"I may be in the minority here but the thought of Heartcutter in a tub of chlorinated water splashing about with some moistened tarts trying to (apparentely) gain some sort of sexual favor in order to procreate truly frightens me. Little Heartcutters....((shivers)) makes Blair witch look like disney."
-Thundercracker
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| My Tao Kali Experience | | | Author: | | | IP: | 158.5.14XXXX | | Date: | 03/20/00 10:03 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 4, Max: 8, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for AQD3: 7.6184 |   | You ever get that feeling that you’ve had enough of starcraft? The same old strats, the same maps, the same low level opponents? The only thing keeping you coming back is that watching Sp|ne cuss out all of nohunters for being lame is still a little more entertaining than watching tv. I’d fallen into a starcraft rut, just going through the motions. Heck, even ladder isn’t all that fun anymore, with all the non-english speaking players and disconnecting, hacking etc.
So what the heck could I do to make starcraft as fun as it used to be? Well, there’s this little site called Tao of Gaming that is holding it’s own ladder. A ladder in the old school Case’s ladder tradition, with most of the active kali players on it. Imagine that, games of starcraft actually being played on kali! Amazing isn’t it? It’s even worse than the chatcraft players in nohunters. (Mad props to DoomDragon, he’s top ten in the chatcraft ladder, having been online for over 1000 hours this year without playing a single game yet.)
So off I go and sign up for the Tao ladder. My intrepid student Punck~ had managed to get himself to about 140 or so, and was kind enough to play me twice to get me started last week. After our games I was logging in at about 273 out of 724 players. So I logged onto b.net yesterday with the intention of getting a few random games in, when Fox^1 lays down a Kali ladder challenge. What the heck, time to get active.
Game 1
Fox selected the map of Lost Temple, and chose to play as zerg. I went with protoss as is my usual selection for serious games. The game started off a little slow, Fox taking his natural and sunkening up, while I teched a little to templar and then took my natural. A few lurkers came knocking and I knew the game was going to be relatively easy. Cannons and templar kept them away from my probes. The first major engagement came when Fox tried a decent sized hydra attack on my natural. I had a few ranged goons and some zealots to defend with, plus two storms. Once the hydras were decisively engaged with my forces I hit them with two storms and gained the advantage in troops I needed.
With that advantage I expanded to my mineral natural. Dark templar patrols showed that the other mains were clear. I snuck a probe to another main and cannoned the entrance up with 8 cannons. When you take your mineral natural you start doing things like that. Fox and I sparred a little in the middle and then Fox dropped. After he got back on we resumed from a saved game. Since I knew what he had, I sent out a templar and killed some lurkers, then took over 120 supply of troops and rammed them right through his containment to his natural. The forces were in my favor right from the start, as were the upgrades, and storm made it pretty obviously unfair. I lost about 20 supply of troops, and shared vision as I marched in.
Let me tell you guys, don’t ever piss Fox off. Sharing vision pissed him off because he thought we still had a game going on. He went from trying to win to trying to be as annoying as possible =]. I dropped the island he had taken, and ran over the natural of the last unoccupied main. Then we had a thirty minute game of “hide the hatchery”. Hatcheries sprang up in the most out of the way places, and never finished morphing before being cancelled. I finally caught his last on the ledge of a natural and 8 probe dropped it. Just don’t piss the guy off. He refused to concede after dropping out a few more times and insisted on restarting from saves. =[
Game 2
The second game I caught up with Persian and asked him to play. Persian has been doing very well on the ladder, getting to tenth by the time I played him and ending up seventh later yesterday. We both picked protoss on Lost Temple as is our custom and started the fight. I scouted Persian early and saw him start a two gate build. As my probe left though, I saw one gate being cancelled. Aha! A tech rush. I proceeded with a pretty standard two gate to reaver build, getting the robotics facility before goon range. I dropped Persian relatively quickly, getting a few probe kills and generally tearing up his base before he could get enough goons to stop me. My first observer popped out just Persians dark templar reached me, and I managed to stop it with two goons.
Then came my mistake. I sent the observer to Persian’s base to pave the way for my next reaver drop. I got off a decent drop, was cost effective but didn’t get all that many probe kills. Then dtemps started carving up my probes as I realized I hadn’t made a second observer. My non speed observer crawled back as I tried to run my probes, and finally killed the dtemps after losing half my probes. I wasn’t going to be able to get much more mileage out of reavers so I switched to three gate goons, having just enough probes left to support three gates after expanding. Persian tried his usual expand to another main trick, which I anticipated and found with patrolling goons. We both sent all our goons to fight over his expansion, and since I had been going three gate and he hadn’t I won with a little micro. This bumped me up to 141.
Game 3
Persian of course demanded a rematch. Happy to oblige, we started same map and races. This time I went two gates to templar. Persian did a slightly stronger strat, going robotics facility for observers only and quick three gate goons. It took me too long to build up to the four storms I needed to break the containment he used. The trick being if you have more goons you place them under your opponents ramp just within goon range, so the goons coming down the ramp stop midway on the ramp to fire. The only way to break it without having more goons and being willing to take the hits as you move them into position is to use storm or reavers. And storm takes a while to build up. Once I broke his containment I expanded to my natural and mineral natural, but it was already too late. Persian had taken the other main and it’s natural, and his own. We went back and forth, but I spent a lot of strength trying to take the other main’s natural.
