The Star Warz Twilogy

For my fifth report I am writing an account of the exploits of a young Darth..Sidious. A ~NH regular at about 2 in the morning my time, so I had to stay up flippin late just to observe a few of his games…. But then and again, I have to stay up until I’m nearly asleep in my chair anyway to accommodate you Americans =[. In my last report I over-killed on the pictures in my opinion, but everyone seemed to have loved it like that, so this time I’ll do the same. I’m also using a much higher quality .gif image for the pictures, so expect something a little but special…. I hope I can live up to this! Naturally, I’ve altered the spelling of the title from the original to evade copy-write restrictions yadder yadder blah blah blah.

Onwards… Me and my fellow observers; Dr.Ferret and Squad-o-death, all stumbled into episode 1, “the flatulent menace”, where our here Darth..Sidious was preparing to go head to head with the dreaded and quite clearly evil DeonPeon skywa#ker, dark lord of the undergrowth!!!!!! This was a no-holds barred shoot-em-up with light-sabres as the primary weapon. So off we go with the first episode of the greatest trilogy ever told (erm, how many copywrite infractions in one line).

Game 1

Along time ago, in a galaxy far far away……….Our hero Darth..Sideous was gifted a white (for purity and good etc) Zerg brood at the 6:00 position of everyone’s favourite map (no, you can’t have a mini-map thing); I’ll make him yellow for the benefit of colour contrast against the white text. He started with a blatantly un-aggressive and good will-like build of hatchery at his natural followed by a pool in his main, and then a refinery which he doesn’t start mining from for ages….. You’ll see why. His build-order looks to me like he intends to teach blind kids how to read, and maybe hand out food to the hungry.

Across the temple grounds at the 3:00 position, a sinister red nexus has just warped into existence, and under the control of the blood-thirsty executor DeonPeon, a pylon is also summoned from the huge, evil Protoss stock just off the side of the map. Two fast gateways are warped in followed by nasty several pylons (be afraid!!!), leading to the obvious conclusion that he intends to go for a quick, heavy zealot rush, in order to stop the helpless insects from giving medical aid to the bengalaas that he’s been torturing. Now let’s hear a big “BOOOO!!!!” for Evil DeonPeon.

He scouts the bottom position quickly and finds the morphing hatchery in the natural, thus he orders forth 3 newly made zealots and SEVEN evil probes down to the Zerg expansion. They proceed to lay waste to a sunken colony in the natural, and begin beating on both of the hatcheries there (a new one was started just as the attack began).

Clearly the eminent Darth..Sideous was not going to stand by and watch his red-cross efforts being dashed before they get going, so he orders forth a hat-full of lings, and they intercept the evil Protoss and drive them away, HURRAH!! But we’ve not heard the last of the executor, as he orders forth an assimilator, cybernetics core, another gateway and a hideous stargate, for the production of corsairs. He clearly has the intent of murdering the innocent overlords deployed around the map, I mean, how evil do you want to be… picking on the defenceless hatcheries and overlords….. BOOOOOO!!!

In response to the early assault, Darth..Sideous finally begins to collect gas, and starts to saturate his natural with workers. He builds a hydralisk den and hatches a few spine-spitters just before a pair of corsairs begin to ravage his overlords. He fends them off with the loss of two overlords, making the fliers a bad investment for his ultra-aggressive opponent. He also sacrifices a zergling to see that DeonPeon has decided to take his natural, and has moved his troops into his valley.

This is the last straw for our hero, as he begins massing hydralisks to prevent this ambitious venture from going any further. He then brings his troops up to the centre of the map and gets them ready for a vicious showdown against the executor’s forces, but he has to keep the overlords nearby in order to evade those pesky corsairs, who attack at any opportunity. In the Protoss camp a forge is added for upgrades and cannon support, but this is matched on the creep by dual evolution chambers, clearly Darth..Sideous is expecting a drawn out battle, whereas his arch-nemesis was attempting to end it all quickly with cheap and evil tactics. Now the assault begins, and 456234 hydralisks pour forward into the Protoss valley. Squad-o-death gives his expert judgement on the outcome and we sit back to await the entry of psi-storm, to quash the rebellion.

Hang on a second, No templar archives, all the gas went on goons and corsair production…. Oops! Oh well, the Protoss natural falls, and no ramp defence is able to prevent this from being an overwhelming victory for our hero, the defender and saviour of all that is good in the universe; Darth..Sideous. Game one is over.

