Yet Another Irrelevant SC2 Post

Why do I keep posting about sc2 instead of what this blog is SUPPOSED to be about?
Because I love it of course. I would say I'm addicted but that's a blatent lie; if I was addicted then I would be playing starcraft instead of writing this post.

The decision making aspect of it is what I love most. Anyone who knows me in real life, knows that I am an impulsive and emotional person and hence I make a lot of terrible decisions. I feel like in starcraft I can gradually peel that away and learn to make good decisions even though my world around me is dying. I am becoming calmer after losses but I still can't help but feel euphoric everytime I see the victory screen.

I know that many of you have already judged me and placed me into the "nerd" category of people. You are probably right, and I do get a fair amount of my daily social interaction qouta via sc2, but that doesn't stop me from talking to people in real life and happily concealing my gaming tendencies.The unfortunate truth is that the world is somehwat polarised with regards to computer games these days. While the younger generations happily accept them as part of life, the older generations treat competititve and intellectually challenging e-sports like I treat farmville addicts: with disdain and pity that they are wasting their lives.

It's a downright shame. I play starcraft ladder in both 1v1 and team and honestly I get the same kick out of it as I got when I played tennis and rugby union competitively, respectively. The only difference is that the challenge is mental, not physical. For anyone who understands this, read on as I talk to you briefly about my latest exploits... Any non sc2 players feel free to abandon this post for one of my other posts that caters your interests better.

I recently started playng starcraft again after a long reprieve. I play random which makes it very hard to be flexible in the matchups due to the sheer number of match permutations (ie instead of learning 3 builds for three matchups in a TvX, I have to learn nine for XvX, where "X" could be any race).

I decided to simplify things by having three main build orders/openings, one for each race. 7 Roach Rush for Zerg, 6 Rax for terran and 4 gate for protoss. All of them are semi cheesy, that is to say they are a little bit hard to transition out of if you fail.

I have had success with all of them but I decided about a week ago to change my zerg build. I found it too fragile against protoss and zerg. So now I am enjoying a much higher win ratio as zerg using the spanishiwa ice fisher build. It is a FE economic build and it greatly contrasts my other two racial build orders. But now I am winning 90% of my ZvP games at the cost have having to play long games as zerg.

Perhaps I will end up changing my other builds but for now there is so much unexplored territory in the match ups and some familiar challenges I must overcome. For instance while PvP was once my strongest match up, now I am consistently losing to professional cheesers. The weird thing is it is not the initial cheese that kills me (eg cannons, proxygate) but usually the followup...

In other sc2 related news, my nephew and niece played a co op together a few days ago. It was so cute, Erin got attacked and only had a few zealots, so Liam came to the rescue and saved her with his void rays. This was despite Erin deliberately "A" clicking one of his pylons earlier in the game (nothing like a bit of sibling rivalry).

Anyway so I think I shall leave this post here, but before I go I have a little treat for all you starcraft fans:

Forever a Bronze

Incidentally I am a bad terran. ALL my terran build requires is clicking "A" repeatedly.

I love this song. I LOVE it so much I have been listening to it on repeat.

This is another sc2 parody of "Friday", I don't like the singing much but the line "Proxying, proxying, RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE" was a deal maker for me.

This song is inspirational, I want to go play protoss now. The best part is the line "If you catch me not walling, I have zerglings in my base" , oh god, I can so relate to that...