Supply Blocked Update

Don't get supply blocked!

Getting supply blocked. It happens to all of us. From pro's, to your grandma. Recently, I was asked if it is that big of a deal to get supply blocked. My immediate thought was yes of course, and it is, but there are certain situations in a game where it is very bad, and other times where it is only an annoyance. While it is important to never get supply blocked, I will attempt to explain ways in which you can prevent yourself from getting supply blocked, and if you do, what you can do to help lessen the blow.

I recommend you check out my last post on the subject: Getting Supply Blocked.

Worse Case Scenario
The worse time to get supply blocked I would say is within the first seven minutes of game play while still on one base. Every unit, every warp in, every upgrade in that time needs to be right on cue.  Imagine this, you are supply blocked at the 26 food count because you forgot that 3rd Pylon. You have two Zealots out and ready to make more. It takes 25 seconds to warp in a Pylon, not including the time to select a Probe and make more Pylons. A Zealot can take 33-38 seconds to make, add 4 more seconds for Stalkers. 25 seconds is nearly 2/3 the time it takes for another unit to be made/warped in at the Gateway. The game can be over before the first push even happens.

Think of the opening/early game as you would a race between two cars. Both cars can achieve the same top speed, but one has higher acceleration than the other. Who do you think will win? Obviously the car that can get to its top speed before the other will take the win. Same concept here, the early you pick that momentum up, the easier it will be too gain the lead and hold it. Getting Supply blocked, forgetting to build Probes, or letting your minerals get too high from lack of effective macro are all speed bumps you want to avoid. They can cause you to temporarily lose some speed.

How I fixed the Blockage...
After practicing on the Normal Difficulty of the Multitasking Trainer, I discovered that if I forgot the Pylon at 26 or 34, I was doomed to lose. No matter how hard I macro'd, Chrono boosted, or positioned my troops, having 4 less units during that timing attack was too much. So I began to look for key moments early on so I could time that Pylon just right so just as I needed it, a unit would be taking advantage of it. This time was somewhere between 4 and 5 food left till cap early on. However, around 50 food and up, it became necessary to build a Pylon after every warp in, and sometimes more as I expanded.

I mentally connected building a Pylon with warping in units. Another Pylon to me was just a second step in Warping in. You cant build one when you need it, you NEED to plan ahead.

For anyone in the lower leagues who are having this problem, it might help to just go ahead and place that 3rd and 4th Pylon down much earlier, like while you are warping in your Gateways, Assimiliator and Core.

What to do when you've been Supply Blocked...
First things first, build a Pylon. Your ability to macro has stopped. If you caught it right as you got capped thats good. Get that Pylon out, and probably a second to keep yourself in the race.

What happens when you catch it later, when your ready to warp in more? This one can hurt you. The first thing you should consider is this. Do you feel like you are safe enough to expand? If so, still place that next Pylon down, but do so near your expansion. A lot of pro's put a Pylon at the end of there ramp when they are about to expand. Warp in a few units, preferably some that take less minerals, like some Sentries or Zealots, and place another Pylon down AFTER the warp in. your mineral count should be approaching the amount needed for a Nexus. This can be one effective way to move into the mid game by taking advantage of a temporary setback. But only do so when you feel safe enough to expand. The end result can put you back on track.

Another way, and this works very well, is to place a Robotics Facility down if your money is building up and no way to effectively use it, yet. You get an Observer out as its cheap and can use up some of that gas you have been stockpiling. This can protect you from Banshee play or Dark Templars.

Placing a Forge also works. The first upgrades are only 100 minerals and gas. A very fast and cheap way to help you gain a slight advantage while your money is building up.

Getting supply blocked directly affects your macro. Finding ways to keep your money low, without building units is the key to staying in the race. It may seem like a good idea, but DON'T and I repeat DON'T place 5 Pylons down instantly out of frustration. The idea is prevent yourself from getting supply blocked, not temporary solutions. Placing a lot of Pylons down at once, in my opinion, is just like queuing up units. Your using up minerals that can be used elsewhere.

