Well my first 1v1 session taught me a lot. It taught me that if you don't play for a few days you may forget to build an overlord at 9 supply or get your first expansion slightly late. It taught me that if you don't play everyday you will not be at you best so prepare for some tough games. It taught me that to miss a day will slow you down but to miss a week or more is disastrous! Don't play any Starcraft 2 for a few weeks and when you come back nothing feels right, you feel slow, lost, wondering what to do next with all timings gone out the window.
This is how I felt in my first 1v1 game. I felt this way mainly because I forgot to switch to Zerg before playing and loaded as Protoss. Yeah...
You can imagine how I felt when the game loaded and I had no creep, no hatchery, no overlords and funny little floating probes instead of insectoid drones. Lost, slow, helpless and all of the above. Not a good start. Needless to say I lost that game horribly but I learn't possibly the most important lesson and topic of my last post: stick to one race (and for the love of God make sure you select them before entering a game).
My second game went better. It was a Zerg vs Zerg on Tal'Darim Altar. My over arching plan for Zerg vs Zerg is to get really quick zerglings and then bannelings right after. To do this I sacrifice getting an early hatch. My opponent decided to get a second hatch early and then zerglings/bannelings. This immediately put him on the defensive which suits me. I knew I had a window of time to break him before the extra hatch gave him the edge and the tables will turn.
So we trade blows for a while, losing zergling for zergling with me trying and failing to get a spine crawler in his expo. We both end up with bannelings at the same time so any hopes of me winning that way goes out the window. We are both microing about the same and I refuse to give up pushing and keep sending more and more lings down. Eventually he gets his base secured with spine crawlers and I have almost mined out my main base.
I am just thinking the whole time, "I must break through or he will get mutalisks and beat me with his better economy." Well I failed to break his defense and he destroyed me with mutalisks as I predicted. I knew what he was going to do and yet I failed to prevent it.
This got me thinking. What do I do if my first push fails? I had no answer for this in the game and it cost me as I stubbornly sent more and more zerglings to die. But hey that's what zerglings are good for. This is the most important revelation I had this session (well second after picking the right race to start with). I need a game plan. I need to know how I will open each game, what my end game is going to be and how I will get there.
It made me realize that I don't want to be going for an all in lets kill him now opening, but to do enough to survive to reach the end game where I will be comfortable enough to kill him. I didn't have a plan that game and that is why I lost. If I had a plan then not doing much damage with my rush would have been ok, because It would have given me enough time 2 get my second hatch up and tech up to lair. Then make a spire and harass until I am ready to start massing Brood Lords and then go kill him. With a simple plan like that I would have done much better.
So lesson learn't. Have a game plan.
My third game was again a Zerg vs Zerg. I did much better this time. Not because I made a plan, I didn't really figure that out until after the session and I watched the replays. But one thing I took straight from game 2 was that in a banneling war the guy with more bannelings wins. So I made much more bannelings in my first push and pretty much won right out when I exploded all his lings and drones. An easy win but enough to make up for the two previous losses.
In short my first 1v1 session on the road to awesomeness, was a nervous affair that started off with an epic fail and ended with a conciliatory victory. But it was fun and eye opening at the same time.
As a Medivac pilot with their sympathetic ear to the blight of the lowly infantry soldier would say:
"Oh suck it up! You act like you got BOTH arms blown off!"
Welcome to my blog! This blog will document my life of Starcraft as I attempt to go from a casual noob to a hard core master!
Thursday 30 June 2011
Wednesday 29 June 2011
"This better be good..."
When it comes to playing 1v1 there is one important question that every aspiring gamer must answer; "which race shall I play?"
In other words will I conquer the galaxy with Terran, bend the light with Protoss, harness the swarm of Zerg or play all 3?
In Starcraft 2 this is a very important question to answer. There may only be 3 races but they do not play the same. You can argue that maybe two of them are kind of the same, but that is only because the third race is so completely different. There are similarities for the sake of balance, mainly that they:
Its not enough to simply say I'm going to make roaches this game. You need to know when are you going to take a gas. If you should expand before or after getting a pool. Should you go pure roach or start of with lings? Do you forgo ling speed in favor of earlier roaches. And these are just the possibilities me as a noob can think of.
