3 Leagues in 30 Days Challenge

I started playing Starcraft 2 because my buddy Spolz was a huge fan of the original and pretty much forced me into the second one when it was released.  I had just purchased a strong computer and wanted to play some games on it, so why not THE pc game?  I've never been a real strong RTS player... in fact, I've NEVER played RTS seriously.  The last time I had played an RTS (Real Time Strategy game) was Command and Conquer: Red Alert in the 90s.  To say Starcraft is jumping into the deep end of the pool isn't fair.  What is much closer to reality is that Starcraft is like jumping into the deep end of the pool... and the pool is filled with acid... and sharks.

More after the jump!







My first season was season 2 (even though I started playing in season 1... but was too scared to leave the practice league).  I was pretty much just doing whatever I thought was cool.  Opening a round with 4 expansions in a row followed by 200 supply of 3/3 battlecruisers while playing on "normal" speed in the practice league?  Yeah, that happened. I got lucky and simply played more games than 95 other dudes in my division and ended up top 8 for the season.

Season 3 brought my first promotion.  At this point I was still doing whacky builds and had no idea how to play, but Spolz and I played a TON of 2v2s and I started getting a feel for what Terran does well and what they don't.  At least I was building marines and medivacs by this point.  Spolz had been promoted to Gold and was on his way to being a diamond league Protoss player in season 4.  He has always tried to help me out, but he doesn't know jack about Terran, so that made us blind and led by blind respectively.  His advice was "drop marines in their base" so that's what I did to limited success.

Season 4 I played about 15 games and won 8 of them.  I was still focusing on dropping in their bases as soon as I could and trying to force an early close.  If that didn't work I pretty much just waited to lose.

That brings us to season 5... and my new PC.

Two days before Christmas my computer exploded.  Power supply surged (yes, it's on a surge protector) and blasted my motherboard to death.  The horrific smell of burned solder wafted into my very sad nostrils and I was now PC-less.  I had a trip planned to visit family in the Midwest starting the day after Christmas, so I knew I was going to be PC-less for a while.  I forgot that my father-in-law is a tech geek aficionado and that he had a favorite PC warehouse he frequented.  He needed to pick something up so I tagged along.  $1,300 dollars later I had all the pieces to build The Nebuchanezzar.  It rocks... it rocked so hard, in fact, that I wanted to re-try my hand at streaming games.  League of Legends on max settings?  PFFFT... easy.  But wait... I love watching people play Starcraft... I wonder if I could stream Starcraft?  On max settings?  With music and commentary?  A webcam?  YOU BET YOUR ASS I CAN.

So, I'm off.  I win my placement match and am put back into silver league.  Great... I can do this... I just hope people enjoy what I have to offer so I'm not just another jerk screaming out into the abyss that is the internet without anyone even knowing I exist.

Well, some people really DO enjoy my stream!  YAY!  I'm off and running... but there's a problem: I might as well play blindfolded because I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm losing 3 out of 5 rounds every time I log in.  I'm starting to lose to bronze league players (WHO ARE MARKED AS FAVORED BY THE GAME).

This is when my stream came to the rescue (shameless link to my last post).

Fast forward a couple days and I see this:

Spolz wasn't around so I shot him a pic of the screen to prove that I'm no longer mathematically worse than the average.  (Bronze to Platinum go in 20% brackets.  ex Bronze is bottom 20%, Silver is bottom 20% to 40%, Gold is 40% to 60%  Platinum is 60% to 80%, Diamond is 80% to 98%, Masters is top 2% and Grandmasters is an invite only league of the top 200 players)

He responded with this: "Very nice! Can you go through 3 divisions in one month?!?"

I have until the 21th of February to see if I can get promoted 3 times in 30 days as I was promoted to Gold on the 21th of January.  I'm still trying to figure out how to make this more interesting, but if I can get to Platinum league by the 21st of February THEN I SHALL HAVE GLORY!

If you have any ideas on what should be on the line here, drop a comment.  If you want to see how I progress... check out my stream.  If you want to be informed of when I go live don't forget to follow me on twitter @T6SROF.  I have an irregular schedule due to my job, so if you want to catch me, you should hit that follow button under my stream... and if you've been putting off laddering... GET ON THE LADDER NOW!