Straight into ranked matches
Quick overview of the options first - There are ranked and unranked options, with the custom mode being what it says (letting you choose options, teams, number of players, maps etc), and are unranked. Great for playing with friends or specific people. Co-operative mode is you + humans against the API - I didn't play with this yet but I think it will be a good way to learn off other people and practice some strategies. Then there are the ranked matches, the meat of the game.There are 5 types - 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, FFA, and each of them has a separate league for you to compete in. Each one has a series of divisions and sub-leagues, with about 100 people per division. Before you can join any of the leagues you need to play 5 "placement" games, which will decide you initial league position.
I started in the 1v1 games playing as a Terran, and wow I felt like a bad player. My first game lasted 5 minutes, I had not quite got the multiplayer concepts yet and was casually building a barracks, some SCVs, factories etc when a huge army turned up at my doors and proceeded to flatten me. Nice. On to match 2, which was equally short, this time when my enemy crept up behind me with some of the rocket pack Terran units and proceeded to wipe out all my SCVs. Cue resource starvation and again my early demise.
I lasted a full 10 minutes in match 3, as I finally realised the importance of building lots and lots of SCVs and getting some units up quickly, fending off his first assault. My success was short lived however as his tanks and thors rolled in 5 minutes later to flatten by base. I still didn't learn however and jumped straight in to match 4. I took a different tactic this time though and went on the offensive quickly, building lots of marines and sending them out to find him..I did pretty well for a while but still managed to lose..he was playing zerg and cleverly sent out a bunch of zerglings to take out my base while I attacked him. Damn him.
At this point I decided I didn't want to lose all 5 matches so I quit the game for 5 minutes to read up on strategy. Back to the game and my final placement match, where things were looking up. I had learned the concept of "walling" (building supply depots across the front of your base as a wall) and of building multiple barracks to get an army up quickly, and this time I lasted a full 30 minutes! I teched up and geared up, only to be wiped out by a large number of Protoss ships..boo I had forgotten Anti Air.
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