"for the love of all things good and holy, please, please, please enjoy the report, because I have extremely low self esteem and desperately need the approval of you, the wonderful person on the other end of my internet connection."
-Decay
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| YourRoleModel vs Fractal Wave | | | Author: | | | IP: | XXXX | | Date: | 07/28/99 06:07 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 6, Max: 10, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for YourRoleModel: 9.3626 |    | 
Prelude:
Many times, I have put my heart into writing a battlereport on a good game, but this was a great game. It brings me great pleasure to be able to report this to you.
Fractal Wave had challenged me several weeks ago and we played a game on a wide open map. His zerg rushed my terran wall-in and got through, end of story. Being YourRoleModel, I wanted a rematch. In game two, my Zerg contained and destroyed his Protoss after a fairly good early and middle game. This report will focus on the tie breaker game.
Fractal sent me an e-mail containing additional captures and his synopsis of the game, which I hope to combine with my own observations for an accurate report.
The Game:
Map - Discovery (old, but good)
Player 1 - YourRoleModel (Protoss, lower left)
Player 2 - Fractal Wave (Terran, upper right)
The Plans:
According to Fractal's e-mail, he was, “Hyper Vulture to stop any Dark Templar strike.” My plan was to watch for early expansions, defend, and hit with a reaver drop.
I started out with a bastardized version of the pylon, double gateway build. I went for gas after that, planning for a core and some initial zealots.
My scout left the base late and passed Fractal's scout somewhere near the mineral rich middle of the map. Two of my zealots jumped at the chance to volunteer for “choke duty”. The probe scout reached Fractal's base and saw two barracks, an academy, and some marines. Barry Sanders was with my probe as it dodged gauss fire, got the information, and safely returned to my base. Fractal Wave was not so lucky, and his SCV was splattered on the blades of my two zealots.
Wait a minute... I thought Fractal said he was rushing to vultures. Well, yes, but he admitted that he screwed up his timing on gas and went to vultures a bit more slowly. Of course, I saw no signs that vultures were coming at this point.
While I built two cannons, a robotics bay, and a handful of zealots, Fractal was preparing a pimp squad of two firebats, six marines, and two medics. I could be mistaken, but I believe they had access to the drugs at this point. Fractal was also teching to vultures and mines.
My five zealots set out on an attack move to the various expansion points that can be reached by walking. Fractal's natural expansion on the cliff will be checked by my reaver crew, once it's ready. The zealots spot the pimp squad about two-thirds of the way to the Terran Main, and like the zealous warriors that they are, the zealots run like heck.
Quickly, I warped a trio of cannons that protected most of my base. Another cannon was added in case Fractal walked the perimeter. My zealots retreated to the nook just south of the assimilator and waited in ambush. Very soon, the pimp squad arrived and went directly for the zealots. As soon as they targetted me, I fled into cannon range and the firebats followed. Fractal's pimp squad was quickly turned into blood soup. Perhaps if he had focused on destroying my assimilator, while holding the bats still, the attack would have been much more sucessful, but Fractal was busy with other things.
My counterattacking zealots found themselves mined in, and retreated. Fractal claims to have laid down about 15 mines over the next few minutes, but he found that my cannons did protect my probes when he sent the vultures in to attack the mineral miners.
The spider mines did not concern me. My shuttle was finished and deposited two zealots on my own cliff for protection from a tank drop. My reaver was nearly finished, and an observer discovered that Fractal had not yet expanded to his natural cliff site. A probe of my own took advantage of a short shuttle ride and started an expansion for me on the lower right cliff. I rubbed my hands together in anticipation of...
All Out War:
Two zealots and a reaver flew north in a cramped shuttle. I sent the shuttle north first so that it would not fly over any spider mines and reveal my plans. Fractal Wave had comstatted earlier and saw my shuttle. His reaction was to mine his own cliff, bring the vultures back down, and drop three marines and a firebat there. I guess if I had landed on Fractal's cliff with a templar for storm, I would have been hurting. Of course, I had no way of knowing what fractal was doing, and I was too afraid to risk a precious early observer to a turret.
Initially, I had planned on dropping a probe on Fractal's cliff to cannon up while using my reaver and zealot to keep him busy. Maybe if the cannons finished before the four troops on the cliff spotted the build, this would have worked. I'll never know, because I didn't try it.
The zealots shouted a war cry and dropped on Fractal's SCV line. My reaver yelled something, but reavers only speak Korean, so I didn't catch what it said... they need subtitles. I noticed a newly completed Command Center lifting off, and knew that it would be going to the upper left cliff expansion.
