Life in the Middle 28/01/12

After winning my first match this week I could tell that it was going to be a good week and generally felt very positive; eight consecutive loses later my feelings had somewhat changed. Coincidently, at roughly the same time, I found a link to Drewbie's guide, with his strategies and timings, so decided to try them out to see if they would help me stop sucking. By playing better for the rest of the week I managed to end with a 50% win-rate, which isn't great, but is back on track. I wasn't planning to, but this week focuses on TvP; when it came to writing this I had a lot more to say about Protoss than I realised. I end this week as a rank 6 Platinum, so I am pretty much where I was last week.

Still in the top eight.

I've won 80% of my TvTs over the last couple of weeks so I didn't want to change that, but for a while I adopted Drewbie's techniques for the other two match-ups. I think I will continue with Drewbie's TvZ as I like having an early expansion whilst still applying pressure. The build gets out a set of reactor Hellions to scout and do damage before going into Seige Marine with an early expansion. People always seem to panic when they see Hellions, which only makes them more effective. Roaches are the standard answer to Hellions but when you only build two and follow up with Tanks and Marines they aren't so effective.

These two Hellions did 500 minerals of damage and denied a lot of mining time.

I was playing Protoss back when the 1-1-1 build was unstoppable and, whilst it never really trickled down into whatever league I was in at the time, I was super frustrated when watching my favourite players lose whatever they did. This is how I feel now when playing against Protoss, so have been trying to find a way to get my win-rate up. When going bio early game pressure is nearly impossible because Stalkers are so fast, in the mid-game it's impossible before Medivacs because of force fields, and in the late game if you lose one battle it's game over 90% of the time; so I wanted to move away from relying on bio so much.

Sometimes it feels no matter how much you drop and outplay you are still behind.

I think the main problem with going bio in PvT is that it's hard to do damage before Colossus or High Templar come out, and when they do it only makes it harder. It's frustrating to be pigeon holed into having to play a particular way, which still relies on you fighting units that directly counter you, which the Protoss can easily switch between. Fighting High Templar and Colossus require different compositions and fighting both at the same time is a nightmare. None of a Terran's tier 3 units are effective against Protoss which is probably the biggest problem.

I denied his expo whilst dropping and expanding myself as well as killing all his Ghost before the final engagement and was still owned.

In the last PvT I played this week I went for a 1-1-1 all-in because I was really annoyed at Protoss; as it worked I think I will keep at it next week and see how it goes. I had been trying Drewbie's TvP, but only to limited success, so I thought it was time to give something else a go. I liked going 1-1-1 as it gives you access to new units and new strategies and completely changes the feel of the match-up. With other builds I hated how you have to do all the pressure to stop the Protoss from accumulating a doom army by dropping and denying expansions and yet you are still behind and have to engage perfectly to win.      

I love the wide range of units the 1-1-1 offers.

If you enjoyed this article then you can find me on twitter at @RobinTerran or follow the blog from the pane to the right. Thank you for reading. 

Life in the Middle 21/01/2012

Being a student and generally adverse to hard work my first week back at university took a bit of a toll on me, but I still managed to play 30 games and even won 60% of them. Nearly a third of my games this week were against Diamonds, and of these I managed to win over a half, so I'm starting to think that I wouldn't do terribly in Diamond. However, quite a few of the Diamonds I played were Terrans and TvT is where I excel. I have still yet to beat a Diamond Protoss, but I did come pretty close with the new build that will discuss below. I end this week as a rank 8 Platinum; hopefully it wont take too much longer to return to the top of Platinum and maybe sneak my way into Diamond.

Recovering well from a post exams slump.

Day[9] did a daily on EmpireKas' TvP, so I thought I would try it out, and it has since become my standard build. The build involves getting three early Command Centres off of 1 Rax, then going into drop play with fast upgrades. The built leaves you vulnerable early on, but gives you the advantage in the mid to late game with a strong economy and plenty of production. When I failed with this build it was always obvious why, either I didn't have enough units early on or left dropping until too late, so if I keep applying myself to it it shouldn't take too long to improve. I desperately need to get better at TvP as my win percentage is still below 50%.

Early bunkers are vital to surviving with Kas' build, but if you do it is well worth it.

I tried Ghosts against Broodlords twice this week. The first time I built them was reactionary, so when the Broodlords hit I didn't have enough and they didn't have much energy, so I got annihilated. The next time I faced Broodlords I was ready with Ghosts and did a lot better at killing them with a mixture of snipe and Vikings. I still lost the game but I did it with more style than usually do. I am going to stick with Ghost in TvZ as they have a good range of other uses too, but if the opponent doesn't go Infestor Broodlord are they still cost effective? Also, what's better to target first the Infestors or the Broodlords?

Ghosts are great versus Broodlords but Overseers and Infestors still make it a challenge.

I think that it is very important to use the units you feel most comfortable with in the game. For a long time I tried to use Hellions in TvZ but I found that using Marines for early aggression meant that I could do a lot more damage. Using Marines also leaves you less vulnerable to Roach counters, whilst still allowing you to get quick Tanks out. I often find that people don't know how to use late game armies effectively and think that just having higher tech units gives you an instant win. It's all very well saying, you should have x amount of y unit at z point in the game but if you can't use them well you might as well not go out of your way to get them and stick with what you are good with. A prime example of this is when Terrans get out un-upgraded Battlecruisers versus 3-3 Marines.

At multiple points in this game I should have lost but this Random's poor unit control let me pull it back.

I won 80% of my TvTs this week, so I am very happy with where that is at at the moment; I even managed to beat all four of the Diamond Terrans that I played. Check out my other articles, including In Defence of Terran which made me consider changing the name of this blog to Degrees of Polarisation based on people's reactions to it. If you enjoyed this article then you can find me on twitter at @RobinTerran or follow the blog from the pane to the right. Thank you for reading.