Lessons In How NOT To Play

[GenocideAlive]

Review this replay and tell me five major (game losing) errors.

I will give +rep to the best five points and discussion.

[Dayoh]

Ill give it a go, ill check the replay now and edit it, after viewing it.

EDIT:

Ok, just finished watching it. I dont know if these are main game ending errors but i thought these were pretty important.

1. Didn't Expand, in 1v1 its pretty much crucial you have an expansion
2. I dont know if this should get a mention but what was he doing with his alco in the expansion next to your base, this makes me wonder what the hell he was doing, this can question his intellect lol
3. I felt that he wasn't going well economically in the game at some stages after your first hit i think, he lost all alco's, ziggs. When you left he was at max pop for awhile before building more ziggs.
4. When he was attacking your expansion and when you were in his base and took at alcos/ziggs, he didnt tp for a long time lol.
5. Not the greatest micro but if we all had excellent micro most of us would be pro's.

As i said before i don't know if that was what ended the game, haven't played ladder in so long. After watching this i have a sudden urge to get on Bnet and get my ass handed to me ;)

[wa123]

Could have say more than 5 points about this guy, but since u ask for 5, here is...

1. fail to proper use of spare Acdyte at the beginning, not even try to hide it or scope, instead committed suicide for no reason.

2. too greedy trying to take down your expansion using spider scratch attack while failing to TP back into main base to save, lose more than gain.

3. fail to get the undead healing car out to restore blood and mana, the building was up for long time

4. fail to listen on tower up advise, (I vote 5 out of 5 for this insults / advise you gave him)

5. going spider against orc = suicide, bad unit combination.

[Basan]

From what I saw, will try to post the ones I've noticed.

1st - Bad base lay-out (too much space between buildings for my taste). Shop out front? For what, sitting duck purposes? And he even was stubborn enough to put it back there when he now had space at the back of base.
For crying out loud, even a TC with their huge colision size could waltz right in. And this also brings up the low Ziggurat tower count, provided that Ud's depend on it a great deal for base defence imho.

2nd - Scout mistake. Generally Ud's use the Ghoul to scout (faster), because sometimes he can get a lil' worker harass if lucky. Furthermore, a 6th Aco' isn't very useful if your intention isn't to expo right away. He at least could've used it to keep scouting from time to time (even as poorest he might be at it).

3rd - Unit combo. He's so stuck to cookie cutting that went Spiders with DK, even after he scouted. Probably DL with mass Ghouls would've served him well in early game stages. And isn't that hero somewhat better in LT (for sleep abuse)? Ain't too sure, though.
And no Statues to help healing for a while after he reached T2? Come on, those are a must for an Ud to survive through their weakest hours!

4th - Lack of harassing prowess. Usually, and as I see it, Ud players are the Zerg of WC3-TFT will their relentless "in your face" stance towards foe players. This fella though, only came to harass the Orc base when it was well launched into tier 1.5 (almost 2). Little fire focus I saw in here as well.

5th - Poor creeping/creep jacking. Anyone who sends an half good Skellie away when no foe hero is around has to have some issues. And when he sees a Grunt pass him by he doesn't go after it, trying to creep steal on a perfectly good harassing moment?

6th - Finally, and for me, the most important misshap of this Ud. Poor decision making (and micro) almost throughout all game.
He stubbornly focuses on heros a couple of times, when maybe a good Grunt/Wolf XP may've been easier. And when the Far Seer is terribly weak he doesn't pull a Coil to finish it? Oh, how god he f**ked himself! A hero kill would've bought him some time for recovery and levelling up/harassing. :P
Lets his hero party go after a Grunt to the middle fountain during the day, when GA's intention was clearly to lure him to the NPC's there.
Decides to make Spirit Towers when some Nerubian ones would be soooo much more fitting granting him a few extra hits (and perhaps a few more kills, if the Ziggies where deployed better and not as a clump of mushrooms at the back of his mine). And he doesn't direct their fire (along with the one from the tier 2 Necropolis) when GA's troops come along, even throwing the Wolves at front?
Throws Slaughterhouse at front (when had space at the back)? And twice (even after 1st getting maimed)?

