Another one of those Terran vs. Toss games...

The Players:
Heartcutter (terran)
OmniPresent_One (protoss)

Introduction:
Heartcutter and Omnipresent_One decide that they will face each other in a do or die best of 3 series. Omni lands at the 9:00 position and Heartcutter lands at 6:00.

As the game begins and the Probes and SCVs are sent to their respective mineral patches, Heartcutter tells us what he thinks of Terran vs Toss games.

When Omni threatens him with High Templars, Hearcutter coolly replies,
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Early Game:
Omni sends out an early scouting probe. He sends him out in a clockwise manner heading for 12:00, 9:00, then 6:00. Unfortunately for him, by the time his probe makes it to Heartcutter's base, he is already blocked out by Heartcutter's Barrack and 2 depot barricade. The marines hanging out behind the depot spot the probe and start taking potshots at it. The probe turns tail and runs, leaving the marines to argue over which one scored a hit. Omni expresses his disgust at the lack of intelligence that the probe is able to provide.

Heartcutter chooses to keep all his SCVs at home choosing to scout with a vulture after his first factory is complete. The vulture is completed and sent on its way while back at home, Hearcutter starts a machine shop on his finished factory and begins work on a second factory. Omni varies from the normal 2 gate build and instead chooses a pylon, gateway, assimilator, cy core build order. Even with the one gate, Omni is able to have 5 zealots and 2 dragoons waiting at his choke when the vulture arrives. The vulture turns tail and runs leaving Heartcutter with no intelligence on what his opponents plans are.

The Action Begins:
So what are Omni's plans with this strange build order?. You guessed it, Reaver drop. Omni places pylons all over his plateau and spreads his buildings everywhere. Using this method, he is able to disguise his intentions from Heartcutter's probing Comsat. He sends his 5 zealot, 2 dragoon compliment right up to Heartcutter's front door.

Heartcutter by this time has speed upgrade and mines for his vultures. He sends a compliment of 8 vultures flying by Omni's attempted containment and heads for Omni's base.

Omni's first reaver picks this moment to pop out of the robo facility, but instead of leaving it at his base to protect against the ominous threat of the incoming vultures, he loads it into a shuttle and heads for Heartcutter's base. He then takes the 5 zealots and 2 goons that were attempting to contain Heartcutter and attacks the barricade that Heartcutter has erected.

Heartcutter still has only 3 marines guarding the barricade because his first tank has not yet popped out. At the same time, the only defense that Omni has in his base are 3 dragoons. the goons were not blocking off Omni's choke properly and Heartcutter's vultures have a direct path wide open to Omni's mineral line. However, the two pronged attack by Omni is enough to send Hearcutter's vultures scrambling back to his main base.

Omni's Reaver drop causes Heartcutter's SCVs to head east towards his choke. The barrack that should be blocking Heartcutter's choke from the incursion of hostile forces is still floating in the air from when he sent his vultures to Omni's base. This leaves the five zealot, 2 dragoon force a clear path right up the ramp and into Heartcutter's base where only three marines stand guard.

All appears lost, but then, two tanks pop out of Heartcutter's factories and very shortly thereafter, the vultures arrive home. Omni's troops are destroyed but not before some fancy reaver popping is able to take out a couple of tanks.

The consequences of this battle are Heartcutter's base is forced to stop production for at least a minute while Omni's base goes completely unscathed and his probes continue to work unhindered.

Omni wasn't idle during this time. He had 2 gates now and was training goons during the action. He expands to his natural and then moves these troops toward Heartcutter's base. Heartcutter does not have enough tanks to cover his main base from another reaver drop and his choke from more ground troops. He floats his barracks back into his main and lands it. He has 2 tanks seiged up at his mineral line. The dragoons arrive at Heartcutter's base and are delighted to find the 2 unguarded supply depots. The depots are destroyed, but not before Heartcutter has a chance to get more tanks in his queue. With his combination of vultures and tanks, he is able to keep the dragoons from doing any further damage.

There is a lull in the action. Heartcutter continues producing tanks and vultures and begins laying out mines to protect himself from further drops. He also lays down mines and sieges up tanks outside his natural expansion. Then he floats a command center over and moves SCVs to the new expansion. However, this expansion does not even the score because Omni takes the opportunity to expand to the top left island.

The next action comes when Heartcutter moves a group of vultures to the outside of Omni's natural expansion and lays down mines. Unknown to him a large strike force consisting of 6 zealots, 8 dragoons, and 2 high templar are just out of site range.
Omni still doesnt have observers and when he moves his forces forward, the mines cut into their ranks. The vultures turn and run leaving wounded protoss warriors all over the field. Omni sends his two high templar in search of the offending Vultures only to meet gruesome deaths. The first templar gets very well acquainted with one of Heartcutter's mines and the second templar runs smack into the vulture group and gets ripped apart before it even has a chance to cast its storm.

After that little fiasco, Omni decides that it would be in his best interests to throw up an observatory. He does this, and also puts up a Nexus at his mineral only expansion. With his superior resource intake and his newly constructed observers, he begins throwing troops at Heartcutter's bases.

Heartcutter is able to hold off this latest incursion of Omni's troops by sieging up a couple of tanks on the cliff overlooking his expansion, but not before losing more valuable resource gathering time.

Heartcutter sends out a vulture for scouting purposes and discovers Omni's fourth fully operational expansion guarded by 6 dragoons. He moves out a group of 8 tanks with the purpose of destroying this expansion.

However at the moment that he decides to move his tanks towards Omni's expansion, Omni decides to moves his goons out to harrass Heartcutter. They meet in the middle. As soon as Omni's goons come into Heartcutter's line of sight, he sieges up his tanks and a huge puddle of blue goo litters the field leaving Omni to express his displeasure.
With this victory under his belt, Heartcutter unseiges his tanks and continues them on their journey toward Omni's expansion. They come into range and seige up with a few vultures for support. He actually microes into a pretty good formation. However, in the time that it takes Heartcutter to move his troops into position, Omni has a chance to rally his troops to the front and using excellent tactics, he sends zealots to different tanks across the formation, moves in his goons, then for the finale, drops a reaver right into the middle of the melee.

The result of this decisive battle is that Heartcutter loses a lot of troops that he can't afford to lose. Knowing that he is outexpanded and outproduced, he surrenders vowing to take his revenge in the next game of the series.

In the post game interview, Heartcutter said that it was the early reaver drop that killed him. He said that the closeness of the starting positions of the two races in that game left him wide open for a drop that he wasn't ready for.

My Analysis of the Game:
The Heavy metal strategy is an excellent tactic against Protoss. Especially on a map with a choke like Temple. However, I feel like Heartcutter made a couple of tactical errors in the early game that put him too far behind to catch up.

The first was not putting mines inside his base at likely spots for drops before sending them off to Omnipresent_One's base. The reaver is what completely shut down Heartcutter's production because he had to move all his SCVs off the mineral line to spare their lives. Another key error was not getting the barrack back down to block the choke after the vultures left allowing the early zealots and goons to easily penetrate the choke. Without these distractions, Heartcutter would have been free to take out a very high percentage of Omnipresent_One's probes with his vultures due to the lack of defense at Omnipresent_One's main base. So, in my opinion, this game could have very easily gone either way.

I hope you all enjoy reading about this game as much as I enjoyed watching it. I'll try to get the reports for game two (and game 3 if necessary hehe) later this week.

Thank you for taking the time to read this report. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Regards,
Drefsab