Prologue

I was roaming around Battle.net, waiting for a RL friend to join when an interesting discussion about race imbalances and 1.08 patch changes came up. I added my decidedly unexpert opinions that Terran infantry should get a movement speed boost and lurkers should get a slight damage increase, when Microman, a "coworker" at Shadowstrife, run by WilliamWC3 as a fan club for Strifeshadow by Ethermoon, showed up and added his more-expert-than-Inssider opinions to the discussion. He then whispered me for a 2v2, to which I responded "sure, if you wanna lose cuz I suck," and he said "i need a good loss now and then." Okay then. He quickly called out for a "2v2 need 2," and when nobody responded he forgot all about it and went back into the discussion, as I gladly did as well. But soon I got that craving to play a man's game, so I spammed for a "Pokemon Bros. Madness" game, which garnered much attention, and then Microman suddenly remembered our 2v2 and told me to create. So I yelled out to the channel "2v2 need 2 join inssider/inssider." Then I clicked Create, made a game on a 4-observer Lost Temple, and waited. I didn't have to wait long. Aenslaed, ][nsane-San][ty, and Frappy quickly joined, and moved immediately to the observer slots =] Then Microman joined, and asked who we would be playing against. (BTW Microman and I have never played together in Starcraft before, only seen each other’s names in forums and talked on ICQ, so we didn’t know each other’s playing styles or whatever.) Then Aenslaed, who turned out to be ::Nobody:: smurfing clicked back to a PGL Contestant slot, and when Bane, “smurfing” as [BuGs]Bane joined the game we were all set. I told everyone how much I blow chunks at Starcraft, begged them to go easy on me, and then started.

The Game: Part One

I found myself spawning as Zerg with my hatchery at 12:00. After quickly allying with Microman and turning on allied chat, I had to decide what my build order should look like. I decided to not use the 3-hatch build order I've been using lately, and to instead go for my old 10/9 (extractor trick) hatchery build order, so that I could get my spawning pool up earlier and be able to defend an early double team and also rush my opponents if needed. I also sent my overlord to the 9:00 start position. I looked over to my partner's base at 3:00 and saw he was Terran. I asked him if we had a plan, and he responded "um, regular play, i'm going vultures." OK, that's fine with me. I went back to my base and started morphing a hatchery near my ramp choke, and then a spawning pool when I had the cash. At this time, my overlord reached my opponent's base at 9:00, and I saw he was also Zerg, and I quickly checked the diplomacy screen to see the player colors and found that the Zerg belonged to Bane, and I alerted my partner to this information. I started a hydralisk den and an evolution chamber, researched zergling speed, and then looked more carefully at Bane's base, and found three hatcheries in a straight vertical line in his main base. I suggested to Microman that we rush him, but instead he called for some help in his attack on 6:00, which turned out to be Nobody's Protoss base. By this time, I had about a control-group and a half of zerglings, and I sent them down to Nobody's natural expansion while Microman assaulted the zealots standing guard at the ramp with his vultures. Nobody was forced to take his 5 zealots off hold-position and send them down to chase after Microman's 4 vultures, at which time I let out a bloodthirsty yell and ordered my zerglings to attack. The zealots were summarily dispatched, and my partner and I waltzed into Nobody’s base. We started to work on the probes, but spotted a cannon being warped in, and as we attacked it a high templar unleashed its deadly psionic storm on our units, destroying and injuring them enough for newly-produced zealots to finish them off. I built up my force at home, upgrading to lair and getting +1 armor while pumping zerglings and the occasional hydralisk, when my opponents launched a coordinated strike on my partner's base with high templar, zealots, and hydralisks. By this time however, Microman had plenty of siege tanks and was clearly able to hold the attack off with ease, losing only a few tanks to storm. Seeing that my partner was all right, I sent 18 zerglings and 6 hydras to Bane’s natural expansion to see what damage I could cause while the main bulk of his forces were away. I came across a morphing hatchery at his natural expansion, and quickly attacked it, forcing Bane to cancel its construction. I then sent a zergling scout up the ramp to test Nobody's ramp defenses, and found that he had not placed any defenses at the top of the ramp, so I brought up my units, leaving only a couple zerglings behind to warn me of Nobody reinforcements. As I entered into his base, I saw only one morphing sunken for defense, and eggs morphing into defending units from all three hatcheries. I quickly ordered my units to dispatch the sunken, and then I had to fight off newly-produced hydralisks. My forces performed admirably, but were doomed to failure as the weight of reinforcements and superior numbers took their toll. Microman had brought some vultures to help in my attack, but they were delayed by some of Nobody’s zealots and retreated when my attack force was destroyed.

