Early game air
Timing is everything! You didn't have a unit queued up in your airfac for a while, that is very bad especially with air.
In the early game, you had air and he didn't, but you kept building interceptors. In the early game if you build air, there are basically two main valid strategies:
1. Offensive: build a bomber and a scout, then inties.
2. Defensive: build a scout, then inties. If he doesn't have air, MAKE BOMBERS!!! If you don't do that you *will* lose.
On a map where air is uncommon, you should favor #1. On a map where air is common, #2 is probably better, but don't *always* do it since that's predictable. In this case you built an intie first without a scout. In my opinion a scout first is better. A scout first has 3 functions:
1. He will fly over his base, so you can see whether he has air or not.
2. He can spot his early bomber, which you can then target with your intie.
3. He can spot land raids.
4. (He is annoying.)
In that game your opponent went second land, but you were not aware of this, so you did not build bombers. To become good at the early air game you have to actively work your way through this air meta. Build a scout -> fly over his base in a path where he can spot his bomber and airfac, but is unlikely to be caught by an intie -> pay attention to his bomber if he has one, and target it with your intie -> if he doesn't have an airfac, make a bomber and bomb his engies. I personally like to make scout intie bomber, since it automatically does reasonably well against both the offensive and defensive early air strategy, as well as doing reasonably well against second land. You won't get a huge advantage as with early bomber vs second land, but I don't like to gamble anyway
Early game land
You did 3 engies, scout, 2 mantis, then more engies. That is ok though I would not send the 2 mantis to the same side. It is very nice that you ran them to his back though, they paid off by denying his back mexes for a long time.
Your landfacs had bad rally points. The units wait in front of your base, when they should be going to one of the sides.
Early game buildings
You mass stalled, which is a problem especially when your mexes aren't built yet. They will take ages to build and you'll miss out on a lot of mass. It's better to not spend all your initial mass, and to not stall and get your mexes fast, than to spend all your initial mass but delay your mexes. Try to prioritize getting reclaim and mexes over building factories a little more. Remember that if you build that queue of 6 mexes 10 seconds earlier, that means that you get 120 extra mass out of them. On the other hand if you build factories while stalling, you are in fact getting fewer units built.
Mid game
You attacked his main base while it was much better to raid the expansions. He dropped the sides which gave him a big advantage. The sides are EXTREMELY important on open palms, since they give you 3 mexes each, and the ability to deny a lot of mexes with arties/mmls. He was defensive with his units, so you were still in a winning position.
Raid with the minimum units possible, so that you don't lose many units and don't give him reclaim. 2 mantis kill mexes just as well as 200.
Versus Aeon
Here are some things that work vs auroras:
1. T2 land
2. T1 bombers
3. Gun upgrade
Here are some things that don't work vs auroras:
1. T1 land!!!!
Medusa may work on chokepoint maps, but not on open palms. Auroras eat up mantis in larger numbers. So beyond the very early game, make T2 land fast. There is no point in building mantis vs auroras, when rhinos are 100x more effective. Also putting more build capacity on air for making bombers is good vs auroras. Gun+stealth is also devastating. But your main tool is T2 land. Don't even think about making t2 mex before making t2 land against aeon. Think about t2 land as an effectiveness multiplier. It makes all your mass twice as worthwhile because t2 units are more effective, but t2 mex only gives you +4 extra, which on a map where you have +50 in t1 mexes isn't much.
Good luck!
Statistics: Posted by Vee — 12 Aug 2014, 11:39
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