Tao of Gaming Smackdown

The-Feared    vs.   [o]utcast

As many of you know, Starcraft Clans The-Feared and [o]utcast are participants in a 5 game series of single game 1 vs. 1 match-ups.  I was awarded the pleasure of observing one of the games.  I did not know who I was going to be watching.  I only knew the channel and time to show up.  The set tournament time was 6:00pm EST at one of [o]utcast's battle.net (they are usually on Kali) home channels.

I arrived early and saw that most of [o]utcast was already there.  Soon, one of my fellow battlereports.com observers, Sp|nE, showed up followed by the two Tao officials Elitie and Nanogirl.  The channel had various people in it and started to become quite confusing.  The final observer showed up, Bob_the_Newt (posing as a bearded beatnik...Bob-with-Beard), then Nanogirl put her foot down to get channel control.  The rest of The-Feared showed up and we were finally ready to go.

Elitie fired off the game match-ups and then assigned observers.  I got the draw to watch Seer-The-Feared vs. [o]Qwerty.  There was a brief moment of chat in the pre-game screen, but soon enough the game began.  Doing what I do best, here is what transpired on the chosen map of Lost Temple:

  Seer had his preferred race chosen quickly, Protoss, and warped in at the 12:00, or top middle, position.  I noticed Qwerty left his fate to chance on this map and also warped Protoss in at the 3:00, or right middle, position.

Both of them set their probes mining and followed a very similar build:  7th probe (at 8 control) pylon, followed by a 9th probe (at 10 control) Gateway.  Qwerty chose to scout with his 'pylon-warping' probe and started his route counterclockwise.  This was fortunate as he found Seer immediately.  Upon seeing Seer (say that 5 times real fast), Qwerty opted for an Assimilator as his next structure so he may go for a fast dragoon containment perhaps.  The scouting probe turned away and began mining from the top mineral patch of the 3:00 mineral only expansion.  This probe was quickly passed by one of Seer's on its own scouting mission and confirmed the location of Qwerty's base.

Seer had already started a second Gateway when he had his probe wander into Qwerty's main.  Seeing the immediate tech-to-dragoons (a Cybernetics Core has begun warping) the probe hauls-ass back to base.

Qwerty has his first zealot out now and is rallying to his ramp.  He sends the one mining probe back into scout Seer and sees 2 Gateways and 3 zealots on the way out of Seer's base.  The small attack force is partially escorted by this probe on the way to Qwerty's base, but then kill the probe quicky before they are at Qwerty's ramp.

There is a small moment of hesitation/guessing/overcoming-fear/or whatever and Seer attacks with 2 of his zealots and holds one back as there are now 2 zealots defending the ramp.  The confrontation has begun with a whopping 2zealot/2zealot battle.  Qwerty has his two defenders hold fast while Seer has his 3rd zealot ready to come up and replace when necessary.

Qwerty realizes he will not win this ramp charge and must have already started a dragoon (another Gateway is warping also).  He backs his two hurt zealots away from the ramp and towards his own mineral line.  A little bit of dancing around and he now has his 2 zealots and 1 dragoon to defend with.  He places them all in his mineral line.

Seer followed with his first 3 zealots and has two more fresh ones beginning the short march to reinforce.  He doesn't charge into the probe line, though.  Instead, seeing the 2 zealot and 1 dragoon waiting for him, Seer concentrates attacks on a Gateway.  The 3 attacking the gate are soon joined by two more (and two more are beginning their trek now) and he has 5 zealots pounding on one of Qwerty's gates.

Qwerty 'wakes up' and flushes the zealots back a little.  He has been reinforced himself with another zealot and his new gate is almost finished producing another unit.  Probes are needed to defend also, but with fresh troops-by-twos, Seer is able to destroy a gateway while keeping his troop count in Qwerty's base higher than what Qwerty has (besides the fact there are 3 Gateways in Seer's base now).

With more troops in his base than he cares to deal with, even with the all powerful probes, Qwerty concedes the game.  Yes, this game is over with nothing more than a zealot rush.  I note Qwerty has answered his own question above, "yes, it can get more gay" with his actions in this game.  Here are some pics from the 'epic-never before seen-I feel like I'm killing a qwerty' battle:

And here are the final scores:

Back in the channel Qwerty mentions some stuff about 'not planning to win'.  I am half tempted to believe that seeing how the game went.  But, regardless.  This was a tournament game.  Either way you look at it.  Whether you were just plain ol' beat this bad, or that you tanked a tourney game (which is worse is my book), you got the Smackdown!

Check all the other game reports to see who won overall.  I have no idea right now!

-Dr.Zchivago

Thanks to Tao of Gaming and BattleReports.com.

And GG's to all of The-Feared and all of [o]utcast.

This report is also posted on the Tao-of-Gaming site in the Smackdown section.  Since Elitie and Nanogirl are also doing reports, the entire 5 game series can probably be viewed there.  Here is a link to it:  http://tao-of-gaming.com/smackdown.