"Protoss activity detected in the Korpula sector. Terminate with extreme prejudice. Have a nice day."
-Heartcutter
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| Final Hour of Winter | | | Author: | | | IP: | resnet18XXXX | | Date: | 03/20/00 06:03 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 2, Max: 9, Min: 9
Lifetime Rating for MRHD: 8.5455 |  |
Ah yes, the first day of spring. Flowers are in bloom, trees start growing leaves, the sun shines nicely, the air is pleasant. No killing can be done during such a fine time; only pleasant social events, tea outside on the veranda, and a stroll in the park, can compose spring. Spring is when the world comes closest to a perfect utopia, envisioned by mankind since time can remember...
Fortunately for us, the events that follow did not take place during spring, but rather the hours right before, so you will see none of the aforementioned lameness, only blood, blood, and more blood. Anyways, without any further rambling, I now present to you:
The Last Hour of Winter: A Journey through Hell
Starring:
Exo|IcE| |
versus
MegaMan[S]
Part 1: Introduction
It all started when I was going from channel to channel and came upon some players that I knew. One of them, Exo|IcE| was looking for a one on one, and it wasn’t too long until MegaMan[S] accepted his challenge. Eager to find a good game, and knowing that both of them were skilled at the arts of Starcraft, I offered to observe just as Exo|IcE| asked if anyone wanted to observe. Another person in the channel, Arc|IcE|, whom I also knew, decided to observe the game as well, and with combatants and spectators decided upon, Exo|IcE| left the channel to go host the game.
When I entered the chat room, a map that I am sure none of you know awaited me.
Of course, the map was chosen to accommodate us viewers, so it was fine with me. Usually this is the part where I describe the map and show you a picture of it, but come on, if you don’t know Lost Temple you probably haven’t played Starcraft and wouldn’t be reading this report in the first place. Anyways, both players choose random, and this game was under way.
Part 2: The Early Game
The game starts off with Exo|IcE| spawning teal zerg at the six o’clock start position, and with MegaMan[S] receiving the Terrans in the always problematic color of white (Makes you either have to change the table background color or make his name some other color, and either way it is annoying.) at the three o’clock start location. I was crossing my fingers for a good game, because I really felt like doing a report, and I was still trying to figure out the direction of my Warcraft2 report series, and as many of you can probably sympathize with, I was getting what I have dubbed “reporter’s itch.” I was worried the game would be bad, as they usually were when I got chances to observer. Of course, if it was bad, then you wouldn’t be reading this now, so I will stop stalling and just get to what happened.
Exo|IcE| sent his starting overlord up and to the left, obviously to scout out the nine position, where he would end up finding nothing. Watching his base closely, awaiting his first build, I see a drone, I believe it was the ninth, go over to his ramp and morph into a hatchery at the top. Over at MegaMan[S]’s base, I see at first one barrack being built at his ramp, then a supply depot in his base, and then another barracks near the first one. Back at Exo|IcE|’s base, the spawning pool has come up, and the first lings are being created. Around that time Exo|IcE|’s Overlord lumbers up to the twelve o’clock position, and once again finds nothing; at the same time, MegaMan[S] sends an scv out to scout the twelve, which just barely misses spotting Exo|IcE|’s overlord. Then, instead of going on to the nine o’clock position and certifying this as the game with players who have the worst luck on initial scouting, MegaMan[S]’s scv instead heads straight south, and when it tries to journey up the ramp, it is impaled by the first creep colony that Exo|IcE| had just completed morphing; two more were under way. At this same time, MegaMan[S] was beginning construction of a third barracks back at base, and a lot of infantry was beginning to look likely.
After his cruel and heartless slaughter of the lone scv, whose family I hear is still in mourning, Exo|IcE| takes two of his lings, and sends them towards MegaMan[S]’s base on what I assume was a scouting mission. On the way, they encounter a pair of MegaMan[S]’s marines, which were also on a similar mission. The two lings proceed to slaughter the two marines, without taking very much damage to themselves. Continuing on their merry way, they come to the foot of MegaMan[S]’s ramp, and when they try to climb it, their fate is no better than that of the hapless scv who was the unfortunate first casualty of this battle. 
