"you wanted to rustle mah scorpions"
-Jamellan
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| Vanilla SC Tourney Finals | | | Author: | | | IP: | PPP-155-XXXX | | Date: | 11/29/00 01:11 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | Famous Reporter(1), Starcraft(1), Gorgeous(1), Great Writing(1) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 4, Max: 10, Min: 9
Lifetime Rating for DrAwesome: 9.0000 |   |
For weeks I've been waiting for a game to battle report.
Weeks ago, LG:)TuRReT, a friend of mine, planned to have a 32 man 2on2 tournament and promised me that I could watch the finals.
He never showed up.
Well, he finally hosted a new tournament, this time, once again, there were 32 people, but it was 1on1 matchups. LG:)TuRReT also once again made me an official observer, but I felt the need for blood and decided to enter the tournament. Since, well, I'm not very good, I was out on my second match, thereby freeing me up to fulfill my observer duties. After watching many games and relogging on to b.net countless times in order to thwart the server splits, everyone was finally ready for the finals. The two players that remained were: D4RK and .:+:LoSeR:+:. (actually a smurf; as we found out, his real handle is 1st~Chobo).
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Map: Bob's Obs Lost Temple
Players:
.:+:LoSeR:+:. - white (random) terran 12:00
D4RK - purple (random) zerg 6:00
Observers:
DrAwesome (bengalaas ^^)
MatrisKing
Tourny_Host (LG:)TuRReT)
LG:)Drow
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.:+:LoSeR:+:. did a normal terran build vs. a random opponent, with a supply depot on 8, a barracks on 10, and another depot on 11, effectively forming a wall-in. He followed that up with another barracks on 12 and more depots, workers, marines, etc etc you get the picture. D4RK got an overlord on 8, performed the extractor trick on 9, bringing his population to 10/9. This was followed up with a hatchery at his natural on 11 and a pool immediately after. As soon as his hatchery at his natural finished, D4RK sent two drones to morph into sunken colonies.
Well, both .:+:LoSeR:+:. and D4RK turned out to be expansion whores so, of course, they both expanded very fast. .:+:LoSeR:+:. built a CC at his main and floated it to his natural, bringing his number of bases to 2, while D4RK sent a drone to the 9:00 main to begin a hatchery, bringing his base count to 3. Yes... I know, he's getting a second expansion before a hydra den... before his opponent has even scouted him. Its risky, but, if undiscovered, it might work.
.:+:LoSeR:+:. continued to tech and power by building a factory and a machine shop as well as maynard transferring some drones to his natural as WELL as sending a force of 10 marines and 2 SCVs to D4RK's natural. Before the attack force could arrive, however, D4RK built a hydra den, an evolution chamber, and an additional two sunkens at his natural.
As the marines tromped over the sacred grounds of the temple, they happened to see a drone coming towards them, a telltale sign of zerg infestation in the area. In disgust, they targeted it and eliminated it before their commander could tell them not to. .:+:LoSeR:+:. unwittingly gave away his position, allowing D4RK time to prepare. When the force of marines arrived at D4RK's natural, he had 3 sunkens, and one more morphing, with a tremendous backup force of 1 hydralisk. Needless to say, 4 sunks > 10 marines and 2 useless SCVs that, due to the "attack move" assignment that the group had recieved, ran strait into the sunken grid.
.:+:LoSeR:+:. retreated his men before he lost too many, and sent them back to his base, right as his factory was finishing and at about the same time that he expanded again.  He once again built a CC at his main, this time on the far bottom left of the plateau, and floated it to his mineral only expansion.
