Whoa. Been a while since I've done this, hasn't it? For those of you who don't recall who I am, just do a search. Too damn lazy to provide you fools with a link ^_^

So...I've been out of town for the last two weeks at this "nerd camp" where everyone isn't quite nerdy enough to be interesting, but nerdy enough that they qualify for the thing. There's like two people (not including me) who you'd call a nerd. The girls in my class talk about anticipating a bunch of dorks. Wow...

But that's not the point. No, the point is that here all I have is a shitty Dell in a computer lab where there's no sound, where AIM uninstalls in the middle of the night, and there's no StarCraft. Yes, no StarCraft. After two excruciating weeks of not being able to command armies to their death and show off my utter lack of macro skills, I got to come home. Only for a weekend yes, but I think it's enough to get an SC fix to keep me going through those last two weeks.

In an effort to get some chocolatey gaming goodness into my bloodstream, I log onto battle.net and headed to nh. Krebs was there, being the silent, imposing figurehead that he is, as well as mattz. Eventually, mattz returned from his afkitude, and badme, hearing this on AIM, logs on. Ego comes in in the middle of this, and after the usual channel smalltalk simmers down, he asks for a 1v1. After some LCD tag hopping by those in LCD, I agree to the 1v1. Ego makes on Temple, and me and badme join up.

Badme selects terran to obs the game, so we'll ignore him for now. I pick Z, then start futzing around with my headset trying to get the damn thing to work instead of randomley switching between playing out of both channels and playing out of only one. Irritating. I finally manage to get it to work, and look at my screen. Shiz...the game has started.

So I find myself wielding Zerg, predictably, and my hatchery has done it's weird explode-out-of-gooey-thing at six. I quickly hop to the gaming part of the game, and clone my drones onto my minerals. I climb rather shakily to 9 supply and grab an overlord. My headset is still driving me crazy, and I'm getting drones later than I should, but I finally get the thing to behave and start playing decently. I lay down a pool ASAP, then rebuild my drone count to 12 and place a second hatchery just above my first. My scouting overlord has spotted a probe at this point, clueing me in on Ego's race. I grab gas, continue drone production, then switch over to lings as my spawning pool finishes.

Ego's scout finds it's way into my base, but two newly-spawned zerglings are ready and waiting. And a bit antsy, as displayed by the way they chase the little robot around my base, doing some damage to it but mostly making total idiots out of themselves. Another two zerglings spawn and move to intercept the probe. He gets popped. Too bad the Imperial March wasn't playing ;P

My overlords have more or less reached the far reaches of the map, with 12 getting scouted first, and the ramp at 3 shortly thereafter. As a purple blob appears on my screen at 12, I hop away from my base to investigate, only to find that it was badme spinning SCVs. I remember a split-second later that Ego drew white as his color. Cursed SCV-spinners. My other overlord sees a pair of probes on Ego's ramp, then slides back to his cliff to watch for expeditionary forces. Hm...why aren't there zealots holding his ramp? Ah...he's teching, probably. I lay down a den in case it's sairs, and continue zergling production until the den is done. I send my first 12 lings to Ego's choke, and throw one at his ramp to see if it's still just probes. I suspect at this point that he's got at least more dragoons, or some zealots, as no one techs that hard. Of course, I don't want to blow 12 lings for nothing. Sure enough, some zealots are hanging around with the dragoon, and my ling is fragged. I pull away the remaining 11, and they join another newly formed control group of hydra/ling straight from my base.

Wanting to expand my tech options, namely for lurkers, I morph my hatchery right after I order the overlord over, then send my lings further into Ego's choke to take a look. They run into his army, who have moved out from his choke, and I pull them back immediatley. The protoss automatically engage, but as they move into hydralisk range, they turn tail and run. I try to keep my forces from pursuing them, but one idiot hydralisk decides he's Rambo and chases after the retreating Protoss forces. The ass gets killed within seconds.

