"I can't help it Praetor, something triggers in my brain when dark templar are swiping on both my bases and I have no detection! "
"Besides I said "gg", I wasn't a sore loser. If I had said "God damn it, Dtemps are gay! I hate you!" then I woulda been a sore loser. =]"
-Johnny_vegas
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| The double hatchery hydra strat | | | Author: | | | IP: | XXXX | | Date: | 11/30/99 12:11 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 4, Max: 9, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for AQD3: 7.6184 |    | Introduction
Once again I’m starting to report on some of my ladder games. Today I went home a little early for lunch. When all the food had been eaten it was noon, and I didn’t have to leave for work again until 12:40. Just enough time for a quick game of starcraft. I entered into channel nohunters and actually found a few people not afk! After listening to some tactical discussion for a few seconds I threw out a casual challenge of “1v1 anybody?” AngelRebirthed stood up to take the challenge. Noticing his ladder was 1152, pretty close to mine, I asked if he minded a ladder game. With his consent I made the game on Lost Temple:
How to start?
I began the game by choosing my usual protoss forces and ended up in the left start. Angel let fate select his race for him. My initial build order vrs a random opponent looked like this:
8: Pylon
13: 2 Gateways
14: Pylon
15: Two Zealots
21: Pylon
I scouted with the probe that made my first pylon in a counterclockwise manner. The first discovery of interest was an overlord floating it’s way over the top base. Knowing my opponent’s race I determined to keep on a two gateway zealot strategy for a little while. The position of the overlord told me my opponent must have started in the right main. I sent my probe in, bypassing six zerglings on their way out. With a bit of trepidation I looked back to my base and waited the three seconds it took for my first gateway to warp in and queued up a zealot. The second gateway followed a moment after and I ordered a second zealot. Then I had my probe attack a drone in the hopes that it would give me a second’s distraction. I was concentrating on managing my base, but I had my probe hotkeyed so when I got the “You are under attack” message I simply hit the hotkey and clicked on a mineral patch in my base, bringing it out of conflict safely.
My first zealot arrived mere seconds before the first zergling. I ordered it to the top of my probe line. Angel made several feints at my probes, causing me to drag them off mining for a second or two to defend along with the zealot. When my second zealot joined the first I sent the second one to flank the zerglings along with one probe, and attacked from near the probes with the first one. Angel retreated his zerglings rather than lose any, though I got two on their way away. I secured my ramp with the zealots.
It was time for another look at the zerg base; I sent my probe in again to recon the situation. What should greet my eyes but a second hatchery in his main, along with gas. I attacked a drone again for fun, then ran the probe to his natural which was bare. It looked like I was going to be facing a double hatchery hydra strategy. I wonder how the heck a protoss could even think of fighting that off with the 1.03 larvae recharge rate. I guess that’s why I played all zerg until 1.04 =]. I have trouble fighting off dual hatch hydras as it is. About this time a zerg overlord came through my base, nosing around my gateways and then heading for my ramp. I had been keeping up zealot production this whole time, and rather than let Angel find that out with his overlord, I decided to show him the hard way.
Damn Hydras!
I had seven zealots at my ramp waiting to go and two more coming. I sent this force to just outside the zerg ramp, then proceeded up it. A zergling came out and died to the zealot’s psi blades, but revealed my presence. I took a few seconds to let two more zealots from my base join in the attack, which was probably a mistake. When I finally sent in my force, six hydras, four zerglings, and four sunken colonies waited for me. Well, at least I had forced him to waste four drones on sunkens instead of a mobile attack force. I retreated my forces to my main, losing two zealots whose bad AI made them wander around at the ramp until Angel could block it with his troops. This is usually the bad part, when I’m stuck with zealots and trying to get to dragoons and a horde of hydras comes knocking down my front door.
Well, I decided to take a risk. I set down another gateway and bought a citadel of Adun. One the citadel was complete I got the templar archives and expanded. This left me short on troops, but I felt I had to take the risk. I also started the singularity charge upgrade researching. When my first dark templar popped out I sent it to wait right in front of the zerg main. Just as it was moving past my choke a horde of sixteen hydras attacked my natural. I had seven zealots and a single dragoon to fight with. I moved the dark templar back towards the engagement as a second dark templar was running down my ramp towards the conflict. My zealots were getting torn up by concentrated hydra spines, reducing their number to three before Angel ran his troops rather than face my dark templar’s warp blades. I chased his troops back to his main, leaving him only nine of his hydras alive.
