Another Battle for the Temple:

The Teams:
King Lewis: Terran
Persian-POW: Protoss
Versus
Ahscar-X: Zerg
Apex-X: Terran

Persian starts out the game with a quote from Bob-the-Newt, possibly to make his partner, King-Lewis, less intimidated by their opponents.

King-Lewis starts out by blocking his choke with 2 supply depots and a barrack. He then constructs a second barrack behind his blockade. Persian starts with the classic two gate opening followed by a cybernetics core, a citadel, and a templar archive. Apex chooses not to barricade his choke and instead builds three barracks next to each other with 4 supply depots behind them. Ahscar builds his second hatchery at the top of his choke. When the hatchery is complete, he puts down 3 sunkens at the the top of his ramp and builds a spawning pool and a hydralisk den in his base. He also begins a lair.

Persian asks, "." But unknown to him, his opponent Apex has already expanded. He trains 17 marines, 2 firebats, and 5 medics and sends them down his ramp to guard the outside of his natural, then he sends down an SCV to build a command center. Soon after this Persian decides to be "gay" after all and expands to his natural followed shortly thereafter by King-Lewis who also expands to his natural.

The Melee commences:
With a Lair and a Hydralisk den, it's pretty obvious what Ahscar is up to. (For the Starcraft challenged, this means Lurkers.) Ahscar instigates the first battle by sending a group of 6 zerglings, 4 hydras, and 4 lurkers in King-Lewis' direction. This group runs into a budding expansion. The still building Command Center is being guarded by a turret/bunker combination with 12 marines and 6 medics. The lings and hydras charge in and the lurkers burrow. King-Lewis' marines are able to destroy 2 of the 4 lurkers before they burrow and a third just as the spines come ripping toward them. The spines rip through 8 marines causing them to explode into a bloody mist. King-Lewis retreats his marines behind his bunker and the zerglings and hydras follow. The zerg forces get mutilated but the remaining lurker is able to destroy the turret before stimmed marines and a comsat are able to finish him off.

When Persian sees his teammate's base come under fire, He sends a group of 11 zealots and 1 dragoon south towards Ahscar's base. They discover a naked hatchery just sitting there asking for trouble. Persian's troops make short work of the hatchery and then move towards the ramp to Ahscar's main base. Suddenly, the scout that Persian has placed outside of Apex's bases comes under heavy infantry fire. Apex is coming to save the day for his weakened opponent. Persian knows that he will not be able to defeat the combination of zerg and terran forces and his troops retreat back to their base to fight another day.

A few seconds later, Ahscar instigates another battle. He heads toward King Lewis' base with 6 zerglings, 9 hydras, and 3 lurkers. Using the reconaissance information from the last battle that he had with King-Lewis, Ahscar moves his troops into King-Lewis' natural from the north side of the expansion, avoiding the bunker which was built on the south side. However, there are marines and medics waiting and one lurker explodes as they burrow. The remaining 2 lurkers are able to work over King-Lewis' infantry and his hydras start shooting at the command center while staying out of range of the bunker. Persian sees his partner's predicament and quickly sends an observer along with 6 zealots for reinforcements. With the remaining medics healing the zealots, the zerg threat is neutralized.

Persian takes his victorious zealots and moves out towards Ahscar's base. He finds a hatchery and a morphing creep colony in Ahscar's natural. His zealots start working on tearing down the expansion. Apex once again sends a force of ground troops to the rescue and this time, they trap the zealots inside the natural. The sunken colony finishes morphing and helps to finish off the zealot threat.

While Persian was busy down at Ahscar's base, Apex has taken the opportunity to land 2 tanks on the cliff above Persian's natural expansion. They quickly destroy the 2 cannons guarding the expansion and then start blowing away probes. 9 explode before Persian realizes what is going on. He quickly runs his probes back to his main and then loads up a shuttle with zealots. They land on the cliff and quickly destroy both tanks. Persian then sets the 4 zealots to patrol the cliff so no more unexpected drops can occur.

While this is going on, Apex has started an expansion in the bottom right island and Persian has started an expansion at his mineral only expansion below his main. King-Lewis has his natural expansion going strong and he has built up a force of 39 marines and 7 medics. Persian and King-Lewis, after a quick conference, decide that they will double up on Ahscar, King-Lewis with his infantry and Persian with high templar support.

