"I don't mean to sound cocky, but I don't lose often ... TvP is the only matchup I ever really lose."
-Mogalin
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| How to kick toss @ss. A Heartcutter story. | | | Author: | | | IP: | XXXX | | Date: | 07/06/99 02:07 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 2, Max: 9, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for Mark4: 8.6829 |   | Late last night I was hanging in nohunters, minding my own business, looking for a nice easy match to end my 4 day weekend o' starcraft. I was summoned from my idyllic existance by Heartcutter's brisk command to act as his public affairs officer and write a battle report on his next match. With a quick salute and a "yes sir, I would love to sir!" I joined his game. (Personal note, I'm writing this on one hour of sleep. So bear with me if it gets a little incoherent. Damn alerts.)
Heartcutter selected Lost Temple as his place of battle. His opponent was ^Strike^, a veteran player. Heartcutter chose his prefered race, terrans while Strike picked zerg, switching at the last second to protoss. Heart had drawn the top position and Strike the left.
"Say interesting quotes and I'll make you famous" Mark4
"Eat dye and shit." Heartcutter
With this beautifull little tidbit of wisdom echoing across the battlefield, the early build orders developed. Heart began with a rather interesting build. He made two barracks, then concentrated on depots. He had at one point four depots and eight marines due to his constant production of depots. Strike chose a somewhat more conventional build order. He went with a straight "terran killer" build, designed to get anti-infantry units as quickly as possible. To this end he went pylon, gateway, gas, cybernetics core, citadel of adun. Both players tried to scout the other, unfortunately both found the other in the last place they looked. Strke's probe gathered no data of much use, besides the fact heart's marines liked using probes as target practice. Heart's recon was thwarted in the same manner, when "deon peon" attempted to dodge and weave his way into Strike's base, he was greeted at the ramp by a probe and a zealot blocking the way. Allthough this prevented Heart from a sure view of the base, it provides a good player enough info on it's own to let him know what the enemy is doing. After all, if he wasn't teching, there would be two zealots blocking the base, not a zealot and probe.
Heart realizes he is behind in the tech race, and decides to make Strike pay for his low troop count. A quickly assembled force of all available marines, a total of nine, head out for Strike's base. Accompanied by a SCV, this expeditionary force begins to assault the hapless zealot at the front gate. Then the hum of warp blades fills the air, leaving half the marines dead. Heart has a moment of concern over the appearance of the dark templar, his engineering bay and academy both only 75% done. He retreats his 4 remaining marines, and orders a bunker, then a turret built at his entrance. The four marines pile into the bunker, guarded by a few more of thier brethren standing by. One marine dies to a Dtemp charge, then another before the injured dtemps retreat. Strike tries to sieze the initiative and end the game right then, charging his dtemps past the bunker, losing one. He is greeted by another turret at the command center. His dtemp desperately attacks it, but is cut down by a hail of lead before inflicting more than two cuts with his warp blade.
"No easy win here." Strike
"Your toast." Heartcutter
"Best get back in there" Strike
Strike has taken advantage of his succesfull containment to expand to his natural. Heart, thinking his opponent has forsaken dtemps for the moment moves a small MMF force out to see if he can take down the undefended expansion his comsats reveal. Unfortunately, Strike has rallied two more dtemps to his base entrance, and Heart is forced to retreat after a few of his warriors are attacked. His probing attack has revealed the location of the enemy containment, and he quickly builds a turret and bunker at his natural. A previously constructed command center is floated into place. A master level technique, this lets the building be made in safety, and produces a fully operating expansion in short order. Heart uses a Maynard Transfer on about 8 SCVs to bring his expansion online. Strike is content to reinforce his blockade, adding a zealot and two templar, while teching back home with a forge and robotics bay.
Heart begins his own foray up the tech tree. He produces a starport and a wraith, which aside from two dropships is the only flying unit he will produce all game. That's right folks, no science vessels. Unless you count all those flying command centers... Heart's wraith patrols the two islands, saving comsat for the other locations which are constantly scanned. A few tanks on his ledge and comsats kill one of the dtemps and the zealot waiting outside heart's base. Strike expands to the bottom start position, and drops two zealots on top of his natural's cliff, alert to any turbo newbie tank drops. Heart is making another CC in his main, obviously planning on expanding soon. Strike drops the hammer. With carefull placement, Strike drops a reaver, dtemp and templar to the left of Heart's mineral line. The templar gets off it's storms, killing 40% of the SCVs. The dtemp is dispatched by the bunker and nearby turret. Then the 4 marines exit the bunker and kill the reaver, which was astutely noted by Heart to not be firing scabards, along with the templar. Why no scabards you ask?
"Man that sucked" Strike
"Did you load that reaver?" Mark4
"Nope =[" Strike
Heart is not content to let this attack go by. Having a mean streak in him, he decides to perform two actions at once, making the poor battle report writers job that much harder. He simultaneously drops 6 marines and 2 medics on the open part of Strike's main, and expands to the right start position with 3 tanks, a small horde of marines and 3 SCVs. I could almost hear Heart's glee as he comsated the bottom toss expansion guarded with a few cannons. <"you call that an expansion? I call this an expansion" gestures to his dual bunker/turret/tank base> Strike soon finds the new expansion with a Dtemp, ending the poor units life in a storm of arclite cannon fire. Heart believes this will signal an attack on his new expansion and sends a relief column of 12 marines and few tanks. They are spotted by the temp and dtemp in the middle, but good control allows only two marines to die to the storm, and the rest are chased by the dtemp to the right expansion.
