Life in the Middle 26/11/2011

Between MLG, DreamHack and my terrible internet I haven't played as many games as I would have liked to this week but I have uploaded all of my replays to SC2 Buddy so this Life in the Middle comes with added statistics. You can see my SC2 Buddy page here if you have an account. This week I only played thirteen games, winning 54% of them, doing really well against Protoss (75%), all right against Terran (50%) and quite badly against Zerg (40%). Since I've started playing as Terran my overall win versus Terran is 60%, versus Protoss is 49% and against Zerg is just 41%. This week I have managed to climb up to rank 16 from 22 despite not playing all that much, I'm starting to feel ready to move up to Platinum again though I don't think my win to loss ratio is good enough yet.

My aim for next week is to be in the top eight.

The more I play the better I get at drops and the easier I find it to declare a Medivac of Marines already dead and just try to do as much damage as possible; if they survive it's great but at the end of the day it's not that much money for the possibility of causing a lot of damage. Constantly dropping not only has the effect of taking out harvesters or tech structures but also has the psychological effect of making people scared to move out or forcing them to split up their army, making it more manageable. With scan dropping is relatively safe though the scan is often a give away.

Penned in my base this gave my opponent pause for thought.

I always thought that you shouldn't use mech against Protoss because Chargelots, blink Stalkers and upgraded Colossus can close the gap and take out Siege Tanks easily but recently I have been incorporating them into my mid game and having more success than usual. I have been opening 2 Rax against Protoss because I was having trouble with early four gate pushes. This allows you to enough troops to stay alive whilst giving you the option to expand or go Factory/Starport tech or just add more barracks and go for the jugular. Apart from Siege Tank's obvious use I think that they are a good addition to a Terran army because it means that you have to spread out your units in a line for defence, which is great against storms and Colossus splash. Leapfrogging Siege Tanks forwards means that you are more likely to move slowly and carefully and less likely to be too greedy.

I'm terrible at leaving all my bio units in a massive ball and being caught off guard.

Against Terran I seem to have forgotten what I was going on about last week; air control really is vital for success. Both of the games I lost were fundamentally down to me not controlling the skies and so being susceptible to slow tank pushes as I didn't have enough scans to prevent them. When you are contained in your base by Siege Tanks then dropping is often all you can do to try and get your opponent to recall their forces or at least to intercept reinforcements and take out SCVs. As a Terran there is nothing more terrifying than having a nice contain set up around your opponent, thinking that nothing can get out, to find that three Medivacs full of Marines and Marauders are dropping in your main and forcing you to pull back or at least divert reinforcements.

The war was over from this point.

At the moment I'm doing a Reactor Hellion opening against Zerg since I saw my favourite Terran player, DeMusliM, doing it on his stream. It's a good build because it has the potential to cause a lot of damage whilst not being all in and allowing you to transition into anything else, such as the standard Marine Siege Tank. Some of the games I lost were more due to lack of experience rather than than poor play which hopefully after a bit more practice I can prevent. For example I lost one game to a one base Baneling bust that I had scanned but didn't survive as I didn't put bunkers down; I won't let that happen again.

After clearing out his expansion this was the icing on the cake.

This week I've climbed up to rank 16 without playing too much, next week I plan to play much more and crack the top eight. If you liked this post then please follow me on twitter at @RobinTerran and 'stumbleupon' me with the button below. Check out my other articles, including my Leenock and NaNiWa profiles. Please feel free to comment in the section below, thank you for reading.