6 Pool

I've been thinking about the various skills that go into Starcraft, and this is my attempt at generating a report card for myself.  Some of this is to document my own progress, and some of it is so that other players who wonder what it takes to be at League X can see what worked for me at this level. The Grading System S- Superior.  This aspect of play is highly polished, consistent and comprehensive. A- Excellent. B- Good.  Significant effort invested into this area has produced significant strength.  May not be strong in all aspects or consistent. C-Fair D-Poor.  Minimal effort in this area has yielded only the lowest hanging fruit. F-None or Negligible My Report Card eAPM  100 Mechanics  C overall Mouse D Keyboard B Macro C overall Spending C Economy B Injects C Creep C The Mental Game D Task-switching D Attention space C Focus under pressure D Applying pressure F Tactics D overall Positioning/Terrain D Compos...

I'm working on my Ling/Bane/Hydra macro with Railgan's 3-base ZvT opener as a basis.  I'm finding that I get a little lost with the gas expenditures and forget things, so I wanted to create a mnemonic to keep me on track. There are 5 checkpoints where it is important to start several gas expenditures.  The minor checkpoints have 3 items each.  The Lair and Hive checkpoints have 5 each and are shown in blue. Starting mining gas again and take 2nd gas.  Bane Nest Upgrades (1/1) Lair Lair finishes Hydra Den 4 banelings Bane Speed Upgrades (2/2) Overseer Hydra Den finishes Start hydras (5 initially) Hydra Upgrade Infestation Pit Infestation Pit finishes Start Hive Start Spire Optionally Start Pathogen Glands for infestors. Hive finishes Start vipers (3 initially?) Don't forget evo chambers for Consume! Adrenal Glands Upgrades (3/3) Start transition tech.  Either Ultra Cavern or Greater Spire. It's definitely missing some ...

Introduction Players at the level of Platinum and below are frequently told not just to focus on macro, but that macro alone will raise them to higher ranks.  This is mostly true and the lower your rank the more true it is. But there are some non-macro factors too.  Your 3-base roach/hydra plan can be stopped by 1-base marines before you build any momentum. The purpose of Base-count Scouting is to allow your strong macro  to win games by giving you the information you need to make big picture decisions of when to make army and when to drone, and to do that without being a major distraction from your macro.  It is based upon the premise that your opponent's macro is at least not better than yours. Army now vs army later When does a drone pay for itself?  You have 50 minerals and a larvae.  You could make a pair of zerglings, or a drone.  The drone is an investment in the future, but how far in the future? In a 16-drone mineral saturation, the av...

Welcome to 6 Pool! I am a Zerg player on NA and I wanted a repository for my thoughts and resources on StarCraft, particularly StarcCraft II. I played the original StarCraft quite a lot, but not much Brood War I enjoyed WoL and HotS and played them some.  I don't want to say I was casual because I actually really stressed about ladder game and tried to improve.  But I was trying to get better at a game; I wasn't on a personal journey of mastery. Now I'm back in LotV, and my disposition has changed.  I've started to see the huge amount of work that will be required for me to even approach being the best player I can be, and I'm interested in doing that over a period of years.  I'm willing to face failures to improve. I came in right before 2017 Season 3 started. I have 32 games played this season, and my win rate has climbed to 70% over the last 14 games.  I started in Gold 2, and just got promoted to Plat 2.  I feel like Diamond is in reach. My Zv...