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| The Perfect Storm(s) | | | Author: | | | IP: | spider-mXXXX | | Date: | 02/03/01 04:02 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | Image Heavy(1), Starcraft(1), Pro Player(1), Long(1) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 4, Max: 9, Min: 9
Lifetime Rating for xld.aldogrez: 8.8276 |  |
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I'd observed (orky)Priest
play against -Vampyre- (which Priest won pvz), and when I went
to work on the images, half of them were messed up =[. I
logged onto bnet, and did nothing for a while, every once in a
while doing a /who clan -X17 and /who clan orb, until I saw
Priest in X17. I messaged him and told him what happened with
the pics, and he said that sucked, but he also asked if I
wanted to obs him and TillerMaN play. I quickly agreed and
joined the game, my fellow observer being IceGod.
Before we begin, I've added a little bit of info on
each of the players.
(orky)Priest is a member of the orky
pro team whos website can be found here, and has also
written a PvZ strat guide at XGamers which can be found here.
He's a pure toss player, and has a very distinct strategy.
TillerMaN is from Glasgow Scotland, and is a top tier
gamer. He's very good at macro/micro, and if you're
interested, Fox Bane and Nobo did a three game series with him
against Mark4 a while back, and although the pics are missing
on some, the text is still entertaining. You can find them here,
here
and here.
I'd also just like to add that I'm just observing one
of the many games between these two friends. Anyways, back to
the game.
Priest chooses Protoss and warps in as white
toss at the 12:00 start position, while Tiller randoms to
purple Zerg and mutates his hatchery at 6:00.
The
builds are standard, with Priest making a pylon on eight
supply, a gate on ten, and sending the probe that warped in
the gate to scout. Tiller
expands to his natural on twelve, bringing an extra drone down
in case of a pesky probe, and a pool on thirteen.
The
scouting is normal except that Tiller sends his overlord to 9:00
first, and had Priest been
there, he wouldn't have had to scout. This is why many people
now send their overlord to 9:00 if they're at 12:00, 3:00 if
they're at 6:00 and vice versa.
This doesn't matter however, as Priest finds Tiller on his second stop, and has
a look at Tiller's base. It's
a bit late for Priest to kill
Tiller early game, because of
his decision to tech, getting gas on fourteen, and a cycore on
sixteen.
Priest sends his
first zealot down there anyways, but Tiller made lings with the first
two larvae from his main after the pool finished as well as a
morphing sunken colony at Tiller's natural. The zealot kills
one drone before attempting to go back to his own base, but
the sunken gets in three hits because of the placement of it.
The zealot explodes into blue flame from the sunkens attack as
the probe hovers away free of injuries.
Priest makes another zealot and
places it at his ramp when his probe sees a ling coming. The
placement of it is bad though, and is not commanded to hold
position, so the ling manages to sneak through and see the
stargate Priest made. The ling
has a good look around before scampering back out of Priest's base.
Priest made the stargate soon after
his cycore finished, and as soon as it warped in he began
making a corsair.
 The sair finishes soon after the ling leaves, and
Priest immediately flies it
down to Tiller's base. Tiller had been collecting gas for
a while, but for some reason did not make a hydra den after he
saw the stargate. Tiller does
begin morphing one in soon however, but unfortunately it
begins mutating the second Priest's sair arrives. The sair
disruption flares two of Tiller's overlords to death before
Tiller's hydra den finishes
and he turns three larvae he'd been saving from his main into
hydra eggs. The sair flies over to Tiller's natural and begins
attacking an overlord before it's driven away by hydras.
Priest expanded to his
natural during the overlord raid, and he also techs up to
templars after adding another gateway.
Tiller mutates an evolution chamber
in his main and begins researching +1 range attack. He also
puts down another hatchery above the one in his main, bringing
his total to four, which is the same number of gates Priest has at the same time.
Both player's unit counts are pretty low, Tiller with a handful of hydras and
a few lings, and Priest with
three zealots and two temps.
Priest decides it's a good time to
start upgrading, and he warps in a forge and begins
researching +1 attack a little after Tiller begins his upgrades. About
the same time Priest's forge
warps in Tiller expands to
his mineral only expansion with an overlord and thirteen
hydras to guard the morphing hatchery.
Priest made two DTs, but Tiller figured he would see
something like this from Priest, and has overlords where
they're needed. Priest finds
this out as he sends in a DT to try to scout, and is quickly
forced to pull it back before it's killed by the hydras.
Priest now becomes
aware that Tiller might be
massing mutas and/or might be preparing a lurker drop, or he
forgets to build a pylon, because he spaces out about 5-7
cannons throughout his main and natural. He also adds two more
gates, bringing his total to six, more than Tiller has hatches.
