"Lings are sexy, especially with the penis gland upgrade, and when they are super fast (if you know what i mean heh heh heh...)"
-ExecutorDaanis
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| A Typical Day on Battle.net - Part 2 | | | Author: | | | IP: | gateway.XXXX | | Date: | 02/21/00 05:02 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | Famous Reporter(1), Starcraft(1), Long(1), Text Only(1) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 8, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for |]agomar: 8.6667 |  | A typical day on Battle.net - Part 2
Welcome once again to yet another |]agomar battlereport. As you do a preliminary scan of the piece, you'll find that, like all the other reports I've written this week, it's completely in text. Before you let out a wild yelp of frustration, let me console you by saying that I've probably found a way to take screen shots. This means that in the next report, there should be plenty of images to keep all you picture-crazy fanatics drooling =)
While you're screaming about the lack of pics, you're also bound to notice another interesting characteristic of this report: it is very, extremely long. As in huge. As in you'll need a minimum of thirty minutes to read it, and this goes for the raters as well. So sit back, grab a beer, turn on the radio, whatever, and prepare to read a novel, or at least as close to one as anything related to Starcraft is gonna get.
And finally, this report contains alot of humiliating losses. While the typical writer never discusses these down points in his life, I suppose I'm not exactly average, and am prevented from covering up the cruel defeats by the very title of my article. For all of you who simply can't bear to see your favorite guy on the net smashed into oblivion time and time again, leave now before it's too late =). But I believe it's important to show the losses as well as victories, for we all know how discouraged we can get, especially as newbies, after a particularly devastating defeat, and sometimes it's good to know that other people have tragically suffered through the same thing.
And on that overly melodramatic note, it's time to move on to our feature presentation!
Game One - the Ruins of the Temple
Pregame Report
Late in the morning of Febuary 18th I slid into nohunters, a smile on my face, looking forward to the next few hours I'd have playing my favorite game. Nobody cool and famous was in at the moment, so I proceeded to play a 5v1 comp stomp that I could perhaps backstab on. Bad move. When I was in the game, I decided heck, I'll give these newbs a break, and take out the comp instead. I was the first one to be massively rushed by the evil computer, but easily won the day, after which I counter-attacked with a solid force of mixed infantry and took out the first line of defense before being driven back. Then one of my allies decided to attack me while I was weak, saying loftily that I had to improve my game, and soon I was forced to leave my base, cursing and swearing like never before. The traitor now attacked the purple Zerg, who went down in no time, and then the orange Zerg. Most infuriatingly, all the human players actually were allied with the stabber all along, knowing he could easily kill them and not wanting to be set upon in turn. All my former allies set upon me at multiple times after yellow told them that I was the traitor, provoking exasperated outbursts from me. In the end, I lost, and furiously coasted into nohunters once more, immediately spamming the first people that dared to say hi. I was still simmering over the critical comments I had just so rudely received, and the stupidity of my allies, before I noticed some guy named Vie pleading to play a 2v2 and begging me to join. Eventually, this led to the formation of a new match, and I found myself paired with YahYah against Re`Psycho and the formerly desperate creator. I'm often far too overconfident with myself as I enter a new game, fully believing that I can easily win against anyone if I play my cards right. I was in a similar sunny disposition now, and soon found myself grinning down upon my brown Terran minions from the 6:00 position of Lost Temple. My ally morphed onto this desolate world as an insidious orange Zerg swarm at 12:00, while our enemies Psycho and Vie emerged as white Terran at 9:00 and yellow Protoss at 3:00 respectively.
The Calm before the Storm
It was freezing cold in the house and my hands were numb, so it took me a while to command my seventh SCV to construct a supply depot. Thus it was with a very bad start indeed that a erected my defense, pumping marines from two and then three barracks over to my chokepoint just in front of my natural. Rapidly I now constructed a new command center, followed up quickly by an academy and an engineering bay. I built three bunkers at my natural's defense, filling them with marines, and decided that now would be an opportune time to tech up, creating a factory near my new Center. Yet it was at this point that a mighty blast resounded loudly through the dusty air, and a massive force of five acrilite Seige tanks settled down upon my overlooking cliff. I called for help and was not overly worried, still remembering the Praetor battlereport in which the heroic writer takes a similar early blow, but nonetheless lives on to emerge victorious. Soon, however, I become worried as I discover that help will not be forth coming, and I move my SCVs out of the way, deeply disturbed. Had I been in a similar fix now, I would have trained my medics to use optic flare and blind the offenders, or tech up to a starport and create a dropship. Yet it was not to be, for I stupidly continued to rely on YahYah for help, not wanting to waste my precious resources on something I couldn't fit into my existing strategic plan.