It is possible to learn everything about all the races and play random, but it is no easy task and if you can do it then you have my respect. But as Day9 says, if you can master 1 strategy then you are a master level player if you are OK with all the races and all strategies then you are only an OK player. Depth beats breadth in Starcraft 2. I doubt I can get the depth needed to be a good player by playing all 3 races.
So with that in mind I will pick one race to play. But we are back to that all important question, which one?
I have played all 3 races a lot in 4v4 so I have a good place to start in picking which race I should learn. With Terran I do well with MMM (Marine, Marauder, Medivac) massing. Stim packs and siege tanks are powerful and walling in saves me from many a rush.
With Protoss I love that I can warp in units quickly wherever I want, their units are strong and the Protoss death ball has got to be the best with colossi who have great range, attack power and mobility. Not to mention I can use chrono boost to help speed up whatever tech or units I want. Oh and how could I forget Dark Templar's! Those things kick ass! What can be more annoying then a unit that one hit kills workers and is invisible to boot. Protoss truly have a lot going for them.
Sounds like the choice is obvious then and it would be if it were not for the Zerg. The Zerg play a little differently from the other two. Unlike Protoss or Terran all their units come from the same place and cost lava and every time you build something you have to sacrifice a drone to do so. In a lot of situations with Zerg you either make an army or build your economy. Unlike the other two races you can't really do both. It may sound like they are at a big disadvantage there, but they aren't called the swarm for nothing. Out of all three the Zerg have the ability to mass lots of units very quickly and keep massing. When a Zerg army dies, you just build another one, provided you have the minerals of course.
This I like. I like a big horde of fast moving zerglings swarming over my enemies and over whelming them. I like that the Zerg look and feel different from the other two races, that they are truly Alien. I love exploding bannelings all over marines and watching them melt, burrowing with infestors and popping up to spew acid all over my enemies. Most of all the ability Zerg has to take control of the map with fast moving units and creep spread fits my play style well. I am not good sitting back and waiting for the other guy to make his move. I have to be aggressive and control how the game plays out, not wall up and react to my opponents moves. Mostly though, I just have fun playing as Zerg.
So there it is. After a lot of thought I have gone with my gut instinct and will play the race I enjoy the most. Zerg.
All I can do now is get cracking on learning Zerg vs X strats and hope I have made the right decision. To echo the sentiments of the Marine "This better be good..."
In other words will I conquer the galaxy with Terran, bend the light with Protoss, harness the swarm of Zerg or play all 3?
In Starcraft 2 this is a very important question to answer. There may only be 3 races but they do not play the same. You can argue that maybe two of them are kind of the same, but that is only because the third race is so completely different. There are similarities for the sake of balance, mainly that they:
- have the same UI and controls,
- use gatherer units to get minerals,
- build military units to attack with,
- upgrade armor and weapons
- use the same resources: supply, minerals and vespine gas.
Its not enough to simply say I'm going to make roaches this game. You need to know when are you going to take a gas. If you should expand before or after getting a pool. Should you go pure roach or start of with lings? Do you forgo ling speed in favor of earlier roaches. And these are just the possibilities me as a noob can think of.
It is possible to learn everything about all the races and play random, but it is no easy task and if you can do it then you have my respect. But as Day9 says, if you can master 1 strategy then you are a master level player if you are OK with all the races and all strategies then you are only an OK player. Depth beats breadth in Starcraft 2. I doubt I can get the depth needed to be a good player by playing all 3 races.
So with that in mind I will pick one race to play. But we are back to that all important question, which one?
I have played all 3 races a lot in 4v4 so I have a good place to start in picking which race I should learn. With Terran I do well with MMM (Marine, Marauder, Medivac) massing. Stim packs and siege tanks are powerful and walling in saves me from many a rush.
With Protoss I love that I can warp in units quickly wherever I want, their units are strong and the Protoss death ball has got to be the best with colossi who have great range, attack power and mobility. Not to mention I can use chrono boost to help speed up whatever tech or units I want. Oh and how could I forget Dark Templar's! Those things kick ass! What can be more annoying then a unit that one hit kills workers and is invisible to boot. Protoss truly have a lot going for them.
Sounds like the choice is obvious then and it would be if it were not for the Zerg. The Zerg play a little differently from the other two. Unlike Protoss or Terran all their units come from the same place and cost lava and every time you build something you have to sacrifice a drone to do so. In a lot of situations with Zerg you either make an army or build your economy. Unlike the other two races you can't really do both. It may sound like they are at a big disadvantage there, but they aren't called the swarm for nothing. Out of all three the Zerg have the ability to mass lots of units very quickly and keep massing. When a Zerg army dies, you just build another one, provided you have the minerals of course.
