Another one of those Terran vs. Toss games... (Game 2)

The Players:
Heartcutter (Terran)
Omnipresent_One (Protoss)

Introduction:
After Heartcutter's defeat in Game One to Omnipresent_One, He vows revenge in a second game. (To see the details of Game One click Here.)

Game 2 puts the competitors at the opposite end of the map from the starting positions of Game 1. Heartcutter draws the 12:00 position while Omni lands at 3:00.

The pregame comments are few this game as both players are a little more intent on gaining a victory. Omni makes one cryptic comment, possibly regarding why it is his destiny to win this game.

Early Game:
Omni sends out a probe to scout and this time he hits the jackpot. He sends it to 12:00 is able to thread the needle just before Hearcutter is able to complete his barricade. The probe makes straight for one of Heartcutter's mineral patches and mines a mineral. He then attempts to make his escape the same way he came in. Too bad for the probe, while he is busy mining minerals, Heartcutter completes his barricade. The probe is trapped inside Heartcutter's base. He desperately tries to find an escape route but he can't. Seeing the blinking light in Heartcutter's barrack indicating the training of marines, the probe makes a run for the corner of the plateau where he hopes to hide. But the freshly trained marine doesn't have much to do since the game was still young and no threat from the protoss encampment was imminent, so he heads out on a probe hunt. The probe explodes in a poof of blue and orange flame, but not before he is able to transmit the beginnings of a factory building in Heartcutter's base.

Omni once agains goes for the 1 gate, fast tech opening. Heartcutter, like last game doesn't scout until his first vulture pops out of his first factory. When the vulture completes, he starts construction on the machine shop and a second factory. By the time Heartcutter's vulture reaches Omni's base, there are five zealots blocking the choke. The vulture jukes left, then jukes right, but he is no Deon and his vehicle gets sliced into scrap metal by the psi-blades of the zealots.

Heartcutter learns his lesson from the unfortunate reaver drop from last game and constructs a lovely anti-reaver defense near his minerals. Any attempt at a reaver drop against this defense would be futile. However, this game, after the initial pylon, gate, pylon, assimilator, cy core, Omni's build order veers away from reavers and towards the dreaded templar. He throws up a second gate, a Citadel of Adun, and then a Templar archives. Like last game, he spreads his pylons and buildings out all over the map to protect his covert operation from the probing eyes of Heartcutter's Comsat.

The Action Begins:
Omni bides his time building up a pretty good sized force. He has 6 zealots, 8 dragoons and a templar for support. Instead of attacking with this force, He uses it to guard his natural and quickly expands to it. Heartcutter hasn't been idle either and has a force of 8 vultures and 2 tanks. He lays down a group of mines in front of Omni's natural and then sieges up the tanks behind them. Then he attempts to use his vultures to bait Omni's forces towards the mine field and into the range of the siege tank weapons. Omni complains about his predicament by saying,""

Heartcutter's mines do some damage, however, a well-timed psi storm greatly reduces the hitpoints of the vultures. The retreating vultures are chased by the zealots and dragoons, and in an unfortunate incident for Hearcutter, one ill-placed mine is set off killing all the remaining vultures and only 1 zealot. Omni's remaining forces which number 2 zealots and 4 dragoons are able to chase the remaining 2 tanks (which Heartcutter had managed to unseige) back to Heartcutter's base.

Heartcutter has now constructed a third factory and he has moved his barrack away from his choke so that his factory units can come down the ramp in a hurry when they need to. He has also built a second command center and floated it over to his natural expansion.

Even with the generous amount of land mines that are still planted between the two bases, Omni is still able to sneak a couple of dark templar into Heartcutter's base. They do very little damage however when a quick comstat reveals their presence and Heartcutter's tanks make short work of them.

