After the long gruesome match during the first game, the four SC giants moved onto the next game. Victory of game one went to the Gauls, who fought courageously on Dire with numerous combinations of drops and air, and after almost 2 hours claimed victory. Some blamed their loss on Agent's unexpected disconnecting right after wiping out one crucial expansion. For those who haven't read the report for game one, you can read it here.

A long conversation on game one lasted for over almost half an hour before the second game could start. During our chat, Dudey came along and started his typical gosu manner Agent-bashing talks, and was very happy that Agent lost his first game, although he felt sorry for Bob. Agent, of course, was speechless in front of him because of his recent defeat, but he retaliated by disclosing Dudey's sexuality to the public. Dudey could not defend Agent's claim, and tried to divert our attention by challenging Agent to start his next game. IN immediately picked their map: Acropolis : a 192x192 land map with 6 starting slots located at the corner of a hexagon. All expansions are located on islands or unreachable highground, except the middle expansion where most mineral patches can be mined.

Here is a minimap of Acropolis:

started as Protoss warped in the 6 o'clock position.
started as Protoss warped in the 10 o'clock position.
started as Zerg spawned in the 8 o'clock position.
started as Protoss warped in the 4 o'clock position.

Despite the relatively large size of the map, all players went with the most generic and conservative build: all protoss warped in two gates with gas, and zerg planted another hatchery before pool and gas. Agent, with his tricky mind, quickly build two sunkens after pool, and began to pump as much drones and as few zerglings from his precious larvae. The Gauls soon located Agent and Bob's starting location, and seeing Agent's defensive position, attempted to offensive cannon him. After a second though, however, they abandoned the idea because they figured Agent was more then just any newbie on BGH, and decided to pick fight with Bob while Agent was in a defensive position. A total of 9 zealots were sent to Bob's base, only to be greeted with 7 from Bob. Although outnumbered, Bob used the advantage of a ramp, and engaged the offensive zealots by circling around them right below the ramp, thus maximized his attacking force while minimizing enemies' engaging troops. This fantastic micro would make Zileas proud, as the zealot battle ended with Bob's 4 damaged zealots left behind the battlefield.

Bob immediately sent his victorious zealots towards Snikch's ramp in order to contain him. A probe also tagged along with the zealots, but strangely he did not build any cannons at the top of Snikch's ramp. After the initial conflict, everyone was silently teching towards a more powerful unit. Agent, untouched during the first war, mutated a drone to a spire for muta map control, while Bob warped in a robotics facility as well as a support bay. Snikch was dissatisfied with the containment, quickly constructed a templar archive for templars from the dark. Ishamael picked another path, summoning with a robotics facility and a stargate.

Powering madly early on, Agent was able to pull out 3 mutalisks very quickly and sent them directly towards Snikch's main since the overlord at his main showed no sign of a dragoon. Although a pair of cannons were warped beside the nexus, they placed tiny bit too far from some mineral patches, thus allowed Agent to pick off several innocent probes until Snikch's first set of dragoons popped out from his two gateways and drove off the mutas. Agent retreated his mutas, and reinforced with 4 more and headed for Ishamael's base instead. To much of his dismay, the 7 mutas were greeted by 2 corsairs.... and 5 cannons. Losing one, he quickly retreated them back and started patrolling them across the map, picking off unprotected zealots on the way. Using his fast aerial threat for map control, Agent expanded to the 2 o'clock starting position, hoping the Gauls would not find it soon.

Snikch's tech was also soon to pay off, when 2 dark templars were sent to get rid of Bob's 10-zealot containment force. He sent a couple of zealots to lure Bob's down the ramp, and quickly blocked the ramp with one DT while the other chopped the rest of the zealots to oblivion. Bob did not realize the DT until he lost 3, and seeing no way out for the zealots, charged into Snikch's main, only to face more dark templars, as well as a few zealots and dragoons. All 10 zealots died heroically but killed nothing but 2 of Snikch's zealots. Definitely an ingenious move by Snikch.

Although he suffered loss of 10 zealots, Bob was not discouraged and quickly co-ordinated another assault on Ishamael. 2 reavers were dropped behind Ishamael's mineral while Agent's muta protect Bob's shuttle in the air. A cannon went down immediately to 2 reaver scarabs, and half of Ishamael's probes exploded to the next two scarabs. Ishamael's 2 corsairs could only watch the reaver causing havoc to his nexus until his force in the middle arrived to drive off the offense. Bob's reavers, nonetheless, brought down a dark templar and 3 dragoons before they fell. During this probe raid, Bob shuttled a probe and started an expansion on top of his main and transferred about 8 probes there.

Seeing that his partner was hurt, Snikch decided to seek revenge with his pair of dark templars. He sneaked pass Bob's 6 dragoons guarding the bridge without detection, and headed straight for Bob's probes! Although Agent's overlord was hanging on top of Bob's nexus, probes were no match for DT, and the 6 dragoons were quickly sent back to eliminate the detected cloakers, but not before over 10 probes went down.

At this time, Agent had been pumping many zerglings with his excess mineral and decided to end Ishamael's fate by sending over 3 control groups of zerglings and 3 mutas to distract cannon fire. All cannons went down to the zergling swarm, but only 5 remained, and were easily killed by Ishamael's new reaver. Although this move did not put Ishamael out of the game, it placed him in a more defensive position after being hit by both enemies.

