Deathmatch, Part 2: Felix Vs. Ching

"What? What do you mean annihilated? How!?" Felix slammed his hands onto the large map laying on the centre of operations table. Displayed on the table was a holographic map of the planet BGH. Small, detailed models of Felix's base and the last known areas of Ching's forces floated in realtime 3D on the map, unknown areas shrouded by the darkness that is known as the fog of war.

Felix pondered this latest counter, fingers rubbing the deep furrows on his eyebrows. From emergency transmissions right before he lost contact with the 31st regiment, it seemed that Ching had already called in Wraiths. That could only mean...

"SIR!" Lieutenant Poon dashed into the center of operations. Felix looked up with urgency.

"Sir, we have received reports from outlying scouts that enemy dropships are quickly approaching our base!"

Felix pondered for a moment. Finally, he looked up at Calvin. "Lieutenant, order the construction of a comsat station right now. There are wraiths out there waiting, and all we have for defense are our turrets! Recall our Valkyries and all marine regiments at once!"

"Yes Sir!" Lt. Poon said in a huff as he left.

Reinforcements soon arrived in Felix's main base of operations. Siege tanks set up as they rolled out from factories, and several turrets were built around the SCV mineral line. Marines moved into newly built bunkers, medics and firebats standing silently outside, waiting with grim expressions on their faces.

Then suddenly, the missile turrets stopped rotating, and started firing. The wraiths have come. Targetting maps were uploaded from the turrets into all ground units, and the line of bunkers opened fire into the sky with uranium rounds pumped from the barrels of hundreds of gauss assault rifles. The sound was deafening as the wraiths streaked overhead, their cover obviously blown. Cheers and swearing rang out as wraith after wraith started falling from the sky.

And then suddenly, behind the line of defense, arc-lite seige rounds shot into the bunkers. Firebats scattered and stimmed as medics dashed back and forth flashing their optical healing rays onto wounded soldiers. Some of the marines swung their guns around and stared ready to face this sudden pincer move. Felix's seige tanks swivelled around and trained their sights as hundreds of marines, tanks and goliaths came pouring out of dropships. Some were destroyed before they got off the ships, and several dropships crashed into the ground with their cargo as missile turrets trained their SAMs on the closest ones. Felix watched all this on his virtual map with worried eyes, but was soon relieved as he saw his forces taking control of Ching's attack.

Then, it happened.

"Nuclear Launch detected SIR!" yelled a young woman at the controls of the command centre.

Felix swivelled around. "GET THAT COMSAT SWEEP OFF RIGHT AWAY!"

Meanwhile, on the battlefield, the ghost trained his laser sight right between the command centre and the line of reinforcements. "Yes, this is perfect..." thought Stanley as he grinned in anticipation of a huge fireworks display.

"WHERE IS IT?" Yelled Felix. "I WANT THAT GHOST FOUND". The comsat station finally picked up a single enemy dot on a small cliff behind the mineral line. "KILL IT!" yelled Felix...

but it was too late. A missile hurtled from the sky.

In an instant, all the SCVS, reinforcements were blown away in an ethereal flash. There was no time for screaming, no time for reactions. Just a sudden flash of light, and then nothing. Felix braced himself as the command centre lurched under the force of the nuke. Soldiers and personnel flew against the sideway. As his sight turned darker and darker as he blacked out, Felix had only one thought on his mind: Kill Ching at all costs.


Welcome to part 2 of a 3 part series here on duckspot battlereports. Last time we left off with Stanley's zerg brood prevailing over Jacky's Terran force. In our second matchup, the highly anticipated duel between the two top players in the power rankings will commence: Felix Vs. Ching.

So, without further adieu...

GET READY TO CRUMBLEEEE!!! *cue techno music*


Uh... first off, I apologize for the crappy graphics. I've just re-installed Adobe Photoshop, but all these pictures were created using MS paint. I promise better graphics from now on.

The map for this match, since these two players are true gosus, is the infamous Lost Temple (Gamei version). A favorite of pro players on the circuit, and in fact one of the most overplayed maps ever, this map is almost synonymous with Starcraft. If you're ever lost in Korea, all you have to do is yell "Lost Temple" and then everyone within a 100m radius will come and help you.

The Gamei version, similar to the Gamei version of The Hunters, deals mostly with balance changes. There are a couple of changes made to the map that discourages cheap-ass-ing (in the past, "Terran= instant win" thanks to some map features), and resources have been slightly tweaked.

Oh, and at this point I have a request: If any of you Starcraft fans out there have the WCG version of this map, please kindly send it to me or paste a link in the comments section. The reason being the WCG version under "use map settings" has space for 4 players and 4 observers. This is much simpler and more effective than the current method of observing live games (floating a CC into a far corner, killing your own SCVS and then asking the other players to share vision with you). After observing games a couple of times, it became pretty clear that standing and looking over a player's shoulder while they're trying to fight with each other is inconvenient for all, and since we all have our own computers, why not just view the game like one would view an episode of Heroes or Wangan Midnight?

Anyways, continuing on...

Ching started off as blue Terran on the 12 o'clock start position. His build was rather standard at first: on his 8th SCV he built a supply depot; 10th he built a Barracks; 14th he built another supply depot and a refinery at the same time. Clearly, he was going heavy metal.

Felix, on the other hand, took an even bigger gamble than Stanley did in the first deathmatch, by expanding to his natural on his 13th drone!

This is extremely risky.

