"the spank the monkey buddy icon is ..'distracting' me"
-Wangsonn
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| Putting the newbie in NewbieMcNasty | | | Author: | | | IP: | XXXX | | Date: | 10/27/99 05:10 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 5, Max: 8, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for AQD3: 7.6184 |   | Introduction
It’s been a while since my last report. Technical problems have been preventing me from playing, but I think I’m straight now. Some of you may have heard about the Brood War Strategy and Tactics Forum Tourney. I’m playing in it, and won my first round. One of the other players is NewbieMcNasty, and when I spotted him in channel nohunters I asked him for a game to gauge the strength of the competition. NM quickly agreed and I made the game on Lost Temple:
Party time!
I chose protoss and got the bottom start. NM picked terran and got the left. I started out with a quick dragoon build order because you can really punish heavy metal fans if you get the timing right, and it’s not bad against everything else. My build went like this:
8: Pylon
10: Gateway (allows constant probe production that a 9 gate interrupts)
13: Assimilator
14: Cybernetics Core
15: Pylon, Zealot
17: Gateway
I sent out my tenth probe to scout after it made the gateway. I was unlucky in my search pattern, going counterclockwise to find NM in the last place I looked, the left. When I arrived at his base I saw an open choke, but he already had two marines. I needed recon bad so I ordered my probe to mine minerals from his line and penetrated just barely far enough to see a building factory. Convinced I had a case of heavy metal on my hands, I sent my first zealot and a dragoon to his choke, quickly pouring more dragoons in as they were built. When I had about five dragoons pinning NM in I saw a SCV come poking out of his base. I chased it down and killed it, but it had a peculiar path…. It had headed for the low ground between our mains.
Once before I had fought a terran player on the ladder who had done a very odd trick. He had used massive mines and then placed tanks in the low ground between our bases, eventually “climbing” up the wall with dropships, always supported by tanks from below. I suspected I was about to be the victim to this trick again. To head this off I posted a zealot in the low ground. He was promptly struck by siege fire and ran away. Hmmm. Looks like I called the trick right. A few seconds later two tanks were firing from the low ground up to my forge, which was placed a bit too close to the edge. They were protected by a bunker, and a SCV was making a turret. Well, I could sacrifice the forge for time. I sent a probe to the right start. When I got another two dragoons from my gates I attacked from two fronts, sending the five dragoon one zealot force from NM’s choke and attacking with the two new dragoons from my main by moving them close to the edge of the cliff and firing down. NM had placed a few more tanks in his main, and when the siege blasts cleared I had two dragoons left, the bunker was on fire, and I killed two tanks. I teched a little bit and bought a templar archives. Nothing is better at killing low ground tanks than a few dragoons and a psi storm.
I didn’t exactly think I was being cost effective, but at least I had stopped it for a little bit. For all of ten seconds as a dropship delivered two more tanks to the low ground. I didn’t have anything but my two dragoons so I sent them over to the wall and managed to kill one tank before losing them both. The remaining tank got reinforced by another and they started happily pounding away at my structures. I began an expansion at the right start, guarding the entrance with a cannon. I also started getting psi storm. About this time I noticed something very disturbing. The tanks could hit my nexus from the low ground! Thoughts of map based imbalance warred in my head with curses. I had to stop those tanks! I sent in four dragoons I had accumulated and waited impatiently for psi storm to finish. The tanks had an engineering bay spotting for them which made it hard to micro the dragoons in close enough. The pounding of the siege tanks arclite cannons and the bunker fire reduced me to one dragoon by the time I took out the tanks. Just as a dropship put two more tanks in place. Renewed arclite fire took out the pylon powering my templar archives a split second before psi storm finished. My nexus was in the red. I ordered all my probes to abandon my main and head for the right expansion.
Now that’s gotta hurt =[
My nexus disappeared under the guns of the tanks. On a scale of one to ten, this had a demoralization factor of about eight. Would have been nine if I hadn’t already expanded. Still, I’ve never won a game by giving up when it got a little hard. All I really lost was the cost of a nexus and a few random structures, plus mining time while my probes were in transit. It was bad but not unrecoverable.
“I think I might have lost” Me
“Yeah, nothing you can do as protoss when you get the bottom spot” NM
I concentrated on pumping troops from my gates. I also put up two more gates at the right when I got a chance. I started establishing map control, spreading a few dragoons out around the middle of the map. You can be outnumbered by a decent margin and still use map control to win a decisive battle because you control the timing of the fight. NM chose to do a three dropship attack as his next move. I missed it with my forces in the middle and he dropped on the high ground of the right. I had a zealot and two dragoons to defend with, along with one cannon. I queued up two dark templar and attacked. NM had two tanks, seven vultures, and a SCV. He started losing vultures to my cannon and dragoons when the tanks sieged up. I attacked the tanks, losing my forces in the process. NM moved the two vultures he had left right into my probes. He managed to kill three or so before I probed his vultures to death. The tanks pounded away on my structures until the dark templar popped out. A few swipes of the warp blades ended my problems.
