StarCraft 2

Take it away Emblis

'ello there; just let me know what you need from me in terms of contact data/replays/time frame and so on....

Whatever you want mate. My Battle net is Emblis.399
Also, I can bet already now that you probably do not the very basic of Zerg. The most common game plan is to max drones, only drones. Only make units when you absolutely have too. When you have about 3 bases you want halt ALL drone production and just mass out rouches/hydras/Lings or whatever you think would be most effective against his army.

However, ZvZ is an exception. And the most interesting in my eyes. But lets start with ZvT or ZvP and get ZvZ later since it is so vastly different from the other matchup.

Give me a call in-game or throw up a replay

'ello did the add bizness;

"BlackKnight,139" should be me;

oh yeah that was the latest ranked and yeah he did some crazy build idea bad madness crap.

Also have a 2on2 friendly with some co-workers in case that one is not really telling much;

yeah been doing my "new" 2 1on1 ranked games; First was again a ZvZ on Scrapstation and it was a profoundly MEH.

Other one was against a terran with a funky cheesy build again (attempted Raven harass)

Can post the replays if ye be interested

That is what I am here for!

Right; I'm at work right now... I upload them later today...

there we go; both games from yesterday;

First game: ZvZ

You scouted a Spire, yet you did nothing. The moment you saw you spire you should have put down Hydra den. If you are still at T1 get more queens and some spore crawlers. Also, if get an Overseer in ZvZ use the darn contaminate on his hatch! It prevent him from getting extra larvas from queens. The game would have been yours if you had build a Hydra den when you saw the spire thou. Have a game plan from the start and modify it as necessary depending on what you scout.

ZvT

The same thing really, you do not react and adept depending on what you see. See a star port/spire/stargate? Get Hydras, or alternatively, get Corruptors. Note that Viking out range Corruptors so if you fields lots of vikings, switch to hydras or get infesters to fungal them.

Ask yourself "What is he trying to do now? How can I get into his base to find out?" or "I do not know what he is up to, but if I put some pressure on him I can delay or even force him to stop it". Thats the biggest problem with your gameplay right now. You did see the Stargate even before it was done! Plenty of time to get Hydras.

Also, your larva injection sucks and you are way, WAY to high on money. SPEND!

slightly more VROOOOOOM in this one... I think...

I am still very unsure about Hydras as a useful unit and I guess I can fungal pretty much $everything?

Instead of me telling you all that you did wrong, I want you to tell me all that you did wrong.

Start with loading up that replay. ONLY stare at your main base and forget everything else. What is the queen doing? How many larva do you have? Do you have any resources to use those Larva?

Your macro is lagging way, WAY behind. I am going to supply you with one of my own recent replays. Do the same thing for me, only stare at my main base the whole game. What is my queen doing? How many larva do I have? Do I have resources that I can use with those larva?

Notice the difference?

Right; tried your hotkey setup... Just a quick question: you do not hotkey your queens at all yes?

ok... things that I have spotted:

too many zerglings too early?
Forgot about the speed upgrade
Queen inject went sloppy during my pokes/attacks
could have gone for second expand way way earlier
sloppy with getting additional gas
no extra hatchery, even though I somewhat went with zerglings only in the beginning.
better creep placement
no scouting to check if went for some funky distant expand business

anything else?

Macro. You really need to steep up your macro. With good macro you can be in gold/plat since it is so lacking in the lower leagues.

I would say that you still have hard with larva injections. This is why I recommend binding all hatches to different hotkeys. By taping the hotkey and selecting the hatch you can see in the status bar how long it is until the larva hatches and you need to inject again.

Practice looking in triangle on your screen. Check top right, Do have allot of money? Spend them. I am risking getting Supply blocked? Build one or two overlords. Check minimap, is something scary happening? Tap 5-6-7-*** And check your hatches. How long until you need a larva injection? In a second? in 20? Repeat.

So, your macro, practice it. Here is one of my suggestions: Screw micro. Start a game against easy computer and ONLY focus on your base. Whenever you want to attack, just say "See you later units, best if luck" and then box them and attack-move the computers base.

As a side note, you need to practice game plans. How are you planing to win? With early roach push? By out-expanding and denying your opponent expansions? You should always have a goal to work towards. Here is an example: say to yourself before every match how you want to win. Like: "In this game I am going to grab a fast early expansion, get roaches for defence and then go for fast spire and Mutalisk harass. After that I follow up with a huge roach push to kill him."

Hey; sorry for yesterday was massively pissed off; Did you had any games on blistering sands against terran recently?

Afraid not, it seams very rare that I get to play on blistering sands. I had a recent on it against Toss but that's about it.

yeah no problem...
I played with a co worker who is in platinum and yeah... MACRO PRACTICE @.@....

Right; some practice matches with said co worker, with a bit of talk in between on how things could be made better

It is your macro, no doubt that about that. You should never have more 300 minerals. If you do, spend them! I do do not really care on what but never have more then 300 minerals!

Also, versus Protoss you do not really want that many Zerglings in the mix. Mass zergligs are good against mass stalkers but he had quite some Zealots as well. This goes back to the idea of scouting the front of his base. You always want a few zerglings there so you can see when he is moving out. But you do not want a whole army of only zerglings.

But again, it was you MACRO that caused you to lose. Spend all that damn money! same as I said before. Drones are cheep on minerals but expensive in larva. So in order to devout maximum number of larva to drones you want expensive units. In order to afford expensive units you need allot of drones. Roaches are way supperior to Zerglings because they are expensive mineral and gas wise but cheep on larva. In the third game you had about 2400 minerals and 300 gas. That could have been ALLOT of roaches. If you got any minerals left, get drones or some Zerglings for harassment. Do not run your zerglings into his army, run them to his base and nibble at his probes.

This post has been edited by Emblis: Feb 3 2011, 10:03 AM

Overall plan: uhhh ROACHES! <,<

some of the times are prolly a bit off but whatever;

0:21 Overlord goes to the backdoor, because of a bad experience during the placement matches.

1:25 Heard that blistering sands favours a CHARGE type of play for protoss, so I go and scout him out.
2:01 pool at 14; 10 minerals over.
2:08 Entering red base, while my camera is on my main
2:16 meh? Gate+pylon, no gas yet->means what?

~2:48 Gas done; putting some peeps into it.
3:49 Yay proxy pylon @.@

3:57 Roach warren is waay to late, I think I have like 300 minerals
~4:11 moving the drone away from his base?
~4:29 Attack command on the pylon might have been better/derp derp not reading the map properly

~5:12 too many minerals
~5:20 Expansion, 100 minerals too late
~6:50 yeah... not moving drones to the expansion

8:20 slightly bad scouting?
9:20 spire before 4 gas down ->not sustainable!?

~11:17 overlord dies
~11:23 PANIC MODE -> backdoor attack, what would have been the proper reaction? ->creep to the rocks + spine crawler?

~11:47 main rally is shit
12:49 not spending enough...
13:50 enough money for mutas, yet I don't make them; I could also spot the first collosi on the minimap, if I would pay attention to it.