Both
players decide to expand again at the same time, with Tiller attempting to expand to
9:00's natural, figuring if he can secure the only way in to
9:00's main, he can later expand there too, especially since
Priest doesn't even have a
robotics facility for shuttles.  Priest chooses to
expand to 3:00's mineral only, trying to keep all his units in
one place, which this expansion will allow him to do. Only
Priest gets his nexus up
however, as Tiller's drone
meant to make the hatchery was cut in half by a DT. The DT
gets in a swipe at a hydra before Tiller realizes the overlord he
brought along wasn't in range to detect the templar.
Tiller's overlord
speed upgrade soon finishes, and he decides it's time to
attack. He groups his hydras into two full control groups, and
one more of about eight and heads off to Priest's base. The upgrades are in
Tiller's favor as all his
hydras are 1/1, while Priest
only has +1 attack. It looks like the battle will also be in
Tiller's favor, as he has 32
hydras to Priest's 10 zealots
and three templars, but the templars have enough energy for
two storms each. Tiller
attacks first, using the hit and run tactic, trying to kill as
many templars as he can before they can get off storm. Priest is very experienced with
zeal/temp though, and tries to surround the hydras while
drawing the hydras closer by moving the targeted temp back.
Neither player takes any heavy losses for a little bit, each
pulling back their units when neccesary, until Priest casts two storms exactly
where they needed to be. The one storm kills only two hydras,
but the second was cast as the hydras were attacking, and
kills or significantly weakens a whole control group. Priest then brings down three more
temps with a storm each, and casts a virtual blanket of storms
over Tiller's hydras. Tiller sees the templars coming,
and pulls the hydras back just as the storm is cast, avoiding
a loss of about eight hydras. Tiller finishes off what's left of
the zealots, and begin attacking Priest's nexus that had just
finished warping in, but Priest is constantly making units
out of his six gates, and soon six goons dance down to the
action, but without range or the help of storm, they only
manage to kill a few hydras. Priest gets enough mana for three
more storms soon after the goons go down, and manage to kill
quite a few hydras. Priest
loses three of his temps before he summons an archon from the
last two, and brings downsix more goons, which he orders them
to get rid of the remaining survivors from Tiller's swarm.
 At this point I thought Tiller would mass units a little
longer, but instead he orders about twelve more hydras to
attack Priest's base, but nine
of them die quickly to goons and an archon, while the other
three retreat. Priest lost a
pylon and a cannon in the previous battle, and warps in
another pylon above his nexus, while Tiller sends a drone up to the 9:00
main, and begins mutating into a hatchery.
Tiller soon has 12-16 more hydras
ready to go, and he once again heads toward Priest's base. Priest doesn't have all his units in
the same spot when Tiller
attacks, and this costs him the battle. The hydras quickly get
rid of the archon and also kill the six goons there. You can
see the goons below his ramp in the minimap.
Priest moves four more goons he has
below his main ramp down to the battle, but they arrive after
the other six have already died, and the four new goons
quickly die too. Priest has
three more goons below his ramp now, but decides to save them
to defend his main and natural, instead of wasting them trying
to protect his now naked expansion. Tiller is now making hydras as soon
as the larvae is available, and soon has two control groups of
+2 attack hydras destroying the nexus at 3:00's mineral only.
Priest now has more
zeals/temps, and both players try to lure each other into
storms. Tiller manages to
kill one temp that doesn't get off a storm in time, and kills
another just as it casts storm. The battle rages on with Priest casting storm after storm,
and Tiller doing his best to
dance around them. Tiller
suddenly takes half his attacking force and sends it to the
9:00 main. The DT that killed the first drone that tried to
expand to 9:00's natural ran up the ramp after the hydras
retreated, and Priest ordered
it to stay in sight of 9:00 main expansion. The DT is now
swiping at Tiller's finished
hatchery at 9:00, and this is why Tiller sends about eight hydras up
to save the hatch. I'm not sure why color=purple>Tiller sent so many hydras
to get rid of one DT, but he probably didn't want to have to
micro any there, instead wanting to focus his attention on the
main battle.
  Priest gets rid of
the six hydras Tiller left,
and begins warping in another nexus, determined to mine from
there. Priest's pylon he had
warping in above the nexus is now finished, and he warps in
three cannons to protect it. Tiller also invests in some
stationary offense, and mutates five drones into sunkens,
defending both 9:00 main and it's natural. Priest also warps in a nexus at his
own mineral only. The 12:00 mineral only is a great place to
get a mining edge on your opponent, along with islands because
for most people it's the last place they'll check.
