"I'll kill the first one to attack me."
-Mark4
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| The adventures of "Lurk", an OL of vision and courage | | | Author: | | | IP: | erbium-aXXXX | | Date: | 03/06/00 08:03 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 5, Min: 5
Lifetime Rating for tokenresistance: 6.6667 |  | This goes back a couple of weeks, and it’s a little short on some details because of a lack of bandwidth in my memory cells, but it has a theme and other interesting stuff.
Map: Lost Temple
Me, picked zerg, 12:00
My worthy and viciously determined, but sportsmanlike opponent, picked toss, 3:00 (hereafter known as My Worthy Opponent, or MWO for short)
Initial scouting ended speculation about MWO's location very quickly, as my initial OL (let's call him "Lurk" from now on, as that seemed to fit his character perfectly) found a nexus almost immediately. I bet against an early zeal rush and double-hatched, both hatches near my mineral line, and then got my pool. I had a minute or so of trepidation as I saw a zeal come straight out of a gate and make his way towards my base. My pool hadn't finished yet. I hastily morphed a creep colony behind a hatchery for initial defence, but it proved unnecessary for the moment. After his initial scouting probe had left he seemed content to mass his troops below my ramp leading to my main. One chance missed for him, although at least for the moment he had map control.
I found myself accumulating cash very quickly because I went turbo economy at first, so I made a third hatchery and a hydra den, also near my mineral line, plus I started morphing lair. Meanwhile, my initial OL "Lurk" had drifted his way over to the ledge near MWO's natural such that I could see if MWO threw up an assimilator at his natural expansion and I could see when troops started to accumulate at the base of his ramp. No assimilator appeared for a while, which to me suggested that he was probably massing troops below my main for a possible assault. I focused on unit mass, hydra upgrades, OL upgrades, and lurker tech. Periodically I sent out single lings to see what he was up to down below my ramp. He had large numbers of goons and zeals, plus a few temps eventually.
To this point, it had been a tense standoff, with neither player anxious to charge the ramp to or from my main. However, shortly after I morphed 3 lurkers he sent a temp up my ramp and landed a storm, beautifully, on one burrowed lurker and about six hydras while my attention was elsewhere. All dead. Seconds later his entire army charged up my ramp and proceeded to try to tear down my main. I morphed more hydras whenever possible, and my two remaining lurkers did their job very effectively before finally succumbing to a well-placed storm (yup, put 'em too close together. My bad.). But, the sheer weight of his "tossedness" required the eventual intervention of my drones to save the day. I remember being surprised when I pressed my drones into battle to realize that I had close to two hotkeys worth droning away. By their sheer numbers they proved very effective at helping turn the tide. I also lost very few of them because the toss units mostly auto-targeted my hydras and my two sunkens. After the toss'd cyclone had blown its way through I rebuilt a sunken that had disappeared in the assault and went back to mining & morphing troops.
Almost immediately afterwards, Lurk, my initial and most beloved OL (don't tell the others, I don't want them to be jealous), spotted an assimilator back at MWO's natural expansion and a small number of goons and zeals near the base of his ramp. I was relieved to see him mass there as that suggested to me that he didn't have a lot of units left. Spotting my opportunity, I moved my newly hatched (and also beloved) hydras and lings down out of my main and expanded to my natural. Not long afterwards, I was finally capable of making drops.
My favorite OL, Lurk, having reported to me that toss was accumulating troops near his natural, convinced me of the wisdom of dropping the toss main. So, I loaded up 4 OLs with mixed lings and hydras and followed his advice.
I always have some trepidation when dropping against toss because you never know when a storm will blow … and if it blows where you're landing you've just wasted a lot of cash. I chose the extreme northern tip of his main, to the right and north of his assimilator. Dropping there brings a big payoff if things go smoothly but also carries a high risk as a couple of quick and well-timed storms can destroy the entire drop. But, the drop went amazingly well, as there was no temp nearby and cannon resistance was slight and almost immediately disposed of. My leapin' lings and happy hydras made themselves a feast of quite a few robotic probe parts before the remainder fled and I even got to tear down MWO's nexus by focus-firing on it as the toss defenders arrived to rip up my loyal, if somewhat bad-smelling troops.
Meanwhile, in a minor miracle of macro for me, I had remembered to morph more hydras just after I had queued up my drop, and so with the toss troops busy finishing up my drop-in troops I attack-moved all my remaining troops into the toss natural expansion. I had Lurk do spot-duty for dtemps, but none were in evidence. Much to my pleasure, I found two temps by themselves doing what looked like extreme heavy breathing (you know how they heave their arms up and down when they stand in one place) and I proceeded to kill them. Just after beginning that delightful process his troops which he had scooted into his main to save it returned to set about killing my hydras. I chose to ignore them and focus on killing the two temps. After my mission was completed I retreated my remaining troops to the top of my ramp in my main.
