| "We were playing a non-Blizzard made map originating off of Big Game Hunters. This one had more money. " - JeremyFJ
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| A 3FFA Under a Crescent Moon | | | Author: | | | IP: | static-3XXXX | | Date: | 10/01/00 06:10 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | Famous Reporter(1), Starcraft(1), Problem: Broken Images(1), Long(1) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 2, Max: 10, Min: 9
Lifetime Rating for |]agomar: 8.6667 |   | 
Welcome once again to a 10-attempt |]agomar report!
Well, this is my crown jewel to this point, easily my best battlereport, focussing on a tremendously exciting game. I hope that's enough of a preview thing for you. I'm not very fond of these corny introductions . . . but for some reason I can't stop doing them. It's like a warmup for me before I get into the more serious business of writing the br ( note to self: stop this now before it costs you points ).
Um, right, so with that horribly lame intro, it's on to the feature presentation!
Pregame . . .
I stumbled into NoHunters at roughly 7:30 on September 27 ( a.k.a. Wednesday ), excited with the prospect of starting a game. Although I yelled loud and bitterly, my first few spams were met with confused and scattered bickering from well-known members of the NoHunters community ( although I forgot who they were ). Eventually, however, SlingsNArrows translated my requests into normal language, and soon enough we were able to scrape together a quick 5 contestants. This would have been great - normally. However, I had been preparing for a game on my all-time favorite map, Crescent Moon, so only 3 people would be allowed to come. 2 recreations, 2 drops, 14 lines of cursing and one spam latter, we were ready to start.
SlingsNArrows was the first to join, and although he bitterly contests that I mocked him when he was still a newbie ( and arrogantly brushes aside my enquiries with a lofty :o) ), he is now a venerableish member of the br.com community. I decided to like this player because he uses a :o), my favorite type of smiley face even though I've been unable to incorporate it into my own typing.
Slings'Goddess was the second to enter. For some reason she cast a few wry comments about me saying all girls who play StarCraft are fat, ugly, gay and rude. I promptly retracted all my comments, and decided I'd like this contestant best, she being a girl and there being the risk of me being called gay if I said I liked someone else better ;).
The well-known warrior-Anahem- was the last guy to skitter into the game. Although he dropped out once, and I am convinced he was the reason for a later server split, hacker that he is with a rating of 100% in 500 games played ( just kidding ), I decided to rout for this player above all others, if only he would pick Protoss. He didn't, and defiantly declared he would stay random, despite all my desperate pleas and wishes. So it is that I eyed this stubborn young troublemaker with anger for the rest of the game, until he started to
redeem himself by offering up a damn good show.
Arrows chose Zerg, morphing his Hatchery at the 3:00 starting position, while Goddess landed her massive Command Center around 11:00, and the evil Anahem rose the vile spines of his first Infestation at 9:00. The war had begun.
Early Game . . .
The early starting builds were about as divergent as is humanly possible. Anahem decided to go for zergling defense while massively boosting his
production and economy, raising an early hatchery while pumping drones, then mutating a trusty spawning pool, followed by a third hatchery. He sent an overlord and a drone out to scout, unsuccessful at first but eventually spotting the terran just above his main, his overlord sailing past one of brown's on its way out. The drone later stumbled across Arrows only a little bit earlier than the second scouting overlord! Goddess chose an odd route, apparently deciding on a mixture of excellent reconnaissance, relatively early expansion and air power. She rapidly built her tech structure, while sending marine after marine running across the map. Her early defense consisted of a lone bunker, some vultures and a couple extra m&m. Arrows, however, was just plain weird. At first I thought he might be that newbie of old after all, for his base didn't do much for a good long time. Apparently he decided to try and finance his hatchery with his four initial drones plus two more, while Anahem first built a solid economic base before committing to the hatchery. This attempt to be first with the second hatchery backfired, as he morphed substantially later than the crimson enemy cerebrate. However, he redeemed himself somewhat by accelerating his build dramatically, adding a spawning pool and very quickly getting gas, before rapidly teching up to Lair. Was this the beginning of a lurker drop?
