Day 3.
One notable game to report on today. It was a very nonstandard game, so the build and timings were not very helpful practice. My Zerg opponent opened with a fast roach warren off of one base, prompting me to put down a forge and cannon early. Upon seeing the cannon, the Zerg expanded, and I proceeded with my 3-gate expand normally. My observer was unable to scout much beyond two bases, a roach warren, a hydralisk den, and two evolution chambers. As I had seen a roach opening, I expected roaches, and began immortal production from a single robotics facility. I researched hallucination but never used it once, which was a big mistake. As I moved out to poke and scout the Zerg's army, he dropped a large quantity of hydralisks in my main. I cleaned up his army but many buildings were destroyed in the process. I figured we were about even, economically, because he had made so many hydralisks unprompted. I also discovered in engaging so many hydralisks without colossi that guardian shield makes an absurdly big difference. It is 100% necessary whenever engaging hydralisks.
I moved to take a 3rd base while remaking my buildings. I forgot to begin my templar archives for a very long time, which was certainly what lost me the game. I didn't have storm researched until well after my third base was up, and I continued to try to engage hydralisks with charge zealots, which does indeed work very well. The rest of the game wasn't very relevant to my strategy, except that Zealot+Templar seems very viable against pure hydralisks. I simply didn't have enough of them, fast enough, and I continued to suffer from drops in my main, hurting my macro a lot. From watching the replay, my interpretation of the game state at all times was fairly good: the Zerg played aggressively with large numbers of hydralisks, and I thought (correctly) that we were economically very even, or I was ahead. This was true, and some Dark Templar harass actually brought me substantially ahead later in the game. What hurt me was my lack of production buildings, because they kept getting destroyed, and not enough high templars. The game was surprisingly close, but I simply couldn't quite catch up to my opponent's hydralisk army.
The game
Interesting fact: a single psionic storm brings the health of a hydralisk to 1 hp. This makes me think that as soon as Templar are on the field, I should switch from Zealot support to stalkers. Beyond that, this game has made me think about the ordering of the tech route I want to take. Early roaches should prompt me to go stalker+immortal first. This combination then prompts the Zerg into hydralisks. At this point I should already have psionic storm, which should be enough to beat virtually anything the Zerg can throw at me at that point. If, on the other hand, the Zerg opens with Hydralisks fast, I have to go for Zealot+Templar to open. If I execute this correctly, I hope it will be so dominating that the Zerg will need to get air units or roaches. Mutalisks are weak enough to high templar that I should be able to safely transition to blink stalkers. The most dangerous counter after fast hydralisks would be a very fast tech to brood lords, which require a large number of blink stalkers to counter, or void rays.
While my path from stalkers to immortals to a third base to templar seems reasonably clear, my path from zealots to templar to a third base to immortals does not. I'll need to work on rushing to storm and charge off two bases and trying to stay alive. An obvious problem here, as well, is knowing that a Zerg is going for fast hydralisks. If the Zerg began making hydras or just the hydra den early, but then made roaches or even mutalisks, I would be in some serious hurt, I think.
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