This week’s replay comes from our Discord channel. We hope you’ve been enjoying these replay spotlights, but in the future we may move on to try out other types of content for the community.

This weeks replay immediately intrigued me when I looked at the active army chart and saw that for the last several minutes of the game the Zerg only had Swarm Hosts vs a group of Bio and Medivacs, but the hero unit for our Zerg player was a Zergling with 3 SCV kills. Initially I wondered how the Zerg player survived the last 8 minutes of the game on Swarm Hosts alone without any of them getting more kills than that, until I remembered that due to their unique nature kills are not properly tracked for Swarm Hosts (or Banelings).

I still think it was a great replay, though, and I hope you do too!

Opening Antics

The beginnings of this game look a lot like an ordinary TvZ, but there are some subtle clues as to the personalities of each player that foreshadow how the rest of the match will play out.

In the first clip, instead of waiting for the drop to poke again the Zerg loginn takes the initiative, eventually devouring it’s prey.

In the second clip, instead of chasing down the Zerglings and preventing them from morphing into Banelings, the Terran player TerranEZ heads right for the drone line.

Finally, the last clip illustrates how the Terran player is successfully keeping the Zerg player from taking a forth as well as weakening his economy, which he continues to successfully do until the tipping point of this match.

Descent into Chaos

Eventually the Terran player’s continual harass pushes the Zerg, loggin, over the edge — just as he got tired of waiting for the drop to poke in the early-game, he now also gets tired of waiting and takes action.

The Terran player, on the other hand, continues to ignore the Zerg’s army in favor of heading for economic damage.

These two factors, as well as the unusual choice of Swarm Hosts (!?) cause this game to take an interesting direction as both players are left gutted.

Bleeding Dry

With almost no economy left, any unit lost now is a step closer to death. The Swarmhosts fail to pull their weight, a target fire would have brought down the Orbital Command in seconds but instead they do minimal damage.

With a critical Widow Mine hit, this fight seems to be swaying heavily in favor of the Terran player until the genius move at the end were Hold Position Swarm Hosts block the Terran bio, trapping them with some Banelings.

This leaves the game in an interesting position. TerranEZ still has a force of bio backed with the highly mobile Medivacs, and our Zerg player only has Swarm Hosts, which can’t keep up with the frantic pace of Marine drops. If only our Zerg player had some Infestors to hold those Marines in place with Fungal Growth. . .

Avert your eyes…!

This clip contains a roller-coaster of emotions, from the scouring of the Hatchery to every Infestor dying.

Unfortunately for our Terran player, the fact the Zerg player could even afford that many Infestors was a bad sign, and many men fell in the process of killing them.

One of the Terran’s own Orbital Commands fall, leaving the Zerg player significantly ahead in economy, even if catching Medivacs with Swarm Hosts is an impossible task.

Agility vs Endurance

Every action movie needs a chase scene!

As hilarious as it is to watch Swarm Hosts case Medivacs, the last few minutes of this match were sort of a pointless charade. It never hurts to stick around and keep trying, but I think TerranEZ knew it was a losing battle. As agile as Marine Medivac is, the Zerg player had more endurance because of his economic advantage. GG!

Outro

These are just a few highlights from this action-packed StarCraft II match. To catch it all, download the replay from ReplayStats.com: sc2replaystats.com/replay/4662342

As always, we love spotlighting community content, so send one of your own replays for us to spotlight next in the comments, or send a suggestion to us on FaceBook or Twitter! Alternatively, hang out in our Discord chat!

- Sc2replaystats.com staff

 Post written by Justin “TheSkunk” Purdy

ArchangeL [T] vs [Z] Railgan

Highlight Clip 1: Baneling Queen Drop Opening

   A Deadly Start

There are a lot of cool things going on in this fight. First, the idea of this attack from the Zerg was already an amazing idea. The zerg player Railgan had already scouted that the Terran player ArchangeL was going for a large number of Hellions, backed by some Ravens.  A Queen/Baneling drop is set up to do quite well against this.

When Railgan first heads to the main base, you can tell the Terran player is aware of the potential threat of Banelings drops because he splits his Hellbats. Instead, Railgan heads to the natural wall. He could have dropped over the wall, but instead he drops his Zerglings and Queens on the outside of the wall. This puts the pressure on the Terran player to group his forces behind the wall to prevent it from falling, and thats when the Banelings rain from the sky.

Another cool thing about this fight: if you watch the Queens carefully, they focus fire and kill both Ravens before eventually evacuating safely.

But of course, in the end the most damaging part of this engagement is when ArchangeL makes the questionable decision to attack morphing Banelings with all of his SCVs.

Highlight Clip 2: Flying Corpses

   Abyssal Reef’s Legacy

At one point, every new map maker learns they can change the “gravity” value for their map to make corpses fly (or float) upwards, and implements it in whatever map they happened to be working on, thinking themselves the most clever person for doing it.

But not often does such a map make it to the ladder and become so well known for it, nor has the phenomenon been so well-justified by the maps aesthetics: it’s underwater, and the corpses are floating to the surface.

I must admit that it can get tiring watching a tournament where Abyssal Reef is played every series, and the observer insists upon making the corpses fly directly into the camera.

But every now and then it is a joy to sit back and watch, and TvZ series like this one are amazing for it, with Widow Mine or Baneling connections sending corpses ascending to heaven en masse.

