Placement Matches 1 of 1

Apparently for Season 2 you only need 1 placement match.  My 1 match placed me in...

Drum Roll Please

Silver League!

It was a ZvZ.  My last few ZvZ games I played I went Speedling / Baneling and lost.  No surprise, I'm not that great at Baneling micro and I know that one-base Roaching often is winning this matchup.  So when I saw it was a ZvZ I decided to just do a blind one-base Roach.

Interestingly, my opponent out expanded and out built me.  He went for early Zerglings, followed by a strong Roach army, followed by a strong roach / hydra army, followed by Muta harass and followed by Zergling run-by.  I built roaches and then some Hydras and finally some ultras.

I won based on two things.  One was a little bit of extra micro....he'd 1-a his units into an attack and I'd position mine for a little better arc, burrow hurt roaches, etc, etc.  The other, and much bigger one, was upgrades.  I don't know why people don't think about upgrades in mirror matches.  You have the same units fighting each other....upgrades!

Watching the replay I just killed his 9 hydras and 20 roaches with my 20 1/1 + burrow roaches.  After he pulls his remaining units back and starts researching tunneling claws.  Without burrow =(  Meanwhile I'm getting grooved spines for my upcoming Hydras (he didn't have that for his) as well as tunnling claws and +2 ranged just finished with +2 armor going down.

Eventually he pushes on me with a Roach / Hydra / Muta force and I destroy it except for the mutas.  So I leave the mutas to kill my stuff and move into his base, destroying almost all his harvesting drones.  Before the fight he had something around 50-60 drones, after he had 23 while my spawning Hydras eventually dealt with his Mutas.

At the end, and even after watching the replay, there's a lot of time where it feels like he's just outplaying me.  But without getting those upgrades his army just couldn't overpower mine and eventually I wore him down.

+ 0 Points, Silver League Division Rank 5, Remaining Bonus Pool 17

http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/156529-1v1-zerg-xelnaga-caverns