As I promised on the last report, I would post a rematch between the rival groups, Dont Ask and War Council. This game took place a few days after the first battle. Again the map chosen was The Lost Temple. Let's not waste anymore time and let's jump into all the action!

Figure 1 summarizes the location, race, and color of each player. Let's introduce each player and their tactics starting from Kamus, going clockwise ending with WarSaga. Note that I will only refer to color instead of names since it will be easier to keep track of colors over names.

Figure 1

Kamus spawns at 3 o'clock as Zerg (YELLOW). He opts to go 10/9 hatch, expanding at his natural. His OL surprisingly heads off immediately to his partner (12 o'clock) instead of scouting (6 o'clock). Perhaps he rather not give away his race because his build-order is somewhat risky. Six lings are quickly hatched and they rush to his expansion to fend off any potential attacks. As soon as the creep from the completed hatchery extends out, yellow builds 2 colonies but morphs only 1 sunken, for the time being. NOTE: No drones were 'maynarded' to his expansion, which he should have done to increase mineral influx.

BiK at 12 o'clock commands the mighty Protoss (ORANGE). He goes the standard 8 pylon, and 2 gateways in a row (12 or 13th probe?), then another pylon. Zealots are produced to provide some defense. Sometime later, he produces an assimilator, a forge for defense, and a pylon at his choke. His zealots don't guard the ramp though but hang out around the gateway.

WarWind (A.K.A - NewestBee) also emerges with Protoss (BLUE) at 3 o'clock. He does the power rush build with a pylon, 2 gates, followed by two more pylons and gateway. He trains a large amount of units in comparison to the other players instead of teching. He scouts out 12 and realizes that his opponent is Protoss as well.

Warsaga (A.K.A - NewerBee) always chooses Protoss and starts off at the last spot at 6 o'clock (WHITE). He choses to go the standard 2 gate build but warps in an assimilator for fast gas. He scouts yellow and chooses to leave his probe in the main but far enough that Yellow does not notice it. Warsaga goes semi-tech which he usually does, heading toward reavers, but after producing enough zealots for a fast rush.

There's a total of 3 Protoss and 1 Zerg. Who will have the edge - the team with Zerg or will the team of double Protoss? We will find out shortly.

EARLY GAME

It is clear that the 2 Protoss choose to rush with a few zealots each to perhaps gain an upper hand. They chose the closest target overall, which is 12 o'clock ORANGE Toss. After rallying some troops near the choke, with still some following behind, they choose to strike when their volume approaches critical mass. Unfortunate for them, Yellow has been alerted by his ally's distress signal, and quickly dispatches 12 lings to help out. The stealthy lings manage to enter Orange's base with only a few scratches and they wait there. When War Council finally decides to strike, the overwhelming number of lings plus a few zealots easily repel the attack (See Figure 2). Again, War Council does not seem to be able to coordinate their attack. White also builds an assimilator over Yellow's main vespene gas source in an attempt to slow down Yellow's technology. However, Yellow's natural provides gas as well, so Yellow wasn't hindered much. A sunken is morphed and takes care of the annoying assimilator anyway (provide defense against reavers drops as well).

Figure 2

Unfazed by this attack, War Council builds up their army again. This time they chose Yellow as their target. During this time, everyone except for White fortifies their choke with either cannons or sunkens (Yellow builds 3 of them). White decides to build a pylon and gateway at yellow's main in hopes to build a large enough force to disrupt the economy later in the game, since fortifications are mostly located near the expansion. Again, the second attack on Dont Ask at Zerg is unsuccessful because of the many sunkens and lings. White suggests to walk in past the sunkens but only a few zealots combined manage to get inside which are too weak to put up a good fight and quickly dissipate. Orange quickly reinforces Yellow with 7 zealots. The gateway in Yellow's main is spotted and quickly destroyed (See Figure 3).

Figure 3

At this time, both sides decide that it would not be advantageous to attack so they choose to research their technology. Yellow decides to go ling/mutas. Orange and White decides on reavers + dragoons. Blue just simply goes land troops - zealots and dragoons while slowly teching to templars. At this point, both members of War Council choose to expand. Blue at his natural and White at the SE island. To increase pressure on Yellow, White reaver drops Yellow's main with 2 supporting zealots. A great move - a lot of drones die but Yellow manages to command the remaining away from the scarabs. A lot of lings die but the reaver stands. Here's a crucial mistake that white should have really taken into consideration. As can be seen in top picture in Figure 4, a spire was being built.

Figure 4

If the reaver just aimed directly at the spire, Zerg would be left with just a spawning pool and a lair. But the reaver just hit sunken (damaging the pool in the process) followed by the spawning pool itself. The moment the spire was completed 4 larva morphed to eggs (you know what this means). This was when White commanded the reaver to switch its target to the spire! To my surprise, the mutas managed to hatch in time to save the day. Neither spawning pool nor spire was destroyed. The shuttle manages to get away but the passengers did not *sniff*. Nevertheless, Yellow's economy is temporarily slowed down by quite a bit. He therefore decides to seek revenge by attacking White's main, but the mutas have to turn back due to the a fair amount of dragoons protecting the base, also seen in above picture in Figure 4.

MID GAME

Here is a picture of Blue and Orange and their technology (Figure 5).

Figure 5

Orange has only 2 gateways. He should have produced at least two more, and expanded but he has reasons not to. He's building up on reavers and dragoons and is waiting for the right moment to strike. Blue is teching toward templars as you can see the citadel. He also expands and already halfway done with the archives. His main is not well defended against reaver drops (1 cannon), but he believes his dragoons can quell any drop (well, almost). Orange's master plan can be seen below in Figure 6.

