I tried to put this new anti-anxiety method to use the other day and you know what? It worked perfectly! Without batting an eyelid, I hit that find match button and was into my third placement match as terran without a hint of anxiety. No adrenaline, no racing heartbeat. I had won my first two placements against bronzes (as mentioned in my previous post) and both were ZvZ, my best matchup as zerg. I hadn't played terran in a long time so I was expecting to lose. I didn't actually care if I won or lost because I knew that if I did lose, I'd still achieve my 'loss quota' for the day and therefore win my daily challenge.
I go into the game and my opponent is a zerg. We're playing on Tal'Darim Altar. I go with one of my usual terran builds, marine-tank, and get my second base running at my natural. I notice he's not building many units and hasn't expanded yet so I was a bit worried. I send in two cloaked banshees to harass and spot a spire so I take it out as well as his queen. An overseer and his first three mutas then turn up to dispatch of my banshees. For some reason (probably because I'm an idiot), I completely forget about the mutas and neglect to get an engineering bay for some turrets. He attacks and I lose all my SCVs at my main but at this point I had my third base up and running and his second had barely finished so I was pretty confident. I got a turret up at my natural, my third and at my group of barracks to protect my production. I notice all he has is lings and he was reckless with his mutas, losing most to my marines, so I push with my marines and a few tanks. I come across a group of roaches I hadn't scouted and kill all of them. I then take out his speedlings and a couple of banelings. He's managed to whittle my force down to almost nothing but I have good production back at base so I have two tanks and a fresh group of marines ready straight away. I push straight to his ramp and siege up at his natural. I take out his entire army, natural and extra macro hatch and then check for a third base but it doesn't exist. I push into his main and take everything out. I send out a marine to every group of minerals on the map to find hidden bases and manage to spot one building so I take that out with a few marines. I then notice he's got his third base up and running already where the fourth usually goes (down the cliff from the main). I siege up on the high ground and stim in with marines. I kill his handfull of lings and he types gg. I check his profile, he's silver.
My fourth placement is against a protoss on Cloud Kingdom. I like this map quite a bit. I go for a three-rax build this time (note, I haven't practised these builds in months and they probably suck). I get my natural up and use a scan in his base. Looks like a three-gate robo. Next minute I know, I have units warping into my base. Turns out he'd placed a pylon on the low ground and was using an observer to warp in up-top. I thought I didn't have enough units but I micro away from his zealots and manage to kill everything. He warps in again but this time I think I have enough to hold so while I micro my units, I send three marines down my ramp to go and kill the pylon. Phew, I've held it off and also managed to kill the pylon and that pesky observer! But the next thing I know there's a warp prism in my base. I stim my marines foward and almost kill it but it gets away. A minute later it's in my base again and two zealots are attacking my SCVs before I even notice. I take them out and stim foward to finally kill the warp prism. I only lost a few units and about two SCVs from all the pressure. That's not good for him considering he's lost about five stalkers, six zealots, an observer, a warp prism and a pylon. I spend just a few minutes growing my marine/marauder army to a somewhat decent size for this stage in the game and then go for an attack. I figure I'm pretty ahead because of how much he's lost and it turns out I'm right. I stim into his natural (which has only just finished being warped in) and see his army is half the size of mine. He types gg before his army is even dead. I watch the replay and notice if he'd pulled back into his main and maybe forcefielded the ramp to keep me out (although I don't remember seeing any sentries at all), his first colossus would have popped out. Guess I hit a pretty good timing there. I was pretty happy too when I found out he was gold. I've never been in gold league, the last time I laddered was almost a year ago and I was only high silver then. What's more, I haven't played terran in months.
My last placement is a TvT, my worst matchup and also my least favourite. It's also on Ohana, a map I've only played on once before. To make it even worse, I'm an idiot so I make up a build I've never done before. It was a sort of marine-tank build with some cloaked banshees in there to harass. I do manage to get my natural up though. I send in my banshees and kill a few SCVs but I look away for a second to build a building in my main and the banshees die before I can cloak them. Doh! So already that's lot of wasted resources for nothing. Being behind, I decide to turtle and build up my army. By the time he comes his army is bigger than mine and my tanks are in stupid positions defending my natural, even though he attacks my now-functioning third base. I army dies quickly and I'm forced to gg. I put that loss down to the bad build, my bad macro that game (got supply blocked a lot) and also losing the banshees.
In my next blog post I'll talk about what league I placed and where I am now with my play. Thanks for reading.
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