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This is another round one game from X17's 2x2 tournament, which means that the game will take place on the incredibly overplayed map Lost Temple. I observed this game Teusday night with the tournament organizer and referee, Zane-X17, and I'd like to thank him for letting me tag along to present you...
Pre-game filler: People get ready
Before the game I had never heard of any of these players. Volkskrieg came into the match using a different account, with which he called himself -pushover-. This account's ladder record was 4-0, with a rating of 1091. Tranith's name for the match was Yahooboy. Tranith's a Canadian (Canada kicks ass) and Volksgrieg's from the US of A. I know even less of their opponents, Matar and Darkdream~. In fact, I know nothing of them beyond their race selections and their performance in this game. So without further space-filling crap, let's get into this game and see if these boys know how to play.
Round 1: Welcome to the dude ranch
Matar and Tranith both chose terran as the launch countdown lowered. Darkdream and Volkskrieg left themselves at random, with Darkdream pulling zerg and volkskrieg snagging the terran. The M&D team, Matar and Dream, both went for fast rush builds(at least as far as your average Temple game is concerned), with Matar building his first barracks before his supply depot, and Dream slapping down an eight or nine pool with saved-up larvae to boot. It looked like these two had a fast six-zling rush in mind plus some early marine support. The T&V, Tranith and Volks, team, followed very similiar early builds. They both did standard double 'rax 'n refinery buildups with their first supply depots and barracks forming a protective wall around their mineral lines.
Soon enough, Dream's zerglings were ready to go. They hustled their alien asses across the temple to the top spot, where Volks' base was waiting. When the zerglings were about halfway there, Volks' first marine popped out, and I immediatly declared the rush as a bad idea. Zanith dissagreed with me, thinking the move might still work. One marine with SCV backup can handle a whole lotta zerglings, though, and let's not forget the two flashing barracks. As the zerglings ran up onto the plateau, two more marines popped out and moved into the walled-in area where they joined the first. The first kill was a straggling SCV who got in the way of the space critters. Reacting quickly, Volks pulled his SCVs off the minerals and surrounded his 3 marines with them. After the now-shielded marines murdered the zerglings, the SCVs were sent back to work, but the marines stayed near in case of emergency. And it wasn't long until the next wave came. Six more Dreamian zerglings ran up the ramp, with three of Matar's marines on their way to help with the rush. Volks had six marinesnow. Dream lost his nerve and decided that by the time the marines arrived, it would be too late, so he charged in against an equal number of marines. As we all know, one zling > one marine, two zlings > two marines, three zlings > three marines, but four zlings < four marines, and the trend continues. Range units' effectiveness against melee units grows exponentially. Needless to say, the zerglings were wasted. So yeah, bad idea to try and rush with an eight or nine pool against any remotely competent terran or protoss player. Matar's marines arrived a moment later, only to get cut down by some marines and SCVs. Not that it was M&D's attacking in turn that made the rush fail, it would have been a failure even had they charged in together. Rushes with a few weak units like that don't usually work because of the early-rush defensive power of the workers.
Round 2: Can ye dig it?
At this point, the crucial decisions that would ultimately decide the game hadn't yet beet made. Because, however, Dream had sacrificed a large chunk of economic power by not adding a second hatchery before his spawning pool, and Matar rushed to put his first barracks down as soon as possible, Team T&V had a slight edge on D&M. They would be able to bust out higher tech faster than their opponents, thus giving them the midgame initiative. D&M would have to play it carefully for the next little while to have another shot at winning.
After the initial rushing, everybody sat back and plotted their next moves. Dream's focus was on a strong economy. To achieve this goal, he put up a second hatchery at the top of his ramp, followed by a third at his natural expansion shortly afterwards, while constantly making drones and zerglings. Once his ramp-blocking hatchery was complete, he put up a sunken colony to hold off any marines from charging right up his ramp. The terrans were all racing for tanks.
