screw titles, I've been working on this too long already

     Welcome to my Xth battle report! I won't try to number mine like Zerg~Ling's because whenever I make a new one, I realize how much my old ones suck compared to it and refuse to admit I wrote them. ;( Many comments have been made recently about how War3 is supposedly more boring to watch than Starcraft and how watching a replay of creeping is more tedious than someone else's game of Diablo 2. To appease anyone who believes this, I will write a series of war3 reports featuring uncommonly intense player-on-player action!

     It starts with an orc mirror-match fought between two of the good folks in clan obs- just after they got rid of that idiotic lockdown bot. The map was obviously lost temple and the players were HoLiDaY. and Afflicted([tR]). I won't bother reporting their outdated levels, check the profiles. :P Mousing over a player's name will show you their color if you forget.

     Afflicted started off at 3:00 with a fairly normal altar > burrow > war mill > stronghold build before placing a defensive tower, apparently going for heroes and spellcasters. HoLiDaY spawned at 6:00 and went for something novel, building altar > burrow > barracks > 2nd burrow, leaving his great hall un-upgraded and not starting a war mill until his first grunt was trained. Both players placed their first two buildings in the peon line to enable four-peon mining.

     Both sides summoned a FarSeer, scouted the map with feral spirits, and headed to the enemy main for a little early game harassment. Afflicted followed a more direct route and arrived at HoLiDaY's base a few seconds early, attacking a burrow with his wolves but getting chased away by the grunts before it fell. Subsequent harassment attempts accomplished nothing. HoLiDaY also targetted a burrow but was easily driven off since the FarSeer had to stand in range of two burrows and a tower just to attack one.

     HoLiDaY then started upgrading to a stronghold (finally) while Afflicted built a third burrow and two spirit lodges for witch doctors, also upgrading to a fortress. Thinking alike again, both players dispatched two peons to the other's main, presumably to build offensive towers. However, the two pairs met near Afflicted's base and engaged in a brief slapping girly-fight before HoLiDaY's peons broke off to build two watch towers at the top of the hill. Not to be outdone, Afflicted's peons started building their own towers right next to HoLiDaY's. :)

     The building race was broken up when HoLiDaY's FarSeer and three grunts showed up and started attacking Afflicted's towers, forcing him to cancel both and then killing the gray FarSeer. The Blademaster stayed long enough to destroy one of HoLiDaY's towers but had to windwalk away before suffering the same fate. With a second and third tower quickly constructed on the perimeter of Afflicted's base and a barracks behind them, the siege was complete.

     Afflicted had a force of four or five witch doctors at this point and tried to break out southward. HoLiDaY's army gave chase and killed a few witch doctors, forcing Afflicted to burn a town portal scroll before losing all his units. HoLiDaY's own offensive was equally unsuccessful; his grunts attacked a spirit lodge but were forced back by witch doctors and burrows before they could destroy it. Afflicted had the spirit lodges working overtime, training a continuous stream of witch docs.

     HoLiDaY's next move was to train a catapult from the siege barracks and start bombarding Afflicted's lone watch tower. While HoLiDaY was busy catapulting, Afflicted's heroes and witch doctors fled southward, bypassing the natural creeps to attack HoLiDaY's main, which was defended by naught by a very bored level 1 Blademaster. Afflicted also left two peons at the natural, just out of creep-range in the hope that he would be able to expand later. HoLiDaY waited until the watch tower fell before town portalling back to defend his base. In his haste, he also portalled the catapult, which was very nearly owned by the gray Blademaster until Afflicted decided to portal out.

     For a minute or two, HoLiDaY continued to produce catapults and Afflicted kept marching into tower range to attack them, destroying many and using healing wards to replenish the damage taken. Both gray spirit lodges were destroyed as HoLiDaY razed buildings faster than Afflicted could destroy his catapults. However, Afflicted rebuilt the buildings out of sight in an area of cleared forest. HoLiDaY also constructed two spirit lodges of his own at the main while Afflicted quickly fled south again to clear out the creeps and expand. HoLiDaY noticed this and gave pursuit, but then his latest catapult left the barracks and both players moved their troops back to the main, Afflicted to attack the catapult and HoLiDaY to defend it. It was amusing to see the two armies battling each other one moment and running side by side the next. :)

     Since the creeps had been cleared, Afflicted started an expansion at the 3:00 natural with his two peons (a great hall and a tower). An illusory pink Blademaster was there to witness it but HoLiDaY made no move to attack the expansion, either because he didn't notice or because he didn't want to break off the siege - he was already training witch doctors with what little money was left over from manufacturing catapults but the only available units were busy protecting the same.

     Another brief round of catapult feinting and retreating followed, HoLiDaY continuing to devote all available funds to producing the machines. Afflicted's attempt at rebuilding his defensive tower was quickly squashed. In turn, the pink FarSeer was actually killed during the reciprocating assault on HoLiDaY's bastion, although Afflicted lost most of his witch docs in the process. Afterward, he switched to a more conservative battle plan, queueing up a huge line of witch doctors from both spirit lodges and gathering all his forces out of tower range, only running out every once in a while to stall HoLiDaY, who retreated his catapults whenever he saw gray units approaching. For some reason, HoLiDaY now decided to go after Afflicted's fortress with the catapults (perhaps to keep him from holding the resource advantage) while Afflicted moved one of his expansion peons south to build two towers in an odd location near the southwest goblin laboratory.

     When ten witch doctors had been trained and more were still on the way, Afflicted decided to abandon his main to HoLiDaY's forces. The latter celebrated by bringing in his witch doctors and demolishing the base. The peons, however, escaped to the natural where Afflicted put them to work rebuilding his most important structures. Meanwhile, the gray army was heading for HoLiDaY's base, pausing along the way to tower-creep the goblin lab, obtaining a healthy amount of experience plus the two most useless items a doc masser could ever have. :)

     And before proceeding any further, a word should be said about the financial status of both players. HoLiDaY had only one gold mine and, for most of the game, built only the third most expensive orc unit - the catapult. No less than six were built before the Afflicted's fortress fell. Afflicted, on the other hand, had concentrated on the second cheapest orc unit - the witch doctor, and also mined uninterrupted from two bases. The result of this was that not only was Afflicted ahead in units and resources, but he found the 6:00 main virtually undefended. The killing of a single pink witch doc alerted HoLiDaY to the fact that Afflicted was launching a last ditch assault and he used his last town portal to return to base for the final confrontation.

     It was an unmitigated slaughter... of HoLiDaY's army. The grand total of three grunts and a few adept witch doctors were no match for Afflicted's ten-strong master doc battalion, especially since Afflicted microed his troops well and placed healing and stasis wards in highly effective locations. Buildings were destroyed, heroes killed, and HoLiDaY frantically ran his peons away and tried to rebuild at Afflicted's main while launching a diversionary catapult attack on the natural. However, the attack was repulsed and the remaining pink forces at 3:00 were destroyed with help from, of all things, goblin sappers. Victory for [tR]! Whatever that is! :) GG's were exchanged, HoLiDaY spent a few seconds insisting that some top ladder guy was undefeated with the tower/catapult push, and both players started doing strange experiments with peons that I didn't stick around to watch.

     It looks like they had a fun game and I enjoyed watching. I hope you enjoyed my report of it almost as much. Please leave comments for the next one, because it's coming soon and you'd better leave your mark on it while there's still time! Also note that someone else is now using the name "Blarg" on BNet so don't go thinking it's me. At least they have a better record than I ever will. ;/

     As always, you can find me on NotEvenFunny or something similar. Peace. --Blarg