Hey there loyal readers. I wanted to say this weeks post will be delays until this weekend mainly because I was in UCSC for the week and because I have too much stuff going on in trying to plan a move to Pennsylvania and buying a car this weekend.
I can however tell you that the next 3 weeks will be a 3 part cast about learning how to play Starcraft. When I first was taught how to play multiplayer, I was first taught to create the ideal defense for 1 then 2 then 3 bases such that I could defend these bases basically until they were mined out regardless of the number or type of attacks. Then I was taught to only attack a base and how to find ways of doing damage and getting into a fortified base to destroy it. Then I was taught how to do both simultaneously, while finally I was taught how to defend my bases with minimal amounts of structures/fixed units and instead have a more mobile, unit based defensive system so it was more fluid. So over the next 3-4 weeks as I start my job and move East, I will be spending some time really analyzing how these phases should look for the three races and what you should be thinking when trying each step out. All you really need is someone to play with, or the comp. if you are desperate. Personally I prefer someone who is 2-3 ranks higher than you if you can find them and they are willing to help you out, but more on that later.
So anyway sorry for the delay, but life comes first.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
BLC Update
It has come to my attention that I should probably give somewhat of an outline of how exactly to read my casts in terms of the "out of game" theory and the "in game" commentary. This will be done below. I also want to say that I will not be casting any more of my games as it is too hard to be unbiased against my own play. Not sure yet what BC#3 will focus on, but I am leaning towards scout reactions and creating counter units.
I try and provide a bit of "out of game" knowledge first, basically theory craft as it relates to the cast/topic of the day. So in the first cast i was talking about surviving and spending money. In order to survive longer and have things to spend the money on, I feel it is important to talk about the "out of game" idea of building placements, unit/worker/supply production, and to think about what is scary so that once you are "in game" you already have an idea of these topics. This holds for cast 2 about dealing with pressure. Knowing what typical builds are helps you adapt your own play to adjust based on new challenges. Therefore, the discussion before the replay is all "out of game" before playing conceptual theory-craft and the "in game" replay sections are things to be watching for, thinking about, and adapting to while under the pressure of a real game.
Hope this clears some of the confusion up. I would also like to say that for each of these "update" posts, please make comments on things you would like cast, ideas to be discussed, and maybe some games you would like to see done. I am happy to take all suggestions as this is for the readers after all.
I try and provide a bit of "out of game" knowledge first, basically theory craft as it relates to the cast/topic of the day. So in the first cast i was talking about surviving and spending money. In order to survive longer and have things to spend the money on, I feel it is important to talk about the "out of game" idea of building placements, unit/worker/supply production, and to think about what is scary so that once you are "in game" you already have an idea of these topics. This holds for cast 2 about dealing with pressure. Knowing what typical builds are helps you adapt your own play to adjust based on new challenges. Therefore, the discussion before the replay is all "out of game" before playing conceptual theory-craft and the "in game" replay sections are things to be watching for, thinking about, and adapting to while under the pressure of a real game.
Hope this clears some of the confusion up. I would also like to say that for each of these "update" posts, please make comments on things you would like cast, ideas to be discussed, and maybe some games you would like to see done. I am happy to take all suggestions as this is for the readers after all.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
BLC #2 The Illusion & Benefits of Pressure
Welcome readers to BLC #2. Some technical information first, before I dive into today's cast featuring myself and Chuck. I want to try and refine the focus of my casts when it comes to the finer points of the cast's theme. I think this is important to do to avoid things like this: You go on the forums and you say I don't understand the point of Zerg. I thought they were the swarm race and that all 200/200 armies should be about the same? Now a typical, non-troll response would be something like "Well the benefit of playing Zerg is that if you are correctly using your queens, which replace the necessity of having 6 hatcheries like in Starcraft 1, then you can completely rebuild 72 larva worth of stuff on 3 bases instantly whereas it takes Terran/Protoss more than triple the time to even come close." Now that response is perfectly valid and justifiable, but there aren't numbers to back it up and being an engineer, you need numbers to convince me of anything. So in the future when situations like this arise I will try and provide more numerical analysis on the situation.
Now before I begin today's cast, I want to talk about the idea of unit compositions and builds, and I want to do so now since I don't want to mention it at all during the replay. It is my opinion every sub diamond player should really have 3 builds and know the timings very well. Some people will say that you really only need 1 build and that you should just master ever aspect of this build until you get to diamond. While that can work depending on your ladder, it makes you very one dimensional and you don't develop a game sense about how to fine tune against the 5-10% of people who will just crush you. Having one build for each race allows for more dynamic play while still allowing you to focus on the little things and gives you options if your original plan goes horribly awry as you are not lost on other options. Before I go any further down this path, I should say that no matter how many builds you have and no matter how dynamic your play is, if you do not make workers and supply then nothing else matters. As we will see in this game, I am extremely guilty of doing this, where I just sit on 12 scv's for a good 4 minutes once I get mules. So when I say make more workers, make tons of workers!!!
Now lets talk a minute about what those builds might look like for each race. I will discuss Terran then Zerg and Toss.
So after patch 1.1.1, the basic Terran build against Zerg is to open up with double hellion harass until you have 4-6 hellions with blue flames then transition into Thors or tanks with a slew of marines for dps support assuming you want to do something more fun than just MMM all the time. This allows for early pressure if Zerg FE's or containment if they build a defensive spine crawler to shut down the hellions. Against Protoss I almost always go two barracks/ghost into expand then add barracks and Starport tech completely skipping all factory units (use the factory to scout). This is manly because of immortals/phoenix and the fact that factory units are too slow so there is no good time to start getting them, and on certain maps, there really is no good place to put tanks (Metalopolis!). Against other Terran, which is where most of the most unique play occurs, I think opening fast banshee for harassment and then transitioning into mass barracks tends to work well, unless you notice your opponent is walling off in which case it is easier to just go tanks/vikings with 2 ravens (never wall TvT you are just giving away the wall). Cheese will be hardest for Terran to deal with after patch 1.2, but if you suspect cheese, which usually means you are playing on one of four maps (Jungle Basin, Agra Valley, Xel'Naga, or Steps of War) then it comes down to really early scouting and going for a faster barracks on say 10 with a supply depot at 9 or even 8.
For Zerg against Terran if a wall is scouted which there will almost always be one due to the fear of the 6-pool, fast banelings with +1 attack works well then a transition into either mutas or hydra (the highest dps unit in the game) before getting ultras if they have lots of mech or guardians if they have MM or mass turtling. Against Protoss, mass roaches/hydra seem to be extremely effective with substantial creep spreading to help the speed of hydras, although if the Protoss is turtling with cannons you can suspect mass Void Ray and try to win early with speedlings. Conversely if you suspect mass DT's getting 3-4 overseers early is helpful and doesn't delay mutas more than a minute or two. The Zerg mirror match typically comes down to who macros better or who has better upgrades. Other than that, I can't say there is any one good opening against ZvZ but maybe someone has one.
Protoss really seems to get the easy openings here because of how awesome the gateway and the robotics facility are. Getting 2 warp gates and a robotics bay with 2 fast observers is almost always a good idea against any race (unless you plan on doing a 4 gateway mass stalker push). With the best scouting unit in the game, you can tell what the opponent is doing and adjust accordingly. Protoss really have to decide early what they want to focus on while on two bases. Do they want to go mass gateway units and get lots of Templar with storm and some dark Templar if their opponent has very little detection or do they want to go Colossi with range?
I think against Terran it is almost always better to go Templar because of feedback to deal with banshees/thor/battle cruisers while having storm to destroy the MM ball. Against Zerg it is almost always better to go Colossi with thermal lances just because of their massive burst damage and ability to chew through zerglings with no viable AA until the mid-late game. Now with both of these options, the biggest problem will be retention. For instance, the reason that Jaedong was so good with zerg in Starcraft 1 is that he picks off Templar with 3 mutas and causes huge losses in gas. The same idea applies in Starcraft 2 where gas is really the thing that lets you get the "cool" units or tech whereas minerals let you survive.
