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Zalpus VS -=RaRe=-
-Page 1-
Note: It is highly recommended that you wait for at least five minutes on a speedy modem for this to load, longer for slower modems. Highly, highly recommended. I'm on a cable modem, and it still takes a while for this br to load. So... be patient, and when everything's all done loading you may continue reading this battlereport.
This is my second finished BR, organized in two pages. Please comment
on this BR and give me some feedback on what I should improve in my next
BRs (or if this is really really bad, that I should never write another
BR again). I took over 350 screenshots this game, but I lost the first
100 because I accidentally overwrited them =[ Oops. So you won't be seeing
any screenshots in the beginning of this BR. I'll try to compress the
early game so we can get on to the pictures.
| This game takes place on the over-played Lost Temple, with Zalpus picking
Terran at the 12:00 start position and -=RaRe=- choosing to command the
Protoss, warping in at the 9:00 start location. Mediocritus is my fellow
observer. Both players choose to tech a bit instead of performing a quick
rush; -=RaRe=- goes for dragoons, making only a couple token zealots to
hold his ramp, while Zalpus goes straight for vultures, skipping marine
production entirely and only constructing one barracks at his ramp along
with supply depots to create the famous Terran wall-in. |
| As soon as -=RaRe=- has about 5 dragoons, he decides to attack the Terran
base, having scouted with a probe earlier. The dragoons pick off the wall-in
supply depots from the ramp while taking some damage from the 4-5 vultures
Zalpus has, and soon break into the base. But with some nice micromanagement
and mine-laying and reinforcing vultures, Zalpus is able to fight off the
attack, taking only minimal damage. Zalpus then continues his vulture production,
while also beginning to produce tanks. He has three factories at this time,
two with machine-shops and one vulture-producing-specialist looking lonely
without a companion add-on. -=RaRe=- has three gateways and is warping in
a Templar Archives, still producing dragoons as the backbone of his army.
Zalpus soon has 6+ tanks in siege mode on his base perimeter near his ramp,
with more constantly in production, and plenty of vultures waiting for orders
in his base. |
| -=RaRe=- then expands to his natural, and chooses this time to attack
the Terran base again. He brings a control-group of dragoons and one newly-made
high templar, armed with the deadly psionic storm. This attack squad pauses
for a few seconds outside Zalpus's choke, then the dragoons begin to fire
at the tanks on the cliff. But even with the aid of storm, the dragoons
are unable to destroy the tanks, and only the templar and a few surviving
dragoons manage to retreat back outside the Terran choke. By now, Zalpus
has quite a few tanks and vultures, and two starports with add-ons as well,
and he decides to expand both to his natural and to the top-left island..
-=RaRe=- is still relying on his dragoons, of which he has many, along with
the occassional high templar, being produced out of four gateways now. |
|
It is at this time that Zalpus chooses to
perform the dreaded four-vulture drop. He loads up a dropship with
four vultures, orders the transport to take a roundabout route to
the rear of the Protoss main base, and then proceeds to unload the
drunk bike riders, who happily lay spider mines all over the base
and then pick on the poor and innocent probes who are industriously
mining, oblivious to their danger. Because the gateways have their
rallypoints set to the Protoss choke, newly-produced dragoons walk
right past the raiding vultures, and the bike riders are able to
destroy every single probe at the Protoss main before -=RaRe=-
is able to bring his dragoons over to his minerals to get rid of
the vultures. Three out of the four vultures are blasted to pieces
by the furious dragoons, but the one surviving vulture escapes the
onslaught by running past the dragoons and down the ramp into the
Protoss natural. He then proceeds to assassinate a high templar,
and begins to fire his grenades at a second templar as it unleashes
a psionic storm on the biker. The vulture, unpeturbed, moves out
of the storm's area and continues to attack the templar. However,
the dragoons have finished destroying the other vultures, and are
now marching down the ramp to kill the remaining one. It's a race
to see who would get knocked out first: the templar or the vulture.
