"I just ramble until it sounds good and cut half. :)"
-~CattleBruiser~
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| Odd protoss strategy in a ladder game | | | Author: | | | IP: | XXXX | | Date: | 10/13/99 09:10 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 2, Max: 7, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for AQD3: 7.6184 |  | Introduction
I played three ladder games since my last report. The first one was against Ko[b]old. He is a good protoss player from nohunters, able to macromanage as well as I can, but he falls for micromanagement tricks occasionally. Our game was fairly short as I did a quick reaver drop and countered his dark templar with observers. I went for a quick drop because with his macro abilities he would have been able to make it a very long and painful game. The second game was against a 6 pooler on Lost Temple. To make a long story short his rush was just successful enough that I never got on my feet. When the game ended I had outresourced him by a third, but his constant stream of zerglings finally wore me down. I wanted to write a battle report on that, but I just couldn’t find a way to make a 12 minute zergling rush interesting. As a note of warning for my fellow players, if a zerg scouts you with a drone when you chose protoss, it means a 6 pool. The drone scouting is essential to find the start location to attack in a short amount of time.
I was looking for another game after the six pool. A bitter taste was in my mouth about my micromanagement ability. It’s never a good idea to go into a game like that. I found a game advertising “1080+ $#%%#”. It was on Lost Temple:
Are you talking to me?
I selected protoss and drew the top position. My opponent also picked protoss and got the right. I have found it more important lately to get early recon on my opponent when he is protoss, so I used the following build order:
8: Pylon (probe scouts)
10: Gateway
13: Assimilator
At this time my scouting probe found the enemy base and saw he was going with the classic Prozerg_hybrid build order of gate then forge. I wondered if he map hacked too…When the enemy goes for an early forge I take it as invitation to get tech quickly. I continued with my build:
15: Cybernetics core
17: Pylon
17: Gateway
19: Zealot
When the enemy goes for a forge and you choose to tech, the natural choice is reavers. It let’s you bypass cannons and reavers outrange them anyway. Dark templar are not a good choice for obvious reasons. And going air in the early game is a bad choice. I warped in a robotics facility and sent my first zealot in to scout. He died on the enemy ramp without doing more than scratching the enemy zealots shields….because two cannons were well positioned on the approach. I was glad that my opponent had chosen to invest in static defense at his choke. It was a good sign for my impending reaver drop. I started making dragoons from two gateways. I defended my ramp by placing my dragoons closely together there and then using hold position. This would let me have enough time to get observers if my opponent turned out to be dark templar rushing. The dark templar would have to cut through the dragoons rather than going straight to my probes, buying me time.
My reaver came out and I loaded it up with a dragoon in my shuttle. I carefully poked around the back of my enemy’s base. He had a dragoon near his assimilator…I moved more towards the edge of the screen. A cannon got off one shot at my shuttle before I moved it away. Hmmm. Maybe he was an experienced turtle. I started making an observer and then a second reaver. I set down a third gateway and kept up the dragoon production. It was time to get the weapons and singularity charge upgrade.
I lost my observer poking around his base because he had an observer of his own. I positioned a set of dragoons on the left of my probe line to intercept any reaver drops while I warped in a cannon. I had one last chance at making this a short game. I was pretty sure my macro was still a little better than his at this point. I moved my control group of dragoons and my reavers just below the upper left side of his plateau. I dropped the reavers in the open part, then went back and got two dragoons. I was about to drop my second load of dragoons when he sent in a force of about ten dragoons and two zealots. I just barely broke even on cost effectiveness as I popped five or so dragoons before losing my forces. This wasn’t looking good.
I sent an observer to check his natural and found that it was empty. I took the opportunity to expand to my natural and put down two cannons to protect it. I was little suspicious. He had a robotics bay and observers but hadn’t reaver dropped. He was probably starting to macro dragoons, but where was he getting his power from? I sent the observer to the bottom right island. Paydirt. A fully working expansion was in operation there. A lot more fully working than mine… I had kept up with reavers and my observer showed that the top part of the island was cannon free. I loaded up two reavers in my shuttle and sent it down towards the island.
You must be talking to me
The game was in hand right? I was about to drop his cannon defense only island with reavers and he had invested in cannons all over the place. I should be good to go. Exactly what I thought. My shuttle was passing over the middle of the map when it got raped by a horde of twenty dragoons or so. This didn’t fit in with the plan. The dragoons weren’t stationary either, they were moving to my main. I arranged my dragoons in a defensive line, wishing I’d kept the reavers at home now. He sent in his twenty or so dragoons, I countered by using the sixteen I had in the narrow entrance so his numbers wouldn’t overwhelm me. I reinforced with another three dragoons from my gates and queued up another three. When the numbers got down to eight dragoons on his side and six on mine I started focusing fire, ordering all my dragoons to attack one of the enemy and using shift queue to attack each in turn. I won the battle with two heavily damaged dragoons left. Just as his four reinforcing dragoons hit me. I retreated my goons to my main and he sent his troops on to my natural. My next three dragoons came out and I ordered my five dragoons to attack his troops from behind. With the addition of the cannons at my natural I killed his troops with the loss of only one cannon.
