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Hey there ;) I'm back with another report. I know I told a lot of people that I lost the inspiration to make reports, but after observing this game, I suddenly wanted to write again.  If you want something to do while the pictures load you can either check out the best text-only thing ever submitted, or read the following true story.

Gogo short intros
Introduction:
I had been talking to JiNMaFiA about reporting, and we agreed that he should find someone to play so that I could observe and maybe report. After a few minutes of waiting, with no one but Epoch and Mattz in the channel, we decided to play some team games. Before any of us could go make, HurtnTime appeared in the channel and asked for a 1v1. Now ask yourself if I could let this opportunity go by. That's right folks, I couldn't.

The Players:

HurtnTime:  Most of the older readers know HurtnTime, and for this report we will just call him Hurt. The big man has been around for quite a long time, and has starred in multiple reports (PsyonicReaver's being the latest one). He is a level 10 human player on War3 with a respectable score.

JiNMaFiA: A.k.a. Dark[DH]. I didn't know this guy before now, but his 25-0 ladder score tells its own tale about his "skills". Furthermore, he had a 3-1 lead on HurtnTime before going into this match. Mafia plays Orc, and loves to tower rush.  If you haven't guessed it yet, he will be known as "Mafia" for the rest of the game.

The Setup:
The game was made on Booty Bay, a 2 player only map with a ridiculously simple layout. The mains are located to the east and west, while the two naturals are easy to access via the main "road" that makes this map so special. In the center, there is a mana pool, plus a goblin laboratory capable of making zeppelins that can be used to reach the north island expansions. My leet description probably leaves something to be desired, so if you would please just look at the pretty picture, we will be ready to go.
Question is, how many just skipped the text and looked at the pic from the start?
Mafia started his conquest for eternal stardom (or something like that) in the western part of the bay. His first 5 Orc peons were all sent to mine gold, except for one lucky peon that received the doubtful honor of building an altar of storms. The next peons built a burrow and a barracks (in that order) giving Mafia a quick hero, but keeping the unit production waiting. When the altar finished, a Farseer was queued up.

Our man, Mr. Hurt, was controlling the mighty humies in the east, and started much like his Orcish enemy; building an altar and a farm almost immediately. Hurt's hero of choice was the mighty Archmage, probably known best for its amazing water elementals, which generally kick ass. Hurt began a barracks almost 30 seconds after Mafia, and added a blacksmith before the barracks was completed. On a side note, Hurt made good use of the peasants' ability to work on the same building at the same time; a process which cuts down build time while adding a bit to the construction cost. When the barracks finished, Hurt began training the versatile riflemen.

Around the 2:30 mark, both players began their creeping, and one of my fellow obsers left the game (bitch!).

Mafia was the first to hunt the neutral units, and went south of his base to find a bunch of trolls around a camp fire. Mafia's single grunt and Farseer were joined by two wolves summoned by the hero. The small band together attacked the level 4 troll right away; bringing it down with the loss of only one of the wolves. A second grunt joined the battle, and the three remaining trolls were brought down without losses (despite the troll spell caster using inner fire and generally being a bitch).
Hurt was meanwhile using his one-man army of hero to bring down his creeps, summoning two water elements before focus firing his trolls to their death. When all the trolls were dead, Hurt began the weapon upgrade for his rifles. Both players then went a bit further towards the middle, bringing down some Gnolls on the way without any losses. This brought both the Archmage and Farseer to level 2.

The creeping continued with both players visiting their naturals where more trolls awaited them. Mafia used his new chain lightning skill and brought the poor trolls down with minimal hassle. Hurt had quite a rifle army by now, and with his brilliance aura helping to pump out water elementals, easily dispersed the defending creeps at this own natural. Both players claimed a cloak of shadows from the creep corpses, with hurt also claiming a ring of regeneration while Mafia gained the very gosu health stone. Both players then headed towards the middle at the exact same time.

