ZerG~LinG vs All-FeAr

Introduction

Ok, people this is my first battle report, so bear with me. Even though most people have broadband or something, just read this while the epics load. I've been playing broodwar for some time now, but using an ,ahem, copied cd. Meaning no Bnet for me. Only recently I've decided to help out that struggling little company called Blizzard by buying me a legit copy. Inspired, I might add, by some hardcore bw-addicts and even battlereporters on warsmith.org.

Only to find out what the term "Noob" means.

Hanging out in op~nohunters, Maareek convinced me that to write a battlereport, it is not necessary for the writer to be a skilled player. I certainly felt I fit that description.

On warsmith I saw that Endersshadow and ZerG~LinG would be playing that night. So off I went to bnet, connecting to us east, there to find the channel empty. Why, not even Krebs was resident.

I saw that Ling was online on aim (when isn’t he), and kindly reminded him of his appointment. Shortly thereafter the number of players on nohunters doubled. After fruitlessly trying to join a 2v2, we finally got one going ourselves. With Ling guiding me ('build scv's', 'your wall-in is fucked up'), we proceeded to an easy win. One opponent just made some hatcheries, but no units, the other expanded to my expansion, which I discovered as I moved out with some M&M's. He hastily tried to defend with building some cannons, augmented with only two zealots. Alas, all for naught. To cut things shorts, this resulted in him having no units worth mentioning as well. So we won. Without the feeling of having played a game. Luckily, this is not the game this report is about.

When we came in nohunters, AF appeared and agreed on a game with Ling. I wanted to obs so I could have typed something like "KEKEKEKEK ME WATCHY ME MONKEY BOY ME BR YOU NOW;sdkjfsd KAKAKAKA" if it didn't sound so immature. Instead I just joined their game, aptly called "Qwe".

The temple was lost so instead the game was made on a map called Predator.

Map

The map looks something like this. The head, arms and legs are plateaus, each consisting of a main and a natural. They all have one ramp leading down to the central body. Ling, yellow protoss, got tossed in at the head (twelve, north, top), while All-fear cc 'd his red cc to the left foot (five, southeast, bottom right). Both commenced the game with a nearly perfect split. Which was a waste of effort in my opinion, because later those extra minerals were wasted in armed conflict. Even more so, since they never found proof of the existence of weapons of mass destruction.

Build orders

Ling builds a pylon at 8, gateway at 10, assimilator at 11. The probe that warped in the pylon started scouting clockwise. Fear builds a depot at 9, refinery at 10, scouts with his 10th scv and only then builds a barracks at 11 at the top of his ramp. Ling's probe arrived a little earlier and started harassing the barrack building scv. AF forget his scv at bottom ramp for nearly a minute while dealing with Ling's harassing probe. That probe btw died a quick death without getting a look at Fear's base.

First skirmishes

Fear builds 1 marine and continues with a factory. He finally remembers his little scout, forgotten during that first battle. He sends it up the ramp and sees a cyber core and no units. Obviously Ling is setting up a Goon rush. After checking the expansion a probe chases him out. What he didn't see was another probe sneaking out. It was carrying Ling's shopping list. Which only mentioned one item: Cheese. That cheese was to be found at 9 where Ling secretly started building a starport and a fleet beacon. Do you need a carrier for all that cheese, mr. Ling? (Recipe for beacon&cheese spamburger found here)

Not to be outdone in the fermented milk department, that SCV started building a factory just out of sight of the probe that was now guarding Lings ramp.

Fear floated his factory unobserved to Ling's expansion and started building vultures, while researching mines at his relocated machineshop. So far our danish protoss commander had only built a total of three (3) dragoons, one of them successfully containing his terran counterpart. The other two were guarding his own ramp. Which he for some reason (call it premonition, call it maphack) ordered to take position next to his minerals. Just in case those cheeky little terran intruders might float a factory to his expansion and surprise him. I have premonitions all the time. Every time I play a game, I have a sure sense of the outcome.

When he had build 4 vultures and researched mines at his relocated machineshop, Fear moved in for some probe-raping. By that time 3 premonitioned dragoons were waiting. The vulture squad tried to get behind the minerals, taking the long way around. Even though some mines managed to get laid the vulture sergeants died without getting a single kill (and without getting laid themselves btw).

