The Tides of War Wait for No Man (or Ching)

BATTLEREPORT? WHAT R THEESE?

Due to the announcement of Starcraft 2, many of the past Fooners who have played Starcraft decided to blow the dust off their old CDs again. Meanwhile, the enthusiasm and sheer boredom of these few veterans compelled the rest of the Fooners to join in, in epic 6+ player team battles to the death.

The formats of the games are simple: Top Vs. Bottom, Starcraft Original (Brood War adds a element of detection and the newer players amongst us can't handle dark templar, etc. very well). However, due to the fact that Felix and Ching are stronger than the rest of us, we elected to go on a 5 on 2 game. Yup, there's no honour or glory for Calvin, Jackson, Jacky, Stanley and I, but as we are really crappy players we need all the help we can get.

As a side note, here's my personal power rankings of all the players at the moment... however, these are mostly due to varying experiences. If you come back to me at the end of the school term/next year, I'm sure the list would be mixed up quite a bit, as everyone is sort of rusty:

Power Rankings
1. Steven Ching
2. Felix Chik
3. Christopher Yang (below the first two by a wide margin)
4. Calvin Poon (GOOSU!!)
5. Jacky Lee
6. Stanley Lam (Jacky and Stanley are actually extremely close, depending on how focussed they are at game time)
7. Jackson Tsui

I have to emphasize that while 2 on 5 does not seem fair, the reality of the matter is that these games are really well matched. The 5 of us lost quite a few games to those 2, and vice versa. It wasn't until about 4AM in the morning when the 5 of us were finally good enough so that we could play 4 on 3 games, evenly matched. Also, as much as it pains me to say it, Ching owns me. He is THE master of early game macro (probably from his gay experience with Bon... I mean Zerg), and if he rushes me early in the game I'm almost guaranteed to go down fast. One day I'll pwn him legitimately, but at the moment I can only keep building my skills up...

Alright, exams are a week away so let's get going...

The game map is The Hunters- Gamei . This is a slightly modified version of The Hunters, with each natural (i.e. closest expansion point) getting it's own Vespene Geyser, as opposed to some getting geysers and some not in the original map. We decided to play this map as it's easy, but not as gay as Big Game Hunters (which requires absolutely no skill in expansion or resource management). Without further adieu, the players and warp locations:


Ching and Felix went Zerg; the rest of us went Terran.

Early in the game Calvin told us to go marines. We all agreed, most of us walling in our base. On my 7th SCV, instead of walling in right outside my base, I elected to build a supply depot further up my choke so that I have my natural protected as well, and on my 11th SCV I built a barracks. Likewise, Jacky did the same. Felix, perhaps sensing that we were too n00b to rush him with marines, decided to expand to his natural using his second hatchery.

It wasn't long before first blood was drawn. 3 minutes into the game, Ching, being the aggressive person he is (just ask Boner King/PO), sent over 2 zerglings to harrass Calvin at the 10 o'clock position.



This was joined by a further two zerglings. Calvin only had one lonely marine that was quickly killed, and as further zerglings appeared Calvin had to pull SCVS off the line to shoo the rats away.



During the chaos, Ching quickly expanded to take Calvin's natural. Jackson, being the closest player to Calvin, sent reinforcements his way to help out... on the way though, he stumbled upon Ching's new expansion and proceeded to pump gauss rifle rounds into it.


Ching had to pull his zerglings from Calvin's base and defend against Jackson, where the marines were quickly killed.

At the same time though, I sent a small pimp squad of marines over to Ching's main to deal some damage...



Unfortunately, my pimpin' pimp squad wasn't so pimpin' when it counted, as Ching recalled zerglings back to his base before I could destroy his spawning pool. However, Stanley and I sent up another contingent of marines, and after quickly dispatching Ching's zerglings, proceeded to finish off the job:





With Ching's main down, it was now only a matter of time. Felix sent over a couple of zerglings to try and save him, but with Calvin and Stan's Marines/Firebats hitting Ching's expansion from both sides, it was an inevitable fall.





With momentum clearly on our side and Ching clearly eliminated, we proceeded over to Felix's base.



Fuck. This is going to be a tough nut to crack.



It was apparent that Felix still wants to play, and won't go down without a fight. With so many sunken colonies littering the front of his natural, our marines regrouped just outside and waited for reinforcements to arrive. For whatever reason I was really unproductive and lazy at this time, as although I built two factories, I wasn't making shit (except marines).

