USA vs. Canada (Official Rules): Each country has a certain amount of cities. There is a team of 8 players for each team; the leader (POA and Lewis) can choose which 2 of their players will participate in each game. This particular game, Lewis decided to attack New York. If the Canadians win, the city becomes theirs, if they lose it remains the Americans. Whoever captures the enemy capital first, wins. Welcome to Game 1 of the USA vs. Canada tournament. Hopefully you can see the Flash movies because that's fairly important and tells you the story of what's going on :). Anywho, I'm now proud to bring you.. USA vs. Canada. ____________________________________________________________ Upon reading the intelligence reports that the Canadians were invading, General POA ordered two of his Commanders onto the field of battle, Sp|nE and Silent-Strike. They will later find out that General Lewis has also deployed two of his Commanders to invade, T_Mac and OrcManiac. ____________________________________________________________ Canadian Attackers:
T_Mac (Protoss, 10:30): Mark4's Analysis: The gay little man with a big stick. Another strong man, he can play any race, any map, and win. He can get careless though, in his macro driven strats. A few DTs at the wrong time, a cliff siege...
OrcManiac (Zerg, 7:00): Mark4's Analysis: The other frenchy brother, Orc plays like a madman. Just plain solid play, nothing to take advantage of. Look for him to take on the top half of the USA team and win over half his games.
American Defenders:
Sp|nE (Zerg, 2:00): Mark4's Analysis: He was just below the top tier players in NH about six months ago. I haven;t seen him much lately. If he's been smurfing he may still be as good as ever, ready to challenge the best from canada. If not, he'll have problems.
Silent-Strike (Terran, 4:30): Mark4's Analysis: Silent has been the man for a long time. I expect he's the strongest member of USA. He has innovative tricks and plays vs the best all the time. On the other hand, he can get a bad break and misjudge an opponent with one of his strats, more so than the other USA guys who stick to more conventional strats.
____________________________________________________________ As you can pretty much tell from the Build Order picture, 3 of the 4 players early expanded; both Zergs and Silent-Strike, the Terran. T_Mac seems content with a pylon, double gateway opening build order, which he used to whore his zealots at the top of his ramp.
Sp|nE builds a hatchery at his natural, and soon after another hatchery directly under the one before. He then builds a sunken colony overlooking his ramp to prevent an early attack. Silent-Strike builds a supply depot and then a barracks at the top of his ramp. He builds a CC at his natural; and when his barracks finishes he constantly produces marines for defense. Orc expands to his natural as well, but he opts to get early gas and skip the third hatchery going straight for mutas. T_Mac sends a probe out to scout the top-right base, which happens to be Sp|nE. After seeing an early expansion attempt, he sends 1 zealot, and then 2 more following that to the Zerg base. What you have to know is that the ramp to Sp|nE's base is between his main and his natural expansion (where his sunkens are). As the first zealot arrives, Silent-Strike sends 2 marines up to help his partner. The 1 zealot is easily killed with ling micro and a sunken colony. T_Mac apparently isn't aware Sp|nE's main is to the opposite side of the ramp than his defenses and loses all but 1 badly damaged zealot to the sunken colony. The last zealot is dealt with by the 2 marines Silent-Strike had sent. While Team USA is rejoicing, on the other side of the map sits Orc, who hasn't done anything yet, and is now morphing in his Lair. Silent-Strike is continuing his marine production from 1 barracks and is now teching to factories and starports. Sp|nE now announces that he's going to go for muta/ling, but by the time he gets his gas down Orc's Spire is at 212/600 and coming in fast. Just about the time Bob (OBS) is hoping Silent-Strike is going for a marine drop, T_mac sends a probe past his defending zealots on the ramp and builds a Nexus at his natural expansion. Luckily for Sp|nE, Orc decided to build up a larger army of mutalisks before he sends them to attack. This gives Sp|nE enough time to get 2 spore colonies by his main minerals, and get his spire about half complete. But that's all he gets, because Orc's 10 or so mutalisks show up at his natural expansion a few seconds later and start to destroy the drones. Since the only spore colonies are located at the main base, the drones all die to the enemy attackers. Pressing his luck a little, Orc sends his mutas up to the main mineral line and runs right into two spore colonies spread apart evenly. After they destroy one spore colony, a large army of Silent-Strike's marines show up to chase the mutas away. They're more or less successful, but the mutas come back to harass the drones a few times before realizing that spores own them too much and leave for good. While Orc was attacking, Silent-Strike sent a single scouting wraith to his base. It proceeded to kill 2 or 3 overlords before finally being killed by some newly hatched mutas. Sp|nE had lost all of his drones at his natural expansion, but he had saved up a good sized army of zerglings, which he now sends down to the bottom of Orc's ramp. This was the beginning of a coordinated attack since Silent-Strike now sends his infantry and tanks over to the same area. The line of M&M unfortunately ran into Orc's mutas that were returning from Sp|nE's base. The mutas really damage the line and they destroy a sieged tank that was busy taking out some of Orc's sunken colonies at the top of his ramp. T_Mac sees the action going on and sends his huge group of zealots he'd been whoring the whole game down to help his partner. They arrive and converge with Silent-Strike's army on a bridge outside Orc base. The mutalisks prove air cover for T_Mac's zealots who tear past the infantry and destroy a single siege tank behind them. Sp|nE had wisely left a group of zerglings out of the battle which would have been totally torn up by the zealots.
