Watched Rain/Shuttle this morning, game 1 was ok but the rest of them were LOL

hm, that's interesting. so did you attempt to break out and failed, or did but still lost the game after?

I couldn't break out. I think I had a late roach warren too - by the time I had enough ravagers to bile down his buildings, he had immortals out which basically meant I was dead.

There are patch changes with mostly just bug/quality of life fixes that included this:

lol, RIP the one game that the first thing I saw from my Terran opponent was a marine that totally looked like a ghost and I freaked out with spores and spines and ****...only to later realize it was just an annoying marine skin

lol

Game 1 of hero/Mind in ASL was really, really good fwiw

SortOf's games in the most recent GSL group were pretty good:



Never thought of him as a top-tier guy but game 2 against Zest was probably one of the best-played games by a foreigner against a Korean that I've ever seen.

that was nice. basically how i wish i could play lategame with spellcasters.

Flash/Snow has come as highly recommended on TL, not watched it yet but the best player vs the best PvT player can't be bad

Map changes in 2 weeks...

Sticking around:
Catalyst
Acid Plant

Saying goodbye:
Neon Violet Square
Blackpink
Backwater
Eastwatch
Abiogenesis

And now, meet your NEW MAPS for season 2, links are to higher res images

16-bit (yes, that's the name)



Usually I hate pocket natural maps but this one might be ok


Lost and Found



Tough choice taking a third for Zerg against Terran, the one under your main lets medivacs zip between main and natural in a super annoying and effective way which I always try to avoid, but the other one seems perfectly placed for an early siege tank rush to make it really hard to hold


Dreamcatcher



Looks gimmicky and kind of Scrap Station-like in its base progression - nobody is ever going to take (and hold) the bases in the middle of the map except using the golds in cheese builds


Redshift



Okay these gold bases were made to troll Zerg - ranged units render them unusable for us, while Zerg has to go roaches (which suck and will get hard countered by immortals in particular) to punish them. Seems pretty huge otherwise.


Darkness Sanctuary



You probably don't recognize it but this map is currently in its 2nd season in GSL, where it has been vetoed with reckless abandon (probably just because players don't hit it on ladder?). Only 4 player map I can recall in awhile. Seems okay.

ASL

The games were pretty good! tastosis has a great cast too.

Very good games

that Dreamcatcher map looks terrible

also, me vs proxy base people part a million:

https://drop.sc/replay/7289349
also feat. a very salty protoss:

https://ibb.co/f81Fw7

Nicely done. One thing you can definitely do is assert your positional advantage defensively, i.e.:



You can reposition spines (or just one, even) to deny both of these buildings from getting up (slight chance the pillar blocks you from getting a spine into the right position to be out of range of the left side), which makes his push harder later on. Also, a creep tumor on the right side of this, behind that pillar (if you can spare the mins for an extra queen or the energy on an existing one instead of an inject) will push creep out into that area to prevent him from building on it.

Solid win though, I'm coming around more to your "base in his base" response to "base outside your base" even though it feels like giving up your bases and having to rebuild in his shouldn't be as effective as it seems to be. Maybe if you nydus and take out his main with a small group of units while leaving other stuff home to defend, you keep your base and get a bigger advantage?

One difference between this game and the one where I lost to this sort of thing - the guy who beat me went gateway heavy before transitioning to immortals (he made a lot of stalkers/zealots that traded really well against spines when retreating to shield batteries).

I think I've been playing really, really badly the last couple nights, but it did lead to this one game against a plat Terran where I was fighting off his marine-tank push with, like, 5 mutas trying to overcome 4 stimmed marines that each had a personal medivac to push them back so I could clear the tanks; I lost my natural to go down 2 bases vs 3, but did eventually push back his attack...

...and then I won the game

https://drop.sc/replay/7290279

lol platinum league (and lol me for even getting that far behind)



3000 minerals and almost dead with no units is like the most classic goofyballer game ever

Yeah, repositioning spines and moving out creep to block his cannon line is definitely one of those things I should do. Every version of this I've played against where I don't die immediately has my opponent rushing out immortals to take out the spines. Though I agree that sending maybe 1/3 of my units into his main and leaving the rest to save the natural is probably an ideal breakdown. My main goal with the nydus is actually killing probes before he can recall, so maybe it's better to have as much DPS as possible?

