"What in the hell was I thinking trying to report another FFA?"
-YourRoleModel
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| 2v2v2, Acropolis Style | | | Author: | | | IP: | 164.58.1XXXX | | Date: | 04/19/01 11:04 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 7, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for AkumaSpawn: 7.0000 |  | THE GAME: 2vs2vs2 on Acropolis
The Teams:
- Akumaling (Teal Protoss, 8 o'clock)
- Mr.Hamster (Purple Zerg, 2 o'clock)
VERSUS
- Rendralisk (Brown Zerg, 6 o'clock)
- shortsteve (White Terran, 10 o'clock)
VERSUS
- ground-LOBP- (Blue Protoss, 12 o'clock)
- Dagomar (Orange Zerg, 4 o'clock)
I opened the game with my usual team game build to quick dragoons... 8 pylon, 10 gate, 11 gas, 12-13 core, gate, forge. Hamster said he was going lurkers with lings to back them up. Builds go up, and as the initial scouting reports come in, the spam begins to float about informing everyone just who ended up with who, which might have been informative if it weren't in caps and repeated a number of times.
My early scout revealed that both of the other Zerg players were going for a quick expansion on the center plateau. By the time I had ten 'goons ready and waiting to be directed, my latest kamikaze probe had detected that the only coverage that they were offered consisted of a sunken thong apiece. I informed Hamster of my decision to go raiding, and he obliged me by sending one of his lurkers to assist me.
Predictably, ten goons and a lurker win over a sunken, even if the defender throws some last-minute zerglings into the fray. I then moved on to finish the destruction of Orange's hatchery and expansion, similarly being able to defeat the scattered lings and the sunken colony.
An unusual sound suddenly grabbed my attention- vultures firing at my dragoons, and as I clicked over to the scene of the engagement, I barely caught the image of a spider mine making its way into the ground. Great, metal on White's part... I've never done well vs metal as Toss. It was still fairly early in the game, tho- maybe I'd get lucky and he'd die.
Yeah, right =\
In any case, I had already prepped a shuttle to start working the high ground and island expansions, so it was just a matter of moments to grab an observer- it was about time for me to grab some reinforcements from my main, and I wasn't interested in watching them have to ooze all over the field. There were only two spider mines blocking the ramp, as I found out, and both were destroyed quickly enough. My dragoons were back up to twelve, and it was time to move again.
I checked back at my forge- the +1 Armor upgrade I had started was still in the works. I'd just have to deal without it for the time... my observer beeped and headed south, intent on doing some damage. The battle opened up nicely enough, but the sudden beeoop of my observer's death clued me in to the presence of a large pack of white wraiths. I hastily pulled back to the entrance of his base, deciding to do a bit of containment in the meantime.
My mineral count was reaching nine hundred while my gas was slipping down to one hundred, so I decided it was time for an expansion. With white stationed above me, the high-ground expansion wasn't going to be the most desirable- with brown at the bottom, I would be a bit more safe. I popped a probe in a shuttle and sent it to the south, and began warping in a nexus with a pair of pylons to support a small group of cannons for detection purposes, meanwhile fetching a dragoon and a pair of zealots and sticking them to enable more mobile escort. Hamster took the opportunity to expand to the island above him as well, but Blue had similar plans. Although Hamster got his hatchery up before the rival Executor could establish a nexus, ASDFASDF threw a few zealots at the budding expansion that were only killed off by a small group of mutalisks. I briefly scanned Hamster's tech- greater spire, with a scant number of hydralisks and other actual combat units. Curiosity sated, I began to warp a pair of Stargates at my expansion and began researching the +1 attack at the cybernetics core- since packs of 'sairs own wraiths hard, it would be even more ownage. Again, I glanced up at Hamster's doings, and was greeted with the sight of what looked distinctly like a cannon push on behalf of Blue. Isolated lurkers were holding off the zealots that threatened to charge forward and kill things. A cocoon was morphing above his mineral lines, though, so I was halfway reassured that I wouldn't have to do anything about it.