Summing up, need I say more for his poor decision and micro? :shiftyl:

[RedRagToAnOrc]

Point 1

Your opponent's base build, especially the shop. The Tomb of Relics is just about the most important building an Undead player can have. At Tier 1, it supplies him with Skelly Rods for creeping, and Dust to counter any Blademaster harrassing. At Tier 2, he gets potions, and at Tier 3, he gets an Orb of Corruption, as well as Obsidian Statues and Destroyers.

The placement of said shop, at the front of his base, allows the Orc player to easily take it down with no fear of having any units taken down. A shop in the back of an Undead base means that the Orc player has to run in and get destroyed by the Undead army and slow tower(s) before he even gets a chance to attack the shop.

Point 2

Your opponent's creeping, throughout the game, was absolutely woeful. Early on, the natural expansion is easily crept, provides an instant Level 2, item, and allows for an expansion at any point from then on. Moreover, your opponent's base was between yours and the natural - so you couldn't even have reached him before he finished, should you have chosen to harrass.

A Death Knight really needs Level 3 at or before Tier 2 to be very effective against Raiders/Stomp, or when pushing, as he did. He should have continued to creep and consolidate his position at this point. After the point at which you had an FS, TC and three Grunts against his DK/Lich/Fiends, he could have crept the centre creeps, which are of utmost importance on Lost Temple. Instead, he chose to push, and lost his DK as a result.

Finally, after his DK was surrounded and killed, his Lich sat in his base with 4 Fiends for what seemed like an age. He may well have been able to get Level 3 on the Lich in that time.

Point 3

The hit on your expansion was a disaster. The cardinal rule in expansion vs main base races is that you instantly attempt to save your main base, unless you can either hold off your opponent's push, or take down the expansion fast enough to be able to TP and not sustain much in the way of losses. Your opponent lost most of his acolytes, a shop (!!!) and two Ziggurats, had his economy effectively crippled, and in return killed a Grunt or two, as well as your expansion - however, your opponent should certainly have cut his losses and TPed immediately.

Point 4

The skilling on the Lich was, in my opinion, the wrong option. After pushing your base at early Tier 2, your opponent sees that you apparently have no Tier 2 buildings, and a War Mill going up. With an absence of Kodos, Frost Armour first along with a potentially Level 3 DK would have completely negated any push you made against him, and probably allowed him to cripple you there and then. As it was, your opponent picked Nova, used it inefficiently, and lost a number of Fiends which probably would have been saved.

Point 5

After losing many Ziggurats, Acolytes and his shop, your opponent pushed you. Okay, that's maybe not terribly bad, although I would have crept to get higher hero levels and fend off any more pushes.

Imagine my surprise when I look back at his base after the push, and he still has... the exact same number of buildings and acolytes as 2/3 minutes ago! This was another contributing factor to the destruction of his economy, and certainly could have been avoided, simply by multitasking just a little bit.

[Prozerran]

Ok, I'll give this a go.

1. Scouting. With one of the first 3 acolytes costed him the game. This crippled his economy at the onset. It's the reason he teched 4':45" into the game instead of at 3':15, and the reason he didn't have a Slaughterhouse for Stats until roughly 7 minutes into the game. And what did he get from this? Nothing. No sign of your strategy, just location, and then he suicides it into a creep because he needed the control to produce a Fiend.

Scouting properly with both of his skellies would have revealed your expo at the 4 o'clock position much sooner, probably as it was beginning to be built where it would have been reasonable for him to attack it to keep it from going up.

2. Burrow would have saved his fiends during your first encounter in his base. This problem lends itself to the first issue, his tech was slowed from resource issues. Still, burrow was needed to keep fiends alive and save DK mana in the subsequent battles and was never researched.

3. Expo vs Harass. His harass on your burrow was fine. He decided he would try to take out your expo with fiends while you were attacking his main instead of expand himself. Not only would he have negated his early mistake with more resources, he would have gained hero levels that he needed to prevent your harass on his base, and given you another target to harass, buying him time to build up his main even more and make up for his latency in tech.