Highlight Clip 3: Clutch Fungal

   One mans loss, another Zergs gain

Some of the same moments that make StarCraft II so frustrating for some players is what makes it so enjoyable for others. There is something so satisfying in these moments where you surprise yourself with what seems like a chance hit. Then you’re given a few gleeful minutes to revel in the joy of it as the fungus devours the five Medivacs you’ve trapped, before it’s back to the frantic pace of StarCraft’s scrappy battles, and your wobbling Infestors and slithering Hydralisks are fleeing from a force of Terran troops running at full sprint and guns blazing.

Highlight Clip 4: Eaten Alive

   Where is the air support?

Initially this fight looks good for the Terran player, but eventually the loss of those five Medivacs really shows.

A force of pure Zerglings devouring a Terran force looks almost cinematically Zerg-like, as each Zergling fights his fellow beats for a chance for a bite of flesh and they writhe and swarm over the dwindling troop of marines like carrion to a corpse.

It didn’t come without a cost to our Zerg player Railgan, though: he lost a Hatchery and some Drones before defending this attack.

Highlight Clip 5: Between a Rock and a Spikey Place

   And the timer is running out!

It doesn’t take very many volleys from a Lurker to melt Bio even without having to worry about Fungal Growth, Banelings, and Brood Lords. The saving grace for ArchangeL is that there isn’t enough Brood Lords to power through a Planetary Fortress. Having recently picked up a Hatchery kill and some Drones, if he can hold on to his mining he should be fine.

Highlight Clip 6: A Breakout Performance

 … Just in Time!

Just as the Brood Lord count was about to rise too high to deal with, ArchangeL makes a move and destroys several key units, leaving Railgan again with not enough to push a Planetary.

The Terran has bought a little more time for now, but not his freedom. It’s a bad sign to always be on the defensive against the Zerg: ultimately, their economy can scale so well if left unhindered that defending is losing. Can ArchangeL gain his Wings of Liberty?

Highlight Clip 7: The Finale

    A Necessary Gamble

In order to keep the Zerg from gaining an overwhelming advantage, ArchangeL must counter-attack.

The best option here would have been several split attacks to tax the Zerg’s multi-tasking and delay him as much as dealing damage, but Corruptors combined with the necessity to build Vikings has dwindled his Medivac count, leaving him with no choice but a direct assault.

Unfortunately, it is a risk and one that doesn’t pay off: a failed counter-attack leaves room for a counter-counter-attack from Railgan, dealing the final crippling blow to ArchangeL.

Outro

These are just a few highlights from this action-packed StarCraft II match. To catch it all, download the replay from ReplayStats.com: sc2replaystats.com/replay/4781010

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a replay is worth a thousand pictures — so simple math will tell you this post would have to be 1,000,000 words long to accurately convey this match!

But you know what besides Replays is easier than reading a 1,000,000 word long post? Statistics!

Submit your very own replay!

As always, we love spotlighting community content, so send one of your own replays for us to spotlight next in the comments, or send a suggestion to us on FaceBook or Twitter! Alternatively, hang out in our Discord chat!

Thanks to everyone who supports our replay spotlights by sharing them with friends, commenting on them, or up-voting them on reddit!

- Sc2replaystats.com staff

 Post written by Justin “TheSkunk” Purdy

The Lingering Horror of Adepts

JhonnyPienso (T) vs TheSkunk (P)

To most Terran players this probably seems like a reasonable and measured reaction even given the Adept’s recent nerf.

The Terran Player’s fears weren’t entirely unfounded, as TheSkunk had delayed his Nexus significantly. Something was up, but it wasn’t mass Adept.

But after sending out a drop with two Cyclones, that “something” was correctly identified as a fast Robo and Stargate from TheSkunk, with no Twilight Council for Resonating Glaives to be seen, and a Nexus on the way.

It appears our human hero JhonnyPienso fell for a ruse, putting himself at an economic advantage.

But as the double Cyclone drop may suggest, our Terran player is going through an industrial revolution and building factories left and right.

And just like the actual industrial revolution, his workers don’t lead very happy lives, dying as much to the product of their own factories as they do to the four Protoss Adepts.

Already, this footage paints an odd picture. A Terran goes Mech vs a Protoss who is.. split harassing with Voidray Immortal?

Like some sort of Protoss incarnation of Polt, it seems he has nothing on his mind but to destroy Command Centers.

A rather particular obsession, but a job well suited to Voidrays and Immortals, I suppose.

Things are looking rather down for our Terran patriot, but having a one-track mind can be disadvantageous.

Blinded with his zeal for this particular strategy, the Protoss player blunders into some rather predictable traps.

Oddly enough, this doesn’t seem to entirely cure him of his convictions. It would seem this Protoss player has taken the definition of insanity to be some sort of challenge to rise up to.

But just as repetition seems to be wearing thin the effectiveness of this particular strategy, our Protoss player doubles down on this gambit and combines them into one attack.

Our Terran player is graceful in defeat. But leaves us wondering — did the strategy succeed in spite it’s unusual nature, or precisely because of it?

Submit your very own replay!

As always, we love spotlighting community content, so send one of your own replays for us to spotlight next in the comments, or send a suggestion to us on FaceBook or Twitter! Alternatively, hang out in our Discord chat!

