"..Grrr casting 9,074 (rough estimate) Perfect Storms starring George Clooney wasn't going to save this one."
-SCN
|
| Most Humiliating Win | | | Author: | | | IP: | XXXX | | Date: | 09/03/99 01:09 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | Starcraft(1), Text Only(1) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 7, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for Thyroid-Storm: 7.2500 |  | Heh. With a lull in schoolwork, I thought I might regail the readers here with an old old story. I actually have to recount most of this from memory, so maybe it's not actually a battle report, but there were lots of important lessons learned. As well, for people who think I'm more than average, this story might just change your mind ;).
Perhaps some of you know the scenario. Your partner sucks and you end up doing all the work. Sometime, though, you're caught with your pants down and you lose everything, and now you have to rely on your partner to win the game.
This is such a tale.
The setting is Shadowlands.
http://images.blizzard.com/star/compendium/LP/bw04/xsl.jpg
Last time, I shared a little bit about how to tell your partner sucks before a game begins. Many times their name is all you need. People with "god" "awesome" "great" in their b.net pseudonyms invariably... well, aren't.
My partner was Pikachu.
:|.
Well, I picked protoss as usual and ended up at the 12:00 starting position. It's been several months, so I don't recall my color. Pikachu (his name actually had many silly characters in it, which I refuse to include) spawned as yellow toss at the 3:00. A teal terran took up residence at 9:00, and brown zerg ended up with 6:00.
The first couple of minutes was spent finding out that this was an island map. I quickly went from my 7-pylon build order to getting gas. Playing SC for 2 years now, I still like old school toss island--defend with templar until you get enough money for killer air. Going sairs vs. zerg on island maps just lacks imagination for me :). On my 3rd templar I made an archon, and that's when brown made a call on Pikachu.
A handful of muties attacked his peon line, and they did some damage before he could drive them off with photon cannons and dragoons. He wisely switched to making corsairs to punish any future incursions.
I loaded a shuttle with a probe, the templar and archon and sent them off looking for expansions. Pikachu had found the 1:00 ore expand, and I assumed there was something like that near me. I found the 10:00 expand in short order and started a nexus; then I thought that gas was more important and quickly found the 11:00 and took that instead.
The mutalisks were quick to find me and began an assault but were driven off by the sight of the templar. Or so I thought. They came back later from a northern angle to slay the templar before I could realize what was happening, and the archon wasn't enough to stop them. I wasn't too badly off, though; money was pouring in and I had been pumping out archons and templar like mad.
Good thing, too. Teal was quick to perform a drop on me, landing troops on the northeastern corner of my plateau. As the tank transformed, the escorting marines/firebats/medics were turned to bleeding chunks by psi-storm, and zealots got rid of the offending tank. By now my expansion at 11:00 was finishing up, complete with cannons and a gateway so I wouldn't have to shuttle templar in.
There was a slight lull at this point. The mutalisks periodically showed their ugly faces, only to be driven off by Pikachu's corsairs. He lent me a few dragoons, even though my main was in good shape. A science vessel began snooping around, and I feared for the health of my archons--over the summer, I'd actually seen a good terran use EMP shockwave, and what it does to archons isn't very pretty at all. Pikachu's corsairs caught a science vessel snooping around my corner of the map, and as they gave chase found a terran drop in transit. They were about to assualt...
When teal lagged out.
To brown's credit, he didn't say a word, and the game continued (I usually offer to ally in these instances).
I slapped down some stargates and began cranking out scouts. Yes, scouts. Unlike Terran/Protoss, Zerg have no dedicated scout killer (though scourge do pretty well, cost-wise). Lots of beginner zerg players love to go hardcore devourer, and pay the price when they meet up with scouts. I was betting that brown was getting sick of those corsairs, and next time his airforce showed up, there were going to be devourers for sure.
I started an expand at 10:00 when brown showed up, right on the clock. Mutalisks pummeled the new nexus under the watchful eye of devourers. I had my trump card, though--I shuttled in 8 archons, who had a few upgrades between them. At first the mutalisks rather stupidly engaged, but when the sky turned that peculiar shade of red they took flight along with the devourers.