Failure
The sight of two shuttles sailing into my peon line should have been a wakeup call to me that whatever remnants of a plan I might've had were now certainly gone forever. When four reavers crawled out of their shuttles, I desperately tried to attack with my hordes of m&ms, who were horrifically blown away by the massive enemy robots. When my natural was completely obliterated, taking with it many of my tech structures, I desperately tried to create some sort of delaying defense in my main, yet any remnants of my hope to keep the plateau quickly perished with the sight of a group of dragoons storming through my choke. I lifted my Command Center, hid what SCVs I could, lifted my three barracks and engineering bay, and flew them all over to my ally's main. YahYah was now attacked by a squad of noble zealots from Vie, but easily crushed this assault and finally brought in two groups of hydras and a group of zerglings to relieve the few supply depots that were left in my main ( ! ). The Terran resistance was easily crushed, along with half of the goons, before the Zerg decided they would fare better in damaging the enemy if they attacked the Protoss natural. This strike was slaughtered before it was halfway successful, but I had managed to secure the top left island. Even this was annialated when a few of Psycho's tanks arrived to dispatch of it, and roving squads of zealots smashed orange's natural, thus prohibiting any Zerg aid to my beleagured expansion. I built another command center in my ally's main, along with two factories, yet all was crushed when Hordes of Protoss stormed into battle and a five battlecruisers first finished off my factories despite hydrass under dark swarm. I managed to kill a zealots with a vulture though before this could be done, and erected a supply depot at my former main with a hidden SCV to keep myself living ( I never surrender ). Yet soon even this was found, and I was banished from this barren world forever when even my last, desperate SCV rush was blasted to nothingness to cries of "Ownage!" and "You suck!"
Yes, there's nothing I hate more than cockiness.
In this game, I should've expanded later. I should have had a conclusive plan about the type of units I wanted this game, even before I explored the enemy builds, then created far better recon before expanding to my natural, where I should've placed defenses like tanks around my command center. I should also have been far more aggressive, launching early harassing attacks for better recon and to stifle the opponents' economies. Finally, we as allies should have worked together more.
Game Two - Free For All amongst the Snow
Pregame Report
I wasn't as angry as before, since I realized I had been rightfully crushed by a good enemy, but I was kind of expecting to play a victorious game this morning. I decided to initiate a three player free for all, and that seemed to go along very well with the nohunters crowd, with three contestants joining the game almost instantly. Let's see if I could win this time . . . .
I morphed in as Blue Zerg at the 6:00 position of Winter Conquest, while Akakaru emerged as Green Zerg at 3:00, with Keysor~Sore spreading his insidious influence as Teal Zerg from the 8:00 plateau ( I'll represent him with the color brown ). The game was on!
Zerg Vs Zerg Vs Zerg
Again fumbling around early on thanks to my by-now frostbiten fingers, I did manage to start a spawning pool at the seventh drone and my customary creep colony at the eighth. I also sent my overlord out to Keysor's, where it passed his counterpart heading my way. Within seconds there was a large, bloated monster nestling over my base, which I tried to scare away with numerous obscene comments at first, and then with a quick spore colony I was forced to rapidly build. The unsuspecting overlord was quickly murdered, just as my second hatchery hatched at my main and four zerglings burst out of their sickening little eggs. I sent the 'lings over to Teal's base to do some harassing, then built two more sunkens before feeling safe enough to expand to my natural. Instead of making the colonies, I should have made more lings as a rapid strike force to hit my 8:00 enemy again, but I, unfortunately, wasn't too smart in this game. My four harassing lings raced up to the enemy, killed two drones at his natural before being smashed by their reinforcing enemy counterparts. Oh well.
When I seized my first expansion, I sent my lings to defend the morphing hatchery. Notice that thus far I'm playing as a Terran or Protoss, two races which I use far more often than Zerg. Today was my day to experiment with the powers of the Swarm. Anyway, I had managed to get a Lair and research lurker aspect before a number of green scourge screamed over my base and promptly decided to eradicate two overlords, which died with long, tortured groans echoing across the frigid world. My last frantically fleeing behemoth was only saved by the single spore colony I had erected, which I had made due to Keysor's own ovie. Angry screams flooded the message board, notifying me that Teal had gone through a similar fate, and soon the first enemy hydras burst from their eggs and slaughtered the spying transport I had left over his base. This set me back by a bit, but I rapidly mutated three more of the behemoths, setting my unit production back on track, at least for the moment.
