Introduction

You may begin reading here.

I really don't know what to say here. After all, this is the part before the actual BR, and I'm not quite sure many people will be reading this anyway. I would try to attempt something witty here, like CattleBruiser's UMSing introduction (which, btw, is brilliant) but my attempts at writing a humorous introduction all ended up in disasters. So now, this paragraph is what qualifies as my introduction. It's a huge waste of time, but I assure you, this was the last resort and I did not mean to subject you to this.

The Game

But it's better to start reading here.

The battle documented below took place sometime in mid-July. It is a 1v1 between the author of this report, who enjoys referring to himself in the 3rd person, and a close friend of his. This is by far the best game I have played since I returned to SC, which isn't saying too much, but it'll comfort you to know that I tried my hardest to find a good game to BR.

The Players

Lurker716: I haven't played in 3 years. I choose Zerg, simply because they are the only race I semi-remember how to play. After all, it's not that hard to remember how to 4-pool. However, I am about to receive a rather nasty shock when I find out spawning pool costs 200.

WildCherryPepsi:  He has not played Starcraft in a long time either, however, lately he has gotten back into it, so I think he's going to be a little less rusty than me. I think we are about equal skill level, so this match is really a toss-up. He chooses random because he is either really good with all the races, or an indecisive moron. Also, he has the distinct advantage of being a soft drink.

The Map

WildCherryPepsi insists that the map be Lost Temple, because it is the only map he remembers. I agree, and quickly make the map on Rivalry. Muwahahahhaha. *ahem* Anyway, Rivalry, for those who don't know it, is a 4 player map with starting positions located in the four corners. The start positions are all on elevated terrain, accessible by a ramp, with a mineral-only natural directly below each starting position. Halfway between each starting position and its neighbor is an expansion with both gas and minerals. In the center of the map are two gas mines. If you don't have any clue what I just said, are an idiot, or just like clicking on things, here's a link to the map.

My spanking white hatchery plops down in the northeast corner. I decide not to send my starting overlord to scout, it'll take too long to get there and will probably die if Pepsi randomed to terran. Instead I send it to my natural. I put down a hatchery at my natural and then add a spawning pool in my main. I have not even the faintest inkling of a clue what to do, so my game plan consists of trying to stay alive and spamming insults.

Meanwhile, Pepsi has landed down at the southeast spot and he directs his overlord to make the long journey to the northeast spawn (which, if you haven't been paying attention, is where I am).His build consists of a spawning pool, with an extractor immediately following. He's clearly heading for fast tech. The adventurous overlord he sent to scout me discovers my hatchery at my natural. He hatches two zerglings and sends them to take it down.

Back at my base, my hatchery and spawning pool have just finished, when two teal zerglings come tearing into my natural and start attacking my hatchery. I start hatching zerglings at both my hatcheries to drive the attackers off. I also send a drone to scout him. My drone sees that the enemy cerebrate has started morphing a hatchery at his natural too, and I order it to attack the hatchery.

Pepsi sends 2 more lings to reinforce his attack. However, when he realizes that his own natural is under attack, he retreats two of the zerglings to quell the threat of my lone drone. He still has 2 lings attacking my natural, but they die when 6 of my zerglings are hatched. Pepsi now starts hatching zerglings, anticipating an early-game zergling war.

I notice that Pepsi's overlord is still in my main. I intend to go mutas and surprise him, and I can't do that if the overlord is sitting (floating, wutever) in my base chatting it up with my ovies. I start an extractor, intending to get some hydras and take down the invading ovie. Deciding to take the offensive, I send 8 zerglings to attack Pepsi.

Map Note: One of the weird things about Rivalry is all the bridges that there are. This often causes forces to split in half and take different bridges. In this particular case, my 8 zerglings split into groups of 6 and 2, the 6 taking the left route and the 2 taking the right route.

Pepsi, sensing a lull in the game, sends his zerglings to attack my natural again. All of his zerglings take the right route, and kill my two lings coming that way. At the same moment, my 6 lings going the left route have arrived at his natural and are attacking the hatchery there. Pepsi retreats his lings and sends them back to save his natural. After a mild skirmish, my zerglings emerge victorious, with 3 of their number left. Those three then celebrate their victory by getting killed by newly hatched lings. Pepsi then sends a drone to expand at the 3 o clock exp.

