Season 2 Retrospective

At my job as a software engineer, our team holds a "retro" at the end of each major release, and we discuss what things went well and what things need improvement.

Season 2 ended a few weeks ago, and I've had some time to reflect on how things went. (and put together some cute HTML tables :)

	After Qualifier	Final Standing
League	Silver	Silver
Rank	84	23
Rank Points	0	278
Bonus Pool	780	1067

Matchup Wins Losses Total Win Rate TvZ 8 1 9 89% TvT 4 8 12 33% TvP 2 3 5 40% Total 14 12 26 54% Opponent's League Wins Losses Total Win Rate ? 2 2 100% Gold 2 2 100% Silver 5 5 10 50% Bronze 5 7 12 42%

Map Wins Losses Total Win Rate Delta Quadrant 3 1 4 75% Metalopolis 3 1 4 75% Tal'darim Altar LE 2 0 2 100% Xel'Naga Caverns 2 2 4 50% Slag Pits 1 1 2 50% Scrap Station 1 2 3 33% Shakuras Plateau 1 2 3 33% Typhon Peaks 1 3 4 25% Green text = map was new for Season 2 Red background = map is removed for Season 3

So some interesting results!

Apparently, I'm very good at TvZ - except for my qualifier, I won every game. When playing, I felt like TvT was my most even match, and I was beside myself with how to handle Protoss (TvP). I felt like I was getting better at TvT the more I played - and I was pretty jazzed after that last game, winning against a Gold league Terran! But yeah, TvP is a challenge for me.

The league breakdown confirms my feeling that I'm mid/lower Silver. The goal of the match-making system is to get you a 50% win rate, and it looks like I'm there.

I did find it sad that the two maps I did the best on are being removed for Season 3. I will miss Metalopolis, it's a great map. But it's been a staple map since the Beta, so it was only a matter of time before it got cycled out. I'm really looking forward to the new Season 3 maps, and playing more on Typhon Peaks and especially Tal'darim Altar LE - both bigger maps.

One thing that really stood out for me is that I really should play more games - 26 is not a very large sample set! I also thought it was a shame that I wasn't able to play more 2v2 or 3v3 with the handful of my friends that play SC2. Now that I'm getting the hang of blogging, casting, and posting on YouTube, I should be able to spend more time playing and less time in production!

Well, I think that's it for Season 2!

Good Game and Well Played :)

Sprinting to the End of Season 2!

It's been a while since my last post, and you're probably wondering, "Did he ever make it to the Top 25?"

Well, you'll find out ;-)

That evening after my last post, I played 2 games:

Result	Player's Race	Player's League	Map
Win	Zerg	Gold	Tal'darim Altar LE
Loss	Protoss	Silver	Xel'Naga Caverns

So I ended the night at rank 29 with 209 rank points.
"djer" was rank 25 in my division with 266 points, so I needed at least 267 points to push him down to rank 26.

The next morning I played 2 games before leaving for work:

Result	Player's Race	Player's League	Map	Notes
Loss	Terran	Silver	Metalopolis
Loss	Terran	Bronze	Shakuras Plateau	top in his division

So I was back to where I was after my last post: Rank 30, with one less point at 188 rank points!

And I only had the evening to play before the end of the season!

So that night, I put my baby boy to bed, did my Jillian Michaels workout (priorities first after all!), and told my wife my only plan for the evening was to play SC2 - and I started playing...

Result	Player's Race	Player's League	Map	Notes
Loss	Terran	Silver	Typhon Peaks	doh! 4 game losing streak!
Win	Terran	Bronze	Delta Quadrant
Loss	Protoss	Bronze	Scrap Station
Win	Terran	Bronze	Scrap Station
Win	Protoss	Silver	Delta Quadrant
Loss	Terran	Bronze	Xel'Naga Caverns
Win	Zerg	Silver	Tal'darim Altar LE

At this point, I was rank 26 with 262 points - I only needed 5 points to beat "djer"!

Result	Player's Race	Player's League	Map	Notes
Loss	Terran	Bronze	Delta Quadrant	Nooooo!!!!

So now it's just before midnight, and I was at rank 27 with 252 rank points.

I needed 15 points to get ahead of "djer", and push him out of the rank 25 spot. A single win would do it.

My wife was working on a project, putting up a bunch of photos over our fireplace. So I was given the go ahead for one more game...

Here's a videocast of my final game of Season 2 - enjoy!



Like that ending graphic? I thought it might be a nice touch. Wondering how I did it? Don't worry - at some point I'll add a section to my "How I make SC2 Videos" page describing how I did this :-)

Update 11/1/2011: I updated the video to point to my new YouTube channel.

Top 25 Here I Come!

After my last post, I was very excited to post more often and of course, play more often - and over the last week accomplished one of those... you can probably guess which one!

Part of that was due to my desire to do more casting (thanks Brock for the encouragement!) - and so kept waiting for a good game that was short enough that I wouldn't have to break it into 2 parts (due to the YouTube 15 min limit).  Funny, that never happened.

