vs.

Early build strats:

• Both çBob and çEligh have opted to wallin their ramp (protection from zealot rushes) and go for gas at around 13. They then both go for a factory then starport for early dropping.
• Both çTaurian and çLatto have opened with double gates and generated several zealots. They both get cores at about ~30 psi and start teching in alternate branches. çLatto goes for a Robotics Facility while çTaurian goes for templar tech. Both toss build forges and a few cannons around their main.

So.... çBob charges in with his dropship only to be met by an equally sturdy cannon of çLatto's. While çBob and çEligh are both equally displeased with the placement of these protoss cannons, the marines end up victorious, taking down the cannon with somewhat ease. çLatto, seeing marines attacking, attempts to mop them up with probes. These probes are no match for the marines and are brutally wiped out while the other half of his probes continue to mine. Zealots are then sent to take care of the job that the probes failed to do. Still, the first strike is considered a success.

The Protoss have not attempted to contain these terrans but instead have taken a more defensive approach with both protoss amassing units. Both çTaurian and çLatto have yet to attack or scout their opponents bases for weaknesses (apart from early scouting). The Terrans, however, remain weary of the robotics facility leaving çLatto with the potential to reaver drop. çEligh plans to siege this building before it can do any harm.

Meanwhile the unattended çTaurian taken the opportunity to be the first to expand. He takes his natural while building basic zeals and some goons for defence. çLatto, with his new found shuttle popping out, ships a probe to the southeast island expansion and starts warping in a nexus.

Very shortly after, çBob and çEligh have both sent troops down to the gap inbetween çBob and çLatto and immediately begin sieging up tanks and building defensive structures. The engineering bay of çBob's is again used as a spotter. Wa-SLAM! the first shot fires directly into the robotics support bay and çLatto quickly starts calling his troops into action.

çTaurian's troops are also quick to come to the rescue in the form of several zealots, a templar and a few dragoons. The zealots go straight in for the tanks while the templar and goons go for the higher ground.
The zealots are dispatched very quickly with the terrans using a newly built bunker to buffer their attack. The Terrans have quite a bit of success, killing several dragoons and assorted units while being repaired by scv's. Also destroyed is the robotics support bay of çLatto's along with his only reaver.

While çTaurian and çLatto's dragoons attack the tanks with little success, the slow moving high templar arrives and the hideous crackling of psi-storm begins shutting down the uprising.

It is then quiet for a while... both teams recouping somewhat from their losses. çBob then quietly floats his newly created command center out on a slow path to the northwest island. As the cc slowly flies over to the island, it finds that it has already been taken! Yes, çLatto has now expanded again now has taken both islands.

At about this exact moment, çTaurian is the beneficiary of tank fire from above!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

çEligh has been actively using his dropships and has set up two tanks on the cliff to the north of çTaurian's base. Using one of the anomolies of the map to his advantage, çEligh is able to hit the assimilator of çTaurian from the northern ledge using his dropship as a spotter. çTaurian can't be too happy about this and lacks any sort of mobility that would allow him to deal with the problem.

To make matters worse, you may also see a purple dot just below çTaurian's natural expansion. çBob too wants to get in on the pounding of çTaurian and is busy setting up a siege of his natural expansion.

The tanks begin raining down fire from all angles on çTaurian leaving him with no source of gas income, only one mineral patch to mine from, and no way to deal with the problem. His dragoons and zealots run frantically in various directions, unable to attack the terran foes. Ubertastic çBob is also expanding to his natural right now (same with çEligh) and maynarding scv's to it.

On top of all that, çBob wanted the northwest island. He still had a floating command center there and so two dropships are sent and the base is sacked. Attempts to raise more cannons by çLatto only delay the inevitable.

Now, one of the things you may be asking yourself is, where are the protoss? Where are all of their troops? Well, too often they would be the casualities of outranged tank fire from inaccessible areas. Many dragoons were lost as well as templar in çTaurian's attempt to save himself. In the case of çLatto, he has been spending loads of minerals expanding twice and cannoning his expansions like a madman. The sieging from the left of his main by çEligh was simply the last straw.

And çTaurian had left. çBob and çEligh sense victory is near...

With his latest expansion razed and his ally leaving, çLatto can't feel all that good about his situation. He decides to hurt one of the opponents quickly and start gathering troops for the upcoming full scale war.

