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Gold Salt vs Silver Effergy ZvZ

Salt opens up with a 5RR, which kind of semi-failed, but it kept me locked in my base for most of the game until I push out spine crawlers and get some zerglings in his largely undefended bases.

I liked the first replay quite a bit simply for the sake of showing just how important macro is, and how little it matters what units you are using so long as you have superior macro.

Banelings and zerglings are not a very good way of dealing with roaches, and yet you won because they took too long to expand, they didn't keep building workers, their economy was too weak to support an army and as a result they lost. Had they taken their expo earlier, built more drones, and not been so aggressive they could have won that match.

The second match had me nearly pulling out my hair and I noticed a theme of yours from the first and second match, beyond the fact that you insist on trying to counter roaches with banelings and it's just not working.

But the big mistake you're making and I've done this a lot too is getting tunnel vision and becoming TOO aggressive. You attack, do a bunch of damage, and you're in a really decent position and so you get this idea in your head that he's almost done and all you gotta do is put the nail in the coffin and start playing to take the win and kill him right away.

This is a very dangerous mindset to get into, you should rarely be thinking of wiping him out and taking the win so much as increasing your own position, put yourself in a better position. Instead of attacking, attacking, attacking, and losing wave after wave of zerglings for little to no damage, consider after doing all that damage, taking another expand, trying a tech change, spreading out your map control and field of vision.

You should always be playing with the thought that this match could continue going for another 20-30 minutes, don't let your macro slip just because you know they're almost dead, even if they're down to their last building, keep making units, keep planning your next expansion, keep spreading creep and keep spreading your field of vision, you don't always have to run in and take the win right away. It's a hard not to get yourself into that tunnel vision, but you'll find your play increases a lot more as a result.

TheGayDude & REL vs. PyschoB & Effergy PvT/Z

I'll admit, I had really poor mid-game macro this game (flinging those zerglings at the cannons wasn't the smartest course of action either xd ) but the early cannons and phoenixes had me freaked out.
But what makes this interesting is REL's rage against his teammate, which starts back-and-forth blaming of why they lost.

Gold Nubskill vs. Silver Effergy PvZ
Effergy vs. Fynnegan ZvZ
Gold Fome vs. Silver Effergy ZvZ
Gold Seragon vs. Silver Effergy Zvz
Jay vs. Effergy PvZ

Now the reason I'm posting these all at once is because I lost all of them (in a row, actually). And I would like to know what exactly I'm doing wrong so I can fix it and be better. So if any of you could take the time to watch and comment, I would appreciate it. :3

Nubskill rushes void rays. Totally catches me off guard and he later comes back to mop up with carriers and zealots.

Fynnegan just out-macroed me. By a lot. He probably could've just stormed my base at any time and killed me.

I can't recall what happened with Fome.

Same with Seragon.

And then Jay just pulls a cheese and rushes me with zealots after a ton of failed proxies.

Game 2 Against Jay:

Alright, I'm already noticing once again early game minor mistakes, and that's your pool timings, your pool is going down at 14 which is fine, essentially, but then you throw down your gas at exactly the same time, remember this is going to cut you back by 2 workers for a period of time, and thus you are losing minerals.

I understand your thought process of getting the gas fast so you can get speed researched for your lings, and if that's the case, consider instead going 13 gas, 14 pool.

Timing on this is important: You want to watch your minerals closely and maintain optimal mining time, to do this, keep building drones around 13-14 drone mark, then watch your minerals, once you jump to around the 150 min mark, drop your gas down and build another drone, you will then have 200 min for your pool very shortly, and the right number of drones, also your extractor will finish just in time so that once you place 3 drones on that gas, you will have 100 gas seconds (or if you're really good immediately) after your pool is done, thus gaining you optimal mining time and improving your timing.

That annoying little probe really became a problem for you by going around dropping proxies in every random direction, and you kept falling for them, instead of trying to pick off the pylons, pick off the probe with speedlings, once it's done, then start taking out pylons, and you did react well by throwing down roaches to defend your expo, but it didn't really matter because your expo had nothing mining out of it anyways, making it essentially just a waste of 300 minerals.