Even if he recalls probes, you're still cutting him from 2 base mining to 1 and making him drop 400 minerals on a new nexus (plus a forge maybe). Losing your bases comes with a considerable cost as well (all the stuff you have to remake + break in mining time) that probably isn't worth getting ~16 of his workers or whatever if you can avoid it.

I'd ****ing love to see sOs pull this out in GSL sometime btw (maybe the fact that he hasn't means that it's not that viable against good players)

lol, this guy's name is bigdickkarl? srsly?

also lol that he has 5 tanks and 11 marines. your games do a good job of reminding me that i shouldn't ragequit

why is every bad terran's response to seeing mutas to make vikings? that has to be the worst possible unit they can make that actually hits air.

@11:05 - he scans the top right base? wat?
@11:30 - you're down 30 supply and he has 2/1 to your 0/0. this is gonna be good.
@11:45 - now 50 supply
@13:30 - concussive shells seems like a good upgrade when you have 100 minerals in the bank
@13:45 - his apm goes down about 100 when the fight starts. seems like a solid strategy
@20:00 - he scans the top right base again?
@21ish - any reason you're not going for a greater spire? like ya he randomly has tons of vikings but seems like it could be useful at some point since as his bank dries up he'll be making mostly marines

gg. good comeback, though apparently karl doesn't know you can micro your marines

ya true. i wish there was someone who actually knew how to macro behind this (not actually, but in a theoretical sense) so we could know the optimal way to defend.

I have a strategy with ragequits, basically that they should be used to avoid rage. In this game, I'm already rage-committed by the time someone would ragequit - I'm gonna be pissed if I lose to that push, so **** it, I might as well stick with it until the hope level reaches 0.

On the other hand, I had a game where after some early adept pressure, I didn't think about followups (usually against P I just blind spore because stargate is so common) and suddenly one of my overlords spots 2 oracles coming my way. That's a calculated insta-leave spot, because chalking it up to a dumb build decision and moving on to the next game is going to be way less rage-inducing than losing 12 drones, trying to fight through, and then losing to the followup push.

I didn't know he did that, but it seems fine - in his sort of situation with a huge lead, I'm generally like, okay, what can I lose to, and let's go ahead and not lose to that. It's generally a short list, like
- mass desperation DTs out of nowhere
- mass desperation <insert dumb unit here> (oracles, void rays, BCs, whatever - make sure you have the tech such that no one dumb composition you didn't see coming will kill you)
- hidden bases

Granted, part of having a huge lead is also generally trying to make sure that I don't lose my whole army to piss-poor micro

Hey, there was that one time he had 2 marines under 5 medivacs fighting vs 4 mutas and picked them up/dropped them individually!


Catching up on GSL beat: this song is an objectively terrible Linkin Park cover yet for some reason it's super catchy (the second half, anyway, that's what they play in GSL)



I love that they made GSL music videos lol

I finally had time to load up SC2 and wound up donating 200 MMR this past weekend. I have a seasonal 22% winrate vs Terran.

The army graphs after the Terran games aren't even funny. Just straight depressing. Twice the supply simply evaporates.

I never get tired of beating Protoss though, so that kept the ragequit at bay. Feels like I can't lose to Protoss, but I can't beat a Terran.

It's becoming abundantly clear that I'll need to build a Hive at some point if I expect to progress toward Masters and break through the Terrans gatekeepers.

What's your go-to ZvT strat, 2p2? My stubborn refusal to stop attacking into them is probably the main issue here. I should probably always let them come to me.

this makes sense normally but he didn't even know if you had taken your normal 4th base?

good video

!!!!!!

Uh, yes, I'm gonna go ahead and suggest that's a problem. How are you going to win ZvTs with 2/2 and no adrenal, no ultras against 3/3? And against mech, no hive = either hit a midgame timing or lose.

lol i kinda liked the cover until he tried to join the band at the end