Season 4: Goals

Well, it's that time - time to review the goals of last season and make new ones for Season 4!

Season 3

I had 4 goals: play more SC2, blog more often, continue to cast, and start StarClass - and I accomplished all of them!

I played 64 1v1 ladder games compared to 26 in Season 2.
I posted on average 2 times a week over 12 weeks compared to about once a week during Season 2.
I casted 5 games compared to 4 games in Season 2.
And I started StarClass with 7 casts.

Outside SC2
I wanted to exercise and lose weight, read more to the kids, watch more movies with my wife, and play more PS3/XB360 - I accomplished 2 out of 4 :(

Weight-wise, I'm basically where I was in August - I only formally exercised 6 times and neglected my PS3 and XB360 (course my PS3 wasn't working for some of that time).

I have read more to my daughter - she loves reading books. And now that my little boy's a toddler, I better start reading those Star Wars board books to him :)

My wife and I have had more movie nights thanks to my mother-in-law watching the kids while she was here, and recently, thanks to the Twilight series... and big news, I guess I'm "Team Edward" - a vampire who believes in chastity before marriage is alright in my book.

Season 4

Well, the ladder seasons are only 2 months now - so there's only 6 weeks left in Season 4 - maybe less! And that includes Thanksgiving and Christmas - this is a very busy time of year! So I'll try to keep these goals short:

1. Play 30 ladder games - that's 5 games a week.
2. Blog/cast more regularly - shorter posts - maybe 1 cast a week?
3. Let's try to lose 5 lbs. That's less than 1 lb a week.
4. I'd really like to play through the single-player of Modern Warfare 1, 2, and now 3.

Those seem do-able - very important for goal-setting! (ok, maybe the Call of Duty one might be a stretch...)

Awesome. Now it's time to break open the new copy of Modern Warfare 3 Hardened Edition I've had for 4 days and get on XBox LIVE!

Season 3 Retrospective

Well, after 64 games, my run in Season 3 came to a semi-climactic end! There was (of course) the 11-game ladder spree the last night of the season, and the tired conclusion at 1 AM that there was no way that I could make it into the top 25 of my division as I had done in Season 1 and 2. So on that note, here are the final results and some nice tables!

After Qualifier Final Standing League Silver Silver Rank 22 26 Rank Points 0 545 Bonus Pool 209 141

Matchup Wins Losses Total Win Rate TvP 7 12 19 37% TvT 5 6 11 45% TvZ 7* 7 14 50% PvP 5* 2 7 71% PvT 4* 1 5 80% PvZ 2 1 3 67% ZvP 1 1 2 50% ZvT 1 1 0% ZvZ 1 1 2 50% Total 32 32 64 50% Green background = best match up for race * = 1 opponent left basically immediately Race Played As Games Terran 43 Random 12 Protoss 9

Map Wins Losses Total Win Rate Backwater Gulch 5* 5 100% Searing Crater 4 1 5 80% Abyssal Caverns 5 3 8 63% Tal'darim Altar LE 3 2 5 60% Shakuras Plateau 3 3 6 50% Xel'Naga Caverns 5* 5 10 50% Antiga Shipyard 2 3 5 40% The Shattered Temple 3 8 11 27% Typhon Peaks 1* 3 4 25% Nerazim Crypt 1 4 5 20% Green text = map was new for Season 3 Red background = map is removed for Season 4 * = 1 opponent left basically immediately Opponent's League Wins Losses Total Win Rate Masters 1* 1 100% Diamond - Platinum 1 1 0% Gold 3* 3 100% Silver 12* 14 26 46% Bronze 14 16 30 47% Qualifier 2 1 3 67% * = 1 opponent left basically immediately

So just like in Season 2, some very interesting results!

Rank - I ended with less bonus pool than I started with, indicating that my rate of playing games was pretty good (despite not playing for 2.5 weeks).

Race - Switching to playing Random was a nice change - and apparently, I'm much better at Protoss than Zerg or even Terran. Yet in some ways I felt a bit frantic since I suddenly had 9 different matchups to consider instead of 3.

Maps - Once again, I seem to be good at maps that get removed in the next season. I suspect this is a result of lesser-skilled players deciding not to veto any maps - and thus, I win vs. them. I am disappointed at my results on the more tourney friendly maps such as Tal'darim Altar LE and The Shattered Temple, but that's likely just a reflection of my casual skill level.

League - With a 47% win rate vs Bronze and 46% vs Silver, it looks like I'm sitting firmly in the lower Silver or upper Bronze level. The Battle.net matchmaking system is apparently working for me!

So all in all a great season! I'm not sure I'll continue to play Random, but I'm interested in seeing how I do in Season 4, as the new map pool is more focused on tourney-friendly maps!

StarcraftDad's Last Cast

After several attempts, I finally recorded my last cast as StarcraftDad last Saturday morning!

Isaac slept in, and I was able to whip together a summary screen. While he munched on breakfast, I put the video together in PowerDirector - he was very curious about what was happening on the TV! Between a family trip out to a big shopping mall and naptime when we got home, the video was uploaded to both my old channel and my new channel.