As it turned out, they both died at exactly the same time - the
vulture makes a nice little explosion, and the high templar does
its little disappearing trick. So Zalpus's
four gosu vultures had all died, but only after taking out two high
templar and destroying -=RaRe=-'s economy
for a while, because even though he had an expansion, -=RaRe=-
had not yet brought his probes there up to full mining capacity.
|
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| Well, now that I have my screenshots back, let's
take a look at the minimap. Zalpus is teal, and -=RaRe=- is orange. To review,
Zalpus controls the Terran and -=RaRe=- is commanding the Protoss. As you
can see, Zalpus started at the top, and -=RaRe=- started at the 9:00 start
position. Circled is -=RaRe=-'s containment force, which consists of one
high templar and a bunch of dragoons. |
 |
 |
Zalpus controls two expansions, his natural and the top-left
island, while -=RaRe=- has only one, his natural. -=RaRe=- has his rallypoints
for his four gateways set to his natural's choke, so his expansion and his
main base are well protected from almost any ground attack by his own ground
force, which mainly consists of dragoons and the occassional high templar.
Zalpus's expansions are only lightly defended, with a few tanks and turrets.
He is not mining very hard from his two expansions, with only a few SCVs
gathering minerals and gas. |
| Zalpus decides to test the waters and perhaps expand again by sending
out an SCV to the 3:00 starting location. The SCV encounters the containment
dragoon force, but succeeds in getting past them by skirting along the edge
of the group of the scary bad guys with rotating *ahems* around their legs
that shoot white glob things. I thought it was pretty funny because the
entire squad of dragoons followed the lone SCV to the 3:00 starting
spot, effectively abandoning their containment and leaving only one high
templar to guard Zalpus's choke. The SCV made it all the way to the 3:00
vespene geyser before getting pelted by dragoon fire. If Zalpus had only
realized what had happened, he could have snuck another SCV down to the
6:00 start location to expand, or bring out his tanks or something, because
he didn't have to worry about the containment dragoons for the 30 seconds
his SCV inadvertantly bought for him. Oh well. |
| |
 |
| Zalpus, although already being ahead resource-wise,
decides to deprive -=RaRe=- of his natural expansion and attempts a tank
drop on -=RaRe=-'s cliff. He drops off a siege tank, two vultures, and a
few SCVs as well to construct turrets and repair. However, Zalpus is met
by -=RaRe=-'s two dragoons already placed on the cliff in anticipation of
this very tactic. They are quickly disposed of and Zalpus begins construction
of a turret. But -=RaRe=-, realizing the danger of this threat to his expansion,
drops off a reaver right next to the siege tank, to get under the tank's
minimum fire range, and shoots its scarabs at the tank. Zalpus frantically
unsieges the tank, but it is quickly destroyed before it can get a shot
off at the reaver. However, while unsieging his tank, Zalpus has also been
ordering his three SCVs and his two vultures to concentrate fire on the
reaver, and they succeed in blowing up the reaver just as it fires a scarab
to destroy two SCVs and a vulture with its splash damage, leaving only one
SCV and vulture as the survivors of the foiled tank drop. |
 |
| Zalpus takes this opportunity to drop two
SCVs and a few tanks and vultures onto the 3:00 start location, a
nice move because -=RaRe=-'s dragoons were just returning from that
spot after killing the rogue SCV that had led them away from their
containment duty, and -=RaRe=- wouldn't expect an expansion there
again. -=RaRe=- expands to the 6:00 start position a little later. |
|
| Zalpus decides he requires a little more breathing room. He
floats an engineering bay over -=RaRe=-'s containment dragoons to spot for
his siege tanks, and a couple dragoons are whacked before -=RaRe=- pulls
them back, along with some reinforcing dragoons. So to recap what's been
going on so far: Zalpus has four expansions to -=RaRe=-'s three. -=RaRe=-
has a containment force of dragoons and a templar sitting at Zalpus's choke
to keep Zalpus from getting any units out of his base. Scouting is somewhat
nonexistant - -=RaRe=- does not have observers and Zalpus only has those
previously-laid spider mines in -=RaRe=-'s base to provide recon. Zalpus
is going mainly with unit produced from his four factories, particularly
siege tanks, and -=RaRe=- is creating mostly dragoons from his five gateways,
although they don't fare too well and are not the unit of choice against
tanks. Neither player has launched a major attack on the other, and the
only battles so far have been two Terran drops (one attempted turbo-newbie
and one mineral-line directed), two small Protoss frontal assaults, and
two sorta accidental skirmishes. Although Zalpus has the upper-hand in resources,
-=RaRe=- pretty much has the map to himself because of his containment force,
and seems to be ahead at this point. |
 |
| -=RaRe=- decides to send a dragoon to the 3:00 start
position to keep Zalpus from expanding there. Of course, Zalpus already
had a base there, something -=RaRe=- found out quickly when his dragoon
died to two mines at the ramp placed by Zalpus's vultures. But at
the same time, Zalpus, getting a little tired of those dragoons sitting
around in front of his base, places a few siege tanks below his ramp.