My expansion was fully up and running by now, and three sunkens had been built at its choke. When the evil scourge had decided to light up my industrious little town I proceeded to build a number of spores about my base, then created some hydras which I morphed to lurkers and placed infront of my defenses. I also had about two groups of speed-upgraded zerglings which I used for protection ( should have used them for offense as well, stupid me ).
Blood and Gore
A constant chorus of 'ows' alerted me to the fact that akakaru was being harassed and occasionally even fully assaulted. Presently I realized that the only thing that makes Zerg strong is their ability to expand massively and overwhelm, two things I should really be working on. I moved to Akakaru's presently unoccupied natural, and began to make a hatchery. A scouting zergling stumbled onto the scene, where it was immediately set upon by my own cracklings, yet managed to escape. The hatchery soon emerged and I set about making another, along with a creep colony. Yet when my sunken was only half done four lurkers burrowed themselves just in front of the frozen ramp leading into their main, and proceeded to absolutely slaughter my terrified minions in only two or three shots. I sent another two groups of cracklings over, escorted by on overlord this time just as my first hatchery was being pelted by the first subterranean spines, yet was driven back just as easily by the four powerful beings. Now I sent in five lurkers with 12 more cracklings, and arrived to find six enemy lurkers and another 18 zerglings walking about unsuspectingly. I figured that if I microed right I could still win, so I waited until the enemy lurkers popped up, then burrowed in a tight semicircle facing the rapidly digging beasts. My speed and sight upgraded overlord was just barely the first to come in range, and therefore I also managed to pull off the first shot. Eventually his superior numbers were annialated without loss, and I claimed my heavily damaged expansion back, proud of my crushing victory. I also decided to be very stupid in that I burrowed my lurkers at the bottom of the ramp, yet this turned out fine when I reinforced with three more lurkers, and akakaru decided to attack with a full group of speed upgraded hydras and another two groups of cracklings. Unfortunately for him, eight lurkers with 2 armor and attack are very difficult to destroy, and his entire army was smashed into the ground without casualties.
"Ouch, that's alot of lurkers!" he cried, then for the third time now, wailed:
"Ow. Ow. You two kill each other."
"Why are you attacking me!?" I bellowed. "Teal is the dominant player! Assault him!!"
The only problem was that Keysor had been given far too much freedom, and had expanded to roughly the half of the map by now. When an enormous drop landed upon my main base, I was currently busy smashing my other enemy's last desperate offensive to dust and only realized the impending threat when the first hydra had already disembarked. A fierce battle commenced, with my cracklings, sunkens and spores furiously battling to prevent or at least stave off eradication, yet the vicious Teal minions emerged victorious with a group of hydras still to his name. My expansion was yet heavily guarded, however, and green's main was on its last legs. I still could've won, with a great deal of luck on my part, had I continued making cracklings perhaps with defiler support, yet now Battle.net decided to disconnect all the players. Green left just moments before this could happen, yet Keysor and I were both thrust back into nohunters, with me ecstatic with the win I thought I'd pulled off. My former opponent alerted me to the miserable truth, and I proceeded to inform him about the battles that were fought behind his back between his two latter-day foes. Eventually, we decided to play another game, this time as allies, and for once I resolved to win fair square.
I should have had better recon, far better, in fact. I should have employed speed-upgraded overlords to patrol the map and discover enemy build orders and expansions, as well as oncoming attacks. This proves I am a better player with Protoss or Terran, since the Zerg's main strength is mass expansion and ability to produce mass units, strengths which I didn't use well at all. Cracklings supported by lurkers and defilers would have been ideal in this game . . . .
Game Three - For Aiur
Pregame Report
Keysor created the game, which at first I couldn't find, yet finally joined as the fourth player. The countdown ticked down to zero as I chose Protoss, and soon found myself on the same map as before, but this time as Yellow at 9:00. My new friend morphed in at 8:00 as red Zerg, while our enemies, as we rapidly discovered, landed as Teal Terran at 6:00 and orange Terran at 2:00. Going into the game, my confidence was somewhat depleted after the previous experiences, yet I was determined to clean up my act with my beloved Protoss, and vowed to crush my hated enemies like gnats under my mighty heel.
