The only strategy I see here is recognizng the cloak player only focuses the middle chokepoint.

You spent too many resources attempting to bruteforce through that chokepoint instead of pressuring the side expansions.

See 7:30 where HistidineStar starts expanding to the sides with lone constables, and you don't even have enough glaives to pressure those constables as you've needlessly lost quite a few glaives to pyros in the first several minutes.

People say sniper + knight against jumpies, but in general I think that jumpy just flat out destroys cloakies - which is one of the reasons I don`t play 1v1 anymore.
If its about direct fighting, you could try tank-arty tho, if you have the ressources. Jumpies have problems dealing with heavier artillery.

Hello Lawesome9:

Before the game begins, your commander had made a mex and immediately started making solar panels. Each solar panel is 70M each and a mex is 85M. The time spent making energy would be much better off with your commander making more mexes.

Use your conjurer to make energy at the start, because metal is a larger concern at the start of the game than any other time.

At 0:42 your conjurer is not doing anything.
This is the first few minutes, where expansion is most important. Have the comm make mex and the conjurer make energy. To be fair Histidine also expands a bit weirdly with their commander, but I can understand trying to get a good position at the start of the game

At 1:32 you lose a mex to a pyro. Rather than making a lotus, simply moving your commander forward would have stopped the pyro and not wasted 90M.
However, you usually wouldn't have that commander there in the first place.
In this case, remember: Pyro only works when it can jump

Three glaives on the top of the hill will kill the pyro if you rush into it. I think two are definitely dead but the third can survive. That is 130M in glaive lost compared to 220M in pyro for histidine

At 2:48 you attack a commander and a lotus with a reaver. I understand that you are trying to 'raid' and apply pressure to histidine with this. However, there is no way to follow up on your success because the commander is still alive. Overall, this attack does not have much success because its purpose does not make sense: In early game you cannot put that much pressure on an expanding commander.

The reason above is why you should get your commander out of the base ASAP. Mecharavaged is a small map and having your commander at the front can secure a good position around the middle, or have an eco advantage by getting the 3 mexes on the side.

At 3:24 a Conjurer is killed. Never lose constructors early in the game. This delays expansion, which you are behind on, even further. The Reaver should have been protecting the conjurer.

Strategically, attempting to apply pressure to histidine is a sensible strategy. However, your tactical situation, namely 1 reaver and 1 ronin precludes any chance of a successful attack on histidine.

Your factory is also not making anything. Do not let the factory idle ever. Always make some units in it. If you need something important set that to a higher priority and just leave the fac be.

In fact, your commander is also idling. Keep a queue to expand your base, because otherwise you will be outexpanded.

Good raid at 4:15. This keeps some pressure on histidine.
What I see is you make a reaver and 5 glaives at this point. However, and correct me here Lawsome9, but you are not confident with glaives against pyro, yes?
Glaives can beat pyro but it must be done well, with confidence, and an ability to accept loss. At this point in the game and at your current skill, it might make more sense to just make 3 ronin since that would apply more pressure in your hands than 5 glaives.


You make slings at 5:22. Presumably, you want to use them to take out histidine's expansion and go forward.
However, there are two moderators heading towards you at this point, which slings do nothing to.

You are concerned about the placeholder-moderator combination. This is perfectly fine. I have found that outmassing moderators with ronin works, as I have played a game against anarchid?? and ronin spam beat back moderator-placeholder.

Looking at your build queue, you are making 1-2 units each. The following is very important to note:

You are cloakbot.
Cloakbot's units, against jump, are inferior in every way.
They are qualitatively inferior.
They come out second best.
One glaive will never kill 1 pyro.
One ronin is dead meat to moderator.
One phantom should die to a firewalker unless really lucky.

However, you are cheaper than jump. Overpower jump with that fact. Pyro may kill 1 glaive, but it will die to a minimum of 3 glaives. 4-5 Glaives are even better. Moderator instantly kills 1 ronin, but costs around 3. Make 5 ronin against 1 moderator. More metal cost? Definitely.

But the trick is that what you lose (1-2 ronin) is much less than what histidine loses (1 moderator)

At 5:02 your commander is still at base and making defence. This defence is not necessary: You can spot the pyro coming far away. Just make one reaver and leave it inside the base while the commander expands if you are not confident that you can hold a pyro off. Also that defence is not close to the drop where a pyro will jump at. Inf act, it fails to actually do something at 7:57 when your comm kills the pyro and not the lotus.

At 8:11 there is a conjurer doing nothing on the western expansion. Use queue so it keeps expanding while you're busy fighting histidine. Later on it still does nothing. Never idle these things, keep them expanding.

Also at this point, you have 4 glaives, two reavers, 2 slings and 2 ronin engaging 3 moderator, a placeholder and a pyro.
You are at a serious disadvantage here. Those four glaives will not do anything against this composition, and it is a waste of metal to try and change that. The two slings are also useless in this fight.