I send another batch of 8 zerglings at him, this time with 5 taking the left route and 3 taking the right route. The 3 lings discover his attempted expansion and attack it. He cancels the morphing hatch and the drone dies to my lings. My 5 lings that went the left route are killed by his zerglings. I send 6 more lings to pressure him. I'm hoping that I can keep him producing lings, slowing down his tech, because I had no anti-air at the time and mutas would have won him the game. My 6 zerglings get slaughtered and I run the remaining 3 away. I've got a hydra den building now, so I can eliminate that annoying overlord.

Update: At this point, both of us have an expansion at our natural, a spawning pool, and gas income. However, Pepsi now has a lair morphing, along with a hydra den. I have an almost complete hydra den. Pepsi has an advantage in gas income, he has more troops, and better tech. He also has recon into my main base thanks to his overlord. He's clearly in control of the game at this point.

Mid-Game

I send a drone to scout the northwest main, intending to keep on eye on expansions, and maybe expand there later. I also send a force of 6 lings and a drone to the 3 o clock expansion. If I can establish a beachhead here, I can attack straight into his main base. 3 hydras are hatched and they immediately kill the spying overlord. I research burrow, so that if he decides to muta harass my peon line, I can at least minimize casualties.

Pepsi's plan is revealed now, as he has a spire morphing in his main. I still don't have a lair. I burrow my forces at the 3 o clock position, hoping that if he sends more zerglings by that way, I can ambush him. Pepsi sends a drone to the southwest main, expanding there. At the same time, he sends 12 zerglings to attack me. My scout zergling found them before they reached my natural. However, with 3 sunkens,  3 hydras, and 10 lings, I held off the force easily. I finally start a lair, and begin production of hydras. Pepsi's spire finishes and he begins hatching mutaling. I sent another ling to scout his natural, and find it well defended by an army of zerglings and some sunkens. I start an expansion in the northwest main, and another expansion in the 12 o clock spot. I also start a spire, since my lair finished. I'm trying to catch up with Pepsi in terms of tech and expansions, so I won't be caught with my pants down.

Shit, I got caught with my pants down. Pepsi sends 5 mutalisks to harass my peon line. He starts killing drones in my main, but I manage to get some drones burrowed. I send my hydras, which had been defending my natural, up to the main to attack the mutas. Pepsi immediately moves his mutalisks to my natural, and begins killing the drones there. Once again, I burrow the drones and send my hydras down the ramp to attack the mutas. This back and forth harassment continues until I manage to hatch reinforcing hydras and drive the muta off. This maneuver pisses me off to no end and I vow to have my revenge. I mean, @#$#@%! Mutalisk mobility>Hydra clumping at ramps.

Seeing as I have no money left in my bank, I begin hatching mass drones to rebuild my economy. Pepsi has a ton of minerals but not enough gas. To this end, he begins gathering gas at his southwest main.

Update: Pepsi has a veritable army of mutaling and two expansions running. I have a few scattered hydras, mutas, and zerglings. I have a natural exp, but my two other expansions are not yet online. A scouting zergling finds the teal infestation at the southwest main. I dispatch 5 mutalisks to kill it, because he has no anti-air at that expansion. While this is going on, my two expansions are coming online and I start mining from them. With my economy back up, and with the gas income from 2 extra expansions, I'm able to pump out mutalisks. I plop down two more hatches at my natural, intending to power. Pepsi does the exact same at his own natural. He also adds a queens nest so he can get hive. He's going for cracklings and mutas, a very deadly combination indeed.

My 5 mutalisks are still at the southwest main, killing all of his drones and disrupting his gas flow. Pepsi responds with a control group of mutalisks to handle the threat. My mutas are quickly killed, but the damage is done and Pepsi's gas income is disrupted.

My gas income is pouring in however, and I begin pumping out mutalisks from all my hatcheries. A scouting mutalisk from Pepsi finds my topleft expansion. He sends a control group of mutalisks to kill it, intending to do to my expansion what i just did to his. However, the scouting mutalisk remains in my base and begins attacking my drones. "Your forces are under attack" I quickly space-bar to the fight and realize that Pepsi will send more mutalisks to handle this expansion. I send a control group of my own mutalisks to defend it. His mutas arrive first, and begin attacking the drones. Once again I burrow the drones and my muta arrive on the scene. My mutalisks manage to kill all of his mutalisks with 6 remaining, because his mutalisks were damaged from earlier battles and I used focus fire.

