Hi Hi all, I’ve been busy rectifying the tarnish to my good (stop laughing) name that is Enslavers. Never again will I mess with that crappy style of HTML, I’ll settle for this one instead. I’ve just gotten to grips with Adobe Photo suite 5.0, so a HUGE shout out of thanks to those who helped me with that (Testosterone and Fox spring to mind, sorry if I forgot any others). I’ve taken up Corbalt’s challenge to write a BR that isn’t complete rubbish, so I’ve brought u this little number, it’s only a bit over four and a half thousand words (before HTML) and it has a bitch-load of pictures, so let 'em load!

The game starts with a lot of detail and a few pictures, then progresses onto sketchy detail and more pictures, this was an attempt to keep pace with the game itself as in all games the best micro is at the start, and then macro takes over later on. I’ll get right on with it, as I know you all hate reading this stuff. Check out the alt-text where it works, the images are all good quality JPEGs and there were 8 pages of writing in Word before I added the HTML, so get out a cigar, sit back and enjoy the ride, as I present to you a titanic battle between:

Fox^1 spawns with an orange hatchery on the 3:00 plateau. He morphs another drone before putting his 4 drones to work collecting minerals from the oh-so-convenient nearby deposits. Knowing the map well, he sends his overlord off to the northwest towards the closest starting position at 12:00 in search of his foe.

The_Knight warps in a purple nexus at the 12:00 starting position. After ordering the construction of a 5th probe, he too sets his peons to work on the minerals nearby. While his 8th probe was just finishing he orders one of the miners to open a warp rift for a pylon near his nexus, he then orders the peon into the unknown to seek out his opponent.

First contact is not long in coming, as even before the probe descends its own ramp it comes across an overlord hovering over from the east. The robotic little worker is ordered to go and investigate the 3:00 plateau to see what trouble the Zerg opponent is up to. On arrival it sees another overlord hovering above 9 drones and 3 eggs morphing beside the inevitable Hatchery. The little probe begins inscribing rude words on the shell of one of the egg’s shell.

Back at home a warp rift is opened for a gateway on 9 supply, powered by the initial pylon, all under the watchful eyes of the overlord there. Fox^1 realises that he is in close proximity to his opponent and quickly orders one of the drones to begin morphing into a spawning pool (on 12 control), in a position that would later allow more efficient collection of gas from the vespene geyser nearby. 2 of the eggs pop open to reveal 2 more drones, which briefly scare off the probe, before getting to work collecting minerals along with the rest.

In the Protoss camp, The_Knight orders forth a second gateway on 10 psi, and queues up another probe, his scouting probe now loitering below the enemy’s ramp. As soon as the first gateway warps in a zealot is ordered, and a second probe is sent towards the Zerg main. Fox^1 must make another hatchery soon, but with his opponent so close it could be dangerous to put it anywhere but his own creep. However, for anyone who knows Fox^1, you know he’s an aggressive player, and he sends a drone down the ramp.

Fortunately for him, The_Knight has taken that moment to send his 1st scout into the Zerg main in search of any new happening, and it misses the drone coming down the ramp. The second probe en-route has not arrived yet either and so Fox^1 gets to place a hatchery at the expansion minerals without having to micro the drone free of probe harassment. The drone morphs a hatchery in the mineral node (not below the ramp )on 12 control; around about the time the pool and 1st building zealot are both about 4/5ths done.

Then in a surprising move, with zealot number one on it’s way across, The_Knight opens a rift for a pylon below Fox^1’s ramp, out of sight range of the hatchery in the natural. This probe then begins to trace the pulsating blood vessels on the hatchery with its small lasers. As soon as the pool completes, 3 larvae in the main simultaneously morph into eggs, and the 2 drones are sent down the ramp to encourage the probe to stop molesting the hatchery.

Then they see it, a pylon and a new warp rift for a shield battery below the ramp. The 3 eggs burst open to reveal 6 zerglings, all of which run straight for the ramp. Just as they arrive, a zealot runs into view from the west, and suddenly a serious micro battle ensues at the bottom of the ramp. Firstly the zealot is outnumbered alone after killing a drone, and must retreat as it’s shields fall, then the 6 lings and 2 drones turn their attention to the warping shield battery. The_Knight, not wanting to risk losing a zealot so early prefers to cancel the shield battery just before it would have been destroyed, saving him the majority of his investment. He also manages to pick off a zergling as they are attacking the structure. One of the probes is the next victim in the fight, followed by the shields and 100 hit-points off the pylon, but as 2 more zerglings run down the ramp, another zealot joins the fight, and it’s now 2 zealots and a probe against 7 zerglings and a drone.