At the same time, Snikch noticed the damage caused by his previous dark templar raid, charged the bridge with 8 zealots and 6 dragoons as well as a templar. Losing 2 reavers in his assault, Bob was only able to defend the bridge with 6 dragoons and an observer. Despite the bridge advantage, Bob was unable to fight against twice his number of troops and retreated 4 dragoons to his main while losing 2. Back at his main, Bob found two more reavers to engage the incoming force. The reaver quickly killed the templar, although one was stormed to death. One reaver and 4 dragoons did not hold long against 6 dragoons and 6 zealots, as plasma fire destroyed the shuttle that was popping the reaver. Another reaver was warped in soon, and along with 2 new zealots and probes, the remaining 2 zealots and 3 dragoons were repelled, but the damage was done.

Right after the battle at Bob's main ended, Ishamael decided to cause some trouble with his limited force, and dropped a reaver at Agent's main, while his attention was at elsewhere, all but 2 drones exploded to the scarabs while one muta was stripping off its shield painfully slowly. The reaver was finally destroyed after 9 hours of muta acid bombardment, as well as spine attack by 3 hydras.

During the confusion, Snikch expanded to the 12 o'clock starting position despite Agent's overlord hanging right on top of the warping nexus. To compensate, Snikch found Agent's expansion at 2 with a scouting shuttle, only defended by 2 sunkens and a small token of hydras and zerglings. A half control group of mainly zealots and dragoon along with the few occasional templar marched into Agent's only expansion. With storm, Snikch easily destroyed the defense and started pounding on structures instead of drones, thus allow Bob to come to rescue. A shuttle of reaver quickly killed the templar with range, although the shuttle was soon destroy by storm and plasma fire. Regardless, the damage was done to the offensive force, and Bob's reinforcement of dragoons arrived just in time before the hatchery might fall.

After saving Agent's expansion, Bob found his main mined out, and proceed to expand to an island expansion at bottom right. Snikch's and Ishamael's main were also dry too, except that Snikch had an expansion and Ishamael had none. Agent's main, long suffered from Ishamael's earlier reaver drop, was still fairly rich in resources. He actually mined his expansion harder then his main. =P

After punished by Snikch's force, Agent quickly summoned a large number of troops, mainly zerglings and a few hydras. This proved to be futile, because Snikch had a pair of reavers in his speed upgraded shuttle accompanying his offensive. A control group of dragoons and zealots, along with 3 templars, appeared close to the creep again, and 2 reavers were proven to be too strong for the two dozens of zerglings with popping. Instead of pressing in with the advantage, Snikch expanded in the middle in order to secure the main source of income and to help Ishamael establish his thru long distance mining for now. Before he could mine the middle, Bob finally noticed Snikch's expansion at the 12 o'clock position where Agent's overlord had hanged in there for over 15 minutes, and dropped a reaver and a zealot for probe kill. His goal was partially successfully achieved since Snikch did not have any troops there; however, most of the probes ran away after the second scarab exploded, and it took Snikch a while to bring several dragoons to rid of the reaver.

Trying to cope with Snikch's expansion in the middle, Agent also expanded to the bottom left island at the corner unnoticed, similar to where Bob expanded, just at the opposite corner. Bob was not as lucky as Agent, as Ishamael's shuttle found Bob's new expansion only guarded by 2 reavers without shuttle. With the advantage of the shuttle, Ishamael pulled out his inner Zileas and do the sequence of "drop, fire a scarab, pop back to shuttle" four times to kill both reaver while only hit by one scarab. I guess that one hit indicated that he needed to rob Zileas' statue harder next game. =] Two more zealots were dropped to destroy the nexus, but before they could tear down the nexus, Bob brought his own reaver and dragoons and finally dispatched Ishamael's attack.

When Snikch's nexus in the middle was warping in, the IN team launched a large attack there to prevent Snikch from securing too much resource nodes. Units of every type occured in the battlefield, all fought brutally until one or the other fell. Zealots, Dragoons, Archons, templars, dark templars, reavers, zerglings, hydras, mutas, guardians... all appeared in the scene. Despite the blood shredded by psi blade and blue soup wrecked by zerg claws, the whole battle can be summarized by:

!!STORM!!

and for your viewing pleasure:

At the end, Snikch could not hold off the combined might of the zerg and protoss army, and conceded the middle and chose another expansion at the top left corner instead. Agent and Bob did not end their assault though. Snikch's expansion was yet again spotted by Agent's overlord and 8 zerglings were dropped before a cannon could warp in, thus forced Snikch to cancel the nexus. Ishamael quickly responsed by dropping a reaver to aid the defense. After delaying Snikch's expansion attempt, Agent and Bob pressed on their advantage and charged Snikch's main. After a few skirmish at the ramp, where a number of hydras, lurkers and dragoons were stormed, Snikch could no longer held the choke point and was forced back to his main. Agent morphed 5 hydras into lurkers to draw storm while charging in over a dozen hydralisks. Along with Bob's templar, the hydras and lurkers vaporized Snikch's defense and his main was slowly tore down. Ishamael's last attempt of a reaver/probe drop combo at Agent's expansion was not very successful against sunkens and hydras. =] Seeing no opportunity of surviving much longer, the Gauls conceded to the IN team.

Some stats:

Victor: IN~Clan2
Time elapsed: 1:03:48
# of times Bob said "SAVE": 4
# of messages from Dudey asking for game status: 16

This is a [FLS]prozerran­­© production. Thank you for reading.