Life in the Middle 11/03/2012

This week has been a week of change as I put into practice what I learnt last week; I spent a lot of time watching tutorials and practicing on custom maps last week. I have tweaked my builds for each match-up and, even though I was expecting it to take a dive, my win percentage is already up. I am now taking a fast expansion in every match-up and properly focusing on macro, as at this level good macro will take you far. I am sill in Platinum but with these new builds am hoping to go up to Diamond in the next few weeks.

Every single time I get a gg.

In both TvT and TvZ I used to for for 2 Rax pressure and then either expand or keep applying pressure depending on how much damage I did. Now in TvT I open with a reaper then fast expand and go into bio. I used to rush out Siege Tanks but I prefer the mobility of bio in the early game. Siege Tanks are really good in TvT, and I still use them a lot to lock down ground, but they make it harder to harass early in the game. I always build a bunker because I know how easy it is for a couple of early Marines to cripple you.

It's the best feeling when you make a catch like this; he's about to lose 40 supply.

Versus Zerg I have started to go for a six Hellion opening with a fast expand and a strong bio follow up. Again I am focusing on bio and leaving the Siege Tanks until later in the game. I think I used to tech up too quickly, with Siege Mode and all the bio upgrades, and forgot how important it was to get actual units out; leaving me vulnerable in the early game. I was underestimating the effectiveness of bio, even though it is Terrans most effective army component, especially how useful Marauders are.  

53 Minutes into an epic TvZ of constant action and it all comes down to this last engagement.

My TvP has changed the least of all; before I was going for a one Rax fast expand into four Rax, and now I am going for a one Rax fast expand into 3 Rax. I get earlier gas with the minerals not spent on the fourth Rax and focus on fast upgrades instead. Getting out Medivacs and Vikings in a timely fashion is really important in TvP. I think that one of the reasons I used to struggle in the match up was because I left getting air until too late. Also, I used to leave my main army at home when doing drops, but now I think that you really need to the threat of your army out front to make drops truly successful.

I love it when a plan comes together.

I wish I could have used blue flame Hellions before they were nerfed, they are still super effective but they used to be glorious harbingers of death. I don't like what has happened to Ghosts either, Terrans used to be overly dependant on them, but now they have been rendered overly useless in late game TvZ. Thank you for reading, you can follow this blog from the pane to the right and find me on Twitter; I'm @RobinTerran. Check back soon for my review of Mass Effect 3. Dude

Life in the Middle 04/03/2012

For a while now Terrans have been starved for a good tuition source, but this week two YouTube series tried to rectify this. DeMusliM has been a great inspiration, and his stream is on of my favourites, but he plays too fast for me to be able to keep up with what he is doing; dedicated videos are more useful. I'm sure that everyone who is interested in seeing Apollo's tutorial has already seen it so I want to talk about Max's series instead, as well as talk about Blizzard's StarCraft Master.

Max goes through a two and a three Rax build that I think I will adopt.

Max goes through by match-up and casts replays from his perspective explaining all of his actions however minor they might seem. This way of doing it is really useful for gaining a greater understanding of Terran as a whole. I have only watched his TvP tutorial so far but I look forwards to watching the rest over the next couple of days. Max manages to keep the commentaries interesting and educational throughout, even in the slower sections, which is the mark of someone who truly knows what they are talking about.

In StarCraft Master some of the challenges are very similar to those in Darglein's.

It seemed like everybody was talking about StarCraft Master so I delayed writing this for a day so I could give it a go. Before playing it I only saw Machine struggling on challenge 30 and hadn't read anything about it, so went in knowing little about it. For those of you that don't know, it is a custom game contains 30 micro intensive challenges that can test anything from your ability to micro a single unit to your control of a small army. It took me about 2.5 hours Blizzard time to complete all the challenges.

Some of the challenges just seemed like you needed to approach them in the right order.

You have to play every race and I like this as I think everyone should have at least a basic understanding of the other races. To some extent the skills you learn are transferable between them anyway. It doesn't extend much further once you have completed the challenges, as there is only one difficulty setting, but then again skill involves being consistently good at something; not just achieving it once, so additional play-throughs may be useful.

My favourite challenge tasked you to snipe Banelings amongst waves of incoming Zerglings.

This week has mostly been a week of learning, so hopefully I will be able to apply what I have learnt next week to get back to the top of Platinum. Thank you for reading and don't forget to check out Max's tutorials and check out my review of Alan Wake. You can follow this blog from the pane to the right and find me on Twitter, I'm @RobinTerran.