20.02.2013

It's been quiet...

(discover the strenght of Roaches!)
around the eSF Team NewStarHoseo (NSHoseo) lately in Wings of Liberty. That's because they focused entirely on Heart of the Swarm and one of the players that impressed me alot with his performance is SSanaEE.
This Zerg, going by the name of "Kim Tae Gyun" opened the GSTL Preseason game of NSH vs MVP and was paired up with MVP_Killer, who he managed to take a win over by the usage of the fearsome Swarmhost Corrupter composition and then went on to play MVP_Dream. Eventhough he lost that game the opener he played made me curious and I broke it down and realized that it's an effecient opening for Zergs to play in order to get ahead early in Heart of the Swarm Terran vs Zerg.
(The VoDs of the GSTL PreSeason are free to watch for everyone so click here in order to watch the game yourself)
Long story short, here is the "17Gas Roach" opener that I first saw being executed as a non allin build by NSHoseo SSanaEE.

General idea

With the tools Blizzard gave us Zergs for the Hatcherytech we are once again up to do some early aggression. SSanaEE took this to heart and decided to put together an opener that consists of early Roaches with Burrow to delay the Terran and even potentionally killing him if he doesn't scout and react at all.
The advantage the new Roaches have is the ability to disengage without the need of the Roachspeed upgrade. 
This means that even if the Terran is not opening with Hellions (which is the ideal opener to play this opening against) you are at least even. In fact you can still get ahead by proper Roach control and Burrowmicro.

The Buildorder

(start droning after you move out)
15 Natural Hatchery
16 Pool 
17 Gas 
17 Overlord
@100% Pool; 2xQueen
27 Roachwarren
26 Overlord
(transition against Mech)
@100% Queen; start Burrow
32 2x Overlord
@100% Warren; start 5-6 Roaches
44 Overlord
(alot of droning and standartalysed play)
7:00 Third Base

Tipps: 
Use the main queen to spread creep once after the Roachwarren finished because you are not going to have the Minerals to turn all of those Larvae into Drones just yet.

It's just an opener, to transition from it properly make a third queen in your nat and either use the next 100 
on the Speedling upgrade if you see massive Bio play that you need to combat with alot of Lings early. If you don't just put down two Evolutionchambers and upgrade either +1Meele or +1Range in combination with +1Carapace depending on what the Terran plays (Bio or Mech) and how you react to those.

The execution

(Burrowmicro is similar to Blink Stalkers)
As soon as your Roaches reach his base you have different priorities. If he doesnt have a Bunker and only has 2 Marines and 2 Hellions you can engage him head on with burrow micro. However if he has a bunker up, which is the most common thing to encounter, you want to focus down as many SCVs as you possibly can without losing any Roaches. The key to this opener is it to not only kill his SCVs and keep him busy, it's also to waste Scans and if you execute your attack properly you can force up to three and sometimes even more scans out of the Terran. 
In the following I will post Replays of me trying (really trying, my macro and transitions are mostly really terrible in those games) out the Roachopener with good execution.

G1 Starstation (edited)

These were random laddergames that I played against more or less good opponents. It's just about the way I tried to engage and burrow that might interest you.

Let's summarize it all

The 17Gas Roach opener is not on the same level of standart like the 4 Queen opener is but it is definitively a build that you can frequently throw at your opponent especially in a best of 3 or in the Ladder where you are not playing against the same opponent over and over again because this build got it's weaknesses like Hellions just bypassing and running into the Zergs Mainbase etc. but if it's surprising the Terran and especially looking like an all in at first sight it's going to go pretty well for you.

I hope this helped some of you out, especially the ones struggeling with mech because this opener is basically made to counter mechopenings with that really early Roachwarren and Burrow.
As far as that goes, Myu~
also check out SSanaEE stream at http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/SSanaEE

15.02.2013

A crazy world we live in

Meteoroids are crushing into Soviet Russia, the Pope decided to step back from being just that and here in germany an eighteen year old teenager still strifes for the top of the Starcraft II ladder.
In less than 30 days Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm is going to be released and therefore a new chapter in my Starcraft 'career' will be made. 
I don't really want to look back to Wings of Liberty all too much because I personally disliked it more and more towards the end of the game. The direction WoL was heading at is just not my style of play. It was heavily relying on camping and just massing up the ultimate deathball of doom for all of the three races so I stepped away from it as soon as possible, meaning when the Beta was finally playable without one second of delay from europe and eventhough the delay is still existing the game is more playable now.

