Yesterday I went onto the AUS-1 server, because my ISP was giving me a ridiculously bad connection to the ever-unreliable battle.net servers of which we are all so fond. You might want to come visit the server some time, there are quite a few fairly good players there. Or maybe you would like to do a BR which disses the Aussies. :)
If you're interested, the AUS-1 webpage is HERE. You should remember the time zone difference though.

Occasionally even some famous players log on to AUS-1 (I hear Grrrr has been there a couple of times), and I logged on to find our server was currently being graced with the presence of XD’s~SmashE. In fact he was playing my mate Layzi3 at that very moment.

    “Fuck he is good!” was Layzi3’s assessment. Keen to see a genuine gosu player in action I waited in the channel Brood War AUS-1, and after a few minutes the two players appeared.
    “Rematch?” said Layzi3.
    “OK,” said SmashE: “sma/she gone”.

I quickly joined and asked if I could obs, and SmashE didn’t mind. They picked races so they would have the same ones as in the previous game; SmashE Protoss, Layzi3 Zerg. And I proceeded to watch a thrashing. SmashE played with great confidence, no hesitation, fairly good scouting, and some very nice flanking manoeuvres. Seeing my friend getting owned so badly was pretty demoralising, so I decided not to BR it.

Layzi3 didn’t feel up to another game afterwards, and asked me if I would like to get owned by SmashE too, but I declined in hopes that another friend of mine who is a bit better than me (OK, OK, VeRSeZ owns me 9 times out of 10) would finish the game he was in soon, and answer SmashE’s call for a 1v1. Unfortunately, SmashE didn’t take nearly that long to find an opponent.

Just a minute or so after SmashE left, VeRSeZ arrived, having finished his game. I kind of assumed VeRSeZ won, but who knows... VeRSeZ was naturally disappointed to miss out on the chance to get owned by someone from such a famous clan. He ended up asking in the channel if anyone else wanted a 1v1. Someone going by the nick toString() with an innocuous 1-1-0 record (smurf!) answered OK, so the game str/str was created and I joined to watch VeRSeZ play Zerg against Protoss.

ToString() teched to high templar off 1 gate, and then turned out to be a rather aggressive expander, while VeRSeZ early expanded, and more slowly teched to guardians. Unfortunately he didn’t really do any damage to toString()’s ever growing economic and military powerhouse, and by the time he had guardians, toString() had enough ground units to force VeRSeZ on the defensive, and the Protoss soon swarmed the Zerg under.

Of course VeRSeZ felt he could play a bit better than that, and asked for a rematch. So finally I present the battle:

VeRSeZ Vs toString()

The map was a UMS obs map ‘The Lost Temple Crezio’, which I believe is a modified version of GameQ with the interesting added features that a bell goes off every 5 minutes, and there is a leader board for kill counts. Both players chose to randomise their races.

In the pregame chat we find out that toString() is a student at UNSW (that’s in Australia, for our non-antipodean readers) while VeRSeZ is a student at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
     “GL, HF”, the opponents say to one another, and the match was begun. VeRSeZ draws the mighty brown Protoss at 6o’clock while toString() draws the puny red Terrans at 9o’clock. I breathe a little easier because imbalance is on my friend’s side. :)

ToString() starts playing in unusual style straight off, and instead of the classic 9o’clock wall-in, he builds a supply depot a few squares Southeast of his cc at about 9/10 control. This he follows with a barracks right next to the vespene geyser while he sends an SCV to scout. VeRSeZ starts off with a pylon and a gateway at about 11/17. He then scouts with the probe which warps in the gateway.

*ding* The five minute bell sounds.

Unfortunately VeRSeZ decided to do this just a little too late, as when he arrives there is a vulture standing by the completed factory. Seeing this he runs all his units right back home. ToString() gives relentless chase with 1 zealot, 1 SCV, and 1 marine, and I crack up laughing at the situation. A second vulture soon follows the first, and they set up camp outside VeRSeZ’s natural, but don’t go to see what awaits them there. Possibly they could have killed a zealot or a couple of probes.

ToString() now has two working factories, a machine shop, and 1 kill. (One of those probes was a little slow on its feet, or whatever it has.) VeRSeZ now has a core and has just warped in a second gateway. When VeRSeZ has his first dragoon he Maynard transfers 4 probes over to his natural to join the 3 survivors of the initial attack. He doesn’t set the probes straight to mining though, he looks to see if he can go on the offensive! The new Protoss army moves towards the mouth of the valley. ToString() spots the movement, and seeing the goon and many probes, he retreats his 2 vultures, 1 SCV, and 1 marine slightly. VeRSeZ doesn’t pursue them but finally sets his probes to mining, and becomes busy reinforcing his army with goons and deciding what to tech to.

ToString() starts a starport, and sends another vulture and a marine over to VeRSeZ’s natural. Then he decides to send his engineering bay to scout. The spider mine research finishes, and his 3 vultures start putting mines down at the mouth of VeRSeZ’s natural, while 2 more vultures come to join the quickly growing containment force. Once a few mines are in the ground toString() presses forward. He is beaten back by 3 dragoons however. The unlucky zealot falls victim to a spider mine as it tries to pull one of the bikies off his vulture.

VeRSeZ is worried enough about vulture raids to plant a cannon by each of his mineral fields. He also gets a robotics facility for teching to observers to break the spider mine containment, or shuttling troops to kill off nasty cliff drops.