Now that each player had drawn a little blood, both began to focus on massing enough forces so that they would be the ones offering the last blood sacrifice of the season, and not be on the receiving end. Exo|IcE| starts morphing a hatchery at his natural, and both players begin extractors at about this time. When they are finished morphing, both players immediately put three workers on gas, and MegaMan[S] started to put up an academy and a factory at roughly the same time, while Exo|IcE| was morphing a third hatchery at his main as well as a hydralisk den, and a little bit later an extractor at his natural as well. He has already completed three sunken colonies at his natural, and has a fair amount of lings, and that luckless Overlord that scouted all the wrong positions is now hovering over the cliff of MegaMan[S]’s natural.
Once his academy and factory are finished, MegaMan[S] immediately begins construction on a comsat station as well as a starport and a machine shop. Meanwhile, Exo|IcE| is starting to pump out hydras, and has a steady stream of resources coming in from his natural now, and is beginning to morph two lairs, one at his main, and another at his expansion. MegaMan[S], not about to be outresourced, starts a command center at his natural, and brings down a substantial force of M&M’s to guard it. Once his starport finishes, he immediately puts up a control tower, and at about this same time his first tanks begin to pop out. Not too long afterwards, MegaMan[S] has two dropships, and loads one with a siege tank and two marines, and the other with another tank along with a medic and a marine. He then brings them down to Exo|IcE|’s cliff, and the tanks, once they are in siege mode, start raining chaos down on Exo|IcE|’s natural.
At first it seems that Exo|IcE| might be able to stop the tanks, as he brings over some of his hydras that manage to take out one of the tanks from below, but MegaMan[S] unsieges his other tank and moves it back, and from there it cannot be reached by the forces of Exo|IcE|. Giving up his natural for now, Exo|IcE| begins to mass his forces in the middle of the map, preparing for an attack to counter MegaMan[S]’s, which just splattered Exo|IcE|’s lair at his natural into a million pieces, along with the sunken colonies that were there. But is it too late for Exo|IcE| to get himself back together?
Part 3: The Mid Game
After decimating Exo|IcE|’s natural, MegaMan[S] reloads everything into his transports and returns them to his main. He then sieges his tanks on the ledge above his ramp, and continues with his troop production and his teching; he starts construction on a science facility after he finishes off Exo|IcE|'s expansion. Once the science facility is done, MegaMan[S] starts to build a Nuclear Silo onto his expansion command center. Exo|IcE| at this time finishes researching ventral sacs, and loads up four overlords with various goodies, dropping some lurkers and lings down on his ledge to prevent another assault from MegaMan[S] at that spot. As he does that, he also sends in the hydras and lings he had massed in the center of the map to MegaMan[S]’s base, where the following bloodshed ensues. 
From this picture it would seem as if Exo|IcE| will run over MegaMan[S], but what you can’t see here are the tanks sieged on the cliff, and while Exo|IcE| tries valiantly to penetrate this defense with his forces, he is soon forced Exo|IcE| to pull back his units to a safe distance. He then begins to morph some of his hydras into lurkers, perhaps hoping to take advantage of MegaMan[S]'s apparent lack of detection in the area. (However, he has just gotten out his first science vessel, so his detection is sufficient at this time.) Also, two of those Overlords from earlier had made their way to below MegaMan[S]’s base, and now they take this opportunity to drop their cargo of four hydras and two lurkers into MegaMan[S]’s natural. 
These hydras and lurkers manage to kill a fair number of workers, and also destroy MegaMan[S]’s bad manner nuclear silo, but MegaMan[S] is quick to react and manages to get a fair number of workers away and lifts his command center up and north, out of harms way. Exo|IcE| then loads up the hydras and drops them in the tanks on the ledge, but MegaMan[S], seeing the overlord approaching, quickly unsieges his tanks, which make mincemeat of the hydras. He then brings his tanks closer to his natural, and with his science vessal spotting, he kills the lurkers that were burrowed in the ground in front of the minerals. Exo|IcE| has started to morph another hatchery at his natural and a spire at his main, and MegaMan[S] brings his command center back down, and begins on a new nuclear silo; both soon have their naturals back up and running. Once his spire is done, Exo|IcE| makes some scourge which take out the science vessel, but soon two more are out and MegaMan[S] has a pair of turrets now anyways, so Exo|IcE| can’t really take advantage of it being gone now, as a few splattered lurkers that try to assault MegaMan[S]’s natural again show. Exo|IcE| then begins expansions at both the south-eastern island and the nine o’clock start locations, and it looks like he is getting ready to start out resourcing MegaMan[S] like crazy, but then MegaMan[S] takes some wraiths, a dropship with a ghost, and a science vessel to the ledge of Exo|IcE|’s natural, kills the defense there, and then we hear:
NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED.