Thanks to everyone who supports our replay spotlights by sharing them with friends, commenting on them, or up-voting them on reddit!

- Sc2replaystats.com staff

 Post written by Justin “TheSkunk” Purdy

This week’s replay is from long-time Sc2ReplayStats user Railgan who has over 4,000 replays uploaded. Most recently known for playing two games of StarCraft II at once, Railgan is a regular member of the Sc2ReplayStats Discord and sent us several replays to look over for the Replay Spotlight.

I didn’t watch the replay in advance, but Railgan is a Grand Master level player known for cunning builds like the Lurker Drop Rush vs Terran, so I was excited to spotlight one of his replays.

http://sc2replaystats.com/replay/4562444

Right off the bat we have both players being aggressive, but our Zerg player Railgan takes the worse end of it.

I guess he just isn’t comfortable getting things done with Zerglings, because he techs to Hydralisks as fast as possible. Once his Hydralisks are out, Railgan starts to hit his stride.

With Hydralisks out, Railgan easily defends a double drop

The game really looks like it’s about to heat up when Railgan loads 6 Drop Overlords full of Lurker Hydralisk.

. . . but a clutch scan catches it, and Railgan’s plan is foiled.

Faced with formidable defenses, Railgan has to back off.

This time, the Terran has plans for action.

A massive drop on the fourth

And a big push on the third

This split push leaves Railgan down two Hatcheries, but due to the Terran’s lackluster macro, Railgan is still ahead in not only income but also upgrades. The only area Railgan is behind in is army supply.

Unfortunately for Railgan, the Terran player realizes that and capitalizes on his army advantage by shutting down Railgans mining putting him ahead in all categories.

The Terran, over confident, starts to take fights without his formidable Liberator and Siege Tank support.

With Lurkers support, Railgan is able to hold on and take superior trades.

Our Zerg player is still behind in supply and income, but with some of the Terrans stronger units at home Railgan buys enough time to get out Vipers, allowing him to totally dismantle the remaining Terran forces.

Just a few Lurkers taking pot-shots can quickly shred a Terran army. With that, both players are now even in econ and army supply with an upgrade advantage for Zerg

Having regained control of his side of the map and built up his Viper count, Railgan is out of the danger zone and both players are on level footing. It’s up to the next few fights to set the pace for the late-game.

A hallmark of this game has been players putting themselves ahead in some areas, but behind in army supply, leaving them open to an attack that swings the game in the other direction.

The Terrain continues this tradition by splitting his forces again, leaving a fair chunk of bio and some expensive Liberators behind.

This was a questionable decision, as it through away a massive amount of his forces and the only meaningful thing it did was prevent more Vipers from being built.

However, at the same time the Terran player attacked Railgans other bases, canceling a base and delaying mining, gutting Railgan’s already shaky economy.

This time it’s Railgan who is ahead in army but behind in econ, and needs to get something done with his temporary army advantage before the Terran’s economic advantage closes the army supply gap. The Terran realizes this, and opts to give up defending in order to put on more pressure.

Railgan succeeds in killing off three bases. . .

. . . but comes back to his base to find his remaining tech destroyed and many bases killed.

Once again the positions have swapped, with Railgan behind in army but significantly ahead in income. While the army supplies only somewhat favor the Terran, Railgan is stuck on pure Hydralisk while the Terran has a health Siege Tank and Liberator count.

Railgan tests the waters before realizing the Terran has too many high-tech units  and leaves.

On the other hand the Terran gravely underestimates how far behind he is economically. Railgan has nearly 4x the income and is quickly teching back up to Vipers.

As throughout the course of the entire game, one player is economically behind but ahead in army. But while previously the player ahead in army would realize it and counter-attack, the Terran finally (but inevitably) fails to realize this. By the time he attacks, it’s too late.

Victory! In the end, Railgan won with patience and a keen mind for recognizing when he needed to attack with an army advantage and when he needed to defend with an economic advantage. Taking fights when Siege Tanks and Liberators weren’t around kept him from losing when things were shaky. Well played!

Submit your very own replay!

As always, we love spotlighting community content, so send one of your own replays for us to spotlight next in the comments, or send a suggestion to us on FaceBook or Twitter! Alternatively, hang out in our Discord chat!

Thanks to everyone who supports our replay spotlights by sharing them with friends, commenting on them, or up-voting them on reddit!

- Sc2replaystats.com staff

 Post written by Justin “TheSkunk” Purdy

With the excitement surrounding the announcement of StarCraft Remastered I wanted to write a post that paid homage to the original.

I tossed a few ideas around, but ultimately decided I wanted to try a game of StarCraft II where both players only used units that exited in Brood War.

Before you stop me, yes, I’m aware this is nothing remotely like actually playing StarCraft Remastered. But it still seemed like a fun idea, so I hit the ladder and got to work!

I did this with random ladder opponents not in custom games with a friend, so I had to face a lot of rejection as unsurprisingly a lot of ladder players aren’t playing SC2 to have a fun time and fool around.

Eventually, I got a bite: https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/4604148

Of course, we have to establish the ground rules. How strictly are we limiting ourselves to Broodwar? Are upgrades that didn’t exist in Broodwar allowed? My opponent got Charge for his Zealots, and there were points I chose not to get certain SC2 upgrades such as Chitinous Plating or Pneumatized Carapace that did exist in Brood War simply because I felt like they would be unfair in this context.