After the failure of this "surprise attack" as Omni called it, he takes a risk. He sends a probe down to 6:00. The probe starts an unguarded naked nexus at not just the 6:00 natural expansion, but also at the 6:00 starting position. Heartcutter has placed mines at both of these positions for just such an instance. However, the probe didn't set off the mines due to its floating nature and since the the mines have such short vision and there are no pylons constructed around either nexus, both go undetected while they slowly warp into position. However, Omni doesn't leave these two nexuses (nexi? nexusesi? nexusises?) completely undefended. He moves 10 zealots and 8 dragoons between the right wall of the temple and the cliff to his base. If Heartcutter wants to take out these expansions, he will have to either go through Omni's troops or way around them.

Omni has the naked expansion at the 6:00 natural running quite nicely before Heartcutter finally discovers it and sends a couple of vultures to do some probe harrassing. Quite a few probes lose their lives before some dragoons come to chase the pesky vultures away. Omni is not at all pleased with this turn of events, especially since the expansion at the 6:00 starting position is not yet fully operational.

Heartcutter's next move is to begin a slow tank push along the edge of the plateau upon which Omni's main base sits. He is very clever about it, using vultures to keep mines out in front of his slow advance. When he has 8 tanks in position along the edge of Omni's plateau with vulture support, he begins using his Comsat to give his tanks vision over the edge of the cliff and tank bombardment begins to rain down on Protoss buildings. Omni's ground troops can't get close.

However, all is not yet lost for Omni. While Heartcutter has been busy moving his troops into position, Omni has quietly built 2 Stargates and a Fleet Beacon. Everyone should know what this means. That's right... Carriers. When Heartcutter's tank bombardment begins, two carriers have just warped in. The Carriers have not yet had the chance to build a full compliment of interceptors, however, it still must have been quite a shock for Heartcutter when a total of 6 or 7 interceptors started attacking his defenseless Tanks and vultures.

In order to save his tanks from destruction, Heartcutter is forced to unseige them and move them away from the cliff. As he does this, Omni sends forth a group of zealots and dragoons. They lay into the tanks from the ground while the carriers continue their relentless barrage from the air. Heartcutter kills a lot of ground troops. He tries to buy as much time as he can while three starports are being constructed back at his base. His offensive units are finally dispatched and the only defense he has at his natural expansion and main are a couple of tanks and vultures, the bunker that was built at the beginning of the game to stop the reaver drop, and a few scattered mines outside his natural.

The land mines bite into the Dragoons that are sent to attack Heartcutter's base, however there is still nothing to combat the Carriers which have now reached a total of 4 with more and more interceptors being built by the minute. 2 of the Carriers begin to work on Heartcutter's expansion while the other 2 fly into his main base. Finally, 3 cloakable wraiths become available to Heartcutter and he flies in to engage the carriers. Two Carriers drop out of the sky in smoking ruin. However, 2 more along with an observer come in to replace them. The interceptors attack the wraiths and wraiths are forced to fly out of range. Unfortunately for Heartcutter he cannot fly the wraiths back into range without getting them destroyed and Omni focuses the carrier fire onto the Starports so that no more of the pesky wraiths can come to the rescue.

With nothing left to combat the carriers, Heartcutter is forced to concede.

Post Game Discussion:

My Final Thoughts:
What can I say about this game except Heartcutter got caught totally off guard by a quick tactical switch done by Omnipresent_One. I can think of about 4 or 5 different counters that Terran has for 4 carriers attacking with no support. Unfortunately for Heartcutter, he didn't have the time or the tech to produce any of them.

One constant that remained true in both games was Omnipresent_One's ability to outexpand Heartcutter. That above all else is probably the key to Omnipresent_One's victories. It wasn't that Heartcutter didn't expand fast enough as Terran. Its just that he wasn't able to do enough damage to Omnipresent_One's expansions to slow down his unit production.

Excellent games by both players and I would like to thank both players for allowing me to sit in on both of these games.

Comments and suggestions are welcomed. Thanks for taking the time to read this report.

Regards,
Drefsab