Gheed Profile Blog Joined September 2010 United States 962 Posts Last Edited: 2012-03-05 19:22:20 #1 One man. One league. Infinite insanity.



Bronze:



Delving Deeper.



+ Show Spoiler [Previous Blogs (Read First!)] +

Part 1:

Part 2:

Interlude:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Part 1: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=271453 Part 2: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=271998 Interlude: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=272765 Part 3: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=281817 Part 4: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=283221 Part 5: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=286351 Part 6: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=304674





Learning that I could worker rush has been similar to how I imagine it would feel like if you learned you could control time. It just feels wrong; it just shouldn't be. It flies in the face of every rational thought or instinctual feeling you have—it's unnatural. But, once you know, you can't un-know. And believe me, I know about worker rushing. More, I would wager, than just about anybody. More than I ever really wanted to. I wish I didn't know. Then I wouldn't feel obligated to finish my journey. Having spent so much time in the bronze league, though, I can't help but feel compelled to go beyond knowing; I must understand, and understanding is something I sorely lack. My prolonged stint in the depths has brought me nothing but confusion. I simply don't understand these people. At times it seems they don’t want to be understood. They are often so illogical as to be anti-logical, like they don't want to be or care if they're right. It's as if they just want to shit out something, anything, to stain the universe with their taint and prove that they were here, that reality exists and they were a part of it.



They are almost Dadaist in their revulsion to sense, order, or sanity—it's like they purposely think up as many ways to lose as they can, so that each loss becomes a special tapestry of failure. And remember, I have only allowed them a scant few workers with which to fail. There are only so many options available to them, but to my amazement they find new ways to lose every day. Is the bronze league performance art or a video game? The lines, it seems, have been blurred. Worker rushing, for me, has had the effect of turning Starcraft 2 into some weird surrealist alternate reality. Nothing I knew before applies and nothing I see makes any sense. Every night, I am left wondering how it could be that such a place exists and why it would be that people would actually choose to inhabit it.





Ceci n'est pas un noob.



I don’t think I could, in metaphor, describe adequately the kinds of things I have seen, so I shall do so directly and in great detail. I don't believe I have fully communicated the unending confusion that one encounters in bronze. To attempt to remedy that, these are just a few of the frightening truths I have had to face.



As I've mentioned in previous entries, I was certain that a game where I worker rushed could not end in a tie. Though, like so many things I once thought I knew, the bronze league has forced me to question my beliefs. I found myself spawning as Terran against a Zerg on Xel'naga Caverns. The game began normally. Well, as normally as my games do. I arrived on creep, 7 workers against 9. Because bronzies are somehow not paying attention to the only thing available for them to look at, I snagged 2 drone kills for free. In response, my opponent decided to flee.





There goes another pair of pants.



One scouting drone had located my Command Center and was nibbling on it, so I lifted it, landed it, and when he resumed nibbling I lifted it again. I was hoping to nonverbally communicate the message that a base trade would not work out well for him, so that he might return home and attempt to defend his base, ending the game one way or another. Alas, he was determined to kill a few more of my brain cells. He created not one, but two extractors to aid in his futile base race. He was kind enough to make one of them in front of my CC so that I would immediately learn of his plan.



Back at the Zerg base, though, my SCVs were still drilling away at the Hatchery. Realizing he still had some minerals, he made 2 more drones. I attempted to surround them as they came out, but they escaped, evening our worker counts. After awhile, I was confronted with a decision I have not often had to make. I reasoned that I had three options available:

Return home with the hatchery alive and attempt to finish off his drones.

Kill the hatchery with 1 SCV, dooming him to certain death by broodlings but keeping the others healthy.

Kill the hatchery with all 7 SCVs, keeping all of them alive, but weakened.



I figured option 3 would be the best, because under no circumstances should my SCVs win against his remaining drones, anyway. So I may as well kill his base and keep as much firepower alive as possible. We were then matched at 7 SCVs, 3 of them in the orange, against 7 full health drones. My CC was being auto followed by a pack of drones, so I directed it to fly over the cliff of the main base toward the eastern expansion spot. I ordered my SCVs to pick up some gold minerals and rendezvous at the CC's landing zone. At nearly the same time my CC arrived, however, his drones followed suit. I attempted to repair, mine, and attack to defeat him, but I simply could not overcome the math that is 7 regenerating, attack moving drones against 7 already weakened SCVs.



So, inspired by the antics of the bronzies, I loaded my SCVs into my CC and attempted to relocate to another base. On a map with a location protected by rocks, this stratagem would have worked, but alas, Xel'naga has no such location and my opponent proved smart enough to not fall for the trick. Now that neither of us could win, I was left to ponder the situation while the draw timer ticked down. I decided to use the opportunity to learn more about my bronze opponent.





I really have to stop deciding things.



Despite my better judgment, I was on a quest for knowledge. I needed to push further.





Ever feel like you're having two different conversations with someone?



Yes, despite the fact that I worker rushed him, this bronzie's warped perception of reality was telling him that I tied the game because Terran was overpowered, not because he didn't attack move. He was so pissed about something completely irrelevant to the situation at hand, that I was somehow at fault. This is the attitude that is almost as enraging as it is confusing, and it's one that permeates the entire bronze league. Never does someone win in bronze because they were better, they won because the game is "bullshit." Even executing a completely horrible strategy, almost every game people have reacted like I have just committed a horrible atrocity, like I'm abusing some sort of game-breaking exploit.





It is here I will take a moment to examine the racial politics of the bronze league. To begin, when we discuss low level players, we must hold bronzies as yet another, even lower tier. So, for the purposes of this discussion, there are four types of players: professionals, high level, low level, and bronze. Starcraft 2 is sufficiently complex a game that racial balance differs among the various rungs of player skill. As more than a year of statistics have borne, Terran is considered the strongest race for professional players.





As skill in macro increases, so does the Zerg population.



You might be thinking that Terran is just an a-move race with Marines/Marauders/Medivacs and stim. Indeed, in the early days after release, Terrans were loathed for their bioballs. As time went on, however, Terran was nerfed, other races were buffed, and people have gotten better. Now, players are more skilled at defeating MMM and as a result, Terran users have shifted to the other 2 races rather than learn a more effective, but more difficult style of play. Whereas a professional player can micro his marines and tanks against a ling/baneling composition to great success, a gold level Terran will simply get rolled over by a similarly skilled Zerg who attack moves and focuses on injects. The gold terran, on average, simply does not have the skill required to keep up with the zerg.