It is for this reason that retention is such a big deal as 4 colossi against zerg with a good gateway force to tank damage will pretty much win 85% of the battles. 6 Templar pretty much shut down Terran, especially if you have 3 sentries for force fields to keep the MM ball from retreating. However, if Zerg kills off 2 of those colossi early, a sizable hydra/roach army will suddenly be overwhelming, just like emp'd Templar are almost useless against the MMG ball of doom. Against other Protoss, the game often becomes about who has the better economy and who has more gateway units with micro, but this is where I think DT's are undervalued as most low level toss players will make 1 and only 1 observer for the entire game then start making the "fun" units.
I want protoss players to make 4 observers and put them in advantageous places!
With these basic build ideas, there are immediately mid and late game plans in mind and the ability to react to what your opponent does by simple unit composition switches and scouting both the base and the ramp of your opponent. By having a game plan or at least some idea of what you want your base to look like, you tend to feel safer and more confident in your play.
Now why did I go through all of this?
Well one was to point out how most low level players should be thinking of strategies and two was to note that today's cast was done just after 1.1.1 when I didn't realize the suckage of tanks against Protoss. Perhaps more importantly, as unit composition is NOT the focus of today's cast, thinking about these build styles and knowing them well, allows you to move on to thinking about more advanced ideas like applying pressure and how the illusion of a constant threat forces your opponent to play differently.
As mentioned in the last cast, I am going through the replay twice, first I'll start with only Chuck's cam on then go to the everyone game. Chuck is a protoss player and as such there are four things I would be asking myself if I were him: How is my timing on my chrono boosting? Am I continuing to produce out of all of my structures while making tons and tons of probes? Does the pressure that I am under really seem that bad or was it just making me think I was worse off than I am? Lastly, what happens to my play and especially macro (warp gates) during a battle? Now I will not talk at all about chrono/mule timings, worker count, or unit composition the entire replay, though you should be aware of it, I will only make mention of it once battles start to help demonstrate the purpose of today"s cast.
Finally diving in, the match starts off like any typical game with probe production, some basic building production and scouting. Note that Chuck should have killed the scv scout, but lets it live for the entire game, not a huge deal, but free info for Terran. He gets the cybernetics core early to get the robotics bay and I'm assuming to start getting the warpgate upgrade, but he doesn't chrono boost it nor does he start it immediately. While this type of miss micro, especially early in the game is very small in relation to say scouting, making probes, or making units, these micro errors tend to escalate especially when under the gun.
Now there is one thing I want to mention in terms of building placement. Even though I talked about this in the last cast, it is still interesting to note the placement of the first pylon and the gateways. I can understand wanting to make some type of wall up front or having the ability to warp in units at the ramp for protection, but the warp gate in the main is all but forgotten for almost the entire game and none of the warpgates are on a control group. Not to be completely negative, I do like that the buildings are being produced almost exactly on time and the probes are almost immediately sent back to do other things. This is very good play to decease idle workers and maximize production time of unit producing structures. However, the robotics facilities are dropped very late, which delays the effectiveness of observers especially since one idles in the base for the entire game. The last point of interest before talking about the first signs of enemy forces is the creation of the second nexus. It is easy to stop around 11:30 and just count the number of total probes in the main and the natural. I think there are less than 20. Now whether this is because too many structures were built, chrono on probes was forgotten, probes in general were forgotten or whatever, isn't why I mention it. Just look at this cost and time effectively. It costs 400 minerals for the nexus and takes x seconds to build. Now in order to fully saturate the main and the nexus assuming about half the available probes are transferred will take another 1000 minerals and almost 5 minutes. Thus with the amount of probes produced, the expansion is almost worthless for quite a while, which means the two warpgates up front are now worthless, which means they should be in the main. Now if they were in the main, then any Terran aggression would be that much more difficult due to high ground and Protoss would be that much safer. Just something to think about for your replays.... do you really have enough workers to make the second base viable? If not should you really be trying to defend such an open position? In this case it would have been better to stay on one base, make one less robo bay, and constantly make units from all structures. I can tell you that you can constantly make units from 2-3 warpgates and one robo bay on one base if you are also constantly making probes and then be in a very defensible position when you move out to take the natural maybe 2 minutes later.... unless of course you are HuK and you expand after 1 gateway, but he is the top Protoss player on the NA ladder for a reason.
Around the 12 minute mark, when units are staring to come out to attack, I just want to look at the setup of Chuck's base and talk about how awkward building placements are, which will eventually prevent him from responding to any sort of aggression. So at this time he has 4 warp gates, 2 robotics facilities, and 32 probes on 2 bases with no upgrades and 6 available chronos. Now just looking at the first two, most Protoss will have a very similar setup of 4 warpgates and 2 robo bays. But they will be clustered together in the main, powered by multiple pylons, and hopefully in defensible positions to help against things like drops, hellions in the mineral line, or long travel times for things like reapers. However, the seemingly haphazard placement of the structures, coupled with the fact they are only powered by 1 or 2 pylons and they are well within range of tanks, makes this a very scary defensible position for the Protoss player. Now the lack of upgrades and probes just makes the situation worse, if Terran were to attack with a very large all ground force of marines and marauders with +1 armor and stim. But this is what I mean by forgetting the fundamentals and how they cascade into huge problems later. So for you bronze players and even up through platinum, think about where your buildings are, think about how wise it is to expand and where you then must be able to defend, and think about the size of your army relative to the territory you must be able to protect. If you can say to yourself that you can comfortably cover all of that territory with available reinforcements quickly then you are in good shape.
PAUSE 14:30
This is when the first major encounter occurs between the two players. With the tanks providing support in the back, but out of range of the stalkers who don't have blink, the ground units can poke up the ramp and start taking out they pylons, cannon, and gateways. Now from Chuck's perspective what can he really do here? Well he can't really move in to attack because the further forward he moves, the less of a concave he can form, but the more terran can retreat and form a better concave. So moving forward seems to be out. If he had blink and was macroing stalkers, he could blink down the cliff and come around or go through the third and do the same, but no blink cancels that. Thus, Protoss is really only allowed to turtle in his base and produce enough units to break the containment. At least that is what he should be doing.
Now this looks scary from the Toss perspective, you have 3 tanks and a handful of MM outside your base. This means you can't expand to your third, you can't be aggressive yourself, and you have to worry about this force at all times. This is what I'm talking about with containment, forcing your opponent to play into your race's strengths while not allowing them to expand, macro, or do the things they wanted with their game plan. Look at this from the replay's perspective though, the terran was able to take out enough pylons to supply block the Protoss player, they took out two of the unit producing structures that were never rebuilt, and they put the Protoss "on the clock". But what is really amazing is that this really isn't a huge force, nor is it that much of a threat. Sure they could wander through the third and shoot from the high ground or they could move south along the cliff line and poke at the expansion, but if the Protoss player just attacks and kills the force, there is nothing much left at the Terran base assuming that the Protoss army had enough left after the encounter.
This is what I mean by the illusion of pressure, there is something in our brains that says "oh no we have to deal with this now, or we will die" but if Protoss just went back to making pylons and probes, made more gateways in his main, and just started macroing again, he could survive on 2 bases, protect himself, and really not be concerned with any of the attacking forces but make the terran come to him. This is the point I wanted to touch on for this cast, the idea of having patience and not being totally freaked out by units posing a threat. Sure you want to kill them, sure they have the potential to do massive harm, but if you remain calm and just go back to the fundamentals of pylons, probes, and units, then so long as you put an observer on those forces, you really don't have to be concerned with them.
This is where the mini map is so important... LOOK AT THE MINIMAP!
So look for this in your replays, when experience pressure, look at your forces and base, and ask is it really that threatening to you? Then go look at your opponents base, chances are if he is microing this attack force his own base is suffering, which means you have even more time to wait for reinforcements. This is just the nature of bronze-gold league, most players cannot micro their forces and macro/build in their base at the same time. For instance look at Chuck's base for the next 4 minutes, not a single unit is being produced as the income is climbing. Even though he defeated the Terran force, look at the global scale of the game. Look at how little info he has about my base, look at how trapped he is on his two bases with so few units, and look at the amount of resources he had to spend just to fend off three tanks and a handful of MM. This is the power of contain, even static contain with tanks. So just remember, they cannot be doing two scary things at once!