Conversely, at a certain point I realized this wouldn’t work if I didn’t cheat and let myself use Overseers.

However, since this was not a premeditated game but something we did on the fly on the ladder, we didn’t have the time to establish a set of limitations. This is about as close as we got to establishing ground rules.

While there were some initial fears the game might just be broken when played with these limitations without the units that existed in Brood War that we didn’t have, my first fear was that my opponent was playing me for a fool for free ladder points. As in any game of StarCraft, scouting is very important even if you have supposedly made a gentleman’s agreement with your opponent.

However, at the 3 minute mark I scouted him building Zealots out of his Gateway with no Warp Gate on the way, so I moved on to my next-largest concern. Despite having played primarily Protoss for years, in this case I was playing Zerg and I was inclined to believe that it was worse for me to lose both Creep and Larva Inject than it was for him to lose Warp Gate.

Regardless of the unit limitations, how on earth was I going to get enough Larva?

For the early-game, my largest concert was he would kill me with pure Zealots since I couldn’t build Roaches, Queens, or Banelings. Having seen that he was indeed playing along with my idea, I sort of presumed he wouldn’t cheese me. Needless to say, I decided the best course of action was to be insanely greedy but have excellent map vision with Zerglings near any possible attack rout so if he did decide to do that I could build as many Spine Crawlers as I could and pray for the best.

Now, let’s take a step back and look at both of our strategic options. After seeing he wasn’t going to Zealot cheese me, I decided to treat him with the same respect and not rush Mutalisks, which, I theorized, would easily crush him when he couldn’t build Stalkers, Phoenix, or even use Overcharge for defense. But looking back, I’m not sure that’s the case.

The lack of inject means I can’t ramp up my economy very quickly. If I tried to go Mutalisks I simply wouldn’t have the Larva to both harvest that much gas and minerals and build Mutalisks at the same time. Conversely, while he didn’t actively use Chronoboost, he couldn’t disable it entirely so he left it on all of his Nexi. This meant his Probes built fairly quickly and his own economy ramped up faster than mine. He could use Cannons for defense initially with his economic advantage, work up to Archons and Storm to defend off the Mutalisks, and then start adding Carriers which could take Mutalisks in a direct fight and begin to push towards my base.

On my side of the table, while my early-game ramp is shaky I would argue my mid-game is much stronger. On the Protoss side of things the entirety of the Robo bay is nulled.  Immortals, Disruptors, Colossus, and Warp Prims are all off the table. Meanwhile, I’m allowed to build Hydralisk and Lurkers which arguably capitalizes on his lack of Robo Tech perfectly. The Protoss is forced into basically Zealot Archon High Templar, all produced without Warp Gate.

One of the few times I’ve used Hold Fire on Lurkers

You can theorycraft all day about what the ideal way to play under these limitations would be, but the circumstances we found ourselves in was Hydralisk Lurker vs Zealot High Templar Archon.

I first I believed it would be an easy victory for me, but up until this point I had not built Overseers so Dark Templar kept him alive.

Warp prisms are allowed as long as he only uses them like a Shuttle

It was at this point I realized I would need to break the rule and build Overseers. I would have been willing to not use Overseers if I could spread creep and move forward Spore Crawlers or use Fungal Growth, but with those options off the table it was pretty clear.

I found that during the engagements I couldn’t clump my Lurkers or they’d be killed by Storm. This made pushing very tedious as I had to carefully leap-frog my Lurkers. This meant that while I was slowly pushing he could peel off units and Storm clusters of Hydralisks, wearing me down as I pushed, until finally my Lurkers were left bare. It quickly came apparent that while the lack of injects didn’t hurt me too badly early, to be able to replace my Hydralisks as they were devoured by Storms meant I would need a lot more Hatcheries.

At this point we actually seem fairly matched, but the entire time I was sweating bullets and wondering when a fleet of Carriers would arrive. If my Hydralisks were peeled off so easily, I wasn’t sure how I would deal with the Golde Armada backed with Psi Storm when I couldn’t build Corruptors, Vipers, Infestors, or even Queens. My only anti-air options are Mutalisks and Hydralisks, and while if I had gone Mutalisks from the start I might have been able to harass him and wear him down well enough to kill him with a Hydralisk max-out, but it was late enough in the game now those options were out of the table and I simply didn’t think I could build an army capable of beating Carriers.

The only late-game unit I could build was Ultralisks, so that’s what I tried. (Without Chitinous Plating, mind you)

Unfortunately, throughout the entire game he rarely scouted me and he was not aware of three of my bases or any of my tech, and, for some reason, he was not going Carriers. I don’t know if it was courtesy because he thought it would easily destroy me, forgetfulness, or simply because he had felt forced into High Templar Archon to deal with my composition and didn’t have the time or money to switch. He valiantly attempted to delay me with sim-city while throwing down some Stargates in a panic, but at this point I had won purely due to economy.