New Protoss Builds Part 1 of 3 (PvP)

I have found a few new builds I have been utilizing since I have started laddering again (27 Wins, 32 Losses so far). This is what I have discovered in the Matchups. The one thing I have learned this past week, and after all my thinking of Protoss tactics without actually playing, is that Protoss are best when they have 2 bases supporting them. Our units take very long to build and are very expensive but very fast and powerful when we finally get them out. So it only makes sense that we need a very good economy to help run it all.

PvP

This matchup is so weird to me. It always throws me for a loop. Here are a few examples of the games I played. At first, I tried going something other than 4 gate against Toss, trying to find out what they were doing then do the appropriate build, however I soon found out that most other Toss as this level of play was doing the same thing in most cases. In fact, I was always beat when the opponent did a build without reacting to mine, thus my build was slightly behind and I ultimately lost. The PvP matchup seems more and more like a staring contest, seeing who will "Blink" first so someone has an advantage.

2 gate Rush vs Fast Forge

This match I saw him have 2 gates really early. My build always gets a Core first. If I see those 2 gate ways early enough, I have enough time to grab a Forge and place a few Cannons down while also grabbing a Sentry to FF the ramp to trap some of his Zealots as I pick them off. I quickly transitioned into a 4 gate and apply the pressure on him until I finally push into his base and win.

4 gate vs Cannon defense

This game was odd. I held my own against constant pressure only using Cannons and enough units from 3 gates. I was very surprised it worked and the only reason I won was because my opponent didn't expand, which is a common epidemic for lower league Toss. They have this mindset that the 4 gate is a Win all Build, and its not. Its fundamental weakness is your constantly building units and not generating enough to expand.

Colossus will rip through any army of equal size.

Fast 3 Colossus with a Council as a fake out

This guy was very smart. I scouted a Council and a Robotics Facility and immediately thought he was going Immortal/Zealot with Charge as I saw many Zealots already. I began to get an expansion while also going for some Immortals as well with Stalkers to kite the Zealots. Yes You can still effectively kite Zealots even with Charge. However, when he pushed he had 3 Colossus and I had just expanded. It was gg shortly thereafter.

So this is what I have taken out of all this. 4 Gate is still the best way to go in this matchup. The fast 3 Colossus could have been easily taken down if I had gone 4 gate and applied some early pressure. However it is still important to grab a Robotics Facility at some point to grab an Observer in case there are Dark Templars coming out, which happened at some point in another game where it was 4 gate vs 4 gate. Most PvP matches don't last very long as one of the players will quickly gain a disadvantage and the other will take that advantage.

Next will be PvZ. Probably my favorite matchup.

Cannon Rush Cheese

We all hate this. I for one never employ this tactic, I think its cheap and unfair. So as an update to my last post about the topic(which you can find here), I'd like to discuss a bit more about the subject as the cheese play has gotten a bit more difficult to deal with. First lets start with the maps this is more commonly used on and why:

Any map where only two players can spawn have a higher chance of this happening as the rusher already knows where you are at. Steppes of War is probably the most common as this map has close positions and big areas to hide that pesky Pylon. The key is taking out that Probe creating them and preventing him from escaping. If he manages to get a Cannon down, this is something I found out recently, if you put 3-4 workers attacking it while its warping in, they will destroy it before it becomes active.

Remember, Canon Rushes are for the most part All-ins, but lately the person doing the rush will block his ramp as to prevent you from coming and and destroying his economy. At this point you will need to focus down his pylons and make sure those probes go down first. No probes means no way of building more trouble, and a blocked entrance into his base means he cannot bring more probes in.

Once you have cleared him out you are already ahead as the majority of his economy has been devoted to knocking you off early, but don't rush into his line expecting victory as he can still hold his own against you, but his weakness is the immobility of his force. He will have not built a Cybernetics core yet so expect a force primarily of slow moving Zealots and stationary Canons. Whats the best way to mop this up? Drops into his mineral line. You need to bring in forces to put pressure on him as this is the point in which he is weakest. When you know you are about to mop up his buildings in your base, begin researching or building that structure that lets you transport units. The sooner the better.

When and what to push

In the early game, Zealots are the slowest units,
but make excellent meat shields to Marauder fire.