D4RK decided at this point, that a counter-attack might be in order. A bit late I know, but better late than never right? Right?? He sent 11 hydralisks north and encountered a familiar problem ;] . Well, .:+:LoSeR:+:. was sending a SCV south to scout, when all of a sudden, it exploded in a furious blast of razor-sharp spines. .:+:LoSeR:+:.'s command centers recieved this information and relayed it immediately to the troops, allowing them time to prepare. A squadron of marines that were previously stationed at the natural choke were sent west from the natural entrace in an attempt to flank the hydras when they arrived at the front door. Unfortunately, the marines were seen by the lurking zerg beasties and were promptly targeted. .:+:LoSeR:+:., seeing his plan crumble, sent his men back, under hydralisk spine fire. Ouch, maybe seven marines were lost as the hydras effortlessly shot.
At this point I almost decided who I wanted to win the match =).  I had been randomly moving my bengalaas around the map the entire game, not attempting to annoy or hurt anyone, when I decided to have some fun with it. I sent him to dance around D4RK's army, when the zerg cerebrate obviously got scared about the fact that there was a bengalaas on the map. "stupid tiger" (or something to that effect) was muttered and my poor, defenseless bengalaas went up in smoke.
Moments after winning this small scuffle (both the one against the marines, and the one against my bengalaas), D4RK sent another 10 hydralisks from his main to reinforce his army.
The first tank rolled off the assembly line with a gruff, yet welcoming "Ready to roll out!," and seiged itself on .:+:LoSeR:+:.'s cliff. It was soon followed by another that went straight to the natural choke defense. D4RK picked this time to send his army of 21 hydralisks in against a bunker, about 30 marines, and 2 tanks. You can guess what happened (at least I hope you can). The hydras went in as a group, quickly exterminating the marines assigned to "operation: human sheild" as well as the bunker. Before they could continue in, however, they got pummeled by tanks and 25 stimmed marines. They died in record time until the ones remaining retreated (he actually managed to save about half by retreating).
D4RK himself decided to expand again (what a whore! ;] j/k) this time he began a new hatchery at the 9:00 o'clock natural expansion, thus bringing his number of bases to a whopping 4.
While making a new expansion, D4RK also decided to deny his terran foe one. He sent what was left of his hydralisk attack force to .:+:LoSeR:+:.'s mineral only expansion and wreaked pure havoc, destroying the "CC" and the "SCVs" by "microing" his growing force "of" hydralisks. .:+:LoSeR:+:. sent troops to save it but only arrived in time to intercept the hydras' retreat. Tanks fired and hydralisks groaned. D4RK was outnumbered 3 to 1 by tanks and marines and ran to his original base. ![o['_']o](http://www.geocities.com/drawesome2/1on1/animation.gif) The terran forces lined up to follow, which D4RK realized and used to his advantage. When he was at the temple, he turned around and killed the marines coming towards him one at a time. This worked until .:+:LoSeR:+:. managed to get 3 tanks seiged and 10 marines bundled in front. The zerg forces were quickly eliminated spilling blood out all over the holy ground of the temple. The Xel'Naga would not be happy.
D4RK's sunken colonies were under fire from the lone tank remaining, so the zerg cerebrate took 15 hydras (fresh outta the oven.. yum) and sent them into the fray, STRAIGHT to the tank, and assassinated it. After completing their morbid duty, the hydras retreated to the safety of the sunken colonies... right as a new tank showed up. 
.:+:LoSeR:+:. thought that he had his enemy contained so he took this chance to expand at 3:00 o'clock natural expansion.
 .:+:LoSeR:+:.'s tanks and marines advanced inch by inch, finally goading out the hydras sitting at the back of D4RK's base. The zerg minions emerged and were promptly ripped up into blood and guts, that somehow mysteriously disappeared a few moments later (I wonder why that is, but if I had to guess, I would say the Xel'Naga). The battle was really pretty boring, because the hydras were mowed down by the tanks and stimmed marines very fast.
Many of you are probably thinking the same thing that all of us observers were.
Tourney_Host: flank
Tourney_Host: omg
Screen captured to file 'screen91.PCX'
Tourney_Host: plz
Thats right... I DID take screen shot number 91! Boy what a shocking discovery. Oh and also, I realized that Tourney_Host had a point, and after he mentioned it, I looked up at D4RK's 9:00 bases, still undiscovered by .:+:LoSeR:+:. (I think), and saw that he too had decided to flank and had a collection of hydralisks just waiting to charge into the containment.