The Game: Part Two

When I returned my attention to my base, I found I had built up some money reserves, and so I expanded to my natural, constructed a queen's nest and spire, researched hydralisk range, and continued to produced hydralisks and zerglings. My partner then performs a turbo-newbie on Nobody’s natural expansion, alerting me to the fact that Nobody has expanded. I send a control group of zerglings down, hoping to destroy his expansion before he can reap the benefits of another mining base, when I came across a nexus just warping in at his mineral expansion with a few dragoons, zealots, and high templar along with a cannon defending. I started to attack, realized its futility, and pulled back and went back to my base to upgrade my lair into a hive, only to have my lings drawn back in to Nobody’s expansion of their own accord by a well-placed storm from Nobody. Needless to say, they were slaughtered. I make a few mutalisks and upgrade my spire into a greater spire, as well as get the adrenal glands upgrade for my zerglings, and then Microman and I launch a coordinated assault on Bane’s natural, only to find that he had just recently expanded to his mineral natural. We attacked the newly-morphed hatchery, but his well-placed lurkers are what saved his expansion. They ripped up my lings, ripped up my partner’s infantry, and some storms from Nobody kinda made my hydras not be there anymore, and they had the same effect with Microman’s tanks =[ Heh my micro ownz you. Anyway, as the last of my attacking units died off, I turned all three mutalisks I had into guardians, and began picking at Bane’s mineral expansion as a distraction to keep him from getting aggressive and attacking my weakly-defended main and hopefully commit to some defense for a unit I didn’t plan on using much. They did all right, killing a few hydralisks and a sunken before somehow dying off. I wasn’t able to figure out how they died, however, because at that moment Bane was executing a rather large hydra/lurker drop in my main base. Yikes. I had minimal defense there, and what defending units I did have were gathered at my ramp. However, right away Microman brought a few dropships filled with a few tanks and M&M, and together with my hydras/lings, the drop squad was eliminated, but not before destroying my evolution chamber, a sunken, my extractor, a few drones, and bringing my hive down to like 6 hp. Nobody tried to attack my base as well at the same time as Bane’s drop, this time from my ramp, but the zealots were quickly taken down as they came up my ramp one by one while being fired upon by the various hydras I had left there. My partner left his two surviving tanks in my base in siege mode, and I rebuilt my drones and extractor and built two evolution chambers and created another hatchery at my mineral-only, planning to erect a couple spore colonies there so that any further drops in my main would first be subject to anti-air fire. I also got around to researching burrow, so I could burrow my drones if they came under fire =] I take a look at my partner’s assets, and I find that he has taken his natural and the bottom-right island expansion. Okay, that’s cool. A brief lull follows, during which I continue to produce hydralisks and zerglings as well as throwing up a defiler mound, and then I send three control groups of lings and two control group of hydras on attack-move to Bane’s mineral expansion. En route however, they meet a group of zealots and high templar. I concentrate fire on the templar, and they quickly die, but only after getting a couple well-placed psionic storms off at my units (slightly damaging Nobody’s zealots as well). I am able to take out the zealots, but my few remaining hydras are badly damaged and die quickly to some reinforcing zealots. Then Microman got around to comsatting the top-left expansion, where he found a Zerg expansion. He told me to get ready to expand there, and he dropped a couple tanks to clear out the hatchery and sunken and drones. I loaded up a drone into an overlord and dropped it on the island. However, by the time I got there, Microman’s forces had somehow pretty much died to reinforcements, so I just burrowed my drone and ran my overlord away At this time, my mineral-only expansion is coming online and I’m finding myself wallowing in money. I build like 5 more hatcheries (no exaggeration) in my main base, set all their rally points to my choke, and just mass-produced hydras, lings, some scourge, a few mutas, and a couple queens and defilers for fun. Microman gets “attacked” by Bane and Nobody – that is, they started to attack, saw my partner’s two dozen tanks with M&M support, started to pull back, decided “what the hell” and went ahead and attacked, took too many caualties, and retreated. I don’t even think Microman suffered any losses there – one templar did get a storm off, but one storm isn’t enough to kill a tank all by itself, and the Terran repair is a great asset, although it’s a pain in the ass to use. Anyway, Microman and I then chose to launch a large attack on Bane’s mineral natural. He sent his M&M over to just outside the creep, waited for my speedy lings to join him, stimmed, and then ran in. Unfortunately, Bane’s lurkers were still there from the last attack, and my overlords, although speed-upgraded, do not move that fast, and so the marines had a tough time as did my lings. However, a quick comsat soon remedied this situation, and the lurkers were manually targeted and brought down, bringing quite a few of my lings down to Zerg hell with them. My hydras then arrived, and started tearing down the sunkens, while Microman’s tanks joined the fray and pounded on Bane’s hatchery. Nobody sent waves of reinforcing hydras, lings, and lurkers as Nobody brought up some templar and zealots. Storm took its usual toll as did shear numbers, and although our forces fought valiantly they were overwhelmed by our opponents’ units. But the damage had already been done: Bane’s mineral expansion was now gone, and he had lost quite a few drones as well as the defending lurkers.

