Interesting, I'm between low 50's and low 60's on any map that I'd played more than about 20, except Antiga Shipyard where I was at 43%. As Liquipedia has PvZ and PvT on there at <50% I'm putting it down to it being imbalanced rather than me sucking on the map

Fun style I've been trying lately, mostly ZvT but you might get a good muta switch opportunity in ZvP if their composition allows for it.

Recommended level: platinum league or below
Our goal: to make a player stay in the game long enough to eliminate all their buildings in a base trade

What to do: this is only recommended against bio, so presumably you've scouted a second rax before a second factory and you're making your lair and baneling nest or whatever. Cool. Make a spire at your main or natural, start +1 air attack. When it finishes, start +1 air armor and start a second spire at the opposite base (if it gets scouted, it looks like you're an idiot and made two spires, if they're next to each other it looks like you're planning a huge air transition). Once that finishes you can start +2/+2 and +3/+3 accordingly.

Get however large of a ling/bane mass you need to hold off whatever push they make, but not much more. You can show mutas if you want, but keep it to ~10 or so to avoid tipping your hand. Maintain whatever ling/bane army you need in order to hold, but otherwise bank gas (do keep up with melee upgrades and stuff like you normally would). If you do make some early mutas, don't be aggressive with them, you don't want your opponent to start making turret rings or widow mines or thors or whatever.

Once you have enough gas to max out on mutas or just to make a ****load of them, hold down that T key. Fly into their main, wreck stuff, pop between bases, micro the **** out of them and kill as many buildings as you can. Targeting down bases is A+ too.

All players will try to stop you, and some players will leave when they realize they can't. But every so often a magical player will say "**** it, I'M GOIN' ALL IN" and march his army across the map. These are the live ones! Make some far off bases so you won't lose a base trade, and maybe start some new tech buildings at a far off one in case your main goes down, but in all likelihood you won't need it - this only happened because they're dead and they just haven't realized it yet. Move your army somewhere safe so you can use it you have to, but otherwise just let them continue on their merry way thinking there's still a shred of hope they can win the game.

With your mutas, target down all their buildings. Ta da! They lose. Say something snarky in chat (or maybe just an offensive gg - make sure you hit "return to game" when the score screen pops up) when they can't reply because losing doesn't give you the "return to game" option.

In replay form: https://drop.sc/replay/7158855

lol

btw this is how i used to play ZvP for about a year

i just played a guy that went 1 base reaper.

and by one base reaper i mean at 10 minutes he had 19 SCVs and 33 reapers

https://ibb.co/e6Apgn

easily the most satisfying ZvP i've played in a while vs another one of those guys that tries to proxy his entire base, but has no actual plan for what to do after

ft goofy's muta style

https://drop.sc/replay/7172276

GSL started this week, Group A (Elazer, Classic, Byun, Leenock) was a couple nights ago and Group B (Scarlett, Patience, Losira, Gumiho) is tomorrow night at US-friendly time (9pm Pacific I think)

So proud you're using my scouting paths <3

It's a little scary how base-trade-y that game got - if you just crank up to a 2 base economy and then crank roach/hydra, his investment in all those cannons should have him way behind? Like I think after you nydused to his main, he was in a position where he could win if he wasn't a total dumbass intent on staying on 1 base for as long as possible. But that was pretty hilarious. I'd def troll him in chat and/or with burrowed lurkers and spores in a circle surrounding his base.

yeah ever since i started doing that, i've scouted so much bull**** going on. thx!

so yeah i basically tried to semi-drone up, you think i could've just broken down his blockade eventually? or was the nydus the best course of action there?

and lol yeah when i finally broke out and was like 'this is all you got?' i def tried to troll him after but he had already signed off

Oh, for sure. Ravagers are great for that, or even just with roach/hydra you eventually get a big enough army that static D dies too fast to have a hope of doing much damage to you.

fair enough. i just saw his billion shield batteries and figured it wouldn't be cost effective enough. who knows though, i still don't really get how those things work