I started an expansion at the 3 o clock position, getting more gas. Pepsi now has a hive, but I have 3 gas sources to his 2. Intent on destroying my economic advantage, he sends another 12 mutalisks to my northwest expansion. I had just sent 3 newly hatched mutalisks to that base, but my damaged mutalisks were no match for 12 fresh mutalisks, and they fell. I burrowed my drones AGAIN, and sent reinforcing mutalisks. 5 of my mutalisks took care of the teal threat at the northwest main, and I resumed mining activities.

My 3 o clock expansion is now guarded by mutalisks and hydras, in case he should try to attack it. My money is piling up and I'm massing mutalisks. Pepsi, at home, morphs an ultralisk cavern, 2 nydus canals, and a defilers mound. I dunno if he was smoking crack or trying to be fls prozerran. I gather my troops to do a large ground-based assault on his natural. I sent ~30 troops, mostly zerglings but with some hydras thrown in the mix. The zerglings go down quickly to a sunken and his zerglings. The hydras stand there for quite a while, popping many zerglings before getting overwhelmed and taken down. All of my troops were killed, but the attack managed to take down a large amount of Pepsi's forces.

He immediately sent his own zerglings to counterattack my natural, and on the way there he found my 3 o clock expansion. However, I still had a bunch of mutalisks guarding it, and the zerglings quickly died, but not before the lings took out a lot of drones. He launches another attack, this time with mutalisks on my 3 o clock expansion. At the same time, he commands a wave of zerglings to attack the topleft expansion of mine. He finds the 12 o clock expansion and decides to attack that instead. I'm trying to fight to save both of my expansions at once, but his mutalisks overwhelm mine at the 3 o clock expansion. The expansion at 12 falls also to the zergling attack. I begin burrowing all my drones at those two expansions furiously. I sent some mutalisks to save my exp at 12. I kill all of his zerglings at the 12 expansion, and then send the mutalisks to save the 3 o clock expansion. Those mutalisks die, but I send more reinforcements and he retreats his mutalisks...or so it seems. He actually retreats them into my top-left expansion. I burrow my drones for the billionth time, and send my mutas to save it. For some reason, his mutalisks leave before my mutas get there. I'm getting tired of chasing his mutalisks around the map as he attacks each of my expansions. I've been mostly on the defensive the whole game, and putting out fires all over the map is driving me to my wits end. That and the fact that it was really really late at night.

Pepsi has only one source of gas, at the bottom-left main. His main is depleted. I have more exps w/ gas, but he keeps attacking them and halting mining. I send 12 mutas to attack his natural, but they're repelled by mutas, hydras, and a spore. Pepsi has switched to hydra production now, because of his lack of gas. He tries to rectify this problem by sending a drone to the 9 o clock expansion. I see his expansion because of the burrowed ling, but I decide to let it be for now. I send 24 lings into his natural as a sort of heavyweight scouting group. They see a large massed army of hydras and lings, with some mutas. I send 2 muta to go harass his 9 o clock expansion now. In response, he sends 12 freakin muta to kill my 2 measly muta. Fine, you wanna play overkill? I send 24 muta to kill his 12 muta. My mutalisks annihilate his mutalisks. He then begins sending 12 hydralisks to save this expansion. He really needs this expansion. My 24 0/2 mutalisks kill his 12 unupgraded hydralisks easily. I have no upgrades for my ground units however, and he has 0/2 for his lings. I send my 24 muta to go attack his bottom-left expansion, his only source of gas left. It's guarded by 2 spore colonies, which are quickly turned into red mush. Pepsi frantically sends all of his forces to defend. 3 teal mutalisks arrive first, and get ripped apart. Hydras come pouring in, but they're all killed. His drones at the expansion are all killed. Basically, all his shit is getting raped by my muta. Finally, reinforcement hydras drive off my muta. He morphs his hatchery back at the expansion, because it was killed during the attack.

