Salutations. After a long and involuntary absence from StarCraft, I finally got a chance to play using that 1.08 patch you hear so much about. Sadly, the Zerg seem to have gotten the shaft in this patch. This is especially bad for me because Zerg is the only race I kind of know how to play with. Another hard pill to swallow is that I missed the ultra short "no hack" window that appears after a patch is released. Despite this, I logged on to battle.net leery of my vulnerability and made a 1vs1 game on the map Challenger.

Predictably, I chose Zerg as my race for this match-up. My opponent, whose name I have forgotten, chose random and we began the game with little to no chat. Taking a nervous breath, I spawned in as turd-brown at the lower part of the map. For those of you who don't know, Challenger is a two player only map. The starting positions are on the top and bottom of the 96 x 128 playing field. Each main has a nearby vespene geyser, but no immediate mineral expansion. If you want a good expansion, you have to fly to one of two islands in the upper right and lower left corners, where you will find minerals and vespene. There are also two very sufficient mineral only islands in the center of the map, as well as two mineral only clusters along the left and right borders. These mineral patches, however, are in a bad arrangement and it is difficult to position a hatchery near them, resulting in non-optimal (who needs a thesaurus? :P) mineral gathering.

Unfortunately, I got off to a bad start by absolutely mauling the cloning procedure, and three drones went for the same mineral patch as one just sat there staring. With this shaky start I continued to build up my base. I planned to make drones until I reached nine supply, then an Overlord, then three more drones, with the last one to hatch getting the honor of becoming my Spawning pool. As far as I know, this is a fairly standard build (especially against a random opponent), but I was concerned about the late Pool. As it turns out, though, I deviated a bit from this build order when a scouting Overlord finally reached my enemy's base.

Zerg! I was facing off against another Cerebrate, and my Overlord happened to notice a Spawning Pool that had just started. With this recon, I sent him back home. I know, I know...I should have made him stay and monitor the enemy longer since nothing could have hurt him. Well, I feel rather uncomfortable leaving an Overlord in an opponent's base because I always forget about it, and before I know it I'm out eight supply. Then I get a call from the Overlord's family asking why the hell I don't keep an eye on my troops (like they know how to fight a war).

Zerg vs Zerg are usually pretty fun matchups. If I'm not mistaken, the Zerg player who is last to make a Spawning Pool is generally the best off economy-wise. With this in mind, I opted to continue drone production for a short while longer before finally plopping down a Spawning Pool. I tried to time it so that I would have Zerglings of my own if the worst case scenario occurred--that is, if he immediately hatched Zerglings the second the Pool finished, and sent them down to me. As it turns out, this worst case scenario came true...but only partially.

In this situation, I usually pump Zerglings out of three hatcheries and upgrade their speed and attack ASAP. Then, as I climb the tech tree, I usually go for a Zergling/Muta or Zergling/Lurker combo. With this game plan, my Spawning Pool finished just as my returning Overlord noticed some Zerglings coming to my base. At this point I had a creep colony and a 3/4 finished Spawning Pool. I felt pretty confident that I would be able to hold off this early attack, but it never came.

"All right," I thought. "Apparently he is massing forces outside my main. Let him." I continued my Zergling production and researched speed and the melee attack upgrade. Before long I caught a glimpse of enemy Hydras standing around the entrance of my base. (By "glimpse" I mean they shot down an Overlord.) Despite the loss of this Overlord, I was a little encouraged to see this. It has been my experience that 99% of the time Zerglings will beat Hydras. (The last 1% being in a tight choke.) I continued the Zergling production and began researching Lurker Aspect when suddenly, my opponent attacked my unprotected Assimilator and tore it down with his Hydras.

D'OH.

I quickly pulled away the workers and sent in some Zerglings, which caused him to retreat after a short scuffle. If I had been using my brain, I would have pursued him, but I was happy just to be rid of his presence.

After a short silence, I received Lurker Aspect and quickly morphed four of them. At this point, though, I had not expanded, and it really started to worry me since I needed two Overlord upgrades (speed and carrying capacity) to claim one of the mineral and gas islands. Unfortunately my money was going toward troop production.

Suddenly my enemy attacked again, this time with greater numbers of Hydras. My Zerglings, along with a couple sunkens and the Lurkers, managed to repel the attack, but not without substantial losses. The size of his army told me that he must've had at least one working expansion, because I had just barely survived this attack and my minerals were saturated with workers.

Knowing that his standing army was dead, I decided that I had better press the advantage and counter-attack. I sent my surviving Zerglings up to his base while setting the rally points of my three hatcheries to just outside his choke. From these hatcheries I pumped Zerglings as fast as the larvae could handle.

