"Jap is a racist slur which I believe is an insult towards jewish people."
-Red6
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| Hydralisks and Radioactive Snowballs | | | Author: | | | IP: | XXXX | | Date: | 07/08/99 01:07 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | Starcraft(1), Text Only(1) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 7, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for Dev: 7.8723 |  | 2 Battle Reports in the same day? Tasty bonus. (: Unfortuantely, the random gods again frowned upon me and handed me my worst race.
The Map: Snowbound. It was my first time on this map, and I actually rather like it.
The Players:
In this corner:
Dev (Tyderis): Randomed to Purple Zerg (UGH), 6:00 start.
And in this corner:
PocketMonsoon (That's a cool name): Randomed to Yellow Terran, 3:00 start.
And here we go!
I was aware that this was somewhat of an island map, so I started out with a build for air transport: Early gas, hydra den, twin lairs. I wasn't sure where everyone started but I deduced from my own starting position that perhaps the starting locations worked like, say, Lost Temple. I sent my first two overlords up the sides of the map for a look-see.
My first overlord (how lucky is THAT?) spotted PockMon's main base at the 3:00 start. I noticed a pair of working barracks and several depots already. Hmm.... lots of M&M there, better not try to drop just yet. (:
I defended my base minimally, four scattered sunkens, when a wraith started chasing my overlords around! Yikes. Turbo tech, guess I should have dropped after all. My first few hydras drove the fighter away and I quickly set down three spore colonies in such a way that they could cover my entire base. I also surmised that it was time to expand (possibly wrongly... but oh well).
I started a hatchery at the bottom-left location, ringing it with three spore colonies and making a few hydras there. Meanwhile, I evolved burrow and made a few zerglings. These zerglings I dropped and burrowed behind the minerals of every expansion I could find. They proved invaluable for spotting PockMon's approacing units later.
I grabbed a spire so as to participate in the air war. I began hatching mutalisks when my errant finger stabbed the 's' key twice. Scourge? I moved to cancel, then paused for a moment. "Hey, that's a great idea," I thought, and quickly hatched eight of them. Just in time, too: a burrowed zergling spotted an unescorted yellow dropship making its way across the map, either to expand or to drop on my expansion. A pair of scourge were dispatched along the dropship's course and pop. (:
I took down a few hovering wraiths with scourge, then resumed scouting for expansions. A scourge found a rather large expansion base at the 12:00 start location. I loaded up a control group of hydralisks in overlords and brought along a group of mutalisks as well. I kept up mutalisk and hydra production at both my bases to replenish losses that were certain to come.
I found a bare spot at the extreme left of the base, and landed my forces unopposed. The hydras slithered in, destroying a factory and it's accompanying goliath, when the calvalry arrived in the form of a large pack of valkryies and wraiths. Yikes! I danced my muties like crazy while parking my hydras beneath the air force on hold position. The quick-firing hydras cut the valks apart first, then the wraiths; when the smoke cleared, I had lost five mutalisks (the rest had 10 hit points or so) and seven hydras from wraiths and assorted ground defense. I morphed the remaining mutalisks into devourers (did I forget to mention my hive and greater spire?) and used my remaining hydras to clean up the expansion.
Meanwhile, a burrowed zergling detected another expansion popping up in the upper-right corner of the map. I noted that it was being mined heavily, but was totally undefended. I grabbed a control group of hydras and moved to the attack, destroying everything there, including a pair of dropships that came to assist with marines and SCVs.
I used a mutalisk and a wounded devourer to keep vigil over the two main base location expansions and prepared for my assault on PockMon's main. I built a control group of guardians accompanied by a hydralisk drop and six or so devourers. To support my massive expenditure of resources, I expanded again in the top-right expansion location, transferring my drones from my depleted main. As I was assembling my swarm, PockMon used his science vessels to harass me with irradiate. Luckily I spotted a few with my burrowed zerglings and caught them with scourge in transit.
I attacked the realtively undefended south side of PockMon's main, leading with a pair of scourge into the first Science Vessel I saw. The guardians began attacking, and cleared a path for me to set my hydras down.
All hell broke loose. Goliaths, marines, medics, valkryies, and worst of all, irradiating science vessels swarmed to the attack. My attack cleared all the base defense units and about half of the base itself before being irradiated into the dirt. I quickly cast about for another pack of hydras to finish the job. I had loaded them up and was moving to attack again when I caught a warning that my base was under attack! Looking down, I saw a massive group of M&Ms laying into my main base from the east, overpowering my sunkens with sheer numbers. Knowing taking all my hydras against that onslaught would be suicide, I landed them on PockMon's main and began destroying everything I could. Eventually I cleared it, but PockMon had floated a starport and established two new expansions to avoid elimination.
Desperately I dropped my hydras on the northerly expansion and summoned twelve quick zerglings from my two expansions to destroy the other. I knew PockMon still had dropships and M&Ms, and a building out there somewhere...
Pockmon dropped on my newest expansion with a shipfull of M&Ms. The expansion was not defended at ALL. Due to my inattention, the zerglings I sent to help charged in single-file and were destroyed. However, I was able to capitalize on the distraction to unload my hydra force to quell the threat.
At this point I got lucky; PockMon's final building wandered into range of the mutalisk I had watching the 12:00 start location. Seeings that his last offensive force had been destroyed and I had discovered his whereabouts, PockMon graciously surrendered.
Lessons:
- Build siege tanks. (: If Pock would have defended his bases with tanks in addition to everything else, he would have had a newbie like me for breakfast.
- The best counter to Air Superiority fighters like Valkryies and Devourers is ground-based anti-air, like Goliaths and Hydralisks.
- Recon won me that game without a doubt. My burrowed zerglings allowed me to contain and deny my enemy as well as spotting his incoming attacks.
- Scourge are really neat for catching dropships and science vessels in transit.
- I hate Zerg. I'm terrible with them. The random gods hate me. |
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