It was time for T&V to try an attack. Tranith left his base aimed right at Dream with a medic, an SCV, and a handful of marines. Looks like an offensive-bunker squad. The bunker team stopped at Dream's mineral-only natural and started setting making camp, only to cancel construction a moment later in favour of a more aggressive location where they could take down Dream's mutating expansion hatchery. As the marines moved closer, Dream noticed them and sent in his zerglings. The medics quickly exchanged dirty needles and harmonized "That's the stuff" like junky choir boys, and the zerglings ran home all the way up the ramp, and the expansion hatchery was canceled. Looking to finish it right there, the marines followed, but the zerglings blocked the ramp, and a sunken colony began aggressively humping the entire expedition with its massive, blunt penis. The medic's face turned red, the SCV laughed, and the marines grew demoralized with penis envy. Seeing that it was going to take more than a few marines to shut dream down, Tranith took his expedition back to Dream's natural and built a bunker where the medic wouldn't get distracted and the marines wouldn't feel their manhood threatened. Matar sent four marines at Tranith's main, hoping to find an undefended base, but by the time he got there, Tranith had enough freshly-trained marines to turn back the attack with only a little trouble.
Round 3: 'Nam.. 'Nam is 'Nam is 'Nam is 'Nam
Things were looking bad for D&M at this point. Dream was contained, and wasn't going to be able to help Matar with any attacks until the bunker squad could be broken up. This is exactly what T&V were going to focus on preventing for the game's next phase. They wanted to push Dream into the grave before they focused on hurting Matar. To further this ambition, Tranith expanded to his natural, with Volks following suit shortly afterwards.
Soon after the bunker and turret were complete, the SCV accompanying the off-bunker squad began construction on an engineering bay in preparation for the tanks that had just started rolling out of the factories. Tranith's first tank went to Dream's natural, beginning the dreaded tank push. Using the floating e-bay to see above the cliff, Tranith began dismantling the sunken colonies and then the hatchery. In a last-ditch effort to stop Tranith from getting up his ramp, Dream sent down four lurkers and a control group of zerglings. First the lurkers charged, running right up to the tank before burrowing, where they promptly died, and then the zlings ran in, where they got tossed violently around and smeared across the ground, like some vile-tasting tooth paste.
As the tanks began a-pushin', Matar's dropship began a-droppin'.  But rather than send his partner some tanks to put above his cliff in a move that would have most likely stopped the push cold for sometime(as pointed out by Zane), he takes a tank and two vultures to Volks' mineral line. The tank drops and digs in, preparing for siege mode, while the vultures run into the min-line and try to spread spider mines underneath the unsuspecting SCVs. But these are no ordinary SCVs, and rather than run to safety, they attack! A few get in close where the arclite blasts can't hit them, and the others crowd around the vultures, aggressively wielding like there's no tommorrow. Mines pop up and explode, taking with them both SCVs and vultures.Shortly after the vultures died, the tank was torn apart by the bloodthirsty workers. Ouch, Matar, THAT must have been embarrassing.
Round 4: Honky Tonk Women
Now things are really looking bad. Zane says "[D&M] are dead." T&V have their natural expansions on their to way full online status, and they've taken control of the map. Tranith is holding Dream in with his tank push, and Volks has just moved tanks, vultures, marines, and goliaths down in front of Matar's base, effectively blocking him from sending any ground support to his partner. T&V, however, are not without weaknesses, and D&M are preparing to turn the game around by exploiting these.
Down at Dream's natural, the tanks are mobilizing. They've blasted the ramp clear, and it's time to get onto Dream's plateau, where they'll be able to plow through his base with ease. When Tranith's forces hit the top, they take a look around, and to their dismay, see some orange tanks preventing further advancement. So, T&V's forces set up base with some turrets and a healthy dose of sieged tanks. Dream's base is looking pretty pathetic at this point: a hydralisk den, a spawning pool, random ground troops with sunken colony support, only one hatchery, er.. Hive, and a.. Hey! A greater spire! Woohoo! Here come the ultimate terran-busters! A moment later, though, much to my dismay, Tranith flew in the ultimate zerg-buster: a science vessel. Bugger! Maybe things aren't as good for Dream as I was led to believe for a tiny, insignifigant, almost immeasurable portion of a fraction of a second.
