"That's your plan?!"

So I got demoted to Gold. I think I raked in two separate 10-loss streaks playing as Zerg. I was probably making it hard on myself because I was fast-expanding every game. That's what IdrA does, so I figured I'd follow his lead. It turns out that in order to play like one of the best Zergs in the world, you have to be sort of... umm... good. I would just get overrun every game. I made very little besides drones in the beginning, because I felt a need to get at least 32 drones on minerals (two per patch) rather quickly to take advantage of having two bases. Then, if I survived, I would start seeing enormous amounts of money pour in and be unable to spend it for lack of larvae.

The most frustrating thing was that I felt like my army would just melt before any sort of resistance from the opponent. It turns out that can happen when all you have is Zerglings and Hydralisks! I had figured Hydras were a good unit to rely on since they hit both ground and air. I remember getting crap-tons of them to beat the campaign in SC1. The problem in SC2 is that they are very fragile--only 80 HP, which is probably the lowest of any tier-two unit in the game. (In fact, even though Hydras cost 25/50 more than Roaches [25/25 more, actually --ed.], they have the same rating for what I call the total damage output, or TDO, which you get by multiplying the damage per second by the HP, giving a rough comparative indication of how much damage they will deal in a fight.) I was used to Terran, where you can just get a big Marine-Marauder ball and successfully attack-move into any army of roughly equal area on screen. (No, I don't think Terran is OP [overpowered], but I do think it's the easiest to play at a low level.) I should have saved some of those replays. Just imagine a giant horde of Lings and Hydras running into a wall of Zealot/Stalker/Colossus or Marine/Marauder/Thor and crumbling apart like so many thrown clumps of dry dirt.

At some point my humor with the situation started to subside, and I wanted to find some way of doing better. So I downloaded some replays of Diamond Zerg players just to see what they did. And I noticed that they all seemed to be using a little thing called Roaches. And then they did something peculiar with them: they attacked. How novel! And by attacking, they forced the opponent to produce units to defend. That's the big lesson I drew. Instead of being worried about being attacked by air, just make your own early attack by ground, and then the opponent won't have the luxury of being able to build up a large air force. Attacking is also a great way to get your opponent to lay his cards on the table by revealing his defenses. (I might make a post later about the way my psychological fear of the unknown poisons my decision making and what I'm doing to overcome it.) So now I am happily making a Roach army from one base (at least to start), and I'm winning regularly again. I still have a tough time with Zerg macro, especially keeping up with larva injections (inarguably the most unforgiving macro mechanic of the three races). But I'm working on it. Once I get back up to Platinum and start winning again too much, I'll switch to Protoss.