One zergling quickly falls to psi-blades, but the remaining manage to encircle the last probe and dismantle it permanently. With the arrival of a third zealot, and the most injured one being pulled back from the fray, Fox^1 is forced to retreat what is now 2 lings and a drone up his ramp to meet with 4 more zerglings. The drone begins the process of morphing into a hatchery there too, whilst The_Knight orders his zealots to form a line across the bottom of the ramp, preventing them form getting encircled.

Seeing that the most injured zealot is a little forward from the others, Fox^1 tries his luck in removing it with his 6 lings, but The_Knight is quick to catch on and pulls it behind the other two as soon as it’s hit-points are in the red. Fox^1 loses another 2 zerglings before he retreats above the ramp. Another zealot arrives in time to plug the hole in the wall giving the injured zealot time to recharge, however, with this set up The_Knight doesn’t know of what Fox^1 has above the ramp, and so he’s unaware of the hatchery morphing there. Again Fox^1 tries to break through with 6 more zerglings, but the two most injured are at the front, and die very fast, thus he is forced to retreat his zerglings back onto his plateau once again.

Another zealot arrives, making 5 there now, and a new probe turns up and begins warping in a new shield battery where the old one was. Now Fox^1 has 4 zerglings below the ramp, and 6 above, so he draws the spare zealots away, and begins a pincer attack on the wall of 3 zealots on the ramp. However his timing is bad as the zerglings above the ramp have to circumnavigate the hatchery there, and by the time they arrive, the now 6 zealots have eliminated the lower half of the pincer for no losses. The 6 zerglings above the ramp are soon 4, and the new shield battery quickly negates any damage they did, leaving Fox^1 with no choice to retreat again.

With all of The_Knight zealots on hold below the ramp, Fox^1 uses 2 new zerglings from the expansion hatchery to pick off the probe there, and they then set on the most injured zealot. First one ling falls, but it becomes clear that the second will be victorious. However, here’s where the story changes, the shield battery jumps into life as the zealot’s energy reaches 20, and recharges it’s 60 shields, saving it from the zerglings foe. So far The_Knight has lost 3 probes, but not a single zealot, at the cost of many of Fox^1’s zerglings.

The three zealots not in the wall are joined by a fourth, and they begin to pound the expansion hatchery. Fox^1 has now stopped using the larvae there now altogether as they were having no success. The hatchery at the top of the ramp finishes, and Fox wastes no time in making a creep colony next to it, along with an extractor in his main. The_Knight still has no idea what is above the ramp, and is unaware of the impending danger to his containment, so he happily finishes off the expansion hatchery and begins an assimilator in his main.

Suddenly Fox^1 morphs the 3 expansion larvae into eggs, and The_Knight smells the proverbial rat. He sends his now 7 zealots (with 2 very close behind) onto the Zerg plateau just in time to see the creep colony finish morphing and begin its transformation into a sunken colony. Fox^1’s 16 zerglings back off a little to get a better angle of attack on the zealots, but the pack of now 9 just retreat back down the ramps and deal with 5 of the 6 zerglings just morphed in the natural. The high ground sunken colony begins to open up its barrage on the pylon supporting the shield battery below.

Fox takes this opportunity to run 12 zerglings down the ramp and into the open, but The_Knight realises the threat to his mining and gives chase just after his pylon explodes, leaving an un-powered shield battery. 9 zerglings descend the ramp to remove this object while the zealots are chasing the initial twelve lings around the temple walls.

Knowing that the containment is lost, and that a counter may be on the cards quite soon, The_Knight puts 5 probes above his ramp while he waits for his zealots to get back home. He is just finishing warping in a cybernetics core, and a forge is very close behind. Once a rift is open for a Citadel of Adun, Fox^1 orders his 2 overlords to vacate the Protoss base, and he initiates his own loose containment of around 24 zerglings in the 12:00 valley.

Having not seen the Zerg main hatchery for quite some time, The_Knight puts up a cannon by his hall, and one above his ramp, as he has no idea what kind of tech to expect in the near future. Fox^1 wastes no time in replacing the hatchery in his natural, and then he upgrades his main hatchery to a lair. He finally leaves a warning zerglings below the 12:00 valley, and brings his zerglings back into a position where they can effectively flank a direct attack. The_Knight clearly fears mutalisks very soon, and warps a further two cannons by his minerals, along with a templar archives and a third gateway.

