"Wha? The alarms! Battlestations! Attendant! Get that monitor working, I want visual, now!"

"Ahh, hallo mighty protoss scum. This is de admiral AMD_Gundam of de UED. We have located your base, and would advise a full retreat before all of your forces are decimated at our hands. You've been warned, da admiral ova and out."

"It looks as if Gundam has already established a base across the valley from us...not good. POS_Bluek, I hereby order to exterminate this threat from my sight. If you come back victorious I might just let you off the hook for your shennanigans earlier...Good luck."

POS (blue in red font is too confusing for my poor readers) opted for a quick goon build, going 8 pylon, 10 gateway, immediately followed by a cybernetics core at 12. His opponent Gundam also began to tech quickly, stalling his depot and rax to save up for an early refinery. His build order was 9 depot, 12 rax, 13 refinery, 15 depot. He got his first factory under construction at 2:51, the same time POS completed his first goon. POS was wise to Gundam's teching however, as a young probe named Barry Sanders rushed into his opponent's base. Meeting no resistance, he took his sweet time in examining every inch of Gundam's base before leaving. By the time the terran commander's first vulture popped out of the factory, a scouting scv finally reached POS's base. It was met with some goon resistance on the ramp, and was driven away with no knowledge of the protoss base layout. POS's fast goon tech was discovered however, and Gundam began laying mines around the base in preparation for the slow moving protoss units. He also began construction on an expansion at his natural.

Afterwards some skirmishes involving vultures, goons, and mines occured without much damage done to either side. At this point POS also took his natural expansion, and began the training of some dark templar. He also had an observer resting in Gundam's base. He may have been better off without it however; the sight of five newly constructed factories couldn't have helped his confidence. With approximately 8 goons he moved up the norhtern causeway before finding two scvs and a hastily thrown up turret. All three were destroyed without incident, and the goons moved onwards only to run smack into Gundam's heavy metal forces. Totalling 5 vultures and 4 tanks, the goons were outnumbered but quickly gain the upperhand since the faster vultures not only arrived without tank support but in a line formation. Gundam finally got his act togehter after taking some light damage, and used his vultures on short raids while advancing his tanks forward ever so slowly down the causeway. The battle lasted nearly five minutes (1/6th the game) and swayed back and forth the entire time before the siege mode upgrade was researched. Only four goons and a handful of zealots were left against the mounting tank front, but there was still no protoss retreat. This was because POS's templar archives had finally warped in along with a robotics facility, and a shuttle carrying four dark templar quickly flew overhead the parked tanks. Two DTs dropped down and managed to destroy two tanks, before being shuttled back into the shuttle (ke) at red health. By this time some scvs had arrived at the battlefield though, and several missile turrets were constructed (as well as two cosmat stations at home). With his DT raiding party neutralized, POS retreated his remaining forces back home under a hail of tank fire.

After Gundam secured the causeway several things start happening at once. POS finished his first arbiter (oh, get it over it already) and begins merging some templar for archons...
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS GUY. Ahem.

With one archon, 4 zealots, and 4-5 goons POS took the lower causeway out of his base towards Gundam's expansion. Once they arrived they were sadly forgotten however, as the attention of the protoss commander was diverted to the massive attack on his expansion/ramp area. The units valiantly sent to the terran base were all picked off one by one from tank fire, and managed to destroy only a marginal amount of random terran units.

Back at the protoss base the heat was on. With a constant source of tanks and vultures flooding towards the battlefield from 7-8 factories, it seemed as if Gundam was going to simply overrun POS. Ahhh, but that is where you are wrong! For anyone who has ever played a protoss knows that they have a bigger bag of tricks than Bozo the Clown (R.I.P.)! For while the terran commander had range and firepower on his side, he wasn't ready for

This is where the game goes to hell. Gundam has a constant stream of heavy metal running from his base to POS's, as well as several scvs at the battlefield to reconstruct missile turrets and repair the parked tanks. He has also floated a command center to the southeast main, betting on its distance from the fighting to keep it unnoticed.

But what about de arbiter tactiques?

Ugh, hold on I'm getting to that part. With roughly 10 tanks and just as many vultures/mines sitting on his front door, POS knew he was in trouble. He had by this point 8 gateways constantly producing zealogoonars (to take a leaf out of WilliamWC3's book) and had all of his templars instantly merge to archons upon completion. This was fairly ingenious mainly because of several reasons:

1. Archons > vultures
2. Archons > tanks
3. Archons can't be hit by mines (they float mwuhahahaha)

Factor all of this together and you get one eats-terran-metal-for-breakfast unit.

Not in the mood to wait around for a huge army of archons to form, Gundam pushed the attack into the protoss natural. I feel that I'm unable to do justice to the huge battle that follows with words, so I'll let this unnecessarily large collage do it for me...