This is how the map looked like 10 minutes into the game:


Most of us had expanded into our naturals, with Stanley being the sole exception. Ching was quite obviously dead, and the mass of rainbow colours outside Felix's base is us.

As soon as the first tanks arrived and sieged up, I put my marines in front to protect them and to provide sightlines to the sunkens



Things were looking good as our tanks were taking out sunkens one by one, and any zerlings that attempted to rush us were met with stiff resistance from marines.

Little did we know however, that the skies were about to turn dark...


OMGWTF Guardians!



Needless to say, Felix's surprise defense move from above his natural caught us with our pants down, and in the confusion marines moved into range of the sunkens, people tried attacking the natural, Stanley was moving his troops I don't know where, and Jacky's fatass tanks blocked everyone from making a quick escape. I was furiously typing "MOVE TO MID, MOVE TO MID" to get us to retreat from the acid spores, but by the time we did, much of our collective forces were gone.

We really need to work on co-ordinating attacks and communicating with each other.

Seeing as we were in slight trouble, I started work on starports


In the meantime, we knew we had to stop Felix from grabbing resources (or else we'd be killed by a mass of mutalisks and guardians), so we sent in our ground troops on a suicidal raid on his expo.


Luckily, we were successful... at the moment.

A brief calm settled over the battlefield, only broken when Stanley for inexplicable reasons sent hapless marines into Felix's natural, only for them to be killed instantly by Guardians.

The next move came from Felix. Realizing that he was starting to run low on minerals and that we were right outside his base, he sent over a couple of guardians to calvin's main. Calvin, without adequate air defenses, could only lift his buildings off and watch as the guardians started destroying his base from the inside out



But wait! Right at this moment my 6th wraith was completed at my starport, and I rushed them over to save Calvin




Moans from Felix's room came as I yelled "WHAT! WHAT!"

Felix was no n00b though, and he knew that I was going to go after his guardians defending his natural. Quickly, he moved his hydralisks underneath his guardians, and his overlord into position to protect against my cloaking capabilities



... And being the dumbass I am, I ran right into his trap


Sigh...

However, this defense and counterattack probably rattled Felix a bit. He was running low on resources, with his main almost mined out, and he had to expand NOW. He gathered up his guardians and hydralisks, and proceeded to push us out from his natural

This is MA house bitches!

We fought back with a combination of marines, siege tanks, and wraiths. Jacky and Jackson were at the front of the battlefield and they lost a majority of their forces before my wraiths and Stanley's marines came to the rescue.



And what of Calvin? He had a nasty surprise waiting for Felix, after what Felix did to him...



I realized at this point that trying to co-ordinate an attack with the 3 newer players were uselss, and that Calvin was quickly trying to rebuild. If you want to get something done, you need to lead by example. I moved my wraiths to Felix's entrance, with several marines to support them from the ground



Then, obviously, I attacked.



I cloaked my wraiths and immediately went after the overlords, while the marines took care of hydralisks from the ground. Perhaps spurred by the fact that I actually attacked, the others rushed in just as my troops were decimated. Fortunately, I had already taken out pretty much all of Felix's minions. Momentum swung heavily in our favour.

As a side note, I have to say that I am really impressed with how versatile marines are. Even this late in the game, they aren't useless, even against bigger and badder enemies... except guardians, but that's only because I didn't upgrade my marines at all, thinking that they were better off as cannon fodder. I was obviously wrong. If I had stim and Uranium rounds, and a couple of weapon upgrades, they would have been absolutely dangerous, even by themselves. Once you have an expansion running, and you're low on gas from building terran metal, you usually have a bunch of minerals left, so you can pump out marines when you're bored, which really aren't absolutely weak against anything. I forgot how good Terran was.

Back to the game, as Felix's expansion falls:



Felix was done for at this point. As our troops entered from his choke, Calvin dropped at his back door and proceeded to lay waste to his buildings



Overcome from both sides, with no resources to spare, Felix left the game.

GG!

Final tallies:



I would like to thank all the Fooners for the fun night that we had. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we'll get too many more opportunities this year for a LAN party as school work is beginning to crunch down on us (again). That's okay though, cuz I have 3 more replays to use for my battlereports =P

Click HERE for the full replay!

~Eastside