Starcraft II: Fallout

The torment continues…

That’s… Better?

Here, I’m playing 1v1 against a Zerg player on Shattered Temple. I think he was a platinum rank, but whatever the case, let’s just say that he was better than me.

So I go on with a 1-1-1 to mass marines build. The banshees didn’t do much because they got shot out of the sky by poor microing and two and a half spore crawlers. Good overlord spread is key to preventing banshee harassment, kids.

The response was also well played. Around that time, the spire finished up, meaning mutalisk harassment time!

Fortunately, this person was not as destructively devious with his airborne menaces. That might be because I had better turret placement in time. Though, I would also argue that the mutalisk control was a bit sloppy–he lost a few here and there, and when I pushed out with a marine-marauder-medivac ball, he lost most of them in the first fight.

I’m still not great with getting marauders back into the mix, but with one tech lab barracks, it’s something, to say the least. Not sure if it helped out with a muta-ling combination.

Even though I expanded to the closed expansion in the corner, I began to run out of luck. My forays were simply too weak, and I ended up losing the center of the map.

After that, banelings started to roll in, and when you have muta-bane-ling, massed marines just won’t cut it. I threw a raven in for spotting creep, but I don’t think it worked out that well.

Whatever the case, I simply couldn’t rebound from such a ferocious retaliation.

GG.

Soft Solace

Today, I’ve been throttled by numerous opponents to dust, mostly because they play at a higher level of gameplay than I do. At least I had a single win for the day.

A TvT, 1v1 on Shattered Temple, I went with banshees again. At this point I still haven’t really given up massed marines, but I decided (probably to my detriment, if my W/L has anything to show for it) to experiment with builds and harassment.

Although the other player had an absurd amount of sensor towers (three, and for one base, that’s really not a lot of coverage), sensors do not detect cloaking. Thanks partially to poor turret placement, I was able to sneak three banshees in and destroy the four stationary tanks, as well as a bunker and a few scattered infantry.

After that, I did my hidden expansion trick again, and then expanded to the natural expansion down at my base. The floated one became an orbital command, while the one on the ground became a planetary fortress.

I massed a considerable number of units, including four tanks and seven medivacs, and decided to do a doom drop right in the guy’s base (he didn’t expand at all for the duration of the game). It turned into a gamble after I realized I had set my troops down right on a pile of finished and half-finished missile turrets. I’m pretty sure I lost at lease one medivac, and then lost the rest from AA fire, but most of my infantry and all of my tanks survived. They then proceeded to crush the base to dust.

GG there, my compadre.

Where Marines Fall

This was a 2v2 on Discord IV. It was a Zerg and I versus two Terrans.

The beginning and middle went pretty quietly. There was one funny moment at which I had to continually float and drop my orbital command because a quad of vikings were harassing it (it was eventually destroyed).

What really griped me about this game was that one player went mass thors. Thors are quite strong units, and are perhaps the only units that would be suitably countered by massing marauders as a rebuttal–one that I obviously failed to utilize to my advantage. My Zerg ally did a fantastic job expanding, but he couldn’t use his massed infestors properly, leading to most of them being chewed up.

Well, from there things went south, and they stayed south. All of our expansions went kaput, and I simply couldn’t retaliate to such a strong force of thors.

GG. Rage Quit.

I wish to put it out there, I’m not a poor sport by normal definition. I can play a good, healthy game, though I don’t take kindly to cheese and harassment (the latter I can deal with with some degree of finagling). But when you lose several games consecutively, the mood to say GG at the end of each game quickly evaporates. As much as they are enriching, they are also demoralizing. It kind of makes me want to stick with playing the campaign (which I cannot complete because I do not have the full game. DAMN IT!).

Also, I hear that Diablo III is coming out soon. I have played Diablo II alone with varying degrees of success; on a necromancer, I virtually never used corpse explosion, had about 20 summons and decided to go for a base-attack-heavy build that would be more appropriate for barbarians. It actually took me pretty far on normal difficulty–until Diablo, that is. It was just not possible to use my absurd build against his types of attacks. The lightning hose is FRIGHTENING–really drains the potions in the belt.

But I digress; chiefly, the new game will have an auction house, which presumably would work similarly to the Maplestory MTS system, where one may trade items for either in-game currency or real (virtual) currency. That last part really intrigues me; perhaps I could build up enough money to buy SCII?

But that’s a pipe dream at best, considering I’d have to buy Diablo III first (and I’m not willing to buy SCII). If there was a trial, however, perhaps I may capitalize on the venture…