By the end of the skirmish 5 vultures were dead (4 just from that one cannon in POS's expansion ;O) as well as 6 mines, 4 tanks, and 2 missile turrets. Hoping to catch Gundam reeling from the last battle, POS quickly regrouped his units (~6 goons) and threw them carelessly against the ramp guarding the causeway. Keep in mind that this ramp was guarded by 4 mines, 4 sieged tanks, 2 missile turrets, and 8 vultures (GL HF goons).

POS was hurting now. His army reduced to roughly 5 goons and some random zealots, a concentrated push could rip him a new shitter faster than it takes MARKTHELLAMA to type "hha." Lady Luck apparently was on his side though as a scouting dark templar found the southeast expansion, making it lift off and chasing the two scvs who were mining there.

There is once again a brief lull while Gundam builds up his tide of metal, and POS leaves his expansion to kill a pylon-harassing vulture at his new mineral only expansion. For the first time in the entire game Gundam takes a hint, and he proceeds to "turret and mine up" the area outside of the protoss natural expansion. POS, seeing the imminent threat, came racing back to save his now only source of income, running straight into the mine field. The wives of several protoss zealots cried that day.

Soldiers are unfortunately not given the liberty of crying, especially on the battlefield. When the last zealot went up in a haze of glory under the power of 6 tank shells, the job was left to the dragoons. They, however, proceeded to get decimated by tank fire from afar. Just as the thought of victory must have crossed Gundam's mind, the terrible (for him) happens. For it appears that the ever skanky Lady Luck was still on the side of the protoss, and 8 rallying melee units come running down POS's ramp to flank the sieged tanks. Four instantly go down under tank fire or mines, but the rest manage to sneak into their field of minimum range, forcing several out of siege mode. We must remember, protoss = tricky bastards! Two templar were also called to duty in those gateways, and three remaining tanks are destroyed under the big blue flatulence of a hastily merged archon.

After the battle Gundam took the eastern mineral only and begins producing goliaths to take down the arbiters. Several more skirmishes take place near POS's expansion as a thin line in the sand is drawn, resulting in the loss of several vultures and one archon. It should be noted now that more archons are being produced by the minute, and POS hasn't forgotten about his arbiter's abilities either. An observer flies over the newly built expansion at Gundam's eastern mineral only, and a nearby arbiter recalls (yeah you were waiting for that) 3 archons and 2 zealots right on top of the hapless scvs. Everything is destroyed.

And yet...No, no something is terribly wrong here! For as soon as the forces are recalled alarms start ringing as the largest push of the game begins. 1 arbiter, 4 goons, and some assorted DT/zealot are all that is left against a huge army compiled of 13 vultures, 3 tanks, and 3 goliaths. The goliaths quickly focus on the arbiter, bringing it down to the red while the zealots and goons battle the surrounding vultures (keke). It seems that, yes, POS might just be forced unde- OMG. Lady Luck it seems has quite a fetish for our young protoss commander, and grants him a third wish... A split-second before the arbiter is brought down a beautiful stasis trap is cast on half the terran army, bringing it to a standstill. Two archons also decided that, hey, now was about as good a time as any to finish merging and together with some extra goons mop up the rest of the vultures stationed there. The battle is long over when the frozen units are unstasisized (kekeke) and promptly killed.

During all of this fighting POS also finished an expansion at the western mineral only, although it quickly came under attack from a scouting vulture. A small column of tanks and goliaths is dispatched to destroy it, but it gets pincered between the returning forces that were recalled earlier, and ~8 goons/ ~5 zealots newly made after the previous battle. The column is completely leveled with no protoss casualties. Two harassing tanks are also recalled on and owned.

At this moment Gundam was almost out of money, and he started an expansion at the southeast natural to rectify the situation. Laughing out loud, I watched on in amusement as the same scouting dark templar from earlier destroyed the scv making the command center at 1500/1500...Only it wasn't finished. Had it destroyed the scv a tenth of a second later the command center would have completed; that or it was a glitch. You decide. Another scv reaches the command center moments later to complete it, and the dark templar is sadly killed by three vultures. It didn't matter however, as the expansion was destined to fall. A lone arbiter flew over the mine field that was the middle of the map and recalled the huge protoss force of 6 archons ~10 goon/zealot right on top of a group of newly maynarded scvs. Again everything is destroyed and Gundam is completely out of money.

Only one more obstacle stood between POS and victory: the entrance to the northern causeway. Defended by 3 sieged tanks, two vultures behind a layer of mines, and a turret, it would be no easy task...

For an army that wasn't packing cloaked archons.

Lessons learned:

• Cloaked archons are fun.
• Recalling cloaked archons on undefended expansions: mmmmm.
• Collages suck.
• Stay away from pet shops.

As always the replay can be found here. Hope you had fun reading and gazing at my blurry screenshots!