With zerglings speed being researched, Fox^1 morphs a hydralisk den on his main creep just as the lair reaches half-done. This means that both the lair and hydralisk den will finish at the same time, a common build order used by Zerg when teching towards lurkers. The_Knight is content to research psyonic storm and zealot leg enhancements, while at the same time producing both varieties of templar. As soon as the lair and Hydralisk den emerge, research on Lurker aspect is indeed begun; but in the Protoss valley, a pylon is warping in a position that would cover the land entrance to the resource node there. A nexus and two cannons are quick to follow, and as storm research finishes, The_Knight decides to distract Fox^1 with an attack to allow his expansion to get online, but all is under the watchful eye of an overlord over the natural cliff.

A scouting Dark Templar is within overlord sight range in the valley entrance and is persuaded to leave by the many zerglings there. The_Knight sends it to be his stealthy reconnaissance unit for the two unused mains. 10 zealots and 2 high Templar, with a little under two storms a-piece rally outside the Zerg valley, but just as they are forming up, 3 lurkers hatch form their eggs on the Zerg ramp, and burrow near the valley entrance. They are in range of the zealots and a row of spikes alerts the executor to their presence; The_Knight realises the futility of attacking with an invisible foe hidden beneath the earth, and withdraws to the defensive detection web of his newly warped cannons. He also begins a robotics facility by his expansion nexus in the pursuit of observers.

Now as most players know, the most practical counter to lurkers are dragoons, as zealots get chewed up quickly, and reavers take up observer’s building space, so The_Knight gets his cybernetics core spinning for dragoon range and sets his three gates into action after maynarding half of his probes to his natural. Cleverly he retreats his zealots behind his cannons, not wanting to waste a single one in a war with lurkers; on top of this, the +1 attack upgrade is nearly done. A cannon is placed next to his expansion nexus in case any lurkers should get through. The_Knight sends a probe around to his mineral-only to expand, but once it is seen by a zerglings, he brings it home before again re-directing it towards the 9:00 plateau just in case he doesn’t get the chance later, and it warps a pylon above the ramp.

Fox^1 tries to be sneaky and put a lurker on his plateau to hit the cannons in the 12:00 valley, but it’s just a little out of range so he pulls it back, places a hatchery below his ramp and gets his dual evolution chambers working on hydra upgrades. After a little scouting by both sides, the first observer enters the fray, hovering over to the 3:00 mineral-only. Both players seem to want to take an offensive stand now, and it’s not long before a small skirmish ensues below the 12:00 plateau. Fox^1 has ventral sacs for his overlords completed now, but no speed, and The_Knight has +1 attack and a lot of zealots, dragoons and storm. He clashes head on with the Hydra/lurker/ling cerebrate’s minions just outside his valley and sees a hatchery morphing in the 3:00 mineral-only.

Storm flies, but Fox^1 is quick (thus his name) and he dances his hydras well, keeping most of them alive through 3 storms. With this waste, The_Knight is forced to pull back and get another Templar, but just before he may have tried attacking again, he makes a fatal error: he moves his only observer into the view of an overlord, and the hydras quickly destroy it. This may not seem much, but it could be a major

A warp rift for a nexus now begins to open on the 9:00 plateau, and the +2 attack upgrade for the zealots and dragoons of the executor is halfway done. The cerebrate is keeping hydralisk production out of five hatches now, with a sixth just finishing in his main, and one at his mineral-only coming online soon. His opponent is warping in a fifth gateway and another forge for upgrades; he is currently pumping 4-gate goons with the occasional Templar support. Again The_Knight tries to break out whilst the first creep colony is morphing, but Fox^1 has just burrowed 4 more lurkers, and the 5 or so dragoons are not enough for the task. Storm takes care of the hydralisks, but the lurkers remain and The_Knight pulls back to his cannons for a second time. 4 cannons warp in above the 9:00 ramp, and 2 more accompanied by 2 gateways warp in next to the nexus there.

Fox^1 sends a scouting overlord there and it takes fire from the cannons, alerting him to the new expansion by his opponent. Sadly for him, 6 low ground hydralisks without detection do not fare too well against 4 high ground cannons and a dark Templar. Realising that he’s been discovered, The_Knight adds two more cannons near the nexus, and begins calling in high Templar from the gateways, but the cerebrate is already loading 4 overlords with 14 hydralisks and a lurker. Once dropped on the plateau, they run around the bottom of the structures and begin to pick off the cannons.