This I like. I like a big horde of fast moving zerglings swarming over my enemies and over whelming them. I like that the Zerg look and feel different from the other two races, that they are truly Alien. I love exploding bannelings all over marines and watching them melt, burrowing with infestors and popping up to spew acid all over my enemies. Most of all the ability Zerg has to take control of the map with fast moving units and creep spread fits my play style well. I am not good sitting back and waiting for the other guy to make his move. I have to be aggressive and control how the game plays out, not wall up and react to my opponents moves. Mostly though, I just have fun playing as Zerg.
So there it is. After a lot of thought I have gone with my gut instinct and will play the race I enjoy the most. Zerg.
All I can do now is get cracking on learning Zerg vs X strats and hope I have made the right decision. To echo the sentiments of the Marine "This better be good..."
Monday 27 June 2011
"Ahh! Ya scared me."
It is Monday June 27th 2011. And it is the first full week of my new Starcraft 2 life. This week I will attempt to shape the way I spend my time training to be a better Starcraft 2 player. There are many things I could do to get better: reading up on build orders, watching replays, watching tournaments, trawling through the the extensive (and entertaining) Day9 archive, looking on forums for hints and tips and what the most common strategies are. But by far the most useful thing to me at this stage will be to just play more.
It sounds easy enough, but as I'm sure some of you know it isn't. I have tried before a number of times on many games, including Starcraft, to play more 1v1s however every time I try can never keep going long enough to get over 'the fear.' The same thing happens every time. I play some games, loose most of them and then somehow start to win a few. Then I notice that my ladder rank has gone up and suddenly I start to care about my rank and more importantly losing. I don't want to lose because then I will drop down from that hard won rank 50 I just got. I get on a winning streak and fear playing another match in case I lose and my over generous ladder rank goes down. Its a terrible thing I know, to admit caring about ladder rank, but I do!
No-one a part from other SC2 players will care and the overwhelming majority of those people you never meet anyway so why does it matter if you loose a few games? I know I shouldn't care about losing but when you don't play that many 1v1s every victory is sweet and every loss frustrating.
And that's when the Fear grips you. Well not real fear of course, its only a game after all not the trenches of the Somme. Still, you get nervous playing a game, you stop thinking clearly while playing and even clicking that "Find Match" button becomes a battle in itself between the desire for improving rank and the trepidation of losing.
Now though I don't want to get better just to show off my rank and say "look at me I'm rank #1 Gold." Now I want to improve because I love this game so much and I love watching the pros play and one day I want to be good enough to understand all the strats pros use and replicate them myself. Sure I could just copy a BO but to understand the timings used and when or when not to attack or build that lair is completely different. This is something that only playing at the higher levels can teach you.
To do that I need to overcome any anxieties about 1v1
To do that I need to play more.
So the first and most important thing I will do on my journey to greatness (well one can dream or at the very least certainly exaggerate for dramatic effect) is to pledge to play at least 5 1v1 games a night. It might not sound like much but if I do that 5 days a week that is 25 more 1v1s then I play at the moment. Hopefully it will be more, but work, life and keeping a blog takes time. We can't all be like Liquid HuK and play 12 hours a day.
I'm hoping over this week I will get a regular schedule for playing these 1v1s and get over the fear of playing and start to ladder a lot. I will be playing my first games tonight and streaming them live (which I will talk about more later) at www.justin.tv/blackadderiv
To quote one of the cockiest SC2 units out there "Ahh! Ya scared me."
But not for much longer...
It sounds easy enough, but as I'm sure some of you know it isn't. I have tried before a number of times on many games, including Starcraft, to play more 1v1s however every time I try can never keep going long enough to get over 'the fear.' The same thing happens every time. I play some games, loose most of them and then somehow start to win a few. Then I notice that my ladder rank has gone up and suddenly I start to care about my rank and more importantly losing. I don't want to lose because then I will drop down from that hard won rank 50 I just got. I get on a winning streak and fear playing another match in case I lose and my over generous ladder rank goes down. Its a terrible thing I know, to admit caring about ladder rank, but I do!
