{ahc}overmind thinks to himself darkly as the familiar music and picture floods his screen, that he should of pressed his parents to buy a new computer months ago. The familiar interface that branches into the separate parts of the game show up, and {ahc}overmind moves his mouse towards what looks like a satellite. Without warning, another menu shows up, and {ahc}overmind presses brood war. Then, yet another menu shows up, with the options for multi-player. {ahc}presses enter, then suddenly, his computer freezes.

STUPID, LAZY COMPUTER!!

Stamping his foot for lack of patience, {ahc}overmind restarts his computer and goes through the entire process again before finally getting into battle net, and reaching channel clan ~nohunters. Immediately before his screen is an invitation for a 1 Vs 1 game, all observers welcome. Happily, {ahc}overmind reads the name and pass for the game and jumps into action. Requiring all the skill he has mustered in the 2 years he has played Starcraft, {ahc}overmind drags the mouse to the Join Game option, and clicks. He fills out the name and password option for the game, and arrives in the last observer spot in the game. There are 5 players in this game, 4 observers and 1 player. Which map is this, but another version of a Lost Temple observer game. He decides that after doing 5 batle reports for his own entertainment, he should make one and submit it to some website or other.

The host, by the name of Ctretina, is angry at that his game has gotten 4 observers, but no players. One of the observers returns to channel clan ~nohunters to try and advertise the game. Within seconds, a player named Carni-Swarm arrives in the game, and a number slowly goes upward to the left of his name. It stops at 49, on which he quits and rejoins. Yet again, Carni-Swarm's D/L count arrives at 97, then stopping. All the observers, including {ahc}overmind become frustrated at this lack of progress, before Carni-Swarm's D/L count goes up another 3 notches. With a bunch of g'ls, and hf's, the game finally starts, with Carni-Swarm choosing terran, and Ctretina choosing Protoss.

The game starts with Carni-Swarm as yellow, on the 12 o'clock position of the map, while Ctretina holds the color blue, on the 7 o'clock position. It's a traditional TvB, top Vs bottom. Carni-Swarm, as a very experienced player knows exactly what he will shoot for. Like most terran players, he is more experienced than lots of people on battle net. Ctretina, while having better than average skill, is not the best player you could find. His protoss abilities are very good, but his strategic mind is fair

The first major move of the game begins with the both players sending out scouts. The two scouts go the wrong way, with Carni-Swarm, yellow, going right with an scv, while Ctretina, blue, goes left with a probe about 20 seconds after the yellow scv embarks. The end result is the scv reaching the right side before the blue probe arrives at the left side, and the yellow scv turning around and heading towards the left side of the map, thus running into the probe.

The two resource gathers go straight past each other. Carni-Swarm now knows where blue's base is, but Ctretina does not. Ctretina continues scouting, guessing correctly that Carni-Swarm is on the top part of the map, while Carni-Swarm sends his scv down to Ctretina's base to see what is down there. The probe sent by Ctretina is destroyed in seconds by scvs and a marine, but yellow's scout is luckier. The scv successfully arrives in the protoss base right before that first zealot is warped out of the gateway, followed by another from the 2nd gateway controlled by Ctretina. The scv gets a good look around, before having to engage its thrusters, and attempt to shake the zealots now on its tail.

The scv arrives at a corner, and becomes small debris and the zealot's psi blades slice through the metal.
Another 30 seconds pass by without anything-major happening. At this time, the players have not climbed up the tech tree too far. Ctretina, the protoss player that is blue, has warped in from Aiur 3 pylons, an assimilator, 2 gateways, and has just started a cybernetics core. Meanwhile, Carni-Swarm has build 2 supply depots, a barracks, and is constructing 2 factories. Concerning units, Ctretina, the protoss player, has constructed 4 zealots, while yellow has built a single marine.
The 4 zealots constructed by Ctretina, suddenly being to move those clumsy legs of theirs, and go on a long hike towards Carni-Swarm's main base. They arrive at the terran base, but encounter a supply depot on the choke point into the yellow base. A single marine is guarding the pass, shooting his rifle as fast as possible at the zealots.

However, the zealots begin attacking the supply depot that could have been bypassed by simply going through a narrow pass between the supply depot, and a barracks. It appears that the supply depot will burn to the ground before yellow can construct marines to counter the threat. But, what about those factories that were being build? They have been building vultures, and in conjunction with all of yellow's scvs, are able to force Ctretina's zealots away from the choke point without any causalities. The protoss forces, in the process of retreat, lose one zealot.
The three zealots attempt to rally, and make another unsuccessful attack on the yellow base. The zealots turn back again, as fragmentation grenades from vultures, and bullets racing at super-sonic speeds puncture their shields, and are stopped only by their armor. The orderly retreat soon turns into a full-fledged rout, as the zealots flee back towards the blue base.

By now, yellow has 5 vultures, and sends them out towards the middle of the map. The vultures, reporting the center clear moves back to about 20 yards ahead of the choke point to yellow's base. Blue begins pumping out dragoons as his cybernetics core is completed. For another 20 seconds, the two sides continue to reinforce their small armies. Remember the yellow marine that helped defend against the small attack made by blue? Well, the yellow marine begins a small, lonely hike down to the blue base for scouting purposes.
It has been a long time since the yellow scv that was in blue's base was ripped to shreds by a zealot's psi-blades. As the yellow marine goes up the ramp leading to blue's base, dragoons begin firing on the already damaged marine. If you don't know what happened to the marine, I'll say that you haven't got any clue what this battle report is about. We'll just say that his death was very fast, with his body being separated from his head, thus resulting in bloody pulp a bit faster than I thought it should be.

