Friday 24 June 2011

Bunker rush

Promoted to gold!

It was fitting, I think, that I got promoted after a TvZ, since my games against zerg have been what's been holding me back - I have a 80%+ winrate against protoss, about 50% against terran, but only maybe 20% against zerg.

I opened the way I always do - 2rax fast expand with no gas, then looking to get 2 more rax, 2 factories, then eventually going marine-tank-medivac. What normally happens is that I wait too late to push, let the zerg swarm power up, get delayed by a huge muta ball, and lose eventually to banelings and speedlings.

This time I decided to try a bunker contain and to be hyper aggressive to prevent myself getting crushed, so pushed out when I had 3 marines, rallying more marines to the zerg natural. I managed to get the bunker down and took out about 7 drones plus the queen at the natural before my first squad of marines died. I had promised myself that I would pressure constantly, so waited until I had about 8 more marines, dropped 2 bunkers outside of his vision but near the natural, then danced back and forth in and out of the bunkers, eventually taking out the hatchery at the natural, a bunch of overlords, another queen, and pushing into his main.

He eventually killed those marines, but I'd been macroing behind the push and came back with a siege tank and siegemode done and some more marines and the zerg player gave up.

Curse was down last night but I'll link a replay here when I get the chance later.

In general I'm very happy with the way the game went. I need to work on my multitasking - macroing at the same time as pressuring will be a good skill. Eventually I'll need to learn to take on zerg in the late game, but even then I'll need to pressure the zerg to stop him droning up and crushing me with his macro.

Thursday 23 June 2011

Update, and my TvP build

OK, so it's been a while. I'm now in high silver and pushing for promotion into gold. Of the three matchups, the only one I feel comfortable with is TvP - I almost always beat mid to high gold players in TvP and have beaten a platinum ranked protoss.

My strategy is heavy bio with ghosts for EMP and a few medivacs and vikings mixed in. I do a fast expand build, usually a 2 rax, as follows

10 - Depot
12 - Barracks
14 - Barracks
16 - Orbital
17 - Depot

Keep making marines. Scout around for an early proxy pylon once you have about 5 marines. Drop a CC on about 23 or 24 supply, then add 2 more barracks and 2 refineries get stim.

Put 2 bunkers by the natural asap, which should be enough to defend a 4-gate if you scout one.

Eventually I get 6 barracks, 2 with reactors and 4 with tech labs, plus ghosts. I push out when my first ghost is done, during time which I add a factory and a third base, looking to get a reactor starport and an armory. The idea is that the ghost EMP plus stim should be enough to do serious damage with the first attack.

I just love the power and robustness of a heavy bio army with medivac support, and ghost EMP is a really cool ability to mix in. I would love to be able to make bio work in the other two matchups, because there I am really struggling to make any kind of impression.