First Blow
Early on, I decided to tech up to an air force, since Keysor had obviously resolved to follow similar tactics as last time: a massive hydra/zergling drop. Although I again had a retarded start, I did manage to establish a very early expansion at 12:00 with my scouting probe ( thought I might as well have him do something useful ) and made only a single gateway before rapidly following with a cy core and then a Starport. Before my ally even had hydralisks I had a corsair, so, needless to say, he was impressed. He now announced his dropping intentions towards our Southern opponant, and by the time I had four corsairs he loaded his overlords and moved in for the kill. I provided air support from a lone orange valkyrie that tried to spoil the party, and the Swarm descended upon the hapless Teal peon line, crushing all that lay in its way. Keysor and I now took a brake from complimenting and then thanking ourselves, as I moved to engage the desperately retreating buildings and he took down anything left on the ground. In my main base my first fleet beacon warped in, and my nexus phased into being at my expansion as my corsairs vaporized the last factory and veered around to smash the second barracks. The surviving Zerg had, however, run into the chokepoint defense and were quickly slaughtered by the three bunkers and equal number of turrets that were positioned there.
I now moved in a lone Carrier ( I didn't have much money while creating a new expansion and teching up to observers ) and engaged these last defenses. Defensive web was researched so I used it generously, and managed to kill off a bunker and a turret before being forced away. However, the plateau was now no longer even partially guarded by Teal, plus it was a good spot to reach both my base and my ally's very quickly, so I used it as a rally point for my two starports. Rapidly a fleet of four carriers and another four 'sairs was assembled there, all having been warped from the same two Stargates. Red was expanding wildly through the middle of the map, so I finally warped in a nexus at my natural and transferred some probes, trying to keep up with his resource flow, while teching up to arbiters, spreading observers throughout the map and creating two new Stargates for mass carrier production against the now solely defense-orientated Terrans. It was still a risky journey for interceptor-less carriers moving across the map to my relay point, yet I put my faith in my recon, and sure enough eight of the massive shis were soon gathered together at the former human outpost, ready to move out and devastate the frigid landscape. Remembering that Teal still had some chokepoint defense clustered around the plateau's ramp, I moved out and devastated it within seconds, then created yet another expansion righ where my rally point was. My economy was doing amazingly well, yet all I was really going for was a group of carriers. More than that is a real pain to handle, and I'd use my corsairs to dweb the enemy anyway.
Finale and Victory at last!
Soon Keysor felt it was time to attack, and I wholeheartedly agreed. I had a fully upgraded fleet of 13 carriers, 10 corsairs, and a shuttle containing a single dark archon and two high templar. My friend had at least two groups of mutas and three groups of hydras/'lings, so needless to say we felt extremely confident as we engaged the first missile turrets. However, a Nuclear Launch Detected message suddenly appeared at the bottom of the screen, and I frantically tried to search for the location until a saw a large mushroom cloud ascend over my friend's natural, who told me not to worry about it and focus on the assault. Doing so, I simply defensive webbed everything in sight, then smashed the orange natural as red dropped in his Swarm, which with the help of my corsairs succeeded in devastating the main in record time as my Carriers coasted in majestically to finish off the last vestige of Terran influence: the Orange/Teal expansion to the south. Before I could fully replenish my confidence level, however, our opponants decided to get the heck out of there and evacuate the planet, and so the game was won.
Good stuff here, although I probably still should have had better recon. I had an early plan, however, which worked well, and used my units to their maximum ability. Also, I should have employed more hit and runs and harassing attacks. That's really a part of my game I must work on . . .
Game Four - My Greatest Humiliation
Pregame . . . .
I was hanging out in nohunters when I realized Drefsab and some other cool people were starting a new game. Even though I knew this was a bad day for the Starcraft side of my brain, I couldn't resist playing a match with Dref, having read his latest report, and joined up immediately. The usual nonsense spewed out in the pregame chat, yet the countdown finally got under way with Krebster and Alurin as observers.
I had chosen random, and hoped for Terran, yet emerged as Red Zerg at the 12:00 location of Snowbound while .Confessor, my ally, landed as yellow Terran at 9:00. He rapidly scouted things out with a barracks as I made a spawning pool, then a sunken, followed rapidly by another hatchery, which in turn was followed by an extractor and then a lair. As Confessor's barracks floated over Drefsab's Protoss base at 6:00 I created a queen's nest, soon followed by my first three spellcasters. I parasited a a number of things, and found orange in the process, who had warped in as Protoss at 3:00. Uh oh. I should've chosen Terran, since Zerg vs unhindered Protoss in an island map which is rapidly approaching midgame is a very, very bad thing.