Priest gets both
expansions up and running, and moves his troops, made up of
six high temps, ten goons and a control group of zealots, down
to Tiller's mineral only.
Tiller has decided to
switch to a hydra/ling combo, and adds another evolution
chamber behind the geyser at his natural for melee attack
upgrades. Tiller now has
eleven hatcheries, two each at his main and natural, five at
his mineral only, and one each at his 9:00 main and natural
expansions, while Priest still
has six gates.
Priest
runs into a control group of hydras Tiller meant to flank him with, and
decides to pull back for now and wait for his templars to
catch up. Priest has had the
zealot speed upgrade since the end of the last attack, and the
zeals along with the goons quickly outrun the slow templar.
The temp get there soon enough though, and after the hydras
dodge one storm, Priest casts
another one which kills a large clump of them. Tiller now attacks with about two
control groups of twenty-four lings from his mineral only, but
microing another control group of hydras from the 9:00
natural. Priest displays nice
micromanagement, moving his zealots and archon to attack the
lings, and moving his goons back to engage the hydras, and at
the same time storming Tiller's clumped up hydras. Priest also does a good job of
storming Tiller's lings,
placing the storms in front of his zealots and archon, so the
storm weakens the lings as they run through, but no damage is
dealt to his own units. Priest
kills the first wave of lings, and Tiller quickly makes more hydras
and lings from the nine hatches at his main and naturals.
Priest's templars lay down the
law though and hydras crumple into a mass of flesh from
psionic shockwaves. The lings don't get stormed this time
however, and the cracklings rip into the goons and archon,
managing to kill one of each before psi blades and goon fire
mop them up. Priest is also
forced to use one more storm to get rid of three hydras about
to kill a goon in the red.
Priest's temps are all out of
energy, so he makes three archons, leaving only one templar to
storm. As long as Tiller
continues making mostly lings Priest will be OK, but with only one
templar he could easily die to mass hydras.
Tiller now pulls a nice move and
sends six hydras he's had at 3:00 to prevent Priest from sending a probe there
over to Priest's 3:00 mineral
only expansion. Priest casts a
storm over them, but Tiller
simply moves the hydras out from under the storm. Priest has no attacking units there,
and he either doesn't have enough energy for another storm or
doesn't want to waste one on such a small amount of hydras.
Either way, Tiller manages to
kill about 700 minerals worth of probes before a few zeals get
rid of them.
 Priest attacks a
little after the hydras begin attacking, and his 1/0/2 units
encounter a large mass of +2 armor lings. Priest's first zealots quickly fall
to the lings, but the archons cut through them one after one,
the lings only managing to kill archon before reinforcements
from Tiller's 9:00 bases show
up in the form of hydras. The hydras draw Priest's fire, and being able to get
close enough before being killed, the cracklings make quick
work of the remaining units.
Tiller counters, and his first wave
of units are quelled by a few nicely placed storms. Tiller has eleven hatches though,
and that's thirty three units at a time, if larvae aren't
already being made into units. tiller quickly has a new army
at his command. The new army is sent at Priest, and as he tries to fight
back wave after wave of lings, Tiller sends in hydras, making
matters worse for Priest. The
templars aren't very useful against lings, and their aren't
very many hydras to storm. Priest's units fight off the swarm
for a bit, but with only one archon, his units can't hold out
for long. Tiller's sends a
few lings and hydras over to take down Priest's expansion at 3:00's mineral
only, and after trying to dance his temps, Priest knows he's outresourced now,
with his natural and mineral only as his only economy. Priest gives a gg and leaves as his
nexus explodes into blue flame.
This
was an excellent game to watch, and I think Priest could've
held his base longer if he'd had more storms available. Both
players did everything needed to win, the only thing Priest
could've done better would have been to had a few reavers to
help clean up the lings. Tiller didn't use any queens to get
rid of the temps or ensnare, and with those two spells the
game could've been over a little quicker also, the templar
being the equalizer between the Protoss and Zerg. Tiller also
exploited the zerg's fast unit production, having 40 more
units at his command in less than a minute.
Priest has
godly storm placement, in the game with -Vampyre- he killed
around 140 units, while only losing 12. Again, if priest's
temps had been charged a little more, the game might have had
a different outcome, or at least lasted longer.
Priest
has expanded when needed in every game I've watched, and is
very good about being covert about it, as he almost always
expands to 12:00's mineral only.
Overall both players
played superbly, and after the game with -Vampyre- I
interviewed Priest, even though he didn't win the game with
Tiller.
It gets rather tedious typing the interviews word
for word, so this time I'm just using the screenshots, sorry
modem users ;[
Thanks for reading everyone, and please comment!
--xld.aldogrez
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