In the end, my conclusion is very similar to the series on Improving by Statistics. I had meant for this to be a retro throwback not a moralistic post, but I the end I think it serves as a valuable lesson on macro. Despite us both being Diamond players, I was able to completely dominate him not through strategy but minor differences to my approach at macro. At the leagues below Masters you can often be miles ahead of others not for minor mechanical improvements like improving your worker production by a few seconds, not missing production beats, or hitting all of your injects but by your bigger-picture approach. I simply expanded many more times then him, and the act of throwing down a few more Hatcheries at some expansion points is pretty easy compared to the incremental second or half-second improvements to the other aspects of my macro.

This is true no matter what RTS you are playing — StarCraft II, Broodwar,  StarCraft Remastered, or StarCraft II with silly artificial limitations. Just knowing that when you have a massive bank you should throw down a lot more production facilities so you can re-max faster can have more of an impact on your victory than what types of units you built.

Submit your very own replay!

As always, we love spotlighting community content, so send one of your own replays for us to spotlight next in the comments, or send a suggestion to us on FaceBook or Twitter! In the next episode we’ll be featuring replays sent in by long-time Replaystats fan, Railgan!

Thanks to everyone who supports our replay spotlights by sharing them with friends, commenting on them, or up-voting them on reddit!

- Sc2replaystats.com staff

 Post written by Justin “TheSkunk” Purdy

If you didn’t see part one, check it out here: http://sc2replaystats.com/blog/archives/1629

At the end of the last episode I said I would focus on my three statistically weak points and play the Training Center’s recommended 30 games per week and then report on my progress.

What a journey it was! When I made that statement, I had not been playing 1v1 much lately. I had lost my drive to play and found the game often frustrating. I expected those 30 games to be a chore.

On the contrary, it reignited my enthusiasm and I had an incredibly fun time. Along the way I had some really memorable games, like when I made a comeback in an epic TvP that ended with mass Battlecruiser vs mass Carrier (he flamed me in Spanish), was called a hacker for doing a 2-1-1 in a TvZ, and had a lot of people calling me some names I shouldn’t write here simply because I went Battlecruisers in TvT.

During the first minute of the game, he gave a long lecture about how anyone who has low APM must be a hacker because they’re so busy looking at the hack info. Don’t play when you’re tilted!

In part one, I was playing defensive styles so I could focus on my macro. Over the course of my 30 games since then I learned this was a bad idea. The longer the game lasts, the harder it is to keep all of your production facilities active and your resource bank low, so the end result was that statistically it appeared my macro was worse. Even though the defensive style helped me macro well in the early-game, it didn’t help me improve the skill of macroing under pressure and still made me look worse on paper.

If you’re thinking I went in the opposite direction and started cheesing so it would appear I had improved my macro in this post, I’m happy to tell you that’s not the case. In my 7+ years as a StarCraft II player I’ve rarely cheesed so I don’t really know how. However, I did switch to a more aggressive style in TvP and TvZ, opening 2-1-1  so I could put on pressure early with a lot of Marines and Medivacs while seeing how well I could keep my macro going. I tried to end the game fairly early off of 2-3 base but it rarely worked: I still had plenty of longer macro games. Either way I still used my money a lot better going Bio in those games than I did turtling to Battlecruisers.

The reason I play StarCraft II. Near the end of a 30-Minute PvT vs a BM opponent. Intense game, the moment I realized I could win gave me the biggest shocks of adrenaline.

Notice I didn’t mention TvT. I continued turtling to Battlecruisers in TvT because I find the doom-drops and Tank positioning of TvT too stressful. However, it makes for some less interesting replays and statistics.

So the day of writing this post I decided I wanted to play until I got a fun non-TvT replay to show in the post.

Yep, you guessed it! I got a dozen TvT’s in a row. But in the end, I did finally get a TvZ replay to feature in this post!

Unsurprisingly, there isn’t much change in my statistics over the course of these 30 games. I’ve been playing the game for over 7 years and I’ve been Diamond league for nearly half that time with thousands of games played. After all that time if it were that easy for me to improve my macro in 30 games I would already be Grandmaster.

The statistics don’t tell the whole story, however. The score-screen showed I was was frequently doing better than my average when taken as a whole rather than split up per game stage, and I had a close to 70% win-rate. Overall, I do think focusing on spending helped me overall.

What the statistics also don’t show are skills related to decision making, micro, and army positioning. Is spending money really what’s holding me back, or was it because I sometimes tried to beat Zergs purely with mass speed Banshees or only went mass Battlecruiser in TvT?

I actually think the Sc2ReplayStats Training Center is correct here. I felt nearly all of my loses were due mainly to my poor resource spending not my strategy, positioning, micro, or scouting.

To that end, I would say that the Training Center is a good way to check up on the major things you need to improve on. Just don’t expect to see a big statistical increase in skill across 30 games in one week!

Now on to the replay we’re spotlighting for this week: https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/4500045

Stanley apparently hated one of my own Marines

You can probably tell the strategy and match-up difference between last week and this week based on the Heat Maps alone:

Last Week (TvT, Defensive)

This Week (TvZ, Aggressive)

I had been going for a quick double Medivac Stim push in TvZ to put pressure on my opponents, but this game my opponent had other ideas.

Lucky my Orbital Command landed just in time, preventing his Baneling bust from being as deadly as it could have been. In fact, I survived with a five worker advantage. Now the only issue is keeping the Zerg from droning too heavily with his three Hatcheries. Luckily, Stim wasn’t canceled and I had my Starport up, so I was still on track for an early Stim-Medivac attack.