4. Towers. A nerubian was needed at the start. Again, this is a resource issue, but he only started upgrading a tower when he started being attacked, and he never cancelled it when the Zigg came under attack. More resources lost. With a nerubian, using his ghouls, and TPing back, he would have increased his odds of keeping one of the Ziggs he lost.

5. Base build has already been mentioned. It is my fifth and final point, to make, but I would like to add that the graveyard was in the entirely wrong place, causing the problem of leaving the shop out in the open and having to rebuild there later. Most of what caused his loss happened in the first minute of the game.

[GenocideAlive]

I'd like to say that everybody did an excellent job, I'm suprised to see so many people giving good assessments. The formatting was really good too, as people put some time and thought into their responses. I'm pretty happy with the turnout. I hoped that maybe GroG would come around to give us a little UD perspective, but maybe he never saw the thread or the play was too annoying.

Anyway, there are a couple of points that I wanted to bring up for purposes of illustrating some of his wrong-headedness that he had in terms of UD.

If you'll notice, I keep queuing peons at my expo to repair the building. This is because Fiend's Piercing damage is so horrible against Fortified armor that I know I can keep him there for a long time. While I'm trashing his base to force him to choose, he thinks he can "hurry up and finish" but I keep multi'ing to repair while I'm working his base like a card game. So he comes back to his base to try to micro Acolytes or whatever, and fails to immediately kill peons that are repairing. So he spends about 30s extra over there for pretty much no reason.

As soon as I show up at his base, he queues no towers. No spirits, no nerubs, nothing. In addition, he leaves his ghouls harvesting lumber. If he would have started the towers, queued more acolytes, and attacked with his ghouls, he could have pretty much kept going through the siege. Once the towers went up, I would have had a pretty difficult time doing anything.

I have no TP scroll, so he could have used some careful TP positioning to trap my hero(es) in his base. Unfortunately, he waits and waits and waits and waits to TP, until finally his base has been soundly thrashed, too late to support towers. I had a large enough force to challenge his, but not on Blight with aura, support ghouls, and towers. He could have easily finished my army, then gone to my expo to stomp.

He places his Lich very aggressively when he TPs back. He then Frost Novas my FS, and then Coils it--both of his skills are at L1, it's going to take around 6 nukes to finish my FS! Dumb, dumb, dumb. He should have hit the leading Grunt(s) with the Nova and tried to FF them down to finish them. He had some good blocks at the entrance but he was so bent on getting my FS that he missed them.

When he came back to my base to push, he proceeds to immediately book it as soon as he sees my army. He really didn't have to do that, but OK. In the process of me chasing him, he does what? His lagging DK which he's using to tank (good idea) stop to Coil a fiend that I couldn't catch anyway. So he's basically hanging around my entire army then stops in the middle of his run. So what am I going to do? If guessed "beat the DK in the face with axes and scimitars until he screams like a girl", you got it.

Someone else post a replay and we'll keep it going with the whole "analysis" thing. That'd be kind of fun, as long as you have something instructive to say afterward.

[h0bgawblin]

Great idea for a thread, if I had my replay folder at my disposal, I would love to throw some of my replays at this thread. GA, for your great ideas in posting threads, and generous advice to all players as of late, I doth knight yee with rep!

[Prozerran]

So, who wins the +rep for comments, GA? Just curious.

[h0bgawblin]

me, isn't it obvious proz? (with that money I slipped ga, I can't lose!)

[Basan]

Since someone brought it up, I just have a feeling that more than one 'prize' got to us so far (read, good points imho)... *Meh* although I could be wrong in the long run.

[GenocideAlive]

Wow, and so none of you know how to use UserCP to check your reputation. Scary.

[Basan]

Wow, and so none of you know how to use UserCP to check your reputation. Scary.

*Rofl* Just not to mention clicking in the scale button on their own posts. :rolleyes:

And provided no one noticed in my previous post, I was inferring that more than one post got karma (due to the quality of exposed points). ;p

[RedRagToAnOrc]

Wow, and so none of you know how to use UserCP to check your reputation. Scary.

I know whether or not I have rep, but I thought giving details of it in forums was frowned upon. :o

[GenocideAlive]

What can I say, I guess I'm just a renegade wildchild. :rolleyes: