Note : None of these events ever happened, all players are fictional, any relation or similarities in real life are based on coïncidence. Some of the info relating the game here may also be untrue. since Ethermoon hasn't released much about the other races, I will sometimes speculate on them. This report is a total ripp-off of the one of Sinrik over at SSS, made with Sinrik's approval :). Thnx for ur help and the map btw.

For the people who have never heard of StrifeShadow, go to Ethermoon Entertainement Inc. ot to StrifeShadow Homeworld to find out everything.

The Players.....

Today, 2 player will compete against each other to determine once and for all who of them is the superior player. These two brave men are Sultan_of_Djinns and Bad_A$$_Gosu. Sultan_of_Djinns (now refered as Sultan) is a well known Dark Elven player. He has played well-known players and he always managed to prove himself a worthy opponent. His favourite strats include Elemental raids and Moag rushes. His opponent, Bad_A$$_Gosu ( BadA$$) is not as well-known, i don't really know him at all :). but he and Sultan seemed to have a fight and they were kind enough to let me observe.

The Battlefield.....

Today's match will take place on the well-known and under used (yeah right :P) map Gobhrum.

Game 1......

Both players select random, and they both draw Dark Elves.Sultan gets the top right start and is colored Purple. BadA$$ gets the bottom right and is elected to dress his units in the magestic blue. Sultan seems to be sure of his capabilities with these feared Elves, and decides to go for a grendier rush. He hopes to be able to tech to these mass destruction units before his opponent finds out that he is weak in the early stages. BadA$$ uses a strange strat. He goes for a Carver rush, an uncommon strat after the 1.04 patch. Before the patch the carvers were produced faster and the Human footmen were weaker. Now it is easy to defeat a Carver rush, because must people still never go hard core tech, the always build a few units for defence and with the help of their peon units, the usually manage to survive. But Sultan is teching hard, very hard. And he only builds a few units. Will they be enough to stop the rush?

BadA$$ scouts very early and Sultan doesn't manage to kill his scouting Kobold before he sees the little defence. BadA$$ leads his army, consisting of 7 carvers, towards Sultan's main base. BadA$$ uses the element of surprise and uses the standard unit formation. Sultan is caught by surprise and his troops are scatterd around his base, so the 7 carvers find no trouble in killing all the units there.

Now, Sultan of course didn't like this and started to complain how cheap rushing and so on, so they decided to remtach :).

Game 2.....

The map is still the same popular Gobhrum.

They once again randomed both to Dark Elves. This time Sultan got the right middle strat and BadA$$ got the top left. As you can see, they maintained their colors.

Sultan went for a Moag/Raider strat. This is one of the most effective strats, because you get the early carvers to stop a rush, and you get anti air raider (against fast Elemental or Dragon rushes) and you get powerful, fast Moags. The idea of this strat is to get an amout of carvers and then only Moags until you have 6-10 Moags. The smart thing about this strat is that you dont mount all the Moags with a Carver, but you leave 3-4 unmounted and you let them attack in the first line. They will take the first damage, and will take out archers of marksmen before they pose much of a treath to the short range raiders. Sultan preformed this strat by the book.

BadA$$, who went Chaos rushing (fast Cabalists to summon either Elementals (speed and good air-air) or Djinns (ground-ground sandstorming guys), saw them coming when the attacking force killed a Kobold in the middle of the map and concentrated his defence at his choke. His units were not completely in formation (his Carvers are not all in front of his Marksman) but even if the were, they wouldn't be a match for Sultan's troops.

So, it seemed the second game was over. Sultan has about 6 raiders left who, altough most of them were damaged, should have no problem killing 2 left over carvers of BadA$$.

But faith decided different. Or maybe not faith, but more likely this little guy : , a Dark Elven Cabalist. And this one did exactly what is what made to do, summon. So, just when Sultan tought he had won the game, a Djinn of BadA$$ slowly floated above the ledge. As in SC, units cannot see over ledges, so the sandstorm of the Djinn came out of nowhere. BadA$$ used the superior range of his Djinn to keep out of range of the raiders, and with a little help from his Kobolds managed to kill off the raiders.

Now both players take time to rebuild. BadA$$ expands directly under him and Sultan expands to the bottom right. Sultan knows that he needs those resources to keep summoning units (damn expensive). After the ealry attack from BadA$$, Sultan decides to be annoying and send 3 Elementals to his opponent's expansion. Elementals have a fairly weak ground attack, and are scared off easely by some of BadA$$ marksmen. But Sultan continues to harass the expansion from different angels, using the speed and the flying abilities of the Elemental. BadA$$ needs to move his marksmen every time, and both players use time is doing these thing, so the rebuilding process is going at a slow rate.

BadA$$ now expands to the top right and takes his troops to mones towards the expansion of Sultan. With his long range marksmen he is capable of killing off the djinns without to much casualities. Now as back up troops arrive from Sultan's main base, the battle begins. BadA$$ uses his marksmen and raiders as best as he can, but Sultan uses his fast Moags to kill his opponent's marksmen, while the Elementals keep the raiders buzy. In the end, Sultan prevails with the help from a freshly summoned djinn, wich is at the very last moment destroyed by BadA$$'s last marksmen. The expansion still lives, but both players have suffered heavy casualilties. With three bases, BadA$$ is capable of rebuildings his troops faster then Sultan, and soon he has a new squad of raiders underway to kill off the already damaged expansion. Sultan only has a few Elementals and some carvers to defend, and he decides to withdraw them to his main base.

Without an expansion, Sultan knows that he will have trouble maintaining his Chaos army, and to change strats so late in the game and withoutbthe necessary resources would be suicide. With his last money he summons 3 Djinns and takes them to BadA$$'s top right expansion, wich is levelled rapidly. He now proceeds towards BadA$$' main base, where he uses the high ground to his best advantage. He places his Djinn so that the enemy raiders can't hit them, and the high ground makes it for the defending marksmen hard to see and hit the Djinns. The raiders start to run around trying to hit the Djinns or trying to avoid the sand storms. With sand stroms obsuring vision, BadA$$ had dificulty placing his marksmen and moveing his raiders out of the way. Sultan will most likely have noticed the small ammount of troops that BadA$$ had to defend. With 3 bases (now 2) he should be able to have more troops. Sultan hopes that BadA$$ tought that the game was already won and slacked off on production.

But suddenly, Sultan hears the whirling sound of the spinning, circling bands of chaotic energy of the Chaos Elementals, and he sees four of these appear. Now it is clear why BadA$$ had so little troops, he had teched up to Elementals. Now, altough Djinns have an air-air attack, it is weak compared to the one of the Elementals. So the four Elementals have no trouble killing three damaged Djinns.

The end.....

GG are exhanged and BadA$$ is declared winner.

Lessons learned :

Moag/raider strat is very effective, only against fast Djinns they will die.

Raiders suck against Djinns.

High ground is once again very important. Use it to your best advantage.

I can wait until this game is really out :).

Yours truly,
Marx_vs_Stalin.

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- http://www.sshomeworld.cjb.net