The flank may not have looked like much, maybe 12 hydras on each side, but it really did bust D4RK out. There were seven marines left when it was all over but unfortunately it was all in vain as some more terran forces showed up moments later.
Expansion update
.:+:LoSeR:+:. finally re-constructed his command center at his mineral only expansion bringing his base count to 4. (just a few minutes later, he also began construction on a CC at the 3:00 o'clock main.)
D4RK began a new expansion at the 9:00 o'clock mineral only bringing his base count to 5.
Remember the large force that I told you .:+:LoSeR:+:. re-amassed at D4RK's natural? Sure you don't, so go back and check it out. Ok, so it was a force to be reckoned with, consisting of about 40 marines and 6 tanks.
Terran Encampment Officer Grabowski's Last Recorded Radio Message...
BEGIN TRANSMISSION
Sir, we've been camping out here for days without any trouble from the zerg forces. A few zealous seargents, overwhelmed with pride, entered the fray already. They are having incredible results; the Zerg are nothing but bugs... bugs to be sqaush.. *BOOM* (a little distant) What the hell was.. Oh my god! Get the medivac unit over! Damn, the medics haven't been programmed yet! Where is the SCV backup?! *scuffle scuffle* (sounds of confusion, voices shouting and large explosions rocking the intercom. Finally, it seems to fall on the floor and shatter...).
END TRANSMISSION
Assumed condition of Control Mission Contain: KIA
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 As the terran pushed forward, meeting maximum success, despite a poorly planned charge (only about half of the marines attacked, leaving the other half sitting behind diddling their thumbs), their hopes of victory were shattered as two full control groups of hydralisks appeared from over the horizon, apparently coming from somewhere to the north-west. The tanks and marines fought and fought and killed all of the hydras coming from the south, but the ones from the northwest soon overtook everything they had.
It seemed that the two players were finally beginning to do what we had been silently telling them to the whole time: get upgrades. D4RK had 2 evo dens upgrading hydras compared to .:+:LoSeR:+:.'s one E-Bay and one armory.
Upgrade Update
.:+:LoSeR:+:. - INFANTRY: 0-1 METAL: 0-0
D4RK - 0-2-1
D4RK won the previous battle with almost 20 hydralisks left so he quickly counterattacked .:+:LoSeR:+:.'s 3:00 expansion. There were 2 tanks up on the cliff and one right at the natural along with eight more marines on the cliff. The 20 + hydras attempted to go up the ramp (dumbass AI acting up), but were blocked by the marines while the two remaining tanks took potshots. .:+:LoSeR:+:. stimmed his marines and chased the hydras from the ramp to the SCV filled area below the natural expansion CC. The Terran commander stimmed again and finally eliminated all of the hydalisks. LG:)Drow made an interesting observation during this attack. "He overstims" and moments later "cuz hes a BW player." It made sense and showed me perfectly why he was playing the way he was. Yes, Drow is a bright one.
.:+:LoSeR:+:. had 6 or 7 working barracks and 3 factories during the entire saga that I have been explaining, and when it was all over, he had a massive force of tanks and marines that were just moving out right as the last traces of D4RK were snuffed from the attack on his 3:00 natural.They moved to the middle of the map (the tanks were now at 1-0 and the marines 1-1).
Before he could do anything with his force, however, D4RK planned an evil little 12 hydra drop on the 3:00 natural SCVs.
It did not go as well as D4RK must have wanted because of, once again, the tanks on the cliff, that managed to take out the hydras after killing only a token amount of SCVs. D4RK was unfazed by the loss and had, moments earlier expanded to the bottom right island.
Well, .:+:LoSeR:+:. was obviously ticked off by the hydra reinforcements that always came from 9:00, so he decided to do something about it. He took his massive force of tanks and marines to right outside D4RK's 9:00 mineral only expansion. It was pretty obvious that D4RK was in trouble.
