Something that baffles me...

[Rezildur]

This one really makes my blood boil. Thoughts on this lame terran move and how to deal with it? I knew as soon as there was no barracks in his base that there was some proxy bullshit going on but by the time I found his rax it was pretty much too late, even after I tried chrono boosting out zealots.

[ooZer0]

Preliminary Analysis:

You defended the Bunker push well, you saw where his Barracks were placed. The logical step would be... go effing kill him. It may sound kinda funny, but your three Zealots, backed up with... like four Probes could have easily run up there and crushed his proxy. Even if he lifted off, you would have delayed his production by, about 20 or so seconds while he flies those back to his base.

The mistake that cost you the game, was that you under estimated the second strike.

Although you did the right thing and not wall off with your buildings, you should have positioned your units at the front of his ramp and kept them there. You had 4 Zealots and a Sentry, just Force Field the ramp, cut his force in half, kill them, then walk back up the ramp before the Force Field fades. The whole act of dancing back and forth from the ramp cost your Zealots A LOT of health and then they couldn't stand up in a straight up fight since they were weakened.

The thing is, his macro was so bad, that there was no way he could win a long game. At your level, know that people who proxy and fail are not going to have the macro skill to make a come back in the long game. The only way they can win is to keep pushing right then and there and win the game now.

I also think you gave up way too early. You just popped 2 Stalkers and had Warp Gates done. Pull the Stalkers back, transform your gates and pull your probes then move in with your 4 Stalkers and 20+ Probes and you easily would have decimated those Marines. Just because you lost a single Gateway doesn't mean you lost, look at his workers and tech. Even with the loss of that Gateway you were still miles ahead of him.

[JackhammerIV]

I don't mind so much the not rushing to attack his proxy. I always prefer defending after surviving a rush like that. The longer i defend the more at an advantage I become. This is gonna be long. Sorry.:P

It's cos of this that I always hotkey my gateways before they turn into warpgates. And really you went back to your original build too fast. Shouldn't have taken second gas and twilight council when your main focus then should be get a big army to survive/push to his main and kill him. And still the forcefield hesitation. Just throw down the forcefield man.:P A sentry that never throws down a forcefield wasn't worth the cost of getting it.

The first zealot you shouldn't have rushed to the bunker. It's out of sight range of your buildings. It can't hit anything. Let it finish. And you accidentally left your first zealot in the mineral line. You could chronoboost a bit more on your gateway. At 4:04 game time, you had two zealots out with one more on the way. Make the pylon and core now. Especially since you had the minerals and started to get gas. Your third zealot unnecessarily got into red health. Hotkey all your attacking units.:P

4:46 time you just made two pylons and your money still high. Throw down the core man.....and another gateway. With 3 zeals just push those marines back. Advance towards them and they have to retreat. 1 zealot can kill 2 unmicroed marines. The gateway going into low health was your own fault. You should have pushed him back by threatening with the zealots. The time you rushed him with zeals and probes. Just quickly check on your gateways. With hotkeys preferrably. You can just attack move and kill the bunker and marines without you having to watch it completely.

During that whole kill the bunker and marines you could have had 2 units come out of the gateway and have a third gateway almost complete. Once the battle was done you took a long time to notice the second gateway wasn't producing. Could have been another unit. So 3 extra units. Preferrably they would be a zealot and two stalkers. If you didn't make the second gas and twilight and kept using chronoboost on gateways and core, you could have squeezed out 2-3 more units. So during his second attack it was possible for you to get out 5 more units than you had. Even with the supply block at 26 (happens to me too :P). Your APM is pretty good. I average about the same.:P

Advice: Overall you sort of did what I recommended in an earlier post and it was working well. Just a bit of panic on your end. Shouldn't have put guys on gas so fast. Only put them in once your core starts. Keep checking your food. Or if you want a concrete way, once you had 2 zealots and 1 zealot making you're almost supply capped with enough minerals for a pylon and cyber core. Hence why i said earlier make the core when you get like 2-3 zealots with 1-2 in queue. Notice 2 zeals and 1 in queue. Earliest good time to get a core without dying.