"They were supposed to keep walking!" Strike referring to Heart's uncooperative marines not walking into his storm.
The opponent's launch attacks at the same time. Heart drops a decent sized M+M horde at the bottom expansion, taking down most of the resistance there and starting to carve it up. Strike opts for a far more risky drop on Heart's main, dropping a large force of reavers, goons, and dtemps. Heart cannot counter without tanks and is reluctant to move them from his choke. Supporting corsairs dweb the closest tanks to allow Strike's force unnopposed access. Heart opposes the drop with quick marine raids into his own base, buying time until ghost's have enough energy to lockdown. When he reaches the energy point, he locks down the reavers and shuttles, advances his tanks, then scans for the dtemps and eliminated them. All in all, the attack was flashy, but managed little besides eliminating the command center. The base was allready mined out though... The same could not be said for the bottom expansion, which the M+M force had worked through. Strike felt the need for more minerals and took the upper left island.
"Try that again" Heartcutter
"What?" Strike
"That cute little drop" Heartcutter
"Okay" Strike
Strike proceeds to mock Heart with a one dtemp drop. When Heart comsats and counters with marines, he nails an observer too... Heart has begun his regimen of scanning again, finding the upper left island expansion as the cannons are ordered up. Heart's quick reaction force of two dropships, one 6/2 M+Ms and one with two tanks moves in. The expansion is over before it even began. Heart is approaching his game over point with his marines hitting 3/2. When it's 3/3 he believes himself to be unstoppable. Strike is 2/1/1.
With the loss of the expansion, Strike realizes he is being outresourced and it's about to become a losing game. He acts before the resource disparity can show in troop count, and makes one last all out attempt at Heart's main. He send two carriers, six corsair, and a control group of zeals and dragoons as well as three templar to Heart's choke. Heart's defenses stand steady under the assault, stripping down the ground forces. Then Strike dwebs half of the tanks and the bunker. Heart has a group of marines he is using to duel with the remaining ground forces, but he is careful to keep far enough away from the choke to prevent a psi storm. The carriers are slowly whittling away at the defense, but a ghost hits the energy mark and one gets locked down. Then the dweb fades off the tanks and all three templar are vaporized in quick succesion. The marines begin hammering the helpless carrier, finally bringing down the behemoth. A corsair is locked down and the remaining air retreats to the relative safety of the cliff of the right expansion. Strike tries one last zealot drop on Heart's main as his attack fades, swiftly dealt with by the buffed marines.
Heart hits the 3/3 mark and is within his kill zone. A large horde of marines, medics, and ghosts depart his main on thier way to Strike's main. They encounter a reaver, goons, and zeals in the middle as Strike makes one last bid for map control. The reaver hit a lucky scarab into six of Heart's marines before lockdown cures that problem. A few dragoons get lockdowned also, a bad sign of things to come. When a terran has the free ghosts and energy to lockdown goons... Heart reinforces his slightly depleted horde with the occupants of his two dropship QRF. Three bunkers are quickly placed at Strike's mineral natural expansion. Strike knows his need for cash will finish him, and he expands to the bottom start's natural. To cover his move, he dwebs the right expansions defenses with his 5 remaining corsairs, then attacks with his one carrier. Heart counters with 12 ghosts, while the little "overkill" light starts flashing on my screen. A quick series of lockdowns later, a few of the corsairs limp for home.
"Damn this game looks good for you" Strike
Strike is not about to give up yet. He attacks with his remaining ground troops, about eight goons and eight zealots and a few templar into the tank push. Suicide? Maybe if he didn't dweb the entire tank push first. Still, Heart micro's his troops back and unsieges tanks. Lockdown canisters fly with gay abandon. And when the smoke clears, Heart still has 4 tanks in place. As with all major actions this game, Heart uses this as cover to expand to the bottom expansion. He also brings four more tanks to reinforce his push. Three zealots charge with ferocity in thier eyes for the few seconds it takes them to be gunned down. A templar uses the distraction to psi storm, netting a few kills from the horde of marines before arclite fire destroys it. Strike fights Heart every step of the way up the ramp, raining down storms on the advancing marines and using dtemps to slow the advance. The assault slows for a moment, over half of the marines dead. But Heart is far too canny a player to be detered at this point, and pulls out the Pimp Move Of The Game: 12 3/3 ghosts, cloaked and firing in unison provide enough firepower to instantly kill a templar. Heart does this quite a few times, ending the templar threat. The tanks push in, and to add insult to injury, Heart drops a nuke on Strike's main.
"Nuke me again" Strike
"Okay" Heartcutter
"Terminal suntan" Heartcutter
The game is over, the terrans victorious.
Lessons learned:
o When you have containment going its a good thing. It's even better if you use it to expand and get map control.
o Learn four or five units very well and learn thier micro tricks. Any more and your attention divides too much. Heart used infantry and tanks. Nothing else significant.
o Ghosts rock!
Post game interview:
Name? Joe Garris aka Heartcutter
Age? 27
Proffesion? Currently a salesman for beyond.com. Previously a video game tester for five years.
When did the game turn? I knew I was going to win when I stopped the first two dtemps.
| | Battle Shots! | 
Strike gives Heart an opening taunt.
Strikes doom drop on Hearts base cluster defense.
How not to break a terran defense.
What is a battle report without a good nuke picture?
The final stats.
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