Immortals are great to use for early pushes in all
match ups. They do 50 damage to Roaches,
Stalkers, and Marauders

Pushing is something I have been having trouble with recently. I am still in the mentality that if I want to win, I should be pushing really early on, something that carried over from all those matches I four gated every time. In fact I rarely had a match that lasted longer than 18 minutes. I would always push when I felt I could do enough damage. What I didn't take into account was things I should wait for to make my push 100% better.

What to wait for
Things like waiting on a Forge upgrade, or a couple of Immortals, or even Charge. Things like that can make that push that much more effective. So now instead of pushing with a large force and surprising your opponent, you know have an upgrade that makes that large force much more powerful, and that upgrade isn't even noticed until after the battle starts. You might see 6 Zealots assembling at your front and think oh all I need is 3-4 roaches and I can kite em around, but what you don't see is 6 Charged Zealots assembling at your front and suddenly kiting is suddenly near impossible to achieve.

You never want to push into your opponents base without scouting what he has or what he was going for. Constant scouting can help you determine what you should be making or if that push you were making was going to work.

Also, don't plan to defeat your opponent early unless you know for 100% you can. In most cases its more beneficial to wait on that upgrade and do small pushes to help you establish that expansion. However waiting to push until you have a higher tech unit is generally Ok. Good units to wait for would be the Immortal, Collossus, Hydralisk, Siege Tanks, Medivacs.

So far we have  two elements that should be considered before pushing, upgrades, and scouting. Going for specific unit counts before you push is only useful if your going for a build where all of your resources are going straight into unit production, like the 4 warp gate build because your objective with pushing is gaining an advantage, not losing it.

Defenders advantage and the proxy Pylon
Another problem with trying to push early on to win the game is something called the defenders advantage. No matter how many units you have, your opponent will be able to reinforce himself faster if he is defending against your push. This is why proxy Pylons are so GOOD! I tend to always build a Pylon near the Watch towers. They are usually the half way marker between our bases and cut my reinforcing time down by half.

New Computer

Well it finally came in! I even got to play SC2 for a bit before heading to bed and work. It'll take me some time to get files and what not transferred over, as well as getting a mouse, they didn't ship it with the tower, its coming later, but I will probably still grab a new one, as well as a new keyboard.

It works great though! I was able to see what Starcraft 2 is SUPPOSE to look like, and the first thing I noticed, Zealots Psi Blades, glow and pulse, ZOMG. I'm definitely going to enjoy this :)

The challenge for me is getting use to the setup. Ive played primarily on a laptop for about three years straight now, so just getting use to a monitor, mouse and keyboard all separate of each other will be a task. My biggest concern is my mouse. I need a new one, a bigger one. I use one of those laptop mobile mice. It's about 3 inches big. I use to have a Logitech mouse for my old desktop, i loved that thing, I'm thinking about getting another one.

Which brings me to the point of this post :) I remember a DJ Wheat episode of Weapon of Choice where he asked this, what can you not live without? A mouse suited to you or a keyboard? and the results were mixed. The results were split down the middle. So what would you rather have? A great keyboard and a lousy mouse or a great mouse and a lousy keyboard?

Me personally, its both. Call me wierd, but if my keyboard doesnt have those big shift keys and a number pad, I'm lost. Also with the mouse, if it doesnt even feel right in my hand, I wont even try to get use to it. I have to go to the tech shops and try each one on in my hand, like a shoe. I think I found one thats perfect, I believe it was called the wolfman or something. :)

Last few Days...

The last few days I've been trying to get back into multi-player. I have been a little wary to get back into it largely due to having unreliable internet and computer at home. I decided to go for it.

Ive played 6 games in 2 days and won 4. I am really proud of myself :) I lost my first one and almost gave up for the night, but I kept my determination up knowing that if I lose again I probably will stop for the night. I had botched my my first games' build order up so I had it coming.

I fended off the dreaded Zergling rush and a 2 gateway cheese in my own base. By far the most entertaining match was against a Terran where I catch him completely off guard and annihilate his MMM ball with 4 tanks without him even shooting at me. And no I didn't use air units, I used Zealots and Stalkers. It was completely intentional and I kept in mind what my opponent was thinking the whole time instead of what I needed to be doing. I waited until he commanded his troops to move while not in siege mode, little did I know, he told them to move and not attack move! It was a lucky break and I quickly finished him off. I am going to be doing a post about it soon analyzing what I did and why I did it, and why it worked.

