BYOB's Final Stand

Monday night I played my last Bring Your Own Banshee game in Season 5 - vs a slightly favored Protoss player. In typical BYOB fashion, I had to try to end the game at a particular time, but it was a spectacular end to a good season!

So that was fun - despite the outcome - and I look forward to reviewing the replay as part of my end-of-the-season activities. And yes, I really look forward to switching to Protoss for Season 6!

Xel'Naga Surprise

Last night, I played quite possibly my last 1v1 ladder game on the classic map, Xel'Naga Caverns. This map has been in the ladder pool since beta, so SC2 players (those with the beta at least) have been playing on this map for 2 years!

I was excited to have a chance to play on this map - I rarely saw it this season - I suspect most players are vetoing it.

And I was matched against a Zerg, another rare occurrence for me this season. So I was excited to get into the game.

So yeah. Perhaps this explains why this map gets vetoed a lot and is being replaced in Season 6!

Although I'm quite far from my original goal of playing 40 games this season (I'm at 21 now), I look forward to playing my last games in Season 5 tonight!

Right now, I'm rank 24 in my division - which is already more than I expected at the beginning of the season, when I was demoted back down into Bronze League. I hope to cast a few of the games live - at least my last game of the evening - so it'll be a fun time :)

BYOB Disruption

Today was a snow day - and I try to play a quick game before the day gets rolling!

Going for a double barracks opening leads to disruption in the BYOB economy and hilarity ensues.

At least it didn't last very long...

Goroth actually messaged me immediately afterwards - he asked why I didn't cloak. And the short answer is, well, I didn't research it!

Not that it mattered, he had me good - and it'll make for an interesting review tonight...

Marine, Marauder... Banshee?

After almost a week since playing 1v1 on the ladder, I hit the Find Match button yesterday morning and wanted to try something a little different.

Not a big different, just a little different.

Continuing to play with BYOB, I wanted to see how substituting marauders for the tanks would change the composition. I think marauders are a little more flexible, especially in the early game.

I found myself playing against a fully favored opponent - and yep, you guessed it, he was a Terran!

At this point, I'm convinced that having air units for visibility when attacking up a ramp is super valuable. It doesn't hurt if the air units can attack ground units as well ;-)

With the game being so short, I figured I could do a quick review as well. So today is a double feature!

Yes, those are my little zerglings at the end, and yes, that was my first published casting blooper!

I usually have a few false starts before a review, and have lately been deleting them immediately. I forgot I hadn't deleted this one. It completely surprised me and got a few laughs, so I figured I should include it. Now you can't just jump into a blooper right away after a cast, but luckily I had some cute SC2 footage with the kids!

First TvP with BYOB

Last night (Tuesday) I got to play a bunch of SC2. First, I played 3 games of 2-player co-op w/ CmdrTallon (my wife was watching Hoarders and then Cake Boss in the background!).

After midnight, while waiting for some laundry, I played a quick 1v1 on the ladder. This time, BYOB flexes its muscles against a Protoss player - and of course, there has to be an external timing, and this time I keep to it!



Despite his Gold league status, I later learned that my opponent was new to the game (or at least his account was), he had only won 7 league games. It's possible this was one of his qualifier games.

Regardless, I'm interested in doing a review - you can learn things even from a simple game.

TvT Live: Bring Your Own... Orbital Command?

Another live cast of BYOB - with a new twist. With less than 22 minutes to play, I queued up for a 1v1 and came out with this gem of a game. Who knew that timing attacks could be dictated by the time remaining in an episode of Bridezillas?

This brings new meaning to the phrase "expand towards your opponent" ;-)



And apologies to my fellow SC2 dads out there - I had almost finished uploading this video before thinking I should blur out my opponent's screen name during the loading screen. It did get a few chuckles from me as you saw. You'll have to explain to your kiddos that there are times (perhaps rare) that alien donkeys need a kick or two ;-)

TvT Live: AFK and My Little Starcraft Buddy

Last night I gave the live casting another go - and had a fairly short TvT involving my opponent being "away from keyboard" (AFK) for the first few moments. The following review was accelerated when my little Starcraft buddy came home with his mom and he got to make a guest appearance :)



I did watch the replay slower afterwards and there were some interesting points. I don't know if I'll do a separate video for it - but of course, the more I think about the game, the more I'll lean towards casting a review :)

TvZ Live: Distracted by BYOB

After getting some positive feedback for my last live cast bundled with a replay review (Thanks Brock!), I decided to try it again last night.

This time I was matched against a Zerg (who turned out to be in Silver league!) and so got to try the 1-1-1 build (which I now like to call BYOB, Bring Your Own Banshee :-) against a new race!



The moral of the story - at least from my perspective - is clear: don't lose focus on that 2nd tier of Budha's Starcraft Pyramid - production.

In addition, the total video ended up being longer than I'd like. The encoding time kept me up late last night, and it took until 11am or so the next day to finish uploading!

So next time, if the game is long enough, I'll break it up into two videos so I can go to bed on time - and the Internet won't be bogged down in the morning - I'm sure my wife will appreciate both :)

TvT Live: Bring Your Own Banshee (BYOB)

Last night, I tried once again to cast a game live while playing - and succeeded! Not only that, but the game was short enough that I rolled right into casting the replay at normal speed (Faster game speed), and the whole thing was only 23 minutes :)

Another change - after playing such long games due to my economy/production focus, I decided that I should move out with my forces sooner - and this time tried bringing some banshees and SCVs. Yeah, I guess you could call it an all-in, but I was planning on expanding afterwards...



It'll be interesting to take this general game flow to other match-ups. I do enjoy sending out armies and not just sitting back and expanding like crazy. Hopefully Battle.net will find me some suitable Bronze league Zerg and Protoss opponents!