Cool, good luck and let us know how it goes!

LAN results: I lost in the first round, as expected. It was super exciting, my opponent commented between games his heart was racing and he needed a moment to calm down. I felt it too, it was just so fun to be competing in a live tournament!

I had a good chance -- the brackets seemed to be random, and I had one of the very few platinum vs platinum matches, almost all 64 players were diamond. Here are the replays and a short description:

Game 1 http://replayfu.com/r/LLT7bv on Xelnaga Caverns.
I went marine/marauder and an early expand. I got a great scan and saw his banshee build, so I was prepared and it did very little damage. I took the gold as my 3rd and then I decided to suicide my army a couple times (hehe), all the while assuming I was ahead because I had 3 bases including gold, but actually he had taken the non-gold 3rd, which I never bothered to scout

Game 2 http://replayfu.com/r/vW5S7h on Steppes of War
Similar start, me going marine/marauder and him going banshees, but this time I didn't scout it and it did more damage. Still I held it off and I had my 2nd up faster. I built some tanks this time and my first push almost killed his natural, but I was left with only marauders/tanks after the battle and he still had a banshee taking potshots as I retreated.
My macro really slipped so I made two CCs and a bunch of production buildings, but before they got up he brought a huge army and killed me.

I've never been to a go tournament where you can get knocked out. What was it like to suddenly have no more tournament games to play? What did you get up to for the rest of the day?

They casted games so I turned into a spectator. Also they had some consoles so people would play Street Fighter 4, some FPS games, etc etc. They held some game related trivia contests, interviewed ZpuX and EGStrifeCro (this was after round 1, turns out they ended up playing in the finals!).

Also there were a couple people I know from Go there, so we played a few games.

Some people played more impromptu SC2 games, I had someone show me how to play SOTUS, which I decided was very boring

Hey we should hold our very own Swiss tournament! Like Tooveli mentioned most Go tournaments you don't get eliminated, so this would add our own flavor to the event. I could organize something on the NA server, say December 11 during US daytime. Anyone interested?

This is strongly tempting... I would be SOLIDLY last... Hmm.

_________________
Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

I'll compete for last place with you...

Sounds like fun. I would definitely be interested. Since there is such a wide range of skill among us, maybe we could use small handicaps (large handicaps could be game-breaking, I fear). For example, the stronger player has to play at 90% if he is two leagues higher, or 80% if he is Diamond vs Bronze. Just a thought.

By the way, for those who don't know (I actually had to look it up just now), the handicap affects your units' HP.

Didn't even know there were handicaps. That's cool.

On another note:

Had a zerg player complain today that Protoss 'should be limited on the number of gates' they could have. Apparently, he felt my 1 robo 8 gate constituted an 'auto win' in spite of the fact that he wiped my army a couple times before I got fully up and rolling.

I've noticed this tendancy to claim that protoss are overpowered, and that zerg are underpowered, but the last two GSL opens have been won by zerg, and terrans and zerg have dominated the higher rounds of the tournaments I've seen. Am I missing something? Where is this 'overpowered' status, if it doesn't win tourneys or, you know, games?

Since the Roach Upgrade, I've had a very tough time beating off good roach micro, and a zerg airforce can chew through my resource production faster than I can blink stalkers in to stop them, and eat my phoenixes for breakfast. I've decided the Phoenix is the worlds least useful air to air unit against anything but terrans.

Whatever you beat him with is OP, and whatever he is using is UP.

How ironic that a Zerg player would say that. Zerg has to build maybe one extra Hatchery and he can make as many units at once as he wants! Anyway, don't worry, Protoss is not OP; yoyoma said it right. Many times now, when I win with only Gateway units (and sometimes even if an Immortal or two is in the mix), they will say something like "wow nice 4gate". Oh yeah, sorry for using my race's immediately available, all-purpose units. Some people just think anything that beats them is cheap.Against Roaches, I'd recommend lots o' forcefields. With the Roach's range being low, it should be relatively easy to force back many of them so they can't attack. Only use Guardian Shield against them if you have energy left over after the FFs, and even then... meh (they do 16 dmg per attack, so 2 armor is less significant than usual). Consider getting your Sentries as early as possible so their energy can build up.