I knew that by sending Zerglings up to his base I was taking a huge risk. At this point I still had not upgraded my Overlords, so they were still slow. As a result, my Zerglings had no detection. Seeing that my opponent's unit of choice was the Hydra, I gambled that he didn't have any Lurkers (which absolutely shred Zerglings).

My smallish force arrived at the enemy base to see a few token Hydras and sunkens, but not much else. I managed to cause some trouble but I was unable to bring about severe damage. Fortunately, it was only a matter of seconds before my new army of Zerglings were ready and waiting at his choke point, and I quickly sent them in to hopefully finish the job.

Slowly but surely, I managed to overpower his forces and tore down every last building in the place. Feeling cocky, I had almost typed "gg" when it dawned on me that the victory screen was not appearing. My earlier fears were proven true; he had an expansion somewhere. It also bothered me to see that he had much fewer minerals in his base then I had in mine :(

By now I had Overlord speed upgraded, so I sent one to the upper right island to check out the situation. Sure enough, there was a small encampment there, complete with a Lair, some sunkens, a Spire, and a Queen's nest (among other things).

At this point I was pretty sure that it was over; I couldn't reach him with a drop until Overlord carrying capacity had been researched, and the game's slowest upgrade is always the one you are waiting on. Fortunately, I had made a Spire earlier to produce Mutalisks, so I quickly morphed six of them (using all of the money I had at the time). These plucky go-getters flew up to the island and tried to stop my opponent's economy, but spore colonies and Hydras chased them away rather quickly. It would take some Guardians or a large drop to bust up that expansion, and I had money for neither.

Meanwhile my Overlord that had found this island expansion had also found a second expansion at one of the mineral only islands. This was of course slightly disheartening and I tried to weigh my options but they just depressed me. At that moment, the Overlord carrying upgrade had finished researching and I immediately ferried a Drone to the lower island expansion to try and catch up.

During all this, I had started producing Hydras to counter the Mutalisks that I had seen being made at that damned island expansion. In addition, I laid down some smack spore colonies to help protect my workers. These finished morphing just in time, for my enemy began a two-pronged attack consisting of Mutas from the north and Hydras from the west.

Thankfully, his Mutas fell pretty quickly to the wrath of spore colonies and my own Hydras. The opposing Hydras, however, give me some trouble since when you focus on Zergling production, you tend to ignore Hydra upgrades. My guys were just a bunch of slow, short distance spitting pussies. It looked grim until I unburrowed some bored Zerglings from underneath the enemy Hydras. (That's one of the perks of playing as Zerg--there's nothing more fun than suddenly unburrowing a group of Zerglings from directly under enemy ranged units :))

With this attack quelled, I noticed for the first time that I had extra money. Like the imbecile I am, I started another hatchery in my main base instead of one at the vespene geyser nearby. I also started one at the mineral-only expansion in the upper left. It's a real sucky expansion site, but I couldn't afford to be picky.

Along the way to this mineral-only, I noticed that my opponent had just expanded to the other mineral only island. I quickly gathered two Overlords and filled them up with Zerglings. These two organic shuttles flew directly to this new expansion and unloaded their 2/1 cargo. Unfortunately, there were just enough Hydras there to neutralize this drop. I immediately began loading two more Overlords with Zerglings, but before they left the base I noticed that my enemy was unloading twelve Hydras there to fend off any more drop attempts. Shit.

Well, let's take a tally here: I had a dried-up main, a sub-par expansion, and a new mineral only expansion that sucked. My opponent had two mineral only expansions that didn't suck, as well as a fully operational mineral and vespene expansion. It looked grim.

As if to agree whole-heartedly with me, my enemy suddenly appeared unannounced at my doorstep. The sheer numbers of Hydras and Mutas were more than a match for my scant Zerglings and pussy Hydras, and with a disappointed "gg" I exited the game.

In retrospect, I have to think that I beat myself in this game. Without considering the map, I immediately went into my standard building order and strategy of using Zerglings extensively. By not having the appropriate upgrades to accommodate the map, I deserved to lose.

In addition, I valued the island expansions too highly. I could have expanded to the crappy mineral-only earlier, but I snubbed it because it wasn't the best expansion site. I guess that one turned around to bite me in the ass.

But hell, hindsight is always 20/20 :)

Finally, I want to say sorry for not having any pictures. Maybe next time I will flaunt some of my l337 MS P41n7 sK1llz :P

If you have any comments about my playing, please let me know. I want to become a better player :)