No-one a part from other SC2 players will care and the overwhelming majority of those people you never meet anyway so why does it matter if you loose a few games? I know I shouldn't care about losing but when you don't play that many 1v1s every victory is sweet and every loss frustrating.
And that's when the Fear grips you. Well not real fear of course, its only a game after all not the trenches of the Somme. Still, you get nervous playing a game, you stop thinking clearly while playing and even clicking that "Find Match" button becomes a battle in itself between the desire for improving rank and the trepidation of losing.
Now though I don't want to get better just to show off my rank and say "look at me I'm rank #1 Gold." Now I want to improve because I love this game so much and I love watching the pros play and one day I want to be good enough to understand all the strats pros use and replicate them myself. Sure I could just copy a BO but to understand the timings used and when or when not to attack or build that lair is completely different. This is something that only playing at the higher levels can teach you.
To do that I need to overcome any anxieties about 1v1
To do that I need to play more.
So the first and most important thing I will do on my journey to greatness (well one can dream or at the very least certainly exaggerate for dramatic effect) is to pledge to play at least 5 1v1 games a night. It might not sound like much but if I do that 5 days a week that is 25 more 1v1s then I play at the moment. Hopefully it will be more, but work, life and keeping a blog takes time. We can't all be like Liquid HuK and play 12 hours a day.
I'm hoping over this week I will get a regular schedule for playing these 1v1s and get over the fear of playing and start to ladder a lot. I will be playing my first games tonight and streaming them live (which I will talk about more later) at www.justin.tv/blackadderiv
To quote one of the cockiest SC2 units out there "Ahh! Ya scared me."
But not for much longer...
Saturday 25 June 2011
Introduction
Hi and welcome to my blog! My name is Chris AKA BlackAdderIV and I'm a Starcraft 2 player. I have played many RTS games over the years but none have captured my imagination and inspired me as much as the SC2 universe. Despite my many years of playing games I am really nothing special at playing them. As an average player I enjoy playing mainly team games with my clan mates for fun, ever avoiding the pulse racing, panic inducing prospect of fighting a 1v1. Whenever I did venture out into 1v1 land I would do so with trepidation and fear, the frustration of losing to obvious all ins and making simple mistakes that you wouldn't ever do in a team game was something I was happy to avoid. I just felt lost and uncomfortable in 1v1s, never knowing what to do or how to stay calm under pressure.
But when I did happen to fluke my way into that first win, the sense of triumph and achievement was awesome.
Like most I never thought I could be any good, not really good but today I will try to change all that. Today I begin my journey to master my fears and anxieties and become a master of 1v1. From today onwards I will play more and more 1v1s, I will study the strategies and tactics used, I will learn how to recognize what the other guy is doing and anticipate his moves so that when the pivotal engagement comes I will come out on top.
Why am i doing this? Well why not? Who is to say that an average gamer like me couldn't hit master league in 1v1? I love playing this game and I want to be the best at playing it I possibly can be. After watching MLG and Dreamhack and loving every minute of it, I want to be able to understand all the subtleties going on and replicate them in my own play and the only way to do that is play a lot of games.
It won't be easy but nothing worth doing ever is right? This will take a long time and isn't going to happen overnight. I'm only gold league right now but I have my sights set high and who knows how far I can climb? I hope you will join me in this great endeavor and in the words of the legendary marine:
Lets Rock!
But when I did happen to fluke my way into that first win, the sense of triumph and achievement was awesome.
Like most I never thought I could be any good, not really good but today I will try to change all that. Today I begin my journey to master my fears and anxieties and become a master of 1v1. From today onwards I will play more and more 1v1s, I will study the strategies and tactics used, I will learn how to recognize what the other guy is doing and anticipate his moves so that when the pivotal engagement comes I will come out on top.
Why am i doing this? Well why not? Who is to say that an average gamer like me couldn't hit master league in 1v1? I love playing this game and I want to be the best at playing it I possibly can be. After watching MLG and Dreamhack and loving every minute of it, I want to be able to understand all the subtleties going on and replicate them in my own play and the only way to do that is play a lot of games.
It won't be easy but nothing worth doing ever is right? This will take a long time and isn't going to happen overnight. I'm only gold league right now but I have my sights set high and who knows how far I can climb? I hope you will join me in this great endeavor and in the words of the legendary marine:
Lets Rock!
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