While both players were heading for the middle, Mafia stopped just a few screens away, and thus let Hurt come first to the all-important creeps by the mana pool. But Hurt was only able to bring down the leading troll warlord before Mafia came running in from below and started chopping the light armored Riflemen to pieces. Hurt realized the danger and immediately teleported away, leaving Mafia to mop up the remaining 3 low level trolls. Both players had gotten their first armor upgrade by now, but Mafia took the strategic advantage by grabbing his natural.

A minute passed, and Hurt had reinforced his army with plenty more riflemen, and was constantly summoning water elements. A familiar situation occurred as both players headed for the creeps just north of the middle. Once again Hurt was there first, and quickly sent in his damage absorbing water elementals to lead his troops, while the heavy damaging riflemen were free to fire away at the neutral ogre creeps defending the spot. A few seconds of  Ogre on Human battle passed, but was interrupted with a charge of Orc warriors serving under Mafia.  The creeps were caught in the cross fire and fell to the ground with their gigantic behinds facing the battle between the Orcs and Humans. Focus fire proved very effective as the grunts fell one by one; forcing Mafia to sound a retreat and fall back to his, now, functional expansion.. You need a giant pic now, right? No? Yes? Yes!

 During this period in the game Hurt decided to visit a goblin laboratory where he bought a goblin shredder for pure tree owning (and by owning I mean collecting) power. Hurt also purchased the infamous goblin zeppelin, which not only has THE most annoying voice acting, but is also capable of carrying units from one spot to another by air, quite handy. With his newfound handiness, Hurt went on a harassing spree with 6 riflemen and his hero. His first landing spot was the Orc expansion, which had been running for a minute or so. Sadly, Mafia had placed his entire army there, so after losing a few riflemen, Hurt loaded up and headed for the Orc main. Upon arrival, Hurt took a few potshots at the mining peons who quickly headed for the burrows. Hurt was able to get one burrow to red during the raid, but was ultimately scared off by Mafia's army that had teleported back to his main. Once again the brave harassing team headed for the Orc natural, but Mafia still had his second TP from the creeps, and quickly TP'd there and killed all but two of the riflemen. With only a few troops left, and an 89hp zeppelin, Hurt airlifted his hero back to his natural where he was greeted by a newly recruited Mountain King named Thorgas Broadaxe. Hurt also began the construction of an expansion seconds later. Hidden editor's note of the day: Drintr Rocks!

Mafia had just completed his tech towards bloodlust, one of the most kick-ass spells in the game, and to show off his new tech decided to head toward the Human expansion. But before he could reach it, Hurt showed up with his huge rifleman death squad and his brand new Mountain King. The odds looked very even as the armies clashed, an almost equal number of basic units were present on each side, not to mention each sides one-man hero army. Mafia was a clever bastard though, and used the Shamans' purge spell to maximum effect by targeting the water elementals; dealing massive damage to the summoned units. The Farseer quickly leveled and unleashed a powerful level 3 chain lighting on the gun wielding humans. Half a minute later, all the riflemen were killed, leaving the Archmage to fight against 3 shamans and the Farseer, a fight from which the Archmage only barely escaped.

After the battle, Mafia said that getting two heroes on this map was rather stupid, since there're only creeps enough to make one hero happy. Hurt realized this too, as he only revived the Mountain King once, before regarding it as a useless investment.

With only his Farseer and a few shamans, Mafia made a short visit to Hurt's natural, but after a short fight with the mighty human heroes, he ran back to the middle. Hurt followed in close pursuit, and with the help of his now level three water elementals, Mafia was forced all the way back to his natural.

During the following break in the action, Hurt started the construction of two gryphon aviaries in his natural. These birds of doom do excellent damage to both air and ground units, and offered a game winning advantage to Hurt unless Mafia was to wake up and smell the birds, so to speak. Read: Danish humor, and it sucks.