So let's talk Heart of the Swarm and my possibilities of doing well in that game.
First of all I like where Blizzard is taking Zerg, they moved alot of stuff to the Hatcherytech and enable me to tech up way faster where I normally was "I have to wait for the Lair to finish, now I have all this gas to not do stuff with" I can just go for burrow and overlordspeed while the Lair is morphing. That change gives Zerg more abilities to get active early as supposed to waiting for those upgrades way after the Lair is done.
The Swarmhost is a cool utility unit that can be used reactionary in ZvP to counter openings with a Robotics and possibly be a core unit in latergame ZvZ because of their free units that trade exceptionally with the basic Roach Hydra composition.
Vipers in combination with Ultralisk and Hydralisk do a great army against lategame Mech in ZvT and combined with Infestors, which is arguebly a bit harder to control, they could form the ultimate weapon of Zerg against Protoss, Terran and in our Mirrormatchup.
The buff to the Mutalisk and the Hydra also plays directly into my hands because it supports the style of play I used to play before HotS was even announced, being super aggressive ZvP tactics with late/midgame mass Mutalisktransitions to kill an army that is not relying on Archons aswell as beating Archon Immortalheavy three base pushes with Hydras and also utilising Hydras in combination with Banelingdrops.

All in all I am super happy about the game at this point in time and I hope with the release of the game the annoying delay will go away and I'll be able to play at 100%. As far as that goes I am trying to gather new replays but it's decently hard because I still suck really hard at this new game and I wouldnt like to have replays of me out there in which I am super bad.
~Myu


26.12.2012

Where is the magic?

Despite the fact that I am way too old to believe in Santa Claus I still wish that he existed sometimes or at least that I could enjoy Christmas as I used to as a little boy. Eventhough nothing really changed in terms of the timings (my family comes to our house and we eat etc) it just doesn't feel really special anymore and I am not quite sure whether that's just normal when becoming older or if it's my fault by playing so much Starcraft. Time is literally flying by whilest playing Starcraft and the fact that I actually try to improve sometimes backfires in real life because I deny booze or other kinds of  fun things in order to be capable of playing serious Starcraft later that day. Sometimes I am a bit worried that I might over do this Starcraft thing but on the other hand I just love this game and the idea of becoming a professional that I can't stop now, not unless I know that there is a wall that I can't pass no matter what I do but let's see what is going to happen in 2013.
Okay, let's get all of this apocalyptical writing out of the way and let's take a look at what I got out of Christmas, 'cause the last remaining magical thing about that day for me is getting PRESENTS (yaaay). Steelseries still did not message me about my repaired keyboard and I couldn't wait any longer so I bought myself a Filco Majestouch 2 Ninja Tenkeyless with Cherry MX Reds (click) and I enjoy the fuck out of that keyboard. Next to that I got a bunch of clothes and money but that's not as exciting as my Filco is.
In the end I just hope your Chirstmas was a bit merrier (not like mine was crap, I still enjoyed it but it was just like any other day *sad smiley*) than mine was. I think the actual Chirstmasmagic will be renewed when I can give presents to my children, so I'll wait up until then.
(wow that sounded really sad)
P.S: Santa Myu brought you some replays, just click the "Hot Replay" button and enjoy

16.12.2012

A quick christmas write up...

on what happened to me in most recent times. 
Ever since my last real post about how much I dislike the current metagame of Zerg I ran out of ideas on what to write on so I simply didn't and now I feel like I have to inform you guys about my recent activities because I have - by no means - letting the lazyness get the better of me. I've been playing alot in order to reach a new peak in my play and with joining my3D my motivation got renewed. My teammates are nice, the leaders ambitious and the atmosphere is great. It's the perfect envirorment for improvement and I am doing that majorly at the moment. I feel like I am playing better than ever before. I have a huge viarity in my builds by practicing an unreal amount with my Z and T mates, my mechanics are getting on a good level again and in addition to that the holidays are right around the corner, giving me the opportunity to do a massive amount of laddergames.

The next big thing that happened to me besides me joining awesome my3D is my Steelseries 6GV2 with Cherry MX Blacks giving up on me. I don't know why and how it happened but some keys just stopped working. I was playing Dota, then I switched over to Starcraft and the number "2", which I used as a hotkey in Dota, suddenly gave up on me and no matter what I'd do I couldn't figure out how to fix it. I also plugged the board into my Laptop with and without PS2, still, no response. That lead me into sending it back to the Steelseries warehouse in Denmark and researching about a possible replacements. I came up with a bunch of keyboards including the Filco Majestouch2, a Leopold Tenkeyless Keyboard or the Zowie Celeritas. All of them equipped with either Cherry MX Red or Brown switches and as soon as I get confirmation about me getting a new 6GV2 or not I'll get myself a christmas keyboard.