RESUME
Realistically you can stop the replay here, because the rest of the match is two additional battles that go pretty much the same way. However, I want to mention two quick things about the remaining battles before restarting under the Terran cam. What I want to mention is the typical response that low level players have to breaking a containment. It's this feeling of "holy crap I can actually win this game I'm not dead" so what do most players do? Well they say oh look I have all these extra minerals that I mined while defeating this contain so lets expand and then build some more structures, and in the meantime I'll go attack him and try and win the game. Then what happens? They loose their attacking force and the game a few minutes later because they have no more stuff. Here is what's really happening though, you are so excited you have breathing room, you forget the fact that you were not macroing while defending your base and you were not producing more workers to speed up resource production. But if you were doing those things, you would perhaps barely have any money left to build an extra gateway, but you would certainly be in no position to attack.
This is especially true in this game, Chuck knows nothing about my main or unit composition all he knows is that I have an expansion and a starport without an add-on. What he should have done was use this lul to start doing all those things he forgot while defending, mainly rebuilding those two gateways, adding more probes, spending those 12 unused chornos on upgrades, and making a large enough force to defend from another attack. By the time the last battle occurs, there is just too much stuff from the Terran side and not enough info to defend it. This is the talent of remaining calm under pressure and of sticking to your game plan. Even diamond players get flustered when massively contained and they start to make mistakes. Those players who can overcome these nerves and immediately start thinking "ok i just got out, what should my unit composition be, how are my minerals, what scouting can I do, how quickly do I need to macro?" These tend to be the top players, just ask Gretorp in day9 episode 197. Just letting the replay go or stopping it now, we see that Terran wins, but does so somewhat convincingly in terms of units. What I want to show in the second part is that Terran played just as poorly, but that early pressure allowed me to get away with such poor play.
Switching now to the everyone cam, this side will be even shorter. The game starts the same building workers and supply, I like to get the early gas for either factory or ghosts, and then the orbital command. Now I can tell you that my plan for this game was to go mass tanks with a mostly marine support and some marauders thrown in. My main concern when using tanks are stalkers and eventually colossi, which tend to be the standard Protoss build. Thus I wanted to get a fair amount of marines to deal with any zealots or immortals, but have a mostly marauder army to be able to deal with blink stalkers and snipe colossi. My biggest problem with this game is that I forget to build more workers once I get mules. So I sit at 12-15 workers for most of the game, which realistically is just so stupid and makes my expansion worthless when I transfer over a measly 8 workers. This is just like Chuck's expansion, so I am not showing favoritism, in fact I think mine is worse do the the nature of Terran's inability to mine effectively. This is however very typical Bronze league play, forgetting workers in favor of more stuff. If I had the 30-40 workers I should have had along with mules, I could have had more upgrades and finished the game a good 10 minutes earlier while having the same number of unit producing structures.
This not withstanding, around 13 minutes against Protoss is when most Terran's start to poke out of their base if they feel like an early push is coming. Not seeing any enemy forces by this point, I decide to get bold and start gong into containment mode. Note that I am expecting to finish the game here, in fact my only real goal is to place those tanks within firing range of the main ramp but far enough that they cannot be hit from the ledge. With the ground force, I want to check what type of units he is making so I know how to alter my own unit composition. Since I saw mostly stalkers and a couple immortals, I really wasn't worried about this too much anymore. Fortunately for me, Chuck basically gave me his ramp while he just sat back and did nothing.
Now this is where one of the problems of containment occurs, if you are containing with tanks you are not mobile. So I could have tired moving the troops to the third, getting an early starport for drops, or a myriad of other, high level things to frustrate Chuck, possibly snipe a nexus, and end the game early. Being the extremely starcraft 1 player I am, I tend to get timid with these plans, so instead my plan was to just leave those units there, poke in now and then with the MM to see what units he is making and if he changed tech but fall back to the tanks if I get ambushed. I was just trying to give the illusion of pressure and attacking to see if I could snipe some free units or structures and to try and contain the Protoss to two bases while I macro myself.
This is the benefit of light pressure, it allows me to see where I am relative to him so I have time to respond if needed, and it basically opens the entire map up for me to expand anywhere and really gain positional advantage. That is a concept most zerg players try to exploit early, but is something all levels of play can understand. IF you can keep your opponent on 2 bases with a small force, then you OWN the rest of the map until they find a way to break past you! I however fail to really take advantage of this by my poor macro and lack of expansions due to my lack of workers and bad mule timing, thus forcing a longer game. But the result is the same, keep your opponent contained, macro and rally your forces to the front lines, and just overwhelm them. Keeping this strategy up, even with my horrible horrible macro resulted in terribleterribledamage and eventually the GG.
WRAPPING UP:
So what did we learn in this cast that will make us better? We learned that if you are continuing to improve on the basics form Cast 1 in building more workers and supply, then you can begin to apply pressure and contain your opponent. At no point in time should you expect this contain to be permanent nor should you expect it to win you the game, but what this small amount of pressure does is fool your opponent. Moreover, we learned that by placing yourself within range, we now have the opportunity for direct scouting of our opponents unit composition, their expansion times, their buildings, and we force them to come to us. We learned that if we use this pressure to expand ourselves and take complete control of the map, we can now start really ramping up in production buildings and leaning on our enemy by just completely overwhelming them. Finally we learned, that if we start doing all the little things right, we can start to play aggressively and beyond ourselves. So until next time, keep working on fundamentals and just trying to apply very early pressure with a small amount of units to put your opponents on the clock.
Now before I begin today's cast, I want to talk about the idea of unit compositions and builds, and I want to do so now since I don't want to mention it at all during the replay. It is my opinion every sub diamond player should really have 3 builds and know the timings very well. Some people will say that you really only need 1 build and that you should just master ever aspect of this build until you get to diamond. While that can work depending on your ladder, it makes you very one dimensional and you don't develop a game sense about how to fine tune against the 5-10% of people who will just crush you. Having one build for each race allows for more dynamic play while still allowing you to focus on the little things and gives you options if your original plan goes horribly awry as you are not lost on other options. Before I go any further down this path, I should say that no matter how many builds you have and no matter how dynamic your play is, if you do not make workers and supply then nothing else matters. As we will see in this game, I am extremely guilty of doing this, where I just sit on 12 scv's for a good 4 minutes once I get mules. So when I say make more workers, make tons of workers!!!
Now lets talk a minute about what those builds might look like for each race. I will discuss Terran then Zerg and Toss.
So after patch 1.1.1, the basic Terran build against Zerg is to open up with double hellion harass until you have 4-6 hellions with blue flames then transition into Thors or tanks with a slew of marines for dps support assuming you want to do something more fun than just MMM all the time. This allows for early pressure if Zerg FE's or containment if they build a defensive spine crawler to shut down the hellions. Against Protoss I almost always go two barracks/ghost into expand then add barracks and Starport tech completely skipping all factory units (use the factory to scout). This is manly because of immortals/phoenix and the fact that factory units are too slow so there is no good time to start getting them, and on certain maps, there really is no good place to put tanks (Metalopolis!). Against other Terran, which is where most of the most unique play occurs, I think opening fast banshee for harassment and then transitioning into mass barracks tends to work well, unless you notice your opponent is walling off in which case it is easier to just go tanks/vikings with 2 ravens (never wall TvT you are just giving away the wall). Cheese will be hardest for Terran to deal with after patch 1.2, but if you suspect cheese, which usually means you are playing on one of four maps (Jungle Basin, Agra Valley, Xel'Naga, or Steps of War) then it comes down to really early scouting and going for a faster barracks on say 10 with a supply depot at 9 or even 8.
For Zerg against Terran if a wall is scouted which there will almost always be one due to the fear of the 6-pool, fast banelings with +1 attack works well then a transition into either mutas or hydra (the highest dps unit in the game) before getting ultras if they have lots of mech or guardians if they have MM or mass turtling. Against Protoss, mass roaches/hydra seem to be extremely effective with substantial creep spreading to help the speed of hydras, although if the Protoss is turtling with cannons you can suspect mass Void Ray and try to win early with speedlings. Conversely if you suspect mass DT's getting 3-4 overseers early is helpful and doesn't delay mutas more than a minute or two. The Zerg mirror match typically comes down to who macros better or who has better upgrades. Other than that, I can't say there is any one good opening against ZvZ but maybe someone has one.
Protoss really seems to get the easy openings here because of how awesome the gateway and the robotics facility are. Getting 2 warp gates and a robotics bay with 2 fast observers is almost always a good idea against any race (unless you plan on doing a 4 gateway mass stalker push). With the best scouting unit in the game, you can tell what the opponent is doing and adjust accordingly. Protoss really have to decide early what they want to focus on while on two bases. Do they want to go mass gateway units and get lots of Templar with storm and some dark Templar if their opponent has very little detection or do they want to go Colossi with range?