This is also my first cast on the new computer! I highly recommend watching it in fullscreen in glorious 1080p!



So there you go, the end of an era! (and for me, the end of a saga - it seemed like I would never get a satisfactory final cast done!)

There are still a few things to do to close down my old channel - turn off the comments and message people who have commented or subscribed - but this was a big milestone :)

So next on the SC2 plate is a Season 3 retro - and finally, I can start playing in Season 4! With the seasons only lasting 2 months now, I really need to wrap up the season finale promptly so I don't completely miss out on the next season!

Bedtime == Final Attack

Another cast from the 1v1 ladder! This time it's a Terran vs. Zerg match-up and a good example of how (or how not to) handle a turtled player. And the timing of the final attack? I told my wife I'd end the game when she was ready to call it a night - she let the dog out and got my attention - and I sent in the troops!




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

A Surprising Game Against Protoss

I meant to cast this game several days ago - both my wife and my opponent wanted me to cast it for the blog. It turned out to be a great game, so I'm happy to have it be my first game with my new headset!

Apologies for the loud voice volume and some of the awkward comments - I had some trouble getting familiar with the new setup, and it's been a while since I've casted a sportscast-style game...

Hope you enjoy it :)




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

Feeling Cheated?

Last Saturday, I finally broke a terrible losing streak - 9 games. My winning streak only lasted for 3 games, but I think the Battle.Net matchmaker finally realized I wasn't top Silver material ;-)

After winning 3 times, I lost a TvT, then played a TvP on The Shattered Temple, in close by air positions. I sent a group of marines to the ramp - to find 3 Photon Cannons - I heard a swish - Dark Templars!

I watched the cloaked DTs make their way down the map and towards my ramp...

9:39 minutes - Here they come up the ramp - and straight into my base. They kill one of the marines instantly and then waltz right in.

9:39 - This is all my tech towards detection - a half-built Engineering Bay - and enough energy in the Orbital Command for one Com-Sat Scan. I waste the scan when there's only a few units in range - none of the DTs are killed. I was able to build 1 Missile Turret - 2 others were destroyed while being built. But by then all my army units were dead - so I didn't have anything to kill the DTs.

When the DTs came up the front ramp - I had all my army units in the back of the base staging for a drop into his mineral line. In some ways, I should've gone ahead with the drop - at least put on some counter-pressure.

But the really interesting thing was my emotional reaction - I was sighing and arrggh-ing, so my wife asked what was the matter. I explained that he did something perhaps cheesy, but legal, something valid, and not cheating. She asked "Uh, how can he cheat?" I explained that since SC2 is played via the Blizzard servers, you basically can't cheat.

But her question pointed out something - I felt cheated. Logically I knew it was a fine tactic - and I was irresponsible for not having any detection or at least walling off the front door. But I had this gut reaction that somehow his victory was not earned fairly.

It's hard to lose. And having lost so many games and seeing your mistakes so clearly and having limited playing time makes it worse. But I love this game and it's intricacies - one of which is the meta of cloaked units. Getting better at any competitive sport or game requires losing a few games (losing a lot of games!) and using those losses as learning opportunities.

Now the funny part - the next game was TvP on The Shattered Temple again!

I commented about losing the previous game to DTs. The guy said he didn't like DTs. He proceeded to stomp me - without DTs - and my only recourse was a counter-attack - with cloaked Banshees. He had no detection back at his natural expansion, so he had to retreat. I even destroyed his Robotics Facility so he couldn't make any more Observers - but his deathball still squashed me.

In some ways, I'm glad - cloaked Banshees are so imba* ;-)

(* imbalanced)

Losing to Zerg

Last night I lost a TvZ and a TvT, both on the same map, Nerazim Crypt. I can't hold it against the map though, hehe, as I've been losing in all maps equally ;) So as of this morning, I had lost 9 of my last 10 games. Not encouraging.

But I skimmed through the two replays and noticed that my worker production was sorely lacking. I was so focused on army producing structures and expanding that I wasn't continuing to train SCVs - and my opponents were. I was also getting supply blocked many times - through no feat of my opponent.

So this morning I figured I'd focus on making SCVs and Supply Depots. Battle.net found me an opponent and the game was on the Shattered Temple map (whew - it wasn't Nerazim Crypt!) and I was playing against Zerg. I would have casted this game - but the mic on my headset wasn't just getting noise, it was occasionally recording nothing :( So here are the highlights - in pictures :)

7:16 minutes into the game. We started in close-by-ground positions, and my first attack group arrived just as my opponent was about to finish his expansion Hatchery. Unfortunately, I did not have Stim Pack researched, so they were unable to destroy it. Since the Marines focused their fire on the Hatchery, the Zerglings and Queen made short work of them.

10:36 - Here is my attempt at being "smart". Rather than bringing these two Siege Tanks behind my second wave of Marines, I thought I'd get them set up in this corner above the expansion Hatchery ahead of time. Too bad the Overlord in the upper right saw everything. It also didn't help that the tanks started shooting a Spine Crawler (it's off the screenshot on the bottom) instead of the Zerglings. I tried to unseige the tanks and load them back into the Medivac - one was saved :)

10:44 - Here's that second wave of Marines. They're greeted by 3 Spine Crawlers, 2 Queens, and shortly, a bunch of Zerglings bummed that they didn't kill both tanks. The Marines were able to kill both Queens. The funny part? I thought the Zerglings were the only army units - so was surprised when I rescued the tank and my Marines were nowhere to be seen. Whoops.

18:20 - So at this point, my goal of building SCVs and Supply Depots was working - and I had more resources than I could spend. So I expanded and made lots of stuff. I had tried a drop earlier and spied a bunch of Roaches, so I made lots of Siege Tanks, Marines and Medivacs. This is a pretty formidable front line!

18:20 - And this is the back of my main base. You never want to see this - a dark spot in your base where you have no vision (upper right) - and a stream of Roaches and Zerglings coming out of it. Nydus Worm attacks are hard to pull off if your opponent is scouting. I was not scouting. Funny part? I heard the scream of the Nydus Worm finishing - and was like "What a weird sound. Wonder what that was." Duh. (facepalm)

18:47 - It was a brilliantly timed attack. I reacted to the Nydus Worm by sending all my SCVs from the main mineral line to my expansion. And moved all my mobile army (the Marines) back into the main base to defend. That left my front line with only Siege Tanks, which can't attack air units. So besides a few Missile Turrets, I was powerless when a ball of 15 Mutalisks arrived. The tanks and SCVs were destroyed in a few moments. All I could say was "nice - very nice". We exchanged gg's and I surrendered.

So on one hand, it was discouraging to lose again. But I reminded myself last night that my goal was not to win all the time - that's an unreasonable expectation - my goal is to get better. As day[9] would say, "Be a better gamer." So in that regard, this game went pretty well - I kept up with building SCVs, and was only supply blocked once (I think) in the first half of the game.

I've heard many times to focus on one thing at a time - until that thing is second nature. So expect to see lots of SCVs and Supply Depots in future games :)

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?

Finally, A Protoss Videocast!

After doing a bunch of posts for StarClass, I got back to playing some 1v1 ladder. I had a 5-game losing streak, but my first game broke it - and I got my first TvT win this season.

My next game was against Protoss, and I was 0-4 vs Protoss this season. So, I got to test a theory I had for playing against Protoss - use Ghosts.

I had tried this before, and 419fish (who plays Protoss) recommended it. But for whatever reason, I hadn't used them at all this season. Watch the cast to see how it went!





It didn't quite go as I expected when I started, or even at the first attack, but it works :)

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

Qualifier Surprises

Last night, I played a few games vs Very Hard computer opponents for warm up. This morning, I woke up, played my 1v1 qualifier and casted it, all before leaving for work - and making it on time :)

It was a surprising game. During the game I felt (as usual?) that it was a super tight game - at every moment, I felt like I was seconds away from my base being overrun. And if you watch the cast, you can see that the feeling was not unwarranted!




And with that, I qualified into Silver league!

Interestingly, according to the score screen, I was ranked 20th in my division upon qualifying. But when I looked at my rank on the Multi-Player screen a few minutes later, I was ranked 22.

Perhaps I was placed into a new division, and by the time I looked at the Multi-player tab, 2 more people had qualified and were ranked higher. I'll likely be ranked much lower when I log in next time. Zero rank points will do that ;-)

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

Season 3: New Season's Resolutions

So here I am, with Season 2 behind me, and Season 3 ahead. Sounds like a great time for some resolutions, right?

#1 Play more StarCraft 2!

Kind of an obvious one :) Although I'm definitely a spectator (I even listen to pro games while I exercise!), I'm a player at heart, and love the sportsmanship, the excitement of competition, and the character building of skill improvement. That, and I'll never go pro unless I practice ;-)

#2 Blog more often, a few times a week or so.

This last season I was figuring out various technical aspects of making videos and getting over those "Never posted publicly on the Internet" jitters. Now I'm ready to rock-and-roll!

#3 Continue to cast games.

Casting games is fun! I really enjoyed making the casts I've posted so far, and want to do more this next season. I'd also like to cast some games of other people - it'd be fun to not know the outcome of the game while I cast it, and it does weird me out a bit to refer to myself in the third-person... Of course it would be even better to co-cast with a friend if anyone's interested!

#4 Start "StarClass" - a series of posts for those new to SC2 multiplayer and the competitive scene.

Most of my friends and family are not avid SC2 fans - yet! As with any sport or game, I think the more you understand it, the more interesting it is to watch, read about, and cheer on those you know who are competitors. I know that you can learn a lot about something by teaching it. So I figure I can kill two birds with one stone: help people learn more about StarCraft 2 and become an expert - all at the same time!

I think that's a pretty good set of SC2-related goals. Of course, for a more complete personal list, I would include:

Exercise and lose weight.
Read more to my kids.
Do more movie nights with my wife.
And can't forget - play more XBox360 and PS3 :)

Well, that should do it. Happy New Season!

And for those of you joining me on the Blizzard ladder this season - any new season's resolutions for you?