2 on 2 Dire Straits

With one probe hiding at the corner, I immediately rebuild my cannons and shipped even more reinforcement there: 2 reavers, 2 templars, 4 zealots and 2 dragoons. With my newly destroyed expansion and a dried out main, I was striped on minerals and I immediately shipped all my probes to my other expansion and reinforced it with one more templar and 4 zealots. Old~El~Paso had been teching to nukes and SV and via wraiths and comsat he shortly discovered Greyhoundbus and -=Elminster=-'s expansions on the smaller islands. To make some use of my fully charged templars, I shipped a templar and dropped it at -=Elminster=-'s main behind his minerals, stormed and killed about 5 drones then ran like there is no tomorrow! :D

The expansions are as follows:


When my cash started flowing again, I constructed more gateways and robotics facilities. I also threw down 2 more forges for my ground unit upgrades. Noticing that the Zerg and protoss expansions were fortified with cannons, hydras and sunkens, I researched hallucination to draw fire. Now greyhoundbus had teched to sair/D-web while -=Elminster=- continued with more hydras and upgrades.

The zerg foe decided to pick on me again, now dropping over 20 hydras to my small expansion below my main, which was guarded by 6 cannons, 2 templars, and 4 zealots. I stormed where the overlord attempt to drop, and most hydralisks were killed right after they landed. 4 zealots are enough to fend off the remaining hydras. I lost only 3 cannons and 1 zealot in the process.

Old~El's first nuke was finally finished, and he decided to nuke the sunkens and spores at zerg's expansion to clear our way to drop our boys. Nonetheless, our opponents decided to launch another huge assault at my middle expansion once again. This time several corsairs D-web all my cannons and 10 Overlords loaded with hydralisks and a shuttle of reavers were dropped. Fortunately, my 2 templars were at full energy and 6 storms, accompanied with 2 fully-loaded reavers, repelled the assault with very little loss of 2 cannons and 2 zealots.

After I fended off the attack, Old~El's nuke fell and hit the sunken and spore and some drones. He immediately respond with his wraiths and dropped a number of m&m , eradicating the remaining zerg reinforcement. I also assisted his attack with assorted drops. One Carrier showed up, but it was forced to retreat in the face of the mighty templar.

Seeing the threat of carriers, Old deployed 2 ghosts at greyhoundbus's main and lockdowned as many carriers as he could, while I cleaned up the disabled carriers with my load that was attacking the zerg expansion. With the lack of ground force but 2 templars, my reavers and dragoons are slowly pounding on the protoss main. More and more dragoons and templars were shipped over and Old~El attempted to nuke the starports, but to be only found by an observer, and one lone carrier was enough to murder the detected ghost who was trying to be sneaky. =) Nevertheless, Old's SV gave me the detection that I needed to eliminate any freshly made templars from the dark side. The protoss's main was slowly destroyed by dragoons, zealots, and an Archon.

Zerg was not idle when he saw his ally's main fell, but he dropped a load of hydralisks at Old~El's 2nd expansion at middle left island which was only defended by 3 turrets. The expansion quickly fell to the spines of the hydralisks unloaded from 12 overlords. The funny thing was that Old's wraiths intercepted the hydras loaded in the overlords, and 6 fully loaded overlords were popped by the wraiths until -=Elminster=- reacted and dropped back the hydras to avenge the death of their defenseless brood. In revenge to the loss of his expansions, Old~El launched another nuke at protoss's only expansion across the river and destroyed a few cannons and probes.

After cleaning up greyhoundbus's main, I discovered that I had 2000+ minerals and gas in my bank due to my lack the multi-task ability to macro and micro simultaneously. To compensate, I immediately threw down 2 more robotics and 3 gates, to reach a total of 7 Gateways and 4 Robotics Facilities. I threw a pair of hallucinated shuttle to scout the middle left island which Old had just lost, and found it was fortified with a horde of hydralisks and some dragoons and templars. Knowing that a large force is needed to destroy such a heavily defended island, I pumped reavers, templars, dragoons and zealots, and decided to launch my attack when my weapon, armor, and shield upgrade were finished.

Old, again, attempted to find himself another expansion at zerg's former expansion, but it was soon discovered and a fat load of hydralisks were dropped there to destroy the CC. Seeing this perfect opportunity, I hallucinated 10 shuttles, loaded 8 shuttles of assorted reavers/goon/temp/zealot and headed to the zerg expansion. My hallucinated shuttles from the top attract most of the hydralisks to concentrate fire on the hallucinations while my real units were dropped from the bottom. With my real units successfully dropped, the remaining hydralisks were killed by my templars and reavers while my dragoons/zealot cleaned up. After the zerg infestation was destoryed, -=Elminster=- conceded with declare "gg" and left. Greyhoundbus also complimented our win with a "gg" and gave us the victory! Wohoo!

At the end of the game, I found I had 200+ kills, most of which are hydralisks. =)
Lessons learned

• 14th CC float is vulnerable to a fast reaver drop.
  
• Don't go air in the early stage of the game on island. Any drop will own you.
  
• Cannon/templar/Reaver defense is truly evil!
  
• Change your strat accordingly to your opponents' strat is important. Only if -=Elminster=- or greyhoundbus had built queens or DA, my templars defense could have been broken.