In case of me not getting my 6GV2 returned I'll also make a post about creating Cherry MX Ghettored switches because they'll send back the keyboard as it is, if the mistakes was done by me, leaving me with linear topheads and the springs of the MX Browns which are basicaly MX Red springs but we will see what Steelseries decides to do.

Next up, a short update about my life. I am approaching my 18th birthday and I will ultimately turn 18 at the 01/06/13 and the end of school is enivitable leaving me with the big question of WHAT TO DO?
The answer for what to do has not been found up until now but I will probably write about it when I feel like I've found THE THING to do.
In the end I'd like to thank you for sticking around for over a year now and following my progress from a low platinum player to a developed Starcraft player and person aswell.
That's it for the little update. Check out my replays and I'll keep you up to date in terms of what I am doing after school. Maybe I'll continue Starcraft for a while, perhaps even fulltime if I reach a certain level up until then and wether I enjoy HoTs or not.
~Myu

30.11.2012

Yet another team?

I don't know if anyone is still left over (due to the huge amount of time since I posted) but for those who still stick around and take a look once in a while, I am going to join 3D-Gaming (which would make me MYƎDǂMyu).
It's an eSport clan founded in 2002 and it's ceo is german. The main part of the team though, is a mixture out of random europeans. It's strenght lies in their CS-Team therefore equiping them with some jammy sponsors and sick teamshirts.
I am really happy to be granted this opportunity. Check their site out aswell.
3D-Gaming.org

20.10.2012

Broodlords huh..?

Yup - the flying siege unit that deals twenty burstdamage for each "Broodling" that is being thrown towards each and everything your opponents obtains plus the provoked splash damage and movement disability.
Yup - the backbone of every single zergs lategame if they are not wanting to lose games on purpose.
Yup - the only unit enabling zerg to stand toe to toe with mech and protoss deathballs.
Yup - that unit that totally destroys the game.
What what what? Broodlords destroying the game? Coming from a Zergs perspective? 
Sadly, Yup (but that's not the only thing being f*ed up) ...


(yaay - so much viarity)
Ever since the Patch increasing the range of the Queens attack got released Zergs realized that they are actually equiped with a fairly (cough) strong lategame because the patch made it actually reachable for the majority of us. So the general plan is it to wait out our opponents and survive their relentless attacks because it does not really matter how you reach the deadly combination it's just important to reach it.
Even if you lost a leg and an arm (refering to bases and tech structures) while trying to escape the whiteshark from the movie "Yaws" as long as you are able to crawl yourself onto the island of endless happyness you are fine, oh yeah, really fine. This is HOW fine you are in terms of money (sortof, slivko, PiG, johnnyrecco, LoweLy).
Anyone ever heard anything about those guys before the malicious patch appeared? I guess not. These are so called "Patch Zergs". A "Patch Zerg" is someone who suddenly - out of no where - got an increase of skill since the patch came out and actually started to win alot of money. Undeserved money.
Don't get me wrong these guys are still alot better than I am in most regards yet this is pathetic and it is ruining the competition, my motivation and - most importantly - the general understanding of "Skill".


What I mean by that?
Well, there once was a time where you had to severly outplay your opponent in alot of ways to win a game. Two parties were facing each others and the one with the greater multitasking, decisionmaking, micro, mapawareness and skill would win. Players like DRG or NesTea were lightyears ahead of everyone else in this term and made a huge name for themselves. Now with the patch Zerg basically starts with 100 creeptumors by default. It's not a big deal to spread creep anymore, and there is almost no difference between a GSL creepspread and the creepspread of a european Grandmaster. This has been taking away an entire skillset that yet had to be discovered. Zerg was told to be the race with the highest skillcap with relentless injection timings, hard to spread creep and a squishy army that needed to be used in a certain way in order to succeed. If you are not capable of keeping your Muta, Ling, Bling army busy you are basically out of the game. It was more cut throat. There is almost no ultra amazing micro that is being utilized in proffessional Starcraft anymore like there was in the beginning of it. Here is an example (Super 15 micro of "old times")
You could argue that the metagame wasn't developed to the state it is in as of today, and sure, it's true. The meta game was SHIT but this switch of metagame has not been done by the players themselves, it's intended by Blizzard. They want the game to be macro dependent and sure, it's a good thing but there are literally no possibilities to punish anything anymore and if you do so it's mostly luck based.
(easily defended timing)
An example for this is a banelingbust against Protoss. It works as long as your opponent either tries to do a Zealot two Stalker harras on your  third or he fails with his Sentries pulling them back to kill the so called "Retardmagnet" (Overlord bating Sentries into the Protoss base) so you are basing your allin on a percentage that has a fairly low chance of winning you the game. This leaves us with no particular timings to prevent any greed in Starcraft2. Neither for Protoss nor for Terran.