Meanwhile, Ling's first carrier narrowly managed to avoid a collision with a floating barracks near the terran base. That base was defended by two turrets, only one of them near the mineral line. Fear had a starport but was building dropships, so he defended himself by frantically building turrets while repairing that one turret that protected his scv's. When that was destroyed, Ling targeted the starport control tower, with the two interceptors he had left. A second carrier was on the way and together they finally managed to destroy first the tower, then the starport itself. But not before one wraith took of and escaped. During all this, Fear was keeping himself rather busy. He loaded one dropship with two tanks and sent it on his way North (that's were the protoss base was, remember?), he built an armory for goliath defenseand started 2 expansions in the right foot and left arm main . His tank drop killed some probes before Ling's few goons took care of them, although I believe a forgotten mine ,left from the earlier skirmish got more of them.

The carriers retreated from 5 turrets,a goliath and that one wraith. The wraith chased the carriers across the map alone (goliath pathing) and soon got his first kill just before his cloaking wore off. He was then scared by the remaining carrier that finally remembered its interceptors.

Dragoons > Command Centers

During all this, Ling had expanded to his natural and the main near his fleet beacon. He has changed tactics and started adding gateways to his main to up his goon production. Observers were sent to all possible mining locations.

Oblivious to all this, Fear expanded again, this time to his natural, while building goliaths from his three factories. He had a barracks and an ebay scouting the map.

Here's an update:

Both players were roughly even in units, though Fear had more tied up in scv's. It seems he's still expecting more carries: his army consists of mainly goliaths, although he is about to mix some tanks in. When his dropship returned from tankdrop he passed Ling's stargate and could have seen it was idle. Apparently he tried to be a goatse player, because he left his expansions naked and wide open.

Ling had map control. He sent observers all over the map and saw the terran expansions were easy picking.

When he had gathered 12 goons, Ling sent them with his remaining carrier to the 2 o'clock expansion. En route they killed Fears floating ebay, giving Fear time to...what? Build two turrets for defense. In short: expansion 1 was gone. Fear decided to keep his army in his main, knowing his goliaths couldn't stand up against those goons.

Ling continued to the right foot expansion, where he demolished a factory, one defending goon, a cc and about 14 scv's. Fear tried to get at the carrier, but instead sent them to Ling's supposedly undefended main.

Four out of his 9 goliaths died. They did manage to lure the main protoss army back, but too late. The surviving five goliaths returned to their main base where Fear had finally switched production to tanks, which he gathered just outside his main. He expanded again at the same place, hoping Ling wouldn't bother checking there again.

Unfortunately, Ling did. His main army met up with his victorious defenders and backtracked down south again. There they clashed with the Terran army en route to defend their expansion. 9 Unsieged tanks, 7 Goliaths and 1 wraith (yes that wraith) clashed with 24 Dragoons, 1 Carrier and 1 zealot.

9 Unsieged tanks, 7 Goliaths and 1 wraith turned tail on seeing the size of the protoss force. They never made it back. When the dust settled, it was clear they had given as good as they got: only five dragoons and the carrier were left. But where the terrans had no more units, Protoss reinforcements were already underway from Ling's four gateways.

Instead, Fear, had expanded again, this time to the right foot natural! First the Protoss killed the main expansion. After a quick visit to see if Fear tried to break out of his main yet, they finished the second expansion. The game was over and Fear knew it: he didn't even cancel the cc. He decided to go out in a blaze of glory. With every unit at his disposal except his scv's and a short reminder of the Alamo, he moved out for a final stand.

Again, Ling's reconnaissance proved its value. Before he could siege up, the Protoss attacked. Retreating tanks were killed by dragoons, sieged tanks by dark templars, cloaked wraiths were reveiled by observers, mines and tank splash damage became 'friendly fire'.

The terrans never stood a chance and the game was over:

no wait, I mean

Afterthoughts

- damn, writing a battle report is hard

- Dreamweaver > hand coding html/css

- Thanks to Ling and other battle reporters for their report guides

- Visit the warsmith

-Tnx Maareek, for getting me into this :(