And if you didn't harvest gas that early imagine how many more minerals you could have had. Enough for core, pylon and a quicker 3rd gateway. Hotkey your gateways. Always helps in early rushes. Unfortunately you couldn't cancel the assimilator in time. But imagine if you did. 75 minerals extra. Can make that third pylon earlier. Can keep pumping out even more units than the 5 extra i mentioned just now. Could get up to 7 possibly by the time of the second strike. Basically you didn't do as well as you could have and you still held off well. With a good forcefield might even have been able to win. Imagine if you did do well. Keep your cool and do what needs to be done. Repeat in your head the steps you need to do. Do them and it'll be easy to hold off such a marine rush.

[Rezildur]

Preliminary Analysis:

You defended the Bunker push well, you saw where his Barracks were placed. The logical step would be... go effing kill him. It may sound kinda funny, but your three Zealots, backed up with... like four Probes could have easily run up there and crushed his proxy. Even if he lifted off, you would have delayed his production by, about 20 or so seconds while he flies those back to his base.

The mistake that cost you the game, was that you under estimated the second strike.

Although you did the right thing and not wall off with your buildings, you should have positioned your units at the front of his ramp and kept them there. You had 4 Zealots and a Sentry, just Force Field the ramp, cut his force in half, kill them, then walk back up the ramp before the Force Field fades. The whole act of dancing back and forth from the ramp cost your Zealots A LOT of health and then they couldn't stand up in a straight up fight since they were weakened.

The thing is, his macro was so bad, that there was no way he could win a long game. At your level, know that people who proxy and fail are not going to have the macro skill to make a come back in the long game. The only way they can win is to keep pushing right then and there and win the game now.

I also think you gave up way too early. You just popped 2 Stalkers and had Warp Gates done. Pull the Stalkers back, transform your gates and pull your probes then move in with your 4 Stalkers and 20+ Probes and you easily would have decimated those Marines. Just because you lost a single Gateway doesn't mean you lost, look at his workers and tech. Even with the loss of that Gateway you were still miles ahead of him.

I got a little lost with the ramp and FF talk. You mean my ramp, right? And isn't forcefielding marines on a ramp and attacking with zealots a bad idea? The marines are ranged and will still be able to get my zealots even from behind the force field...

[JackhammerIV]

I got a little lost with the ramp and FF talk. You mean my ramp, right? And isn't forcefielding marines on a ramp and attacking with zealots a bad idea? The marines are ranged and will still be able to get my zealots even from behind the force field...

The thing is marines die really fast to zealots if they can't run. Forcefield and cut the marines in half. Run the zealots forward and kill the marines. Would be able to kill off the trapped marines with sentry and 1-2 zealots still alive. Hence why terrans with marines try to avoid letting zealots get within melee range. They have a lot of experience having zealots rip through their standing still marines. By doing this you reduce his army size and buy more time for units to finish.

Edit: A full health zealot can kill two marines without dying. You lost two low health zealots and two full health zealots in exchange for killing 2 marines. With a forcefield like zero said you could have stopped his retreat and killed maybe 4-5 marines. Plus if you kept your zealots at the top of the ramp after killing off the first push then you could have gotten a few shots in on the marines of the second push since they don't have vision up the ramp. Would have walked right into the zealots.

[Rezildur]

Okay here's one where I started to expand and totally got eaten by mass lings and banelings against zerg. This is another one of my biggest issues at the moment:

I guess my biggest issue here was scouting...but even so I would feel really uncomfortable expanding with all of those speedlings running around, and I would feel the need to get AOE tech, but need more economy...but also need to deal with the fact that he was getting that spire.