As for Phoenixes, they are extremely efficient against Mutalisks. Obviously you don't want to fly two Phoenixes after a dozen Mutas, but you could probably do well to send five or six. Play around in a unit testing map (I use this one) to get a feel for it. Try to keep your Phoenixes bunched up and dart in and out of range of the Mutas (you outrange them 4 to 3, and you can move and fire at the same time). That said, I'd recommend practicing dealing with them using only Stalkers (yes, Blink helps a lot) and Sentries. Mutas are just plain inefficient against pretty much anything that can hit air; what makes them good is their mobility, for which the biggest counter is map awareness and unit positioning. A common fallacy of Starcraft strategy is that you always have to get the unit that counters your opponent's units.

The irony was not lost on me. More than once, I've been simply outmassed by a zerg swarm (Sheesh, you can make a lot of zerglings and mutas.)


You know, I've never really tried forcefielding the roaches back. I really need to work on my sentry micro, since I've uh.. never been able to use forcefields very effectively (except in penning people on my ramp, and that's easy.)

I've taken to leaving 3-4 stalkers hanging out at any base in the early-mid game just as a 'if the banshee comes around I'll know it' unit. Also, I recently realized, Stalkers are protoss' answer to about 75% of the game. Roaches? Stalkers. Hydralisks? Stalkers. Mutalisks? Stalkers with blink. Battlecruisers? LOTS of stalkers. Banshees? Stalkers and an observer. Marauders? More stalkers. Stalkers? Upgraded stalkers!

I'm a big advocate of mixed forced (And I love charge zealots. They're mean) but about 50-75% of my unit production goes to as many stalkers as I can find gas for.

I just don't find that against other units that can hit air, the phoenix has enough life to really justify building it vs, say, a void ray. Maybe phoenixes need more micro than I'm giving them though. I'm about the worst micro on earth, I have a massive APM of about 30-50 average on my best games. If I'm really focusing, I can pull some good kiting/selective killing with my stalkers, but, really, I just depend on macro to win me games.

I really should work on training my micro more. Is that what the unit tester maps are for?

In case anyone in North America is interested, GosuCoaching is running a big open single elimination tournament tonight, with only 216/512 signups so far. I just signed up, and it will be my first ever SC2 tournament. I fully expect to lose in the first round, but it should be fun anyway.

EDIT: I did indeed lose in the first round (to a similarly ranked Zerg player), but it was a pretty good game. (Here's the replay.) Very standard stuff. I opened 3gate Robo, he went heavy Roach. At the end, he had five bases and I was only trying to get up my third, which is ultimately what spelled my defeat, I think. Hardly any of my ladder games make it past 15 minutes or so, so I don't have much of a feel for the late game.

yoyoma (EDIT oops, I mean CSamurai): Don't stress too much about micro. The unit AI does a good job by itself, and you have to get pretty good at micro to avoid actually hurting yourself. One thing I discovered with that unit testing map is that, if a unit is firing, it is very costly to issue it a move order to get in a better position or target a specific unit. So yeah, you're right to focus more on macro. I view micro as something that can give you that extra edge once you hit a wall with improving the more fundamental skills.

I think you meant that last bit for me.

PTR for patch 1.2.0 is out!
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/1213111662

You can create chat channels, I made one called simply "L19", if you're on the PTR server join me! Experience the amazingness that is chat channels in 2010!

Lots of major new features in that patch. And as a Protoss, I am quite pleased with the balance changes, mwahaha. Here are all my thoughts on the matter.

Apparently the problem was in late-game PvZ where once Protoss got a fleet of VRs with Flux upgrade it was considered too powerful. This was brought to attention by CatZ, a high-level Zerg player from ROOT, who discussed it with Blizzard SC2 developer David Kim/dayvie, who then brought it to the balancing team.

As for my own view of the patch, I think it's great minus the Fungal nerf. They should at least buff NP then. I can already hear the crying..."Phoenixes are OP".

Repairing SCVs now assume the same threat priority as the unit they’re repairing.

Wow. That's so great I don't even know what to say. Thank you SC2 dev team. My micro was not up to removing the repairing SCVs for a thor rush.

Maybe I'll be able to beat some terrans some time soon.

Probably not though. Haven't won a positive number of games all week.

Just played the biggest comeback game...I'll leave a screenshot of just how bad of a pinch I was in: http://imgur.com/Uf0Xy.jpg

I guess it's like tsumego...Protoss to live .

You won that?! I can't think of any way to stop those Roaches from walking up into your main and killing everything there. Replay or it didn't happen!

Interesting SimCity by the way. I like how protected the cannon in back is. What type of hole is that into the nat? Can Stalkers fit through that?