Then why are there so many Terrans in bronze? Well, as I said, bronzies must be considered their own unique group. As I explored in my last blog, "bronze player" and "new player" are not synonymous. Bronze players are simply terrible players, and new players are not necessarily terrible. And, if they are, they often learn, get better, and leave bronze. So, bronze is a sort of Starcraft 2 time capsule. Players here do not learn or improve and are thus kept in a perpetual state of suck. Because Terran, due to having a reliable way to wall off, a tier one unit that can hit both land and air, and a way to detect cloaked units without having to tech, they are the most played race in bronze. They are safe against bronze-level "cheese," they have powerful units that can attack everything, and the opponents they face are simply too unskilled to properly tech to units that would counter MMM. Add to that the fact that the campaign is Terran-centric, and you'll find that the bronze league exists frozen in place in Summer 2010. The bronze mantra is still



Because bronzies are blinded by their ignorance and angered by their ineptitude, they are the first among Starcraft players to cry imba, even in a game so simple, so straightforward as a worker rush. This failure, or refusal, to recognize their own faults instead of trying to learn from them is why they get stuck in bronze in the first place. It's why I can worker rush people 3 times in a row. It's why, no matter how long this game goes on, bronze will be an insult. They simply do not improve.



Which brings me to another game. This one was average in every way. I found a guy on the ladder, I worker rushed him, he sucked, we had a miniature flame war, he left.





Standard.



But what happened later was definitely not normal. After several games, I happened upon this player again. Usually, this does not make them happy. This fellow took it to new heights. He began mining per usual, got enough minerals to produce another SCV, and then, inexplicably, counter-worker rushed me. I usually tab out and read something online for the 40 seconds it takes to get across the map. For that reason, it caught me by surprise when I tabbed in and found myself nearly surrounded by enemy SCVs. I did not immediately recognize him as a former victim, instead thinking him a fellow worker rusher. Seeing that he had more SCVs and that I had already taken some damage, I returned to my base. I got home and began mining, but he gave up the pursuit. That was odd, I thought, and I began to gear up for a more normal game, my criterion of worker rushing having been fulfilled. Then, suddenly, all of his workers entered my base. The replay revealed that he decided to run around in circles while figuring out what to do before finally deciding to counterattack instead of returning home to mine with his shorter return distance and more SCVs. He attempted to kill me, failed miserably, and at 0 SCVs to 10, left the game wordlessly.





The question that keeps me awake at night.



I honestly wanted to know why he had reacted in such a way, so I decided to ask. If I didn't find an answer, the weight of the unknown would burden me for eternity and I would eventually be crushed under the weight of too much unexplained stupidity.





So.. heavy…



The fact that this player was gold and lost twice to a worker rush, the second time in such a retarded manner, posed some serious questions about just how awful the NA ladder is at every rank, not just the lowest one. However, a look at



What this further reveals is that this person, and those like him, see what I'm doing as a "cheese," a real tactic. Not only as a real tactic, but a strong one. An imbalanced one, even. So much so that several people have left the game as soon as I entered their base with my workers.





Oh fuck, probes! Abort! Abort!



They would rather just give up than learn how to defeat something so basic. Some of them sit there, watch their shit die, and then have the audacity to question why I would do such a thing. Is that not a question that answers itself? I wouldn't be doing this if people didn't allow it to work! It's like they think I'm playing unfairly, and they couldn't possibly beat my stupid rush. So in lieu of figuring out, or asking me, how to win, they react with scorn and derision at some perceived injustice. Then, beyond that, is the group of people who, more than claiming that what I am doing is unfair, outright accuse me of cheating. Like this kid, who I'm assuming is Brazilian (I've come to assume anyone who I don't understand is BR). He loses to a worker rush, calls me something incomprehensible, and then when he loses again to the exact same thing, decides that it is not his own mistakes, but my treachery that caused him to lose.





Aff you too, amigo.



This all makes me wonder why the bronze league has not devolved into worker rushing chaos. If you think about it, it makes sense. If I have a 50% win rate with just worker rushing, and I have the same MMR as these people, then why are they even playing? If their goal is to win and not improve (because they are clearly not improving), then why don't they just worker rush, too? Why has the entire bronze league not become a league of worker rushers? Why are they even bothering to spend time 6 pooling or cannon rushing if they could achieve the same level of results by just attack moving drones?





Someone even made a worker rushing bot.



I suppose you could argue that they want to have "fun," but if they want to sit in their base and macro for 20 minutes before moving out, attack moving, watching the fight, and winning or losing based on the AI, why don't they play a Civilization game? If they just want to build stuff, why not play Minecraft? It's got "craft" right in the name! Did they get lost on the way there? Why play Starcraft, the game populated by the most masochistic bunch of gamers who all collectively wallow in a feeling of self-disgust at how horrible they are, even if they are decent? I guess you have to attribute it to Blizzard's marketing team, but I just cannot fathom how they have gotten people who play WoW to buy this game.



WoW is feel-good everybody-wins garbage; the only redeeming feature it has are 4 of the battlegrounds and the unlimited potential for trolling people who, by just playing the game, have admitted they are at least partially stupid. Starcraft is frustration mixed with self-doubt. How is there crossover? How do these souls find their way to one of the most competitive games, only to end up in its version of



Philosophical questions aside, there was still more worker rushing to be done. For this game, I was on the Arid Plateau, or "Xel'naga With Dirt," as I call it. I was Protoss against a Terran. I worker rushed him, he ran away from his base like an idiot; you know the drill by now. I left one probe at his base to keep an eye on his CC, and sent the rest back to my Nexus to mine. He attempted to make a few SCVs, but my probe killed them when they popped out. Eventually, though, he returned with the bulk of his original SCVs. I continued harassing with the single probe while grabbing my now 8 more probes from my base to attack again, leaving a couple to continue mining. At this point, I was fairly confident he had not built a supply depot. Looking at the replay, he had hidden it to the side of his base. I had seen it with a probe, but I just never noticed it or didn't think much of it for whatever reason. So my mindset was that he had nothing but SCVs and I didn't have to worry about anything.



This Terran had a trick up his sleeve, though. He was using the minerals he was mining to proxy a barracks next to my base. That would have spelled disaster for me, and probably won him the game. The problem? He decided to proxy 2 more barracks, so he only had enough minerals to build 3 marines.





A certain Captain Picard picture comes to mind.



I had no idea about his plot, so I was pretty confident I would win at this point. I started wasting minerals building pylons at mineral patches so I could track his command center's movement, as it had lifted off when my probes came back for round 2. I sent a few probes to harass any mining attempts he might initiate, and sent a couple home to mine for myself. Unfortunately, when they arrived at my ramp, they discovered the proxy and the 2 marines he had already built. Fuck, I must not have been paying attention, I thought. I immediately planted a gateway and repelled the duo with my probes, banking on the fact that he would not know how to stutter step, which, being bronze, he didn't.





I sure wish these were Starcraft 1 probes.



I camped my probe force outside the barracks to intercept any training marines while I desperately waited for my gateway to finish. My expeditionary probe force found another hidden supply depot my opponent had built in the middle of the map. Luckily, destroying it supply blocked him, granting me a bit of a reprieve from the flow of marines. I chrono-boosted a zealot out and he and some probes crushed the remaining marines and forced him to lift off. My wayward probes gave up their hunt for his CC and returned to mine as I sat and watched as my cybernetics core finished. In hindsight, I should have chased the barracks with my zealot, but I figured, erroneously, that he would just kite it to death with marines. Because I stopped the pursuit, he landed the barracks a bit further back from where they were originally proxied in my natural. Meanwhile, my opponent, who was on 8 mining SCVs, 2 idle SCVs, and no Orbital Command, decided to construct 2 additional barracks.