The_Knight casts two almost totally useless storms and is forced to use probes to fend off the intruders until dragoons warp in and manage to quell the incursion. I watched the replay carefully, and it was a probe that actually killed the un-burrowed lurker. Seeing this failure, Fox^1 loads up another eight hydralisk and drops them on the plateau, but only manages to kill a Templar and two dragoons while cannon fire and probe attacks fend it off. Some probes are maynarded in by a five hit-point shuttle (lucky guys). Fox^1 responds to this new base by dual expanding to 6:00’s natural and mineral-only, in an attempt to match The_Knight’s resource income seeing how Zerg are supposed to out-mine Protoss two to one. This ends up leaving the mini-map looking something like this:

Finally The_Knight reaches critical mass in his main, and with twenty-three ranged 1:0:3 dragoons and 13 high Templar he begins to push out. He has eleven zealots at the back too, which can be deployed once the lurkers fall. Facing him are 5 sunken colonies, four lurkers and around three control groups of hydralisks. Fox^1’s upgrades are at 2:2 and with a hive now he has 3:3 under research at home. Again The_Knight uses this distraction to begin preparations for another expansion as he warps in a pylon in the 9:00 valley. The 6:00 main now taken by Fox^1 has matched this, but not one of the 6:00 expansions is known about by the executor at this time.

At first the dragoons engage the sunken colonies and lurkers, picking them off from range, but then the cerebrate gets wise and pours hydralisks into the fray. This is just what The_Knight was expecting as he sets about relieving the Zerg creatures of their internal organs with his high Templar. The attack is repulsed as Fox^1 dances hydralisks around, but once the dragoons retreat, he follows them in and the spare high Templars and zealots quickly massacre them with limited losses as they totally blanket the invaders with storm. The reason for pulling out so soon is that the very first storm killed the only observer supporting the attack. With his 5 gateways in his main, it’s not long before 14 more dragoons are down below The_Knight’s ramp, and he sends his troops out again. 9 storms later the containment is beginning to buckle, and when a pimp squad of zealots join in and simply massacre the zerglings involved, Fox^1 leaves the expansion to its fate.

The cerebrate had never really been intending to waste all his troops in such a narrow space though, and had amassed two control groups of hydralisks from the 6:00 hatcheries, and with 11 hatcheries overall he was able to replace much of his losses in no time. Sadly the replacements came in the form of zerglings, and with the spent Templar being morphed into archons, it is soon apparent that the breakout is complete.

Many of Fox^1’s troops at 6:00 are thrown in now that the fighting is on open ground, but the temple wall channels them together and they fall prey to psyonic storm. The nexus at the 9:00 natural comes on line, under the watchful eye of an overlord, but the front is cannon-ed up and Fox^1 has a bigger problem to deal with, namely The_Knight’s marauding army. He throws down three more hatcheries as he realises he is earning more than he can spend right now.

Eventually The_Knight’s templars run out of mana as many of the stormers were left behind, and Fox^1 is able to defeat the last few dragoons in a battle for the 6:00 mineral-only. The_Knight’s macro has been a little sloppy and he has very few troops at either base to hold off Fox^1 who has now gone into production overdrive. Fortunately for The_Knight, you don’t need too many troops if you have 8 high Templar, and Fox^1’s first probing attack troops get torn apart form the inside. The budding expansion at the 12:00 mineral-only becomes the new target of Fox^1’s attentions seeing how it lacks any templar at all. The executor pulls several random ground troops to the rescue while stockpiling corsairs at the 9:00 main, perhaps expecting a tech change to mutalisks by his opponent.

Fox^1 is happy with his hydralisks though, and he drains the storm reserves of the templar at 12:00 in a suicide attack with a few troops from 3:00. Once this is over however he sends a full two control groups from 6:00 up to the 12:00 mineral-only and wipes the expansion off the map brutally. While this is going on he is disrupting mining at the 9:00 natural with the same strategy I see him use most games: lurkers on the ledge. He has all three mining sites at 6:00 totally saturated with workers, and his original natural is still being mined hard. He then switches the direction of the main assault up to the 12:00 main, with cracklings joining
the fray too. He busts through the valley defences and sends his troops up the ramp. The only unit coming out of those gates there are high templar, no use at all until they get time to re-charge or merge into archons, but Fox^1 is relentless as he pushes through, eliminating them as soon as they emerge from the gates.