 The tanks moved forward, beginning "operation: Hammer Strike". .:+:LoSeR:+:. simply demolished the mineral only expansion and continued to push. When D4RK's counterattack was finally performed, hydras once again swarmed in, coming from both bases, flanking the large terran encampment. However, this time it didn't work so well. Tanks fired and destroyed like 5 hydras at a time while the marines, high on steroids, not thinking about the androgynous effects that would come later in life, ripped apart the zerg hordes. The combined forces of hydralisks were able to do some damage though, and only about half of the original force of marines and tanks remained.
 I was gonna put a huge image in of the whole battle with the title: "Flank O' Crap" when I realized that it would be a waste of DL time, because all you wanna see is hydras getting blasted right?? So here you go!
D4RK had finally gotten smart and realized that hydras alone just wouldn't do it against the deadly combo his opponent was using, and had finally teched to a hive and a greater spire, which were finished by the time the tank/rine force reached his ramp.
We all know how bad zerg higher tech units rape terran, in fact, often my goal in Z v T games is to tech to hive level units, so I was confident that D4RK wouldn't have too much trouble against the low end army of tanks and marines. I was right.
Basically what happened was when the Tanks and marines reached the sunken colony matrix, D4RK began morphing 6 mutalisks into 6 guardians. I looked back up at .:+:LoSeR:+:.'s forces and saw at max, 15 more marines. The battle was soon over. The guardians hatched and rained acid upon the marines, quickly getting 'em all from a vantage point on top of the cliff. As soon as the marine support was gone, the tanks were defenseless and were attacked by a handful of mutalisks that got quite a few tanks before they retreated. (At max, 3 tanks made it away).
The damage had been done however, and all that D4RK was left with was a few guardians, zerglings, and razed natural and mineral expansions.
 I finally looked back up at .:+:LoSeR:+:.'s base to see what was going on up there, and I was surprised to see a gang of 30+ marines with only a few tanks sitting around. The guardians were slowly migrating up the map and fairly quickly ran into this enormous marine force. They hacked up a few gobs of acid but quickly retreated while the marines were busy with zerglings.
Following this encounter, .:+:LoSeR:+:. decided to do something crazy and send his whole force (for the what? billionth time?) right at D4RK's 6:00 natural expansion. The whole plan started off badly when one of the few tanks accidentally went into sunken range. D4RK sent out about 20 cracklings to counter the marine/tank combo, which did pretty good once the mutalisk support showed up. So what do you do if you have 20 lings and 5 mutas attacking your army of 20 marines and 2 tanks? Just barely lose. The action was intense because both sides had good counters for every unit used.  There wasn't so much micro during this battle, though, as there was macro. Wave after wave of lings and marines were sent into the fray. After it was over, D4RK began to morph his remaining mutalisks into guardians (5 of them). He also began re-morphing his hatchery at the 9:00 natural.
Ok, for what the billion and first time this report, .:+:LoSeR:+:. took the masses of marines and tanks (and wraiths this time YAY! something new) and moved them into D4RK's 6:00 natural expansion. The guardians had been cleverly hidded up on the ledge before the attack came but were quickly targeted by the wraiths.
The guardian/zergling combo very quickly eliminated the ground troops, but D4RK must have slapped himself a few times when he realized that he had a grand total of 2 units that could attack air. After destroying the entire guardian force, the wraiths set about killing lings and lone hydras until some more terran reinforcements in the shape of another 10 marines and 2 tanks showed up. Right as the new terran forces showed up, some hydras also came from the hatcheries at D4RK's natural and main. They died rather fast to two tanks and wraiths and .:+:LoSeR:+:. began pounding on the 6:00 o'clock natural hatchery. Some lings came from behind and killed the tanks, but there were still marines and wraiths left.
For a second, it looked like it was all over; the small force, soon to be reinforced, was slowly destroying D4RK. Luckily, he had been spending some money at the evolution chambers and when a group of 8 3-3 hydras attacked from behind, the 1-1 marines and wraiths died pretty fast.
