Life in the Middle 18/02/2012

This week I am mostly going to talk about the start of the new ladder season and the importance balancing micro and macro. For the last couple of weeks I have been writing this piece on a Sunday, as I was too busy on the Saturdays, but from now on I plan to continue with writing this every Saturday. I end this week as a rank 37 Platinum; though it seems to me that your rank doesn't actually mean that much at this point, it's more a case of who you are playing and if you are managing to defeat them, and I'm happy with who I can defeat at the moment.

Back in platinum fighting my way up; the gap to Diamond seems the biggest so far.

So Season 6 has begun after a relatively short lock and I am back in Platinum; I was expecting a longer lock, and hoping to get in some more practice before Season 6 started, but unfortunately that didn't happen. Having not had much of a chance to play since the start of Season 6 I haven't got far into my division yet but will hopefully manage to do so over the next week or so. I am already back to playing Diamonds often, so I have high hopes for this season. I'm not sure that I like the shorter seasons Blizzard has started to implement; to me the shorter seasons feel less important and are harder to improve over, so feel less memorable.

I always use pictures like this and put a vague caption when I have nothing good to say.

With the start of Season 6 comes a change to the map pool; Arid Plateau and Xel'Naga Caverns are out, Whilst Cloud Kingdom and Korhal Compound have been added. I never liked Xel'Naga Caverns that much, and had it vetoed last season, so I'm not upset that it is gone and am glad new maps are getting a chance. I know many people didn't like Arid Plateau, but I thought it was a decent map (in all but TvP) and hope it returns soon. I think that it is brilliant that Blizzard has started putting community maps into rotation and hope that the competition to be included in subsequent map pools leads to more competition to create even more better maps.

I haven't had a chance to play the new maps much but so far I am really liking Korhal Compound.

Recently I came to the realisation that I often let my macro slip, and started to wonder at the importance of macro and micro, as I was still playing to the same level as before. I always find that if I focus on one the other always suffers, so I need to find a way of balancing them out if I want to improve further. It's no good winning every battle if you can't sustain your army after each victory and likewise the opposite is true so a balance is required. Macro and micro can each only take you so far on their own, learning to master both at the same time is what is required to succeed at the game; though it can never really be mastered. 

Punishing a Protoss early game for early expanding can require a lot of micro but can also be very rewarding.

Can anyone suggest a micro practice trainers that I can use before gaming sessions? If you enjoyed this article then you can find me on twitter, @RobinTerran, or follow this blog from the pane to the right. Thank you for reading.