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Zalpus VS -=RaRe=-
This is my first BR; well, part one of it anyway. Please comment on this BR
and give me some feedback on what I should improve in part two (or if this is
really really bad, that I should never write another BR again). I took over
400 screenshots this game, but I lost the first 100 because I accidentally overwrited
them =( Dammit. Oh well. So you won't be seeing any screenshots in the beginning
of this BR. I'll try to compress the early game so we can get on to the pictures.
| This game takes place on the over-played Lost Temple, with Zalpus picking
Terran at the 12:00 start position and -=RaRe=- choosing to command the
Protoss, warping in at the 9:00 start location. Mediocritus is my fellow
observer. Both players choose to tech a bit instead of performing a quick
rush; -=RaRe=- goes for dragoons, making only a couple token zealots to
hold his ramp, while Zalpus goes straight for vultures, skipping marine
production entirely and only constructing one barracks at his ramp along
with supply depots to create the famous Terran wall-in. |
| As soon as -=RaRe=- has about 5 dragoons, he decides to attack the Terran
base, having scouted with a probe earlier. The dragoons pick off the wall-in
supply depots from the ramp while taking some damage from the 4-5 vultures
Zalpus has, and soon break into the base. But with some nice micromanagement
and mine-laying and reinforcing vultures, Zalpus is able to fight off the
attack, taking only minimal damage. Zalpus then continues his vulture production,
while also beginning to produce tanks. He has three factories at this time,
two with machine-shops and one vulture-producing-specialist looking lonely
without a companion add-on. -=RaRe=- has three gateways and is warping in
a Templar Archives, still producing dragoons as the backbone of his army.
Zalpus soon has 6+ tanks in siege mode on his base perimeter near his ramp,
with more constantly in production, and plenty of vultures waiting for orders
in his base. |
| -=RaRe=- then expands to his natural, and chooses this time to attack
the Terran base again. He brings a control-group of dragoons and one newly-made
high templar, armed with the deadly psionic storm. This attack squad pauses
for a few seconds outside Zalpus's choke, then the dragoons begin to fire
at the tanks on the cliff. But even with the aid of storm, the dragoons
are unable to destroy the tanks, and only the templar and a few surviving
dragoons manage to retreat back outside the Terran choke. By now, Zalpus
has quite a few tanks and vultures, and two starports with add-ons as well,
and he decides to expand both to his natural and to the top-left island..
-=RaRe=- is still relying on his dragoons, of which he has many, along with
the occassional high templar, being produced out of four gateways now. |
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It is at this time that Zalpus chooses to perform the dreaded four-vulture
drop. He loads up a dropship with four vultures, orders the transport
to take a roundabout route to the rear of the Protoss main base, and then
proceeds to unload the drunk bike riders, who happily lay spider mines
all over the base and then pick on the poor and innocent probes who are
industriously mining, oblivious to their danger. Because the gateways
have their rallypoints set to the Protoss choke, newly-produced dragoons
walk right past the raiding vultures, and the bike riders are able to
destroy every single probe at the Protoss main before -=RaRe=-
is able to bring his dragoons over to his minerals to get rid of the vultures.
Three out of the four vultures are blasted to pieces by the furious dragoons,
but the one surviving vulture escapes the onslaught by running past the
dragoons and down the ramp into the Protoss natural. He then proceeds
to assassinate a high templar, and begins to fire his grenades at a second
templar as it unleashes a psionic storm on the biker. The vulture, unpeturbed,
moves out of the storm's area and continues to attack the templar. However,
the dragoons have finished destroying the other vultures, and are now
marching down the ramp to kill the remaining one. It's a race to see who
would get knocked out first: the templar or the vulture. It turned out
that they both died at exactly the same time - the vulture makes a nice
little explosion, and the high templar does its little disappearing trick.
So Zalpus's four gosu vultures had all died, but only after taking out
two high templar and destroying -=RaRe=-'s economy for a while, because
even though he had an expansion, -=RaRe=- had not yet brought his probes
there up to full mining capacity.
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| Well, now that I have my screenshots back, let's
take a look at the minimap. Zalpus is teal, and -=RaRe=- is orange. To review,
Zalpus controls the Terran and -=RaRe=- is commanding the Protoss. As you
can see, Zalpus started at the top, and -=RaRe=- started at the 9:00 start
position. Circled is -=RaRe=-'s containment force, which consists of one
high templar and a bunch of dragoons. |
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Zalpus controls two expansions, his natural and the top-left
island, while -=RaRe=- has only one, his natural. -=RaRe=- has his rallypoints
for his four gateways set to his natural's choke, so his expansion and his
main base are well protected from almost any ground attack by his own ground
force, which mainly consists of dragoons and the occassional high templar.
Zalpus's expansions are only lightly defended, with a few tanks and turrets.
