Map Name: Lost Temple

CoP~Soul: Purple Zerg (Random) in south starting position

Fennec: Brown Protoss (Random) in west starting position

Battle Report by Candle

This exciting game was played on February 4th between two top Kali players. Fennec, who reached #3 on Case's ladder at the end of last year defeating some players such as Gadianton, Jolly, Pillars, Montaro. His opponent would be CoP~CoP~Soul - one of Russia's top players, also a Kali regular.

The Early Game

The game started with both players pumping peons as expected. CoP~Soul sent his overlord scouting directly to Fennec's base. When the overlord found Fennec, both players knew what the other's race was. CoP~Soul makes a remark

Of course, whether he meant that he was going to die, or deal the death blow is unknown.

An interesting situation arose next. Both players know what the other's race is, and both players know the starting position of each other. Fennec makes a guess that CoP~Soul is going to do an early expansion and sends a probe to sit at the natural, intending to block the place where CoP~Soul would want to build his hatchery. CoP~Soul anticipates that Fennec will attempt this cute trick, and sends 2 drones to his natural instead of just one so that they can kill the probe if need be.

At this point Fennec pulls the same trick used by Kain-the-Feared on Gauntlet and begins the construction of a pylon at CoP~Soul's expansion! This means that even if the probe gets killed the pylon will live on - and 2 drones will never destroy a pylon fast enough. Faced with the pressing need to get a hatchery started soon, CoP~Soul builds a hatchery in a less than optimal location. Once Fennec is satisfied that CoP~Soul is building his hatchery in a non-optimal position, he happily cancels the pylon to recover some minerals.

At this point, CoP~Soul begins construction of a spawning pool. Fennec has a gateway completed and is adding a second gateway.

On a scouting note, CoP~Soul has sent both of his overlords towards Fennec in order to check him out. CoP~Soul sends his first overlord to check on Fennec's ramp and natural, and sends his second overlord to look over Fennec's main base. This is important. It allows CoP~Soul to keep an eye both on the technology path that Fennec chooses, as well as knowing whether or not Fennec makes an attempt to set up an early expansion of his own, a common Protoss strategy against a Zerg who sets up a fast expansion.

CoP~Soul sets up a third hatchery at his expansion even before his second hatchery is finished. His spawning pool is finished now, but Fennec has already arrived with a zealot! CoP~Soul dances around with a drone for a while, trying to set up a sunken colony, but Fennec chases it around until he is able to kill it. By this time though, CoP~Soul has produced enough zerglings to force Fennec to retreat.

CoP~Soul adds an extractor to his main base, and build a sunken colony at his expansion to help out against possible zealot attacks. Fennec makes a few probing attacks at CoP~Soul's base but is unable to find any significant weakness. CoP~Soul adds another sunken colony, later a third, and concentrates on building primarily drones. CoP~Soul upgrades to Lair while Fennec continues pumping out a large number of zealots. At this point Fennec's army is probably more powerful but CoP~Soul's sunken colonies and strong buliding placement make it unwise for Fennec to attack.

The Mid Game

Midway through the upgrade to Lair, CoP~Soul adds a hydralisk den with the intent of building lurkers. Lurkers can be a powerful strategy if they're done early and in conjuction with zerglings in the early game. If the enemy has cannons you can sometimes use the zerglings to absorb cannon fire while the lurkers get into a good position to burrow. Fennec builds a forge and a citadul of adun, all under the watchful eye of CoP~Soul's overlords. At this point CoP~Soul's overlords decide to float quietly away and leave Fennec in peace.

At this point Fennec decides it's time to expand. He moves his large zealot force outside his natural, builds 2 pylons, and begins warping in his Nexus

As soon as his pylons are done, Fennec warps in two cannons. Fennec also has a zealot standing between his base and CoP~Soul's base as a scout, which will inform him if CoP~Soul decides to make a move to attack. As it turns out, this zealot serves Fennec well as he gets advance warning that lurkers and zerglings are on their way!

