Life in the Middle 3/12/2011

Up until now I have been limited by my terrible internet which meant that I could only play during certain times of the day and that if I had the audacity to try at other times I would be punished with crippling latency. Often having university in the morning, when my internet was good, meant that I couldn't play as many games as I wanted to; that changed this week. We upgraded our internet, which means that my playing window is longer, so I have managed to play a lot more games this week. In the future I will be able to play a lot more too and this will undoubtedly be a good thing if this week is anything to go by. My target was to get into the top eight of my league and I managed to get all the way up to 1st in my division, before losing a couple of games, and ending up 2nd.

This week rank 2, next week Platinum hopefully.

I play hyper aggressive in the early game then go quite passive  except for against Zerg who I always feel like I have to keep pushing. Versus Terran and Protoss I go 12/14 Rax and apply early pressure with my first five marines before putting down a factory against Terran and another Barracks and some Tech Labs against Protoss. I started the early attacking in TvT so that they would be distracted, and give me enough time to get out some tanks and an expansion of my own, but you would be surprised by how often Terrans aren't prepared for this. Against Protoss it's not as effective as Stalkers out-range Marines so often a quick retreat and a Bunker is what it takes for survival but I still like to early pressure just in case something can be done.

Bio is amazing in TvP until Colossus and High Templar start to arrive.

Zerg is what I am having a lot of trouble with; I only won 46% of my TvZs as opposed to 62% of my TvPs and 82% of my TvTs. My usual strategy is to go straight for a Factory with a Reactor and get out four to six Hellions before switching it out for a Tech Lab and getting out some Siege Tanks, all the time producing Marines. The downside with this strategy is that if you do no damage with the Hellions the Zerg will be way ahead economically and sometimes they can get up too many Mutas for your Marines to handle; though when done properly the Seige Tank army at least allows you to expand safely if not kill them outright. I want to try out PuMa's mech play versus Zerg, as it was pretty effective against Sheth in NASL season 2, I just need to find the build for it.

I only realised how close to destruction I was when I watched the replay... he didn't detonate.

At the beginning of the week I was playing against high Silvers and mid Golds but after having a nine win streak against mid to high Golds I have started playing Platinum players again. I like having win streaks but it is far too stressful and takes my mind off the game, I find that losing every couple of games keeps me focused. Unfortunately of the four Plats I have played so far two were Zerg and absolutely annihilated me, showing me that I am not yet ready to make my way up into Platinum, though the other two I faced were Terran and I managed to beat them both. In one of the TvTs I played my opponent thought he had out macro'd me because I had two hidden bases and half my army out of sight. By the time he found my hidden bases I had loads of Siege Tanks and Battlecruisers to add to my other army, that were already managing to hold off all of his forces. It was satisfying to be the one with hidden bases for once, and not the one surprised, as I usually am.

The relieving army was bigger than what was left of the rest of my army and probably quite a shock.

This week I've achieved my target of getting into the top eight by climbing up to rank 2, next week I plan to play even more and hopefully get back into Platinum. 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 the story of how I got into StarCraft and my Super Mario 3D Land review. Please feel free to comment in the section below, thank you for reading.