I think against Terran it is almost always better to go Templar because of feedback to deal with banshees/thor/battle cruisers while having storm to destroy the MM ball. Against Zerg it is almost always better to go Colossi with thermal lances just because of their massive burst damage and ability to chew through zerglings with no viable AA until the mid-late game. Now with both of these options, the biggest problem will be retention. For instance, the reason that Jaedong was so good with zerg in Starcraft 1 is that he picks off Templar with 3 mutas and causes huge losses in gas. The same idea applies in Starcraft 2 where gas is really the thing that lets you get the "cool" units or tech whereas minerals let you survive.
It is for this reason that retention is such a big deal as 4 colossi against zerg with a good gateway force to tank damage will pretty much win 85% of the battles. 6 Templar pretty much shut down Terran, especially if you have 3 sentries for force fields to keep the MM ball from retreating. However, if Zerg kills off 2 of those colossi early, a sizable hydra/roach army will suddenly be overwhelming, just like emp'd Templar are almost useless against the MMG ball of doom. Against other Protoss, the game often becomes about who has the better economy and who has more gateway units with micro, but this is where I think DT's are undervalued as most low level toss players will make 1 and only 1 observer for the entire game then start making the "fun" units.
I want protoss players to make 4 observers and put them in advantageous places!
With these basic build ideas, there are immediately mid and late game plans in mind and the ability to react to what your opponent does by simple unit composition switches and scouting both the base and the ramp of your opponent. By having a game plan or at least some idea of what you want your base to look like, you tend to feel safer and more confident in your play.
Now why did I go through all of this?
Well one was to point out how most low level players should be thinking of strategies and two was to note that today's cast was done just after 1.1.1 when I didn't realize the suckage of tanks against Protoss. Perhaps more importantly, as unit composition is NOT the focus of today's cast, thinking about these build styles and knowing them well, allows you to move on to thinking about more advanced ideas like applying pressure and how the illusion of a constant threat forces your opponent to play differently.
As mentioned in the last cast, I am going through the replay twice, first I'll start with only Chuck's cam on then go to the everyone game. Chuck is a protoss player and as such there are four things I would be asking myself if I were him: How is my timing on my chrono boosting? Am I continuing to produce out of all of my structures while making tons and tons of probes? Does the pressure that I am under really seem that bad or was it just making me think I was worse off than I am? Lastly, what happens to my play and especially macro (warp gates) during a battle? Now I will not talk at all about chrono/mule timings, worker count, or unit composition the entire replay, though you should be aware of it, I will only make mention of it once battles start to help demonstrate the purpose of today"s cast.
Finally diving in, the match starts off like any typical game with probe production, some basic building production and scouting. Note that Chuck should have killed the scv scout, but lets it live for the entire game, not a huge deal, but free info for Terran. He gets the cybernetics core early to get the robotics bay and I'm assuming to start getting the warpgate upgrade, but he doesn't chrono boost it nor does he start it immediately. While this type of miss micro, especially early in the game is very small in relation to say scouting, making probes, or making units, these micro errors tend to escalate especially when under the gun.
Now there is one thing I want to mention in terms of building placement. Even though I talked about this in the last cast, it is still interesting to note the placement of the first pylon and the gateways. I can understand wanting to make some type of wall up front or having the ability to warp in units at the ramp for protection, but the warp gate in the main is all but forgotten for almost the entire game and none of the warpgates are on a control group. Not to be completely negative, I do like that the buildings are being produced almost exactly on time and the probes are almost immediately sent back to do other things. This is very good play to decease idle workers and maximize production time of unit producing structures. However, the robotics facilities are dropped very late, which delays the effectiveness of observers especially since one idles in the base for the entire game. The last point of interest before talking about the first signs of enemy forces is the creation of the second nexus. It is easy to stop around 11:30 and just count the number of total probes in the main and the natural. I think there are less than 20. Now whether this is because too many structures were built, chrono on probes was forgotten, probes in general were forgotten or whatever, isn't why I mention it. Just look at this cost and time effectively. It costs 400 minerals for the nexus and takes x seconds to build. Now in order to fully saturate the main and the nexus assuming about half the available probes are transferred will take another 1000 minerals and almost 5 minutes. Thus with the amount of probes produced, the expansion is almost worthless for quite a while, which means the two warpgates up front are now worthless, which means they should be in the main. Now if they were in the main, then any Terran aggression would be that much more difficult due to high ground and Protoss would be that much safer. Just something to think about for your replays.... do you really have enough workers to make the second base viable? If not should you really be trying to defend such an open position? In this case it would have been better to stay on one base, make one less robo bay, and constantly make units from all structures. I can tell you that you can constantly make units from 2-3 warpgates and one robo bay on one base if you are also constantly making probes and then be in a very defensible position when you move out to take the natural maybe 2 minutes later.... unless of course you are HuK and you expand after 1 gateway, but he is the top Protoss player on the NA ladder for a reason.
Around the 12 minute mark, when units are staring to come out to attack, I just want to look at the setup of Chuck's base and talk about how awkward building placements are, which will eventually prevent him from responding to any sort of aggression. So at this time he has 4 warp gates, 2 robotics facilities, and 32 probes on 2 bases with no upgrades and 6 available chronos. Now just looking at the first two, most Protoss will have a very similar setup of 4 warpgates and 2 robo bays. But they will be clustered together in the main, powered by multiple pylons, and hopefully in defensible positions to help against things like drops, hellions in the mineral line, or long travel times for things like reapers. However, the seemingly haphazard placement of the structures, coupled with the fact they are only powered by 1 or 2 pylons and they are well within range of tanks, makes this a very scary defensible position for the Protoss player. Now the lack of upgrades and probes just makes the situation worse, if Terran were to attack with a very large all ground force of marines and marauders with +1 armor and stim. But this is what I mean by forgetting the fundamentals and how they cascade into huge problems later. So for you bronze players and even up through platinum, think about where your buildings are, think about how wise it is to expand and where you then must be able to defend, and think about the size of your army relative to the territory you must be able to protect. If you can say to yourself that you can comfortably cover all of that territory with available reinforcements quickly then you are in good shape.
PAUSE 14:30
This is when the first major encounter occurs between the two players. With the tanks providing support in the back, but out of range of the stalkers who don't have blink, the ground units can poke up the ramp and start taking out they pylons, cannon, and gateways. Now from Chuck's perspective what can he really do here? Well he can't really move in to attack because the further forward he moves, the less of a concave he can form, but the more terran can retreat and form a better concave. So moving forward seems to be out. If he had blink and was macroing stalkers, he could blink down the cliff and come around or go through the third and do the same, but no blink cancels that. Thus, Protoss is really only allowed to turtle in his base and produce enough units to break the containment. At least that is what he should be doing.
Now this looks scary from the Toss perspective, you have 3 tanks and a handful of MM outside your base. This means you can't expand to your third, you can't be aggressive yourself, and you have to worry about this force at all times. This is what I'm talking about with containment, forcing your opponent to play into your race's strengths while not allowing them to expand, macro, or do the things they wanted with their game plan. Look at this from the replay's perspective though, the terran was able to take out enough pylons to supply block the Protoss player, they took out two of the unit producing structures that were never rebuilt, and they put the Protoss "on the clock". But what is really amazing is that this really isn't a huge force, nor is it that much of a threat. Sure they could wander through the third and shoot from the high ground or they could move south along the cliff line and poke at the expansion, but if the Protoss player just attacks and kills the force, there is nothing much left at the Terran base assuming that the Protoss army had enough left after the encounter.
This is what I mean by the illusion of pressure, there is something in our brains that says "oh no we have to deal with this now, or we will die" but if Protoss just went back to making pylons and probes, made more gateways in his main, and just started macroing again, he could survive on 2 bases, protect himself, and really not be concerned with any of the attacking forces but make the terran come to him. This is the point I wanted to touch on for this cast, the idea of having patience and not being totally freaked out by units posing a threat. Sure you want to kill them, sure they have the potential to do massive harm, but if you remain calm and just go back to the fundamentals of pylons, probes, and units, then so long as you put an observer on those forces, you really don't have to be concerned with them.