What does this lead us to?
An anticlimactic game in not only ZvT and ZvP but also in TvP and PvP. In the opening minutes of the game alot of micro is being thrown out. Protoss puts up Forcefields, Blinkmicros back his Stalkers, does alot of target firing - Terran splits Marines, Stuttersteps, Drops alot, focusfire with Tanks - Zerg Micros Zerglings, Runbys, Surrounds, Flanks, dualpronged Harras - all in all the early to mid game is actionpacked and enjoyable to play and watch. As soon as you reach the lategamestage though the rate of micro requiered drops down RAPIDLY and it evolves into a boring game where both parties sit on their precious armies and harras from time to time. Protoss warping in Zealots is called "Multitasking" by casters which is a testament to the lategames boringness itself. - Wow, that dude warps in sh*t here and does nothing else in the maintime woooow -
(click to enlarge)
This waiting lasts for about as long as someone decides to not spend 50 minutes in a game and attacks. He either crushes his opponent  in no time by stealing the Mothership or getting a favorable engagement with Infested Terrans aswell as Neural or is getting crushed  in no time by engaging badly. This is not how it's supposed to be in a professional eSport game.


Let's just take a look at Dota2.
I already wrote about how much better the UI is and how much more inviting the game is in terms of the Leveling system - that gives you goodies and skins - at the same time is not a necessity still giving you a drive to play more and more. This is not part of the arguement I just wanted to give a little sidenote. What I am trying to do show with the comparison to Dota2 is to compare the fights in Dota2 work. In Dota2 you see skirmishes that sometimes last for 5 minutes (GD B-Team vs Na'vi G1 Fight Starladder). There is no Oneshotting, Fungals or Vortexing that instantly wins an engagement. Fights are drawn out and almost all the time this attribute carries on into the lategame.
(Dota2 fight)
Another totally different fact about Dota2 is the fact that the earlygame has a significant impact on the Lategame. If you start off in Dota with your Carry picking up easy Kills the advantage carries on into the engagements later in the game. The early game MATTERS.
This does not apply to the lategame of Starcraft 2. It's like you are playing a DIFFERENT game as soon as you reach the lategame. You opened up with a 6 Pool and you microed like a boss? Being ahead through out entire mid game?
Well.  A Vortex can change EVERYTHING.
It's not like it shouldn't be possible to turn around fights. You can turn around games in Dota2 too but you'll be needing to pull off some incredibly skilled moves and therefore outplaying the opponents team by alot not just by hitting a lucky ass Vortex or failing to Spread your Broodlords to prevent Seeker Missiles to hit you.
An example for this is "The Play" made by Natus Vincere destroying invictus Gaming in TI2 ("The Play"). You can SEE how the crowd is going INSANE because they know that 99% of the worlds team would've straight out died against a gank like this but Na'vi did not. They hit all of their abilities correct with the Rubick stealing Ravage and the perfect Blackhole by the Enigma. It's just a delight to see. 
Let's just compare this to a Starcraf2 Lategame with NO EXCITEMENT whatsoever because everyone can use Fungals and Spread or use Vortex there is not even a potential depth in the Lategame.
The lack of micro being requiered in lategame almost denies any possibility to do literally "outplay" your opponents. No matter from what angle you look uppon the Lategame - it's being unfair.
Broodlords - Unfair, Vortex - Unfair, Thor Splash and Seekermissile - Unfair and all of them are not fun to use nor to watch on stream.