Fennec has templars with psi storm at this point, which can serve as defence against lurkers, as well as his cannons, which can provide detection. Just to be safe though, Fennec decides it's time to add 2 more cannons to his defence, so that there's no funny business.

CoP~Soul places his lurkers just outside Fennec's base. Fennec is able to kill a few of the lurkers using psi storm, but for now, Fennec is trapped. He can't assault such a large base of zerglings and lurkers without detection.

At this point CoP~Soul pulls an unusual move. He builds a hatchery right outside Fennec's base at Fennec's mineral only natural. Because of the lurkers, Fennec is unable to make an assault to break out of the containment. The Hatchery can then be used to make multiple sunken colonies which will haunt Fennec for the rest of the game.

CoP~Soul expands to his mineral only natural, and simultaneously prepares a drop attack on Fennec's main. CoP~Soul can use the momentum of his attack in order to get his expansion established. The drop looks like it could do considerable damage, considering all of Fennec's forces are at his choke and Fennec hasn't quite gotten observers yet. In fact, his obsevatory is building as CoP~Soul performs his drop! But CoP~Soul doesn't kill the observatory or the robotics facility and Fennec is able to pull back enough of his forces that combined with the observer and some psi storms he is able to neutralize the Zerg drop.

As a distraction, CoP~Soul transports a single lurker to the cliff overlooking Fennec's natural. Although this can be easily stormed by Fennec, this lurker can be very useful. It takes attention time away from Fennec as he tries to locate the exact position of the lurker, and can kill a few probes.

At this point in the game, Fennec decides to make his first attempt at busting out of the containment CoP~Soul has placed him under. Unfortunately for Fennec, between the hatchery CoP~Soul built built earlier and numerous hydralisks, the area outside Fennec's natural is a

Following this, CoP~Soul produced dozens of hydralisks, but kept them behind his front line sunkens. Whenever Fennec made an attack, the hydralisks would run up from behind to engage Fennec in battle. This prevented Fennec from trying to do any luring tactics and kept CoP~Soul's hydralisks somewhat safe from any surprise psi-storm attacks.

The late game

At this stage in the game, CoP~Soul expands aggressively all around the map. One key skill that separates CoP~Soul as a truly awesome macromanager is not only did he have many expansions, but he also had a lot of drones at each expansion. Some players set up an expansion, but leave it mining with only 5-6 drones. By distributing many drones between all his expansions CoP~Soul's income considerably outpaced Fennec's. Knowing that Fennec is securely boxed in by his sunken colony/lurker/hydralisk force CoP~Soul can freely expand all across the map.

One important thing to note is that although CoP~Soul had managed to contain Fennec's land passage out, in order to make the siege complete, CoP~Soul needed large amounts of scouting around Fennec's base to prevent any attempts to use shuttles to break out. A look at the mini-map reveals that CoP~Soul had ample forces surrounding Fennec's base.

Realizing that he needs to take drastic action, Fennec constructs a Robotics Facility to help him bust out. Unfortunately, it's too little too late. Despite attempts to perform raeaver/templar drops, CoP~Soul simply has too many forces. His reaver and templar are not able to cause enough damage to the ever-increase size of the zerg forces.

Finally, Fennec makes one final desperate push to break out against the sunken colony siege. Using a large force of dragoons and templars, Fennec encounters a mass of hydralisks which move to keep Fennec boxed in. What ensues is over two minutes of both sides sending dragoons, templars, hydralisks and zerglings into the area for reinforcements. Near the end Fennec even brought int two reavers to help deal with the zerglings. At long last, CoP~Soul emerges victorious, and presses onwards into Fennec's natural using a contant stream of hydralisks and zerglings.

All I can say is - Fennec speaks for the both of uswhen he says

Offensive sunken colonies is not something you hear about happening too often in high-level games. You tend to see them more among mid-level players. But I guess with aggressive scouting and lurkers to guarantee that you can pull it off, it can be a powerful strategy indeed.