SC2 Withdrawal !

Hey guys I've left to my cabin for four days or so. All I can say is I'm going into Starcraft 2 withdrawal. This is nothing to laugh at it is very serious. I am at a library right now 'cause I'm out of town and I looked through the programs. It has....
No starcraft 2...
What should I do???? Please help!

i am SO sorry guys :'(. PvP match!

The starcraft 2 ladder has been up for a few days now. So I logged in and played my first game. This is how it went:

First off it is a Protoss vs Protoss match vs a master league player. I am the red protoss, and he is the blue protoss. Sorry about the chat in the pictures guys I'm just talking with a good friend of mine who just made masters in the new ladder after his first match.

As you can see here I scouted his second gas. This means he is highly unlikely to be aggressive early in the game, and he is teching up.

Here I killed his early-game scouting probe before it could even get in my base. Now he has no idea what I'm doing except that I obviously have a stalker so I've made a gate, cybercore, and 1-2 vespene gas assimilators.

Knowing he went for a 2 gas build order, I felt free to take my own gas without feeling scared of an early attack. So I went ahead and teched up myself and got a twilight council and dark shrine to build invisible assassins called dark templar. As you can see I also build a forge and a cannon (on the right) to protect myself from invisible dark templars of my opponent in case he went for the same tech path as me. You really have to be careful because dark templar can one-shot workers and pretty soon your whole economy is destroyed and you lose.

With his extra gas, he went robo tech and chrono-boosted out two immortals before getting any colossi out. Clearly he was fearful of an early attack because he never got into my base. Most protoss players when playing another protoss will try to end the game early with an extremely powerful four warp-gate push, having only taken one gas. Taking only one gas allows you to save a ton more minerals to spend on zealots, which are really hard to deal with early on. Little did he know I was just teching myself.

Unforunately since I went for dark templar this game and he went robo, he was able to get an observer out to detect my dark templar before they were able to get into his base. You can see them under attack right now, so I was forced to retreat. At this point in the game he had a decisive lead as I wasted money on expensive dark templar that did no damage.

I figured I might be able to win if I do an extremely powerful timing attack. So I used my forge to get a ground weapons damage upgrade, and got upgraded charge for my zealots. I morphed my dark templar into archons and moved out for an attack.

I completely PWNED his army here except for 1 colossi was left on the high ground. At this point he was pretty much done for.

It was his last desperate attempt to micro his colossus to try to win somehow... But it failed and it died.

                                                                  He left the game.
What basically happened in that game is he committed too much to immortals because he was expecting an early attack. They are great vs stalkers but horrible vs my zealot archon composition. Had he stayed at his ramp the game might have went a bit differently. If I had been in his position I would have scouted with a stalker and ran away and camped at my ramp until I chronoboosted three colossi out, then I would have attacked. Colossi are great vs my composition because they do terrible splash damage to zealots. He transitioned to colossi but it was pretty slow. In my opinion it was a bit of a waste of him to get the colossi range out so quickly because it really lowered his colossi count because he couldn't afford both the gas for the upgrade and the robo bay tech, and also get several colossi out. Most people after going robo and deflecting my dark templar like that will try to get an expansion up which is always very dangerous in pvp, and try to get more colossi out. I try to take advantage of when they try to expand like that with this timing attack with +1 chargelots and archons.

Sadly as you can see here I was placed in diamond league again and I am only rank 69 right now. I wish I got a screenshot of where it said I was diamond again :(. It's just so sad, you would think after beating a master league player like that you might get promoted but I guess not. I mean almost all the games I've played lately vs master league players I have won.

