BGH Strat of the day (Guarding Your Choke)

Welcome to the third installment of the BGH strat of the day.

If you missed the first installment, click here
If you missed the second installment, click here

This installment is for all your terran techers out there who just can't seem to guard their choke properly. Most terran players forget the most important asset to any choke.. the Medic.

I will use The following 1vs1 BGH game that I played against Goku1369 to demonstrate what I'm talking about.

The Game:

Now as I mentioned in my little prologue, I had decided to go for some high terran tech in this game. In order to do this in a BGH game, my priority was to guard my choke so that no enemy troops could break through into my defenseless main base.

I sent out an scv to scout counterclockwise and eventually found my opponent's base in the bottom middle. Unfortunately, my scv was destroyed by 2 sunkens before he could gather any valuable data.

My build order was depot, rax, rax, refinery, depot, academy, rax, rax, factory, engineering bay. As soon as my academy was up, I researched optic flare and rallied all four of my barracks to my choke as they were built. Then I started pumping medics. I grouped the medics tightly together in my choke and put them on hold. Then I built a turret behind them and sieged up a tank next to the turret.

When I had 32 medics guarding my choke, I decided that it was safe to start teching. A quick scan of the zerg showed a Lair and a hydra den. Hmmm, sounds like Lurkers, but I had just started work on 5 starports and no Lurker rush had arrived.

As soon as my first starport finished construction, I began to work on a science facility. I added control towers to each of my starports and when my science facility finished, I began working on 5 science vessels and researching irradiate.

I started to run low on gas so I parted my medic blockade to let an scv through. I ordered the scv to begin constructing a command center at my natural expansion.

Another scan of my opponents base now showed that he was working on a spire and a queen's nest. A couple more scans showed that he had 6 lurkers burrowed at his choke.

I decided that now was the time to strike. I took my first 8 science vessels and moved them out to his base. He had no spore colonies and his spire had just finished construction.

I started my assault by irradiating one of my science vessels and moving it back and forth across his peon line. I saw 6 larva start to morph and so I used my irradiate on more drones and some overlords. Just as I was about to retreat, six of his mutas assaulted my science vessels. I had a couple of irradiates left and used them. All 6 mutas died and I lost 1 science vessel.

Back at home I was continuing to pump science vessels. I brought the used up ones home and sent 11 more to his base. Just as my 11 reached his base, I heard the words, "Your base is under attack" I looked up to see 6 mutas over my choke. My 8 science vessels hadn't saved up enough juice yet to irradiate and so I sat and patiently waited. In the meantime, he destroyed the turret at my choke, and then the tank. He had just started firing on my medic blockade when my first irradiate came online. Soon, yellow radiation filled the air and all 6 mutas went up in a red mist.

No sooner had the mutas died, when 4 lurkers came knocking at my door. They started attacking my gas only natural expansion. I had 2 irradiates left so I used them on 2 of the lurkers. As soon as the scvs mining gas were dead, the 2 remaining lurkers started firing on my medic blockade. Thinking quickly, I blinded both of them. They could no longer see my medics and if they unburrowed and got closer, they would be in tank range. As soon as I saved up enough, I irradiated them too.

Back at his base, my 11 science vessels continued irradiating drones, when the drones were gone, I started irradiating overlords.

I filled up my starport queues with science vessels and rallied them all to the zerg main base. I had now reached the point where anything that hatched from his 3 hatcheries would instantly get irradiated.

At this point in the game, he started to get frustrated with my tactics as demonstrated by this stream of commentary:

Finally, with 36 science vessels hovering over his base waiting to irradiate anything that even thought about hatching from a larva, Goku left the game.

The Scores:

As you can see, by blocking off my choke early, I was free from the worry of a lurker rush and could easily tech to a deadly strat that destroyed my zerg opponent. My medic choke is almost impossible to break through, especially when the medics are equipped with optic flare. You also have to consider the fact that your common 14 year old BGHer is going to be incredibly turned on by looking at 30 to 40 tightly packed female bodies. ("Oh my God, I think that medic's arm touched that other medic's boob...")

Anyway, I hope this strat works as well for you BGHers out there as it has for me.

See ya next time and happy BGHing,
Drefsab