Game 2

Not happy about being sent spinning into the wide black yonder in his little corsair, DeonPeon schemes up another great plan to hit back at his enemy, the honourable, peaceful Darth..Sidious. They agree to re-match (as the last game sucked a lot) and thus head back to the grounds of the lost temple (where the minerals have somehow re-appeared) to duke it out for a second time. Episode Two, “the executor strikes back” is revealed before me and my fellow observers, and we in turn tell the story to you.

The evil DeonPeon is presented an orange command centre and 4 mini Deon-lets to help out with his production and he opens with a standard wall-in at his choke. After scouting his opponent he opts to go for a heavy metal build, and begins with dual factories. His gosu scouting involves sending an SCV up to the valley to the left of the 12:00 start position, he lets us in on his little secret where that is his key for victory…… hmm. His build is depot-rax-gas-depot-factory-factory.

The righteous Darth..Sideous receives a white (yellow text) nexus at the 6:00 position, and opens with a standard anti-Terran build consisting of a quick cybernetics core off one gate. This leaves the option of dragoon rushing or fast teching to templar or reavers; he opts for a quick robotics facility, the route for reavers and observers. His build is pylon-gate-assimilator-cybernetics core-pylon-gate-pylon-robotics facility.

Once he attains a suitable number of dragoons, Darth..Sideous takes his natural, exploiting the metal-user’s low early troop count. The evil DeonPeon orders up an academy; perhaps fearing a dark-templar assault, but certainly hoping to see the advantage offered by scan as a means of passive scouting. Squad-o-death lets us all know a little more than we wanted to about his real-life pastimes =[. DeonPeon also mined the other available starting positions in order to keep track of his opponents expanding exploits.

Now that he has constructed several vultures and tanks, DeonPeon decides to make use of his mine and siege research by sealing the Protoss in their own natural. He lays down a mine-field and sets up his containment, but sieges one tank too close to his enemy’s forces, and thus alerts them to the suddenly perilous situation they’ve been placed in. As a result, Darth..Sideous orders all hands forward in an assault on the containment. Knowing how dangerous it is to be trapped within a small choke by a Terran metal force, he sends in every man he has as soon as he can. The noble Protoss warriors clash with the Terran tanks under a hail of arclite fire and phase disruptions.

As you can see, the containment is breached, and the dragoons push on to the Terran natural. However, a critical mistake is now made as they pause at the entrance to await an observer. There were actually NO units in the Terran base What-so-ever, and the delay allowed two tanks to finish and siege up on the ridge above the natural. The Protoss units stormed in, threw a few phase disruptions, got the living s*#t blown out of them, and proudly retreated back to the temple for a little wound-licking. Darth..Sideous also noticed that the Terran natural had just gotten up and running before his assault was rebuffed, and so seeing that he can’t penetrate the 3:00 establishment with dragoons, he decides to tech up a little to a more cost-effective unit, and so opens up a new warp rift at the bottom of his base.

DeonPeon realised that he is only still in this game due to the good-fortune of a Protoss pause. He sets out to remedy the situation by constructing three new factories, and another came later on. He also used depots and his academy to block up the top end of his mineral line, making it extremely difficult to orchestrate a successful drop.

The quick-minded or observant of you will have noticed that there’s a large amount of orange material around the Protoss natural. This is another cheese move by the evil DeonPeon, and he places 2 tanks, 2 turrets and a large number of mines on the ledge in the metal version of the turbo-newbie.

This forces the executor to evacuate his probes from his natural, but he sends one off to the 9:00 main to begin a new mining base there. Several probes are lost in the exchange, but due to poor mine placement, a bunch of speedy zealots are able to neutralise the threat. This takes time though, and amidst the confusion the sinister DeonPeon took his army of darkness and took the centre of the map. The 9:00 natural got underway quite quickly, and two gateways were warped in to complement the 5 already in the 6:00 main. The 6:00 mineral only was also taken by Darth..Sideous, so as to capitalise on a bad situation. He tried to massively out-expand his Terran enemy so once the siege on his ledge was lifted, he would be able to shock his opponent with an over-powering troop count. Then a siege tank fired, and he realised that he had been cornered and had lost control. Thus he rallied his troops at his mineral-only and assaulted the tank-push head on, now showing off his new weapon: psionic storm.