Platinum League: Or, Why You Don't Leave Even When It Seems Hopeless

(I lose my natural to an early hellion-cyclone attack off double reactored factories while he goes up to 3 bases as he puts me down to 2; he then leaves me untouched for the next several minutes so I can double expand, get to a 4 base economy, and be ahead of him in upgrades)

https://drop.sc/replay/7182388

i would've left at around 7 min but if i somehow didn't quit, i think your position after he trades your natural for his army isn't *that* bad. sure, you have 33/16 drones at your third, but you were smart enough not to lose (m)any of them so your economy is only **** temporarily.

side point: i've been going roaches with burrow movement every game vs terran if i notice they didn't get a raven early on. at my level, terran players basically only build ravens at two points - early on as part of their BuildGuide.doc, or later on when they have so much money they need to start spending it. burrow under their seige tanks + unburrow, or send roaches to 3 bases = profit

few other points:
-i've noticed that you usually stay with a lower ideal drone count than i do (you're usually in the high 60s, whereas my ideal is in the high 70s to low 80s). is this just a function of the fact that we mostly post replays of weird games? or do you generally have fewer drones? if the latter, is that better than getting as many as i do?
-lol @ him making thors when all he's seen is roach hydra. at least he knows to mass tank once his army gets rekt (~11:30)
-he's making more thors! i guess he needs anti-air for your...vipers? muta switch?notice he still has no raven (that i can see).

one of the funniest things to me has always been how little effort P and T players put into hiding what they're doing. if i'm ever doing some sort of rush or timing attack, i put extra effort into placing buildings in hard to see locations, always rallying units to the back of my base, clearing paths ahead of time, etc.

then i play a protoss who makes his robo as part of his wall and rallies immortals to the front side of it. of course, i lose to it, so who's the bigger fool?

I usually go for 72 (three bases of 16 on minerals/6 on gas, plus a fourth gas-only base), but I don't necessarily replace mineral drones when patches dry up and I send them to make buildings, so that's probably where high 60s comes from. If I can swing it I might go for 5-6 bases and mine more gas, but I usually have a mineral bank in the thousands that I can't seem to figure out how to spend so what's the point in having more drones? Your setup is probably better if you can actually spend it.

And yeah this is a good idea, it falls into the category of "good moves that I never think to do in the course of a game" (related: burrowing banelings/baneling drops, stuff like that). I have been able to integrate burrowed lings at expansions into my game, though.

i should do burrowed stuff more. i am pretty good about dropping creep to block bases, but i'm sure there's nothing more satisfying than seeing a terran do the

move CC to third base --> bring army to kill overlord gooping the ground --> army leaves --> creep recedes, CC tries to land but there is a ling burrowed there --> army has to come back to scan

GSL fun tonight

Recommendation for Losira fans (I know bsball, maybe bobman?) re: his 1st match

Lol

It's been brutal

I'm tired, but I wanna finish this.

that match was brutal - like is he using one hand brutal

One of the few things I can conclusively say I do better than pro gamers: tech building placement. Lurker den at your 4th, on the outside of the base, where a runby can just snipe an important tech building while you're out of position? Yikes.

Parting is such a phenomenal troll, watch these Twitch clips that explain the origin of some BEEF between him and Top: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/c...of_69/dxrdivf/

We need him back in GSL

bsball, I just played a very similar game to your Protoss who built a base outside your base, and lost, so I think I underestimated your strategy a bit. He built it far enough out (on Backwater) that his cannons weren't quite in range of my hatch, but he did have me boxed in pretty close, and from there he went stalkers/immortals and would just retreat from fights to shield batteries to heal up and trade absurdly well. I held on for decently long with roach/ravager but it was pretty hard to fight well, and I think the killing blow I needed was some way to get lings into his main (he never expanded) to disrupt his economy - once his production stopped, I could have just out-produced him to win.

The other option, of course, would have been to just react better. I scouted forge first, so if I just took it more seriously (I had a drone on his probe and went pool first so figured that was enough - nope, he had a second probe I didn't see and cannons were finishing when lings came out) I could have stopped it.

edit: looking at the replay my scouting drone saw his 2nd probe, but I didn't see it in the minimap. FAIL. That's for sure the all-hands-on-deck sign.