[JackhammerIV]

First PvZ against a friend on custom i assume given the colours. He went a 10 pool and your income and his was pretty much even the whole game. If you'd expo earlier you would have had the econ advantage. Funny thing was u said gg zerg had too much of an econ advantage.:P Consider how you want to make your wall off against zerg. It's a bit wide. Most players usually put the pylon to provide power over buildings on top of the ramp and put a gateway and core or two gateways there to narrow down the choke. Again....forcefields. It seems to be a really bad habit of yours to just not use any forcefields. Keep your ranged units behind the buildings closer to the top of the ramp. The way you place it the zealots would be fighting on their own for a while before the ranged units come to help. And if units do break through forcefield the choke so more lings and banelings can't rush through.

You even saw the lings and banelings coming. Could have moved your ranged to attack them walking past the jutting out high ground and forcefielded the ramp to stop them from coming up. If you see so many lings....cancel the immortal. Won't be of any use against mass lings. Go for colossus since you already got the robo up. The moment you killed that army with lings and banelings you should have moved the army down and expo'd immediately. Start putting down buildings to block the choke a bit. Don't put a pylon in front if you've seen banelings. If you see that many lings then first thing to do is zealot charge and +1 attack after you've expo'd (with +1 attack and lings having 0 armor it takes 2 shots to kill a ling instead of 3 shots). Get a few more sentries out. Enough to forcefield off the choke at the natural. Then consider the next step is usually mutalisks or nydus. You didn't have enough base vision with pylons to watch for either. And considering you saw ling/baneling with no roaches you know you won't use your robo until later on for colossus if you choose colossus tech so make anotehr gateway to get up to 4 gateways. Definitely do not move out to attack when you've just survived an attack and your army is not big enough to kill him. At around 9 minutes if you'd just moved down to choke and expo'd. Make the forge at the choke to help block it off and some cannons you would have had the economic advantage. Gotten up to 6 gates and the mutalisks would have been less troublesome. You could have won. Till the very end your zerg buddy didn't saturate his natural. You could have out macro'd him easily.

[JackhammerIV]

The other PvZ on xel naga. You could have gone down with fewer forces to clear off the lings hanging around in front of your base. Staying close to the ramp. It was really careless of you to go so far away from the ramp letting them just run up. And again with the immortals against lings.:P Stop doing that. Try to use your chronoboost more. Expo earlier. Like around 7 minutes just make a few more sentries move down and stay near the ramp. Use the stalker to check around. Could have gotten a free overlord kill on the overlord near the natural. Then expo'd. Started to make a wall with high hp buildings like forges, gateways. Getting the second immortal was a bit pointless.

You made way too many zealots. Obviously zerg seeing that would go baneling mutalisk to just kill off all the zealots. When you're moving down the ramp it helps to just halt your army on the ramp and warp in zealots to hold position at the choke. And consider changing the position of the first pylon and gateway. If you exchanged their locations it'd take a bit longer for lings running in to reach the mineral line. You did well getting +1 but you stayed on 3 gate robo. Get up to 4 gates if you're not gonna be making lots of robo units off one base. You could have cleared out those lings and the overlord earlier in the game. Made a wall off between the expo nexus and the ramp and gotten ahead playing defensively. This zerg unlike your friend got speedlings so don't wander too far off. Oh and guardian shield only reduces ranged attacks....lings aren't ranged.:P You were doing ok until halfway in the game when the lings rushed into your base.

Oh and if the drone cancels the extractor and then tries to remake it you can always quickly take the gas if you want it early. I don't really appreciate gas steals.:P If zerg gas steals I usually go a bit crazy and do 1 gate, cyber, expand or a 4 gate with zealots and stalkers.:P

[Rezildur]

Jackhammer I love you. I'll take these things into account.

As for using the guardian shield against the lings, I know, I hit the wrong button LOL.

[JackhammerIV]

LOL. Reminds me of a lyric from a DMX song: "I show no love to homo thugs." LOL. Just kidding. Well hitting the wrong button is ok. Last year Huk in the EG Masters Cup notebook finals vs Idra. Researched air attack upgrade instead of warp gate and chronoboosted it to completion.:P It happens to the best of us.