After a small skirmish near Mafia's natural, Hurt was back camping up in his natural to protect his game turning tech. Mafia wasn't the typical defensive type though, and went over to tear down the natural with his now enormous grunt/shaman army. He took his time to bloodlust all his units before going to battle, and thus came slamming into the natural with immense power, reaching level 7 immediately. The first 3 gryphons had been produced and were fighting with the shamans while the few, freshly created human knights did their best to micro against overwhelming numbers of grunts. It looked like it would turn into a resounding victory for Mafia... had it not been for three guard towers constantly picking off targets while the knights were playing around. In the end, Mafia had to flee with 10 grunts/shamans who were heavily damaged and being chased by the gryphons all the way back to the Orc natural.
I asked Mafia after the game why he didn't use earthquake on the three towers, which would easily have taken them down. He answered that the Gryphs were targeting the Farseer constantly, leaving him no time to use time consuming spells.

While Mafia was working on adding headhunters to his army, Hurt bought another zeppelin, not for harassment mind you, but expanding. He brought his hero and the gryphons over to the northeastern island, and proceeded to kill the mighty level 9 granite golem and trolls. And what incredibly 1337 item did he get from the golem you ask? A +2 tome of strength... for an Archmage... sad. Sad like the people who play more than a hundred ladder games a week :(

While the humans were expanding, Mafia moved his headhunter/grunt/shaman army toward the deserted human main. Mafia targeted the barracks, but didn't even manage to bring it down before Hurt used his ultimate spell to teleport to one of his peasants in the main. A incredibly flashy battle took place among the human buildings, mainly a battle between ~12 blood lusted Shamans and an almost equal number of gryphons. Spell use was heavy on both sides, and lightning electrocuted the gryphons every 20 seconds or so. Unfortunately even that wasn't enough to stop the birds of war, and Mafia had to retreat back to the center mana pool with heavy losses.

Interestingly enough, Hurt hadn't launched any direct assaults up until now. He had a clear advantage after the last battle, and now decided to follow up with an all out attack. Mafia is good macroer though, and met Hurt with a ton of headhunters and shamans, having now totally abandoned to faithful Grunt. Once again a massive overuse of lightning effects took place, and reeked havoc upon my phone line. The Orcs seemed to be able to hold off the gryphons, but when the Archmage unleashed a perfectly placed blizzard right up the shamans' asses, Mafia was slapped down faster than an Ak-47 wielding afghan facing a cruise missile (eh?). Like the other times, Mafia was forced to flee back to the main. This time though, Hurt followed in hot pursuit and utterly destroyed the Orc base, forcing Mafia to make several sad ASCII faces and ultimately leave the game with a "GG". And now for the biggest picture you've seen in some time :o

As said before, GG. Very nice match by both players, tnx for letting me observe and report ;). A big "thank you" also goes out to the old school lads who took over when Mr. Dag left us. Furthermore, I would like to thank the master of the verbs, the king of grammar, the guy who proofread and probably corrected and improved more than I'll ever know... yes people, I'm talking about Drintr.

Shout out to Dial who gave me the fabulous idea to make the report full screen like this, it really makes it stand out. Remember to comment on the picture/layout style, and tell me if its any good. Also, SandTrap and Blitzkrieg deserve massive shout outs for letting me obs quite a few games that probably deserve reports. Unfortunately, I'm way too lazy to report them, so lemme just say that Blitzkrieg can do pretty stuff with a zeppelin and some meat wagons. Hey, this kind of reporting saves a lot of time :o

And now a word from my sponsors: Yeah I do have some you know.

Before you close this window and go to spam my comments section (plz?), I would just like to recommend an art site: www.visionafar.com. The site is quite possibly the most impressive corner of the internet, and definitely worth a look.

Fun fact: In a few days, I'll have my 1 year anniversary as a battlereporter ;) It's been 22 reports since 29/10/2001, go take a look at my first report here, and tell my if I have improved :-).

That pic is just huge ass -.-