Armed with the updated game plan I went to the ladder with new confidence to focus on improving instead of winning. Here is a recap of my small session:

In the first game…

…of the session I went out to build my expansion just a bit late and got punished directly by a pylon blocking my natural. I sent the drone to the third and wanted to go on as usual. When the probe then blocked both my main gasses, I directly suspected a cannon rush and mentally prepared for that.

It never happened.

Instead I built 4 Zerglings out of impatience to clean up the natural and my main gas geysers, took double gas at my expansion to catch up the lost gas mining time and finally got my 3rd hatch up. Because I was floating quite some minerals because I was thrown off, I also decided to put down a macro hatch. After shaking up, I synced up with the B2GM build to continue the game plan. My Lair and my Roach warren were pretty late, but I already had 66 drones out before 5:30. I forgot to remake the drones from making the Roach Warren, but had over 60 drones when I started making some safety units. To get some more values out of the Zerglings I created, I placed them in front of the 2 exits of the Protoss’ natural.

The Zerglings in front of their base alarmed me when they moved out with a bunch of Chargelots and Blink Stalkers around 6:30. I was a bit late on 3 base saturation because of the distraction, but on 63 drones I started to crank up unit production. My creep spread was okay-ish because I tried to actively think about it every time I injected, so I saw them arriving and let them close in on my purple carpet. Here the game was basically over since the all-in just hit a brick wall of Roaches and some Hydras.

Later in the replay I noticed they were all-in on 2 base with only 2 geysers worth of gas. But they still floated quite some resources, so their ability to macro really hurt their build and timing attack. I have always been scared to overreact and fall behind, but note to myself: With 3 (nearly) fully saturated bases against a 2 base all-in I am always ahead after defending.

In the second game…

…I really messed up the first 6 minutes. I got supply blocked a lot, didn’t really spread creep and also had way too few Overlords out in the field against a Zerg opponent. I think I was too afraid of being Ling flooded again, that I did the damage to myself and this was my biggest mistake in this game. I didn’t see them coming at all when the opponent showed up 3rd killing the hatchery and all its residential 22 drones (because I didn’t mineral-walk but only move commanded them out). The opponent retreated with all Roaches and Ravagers and had destroyed one third of my economy and production for free.

I though the game was over.

Little did I know that I was still up in workers and the 3rd of my opponent had just finished. They also decided to attack my other 3rd where my replacement Hatch was close to finishing. They got the cancel, but they also overextended their whole Army into my now ready defensive units which were just late for their ambush on my first 3rd. After that my 3rd was reestablished, and we were even on bases and workers. From this point I could max out on Roach/Hydra and push their Bases. During my push they sent a bunch of Zerglings into my main and natural which managed to kill 14 workers and left me with just 37, but they could not defend my push either.

Lesson learned for the next time: Leave some lurkers as static defense at home as ViBE always says “if the game turns into a base-trade…”. This has never happened to me before, so I guess there is always a first time for everything.