I got a sentry out, built some more gateways, and in a moment of panic built 3 more sentries. Fortunately for me, my opponent derped once again (there's a theme to this game) and decided to take two gas geysers, putting 3 workers in each of them. He then had 5 workers on minerals. One for each barracks, I suppose. He had also still neglected to turn his CC into an orbital. All of this fail that had been compounding in the fog of war was unbeknownst to me, however. I thought I must have been severely behind. I teched to 1-base colossus and then, after failing a forcefield, I remembered something.





Colossuses are good?



I remembered I was playing against a bronzie. I had, by way of not being bronze myself, built way more stuff than him, even after losing a bunch of probes to marines. I attack moved and he left the game with 500 useless gas in the bank.



This was the game that made me finally realize I needed to stop worker rushing. Not for any ethical reasons. Not even because I was entirely bored with it. I am still perversely fascinated by the concentrated awfulness it produces, even as it pains me to experience it at times. I'll probably pick up a friend's account and keep doing it while I watch tournament streams or something. The reason I needed to stop was so that I could more fully observe the bronzies in their natural habitat. I had been stunting their growth, as it were, by rushing them so quickly. They needed time to develop so that I could take in the entirety of their failure, not just one tiny aspect of it. By letting their awfulness grow to full bloom, I could create a better picture of what the bronzies are actually like, and maybe, just maybe, relieve myself of some of the unexplained horrors I've encountered. Maybe, I could finally reach understanding. Maybe, I could be free.



To get the most knowledge, I reasoned, I would need to go as low as the bronze league could take me. I needed to experience the worst of the worst. Most people who want to lower their MMR just worker rush, but as we are now all painfully aware, that doesn't plummet you quite far enough. There was still further I could go. So, I decided to lose 100 or so games in a row to absolutely bottom out my rating. But, how do you lose against people so bad? I didn't want to just mass leave games, as that is somewhat frowned upon, although I know firsthand blizzard never actually does anything about it. So I needed a tactic that was worse than worker rushing. Could such a thing possibly exist? I decided upon a strategy I like to perform against the insane AI when I'm bored: I would turtle myself to death. I would take one or two bases, maximize my static defense, and just sit there and see how long I could last against an enemy onslaught. This way, I could observe the bronzies as they attempted to defeat me, ensuring both a consistent metric with which to measure the bronzies and a loss to plummet myself further into the abyss.



My first game with this new approach was a PvT. I massed cannons, using a hidden expansion I built to fuel their production. Unfortunately, my opponent knew what a siege tank was, so he just killed me, which wasn't very interesting. I decided mass cannons was not a good idea, because any race can just build their long range seige unit and kill me without anything I could do about it. For my next game, I picked Terran.



I landed a TvZ on Xel'naga. I erected a fortress similar to how I would in my games against the AI.





Panda brand bunkers are especially intimidating.



To account for my vulnerability to air units I decided to mass Vikings behind my wall of tanks and bunkers. After awhile, I got a little impatient, so I built a CC and flew it surreptitiously to the submerged blue third and sent out my Viking squad to check and see what my opponent was doing. To my giddy delight, I found a pack of overlords ready to be killed. For air defense, my opponent had but 2 Mutalisks, which were immediately vaporized by a volley of Lanzer Torpedoes.





Fight or flight? Yeah, right.



The Overlord genocide left my opponent supply blocked and panic-stricken. Desperate, he rallied his small ground force to my base. The puny army of Roaches, Zerglings, and Banelings didn't even reach the wall before exploding into piles of Zergy goo at the foot of my well defended ramp.





Kyrix Style!



Losing sight of my mission to lose, I landed the Vikings in his mineral line and killed all of his drones. I hadn't even noticed his army performing suicide-by-tank until I watched the replay. Still supply capped, economy trashed, without an army, and thoroughly embarrassed, my opponent left the game. Damn it! I had won despite myself. I had some fun, though. In the past several months I've played maybe 4 "real" games of Starcraft. One of them was a 111 I executed against a guy who, after defending a worker rush, claimed to be a diamond smurf. So, I all-ined him the next time I found him on the ladder. That makes maybe 3 games that didn't involve pulling SCVs over 5 months. As you could imagine, I'm pretty rusty. Not that I was ever spectacular to begin with.



It was clear if I wanted to lose I would have to not attack, ever. No worker attacks, no Viking harass, nothing. Pure passivity. Anything other than that might scare off my bronze test subjects. But I couldn't just sit there and have a make-believe tea party with my starting SCVs—that's only fun for a few games. I needed to lose at least a hundred, if not more, to scrape the bottom of this bronze barrel. It would be a daunting task, so I would have to just pretend my opponent was a computer and last as long as possible before I finally ran out of money and had my defenses breached.



So, I queued again as Terran, ready to turtle. Unfortunately, my opponent immediately left the game, a not uncommon sight in bronze. Two wins a row. Not off to a grand start. Another queue resulted in an actual game. One that will probably leave my brain addled for the rest of my days. It's very rare to look upon another human being and be completely unable to come up with a rational explanation for their actions. Homeless guy jerking off on a bus? See that and you have to think to yourself, where else is the poor guy going to do it? You ever try to get an erection outside in January?





Ever hear of shrinkage?



Guy in a suit and tie jerking off on a bus? Now that is the face of insanity. That is a man who is without shits to give, for whom no logic or reason can be applied. He simply does. He simply is. It's all very existential, I assure you. So how is this bronzie like our proverbial public transit pervert? Well, like our well dressed miscreant, this guy doesn't follow the trends. He just does whatever he feels is right. He doesn't care about what others are doing. I'll start from the beginning. It's going to be a long journey; this one spans an hour and a half of unremitting befuddlement.



This time, I found myself on Shakuras Plateau, which was fortuitous because it allowed me secure two bases from which to gather the recources needed to fund my hardcore turtling. My Zerg opponent opened with a 10 Pool, followed immediately by a gas. His crazy build order continued: he expanded, teched to Lair, and then took two more geysers. By the 8-minute mark he yet to produce a single attacking unit. He rectified this deficiency by creating a wall of Spine Crawlers and an Overseer.





You have to be safe from those wicked 8 minute Terran DT rushes.



A keen reader will notice I never mentioned him scouting. That would be because he didn't. He sent an overlord to the right of his spawn, but he never found my base, never even attempted to look for it. He hadn't even confirmed that I was Terran, or that I was even playing. I could have been AFK for all he knew. And then the strangest thing happened: as I was happily constructing another fortress, he started a Hydralisk Den and began making Hydras. Why hydras? Well, why's the guy wearing Joseph Abboud playing with himself in the handicapped seat? I just don't fucking know. And I'm not going to ask him, either. Are you? That is one can of worms I would rather not see opened.



After the mysterious rush to hydras (which, after built, proceeded to chill in his base for 15 minutes), he built some Zerglings, who killed the Marine I had tentatively sent to a watchtower. He built a Spire and upgraded to a Greater Spire. Was he maphacking? Or was this his normal gameplan? No, he couldn't have been hacking, he started the Hydras before I even began my Starports. Was he psychic, then? How did he, with zero information, decide upon the perfect counter to someone turtling with tanks and potentially harassing with Vikings? This couldn't possibly be some random cosmic coincidence, right? What are the odds? As if to assuage any concerns I might have about his cheating, he sent a changeling to my ramp at 16 minutes. A missile turret identified the intruder and a tank shot it down before it could see my base. He then started flying overlords to every expansion on the map to drop creep.



On my end, resources were running low, so after 21 minutes I thought to attempt to sneakily mine some extra minerals with mules and a brave Orbital Command. Upon noticing it with one of his overlords, he deployed a Nydus Worm and destroyed it with his Hydras, confirming for me that he wasn't AFK. Around the 24 minute-mark, he invested in another Spine Crawler and Overseer emplacement. He had still not scouted my base! What was he preparing for? A few moments after that, despite never once looking at my base, he moved out with his small Brood Lord/Corruptor force and attacked the one weak point of my wall, the southern cliff. I was not expecting an assault from such an intelligent angle, given the nature of my opponents. He only managed to kill a few Turrets and a Siege Tank before my Viking squadron could arrive, though. Once there, they easily dispatched of his Broods because he had forgotten to bring his Hydras with him for support.





Goddamn it! This is Panda Rider 117. This Zergy is all over me!



Frustrated by the defeat of his siege forces, he attack moved his Hydras up the ramp. The results were less than ideal.





Ouch.



The game then entered a lull in the action. For several minutes, nothing happened. In the fog, my opponent was taking some more bases, and I had very few minerals and gas left. I sent my horde of Vikings to kill some overlords and clear out some of the errant Nydus Worms he had been dropping around the map. My opponent evidently reasoned that Corruptors and Brood Lords were not the answer, so he continued Hydralisk production. After seeing my Viking squadron flying around, he set up an ambush for me at his fourth base.





Where's Ackbar when you need him?



I avoided most of the damage, and the next forty minutes consisted of me wandering around the map with my air force wondering why I wasn't dead while he chased me in and out of Nydus Worms like a Warner Bros. cartoon. At one point, it occurred to him that he could make a unit that was not a Hydralisk, so he popped out some Infestors. I flew right over them with a clump of 40 Vikings, but he apparently didn't know how to fungal, as he never used it once the entire game. He did use some Infested Terrans to kill a Command Center I had hidden, which leads me to believe that bronze players spend more time watching Destiny's stream than they do playing the game. Consider that next time you hop into his stream chat.



At the hour mark the Zerg gave Brood Lords another go. He only made 4 of them though, and they met the same fate as the last batch. He did kill a couple of tanks while my Vikings were otherwise engaged, though. After the battle, I decided to abandon my mined-out natural and retreat to higher ground where I could more easily consolidate my defenses. My bronze enemy seemed completely at a loss. He had no idea how to defeat my 8 Siege Tanks and a handful of Vikings. At one point, he made 50 Banelings and attempted to break my wall with them. I didn't even know he had done that until I watched the replay, because he didn’t send any Zerglings to tank and so every single one of them died before it got near the wall.





Unfortunately, all commendations in the Gheed army are posthumous.



Finally, at an hour and 15 minutes, a light bulb must have lit. He made some ultras and attack moved my now minimal defenses. I was left with 0 resources and 3 Tanks. Still baffled by my rival's inaction and getting pretty restless, I took my remaining Vikings and poked around some more. He couldn't possibly be low on money, right? He had access to 10 bases to my 2. What was he doing? Well, sitting at 120 food, 8000 minerals, 1000 gas, and 80 IQ, he did what he knew best. He made more Hydras, and then when he ran out of gas pumped out a bunch of Zerglings. I sent my Vikings on a suicide mission and waited patiently for death. When the Lings and Hydras flooded into my base, I got an idea. I floated one of my Orbitals to the corner of the map. In game, I still had the sneaking suspicion that he was maphacking. I thought that maybe he was just so bad that even with knowledge of what I was doing he couldn't come up with a solution. So if he immediately found my Orbital, I could be assured that there was yet another layer to this insanity. Watching the replay, though, after failing to end the game he sent overlords to every corner of the map. So, he either wasn't maphacking or he was trying to cover it up.



I don't know which choice is more sad. I don't really know what to think about that game. I've never seen so many Hydralisks in an SC2 match. Not a single word was spoken, which is probably for the best. A quick look at





Starcraft 2: Tower Defense



One thing was certain, though: turtling was not an efficient way to lose games in the bronze league. I didn't play for a few days after that. But, as always, the bronze league kept calling. One night, not tired enough to go to bed, but too lazy to do anything productive, I logged on and found a game. It was Shakuras again. I didn't want to play for an hour and a half this time, but the results would prove no less retarded than if I had. I killed one of my SCVs and lifted the others to the expansion protected by rocks. There, I weighed my options. I decided on cloaked Banshees. I'm not sure how exactly I thought that would lead to a loss. I figured maybe I could use them like Mutas and just harass until my opponent finally out expanded me and crushed my hidden base. It didn't get that far, though.



I arrived to find my opponent completely without units of any kind. This confused me so greatly that I had to watch the replay to figure out what had happened. Or what didn't as the case may have been. My opponent opened by building a Pylon at the bottom of his ramp. Then, after scouting and failing to find my base, he made 5 more Pylons in a circle around his Nexus. He then built two Assimilators, which he never mined from. Meanwhile, he started building Nexuses around the map. By the time I arrived with my Banshees, he had just constructed a gateway. Enraged, he greeted me with the expected level of anger.





More depressing than the actual BM is the fact that I can actually read it.



I flew around finding and killing his bases, still not sure what the fuck was happening. He attempted to reestablish a foothold on the opposite corner of the map, but I found it and killed it before he could make cannons. He left the game, but not before giving a strange, belated warning.





Is this guy fucking Jar Jar Binks? What is this bizarre speech pattern?



Now I'm more confused than ever. How am I supposed to lose against people who don't make units? Or people who choose to make the worst units in the game? I really don't know. Short of just leaving the game, I am at a loss of how to proceed down deeper. So fuck it. It's time for a tea party. For the next 100 games I shall be having a very merry unbirthday.





Why is a bronzie like a writing desk?



+ Show Spoiler [Bonus Pictures] +

Now that worker rushing is behind me, at least for the time being, here are some random screenshots I couldn't find a way to fit in anywhere. Remember to read the big in-game chat log bubbles bottom to top.



My first ever post game hate message!





Top 8, huh?





Oh do they?





Glad I could be of service.





Sometimes, when they lift off and BM, I decide to play Sim City.





Oh come on, that was punny.





How to spot a WoW player:





2000 games later, I wouldn't be surprised if he was telling the truth.





… but if I'm gay, how could I have any?





Children are adorable.





I would like to see your credentials, sir.





Self-loathing even in silver.





High school Spanish failed to prepare me for battle.net.





I'll be awaiting the call from your lawyer.

+ Show Spoiler +

Now that worker rushing is behind me, at least for the time being, here are some random screenshots I couldn't find a way to fit in anywhere. Remember to read the big in-game chat log bubbles bottom to top.My first ever post game hate message!Top 8, huh?Oh do they?Glad I could be of service.Sometimes, when they lift off and BM, I decide to play Sim City.Oh come on, that was punny.How to spot a WoW player:2000 games later, I wouldn't be surprised if he was telling the truth.… but if I'm gay, how could I have any?Children are adorable.I would like to see your credentials, sir.Self-loathing even in silver.High school Spanish failed to prepare me for battle.net.I'll be awaiting the call from your lawyer.



Part 2:



Learning that I could worker rush has been similar to how I imagine it would feel like if you learned you could control time. It just feels wrong; it just shouldn't be. It flies in the face of every rational thought or instinctual feeling you have—it's unnatural. But, once you know, you can't un-know. And believe me, I know about worker rushing. More, I would wager, than just about anybody. More than I ever really wanted to. I wish I didn't know. Then I wouldn't feel obligated to finish my journey. Having spent so much time in the bronze league, though, I can't help but feel compelled to go beyond knowing; I must understand, and understanding is something I sorely lack. My prolonged stint in the depths has brought me nothing but confusion. I simply don't understand these people. At times it seems they don’t want to be understood. They are often so illogical as to be anti-logical, like they don't want to be or care if they're right. It's as if they just want to shit out something, anything, to stain the universe with their taint and prove that they were here, that reality exists and they were a part of it.They are almost Dadaist in their revulsion to sense, order, or sanity—it's like they purposely think up as many ways to lose as they can, so that each loss becomes a special tapestry of failure. And remember, I have only allowed them a scant few workers with which to fail. There are only so many options available to them, but to my amazement they find new ways to lose every day. Is the bronze league performance art or a video game? The lines, it seems, have been blurred. Worker rushing, for me, has had the effect of turning Starcraft 2 into some weird surrealist alternate reality. Nothing I knew before applies and nothing I see makes any sense. Every night, I am left wondering how it could be that such a place exists and why it would be that people would actually choose to inhabit it.I don’t think I could, in metaphor, describe adequately the kinds of things I have seen, so I shall do so directly and in great detail. I don't believe I have fully communicated the unending confusion that one encounters in bronze. To attempt to remedy that, these are just a few of the frightening truths I have had to face.As I've mentioned in previous entries, I was certain that a game where I worker rushed could not end in a tie. Though, like so many things I once thought I knew, the bronze league has forced me to question my beliefs. I found myself spawning as Terran against a Zerg on Xel'naga Caverns. The game began normally. Well, as normally as my games do. I arrived on creep, 7 workers against 9. Because bronzies are somehow not paying attention to the only thing available for them to look at, I snagged 2 drone kills for free. In response, my opponent decided to flee.One scouting drone had located my Command Center and was nibbling on it, so I lifted it, landed it, and when he resumed nibbling I lifted it again. I was hoping to nonverbally communicate the message that a base trade would not work out well for him, so that he might return home and attempt to defend his base, ending the game one way or another. Alas, he was determined to kill a few more of my brain cells. He created not one, but two extractors to aid in his futile base race. He was kind enough to make one of them in front of my CC so that I would immediately learn of his plan.Back at the Zerg base, though, my SCVs were still drilling away at the Hatchery. Realizing he still had some minerals, he made 2 more drones. I attempted to surround them as they came out, but they escaped, evening our worker counts. After awhile, I was confronted with a decision I have not often had to make. I reasoned that I had three options available:I figured option 3 would be the best, because under no circumstances should my SCVs win against his remaining drones, anyway. So I may as well kill his base and keep as much firepower alive as possible. We were then matched at 7 SCVs, 3 of them in the orange, against 7 full health drones. My CC was being auto followed by a pack of drones, so I directed it to fly over the cliff of the main base toward the eastern expansion spot. I ordered my SCVs to pick up some gold minerals and rendezvous at the CC's landing zone. At nearly the same time my CC arrived, however, his drones followed suit. I attempted to repair, mine, and attack to defeat him, but I simply could not overcome the math that is 7 regenerating, attack moving drones against 7 already weakened SCVs.So, inspired by the antics of the bronzies, I loaded my SCVs into my CC and attempted to relocate to another base. On a map with a location protected by rocks, this stratagem would have worked, but alas, Xel'naga has no such location and my opponent proved smart enough to not fall for the trick. Now that neither of us could win, I was left to ponder the situation while the draw timer ticked down. I decided to use the opportunity to learn more about my bronze opponent.Despite my better judgment, I was on a quest for knowledge. I needed to push further.Yes, despite the fact that I worker rushed him, this bronzie's warped perception of reality was telling him that I tied the game because Terran was overpowered, not because he didn't attack move. He was so pissed about something completely irrelevant to the situation at hand, thatwas somehow at fault. This is the attitude that is almost as enraging as it is confusing, and it's one that permeates the entire bronze league. Never does someone win in bronze because they were better, they won because the game is "bullshit." Even executing a completely horrible strategy, almost every game people have reacted like I have just committed a horrible atrocity, like I'm abusing some sort of game-breaking exploit.It is here I will take a moment to examine the racial politics of the bronze league. To begin, when we discuss low level players, we must hold bronzies as yet another, even lower tier. So, for the purposes of this discussion, there are four types of players: professionals, high level, low level, and bronze. Starcraft 2 is sufficiently complex a game that racial balance differs among the various rungs of player skill. As more than a year of statistics have borne, Terran is considered the strongest race for professional players. However, it is arguably the most difficult race to play, especially at low levels. It is simply easier for a middling player to play Protoss or Zerg than it is Terran. To be successful, a Terran player must execute drops, slow pushes, and advanced micromanagement techniques. A player could more easily achieve a similar ranking with Protoss by using a 1-a deathball style, or with Zerg by mastering the inject mechanic. This is why, among high and low level players, Terran is the least played race, while among professional players, especially Koreans, Terran is overrepresented, for it is those players have the mechanics necessary to fully utilize the Terran arsenal.You might be thinking that Terran is just an a-move race with Marines/Marauders/Medivacs and stim. Indeed, in the early days after release, Terrans were loathed for their bioballs. As time went on, however, Terran was nerfed, other races were buffed, and people have gotten better. Now, players are more skilled at defeating MMM and as a result, Terran users have shifted to the other 2 races rather than learn a more effective, but more difficult style of play. Whereas a professional player can micro his marines and tanks against a ling/baneling composition to great success, a gold level Terran will simply get rolled over by a similarly skilled Zerg who attack moves and focuses on injects. The gold terran, on average, simply does not have the skill required to keep up with the zerg.Then why are there so many Terrans in bronze? Well, as I said, bronzies must be considered their own unique group. As I explored in my last blog, "bronze player" and "new player" are not synonymous. Bronze players are simply terrible players, and new players are not necessarily terrible. And, if they are, they often learn, get better, and leave bronze. So, bronze is a sort of Starcraft 2 time capsule. Players here do not learn or improve and are thus kept in a perpetual state of suck. Because Terran, due to having a reliable way to wall off, a tier one unit that can hit both land and air, and a way to detect cloaked units without having to tech, they are the most played race in bronze. They are safe against bronze-level "cheese," they have powerful units that can attack everything, and the opponents they face are simply too unskilled to properly tech to units that would counter MMM. Add to that the fact that the campaign is Terran-centric, and you'll find that the bronze league exists frozen in place in Summer 2010. The bronze mantra is still "Terran's OP." Because bronzies are blinded by their ignorance and angered by their ineptitude, they are the first among Starcraft players to cry imba, even in a game so simple, so straightforward as a worker rush. This failure, or refusal, to recognize their own faults instead of trying to learn from them is why they get stuck in bronze in the first place. It's why I can worker rush people 3 times in a row. It's why, no matter how long this game goes on, bronze will be an insult. They simply do not improve.Which brings me to another game. This one was average in every way. I found a guy on the ladder, I worker rushed him, he sucked, we had a miniature flame war, he left.But what happened later was definitely not normal. After several games, I happened upon this player again. Usually, this does not make them happy. This fellow took it to new heights. He began mining per usual, got enough minerals to produce another SCV, and then, inexplicably, counter-worker rushed me. I usually tab out and read something online for the 40 seconds it takes to get across the map. For that reason, it caught me by surprise when I tabbed in and found myself nearly surrounded by enemy SCVs. I did not immediately recognize him as a former victim, instead thinking him a fellow worker rusher. Seeing that he had more SCVs and that I had already taken some damage, I returned to my base. I got home and began mining, but he gave up the pursuit. That was odd, I thought, and I began to gear up for a more normal game, my criterion of worker rushing having been fulfilled. Then, suddenly, all of his workers entered my base. The replay revealed that he decided to run around in circles while figuring out what to do before finally deciding to counterattack instead of returning home to mine with his shorter return distance and more SCVs. He attempted to kill me, failed miserably, and at 0 SCVs to 10, left the game wordlessly.I honestly wanted to know why he had reacted in such a way, so I decided to ask. If I didn't find an answer, the weight of the unknown would burden me for eternity and I would eventually be crushed under the weight of too much unexplained stupidity.The fact that this player was gold and lost twice to a worker rush, the second time in such a retarded manner, posed some serious questions about just how awful the NA ladder is at every rank, not just the lowest one. However, a look at his profile shows he has since fallen to his rightful place in the bronze league, so I dodged a psychological bullet. Though, it did prove again that I have ended up the de facto gatekeeper to this stygian nightmare of a league. I still don't know how he even got there, though. Is he a remnant of the a-move stim bioball past, now finding out his skills are so bad in today's Starcraft that he can't escape bronze? Did he have his friend level his account? How did this man, who felt he needed to counter a worker rush by worker rushing himself, get to the gold league where, by definition, he is better than at least 40% of the player base?What this further reveals is that this person, and those like him, see what I'm doing as a "cheese," a real tactic. Not only as a real tactic, but a strong one. An imbalanced one, even. So much so that several people have left the game as soon as I entered their base with my workers.They would rather just give up than learn how to defeat something so basic. Some of them sit there, watch their shit die, and then have the audacity to question why I would do such a thing. Is that not a question that answers itself? I wouldn't be doing this if people didn't allow it to work! It's like they think I'm playing unfairly, and they couldn't possibly beat my stupid rush. So in lieu of figuring out, or asking me, how to win, they react with scorn and derision at some perceived injustice. Then, beyond that, is the group of people who, more than claiming that what I am doing is unfair, outright accuse me of cheating. Like this kid, who I'm assuming is Brazilian (I've come to assume anyone who I don't understand is BR). He loses to a worker rush, calls me something incomprehensible, and then when he loses again to the exact same thing, decides that it is not his own mistakes, but my treachery that caused him to lose.This all makes me wonder why the bronze league has not devolved into worker rushing chaos. If you think about it, it makes sense. If I have a 50% win rate with just worker rushing, and I have the same MMR as these people, then why are they even playing? If their goal is to win and not improve (because they are clearly not improving), then why don't they just worker rush, too? Why has the entire bronze league not become a league of worker rushers? Why are they even bothering to spend time 6 pooling or cannon rushing if they could achieve the same level of results by just attack moving drones?I suppose you could argue that they want to have "fun," but if they want to sit in their base and macro for 20 minutes before moving out, attack moving, watching the fight, and winning or losing based on the AI, why don't they play a Civilization game? If they just want to build stuff, why not play Minecraft? It's got "craft" right in the name! Did they get lost on the way there? Why play Starcraft, the game populated by the most masochistic bunch of gamers who all collectively wallow in a feeling of self-disgust at how horrible they are, even if they are decent? I guess you have to attribute it to Blizzard's marketing team, but I just cannot fathom how they have gotten people who play WoW to buy this game.WoW is feel-good everybody-wins garbage; the only redeeming feature it has are 4 of the battlegrounds and the unlimited potential for trolling people who, by just playing the game, have admitted they are at least partially stupid. Starcraft is frustration mixed with self-doubt. How is there crossover? How do these souls find their way to one of the most competitive games, only to end up in its version of Elo Hell ? But, in the case of SC2, it's a hell of their own making. Which begs the question: why do they go on? Why is there such continued stagnation? Do they not tire of their own shittiness and desire to become better?Philosophical questions aside, there was still more worker rushing to be done. For this game, I was on the Arid Plateau, or "Xel'naga With Dirt," as I call it. I was Protoss against a Terran. I worker rushed him, he ran away from his base like an idiot; you know the drill by now. I left one probe at his base to keep an eye on his CC, and sent the rest back to my Nexus to mine. He attempted to make a few SCVs, but my probe killed them when they popped out. Eventually, though, he returned with the bulk of his original SCVs. I continued harassing with the single probe while grabbing my now 8 more probes from my base to attack again, leaving a couple to continue mining. At this point, I was fairly confident he had not built a supply depot. Looking at the replay, he had hidden it to the side of his base. I had seen it with a probe, but I just never noticed it or didn't think much of it for whatever reason. So my mindset was that he had nothing but SCVs and I didn't have to worry about anything.This Terran had a trick up his sleeve, though. He was using the minerals he was mining to proxy a barracks next to my base. That would have spelled disaster for me, and probably won him the