A Call For...Units...

Today's Battle...

CLICK...

The "MASTER" button on my decades-old power box/surge protector is turned on. Starcraft Broodwar...Multiplayer...Battle.net...Clan ~NOHunters. I see Havocwreaker calling out to no one in particular, "1v1 whisper me." He proceeds to repeat this phrase a few times.

Nothing happens.

Finally Havocwreaker takes the initiative to look down through the list of names and finally calls out, "[e]Homer, 1v1?" and so the game begins.

The Lost Temple (unfortunately) never seems overplayed to some people. As you saw from the map above, Havocwreaker had randomized and was given terran at the twelve o'clock position. [e]Homer, also chose random, and was granted protoss at the eight o'clock position. The game began like any other: Havocwreaker walled himself in with two supply depots and a barracks, successfully cutting off his link to the outside world. He began, almost immediately after that, building a factory, obviously going for heavy metal. [e]Homer builds a pylon and two gateways, since he must be fast because he has no idea what the other player's race is.

He is the first to scout out the enemy. The lone zealot that is sent out on a probable suicide mission swaggers off to some random point on the map like a soldier who has had a few too many malt whiskeys and feels that life is really pointless. This was almost ironic, because the first place the zealot came to just happened to be Havocwreaker's base. The zealot immediately engages one of the supply depots at the entrance ramp to Havocwreaker's base. The depot is set afire before a marine arrives from the barracks to fight off the angry zealot. Havocwreaker, after repairing his injured supply depot, begins building the factory that was spoken of above. Just as his SCV begins building the factory, two zealots stalk up the ramp to attack the supply depot again.

And again, they set the depot into yellow as the marine fights them away.

At this point, [e]Homer has warped in another pylon, a third gateway, a forge and a cybernetics core. By the time [e]Homer has two dragoons and another zealot and sends them to the foot of Havocwreaker's ramp, Havocwreaker himself has two vultures and a few marines. Not sure if this is a good time to attack, the dragoons and zealots are sent up anyway. Little did they know that two big bikes with fragmentation grenades were waiting at the top of the ramp beyond the poor little supply depots.

[e]Homer's dragoons do that silly walk of theirs that makes them look drunk (That's some sort of liquor inside the robotic exoskeleton) up Havocwreaker's ramp and begin attacking that supply depot at the same time the zealots do. The vultures and marine sitting there behind the wall instantly come to life and begin attacking the small assault force. One zealot explodes into a wisp of smoke...then another...and the last one dies as the supply depot is decimated.

The two remaining dragoons march solemnly into Havocwreaker's base, consisting of two factories, one barracks, one starport-in-the-making, an engineering bay, several supply depots, two vultures and two marines. A vulture and a marine are eliminated as the dragoons march straight past the vulture still firing at them. These dragoons are actually on a scouting mission. [e]Homer now has valuable information about the technology that has been obtained by Havocwreaker.

At about the same time [e]Homer had broken through the wall, Havocwreaker had finally scouted out [e]Homer's base with a marine. Havocwreaker had already scouted the empty base at three o'clock with that marine, just so you know. Anyway, the marine steps into the base, then retreats for fear of being slashed to death. [e]Homer has raced up the tech tree, knowing that he can't defeat his opponent with only zealots and dragoons. [e]Homer has warped in a citadel of Adun, a templar archives, and a robotics facility. By the time the single marine retreats, he has 4 gateways, with one dark templar waiting outside for orders. A few zealots and dragoons are sent to the front of [e]Homer's natural expansion, because he realized that this wasn't a Big Game Hunters map, and that there were expansions put in for a reason.

Havocwreaker now has the knowledge of the location of [e]Homer's base, plus he has dropships and a wraith to support it. But before he does anything, he sends out several marines with medics and two or three vultures. They stop just east of [e]Homer's expansion, where newly-warped probes are just beginning to mine. Rupturing the tense silence, a violent, horrible, purple observer floats ominously over the vultures and marines, but they have already begun moving. The force begins assaulting the group of dragoons and zealots assembled at the mouth of [e]Homer's expansion. The terran force fights valiantly, but to no avail; they are slaughtered by the menacing robotic Protoss.

The terran player sees an opportunity to strike. He loads up his dropships with a three siege tanks, three SCVs, and a vulture, and sends them out into the great void of blackness known only as the fog of war. He is armed with the knowledge that the expansion is hardly defended. He continues flying until he reaches the ridge that separates [e]Homer's natural expansion from the northwestern island expansion. Havocwreaker drops his units at the southern lip of the ridge. Once they are all completely out, the siege begins.

The Protoss units below begin to run around franticly, which was unfortunate because they just ran back and forth in front of the siege tanks. [e]Homer finally figures out that he should stop the carnage, and loads two dragoons into a shuttle while sending some of his remaining forces back up the ramp to safety, while others run east. The shuttle shoots off to a part of the ridge that Havocwreaker hasn't explored, directly on the wall. He drops the dragoons in an attempt to save his expansion, but they died of arclite shock cannon, taking only one tank with them.

This is the strange part of this battle. [e]Homer had sent out a shuttle filled with a couple of dark templar to silently destroy Havocwreaker's base at the same time that the tanks were being unloaded on the ridge. The transportation ships had actually passed each other just outside their sight range. While Havocwreaker had his mind on his enemy, [e]Homer drops two dark templar onto the side of Havocwreaker's base. The cloaked assassins skillfully began hacking away at the mining SCVs with no hitch. After taking down a few miners, one dark templar begins slashing at the command center, while another attacks a supply depot. This may have really been quite a useless little attack, except for one overlooked fact...

