The two players that ended up facing off with the Ethermoon Team were Silent-{SF} and KraZyLisk.

After a few moments of discussion, it was decided that the map would be Island Hop. Zileas and Artius both chose Protoss, as did Silent. Krazylisk opted for random.

As the game started, it appeared that the Starcraft gods had smiled down upon Krazylisk, for he had received a Nexus for his starting building as well, making the game a full-fledged Protoss civil war.

OPENING MOVES:

Silent starts out with a build similar to Zileas and Artius. However, when his Cybernetics core is complete, he constructs a Robotics Facility and then a Robotics Support Bay, an Observatory, and a Forge.

Krazylisk wins the strangest build order award for this game as his is vastly different from the other three players. He starts with a Pylon, Gateway, Gateway, Assimilator. He then constructs a Cybernetics Core. Once the Cybernetics Core is complete, he constructs a Robotics Facility, a Citadel of Adun, and a Stargate.

The first unit to go out into the vast unknown is Silent's first shuttle. He heads the shuttle south towards Artius' base and makes a quick pass over the northern edge. The two players cordially exchange greetings.

After his quick flyby of Artius' base, Silent flies his shuttle off to the west and discovers the only empty starting location on the map. He then shows everyone what an intelligent fellow he is by saying:

What he doesn't realize is that while he's scouting in the south, Zileas is dropping a probe at the Northeastern expansion and is warping in a new base.

Meanwhile, Krazylisk is continuing his peculiar build order. He's building zealots and goons and he's warping in a Fleet Beacon.

THE PEACE IS BROKEN

Silent's two reavers land on the northern edge of Artius' base. Artius' base defense consists of 3 high templar and 3 cannons.

Silent's first salvo takes Artius by surprise and and eliminates one of his templar who was standing outside his cannon perimeter. However, his second templar gets a storm off and catches both of Silent's reavers underneath its deadly lightning. It pays the price however when the next reaver salvo eliminates it.

Only one of Silent's two reavers is able to escape from underneath the storm. The reaver is able to fire a couple more scarabs and destroy a cannon before Artius' last high templar is able to eliminate it.

Immediately after the skirmish, both players (Silent and Artius) expand. Silent starts an expansion on the island to his southwest and Artius to the island directly to his west.

Meanwhile, Krazylisk's build order gets more bizarre by the moment. Now that his Fleet Beacon is complete, he is warping in a third gateway, a forge, and an Arbiter Tribunal.

Zileas decides to employ an interesting strat to scout for expansions. He loads up one dark templar into his shuttle and starts patrolling around the map. He heads for the middle left island first and when he finds that island empty, he heads off to the southeast where Silent's buildings are warping in with no defense.

Zileas immediately drops the dark templar onto the island. The dark templar's first target is the probe and with one quick swipe, the probe goes up in blue smoke. Then the dark temp's blade starts swiping at the warping Nexus. Silent quickly cancels it, however, he is not able to cancel his pylons. The dark templar hangs around and starts swiping at the two lonely protoss supply structures.

However, Silent wasn't about to let Zileas' Dark Templar have the free kills so easily. He brought a shuttle filled with two dragoons over to the expansion in an attempt to save his damaged pylons. The shuttle was accompanied by an observer and after a quick skirmish, Zileas' dark templar threat is eliminated.

Zileas asks Artius to finish off the expansion but Artius laments that he can't because his only unit available is high templar.

Since Artius can't finish the expansion, Zileas decides to take matters into his own hands. He loads up a high templar and a reaver into a shuttle and heads south again.

By the time he returns, Silent has had time to warp in two cannons on the eastern side of his island. He also has brought over two dragoons for reinforcements.

Two quick storms from Zileas' high templar destroy the dragoons, but not before the dragoons take the reaver's hitpoints down into the red. No problem right? There are no more mobile forces to take down, just static defense. Zileas moves his reaver to attack the cannons and finish off the expansion, but the reaver must have had too much to drink because it walked right into cannon range and was blown to smithereens.

The Great Reaver Guru (Zileas) was not pleased.

One more time, just for the effect. What did you say Zileas?

Hmm, well anyway, the failure of Zileas' reaver allowed Silent to reinforce his expansion and finally get it up and running.

Meanwhile, Krazylisk's plan is finally starting to crystallize. He has an arbiter and a pretty good sized group of zealots and dragoons. However, he still hasn't expanded and Zileas takes advantage of this by taking the expansion to the south of Krazylisk's main. While he expands, he also takes a moment out of his busy schedule to do a hit and run templar attack on the probe line at Silent's main. He succeeds in killing about half of Silent's probes.

Meanwhile, Krazylisk discovers Zileas' brand new expansion and decides that it needs to be eliminated. But instead of using the arbiter that he has worked so hard to tech to, he elects to drop two shuttles full of zealots.

By the time Krazylisk's zealots arrive, Zileas has had a chance to warp in four cannons. He also has a dark templar and a high templar for defense.

Two quick storms from the high templar greatly weaken the 8 zealots and the four cannons quickly clean up the mess.

While this is happening, Artius quietly expands to one of the mineral only expansions in the middle of the map. He also has put up 3 Stargates and a Fleet Beacon in his main.

After his failure to bump Zileas from the expansion to his south, Krazylisk decides to take the other mineral only expansion in the middle of the map for himself.

NOW THE FUN REALLY BEGINS

The attack starts out shaky though. It seems that Zileas has quietly teched up to Arbiters himself and when he spots Silent's shuttles incoming, he casts a stasis. The shuttles were not tightly packed and so the stasis only catches two of the shuttles. The other two shuttles go ahead and land their troops onto the southwest corner of Zileas' island. The troops turn out to be 3 dragoons and 2 high templar.

Zileas moves in two reavers to attack with a templar for support. Zileas and Silent simultaneously cast storms on each other's troops. The end result is that all the troops die.

Right about that time, Krazylisk's arbiters come flying in and recall a large amount of dragoons and zealots.

At first it appears that Zileas will be able to stem the tide using storm and cannons. However, Silent's two stasised shuttles finally escaped and it turned out that those two shuttles contained four reavers. This proved to be enough to turn the tide and Zileas' main was methodically destroyed.

However Artius who had been quietly biding his time, chose this moment to strike. Six carriers attacked Silent's only expansion. They razed the cannons and then started beating down the Nexus. The Nexus was in the red when one of Krazylisk's arbiters patrolled into the area. He fired a stasis and was able to put five of the six carriers out of action. However, he had nothing to stop the 6th carrier and it singlehandedly was able to finish off the Silent's Nexus.

The shutdown of Silent's expansion proves to be the turning point in the game. He and Krazylisk don't have the manpower to retake the expansion and when Silent runs out of minerals and fighting men, he is forced to surrender.

Krazylisk hangs in a little longer and in one funny moment, two of his arbiters meet up with one of Zileas' over the ruins of Zileas' main. The three arbiters duke it out for a moment until Zileas realizes that this is one battle he can't win and retreats to the safety of cannon cover in one of his expansions.

Eventually, Artius and Zileas, with their superior resource intake, overpower Krazylisk with a large group of carriers.

And the Ethermoon team is triumphant. Now quit screwin' around and go make us a game!! hehe... Good game to all, thanks for letting me observe, etc. etc...

THE SCORES:

DID WE LEARN ANYTHING?

1) Taking expansions on the maps with few resource nodes is very important.
Getting more resources then your opponent is the best way to ovepower him.