Silver!

It has finally happened. I am no longer in bronze.

It happened remarkably quickly in the end. I started following the teachings of "Filter" and after a few practice games against the AI, and about 8 games in the league, I am now silver material. Apparently.

I now don't build an engineering bay until I find myself at 12+ minutes. Apparently that sort of stuff is too complicated and I should focus on SCVs and nailing my build. But as well as SCVs at 10 minutes and the timing of my natural, I also have a benchmark for getting my factory down. If all works well I should set off at 10 minutes with an army and 2 medivacs, and arrive at his base shortly after just as stim is finishing. It hasn't worked like that once, but I still get a big army together and have had good success with this new plan.

Game 3

Summary: Promoted to silver!
Result: Victory!

Date: 7/1/13
Duration: 12 mins
Map: Cloud Kingdom LE

Matchup: TvZ

Was left alone to get on with my build. The most straightforward game since implementing my new plan.

Time of expansion: 3:47
Time of factory: 6:56

SCVs at 10 minutes: 49 (A-)

Good points:
Build order went well.

Areas for improvement:
Close to the targets, but not hitting them yet.

As usual I hesitated before setting off.

Game 4

Summary: Let protoss build stuff in my base.
Result: Defeat!

Date: 7/1/13
Duration: 9 mins
Map: Cloud Kingdom LE

Matchup: TvP

Saw the probe in my base, but wanted to get on with mining. Didn't see him leave, and when I checked around, I didn't look in the right places. He stayed there until he had warp gates. I only saw him when the pylon was nearly done. Maybe good micro could have saved me, but I don't have good micro and I lost.

Time of expansion: 3:52
Time of factory: 7:10

SCVs at 10 minutes: 

Good points:
Er, stops my head getting too big?

Areas for improvement:
Should have spotted the probe hiding there.

Could have pulled SCVs to clear it up before it got out of hand.

Game 5

Summary: Fended off some early pressure, then marched on to victory.
Result: Victory!

One poorly zealot, one poorly marine and one healthy marine and  the beginnings of a bunker.
Who will win?

Date: 7/1/13

Duration: 16 mins
Map: Daybreak LE

Matchup: TvP

He came with individual zealots for a couple of minutes. I tried a little micro and barely defeated them at the choke point. He came with a bigger attack around 8 minutes. I pushed out at 10 and cleared up a pylon and some units in the middle of the map. Then regrouped for a moment and piled into his base. He had some sneaky proxy stargates which sent some voids into my main. But by that time it was all over.

Time of expansion: 3:50
Time of factory: 7:10

SCVs at 10 minutes: 43 (C)

Good points:
The build works. I had more stuff, and had enough early on to cope with his pressure.

Areas for improvement:
My benchmarks were quite a bit off, this has to be due to worrying about the incoming attacks. The idea is that with practice I can do a little micro to help with that, and not miss a beat with my build.

Season 9: Game 4

Summary: Played fairly well and got a surprisingly easy win.
Result: Victory!

Date: 1/1/13
Duration: 23 mins
Map: Ohana
Matchup: TvP

I haven't played so much lately, but I want to get back into it. I have discovered new learning materials on the web and have been trying to incorporate that into my play. In particular I now build one barracks then expand, and don't get any gas until I have at least three barracks. But more importantly I have some benchmarks that I can use to measure my play. I knew already the importance of continuously producing out of all my buildings, but since I watched the first of these videos, something has changed and my macro has improved a level. I will now be adding two new stats to my reviews: SCVs at 10 minutes, and the time I expanded. According to the video on the team liquid forum, I should have 50 SCVs at 10 minutes and expand at 3:45.

Having said that, I made plenty of mistakes in this game, but still won. As usual I got distracted by him scouting me and was delayed with a couple of early structures. Having watched the replay he didn't expand for ages and spent a lot of time not building workers. He was slightly favoured, but I would say his play wasn't very good.

The first exchange, and perhaps pivotal moment in the game. His comes into the side of my base with a surprisingly large army, but my first medivacs arrive just in time and I fend him off.

