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So I am sorta new to this whole playing Brood War thing... I'm hoping to make D+ or at least hold D for Season 10. I only started ICCup a few days ago. Here's my story so far:
I've only played ICCup games on Heartbreak Ridge so far. I'm not sure why I picked that map... well actually I remember now. I picked it because I wanted to try the strategy where you block your opponent in their main with just one pylon and then cannon rush them (I think Jaedong had this done against him in GOM Season 3). Anyway, I tried to do that strat without even looking at the VOD and failed miserably so now I am trying more legitimate strategies.
Day 1:
Game 1: vs. yaicbonke (T) on Destination Ok, so, looking at the rep, this game was actually on Destination. So I have played games on that map and HBR. Anyway, I am a 29 APM protoss playing a 181 APM terran so you can probably imagine this went badly. I dunno what I was trying to do; I put a manner pylon down that didn't even block anything and I let it finish. Then I tried to expand and only had one zealot by the time he came in my base with 3 rines and ran a vulture right into my main. I managed to kill the first vulture before I gg'd. I had hosted the game as Top vs. Bottom so the stats didn't count lol.
Day 2: (I actually used one on one this day)
Game 2: vs. Brandysue (Z) on HBR I'm up to 36 APM here, lol. I felt a bit better against this 100 APM zerg. I tried the cannon rush here with the pylon in the main choke but he spotted it and made a hatch nearby to sunken push so I didn't even proxy the forge I just expanded and tried to play standard from there. Managed to take out all of his lurkers before his lings and hydras wiped me out.
Game 3: vs debonairx (T) on HBR I try to cannon rush this 80 APM terran with my measly 30 APM, and fail. It actually starts out fairly productive because he walls in and doesn't scout it, allowing me to kill the depot and almost kill the barracks that form his wall in, as well as of his marines. But, I don't even have a pylon in my main and siege mode renders my cannons useless so I gg.
Game 4: vs debonairx (Z) on HBR I don't want to cannon rush anymore, so I make a game asking for a zerg on HBR and the same guy joins and chooses zerg. I get 38 APM this game and he manages 70 while off-racing. I go for fast one-base star port and he 6 zerglings as my first gateway unit comes out, which is a goon. I manage to drive him out after losing a pylon. My sair comes out and can't kill an overlord before hydras hatch. I have a decent army to take out his 2 hatch hydra/lurk that comes at me, but the observer I thought had been rallied to the front of my main was actually still at the robo fac when I moved into lurkers and lost everything T_T.
Day 3: (After playing a bunch of 3v3s with my good pal RebirthofLegend, I decide to try ICCup 1v1s again)
Game 5: vs gS)Untouchable (Z) on HBR I go 39 APM against this 69 APM zerg. I go pylon forge at nat, then two cannons without scouting and a Nexus. Good thing I got two cannons, because it stopped his 9 pool. Then I somehow added another 3 cannons at the nat... anyway, I go for speedlots with +1 attack and I take out his nat, but his mutas arrive when I've got only 2 cannons at my main and no stargate (I think I even forgot to make a cybercore by now T_T). So we are both on 1 base now and I take out his pool and spire but he has too many mutas and kills me. I felt a lot better in this game; I think I would have won if I had just had a stargate or a few more cannons in my main.
Game 6: vs sGJ (T) on HBR Basically, I don't have a vT build (or a vP build), since I've just been focusing on vZ. I should just ask for a zerg in my game name but I'm too shy to dodge, I guess. So, most of my games are just called "D- 1v1 HBR". So, I go for 2 gate DT rush. I arrive at his main while is first turret is being built and I stop it. I kill a bunch of half-made turrets and tanks and rines and vults and scvs with my DTs but he finally gets a couple turrets down due to my poor micro. I hadn't really been doing anything at my main so his counter with vultures makes me gg. I had 59 APM this game to my opponent's 137.
Game 7: vs Slipz666 (P) on HBR PvP? Yeah, I had no idea for a PvP build. I DT rushed again but my opponent had cannons at the entrance to his main so I immediately pulled my army back to my nat entrance and expanded. Basically, I got a quick 3/4 bases while my opponent was only at 2. I went carriers since I suck at spending my money and figured that would be the easiest way to keep my resource count low. My observer spots that he is also going carriers and I already have 6 so I start massing sairs. My opponent also gets Arbiters, which are too fancy and complicated for me at this point (I didn't even know how to use Recall at the time, but I have since figured that out). Anyway, by the end of the game, I am on 7 bases and he's still on 2 and he's trying to take the middle but I won't let him. My sairs keep sniping his arbiters, I have a better ground army, and my sairs + carriers destroy his lower carrier count. GG! I finally win one! I had more APM too, 49 to his 46 (though with 5 more bases I oughtta have more APM, lol).