This is where the mini map is so important... LOOK AT THE MINIMAP!
So look for this in your replays, when experience pressure, look at your forces and base, and ask is it really that threatening to you? Then go look at your opponents base, chances are if he is microing this attack force his own base is suffering, which means you have even more time to wait for reinforcements. This is just the nature of bronze-gold league, most players cannot micro their forces and macro/build in their base at the same time. For instance look at Chuck's base for the next 4 minutes, not a single unit is being produced as the income is climbing. Even though he defeated the Terran force, look at the global scale of the game. Look at how little info he has about my base, look at how trapped he is on his two bases with so few units, and look at the amount of resources he had to spend just to fend off three tanks and a handful of MM. This is the power of contain, even static contain with tanks. So just remember, they cannot be doing two scary things at once!
RESUME
Realistically you can stop the replay here, because the rest of the match is two additional battles that go pretty much the same way. However, I want to mention two quick things about the remaining battles before restarting under the Terran cam. What I want to mention is the typical response that low level players have to breaking a containment. It's this feeling of "holy crap I can actually win this game I'm not dead" so what do most players do? Well they say oh look I have all these extra minerals that I mined while defeating this contain so lets expand and then build some more structures, and in the meantime I'll go attack him and try and win the game. Then what happens? They loose their attacking force and the game a few minutes later because they have no more stuff. Here is what's really happening though, you are so excited you have breathing room, you forget the fact that you were not macroing while defending your base and you were not producing more workers to speed up resource production. But if you were doing those things, you would perhaps barely have any money left to build an extra gateway, but you would certainly be in no position to attack.
This is especially true in this game, Chuck knows nothing about my main or unit composition all he knows is that I have an expansion and a starport without an add-on. What he should have done was use this lul to start doing all those things he forgot while defending, mainly rebuilding those two gateways, adding more probes, spending those 12 unused chornos on upgrades, and making a large enough force to defend from another attack. By the time the last battle occurs, there is just too much stuff from the Terran side and not enough info to defend it. This is the talent of remaining calm under pressure and of sticking to your game plan. Even diamond players get flustered when massively contained and they start to make mistakes. Those players who can overcome these nerves and immediately start thinking "ok i just got out, what should my unit composition be, how are my minerals, what scouting can I do, how quickly do I need to macro?" These tend to be the top players, just ask Gretorp in day9 episode 197. Just letting the replay go or stopping it now, we see that Terran wins, but does so somewhat convincingly in terms of units. What I want to show in the second part is that Terran played just as poorly, but that early pressure allowed me to get away with such poor play.
Switching now to the everyone cam, this side will be even shorter. The game starts the same building workers and supply, I like to get the early gas for either factory or ghosts, and then the orbital command. Now I can tell you that my plan for this game was to go mass tanks with a mostly marine support and some marauders thrown in. My main concern when using tanks are stalkers and eventually colossi, which tend to be the standard Protoss build. Thus I wanted to get a fair amount of marines to deal with any zealots or immortals, but have a mostly marauder army to be able to deal with blink stalkers and snipe colossi. My biggest problem with this game is that I forget to build more workers once I get mules. So I sit at 12-15 workers for most of the game, which realistically is just so stupid and makes my expansion worthless when I transfer over a measly 8 workers. This is just like Chuck's expansion, so I am not showing favoritism, in fact I think mine is worse do the the nature of Terran's inability to mine effectively. This is however very typical Bronze league play, forgetting workers in favor of more stuff. If I had the 30-40 workers I should have had along with mules, I could have had more upgrades and finished the game a good 10 minutes earlier while having the same number of unit producing structures.
This not withstanding, around 13 minutes against Protoss is when most Terran's start to poke out of their base if they feel like an early push is coming. Not seeing any enemy forces by this point, I decide to get bold and start gong into containment mode. Note that I am expecting to finish the game here, in fact my only real goal is to place those tanks within firing range of the main ramp but far enough that they cannot be hit from the ledge. With the ground force, I want to check what type of units he is making so I know how to alter my own unit composition. Since I saw mostly stalkers and a couple immortals, I really wasn't worried about this too much anymore. Fortunately for me, Chuck basically gave me his ramp while he just sat back and did nothing.
Now this is where one of the problems of containment occurs, if you are containing with tanks you are not mobile. So I could have tired moving the troops to the third, getting an early starport for drops, or a myriad of other, high level things to frustrate Chuck, possibly snipe a nexus, and end the game early. Being the extremely starcraft 1 player I am, I tend to get timid with these plans, so instead my plan was to just leave those units there, poke in now and then with the MM to see what units he is making and if he changed tech but fall back to the tanks if I get ambushed. I was just trying to give the illusion of pressure and attacking to see if I could snipe some free units or structures and to try and contain the Protoss to two bases while I macro myself.
This is the benefit of light pressure, it allows me to see where I am relative to him so I have time to respond if needed, and it basically opens the entire map up for me to expand anywhere and really gain positional advantage. That is a concept most zerg players try to exploit early, but is something all levels of play can understand. IF you can keep your opponent on 2 bases with a small force, then you OWN the rest of the map until they find a way to break past you! I however fail to really take advantage of this by my poor macro and lack of expansions due to my lack of workers and bad mule timing, thus forcing a longer game. But the result is the same, keep your opponent contained, macro and rally your forces to the front lines, and just overwhelm them. Keeping this strategy up, even with my horrible horrible macro resulted in terribleterribledamage and eventually the GG.
WRAPPING UP:
So what did we learn in this cast that will make us better? We learned that if you are continuing to improve on the basics form Cast 1 in building more workers and supply, then you can begin to apply pressure and contain your opponent. At no point in time should you expect this contain to be permanent nor should you expect it to win you the game, but what this small amount of pressure does is fool your opponent. Moreover, we learned that by placing yourself within range, we now have the opportunity for direct scouting of our opponents unit composition, their expansion times, their buildings, and we force them to come to us. We learned that if we use this pressure to expand ourselves and take complete control of the map, we can now start really ramping up in production buildings and leaning on our enemy by just completely overwhelming them. Finally we learned, that if we start doing all the little things right, we can start to play aggressively and beyond ourselves. So until next time, keep working on fundamentals and just trying to apply very early pressure with a small amount of units to put your opponents on the clock.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
BLC#2 & Updates
Hello All...
BLC #2 will be coming out on wednesday featuring a TvP game between myself and Chuck, two bronze league players. This cast will be about map control, mobility, and containment.
Also some changes will be made if I can figure out how, or if someone wants to tell me... a labels section will be added for easier access to the BLC casts and a section will be added with links to the uploaded replays to sc2replayed.com. Those will be coming out ASAP.
BLC #2 will be coming out on wednesday featuring a TvP game between myself and Chuck, two bronze league players. This cast will be about map control, mobility, and containment.
Also some changes will be made if I can figure out how, or if someone wants to tell me... a labels section will be added for easier access to the BLC casts and a section will be added with links to the uploaded replays to sc2replayed.com. Those will be coming out ASAP.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
BLC #1 Surviving and Spending Money
Welcome to BLC#1: written cast, where my goal is to take new players who like to have fun, try and help them play better and have even more fun (everything is more fun when you are winning). Until I live someplace that allows me to do video casts and can get that all set up, for now these will all be written and thus kinda long. Each cast is meant to be read simultaneously or after watching the replay that comes linked. The length of each cast will vary depending on the game, but I want to try and make them ~20 minutes of reading so I focus only on the larger themes and then some finer points at the end based on something important from the cast that can be seen in the replay. This first replay will be mostly an introduction, but will be focused on the beginnings of building a base.
The very first thing I want to suggest is that for all new players who do save their games, which you should automatically anyway, is that you really want to watch them at least 2 times. The first from the opponents view, then the global view. Now why do I suggest this? Well by seeing your opponents timing you get a feel for how other players think the race should be played, which may give you insight into some timing connection you hadn't realized (such as the Lair can be started just after the third roach) but also you get to see how your opponents react to your strategies.
Some things to think about when watching your opponent are using ZvZ as an example are: Do they scout an early hydra den and switch to fast/heavy ground? Do they scout an early spire and rush hydra or do they see an early Lair and fast expand at 15 food? These things can tell you how you should be thinking about your own game.
When you watch yourself, you should have a few basic questions to be asking the entire time. Namely, am I continuing to produce drones all the time? Am I keeping up with my income, queens, scouting, and supply? Am I actively applying pressure or map control while expanding or macroing my base? Do my hotkeys allow me to be actively marco-ing my stuff while focusing on the major tasks? These are some of the questions I ask during every replay and I ask almost every minute and even more when watching a battle or at the beginning of a match. Too many players just forget to build units during a battle or forget to rally/change rally locations, even me. So you should be comforatible with yourself to be building those units/expand/structures while attacking and just forget about the battle. If nothing else, just send your units to attack and don't micro them at all, just go back to your bases and keep up the macro/supply building. Soon you will have such a large unit advantage and be so comfortable you can afford to go watch and mirco the battle. Or you will just win because you have like 4 times the units of your opponent. All of this comes from new players will get stuck and ask well how do I know what to look for to improve, how do I know if I am improving, and how do I know what to work on for future games.
Now this first game was given to me by a friend who goes by the name Zagra against an opponent named Stoneballs, who I hope really has balls of stone that don't crumble. For the purposes of this game, I will assume I am playing as Zagra which means I will start the review from Stoneballs cam and be completely blind to Zagra's actions. Now this starts as a fairly typical ZvZ match of just building drones but both players will make multiple fundamental mistakes really throwing off their ability to end the game quickly or to respond to early pressure.
At the outset of the game, ust as a small gripe, boxing all 6 drones to one mineral patch due to the AI is effective, but rather slow. It would be better to have 3 go to one patch and another 3 to a second and self divide this way for a larger spread. Then once each new drone finishes, rally it to a mineral field whose worker just finished so it starts mining immediately. This works for the first 6-7 drones when not much else is happening and it helps speed up mineral production and saturation. (After a bit of testing, over the first 6 drones you can get an extra 25 minerals).
Diving into the game and Stoneball's play, the very first problem is that he never actually sets a rally point for his drones, which will seriously screw him up later in the match. Now he may have just forgot or thought he already did it, which is fine for the first couple drones, but unlike the days of SC1 where you couldn't rally to minerals, it is important to set that rally and make sure to refresh it as needed. (Plus you can massively boost APM if you care about that)
The second big issue with Stoneball's play is that he is just letting those minerals pile up. He waits until he has almost 150 minerals and 3 available larva before making a new drone. Good players will be making those new drones just seconds before the last one finishes, constantly on cue. This extends available minerals for use later and it makes sure you keep up with drone production. Having all your hatcheries hotkeyed to 4/5 and making workers is essential to this game! Now we will see Stoneball continue to do this wasting of minerals for almost the entire game, which will make him very susceptible to early pressure.
Now this first game was given to me by a friend who goes by the name Zagra against an opponent named Stoneballs, who I hope really has balls of stone that don't crumble. For the purposes of this game, I will assume I am playing as Zagra which means I will start the review from Stoneballs cam and be completely blind to Zagra's actions. Now this starts as a fairly typical ZvZ match of just building drones but both players will make multiple fundamental mistakes really throwing off their ability to end the game quickly or to respond to early pressure.
At the outset of the game, ust as a small gripe, boxing all 6 drones to one mineral patch due to the AI is effective, but rather slow. It would be better to have 3 go to one patch and another 3 to a second and self divide this way for a larger spread. Then once each new drone finishes, rally it to a mineral field whose worker just finished so it starts mining immediately. This works for the first 6-7 drones when not much else is happening and it helps speed up mineral production and saturation. (After a bit of testing, over the first 6 drones you can get an extra 25 minerals).
Diving into the game and Stoneball's play, the very first problem is that he never actually sets a rally point for his drones, which will seriously screw him up later in the match. Now he may have just forgot or thought he already did it, which is fine for the first couple drones, but unlike the days of SC1 where you couldn't rally to minerals, it is important to set that rally and make sure to refresh it as needed. (Plus you can massively boost APM if you care about that)
The second big issue with Stoneball's play is that he is just letting those minerals pile up. He waits until he has almost 150 minerals and 3 available larva before making a new drone. Good players will be making those new drones just seconds before the last one finishes, constantly on cue. This extends available minerals for use later and it makes sure you keep up with drone production. Having all your hatcheries hotkeyed to 4/5 and making workers is essential to this game! Now we will see Stoneball continue to do this wasting of minerals for almost the entire game, which will make him very susceptible to early pressure.
Stoneball's, who has yet to see anything but a scout drone starts going into what I can only assume is his early game plan of early Lair into Muta harass. So he opts for an early extractor, which is perfectly fine and reasonable for this style of play. I don't mind this standard zerg play at all, but just note that if he had kept his minerals low, kept up with drone production, and had some zerglings or even a spine crawler for defense, he could still take an early extractor and just have more stuff. So the idea here is to think about what you want to be doing in the game, and then figure out how best to get there. Stoneball's problem is that I'm guessing he has a plan for later, but he is forgetting the early things to keep him alive. So any early pressure by Zagra will just be devastating especially since Stoneball's has no idea what's coming since he didn't scout.
(Pause game here)
So one of the biggest complaints I hear/read is that zerg has no good early defense and cannot wall like Terran/Protoss. But I tend to disagree with this if you think about strategic building placements and what your opponents can throw at you ESPECIALLY now that Blizzard has implemented the game clock feature (which I hate). So just as Stoneball's is dropping his spawning pool is a good time to pause and think about this. Ask yourself what could your opponents throw at you this early in the game that you need to be worried about and can you do something to reduce their effectiveness?
Lets do Terran and Protoss first before coming back to this game. Post Patch 1.1.1, the time for the reaper rush has been increased making it viable, but less effective. If this happened by now, you would have the spawning pool and zerglings faster or have already lost the game without a queen or some basic defense. This isn't even the most viable thing for TvZ though, double hellion harass is far worse, especially if they get behind your minerals and you don't have speedlings. This is about the time in game that double hellions with a couple marines could be coming for you too. So to combat this, my suggestion is to build the spawning pool at the front entrance to your mineral line so that hellions can't even get back there. Or if the map is really big, build it in the middle behind your minerals, so they get stuck and can't retreat from your speedlings. I mention speedlings because they are the standard, mobile zerg defense and mobility over static defense is always preferred. If you really want to expand or tech faster, a spine crawler in your mineral line would also shut down marine/hellion pushes. It really is that simple, keep the scary things from getting behind your mineral line, and have some simple base defense around to help if they do. Honestly, if you have one spine crawler near your ramp/expansion, hellions get shut down due to range and damage of the crawler.
Now looking at Toss, the only viable options are 2 zealots and 1 stalker by this time in the game. Maybe they went 2 stalkers 1 zealot or 2/2 if they cut probe production and good chrono boosting. Again, a spine crawler if you absolutely need it or some speedlings since you kept up with production on time and this isn't a problem either. Put the spawning pool and maybe the roach warren behind to almost completely block your minerals, saving some room in case of drops, and you are safe to deal with those threats in front of you.
ZvZ follows the same principle, however the timing to get zerglings can vary greatly depending on the style of your opponent, which is why scouting is so important. If you scout the opponent fast expanding, you have time to tech to roaches or a speedlings. Whereas, if they are one-basing and getting zerglings fast, then you need to respond in kind. The benefit here is that they have to come to you and on megalopolis, the distances are large enough that you can start the spawning pool as soon as you scout theirs and get 6 zerglings before they rush you with enough money for drones or a spine crawler if you are still nervous. This along with good building placement so their zerglings are forced to run around your entire base to get to the drones buys you a lot of time to feel secure.
However, all of this is contingent on you keeping up with drone, queen, and mineral production. As we will quickly see from Stoneball's early mistakes and letting so much money collect will quickly spell disaster when coupled with his inability to react to early pressure. At the time Zagra's attack starts starts, there is enough minerals for 2 more drones to be made, but assume for a second he was keeping up on drone production as mineral collection and the ability to dump them into zerglings is ideal for ZvZ matches that rarely get past the roach/zergling/muta phase with the occasional hydra/ultra thrown in. Perhaps 95% of all ZvZ matches have only the first 3 units with the occasional baneling as needed, which is really quite sad for the race. This mineral heavy unit composition not withstanding, lets see if we can think of a simple strategy that Stoneball's could have used to come back from the first wave of attacks.