Back when Ego's DT laid waste to my expansion-as much as one can lay waste to a partially morphed building, anyway-I'd started one of my overlords which was hanging out over at the southeast island back towards my natural. He finally gets there, and I send a few zerglings there. They bring him down somewhat, and the two hydralisks I send to finish the job find him standing in place, accepting death. He dies in that weird cloaked fire thingie. Yay, I have my nat back. I'd sent a drone just a few minutes ago to 9 to expand, so after I take my nat I'll have three operating bases. Ego at this point has taken his nat, although I haven't actually seen it yet, so I'll be up in terms of bases, unless his DT death squad decides to have a party in my partially morphed base.

Ego sends his army of zealots, dragoons, and the odd dark templar out because he's tired of having smelly animals that close to his base. The protoss engage my forces, and soon zerg blood covers the warriors' armor. I quickly try to dance my hydralisks around while using zerglings to keep the protoss engaged so I can get in some shots, but they manage to rip through most of the zerglings and engage the hydralisks. I try to pull some fancy micro out of my ass; unfortunatley, that didn't work as was supposed to. While I've done some damage, I've lost a healthy amount of troops. As I fall back, Ego moves back into his base with the surviving four zealots, dragoon, and DT. Only one of these is critically damaged, while a healthy amount of my troops are bleeding from strange places. Anyone seen Don Hertzfeldt's Rejected?

For some reason I haven't retaken my nat yet. In the relative calm following this engagement, my hatchery finishes at 9 and I actually start a hatchery at my natural! Wow...that was some major league stupidity there.

My army has been hanging at the center, waiting for something to happen, when something does. There are a little under two control groups of hydralisks and an overlord there, and Ego's army consists of five dragoons, two zealots, and a dark templar. The two forces bounce off of each other, in essence; his troops walk up to mine, a few shots and warp-blade swipes are exchanged, one of my hydras explodes, and then we both pull away. Yeesh, I thought I'd only see that kind of shit in physics class. He runs back towards his base, and I reclaim the center templeish region for myself. I found the temple!

Okay, that joke sucked. Let me redeem myself now...

I've gotten a spire during this, mostly so I can grab a few mutalisks and harrass a little more conveniently. Ego's probably got cannons at his minerals, so drive by shootings of peons doesn't seem to be tonight's fare; however, a few mutalisks attacking stuff can be a pain in the ass, so I figure it's worth the investment. I quickly morph a pair of mutas when it finishes, and get them ready to go spew little glaive guys at buildings. However, my natural is done, and I invest funds in getting it and my shakily running 9 o'clock main up and running. Two mutalisks are all that's gonna hold the skies for now...still, they'll get some buddies as soon as I can get them.

Okay, so I have six mutas now. Enough to be a pain, methinks. But what's this? Up at 12, a little white dot pops up on my minimaps to join badme's spinning SCVs (get a life, badme :D) and starts up a nexus. Well, I'd like to keep the expansion advantage if at all possible, so this clashes with my Master Plan. I grab a few stray zerglings and send them up to the top to kill the probe and end the expansion attempt, ready to send more if he supplies reinforcements to the hapless peon. The zerglings find a pylon there with a cannon morphing in, and as soon as Ego sees them and the pylon goes down, it's all cancelled. The probe is dispatched seconds later, just as my mutalisks fly up to the little lake above Ego's base, ready to bug the hell out of Ego's architect by messing up his buildings. But he's back on Aiur, so no one cares about him.

Back in the middle, I've got a few lurkers which are sorta standing there stupidly. Ego moves his army out a little, and rallies a few of his dragoons back towards my mutalisks. I finally get my lurkers under the ground and they spike the zealots that are in range, causing Ego to pull back. Right now I'm macroing like a decrepit grandmother on crack cocaine who's also sloshed, which is to say very poorly. Even though I'm happy I made Ego run away, I'm really not in any position to be happy at all. Ego's got enough troops to pound me into a juicy pulp right now. I need to pick up my macro if I hope to hold onto this game at all.

Ego moves out from his base with his collosal army, straight into my jumbled mass of hydra/ling and the two lurkers. Storm lands randomley, or so it seems. It suddenly becomes apparent that Ego is trying to storm my lurkers rather than my hydralisks...which means he doesn't have detection yet. The zealots hit the hydralisks, but between them and the lurkers, they dies pretty quickly. Ego's lone archon suffers a similar fate, exploding into a weird cloudy thing. The few DTs die just before my overlord bites it from dragoon fire. Zergling blood is prevalent, as the entirety of my zergling army lies dead now, but there's still a healthy amount of hydralisks. Not wanting to hazard a fight where there was a consistant source of spikes that he couldn't stop, Ego pulls back. Looking at the replay, he probably could have just run me down here, but he decided to play it safe.

I placed a queen's nest at my 9 main, and I now use it to morph to hive, hoping to get ultra/cracklings. Heh...I suck with ultra/cracklings, and probably defilers would be better, as I've got experience using them, but I don't think about that kinda stuff in game. Which is why I lose so much. I also place a few more hatcheries, hoping to finally macro decently. In theory, I should be able to do decently. I've just taken the 9 nat, so I'm up in terms of base count. However, my peon count is shaky as hell, and I'm not using my money as well as I should. Ego's more than likely grabbing obs, so I can't ride on lurkers anymore. Damn.

The battlefield is calm, so I grab my mutalisks and do another fly-by of Ego's base, hammering his forge. He again rallies some dragoons to chase away my mutes, but the forge is on fire. Unfortunatley, I don't manage to take anything down techwise, so he's only affected in the time it takes to send dragoons in and get my mutas off his ass.

Ego's got an observer, and he decides it's time to end my hold on the center. His massive dragoon army and frags my lurkers in a matter of seconds, just as two new ones exit their eggs. My hydras slowly react, and my new lurkers go under. The goons have superior upgrades, but they're doing half damage to my hydras; however, the numbers are such that he's got a decent advantage. My lurkers aren't much help because of the observer, and while they launch spkes out, their death is imminent. Storm rains down on my hydras this time, and shreds them. Fortunatley for me they were spread out enough that I didn't lose immense amounts to storm and managed to kill a healthy amount of Ego's dragoons. However, I can't hold up against the hail of plasma fire. My hydras bite the dust, creating an arc of blood and bodies, and my lurkers bite it as the dragoons move into range. The remaining dragoons (about 12, just eyeballing it) and a few templar move towards my natural. Fuck. I have nothing in terms of defense, so I quickly start cranking hydralisks. My ult cavern is building at my nat, and I'm hoping it'll get done and I can have ultras hit the board before I lose too much. I get a squad of hydras from my main and attempt to use my cliff to lure dragoons away from the hatcheries they're pummeling and kill them. I manage to do it with a few but the rest are placed out of hydra range and going down the ramp isn't working too well. Fuckfuckfuckfuck. My first hatchery dies, and the second one isn't doing too much better. I don't have the troop count to fight off Ego, and my little tactical squad is taking losses even as it kills dragoons. Shiz.

My exp is more or less fucked right now, so I pull back my hydras and morph lurkers out of them. I start cranking hydralisks from my main as well. I can stop Ego at the least from ending this here, and hopefully reclaim what I've lost. Still, not in a very happy position. My ult cavern finishes, but I haven't the gas for ults. It gets razed seconds later. Fuck.

My newly morphed hydras and lurkers climb down the ramp and attack the goons, just as badme decides he wants to cameo yet again and sends his four SCVs of death down to "help" me. SCV < Lurker. They die along with the dragoons.

Okay, damage review. I lost an exp, which was two hatcheries, drones, gas, ult cavern. He lost his army, but not without taking down one of mine. Heh...cost effective, methinks. And guess what? He managed to take 12 and 12 nat in all this confusion too. That's right, a little white thingie is visible at 12 where my overlord is hanging out. We can't have that kinda stuff now, can we?

Ego has cannoned the choke point, so my hydra/lurk has to deal with that first. The lurkers shovel themselves under the ground and unload spikey death upon the cannons, while the hydras are the ones taking hits. I like it like this. The cannons fall pretty quickly, and I move on up to the nat. Ego runs his probes away, but my lurkers get into the ground just in time to take out about half of the little robotic buggers. The puff of smoke dissipates and the lurkers turn their attention the the nexus. Ego hasn't been skimping on his troop count though. The hydralisks who were taking down the cannon stuff get it handed to them by a sudden mass of dragoons who decided that they wanted in on the fun. The hydras don't stand a chance; they're outnumbered and outupgraded and the mass of white protoss sweeps quickly through them. The dragoons move up to frag the lurkers hammering Ego's nexus, and with an observer there to spot for the dragoons, there may as well not be resistance. Only one dragoon bites it before the lurkers are reduced to a mass of bloody crater things. What the hell is the lurker death thing supposed to be, anyway?

I retake my natural now, and begin hydralisk production again, only to see Ego moving out again. This time he's headed toward 9, ready to stomp my exps. Shiz. I send my hydralisks to intercept, and while he takes a few potshots, he eventually totally ignores my hydras and waltzes over to my base. I chase after him, but he makes it to my nat and frags it heartlessly just as my hydras get there. Fuckin'...I'm not doing so hot right now. He runs his dragoons up the ramp and my hydralisks chase after him. He stops at the top to attack my forces, and for a second I think he'll just kill them and end it. But I've got lurks! I place them just under his army on the cliff and they force him to move on. The hydralisks chase after him again, and this time he focuses on my main hatchery. Fortunatley for me, he lost enough dragoons and zealots to my lurkers that it's a pretty easy dispatch at this point. 12+ hydralisks vs a few dragoons and zealots that aren't even paying attention to them. The protoss bite it, but not before taking a few drones and a healthy amount of my hatchery with them. Fux.

Time for repayment. I rally the surviving hydralisks and lurkers, as well as some newly morphed ones, and assaile his expansions at 12. Once again, the resistance there is minimal, and I cut through it in a matter of seconds. A shuttle is there, and fearing that he's gone reavers I immediatly focus fire it. I lose about five hydras to the cannons Ego has there before they fall, and my entire army focuses on taking out his natural. The nexus there didn't stand a chance, and it burns and falls very quickly. However, Ego yet again has more than enough troops to stop me...they're just somewhere else. They finally arrive, and my hydras are stuck in Ego's natural with no way out but fighting. A huge stripe of blood is all that remains after a few seconds of dragoon fire. Annoyingly enough, Ego's assault on my nat was easily followed up by moving for my main. Mine wasn't so easy, because of the way 12 is set up. Curses :(

Deja vu time! Ego is back at my 9 base and he's doing the exact same thing this time. He's got a little less in terms of unit count, but so do I. On the other hand, I have no lurkers this time, only a large quantity of hydralisks and a few guardians that I built to shell his expansions with. The guards open fire, then quickly fly up above the cliff to rain their attacks on the dragoons as hydralisks arrive from the back and open fire on the spidery robots. Again, as soon as my nat falls he moves up to the 9 o'clock main to raze it. My unit control gets really flaky and I manage to leave some of my hydralisks at my natural base, but they eventually make it up the ramp to join the fighting. I quickly grab drones, not wanting my weak hatchery to have to face the protoss, but the drones don't stand up too well to the protoss warriors; drone blood stains their armor quickly. The hatchery falls this time, as DTs are there to assist and they quickly hack the health away. One of my guardians dies now, but I finally manage to finish off the protoss forces. Shit...down two bases.

I move to counter, but it turns out Ego will have none of that. A platoon of dragoons waltzes into my natural back at 6, and there's more or less nothing there. I run hydras there frantically, feeling the game slipping out of my fingers. Shiiiiiit. My nat and the hydralisks sent to defend it all die, but fortunatley not before I bring his dragoon count down to about five. Ego however already has another army ready at his base, and as he moves toward 9 again, I see now way to win. I concede the game.

Hm...I think macro is what really screwed me over. Ego was doing it well and I wasn't. Especially when the troop turnover was this high, what with me and him clashing so often. Ego consistently had an army ready to go after each fight while I was usually lagging behind in reconstruction...to the point where his final few attacks left me without anything to fight with. Seeing dragoons walking into your base and not having a single hydralisk is pretty disheartening. Ah well, practice makes perfect :)

GG to Ego, thx to badme for getting me to report this and a retraction of that thx because he was such an ass ingame ;) <3 to everyone else and all that.