...about this game.
The story of my TvP.
IMO I play solid early and mid game, feel strong, but then I reach a point where it's time to get up and do something with my army. But then the fear overwhelms me and I end up doing nothing, which is then followed by toss taking the initiative with his arbiter-covered army and eventually he wins the game.
I watched the replay and I have some ideas on how to do better, mainly things like where the best place to put the forwarding tanks, what key positions to try to control etc.
My main problem are these key, decisive battles, I don't like to be the one advancing to the protoss' trap.
I can't really use mines effectively when I'm advancing my army forward so I feel vulnerable. Anyway..
I want you to look at the game and tell you opinion and advice on whatever you think might be good to work on.
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Thoughts while watching (will try to be as brutal as possible ):
Why did you stack up so many scvs just before your rax was going to be fininshed? I'm watching right now there's 3 scvs in queue, you have 100 gas, and your rax is complete. You could've started your factory right there and then but you didn't. You realise this and send and scv out asap but you really should've had that scv there to build as soon as you hit 100 gas. Especially important on rampless maps where fast goons are a possibility.
After your kill his scouting probe, you have an idle scv in base + your scouting scv is just chillin. Do a better job of keeping your scouting scv active and alive. Second scv moves towards wall unnecsarily too (I'm guessing cause of forgetting to reset rally). Scouting scv dies needlessly to zealot while frantically trying to get a new scv to mine his minerals.
Hmm..a 3rd depot that isn't actually needed, and so your first tank is delayed even further. You could've gotten the CC and tank before the 3rd depot I think.
It should be painfully obvious he's going for reaver, so of course you should do every little thing to make your defense against the incoming drop more effective. You could start by ifting your ebay and using it to scout in front of the turret to to hide turret. Going straight into vults feels a bit risky, especially if he manages to get into your base with that shuttle then comes knocking on your front door with goons as well. With only 2 tanks you'd be in a difficult position. Not only that, because you started siege quite late and you're only on 1 machine shop, mines are gonna take a while, so your vults will be useless for quite a bit.
Here we go, now you're gonna be in a bit of trouble. If you had gotten constant tanks up until the reaver drop, then you could've left a tank sieged in your nat to stop those front goons, while your other tanks fend off the drop easily. Kinda also your fault for not putting a turret at that position where he flew in (especially since you knew he was gonna reaver drop) and also you should have one behind your natural minerals. Not only that, you had supplies to scout his shuttle coming in, you also saw the shuttle, and you knew he could just fly in, but you don't react at all when he flies in?
So you react really late when you should've pulled scvs faster (also knowing the fact that you'd need to react quicker because if your pull scvs, they're gonna be in the path of the reaver so they'd get owned more easily). Then you lazily send one tank which is obviously gonna get raped and not help at all. You should've unsieged one tank at your nat, bring along the vult too, then go in and fend off the reaver.
Ok so you unsieged both of them...which would allow him to come into your nat with his goons. Leaving one tank sieged there behind that rax would be enough to defend (you might need to pull scvs though just to block a bit).
There is also no need to siege your tank to defend vs reavers. You want to keep everything unsieged. Sieging is just asking for him to drop a zealot to splash your other units which also has the added bonus of distracting fire then he can target the splashed units with his reaver and you'd be in pretty bad shape. Keep your untis unsieged and constantly moving to follow the shuttle. If he looks like hes about to drop, keeping moving even if he drops the zealot so your tanks do not fire, then target the reaver once it drops.
Also I question the need for such an early academy. You pretty much knew he was going for reaver drop (no surprises there) so you could've skimped on the academy and went maybe armory + attack upgrade instead (and possible a gol to fend off the shuttle).
He has like...3 goons outside your nat lol. You have 4 tanks and a decent amount of vultures with both speed and mines. You should've just attack moved with the tanks, run by his goons (like literraly just go past them, you wouldn't even need to sneak around or anything) and lay mines behind his goons, and clean them up quickly. Instead you lose vults unneceasrily, and let his goons survive. In fact even with his 2 goons coming to join his other 3, you could've still easily just attack moved with those tanks, and use vults to just lay some mines behind him and clean that up so easily.
Wasting more vults unnecsarily while trying to be cute. Now you finally move forward and just attack move while laying mines. You could've saved so many units from dieing if you had done this earlier vs those 3 goons. Now because you lost so many vults needlessly his zealots look threatening, which is entirely avoidable.
Also, just because you are going 3s or whatever to build scvs, doesn't mean you have good scv production. You need to actually send them mining asap. You also forgot depots.
You could've laid more mines when you harassed with those vults, and you should've went underneath those buildings in his main to get at his probes.
Should've laid mines immedaitely after killing that cannon. You know his units will be coming so get them down asap.
So this protoss seems content with just sitting on his high ground, essentially turtling and defending his bases from vult harass. That means you shouldn't bother sending vults into that high ground area to keep dieing and doing minimal damage. Also, you should've aimed for that 4th base faster because you know how passive he is. Meanwhile, you would try to delay his 4th by laying mines in the paths that lead to the top left and top middle expansion. In fact he is so passive you could've just moved forward and split the map right then by laying a wall of mines and siegeing your tanks in a spread out form. You could've also gone for dropship seeing how turtling he is.
You know full well he's aiming for a 4th, so you could've left a vult at top left to kill that prove you know is going to coming. In fact he gave you surprisingly a large amount of access to those 2 expos on his side of the map. You should've taken advantage of that to slow down his 4th even more.
When he attacked you your vults were a tad too in front because your tanks are so far behind. You shouldn't let your tanks be so far behind because that's effectively splitting your army and letting him attack one group at a time. By all means spread out your tanks but not so much that some of them are ridiculously far behind. I'm pretty sure you lost way mroe vults than you needed to in that battle.
Why are you moving tanks so far forward without and vults or mines to support. And also your other tanks are so far behind that they're not exactly gonna help either. You should've moved all your units to that forward position asap, including those tanks that are so far back. You're also giving him time to take that 5th. Immediately when he retreated you should've sent some vults in to check for it, and since he did take it, lay some mines and force him to move some units into a poor position to defend his expansion, then you could've moved up that center middle lane and take advantage of the map pathing.
The other option would've been to head for the spot where you can hit his natural, which would've been hard for him to defend too if you layed enough mines. Either way you need to shut down one of his expansions while keeping your 5 bases safe, but you didn't do that all.
Instead you passively sit there just asking to get raped with such a crap position and no vults or mines to support that small group of tanks so far forward. And as expected you do get raped easily. You made it all the way across the center of the map where you could've built turrets and been in a really good position because of the narrowish path that doesn't allow for easy flanking, but you gave that up completely by not brining all your units forward asap.
Now because you've let him take his 5th without worry and he won that battle so easily, he is in a position to take down your 5th and 4th, and basiaclly the game is over at this point unless he screws up really badly.
Thoughts in general: early to mid game can definitely be better. In mid to late game you don't have an understanding or awareness of what the current state of the game is and how you should be reacting. It's like in mid game you're thinking oooh yeah I'd better take those expansions on my side of the map because it sounds like a good idea...yeah I think I'll set up in the middle and be fine, equal bases vs toss is good right? Dododo I'll just sit here and macro away and I should win this.
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