ToString() on the other hand isn’t opting for either of these tactics. As the 10 minute bell sounds he begins constructing a turret at his containment. A siege tank also arrives. Soon the turret finishes and the tank sieges up and takes a shot at the nearest dragoon. VeRSeZ has a few unit control hassles, and loses a goon to arclite fire. More tanks arrive soon, and the natural expansion nexus starts taking heavy fire. VeRSeZ manages to kill a couple vultures but there are several probe and goon casualties. Most of the dragoons retreat to the top of the cliff. The engineering bay which floated across spots an observatory warping in, then gets chased away by a dragoon. Amazingly, a dragoon on top of the cliff stands where a tank can see it, and gets pulverized.

ToString() takes this opportunity to start a command center at his natural.

As the nexus falls the first observer arrives on the scene. It spies the Terran army preparing to move forwards, with tanks unsieged. VeRSeZ seizes that perfect moment to attack with the army of dragoons he had been pumping out. ToString() seems to have been caught napping, and the expense of expanding gives him a slightly lower unit count than he would have otherwise. His containment marines/vultures/tanks die to a man. The spider mines slow down the surviving goons very slightly, long enough for toString() to siege up the rather late reinforcements he sent. The remaining goons die to these 3 tanks, taking one tank with them.

Minimap update

ToString() gets another factory and Maynard transfers a horde of SCVs to his natural. He adds an academy for comsats, and starts a third command center near his second one, ready to float to the Northwest island. VeRSeZ on the other hand has a few more goons, and decides to see if he can press an attack. He runs into the two sieged tanks which survived the earlier battle, which ToString had just left where they were. They are quickly killed by the pack of goons, while no dragoons die. The fifteen minute bell sounds during the brief conflict. Another unit which was coming to reinforce the position also gets taken out by the goons with obs support. Then VeRSeZ just sits his troops at his mineral natural.

    “Oh for heaven’s sake scout with obs!” I yell on allied chat, so the players don’t hear me. Happily VeRSeZ thinks to do this shortly afterwards. He also starts a nexus at the 3o’clock main. He leaves his goons where they are, which is a pity, they might well have done some damage because toString() had only about 2 siege tanks for defence at the time. VeRSeZ has more than 30 probes at his main at this point. Seriously, look at them. It’s crowded.

Action remains scarce. VeRSeZ keeps pumping goons, with a few zeals, and sends them to the middle of the map. He Maynard transfers probes from his crowded main to his new expansion at 3o’clock. ToString() keeps making units to secure his choke, and starts building a FOURTH command center. This is mind-boggling to me because I am a really poor expander.

Then finally VeRSeZ chooses this good moment to attack! (His observer was proving its worth here.) Charging into the confines of the choke most of the red army was eliminated, along with the 4th putative command center. However, VeRSeZ felt that losing 9 troops was more than enough, and in a maneuver of which Ambrose Burnside would be proud*, he retreats the 10 or so he had remaining.

In any case, the game is going on longer than anyone expects. :)

Minimap Update:

ToString() then sends out half a dozen vultures on some sort of peon raid towards SeZ’s main. Possibly toString() hoped VeRSeZ had taken his natural again and they would do some damage there, but that wasn’t the case. The vultures plant mines around VeRSeZ’s mineral only, forcing the goons in pursuit to back up until an observer comes to spot the mines for them. In the meantime the vultures try to zip up VeRSeZ’s ramp.

Unfortunately VeRSeZ has just made his first 3 dark templar, and told them to hold position on the ramp. The vultures milled around a bit before toString() figured out what was happening, then he started laying mines around the base of the ramp. VeRSeZ then retreated the templar allowing the vultures up. The goons are still miles back at the mineral only, but the dark templar and photon cannon dispatched the vultures after they killed half a dozen probes, since toString was busy getting his island expansion running and fortifying and expanding to his mineral only.

ToString() comsat scans for expansions at 12 main and natural, and the Southeast island as VeRSeZ finishes clearing up the vulture’s minefield legacy with goons and obs and tries to get his mineral only running. Once VeRSeZ has made his land a bit safer he scouts again with his observer (hurrah!). What he sees is a well defended mineral only expansion. The observer barely escapes being shot down by a turret and a wraith. The obs scouts around a little more and sees yet another factory being built.

VeRSeZ has obviously decided he needs to gain more of a resource advantage to have any hope of winning this game, because he starts an expansion at the 12o’clock main. He also sends a shuttle over to the Northeast island to see if there’s anything there. Finding a Command Center and a handful of SCVs he unloads two dragoons which proceed to raze the expansion. ToString() ignores this, for he has bigger fish to fry. He starts the dreaded tank push down the left side of the map. This of course is exactly what VeRSeZ did not want, for he just got his mineral only running, and the tank push is a big threat to it, not to mention his main.

What follows is a prolonged battle. I leave its description to a collage.

The terran tank producing economy is just unstoppable by this stage. All the time VeRSeZ was playing catch-up as far as expansions go, and after he spent so much money trying to outexpand toString() he got so far behind on unit spending that he couldn't field enough troops in time to defend his bases, and they fall one by one.

Well, thanks for reading, and I hope you liked it. Those of you who read my others may notice a trend: I have only reported TvPs so far. Why? I never set out to BR them, but I guess I end up reporting them just because I like seeing good TvP matches which illustrate ways I can improve my own game. OK, have fun in the comments!

*Ambrose Burnside was a highly incompetent general in the US Civil war paid this tribute by President Lincoln: "Only he could wring spectacular defeat from the jaws of certain victory."