Scouts growing.
Pikachu began to complain about his lack of gas. I kept telling him about 2:00, and yelling, "expand... NOW!!!" (The zerg player was keeping us on our toes, and woe be to ye if you lose a 2 on 1 ;). For some absurd reason, he took 1:00 instead. Moral of the story--expands with both gas and ore are _always_ better than an expand with just one.
Scouts growing.
My observers were now starting to light up the map. One moved into the center, and sent a transmission home:
"I spy... with my naked eye... something brown. LOTS of it."
Waves of mutalisks flew in and out of vision, followed closely by devourers. My archons obviously had brown spooked, because, last, but not least, the guardians came lumbering, all by their lonesome.
:)
My growing scout squadron quietly outflanked the bulk of the zerg fleet, going by the bully rule--best to pick on those that can't fight back. They caught the guardian swarm as they were in transit. The howl of anti-matter missiles filled the air, and the price on all-you-can-eat giant crab plummeted at Chesepeake Seafood House. Brown, quickly realizing his boo-boo, sent the mutalisks and devourers back, and I ran my scout fleet away before he could inflict any hurt on me.
The zerg fleet wasn't finished, though, and came knocking at the back door of Pikachu's expansion. He cried out for help. Rolling my eyeballs, I sent my 10 archon force and a few templar to the expand--a 5 ore patch expand, mind you--to help him keep it. We both periodically sent in our respective squadrons (me scouts, him sairs) to pick at the guardians, and between that and a little storm action, the tide receded.
Gas was starting to become an issue, so I slapped down a nexus at the top middle geyser. By now I had an 11 scout squadron, working on the 12th. Hey, I'm old school, I love those scouts :). Beautiful, sleek, deadly--I had upgraded their speed, and their weapons were at full capacity. They were a sight to see, streaking across the twilight skies of the Shadowlands ;_;. Brings a tear to my cold eyes. That, as it were, was their elegy.
They found the zerg doing the same at the other geyser in the middle. They slaughtered the undefended drones and were pounding on the hatchery when the zerg fleet returned. The Venatir scouts veered northwards for home, with the zerg in hot pursuit. *bang* *bang* No, that's not the sound of more missiles, it was me banging my head; I'd lead the zerg straight to my new expansion. The Venatir turned around... it was time to make a stand.
Their upgraded missiles pounded the devourers as glave worms bounced off their shields. Still green, though. One by one the hulking creatures popped like balloons at a 2 year old's birthday party. Upgrades were the key. That is, brown had none :). It looked like I had the edge.
Then the calvary rode in--Pikachu's corsairs!!!
:|.
Their shields had been depleted by the mutalisks. Their wireframes turned yellow, then red. It took me only a second to realize what was happening. By then it was too late. The smoke cleared, and Pikachu's corsairs were all that was left. My scouts... my beautiful scouts... which I'd lovingly carved from 2 stargates... gone... gone!
At this point, I contemplated writing many things to Pikachu. Something like, "You f*****' moron! You f***** blew up my scouts! Do you know how expensive that was?"
Instead, as I calculated my loss (12x300=3600, 12x150=1800), I typed, "Be careful. Your sairs hurt my scouts."
Very slowly I began rebuilding what was lost. Then a lone queen arrived at my base, no doubt looking for templar blood. Seeing there was nothing, she left. Of course, you all know what happens next. My 10 archons were still babysitting Pikachu's ore only expand. One of them were parasited, as was one of the 3 shuttles I had at the time. Without my scouts, I had nothing to intercept the overlords I knew were coming. A dozen of them floated into my main where once 10 glowing happy fun balls deterred any kind of landing. That slimy sound that wasn't me throwing up was wave after wave of hydralisk emptying into my main.
Frustrated, I took the 2:00 expand for myself with a probe, Pikachu be screwed. He busied himself by taking 4:00... again, NO gas. I quietly began teching up again, intending to go mass carrier. I'd also decided that I wasn't going to ally; I'd put up with enough from Pikachu already. If I hadn't been babysitting him, I would have had something at home.