I'm very happy though that a good friend of mine made it into masters league though. I've been practicing quite a bit with him. He said he was struggling a lot in PvP (He is a protoss player like me, and this was a while back). So I taught him the zealot archon build I learned from Artosis' stream on teamliquid.net, and now he says he almost never loses against protoss lol. Maybe that is partly what helped him reach masters. It's weird though because I beat him like 8/10 games I play vs him yet he is in master league and I'm not... I'm not jealous though I'm totally happy for him, I know my time will come some day!~

I've played some interesting matches lately too. I hope to share about them with you guys especially my game vs a zerg who went mutas, as that is proving to be my starcraft 2 weakness lately and it is very annoying to deal with.

BONUS BLIZZARD FAN ART FOR YOU GUYS WHO LIKED THE LAST ONE! IF NOT COVER YOUR EYES PLEASE!! :-D

Only 6 hours or so 'til the new ladder season begins!!!! +Blizzard fan art!

Unfortunately I can't stay up until 5am for the ladder to reset because I have to work in the morning saving precious lives as a lifeguard and teaching kids how to swim. Then when I get home I just have to play one game and I will find out what league I'm in!

Anyways I was looking through Starcraft 2 fan art today and some of it is pretty intense!
Check this out! I'll probably add some more fan art randomly as I go along with my posts just to spice things up! (I think I'm allowed to do this?)

By the way guys I was thinking about putting a song up on my blog that plays but can be easily turned off. What are your thoughts guys, would you like that or no? Also if anyone knows how please let me know.

Starcraft 2 MASTER league here I come??

(By the way I wanted to mention, in the picture above, the guy ahead of me named "HuK" who is a famous player but not really because he is an imitation, is hacking or something because in every one of his games he gathers 0 resources, makes 0 army units and manages to win somehow.. As you can see he has 2000 some points, and is the 2nd highest ranked diamond player in north america. He has won 56 or so matches in a row, something that is unheard of in starcraft 2.)

Only two days left until the ladder resets! All I can say is I can't wait to find out if I made it into master league yet! The ladder has been locked for a while, so you can't get promoted to a higher league.
There are 7 starcraft 2 leagues: Bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, master, and grandmaster. Only the top 2% of players will be promoted to Master league. The problem is in order to get promoted to master league, you have to be better than (have a higher MMR than) 50% of master league players. Right now when I hit the search button for a quickmatch in the ladder, I sometimes go up against masters players. Other times I will get high ranked diamond players. Technically the high ranked diamond players are better than the lower end of the master league, so that means I'm getting close.
Wish me luck!

Here is a bonus screenshot of me winning a free for all against 7 AI. I hope to show it more in a later post. It sounds easy but its pretty difficult because the AI cheat by gaining extra resources. And they always want to attack me with maxed armies of ultralisks, banelings and hydras, which were melted by my tanks and thors. You get an achievement for winning this. I already had the achievement I just felt like doing it again for some reason. =D

Okay I couldn't resist so I took some more screenshots of me demolishing 7 zergs with my crazy mech army:

All this reminds me of Starcraft 1 where I used to do 1v7AI. Not free for all, all vs me. It was very difficult but possible. Ah how I love starcraft 2.

Epic Protoss vs Zerg Fail

Okay so I played my first starcraft 2 ladder game today. Complete fail!
As you can see in the picture to the right, I opened with a 3 gate expand and went very sentry heavy. This allows me to spend my gas on getting some sentries out to help defend early zerg rushes, and spend my minerals on a very fast expansion to boost my economy up early on.

I then began to wall off the entrance to my natural expansion with some pylons, a fourth warpgate, and a forge. The forge also allows me to get some photon cannons up in the perfect position behind my buildings to help in defense in case of a roach-ling all-in push.

I made a hallucinated phoenix with one of my sentries to fly to the zerg base to try to scout out what tech route he was going. You can also see my robotics facility finished and I got an observer out to detect burrowed zerg units, and creep tumors. Most zerg players tend to go for roaches so I've started my way towards colossi tech, and immortals. I also have my level 1 ground weapons half way completed at my forge.

I made it into his base with the hallucinated phoenix to see a ton of speedlings, and a roach warren, so I knew continuing to make immortals and colossi should be effective.