He is not mining very hard from his two expansions, with only a few SCVs
gathering minerals and gas. |
| Zalpus decides to test the waters and perhaps expand again by sending
out an SCV to the 3:00 starting location. The SCV encounters the containment
dragoon force, but succeeds in getting past them by skirting along the edge
of the group of the scary bad guys with rotating *ahems* around their legs
that shoot white glob things. I thought it was pretty funny because the
entire squad of dragoons followed the lone SCV to the 3:00 starting
spot, effectively abandoning their containment and leaving only one high
templar to guard Zalpus's choke. The SCV made it all the way to the 3:00
vespene geyser before getting pelted by dragoon fire. If Zalpus had only
realized what had happened, he could have snuck another SCV down to the
6:00 start location to expand, or bring out his tanks or something, because
he didn't have to worry about the containment dragoons for the 30 seconds
his SCV inadvertantly bought for him. Oh well. |
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| Zalpus, although already being ahead resource-wise,
decides to deprive -=RaRe=- of his natural expansion and attempts a tank
drop on -=RaRe=-'s cliff. He drops off a siege tank, two vultures, and a
few SCVs as well to construct turrets and repair. However, Zalpus is met
by -=RaRe=-'s two dragoons already placed on the cliff in anticipation of
this very tactic. They are quickly disposed of and Zalpus begins construction
of a turret. But -=RaRe=-, realizing the danger of this threat to his expansion,
drops off a reaver right next to the siege tank, to get under the tank's
minimum fire range, and shoots its scarabs at the tank. Zalpus frantically
unsieges the tank, but it is quickly destroyed before it can get a shot
off at the reaver. However, while unsieging his tank, Zalpus has also been
ordering his three SCVs and his two vultures to concentrate fire on the
reaver, and they succeed in blowing up the reaver just as it fires a scarab
to destroy two SCVs and a vulture with its splash damage, leaving only one
SCV and vulture as the survivors of the foiled tank drop. |
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| Zalpus takes this opportunity to drop two SCVs
and a few tanks and vultures onto the 3:00 start location, a nice move because
-=RaRe=-'s dragoons were just returning from that spot after killing the
rogue SCV that had led them away from their containment duty, and -=RaRe=-
wouldn't expect an expansion there. -=RaRe=- expands to the 6:00 start position
a little later. |
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| Zalpus decides he requires a little more breathing room. He
floats an engineering bay over -=RaRe=-'s containment dragoons to spot for
his siege tanks, and a couple dragoons are whacked before -=RaRe=- pulls
them back, along with some reinforcing dragoons. So to recap what's been
going on so far: Zalpus has four expansions to -=RaRe=-'s three. -=RaRe=-
has a containment force of dragoons and a templar sitting at Zalpus's choke
to keep Zalpus from getting any units out of his base. Scouting is somewhat
nonexistant - -=RaRe=- does not have observers and Zalpus only has those
previously-laid spider mines in -=RaRe=-'s base to provide recon. Zalpus
is going mainly with unit produced from his four factories, particularly
siege tanks, and -=RaRe=- is creating mostly dragoons from his five gateways,
although they don't fare too well and are not the unit of choice against
tanks. Neither player has launched a major attack on the other, and the
only battles so far have been two Terran drops (one attempted turbo-newbie
and one mineral-line directed), two small Protoss frontal assaults, and
two sorta accidental skirmishes. Although Zalpus has the upper-hand in resources,
-=RaRe=- pretty much has the map to himself because of his containment force,
and seems to be ahead at this point. |
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| -=RaRe=- decides to send a dragoon to the 3:00 start position to keep
Zalpus from expanding there. Of course, Zalpus already had a base there,
something -=RaRe=- found out quickly when his dragoon died to two mines
at the ramp placed by Zalpus's vultures. But at the same time, Zalpus, getting
a little tired of those dragoons sitting around in front of his base, places
a few siege tanks below his ramp. Tanks siege, tanks fire, dragoons get
hit, dragoons get mad, dragoons attack tanks, mayhem ensues, and dragoons
turn all gooey-blue. |
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| So what happened? -=RaRe=- lost pretty much all the dragoons he had basecamping
in front of Zalpus's choke, while Zalpus lost only a couple siege tanks
and one or two vultures. Zalpus now has the potential to break open this
game, as he still has a dozen or so tanks and quite a few vultures, while
-=RaRe=- is short 15 dragoons and down to his base troops and the few containment
dragoons that managed to not get drawn into the siege tank fray. However,
not willing to write off the game yet, -=RaRe=- takes his surviving containment
dragoons and smashes Zalpus's 3:00 expansion, suffering only minor losses.
With that, -=RaRe=- is back in the game. Although his troop count has been
hurt badly, he has four gateways in his main base, a gateway in his natural
expansion, and two gateways at his 6:00 expansion to quickly replace the
lost units. And by taking away one of Zalpus's expansions, -=RaRe=- has
evened the resource intake. He has also avoided a potentially destructive
move by Zalpus: when -=RaRe=- razed the 3:00 expansion, he also destroyed
the nuclear silo add-on to Zalpus's command center there. |
| Part two: Drops, nukes, storms, soup, and all the other familiar TvP
things. And BTW, if the pictures look a little poor to you, it's because
I saved them as JPEGs with the highest compression, so it would download
faster. Please comment if you feel I should change this. And I know this
part one didn't have a whole lot action, but this was taken from only my
first 85 screenshots :P (besides the first 100 that I overwrited.) I still
have like 210 left, and this game is far from over. Please please please
comment and give me some feedback. Thanks. |
Inssider
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