Here, by the way, is the map:
Midgame, and Confessor's Treachory
I found myself deeply troubled as I created more drones, a number of sunkens/spores, along with with a couple scourge. Confessor then proclaimed that if his offensive rax didn't work he'd get outta there. I laughed at that, yet looked at the semi-famous player's base and was sorely dissapointed, for there was hardly anything standing at all. I decided to cheer him up by declaring my plans for a mass drone drop, which he seemed to agree with whole-heartedly ( side note: remember to execute this strategy with a newbie ASAP and report it ). His barracks landed in the far right side of Drefsab's plateau, yet was rapidly uncovered by a lone dragoon and was forced to fly off once again. Now an orange scout screamed in and began to pelt it with missile fire, whereupon I yelled at my ally to land it and immediately train a marine. He frantically obeyed as I hatched some scourge and sent them over, yet another scout soon join and began blasting the hapless structure with photon cannon fire as well. Even my scourge couldn't defeat the mighty Protoss fighters, which disengaged when the pathetic rax dropped to the red and watched it pitifully explode.
A single tear slipped down Yellow's face, as with clenched fists and gnashing teeth he furiously vowed revenge. An ugly little dropship barelled down from the turbulent skies over Dref's cowering base, out of which raced four drunken vulture drivers, who subsequently drove all over the place before they were ordered behind the peon line and slaughtered probes left and right before they were finally chased off by some goons and zealots despite highly skilled dancing maneouvers expertly pulled off by my cunning friend. Unfortunately, however, just when I had just typed "gj," he decided to leave the game, leaving me all alone as a single pathetic zerg with only his main, frantically microing his queens, against two excellent Toss rivals. It was worriedly discussed how close Confessor was getting to the infamous T-mac, while I took to cursing his name, before suddenly panicking and pathetically trying to fortify my base with large amounts of sunkens and spores. Resolutely I swore to fight on for the Overmind, and die the honourable Mark4 way. The only problem was that I couldn't find any counters for the expertly mixed Protoss units, and that by this point the frigid air was beginning to affect by frantic brain.
Not a newbie but sure played like one
Within minutes, I seized both my natural and the center expansion, and tried to move into my ally's former town as well, only to find two of Dref's dark temps slicing apart the command center for some yet unexplored reason. I mass produced scourge at my main which I kept ramming into orange's fighters, which in turn lashed out at my middle expansion, slaughtering it before I could erect a proper defense. Luckily I had burrowed a number of drones there, and thus recreated the base as soon as the enemy ships left. The attempt was discovered again, so I burrowed my reamining drones and canceled, then remade once alone again. This went on for some time until all my peons were finally eradicated and all hopes of victory were realistically smashed to the ground. But I played on, heavily defending my natural, prompting cries of "turtle!" and "lol!" from the particularily helpful observers ( grrr ). But let's look at the situation here for a second.
I'm a single Zerg with two bases, my main and my natural, facing two highly skilled Protoss opponants with nearly complete map control. I was extremely intimidated at this point, and stupidly decided to heavily fortify everything with defensive structures, thus wasting all my resources on something that wouldn't even move from place to place, and had absolutely no offensive value. What's more, I could easily be blasted to oblivion by any sort of ranged unit and/or corsairs with defensive web. Looking back, with 20/20 vision and without the overwhelming stress and tension of the moment, I would've made massive amounts of cracklings now, supported by lurkers and defilers. What, you say, cracklings? Against scouts? Face it, I was dead, but a mass drop of well-supported cracklings under dark swarm on orange's main would have easily forced him out of the game in not time and at least garner me a little repect. Mass Hydras might have worked too, and could've directly engaged the enemy airforce, but probably wouldn'y have razed the base fast enough. I'm sure all of you have been in a similar situation: it's a bad day for your game, you're in a very tough spot and you panick in the heat of the moment, doing the exact wrong thing.
Well, eventually orange decided to make some carriers and about eight archons soon blasted through my natural, annialating everything in their psionic path. I rebuild soon after, but more archons arrived, smashing my newly morphed nydus cannal and eradicating my presence there once and for all. When my entire base was coloured a writhing blue by the defensive web that roving packs of 'sairs laid down upon me, and immense chorus of laughter and mockery resounded from the jeering observers ( who both had much lower scores then me, by the way! ). My group of hydralisks and five defilers were obviously no match for the enemy, and Alurin decided to lag out as the last few structures in my base were set upon by the remaining three carriers, twelve scouts and eight zealots, while Krebster took this time to happily tell me that I was a horrible player just a little past the stage of a BGH newbie. How wonderful.
This was easily the worst game I've played in months. The humiliation was supreme, the loss total. Afterwards, I decided that from now on I'd make either Protoss or Terran my main race, and created a new account named Silent~Shadow to hide myself for a while, before realizing I'd have to totally remake my name from scratch if I continued with this scheme and quickly abandoned the new identity ( I guess I'll make that my alter ego now ). Had I chosen Terran I would've known exactly what to do: expand heavily so I could have at least 3 mining bases, make many Science Vessels to support mass wraiths and use large amounts of nukes
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