The Game: Part Three

Nobody and Bane then proceeded to perform a series of frontal attacks on my base – storm hurt like a bitch, but eight hatcheries is just so good at pumping mass units that any losses were replaced by twice their number. You can’t just wantonly pump units with abandon, however; you need money, and money is not an unlimited resource. And I was running out of money. The mineral patches in my main were gone, the drones transferred to my natural, my natural was nearly mined out, and my mineral only wasn’t being used all that efficiently by me. However, vespene gas is pretty unlimited however, and I had plenty of vespene gas, as I had been mostly pumping low-gas units in hydras and zerglings. I quickly informed my partner of this, and he said “okay, time to bust out the ultra-efficiency. Go for cost-efficient units, don’t waste money, and we’ll starve them to death.” Sounds like a plan. But wait: cost-efficient units? I’m Zerg? Damn. But I DO have a queen’s nest, and a defiler’s mound, and they allow me to produce queens and defilers, both of which are fairly cost-efficient and cost mainly gas and not minerals, which fit my current predicament perfectly. Plus queens and defilers are hella fun to use =] I carefully made queens and defilers, using only two hatcheries’ worth of production power while researching all the spells for queens and defilers. Damn that pissed me off – here I was, sitting with eight hatcheries and not enough money to produce units from all of them. ASDF$%@#$@. Oh well. Anyway, our opponents were being pretty quiet, and Microman decided to liven things out at Bane’s mineral expansion, which he is sure to have retaken, with his economically-efficient unit of choice: the science vessel. Armed with mass irradiate, my partner proceeded to cast this pimp spell on everything in sight: lurkers, clumps of hydralisks and zerglings, ultralisks!, rocks, trees, temples, Nobody’s overlords, my overlords =] Quote from Bane: “Stop it!” Getting into the spirit of things, I took my queens and broodlinged any ultralisks that Microman had missed, and then I headed down to Nobody’s Protoss base for some templar hunting. When I would see a high templar, I would hold down shift, press “b,” left-click on the templar, right click somewhere far away, and then release shift. Even when escorted, this killed the high templar and kept my queen alive. Then I see a red rippling rectangle on my minimap, centering around my mineral expansion (I play without sound BTW). I clicked on that spot on the minimap – still haven’t learned to push spacebar =[ – and found a group of guardians pounding away at my drones and hatchery with a large force of corsairs hovering around protectively. I call for Microman to irradiate, burrow my drones, receive his message that the corsairs are eating his vessels alive, find a defiler, manually walk him over to my mineral expansion from my main base (AI pathing sucks), press “g,” find out he doesn’t have enough mana, find a spare drone, consume it, press “g,” click on the middle of the guardian clump, and cast plague. Twelve hydras can then take out the very-weak guardians. At this point, my natural expansion runs out of minerals, and all I have left is my mineral-only. However, the guardians have just pummeled the hatchery there into Zerg intestines, and so I am forced to perform a gosu maneuver known as Long Distance Mining Until You Save Up 300 Minerals For A Hatchery =[ However, I was still having fun broodlinging (I deserve credit for making up my own word) random units and casting plague in random places. However, Bane was still getting some income from my island expansion, and I remembered the drone I had left there. I took a look, and saw that it was still safe and giving me some nice vision of Bane’s expansion. I saw virtually no defense: just a couple spore and drones. So I attempt something I’ve never done before and probably will never do again: I built a nydus canal in my base, produced some actual units (hydralisks and zerglings instead of just queens and defilers), built the other side of the canal in Bane’s base, and prayed. And incredibly, Bane didn’t seem to notice the morphing nydus canal in his base. I was banking on the hope that his attention was centered elsewhere, like on the mainland, and that there were not fighting units to automatically take out my canal. Unfortunately, while waiting for my nydus canal to finish, I centered my attention elsewhere and when I came back to the finished nydus canal, it was under attack by lings and drones =[. I tried to get a few units through, but it was too late. This cheese strat would not work against Bane.

The Game: Part Four

Epilogue

I’ll have it be known that the only reason Nobody and Bane lost was because I had asked them to go easy on me in the beginning, and Microman my partner kicked ass. I sux0rs if you haven’t already figured it out from reading this BR. Nobody, Bane, you own, and so do you Microman. I hadn’t originally thought to BR this game, which explains the TOTAL lack of screenshots, but oh well. It’s easier without having to worry about pictures, anyway =] And here’s a shameless plug for Ethermoon, a recently-formed game-producing company with a great staff (YourRoleModel is on it BTW, as are some other very well-known gaming names) making a great game with some great fans. Oh, and please comment on this and give me some advice for future BRs.