As you can see, the SCV line was destroyed. Fractal commented that it was a nice move...
...but then he said something that made my heart grow cold.
“Mind if I return the favor?”
My two zealots had been sleeping on the job and ignored a double dropship assult on my cliff until it was too late. By the time I was able to respond, Fractal had set up the Terran Circle of Life. Let me explain... When a terran has a turret or two, two tanks, a bunker, an scv to repair, and medics to heal each other or the scv... there is no weak link to attack. Corsairs with D-Web would have done me alot of good right about now, but I didn't have them.
Fractal thinks that my expansion is lightly defended and figures that I am finished with the loss of my main nexus... but I am not finished yet.
Crippled, but living:
I was slowly but surely going to lose my main base. I just didn't have the firepower to knock a terran off of a cliff. Right then and there I made a choice to not only keep fighting, but to win. I had several observers, and managed to make another key shuttle before my robotics bays went underpowered. It's too bad that I was 4 hitpoints away from finishing a reaver when the power went out. Two dragoons that had been shuttled up to my expansion killed a wraith and drove off another one. I started three starports and a couple of cannons before I lost my forge and cybernetics core. My former main was in a sad state... I must seem like a stubborn hick for even continuing to fight.
What I did have going for me is that I had crippled Fractal's economy and would do it again. You see, I still had a reaver. My two dragoons stayed at my expansion to protect against wraiths and I reavered his expansion and then his main... again. My fondest hope was that Fractal would find himself with 49 minerals and no SCVs. It was kind of funny to see all of the buildings floating, because I only had that one reaver on attack. Just then, a wraith attacked my reaver, and I sent my wounded shuttle home to gather up my two dragoons.
The shuttle outraced a wraith and reached Fractal's expansion, and the goons killed the wraith. Even if the wraith had cloaked, an observer was nearby so the battle was never in question. The flying command center could not outpace my goons, and it perished despite an escape attempt.
Fractal was just finishing the destruction of every building in my main base when three newly built scouts took down a dropship, two marines, and, according to Fractal, the tank that was inside the dropship.
The Final Assaults:
Who is in worse shape... a player who has lost his entire main base, but is making scouts, or a player who has lost every bit of his economy at least two times?
Scouts are expensive, but my instinct was that I needed to have a mobile attack force to allow me to expand my way back into a dominant position.
At this point I picked up my two dragoons and landed them on the cliff behind Fractal Wave's main base...
...nothing happened. I realized that I had not researched RANGE!!! The dragoons were delivered again behind the minerals, but his few SCVs retreated and marines rushed in. The shuttle lifted the goons yet again and dropped them on the cliff. Remember that Fractal had mined his own cliff? Well I didn't know... and my goons were lost.
My shuttle did escape though, and I decided to try a sneaky expansion to the other cliff site, where I had destroyed the command center. Observers made sure that there were no mines, and my scouts killed a wraith that was patroling the center of the map. At this point I started my expansion. If Fractal sits back and rebuilds his economy for even five minutes, I have him.
Scouts patrolled the expansive western portion of my first expansion site, hoping to stop any drop, when I noticed that a tank is pounding on my starports from the north. My scouts missed one tank and one dropship earlier, and now Fractal has started another circle of life tank push just north of my established expansion. Patiently I wait for two more scouts and a dragoon to finish (I had started to re-tech)... and then I attacked for all I was worth.
It was not enough.
Two wraiths began an assault on my budding northwest expansion, and I finally admitted defeat.
As you can see, I out killed and outproduced Fractal, but still lost because of losing my main base. I had produced far less troops than Fractal, but killed far more. Fractal's composure in executing his compact tank pushes won him the game.
We both made some foolish mistakes in the heat of the battle, but the effort was not lacking on either side. Hopefully the report kept you in suspense.
Lessons Learned:
A - 2 Corsair with disruption web and 4 scouts would have stopped his push cold. I was spending all of my resources, but I should have spent them better.
B - A dragoon in the shuttle with my second reaver drop would have prevented the death of my reaver to one wraith.
C - If I had just put the zealots on my cliff on patrol, or build two cannons up there, my main would not have fallen.
D - Fractal went for an anti templar build early, and it did not help him much. He would have done very well to have a bunker, tower and tank protecting his probe line.
E - Even in the last minutes, I could have won the game if I had more actively hunted for his dropship(s).
F - Terran + Cliffs and Chokes = VERY TOUGH
G - Although I believe the game could have gone either way right up until the end, Fractal made better use of his opportunities and clearly earned the win. Good game man.
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