At this moment in the game, blue has constructed 4 dragoons, and 3 crippled zealots from the previous attack made on the yellow base. Yellow, has added machine shops to his factories, and is constructing siege tanks. In addition to the 2 siege tanks that will soon roll out of the construction bays found in a factory, Carni-Swarm has 9 vultures. The vultures go across the area leading to the ramp leading up to the yellow base, making a virtual minefield. Technology wise, Ctretina has constructed a robotic facility, a support bay, and is about to build an observatory. Yellow hasn't really done anything.

As blue's 5th dragoon starts moving from the gateway to the blue defense force; the defense force, consisting of all of blue's units, suddenly changes its role to an attack force. The three damaged zealots and 5 dragoons began to march towards the yellow base. Fortunately for yellow, he has laid spider mines about 10 seconds before blue starts sending his troops up. The zealots are the first to be hit by spider mines, then the dragoons. By the time the attack force is in range of the primary defense units employed by yellow, they are reduced to 3 heavily damaged dragoons, one moderately damaged dragoon, a perfect health dragoon, and 1 zealot who was lucky, and has 1 hp left.

In the past 2 minutes, yellow has reinforced his front with siege tanks, but they are only in the process of researching the ability to be in siege mode. The Yellow tanks that were in the immediate area converged on the spot right outside the minefield. In total, 3 siege tanks are able to attack the battered attack force. While this small skirmish is going on, blue sends out another dragoon to reinforce his attack that looks like it will fail without support. Then, what's this? 9 yellow vultures stream out of nowhere, destroying the dragoon in one volley, as it rushes towards the undefended blue base.

The vultures lay spider mines amongst the resource gatherers, which is Carni-Swarm's major mistake in this part of the battle. He forgets that the probes are floating, and will not trigger the spider mines. But dragoons do, and the forces that was formerly Ctretina's attack force, is now frantically trying to engage the enemy vultures, and avoid the spider mines making those little annoying sounds.

In the end, the majority of the vultures are destroyed, but they take what's left of the attack force with it. With 2 vultures remaining, yellow attempts to do as much damage as possible before he is forced to retreat because of blue forces that will inevitably come out of the gateways sooner of later. But, the blue forces don't come from the gateway; they come from the robotic facility. As the reaver makes that sound thing, it loads up on scrabs. The yellow commander sees the reaver right before it launches a scrab, which is the end of the 2 remaining vultures

During this entire time, yellow has been constructing more siege tanks, and now has 4 siege tanks, capable of siege mode in the front line of defense for yellow. Meanwhile, blue is constructing another army for a direct frontal assault of yellow's defense. In addition to this attack, blue will attempt to drop the reaver that let blue live through the vulture attack, into yellow's main base. The attack is designed to begin at the same time as each other. Now, as every experienced player knows, this is extremely difficult if you don't know what you're up against. Blue has another field of spider mines, and 6 siege tanks in front of his main assault. His drop has 2 siege tanks, and scvs against his reaver.
As the blue forces move up the middle of the map, they again encounter spider mines, which make the blue forces quicken up their pace towards the yellow lines. As the dragoons reach the end of the minefield, the siege tanks begin to rain their super powerful article shock guns on the already damaged dragoons. Two are destroyed, prompting Ctretina to retreat towards the center of the map. A missile turret shot down the blue reaver that was moving towards yellow's main base before it could unleash its deadly cargo.
Another silence over the battlefield, and troops, buildings, and machinery are built rapidly to replace those lost in the last battle. Yellow is able to extend its minefield, along with the number of tanks he controls. He has also expanded to his natural, so he has a very strong position. Blue has also expanded to his natural, and is attempting to expand to the closest mineral only expansion. His major weakness is that his army in the field is very maneuverable, but does not have the raw power that the tanks have.
As blue reinforces his standing army, yellow is preparing for another attack on his defense lines. Sure enough, the attack comes, with a reinforced blue dragoon army being attacked by spider mines. It seems that blue has not learned his lesson, but before he comes in range of any units, he retreats. Now, yellow has been assembling a huge army of goliaths, vultures, and siege tanks. What makes their awesome power diminish is that they're spread out, and that they must unite to make any real difference.

As blue's dragoons retreat back towards the center of the map, yellow's forces return to tank mode, and attack the blue dragoon force on all sides. The dragoon force is decimated, leaving blue's only major force in the field eliminated. The yellow forces take the chance to attack the enemy base, which is now virtually undefended. The awesome power of 12 siege tanks, 3 vultures, and 4 goliaths, (yes, I counted.) cannot be underestimated.

As this huge army slowly descends on the enemy base, Ctretina forms a small, rag tag force of 4-5 dragoons. The dragoons are eliminated with prejudice, Ctretina realizes that he cannot even hope of surviving this. Blue surrenders the game to yellow, thus ending {ahc}overmind's first battle report. {ahc}overmind looks at the little digital clock on his desk, it's 9:00 PM. He worries about what to do when he has to make graphics for the battle report. A question suddenly pops into his mind, is there such a thing as too many screenshots?

What we learned
1) It is important to scout in the early going of a game.


2) When your enemy establishes a pattern, there's a really good chance he'll stick to that pattern. Ex. Yellow kept on laying spider mines, blue kept on attacking.


3) Units are in most cases a better defense than buildings.


4) It is vital to expand in the early going


5) Micro management can change the tide of battles.


Notes: If you didn't know, {ahc}overmind is I, the writer of this battle report.

Here are the stats

Overall stats

Units stats

Buildings Stats

Resources stats