D'OH! Shit, I already screwed up. K, sorry about that Johnny V. Um.. christ, I'm flirting with death here. Mind you, I don't mean flirting in that I'd like to coat death's genitals with peanut.. ARGH! Man, this is really hard, but I'll do my best to NEVER EVER mention crotches and nut butters again.

Kentarre randomed his way to the head of a terran settlement at the top left island. His opponent, Skittles, selected zerg and ended up at the top right spot. I picked terran so that I could liftoff and watchy..

Jimmy the wallaby hopped his way through the beautiful foliage of his little island. His marsupial life was complete; in the Dire Straits no animal had any natural enemy, and there were peanut trees covering every island. A moment later Jimmy got flattened by a landing command center.

Duncan jumped into his SCV suit and floated out the door with the rest of his eager crew. The ground he zipped over was green with moss and wallaby mucous. Quite pleasant. Captain Henderson looked as if he was about to say something welcoming to his crew, but instead his face contorted and he said something like "Yaar!" and charged George with a tire iron in his hand. Duncan felt the same uncharacteristic urge to kill, so he pulled out a letter opener and charged Bobo, the engineer, who was just about to fry Henderson with a blow torch. For a few moments, it was absolute chaos. George was the first to go, followed by Bobo. Then it was only Duncan and Henderson. Duncan had taken a strong blow to his temple, and was having trouble focusing, and Henderson's arms were attached only by tiny threads of skin. Duncan lost balance, and the Captain dragged himself menacingly towards him.

"There can be only one, my boy. There can be.." With a few well-placed kicks, Duncan managed to kick Henderson's legs off and get back to his feet. The first thing he noticed was that the command center was floating away. Somebody higher up was playing with them.

"More.. proof.. Duncan.." Captain Henderson died with a smile on his face.

Kentarre went early gas, slapped down a factory, and then right away slapped down two starports for a fast wraith rush. His buildings were arranged to make a box around the command center and his mineral line, a strong defensive move. Skittles's v random build order used early gas as well, and when his overlord spotted the terran buildings, he teched towards a fast lurker/hydra drop by upgrading his two hatcheries to lairs. Kentarre made the first move. Two fresh wraiths flew towards Skittles's almost hydra-less base..

"And so den I says 'your place or mine' and den I'm just laughin' and laughin'" Foxman's voice crackled over radio to Spulldey's cockpit.

"Yeah, that's great foxman, just keep an eye out for hydralisks, ok?" It was easy to get tired of Foxman's senseless ramblings, but he was a damn good pilot.

"Hehe. Ok, Spull, your mom at twelve o'clock!" Spulldey looked at twelve and saw the massive, bloated shape of an overlord hovering about fifty feet above the ground, and opened fire.

The wraiths managed to circle Skittles's base and take down three overlords. Also, Skittles sent his scout overlord into the corner near his enemy's base, which Kentarre found shortly afterwards. Four dead overlords is a pretty major thing, but Skittles recovered fairly quickly and got a drop together. At the same time, Kentarre started constructing a command center on the bottom edge of his island.

The overlords filled with hydras and lurkers were intercepted by Kentarre's wraiths just before they unloaded, and two overlords were lost. One was full, and the other was unloading as it died. This small force was no match for Kentarre's walled-in tanks, and got taken apart in no time.

Again, Skittles lost a good part of his overlords and had no army. Messy. Kentarre started producing heavy ground units with dropship support here. He was hoping to catch his opponent before he could rebuild another drop, and it worked quite nicely.

The three-tank, twelve-marine drop hit right behind the mineral line, and killed a healthy number of drones before it was repulsed with a small (but elite) hydralisk posse. Once again, Skittles was set back. Kentarre was keeping the pressure quite well, but Skittles still managed to sneak an expansion to the middle-right expansion island to match Kentarre's. Determined to put his enemy on the defensive, Skittles loaded up another drop.

Again, his attack failed miserably, and he was forced to rebuild.

So far both players have been exchanging blows, and Skittles decided to keep up the tradition by loading up for another drop. This time, though, rather than trying to take down Kentarre's main, he loaded up and headed towards his expansion, which a scouting overlord had found a few minutes earlier. The drop was fairly small, but it worked because Kentarre hadn't had a chance to defend it with any tanks. After a few moments, the only unit left on the island was a lurker. Now, you may be wondering "Why didn't Kentarre just scan and kill it with wraiths?" Well, he built his starport too close to his CC at his main, and his only other scan got destroyed in the drop. "Why doesn't he use his brand-spanking new science vessel to detect for his wraiths?" you ask? I have no idea. Apparently he thought it would be more cost-effective to just let the lurker kill whatever it wanted and float his command center to another island.

But then again, maybe Kentarre didn't really care about his expansion, because he knew he was about to win the game with a final, massive drop. He loaded up hella dropships with two tanks, some SCVs, and a whole lotta marines and medics. The army unloaded on the edge of Skittles's main island, and an SCV started building a turret right away. Skittles didn't notice at first, because he was busy establishing another expansion. Let's take a look at what's happening on the minimap:

As Kentarre's tanks sieged up, Skittles was loading his overlords with hydras and lurkers, apparently going for another drop. When the first arclite blasts landed on his buildings, though, he quickly sent his overlords home, and decided he'd drop right in the middle of the marines. Bad idea. This defensive effort was shut down easily by stimmed marines and a missile turret. The reinforcements kept coming, but not nearly fast enough. By the time there were enough hydras and lurkers on the island to turn back the marines, all that remained of Skittles's main was a creep colony and an extractor. Now, this didn't hurt Skittles as much as you might think. His mineral patches at his main were almost run out, and so he could still out-resource his opponent with his two expansions. Kentarre got together a small force for a drop on one of these expansions as he landed his command center from his destroyed expansion and built another expansion at the top middle expansion island.

Kentarre's attack force comprised three dropships, a few wraiths, and some science vessels. After softening up the defense with a few irradiates, he moved in the the dropships. At first the attack looked promising, but as the dropships moved closer, the drones finished mining the last few patches and spread apart, filling up the area Kentarre wanted to drop on. The marines trickled out and died to drones and a few hydras. I was pretty impressed with that piece of micro. Anyway, not that the drop would have done all that much good anyway, because the minerals were run out anyway.

Meanwhile, a giant herd of overlords floated towards Kentarre's top middle expansion.

Most of them were decoys to draw fire, but they still packed a pretty hefty punch. despite the irradiates and valkyries, a lot of hydralisks managed to get on the ground. The drop decimated the expansion, as there were very few marines on the ground here.

Another drop was loaded up quickly and sent to Kentarre's other expansion. Again, he did all he could to stop the rabid hydras, but his expansions were lost. Kentarre's last offensive consisted of five science vessels vs. a few overlords and hydralisks. It worked, but it was too little, too late.

Now certain of his victory, Skittles decided to take out his opponent in style.. DRONE DROP!!

A few irradiated science vessels work beautifully against this sort of thing..

Well, there you have it, my comeback BR. Pretty well-played by both, some cool moves were used on both sides. Skittles had a pretty nice way to counter irradiate. He used his non-irradiated units to kill the irradiated one. I'd never thought of that.. pretty clever. Also, even though Kentarre lost, his attacks were so stylish and dynamic he made me want to learn to play terran on dire. Marine drops look like a lotta fun. Wheee, ok that's that, remember to leave comments!