Lets go back to that very first comment of minerals piling up and Stoneball's continuous cueing of units, all the way back to the beginning of the game, to just analyze this for a second. Lets do some simple math here with each of Stoneball's units/structures. We can see that he is cueing multiple drones instead of saving the money and building unit producing or in the case unit enabling structures. As a result of the saving and no rally point, Stoneball's looses almost 300 minerals throughout the game and delays his spawning pool, extractor, and Lair tech as a result. Now if he had kept up with production, Stoneball's would have had 6 more drones before his spawning pool. At his point he could have started making zerglings for defense and had lets say 12-16 and started his extractor at the same time. Alternatively, he could make 4 zerglings and a queen then start his extractor and make 8 more zerglings all in the same time. Now lets stop and think about this. Now we have ~12 zerglings for base defense, we have a queen for extra defense AND creep tumors/extra larva, and we have effectively delayed our Lair by 1 minute. Instead, due to not keeping up with production, we have none of this and are in a bad spot for defending any sort of attack. All because of extra cueing and not keeping those minerals LOW. So look at your replays and look for the same thing, if your minerals as zerg get above 200 and you are not expanding or trying to build a structure, you are doing something wrong!.
Notice in all of this, I said nothing about expanding, nothing about scouting, nothing about teching, nothing about timings, and nothing about overall unit composition. All I have really said was that keeping up with drone production and not cueing units until the last moment gives you the opportunity to spend that money on other structures so you end up in the same place, but with more stuff! This is something simple enough for bronze players to learn and work on, but important enough for everyone up to Diamond to practice, constant production of units and more importantly, spending the money on getting more USEFUL structures to give you avenues to spend your money wisely. There are countless examples where say as terran you build the engineering bay early and then 3 turrets in the response of mutas just because you are worried about them and as a result you lose out building an extra factory and starport to produce more units. This type of decision making may be more silver/gold range, but the realization that maybe you can get more buildings now to get more units later instead of trying to prepare for everything is important. Now in ZvZ, this is a little different because everything is built at the hatchery and there is always a choice between drone or unit, day9 does this one well, but the same idea applies, sure you need lots of drones, but if you get an early spawning pool and queen so you can stay alive longer, you will eventually produce more drones in the long run simply because you can defend yourself and your expansions. But back to the game….
(Unpause game here)
Now we see that my original thought of teching was correct and Stoneball's is indeed going for the fast Lair at 3:50. Again this is totally fine, typical zerg play I have no problem with it. But what I do have a problem with is drone micro with the spine crawler. First he backs off then decides to attack, then adds more guys, meanwhile there are 3 drones sitting by his hatchery that lost him ~40 minerals in mining. This is just wasteful. If he is going to kill the spine crawler, which he should, do it immediately with the drones you have then shift-click them back to mining. Of course what else do we see but a third drone on gas and eventually a second extractor going up. This makes sense for the early mutas you can tell are coming, but again why not produce some zerglings for basic base defense? Why not make more drones or a queen to increase larva production? And why take a second gas when you don't have enough drones mining minerals in the first place? So what we see here is a continuation of bad habits and overreaching without understand why we are building units and that you need to protect yourself. At this point, Stoneball's is on his last legs and he just doesn't have the balls of stone needed to stay alive and pull out a win. There were too many early mistakes that compounded to cost him the match. Thus, 5:40 is when the match was basically over due to unit production. The sustained loss of drones and too much overreaching for gas and mutas was too much for Stoneballs to handle.
While I understand what Stoneball's is doing, he is basically playing the game without really understanding WHY he is building a particular unit. This is what I feel like many bronze players do, they watch videos of diamond players and just say "well that's what Idra/TLO does, so that's what I should do too." But no bronze player has the macro of Idra nor the creativeness to just wing every match like TLO does. So you really need to understand why you are building what you are and how to stay alive long enough to get to that point. In general, Stoneball's plan isn't bad, he has a plan of going early zergling into muta harass into something late game. This is the most common and easiest play for erg, which is why it is such a sound strategy considering the lack of AA for zerg. If other bronze players do this, I would not fault them, but the little things of constantly spending money, making sure you are not supply blocked, and getting those important structures early and in advantageous places is something every bronze player should be doing. That is really what this cast is about, getting those fundamentals down and not overreaching so by the time you are gold/plat. you can deal with more complex issues like unit compositions, timing attacks, and basic build concepts. Now lets look at the game through Zagra's cam, and I am really going to just do the everyone cam for brevity, and see if he makes many of the same mistakes, which I am sure he does.
While watching Zagra, some things I still want to look for as zerg even though I already won the game are: Am I making enough drones and can I support the buildings I am planning on adding? Do I have my overlords in a good spot to give me decent map coverage to know when an attack is coming? Do I have anything protecting my mineral lines and workers? And have I properly scouted or scouted at all to know what my opponent is planning?
With Zagra's cam, I will not repeat the same issues in depth, merely point them out. Starting off we still see the same drone clumping gripe. Again we see a lack of macro with drones and letting money keep piling up for unused drones. I do however like the scout at 9 and checking the expansion first for any type of proxy hatch. I really hate all forms of cheese, even though it is a viable playing strategy because it's just lame, so checking your expansion or third is a good idea for this kind of play. The placement of the spawning pool was good but not as defensive as possible and minerals are still piling due to an over micro of the scouting drone causing 3 unused larva to just sit there for almost 50 minerals.
(Pause here)
(Pause game here)
So one of the biggest complaints I hear/read is that zerg has no good early defense and cannot wall like Terran/Protoss. But I tend to disagree with this if you think about strategic building placements and what your opponents can throw at you ESPECIALLY now that Blizzard has implemented the game clock feature (which I hate). So just as Stoneball's is dropping his spawning pool is a good time to pause and think about this. Ask yourself what could your opponents throw at you this early in the game that you need to be worried about and can you do something to reduce their effectiveness?
Lets do Terran and Protoss first before coming back to this game. Post Patch 1.1.1, the time for the reaper rush has been increased making it viable, but less effective. If this happened by now, you would have the spawning pool and zerglings faster or have already lost the game without a queen or some basic defense. This isn't even the most viable thing for TvZ though, double hellion harass is far worse, especially if they get behind your minerals and you don't have speedlings. This is about the time in game that double hellions with a couple marines could be coming for you too. So to combat this, my suggestion is to build the spawning pool at the front entrance to your mineral line so that hellions can't even get back there. Or if the map is really big, build it in the middle behind your minerals, so they get stuck and can't retreat from your speedlings. I mention speedlings because they are the standard, mobile zerg defense and mobility over static defense is always preferred. If you really want to expand or tech faster, a spine crawler in your mineral line would also shut down marine/hellion pushes. It really is that simple, keep the scary things from getting behind your mineral line, and have some simple base defense around to help if they do. Honestly, if you have one spine crawler near your ramp/expansion, hellions get shut down due to range and damage of the crawler.
Now looking at Toss, the only viable options are 2 zealots and 1 stalker by this time in the game. Maybe they went 2 stalkers 1 zealot or 2/2 if they cut probe production and good chrono boosting. Again, a spine crawler if you absolutely need it or some speedlings since you kept up with production on time and this isn't a problem either. Put the spawning pool and maybe the roach warren behind to almost completely block your minerals, saving some room in case of drops, and you are safe to deal with those threats in front of you.
ZvZ follows the same principle, however the timing to get zerglings can vary greatly depending on the style of your opponent, which is why scouting is so important. If you scout the opponent fast expanding, you have time to tech to roaches or a speedlings. Whereas, if they are one-basing and getting zerglings fast, then you need to respond in kind. The benefit here is that they have to come to you and on megalopolis, the distances are large enough that you can start the spawning pool as soon as you scout theirs and get 6 zerglings before they rush you with enough money for drones or a spine crawler if you are still nervous. This along with good building placement so their zerglings are forced to run around your entire base to get to the drones buys you a lot of time to feel secure.
However, all of this is contingent on you keeping up with drone, queen, and mineral production. As we will quickly see from Stoneball's early mistakes and letting so much money collect will quickly spell disaster when coupled with his inability to react to early pressure. At the time Zagra's attack starts starts, there is enough minerals for 2 more drones to be made, but assume for a second he was keeping up on drone production as mineral collection and the ability to dump them into zerglings is ideal for ZvZ matches that rarely get past the roach/zergling/muta phase with the occasional hydra/ultra thrown in. Perhaps 95% of all ZvZ matches have only the first 3 units with the occasional baneling as needed, which is really quite sad for the race. This mineral heavy unit composition not withstanding, lets see if we can think of a simple strategy that Stoneball's could have used to come back from the first wave of attacks.