As you can tell by the lack of significant splatters, Exo|IcE| managed to get all of his workers out of harm’s way, with the only damage done being significant loss in hit points for his expansion’s hatchery and the extractor there. Still, nukes are fun to watch even if they don’t blow everything up. Now MegaMan[S], who has just gotten his fourth and fifth starports up, starts scouting the map with a fairly large number of wraiths, which happen upon Exo|IcE|’s island expansion, and since Exo|IcE| really did not have the defense to spare at this point, it is unceremoniously blown up by the wraith pilots expertly aiming their bb guns as they do for all ground targets. Taking advantage of the ailing situation of his opponent, MegaMan[S] expands to the north western island, and soon afterwards takes his wraiths on a little mission to Exo|IcE|’s natural, going straight for the very injured hatchery, which doesn’t take too long to cave in even under the extremely pathetic fire of the wraiths. Things were certainly not looking good for Exo|IcE|. He was out of minerals at his main, and the only expansion he had was the nine o’clock, which was just getting started. Meanwhile, MegaMan[S] had both his natural and an island expansion up. Once again, the prospects for Exo|IcE| winning this game weren’t looking all that great.
Part 4: The Late Game
Despite the odds, Exo|IcE| was not about to give up. He morphed a Queen’s Nest at his main, and soon afterwards started working on his Hive. He also expanded to the nine o’clock natural and once again tried to build up an expansion at his own natural. Exo|IcE| is no fool; he realizes that if he cannot at least catch up to MegaMan[S] in resources, that this game is over, and if he doesn’t start expanding like mad, he might as well throw in the towel. MegaMan[S] gets up a second science facility at his main, and soon afterwards puts up a physics lab… and we all know what that means! But while all that is going on, he loads up a transport with a ghost, and because he has been keeping up a constant scan, he realizes that Exo|IcE| has an expansion at nine, so he drops the ghost at the very edge of that area. And the cloaked ghost, standing in front of a duo of clueless zerglings, does his thing:
NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED.
Unfortunately for Exo|IcE|, he has no overlord nearby, so I get to show you a cool animated gif again:
As you can see, this nuke was a heck of a lot more bloody than the last. Drones and a few lings go up in a crimson shower of gore, but the hatchery was of course still up, and there were still some drones alive so Exo|IcE|’s mineral gathering from this area had not been totally shut down. Realizing this, MegaMan[S] sends in a fleet of wraiths and valkyries to attempt to finish the job, but showing his great skills at micromanagement, Exo|IcE| manages to have his remaining hydras dance circles around the fleet, eventually taking them all out, and making it look like Exo|IcE| has successfully defended the area, which in turn would help turn the tide of battle in his favor. But wait, there is still a white blob in the far corner of his base… what could that possibly be… oh yeah…
NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED.
Now that expansion is really dead; those spore colonies that Exo|IcE| was morphing right before the nuke hit got blown to pieces, as did the hatchery and most of the drones. However, MegaMan[S] makes a mistake in handling his air units, which he accidentally sent in at the same time he dropped the nuke, and although he managed to pull most of them out, three wraiths went down in a blaze of humiliation, nuked by their own commander. Sorry to have made another animation to those of you who are not lucky enough to have a cable modem, but I just couldn’t resist. Now you might be wondering why this last animation didn’t follow the nuke the whole way through like the last two did. Well, while all of that stuff at nine was going on, Exo|IcE| had loaded up a couple of overlords with hydras, and had taken them north to the corner, where MegaMan[S] had his island base. So while the nuke was dropping, I noticed that Exo|IcE| was starting to cause havoc at MegaMan[S]’s only expansion besides his natural, and it was something I wasn’t about to miss.