Eventually, at almost a complete loss for both armies, the Terrans were destroyed and the armies of Darth..Sideous re-initiated a loose dragoon containment of the 3:00 natural. What was missed by the executor was a second command centre at the Terran natural, floating off towards the bottom-left island. For the next few minutes, a series of light tank break-outs were attempted, but all fell to the dragoon containment. But every time the dragoons tried to break in, a few tanks on the ridge saw them off again, and the containment started again. Also, you can see the extent of the damage of the cliff siege on the Protoss expansion nexus.

Only one forge is at work in the Protoss main working to upgrade the ground troops, and 2 armouries are standing in the Terran main, but they haven’t kicked in as far as upgrades are concerned. Evil DeonPeon called for the another batch of tanks, and seiged up in the entrance to his natural. This was more than any other breakout force, and yet again they siege up to entice in the Protoss Dragoons. The problem was how close the tanks were at the entrance to each other…..

….and they were destroyed with one well place psionic storm and a dragoon assault follow-up. Not even the support of goliaths and vultures could turn the tide, and once again the Protoss containment remains in-tact. Speedy–zeals and dark templar nullified the diverse unit advantage the Terrans were trying to utilise. Taking full advantage of his map control, Darth..Sideous took an expansion at the 9:00 mineral only, and again the series of break-out/containment wars re-commenced on a small scale.

No new upgrades have kicked in up to this point, but the armouries and the forge are working their hardest…. Honestly they are! But our hero still refused to commit his forces to a full-scale invasion. He also preferred to keep his observers above his own troops, and decided not to deploy them to watch over the Terran defences. DeonPeon orders his evil army to FINALLY do a proper tank push out of his natural, and ends up driving Darth..Sideous’ army of light back to the temple. He manages to break out a little into open ground and put pressure on our hero’s forces.

Realising that he’s about to lose total control, Darth..Sideous orders forth his minions into the impending danger, in the all-out assault we’ve all been craving. The titanic battle displays new upgrades for both sides and the victor is not clear for a while.

Finally the metal buckles under intense psionic blasts, and the warp-blades of many more melee units than ever before. The lack of mines finally took its toll on the Terran defences. GG’s are exchanged by all and DeonPeon’s evil empire buckles for the last time. Darth..Sideous goes back to char for a firework party and all live happily ever after…….. the end!

But hang-on a moment, on the dark side of the force, there’s always a pupil and a teacher. Now seeing how DeonPeon faltered in the face of adversity, perhaps he’s the pupil…… Well anyway, a quick check of his passport revealed that Dr.Ferret was the culprit, perhaps having psychically helped his opponent, we ordered up a matchup between the him and the hero of the day.

Game 3

Now as we all hate the Lost Temple, I made the next game so as to be able to choose my current favoutite map; Rivalry. Sadly, both of my other observer lagged like whoars, and High+Templar disconnected and the people’s favourite Squad-o-death had to go too a little later on =[. After moaning about the map a lot (Darth..Sidious clearly paranoid about facing an evil master), the game kicked off with poor little me on my own in the commentary box.

The Evil Lord of Darkness Dr.Ferret received a sinister brown nexus at the top left corner of the map. He began with an aggressive pylon-gate-gate-pylon-zealots by the handful build, in an attempt to block any early expansion attempts by the good-guy. Darth..Sideous was re-aquanted with his Zerg brood and began with a yellow (finally) hatchery on the top left plateau. He began with an overlord followed by a hatchery at his natural, after which he added a spawning pool in his main, and then began getting gas.

After the initial scouting, a probe and a zealot began assaulting the expansion. This prompted production of zerglings and a sunken colony by our hero as a defence against these and later 2 more zealots. I acted as set director making sure the pictures would be as good as possible, and a short micro-battle played itself out on set, resulting in the evil dark-lord being driven out of the top right natural.

This was hardly a setback to Dr.Ferret as he had begun the development of a new and here-to-fore unseen combat unit. A robotics facility had warped in on the Protoss plateau. He complemented this with a forge and a pylon at his choke; clearly planning to place defensive cannons on his ramp before beginning to upgrade hit troops.

In the Zerg hive cluster the early gas has been utilised to morph a quick hydralisk den, the trick that helped so much in the first game to stop overlord hunting, Darth..Sideous also added two more hatcheries in his main to keep up the troop production. He also sent zerglings to the two most likely resource nodes where his enemy may try to expand.

