"We all know Canadians can carry on entire conversations relating to nuclear non-proliferation and moral relativity theories taking into account existence of alternate planar realites, simply by using various inflections of 'eh?'"
-.Praetor
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| Mind Control Madness, take 2 | | | Author: | | | IP: | hill-d-1XXXX | | Date: | 03/16/00 11:03 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | Starcraft(1), Great Writing(1), Problem: Broken Images(1) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 2, Max: 9, Min: 9
Lifetime Rating for Dausuul: 8.3333 |  |
Mind Control Madness
I've spent months commenting on battlereports.com, and put up one text-only BR a while back. The other day, I played a game that got so amusing I decided I had to BR it, employing my recently acquired HTML skills. So . . . here it is. The early game is a bit short on pics (read "none at all"), but as things progressed and I saw how weird they were getting, I started taking screenshots . . . hope y'all enjoy it.
Without further maundering, then, I present:
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The game is a 2v2v2 on Green Valleys. I am blue Protoss. My partner, TerranMaster, is teal Zerg. IAmBeerMan and LS6 are teamed, as purple Protoss and white Terran respectively; and ttrippp and SmilingSmiley are teamed, as red Protoss and orange Terran. Starting locations are shown below, with totally arbitrary symbols representing the three teams.
(Please note that the starting positions for orange and white represent guesswork on my part, since I never saw those bases until late in the game. I'm pretty sure these places are where they started, but I could be wrong.)
My partner quits a few moments into the game, for reasons that are not very clear. I bitch and moan about it, and the other players offer a remake. I decide not to, however. I'll go it alone and see what I can make of this. I have, after all, a plan . . .
This being a huge map, and a three-way battle to boot, I go for air superiority. I start by making a few corsairs to scout things out for me, meanwhile using goons and cannons for base defense. Green Valleys is nice for a lone player in a world of teams; there are lots of isolated cliff bases with no ground access, where I can set up camp and avoid conflict. I can let the other two teams battle it out while I build up.
A little poking around discovers ttrippp to the south of me. Check. I make sure my base is secure, and start expanding. I take two of the plateau mineral expansions, the one between me and ttrippp and the one between ttrippp and my defunct partner. Then I take the lower left corner vespene expansion. Finally, in a bold maneuver, I grab the mineral expansion between my ex-partner and IAmBeerMan, and start pumping out probes.
Since I think it quite possible that my main base will get razed at some point, I decide to relocate to the lower left corner, a nice out-of-the-way spot. I stop teching at my main and start teching there instead. I put up a Citadel of Adun and a templar archives. As soon as the archives warp in, I put my plan into action. Two dark templar begin to warp at one of my gateways, and the archives begin to research . . . mind control.
The templar pop out and promptly make a dark archon. Now I have to sit and wait while he charges up. It takes an abysmally long time.
While doing all this, I've also been powering probes and teching like a whore. Two vespene bases and four mineral bases are very good for that sort of thing. It isn't long before I have the entire Protoss tech tree, an arbiter at my main, assorted corsairs, and cannons everywhere, and I still have minerals coming out of my psionic ears.
It's around now that ttrippp sends a small group of goons and zealots at my main base. Unfortunately for him, I have goons too, and my goons have cannon support . . . not to mention invisibility, thanks to my arbiter. He kills a couple of cannons, but nothing else.
Also, IAmBeerMan starts putting up cannons next to my expansion between him and the dead TerranMaster. I think little of it at the time, assuming he's just putting up defenses around his base in case of turbo newbie.
The dark archon has 150 energy, and it's time to go. I load him into the shuttle and drop him in TerranMaster's base, where six drones and an overlord sit around their hatchery, mourning their lost Cerebrate. The archon points at one of the drones, and suddenly the little bug looks up with new hope in its eyes. I am happy. I have taken this poor despairing creature and given it a reason to live. It rushes over to a spot near TerranMaster's vespene geyser, sits itself down on the creep, and begins the long metamorphosis into a hatchery.
There is a long pause now. I have no idea what's going on elsewhere on the map, and I don't much care. I just hope the teams are evenly matched enough that nobody goes under any time soon . . . and that nobody gets any funny ideas about attacking me. I concentrate on building carriers, upgrading, climbing the Zerg tech tree, and not disturbing my roommate with my psychotic snickering. Spawning pool . . . lair . . . spire . . . queen's nest . . . onward . . .
The silence is broken by cannon fire. BeerMan, it seems, was not just defending his base after all. Photon cannons now encircle my mineral expansion in the south. They can't hit my nexus, but they can and do kill my harvesting probes, effectively shutting down the base. For the time being, I let it go. I don't need the minerals. I have more than I know what to do with already.
Minerals I've got, but I'm having a major vespene crisis. I'm already sucking vespene from TerranMaster's main. I expand to his natural with a hatchery and an extractor. Ahh, it's good to be playing my beloved Zerg.
By now I have a hive and a greater spire. Several mutalisks pop out, and promptly turn into devourers. That's right, folks. It's the Zerg-Protoss devourer-corsair air superiority strat!
One of my observers (did I mention I got them?) happens to be hovering near ttrippp's natural, and it sees a curious thing. Floating, orange, buildings. Apparently SmilingSmiley is having problems, and is having to relocate to his partner's base for safety. This could be bad--if ttrippp and Smiley go under, I'll have to face the other two alone--but it also affords me a nice opportunity. The dark archon has recharged his shields and energy now. I put him back in his shuttle and sail around to the cliff above ttrippp's natural, where my observer is watching SmilingSmiley's SCVs munching away on the minerals.
ttrippp has a lot of goons moving around there, so I'll have to pick my moment carefully. I move the observer over a bit, drop the archon on the cliff, and move the shuttle out over the lower ground. Careful . . . careful . . . wait for it . . .
