I'll up the replay when I get home, although I didn't play very well that game despite the comeback :/. Basically I managed to fend it off by barely getting 2 VRs out in time, losing a good handful of probes and my ground army. Tbh, it wasn't me playing well that saved the game, but my opponent making huge decision mistakes (e.g: letting his roaches burn to death from fully charged VRs trying to do as much damage as possible in my base rather than retreating, letting his lair die to VRs without an overseer, allowing me to get DTs, etc.). And regarding the sim-city, it's something I'm still trying to get used; the BO in the game was 15 Nexus and I'm still trying to find the best positioning of buildings to place cannons near. I only 15 Nexus on maps like Scrap or Shakuras for PvZ.

I...
I'm a battle.net prude!
I don't know how it happened, or when, but seriously, when I see some of the names on battle.net that I'm playing against, the first thing I do is reach for the refer player button. And folks who open a game with cursing at me are going to get referred. I try to tell myself that I'm just trying to keep the game friendly and keep people from creating a hostile environment in the multiplayer.

But I feel like such a prude, and a bit of a hypocrit. IRL, I curse like a sailor. I've accidentally cursed out my team while wearing a headset on xbox live (I forgot to turn it off before the round ended, since it's my habit to curse mightily at the end of losing rounds.) My phone has had to learn profanties, because I ducking couldn't take the substitution. But..

I curse in the privacy of my personal conversations with friends. I curse in the privacy of my own head. I try not to curse to people I don't know, or in friendly competition. Is it so wrong for me to view people who open up by cursing me as harassment, given my own rather obscene private monologue?

Am I a battle.net prude? Are you? what would you do if someone opened up by cursing at you?

I am. I don't do anything about it, but I only type in perfect English (punctuation and all), and I stop talking anytime people are idiots. Let's face it, at decent chunk of battle.net seems to be idiots. If someone's gaming handle is chosen to be offensive to some racial, religious, or other group, then they annoy me, mildly at least. If people spend the whole time cursing, I roll my eyes. It's been happening a lot, so I get a bit annoyed at it.

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

If people use any kind of slur against you, you can definitely report them. Someone posted a letter from Blizzard on starcraft.reddit.com that issued a warning for using the word faggot. But if they just insult you with bad language, I'm not sure if Blizzard cares. It would probably have to escalate to the level of real harassment and not just trash talk in some way.

In any case, if you believe that someone is acting in a way that should not be allowed, go ahead and report them. That's what the command is there for.

If all else fails, at least you'll have more motivation to improve! I've played in Gold, Platinum and Diamond, and people are more civil the more skilled they are.

The game I was discussing earlier T__T: http://replayfu.com/r/S4DWfm

Well, I can't seem to get out of bronze, and I'm trying not to give myself an ulcer about it, so, I'm not looking for more reasons to improve.

GSL Spoiler:

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KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

GSL Spoiler

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KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

Indeed. I was surprised at first that he didn't notice. But then again, he's not the first high-level player I've seen make that mistake.

Do they release the replays for GSL games?

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KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

Unfortunately, no.

Another go-playing friend and I were playing our first 2v2 placement match, and it turned into a 40-minute game. A good example of 'I should have scouted better/at the right time', but it was really amusing to me. I'll post the replay here, in case ya'all would find it entertaining. I'm bronze league in every league I've placed, so don't expect high-level play. Not particularly looking for suggestions on this game, just thought I'd share. May post a replay for suggestions soonish, though.

http://replayfu.com/download/85k25c

Also, as an aside, I'm working on learning all three races, though I've only used protoss 'til now. I'm practicing with friends and getting zerg-pointers. Is there anything important and non-obvious that I may not know about those races? I DO know that creep tumors can spread themselves, which apparently people don't always know.

Edit: Also, is there any reason ravens aren't used more? Between PDD and auto-turrets, they seem rad, but I never see them used.

