Well Pillars has accepted his defeat in i2e2, but is determined to get his revenge in a friendly game after the match. The first game in the i2e2 quarter final had been on Dire Straits and Pillars was puzzled how the hell his protoss lost to a zerg on islands, muttering something about forgetting to drop his 6 reavers at the right time Pillars prepares to get his own back.

Maynard starts off with a very conservative 3 hatch hydra build, now most hydra builds on island involve 2 lairs for fast OL transporting, so people may be suprised to see a 2 hatches and a lair. Now Maynard is going to find himself without the option of an early attack but how much can he make of the greater economy and more numerous hydra? Does Pillars realise what Maynard is up to, and will he try for an early expansion, most people expect an early offensive from zerg.

Pillars has chosen a similarly conservative build going 1 gate corsair with a robotics facility for reavers. Pillars' first couple of corsair quickly find Maynards base but are shooed away by several hydra, now Maynard spreads out his hydra into three groups one in the middle of the island and 2 on each side. This placement of hydra stops Pillars landing unnoticed on the island and made it impossible to drop the sweet spot behind Maynard's minerals.

So when the first reaver does come it manages only to pick off a few stray hydra before retreating. Pillars can see Maynard is no immediate threat and decides to expand to the Middle-bottom Island after building a second robotics facility. Maynard drops mass hydra on the left Middle Island soon afterwards, and starts an expansion, but this island has many more resources than Pillars current expansion. Maynard and Pillars soon have an expansion each, guarded by 2 cannons/sunkens as appropriate.

Pillars now builds his templar archives and starts another expansion right-middle. A brief scuffle occurs over the unpopulated middle island, with the dispute being won by Pillars 4 reavers. Maynard quickly attacks Pillars main with many many hydra, and Pillars only has 3 reavers and 2 cannons to defend, this is sufficient however mainly due to Pillars excellent building placement (his buildings are in a circle surrounding his nexus with cannons and reavers in between) and some microing of the reavers. Pillars only really loses a forge which is soon replaced.

Maynard now attacks the bottom middle island with quite a few hydra which kill many probes and the 2 cannons before the ever blunt group of 4 reavers are shuttled in to the island. Now the middle island the reavers were shuttled from is unoccupied Maynard sets up a hatchery there with hydra backup, Pillars realising he can't give Maynard control of both the middle islands quickly squashes this expansion attempt with more reavers. The action keeps switching between this island and Pillars left expansion, as Maynard once again hydra drops the defenseless island, this time the threat is put down not only by reavers, but the first of many psi-storms to be cast.

Pillars now has his own expansion warping in on the middle-right island, which Maynard attempts to deny with a bunch of hydra, but they don't live to long in the face of several reavers. Maynard is not too dismayed by the failure of this attack as he is creating expansion on both the islands neighboring his home shores. Pillars has been massing a number of scouts, which have proved useful in guarding shuttles, harassing OL and picking off weakened hydra. Maynard now expands to bottom left, and simultaneous attacks Pillars scout mob with a bunch of scourge, the scourge meet little resistance as the scouts are busy practicing fancy acrobatic manouvers instead of more useful anti-scourge tactics.

Pillars now expands to top right, giving each player exactly half of the maps resources, normally you would give a zerg player little chance in an equal resources battle, esp. since he has had no major victories, and has lost a lot of hydra, but this is Maynard. Pillars latest base is comparatively weak because of it's position in the middle of a large island, Maynard has plenty of room both to drop his hydra unnoticed, and to manouver them in battle. Pillars could have used nexus placement similar to eVERLAST's to make his base more defensible at the cost of resource gathering speed, but will the expansion survive the mass hydra drop, that Maynard has landed on the edge of the island? Pillars defense consists of cannons, templar and archons, a whole mass of storms is quickly cast while the templar retreat leaving many less hydra for the remaining defenders to contend with. The archons make a good account of themselves however and the hydra's that escape their grasp are easily dispatched by Pillars scouts.

These said scouts pursuing the lords from the drop chance upon Maynards top middle expansion which is undefended, many drones are lost as Maynard hastily morphs some spore colonies to scare off the scouts. A few corsair had been hanging around but obviously without dweb despite Pillars fleet beacon. By this time Maynard has got together a few dev/guardian but strangely has no supporting mutas, this small force attacks across the center of the map but is absolutely massacred by some scouts. But apparently this was yet another diversion as a hefty group of hydra lands at Pillars beleaguered top-right expansion, the hydra take out some cannons and many probes but are themselves destroyed by the archon/templar defense.

Pillars decides to pick on the few devourers clustered around the edge of Maynards central island with his scouts/corsair, and despite limited support from hydra and a spore colony on the ground kills the devourers at minimal damage to his own fleet, he even sneaks in a cunning cross-island psi-storm on the hydras. Tragically at this moment the observing SCV from a floated CC is cruelly killed, perhaps terran do suck :( But now Pillars makes his big move, and lands many shuttles full of templar/archons/reavers and a pet dragoon on Maynards bottom-left expansion, the attack appears devastatingly effective as Pillars simply mows down the defending troops, psi-storming the peons, and popping lords with scouts, morphing used templar into even more archons. This was the most exciting battle of the game, and I was suprised to see Pillars making the attack so late in the game, when he had continually held the resource advantage. I was sure Pillars would prevail in this battle, but he simply couldn't match troop production despite his resources.

But the attack is halted as Maynard pours more of his seemingly unlimited hydra hordes into battle, and the scouts are recalled to deal with guardians raining havoc on Pillars bottom-middle expansion. Worse still Pillars top-right expansion has been hit yet again by an even larger army of hydra, a mass of storm erupts amongst the hydra, but more hydra are coming and a lot of hydra simply ran through the storms. At this point Pillars scouts are in trouble as Maynard lured them into attacking his central island and killed a good few scouts with hydra. Back at the top-right island things are going badly for Pillars although most of the hydra are dead, so are the islands defenses and Maynard can seemingly afford infinite hydra losses at this point. But all Pillars needs is one more storm provided by a newly shuttled templar and what remains of the scouts secure the island once again.

Yes even more hydra as the island is dropped yet again, with just a single templar defending it. A whole wad of shuttles are approaching containing those deadly combat troops we all know and love; probes. However the single templar does significant damage and the first DT of the game pops out a nearby gateway just in time. Yet again scouts finish off the last hydra, and I am puzzled to see a probe warp in 3 stargates, surely Pillars already has 3 at home? Looking down to check I spot the largest hydralisk army yet rampaging through Pillars undefended main base. It's probably all over for Pillars now, but he isn't prepared to admit defeat, 2 seconds later when Maynard drops all three of Pillars remaining mining expansions however it is 'GG'.

I mean ouch, the last 10 battles took place in like a minute :( Maynard's standing forces during 90% of the battle were 100 drones and 100 hydra, Pillars holding on with a handful of reavers/templar shuttled whereever they were needed, he did resign with quite a pile of resources but he never made enough production facilities to threaten Maynards 15 or so hatcheries. A brief recap of the game, even while Maynard and Pillars are contemplating deep philosophical issues we still can't keep up with the action...

Willzzz