Tech Vs Power

An introduction…. What to write…? Well, I was in NH and I had screen shots for two 2v2 games I was going to BR, but it’s sooo hard to keep track of 2V2 that I decided to postpone the BR and observe a few games instead. I joined this game and saw a really good fight, so I thought that I’d bring it to you and let you enjoy it too.

[Z-user]ze[r]g received an orange hatchery on the 6:00 plateau, and started out with a very aggressive hatchery at his mineral-only. He sent a drone to scout at the same time, and followed up his expansion with a spawning pool in his main, and a hatchery at his natural shortly thereafter. He added an extractor and started to mass drones and a few of zerglings to prevent scouting. He also added a sunken to his mineral-only as soon as there was creep to build on. Who can say what his tech choice will be this early with no lair yet, perhaps hydra-ling.

Art()fDrowning received a white command centre (yellow text) at the 3:00 position and went to work straight away on a wall-in at his choke. He went depot-rax-gas-depot (wall-in finished) and then produced a factory, an academy and teched to a starport very quickly. His scouting revealed his opponents powering and mind in his mind that teching quickly was a safe choice, as [Z-user]ze[r]g wouldn’t have many combat units for a long time. Clearly he intends to tech to everything and anything available to him, but for now it’s fast air.

Art()fDrowning’s teching was justified to begin with, as he researched siege and produced a quick wraith. He managed to bag an overlord, but they were fairly well hidden, and the wraith prompted a hydralisk den and a lair to begin in the Zerg main. He dumped a tank and 4 marines on the 6:00 natural cliff, and proceeded to scare off the drones below; the problem with this is that they could all disperse between the other two mining sites with minimal mining time lost. [Z-user]ze[r]g adds another hatchery at his main and natural.

Art()fDrowning uses this distraction to tech even farther. He makes a science facility, and also constructs a command centre to float to his natural. He knows his cliff-siege is only a short-term measure and that he’ll have to expand himself to match the Zerg’s potential economy. He also bags another overlord with his wraith, but hydralisks have reduced its usefulness now.

Realising that the Terrans are likely to be expanding themselves, [Z-user]ze[r]g orders up a spire to evict the menace on his natural cliff, and he then duel-expands to the 9:00 natural and then mineral-only. He also begins building up a fairly substantial force of ranged and speeded hydralisks and zerglings at his own mineral-only (that huge orange smudge on the minimap =o).

The cliff tank could only reach the drones initially, but soon Art()fDrowning notices this and re-positions it so that he can lay siege to the mining hatchery itself. Suddenly it becomes a race between the mutalisk production and the tank damage, as the hatcheries health drops dangerously low……

Sadly for [Z-user]ze[r]g, the tank finishes the hatchery just as the mutalisks arrive, and they proceeds to murder the tank, the marines and the wraith that were stationed there. Unperturbed, [Z-user]ze[r]g replaces the hatchery immediately, along with building another at his mineral-only. Currently he has morphed 9 hatcheries this game =o. He then maynards several drones to the 9:00 natural, and adds two evolution chambers to his main. Finally he moves his fairly large army to the centre of the map, beginning to exercise a mass-expand/containment strategy.

Coincidentally, Art()fDrowning moves his units to the centre of the map shortly afterwards, and meets this large Zerg swarm in the place where he wants to be. Thus he sieges and stims and charges into battle. Both players were a little surprised by this confrontation so there is limited micro, but [Z-user]ze[r]g sends all he has forward and the first real clash of the game commences.

A Terran infantry armour upgrade (mouthful) kicks in during this assault (clearly an anti-lurker strategy), and with some science-vessel support, the marines over-run the Zerg swarm with about 50% losses. Art()fDrowning moved on to the mineral-only and proceeded to siege up the sunken colony there before downing both of the hatcheries with marines. The expansion is totally lost, but a large army had been massing in the 6:00 natural.

Trying to quell the Terran momentum, Art()fDrowning moved his army out before his opponent could dominate the choke point. He also added three sunken colonies to the natural at 9:00, giving up the un-used mineral-only as lost, even though it was barely discovered yet. The insects raced out to confront the humans and swamped them with sheer numbers.