He ran into my base with a ton of lings, and almost sniped my colossus. Thankfully I ran him into the valley where he would be safe. Phew! He lost a lot of lings there for almost nothing.

Like an absolute idiot, I ran my colossus back up onto the high ground just for it to run straight to the lings and die. Fail #1.

My opponent made a massive attack with roaches and infestors. As you can see, a ton of his roaches are caught in a forcefield prison, and are certainly about to die.

As you can see, that is all that is left of his army. It is almost all completely roasted. If you look to the left you can see one of his infestors is exploding violently in red goo. You would think I had won at this point and just needed to attack, right? Let's see what I did.

I decided to pull back, expand again, and macro up an even larger army with templar and hopefully archons, which isn't too bad of a decision..

I totally had every unit of my army hotkeyed to 1.. I tried to forcefield, but templar were in my army so I didn't have my sentries selected as a caster unit. I didn't even have storm researched for my templar, or have any archons. I didn't even use my high templar for feedback so they were useless, and I just kind of sat there with my colossi in the front to be easily mind-controlled by his infestors' neural parasite ability. And, as you can see, he just waltzed forward with his infestors and neural parasited every single one of my colossi until they were all attacking my stalkers.

I should have at least blinked my stalkers in to kill the infestors to get my colossi back, but I just blinked away to try to save at least my stalkers. Then my neural parasited colossi attacked eachother, along with his roaches until they all died.

As you guys can see I mess up a lot. My micro (control of my units) isn't very good, but I'm at least getting better at macro (getting a strong economy and making as many army units as possible). I'm trying to get into the master league, but the ladder system is currently locked until the 26th of July when the next season of Starcraft 2 ladder begins. Hopefully in the future I will play some games where I actually do something clever and win, but for now I'm satisfied with making fun of myself.

I miss Starcraft 1!! Don't you!?

I got the chance to play with an old friend of mine from my old clan in starcraft 1! Man it has been so long since I've played starcraft 1, but it is still an amazing game! I have played starcraft for so many years, yet it never gets boring.
Starcraft is the one game that never seems to get old. There are endless possibilities of strategies.
Not only that but through the map editor, the possibilities are endless. People have come up with so many amazing maps that have become almost games in themselves including sunken defense, evolves, fastest possible map, rpgs like Dragon Ball Z, you name it! And now with the release of Starcraft 2, the map editor is so powerful, a person can even make a first person shooter style game! Imagine that in an RTS! Basically anything you can think of is possible, you can make a game as in-depth as you like.
I personally love 1v1 in Starcraft. The strategies are endless, and the possibilities of what can happen in a game are limitless. I've played games where it came down to a base-race where each players' army is on the opponent's end of the map, trying desperately to illiminate every one of the opponent's buildings first.
One example of a strategy that is extremely effective in Starcraft 1 that have always found EXTREMELY annoying is when Zerg players (when against Protoss) will build a spore and two sunken colonies at each one of their bases. (Spore colonies and sunken colonies are zerg defense structures, one attacks ground, one attacks air and detects invisible units.)
Then they burrow a whole bunch of lurkers all spread out, which are invisible underground unless detected, and shoot out spikes in a line, dealing major splash damage to the enemy's units.

Here is an example of this set-up in a screen-shot (above).
What makes the strategy so annoying is even if you are winning by a long-shot in economy, army, technology, you name it, you just can't seem to kill their bases no matter how hard you try. Even if you bring in a massive army of zealots, archons, dragoons, and high templar, you can still get completely wiped out by only a small handful of lurkers and a spore colony. Whenever you try to bring an observer in to detect the lurkers in attempt to KILL the zerg's base it just keeps dying to the spore colony and then all your army runs in and dies almost instantly to the lurker's amazing splash damage. I've played games that have lasted hours against my Korean friend before he moved away, where he would just continually grab more and more bases, putting only a few defenses with a spore and some lurkers at each one and I would be pulling my hair out trying to kill him even if I doubled him in food count.
Anyways I have been playing fastest possible map with a good friend of mine, and man it's so hard to get used to needing like 30 gateways to spend your money, and when gateways take up half the screen it is EXTREMELY hard to find space compared to starcraft 2. We have been 3v3ing it with a girl who also plays SC1 and pwning some noobs who go for a 6 pool strat, and forget the pool. Always a fun time!

