Starcraft 2 Journey to Diamond League Wk8

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)Games played: 10 Initial Rank: Silver - 42 Final Rank: Silver - 38 Win/Loss: 5/5The first game in week eight of my journey to diamond league was against a Protoss. My opponent decided to open with the four gate pressure build. This is an all-in build as players continue to warp in units and do not focus on their economy. This means that if their opponent is able to hold the attacks without taking significant damage, they are in trouble.After getting cheesed and fending off all-ins all of last week, I continuously scouted my opponent. I did see four gates in his base very early on but no sign of units; there was only one zealot to block the ramp. I thought it was safe to continue droning and building up an economy but a large army took me by surprise.The Protoss race has the ability to warp in units anywhere there is a pylon. My opponent simply hid a pylon on the map and continued to warp in an army at a hidden location. Since I was unprepared and only had drones, I was unable to fend off the attack. I did not have a lot of experience against proxy pylons so I was not expecting this; I'll be sure to stop scouting only their bases and begin looking at the entire map.The following game I tried a hatch first build against a Protoss for the very first time. I was very lucky that he was located as far as possible from my base so I was safe from early aggression. The early expansion allowed me to enhance my income very early. As the game progressed I was too far ahead with my four bases against his two. I was able to reinforce my army a lot quicker than him which resulted in his base being overrun.Later that day I was put up against another Protoss. He played very passively and continued to increase his army size. He was most likely trying to max out his army and then finish the game. However, that is very hard to do on one base. He expanded very late and by that time my mutalisks were able to continuously poke his expansion, denying mining time. After realizing how far ahead I was, I simply morphed a large army and finished him.My game against a Zerg did not go so well. I did my typical 14 pool 14 gas opening and then transitioned into banelings after saturating my expansion. My opponent was commanding a roach army; banelings are not very good against roaches. I thought I would be fine since I moved over to produce mutalisks as they are good against roaches. However, I made a very big mistake to clump up my mutalisks. This was a very bad move because his army contained infestors.Infestors have an amazing spell called fungal growth which targets an area to snare and apply damage over time to units. Normally it takes multiple fungal growths to kill an entire army but I made a huge mistake. I clumped up my mutalisks so that one fungal growth would hit them all. After my mutalisks were dead, I was unable to fend off his roaches with just zerglings and banelings. I was forced to concede.Recently I have been facing a lot of opponents that decide to construct their second base not at their natural. This allows them to give the illusion of only having one base as opponents assume they have not expanded after checking their natural expansion. This strategy does not seem very viable to me as if your hidden expansion gets scouted, you will have a difficult time defending it.A Zerg player tried this strategy against me. At first I was unaware of his hidden expansion and though he was going to do a one base all-in. I continued to scout his base to allow myself to see when the attack was coming and to learn what tech paths he was taking.When I saw enemy mutalisks in my base coming from an odd direction, I knew something was up. Firstly, mutalisks are quite hard to support on only one base because they take a lot of vespene gas; each base only has two gas geysers. Secondly, the mutalisks approached from an odd angle. Finally, there was no spire in his main base.After I located his hidden expansion I was easily able to deny mining time by attacking both bases simultaneously. Since he did not have any creep connecting his bases as an attempt to keep it hidden, he was unable to defend.The final game we will talk about this week was against a Terran. The Terran player played very passively but continued to deny scouting information. I should have known something was up but I did not react. When cloaked banshees showed up at my base I had nothing to detect them with. I quickly setup some evolution chambers to get out some spore crawlers but too much damage was done. If I had remembered that I could morph overlords into overseers to get detection, I would easily have been able to hold with three queens. However, I completely forgot about overseers and was forced to concede.I achieved my goal of ranking higher than my initial rank. Hopefully this trend will continue and my rank will rise even higher next week.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).