My air force flies off to attack his main, but on the way there they find a bunch of idle drones in the 6 o clock expansion. Quickly, I order my muta to attack it, and even more drones are raped. At this point, I decide to switch tactics to cracklings. I get a queens nest and a hive, and start researching adrenal glands. I morph 2 evolution chambers to start upgrading my zerglings faster. Pepsi sends a single zergling to scout out my topleft expansion. For some reason, I never build defense at my expansions, depending on my mutas to act as a sort of emergency response team and protect all my bases. For one zergling though, I think my drones can handle it. And handle it they do, as the zergling gets popped and the drones continue mining. I know Pepsi will attack soon, because he knows I have no defense there. I quickly send some mutalisks there to defend, using the move command instead of attack-move. Because of this, my mutalisks fly right over his zerglings that were coming to attack my base. Burrowing my drones, I ordered my mutalisks to kill the zerglings. The zergling threat was eliminated, but not before my hatchery got taken down. I remorphed the hatchery there, more out of spite than anything else, because I had more money than I could handle.  

Update: At this point, the tables are turned, as I now have the superior expansions and troop count. The reason why? Gas. Pepsi's choice of expansions earlier on in the game were poor, because he expanded to only one expansion with gas. I, on the other hand, made sure all of my expansions (besides the natural) had gas. This allowed me to build up enough mutalisks to fight him.

Late Game

I started building up another attack force on his natural, and Pepsi expands to the 6 o clock spot, desperate for gas. I found this new expansion with some scouting mutalisks. I started attacking, but several hydras arrived to defend and I retreated the mutas. I then threw my force of 24 1/1 cracklings and 12 0/2 mutalisks at him. Pepsi's lings were upgraded to 1/2. Our zergling waves collided, and zerglings were popped like popcorn. His zerglings emerged victorious, whether it was because of the sunkens, superior numbers, or superior upgrades, it did not matter. My mutalisks proceeded to kill all of his units, because there was no anti-air at his natural, cept for a for hydras and a spore. My mutalisks killed most of his units at his natural. He was hatching hydralisks desperately, and throwing all the muta he had at me. My mutalisks were pretty much untouched though, and they killed all of his reinforcements. The hydras were killed as soon as they had hatched. 

In the stupidest move of the year, I decide to go overlord hunting. Yes, overlord hunting. After I had killed about a billion of his forces and his supply was down to about 2, i decided to go overlord hunting. My only excuse is...uh....This was my first game back. hehe.

Back at home, I was hatching masses of zerglings. I sent them in a line toward his natural. I had too much money anyway, I just threw them at him to weaken his defenses. They get killed, but his defenses are taken down another notch, perhaps enough to make the next attack the game-ender. My mutalisks at his main run into a group of hydralisks, and they retreat. I prepare another ground assault, hatching more lings, which are now 2/2. Once again, Pepsi sends a single ling to the 12 o clock expansion, just to annoy me. My drones kill it quickly. At this point, two wormy little critters, known as defilers, make their way to Pepsi's natural, armed with dark swarm. Pepsi is obviously preparing for a mass assault by my mutalisks. He hasn't realized that I've switched to cracklings. 4 control groups of cracklings are sitting outside his natural, along with 12 mutalisks. I send them in, and the game-deciding battle begins. Pepsi has been massing mostly zerglings because he has no gas, and so he has a ton of zerglings watiting for me. 

As soon as he saw my troops pouring in, Pepsi cackled evilly. He had his two defilers cast Dark Swarm over his zerglings, protecting them from my mutalisks. Hopefully, he could use consume, and thus keep the Dark Swarm going for a long time, perhaps long enough to get hydras to drive my attack off. Taking a sip of his Wild Cherry Pepsi, he sat back in his chair and waited for my mutalisks to come. And waited...and waited...

Wave after wave of zerglings collided in his zerglings. Dark swarm was rendered completely useless, thanks to my decision to use mostly cracklings. I still have a control group of mutalisks that were supposed to be in the attack, and I decide to throw them in there because he had nothing underneath the dark swarm that could hit air. He has only 2 hydralisks for anti-air, and they're quickly dispatched. ~ 24 cracklings and all of my mutalisks remain. This force ventures westward, stumbling upon his 6 o clock expansion which he restarted, and raze it quickly.

At this point, Pepsi has no gas income, and no real forces left to combat me. He concedes the game. We chat a little bit about how tense that game was, while my forces wander around the map and clean-up the rest of his buildings. Yes, I forgot to ally vic him. Oops.

Thank you for reading my first battlereport. Any and all criticism will be welcomed, especially on my writing, since I know that needs work. Umm...yeah also on photoshop, since I'm a complete newb at it, and Zerg~Ling's guide saved me.