Just as I took an island Persian countered, killing the mineral natural and then almost took my natural. A few more waves drained my reserves and it was over. A very strong strat by Persian, you can see how he made top ten. (Mostly because Silent~Strike whored himself out to nohunters cool guys when he was top ten =] )
Game 4
I asked Persian for another game, but he had to go do some stuff. Oh well. A quick snack and watching a few minutes of “Terminator” pumped me up for more starcraft. Damn Arnold is good at portraying an emotionless machine… I got back and saw Aquanda had messaged me asking for a game. Aquanda is one of the official “Damn good” Kali people, doing i2e2 for the sc.org tourney and so forth. I happily agreed to a game. I picked Protoss on Temple and Aqua went zerg. Figuring I’d try something a little different I went with a one gate reaver strat. Then I spent the next ten minutes screwing around with offensive cannons and reaver dropping while Aquanda macroed. The cliff cannons didn’t work too well cuz I didn’t recess them at first and olord spotting for hydras owned them. I then did a recessed cannon thing but Aquanda just moved his drones, probably to his mineral natural, and the dropped enough hydras to take them out before moving his drones back. I started three gate goons and constant reavers while I expanded, with that sinking feeling of getting my resource intake tripled in the early game.
I scouted a little and found a hatchery at the natural of another main. A little zealot harrasment paved the way for a goon assault, but a “horde” (24+) of hydras made me run my little goons around the map in a big circle back to my natural. Then a 12 muta strike force tried my natural, got chased away by some cannons, then came back with 36 hydras. My 4 reavers got targeted by the mutas and fed by lings long enough that they went down pretty quick, then the goons and cannons alone were just not enough to stop the horde.
Aquanda was really cool after the game, offering me his personal build as the protoss in that situation, and explaining the details and his philosophy on the match up. A very classy move by a gentleman player. My thanks Aquanda!
Game 5
I took up a randomly offered challenge in main Kali chat for my next game. A player BigHiLo, ranked 234 asked for the match. I told him I would like speed faster and he could pick the map. He chose River Styx. I picked protoss and he randomned to the same. I started out with my turbo goon build, while scouting revealed he was going two gate before core. I expected a zealot rush, and built my gates an pylons to form a wall in the front part of my base. Big charged in four zealots, saw my zealot and three goons behind the wall right next to my probes, and realized he wasn’t going to do himself any good by attacking that. We both built up, taking our naturals. I attacked with ten goons right as he took his mineral only, forcing him to cancel, then I had to back off as he revealed his six goons and ten zealots.
Hmm, time to get real. I took my mineral natural as I knew I couldn’t stop him from taking his. I expanded to two of the little expansions in the middle of the bridge, and that became the trigger for out battles. He attacked the expansions and I countered with my goons. The narrow passages made the battles take a while, so I tried to flank him and attack his mineral natural as we fought. My attack failed, but I dropped some storms on his probes during the battle. He eventually forced me off the bridge expansions with some reavers which you can’t really counter with goons in that confined a space.
I started a psi raid on his mineral natural by walking templar to the back of the ridge and spotting with a goon. He returned the favor with a 2 templar drop in the back of my mineral only. I realized we were just about evenly matched, and I needed a material advantage. I sent a large expedition to attack his mineral natural from the top, then moved all the rest of my forces to the expansions on the bridge closest to him, while expanding to the mineral spot farther away, just as my mineral natural ran out. He harrased my screening force for the expansion, but I managed to keep it reinforced. The large attack stalled on his forces, but eventually just about broke even. His expansions ran dry and my mineral one allowed me to keep in the production, and he conceded, thanking me for the game and saying it was one of the best he ever played. Likewise Bighilo! I love those limited resource games. Makes micro all that much more important.
Game 6
After a little break I went back to battle.net for another game. There Ghost kept pestering me for a game “like in the old days” =]. I think he has a lot of skill in the game and I was a little disappointed that he had withdrawn from the Tao ladder, so I told him if he signed up again I’d play him for the ladder. He agreed and I made the game on challenger. Ghost randomned to protoss to match my protoss and away we went.
His first move was an offensive assimilator. I have a strat for small maps where the other guy does this to me. I forget all about the goon wars and just straight up zealot rush. The assimilator slows the other guy down enough to where he can’t have enough goons when your zealots hit him. I proceeded with my strat, getting to Ghost while he had low troops, but the distance kept me from finishing. Whenever he was forced to use his probes I targeted probes instead of combat troops. Soon enough I was up to three gates and a forge and made a cannon to take down the assimilator. Once that was down I made some goons of my own to support my massive zealot force and ended the game. Ghost told me he had reported the loss before we started =[. GG anyways Ghost. I really should have thrown that game for the hell of it =].
So that’s my experience so far with the Tao ladder. A lot of fun, and I probably got more insight into strats from my games with Persian and Aquanda than I would in a week of normal b.net games. It’s a lot of fun and I encourage everyone to give it a shot. Good luck…..and hey, let’s be safe out there. Comments and questions welcome.
Mark4
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