Starcraft 2 Journey to Diamond League Wk6

By Mohammad Abubakr, OnRPG JournalistIf you missed any of the previous weeks in my journey to diamond league, check out the Starcraft II review section. (http://www.onrpg.com/MMO/Starcraft-II/reviews) This week things get exciting as Season 3 has finally opened up and my chance to be placed higher than bronze is up for grabs!Games played: 12 Initial Rank: Unranked Final Rank: Silver - 34 Win/Loss: 6/6Week six began with the first day of Season 3. The ladder was finally unlocked and I could now get out of bronze. At the beginning of each new season, all players must play one placement match. This match decides which league you will start in for season 3 based on your MMR (match-making rating).I was very nervous for my placement match because I did not want to get placed into bronze again. I knew I had to win. I was pleased to see my opponent playing the Protoss race because I find I can win against Terran and Protoss most of the time. I have a lot of trouble facing other Zerg players.I opened the game with my usual opening, 14 gas 14 pool and expanded at 21. Since I just booted up Starcraft on my new PC, I forgot to change my game settings. Doing this in the middle of the game caused me to open up a bank account early on, I had so many unused minerals. This made me think I was going to lose but I remembered the average bronze/silver players are not very good at macro so I still had a chance.I was very lucky that I scouted his hidden void rays because I quickly set up spore crawlers, made extra queens and a hyrdralisk den. While I did lose my expansion because my forces were not ready, I did manage to hold off the aggression at my main base. Afterwards, I continued to make roaches and hydralisks and was able to overrun his base with the help of more workers. I was placed into Silver League!My first game in my new division did not go very well. I got matched up against a Zerg and knew I was in trouble; my ZvZ history thus far is dismal. My opponent did an early roach rush and I was unable to hold. I wasn’t defeated outright but I fell really far behind. I tried my best to catch up but I did not have the income to keep up and was forced to concede.Even after hearing a lot about the "Protoss Death ball", I let my Protoss enemy macro. This death ball is described to be almost unbeatable by a Zerg player unless the Protoss has bad control. While Zergs have the ability to amass large armies quickly, their maxed out army is not as strong as a maxed Protoss army.Unlike most Protoss players I have faced, my opponent did not attack early on. He simply waited until his army was maxed out and marched towards my base. I should have continued to apply pressure to end the game quicker. It is not a good idea to let your opponent produce a massive army without punishing him. I was unable to hold his maxed army with my maxed army and was forced to concede. However, I think I might have stood a chance if I had more infestors to mind control his colossi.The following game was quite weird. I was under the assumption that my Terran opponent was far ahead because I was floating a lot of minerals. It turns out that his macro was worse than mine. He had a lot of production buildings but was unable to support all of them on one base. I overran his base because he had nothing to defend it with.My next Terran opponent was not as bad. He continued to use medivacs to drop marines into my base. While I was able to hold off for a little bit, I really needed mutalisks out to prevent the medivacs from freely roaming the map. I did put down a spire but I forgot to build mutalisks. Oops.The next day I was matched up against a Zerg opponent. Since this was my worse matchup, I was scared of losing but was excited that to test some of my new tactics. I watched the GSL (Global Star League) finals between Nestea and Losira, both Zerg players, and learned some new tricks to help me. I was amazed at how many drones Nestea was able to produce before an army. This series helped me understand that I do not need an army really early if I continue to scout so I continued to expand my economy like Nestea and eventually overran my opponent. He continued to apply pressure but I was able to hold because of spine crawlers. Really looking forward to GSL August!I am just happy that I got into silver league this week. Hopefully I will find more time to play many SCII games or getting into gold may take a while. I will continue to watch the pros play to learn some new builds and tricks and hopefully improve my play.If there are any suggestions or feedback about this series, please let me know on the OnRPG forums (http://www.onrpg.com/boards/) @ Abubakr (http://www.onrpg.com/boards/member-abubakr.html). Alternatively you may message me in Starcraft II (Abubakr, 109).