At the same time that a science vessel appears above Havocwreaker"'s Starport, floats over to the dark templar, unveils them to a present siege tank, and submits them to a horrible death by flame, [e]Homer is already brewing something else. It would appear as if the dark templar drop were a diversion, for [e]Homer has sent out a congregation of Protoss warriors to the center of the map, where the lost temple looms over them like a farmer over his chickens. This attack force consists of the following:

AUTHOR'S NOTE: [e]Homer isn't a very fortunate person, just remember that.

A bunch of Protoss guys go to the middle of map, so what? It just so happens (And now the kharma comes into play...) that Havocwreaker was also beginning to form an army at the lost temple, although his only forces at the time of the encounter were:

A brief yet bloody battle ensued, with the Protoss vanquishing the few machines with minimal casualties.

With his remaining forces, [e]Homer orders a simple frontal attack at the ramp of Havocwreaker's base. With observer support, the Protoss reach the ramp, when suddenly, a burst of arclite shock cannon, then another, and another, shows the presence of several siege tanks on the cliff. Regardless, the cynical and drunken suicide soldiers of [e]Homer's army stalk on up the ramp and are slaughtered, much like cows, one by one.

This is quite an eye-opener for the poor Protoss player. As he gets a bit of the sight from atop the cliff, he can see that just a little army won't stop Havocwreaker.

This whole time, Havocwreaker has been sending reinforcements to his cliff-top assault force at [e]Homer's natural expansion. By a minute or two after [e]Homer 's attack, had a bunker and a turret, with several marines, a wraith, a vulture with spider mines, a siege tank, an SCV, and a dropship. (And yes, I "condensed" the picture a bit). Any of [e]Homer's buildings that were within the siege tank's range had been killed a while ago. He's lucky that the siege tanks haven't bothered to move just a little bit west because they could easily have destroyed his Nexus, where busy little probes run around playing tag with the Psi center.

Now Havocwreaker has a sizeable army (If he had only sent it out [e]Homer would have been easily crushed underfoot), and he craves some blood-eerrr, that bluish liquid stuff. [e]Homer also is hoping for some sort of victory, for the only killing he has done has been to a few machines, and a measly supply depot. The threshold to his base has been blockaded by a diverse mob of angry terran units. If [e]Homer wishes to leave his base, it must be from a shuttle. Before the blood, though, we must state that [e]Homer has tried valiantly, over and over, to save his expansion, like a mother guarding her children from a raving lunatic. With one of his two shuttles, he constantly attempts to take the ridge with only two dragoons. Sometimes, he even kills a marine or two before crumbling to the ground in pieces. [e]Homer has used also High Templar, approximating the point (or using his vision given by the dragoons) to initiate powerful ripples in the reality matrix.

Havocwreaker, seeing that he has the game in his hands, heads back to his own base in an attempt to better it. He has only expanded to his natural expansion and looks to his minerals-only for help, having cleaned out the majority of his raw minerals. Havocwreaker, after beginning construction on a new command center at his minerals-only, sends out (somewhat unneeded) protection in the form of marines, medics, siege tanks, vultures, et cetera. Havocwreaker had also been patrolling the map with a couple of wraiths, searching for any signs of expansion to the empty starting positions. It would seem that all is lost for [e]Homer but wait...

[e]Homer musters up all the units he can get. He ends up, though, with only a bit more than his earlier attack force. He is out of minerals and has no desire to expand-for some strange reason-let alone even the chance. Havocwreaker, also is creating a huge army made mostly of vultures, siege tanks, and marines. Soon he will be out of minerals, but that is of no importance to the valiant Terran player; he has bigger fish to fry.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: From this point on, excepting the next few, there will be no more pictures or stats. (I'm using Kodak Imaging, which came with the Windows 98, and the error message says something to the effect of, "The document cannot be opened. The document's format is invalid or not supported.") Sorry for the inconvenience.

As you can most likely see, [e]Homer lost. If you can't see that, please, get reading glasses. It will help my self-esteem. Anyway, this is how it happens. [e]Homer has burnt up all his minerals. He's as ready as he can be for a final attack. Havocwreaker hasn't exactly burnt up all his resources, but he has a moderately-large Terran army anyway. The army begins their long (pppsssssh) march across the whole, big map towards [e]Homer's base. He's sure that there are no expansions. They march, in a column, to a point about where [e]Homer's minerals-only expansion is, untouched of course. The map doesn't lie, now. There is presently a huge orange clump outside of [e]Homer's base.

I'm sorry to say, this is the end. I'm sure that [e]Homer, whoever he is out there in computerland, was really very vexed because he had lost. Unfortunately this cannot be justified because he had not had even a Stargate in his base throughout the entire game! Well, as soon as he caught a glimpse of this mammoth, rolling fortress, [e]Homer ran-literally. After a quick battle, in which he lost all of his zealots and high templar, he was left with only 5 dragoons. He quickly forfeited with a "gg" and a "[e]Homer has left the game."

A few things I will repeat:

• My pictures weren't working, I am sorry for the inconvenience. It wasn't my fault.
• This is my first Battle Report, I am sorry for the inconvenience. It was my fault.
• This was a not-so-good game to report on, I am truly sorry for such an inconvenience. That was, again, my fault.
• On a happier note, I will bet that no one can guess what this picture is.
  • Hint 1: It is indeed in Starcraft.
  • Hint 2: It can be in Broodwar.

Thank you, have a nice day, and stay out of drugs **cough**Godocide**cough**.