This week, despite playing very few games, my ladder ranking got even lower. My bonus pool hasn't been spent for weeks. The ladder insists on spewing the matchups I'm not good at at me, and withholding the ones I can perform well in. The worst part is, I'm playing gold/silver players and losing. Didn't I already do my due diligence in beating these guys to get promoted? Don't send me back there, Blizzard :(.

I got regrettably few games in this week, mostly because my computer was borked, but slightly for lack of trying. I'd say my win rate is sitting at about 25% for both my TvT and TvZ, but probably 80-90% for TvP. I'll cover that first.

I love TvP. It's probably to do with my incredible comfort level with bio units. Honestly, if I could play bio in every matchup I would. The drop play and mobility is awesome, as is the ability to remacro quickly off off 21 barracks. I don't usually forget to upgrade, and I'm usually diligent about expanding. Even moreso, when I scout a Protoss base, I understand what I'm seeing. I understand how to react to a 4-gate, a 1-gate expand, what the gases at a certain time mean, everything. It's a comfort level that I enjoy a great deal. This week, at the recommendation of a friend who stole a build from Kas, I tried out a new TvP build. It involves going cloaked banshee into double orbital production. It is fantastic.

The primary goal of the banshee harass is simply just to keep him in my base while I'm building 2 orbital commands and no units. If I kill an ass-ton of probes, that's a bonus. I do feel a bit of empathy for him, though, I can understand how frustrating cloaked banshees are, especially without scans.

After I get my two orbitals up, my income skyrockets, especially with MULEs. Really unless he took another expansion himself or did something extremely creative there's not much he can do anymore. I'll usually have about a 20 or so worker lead when I push, and my army will just crush him. Even if it doesn't, I have so much production I can just re-create my army before he gets to my base.

But while Protoss is fine, TvZ is still giving me issues. I've all but stopped making marauders vs Zerg -- except when he has roaches or Ultras -- but it's still very much a coinflip whether I win and the Zerg's side is weighted. I won't really talk too much about TvZ, because I'm still working on it as best I can. I really need to get a better answer to engaging with Zerg, and get better army control. Losing your whole army to lings and blings sucks.

TvT is the problem matchup of the week. I used to do either one of two builds against Terran, a 1/1/1 or a 3-rax. Neither of those have been yielding me great success as of late, so I decided to switch things up a bit. DeMuslim uses a build that was pretty cool - he 1-rax FE's into a bunch of marines, then transitions into tanks. I've already said my opinion on the 1-rax FE, it's a great build. Essentially it's out too fast for the opponent to really do anything about it unless he's 6-pooling, so the opponent has to come up with something creative, expand himself, or lose. I prefer the latter. When a Terran goes something regular like a 1/1/1, I win. I just crush the push with a ton of bio, if I have enough of an advantage I just move out and kill him with marines. Usually I'll wait for my tanks to get out then move in.

When the opponent goes bio also, however, I tend to lose. That wasn't the only reason I lost the above game, I should have scouted that he was one-basing when I was already on three and just thrown up six or so bunkers and stomped his army without denting my economy. But even when it's not a one-base, if my opponent is going bio he usually has stim. In my build I focus on getting a lot of marines up, which involves two reactored barracks, so I don't get stim very early (I usually start stim about the time I start my factory). This is an obvious weakness in my build, but I'm not quite sure how to fix it. I like to avoid gas in my build for as long as possible so I can get my economy up quicker, but the trade-off for that is a weaker army. I'll have to do some more experimenting, but I'm not sure whether it'd be more tactful to keep my stim timing and just work more bunkers into my build or whether I should forego some of my economy and just get stim earlier. I think I also blame part of the loss on this map. I hate Arid Plateau, but I hate it the least of my downvoted maps. My first veto is Tal'Darim, then the new Entombed Valley and Antiga Shipyards. Perhaps I could switch Antiga for Arid, but I really hate playing Zergs on Antiga =\. Life was so much easier back in Bronze.