The next few minutes were pure craziness, as reinforcements after reinforcements stomped in to the same place. Probably 150 various zerg and terran units were destroyed in a 2 minute span right here.
As soon as .:+:LoSeR:+:.'s force was wiped out, another group of 30 or more marines and 8 wraiths showed up to fight the group of 15 hydras. The humans were about to win when a long line of cracklings came in from the 9:00 expansion. During the action, .:+:LoSeR:+:. sent another group of 30 marines and 2 tanks south which showed up right as the last of the previous batch died. .:+:LoSeR:+:. also took this time to expand to the mineral only expansion at the 3:00 base. Man these guys were incredible multitaskers. Ok, so when the new forces showed up, it was a long, drawn out battle, the likes of which I have never seen. Zerg forces literally never stopped pouring in from both sides. I'm convinced that D4RK had some sort of build hack (that or a lot of hatcheries and multitasking capabilities) because cracklings and hydras came out as fast as they died, which was really incredibly fast. In the end D4RK, the zerg cerebrate, won the battle, and, with his remaining forces of maybe 10 or 15 hydras, he assaulted .:+:LoSeR:+:.'s 3:00 natural expansion. Here is an animated minimap to show what had just occured.
  
After the grand battle, the hydras at 3:00 killed both of the expansions easily. .:+:LoSeR:+:. attempted another tank push on the 9:00 expansion but was repelled by some hydraling flanking.
.:+:LoSeR:+:.: gg
It was over. Despite the 8 barraxes and the 6 mining bases, D4RK was simply able to outproduce and, (probably even as important) outupgrade .:+:LoSeR:+:.. It was an incredible game. I really couldn't tell who was gonna win until the final few minutes. A few times, us observers urged D4RK to just say gg. Incredible playing, macro, and multitasking guys; it was fun.
PLAYER SCORES
Good lord that was close! The final scores were less than 200 apart. Their unit scores were off by less than 1000 as were the amount of minerals they each mined. Also, combined, the two created more than 1000 units. Wow.. Now on to the scores that really matter!
OBSERVER SCORES
Damn! I came in last. Close though.
Well that concludes the first of three matches that made up the tournament finals, but unfortunatly I won't be reporting the next two games. The second game was, once again T v Z. I know how much you all want to see vanilla SC T v Z again (hehe) but it just wasn't worth it. The game was over fast, with some nice offensive early builds. .:+:LoSeR:+:. went M & F early and took out D4RK's early muta/ling attack with ease. It was all over in 12 minutes.
I have, however displayed some screen shots of the high points from the second game.
The third game was a different story however. We had to postpone it for a week, and, the players, antsy for a game, played it without me... without the battle reporter!! Sigh... oh well, all I know about the game was that D4RK managed to beat .:+:LoSeR:+:. and take the title for the tournament. I don't ever know the races.
Congratulations to D4RK.
Lessons Learned
If your opponent isn't teching: tech. Well, I guess thats not always true. So sometimes if your opponent isn't teching: don't tech. So... we learned that if your opponent isn't teching: be prepared to lose. But then, whats the point of teching? What did we actually learn? Who am I?expand, expand, and a little more expandHive level zerg units rape terranLearn to multi-task and you can win w/o micro ;]Never, ever, ever commit bengalaas murders (bengicide?) Do crazyass strategies like lair before lings (the second game zerg strategy) and expo twice before scout and hope they don't rushVanilla SC Z v T is apparently all i ever get to battlereport. (1)(2)One sided ownage = no funNot waiting for the BR'er sucksI DID take screen shot number 91these guys are a lot better than meMutas make for good screen shots because the "glave worms" bounce around and make everything look crazyWhoever invented the "Lessons Learned" section should be in the HoF just for that
Well hope you enjoyed it. It took quite a while. I have started playing BW more and am starting to go to NH more. I hope to BR some non-temple BW games soon :P.
DrAwesome
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