As a warm up to the inevitable attempt at breaking out, Matar sends a dropship with a tank, an SCV, and some marines to Tranith's natural's cliff. Before any real damage can be done, though, the drop is countered by Tranith dumping his own dropship 'o random units on his drop. That's two bad drops for Matar, but hey, who's counting? Anyway, onto that breakout.
Round 5: Quadrophenia
Dream starts by not letting his guardians soften up the tanks before he sends in the hydralisks and zerglings, but by sending in the guardians and ground troops at once. Seeing as he only has two guardians, the tanks manage to shred apart most of the army before the guardians start doing their thing. Watching all these zerg units get senselessly slaughtered seemed to amuse Zane to no end.
Not to say that the guardian push was useless. No, in fact it was fairly effective, because Tranith hadn't researched irradiate yet, and therefore had no immediate solution to the guardian problem.
 Once most of the tanks and almost all of the infantry got blasted to hell by those little acid-balls, Volks brought in two wraiths. After getting D-Matrixed, they attacked the guardians. Some very fresh mutalisks jumped in, though, and managed to chase off the wraiths with a little hydralisk support. Once the wraith threat was dealt with, the guardian push continued, and the terrans were forced back down the ramp, all the way to the original offensive bunker.
As soon as I saw the science vessels, thoughts of small kamikazee bats slamming into things and exploding began creeping into my head. Something told me that flying rodents could somehow -- I wasn't sure how exactly -- end the science vessel threat. Then it hit me, but not as hard as it hit Tranith. With a "scree scree!" here and a "scree scree!" there, scourge began slamming into science vessels like hockey players into.. um.. other hockey players. Smaller ones. Small, squashable, ones. Anyway, Zane and I were whooping and screaming like cars chasing dogs! We'd been waiting for this moment the second that first sci-vessel popped out. Two science vessels died so we could get our kicks, btw, but who's counting?.
Round 6: It's good, I'm bad
Well, the pressure was off Dream. So what now? Matar had an idea: Another useless drop. This time, the dropship unloaded on Volks' natural's cliff, and was taken out shortly afterwards by cloaked wraiths. His effort brought a tear to my eye. While he was doing that, T&V started putting the pressure back on Dream. Honestly, though, there wasn't much to put pressure back on. One or two guardians wasn't enough to hold back the terrans, who quickly got back up the ramp and pushed onto the creep. Slowly they dismantled the base, and eliminated Dream. Matar tried one last time to change the course of the game by sending two tanks at Volks' brand new expansion at Tranith's min-only natural. Needless to say the attack did very little, and moments later Matar found himself with three dropship-loads of marines, medics, and tanks. Many tanks. He surrendered shortly afterwards. Well, Tranith and Volks are going to the next round.. Or are they!?!?!?!?
Round 7: Answerin' to the 'man'
To ensure that this tournament is hacker-free, Zane and the other referees ask players to take screenshots throughout the game. Zane would say "ALL PLAYERS TAKE SCREENSHOT NOW" and everyone would have a shot of Zane saying that to send to him. Apparently, Tranith's button didn't work. Take a look(remember that Tranith was playing as with his Yahooboy account):
Well, the chances that Tranith would enter a tournament like this and cheat are, IMO, pretty slim.. But hey, it's up to Zane to decide whether or not he should enforce the rules..
Man, of course you can't disqualify him! He's Canadian! That's proof enough that he never lies, hacks, or cheats! Geez....
Anyway, first person to say "My dad says 'dope is for dopes,' but he only says it when he's drunk" in the comments wins a prize for first to read this through. Also, raters, make sure you lemme know why I get whatever you give me, thx.
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