I was still a bit behind after the first two Medivacs were driven off, but by continuing to boost over more units, I was able to take the fight I needed.

Despite how cost-effective my trades were, my third was delayed so much that I still was only tied in worker counts, but with MULEs I was starting to pull into a lead.

Unfortunately, when I say my third is late I mean it landed at 10:40 so we’re still neck-in-neck. Bleeding, we both take a moment to defend and get our economy up and running.

Things take a turn for the worse when I’m caught off-guard with un-burrowed Widow Mines.

Luckily, both my macro and my Upgrades are doing well enough the Zerg isn’t quite able to damage my economy significantly. Just after the fight above, my 3-3 finishes a few seconds before his 2-2 finishes.

Like many TvZs, we traded and kept even for many fights, gaining a small edge each time, until suddenly a straw breaks the camels’ back. In this case, in order to trade as well as he did and afford Ultralisks, the Zerg had to cut both upgrades and Anti-Air, leaving his 2-2 Ultralisks to melt to0 Liberators.

Until Next Time!

As always, we love spotlighting community content, so send one of your own replays for us to spotlight next in the comments, or send a suggestion to us on FaceBook or Twitter!

Thanks to everyone who supports our replay spotlights by sharing them with friends, commenting on them, or up-voting them on reddit!

- Sc2replaystats.com staff

 Post written by Justin “TheSkunk” Purdy

After a 4-month hiatus, Replay Spotlights return!

In Replay Spotlight, we take a look at replays based on viewer recommendations. Each episode has a different theme.

In this two-part “Improve by Statistics” series, we’ll be taking a look at how you can use Sc2ReplayStats to improve your play and take a look at some fun replays at the same time.

It’s easier to improve your play if you focus on specific weakness, practicing until muscle memory takes over and you can use your conscious focus on more important things.

We can use the Training Center, an Elite Membership feature of SC2ReplayStats, to see what we should be focusing on for this game.

In this case, I haven’t played ranked 1v1 in a while, so I’m a bit rusty and the Training Center suggests that we work on reducing Idle Production time, Floated Resources, and Supply Block time.

There are some other ways you can gather pre-game statistics to help you as well.  When I get into a game, I like to search for my opponent on the Ladder Rankings during the loading screen and look up some of my opponents replays for the match-up we are about to play.  Doing this, I was recently able to find out that my Zerg opponent likes to use Mutalisks into Corruptor Broodlord in the TvZ match-up. Sure enough that’s what he did, and I was more prepared because of my research.

We got a TvT, and in this case our opponent didn’t have any TvT replays so we weren’t able to get an idea of how he’d play during the loading screen.

This is the “Units Lost” heat-map. I spawned in the Bottom-Right.

Since we want to focus on basic macro, I decided to go for a strategy that wasn’t high micro so I could focus on production and avoiding Supply Blocks.

Since we were playing a TvT, this meant playing defensive Mech into Sky-Terran. Luckily for us, this plays well into the current meta. To begin with, our defensive strategy meant we were often looking at our base so we were able to react quickly to our opponents Auto Turret harass.

Another popular strategy in the current TvT meta is large aggressive “Doom Drops” but our early missile Sensor Tower accompanied by Missile Turrets and a Viking discouraged that.

Unfortunately, TvT can be a difficult match-up to focus purely on your macro. You can use your macro to build a far larger army, but it all goes to waste if you walk it into Tank fire or your own Siege Tanks are out of position. Luckily for me, my strategy was more forgiving than some: with air control I could often brute force my way out of a bad situation.

Regardless, it wasn’t long before the enemy found a way through my defenses, and I found my macro slipping as I tried to use micro to fight my way out of a disadvantage.

By the time I stabilized from his constant attacks, I was maxed out and Macro wasn’t as much of a factor. Playing defensive, my supply rarely dipped down so keeping my Production Facilities busy and preventing supply blocks were no longer a factor.

Eventually my defensive style paid off. But did I statistically improve?

The Replay

It would seem I didn’t improve much overall, but my focus on avoiding Supply Blocks paid off!

But of course, we can’t expect to improve very much in just one game using any method. The Sc2ReplayStats Training Center recommends we play 30 games a week to improve.

Join us next time after I’ve played those 30 games and we’ll see how much we’ve improved and what goals the training center recommends for us next!

Submit your very own replay!

As always, we love spotlighting community content, so send one of your own replays for us to spotlight next in the comments, or send a suggestion to us on FaceBook or Twitter!

Thanks to everyone who supports our replay spotlights by sharing them with friends, commenting on them, or up-voting them on reddit!

- Sc2replaystats.com staff

 Post written by Justin “TheSkunk” Purdy

I found this week’s pro replay while searching for recent Grandmaster level games using the Sc2ReplayStats replay search.  It was played for the Gauntlet Season 2 Weekly #1 on Galactic Process.

Initially, I was searching for high level games that had cool hero units displayed in the statistics:

But after finding this replay I remembered I had actually caught it live — and I’m not surprised to see an Immortal (“Donnie the Final”) made Hero status.

Atypical openings and an even match

Bly, known for his aggression, opts for a 3-Hatch opening instead. Mana isn’t tricked into being overly defensive and goes for Gate-Nexus-Core.