On a map like The Hunters where one has mass money, it's very easy to recover if your early expo was attacked. On the Lost Temple, however, where resources are more scarce, it's usually GG if your opponent comes knocking on your front door. Felix could have lost the game right here if Ching had decided to attack.

Ching, however, wasn't interested in early attacks, instead turtling with a Terran-like slowness:


Notice how Ching managed to create an artificial wall around his base using buildings. However, I am of the opinion that a simple 2-depot-1-barracks wall-in is much more effective. Lost temple is notoriously easy to wall in using this method (even more so than on The Hunters), as it's hard to screw up a wall-in. Ching was content, however, with his build, and proceeded to mass troops, building a factory about 4 minutes into the game.

Meanwhile, Felix's newly created hatchery finished morphing in, and he sent over a few drones to create sunken colonies for defense.


Up and running natural expo

5 minutes into the game, and Ching and Felix are continuing to mass and tech, respectively. Ching started building his first siege tank, at the same time researching siege mode. Felix morphed in a spire at his natural and a Queen's nest back home in his main.

As I sat in Felix's chair (he was using my laptop in Calvin's room) observing the game on the screen, with Jacky furiously doing his lab on a Friday night beside me, I looked on with amazement at these two players. Taking a sip of the sprite I stole from their fridge, I knew that this game was going to end in a very gay way, depending on what happens in the next 2-3 minutes.

My hunch proved correct as 8.5 minutes into the game, Felix, running off of the strength of his economy and with his spire now morphed in, started pumping mutalisks and upgraded his spire into a greater spire. Finally, both players began to move in something that could be called "offense".

Felix, looking to scout Ching's base to see how far he's come along, sent over a drone to investigate Ching's build orders. The little guy sneaked along the walls of the factories, but was suddenly spotted by a siege tank. Without enough time to let out more than a weak scream, the siege tank murdered the drone in cold blood:



Felix looked on with anger and sadness. A tear trickled down his cheek as he swore revenge on Ching for killing his favorite drone pet, Fluffy.

Ching, meanwhile, FINALLY decides to go on the offensive, setting up a good ol' Terran camp right outside Felix's natural:



Felix, still obviously swore with the loss of his favorite drone, moves his mutalisks right outside Ching's base... and proceeds to morph some of them...


It's the infamous flying crabs, Guardians! I'm thinking at this point that perhaps guardians are Felix's favorite units... there's not one game that goes by, when he plays as zerg, where he doesn't make guardians. They're pretty gay, but I suppose they're better than upgraded Ultralisks... and defilers.

Anyways, once Felix's guardians were finally morphed, he went straight for Ching's backdoor



Now Ching was in deep shit, and he knew it. He moved his forces towards Felix's natural while lifting his command centre and other buildings, trying to buy time so he can destroy Felix. But... well...


It's not going to happen =/

As Felix continued to ravage Ching's base


It was pretty much GG.

Final Scores:



Click HERE for the replay!

Post Game Analysis

The reason why Ching lost was pretty obvious. He didn't attack until it was too late. No more, no less.

His first mistake was pretty simple: He didn't scout out Felix. If you looked closely in the replay, Ching scouted the other two locations, which means he knew where Felix was, but not what he was building. If he had seen Felix's expansion, he could have adjusted his strategy, going for early marines and the early kill. Instead, he allowed Felix to expand unmolested, granting him a huge resource (and thus, time) advantage early in the game.

His second mistake was that he didn't even bother going on the offensive until 12 minutes into the game. By common sense alone, that would mean that Felix could either have created a million units, or he could have even teched to the very tip of the zerg tech-tree if he wanted. Ching, up until perhaps about 5 minutes into the game, had every chance to pressure Felix and perhaps draw the game out, where he perhaps could have won. Instead, he turtled and allowed Felix to do whatever he wanted, unmolested.

The other strange thing to note was that in post-game commentary, Ching mentioned that he knew that Felix was going for mutalisks. Yet, throughout his turtling, Ching didn't seem to take any countermeasures for possible attacks. No wraiths, not enough missile turrets, not goliaths, etc. It was very puzzling, to say the least.

In terms of power rankings, this game didn't outright determine why Ching lost his #1 spot to Felix. In this particular game, Ching just didn't seem to be in his normal uh... Ching-y state (which is to say, mass units very early and go for the rush). That being said, these two players are still extremely close, so I do expect #1 and #2 to be mixed up frequently.

The reason for Ching's loss is because Felix is a better user of all three races, and has better micro. In a couple of team games on The Hunters, there was this one instance where I was trapped in the top left position, with Felix on the top mid. Here I knew I was in trouble, because my choke is shared with his, and he walled me off very early in the game. I tried going for dragoons very fast in order to destroy his bunkers, but not only does Felix build units as fast as Ching normally does, he also has micro. He lifted up his barracks to use as a sight for his tanks, and moves his troops around so that they defend his tanks well. In that game, I had to abandon my main and shuttle my probes and defending units to another starting position. As mentioned, Felix seems to be better using all three units than Ching. Ching is good using zerg (his best race I think), and Protoss, but when it comes to Terran, he seems to have trouble effectively using marines and tanks properly. I can't really discuss one on one games because I have only seen them play against each other once. But based on team play alone, Felix is superior to Ching, albeit the difference is almost like splitting a hair. They're really THAT close.

I would like to thank Felix and Ching for allowing me to view this epic battle of Gosus, and for everyone over at the Fooner's HQ for allowing me to steal their drinks and food. I suppose next time it's my turn to bring a pizza or something.

Look out for the final deathmatch report, coming out soon.