I was betting that the next thing I would face was going to be even more hydras and speed overlords. To prepare for this I started another gateway, bringing my total to four, cranked probes from both my nexii after Maynarding eight or so to my natural, and just kept cranking range goons. I soon felt the income from my expansion and started a fifth gateway, then set down a second forge and started double upgrading. I sent two of my remaining zealots to patrol expansions, one between the top and it's natural, one between the bottom and it’s natural. Soon enough the hydras started coming. I had a double wall of dragoons across my choke and all five gates cranking more. I had started researching storm just before they started moving. My first clue was my dark templar in the middle getting a free hit on a hydra before two speed overlords and two control groups of hydras ran him over. My twelve dragoons faced his two control groups of hydras. The sort of narrow choke to my natural caused him to bunch up as he came in, and I used focused fire and a spare zealot and dark templar to distract him. Three more dragoons came down my ramp as the forces started pounding on each other, then another two as the battle wound to it’s close. When the blood sank into the ground I had eight dragoons left and psi storm finished researching.
Let me tell you the way of Whoop grasshoppa
Ignoring the temptation of templar for a minute, I sent a dragoon to both the top and bottom starts where overlords monitored the status of those points out of reach of my zealots. I didn’t let a single gateway sit idle as I kept up on dragoons. When the overlords had been cleared off both expansions I sent a probe to the bottom start and crated a nexus there, dropping a few cannons at the choke for defense, then later three gateways back in the main part of the base. I was satisfied that the game was going well up to this point but I had a slight worry my zerg opponent had expanded to one or both of the islands. To check out the situation I created a robotics bay at my main.
As the robotics bay was warping in, a single zergling tested the defenses of my bottom expansion. I thought that as soon as Angel collected his troops he would go run it over, and the two cannons there wouldn’t last all that long. I took all my troops and moved them to wait just outside his choke, doing a little containment. I had sixteen 2-1-0 dragoons, a few zealots, and four templar. It should be good against nearly anything except mass cracklings. My first shuttle moved over the containment force just as six hydras moved out from the choke. They just as quickly moved back in when massed dragoon fire cut down two of their number. Angel now knew I had him contained. I picked up a dragoon and two templar in the shuttle and moved to the top of the cliff. Just below the cliff I saw a mass of hydras and just couldn’t help myself; I dropped a storm on them and watched in glee as they milled around in it trying to get at the templar on top of the cliff. I spent my next two storms well also, placed perfectly in the middle of the drones mining the zerg natural. From however many drones there used to be, only four or so survived. Each templar had kills in the high teens.
Angel went for a big push on my containment just as a reinforcing contingent of eight speed zealots arrived. The zealots engaged the hydras while a queen used ensnare on the dragoons. Upgrades hit 3-2-1 as the hydras rolled the last zealot under and the remaining two control groups of hydras attacked the dragoons. I blanketed the line of hydras with storms, getting off four very nicely targeted ones before running out of targets. I lost only one dragoon. I decided to expand to the top start and dropped another three gateways there. One of the templar on the cliff was killed by a broodling, then the dragoon died to three hydras when it got to close to the edge. I ended up having to storm the templar to kill the broodling =p. My main was mined out so I transferred half the probes to the bottom expansion and half to the top.
I brought another two templar and one dragoon force to the top of the cliff, but my storms only caught a few drones, a spotting overlord letting Angel run them away in time. I had accumulated a control group of forces at home during this time, and brought them to reinforce the containment from the top of the choke. Much to my surprise, Angel had been mining his mineral natural for most of the game! I had missed seeing it as my troops had been guarding the lower approaches to his base. The mayhem being inflicted on his expansion drove Angel to sally forth with his hydras one last time. Once more I started casting storm after storm, killing around two and half control groups of hydras with only three dragoons going down. You have to love storms for choke fighting.
The real world intrudes
With a moment’s respite I glanced over at my clock. 12:36! Time to stop screwing around. I had exactly four minutes to finish this game. Two control groups of dragoons patrolled in towards the zerg main base, accompanied by three archons and a few zealots. I met only mild resistance from a control group of hydras and few sunkens. As I cast a few storms to clear the ramp Angel conceded the game.
As a post game thought, the critical point was when the hydras were driven off by my dark templar. If Angel had left his overlord above my cliff, I would have lost the fight and probably my expansion. Do any of the top players out there have any thoughts about fighting two hatch hydras? When exactly should I transition from zealot to dragoons, or should I keep one gate on zealots and use another for dragoons? An interesting thing happened when I got back to the channel. I had gained only 14 points and Angel had lost none. On checking the ladder game record located HERE, I noticed it listed Angel as having a ladder score of 1000 even though he had 1152 in the channel. It also says the game lasted 27 minutes, but Angel lost his connection after 17 hours, 53 minutes =p. Just another little present from battle net I guess.
Thanks for reading the report. I hope you liked, it.
AQD3
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