"The Science Vessel also notices that a High Templar is about to cast a spell on a Sieged Tank; in the nick of time, it is matrixed and weathers the storm (pun intended)"
-Rumpelstiltskin
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| Terrans vs. Toss, AGAIN :) | | | Author: | | | IP: | moola.tcXXXX | | Date: | 03/25/00 06:03 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 6, Min: 6
Lifetime Rating for Dausuul: 8.3333 |  |
My Attempts At Terran
Okay. I’ve put up a lot of comments lately. Many of them have upset people. Some were unnecessarily harsh on other peoples' playing skills. (In others, the harshness was quite necessary, but that’s another story.) So it’s time for me to put up another BR so that everyone can see just how lame my own skills are, and laugh at me. No pix for this one, I’m afraid, except for the final scores.
The map is Lost Temple. I am squaring off against the redoubtable but unfortunately named Big-Poop-Fart. Both players go random. I start as purple Terran at 6:00, and my opponent, as it turns out, is red Protoss at 3:00.
Terran is my worst race, but I’ve been trying to improve. I’ve studied the Book of Heartcutter. I’ve practiced against computers. I’m still not nearly as good with Terrans as I am with the Protoss, and as Zerg I could crush myself in a matter of minutes; but I flatter myself I can at least try to put up a fight now.
I start with a textbook wall-in. As soon as the first depot finishes, I send out an SCV to scout. It runs up the ramp at 3:00 and finds what I least wanted to see—a gateway. This will be a trial by fire.
He sends a zealot to scout me, but sees the wall-in and backs away quickly before my marines can toast him. I’m doing something akin to Heartcutter’s Heavy Metal Build (I haven’t learned Deep Six Terran yet), but I decide to skip the vultures, which I have not yet learned how to use effectively, and try for a fast tank push. If I can hit him early enough and hard enough, I may be able to win right there.
Two factories go up, followed by machine shops. Being the Terran newbie that I am, I place one of the factories wrong and have to move it so my tanks won’t get trapped when they come out.
Wary of dark templar, I make an academy and a comsat, followed by an engineering bay. I refrain from scanning my opponent immediately. I want that comsat for DT detection. By the time the engineering bay comes on-line, my tanks are already rolling out, accompanied by an SCV and a few marines. The SCV throws up a bunker and a missile turret outside his base, while the tanks siege up.
A marine runs up the ramp, hoping to find a clear field for bunker construction. No such luck. There’s a sizeable force of goons and zealots up there. Well, a slow advance with the tanks will take care of that.
Counterstrike! Lightning explodes around my tanks, and I see a templar up on the cliff, chuckling wickedly. He doesn't chuckle for long, as the tanks retaliate by obliterating him, but my SCV is going to be busy repairing for a bit.
I advance the tanks and start to build a new bunker, meanwhile rallying tanks and marines to a point outside his base. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of moving my tanks too far forward--the original bunker no longer covers them. Zealots charge in, and the tanks explode in moments. The zealots try to advance, but the first bunker and a couple of new tanks put a stop to it.
What follows is a hard and bloody demonstration of siege warfare. A continuous stream of tanks pours out of my factories. I send in three more SCVs, and they’re kept very busy fixing tanks and building turrets and bunkers. On his side, corsairs with disruption web support goons and zealots, and together they hold off the tanks. Occasional dark templar sallies keep me on my toes.
While the siege is going on, I make a command center and start it floating towards the top left island. It may go unnoticed there, and it will certainly be easier to defend. I’d send it to the lower right, but he’s got that zealot still parked outside my base (I haven’t got around to killing it yet), and I don’t want him knowing about this expansion if I can avoid it. Besides, the lower right is the logical place for me to go, and he’ll be watching it.
Since I’ve got turrets up now, I don’t need the comsat for detection, and I start sweeping the map, checking the other bases. I hit pay dirt at 12:00. There’s a base starting on the plateau, and a fully functional expansion at the natural. And we all know what the Book of Heartcutter says about Protoss expansions.
Two siege tanks are diverted from laying siege to his main. The comsat didn’t reveal any sort of defenses, so two may be enough. If not, I’ll send more. The tanks roll up onto the plateau, siege, and start blowing away probes. Then they reduce the nexus to rubble and move over to the cliff above the natural. They siege again, and the natural, too, goes down.
As I am congratulating myself and working on getting science vessels, screams and arclite thunder echo back from the front, mixed with the crackle of disruptor fire. Corsairs blanket the battlefield in white, and the enemy bursts out of the siege with a squadron of dragoons, zealots, and dark templar. Aargh! Bad Protoss! No psi-biscuit! Bad Protoss!
Shaken, I redouble production of tanks and marines and reinforce my base defense, anticipating a counterattack. It doesn’t come, however. The foe is not about to try to take me on my home ground, not with his troops and resources depleted by the siege. Instead, he sends a corsair and a shuttle with two dragoons to wipe out my undefended expansion on the island.
Desperately, I order my SCVs off mining and charge the dragoons, meanwhile building more as fast as my command center can churn them out. Wonder of wonders, it works! The tough little workers slice away with their fusion cutters and pull down both goons. The corsair hovers uncertainly overhead for a moment, then turns and flies off, along with the shuttle. I put up a few turrets in hopes of preventing or at least discouraging a recurrence of the incident.
My starport is up with a control tower, and my science facility is building. I send a dropship with two tanks to my island, as further discouragement. It doesn't do much good, as will be revealed soon...
A scanner sweep reveals a bunch of probes sitting on the lower right island, presumably waiting for minerals to make a nexus. I load up two dropships with two tanks, seven marines, and an SCV, and drop the island. The probes go up in white flame, just as disruption webs flash on over my own island. An arbiter locks up the tanks in a stasis field, and three shuttles drop dragoons. The goons begin blowing things away. I lift off my command center and fly it out in the confusion, pursued only by a single corsair. Two more join it on the way south, but I make it to the 9:00 natural and land before they can get me into the red. I build a few SCVs and repair the damage, even as the SCV I took to the lower right island sets to work on a command center.
I dispatch two tanks to defend the 9:00 base, and put up a missile turret. It doesn’t help much when the corsairs, arbiter, and dragoons show up. The Protoss move on to the lower right island, and my science vessel doesn’t make it in time. More webs, more goons and zealots, and down goes my last expansion . . . but he doesn’t have any either.
Time to finish this. He can’t possibly have any resources left. Of course, I have only 500 minerals, and my main has run dry; but, unlike him, I can float my command center to a new base. I do so, dropping it at the 9:00 plateau, and send six tanks, six marines, and a science vessel to his natural, where I find a nexus and a few wretched probes harvesting.
The arbiter shows up and throws a stasis before I can EMP it, catching four tanks and the science vessel itself in the field. However, the two remaining tanks and the marines are sufficient to kill the nexus and put the probes out of their misery. I guess the corsairs are out of juice, since there’s no sign of disruption web. Eventually the stasis wears off, and the tanks roll up the ramp and into his main. The science vessel keeps the corsairs and arbiter from causing any further trouble for the tanks with a couple of well-placed pulses. However, the angry corsairs come after the vessel itself, and I fly it back and forth, raking the corsairs over the marines. The shield-less corsairs go down, and the vessel survives with 28 hit points. Then the arbiter attacks it! It’s the only time in my life I’ve ever seen something running in terror from an arbiter’s guns.
Once the marines finish off the arbiter and a couple of SCVs show up to fix the vessel, I push on into his main. As they begin taking down the buildings, he says good game and surrenders. I sit back, exhausted but triumphant.
Here are the final scores. You may all now comment on my utter incompetence with Terran. ;)
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