game. The problem? He decided to proxy 2 more barracks, so he only had enough minerals to build 3 marines.I had no idea about his plot, so I was pretty confident I would win at this point. I started wasting minerals building pylons at mineral patches so I could track his command center's movement, as it had lifted off when my probes came back for round 2. I sent a few probes to harass any mining attempts he might initiate, and sent a couple home to mine for myself. Unfortunately, when they arrived at my ramp, they discovered the proxy and the 2 marines he had already built. Fuck, I must not have been paying attention, I thought. I immediately planted a gateway and repelled the duo with my probes, banking on the fact that he would not know how to stutter step, which, being bronze, he didn't.I camped my probe force outside the barracks to intercept any training marines while I desperately waited for my gateway to finish. My expeditionary probe force found another hidden supply depot my opponent had built in the middle of the map. Luckily, destroying it supply blocked him, granting me a bit of a reprieve from the flow of marines. I chrono-boosted a zealot out and he and some probes crushed the remaining marines and forced him to lift off. My wayward probes gave up their hunt for his CC and returned to mine as I sat and watched as my cybernetics core finished. In hindsight, I should have chased the barracks with my zealot, but I figured, erroneously, that he would just kite it to death with marines. Because I stopped the pursuit, he landed the barracks a bit further back from where they were originally proxied in my natural. Meanwhile, my opponent, who was on 8 mining SCVs, 2 idle SCVs, and no Orbital Command, decided to construct 2 additional barracks.I got a sentry out, built some more gateways, and in a moment of panic built 3 more sentries. Fortunately for me, my opponent derped once again (there's a theme to this game) and decided to take two gas geysers, putting 3 workers in each of them. He then had 5 workers on minerals. One for each barracks, I suppose. He had also still neglected to turn his CC into an orbital. All of this fail that had been compounding in the fog of war was unbeknownst to me, however. I thought I must have been severely behind. I teched to 1-base colossus and then, after failing a forcefield, I remembered something.I remembered I was playing against a bronzie. I had, by way of not being bronze myself, built way more stuff than him, even after losing a bunch of probes to marines. I attack moved and he left the game with 500 useless gas in the bank.This was the game that made me finally realize I needed to stop worker rushing. Not for any ethical reasons. Not even because I was entirely bored with it. I am still perversely fascinated by the concentrated awfulness it produces, even as it pains me to experience it at times. I'll probably pick up a friend's account and keep doing it while I watch tournament streams or something. The reason I needed to stop was so that I could more fully observe the bronzies in their natural habitat. I had been stunting their growth, as it were, by rushing them so quickly. They needed time to develop so that I could take in the entirety of their failure, not just one tiny aspect of it. By letting their awfulness grow to full bloom, I could create a better picture of what the bronzies are actually like, and maybe, just maybe, relieve myself of some of the unexplained horrors I've encountered. Maybe, I could finally reach understanding. Maybe, I could be free.To get the most knowledge, I reasoned, I would need to go as low as the bronze league could take me. I needed to experience the worst of the worst. Most people who want to lower their MMR just worker rush, but as we are now all painfully aware, that doesn't plummet you quite far enough. There was still further I could go. So, I decided to lose 100 or so games in a row to absolutely bottom out my rating. But, how do you lose against people so bad? I didn't want to just mass leave games, as that is somewhat frowned upon, although I know firsthand blizzard never actually does anything about it. So I needed a tactic that was worse than worker rushing. Could such a thing possibly exist? I decided upon a strategy I like to perform against the insane AI when I'm bored: I would turtle myself to death. I would take one or two bases, maximize my static defense, and just sit there and see how long I could last against an enemy onslaught. This way, I could observe the bronzies as they attempted to defeat me, ensuring both a consistent metric with which to measure the bronzies and a loss to plummet myself further into the abyss.My first game with this new approach was a PvT. I massed cannons, using a hidden expansion I built to fuel their production. Unfortunately, my opponent knew what a siege tank was, so he just killed me, which wasn't very interesting. I decided mass cannons was not a good idea, because any race can just build their long range seige unit and kill me without anything I could do about it. For my next game, I picked Terran.I landed a TvZ on Xel'naga. I erected a fortress similar to how I would in my games against the AI.To account for my vulnerability to air units I decided to mass Vikings behind my wall of tanks and bunkers. After awhile, I got a little impatient, so I built a CC and flew it surreptitiously to the submerged blue third and sent out my Viking squad to check and see what my opponent was doing. To my giddy delight, I found a pack of overlords ready to be killed. For air defense, my opponent had but 2 Mutalisks, which were immediately vaporized by a volley of Lanzer Torpedoes.The Overlord genocide left my opponent supply blocked and panic-stricken. Desperate, he rallied his small ground force to my base. The puny army of Roaches, Zerglings, and Banelings didn't even reach the wall before exploding into piles of Zergy goo at the foot of my well defended ramp.Losing sight of my mission to lose, I landed the Vikings in his mineral line and killed all of his drones. I hadn't even noticed his army performing suicide-by-tank until I watched the replay. Still supply capped, economy trashed, without an army, and thoroughly embarrassed, my opponent left the game. Damn it! I had won despite myself. I had some fun, though. In the past several months I've played maybe 4 "real" games of Starcraft. One of them was a 111 I executed against a guy who, after defending a worker rush, claimed to be a diamond smurf. So, I all-ined him the next time I found him on the ladder. That makes maybe 3 games that didn't involve pulling SCVs over 5 months. As you could imagine, I'm pretty rusty. Not that I was ever spectacular to begin with.It was clear if I wanted to lose I would have to not attack, ever. No worker attacks, no Viking harass, nothing. Pure passivity. Anything other than that might scare off my bronze test subjects. But I couldn't just sit there and have a make-believe tea party with my starting SCVs—that's only fun for a few games. I needed to lose at least a hundred, if not more, to scrape the bottom of this bronze barrel. It would be a daunting task, so I would have to just pretend my opponent was a computer and last as long as possible before I finally ran out of money and had my defenses breached.So, I queued again as Terran, ready to turtle. Unfortunately, my opponent immediately left the game, a not uncommon sight in bronze. Two wins a row. Not off to a grand start. Another queue resulted in an actual game. One that will probably leave my brain addled for the rest of my days. It's very rare to look upon another human being and be completely unable to come up with a rational explanation for their actions. Homeless guy jerking off on a bus? See that and you have to think to yourself, where else is the poor guy going to do it? You ever try to get an erection outside in January?Guy in a suit and tie jerking off on a bus? Now that is the face of insanity. That is a man who is without shits to give, for whom no logic or reason can be applied. He simply does. He simply is. It's all very existential, I assure you. So how is this bronzie like our proverbial public transit pervert? Well, like our well dressed miscreant, this guy doesn't follow the trends. He just does whatever he feels is right. He doesn't care about what others are doing. I'll start from the beginning. It's going to be a long journey; this one spans an hour and a half of unremitting befuddlement.This time, I found myself on Shakuras Plateau, which was fortuitous because it allowed me secure two bases from which to gather the recources needed