Before long, my two stargates had pumped out the ten corsairs I felt would make this task best done. I set an observer on the periphery of Brown's base, still wary of wraiths from White's part, and poured my wrath into Brown's unsuspecting base. Although he had scattered his overlords about, the complete lack of anti-air forces nonetheless allowed me to kill six or seven of them before white descended upon my parade. This time, though, he was out for blood- when I pulled my corsairs back to the quiet safety of my observer, he followed me- and when I abruptly turned around and began owning the aluminum-plated fighters, he decided to take a quick detour. Using detection just offscreen- comsat, an overlord I hadn't seen, whatever- he swung upwards and blew the observer apart. My muted smile fell even further, and I pulled back to the safe detection net provided at my expansion. With that many wraiths floating around, it would probably be prudent to finish climbing the tech tree towards templar, and I laid down the foundation for a templar archives and another forge to upgrade faster.
There was a brief moment of time that allowed me to get the wheels spinning on the forges and start researching the ever-important Psi Storm when an angry exclaimation from Hamster drew my attention to the minimap, where a large blurb of white was hovering over his island expansion. Clicking the minimap revealed the cause of his new-found anger- a group of wraiths, likely the same ones that had just rained on my overlord-stomping parade, were parked over his expansion, coated in acid spores from a devourer that had only recently been killed. I giggled darkly for a moment and then sent my own fleet-o-doom to finish them off- which, after about thirty second's time in crossing the map, they did. Cloaking did little top stop my counterattack, as an overlord remained untouched and a spore colony popped up just as I was finishing them off. Not a single Terran fighter in that squad lived to see the next sunrise.
I retreated back to base, allowing Mr. Hamster to rebuild his expansion when abruptly Blue abandoned the game, followed shortly by his Orange partner. There were little warning sirens going off in my head- the only time my team had touched them was when Hamster sent a pair of guardians over to do some damage, and even that hadn't done much when confronted with a corsair and a couple of dragoons. White must have done SOMETHING to hurt them, and I wasn't quite intent on waiting to see what he had come up with. A scouting zealot revealed the presence of a White expansion on the northern part of the plateu. Back at my base, I had a number of zealots standing around gathering dust, so I attack-moved them over to the Terran encampment. While they valiantly gave their lives in destroying the home forces, they were unfortunately unable to deliver the killing stroke. THAT one was dealt by a number of purple Zerglings, who were jeered at by the fallen zealots.
Due to my complete lack of macro skills, I was comfortably situated for the time resource-wise, with several thousand minerals in the bank. With my expansion almost mined out, I had to start looking for another source of income, though- better to have an excess than a deficiency. A small pack of observers began roaming the map, searching for any unclaimed expansion zones- lo and behold, there's one directly to the north of me, situated comfortably on higher ground. After swearing for a few seconds, I loaded up a number of probes and had a shuttle ferry them off to the plateu and simultaneously sent one probe to one of the mineral/gas situated on the central area. Meanwhile, an observer beeped in alarm as it hovered over the lower right island- NOW I saw where Brown had gotten off to after we had razed his main. He wasn't doing half-bad, either... he had a spire and other goodies floating around, and was rapidly teching towards the upper levels granted by the Hive. Hamster wasn't doing so well, on his side- his island expansion was long mined out, and his only source of mineral income came from the central mineral node on top of the plateu. White was hurting, this much I was sure- and with that knowledge firmly in hand, I sent a cadre of dragoons down to his main to probe his defenses. It wasn't to be, though... tanks perched on the temple walls began the slaughter and tanks everywhere else made it a brief excursion, to be certain. No biggie, though- I could break through this stuff.
