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.