When The Universe Steps In: And slaps you with a fish.

Sometimes we get distracted from our goals. My goal is to improve my ladder play while steadily rising up the rankings and I got distracted. I have actually been distracted by a myriad of things.

Forges: Could they be living among you?!

So Patch 1.1 really isn't as terrible as I might have depicted. But what it is doing is forcing Protoss(not so much Terrans) to alter their game plan in order to continue their journey to universal domination. One theory floating around right now is that Cannon Rushes, VR Rushes, and Cannon Contains are going to be more popular than they were before. Yay.

Today I'm going to be reviewing one of my recent games where my opponent went Void Rays and how I dealt with it. Was it pretty? No. Did I do everything perfectly? Never. Do I see places where I can improve? Yes. And that's really the most important thing. So if you're interested, take a gander at my replay here.

Opening Strategies: Winning Starts Here

Don't 6pool.

Ok, now that that's out of the way, we can get on to playing like we expect the game to last longer than ten minutes. Wingweaver over at The Starcraft Noob recently wrote about practicing his early game over and over against the AI so he can get it down quick and effortlessly. There's a lot of sense in that idea, but what if you don't really have an opening strategy to practice? I know when I first started, I didn't.

6 Things I Constantly Forget

I've been spending some time watching replays, mostly because I'm frustrated with my inability to reliably win in Zerg vs Zerg. In this match up, for me at least, all good gameplay habits tend to go out the window and I start to panic as soon as I see the beady little eyes of the enemy zerglings coming to eat my face. Because that's what zerglings eat. My face. Moving on.

Nydus Network: Surfing the World Wide Worm

You can't get more Aliens than this.

Do you know what irks me? Protoss and their silly Warpgates. Do you know what else? Terrans and their Medivac drops of doom. These intermingled hatreds got me thinking about what Zerg has to compare to these particularly irksome tactics from our less slimy opponents and then it came to me. Nydus Worms.

Sure Warpgates and Medivacs are great, but nothing strikes panic in the hearts and confusion in the minds like the sound a Nydus Worm makes as it bursts forth through the crust of the ground and begins to belch out a horde of ravenous Zerg. Surprise attacks are so much fun and so effective, but once I started thinking about giant, upchucking slime subways I wondered if there were more uses to these gargantuan channels of the information super slimeway.

Burrow Play: Why Roaches Rule

When I was first starting in Starcraft II, I had a very loose idea of what the Zerg were. Having barely played the first game, I of course knew that Zerg were bugs on steroids and that they overwhelmed their opponents by sheer speed and numbers. The archetypical Zerg is the zergling, usually. It's what almost everyong thinks of first. Then, of course, they think of Hydralisks, Mutalisks, Brood Lords, Queens, etc. But does anyone's mind first think of Roaches?

TG Intel Starcraft II Open: Part 2

We are now entering Day 4 of the TG Intel Starcraft II Open(what a mouthful) and I have to say GOMtv has improved their offering every step of the way.

Everyone Loses

It's true. Everyone loses. Some more than others but eventually, they all do.

Anyone who's been around video games for any amount of time knows the highs and lows that come with playing. When you have a lot invested into the game in terms of practice time and the feeling of competition, emotions can run high both during the match and after it's over. At least, I know mine do.

TG-Intel Starcraft Open

So I gave in and forked over the $19.99 USD for a season pass to the TG-Intel Starcraft Open. I'm sure that this will be an educational experience for me as much as an entertaining one. In fact, I've already learned one thing: I don't speak Korean. As I type this, I'm watching the HQ stream of the pre-game show and everything is in Korean.

And then as I type this, the English kicks in. Awesome. So here's the details.

64 Players from all over the world squaring off for a crazy amount of money and this is, to my knowledge, the first official league and tournament held in Korea. Matches are going to be cast by Nick "Tasteless" Plott and Artosis, so you know they'll be entertaining and informative.

My plan for the most part is to watch the matches after they've been played, but I wanted to at least check out the first one live. It's just about to start so I'll let you know how it goes later on.

UPDATE: Well, GOMtv is off to a somewhat rocky start. Streaming and bandwidth problems are making the High Quality video choppy and the Standard Quality stream is currently overloaded. I'm hanging in there, confident that they'll get things together, but I might not be able to watch any matches today.

UPDATE #2: Things finally got stable enough to watch the SQ stream for the last match. Apparently problems with the connection from Korea to the States was causing all the issues, which I hope they manage to rectify before the next stream. A lot of people are upset, as often happens on the internet, but I think these rough roads will only get smoother. Plus, there's always the VoDs to review once they come out.

Operation Diamond: Step 1 Complete

Finally, after 150+ games, I have been promoted to Silver.

I guess there's not a lot of movement in this division, as I was plunked into a new one(only 79 members). Still, they started me at 9th, so that's a bit of a time saver. Or so I thought until I looked at the score board; the top 20 or so people were only a few points from each other. By the time I had changed from the Promotion screen to the ladder screen and then started a game, I was 14th.

It's too early to tell if the competition is much different, but I'll let you know what I find. In either case, Step 2 of Operation Diamond(nice name, eh?) has begun: push from Silver to Gold.

Top of the Heap: Where do I go from here?

After a long(read: a few days), grueling(actually it was quite fun) process, I find myself finally at the top of my division. So, now what?

While I wait for Blizzard to acknowledge my relative awesomeness, I wanted to talk about a few things I noticed from my trip up the ladder. Primarily, the difference in opponents as you get higher in the ladder and the necessity of adapting your play to your new environment.

The Push Continues

So after all my excitement of pushing into the Silver division and how excellent that would be, I have a confession. I'm still in Bronze. By the time I had finished pushing, I was ranked 2nd in my division and only 40 or so points from 1st. Not too shabby, I think to myself.

Then Blizzard's match-making system decides it's been far to lenient with me. Enter in matches against Gold-level players. These were definitely not games I was used to playing, but I think I did well; I did lose a few but I also won a few. It did, however, seem to wreck my focus and I lost more than I cared to. And then the unspeakable happened.