Finally zealots help remove the immediate attackers, and establish some kind of perimeter with templars and cannons behind the row of gateways. Another set of hydralisks have been busy laying waste to the 12:00 natural. Under a stormy sky they ascend the ramp and remove all resistance before them.







Fox^1 knows he has nemesis in a difficult situation, and he begins massing troops outside of the 9:00 mineral-only whilst the attack on 12:00’s main is still in full swing. He then loads these up into 6 overlords and again drops on the 9:00 plateau with the largest drop yet consisting of nine zerglings and sixteen hydralisks. Cannon fire, zealots and 3 well placed psyonic storms remove this threat extremely efficiently however, and Fox^1 has to re-think his strategy once again.

A generous dose of storm clears the lurkers off the 9:00 natural cliff and finally The_Knight has two fully operational bases once again . He replaces the most vital tech in at 9:00 while 12:00 is still being razed, and increases the gateway count at his new main to five. With 11 cannons defending his natural, and the drops by the cerebrate being beaten off easily, his outlook for the future is good. He has a generous helping of full-mana templar and a few active ground troops. Fox^1 will not be denied however, and he loads up YET ANOTHER drop into about 8 overlords. He drops off the cargo, but this time sends them to assault the cannons above the ramps, while at the same time sending in waves of cracklings through the natural’s front door to see if he can wear down the cannon defences. The problem here is that there’s more than just a pack of cannons on guard, numerous high templars again get involved in the skirmish and with the loss of a few cannons the attack is repulsed with a few cannon losses.

Fox already had another wave en-route though and 12 hydralisks and even more cracklings again slam into the cannon wall. He doesn’t even bother microing them any more as he is just madly pumping units from most of his 14 hatcheries. The waves sort of become a long continuous attack now and storm just decimates every single one, but each time they do a little more damage, and each time a hydralisk falls, another one arrives to take it’s place. Eventually Fox^1 remembers the attack at 12:00, and with that base now totally razed, he re-directs the troops to the new front line. This is possibly the only time in a game where line-formation attacking is effective: when your opponent is relying almost entirely on psyonic storm.

Just as it looks like Fox^1 is getting through, four psyonic storms in quick succession destroy over half the army attacking at that point. But re-enforcements are on the way, and they eventually tear through the natural whilst The_Knight retreats to hold his ramp. Fox^1 begins hatcheries at the 12:00 and 3:00 mineral-only expansions while disaster strikes for The executor: just as his natural falls, the minerals in his main dry up, he has no income what-so-ever at this point. To make matters worse, Fox^1 is not resting, he just rams his army at the ramp defences while at the same time executing the fifth drop of the game on the 9:00 plateau.

I didn’t watch this game when it was played, and I only reported it after finding it in a download folder from BR.com replays, but it was a titanic struggle mining dry 7 resource spots, with back and forth action all the way. I hoped you enjoyed it, it was good to make, and the zealot micro at the start was excellent, not losing a single zealot during the entire first exchange while destroying numerous zerglings.

You can see the replay here; I’ll just link the original post of it; so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I’ll mention a few things of note: despite mining dry half the map between them, both players kept on top of their money when it was important. Fox had to even save up a little to afford those last two expansion hatcheries. He rarely massed troops, preferring to apply continuous pressure in order to make The_Knight use his psyonic storms on smaller groups of units each time. The_Knight responded by massing templar, but never really made any attempts to storm-raid or damage Fox’s economy. Fox had lurkers on the 9:00 ledge, and even loaded up one destined for the 12:00 ledge at the start, but his overlord there spotted an observer and cannon warping in so he decided to use it elsewhere.

The game was only 35 minutes long, which gives you an idea of how much powering was done in mining, Fox totally saturated all of his mining sites for the entire game, getting maximum benefit from them, but also having spare drones to transfer when he expanded again. Note how Fox made practically 900 units that game, that’s one every 2.3 seconds for the entire duration. The_Knight relied on the efficiency of his storming, which was excellent for the most part, and I would regularly click on a templar to see it with plenty of manna but still over 10 kills. The_Knight even mined substantially more gas than Fox, but his dependence on spells became too great nearer the end as he had too few actual units to mop up the mess storm leaves.

I’ve decided not to post the scores, but they’ll always be there on the replay when you DOWNLOAD IT NOW (unless you did just a moment ago). Props to both for playing so well, thanks to fox for OK-ing the BR. I’ll also give thanks to Breeze, even though I didn’t use his images, he was very generous with them either way. I hope it was good for you too, laters =]

Ling-erie