However, heartbreak ensues! For all three games today, I used top vs bottom accidentally so I don't get any credit for my first ICCup win T_T. I got upset and cleared my stats to start anew.
Day 4:
Game 8: vs Ver (Z) on HBR So my mafia buddy Ver wants to play me after showing me some replays to help me. He off-races to zerg instead of his normal terran and says he will play with one hand (just the mouse) while he talks on the phone. He is C- while we play and I think he might be B range sometimes so even with one hand he manages twice my APM (48 vs 98) and its not even close.
Game 9: vs harkat (P) on HBR My second protoss. Maybe I can extend my vs protoss undefeated streak? I get 4 gates early and wipe out his nat while expanding. I'm on 3 bases to his 1 when I see a shuttle of his heading to my base and I lose track of it. About 5 minutes later, as I'm about to take out his expansion to the bottom right, I notice he has a proxy gateway above my nat. I send some zealots to take it out but he's got about 10 zealots there and a templar that storms my probes. My probes just bug out when I try to send them to my 3rd or 4th and I can't remember how to waypoint so I am starting to cuss like I have Tourette's. I manage to take out his 3rd easily, despite all the cannons there, with goons and zeals. My carriers pop and I am able to get a 4th base and I take out his 4th then move on his main. I lose way too many carriers to storm but my remaining 3 camped at his main force him to gg :D. I'm so relieved that I just sit there dumfounded and catch my breath and forget to gg back so he probably thinks I'm an ass now . I got 53 APM in a 40 min game so I think I'm getting a little better. My opponent had 78 APM so I guess that means I made up for the difference with superior strategy? O_O I dunno why protosses think they have to stay on two bases so long, I suppose my streak will end when I find one that can take a third before 30 minutes into the game, lol.
Well, I am off to play some more games. If you read this, I bet you're pretty disappointed in yourself .
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just keep practicing man, it takes a lot of time
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the more you play the more you get used to your keyboard and mouse, and the faster you'll get. Combine that with proper build orders, strategies, and game sense, and you'll be rolling
:D
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FUCK YA MAN.
I loved the writeup and read the entire thing! Keep on going for your goal!
You started out alot better than me lol. I was a measly 1-34 when i first started 2 years ago lol
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It's hard to remember sometimes that everybody starts out with 30-40 apm and it takes years of training and skills to get to progamer level (unless your a child prodigy or w/e). Good blog and keep it up!
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Thanks for the support! A lot of people have helped me, too, like Ver and RebirthofLegend and probably some people I am forgetting O_O. Also, I guess ICCup is down for the season break so I just went onto US West and beat my first terran! He didn't GG tho, just tried a bunch of vulture/tank drops which I defended rather sloppily. When I went to scout, he was walled in so I made a pylon at the nat so I would know his expo timing and I sat my probe down at his likely 3rd. He was way late taking his nat so I figured I would just turtle and go 3/4 base carrier, however, before he even took his nat, he vulture dropped my warping in 3rd, which I had to cancel. I had already pylon walled the 3rd in, so I couldn't move in with my goons so I started up a robo fac to get a shuttle. Then he picked up his vults and mined up my main, so then I had to start warping cannons in my main so I had some sort of detection. After I cleaned up the drop I got my 3rd setup and he pushed it with 3 tanks and 4 marines. I easily took that out with 11 or so goons and then he finally took his nat. I never had more than 2 gateways, which was a mistake. He made a drop on my main with about 5-7 dropships of tanks and vultures, which i easily took out with goons and zealots. At this point I had way too many extra resources, was comfy on 3 base and taking my 4th, and had 6 stargates with the fleet beacon warping in. As he retreated his dropships, I tried to catch them with goons but he just managed to avoid losing any. And then he gg'd. Guess he saw the stargates, lol.
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Most of you are saying I should just play a bunch and that is definitely my feeling. I've watched a lot of reps but I don't think I am to the point where they are too helpful beyond finding a basic build to practice.
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Well, you might be D-, but this was an A+ writeup.
Thoroughly enjoyed it!
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I just burst out laughing when I saw you said you had 29 APM. That is pretty nice, just keep playing and I'm sure that'll go up in no time as long as you are thinking about all the things you need to do in terms of scouting, peon production, macro, etc.
Have you played the campaign or ever played on public servers? I mean, imo jumping straight into ICCUP from never playing BW before is just asking for pain and frustration. I think it might be better playing 1v1 play/obs or some teams games on public servers to get the basics down but you do seem to be improving.
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On September 01 2009 13:21 Pyrrhuloxia wrote: Anyway, I am a 29 APM protoss playing a 181 APM terran so you can probably imagine this went badly.
That just cracks me up rofl
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Mk well after winning tonight I lost a really long macro game against terran. Turtling until you have a control group of carriers doesnt work lol he had to have made like 100 turrets and had lots of goliaths too... Also I lost a crazy game to a zerg... I could have probably won if had made my sim city better. A couple of funny notes of that PvZ: He said "oh you're still playing?" at one point because he hadn't found my hidden expo (he never did). Very early in the game, I put a pylon and a few cannons on the cliff over his natural so I would know when he took it and he didn't find it until his nat had completed and he sent his drones over to mine and they all died to the cannons. Unfortunately, he pinned me in my base early with lings and I never was able to take my nat. Lots of mutas kept effing up my main too. Oh well.
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On September 01 2009 15:27 Jonoman92 wrote: I just burst out laughing when I saw you said you had 29 APM. That is pretty nice, just keep playing and I'm sure that'll go up in no time as long as you are thinking about all the things you need to do in terms of scouting, peon production, macro, etc.
Have you played the campaign or ever played on public servers? I mean, imo jumping straight into ICCUP from never playing BW before is just asking for pain and frustration. I think it might be better playing 1v1 play/obs or some teams games on public servers to get the basics down but you do seem to be improving.
I have played the campaign... although I've never beat it. The first time I heard of Starcraft was in grade school when I remember seeing it on the shelf in Costco (with the three different boxes). I remember thinking the Terran was the best box and the Protoss one looked the worst. It was rated T though so my parents wouldn't have let me near it lol. Then I remember once, also in grade school, my friend's brother had rented the N64 version and was playing it. Later, as a frosh in high school, I was at a friends house for a project and he played some comp stomp UMS map while I waited for my parents to pick me up. I finally bought the game in high school at some point when my computer died. I needed some old school games that would work on my backup computer. I tried starcraft and it was even a little old school for my backup computer so I went out and got Morrowind next, which is now my favorite single player PC game of all time (Starcraft is probably top for PC multiplayer). Before I got Morrowind I did get through the Terran non-Brood War campaign and lost a few games on b.net. When I started watching pro-Starcraft with the GSI, I tried the game again and got through some of the zerg campaign. I also tried playing b.net and maybe 5 pooling on iccup but never won anything (except one game where I DT rushed and the guy had made no units, 4 forges and a bunch of pylons, maybe an assimilator, clearly even worse than me by a mile). Recently I have beat the zerg campaign and some of the protoss and have been playing a lot of fastest/bgh with RoL, as well as the 1v1s I've talked about.
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Lol it's funny you say that. My first time seeing BW too was at a friends house, seeing his older brother play it on a rented N64 copy of SC.
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Pro-tip: read liquipedia. Get a build (or 3) you like. Practice them by yourself every day at least 2 times before playing your first game that day. Pwn face before SC2 beta.
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Ugh BGH is soooooo hard. I played like 5 games of it tonight with Rebirth and felt like complete dead weight and I lost us like every game and died so fast it wasn't even fun .
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funny blog dont clear ur stats !! anyone can get D+ but your stats r personal! imo
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On September 01 2009 20:11 starflash wrote:funny blog dont clear ur stats !! anyone can get D+ but your stats r personal! imo I know but I felt so bad about missing the stats from those Top vs Bottom games right? Made me feel dirty so I cleaned things up. New season was just around the corner anyway.
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yeah don't be one of those insecure nerds who cares about their record so much, just play play play and be good manner.
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On September 01 2009 21:13 lazz wrote: yeah don't be one of those insecure nerds who cares about their record so much, just play play play and be good manner. Yeah I'm not really that worried about my record; I just am sad that I lost that history.
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i'm so glad blizzard put SC on the N64, it got so many people into it, including myself.
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