The tanks siege, the tanks fire, they hit some dragoons, some dragoons
get mad, the dragoons attack tanks, and mayhem ensues. |
 |
 |
 |
| The end result was a general sensation of blue goo.
-=RaRe=- lost pretty much all the dragoons he had basecamping in front
of Zalpus's choke, while Zalpus lost only a couple siege tanks and
one or two vultures. Zalpus now has the potential to break open this
game, as he still has a dozen or so tanks and quite a few vultures,
while -=RaRe=- is short 15 dragoons and without his containment. However,
he still has four gateways producing dragoons nonstop, and a whole
bunch of base-defense dragoons just waiting for him to give the order
to fight for Aiur. -=RaRe=- has also upgraded his ground troops to
+3 attack, +2 armor, and +1 shield, while Zalpus has his mechanical
units outfitted with +2 attack and +2 armor upgrades. |
 |
Not wanting Zalpus to gain a resource advantage,
-=RaRe=- decides to raze Zalpus's 3:00 expansion to the ground, which
incidentally houses a nuclear silo. He sends about a control-group
of dragoons, hoping that the base is lightly defended, which it is
with a couple tanks, a few spider mines, a turret, and two vultures.
-=RaRe=- is delayed a bit by the mines and vultures, but soon pushes
forward, only to be delayed further by the dreaded message that can
only mean one thing: a nuke. He quickly abandons his invading dragoons
and desperately searches for that damn red dot. |
| Unfortunately, -=RaRe=- evidently could not find the
nuke's location in time, as the nuclear missile successfully dropped
and destroyed an EMP-ed nexus, as well as seriously damaging a gateway.
Of course, being the incredible observer that I am, I missed the nuking
process and failed to obtain a good screenshot :[ And don't ask why
that menu thing is there. Whatever. But anyway, this nuke hit -=RaRe=-
pretty hard. This base was -=RaRe=-'s primary mining source, because
his main was just about mined out and his 6:00 expansion was just
coming online, and his 400-mineral nexus and dozens of probes were
destroyed by a single nuke. |
 As
you can see, in the aftermath, two ghosts were left to deal with two
dragoons. The ghosts cloaked, lockdowned the dragoons, and proceeded
to destroy both of them =] |
 |
-=RaRe=-, being the determined sort of guy, gets over
his mourning over the loss of his expansion and turns his attention
back to his dragoons at the 3:00 expansion. He continues where he
left off and orders his dragoons to pummel all Terran structures and
units in sight. A few goons are lost to some mines, but the others
are left unmolested to take down the fledgling expansion. |
 |
Zalpus, however, either didn't notice his expansion
going down or didn't think it important, as he sent no unit reinforcements.
-=RaRe=-, of course, doesn't mind, and summarily wipes out the expansion,
leaving only metallic rubble behind. He then sends his dragoons back
down the ramp and orders them to loosely contain Zalpus in front of
his base. |
| Zalpus does not like the fact that -=RaRe=- has gotten
his 6:00 main expansion online, and sends down a fast contingent of
vultures to take it down. He rallies them at the natural choke, and
then sends them in. |
 |
| However, they end up inflictin only nominal damage, ending the robotic
lives of a few probes before coming under heavy fire by photon cannons
and dragoons. Vultures do not fare well against buildings or large
units such as dragoons, and so -=RaRe=- quickly disposed of the threat. |
| Meanwhile, back at home, Zalpus and -=RaRe=- had gathered
their forces together, both still using their units of choice from
the beginning of the game - dragoons and Terran mech - and began preparing
for a confrontation. Zalpus sieged his tanks at his natural choke,
and -=RaRe=- brought up his dragoons to the center of the map outside
Zalpus's base. Both sides knew they had to maneuver very cautiously,
lest they cross the red line and suffer great losses. My fellow observer
mediocritus chose this time to make his exit and left the game for
domestic reasons [he had to go eat or something]. |
 |
| -=RaRe=- chooses this time to expand to the 3:00 start
position, warping in a nexus guarded by a few dragoons. |
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And so concludes page one of this battlereport.
I apologize for the inconvenience of having two pages, but my BR happened
to exceed the character limit. So click the back button on your browser,
go to the next page, read, and then comment. Thanks,
Inssider
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