At first it looked like the science vessels, who were irridating the hydras like mad, would pull through for MegaMan[S] and save his expansion, but as Exo|IcE| dropped some on the main portion of the island, it became apparent that this was not to be the case, as both vessels go up in a not so glorious blaze. With the island undefended, but only four almost dead hydralisks left, MegaMan[S] decides he might as well use his scv’s, which actually manage to kill two of Exo|IcE|’s hydras, but then they are all killed, and the two remaining hydras take out the nuclear silo and start spitting their bile on MegaMan[S]’s command center. Not only is Exo|IcE| doing this, but showing his determination, he starts another hatchery right back up at the nine o’clock position. Also around the same time, MegaMan[S]’s notorious ghost decides to return to base, but it is killed on its way by a sunken colony that Exo|IcE| had set up at his nine o’clock natural expansion, so we now know that MegaMan[S] is aware of it. Anyways, back to the island, MegaMan[S] sends in his wraiths, which easily dispose of the two hydras, and the command center is only in the yellow, so as of right now MegaMan[S] is okay. But while he has a dried out main and natural, and an island base that is for the moment down, Exo|IcE| has a dried out main and natural as well, and also has an expansion he’s trying to get back up again, but unlike MegaMan[S], he has a fully functioning expansion, at the nine o’clock natural, while MegaMan[S] does not have any resources coming in at this time.
Exo|IcE|, sensing that he is one step away from finishing off MegaMan[S]’s expansion, sends another attack over, this time a mixture of mutalisks and hydras. They clean up both the team of wraiths that were stationed there and the scv’s that MegaMan[S] was able to make in that short time, and if it were not for the fact that the first batch of cruisers had just popped out from MegaMan[S]’s base and were already on route to the island, Exo|IcE| would have destroyed the expansion. But the fact was that the cruisers were on their way, and they easily destroyed Exo|IcE|’s assault.
Now MegaMan[S], instead of going directly south to take out Exo|IcE|’s expansion, goes first to the right and then down, and proceeds west, launching a strike on Exo|IcE|’s dried out natural, perhaps hoping to push into his main and end it. Exo|IcE| has five hatcheries at his main at this point, and when he sees the cruisers he immediately orders up some scorge, and leading off with devs, hydras, brings in the scourge to devastate the cruisers once their fire has been distracted by the other units, killing them off without too much effort. And although they managed to kill a defiler mound and a hatchery, Exo|IcE| did not have too much use for that hatchery at the time, and had a second defiler mound close by, so the damage done by the cruisers was very small.
Knowing that the cruisers are out of the picture, Exo|IcE| loads up two overlords with lings, which he sends to MegaMan[S]’s island expansion, and they easily take out the unguarded area, forcing MegaMan[S] to lift off his command center and land it nearby out of harm’s reach. Perhaps out of desparation, MegaMan[S] starts to siege the cliff above Exo|IcE|’s expansion at the nine o’clock natural, and does some damage, taking a few workers out of the picture as well as a spore colony.
Picking up the lings that he used to destroy MegaMan[S]’s expansion, Exo|IcE| drops them right in the middle of the sieged tanks, managing to kill all but one. Not ready to give it up, he brings some of his drones, who are hiding a safe distance from the tank, into an overlord, and proceeds to humiliate the last tank by killing it with these. Exo|IcE|, now clearly in the lead, expands a grand total of four more times: to the mineral only at nine, six, and twelve (where he finds MegaMan[S]’s old command center and kills it with hydras.), as well as the twelve main. MegaMan[S] knows he is in trouble, and launches one final assault on the twelve main expansion once it finishes, which he saw in one of his scanner sweeps. He sends a group of M&M’s over to the area, which actually do a lot of damage, killing all of the drones, and taking that expansion out.
But the hydras that had destroyed MegaMan[S]’s command center soon engage this M&M force, and lay it to waste. At about the same time, Exo|IcE| fills up couple of overlords with hydras, and drops them in the southernmost corner of MegaMan[S]’s main. At first the forces left at his main look like they might stave off this drop, but Exo|IcE|’s forces pull through in the end. Realizing it is over, MegaMan[S] exchanges a round of “gg” with Exo|IcE|, and leaves the game.
Part 5: Conclusion
After the game, the four of us discussed why exactly we thought it slipped away from MegaMan[S], and both me and Arc|IcE| agreed that it was because, while Exo|IcE| was aggressively went after expansions, MegaMan[S] was fairly passive in his attempts to gather in more resources. It was a very long, intense, and close game, lasting eighty minutes and with scores in the hundreds of thousands, with the difference being only three thousand, in favor of Exo|IcE|. (I had a screen with the scores, but I accidently deleted it, oh well.) I would like to thank both of the contestants for allowing me to observe and giving me their permission to report this game; both of you played well, and made it entertaining for those who watched it.
This Game Was Reported By
[z]MRHD |
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