The early-game is largely uneventful — Bly works on some rocks with a few early speedlings, and Mana tries to go for some Adept harass but Bly full walls with 3 evolution chambers to buy time for enough units to defend without taking damage, as seen above. By the 6 minute mark both players are tied with 3 bases, 52 workers, and a similar value army for each player.

First blood!

Mana sends his Mothership Core away from the damaged rocks just as Bly makes the first move to launch an attack there. A Probe comes just in time to see the rocks fall, but it’s too late: Mana was halfway across the map to make an attack of his own.

Mana opts to recall, but sadly, chooses the wrong Nexus: He recalls directly into the Zerg army, allowing Bly to snipe all of his high-cost Sentries before they can cast Forcefield or Guardian Shield. Additionally, this makes the Mothership’s Pylon Overcharges too late and out of range.

It’s a rough fight, but not devastating: Mana survives, ahead in economy.

The real loss is that this fight made Mana pull back his Observer, and the loss of so many Sentries (and Sentry energy) means Mana doesn’t use Hallucinations to scout Bly’s spire.

A Nasty Surprise

By the time Mana finds out, it’s too late to prepare.

Things could be worse. Despite not scouting the Mutaslisks or Spire, Mana isn’t defenseless: his natural and third each have three cannons, and he has Blinkstalkers and Psi Storm.

Nevertheless, they still pose a serious problem. Not only have they shut down aggression from Mana, they also make it difficult for Mana to secure his already late forth by splitting up his forces and attention.

It’s 14:30 before Mana has secured his forth base, and Bly is on 5 bases taking his sixth. Things are looking rough for Mana, but he’s managed to avoid falling too far behind in army supply or upgrades.

Despite his viscous fight to stay alive, Mana’s scouting comes back to bite him again.

There’s only one thing Mana can do: send all of his army across the map to base-trade while desperately chronoing out Tempests. A Protoss army with 9 Immortals kills buildings almost as fast as 10 Brood Lords, and Zerg have fewer buildings than Protoss. Bly recognizes this and, after doing some damage, starts to send his Brood Lords back.

Mana recalls his army — a brilliant choice that almost makes up for the bad recall earlier. Now Bly’s army is split up, giving Mana a small window of opportunity to kill Bly’s anti-air, leaving his Broodlords defenseless to the Tempests.

Sadly, the opportunity is missed. With slightly better Storms or a few hits from Archons the Corruptors would have died and we’d have a game on our hands. Unfortunately, Mana is forced to tap out.

Still, it was a close-fought game and both players played well. Mana and Bly have quite a history, with their overall record being MaNa 32–50 Bly with their record this year being Mana 6–17 Bly. Something about Bly seems to give Mana trouble: Perhaps Bly’s aggression just makes Mana make small mistakes that cost him the game, like the lack of scouting that led to Mana’s loss in this one.

Submit your very own replay!

As always, we love spotlighting community content, so send one of your own replays for us to spotlight next in the comments, or send a suggestion to us on FaceBook or Twitter!

Thanks to everyone who supports our replay spotlights by sharing them with friends, commenting on them, or up-voting them on reddit!

- Sc2replaystats.com staff

 Post written by Justin “TheSkunk” Purdy

For this week we have Ketroc vs Vreaks: sc2replaystats.com/replay/2971198 A 25 minute TvZ on Prion Terraces, shared with us by sc2hl.com who featured it in their latest Top 5 Community Plays.

Fond Memories of Prion

This replay starts off with the classical problem of Prion Terraces: How do you stop a Zerg from getting both the golds super early?

For Ketroc, the answer seems to be Engineering Bay blocks. The frustrated Zerg decides instead of killing the engineering bays with Zerglings, he’d be better off counter-attacking while talking a regular base instead of a gold. It seems to be the right choice, as Ketroc cancels his CC building on the low ground and panics to put up a wall — holding, but at the cost of a few dead SCVs, a slightly later CC, and some resources spent repairing.

Meanwhile, Ketroc does what Ketroc does, building a Planetary Fortress at both his natural and his third. The Zerg player tries for Mutalisk harass, but Ketroc has is Turret timings down.

But Vreaks is not easily persuaded to be defensive. No sooner than his attack waves are driven off by Missile Turrets and Planetary Fortresses, Vreaks strikes again — and this time delivers a painful blow.

14 SCVs and one Command Center down, Ketroc is in a dangerous spot. But he has a hidden plan.

A few minutes later, Vreaks strikes again and Ketroc shows his hand: Ravens. You might be surprised to see Mass Raven, but even now (before their upcoming buff in the Balance Test) Auto Turrets deal enough damage to shred entire armies.

They don’t excel vs Ultralisks, but with some repaired Planetary Fortresses they do well enough to survive. Even if Ketroc lost a Planetary Fortress and a couple dozen SCVs, he only trades Raven energy for high-cost Ultralisks making it a very cost-effective trade: After these battles, the Zerg player Vreaks has lost 10,000 more resources.

Things get worse. Vreaks Viper’s die casting Parasitic Bombs that don’t kill any Ravens — again, not cost effective for killing a Planetary Fortress — and while the Ultralisks live, they live just long enough to walk through Widow Mines and die to Auto Turrets and Planetary Fortresses.