Just as soon as my new expansion had settled down, though, the distinctive sound of arclite fire and the obligatory "we are under attack" message came through. A space bar brought me to the source of the trouble... White had obviously set his sights on the expansion I was now occupying, and he wasn't going to take no for an answer. A number of siege tanks were perched about the area, granted sight by a floating engineering bay and detection by a science vessel that just happened to be in the area. Storm didn't do much good, in the end- the tanks were spaced too far apart to be hit, and the templar itself was gunned down almost immediately after it let loose. I threw my corsairs at the ebay, attempting to knock it out of the sky, but white came right back with some wraiths and slapped me back- wraiths that I suddenly noticed were upgraded 3-3 to my 1-0. Can we say ownage? Yeah, I thought we could... when you're only doing 3 damage, even the splash doesn't factor in a whole lot. I lacked even the basics to stop them, so I had to surrender the expansion to my enemy. Damn metal... I've never been good enough to stop a Terran going metal as Toss, as the (un)lucky few of ya'll who've played me can attest.
Time for a situation check... My team was in possession of the main plateau, with me having two active expansions- each one with two mineral patches and one geyser- and Mr. Hampster having just now expanded to the central mineral patch on the plateau, his island expansion almost completely mined out. We were aware of White's still-untouched main, and the fact that he had likely already begun construction of an expansion on the high-ground expansion between his base and my own. Brown had long entrenched himself on the bottom right island, and given everything, was probably sitting on another expansion we hadn't quite seen yet. In other circumstances, things would have looked grimmer than they were... however, this time, I had an ace in the hole that amounted to roughly seven thousand minerals stored up in the bank. What does a Protoss player do when he's cornered against someone not fielding a massive goliath squad?
If you DIDN'T say carriers, I'm going to slap you.
I warped another four stargates in addition to the ones I had at my island expansion and a fleet beacon, and began preparing my Fleet of Doom. Upgrading air weapons, making sure I was able to field 8 interceptors per carrier- yeah, I know, real intensive micro, but the fact that White could have attacked me at any moment was a bit disconcerting. Despite the occasional wraith raid on my templar/robotics tech (which was conveniently secured on the side of my base opposite the ever-growing fleet), though, it wasn't much trouble to construct a fleet. Once Mr. Hamster had manuvered what air forces he had- six or seven guardians, and about that many devourers- we both decided that White would be the best choice to eliminate... and thus, the final battle began.
As our combined fleets moved out to first destroy the expansion White had so recently stolen from me, the initial resistance was stiff- as was to be expected, really. The wraiths that had survived the earlier battle cloaked and died to the combined fire of devourers and eight little bitty robots running around and shooting things, and a couple isolated turrets spat a few missiles- but the entire expansion was razed in a minute or two. Goliaths then began to attack, but there were far, far too few of them to be anything more than a minor speed bump. The minimap suddenly spoke of a long trail of brown zerglings headed for Mr. Hamster's base, obviously in an attempt to draw attention away from his partner, but Hamster told me to forge onward- all the important tech had already been duplicated at his island expansion. We did so- and we fought through. I stationed a group of my other ground forces near his productive expansion and at the entrance to my own main, and when the zerglings DID come, they faced a combination of high and dark templar with a number of zealots. Ownage proceeded.
After White bought the farm, it was just a matter of time before Brown folded as well. The scourge that he had sent at my carriers were easily dealt with by Purple's devourers, what with one-hit-kills and all. The combined forces swept over Brown's expansion, heedless of his devourers, and splattered his rebuilt bases with the ease that having ten operational carriers plus a number of other Zerg air units provides. When Brown decides to plop a hatchery down somewhere obscure, though, we decide to go ahead and ally just for kicks and get the game done with.
And in the end, that was that. One of the best games I've had the pleasure of winning in a long time.
Special kudos go to:
- shortsteve (white), who originally organized this monster IIRC, and reminded me of the best way to knock a slow-moving Terran out of the way with an abrupt change of gear.
- Rendralisk (brown), for having a sense of humor that remained entertaining throughout the slow spots in the game- more than can be said for a lot of people...
- Mr.Hamster for playing like a teammate should in 2v2. Responsive, quick to assist, and definitely not silent when things go around.
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