At this point a number of things happened. First, Anahem, now with full hydralisk capability, decided to expand to his natural. Second, Goddess sends down a Wraith to scout, a move that was to have profound implications for the rest
of the game. Third, Anahem's drone and second scouting overlord discover brown at roughly the same time, alerting him of the alarming technological progress of the other Zerg. In response to this, he sends a mixed army of four zerglings and three hydralisks on the long trek across the map, deciding to smash the small main base before it blossoms its hideous technological flower ( that was pretty bad, but at least I tried ). When this force is halfway across the map, the scouting orange wraith, screaming back up North after a Southern excursion, stumbles across the morphing red expansion hatchery, just barely within its range of sight. The wraith continues on course for a few seconds, and I think the tiny expansion has been missed, when suddenly it wheels about, cloaks, and hurtles back down with destruction on its mind. Another newly made Wraith ( talk about teching ) flies down to help its brethren, just as Anahem's army is spotted by a wayward brown overlord. He presses on nonetheless, yet a second brown sunken colony is now quickly mutated in response. When the first zergling arrives, it is torn apart, and the hydralisks are routes by a combination of lings are colonies. The crimson cerebrate knows when he's outmatched, however, and expertly retreats the rest of his forces without a single loss, despite the zerglings, managing to get excellent yet disturbing reconnaissance on his opponent's tech tree.
What is left of Anahem's beleaguered army races back home, in a more winnable attempt to ward off the evil wraiths, which by now are doing truly substantial damage. When they arrive to the hatchery's general vicinity, they join with more of their race and viciously attack the resident starfighters, which in turn cloak, and manage to slaughter a single hydralisk before being spotted by a speed-upgraded overlord and downed. Apart from these early game skirmishes, there is a relatively unhampered buildup on the part of all players, following their particular devious schemes. Goddess had already expanded, fortifying her natural with a token defense of marines and a wraith, while her Southern neighbour, angered by the recent attack, was busy getting his expansion up to pace while amassing hydralisks, his unit of choice. Indeed, Anahem had emerged as the dominant player at this time, expanding a third time to 7:00, and possessing an army large enough to smash both of his opponents in a single blow. Arrows, however, has expanded to the raised central resource node, glowering down at his foes and defending with a full group of mutalisks! When the sole woman in the game sends a valiant wraith into this swarm to scout, it is blown to smithereens within seconds. Terrified, the Terran commander begs her Zerg foe not to attack her, and continues on with her now obvious tech choice: battlecruisers!
Mid Game . . .
By now, the game has moved up to one of those moments of truth, when momentous decisions of terrible risk must be made by a single player within the space of a few seconds, with the outcomes being either horrible death or glorious victory. Such decisions are mirrors onto a player's psyche. To attack or to defend? Or both? And how?
All is still over the dark, brooding map. Only the faint yellow glows of the distant Terran expansion are visible above the black horizon, and the blue sun, peaking out behind dark clouds, casts a passing glitter on a pulsating zerg structure high up among the mountains, many miles away. Anahem is at a crossroads. He has three main choices. The first is to attack his human neighbour just before she can wholly complete her tech to cruisers ( now only a Physics lab away ), thereby eliminating a dangerous threat and clinching more resource spots. In order to chose this course he must make his move within the next couple seconds, for the expansion blocking the route to the Terran base would give Goddess just enough time to construct two battlecruisers, and with generous use of repair beat off Anahem's assault. The second possible option is to attack later. It is highly likely that the human commander would opt for a third expansion to facilitate battlecruiser construction, and thereby meat stiff resistance from Arrow's nearby Mutalisks. When she was ready, Goddess would probably attack brown's expansion, and a war of attrition between the two powers would result, with Anahem taking only grazing blows, and ready to smash both weakened powers when they'd hurt one another sufficiently. The final path, involving the greatest number of casualties, would be taking out the most immediate threat, Arrow's central expo and mutas, thereby clinching an invaluable resource node and controlling a good portion of the map, while crippling his most powerful foe.
All this goes through Anahem's mind in a couple seconds. No doubt with a flinch at the enormity of his decision, and with the thought of constructing a physics lab probably only milliseconds away in Goddess' mind, the Cerebrate rallies his Hydras, and marches North to obliterate his Terran foe, banking that an unstoppable future power will be more deadly than a smaller current threat. And no doubt this momentous decision was made with revenge, for that little wraith rush was probably just enough to tip the balance . . . .
The first wave of Hydralisks is just barely beat down, but the second is far larger and more deadly. The Hydras tumble down into Goddess' expansion like a roaring tsunami of death, wiping away all pitiful defences and reducing the CC to rubble without a single loss! Many SCVs evacuate to the Main, but find little solace there, as Anahem's blood-red hydras skitter diabolically through the choke in hot pursuit, supported by a couple newly-made lurkers. The lurkers burrow, and the hydras split into two groups in an astonishing move, flanking the defences and distracting them while the lurkers tear them to shreds. The leading buildings are blown away, while a single lurker cleverly burrows just out of range of the sole bunker, no longer surrounded by buildings, and destroys the defensive structure, leaving four very confused marines to be torn apart by the surging Hydras. Needless to say, very little survives, all is crushed - but many Terran structures manage to fly over the black sea in the confusion, and Goddess, in a great example of multitasking, has just started a new expansion . . . directly to the northwest of Arrows' Main! How long would this go undiscovered??
