Cang agreed to Rivlary on the faster setting. I had thought him a Terran-only player with good micro, but he picked toss on me. I'm not the best Toss v Toss player in the world but I just didn't want to pick Zerg this game.

Anyways, I got bottom right and he got bottom left as Protoss. This would be a very close game for the first 6-7 mintues.

I did the usual Pylon on 8, gateway on 10 then again on 12. My probe that made the first gate scouted him at the bottom left corner. I saw he was doing the same thing as me but my probe died before I had a chance to respond to the attack signal. I think it got stuck in his probe line and got smushed or something.

He rushed me early with 5 zealots. I only had 3 zel vs his 5 becuase I stalled production to get early gas. My scouting zel had run into a pack of 3 zealots half way to his base, so I pulled him back to my ramp with half his life gone. I noticed that 2 more of his zealots were right behind his front 3. This is where it gets scary.

The Micro battle of my life:

I had my 3 zel stand atop the ramp so that he had to engage 2 of his zealots vs 3 of mine. 2 of my zealots began to attack his lower zealot. I noticed he did not order his attacking zealots to focus on one of my zealots at a time. I pulled the Top zealot that was going 1v1 with his upper zealot away. His other zealots were trying to get up the ramp but were running around stupid becuase his frontal zel were still in the way. One of his zealots was dead and I had no losses yet, just 2 badly damaged zealots and 1 healthy one. Luckily, I had a cyber core warping in.

The rest of his zealots came up the ramp and I had to back off and regroup. I used unit que within my 2 gateways to have zealots trained while I did my maneuvering. Unfortuanely I forgot to reset my rally points that were tageted at my choke and lost a few seconds of control.

I was able to kill the zealot that had went 1v1 during the inital skirmish right away but I lost a zealot in the process. It was my 2 zelaots vs his 3 now, and 1 of mine was already close to dead.

I let him chase my zealots a bit, poking him every time he targeted one and not the other, and lost another zealot as 2 fresh ones popped out. When I think back I realize that I had a butt-load of probes I could have used for possible delaying actions, but in the end it didn't matter. I had started training a goon in one gateway and zelaot in another.

He had 3 healthy zealots, which would beat 2 healthy and 1 damaged zealot, so I had to run and poke a bit, losing 2 more zealots.

I had both gates que with extra zel so I could manage my fight and still keep up. I teched rather fast and that was the reason I thought I was going to lose. He soon had reinforcemtns, and eventually he had 3 zels chasing my 2 zels around while I made goons in the unit que. Long story short: I did more goon dancing and Zealot dancing than I had ever had to do in any SC game. He tried for the probes once but a goon firing at zelots makes it hard for attack-move junkies to get kills.

When I finally got my choke defended by 2 zel and 2 goons I went straight to DT. I knew I had better macro skills than my opponent and had far more tech options at that point becuase the second I saw I was in control of the fight I started to tech further. I used one DT to help defend my choke with 1 cannon, a zealot and a goon.

My second DT went stright to his base. His choke was bare. I went in and got behind his peon line. His cannons covered roughly 3/4ths of the line. I made a few kills (like 4) in all before it died. I noticed he teched to temps as well.

I ran 2 probes to the top corners of the map for scouting and future expanding. He had a Nexus warping in at top right. His probe at that expansion killed mine becuase I heard an attack signal from home base. I could hear a cannon firing but didn't see what was going on. I checked the health of my buldings and saw that my temp archive was damaged but not beyond shileds. He had dropped a DT in my base and was looking for a place to attack freely. I don't know if the DT died but the cannon fire stopped and I put up another cannon, teched to PSI, and moved 6 speedy zels up to top to stop the expansion. Lucky for me he had no units there, just a cannon or 2 warping in. I expanded top left as I killed his exp.

I had a DT stationed at his natural but he lured it into his base when I was expanding and killed it.

From there I went into contain mode. At one point I noticed a cannon creep at my expansion. I laughed and threw up cannons and attacked his main with a mid size goon/zel/DT rush. It didn't win the game but it allowed me to make take his mind off his cannon push. I really didn't care to micro that battle, I just attack-moved my men in and forgot about them while I upgraded and focused on getting my expansion running full steam.

After that battle I was fighting 3 zelots with 1 goon and 1 DT I had sitting outside his base. I danced the Goon around over and over and let the DT do his thing. I lost the goon eventually but killed all 3 zealots. I couldn't believe it. I even took time to macro as I did that. LoL.

After a few good rushes with suicide PSI stroms on his peons he said GG as my twin reavers were being shipped over with HT and Goons.

I would not adivse any protoss player to make a templar arhive before getting reavers unless the situation is very special.

My situation was special becuase I knew I had gone up the tech tree while holding off waves of low tech units. That means that during the fight he could have done 1 of 2 things:

1.)Teched or,
2.)Cannoned.

If he had teched the first DT would have killed or crippled him until he got an observer out. If he had cannoned up I would be able to mess with anything out of cannon range and could also expand with impunity. As it turned out he did a little of both: slow tech with 2 cannons. The cannons slowed down his tech to observers. Since he made a forge he should have cannoned his natural or at least his choke.

Because I knew that my oppnent was one track-minded during attacks I knew I could take him if I could beat his rush. I wrote this report in the hope that people won't give up when they are outnumbered during a rush. $500 may not be your motivation to win a match, but you should always do your best and go down swinging. If you are ever rushed, don't foget the following things:

1.)Unit production/control
2.)Supply
3.)Tech.

If you can keep your mind on the entire game you can defintaly win even if you are on forced the defensive.

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NCG RULEZ.