The original assault goes well. The infantry reinforcements that Apex had sent earlier along with a group of zerglings get wasted quickly. 5 mutas fly overhead, but they refuse to engage the huge amount of forces below and they fly off to the east. Apex sends a dropship with 2 tanks to once again save the day. They start raining terror down on the marines from the cliff above Ahscar's expansion. Many marines died, but not all of them. The tanks are on the cliff to the right and the marines move to the left and out of tank range. Persian's templars cast their storm over the drones causing all of them to explode into useless piles of charred flesh. With their energy expended, the two templars morph into a powerful archon. Just when it looks like Ahscar's expansion is going to fall the mutas returned. But, like the ugly caterpillar morphs into the beautiful butterfly, the ugly mutalisks had morphed into the uglier still guardians. The guardians rain down terror upon the remaining forces and the threat is finally neutralized with Ahscar's hatchery still intact.

During all this action, Apex has been busily constructing tanks and infantry. He moves these forces out towards the middle of the map, spreads the tanks out sieges them up, and keeps the infantry there for support. He constructs yet another expansion at his mineral only spot and then moves 2 of his tanks in range of Persian's mineral expansion. The tanks blow away the cannons guarding the expansion before Persian can send down zealots to destroy the tanks. However, with the cannons down, Apex is able to send in his infantry with a Science Vessel for support. This force is able to succeed in completely destroying Persian's mineral only expansion.

King-Lewis' reinforcements arrive way too late and they end up in a standoff in the middle with Apex's forces.

A pitched battle occurs between the 2 terran combatants with Apex defeating King-Lewis and taking control of the middle.

With the middle secured, Ahscar is able to start sending troops across the map towards Persian's base. His main force of choice is cracklings. Storm and zealots do their job, but the harrassment keeps Persian occupied.

At the same time, Ahscar sends his guardians and a few mutas behind King-Lewis into his main base hoping to catch him off guard. The force is not large and doesn't cause too much havoc and when King-Lewis starts using irradiate from his science vessels, Ahscar is forced to retreat back to his main.

King-Lewis and Persian are now scrambling for an expansion. They both attempt to claim the island expansion in the top left at the same time. After a quick discussion, it is decided that Persian will take the island and King-Lewis will take Persian's mineral only expansion. Unfortunately for Persian, he is discovered and a quick drop of marines and medics ends his expansion hopes.

After his successful thwarting of Persian's expansion attempt, Apex loads up 4 dropships and flies them over to the cliff above King Lewis' natural expansion with 4 wraiths and 2 science vessels for suppoort. The attack appears to catch King-Lewis completely off guard because he has nothing to transport his troops up to his cliff. Not only is his natural expansion destroyed, but also a command center that he had just constructed at his mineral only expansion.

King-Lewis is desparate to do some damage now. He still has a large force of ground troops and he decides that now would be a good time to use them. He moves them out of his crumbling expansion and heads for the southeast. He has 35 marines and 7 medics. The first thing he runs into is a naked zerg expansion at the mineral only spot above Ahscar's main. He proceeds to level it and then moves on towards Ahscar's natural expansion. He is able to destroy his natural expansion as well, but guardians start firing from over the edge of the cliff and some ultralisks and cracklings come down the ramp, stopping the terran invasion on the doorstep of the zerg main base leaving Ahscar with very few resources to work with and only his main base left.

While King-Lewis was attacking Ahscar, a few of Ashcar's cracklings found King-Lewis' mineral only expansion and they tore it down leaving King-Lewis with only his main left.

King-Lewis is desparate for minerals now. He decides that he will try to crack the force that is entrenched on the cliff above his natural so that he can start mining there again. He has four dropships now and he loads them up with troops. En route to the cliff, the 4 dropships meet up with Apex's wraiths. 3 of the 4 dropships are blown out of the sky before reaching the cliff. The one dropship that does make it is only able to drop one tank which gets blown away immediately by Apex's 3 sieged tanks that are standing guard on the cliff.

To add insult to injury, Apex is now sending the SCVs from his mined out main to gather minerals at King-Lewis' mineral only expansion.

This is enough for King-Lewis and he concedes defeat leaving Persian to fend for himself.

After defeating King-Lewis, Apex and Ahscar begin their final push on Persian. Apex who is most likely saturated with minerals by now, decides to begin the push with a tactical SCV strike. Approximately 25 SCVs go rolling into Persian's base. The SCV strike draws a couple of psi storms and then the main force rolls in, a combined force of marines, medics, tanks, science vessels, cracklings, and ultralisks. Only token resistance is offered and the invasion succeeds in eliminating Persian from the game.

Final Scores: