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ORIGINAL POSTER'S NOTE. NEWEST REPLAYS WILL BE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LIST, THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS, THEY HAVE MADE ME A MASSIVELY BETTER PLAYER.
Hello TL,
I'm new to the game and decided that, unlike SC1, I wanted to get more serious in SC2. I decided on Zerg as a main race, owing to the awesome macro mechanic and the interesting interplay between the T1 units (too many roaches? Not enough lings to deal the damage. Not enough roaches? Too little damage soak and the lings get wasted)
I've recently started a winning streak after placing rank 80-ish bronze and losing my first seven games outright. I want some critique, however, to guide my advancement. Pick my play apart, ESPECIALLY strategically (bad micro can be solved by playing more games, becoming more accustomed to the macro, and being able to spend more "clicks" on my units). Where would you have scouted? When would you have pushed or harassed? Did my tech structure make no sense? WHY AREN'T YOU DRONING, ROWEN?! The more critique I get the better I can focus my attention and practice while I'm playing, and the faster I'll get up to the Platinum and Diamond levels we all want to play at.
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92482-1v1-zerg-jungle-basin
ZvZ saw my roach/muta/ling topple a roach/bling/hydra tech path. Scouted early and read aggression so had to drop some spines. Should I have expanded sooner? Seeing no expand, should I have teched to mutas or gone for hydras? More scouting in mid-game? I felt very good about this win, so knock me down a few pegs! I know I missed a couple injections 
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92487-1v1-protoss-zerg-shakuras-plateau
ZvP 5RR took on 4 gate. I made some pretty serious macro errors here. Forgot to hotkey my queen (!!), missed an inject because of it, was fumbling with hotkeying units the whole time. If you set it to player cam, right as I'm breaking the rocks out of my base there's ~10 seconds of NOTHING happening, this would be me fumbling with hotkeys. Still ended up as a win, so I guess I can chalk it up to poor opposition.
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92913-1v1-terran-zerg-jungle-basin
MMM stops my 5RR but I'm able to contain and expo a couple times while denying his expo until late-game, where my muta harass becomes more like a muta army but the Thors still scared me. STILL keeping too many minerals around. Don't ask me why I suicided my lings against their wall in the beginning. I think it was a misclick and I just went with it, but it was yesterday and I don't recall completely!
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92911-1v1-protoss-zerg-shakuras-plateau
Good Stalker/Zealot Macro keeps me out of their base with my lings, but I contain for most of the game and when they do push me off I have mutas to make sure I don't stay gone long. By that point I'm up three bases to one and and simply able to swarm him for the win.
LOSS http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92952-1v1-zerg-steppes-of-war
Ah hah, a loss! Would love your thoughts on what I did wrong. I actually thought I was holding my own fairly well until the roaches arrived and roasted my lings. I think the problem may lie less with strategy or mechanics, there, and more just knowledge of the game. "How many lings do I need to toast 4 roaches? Well, 12 seem good enough, a-move!" and that was that. ZvZ, early spine crawler attempt denied leads to fast zergling pressure which I have to fight off with drones. I failed to cancel my first spine crawler, which set me back, but thought I equalized and actually came out ahead -- apparently my time killing zerglings and not mining came back to bite me in the ass. I haven't actually watched this replay, but I was CERTAIN I was ahead of him economically (thus the attempt at a FE once I held off the pressure) and it seems that's not the case. Read, review, and critique!
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92997-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis
15 Hatch/15 Pool FE against a 2rax'ing terran ends up with Zerg map control which rolls over the Terran bioball. Not much to say here, it was a pretty standard game. Backtech to bling gets aborted before the speed upgrade when the terran tries to take a sneaky expo by flying his CC in and rushes his bioball out to stop my dozen-ish Mutas and I have to force the endgame right there. Some blings went boom, but they could have just as well popped from tank fire as busted the bioball for all I know -- was too busy keeping my fragile mutas away from those nasty marines while my lings ate them up.
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/94656-1v1-protoss-zerg-metalopolis
There's been a few losses in between these two, but none that I felt needed analysis. I knew even while playing my losses that I wasn't playing at my best, and what good does it do to critique sub-optimal play? The best advice is just: play at your best, and if you're not at your best, then don't play.
14 pool takes 2gate robo to the cleaners in a micro-heavy ZvP matchup on Metalopolis. Eventually the weight of my muta/ling army with superior econ crushes his 1-base stalker and colossi play, and the game is mine. I'd love a macro-centric analysis, however. I feel like my micro was good in this game, and overall my macro was strong as well, but my money ended up as OBSCENELY high and I couldn't seem to spend it fast enough! I ended up dropping an extra hatchery in my natural but perhaps it was too late to matter? Should I have expanded again with that extra money? I just have a long history of being CRUSHED by protoss warpgate/robo balls when I'm more than one base ahead. The opponent notes that I'm playing at a higher-than-silver level and I'd love to believe that's true, but if my money keeps staying sky-high like it is, I can't imagine I'm going to make it in platinum, much less diamond league.... Also a quick note about APM: I was spiking to 200+ APM in micro-intensive sections (managing lings and mutas attacking two parts of his base, etc). Is this enough to get by at platinum, which is my short-term goal, or should I be doing more APM exercises once I graduate to gold?
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First of all, don't say gg before your opponent when you win the game.
That game should have been over a LONG time before it was actually over. The guy went hive tech for no reason, had a pitiful drone count, and used his banelings against your roaches every chance he had. He had zerglings but didn't get speed. You opted for defense while he mounted a poor offense. For example, when he came in with zerglings for the second time, he attacked the spawning pool in plain sight of the crawlers. He could have killed the queen easily instead or pick off 3-4 drones, or even retreat.
As far as what you did. You scouted his early pool and went a crawler. That was good. You then threw down a second crawler. That I didn't like so much. You could instead make your own zerglings, which would give you the option to attack and defend. Notice at 5:30 you had over 300 minerals and tons of gas. You needed to be using that up or pulling gas drones off to minerals. At 9:30, you scouted the rocks at your expo. That's an ovie's job, your 3rd ovie should be watching that the entire game. You have lots of minerals and that count does not fall up to the end of the game. That money should be spent. Also notice how he's massing an army right beside you. You should have been controlling the xelnaga watch towers with a ling on each. You also should have upgraded your overlord speed or made an overseer. There are so many things he could do to screw you up. Your defensive posture could have backfired hard if he decided to go muta. That infestor pit could have been a spire and you would never have known. Without den or evolution chamber, and only two queens, he could have forced a game with just a handful of mutas. He could have gotten burrow with tunneling claws and just burrow right into your base leaving you no chance of retaliation. Anyways, at the end of the game he just stopped producing so there's not much to say.
Your opponent would have done much better if he took the expo in his own base. Anyways I got to sleep, you could try playing custom games on bnet with lost temple and such, I saw a lot of diamond level players, which I did not actually expect to. You can get plenty of worry free practice from that.
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On October 18 2010 20:11 ddrddrddrddr wrote:
First of all, don't say gg before your opponent when you win the game.
That game should have been over a LONG time before it was actually over. The guy went hive tech for no reason, had a pitiful drone count, and used his banelings against your roaches every chance he had. He had zerglings but didn't get speed. You opted for defense while he mounted a poor offense. For example, when he came in with zerglings for the second time, he attacked the spawning pool in plain sight of the crawlers. He could have killed the queen easily instead or pick off 3-4 drones, or even retreat.
As far as what you did. You scouted his early pool and went a crawler. That was good. You then threw down a second crawler. That I didn't like so much. You could instead make your own zerglings, which would give you the option to attack and defend. Notice at 5:30 you had over 300 minerals and tons of gas. You needed to be using that up or pulling gas drones off to minerals. At 9:30, you scouted the rocks at your expo. That's an ovie's job, your 3rd ovie should be watching that the entire game. You have lots of minerals and that count does not fall up to the end of the game. That money should be spent. Also notice how he's massing an army right beside you. You should have been controlling the xelnaga watch towers with a ling on each. You also should have upgraded your overlord speed or made an overseer. There are so many things he could do to screw you up. Your defensive posture could have backfired hard if he decided to go muta. That infestor pit could have been a spire and you would never have known. Without den or evolution chamber, and only two queens, he could have forced a game with just a handful of mutas. He could have gotten burrow with tunneling claws and just burrow right into your base leaving you no chance of retaliation. Anyways, at the end of the game he just stopped producing so there's not much to say.
Your opponent would have done much better if he took the expo in his own base. Anyways I got to sleep, you could try playing custom games on bnet with lost temple and such, I saw a lot of diamond level players, which I did not actually expect to. You can get plenty of worry free practice from that.
Thanks for the input. I have trouble macro'ing away all my minerals at times, I'll try and focus more on it. The scout on my expo's rocks was because I saw units moving out of his base to the West, and since I didn't have watch tower control, wanted to make sure I wasn't about to have company. I figured if they were going for the rocks I could crush their army there and have a free ride to mutas and the coup de grace. Part of my thought process in taking the spine over the lings was concern that if he continued to mass lings and I went back to droning, I could be overrun. That comes down to scouting, I suppose. I know that Static Defense Is Bad, so I'll focus more on unit production. I reasoned that he wouldn't go mutas on one base, but that's faulty logic -- just because I wouldn't go mutas on one base doesn't mean that random bronze player won't. Scouting scouting scouting....
Good points about ovvie scouting my expo rocks and keeping an offensive posture. I'll keep that in mind in my next games.
Oh and thanks for the "gg" comment. I was being sincere -- it was a good game, but I see how it could come off as rude.
EDIT: how do you feel about changelings as scouts? You mentioned Overseers several times obviously for their detection and quick(er) movement speed, but they seem useful for changeling as well. Do you use this? I've tried a few times against admittedly AWFUL opponents, even for bronze (some dozen MMM and 3 Vikings by the time I'm up to ultra. Missile turrets and bunkers freaking EVERYWHERE), and they seemed useful, but tbh I don't know how they'd fare against better players.
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Changelings have been either useful or a waste of time from my experience. I tend to spot them easily, can't say if it's from poor use or I just notice when my zealots are moving around without being told.
However I have seen cool uses:
Like blocking their ramp as a nydus pops. Dropping a changeling during a skirmish so they're distracted and you can check on it a few seconds later and see a lot more than gambling if they'll notice a unit randomly running out from the back of their base (I've watched reps and found changelings getting a look in my main for over half it's lifespan due to tricks like this).
You can also drop a changeling at your entrance and run it out for a free way to scout around your area or just run it straight at the enemy and see what it finds. Telling it to follow the enemy's army can also be a nice move as that's harder to spot.
You said you wanted to get serious in SC2, and really the 1st thing that you need to work on is macro. You are scouting, so that is good and it will improve as you see more and more openings.
Massing games on ladder or with friends is great, and the main way to improve quickly.
There is something I can recommend:
I don't know if you're aware of it, but a great tool is the build order tester, there's a few around. Create a custom game and type YABOT into the search bar to find yabot-converted ladder maps. The instructions are found after the loading screen, and very simple.
You can try and follow some available builds already in there, or go with freestyle and it will track your build order.
The best thing about yabot is the ability to just restart the game in just a few seconds, allowing you to instantly start over when you screw up or want to try something different. This will help you tighten up some aspects of your play and make many actions second nature through repetition very quickly.
You can play against others or set the AI to easy for basic, no pressure practice or harder if you like.
It's great for practicing spending money and getting tech and expanding smoothly.
Kind of long-winded but I'm feeling all giddy and chatty after watching Boxer play.
Sorry if I'm telling you about something you already know.
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yabot is a great tool but it still pretty much broken since the last patch & were still waiting on an update? no save function etc,
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I didnt know save didn't work anymore, as i just freestyle every game. That's terribad.
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i'm at work, so unfortunately, i'm not able to look at it (i'm only gold, too :-(, so i'm working on getting better myself), but you'll find you'll learn a lot more from losses than from wins, if you really want to analyze your play.
In wins, your mistakes will kind of be overshadowed by your opponents mistakes, while in your losses, they become much more evident, so i'd suggest taking harder looks at them
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There's probably no real point to practicing build orders in YABOT right now. Practice the three key things that you need to do every game with every race and every build order: making workers, spending your money, and watching the minimap.
Until those fundamentals are solid, your timing will all be off anyway.
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It is utterly pointless to critique bronze level play. All games come down to same things not building workers and not spending your money. Until gold you can literally pick A unit and make just that with good macro and win almost every game with zero scouting. Well that is my 2c anyway.
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On October 19 2010 00:57 Deathfairy wrote:
It is utterly pointless to critique bronze level play. All games come down to same things not building workers and not spending your money. Until gold you can literally pick A unit and make just that with good macro and win almost every game with zero scouting. Well that is my 2c anyway.
I just dont get it why he got warned for this... Its true tbh. Just like day9 said... build pylons and probes/ scv's and sup depots/ drones and overlords + keep your money low. Warn day9?
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Eh, generally you need more practice, but the one thing I did notice throughout your entire game was that you weren't spending your money. If you watch your replay, you will notice that at your hatches you have almost 3+ larva the entire game. Spend those larva as fast as you get them. They won't regenerate if you don't spend them, and therefore you will have less units during the course of the game. Spending those larva should solve most, if not all, of your money problems.
I would have been broke on the amount of workers you had. I think it was 24 for 2 bases? Eh.
Also set a zergling at each watch tower. You would have seen there entire force if you had done that. Also, like said before, getting an ovie over the rocks is generally better than checking the other side of the rocks with ALL of your forces and then watching your main getting attacked.
For bronze league, focus more on your macro. If you really want to scout, just send a drone into the opponent base and set it on a patrol loop. It's funny when they try to kill it, silly bronze players.
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Changelings are awesome when they work (mid battle run-by, etc etc), but once you get to like gold they probably won't work too well unless you are a) playing someone who is tunnel visioned on something else or b) someone who doesn't realize that changelings even exist and can't figure out why his zealot is running around by itself with 5 hp.
I'm about 1600 diamond and yea...it rarely ever works lol best bet is to just sacrifice an overlord
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Well, I think it is important to know that a mineral patch is most effectively harvested by 3 drones, so you will have to get 24 drones for minerals + 6 for both geysers.
A big aspect of Zerg play is to basically power drones whenever you can & you would not believe how often you actually can! For example on Lost Temple: If you constantly scout his army composition, you can power drones like hell just until right when he moves out. The 50 secs that he´ll need to get to your base are enough to set up spines & the right units in most cases. Given the fact you do not want to play aggressive early on, which would be another possibility.
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I appreciate all the input, folks. It definitely gives me somewhere to focus my time. I'll keep an eye out for YABOT (Yet Another Build Order Tester? I see what you did thar...) updates and try it out, at the moment I really only know the one opening (5RR), so it's hard to react to early scouting.
On October 19 2010 00:57 Deathfairy wrote:
It is utterly pointless to critique bronze level play. All games come down to same things not building workers and not spending your money. Until gold you can literally pick A unit and make just that with good macro and win almost every game with zero scouting. Well that is my 2c anyway.
User was warned for this post
"Pointless" certainly depends on the point of view. It's pointless as a high-level player to try and improve your game by picking apart bronze level play. It's not pointless as a bronze-level player to have your games picked apart by higher-level players. Even if I could just mass zerglings EVERY MATCH and win with perfect macro, that wouldn't be teaching me much about the game, would it? Macro skills get better after massing games and practice. I can be getting better at something else while learning the muscle memory required to macro correctly.
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On October 19 2010 01:06 TERATON wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 00:57 Deathfairy wrote:
It is utterly pointless to critique bronze level play. All games come down to same things not building workers and not spending your money. Until gold you can literally pick A unit and make just that with good macro and win almost every game with zero scouting. Well that is my 2c anyway.
User was warned for this post I just dont get it why he got warned for this... Its true tbh. Just like day9 said... build pylons and probes/ scv's and sup depots/ drones and overlords + keep your money low. Warn day9?
Because good habits start off early, and hes coming to a place that will teach him good habits at the begining instead of having to relearn everything at the end.
@Rowen,
First, what is your plan when you go into the game? Do you have a plan? I am not saying that you have to stick to said plan, but the fact that you have one. What I do, and I am a Diamond Terran, if you ever want some 1v1s let me know, I have a plan when I go in. For example, I see Zerg, I think in my mind, I am 3 raxing, building an engineering bay, getting stim, +1 weapons and slamming his expansion asap. Zerg will ALWAYS win the macro game. I scout with my scv and do my best to slow HIS expansion down. I can win 90% of the time on a 1 base game. So, develop a plan, but ALWAYS have contingencies.
On the second game, you dropped a pool on 13, and a gas on 12. Did you have a purpose? Speedlings? Were you going to lair? What is your reasoning behind doing that. What was your overall plan/
At 3:38 you drop the spine crawler, you did this because you feared early harass from lings from the other player. Why not just make lings and a queen? Mind you, Im not saying it was a bad choice, just what prompted that thought process. You are asking for strategy comments, Ill do my best 
At 4:23 you beat off his first rush. You have him beat in scv count, you know this because you know that zerg can not build 2 units at once, that early of a rush means he sacrificed scv count, so expand. You will have him beat. Make some lings to defend. Zerg are a macro race, you already know this, you need monies to macro.
Get better placement on your crawlers.
At 730 your macro drops. Focus on Macro, get better at it. You have WAY to much monies. Way to much.
If you notice, high level and programer zerg players, spread creep like a boss. You need the WHOLE map to be creeped up. I think spending the 150 for an additional queen to do this is worth it. SPREAD CREEP. GET THIS IN YOUR HEAD NOW. S P R E A D C R E E P. You didnt start spreading until almost 9 minutes.
You have map control, move your crawlers up to your front door so they can support your units.
YOU STILL HAVE TO MUCH MONEY! Build another hatchery in your base do something with it. The fellows that commented above have a point, you need to learn how to spend your money.
You have to few drones, honestly. I know I am saying you have to much money as well, but you need to have about 25-30 drones at each base.
You saw that he was going lings and roaches, why didnt you go mutas? Then you could harass and attack. Again, not saying wrong decision, but asking what your thoughts were.
At 14 minutes you beat his army and had a standing army, you should have expanded.
YOU HAVE TO MUCH MONEY.
Good micro at 1530
at 18 I recomend attacking with your standing army, and using your mutas to kill his mineral line.
YOU HAVE TO MUCH MONEY.
Yea bad form to gg before opponet. :/
Your doing good for a bronze player, polish up a bit and I expect to see ya in Diamond.
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I was all getting ready to help out a new member of the swarm, and then I saw these guys pretty much say exactly what I was going to. 
If you ever want some advice or want to get some help on anything, hit me up. TheMonkeyMon.667. Love helping out new players.
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Also add me, Igakusei.364. I'm always happy to practice with newer players who are actively trying to improve.
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My view of gg is that you're saying game's over. Imagine if you're playing chess, the loser will make the motion to resign or you keep playing until check mate. You don't tell your opponent "you lose, that was a nice game" because it would be rude no matter how nicely you put it. Changelings will die against good players, but you don't really need changeling to live very long, just enough to see what he's producing and his army size. About 5 seconds of life time will do that, and short of you dropping the changeling in plain sight and he goes directly to kill, you should see what you need to see.
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On October 19 2010 03:30 Rowen wrote:
"Pointless" certainly depends on the point of view. It's pointless as a high-level player to try and improve your game by picking apart bronze level play. It's not pointless as a bronze-level player to have your games picked apart by higher-level players. Even if I could just mass zerglings EVERY MATCH and win with perfect macro, that wouldn't be teaching me much about the game, would it? Macro skills get better after massing games and practice. I can be getting better at something else while learning the muscle memory required to macro correctly.
You're absolutely right. It's easy for me as a low diamond player to beat platinum players and below by simply not dying to cheese and making stuff. But if I want to kill a protoss player with mass ravens, I also have to understand a lot of basic RTS principles that most bronze players haven't exactly learned yet. I might recommend intentionally altering your style from time to time to focus on building up different RTS "skills." If you want to work on your macro, find a solid ground-based style that involves an early expansion. You can find several ideas on Liquipedia. This way your army doesn't need to be extensively micro-managed to be useful (as in mutalisk plays), and you can play every game with the goal of making as many units as possible. Especially early game, always make as many drones as you think you can get away with, then turn all that money into roach/hydra or whatever you're macroing. If you find yourself missing larvae injects, make extra hatcheries to compensate. The goal is that you're focused on having really strong macro every game.
Once you feel like you can consistently out-expand and outmacro your opponents and are mainly losing to cheese/allins/etc, switch it up and start playing really aggressive one base builds that don't have a difficult macro requirement. The focus here is to learn how to be constantly controlling your army (harassing with mutalisks, etc) without sacrificing your macro.
But as to your point about learning something else while improving your dexterity and muscle memory, I think that watching day9 and varying your style from time to time both help quite a bit with that. In SC1 I used to always fast expand (this was back in the day before terrans and protosses started fast expanding too) because I had trouble with keeping up with terran and protoss macro and didn't understand how NOT fast expanding could possibly not make things worse. Then I made myself learn some really aggressive low-econ openings and discovered that zerg can, instead of making a bunch of drones early for a strong economy, can use early units to gain map control and then make up the difference in economy later once they have that advantage. That's something that probably would have taken me a much longer time to understand if I hadn't forced myself to learn different ways of playing the game.
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EPT