So what has to happen to improve the game?
(thanks inviszerg on reddit for the graph)
Starcraft II developers will be having to aim to a steady or maybe even EXPONENTIAL GRAPH!
Once again I'll be needing the comparison to Dota. Early fights consist of throwing some stuns and maybe use the right mouse button to autoattack but the later the game goes the more Items you get and the more Abilities you and your opponents get so you need to think quicker and also react quicker. Use a "Forcestaff" (an Item that pushes a targeted hero in the direction in that it's looking) to push a targeted hero out of the dangerzone, disable the heavy hitter with a "Sheepstick", heal your team with a "Mekanism" in an AOE-radius aswell as giving out mana with "Arcane Boots". I could even further elaborate on that but it already shows the diversity for Dota and Starcraft because it's pretty much exactly the other way around.

How are we going to achieve this type of change in terms of microusage?
I am not entirely sure about how far the units are allowed to be deviated because Wings of Liberty is already pretty much figured out and that will probably be up to Heart of the Swarm to fix it. I have the opinion that there should not be alot of new 1 - A units being thrown into the pool of Starcraft Units. They should rather put in more Spellcasters. Another possibility would be to increase the Supplycount of the Broodlords at the same time making them faster(movement speed) or give them any other possibility so you can actually USE them instead of just MAKE them and AMOVE them. Same goes for the Protoss Deathball which is not USED it's just MADE and A-Clicked. These are fundamentals that are having to be adressed in HOTS and Blizzard announced that they are trying to restructure Protoss in order to use more Gateway Units and Zerg still is kinda messed up with now having two micro denial Units. Terran, well, nothing changed (yet).

So what do I end this post with?
I am just hoping that Blizzard is taking some of the recent criticism by heart in order to fix the problems with the game at the moment. The gameplay itself has not been that criticised but I wanted to elaborate on that because it is making me mad to play a boring lategame because it forces me to end the games in the midstages. Even watching Tournaments is boring as f*ck for reasons like Broodlords, Infestors playing against Mothership, Archon is not intense nor it is that skill dependend. It does not really matter if DRG or JulyZerg or even Nerchio controlls those Broodlords because there is no Nextlevel Micro or Unitcontrol that really seperates the Pros from the Bonjwas like Mutamicro in BW did.
In the end I am just a guy that loves Starcraft II alot and seeing this decay of the game just makes me sad. I just want a nice actionpacked, skillbased game to watch, play, enjoy and live the game the way I did the time Muta Ling Bling vs Terran and Hydra Roach were viable.
Seeing these facts together with a Battle.net that actually acts like a social network (close to what steam does) would make me a really happy nerd.

20.09.2012

2012 Season 3 wrap up?

Naaaaaaaaaah...
As you may or may not know the 2012 Season 4 is already a week old and I normaly do the wrap ups days before the new Season. I wanted to do one but I figured that the results of the Season are not that accurate. Sure I win TvZ lose ZvP and have 50/50 ZvZ but I had huge drops and also increases of skill during this Season (S32012) due to the unsteady practice.
If you followed my blog you should've reaslized that I was knocked out for the majority of the time. The Season started with the start of the summer holidays in germany so I was playing alot in the first two weeks making ~150 games in this limited amount of time with my friend because I knew about the upcoming time.
The struggle started with being in Spain (struggle manely focused on SCII practice ^_^) because I was disabled for one and a half week already. If you ever tried to get good at Starcraft you'll know how much a week of not practicing hurts you.
I arrived back home being sick with fever and a burning throat denying my practice for an additional week. If we add that together we are already at a two and a half week break which is huge already but it's not a biggy because it's still almost two weeks to play right? NO
(inconsistency at it's best click to enlarge)
I had tooth surgery where they had to remove some wires to support my gum and prevent my tooth from falling out of my mouth by the age of 40 something.
We are at 3 weeks of forced 'Starcraft Vacation'.
So we are in the first week of school and I was all about organizing the new semester. I played but it's not enough to make up for the 3 weeks. Next week I cought the chickenpox disabeling me even longer.
We are looking break of 5 weeks. The following week I had to recover schoolwise and catch up with the missed subjects. 6th week.
7th week I spend in Rome where I destroyed my Laptop too.
So we are looking at a 7 week disability to get in proper practice in.
Somehow I still managed to improve alot and win 1.6k people and end up with 1.1k with a 500 bonuspool. Still I think it was all a bit goofy and unorganized but hey - It's summer what are you supposed to do ;)?
I am trying hard to reach my old form and play alot better this upcoming Season and post some results.
Though it is a double edged sword I am really looking forward to the winter so I can play alot more consistant and hit a Grandmaster level niveau because that's my next target to achieve. Beating a Grandmaster.