This game was getting tighter all the time. I kept cranking probes at my natural and set down a fourth gate. I sent an observer to the left start and saw that it was clear. I sent a probe to the bottom to try and expand, but a zealot chased it away. I clicked it to mine minerals at my main, then sent two dragoons to deal with the zealot. I needed to interdict his flow of minerals at his island. He was ahead on minerals at this point and could probably just run me over if he got a chance. I ordered up a shuttle while keeping my dragoon production going. When it arrived I loaded in two dragoons and took off for his island. When I got there I dropped away from his cannons and hit a probe or two. He moved his probes off to the other side of the island under protection of the cannons. I put my goons on hold position and let them hammer away at his gas probes and the nexus. In a minute he dropped two dragoons of his own and took down my dragoons one by one.
I needed to do something to get an advantage. I took a probe and expanded to the left start. As that expansion got up and running I sent the probes from my mined out main there. I had a good two control groups of dragoons now and I moved them to just outside my opponent’s natural. My upgrades were at 1/1/1. I find that every game I go for reaver tech that last’s more than twenty minutes I really regret not getting templar. I decided to fix this problem and started working on a templar archives. My enemy picked this time to do a two reaver drop at my natural. Fortunately my cannon was in range of the reavers and it started absorbing the scarabs. I ran my probes away and then sent in six dragoons to deal with the problem. As the goons came in my enemy loaded up his reavers, letting me get a free kill on the shuttle without doing any more damage. I sent the probes back to work and ordered up a few tamplar.
That’s when the interceptors started flying over my natural. I knew that I couldn’t hit the carriers from their position over the cliff and sent all the probes there to the left start. He hammered on the nexus for a while. I was about to lose this game… Well, when in doubt attack. I sent in my two control groups of dragoons straight at his ramp. He was still 0/0/0 because of his plan to go air and it wasn’t quite as bad as it seemed to attack up the ramp. His dragoons forces were a little low, he had only ten or so. This move forced him to bring his carriers back from my natural as the nexus fell. When the interceptors started flying I had about fourteen goons left to his four, but his eight or so carriers and the uphill nature of the fight made me move my troops back. I sent half to my main and half to my expansion. I hate fighting carriers with land troops on Lost Temple.
I had a stroke of luck at this point. My observer ran across the carrier group just over his natural. I ordered it to follow the carriers. At first they headed to the bottom. Expecting them to attack the left from there I sent my dragoons and two templar from my main to there. They stopped as my troops began moving and headed around the left towards my main. I sent the troops from my main scurrying back there. In transit the carriers passed right by the two templar I had sent. I got off a storm from one, then a storm from the other before both went down to concentrated fire. The carriers moved into my main and started hitting one of the main pylons powering my gateways. I got off two more storms from the templar I had left at my base, then the eight dragoons arrived back and started pounding on the damaged carriers. Four more goons popped out from the gateways and first one carrier then another popped. He moved his six heavily damaged carriers back over the open space to the left of my base. The observer then saw them head towards the left. I moved out the eight dragoons I had left towards the left. They engaged the carriers just above the ramp to the left with the dragoons below. I had five dragoons and a templar from the gateway there and these joined in the fight. The carriers killed six or so dragoons before falling to a storm and massed dragoon fire.
There’s no one else here
My opponent apparently didn’t believe in letting me rest. Eight dragoons and three carriers started attacking my main, confronted by six dragoons holding the high ground. I sent the seven dragoons from the left to attack this force from behind. I managed to keep the at the bottom of the ramp, my enemy was not willing to risk the carriers in a n all out assault, instead nibbling at the dragoons too close to the ramp. I ordered up a templar and more dragoons.
All this time I had had a shuttle with two reavers ready to go. It never got used when the carriers started hitting me. I decided it was worthy as a distraction. An observer had revealed that my opponent was mining his natural finally. I sent the shuttle in over the cliff and dropped it as I began the attack on my ramp. I started with a storm of the dragoons and carriers at the bottom, then focused fire on the dragoons with my own just as I attacked from the rear with the dragoons from the left. I lost all the dragoons from the left, but killed all but two of his dragoons and all three carriers. Then another four dragoons popped out from the gateways and I started cleaning up.
Just then I glanced over at my expansion and saw my opponent had done the same thing I did. He sent a unmicroed reaver drop during his main attack. The reaver had killed both cannons at the left and was working on the probes. I fled the probes and sent in the leftover templar to storm the reaver, then back again to storm it a few seconds later. I lost very few probes to that attack. I looked over to my opponent’s natural and saw that the reavers were empty and all the probes were gone. I guess I got a little luckier with my reaver drop than he did.
At this point my enemy left the game. The end stats revealed he had mined just under a thousand minerals more than me, killed a lot more buildings, but was slightly lower in score than troops. I had outscored him by a mere thousand points. Of course, when I returned to battle.net it had failed to record my victory. It had no problem recording my earlier loss however. I guess my opponent had given up when I killed his probes. It was probably the only source of income he had left. He has my respect for a very interesting strat and a close game.
Thank you for reading my report. I welcome comments on the tactics we both used during the game. In particular, what do the protoss players think of the early forge to robotics facility and taking an island early?
AQD3
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