Season 5 Update

On the EU servers Season 5 started on the 21st of December and I was pretty confident that I would be promoted to Platinum because over the last week I have only played the highest of Gold and Platinum players and won a good proportion of them. I was pretty sure that even if I lost my placement match I would still be promoted, as my MMR was high enough to play against my first Diamond this week, and sure enough I lost my placement match but still got placed in Platinum.

Back into Platinum.

I wish there had been an epic struggle backwards and forwards and that my return to Platinum, where I was originally placed before getting demoted at the beginning of Season 4, had been hard earned but I simply lost because I played poorly. My opponent was a Platinum Protoss so the plan was to go for a 1 Rax FE but I forgot to actually fast expand and accidentally threw up another three Barracks before realising what I had done. Whilst getting up my expansion I decided to attack into a much larger force and then even managed to botch up my retreat as I left half of my forces behind. My defeat didn't take much longer and whilst I was happy to get promoted I was really annoyed at myself for playing at such a low level.

For some reason it seemed like a good idea at the time to attack into a much larger force.

Before things started to pick up again I continued to perform poorly for another two games as I lost to a Platinum Terran and another Platinum Protoss. The Terran out macro'd me so despite me winning nearly every engagement he always had more reinforcements and I couldn't keep up. I played better against the Protoss but a few fundamental mistakes led to me losing. I dropped two loads of troops at two different bases but at this point he just attacked me and I didn't have enough troops in my main army to hold. I missed about three EMPs on his High Templar so got badly stormed. When I watched back the replay I discovered that he had expanded to one of my possible thirds, on Arid Plateau, 14 minuted into a 26 minute game and I never realised.

Missed EMPs allowed storms to ravage my troops.

My first win came from against a Platinum Zerg, which is normally my worst match-up. I was trying out a 2 Rax FE as suggested by a beautiful and attacked with my first seven marines when I saw that he had got six ealry lings and an evo chamber. The game only lasted 6 minutes and wasn't the most satisfying win. After the game I went to look at his profile but accidentally clicked add as friend and had to sheepishly explain that he didn't have to be my friend and that I mis-clicked. When I looked after my next game he had 'disconnected' and I haven't seen him since. My second win wasn't from a very interesting game; my opponent went very early Colossus but to do so heavily cut probe production. I scanned his first Colossus as it was made and hurried my Starport, that was already on it's way, and built a second one to get out a lot of Vikings. My third went down as I went in for the attack. I used my Vikings to draw his army to a cliff then engaged with my bio as my Vikings killed his Colossus.

Early Colossus and early upgrades meant that my opponent didn't have enough units to defend my attack.

So far I only have a 40% win-rate now that I am back in Platinum but still feel hopeful that this time I can conquer the Platinum league and wont be pushed back down to Gold. Over the last couple of weeks I have been playing very well against Platinums and being home for the holidays has meant that I've had a lot more time to play. If you enjoyed this article then you can follow me on twitter at @RobinTerran. Check out my other articles including this weeks Life in the Middle. Thank you for reading.