Life in the Middle 14/01/2012

There was no Life in the Middle last week as I had exams this week and was panicking about how unprepared I was for them, but now that they are over I will be returning to writing 'Life in the Middle' every Saturday as well as another piece about StarCraft or general gaming every Wednesday. I continued playing games, usually as a reward for doing even the smallest bit of work, but overall fell quite a few places in my Platinum league. I end this week as a rank 22 Platinum, but now that exams are over I can start to focus on improving again; hopefully it wont take long to climb back to the top of Platinum and eventually into Diamond.

Down to rank 22 but now that exams are over I can refocus and hopefully get back into the top 8 soon.

For a couple of weeks I was considering buying a fancy new £100 keyboard but I have since come to the realisation that the best equipment for you to use is what you are the most comfortable with. My current keyboard may not glow in the dark but it's what I'm used to and what I am most proficient with. Even with an expensive new keyboard I wouldn't necessarily improve so I might as well save my money; I got a Razer DeathAdder for Christmas and had to stop using it because I was better with my old mouse. Having said that, and being the massive hypocrite that I am, I have started using my DeathAdder again as I've fallen so far in my league that I might as well learn to use the mouse as I work my way back up.

Macro and constant pressure are the two most important concepts for TvZ.

Over the last couple of weeks I have played a lot of Diamonds and am slowly starting to win a higher proportion of them, but I am still not playing at Diamond level. TvP is my worst match up so naturally that's what Battle.net puts me against the most and I still haven't managed to win a single one of them yet. I won two out of three of my versus Diamond Terran games and I think I could have won the other one if I hadn't disconnected. I only beat one out of the three Diamond Zergs I feel a lot more comfortable in TvZ in general now. My games versus Diamonds are still quite rare but their increasing frequency makes me hopeful that after I start playing more seriously and more regularly again a promotion wont be too far off.

I nearly beat this Diamond Protoss after this engagement went so well but was unsure about whether or not to push.

I take part in the EU Collegiate StarLeague (CSL: EU) and the last two times I played I was against Diamond Terrans and won both times. I think It's only my TvP that is really holding me back at the moment, which is really frustrating as I was always led to believe TvP was easy, what changed? For a long time now my TvZ win percentage has been around 50%, my TvT has been around 70% but I only win between 25 and 50% of my TvP. My TvT is good enough for me to advanced, I just need to improve at my other match-ups.

A drop in his main meant that this Diamond Terran had to either return home or attack; he chose wrong.

I have started to use Ghosts a lot more because they are so very useful versus Protoss but I have yet to fully utilise them versus Zerg as Vikings seem like a much better counter to Broodlords to me. Middle league players seem to rarely get Infestors for some reason so I don't build Ghosts in TvZ as much as in TvP. In my opinion there is nothing more satisfying than EMPing a group of High Templars and then sniping them all. I still struggle to use Ghosts effectively in combat as there is just too much other stuff to do at the same time.  Between positioning your army, controlling small groups of troops and getting your Vikings to attack Colossus or Broodlords when are you supposed to have time to also EMP and snipe with your Ghosts?    

I started experimenting with Ghosts in team games and love them.

Thank-you to all the people on the NA servers that offered to help me improve but as I am British I am on the EU servers so I cannot play with you. I read all comments left and reply to as many as I can so please feel free to leave a comment on here, Reddit or Twitter. If you enjoyed this article then you can follow me on twitter at @RobinTerran or follow the blog from the pane to the right. Thank you very much for reading.