Speaking of Arrows . . . remember those mutas? And remember those zerglings? No wait . . . I didn't talk about those. Well, in any case, the brown cerebrate has pumped two groups out of his hatcheries, speed-upgraded, and they begin a long trek towards Anahem's first expansion, just as the last remaining Terran supply depot at 11:00 detonates in a blaze of glory. At the same time, the mutalisks head south, and hover just below that very same expo. As the two forces prepare to strike, Arrows expands to 5:00, just seconds after a wayward red drone sets up shop at the former Human natural.
Moments later, the battle is met. The brown cerebrate intelligently ( coughs ) hops his lings into Anahem's outpost one by one, where they are met by a friendly reception committee of seven well-dressed Hydralisks handing out little bouquets of razor-sharp green spines. The first wave of zerglings is ground to dust, yet now the mutalisk swarm flaps in upon the sole defending spore colony, razing it in record time and blasting a few unlucky drones in the process. Suddenly the hydras are torn between desperately engaging the mutas and grinding down the constant line of lings. The moment of impotent indecision is just enough for a critical mass of lings to arrive, which rip into the hydralisks, constantly buttressed by reinforcements. The brave lisks finally fall, and now the undefended base if set upon by Arrow's united forces, with the brown cerebrate arrogantly laughing at his seeming victory.
Note that I said, "seeming." For the dreaded warrior Anahem is no fool. As soon as it became obvious that he was terribly outgunned, he recalled his doom force. He ensures that his lurkers are the first to arrive, and while the brown Cerebrate, confident of his triumph, looks elsewhere, the hulking beast burrow into the ground, taking only minimal damage, and with an awesome subterranean volley wipe out a third of the lings. Another wave exterminates the majority of the routed attackers, but a solid line of Hydralisks blocks off their retreat! The lings do all the damage they can to the remaining structures before being sliced to splattered splats of gore upon the dark landscape, and as the overwhelming number of Hydras march triumphantly into the bloody ruins the mutalisks wisely retreat, with only one of their number moderately damaged by wayward spines.
Total Attrition
Another reason for this sudden concession is soon revealed, for Arrows' greater spire had just burst into being. As soon as the mutalisks reach the relative safety of the 6:00 cliff, where a budding brown expansion has just been morphed, they mutate into that most lethal of Zerg air units, the behemoth guardian. Unaware of this bold new threat only a few second's flight away from his largest expansion, Anahem takes a breather, leisurely rebuilding his expo and getting the other ones up and running. He relaxes on reconnaissance, although if one of his overlords had only sailed south and stumbled upon the morphing guardians, the hydras could have dropped in and wiped out the entire brown aerial fleet in their moment of vulnerability.
In this tense pause, let's have an update on the minimap.
As you can see, Arrows is now tied with his crimson foe in terms of number of expansions, yet his forces are marginally weaker numerically, his production capabilities are slightly lower and he hasn't gotten all his expansions up and running to the same extent as the other cerebrate ( although they are better defended ). Goddess, as you can see, is doing a surprisingly good job with rebuilding, skipping defense ( who needs it? ) and teching straight up to cruisers once again. For the second time now, she's but a hair's breath away from obtaining the giant vessels, but as her bases expands, the chance of her discovery is getting greater and greater . . . .
At the 6:00 position, there is a large brown blob. It is this unobtrusive splotch that now becomes the most important factor in the game.
That's right, the guardians have hatched. And they're lean, mean, and ready to kick some serious Zerg butt. The aerial fleet, reinforced by an escort of the ferocious mutalisks, lumbers North, and before long slams into Anahem's embattled expansion, slicing into the fringe structures, which erupt in unholy explosions of filthy gore.
The red cerebrate, knowing that his hydras are simply unable even to engage the punishing guardian force, let alone defeat it, marches his hydras to the East . . . and on course for Arrows' main! Get ready for some serious attrition!
