"I love it when someone "raises" a base. Look, it floats!!"
-.Praetor
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| All out Air War on Challenger | | | Author: | | | IP: | XXXX | | Date: | 07/12/99 09:07 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | Starcraft(1), Text Only(1) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 2, Max: 8, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for BadGuy(tm): 6.4286 |   | The setting: sunday night, public melee, trying to get 10 kills under a smurf name to give losers losses on ladder... you know the drill. For future reference, this report is writting in a stream-of-consciousness format. I.e. none at all.
Challenger, me random (top) vs. last-second Random-to-Zerg (bottom). I'm thinking, 4 pool.
Oh brother, I got a hatchery here. Being a pro-economy person I'm gambling... 9-pool, then sunken, then hatchery, all arranged to keep the sunken surrounded. The overlords meet in the middle. When mine makes it to his base I see two sunkens, no second hatchery (expansion??), a bunch of zerglings departing. Arranging 2 more sunkens at mine, assimilator and hydra den. I keep my own 12-zergling family behind extractor to deceive that blue baloon obnoxiously flying around. I've put the den to a far edge of the creep where he doesn't see it. Chased that guy off with the first hydra, but clumsily, so he lived. Duh.
No attack. Not good. Teching to Lurkers, and a drop, but slowly, can't afford two lairs at once. Man, gas would be good. I have about 6 hydras, 12 lings and 2 lurkers when I discover a little hydra + ling camp at the choke just outside my base. Move out the lurkers, followed by the rest. The lurkers dig in in range, but DUH, he has an overlord in there. Thankfully, those things aren't fragile, and while they died gloriously taking hits, my lings and hydras killed the camp. Result: win with two hydras surviving.
A lot of skirmishes in this battle resolve in mutual annihilation like this. While he's probably filling up supply with more stuff, I scout with lings, find NO land expansions. My three new lurkers and two hydras are loaded into my speed-upgraded overlords (his still aren't!) and are sent around the right border of the map towards his mineral line. They unload, one lurker on the high ground, the rest on the bottom, where they burrow and wreak havoc. The two overlords survived, while the drop barely payed for itself money wise. I may have killed a couple workers and 4-5 hydras.
I'm the one teching first, knowing well that hydra's explosive damage doesn't fair well against small mutas (getting mutas, just in case he does!). The spire is started, and so is my island expansion. While it's building I'm putting up a queen nest and foolishly (?) spend gas on a couple queens.
My spies learn of him expanding to his island. I pull together everything I have - a few hydras, a dozen lings, load them up and send them there, along with 4 new mutas. Mutas arrive too early, the attack comes in chunks his 16 hydras here can eat up one at a time. Duh. Net result: about 4 hydras left standing. The island is his.
I notice that with my muta production and teching, I'm accumulating excess minerals. It's spent on chunks of zerglings, with a master plan for my favorite hive-level upgrade.
Hive is done, so is the upgrade... we are engaged in a cold war of spy interdiction. I send about 30 zerglings over, along with a couple hydras, regrouping them by the choke. The hydras are ordered to morph, zerglings wait. The attack comes in a big wave, with zerglings taking hits and lurkers burrowing. Sunkens and hydras are annihilated, so is the peon line, and the lurkers are burrowed right by the morphing hive. We manage to bring it to 1/2 the hitpoints before it completes... a wing of 8 mutalisks come and kill everything. My own, fresh 6 mutas are sent to the rescue but are outnumbered. The attack fails.
Back home I've started armor upgrade for those lil lings since the minerals in the bank say I have to make more of those lil buggers. I expand to minerals only (what was I thinking?) land, and much later, to a gas near me. I'm producing mutalisks with 80 percent of my gas, the greater spire is complete. Parasite war continues, with us both trying to find all the infested units and weed them out. I expand to a middle island after my main runs dry of minerals. I see he's going massive mutalisks, about 20 at his main base, which outnumber me 2 to 1. Devourers! Ensnare! Ok, 4 mutas start morphing, and queens are told to follow the mutas around. I'm killing stray overlords, he does too.
I send another 30 or so zerglings to his base, they find death under many many many mutalisks, without ever reaching the half-finished spire. I just throw away those units because I can't seem to put the minerals to better use, end up making more hatcheries... about 8 total near the end of the game.
There are a couple of muta-muta confrontations in the middle, he kills off a wing of 6, too eager to follow him into his base. When he attacks my expansion, he pulls out at the sight of a single sunken and the new devourers. He parasites one, I send him to the south on patrol, he gets mauled. Realizing that him knowing my still outnumbered muta army is hovering above my island will result in a lot more parasites I move it, to the far right, and more down, right over the mineral-only location. It would be a good attack position. A couple scourges pop my overlord nearby. The guy notices that he's expanding to the other middle island with a drop. Before I can react, 12+ scourges come flying from that direction towards my air army. Without micromanagement, they are decimated, killing one or two mutalisks. After that I'm swarmed with that large muta cloud, with more of them coming in. The devourers spit, the queens ensnare repeatedly, then pull out. A lot of my mutas die, but the fight is almost even.
I order my last three 'almost dead' mutas to pull out. The two fairly healthy devourers stay in, spitting on the 6-8 remaining enemies. The three mutalisks do a turn around and come back into the battle once the enemy is pounding on the tough devourers. Once re-engaged they are not under direct fire and put in a lot of free hits (thanks to the spores, those matter a LOT!) this micro gives me another near-death victory. I'm taking them, and a new 4 mutas to that new expansion, along with a 5-lord drop of hydras and lings. The expansion attempt dies, I burrow the 8 surviving hydras and leave... he doesn't try to expand there again.
This is when I run out of shortkeys for hatcheries at my main. Just as they come online, I notice a large group of zerglings departing his base, and soon enough my land-mineral only expansion (undefended) is lost. My muta army along with hydras and zerglings arrives a little too late but kills them all never the less. The copy-cat move paid off and was the one serious attack that on my opponent's part that took out something other than my fighting force. I send more zerglings and hydras to his choke, ready for another assault, while relocating my veteran muta army across to the map down. The land force is met by an incoming zergling wave, and both are decimated. I notice that the fresh spy Mutalisk I had hovering over his natural gas is dead, he finally decided he needs more of that stuff.
After gathering around 10 mutas and 4 devourers, I take the battle into his main base, while about 30 or so zerglings come running across the map in a single file. The almost-simultaneous attack does it, and the main base is left defenseless after the superior numbers of newly hatched mutas are devoured/spat (sp?) to death.
GG's are exchanged and my enemy asks for suggestions. I kill his base for a while, we talk about the game, then he surrenders most honorably.
His nickname, if I remember correctly, is gazz.
Lessons learned:
Spells make a difference
Micro makes a big difference
Cracklings need support
Combined arms (air and land) attacks work wonders
Mutas are expensive - my opponent was contained yet spent a lot of his money on them
Attacking is easier than defending - you can afford to lose
Well, that's all folks, except I still can't believe I didn't make a defiler in this game.
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