Edit Edit: Sorry to the few people I messaged conversationally last night. Much like I do on KGS sometimes, I forgot to check if they were in a game. If I ever do that to you, feel free to ignore me and win the game instead. =D

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

I play random semi-successfully, so some thoughts from that:

Usually you should look to expand with zerg more than your opponent. As in, you should probably have one more up and running base than your opponent at any given time. Also, don't be afraid of using banelings. I had an aversion to them when I started because when they 'splode you don't have an army anymore, but they're powerful, so use them.

Also, as a neat trick, you can spew larva with the queens using the minimap. So I usually do:

6 (my hotkey for all queens), hold shift, 'v', click on hatchery on minimap, click on other hatchery on minimap, click on third hatchery on minimap, etc. So long as there are queens near every hatchery, the closest queen will always do the spewing.

I'm failing with Terran in the higher ranks, so I prolly don't know what I'm doing with them. I will say that if you're feeling uncomfortable, a planetary fortress at your natural expansion will crush any sort of early mid game pressure (from ground anyway).

Then there are of course general strategies that apply to all races. Day9 is good for that. Basically:

1. Just like in go, attack in profit, instead of to kill outright. That means throwing down an expansion, or getting upgrades, etc. since you know your opponent is too busy with your attack to harass you.

2. Be sure to know when to retreat. It's better to lose 80% of your forces killing 90% of his forces and taking down an expansion than to lose 100% of your forces killing 91% of his forces and taking down an expansion

Other things like that. But those are the two big ones.



They're used in (much) higher level play sometimes. There's a replay somewhere that involved a guy building just about nothing but ravens. Spewed PDD and auto-turrets like a carpet over the map, and the opponent (Terran) got boxed in and died. I did ravens some when I was just starting for probe harass. If you have a starport with tech lab and the gas, go for it

Esp. in the bronze league, you should be able to win doing almost literally any combat unit, because your opponent isn't playing that well anyway. Find a silly idea and try playing games with it.

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1k KGS

Ah! (minor Eureka moment)



Whoah, do auto-turrets and PDD not go away? Or do they just last a good long while? I could test this tonight, but if you know off the top of your head, I'd appreciate it.

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

My gift to you: Liquipedia.

Yeah, it was for me too when I found out. You can actually macro up during a battle as long as you have 3 seconds to spare (or however long it takes you to do that) while still keeping eyes on your forces.


They last like 120 seconds or something insane. They (both I think) have energy that depletes fairly rapidly while actually firing, but 10 ravens spewing 4 auto turrets a piece for 0 minerals and 0 gas makes a wall that is VERY hard to break for Terran. Seige tanks take so long that by the time they're done your ravens have energy again.

As a note, I don't think you can auto turret on creep, so against Zerg this wouldn't work. Er, actually this is false according to that Liquipedia page. Auto-Turret away.

The only trick is to survive long enough to get that far

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1k KGS

Sorry to spam the thread, just good to talk games with friends. Yesterday, two friends and I tried something that seemed useful: two of us played against each other while the third watched. In cases where the observer was more experienced (like our local zerg/random expert watching while I played zerg), he gave pointers in party chat 'Don't forget to inject with your queen', 'Run your hellions into his main so you can scout it', and so on. When the observer is less experienced, we just watched build and stuff, and asked questions after. Do you guys do anything similar?

I know the best way to improve (especially at my level) is to play, but it's always fun to do stuff that involves teamwork/cooperation. Are there any other things (similar to the GTL, for example) that we can consider that might let us help each other?

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

There's a team liquid forum for game analysis, I think, but the few threads I've seen seem to be people saying "bluh, macro better" so not really very helpful.

For a proper review ladder, the only tricky thing is deciding on a format for game reviews. Go is nice because SGFs let you not only comment a position, but actually make branches and show some variations. For Starcraft a good format for reviews is a video recording of you talking and pausing and moving around in the game, but that's not something everyone can set up easily, and the files easily get huge if you have video and audio data.

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1k KGS