A couple spine crawlers and a couple of queens could really bolster your forces at this moment, also, your gas is getting a little bit high and although I understand you need the gas to support your roaches, you also need the minerals to continue building them 2 workers on gas is actually enough to maintain 1 base worth of roaches, the 3rd is just excess.

I'm also going to note your larvae producing does slip, but it's understandable when you're under pressure.

What was with the spore crawler? You had no reason to believe air was incoming, a spine crawler would be reasonable but a spore crawler no.

Your opponent wasted LOTS of minerals on wasted pylons, and was incredibly aggressive right off the bat with lots of units and they're only running on one base, yet they somehow have more workers and income than you, this is a clear sign that you are simply not droning enough.

Game 3 against Seragon:

Once again I'm going to note your pool gas timing and how it affects your drone line.

Next I'm going to note your scouting, it's good to scout, a great idea to scout, your timing for the scout was pretty decent, could have been delayed a LITTLE bit longer to save you some extra mining time, as the only sort of valuable information you're going to get from scouting when you do is to see if there is a 6 pool cheese rush coming, which is good to know, but still, could be delayed a little bit longer.

When you did scout however I don't think you paid close enough attention to what you were scouting for, you saw the second in base hatch and a spine crawler go up, yet you push with about 6 zerglings right off the bat. That spine crawler will mop up all of your zerglings no problem, it's not a good idea to be pushing, it's a better idea, since you know he has the crawler up and an in base hatch, to continue droning since you already have an expo up (which I don't like the placement of btw).

Also those lings defended the FE in case of a push, or simply sit 1 or 2 outside his base to scout for an incoming push at which point you can build your units to defend, but instead you lost 3 lings and did 0 damage.

I'm gunna go back to your expo for a second here and note the placement and it's function. Most importantly it's up for a fair deal of time before you begin producing anything out of it, this is lost minerals, keep an eye on the left side of your screen for notification when that hatchery is done and immediately begin producing a queen and drones to begin saturating. Also the placement is not a good idea, it feels safer to have a random expansion hidden off in the corner producing free resources but it's not, taking the natural expansion is a better idea as it's easier to defend, by connecting your bases through creep and producing all your units together and keeping them nearby, also it's good for moving drones around to saturate your bases properly.

Your play for a good deal afterwards is pretty decent, you could still drone a little more, but you did a good job of really devastating his worker line and defending at the same time, however I question your teching path.

You're gone into a midgame and you still don't have anyway of dealing with air units, no number of baneling zergling is going to fight off a handful of mutalisks, and you don't have enough queens to deal with them either. However you're teching to an infestation pit hive? What was the point in that? Those buildings could have easily been delayed for an earlier spire or hydra den, and then begin producing THOSE units, next you begin to build ALL your tech buildings, which is a good idea in a long game, where the sides are really even and you're both sitting on three mining bases and macroing hard and might need to tech swap at any given time, but at this point, not really. You build all of these tech buildings, but don't have the economy to support mass tech units, so you continue to build more zerglings and banelings, which will ultimately delay you from getting the tech units you need.

Also your macro is slipping up, which happens a lot for zerg players because they are limited by larvae, so the clear solution is to get more larvae, build another hatchery, even if it's an in base hatchery, this will help you produce more units.

I find for Zerg, they reach a critical mass for macro on their third hatch, at which point, if you're on top of your macro game you cannot fall behind in units, because you are just producing so many units out of 3 hatcheries with queens that it becomes ridiculous. Anytime you have too many minerals, consider throwing down another hatch to increase your larvae production.

I also want to note something from all your games, control groups of your friend, use them. You'll find it's so much easier to macro and control your forces in control groups.

Hatch 4 or hatch 5 is a pretty common favourite, and will increase your ability to macro 100% easily.

All in all, what REALLY lost this match for you was inability to macro, I would definitely suggest taking a page out of my book, and just spend a bunch of games losing to work on your macro, focus entirely on your macro skills, producing units constantly, maintaining your economy and expanding, also knowing your timings for buildings and building the RIGHT buildings to best suit your plan.

Building one of everything so you can do anything you want isn't going to work very often, going into a match you need to have a plan already in mind, and then flex with it slightly according to how your opponent reacts.