"YRM, Team up with me on my "Cow-with-a-Band-Aid" Productions� and make mediocre reports of 4 pools on Bloodbath. After four weeks of them, you can post a picture of Kerrigan and get a 10.0."
-~CattleBruiser~
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| Best fight of my life | | | Author: | | | IP: | cx30769-XXXX | | Date: | 03/06/00 10:03 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 7, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for Fuzzus: 5.3333 |  | It was 2v2, myself and my friend wedge_wallace versus -=AberFitch=- and -=Jesse=-, on Hunters. Yes, yes, I know, but it wasn't BGH and this was a really good game.
It started out innocently enough - in the channel, the races ended up being myself Terran, wedge Zerg, and the other guys Terran. I started in the lower right, wedge in the lower left, Jesse in the upper right, and Fitch at the 12 o'clock. I'd decided I would go heavy metal - lots and lots of tanks with marine support. Wedge was going for his usual plan of cracklings and lots of them. Our strategies were about to change.
I went 8 depot 10 rax, scouting with the SCV off the depot. wedge went with 10/9, 9 as pool and 10 as extractor, then an overlord. The builds will get a bit vague from here on out, bear with me. But my scouting SCV found Jesse holing up behind 2 depots, with a rax and 2 bunkers behind them. I told wedge to rush with me, so I pulled my marines up there as they came out and built a bunker in the natural with the scouting SCV. lings and rines waited outside as my first tank rolled off the line and the machine shop researched siege. At home, I was building my academy and a second factory, throwing up a comsat as soon as the academy was done. Finally, I sieged up my one tank (with another on the way) and began pounding on one of the bunkers. SCVs constantly repaired it, until my second tank made it, sieged up a bit closer, and blasted the repairing SCVs.
We ripped through the blockade easily, but as we moved into the base.....wraiths! With wedge's overlords halfway finished their pneumaticized carapace, things were looking grim. I comsatted and tooled on them with the 8 marines up there, but there were a lot of wraiths that danced out of comsat range. In an attempt to fight off the wraiths, I build a rax right outside Jesse's base. lings charged into the base, but the buildings lifted off. The wraiths eventually killed off my marines and tanks, but wedge managed to slip a few lurkers in and killed off all the workers and supply depots.
Meanwhile, Fitch's wraiths move in on my main and kill lots of SCVs, then blow up my CC. I've started production on goliaths and am researching range, but the wraiths cloak and run. I've still got my natural, and they haven't noticed, but at this point I'm thinking I'm out of the game. Another division of Fitch's wraiths start popping wedge's overlords and killing various units and structures (including hydra den, pool, and spire). Wedge barely manages to crank out a few scourge and take the 6 o'clock main, while I desperately start a comsat on my natural (and only remaining) CC.
The great counter. I pull together 11 marines and 6 goliaths. The marines go to wedge's 6, while the goliaths head for his main. OLs pop out of eggs at the 6, wedge moves them towards the 6 or 7 wraiths shooting at his peons.
"ahh, yeah, that's the stuff..."
The hepped-up 0/1 marines charge at the wraiths, who are busy attacking the OLs - the wraiths die. At wedge's main, a few more lords come up just in time for my Charon-boosted gollies to blow the piss out of another 7 or 8 wraiths. They try to run to a corner of wedge's base, but it doesn't work and I beat them down.
At this stage of the game, it's pretty bleak. We've killed their wraith fleets by some miracle, but I'm mining off of one CC and have just started a refinery there. Wedge manages to somehow get up another greater spire, but that's the only tech building he's got. We know that there are two supply depots blocking the three bases in the northwest, and there's at least one bunker and turret behind these. We don't have forces - just my 10 or 20 hp marines and 6 goliaths and whatever drones wedge managed to save. I scan Fitch's choke - there are tanks back there too. I can see some of Jesse's buildings in the natural - he's not dead. I scan Fitch's base...two sci facilities, one with a lab and one with covert ops. Five or six starports that I can see. They're flashing. Before the scan fades, cruisers pop out.
Screw it. We're going defensive, taking the map, countering whatever they throw and starving their asses.
"wedge! they're going bc's, we need devourers!"
"i've got 12"
"i love you"
The BCs move against wedge. They all die. We lucked out. Time to fight back.
I rebuild the CC at my main - luckily my comsat survived. I'm pumping goliaths right now, build 2 starports and research wraith cloaking, build a science facility with covert ops and start researching those ghost upgrades. Pump those depots. I start an expansion in what used to be Jesse's main. Getting back on my feet...I throw up another factory. Start researching upgrades at my armory. Things going okay - we found a Jesse expansion at the 9 o'clock base. I move a few tanks in, siege them up with goliath backup...get hit by a bunker and 2 tanks. I can handle it, till the cruisers break over the horizon.
Lots of them. With valkyrie support.
My ghosts lock down three of the gargantuan buggers, but they splatter my offensive. It's at least a control group.
"Wedge! Get those damn devourers in there!"