The Hydras barely miss spotting the new Terran expansion ( literally by a tankwidth ), and rally just outside their archenemy's main. Now, Anahem takes the chance to show off his ultra gosu micro, as, in one of the most impressive moves of the entire war, he burrows two lurks slightly out of range of Arrow's resident zergling defense ( that's A LOT of very mean-looking rather nasty little lings ). Anahem now scampers up a sole hydra, takes a potshot upon the leading zergling, then hurries back, sending the lings rushing heedlessly straight into a massive volley of lurker spines, which rip them apart as the hydras surge forward with a terrible vengeance for their dying expo on the other corner of the map. The main base now doesn't stand much of a chance. The Hydralisks lunge at the defences in a rage, and basically sack every last remnant of the organic base - that's Arrow's entire tech structure, folks - within a whirling minute of sines, claws, and blood. Not a single drone survives, and the towering spire is no more, eliminating all hope for the brown cerebrate of reinforcing his minions.
But even as he wipes out the brown main, the crimson cerebrate expects a similar counter by the brown fleet, which is still a devastating force, having suffered only light losses. So it is that the armada screams in upon the besieged Zerg base, which crumples before the withering barrage like a snail's shell under Drefsab's mighty heel ( +1 bonus point right there, lol ). The shadow of brown's flotilla darkens the land as multiple red structures are torn apart in apocalyptic eruptions, and soon enough only the desolate hulks of what once was a glorious Zerg base are all that remain upon the smoldering landscape.
But that's not all. Although desperately wounded, Anahem is certainly not to be outdone. He scrapes together all his remaining overlords, loads 'em up with frenzied hydras, and sends them happily bobbing on their way to brown's mightiest expansion: the raised central base. There is very little opposition as the hydras release their hold on the low flying ovies and drop down into battle, releasing crippling volleys of spines, executing the stranded drones and ripping apart the wretched structures. With his largest outpost entirely sacked, Arrows is down to two pitiful bases, and can only produce zerglings, while the red cerebrate has double expos in widely varying locations, pathetically popping out a drone an hour. Four bases in a row have now been destroyed! What was to come?
Now Things get really interesting
Believe it or not, the Terran refugee is now right back to square one, and she's currently building her first battlecruiser ( insert wild cheers and suggestive winks here ). Amazingly, with a nearly out of control war of constant vengeance, chaos and death going on with Anahem, Arrows has the presence of mind to realize that the once nearly defeated human is now the main threat. He sends his fleet to the Northeast, stumbling upon one of the two happily mining red expansions, which is razed before you can say "Aie!"
The Zerg flotilla closes in upon the largest Terran base at 12:00, and the fliers unleash their insidious acid globs in a single fluid motion, crushing the first defenders and wiping out all buildings unable to lift off and retreat. Two more hulking guardians slide in to engage the second human base just above the former brown main, delivering a deadly acidic punishment in another one of the flanking attempts all to common in this match. However, a battlecruiser roars up from its docks at just that moment, and those double crabs are down in seconds, while the mutalisks race in to pursue the fleeing buildings above the remnants of the burning 12:00 base. Even 2/2 mutas, however, are not very effective against, well, most things, so not only do all the buildings manage to escape, but the entire 5 muta fleet runs straight into the Terran cruiser, which manages to wipe out every last Zerg air-to-air flier . . . losing only half its hitspoints! The beleaguered guardians, now suddenly caught without any air support, turn tail and run, but the battleship is reinforced by one of its fellows and the double leviathans stab the helpless crab fleet with crippling laser fire, only half of which manage to escape.
Now, however, in what was perhaps a bad move, Anahem comes a-rollin' in with his batch of overlords, taking shots from the cruisers but managing to deliver his precious cargo just the same. What follows is one of the most unbelievable battles of the game, for at exactly that moment, a mighty swarm of brown zerglings sets off from their hive clusters, and, speed upgraded as they are, rapidly close in upon that very same Terran base! In the moments before they arrive, the orange buildings lift off, but Goddess seems finally to be at her wit's end, for there seems very little chance of escape from this raging swarm of upgraded Hydras. The Battlecruisers are pummelled, yet moments before their hitpoints plummet into the red, Arrows' own Terran-killing force pours in to save the day. In the bloody frenzy that follows, with Hydras battling zerglings in a whirlwind of claws, spines and gore ( lots of it ), the battlecruisers gracefully rumble away unimpeded. The red cerebrate, in an astonishing move, micros his Hydras to move behind the mineral line so that the lings can’t reach them, and are terribly mauled. But by the time the great battle is finished, with Anahem coming out the obvious victor , the Terran base and its escorting Cruisers are just sinking beneath the horizon.
Neither Zerg players are very impressed with one another, and Arrows even says ominously, "time to put a stop to this." However Anahem, gay hacker as he is, pursues one of the orange battlecruisers, and, seemingly not realizing that these behemoths are now the best hope for victory against the brown Zerg ( who has no anti-air capability ), he unloads his hydras, blowing apart the glorious vessel in what seems almost a blasphemy against the Starcraft God ( ie. Johnny Vegas ).
