"Mayday! Mayday!"

What do you do when you lose a bunch of games? Lose some more. At least that's what I did. After a successful start to my 1v1 sessions I hit a brick wall on Tuesday and Wednesday. A brick wall covered in spikes. Which I hit with my face. Repeatedly.

That is to say I lost a bunch of games. The thing about becoming good at Starcraft 2 is that you have to resist the urge to crawl into a corner and cry when you go on a losing streak. Because you will lose games. A lot of games. If you win a thousand games, expect to loose a thousand games as well. At least while you are learning and ranking up. Every time you start to do well you will find yourself playing better and better people until you loose a bunch. So get used to it.

But more than that, learn from it.

Every time I lose I must force myself to watch the replays and see what went wrong: when was I ahead? How did I fall behind? What was my biggest problem? No easy task when stuck in a rut and all I want to do is play 1 more game and get that all redeeming win. From now on though, I must stay calm and ignore that search button until I have watched the replay and figure out what happened.

But what did I learn from my 2 day bludgeoning? Well firstly little things held me back and slowed me down. A few things noted were:

• Forgot Zergling metabolic boost
  
• Didn't expand enough
• Made to few Drones when pressured
• Didn't have Overlords rally out of the way
• Failed to scout with overlords and observers
• Didn't spread creep
• Got control groups confused

A big list for sure but all things that can be worked on and improved easily by just playing a lot or playing vs the AI. To try and fix all these things at the same time won't do me any favors. I will take up too much and get overwhelmed by how much I need to remember. So I will just focus on a few issues and master them until I do the right thing without thinking. Once it becomes second nature to do one thing I can then try and master something else. I think for starters I will concentrate on rallying my Overlords out of the way.

This might not be the biggest game changing thing to learn that once mastered will instantly see my skill increase, but it is a small thing that leads to many other problems. Having Overlords all over your base and hovering over your army makes things very difficult. Just trying to find where your Queen is under that mass of floating fat gas balls is a mission in itself. Time wasted trying to find things under Overlords can lead to other problems such as slow lava injects, miss-clicking units, not seeing idle Drones, missing key units such as Infestors and creep tumors and a host of other things.

On the plus side though I was always looking towards getting Brood Lords as was my intent for this game and in a few games they saved my ass. The horrible, nervous, fear of losing was replaced by a grim determination to just win one match. Maybe I have improved since my first post and opening 1v1 session. So its not all bad.

With a bit of luck and a lot of practice, in my next battle that starts to turn ugly I might be able to resist saying the Banshee's distress call:

"Mayday! Mayday!"