They come, with mutalisks and overlords. They kill a few bcs and valks, they run away.
"Why are you running away?! Kill them!"
"I saw your ghost - I thought you were going to nuke them!"
The devourers come back. It's too much, the zerg air force pops under cruiser lasers and valkyrie scatterpacks.
"scourge"
"i know, i know"
Macro, macro, macro. My philosophy turns from offensive to just building a _LOT_ of shit. I pump goliaths out of my facs till I have about 20, then I pump tanks. My 2 rax constantly pump marines, ghosts, and medics. Everything rallies to the center - I've got a nuke silo on the CC in the northeast and I'm dying to use it. I load a ghost onto a dropship and set him down on the little ledge that runs down from the 9 o'clock. I'm gonna nuke Jesse's peon line - they've exhausted everything else.
I move Casper in, sight the little red dot in the middle of his peons, and pray.
Damn, he saw it. The SCVs run away. The nuke drops and kills a lot of the marines looking for my undercover agent, and does some serious damage to his CC and a few nearby barracks. Marginal damage. I pick at a few SCVs as they go back to mining, but run my ghost behind the minerals when Jesse yells "SCAN." I forget about Casper for a while and return to macroing. I pump out 3 more armories and another ebay and start researching like a scientist on crack.
The game's turned. We can win this. But we need to break through that damn choke.
"wedge, get cracklings!"
"i don't have a pool"
"what?!?!?"
"gimme a sec"
He never rebuilt it. sigh. While wedge is catching up on his tech, I hear "nuclear launch detected. I wonder for a split second, then I _know_: the red dot's on top of my army in the center. I hit the hotkey for comsat and scan like a man on illegal pharmaceuticals. I'm lucky, the first scan finds the ghost and goliath autocannons wax him. Breathing a sigh of relief, I return to my macro, queue up anotehr nuke and catch up on my overtaxed supply.
"Nuclear launch detected."
"Shit!"
I hit the hotkey for my backup comsat and scan all over the center, where the red dot is again. Sieged tanks blow the newly-revealed ghost to kingdom come, and I start building turrets in the center to avoid future hassles.
I start building a CC at the upper-right natural (wedge has taken EVERYTHING not nailed down by now - including his own natural, the 6 natural, and the 3 main) when it hits me. I can see in Jesse's 9 o'clock base...the ghost! And I have another nuke ready. Casper's got about 40 energy left in his cloaking suit. The dot gets put just north of the CC, where all the SCVs are mining mineral. I aim for a patch of ground right between a tank and a turret.
"SCAN!"
...
I jump out of my chair as the dot disappears. "Too late, you bastard!" I yell as the nuke hits, taking out ALL his SCVs, his CC, his inner base defenses, and two of his rax burn down soon after.
A lone SCV starts up a CC on the rubble of the nuked one. Casper and I share a brotherly chuckle, and he assassinates the little bugger.
"-=Jesse=- has left the game."
During my little covert operation (hee hee), a climactic air battle takes place - lots of cruisers and their support versus 20+ devourers with scourge, OL, and muta support. Of course, I miss it all. Wedge assures me that it was very exciting - mostly because he came out on top.
Wonder why he didn't attack the center? Probably the 25-30 goliaths and 20-odd marines out there. With about 10 ghosts for lockdown support.
Fitch: "ah, well. I tried to keep us both alive. gg"
Wedge: "gg"
Me: "you played REALLY well, gg"
Me: "want to ally up?"
Fitch: "I'd appreciate it"
We all ally up. In the end, the game was over an hour long. Congratulations to our opponents - they fought honorably and well. Wedge was a great teammate to have - I would never have fought back if he wasn't behind me. It was the greatest game I've played yet, and certainly the most impressive comeback. On to the textbook.
Lessons learned:
- 2 ghosts < 12 cruisers
- Quick mass wraiths can kick your ass. I wasn't completely ready for them, but it's a good tactic. Fitch and Jesse pulled it off well.
- Wallins should be done Heartcutter style, or not at all. Even going mass air shouldn't decrease your need for ground mobility. These guys walled off their chokes with depots.
- Don't let records intimidate you. I went in with my humble 69-66 record and gawked at Fitch's 279-30 and Jesse's respectable ratio of 30-16. I figured we were outclassed, and we were, but that's no reason not to fight back.
- It's all about the upgrades. Goliaths are near-useless without the Charon boosters and marines _are_ useless without stim. If you're gonna play Terran, you have to get these things and use them wisely.
- The hardest place to hit your enemy is obviously his economy. I'm now starting to live by Heartcutter's rule of expansion denial. We did it this game, and it worked. Sieges are messy and brutal, and it sucks to be powerless.
- Finally, a lesson for the other side. They had us over the barrel after the wraiths hit. If they'd followed up that attack, we'd have been dead. By pulling the punch, they gave us time to rebuild and set up counters to the inevitable.
I'll stop my long-windedness right here. Comments are welcome and appreciated...maybe one day I'll get around to putting in pictures? Salutes all around...it was an awesome game. |
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