Lets go back to that very first comment of minerals piling up and Stoneball's continuous cueing of units, all the way back to the beginning of the game, to just analyze this for a second. Lets do some simple math here with each of Stoneball's units/structures. We can see that he is cueing multiple drones instead of saving the money and building unit producing or in the case unit enabling structures. As a result of the saving and no rally point, Stoneball's looses almost 300 minerals throughout the game and delays his spawning pool, extractor, and Lair tech as a result. Now if he had kept up with production, Stoneball's would have had 6 more drones before his spawning pool. At his point he could have started making zerglings for defense and had lets say 12-16 and started his extractor at the same time. Alternatively, he could make 4 zerglings and a queen then start his extractor and make 8 more zerglings all in the same time. Now lets stop and think about this. Now we have ~12 zerglings for base defense, we have a queen for extra defense AND creep tumors/extra larva, and we have effectively delayed our Lair by 1 minute. Instead, due to not keeping up with production, we have none of this and are in a bad spot for defending any sort of attack. All because of extra cueing and not keeping those minerals LOW. So look at your replays and look for the same thing, if your minerals as zerg get above 200 and you are not expanding or trying to build a structure, you are doing something wrong!.
Notice in all of this, I said nothing about expanding, nothing about scouting, nothing about teching, nothing about timings, and nothing about overall unit composition. All I have really said was that keeping up with drone production and not cueing units until the last moment gives you the opportunity to spend that money on other structures so you end up in the same place, but with more stuff! This is something simple enough for bronze players to learn and work on, but important enough for everyone up to Diamond to practice, constant production of units and more importantly, spending the money on getting more USEFUL structures to give you avenues to spend your money wisely. There are countless examples where say as terran you build the engineering bay early and then 3 turrets in the response of mutas just because you are worried about them and as a result you lose out building an extra factory and starport to produce more units. This type of decision making may be more silver/gold range, but the realization that maybe you can get more buildings now to get more units later instead of trying to prepare for everything is important. Now in ZvZ, this is a little different because everything is built at the hatchery and there is always a choice between drone or unit, day9 does this one well, but the same idea applies, sure you need lots of drones, but if you get an early spawning pool and queen so you can stay alive longer, you will eventually produce more drones in the long run simply because you can defend yourself and your expansions. But back to the game….
(Unpause game here)
Now we see that my original thought of teching was correct and Stoneball's is indeed going for the fast Lair at 3:50. Again this is totally fine, typical zerg play I have no problem with it. But what I do have a problem with is drone micro with the spine crawler. First he backs off then decides to attack, then adds more guys, meanwhile there are 3 drones sitting by his hatchery that lost him ~40 minerals in mining. This is just wasteful. If he is going to kill the spine crawler, which he should, do it immediately with the drones you have then shift-click them back to mining. Of course what else do we see but a third drone on gas and eventually a second extractor going up. This makes sense for the early mutas you can tell are coming, but again why not produce some zerglings for basic base defense? Why not make more drones or a queen to increase larva production? And why take a second gas when you don't have enough drones mining minerals in the first place? So what we see here is a continuation of bad habits and overreaching without understand why we are building units and that you need to protect yourself. At this point, Stoneball's is on his last legs and he just doesn't have the balls of stone needed to stay alive and pull out a win. There were too many early mistakes that compounded to cost him the match. Thus, 5:40 is when the match was basically over due to unit production. The sustained loss of drones and too much overreaching for gas and mutas was too much for Stoneballs to handle.
While I understand what Stoneball's is doing, he is basically playing the game without really understanding WHY he is building a particular unit. This is what I feel like many bronze players do, they watch videos of diamond players and just say "well that's what Idra/TLO does, so that's what I should do too." But no bronze player has the macro of Idra nor the creativeness to just wing every match like TLO does. So you really need to understand why you are building what you are and how to stay alive long enough to get to that point. In general, Stoneball's plan isn't bad, he has a plan of going early zergling into muta harass into something late game. This is the most common and easiest play for erg, which is why it is such a sound strategy considering the lack of AA for zerg. If other bronze players do this, I would not fault them, but the little things of constantly spending money, making sure you are not supply blocked, and getting those important structures early and in advantageous places is something every bronze player should be doing. That is really what this cast is about, getting those fundamentals down and not overreaching so by the time you are gold/plat. you can deal with more complex issues like unit compositions, timing attacks, and basic build concepts. Now lets look at the game through Zagra's cam, and I am really going to just do the everyone cam for brevity, and see if he makes many of the same mistakes, which I am sure he does.
While watching Zagra, some things I still want to look for as zerg even though I already won the game are: Am I making enough drones and can I support the buildings I am planning on adding? Do I have my overlords in a good spot to give me decent map coverage to know when an attack is coming? Do I have anything protecting my mineral lines and workers? And have I properly scouted or scouted at all to know what my opponent is planning?
With Zagra's cam, I will not repeat the same issues in depth, merely point them out. Starting off we still see the same drone clumping gripe. Again we see a lack of macro with drones and letting money keep piling up for unused drones. I do however like the scout at 9 and checking the expansion first for any type of proxy hatch. I really hate all forms of cheese, even though it is a viable playing strategy because it's just lame, so checking your expansion or third is a good idea for this kind of play. The placement of the spawning pool was good but not as defensive as possible and minerals are still piling due to an over micro of the scouting drone causing 3 unused larva to just sit there for almost 50 minerals.
(Pause here)
I just want to point out that almost everyone tends to overmicro their scouting drones. By just shift-clicking a bunch of spots by manually scrolling to them or just unnecessarily moving the drone. Two things to help with this is to shift-click using the mini-map so you don't have to waste time scrolling all over the screen and second is to just practice going back and forth from your scout to your base. The best way to do this is to assign your base hockey 4 or 5 and the scout 2 and just go to a big map like kolas ravine or megapolis and just make your drone go in circles/loops/figure 8's around the middle watchtowers/bases to just get comfortable switching back and forth and spending units will moving the scout.
Now at 3:30 and take a look at the mineral and unit count. One thing we see from Zagra is that he has almost 500 minerals, a scout which is now a spine crawler in his opponents base, and a is going to soon start macroing up in drone production. However, with 500 minerals, why no drones on the gas as it finished early? why no expansion already? If you know your opponent is one basing as zerg and
you have the contained this early, go ahead and get that early expo at 15-17 supply and just start to macro early. In fact some players like TLO will take an expo and put a second hatch in the main just because they have enough minerals. Don't be afraid of this, in zerg the ability to macro well and scout
for defensive play is key.
(Unpause and just watch rest of game here)
Now I want to go back to that extractor that was idle for almost an entire minute, it is important to play with your sound up or at least look for the cues that buildings are done and immediately transfer drones to gas. Otherwise hold of on getting the extractor and you have an extra 75 minerals to play with for an extra hatch or something. Also want to point out the slowness of the spawn larva for the queen and the fact that on the second 25 energy she really should be placing a creep tumor to extend the creep to the entrance ramp for better base defnese. In fact zagra lets it get all the way to 60 energy without doing anything when he could easily have made 2 creep tumors spreading creep over his base. Even though it was moot by that point because of the economic damage dealt to Stoneballs, this
kind of key micro is important to just get down at these early levels and is very simple to remember to do.
WRAPPING UP:
So what did we learn in this cast that will make us better? We learned that building placement is important for ALL races to protect or workers. We learned that having defensive units is important to just stay alive and to protect your bases/workers. We learned that you need to understand why you are building units not just because you saw 1000+ Diamond players do it, which transitions into needing a plan for mid-late game then fighting. Perhaps most importantly, we learned that if you keep up with the production of workers and buildings without cueing then you will wind up at the same spots but with a lot more stuff! So watch for these in your own replays and practice keeping that money low and workers flowing.
Until next time when I review a PvT of myself vs. another bronze named Chuck remember keep those minerals low and defend your mineral lines!
BLC #1
Just a simple reminder that Wednesday will start the BLC postings. First game is a simple ZvZ match between Zagra and Stoneballs - what a great name - still working on uploading replays as I lost this one for some reason, but I'll work around it.
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