Silent-Strike still has some forces coming from his base, and so does Sp|nE whose force of about 7 mutalisks is half way there. The two team's armyies meet up on the same bridge again. Orc sends his lings out and T_Mac fights with his zealots. Tanks fire on the battle from behind the infantry and Sp|nE's mutalisks. After a long battle, the Americans are defeated and Silent-Strike wisely retreates what is left of his army, running Orc's zerglings into some more M&M and killing them. Sp|nE's mutalisks, however, had no opponent because nothing could attack air, and they stay there and harass some of Orc's sunkens and drones at his natural.

After a while, Orc warps in some spore colonies and builds more mutas; soon he forces Sp|nE to retrea his mutas to 6 o'clock without killing many drones. During the last battle, Silent-Strike sends an SCV to the 3 o'clock expansion and expands. Sp|nE also tried to expand to the top middle area, but that is destroyed by a few of T_Mac's scouting zealots. When the battle ended and T_Mac didn't have to micro, he expanded to the area Sp|nE used to be.
Here comes the Reaver Show... T_Mac decided to load up 2 reavers into a shuttle and cause some havoc with his 2 American enemies. First, he drops them off behind Sp|nE's natural expansion and sends the scarabs into the middle of the workers, destroying them in groups. For the third time in the game, the majority of Sp|nE's drones at his expansion are destroyed. After a little while, T_Mac apparently decides to load up the reavers again and send them down to Silent-Strike's natural expansion. Luckily for him, Silent-Strike didn't have any sieged tanks in range of the reavers, allowing them to open fire on the SCVs and kill a bunch of them. Silent-Strike uses his SCVs, marines, and goliaths that were right near that area to defend himself. Sp|nE has just build a small mutalisk army, fortunately, and sends them down to chase away the two reavers. T_Mac retreats them to his main in the shuttle at the site of the mutalisks, who gave a brief chase then turned around. He brings them to his middle expansion, which is now very well guarded with zealots, goons, and archons.
Now, Team USA will once again coordinate an attack. This time on T_Mac's middle expansion. Silent-Strike brings the army from his mid-right expansion up near Sp|nE's base, in good attacking position for a Terran since he would have to cross a bridge to get to the expansion. Sp|nE gets his mutalisks in position above T_Mac's expansion, ready to attack. Silent-Strike soon moves his forces just across the bridge where he meets up with the zealots, goons, and archons. While T_Mac pulls his forces up to attack the Terran invaders, Sp|nE moves in his mutalisks in and attacks the probes and 2 photon cannons. Unfortunately, Silent-Strike's forces were easily outnumbered and overpowered by T_Mac and the battle is short, allowing the goons to move back and chase away the mutalisks before they do much damage. So, T_Mac successfully defended the attack and didn't need the mutalisks Orc had sent from his base to help. They discussed it among themselves and decided they should go counter Silent-Strike, whose forces had to be worn down by now. Orc sent his mutas and T_Mac sent his goons, zeals, and archons over, past Sp|nE's base, to Silent-Strike's mid-right expansion. They move in at the same time, running right into a bunker, a few marines and SCVs which were pulled off to help defend. Soon after, Silent-Strike brings tanks and goliaths from his main base up to help defend, but at the same time, two of T_Mac's reavers land on the battlefield and dispose of what is left of the Terran force. Fortunately, by the time they were killed they had destroyed most of T_Mac's army. This allowed Sp|nE's mutalisks to come down and save the day, chasing the rest of Orc's mutas away with the help of a few goliaths, and letting Silent-Strike keep a half dead expansion. T_Mac was successful in running his reavers away, once again, and now brings them down to drop off at Silent-Strike's natural. Fortunately, there are a lot of marines, tanks, and goliaths down there who easily despense of the reavers.
After this, Sp|nE sees a medium sized force of goons and zealots sitting outside T_Mac's middle expansion. He sends about 12 mutalisks to attack them, which overpowers them at first, but when Orc sends his larger (probably 20) army of mutas down and chases them away. At the same time, T_Mac has sent another shuttle with 2 reavers in it to Sp|nE's natural expansion and his zealot/goon army in the front door. Now, for the fourth time, Sp|nE's drones at his natural are destroyed. T_Mac's army rushes through an army of zerglings up into Sp|nE's main base, supported by Orc's mutalisk army. Silent-Strike sends some M&M and goliaths to help, but they are destroyed by T_Mac's army on the other side of the bridge. So since there is nothing to save Sp|nE now, he simply concedes the game, leaving Silent-Strike on his own.
Silent-Strike had a large army of goliaths and tanks going up to help Sp|nE when he died; but since he's now dead, he diverts them to the left in an attempt to attack T_Mac's middle expansion. That army is intercepted by a large zealot/goon force and Orc's mutalisks returning to his main base. Silent-Strike micromanages as hard as he can but can't kill a force that much larger than his own army. When that battle is over and Silent-Strike has no men left, he concedes the game to the Canadians.
I hope you've enjoyed Game 1 of the USA vs. Canada tournament. Look for Game 2 when the United States invades Montreal! An EXTREMELY GIGANTIC thanks to King-Lewis who designed the Flash movie in the beginning of the battle report. I told him what I wanted and he did it EXACTLY! And from now on, whether he releases an epic report or a spam, I will always give it a 10 =) (jk obviously :) *cough*
Anyway... thanks for reading, and please comment. Remember, this could go on for a very long time :)