Now, suddenly, those last words spoken by Arrows are processed in his 1960's computer-like mind, which finally spits out an answer on a little roll of ticker tape printing from his ear: "%^$#^* ^%#^ #!*~*(^ ^#%@&, #@&%!" Since the red commander had a bit of a malfunction in his brain at birth, such that its default language is now Korean, he must first translate this text from a handy dictionary. When he's finally done with that, losing vital seconds as the brown fleet closes in, he is able to decipher what his brain is telling him: "Get those #$%@ Hydras back, fool!"
With blinding speed ( again, for a 60's computer ), Anahem loads his hydras, utters a few choice swearwords, and sends the blundering lot hurtling down towards his last base ( with all that micro, he has forgotten to expand or develop in any way . . . a critical mistake ). Now the overlords are bobbing South in earnest, yet even though in a drag race they'd own guardians really rather badly, the first acidic spores have already begun to pummel the wretched hatchery. My Command Center bumbles on down at just that minute, and overshadows the hatchery for an instant, but the merciless brown cerebrate blows it away in the following milliseconds, and the mighty warrior Anahem hops into one of the remaining ovies under his control, flying off into the depths of space.
Three minutes later, the now brain dead overlords arrive - just a little late.
The Finale
Now let's go back in time for a moment, and reflect on the amazing degree of Goddess' unluckiness.
Only minutes before she would have obtained her first two cruisers, Anahem invaded her base, blasting all her hopes and sending her back to the stone age, technologically speaking. Then, after all the hardships and dangers of having to start up from scratch, and with the first battlecruiser already built, the other Zerg cerebrate laid waste to her largest base, ending her dreams of a grand fleet only minutes before it would have been an unstoppable force. Finally, in the third blow, Anahem had once again dashed her chances, by crushing her second battlecruiser. The two of these behemoths, if deployed properly, would certainly have been a game-winning force. However, the last leviathan was still by far the largest and most powerful element in the game, and was able to defeat any force currently deployed ( that's how vicious this war of attrition was - never seen anything like it ).
So it was that the ship rumbled on South, blasting an overlord to dust in the process, and came upon the 7:00 Zerg base. In a glaring strategic error, Goddess attacked the group or so of zerglings milling about the choke first, probably because she thought she didn't have much of a chance. Not so.
Had she only flown on down to 6:00, where a Spire had just started morphing, she could have easily halted the process, sacked the evil cerebrate's technological structure, and wiped out his helpless base like a bug on the proverbial windshield. However, it was not to be. Instead, as I stated earlier, she set about mopping up the zerglings, and killed about ten ( 2 shots = 1 very dead ling ), before she realized that perhaps tech would be a better target, and starting hitting on the spawning pool ( heh ), reducing it a miserable gore just as one of her wraiths screamed in to help, coming from her recently landed StarPort. As the wraith tore into the first overlord, however, the Spire burst into full garish splendour down at the 6:00 base, and a full group of mutas was morphed at once!
Indeed, the last vestige of Terran might had done all the damage it was going to do, for the horrifying muta swarm rallied over the black lagoon, then screamed in upon the offending units in a fury, ripping into the cruiser, smashing it within seconds, and downing the pathetically cloaked wraith, losing only one of their number ( still surprising with such overwhelming odds ).
Now the last Terran buildings are ruthlessly hunted down, scattering in all directions, until, in a horror above all others, the orange human Command Center was hideously infested by a queen, while mine is downed by scourge ( die Arrows! )
As you can see, there are no final scores. This is because there was a half-hour time delay after Arrows smashed the last battlecruiser and its feisty little escort, during which time we shamelessly did stupid things, talked, and tried to ram our CC's. Of course, the brown cerebrate continued pumping out mutas and scourge, so that he ended up making more units after the game than he did during it ( bleh ). However, looking back at the final scores, I assume that the stats would have ended up roughly like this: Arrows with 90,000 overall points, Anahem with 70,000 and the perpetually unlucky Goddess finishing with a wretched 50,000.
Indeed, the great war is over, and silence regains its hold over the dark black land, home of the Templar.
I hope you enjoy my new style of writing, and that this manages to clinch a 10 ;). Anybody who wishes to partake in the next battlereport, say so in the comments section and we'll see if we can start something. Depending on the success of this br, I might do another twilight report on Octopus next, or go with a Jungle br on Entrapped. We shall see . . . | |
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