The archon reaches out again, and one of the SCVs turns upon his fellows. As the other SCVs start to gang up on him, I scream into the little guy's mind. Run! Run! Run like the wind!
He bolts for the waiting shuttle and leaps in, and the shuttle takes off with afterburners screaming (okay, gravitic drive), pausing only to pick up the dark archon on the way. Giggling maniacally, I land the SCV at the mineral expansion southwest of my main, and start putting up a command center. I am no longer Protoss! I am Protoss-Zerg-Terran! I am . . . [FLS]Prozerran! Oh . . . wait a minute, no I'm not. I just wish I were.
Two of my mineral bases are exhausted, and I'm starting to cast nervous glances towards my mineral readout. It's still in the thousands, but, what with teching for three races and building troops, if my income falls off, my reserves will drop to zero in no time. Time to take that mineral base back from IAmBeerMan. Six carriers move in and start tearing down the cannons . . . and a psi-storm goes off all around them, followed by BeerMan's own carrier fleet.
Well, of all the things I was ready for, this tops the list. I retreat my carriers briefly, then return with devourers and corsairs. The battle that follows is a nightmare of spell-slinging and micromanaging, as psi-storms explode, disruption webs fly, and purple goo splatters all over everything. The tides of battle surge back and forth as reinforcements flow in from both sides. Finally, BeerMan concedes the field. Unfortunately, my base was destroyed in the clash.
After a brief lull, during which I sneak a shuttle up to the top right corner and make another vespene base (I'm still having gas problems), I decide to advance again, and clear BeerMan off the high ground if possible. It turns out that BeerMan has put quite a bit of his stuff up here, and the fighting is vicious. BeerMan gives ground grudgingly, but my advance is slowed to a crawl.
It's right about now that I see a little message on my screen. It says:
SmilingSmiley has left the game.
ttrippp screams, "ALLY." Whether this is a plea for mercy from his foes, or a request to me, I don't know, but I seize the opportunity. "Want to ally with me?" I ask him. His response is an unequivocal "YES." All of a sudden, red blossoms all over my minimap as he shares vision with me. I have a partner again!
Together, the two of us hit BeerMan's main. ttrippp has a horde of dragoons, with arbiter and dark archon support. I have my trusty carriers, devourers, and corsairs, along with overlords and observers for detection. Added to all this, science vessels with EMP are in the works . . .
BeerMan's main can't stand up to this sort of punishment. It goes up in blue smoke. BeerMan inquires, "Musical partners?" I admit to my perfidy, and he says, "Cool."
Not long after this, purple zealots hit my vespene base in the upper right. Fortunately, I have an arbiter stationed there for just this eventuality. My goon squad warps in and blows the zealots to hell.
I check out the nearby mineral-only, and find an orange base there, now defunct (orange, if you recall, was SmilingSmiley, who secured me a new partner by quitting). I send my arbiter over there and warp in the goon squad, now on demolition duty, and a probe. There're good minerals there. I can use them.
The goons arrive and find a group of purple zealots already there on the other side of the base. Our purple friend obviously had the same idea. The battle is rather comic, as the various troops try to maneuver around the Terran buildings and resist their impulse to attack them. I kill off the zealots, raze the base, and set up shop. Not long after that, BeerMan brings more zealots to my vespene base. Since there is a deplorable lack of goons this time, the base falls.
Meanwhile, in the south, the war rages on. I'm running out of vespene again as I struggle to make guardians.
Trying to find something to do with all these minerals, I sneak a probe around to where BeerMan has put up a base in the lower right. I've already done plenty of crazy weird-ass shit this game; why not throw in a late-game cannon creep? Unfortunately, my attempt is detected and shut down by scouts and zealots. One of the scouts dies to my corsair-devourer team, and the other two suddenly see the wisdom of working for ttrippp (those dark archons are so persuasive).
BeerMan's base in the lower right is destroyed as my new-hatched guardians move in and ttrippp does a massive goon-arbiter drop. At the same time, however, he's started cannon-creeping my mineral base in the upper right again. I micro my goons and manage to hold off the cannons for a while. ttrippp and I begin our march of death up the right side of the map, ripping up LS6's defenses like so much tissue paper.
All this time, BeerMan has been harassing my base in the lower left with little bands of dark templar, zealots, and corsairs. Mutalisks, guardians, and overlords keep having to move in and put a halt to things. Now a particularly intrepid band of dark templar, using corsairs to kill my guardian defense, manages to wipe out the nexus. How irritating. Not a big issue, though. That geyser was pretty well sucked dry anyway.
The assault on LS6 continues. Now the doom fleet is pounding down his natural. ttrippp sends his goons up to clear out anything on the cliff.
LS6's command center escapes the carnage, floating back to his main . . . but it's deep in the yellow. A queen dives into the command center with evil glee and infests the thing. After this, it's just death and destruction for a while.
The game is clearly over by now. LS6 has been obliterated, and BeerMan is dying. I take the opportunity to play with my pretty toys. Observe . . .
The arbiter-zergling drop!
One Protoss player's queen infesting another Protoss player's command center!
The dreaded three-probe rush countered by the arbiter-probe-drone-SCV drop!
IAmBeerMan finally falls, commenting that "it would have been funner if people had stuck to the teams." With that, the game ends.
Final scores:
Lessons learned:
1. Corsair-devourer kicks ass. (This is the second time I've used this strategy. It kicked ass the last time, too.)
2. I am not [FLS]Prozerran.
3. If you're in a 2v2v2, and your partner quit like a dumbass at the beginning of the game, and someone else loses a partner, you just got yours back.
4. If you have the resources for it, being three races at once is a whole lot of fun.
5. Mind control is hilarious.
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