I scouted NM’s natural at this point with a dark templar and found he was just now expanding there. That wasn’t too bad… I was still probably equaling his resources. I kept pumping dragoons at both my bases, then sent a probe back to the bottom to make a pylon and finally finished researching psi storm. I hoped NM wouldn’t attack for a bit and established the top position as another expansion. A carefully positioned dark templar sitting under the ledge next to his base spotted four dropships moving out towards the right. I intercepted with dragoons in the middle, killing one dropship and weakening the rest with a bit of psi storm added in for good measure. I had four dragoons and a templar at the right and managed to hit the dropships just as they unloaded. Four vultures, four marines, and two tanks made it out as I killed a dropship, but two quick psi storms quickly turned the odds. I lost only two dragoons, prompting NM to curse a bit. I also bagged another dropship as they headed back to his main.
“Damn!” NM
“Haven’t you heard? Imbalance is on my side.” Me
Putting the “newbie” back in NewbieMcNasty
With that little conflict I felt I was back in the game. I started a nexus at the bottom again to replace the one I’d lost before. I also managed to eliminate the low ground stronghold using five dragoons and a psi storm from the high ground. The next few minutes went by quickly as I pumped probes from all my bases, got a robotics facility and two gateways at the top, and added another gateway to the right, bringing my count to seven. NM apparently felt surgical strikes could still win him the game. He dropped two tanks on the leftmost part of the bottom, which I quickly eliminated with my five dragoons. We began a cat and mouse game over the bottom. He dropped two tanks, eight marines, and four vultures which eliminated my dragoon force. I did catch him with a psi storm and managed to kill all but one tank. Then a newly minted dark templar ended that gambit. I kept pumping dragoons. NM pulled a four dropship attack on the top part of the bottom plateau, but another key psi storm and five dragoons along with a forgotten zealot and two dragoons from the ramp ended that threat. Then a series of irradiate raids. I was content to let him waste his micro on the bottom, and expanded to the bottom and right naturals. One final attack on the bottom with another four dropships went sour as he found out the hard way he missed a templar with his irradiate raids. After the storm I went in with a few zealots and cleaned out his tank heavy force. Switching troops helps keep the enemy from building specific counters. If NM wanted precision drops to be the tempo for this game I was willing to play along.
I loaded up a dropship with a dragoon and two templar and sent it in over his natural. He had a command center floating towards the top left island, but didn’t seem to notice the shuttle sweeping by. I unloaded in the sweet spot just to the upper left of the minerals and got off two beautiful storms. A good control group and a half of SCVs went to the big command center in the sky, and seeing I had no targets left I picked up and ran to the upper left island, chanting Whoop’s name in praise. A cloaked wraith started chasing me half way and I lost the shuttle over the island, but not before dropping my troops. The wraith ran out of energy and uncloaked, letting me get in a nice psi storm before finishing it with the dragoon. I used the dragoon to drive off the incoming command center.
Time to stop screwing around
All was quiet for a minute or so, until the booming of siege tanks sounded over the bottom natural expansion. I had just about enough of this. Even the best precision attacks fall to macro at some point. I was determined that this was that point. I emptied out my bases, leaving only six dragoons to guard the heavily contested bottom base. I had two control groups of dragoons, one of speed zealots, a few templar and a dark archon for those pesky science vessels. Observers were at key points, showing both islands as clear and the front of NM’s natural covered by a high ground tank, a low ground tank, and a bunker. I patrolled my forces in. SCVs lept off the mineral line and started desperately repairing the tanks. Another tank was placed further back on the low ground. SCV micro kept the tanks and bunker fighting for a few seconds, but the overwhelming mass of my troops just rolled over the defense. As I ordered my troops to assault the undefended main, NM commented that “I hate temple, it’s too big” and surrendered the game. I have a somewhat more pointed complaint. I hate the bottom start vrs terran because siege tanks can hit your nexus from low ground. =]
Thank you for reading my report. I thought this game was worthy of a battle report because of the nasty low ground siege tactic NewbieMcNasty used. I would appreciate comments from you on the tactics I and my opponent used, especially any counters for the low ground siege.
AQD3
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