çLatto pulls together some dt's and throws them in a shuttle and sets off for çBob's base. They do a fair bit of damage, but though the use of comsat and some scarce defences, çBob manages to rid himself of the dark templar.

It is then quiet again for a while - çLatto is trying to accumulate as many troops as possible (albeit ground troops) while çBob and çEligh are content to sit back and build massive armies of tanks. Rather than get into it in great detail, I think a few pics pretty much sum this up.

And game #1 is complete! çBob and çEligh move on to the next game that they would've played anyways! Woo-hoo! (cue air guitar)

Observations

• Templar archives were built by çTaurian with no dark templars created. Given that the terran mobile detection that didn't come until way later, dt's could've bought some extra time. Even with dt's, however, all sieging attempts were almost always accompanied by turrets and bunkers.
• Islands do not necessarily make for good expansions. They only become good expansions if you have fleets of air units (or nydus canal as zerg) - otherwise defending these bases often involves raising large amounts of static defences even in the case that it is never attacked. This took a lot of resources away from çLatto who was trying to hyperexpand throughout the game.
• Scouting and mobility. The terrans were comsatting constantly and by way of dropships, had armies that were all over the map. The protoss, however, lacked observers or any knowledge of opponents bases (beyond early scouting) and were not able to mobilize their troops to properly deal with much of the sieging.
• Know when and when not to attack units using your workers. A good chunk of çLatto's economy was wiped out because of a misplay.
• This was a very fast paced game. One of the other reasons why we didn't see many protoss troops was because çBob and çEligh had 3 of the cliffed sieges up by about 15 minutes in. Total game time:
• This was a very well played game by the terran team and displays how powerful tank positioning can be.

(Dire Straits)
 

vs.

About the 10 seconds into the game, this pops up: Funny? Gay? You decide.

Early build strats:

• As has already been stated, çBob and çEligh open with gate/core/stargate/robo fac builds.
• çCasper figures he might just go out on a limb and expand early. His build is supply/cc/gas/rax/factory/eng bay/starport. He begins floating his new command center to the middle right island.
• çSnakeyez scouts the bottom left with his overlord and goes for a hatch/pool/gas/lair/evo chamber/spire. He then begins work on a spore colony knowing his overlords will need protection (after finding protoss)

çBob's first corsair pops out and he zips up towards çCasper and discovers that he is terran. He finds that a starport is building and informs çEligh that they should get observers asap. çBob's ship then floats south a bit and bingo...

çCasper has been found out but his turrets force the protoss to abandon an early exp raid. Instead, they start shipping their corsairs into zerg land. çBob is the first on the scene as he drops one reaver and covers it with his corsair. çSnakeyez scatters his peons immediately but not without losing some to the reaver. To make matters worse for çSnake, çEligh shows up on the scene and drops his reaver and brings a corsair as well.

As scarabs are smashing into buildings and corsairs are making that high pitched WEEE-WEEE-WEEE sound as they attack slow moving overlords, çSnake has built scourge which he sacrifices to kill off both sairs. çCasper is shortly on the scene with a couple of wraiths to take out defenceless reavers but not before çSnake's spire and spore colony explode in blood. The spore colony wasn't much of a deterant for the corsairs who managed to take out a couple of overlords before being destroyed. Peons are immediately sent back to work as the corsairs patrol for other expansions.

çCasper, who is hoping he can catch these air fleets off guard before observers come, sends his wraiths scouting.
 
 
 
 
He finds a fleet of them and starts the harrassing. This doesn't last too long as an observer of çBob's shows up and blue wraiths are waxed faster than you can say screenshot. çCasper continues to annoy corsairs with cloaked wraiths but only suceeds in losing flocks of them as observers are starting to take the map. çEligh then asks çBob what his plan is now... Truly the sign of a master.

It is somewhat quiet as people expand. çBob sets out to expand to the middle bottom island, çCasper is floating a second cc to one of the center islands (the one closest to him), and çEligh is expanding to the middle left island. The crippled çSnakeyez has yet to expand and tries to amass some sort of defence knowing he will probably be hit with another corsair raid. He builds a hydra den and starts setting up hydras around his base. Sure enough...

çBob, who is the first to the zerg base, quickly turns around as he sees hydras and no overlords. He instead starts scouting again and comes upon çCasper's most recent expansion. Spotting this, çBob asks çEligh to kill off the expansion attempt and almost immediately he on the scene with reavers. They kill it as çCasper is unable to float away with the corsair fleet floating above.

