Losing to Protoss

Two weeks ago - there was a day (a single day) where I had a 5 game winning streak. To be honest, they were odd games.

The first was a TvP where the Protoss went straight for air units - and only had 2 units for ground defense. I won the next game within seconds - the Zerg player had forgotten to veto the map and quit immediately with an explicative (in a form the language filter didn't catch!). The next was an intense TvT battle of micro skills as we fought with a few Marines at a time in the first few minutes. The fourth game was a TvT where he just trained 2 Reapers - my workers and a few Marines held him off and he surrendered when my handful of Marines went up the ramp. The last was a great TvZ - too long to cast sadly - which ended with floating Orbital Commands and a handful of cloaked Banshees saving the day.

But this post is about my latest TvP loss. As you can see from the ladder summary on the homepage, I've had some trouble playing against Protoss. 4 wins and 9 losses. Last night I played my 32nd game of Season 3, and it was tragic.

Here's how the game unfolded - this time in pictures :)

5:03 minutes into the game - and I am down by 4 workers already - you can tell where this is going...

10:31 - I send out my first attack force - much delayed. I move them up the left side of the map, trying to sneak into the backdoor of the natural expansion. But of course, there's a cloaked Observer watching everything. You can see I'm behind by 15 workers at this point - he has almost double the workers I do.

12:20 - "It's a trap!" Admiral Ackbar was right. You can see the 3 key parts: In the upper left, the Observer watching my troops move in. In the lower left, a few units placed to close in behind and if necessary, Sentries to force field my escape route. In the lower right, the main attack force closing in.

12:25 - Aren't EMPs pretty? This was the 2nd one - you can see the depleted shields on almost all the Protoss units - my 2 Ghosts did a total of 4 EMPs - one of them on units that already had no shields :( If you look closely, you'll notice that none of my units are attacking - that's because I ordered them to Move to the back of the mineral line - and didn't tell them to Attack Move when the trap was set off. Micro FAIL.

12:44 - The body of the last Marauder hadn't even hit the ground yet (he's behind the Units Killed banner) and the Protoss army is already headed towards my base. Notice the Immortal in the lower right - who barely survived the encounter.

14:03 - The opening shots of what is essentially the last battle. Luckily, I had time to build a few bunkers. Unluckily, they would contribute to a horrendous miss control of units.

14:08 - Is this guy good or am I just this bad? Probably both are true. Ignoring how much they are overlapping, the force fields were brilliant - preventing the forward troops from retreating to the covering fire of the bunkers. You can see how I selected a bunch of units - and told them to move into the bunker on the left - that only 2 Marauders could fit in. Brilliant. See that marine? The one in front of the force fields and about to be hit by four Stalker laser beams? Yeah, he dies.

14:42 - This sums up the game well - despite Terran heroics, Protoss units are amazing. That blue explosion is a hero Marauder - my one micro-management victory. Him and his buddy were off to the side of the big battle - I stimmed them both and they killed a few units before getting the attention of the main force - and actually scared the Immortals away momentarily. Momentarily. That Immortal on the bottom - who's about to be hit by two Marauder grenades? He survives with 5 hit points. Protoss units are SO powerful!

The game lasts for a few minutes longer - but that was basically the end. We chat for a little bit - as he destroys my base - and he was pretty cool. I complimented him - "nice! I just don't know how to deal with protoss!" He replies "GG THO!". I say "ghosts are great - if you can control them :)" then "gg" He says "gg man" - and I surrender. Good sportsmanship - one of the aspects I love about SC2!

So winning against Protoss continues to elude me - and my winning streak vs. Zerg has ended - I've lost my last 3 TvZ games. Of course, I didn't build Banshees ;-)

Anyone have tips for a Terran player who's in a slump?