Figure 6

Cannoning up Blue's expansion from high ground! Blue has no defense against such tactics since he does not have the technology to stop such an attack (he went mass troops). Fortunately for him, the probes manage to get away without heavy losses, and his nexus can't be reached by the limited range of the cannons. So he quickly sends a single probe to expand at White's mineral only expansion. The rest of the probes return to Blue's main to mine more minerals.At this time, Yellow takes the opportunity that Blue is under some stress and rushes in with 30+ lings (0/1 with speed upgrades). At the same time, Blue is trying to move more than half his army to defend his latest expansion and they clash in the middle!. Check out Figure 7. The lings drop dead like flies - Blue had leg enhancements and 1/0, while Yellow had nothing so far. The rest of the lings that managed to make it close to the choke were killed by 4 cannons. And unfortunately for Orange, the shuttle that carried a zealot, reaver and probe that was going to do the same thing it did on Blue's expansion was intercepted by dragoons, and destroyed on its way to White's expansion (Check upper left and mid left pictures in Figure 7)! White comes in and helps Blue from those blasted cannons on his ledge with a reaver and dragoon and manages to kill off all of oranges units and structures with the lost of only 1 reaver (Check upper right picture in Figure 7). With a sigh of relief, Blue sends approximately half of his probes back to his natural and continues to pump more probes from both expansion to get back to speed. Orange also expands the NW island in order to secure more resources over his natural. He was probably afraid that either one of War Council would cannon push his ledge, having done so against his opponents.

Figure 7

LATE GAME

At this point, War Council has a larger troop count than Dont Ask. As for technology, Yellow is going toward air, aiming for the guardian/devourer combo. Orange is still the same, dragoons primarily now. Blue is still going strong on zealots and dragoons with templar support. White is going corsairs to counter mutas as well to dragoons to complement Blue's army.

Blue's newest expansion at White's mineral-only is up and running with several probes mining (maynarded from his main). It is also protected with 3 cannons, a templar and a large chunk of his army as well as White's. Yellow also attempts to expand at his own mineral only expansion and guarded with lings. White's corsair fleet notices it and War Council decides to take it out before any sunkens are set up.

War Council rallies their land troops consisting mostly of dragoons, a handful of zealots and a few templars to the entrance to Yellow's base. An observer also tags along to provide detection in case lurkers are present although there aren't any present. It takes them some time to assemble their troops but they want to be sure that they their offense will actually cause some severe damage to the opponent's economy and troops. Figure 8 below shows the combined force of War Council. The top right picture shows that Yellow really does not have much troops. In fact Orange left some zealots at Yellow's base in case help was needed. However, the overwhelming army of War Council just walks right in without much resistance. However, as seen in the mini-map, Orange realizes Yellow's impending demise if help isn't quickly dispatched. You can see Orange's troops (dragoons and some zealots - no leg enhancements though) in the mini-map rushing over to help Yellow. Unfortunately for Dont Ask, the War Council's accompanying templars' psi-storm weren't used to eliminate zerg troops (no troops to zap), so they zap Orange's incoming troops instead. After 5-6 storms and dragoons to clean up, all that remains of Orange's proud troops is a large puddle of blue soup (sorry, not pictured - but I'm sure you have seen enough blue soup to imagine how it looks like).

Figure 8

At this point Yellow is pretty much without an army, but wait! There are a few guardians and devourers waiting his Yellow's main. However, there's no stopping the dragoons. They waltz right in and start smacking anything that stops them from reaching Yellow's main. Orange (BiK) see all the enemy troops and realizes that it's only a matter of time before War Council gets to him - promptly quits even though he was not the victim of the onslaught (see Figure 9). At this point, D-web has been researched, so corsairs web the sunkens and pretty much anything they see.

Figure 9

Kamus hangs in for a few minutes trying to make his last stand, but at least he offers a "GG" before leaving. War Council has won this time making the official record between both sides 1-1. War Council also rejoices before the are prompted to leave the game. The statistics are show below in Figure 10.

Figure 10

Thoughts and Last Minute Comments

• I thought that both sides played well, although obviously the victors did better. I did not see much mutalisk action on Yellows side. I suppose he played defensively because he was rushing to guardians and sweep White's main.At least he should have gone mass cracklings with all the excess minerals he had. (Air units use gas intensively) If Orange was the victim, Yellow would have still gotten troops to help Orange out.
• I think Orange expanded on the NW island way too slow. Notice the difference in minerals Orange had between White and himself. Both players got the islands too. But White did expand to his mineral, which reminds me that White did that offensive cannoning at Orange's natural which limited Orange's income as well.
• I don't remember how many gates Orange had, but if he did not add any extra, the minimum number of gates a toss should have on Lost Temple Mid to late game should not be less than 6. I don't know how many gates Blue had, but I would think he had at least 6.
• This time War Council did a little better on coordination although they kept screwing up again.
• I think initiative is important. You don't want to be the recipient of a 1v2 mid game. Strike first, although wait for the appropriate moment.
• The battle last 28 minutes and 58 seconds.
• At the end of the game, Blue's troops were 3/0/3 (that's for not building the last forge!!). Yellow was 0/2. White and Orange also made upgrades, which was not taken down :( Upgrades are very important!

I am rambling again. I hope my report is much clearer than it was in the first one. A few readers commented that the battle in mid-game was somewhat incoherent and confusing. Well, this game is much easier with fewer major battles. At any rate, I hope you guys enjoy my report. Have a good day.

//WarSuoN