has a huge group of slow zealots with some templars and no observer to be seen. If your terran has ghosts, you NEED a lot of observers. You need observers every which way a ghost can come and snipe or emp your templar. Killer has 1-2 obs out on the map for the entire game. In this situation on such a big map with a lot of space to cover, I recommend at least 4 (and with speed).

For the rest of the game, Killer does the same garbage. He walks around with slow zealots and ht's (and a mother ship..) with no observers and gets picked apart by drops, snipes and emps which he can't combat given he doesn't bother to make any observers or use the ones he already has on the map. I was going to review the entire match, but honestly I can't bear to watch the rest of this awful game.

The sad thing is, I don't even think Killer was trying to troll you. He just had a poor opener for the map (compounded by having scouted Bomber last, which you cannot really control. But really, you should opt for a greedier opening on this map).

He then followed with an inefficient 2 base transition.. it was a half-ass timing or pressure to secure a 3rd. We will never really know, because he pulled back an 80 food army to kill a marine.

And then there is the charge. YOU HAVE TO GET CHARGE IF YOU ARE GOING HIGH TEMPLAR AND EVEN IF YOU ARE GOING COLOSSUS. I am sorry to use caps. But just the thought of moletrap or wolf defending this decision is absolutely RETARDED. There is no excuse to not have charge 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minuteds into a game against terran and you have at least one zealot on the map. They transform from mere meat shields into frenzied dps machines that form a concave around bio, protecting the gas heavy units of your army.
Also, late game against ghosts, you need a lot of observers. If a terran can move cloaked ghosts into your army to set up emp's, you lost that game. No way around it.

Thank you for reading. It might come off as a rant at some parts but I think you can learn a lot from watching a horrible game such as this