A Before and After

Today I’m going to show an example of what happened when I switched from my old standard Bronze and Silver league level of play into what I do know. This first replay is one of my first Placement matches after Starcraft 2 went live. It’s not a reenactment, it’s the real deal. I did make that many mistakes. Feel free to point them out! Here.

As you watch, I want you to notice what I have at the 7 minute mark. My resources, units, supply, and buildings are all being built on this strategy I had which was, I dont want to lose. So you can clearly see as the replay goes on, I did not have a plan. I knew I wanted some Zealots and some Stalkers, but beyond that, I was just going to wing it.

Probably my first mistake was canceling that pylon and letting the Zerglings in, I thought I could handle it, but I underestimated how easily those small units can fit into small places. Not having enough zealots to fight them did not help either, or the fact I used the nervous “OMG PROBES ATTACK!” strategy. But I’m happy with the way the match turned out. I learned a bit about Zergling rushes and the limits of Zealots.

Now here is a replay of another match I was in a few days ago.

Watch what I have around 7 minutes. I have a surplus of minerals and my first expansion came a bit later than I wanted due to me not breaking the rocks early enough. But I have substantially more at this point than I did vs. xnscone. My APM also did not change. I just began remembering what I had to do, and I’ll admit, it still isn’t perfect. Currently I’m working on improving my build by not stopping to build, or preventing myself from suddenly noticing that I have an excess minerals and quickly move to warp in 3 buildings at once. If I have to warp that many in at once, I wasn’t paying attention to my resource/supply tracker. Ultimately that’s what having these fast reliable builds is. 


We all need to get ourselves in the habit of staring at that resource supply tracker every few seconds, it’s essential. Think of it like this, when you’re driving, your should be looking at all your mirrors every few seconds, but more people only look at them when they want to change lanes etc. But if you need to change lanes suddenly to avoid an accident and you didn’t know there was a car in your blind spot, then you’re going to get into an accident anyway. It is the same with constantly looking at your resource/supply tracker, if you don’t watch it you can potentially lose a match.

Next time I am going to talk about some little tricks you can do with casters(and some you thought you could but can't). I am also going to highlight a few casters who do so well in certain match ups, you would be a fool to try to incorporate getting a few in your build.

There is something about Zealots...

I have noticed that Zealots are very difficult to use early on unless they have some armor and weapon upgrades, and Charge. You cannot have a mass Zealot army without Charge. It is one of those necessary upgrades you have to have. In a lot of games I tried to get zealots early on, but they always managed to get killed by a mass of Zerglings and Roaches, or a Marine Marauder push. The ranged units could be Micro’d to stay out of range of melee, which is why a lot of high level players will go for Stalkers early on. Stalkers are just a necessary part of any Protoss army, they are fast and have good range.

Why Charge?

The reason Charge is so important is because a lot of strategies involving Protoss center around the units you can train at the Gateway. Units from the Robotics Facility and Stargate work best as support units to Zealots and Stalkers. Zealots, without Charge,  are just slow moving, easily avoided targets. However, when mixed with Stalkers, the Zealots take the damage so that the Stalkers and other units in the back don’t have too.  It’s the same strategy that Zerg uses with Roaches and Hydralisks, or when Terrans use Marines and Marauders. Its important to remember that these are not the only strategies to use these units in. Be creative and come up with your own.

You have to agree though, there is nothing like the site of a dozen zealots who just popped Charge rushing to the front lines.

I dare you…

My challenge to you, think of a unit that you hate to go up against. When you see this unit you cringe and get a mental block when trying to find some way to properly engage it. Common units are the Protoss Colossus,  Zerg Hydralisks or Mutalisks, or the Terran Battlecruiser.  Now train up a force you think would be a good counter to it. But don’t stop there, Mix units with that hated unit, perhaps some Zerglings, zealots, or Vikings, and see how you do. When you know how to properly engage your enemy, you know how to properly beat him.