In the future I hope to share of my evolution of strategy in Starcraft 2 specifically just to show how I've learned from my mistakes in all matchups over the past year or so that Starcraft 2 has been released, and update strategies I'm trying and things I'm learning. And epic fails that I do with screen shots to show how badly I sucked! But it's always nice to go back to good old Starcraft 1 every once in a while just for kicks!

My first blog! I will be talking almost exclusively about 1vs1 play.

Hi everyone, I am a person, and I've decided to make a blog about my favorite hobby, Starcraft 2! If you have never heard of Starcraft or Starcraft 2 before, it is an RTS (real-time strategy) game.
It is an extremely fast-paced and competitive game that requires perfected strategies to be victorious at high levels. In fact it is so popular in South Korea that has basically become a sport, where there are teams who practice together, and then compete in tournaments. They have several channels where the top professional games are broadcasted. The most competitive and popular matches are 1 vs 1.
How the game works is, you are looking down on your base from an overhead perspective, and you start off with one building that produces workers. You use those workers to harvest 2 resources, first minerals and then vespene gas. You continue to produce as many workers as you can throughout the game in order to have a larger economy. Workers cost some minerals, but they soon pay for themselves. You then start building an army using the resources you have collected. The goal is to destroy every single one of your enemy's buildings. Once you have done that, you are victorious. Usually your army will clash with the opponent's army before you are able to freely destroy their structures. You cannot see what your opponent is doing unless you scout what they're doing with a unit of your own, or scan their base (a Terran ability).
There are 3 races in the game and 4 race options available before a match begins: Protoss, Terran, Zerg and Random--random meaning the computer will decide by random chance which race you will be the moment the game begins.
Each race has completely different buildings, workers, and army units available to them. All army units have different characteristics, ranging from being a melee fighter (zealot), to a unit that is able to fire from  a long distance and cause splash damage where multiple units are damaged within a small radius (tank). Some units are even capable of causing terrible, terrible damage to the opponent's army or base through psionic storms(a Protoss ability), or even calling down a nuclear missile(a Terran ability). Some units are extremely fast, others are extremely slow. Some units can become invisible (cloak) for a certain amount of time while they have energy, some are able to cloak perminately, requiring detection units from the opponent to be able to be seen or attacked.
Considering all the strengths and weaknesses that army units may have when facing dynamic units of the other race options, there are many strategic decisions that a player needs to be aware of. The way you play or the type of army units you may build as Terran against Protoss for example may be completely different from the way you might play against Zerg. This demands meticulous training and strategic planning from professional players against each race option. This is why most players don't choose Random, especially at the professional level of play because they will have to learn all 9 matchups vs every possibility of race option (pvsp pvsz pvst zvsz zvsp zvst tvst tvsp tvsz). Other times players will choose a race for themselves simply because it is their favorite to play, or easiest for them, or best suits their playstyle.
Top tier players will be so accustomed to each matchup, they will know exactly the order and timing to build each one of their buildings for each particular strategy they are doing. There can be much variation between strategies, including going for an aggressive strategy where you plan to attack very early, keeping your enemy on the backfoot, going for a technology focused strategy where you can gain a tech advantage over your opponent so you can kill his workers or defeat his army more easily, or you can go for an economy focused strategy where you defend until you have a great amount of money come in and can produce many more low tier army units.

Anyways I hope that gives you an idea of what Starcraft 2 is all about. In the future, I hope to update this regularly and include some screenshots of my gameplay, and some strategies, including build orders, timings, and just general tips.

starcraft 2 rocks!