Once at the Undead base, Nick5: took a few steps back from the Undead blight and cued up an AoW. Back home he was furiously building more wisps, filling up his mine and then queuing them to immediately harvest wood. A few moments later, at the 1:35 mark, all three wisps were building AoW's, and the rush to destroy Lawless' base had begun.

If Lawless had his hero out and a few ghouls, the ancients would be in trouble. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case just yet. While the three ancients were finishing up, Lawless had two ghouls harvesting wood while his death knight was building in the altar.

Timing would be essential for this tactic. If Nick5: simply assaulted the undead base, he would be removing himself from any nearby trees that could heal his AoW's as they took damage. He also didn't bring any extra wisps with him to heal the AoW's as they attacked the Undead base. Those ancients were one their own, and by god, they were going to kill or die trying. Nick5:'s base had only a moon well building at the 2:28 mark, with a few wisps on wood now. Should this rush not work, the game would surely be over.

As the ancients began finishing up, one has to wonder what those ancients were talking about:

When those AoW's finished, they wasted no time in heading towards the base. Of course, this was a very slow process. Let's re-enact that process...

............

............

Ok, now the ancients have moved about two feet. But look out! Lawless has his hero out and about five ghouls ready to take on three ancients. Lawless had about two choices at this point. He could use his uber micro skills, attacking one ancient at a time. The AoW's were actually fairly spread out, as you can see in the picture on the left, the third ancient wasn't even visible.And the space between the first and second ancients are..uhm, pretty far. This makes for some interesting strategy as Lawless could have hit and run all of the ancients together for awhile, dealing a lot of damage.

But there is a certain valor in...how do the french say...RUNNING THE HELL AWAY!

Kind of like this...

You know what they say. When the cat is away, the mice will play. And that's exactly what happened. As you can see, our little friend Nick5:' doing his best to raze that undead base as quickly as he can. Unfortunately, all workers have this funny little function called repair.

Ahem, and the fact that workers can move faster than ancients is another problem. Lawless was now repairing his necropolis and then running them away when an ancient came over to attack. At this point you can imagine Nick5: stamping his foot on the ground, trying to figure out why his uber AoW rush is not working.

Nick5:: mOM! mY aOw CHEESE RUSH IS NOT WORKING! wHAT DO i DO?

Nick's Mom: Go do some homework! And put that game away! For god's sake, it's not even half as good as the mutha fuckin' Brood War, y0!

Nick5:: taKE IT BACK! TAKe it back!

As Nick5: attempted to take down the undead base, Lawless' true plan emerged. While you might have thought that he had simply tucked his tail between his legs and ran from the onslaught which is AoW ABUSE, his plan was much more sinister....

...COUNTER!

But Xan, how in the hell could he do such a thing? When you see AoW's, you're supposed to run! You're supposed to cry! Good lord, why didn't he just cry cheese and leave?

The answer is simply. The night elf base had nothing but wisps and a moon well. ONE DAMN MOONWELL. As shown in the picture to your right, nothing stood in the wake of the undead fury which was one DK and five ghouls. Not even a tree of life.

Lawless: I hate trees.

With the NE base now completely destroyed, it was only a matter of time before Nick5: realized what a dire situation he was in, as did our commentators.

It was only a matter of minutes before Lawless made it back to his base to find that his opponent had made absolutely no headway in razing the undead base. The necropolis still had over half its health, and now with the combined armies of Lawless, ran over the remaining ancients.

Nick5: had to be wondering what the hell happened. Just remember, Blizzard knows best, and when they decide that ancients will not have fortified armor anymore, hell, you'd better listen to them. No offensive ancients.

The armor had little to nothing to do with the outcome. Lawless let his opponent think he had an upper hand, but in reality, all he was doing was hoarding three lumbering buildings that were hacking away at nothing. He had no hero, no base (if you call a single moonwell a base), and nothing but his pride left.

Perhaps ancients aren't lame. Perhaps we've simply overreacted when we saw them. If you were anything like Nick5:, you surely would have thought that three AoW's at the very start of the game would have won it all for you. I'm sorry. It didn't. Maybe if he built an altar and had a hero at least, this would have been a strategy. But instead he decided to be as lame as a llama and go all out. Well, you know what happens when you go all out don't you?

Well, it wasn't the best game, but it shows that all of the belly aching, all of the complaining...it's not all valid. You can beat the lameness of the ancient abuse, but it may take effort. Now, if only they'd fix spell breakers...

A XanTerD Production