You build a phantom at 8:32. As I said above, you can use ronin spam to knock out moderator-placeholder, with some casualties. A phantom is worth almost 8? ronin. Those 8 ronin have a bigger effect on the tactical situation than one phantom, especially when a firewalker comes out.

On the strategic scale, you keep picking fights with histidine despite a) Serious losses as a result and b) It does not work, and c) This is the mid chokepoint which needs a large army to go through.

Rather than pick fights which you cannot win, go defensive, take the fight on your side, and look for an opportunity to reclaim. You are down on metal and manpower. Don't waste both on futile attacks.

At 9:23 the phantom dies uselessly. This is just a blunder.
You attempt a small-scale raid which results in everything there dying. Good idea, but try to pull out if you find the defence is way more than what you can handle.

9:57 shows how 3 glaives kills 1 pyro despite pyro having advantage.

Also, you never pressure the right side, allowing histidine to completely fortify it with ONE constable. Even 2 slings will add pressure and require some response from histidine.

Again at 10:27, you attack mid with a large force. The problem is not that firewalker is killing your units, it's that you're consistently attacking the same point and taking attrition over it.

At this point, the game is almost unwinnable. Histidine has 4x your value in army, and 6000more metal worth in actual terms.

So to recap:

Comm to front and expand with it. Cons for energy. Commander makes energy at front if needed. (Might need for myself tbh, always estall now)
Don't idle constructors, keep them expanding.
Cloak needs to outnumber jump by a factor of 3:1 or 4:1 to beat an equivalent unit (except for reaver vs placeholder obviously)
The good news is that cloak is cheaper and so can easily reach those concentrations.
Avoid repeatedly attacking the same point because all that does is create attrition. Fight somewhere else, such as the east side of the map.

Adding some specific bits of micro feedback:
At 1:30 the pyro jumps into your base, you can use your own jump to jump over the mexes/solars to kill it, in the air it won't be blocked by the solars

At 1:40 you have only 6m/s, but you still have your com finish the lotus rather than immediately reclaiming to you can get your eco moving again. At this point you are trying to spend 20m/s but only have 6m/s, you need to use the prioritization system here to avoid having all your construction stall. Pick what's most important and focus that (I personally have my factory default to low priority and mexes default to high to minimize micro).
Three mexes in a minute is much worse than one in 20 seconds, one in 40 and one in 60.


More things happen after this point, but with only half the income of your opponent everything will be a big struggle.


A bit of general advice:

• A single lotus will defeat an unmicrod Pyro. HistidineStar always micros his so you need a glaive and a lotus rather than just a lotus.
• On the cloak matchup:
• Contra Double_Helix_DNA, Ronin are bad against jump (more or less everything dodges them, Moderators one-shot them and Firewalker obsoletes them), you basically never want to build them in this matchup. Scratch that, looks like their unit AI has been adjusted so that they deliberately walk into Ronin shots, so they might be ok against un-microd Moderators if there's no pyro nearby to draw fire. But if @Histadine is microing a Moderator you will never hit it with Ronin. I would still definitely not recommend them though, particularly as they're useless against everything else.
• Instead rely heavily on Glaives, Imp and Reavers (but use the last conservatively on defence, don't send them near Moderators unless cloaked! Use radar to see incoming Moderators) early on.
• Use Conjurer area cloak if needed to get close. An Imp stunned group of Moderators, Pyros and Placeholders will be easy pickings for the following Reaver(s).
• Later on, try and snipe the Firewalkers (and Moderators and Placeholders) with Phantoms. If attacking non-firewalker army, have the Phantoms to moderately in front of the Reavers so they can retreat to the Reavers if need be (Moderator struggles to catch Reaver), use Glaives, Scythes or attack-moving Gremlins to provide Line of Sight for the Phantoms. A Sling is also good LoS and can take out light porc or AFK units.
• Don't overbuild Phantoms vs Jump, they require a lot of micro to avoid Firewalker fire and kill things.
• Turn off Fire-at-radar on Phantoms by default. This just pointlessly wastes shots on moving targets (with it off Phantom will still fire at porc) and lets the enemy know there's a Phantom there. It's in the ingame Menu under Settings->Unit Behaviour->Default States
• Hold Fire Phantom isn't a good idea unless you can be very sure you'll be around to micro it (e.g. a lob pot). At least use Return fire.
• Sling will try and fire at radar dots by default, this mostly wastes shots, try and manually target porc and other statics.
• If fighting jumpfac, be careful with forwards rally points, they can often end up a ball of fire, instead use a rally point somewhat back from your main army.
• Pyros have the ability to fire through the ground, this makes them extremely hard to dislodge from the ledges. Avoid them there.
• Jump in general struggles somewhat against porc, particularly Picket and Stinger. They have only one effect unit against Stinger (Jack) and your Reavers and Glaives will absolutely mangle it, 2 Reavers or 6 Glaives will stop in escaping if it tries to jump in and kill your Stinger (though you will probably need to fall back after it's dead). Very early on a couple of Pickets can deter pushes pretty well if there's something else nearby.