Training in Starcraft

I've been away for a month... but I'm back.*

I'm going to be homeless in the next month (long story). Just got a job to pay for a future home. I may or may not have easy access to a computer in a few weeks, I'll have to use computer time wisely.

Anyway, after a month of no interest in SC (playing Dodge the Rapist), I came to a fork in my starcraft career. Either I continue to play this game and learn the standard builds of experts, or quit it forever. Playing through trial and error is too tough these days, and it's simply idiotic doing that kind of thing. I was stupid. I look onto my blog, and remember my goal... I suddenly want to make it to 100 games ASAP. I've had a pleasant surprise waiting for me... I play exactly the same as I did a month ago, like I haven't left at all. It's just that I now actually work on the pro builds, mainly the TvZ vs 3 hatchery ... pretty standard...

ugh.

A few games, the first guy was super easy. Second guy had a record of 62 - 132 with 1121 points, yet took him down fairly easily.

Third guy... 205 apm and gave me a pretty hard time.... lost.

But the one I really want to talk about was around 1500 ranked and played almost 200 games this season (I check profiles on iccup before the game starts). Thirty minute game... and I had lots of trouble winning. Turned out his apm for the game was 70. He started out with 2 hatchery, and I'm still not quite sure how to do gosu build against that so I start screwing up... panic mode settles in (after looking at replay he built a third hatchery immediately after my scout died). He sends a few mutalisks and kills about four of my units... and about 3-4 minutes later drops many lurkers and hydras into my main, just as I'm moving halfway across the map. I go back, fend it off, feel like I've lost but find myself able to effectively push out again. My attack and the next fail, but I managed to kill most his lurkers so I wasn't all a complete waste. After looking at the replay, I see my marines stay in one spot, there was a hill to the side but didn't think of moving up while I had the chance. Map awareness is shit. I lacked unit production for most of the game, but towards the end I had a decent amount of tanks and vessels (he quit after telling me I suck).

There is good news... I've learned a key vessel micro technique (thanks to a guy in my team), but seem to have trouble doing it in the heat of battle. I select all my vessels and tell them to irradiate something. The ones that have enough energy for the spell will begin to move. I, then, can deselect one of them and make the others return. Now that I think about it, it seems to be better to find out which ones have energy and just hold those momentarily ... irradiate one at a time. It may be good enough to just know which have energy. I'll experiment.

sigh

I'll now allow all D+ players into my games. Rank must be 1001-2999 points. Must be Zerg.

Lastly, I'm not excited about starcraft 2 as I was before. It's been too fucking long without a release date.

* I guess that's a curse that comes with 'Learning Starcraft'.