This entire time Vreak’s has been on an untouched 77-drone, 6-7 Hatchery economy while Ketroc has lost 62 SCVs and several Planetary Fortresses. On the other hand, Vreaks has lost nearly 20,000 more in resources lost.

It’s sort of a wash: Ketroc has a strong standing army and has traded cost effectively, but Vreaks has a superior economy by far.

All Ketroc needs to do to win is get a hold of his shambled defenses and crippled economy well enough to start on the offense, and all Vreaks has to do is get some good Parasitic Bombs off on Ketroc’s Raven fleet to instantly win the game.

Ketroc does manage to split of some Ravens and pick off three hatcheries with Auto Turrets, the whole while having close brushes with death. If he split slightly worse (or this was pre-parasitic bomb nerf) Ketroc would be in dire straights. But as it is, his weak economy doesn’t matter: if you rarely lose units, you don’t need money to rebuild them.

Yet still neither player has managed to do crippling damage to the other — yet.

Yeow! Casting Seeker Missiles on his Hellions, Ketroc is able to snipe the last Vipers out of the initial 11, leaving Vreaks completely defenseless to the Swarm of Ravens who evaporate his remaining Hatcheries with waves of Auto Turrets. The nail in the coffin for our Zerg player Vreak’s is the Widow Mine sneaking in just to blow up the Broodlings from the dead Hatchery, causing him to tap out, being 100 supply down and 40,000 more resources lost.

Submit your very own replay!

As always, we love spotlighting community content, so send one of your own replays for us to spotlight next in the comments, or send a suggestion to us on FaceBook or Twitter!

Thanks to everyone who supports our replay spotlights by sharing them with friends, commenting on them, or up-voting them on reddit!

- Sc2replaystats.com staff

 Post written by Justin “TheSkunk” Purdy

This week’s show (found using the Sc2ReplayStats.com Replay Search feature to look for Grandmaster games with Carriers) is Hymirth vs GilTzOkO, a 35-minute TvP on Dusk Towers: https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/2953689

An Eye for an Eye

The game starts out fun, with our Terran player GilTzOkO proxying a Factory. But our Protoss player Hymirth is already one step ahead: Having sent out his scouting Probe just after starting his first Pylon, his Probe gets into the Terran before the wall is complete. Seeing gas first and a Marine out of the barracks rather than a Reaper prompts the Hymirth to send a Probe looking for that Proxy and finds it at the third-base location, shutting down the first Widow Mine.

The Factory lift’s to Hymirth’s natural and builds a second widow mine,  but he pulls Probes at the right times losing only two individually before an Observer is built to kill it. But like every aggressive Terran opener, GilTzOkO’s attack comes in waves and it’s not over yet.

Not only does Dusk Towers have good Liberator positions, but Hymirth chose to send his Stalkers across the map, leaving himself particularly vulnerable to Liberators, bringing his worker lost count up to 12. But opening a Dark Templar drop build himself, Mymirth is ready to strike back.

When the dust settles, both players have lost the exact same number of workers.

How does this turn into Carriers vs Cruisers?

Sometimes weird games we spotlight are weird the whole way through, but not so with this one. After the openings, players transition into relatively standard TvP compositions: Bio vs Storm and Chargelot/Adepts.

Not to mention fights like the one below, bringing the Terran player’s worker death count up to 50 and propelling the Protoss to a 30-worker lead, making it seem dubious at times that the match would even make it to the late-game.

Yet, with some Liberators and EMP’s with a Planetary Fortress to anchor the defense, it does.

The Cheeky Factory that Could

Meanwhile, the proxy Factory returns with a cheeky attempt at denying the fifth. . .

. . . And then again, a few minutes later, delaying  the seventh, escaping to pester the Protoss again another day.

Carrier has arrived. Battlecruiser Operational. 

After a short peace treaty, both players have powered up and set the game up for an interesting late-game: four Starports producing Raven Banshee and 4 Stargates producing Carriers. Banshees continually go on strike attacks, while on the Protoss side of things, Carriers dispense their Interceptors into production lines.

Tempests pick off a Planetary Fortress (left) —————————- (right) Banshees harass the fifth
Banshees harass the main (left) —————————- (right) Some sick storms deal terrible terrible damage

The Life and Death of a Cheeky Factory

This factory, man! From the moment it was proxied in the first few minutes of the game, it’s always been doing something annoying!

Sadly, after twenty-five minutes of flying, landing, and building, the time has come for this cheeky little factory to lay at rest forever.

A Banshee Problem

Speaking of persistent, annoying things, these Banshees just never stop!

Rumbling to a close

But despite the annoyances the Factory or Banshees provide, what counts most is the main engagements, and the Protoss player wins out here with some clever moves, using Mass Recall after Interceptors have died, retreating until they are rebuilt.

Eventually he takes a fight so good the Terran is forced to tap out — unfortunately not very gracefully, but it can be tough for anyone after losing a long game where you pulled off so many clever moves.

Submit your very own replay!

As always, we love spotlighting community content, so send one of your own replays for us to spotlight next in the comments, or send a suggestion to us on FaceBook or Twitter!

Thanks to everyone who supports our replay spotlights by sharing them with friends, commenting on them, or up-voting them on reddit!

- Sc2replaystats.com staff

 Post written by Justin “TheSkunk” Purdy