So here's a cast of my most recent game - done in a more "play-by-play commentary" style than "retrospective analysis" style.  I tried casting in the third person, as if I wasn't one of the players.  It was really fun!  My wife told me when I started casting that I should really ham it up - she thinks it's cute when I do that - so here's a bit of ham and me creeping a little more out of my shell!



Listening to the cast afterwards, it was funny to hear how many mistakes I made or times I corrected myself, but was right the first time!

So now my standing is Rank 30 in my division - with only tonight and tomorrow left in the season!

As you can see from the screenshot above, I'll need 80 rank points to beat the current rank 25 player in my division.  With my record (8 wins, 4 losses) and the amount of points I'm getting per win or loss, I figure I need to play 6 games before Tuesday morning.

Of course, the player currently ranked 26 is active and has played a bunch of games recently, so I think he's shooting for the same spot I am!

Do you think I have what it takes to make it into the top 25?

Update 11/1/2011: I updated the video to point to my new YouTube channel.

First Game in Silver League

Two days ago (July 14) was a day of many firsts for this Starcraft dad!

• My son turned 9 months old for the first (and only) time - and is as big as his sister who is almost 2 years and 2 months old!
• In the evening, I started a 30-day workout series - 20-minutes a day with Jillian Michaels! (my wife is doing the same series)
• And to kick off the day - I played my first 1v1 game in Silver league!

It was somewhat of a re-match of my qualifier game (which I lost due to an early Roach attack).

I played on the same map, against the same race (Zerg), and in the same starting position as in my qualifier. My opponent even started with a similar Roach attack. I also found out afterwards that my opponent was once again a Bronze player at the top of his division (last time he was Rank 1? and this time I think he was Rank 4).

But as you can see in this videocast I did the next morning - the result was not the same!

(YouTube has a 15 minute cap in videos for regular accounts, so I had to split it up. BTW, I updated the embedded code so fullscreen is available from the embedded player AND higher resolutions are available when you go fullscreen!)
Update 11/1/2011: I updated the video to point at my new YouTube channel - it no longer has to be split into two videos.

And with that comeback, I advance to rank 63 in my division!

And celebrate my 100th league win!

So my current standing is:
Division Rank 63
30 points
Bonus Pool 1246

After my qualifier back in May, I was:
Division Rank 84
0 points
Bonus Pool 780

Season 2 is Ending?

Yup, you guessed it - the urgent news I heard last night was the impending end of the second season of the Blizzard online ladder.

Before vacuuming our family room last night, I was listening to an episode of StarCast (an SC2 podcast) that was 4 days old and found out to my surprise not only was Season 2 ending, but the leagues and divisions had been locked since July 5th! for the last week! (Guess that's what I get for listening to old podcasts?)

So two months after Season 2 started, I qualified for 1v1, and now, two months after that, I haven't played my first regular ladder game, and the season is already locked!

The lock lasts until the end of Season 2 on Tuesday July 26, during the morning maintenance.

So until then, players can't be promoted or demoted out of their current league or division.  So no matter how I do over the next 12 days, for Season 2, I'll finish in Silver league!

After hearing that podcast, for some reason I thought the season ended July 19 (next Tues) so I decided last night to make an effort to play over the next 5 days and see how high I could get in my division.  Of course now after re-reading the official post (here), I see that I now have 12 days - so I've some more time :-)

How high do you think I can get? Last season I made it to Rank 12 in my Bronze division... (heh, over the course of several months!)

A New Season

The first season of the official online ladder (hosted by the developer, Blizzard) ended this last March, and before I realized it (literally), the second season of the official ladder began.

As the first season was wrapping up, I had this idea that it would be cool if the launch of this blog coincided with my start in the second season. Cool idea, huh? (my daughter loves saying "huh?")

Alas, I was so wishy-washy with getting this blog started, that I didn't play my first game until two and half months later - the day after my 32nd birthday. (And yes, at the time I thought it would be cool to also launch the blog right after my birthday...)  It then took me another month to sit down, get over the perfectionist in me, and actually record a commentary of that game!  But it's done!

So for my first blog post, I am happy to announce not only my return to the world of competitive StarCraft 2, but also my entrance into the world of videocasting! (Don't worry, I'm keeping my day job - this is definitely an example of amateur enthusiasm!)

If you click on the video after it starts playing, you can watch it in full 720p on YouTube. This video is also available on my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/gosudad

Oddly enough, despite my complete domination in this first game (and yes, you can read that phrase in two different ways), I was placed in the SILVER league!

This was a huge surprise to me, as my entire career in the first season had been spent in the Bronze league. Not quite sure how the Battle.Net ranking system decided my placement - but there was talk that Blizzard recently fixed a bug in the ranking system that was preventing people from promoting, so perhaps that's what happened here. Nonetheless, I was quite pleased :-)

Update 11/1/2011: I updated the video to link to my new YouTube channel.