to fund my hardcore turtling. My Zerg opponent opened with a 10 Pool, followed immediately by a gas. His crazy build order continued: he expanded, teched to Lair, and then took two more geysers. By the 8-minute mark he yet to produce a single attacking unit. He rectified this deficiency by creating a wall of Spine Crawlers and an Overseer.A keen reader will notice I never mentioned him scouting. That would be because he didn't. He sent an overlord to the right of his spawn, but he never found my base, never even attempted to look for it. He hadn't even confirmed that I was Terran, or that I was even playing. I could have been AFK for all he knew. And then the strangest thing happened: as I was happily constructing another fortress, he started a Hydralisk Den and began making Hydras. Why hydras? Well, why's the guy wearing Joseph Abboud playing with himself in the handicapped seat? I just don't fucking know. And I'm not going to ask him, either. Are you? That is one can of worms I would rather not see opened.After the mysterious rush to hydras (which, after built, proceeded to chill in his base for 15 minutes), he built some Zerglings, who killed the Marine I had tentatively sent to a watchtower. He built a Spire and upgraded to a Greater Spire. Was he maphacking? Or was this his normal gameplan? No, he couldn't have been hacking, he started the Hydras before I even began my Starports. Was he psychic, then? How did he, with zero information, decide upon the perfect counter to someone turtling with tanks and potentially harassing with Vikings? This couldn't possibly be some random cosmic coincidence, right? What are the odds? As if to assuage any concerns I might have about his cheating, he sent a changeling to my ramp at 16 minutes. A missile turret identified the intruder and a tank shot it down before it could see my base. He then started flying overlords to every expansion on the map to drop creep.On my end, resources were running low, so after 21 minutes I thought to attempt to sneakily mine some extra minerals with mules and a brave Orbital Command. Upon noticing it with one of his overlords, he deployed a Nydus Worm and destroyed it with his Hydras, confirming for me that he wasn't AFK. Around the 24 minute-mark, he invested in another Spine Crawler and Overseer emplacement. He had still not scouted my base! What was he preparing for? A few moments after that, despite never once looking at my base, he moved out with his small Brood Lord/Corruptor force and attacked the one weak point of my wall, the southern cliff. I was not expecting an assault from such an intelligent angle, given the nature of my opponents. He only managed to kill a few Turrets and a Siege Tank before my Viking squadron could arrive, though. Once there, they easily dispatched of his Broods because he had forgotten to bring his Hydras with him for support.Frustrated by the defeat of his siege forces, he attack moved his Hydras up the ramp. The results were less than ideal.The game then entered a lull in the action. For several minutes, nothing happened. In the fog, my opponent was taking some more bases, and I had very few minerals and gas left. I sent my horde of Vikings to kill some overlords and clear out some of the errant Nydus Worms he had been dropping around the map. My opponent evidently reasoned that Corruptors and Brood Lords were not the answer, so he continued Hydralisk production. After seeing my Viking squadron flying around, he set up an ambush for me at his fourth base.I avoided most of the damage, and the next forty minutes consisted of me wandering around the map with my air force wondering why I wasn't dead while he chased me in and out of Nydus Worms like a Warner Bros. cartoon. At one point, it occurred to him that he could make a unit that was not a Hydralisk, so he popped out some Infestors. I flew right over them with a clump of 40 Vikings, but he apparently didn't know how to fungal, as he never used it once the entire game. He did use some Infested Terrans to kill a Command Center I had hidden, which leads me to believe that bronze players spend more time watching Destiny's stream than they do playing the game. Consider that next time you hop into his stream chat.At the hour mark the Zerg gave Brood Lords another go. He only made 4 of them though, and they met the same fate as the last batch. He did kill a couple of tanks while my Vikings were otherwise engaged, though. After the battle, I decided to abandon my mined-out natural and retreat to higher ground where I could more easily consolidate my defenses. My bronze enemy seemed completely at a loss. He had no idea how to defeat my 8 Siege Tanks and a handful of Vikings. At one point, he made 50 Banelings and attempted to break my wall with them. I didn't even know he had done that until I watched the replay, because he didn’t send any Zerglings to tank and so every single one of them died before it got near the wall.Finally, at an hour and 15 minutes, a light bulb must have lit. He made some ultras and attack moved my now minimal defenses. I was left with 0 resources and 3 Tanks. Still baffled by my rival's inaction and getting pretty restless, I took my remaining Vikings and poked around some more. He couldn't possibly be low on money, right? He had access to 10 bases to my 2. What was he doing? Well, sitting at 120 food, 8000 minerals, 1000 gas, and 80 IQ, he did what he knew best. He made more Hydras, and then when he ran out of gas pumped out a bunch of Zerglings. I sent my Vikings on a suicide mission and waited patiently for death. When the Lings and Hydras flooded into my base, I got an idea. I floated one of my Orbitals to the corner of the map. In game, I still had the sneaking suspicion that he was maphacking. I thought that maybe he was just so bad that even with knowledge of what I was doing he couldn't come up with a solution. So if he immediately found my Orbital, I could be assured that there was yet another layer to this insanity. Watching the replay, though, after failing to end the game he sent overlords to every corner of the map. So, he either wasn't maphacking or he was trying to cover it up.I don't know which choice is more sad. I don't really know what to think about that game. I've never seen so many Hydralisks in an SC2 match. Not a single word was spoken, which is probably for the best. A quick look at his stats showed he was not new to the game. He had played over 600 games. So I just stepped off the bus and tried to pretend it didn't happen.One thing was certain, though: turtling was not an efficient way to lose games in the bronze league. I didn't play for a few days after that. But, as always, the bronze league kept calling. One night, not tired enough to go to bed, but too lazy to do anything productive, I logged on and found a game. It was Shakuras again. I didn't want to play for an hour and a half this time, but the results would prove no less retarded than if I had. I killed one of my SCVs and lifted the others to the expansion protected by rocks. There, I weighed my options. I decided on cloaked Banshees. I'm not sure how exactly I thought that would lead to a loss. I figured maybe I could use them like Mutas and just harass until my opponent finally out expanded me and crushed my hidden base. It didn't get that far, though.I arrived to find my opponent completely without units of any kind. This confused me so greatly that I had to watch the replay to figure out what had happened. Or what didn't as the case may have been. My opponent opened by building a Pylon at the bottom of his ramp. Then, after scouting and failing to find my base, he made 5 more Pylons in a circle around his Nexus. He then built two Assimilators, which he never mined from. Meanwhile, he started building Nexuses around the map. By the time I arrived with my Banshees, he had just constructed a gateway. Enraged, he greeted me with the expected level of anger.I flew around finding and killing his bases, still not sure what the fuck was happening. He attempted to reestablish a foothold on the opposite corner of the map, but I found it and killed it before he could make cannons. He left the game, but not before giving a strange, belated warning.Now I'm more confused than ever. How am I supposed to lose against people who don't make units? Or people who choose to make the worst units in the game? I really don't know. Short of just leaving the game, I am at a loss of how to proceed down deeper. So fuck it. It's time for a tea party. For the next 100 games I shall be having a very merry unbirthday.Part 2: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=313577