The problem was that 2 science vessels made generous use of defence matrix on marines and the tank, and the [Z-user]ze[r]g was stopped by the last few troops. Taking advantage of his pseudo-containment, Art()fDrowning sent some marines and a tank to remove the 9:00 expansions. They ran-over the mineral-only, but when the scouting marine had gone through, there were no defences, and the attackers were thwarted by the sunken colonies at the natural choke. The scouting marine spent the rest of his life shooting at a morphing hatchery in the 9:00 main (this can be seen in the mini-map).

To replace the lost marines, a new set are despatched to the 9:00 expansions, but again attention is diverted to the mineral-only of 6:00, where a second Zerg breakout has begun. After killing the marines, the hydralisks abuse the tank’s minimum range to kill it from up close. Generous D-matrix is insufficient to stop this and so two the science vessels irradiate each other and go to hover and over the natural’s miners. They are seen off by the last mutalisk before they can do too much damage, and a few more marines are unable to re-initiate the containment.

Back to the 9:00 natural, Art()fDrowning’s latest marine upgrade allows him to destroy the sunken colonies there, and they proceed to lay waste to all the structures. He also sends an SCV up to the 12:00 main to make a command centre there. [Z-user]ze[r]g runs his drones to the main, and places down 5 sunken colonies, seeing that 3 are were enough to save the natural.

A new batch of hydralisks are able to save the 9:00 main, and they join up with a new army in the middle of the map. Their first upgrades also kick in now, making them even with the marines that they were to be pitched against. A new hatchery began to morph at the 6:00 mineral-only, and [Z-user]ze[r]g got his army ready to assault the Terran main. Sadly for him, Art()fDrowning had been building up infantry, and once he discovered the Zerg encampment, he sent his men (and women) out to meet up with them and put them away for good, but cleverly the cerebrate pulled out some of his force back to his base when he realised that two distant siege tanks were making it an impossible win for him. As his troops got in range to engage, they were covered in arclite fire, making them totally useless as they died within making one to two spits.

A two-bunker/turret defence was added to the 12:00 main’s ramp, and a command centre was made on the 12:00 plateau to float to the 12:00 natural; also another one was made on the 3:00 plateau, to later be floated to the 3:00 mineral-only. The victorious Terran army moves on to the nearly-finished 6:00 mineral-only expansion, forcing [Z-user]ze[r]g to cancel the hatchery morphing there. Art()fDrowning sends his troops forward and engages the 6:00 at the mineral-only site. He also dispatches some marines and a tank to the 9:00 main, whilst making it even harder for himself but initiating a very successful irradiated-vessel raid on the natural drones. Despite all of this multi-tasking, he manages to stop the Zerg breakout with very few losses, and defeat [Z-user]ze[r]g’s standing army.

This is a crushing blow for the Cerebrate, and there is little that can be done to stem the Terran tide. The seven lurkers he was morphing in his natural were knocked down to half energy due to the irradiate raid, and the scourge proved almost totally useless. Art()fDrowning continues his push into the 6:00 natural where he meats the last remnants of [Z-user]ze[r]g’s troops, but they are not sufficient to even slow him down.

This WAS one big picture, but it shrunk too much when I pasted it =[. Anyway, gg’s are exchanged as the Zerg are pushed aside, and the 2:2 marines run-over the 6:00 natural and 9:00 main simultaneously. The 6:00 main is quick to follow suit. GG to Art()fDrowning, this was a good, consistant performance. For those who find it hard to use Terran, here’s what you have to do to macro as much as Art()fDrowning just did:

Thanks to the players, it was a fun game, but I never even hinted I was going to BR it so I hope you don’t mind. I can’t be arsed doing a lessons learned bit, and I can’t find any sexy anime chicks to show you either. That base shot took ~forty minutes to make, so that’ll have to be the jewel in the crown.

I also totally forgot the scores, not that you’ll have read them anyway, so go and read someone else’s report, I’m sure it’ll be better than this one ={. HF all.

Ling-erie