SC2 beta with 9 plans

I was inspired by Day Nine’s podcast series on playing the original Starcraf,t in which he said the important thing is not to have a build order, but to have a plan; a vision in your mind of what you want the mid-game to look like and a corresponding list of the things that you’re going to need to help you reach that game state. Since I’m playing random, this involved brainstorming a 3×3 matrix of stuff that I was aiming for in my early game, which made things a bit complicated. I tried to refer to it at the start of each game in order to give myself a basic plan, and then noted what worked and what didn’t after each game. I played 10 games in total with a 50% win ratio, so I guess the automatch system seems to be working pretty well, even if my plans were a bit spotty.

Game 1 was ZvT, for which my plan was speedlings into mutas. I saw a great opportunity for an attack because he hadn’t walled the front of his base, but I massed far too few lings to be able to take out his marine blob. In two cases I attacked with about half the number of lings that I should have and this allowed him to get himself established, then crush me with a marine and tank counterattack.

It was ZvT again in game 2 with a similar start, being unwalled marines out of 2 barracks, but this time because his base was open again I opted for a stronger roach based play and pushed right into his base. Shortly after he had managed to stabilize I got mutalisks and finished him off. My transition was a bit uneven though, because of focusing needlessly on roach micro.

Game 3 was ZvP and again I came in early with 5 imba roaches and caught his army with its pants down. His small zealot and stalker force couldn’t hold me off. Had he defended his ramp things might have been different.

Game 4 was PvP and my opponent played very strangely. He massed tier one forces out of 4 gateways and walled himself into his base. I built zealots and stalkers out of 2 gateways, then teched to colossi which I used to push through his wall. After a few false starts the push cracked through and colossi baked his ground forces with PeWPeW lasers!

In game 5, TvP, I tasted my own colossal medicine when I failed an early reaper harass and ended up with a marine, marauder, and medic army that got baked by that tripod lazer fire. Until that point things were very back and forth though, with my marines holding off his zealots and stalkers. I think if I’d gone for heavy banshees or more marauders things wouldn’t have been too bad.

There was more colossal fun in game 6, PvZ, where he went roaches and I walled up to tech for colossi. Although I lost, I felt like it was a good move, because when the colossi came out they absolutely brutalized his ground forces. The problem was just that I needed a critical mass to kill any zerglings that managed to make it through my lines to the attack them, but I generally only had 1 or 2 in my army. The problem was basically that I was too aggressive in counterattacking.

In game 7, again PvZ, I had the chance to do it right and won. I pushed for colossi much faster and was careful to keep lings off my nimble tripods. The right time to attack was when I had 3 to 4 colossi. Colossi completely brutalize roach swarms in a way that’s beautiful to watch.

Game 8, TvT, was a big eye opener for me. My opponent went mass banshees, which I had never seen before and it was super strong. I turtled then expanded with marines, marauders, medivacs, and tanks and started massing, but me managed to catch me with my pants down and do heavy damage with his flyers. This game taught me the importance of hotkeying comsat sweep, as I fumbled pathetically to reveal his cloaked banshees so my marines could shoot them down. After losing a tonne of SCVs and having two command centers sniped, I decided to call it quits.

My success with colossi in PvZ continued, but not unequivocally, in game 9. I managed to get fairly early colossi, and expanded, but he ninjaed into my base twice with nydus worms and did heavy damage with a mixed force of lings, roaches, and hydras. His macro was quite good, so although I was able to hold him off, the constant flood of units kept me from doing much else. The game came to an end when the server had to restart, so it was a draw, but I was on the back foot. I think I needed to build more gateways sooner, and probably more cannons.

My final game of the night was ZvP, in which I went for roaches, transitioning to mutas and he took a quick expansion defended with cannons. I ran past the cannon front line at his expansion and sat behind his minerals, chasing away his workers and destroying his nexus. He managed to expand twice more though, and his macro was reasonable. I expanded and massed mutas from 4 hatcheries to try to beat down the floating that I was doing. My mutas harassed him from the air fairly inefficiently, because I wasn’t very confident against his cannons and stalker army. He massed quite a large mixed ground forces army and managed to force his way into my expansion and kill drones, but I managed to killed them off with roaches and mutas. He then tried repeatedly to harass with dark templar, but I had detectors and mutas at base.  Eventually I managed to rebuild my drone force and tech to broodlords, which are amazingly good. They’re kinda like necromancers in WC3 in that they shoot out little melee guys that quickly become an unmanageable horde. After I killed off his main defensive army of archons, high templar, and stalkers with the help of the broodlords he conceded. It was the longest and closest game I’ve played so far.