I wasn't to realize until a couple of minutes later how much it would help me to kill those particular temps.
I expanded again to the 9:00 start position and shifted Lurk's position to see how MWO's natural expansion was faring. I noticed, to my surprise, only a couple cannons and no temp close to his nexus, committed to its defence. I set about planning my next drop, right on the mineral line of his natural expansion (I'd love to have him storm his own mineral line.).
Having hurt his mining, and with large numbers of troops pouring out 5 of hatcheries (by that point), I took map control and bottled MWO up in his base. At the last minute, after shifting over some errant OLs (they had all been hanging out together, chit-chatting about nothing important all by themselves), I loaded up all my "map control" troops, 6 OLs worth, and headed for his natural.
I shift-queued a "doughnut formation" drop, with the bottom of the doughnut right on his mineral line and his nexus forming the hole in the middle. I didn't want to make it too easy to storm all my troops, and I hoped my "advance" troops closest to his troops would serve as "blockers" to keep his troops and temps away from my other units long enough to do serious damage to his probe count and his nexus.
After queueing up the drop, I morphed more units around the map and went back to my drop to find that my timing had been a bit off, as the drop had dropped and I saw the familiar crackle of psionic lightning just before quite a few of my troops turned into red splotches on the map. However, I noticed that no probes were in evidence. I saw his lone temp in the area nearby, and I immediately focused fire on it and killed it. I then clicked on his nexus and found, to my pleasant surprise, that it was already in bad shape. Meanwhile, his troops were pouring into the area, killing my surviving troops. I ignored them and focused fire on the nexus, bringing it down before the last of my troops was killed.
Having killed those two temps earlier reduced his storm-capable temps in the area to one, allowing me enough time to bring down his nexus instead of simply succumbing to multiple storms.
I should have realized he might try for a desperation attack, but I kind of figured he'd say "gg" at that point. But, very shortly afterwards, as I'd started morphing more troops in all my hatcheries, he launched his final assault.
For somebody who had just lost two nexii, hordes of probes, and mixed troops during the game the sheer ferocity of MWO's final attack was stunning. I don't know how he produced them all as it looked like a zeal 'n goon convention on Shakuras. I didn't think my two sunkens and scattered defences could possibly hold out. All I could do is throw every unit I had at his troops and hope.
I emerged victorious from that battle, albeit barely, and I also emerged with respect for MWO's abilities and fighting spirit. We’d both made substantial errors of judgment and some micro errors, but he fought hard all the way through. He also proved to be a gentleman, both in that game and in the rematch (which he won by beating down my early zergish expansion with zeals and probes).
Three things won me this particular game. I kept producing units virtually non-stop, not wasting larva. That was absolutely key. Second, my favorite OL, Lurk, provided me with invaluable information about his troop count and disposition, his expansion timing, and cannon and troop placement at his natural expansion. These bits and pieces of information helped me make critical decisions about when to expand, where to place my troops, and where and when to drop. Third, I was pretty lucky that he made some key mistakes, such as not defending well enough against drops and giving away map control by attacking my main earlier in the game without any guarantee of success.
Although, in a way that's kind of difficult to explain, the drops weren't really luck. His playing style "oozed" aggression and relatively few players who ooze aggression plan their defences well. Those who do are "gosu", and although he was pretty good he wasn't "gosu". I just kind of knew drops would be the way to go against him.
The last thing that helped me was playing in a way comfortable to me. I set up three hatches near my minerals to improve my macro, even though it cost me in terms of "optimal" hatch placement. Its standard to build a hatch at the ramp to one's main and sunken up. However, by placing my hatches all together, I just pressed the "0" hotkey twice in rapid succession, then pressed "ctrl" as well as a larva, and was able to produce troops and workers very efficiently. As I am a little old in the tooth and slow in the reflexes, favoring efficiency in the number of keystrokes used to achieve things over "optimality" in hatchery placement seems to be the way to go for me.
Finally, the theme. The deadliest unit is not the lurker, not the OL, but … (drum roll please) the "Lurking OL". With Lurk-the-OL's help I had better scouting than he did which allowed me to time and place my attacks better. He just picked a moment to attack me that seemed propitious based on instinct and occasional "ramp-scouting" with advance zeals, and it turned out badly as he lost map control.
Moving beyond the "scouting is important" cliché, maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of scouting efforts is absolutely key. MWO scouted from time to time as well, but he had to move units around and micro stuff. I mostly just looked at the minimap from time to time to see what Lurk had in his sight range and clicked over whenever a new red splotch appeared near Lurk. Also, I'm pretty much certain MWO wasn't able to learn as much from his scouting endeavors as I was, thanks to Lurk's invaluable assistance.
Hope you found it enjoyable. And if you do run into Lurk when you're in the bar sometime, go up and say hello. He's very sociable. :)
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