Chapter 1: The Siege

God Loves Even the Whores

I was soon joined by MikkeyDaRat. It was hard to tell the calibre of this player by looking at his 0-2-0 record, but nobody else joined so I greeted him and clicked the start button. As the countdown timer reached 2, I saw his race switch over from random to Protoss. Chances were that a newbie with two games under his belt wouldn't know such a gosu trick and I felt a bit of trepidation begin to form in the pit of my belly. Would my newbie bashing plans be spoiled by a smurfer?

My choice of random rewarded me with zerg (zerg vs. toss on isles... neat-oh) and I landed in the bottom left. My first exchange with Mikky left me feeling more nervous than ever.

Did Mikky really think he was going to lose or was he playing a complex game of psychological warfare?

He then asked me how long I'd been playing the game. I didn't realize it when I said it, but later when I saw the screenshot I realized that I'd made a typo. I put two weeks instead of two years. It was totally unintentional. I did not mean to mislead him.

Then things started to get really confusing. He began asking me about my group...

At first I thought he meant clan, but I wasn't sure so I asked for clarification. He responded.

Ahh, now I understood.

Hmmm, maybe playing newbies wasn't going to be so relaxing after all.

The game progressed quietly for a few minutes with me whoring like a Navy man in a Japanese port. I didn't build a single fighting unit. The only reason I built a spawning pool was for the purpose of the transport technology that the Lair provided. I had a total of 7 hatcheries on 3 separate islands when I decided I'd better do a bit of teching so I built a Spire and a Queen's Nest in my main. I also decided that it might be a good idea to do a little scouting.

By now the Overlord speed upgrade had completed so I clicked one of my Overlords to the northwest corner, then shift clicked in the northeast corner, then the southeast corner. I forgot about the bloated floater until I was alerted that my "forces" were under attack. A space bar centered me over the southeast island in time to watch four photon cannons pelt my overlord into oblivion.

A few moments later, two scouts, obviously thinking that the expansion was easy pickings due to lack of defense, flew in and started firing on one of the two hatcheries. By this time I had 2 control groups of mutas at 2/1 upgrades. It was a tough job finishing off those two scouts. They fought hard for the .2 seconds before exploding spectacularly in a white mist.

The game was still close and I wasn't sure what kind threat I might have to face next so I kept builiding. It wasn't long before I had 13 hatcheries on four islands. I kept building mutas until a message appeared on my screen.

Grape Jelly Anyone?

At first, this seemed like a brilliant move, but as I thought about it, I realized that I would not be able to win the game by destroying Mikky's base. We all know that the devourer's purple goo has an anti-gravity element that keeps it from falling to the ground. However, all was not lost, for this was an island map, and in order for one to play, one must be able to devise a method of getting from one island to another. Sound easy? Under normal circumstances maybe. But once I moved my devourers into position, island hopping for Mikky became a bit more difficult.

It was such a beautiful sight. I couldn't keep it to myself, so I shared vision. Seeing his predicament, Mikky realized that he was in trouble.

That's right, our hero was out of minerals. At first he tried to get me to come in and kill him. It took me awhile but I finally convinced him that my devourers couldn't destroy his base, and I couldn't build any more units because I was at my supply limit. Upon realizing this, he began to attempt to negotiate a treaty with me.

He was so convincing and his plea was so eloquent. How could I refuse?

The shuttle is blown to bits. Mikky expressed his displeasure but at the same time, showed his ability to think quickly in tough situations.

Showing my amazing micromanagement skills, I rearranged my devourers giving Mikky a wider path. The pressure was on because this was Mikky's last shuttle. Could he run the gauntlet?

ummm... no.

Surrendering 101

Well, we sat in a face off for about five minutes. It was a stalemate of sorts and we stared across the no man's land between our lines waiting for the other to make the first move. Suddenly, the sound of firing photon cannons sounded. I looked into Mikky's base and saw that he was methodically destroying his buildings. It was a slow process to destroy all those cannons.

It seems that since I was unable to destroy Mikky's buildings, the only way for him to get out of the game was to destroy all his buildings himself. And that's exactly what he did.

Needless to say, that is where today's story will end.

And so after a relatively close call (those two scouts almost had me), My newbie killing was complete. I felt much more relaxed and I had to wipe tears of hilarity from my eyes. And even though I hadn't cracked my Political Science notes, I felt ready to take the damn final. What was the worst grade I could get anyway? Oh yeah, a zero :\ Maybe I'll get a point for spelling my name correctly.

Cheers,