Both protoss players begin solidifying their expansions with cannons. çCasper begins looking to drop metal as çSnakeyez looks like he's going for hydra drops. They will have to avoid these roaming fleets of seemingly indestructible corsairs... we'll see how they do.

Well, before çCasper can get started with his offence, a couple of snowy looking circles of goo show up at his expansion. It could only be one thing... the dreaded GAY-WEB. Two of çEligh's shuttles swoop in and drop off four reavers and the hollow booming sound begins. çCasper responds with a couple valks and wraiths, but they are no match at all for a good dozen of çBob's corsairs. çCasper is not ready to give up the island so easily and sends all his scv's to attack. For some reason I found this very fascinating and happily watched scv explosions for a while. Can you blame me? I mean who doesn't enjoy gratuitous violence...

This did, however, force me to miss some other gratuitous violence somewhere else. As çBob is having a good chuckle over the sacking of çCasper's expansion, you might notice a red dot off to the left of çEligh's expansion. Now this is what we in the field call "a red blob 'o zerg stuff." This blob proceded to get larger and made the orange blotches around it disappear.

The same can't be said for those orange and teal blotches though. çBob and çEligh failed to take out the 3:00 island of çCasper's as he relentlessly attacks the reavers with his scv's enough to kill all four. So now, there are only two expansions: çCasper's and çBob's. çCasper's is significantly more worse for ware now that he has maybe two scvs and a bunch of burning crap all over the place but oh well. Time for an update!
 

çBob is now taking the next logical step in protoss island games... that is to go blimps. He has a fleet beacon and is now busy producing these chubby things so he can mindlessly assault people.

Before any of that comes online though, çBob actually does something pretty cool. He ships a bunch of those sairs of his up to çSnake's main. While up there, he spots some hydras getting sucked into an overlord and waits for about 5 seconds. He then swoops in and waxes all three overlords with their 12 hydra cargo. Ow...

çEligh is then quick to follow in with his shuttles to drop off reavers and a couple zeals. They start beating the hell out of everything and man, what a mess. çCasper sends over a couple dropships containing two tanks and four vultures (vultures?) to help out his ally. As the reavers take on some tank fire, they are quick to get shuttled out of there. The zerg main is again left in ruins - this time with the lair barely standing and little else.

çEligh starts complaing about the fact that he has no cash at all and is forced to do some long distance mining. No more reaver use for çEligh. Of course, this didn't really matter at all seeing as how çBob's fleet 'o chubbies started walking all over çCasper's 3:00 expansion. Yup, gone are the days of looking at the screen to see how his units are doing. Way to go çBob!

Seeing these tubby blimps plowing their way across the screen, çSnakeyez comes to some sort of realization...

He then promptly leaves and we're left with a much less interesting game. Two toss vs. one terran on dire. And I don't really want to report on the stupid delay tactics that çCasper went to. Instead....

Victory! These stats are slightly skewed because we sat there for an extra ten minutes with çBob and çEligh complementing each other on how sexy they are. çCasper seemed preoccupied with dropping vultures on çBob's mined out main that only had carriers for defence.

Yay! They get the girls!

Observations:

• Protoss are very tough to beat on island maps. Corsairs must be fixed. Because corsairs were able to reach critical mass, there was very little that could be done by çSnakeyez or çCasper to take back the air.
• Every time çCasper would lose a whole whack of wraiths or have his exp razed, he'd just start going "whee!" or "rofl". Fascinating fellow...
• The references to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" are extremely lame. Being that the second game had some of the cheesiest stuff I've seen, I figure a cheesy movie reference with a cheesy ending ought to suffice.
• Very well coordinated attacks by the protoss. Because they were able to take the center of the map with corsairs, they could easily escort shuttles across the map.
• All players played extremely well.

After smurfing as a character known as "Dr.GayRaper" (a curse of a last name), I was msg'd by a person known as $nake-eye$. I don't know this individual and yet he sent me this message. Seems pretty personal for that type of comment. I'm guessing that even if I was gay that I'd prefer to be sweet talked for a while before reaching this stage. Oh well... whatever works.

Using another smurf name of indigo~bob2, I had the pleasure of meeting an interesting fellow. I beat him silly and after the game, his accusations of hacking were nothing short of amazing. Apparently this guy has some serious pull in the Blizzard company as the life of my CD is still in jeopardy.

Oh ya, this is my first battle report so for any "issues" you have with this report, you're more than welcome to "whine."