Time of expansion: 3:45 (yay!)

SCVs at 10 minutes: 47 (I will give myself a B for that)

Good points:

• Didn't panic or die when he planted a pylon in my main.

Areas for improvement:

• Supply blocked at various points. (94 and 134 - which is much much better than usual)
• Started engineering bay at 8:00. Think this was too late and I was potentially vulnerable to DTs.
• Need to be more organised about getting upgrades.
• With no pressure from my opponent I failed to set up third and fourth bases and had 30+ idle workers at 20 minutes.

Season 9, Game 1

Summary: Crippled early on, but managed to drag the game out for nearly an hour.
Result: Defeat!

Date: 3/11/12
Duration: 56 mins
Map: Daybreak
Matchup: TvT

He wasn't very good, and I could probably have won on another day. But I was just bad. At about 10 minutes, I had expanded and he hadn't. He dropped in my base while I had my army en route to his base. I lost my main command centre and some scvs, and the game should have been over at that point. But he was not aggressive at all. He sieged up outside my base and seemed to be waiting for me to give up. I broke his siege line and did some expanding and countering, but was always in a bad place.

Good points:
Started by engineering bay at 7:10.
Build order went fairly well.

Areas for improvement:
Failed to upgrade.
Bad micro. Kept letting my marines saunter towards his line of tanks.
Bad macro.

Season 8, Game 1

Summary: Somehow survived early banshee pressure, then accidentally spotted he was going battle cruisers.
Result: Victory!

Date: 20/10/12
Duration: 46 mins
Map: Entomed Valley
Matchup: TvT

It's been ages since season 8 started and I have purposefully delayed playing again, so I can concentrate on other things. Amazingly I started with a victory. Even so, there are still plenty of things I can improve on.

Good points:

• A win is a win.
• Somehow survived 3 cloaked banshees arriving in my base at 9:20. They killed 13 worked, I should have lost.
• Didn't to too badly at getting supply blocked. Happened at 86 supply, but it wasn't too bad up to that point. I guess I stopped building depots after having 22 units killed by banshee and forgot to get back to it.

Areas for improvement:

• Supply blocked. Hardly a surprise, I get supply blocked all the time and I know it is rubbish.
• Failed to upgrade. Infantry finished the game 2/2 and the only thing I had done with my armoury was start ship playing 1 after 45 minutes.
• Money got too high. I finished the game with an *average* unspent resources of over 2000. I don't think it should get that high at any point in the game.
• Started Engineering Bay too late. I started it at 8:20 and wasn't quite ready when the banshees arrived.  I think I should be starting it around 7:30

The moment when I felt I would win. His battle cruisers turn round and try to run away.

About me

Hi, I'm Jim. I'm from UK. I play a little Starcraft most evenings, and I am rubbish.

Well, that is the short version.

Although set in the distant future where humans are  too busy fighting lots of evil aliens to worry about petty national squabbles, I can't help associating the terrans and the USA for some reason. Maybe it is the triangle of doom...

I guess I want to start by explaining the purpose of this exciting new blog venture. I have been playing Starcraft II on and off since it came out two years ago. I enjoyed the campaign and played some team games with my friends. But in the last few months I have turned my attention to 1v1 games. And it is exposing how bad I really am (like I expected it would).

Maybe the details of what I have achieved in life and Starcraft will appear in this blog at some point. But for now let us just say that I want somewhere to note the areas of my game I need to work on. This methodical study is not something I do often, but Starcraft is one of the hardest things I have tried to do. I just need to remember that I am playing against kids with a lot of spare time, who play a lot. I still have to deal with how high the standard is even in bronze league (where I am and where I belong).

I am thinking that starting in September I will write a very brief account of some or all of my games. That way, I am track the things I need to work on. Maybe after I have typed "got supply blocked at 35 again" 20 times I will start building that next depot a bit earlier.

Yeah, so obviously picked some sort of space themed background for my new blog, because, er, sometimes you play Starcraft at night. And the white writing on dark background seems customary, if a bit shit.