Without shuttles, I didn't think there was much to be done with my archon force. I managed to build carriers, but brown went scourge nuts and kept them from going anywhere. Pikachu was too gas starved to mount any serious offensive (he hadn't attacked once the whole game anyway). I won't bore the reader with what happened for the next half-hour--as punishment for my suckiness, I was forced to watch two suck players duke it out. Pikachu kept building cannons, and more cannons, and more cannons. Perhaps in 1.06 Blizzard will give cannons a range upgrade to 10/11, so toss players never have to build troops at all. Bases got razed left and right, and soon I was left with nothing but a few pylons.
Then I sent a probe wandering... and wandering... and wandering...
*bang* *bang*
duh, the map was just like Polaris Prime. That is, all the major expands are connected by land.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
The 10 archons, furious at the stupidity of their executor, were promptly sent to 5:00. There waited hydras and guardians, bad news for archons, right? Not if they're going 0/0. Yes, late game, ore is running out, and both brown and yellow are 0/0(0), meanwhile with 2:00 resources, I had managed to finish all upgrades, meaning my cowering carrier fleet and archons were 3/3/3. The glowing happy fun balls rolled into the base, canning zerg for the blue light special at K-mart. Of course, brown forgot that guardians have a range of 8, archons only have a range of 2--neglecting to park them over water or cliffs, the handful that were there were promptly slaughtered. Now the archons invoked the bully rule, picking on those that couldn't fight back--queens, devourers, scourge, and drones, which didn't last long under 10 39 ounce cans of whup-ass (plus splash of course :). I lost one archon--the parasited one, as it were.
Not satisfied, the archons scoured the map of zerg infestations. I shuttled them in 2 at a time to destroy the middle gas expand. Wandering guardians and neglected overlords were caught over open ground and butchered. Now all that was left was brown's main.
My humiliation was complete at this point. I'd lost to a zerg player 2 on 1, and he had NO upgrades. He didn't even have the wit to put his guardians over the middle cliffs where they could have sniped at my archons with impunity. My plan materialized; I would launch an attack with my carriers. The interceptors would hopefully provide enough cover for the 2 shuttles I had left to slowly bring the archons onto the main zerg platform.
Pikachu, at this point, had prepared an arbiter and called out, "wait wait" as my carriers went off into the sunset. As he performed a recall at brown's main, brown asked us to ally. Like I said, I wasn't about to--I say, if I had to put up with a partner who blows up 12 of my scouts, I _deserve_ to win. When he was turned down, he angrily told us that neither of us would have lasted a 1 on 1. I replied by telling him to look at the score--I KNEW I had the most kills in the game (slaughtering all those helpless units at the end put me over the top for sure), and I was about to go at length about how the loss of my scouts was the turning point in the game when he was eliminated, cursing a blue streak.
Lessons learned:
Don't play with anyone who chooses their b.net name after a Pokemon :P.
When your partner says there's an expand with gas right north of you, LISTEN TO HIM.
Really, I should've taken some more responsibility for Pikachu. I should've told him to hold off on his corsairs, even though I never saw them coming. For the fledgling team players--it's actually a pretty good idea for someone to say, go scouts and someone else to make corsairs. But coordinate your strikes carefully or pay the price. In this case, 12 scouts, which was a huge financial and temporal loss on my part. Go by the air paradigm--let your partner (with the scouts) get rid of the devourers... then have him retreat and you can mop up with your corsairs.
Upgraded archons rock. They really rock. No no, they ROCK against zerg.
Zerg must upgrade or pay the price vs. upgraded archons.
Guardians outrange cannons (so if you see guardians, STOP MAKING CANNONS!!!).
Find out the lay of the land. If I'd discovered earlier the map was like Polaris, I could've sent my carriers on sorties guarded by the archons, which would've wasted any scourge. In my defense, this is somewhat harder on twilight maps; I couldn't really make out any detail on the mini-map, and it wasn't until I walked around that I found out what the deal was. As it was, brown never figured it out, either--he kept dropping his hydras everywhere, when he could've just as well walked.
Really, ally with someone at the end if their partner lags out :).
--Thyroid-Storm
|
|
|
|
Home
Forum
Starcraft Tournaments