Using his hydralisk counter-attack from game 1, he sends in close to a control group of the speed-upgraded dragons, and with his spare zerglings he assaulted the Protoss ramp. Sadly a well-placed cannon, some zealots and a spanking new reaver-shuttle combo spelt certain death for the attackers.

Upset by this drawback to his strategy, Darth..Sideous sends in a second wave of hydralisks to keep on the pressure. The problem is that Dr.Ferret had sent his reaver with a couple of zealots over to the top of the Zerg main. Sadly, the route from his ramp to the top west plateau goes straight past a well placed scouting overlord and an expansion scouting zergling. The result is that our hero sees the danger before it hits, and the earlier reaver defence gives away the content of the shuttle.

Fortunately, the shuttle and reaver are both disposed of by the defending forces, but not before they (and the two zealots) clear out the majority of the mining drones there. Evil bar steward!! The response to this clear breech of the peace is that Darth..Sideous sends wave after wave of hydralisks to the Protoss main in an attempt to scale the ramp. We also see the introduction of the second reaver of the game in the desperate defence that follows. Will the hoards of hydralisks be able to break through? Let’s see, shall we?

(By the way, the reason why several of the pictures are blurry is that they are over the width limit, I’ll be trying to rectify this in future BR’s, and hopefully keep all images at top quality)

Hopefully it’s clear that one unit turned the tide of a seemingly lost battle for Dr.Ferret into a bitterly fought-for victory, with around 45-50 Zerg units lost in repeated waves, the >10 Protoss units fended them off. Cleverly, Darth..Sideous leaves his final wave in the natural, preventing an expansion or counter-attack from the executor, and he also expands during the assault to a resource node below him. This is because the reaver becomes vulnerable in open ground where it can be flanked. The cerebrate then orders up an expansion at the bottom right natural, but he loses his containment force in one last push, and the executor takes his natural too.

After maynarding a load of drones to his latest expansion, Darth..Sideous sends a small probing force into the Protoss camp, and seeing the natural getting underway, he begins massing troops at his own natural. Sadly his probing force got owned by the reaver and a few goons, but they did scratch the reaver’s armour. He added a pair of evolution chambers to his main, and got them working on hydralisk upgrades. A zealot at the bottom right main scares off a would-be expansion drone, prompting Dr.Ferret to send down an observer to check out the local resource nodes.

The observer and zealot are wasted by a few hydralisks at the middle right expansion, but they saw two new expansions, and so a force of dragoons and zealots were dispatched to the bottom right natural to dispose of the infestation. Sadly for them, the force (some scary overmind-voice) warned Darth..Sideous of this attack, and just look at the line of hydralisks (on the mini-map) sent to intercept ^^ A hatchery was already morphing at the bottom-right main, and long-distance mining was going on to the hatchery at the natural.

The hatchery was destroyed, but so were the invaders; however the drones were not run-away, but were used to resist, and thus almost all were lost in this attack. As the armour and missile attacks of the hydralisks completed their upgrades, the good and righteous Darth..Sideous sent all forth to the Protoss natural in a 2-sided pincer attack. The reaver and a couple of high templars were backing up the dragoons in the defence…… the results were bloody!

Sadly, 1 well-managed reaver and two high templar with 2 storms a-piece were insufficient to kill 23452 hydralisks, and thus the hero of the hour Darth..Sideous tore down the only Protoss mining base, resulting in gg’s being exchanged. Having read my reports before, Darth..Sideous realised that macro-ing after gg’s have been exchanged is a wise move to ensure victory, especially when the enemy is as dark and evil as the Lord of sythe Dr.Ferret (don’t be fooled by the name, he’s REALLY evil, honest!!).

So with the trilogy completed and the hero still standing, we all get to take afternoon tea in the intergalactic conservatory that is battle.net, and revel in the glory of Darth..Sideous, defender of justice and peace!!!

No lessons were learned from this because I’m too stupid to see what people were doing wrong, but hopefully you’ll have seen any mistakes throughout the report (gaming mistakes, not my spelling and grammer) . As always, I hope it was good for you^^ as I enjoyed the games thoroughly.

Have fun all, and remember, a Pokemon doll to the rater who gives me the highest mark (offer may be retracted at any time without prior warning).

Ling-erie

I thinned out a few of the images to make the quality better, but it’s width that’s the problem, so expect better image quality next time….. once again sorry all =[ BTW Fox, I’d have owned you if you didn’t kill all my probes, zealots and gateways in under 8 minutes =0