So Zerg Own Toss On Temple Eh…?

Many moons ago in ~nohunters I was writing my third BR. I had chronic neck-ache from typing for hours a so I decided to observe a couple of games to clear my head. Having BR’d twice before, I was asked to at least take ss’s for this game, and BR it if it was good. I didn’t mind that, I enjoy writing BR’s and so I got put my finger on the print-screen button and got ready to rumble. Let’s see get to the game and see how it went.

By the way, watching Manga whilst writing BR’s is extremely distracting and OMG the music (by Yello) to ‘Space Adventure Cobra’ rules bigtime!!!. Anyway, the players were Silver_Venom and Hybrid-IMC, nope I never heard of them before, but I played Hybrid-IMC a day or two later and hit Zerg owned my Terran (Boooo) BTW he’s a peon murderer so own him if you se him =P. God knows who randomed or not, I think both did, but I really don’t have a clue because I wasn’t intending to BR so I didn’t look =[ By the way, this report may have a kazillion huge pictures in it, but this is a one-off only because a load of people asked me to include more in my BRs. That’s a fair request, so if I overkill on them massively, you’ll want me to make less in future, which suits me fine! I also apologise in advance if this game is reviewed more from Silver_Venom’s point of view, but I don’t care, so just enjoy the damned thing.

I'm just adding this having previewed the report before submitting it; it took me around 5-6 minutes to download it fully so BE WARNED. Also one or two of the 27 images may be over the width limit so I'm sorry if they blur up a little. However, having said that, the last picture makes it all worth while... U'll see what i mean ^^

Silver_Venom manages do find a dirty old brown Protoss nexus and a few probes down at his local pawn shop, and decided that he should take them on a mission to find this old fable temple that’s been lost for many millennia. Having warped across Auir to west of the last known co-ordinates, he decided that he needed to have arbiters to help him search. Thus he set his peons to work on the local minerals, to get himself an income. He then went on to warp in a load of structures with the expressed purpose of being a tech whore, and before anything particularly notable happened he had a templar archives and a robotics support bay. His initial build was pylon-gate-gate-pylon-assimilator-core-forge-techlikeawhore-onwardstofindthetemple. All was going to plan, and he was getting ready to warp in a stargate for his arbiters, when suddenly a probe that had gone wandering came rushing in saying “There’s a horrible smell coming from a plateau south of here”. Clearly some infestation had taken this area to set up shop, so Silver_Venom rejected the stargate and began construction of an army to crush these foul creatures. It also struck him that the big ball of puss that had been floating around his base for the last half an hour may actually be one of them. Ah well, no-body else even mentioned it, so he must be doing something right. He then erects some cannons at his peon line, just in time to shoo off a few bird-like creatures with serious sneezing-inducing parasites living in their mouths. He also places strategic cannons into his gates and tech before expanding to and fortifying his natural and adding a third gateway.

Down on the southern plateau, a bunch of purple insects had been milling around, collecting nectar and playing cards with a local bengalaas when a stray overlord, who had been watching over them, ordered them to begin collecting minerals from a deposit next to their hatchery. Upon inquiring why, they were told to ‘MIND YOUR OWN GODDAMN BUSINESS’, and that it was for the greater good of the swarm. Thus they did as they were told and began working for a living, and soon several of them received orders from their evil cerebrate Hybrid-IMC to turn into buildings. He realised that the only way to stop a teching Protoss was to either run them over, to mass expand or to tech like their was no tomorrow. Thus he ordered all available drones to get to work turning into buildings or collecting minerals and gas. He makes an overlord-pool-extractor-hatch in main-lair-spire (6 muta-haras)-queens nest-third hatchery and looks to be heading on towards hive-level tech sooner rather than later. I spy muta/crackling, with an evolution chamber in the works!

Hybrid-IMC decides to send a group of zerglings to negotiate a peace settlement, and they wander up towards the Protoss base to see what they can do. They go on up with high hopes in their minds, and a skp in their step….er hop….crawl thing. On the western edge of the grounds, Silver_Venom was happily whoaring forces for a battle with the insects, and was fortifying the outpost he had constructed.

Suddenly, over the horizon, Silver_Venom saw a group of frog-like creatures come bounding along. This was quite clearly an aggressive act, and all available troops were deployed to fend them off, stopping only to curse himself for not asking regulars at NH where the Temple was, because they ALL know and he could’ve avoided all this hassle (like they’d be un-AFK enough to tell him……). He saw their white flag but was far too noble to talk peace with them and thus opened fire with all he had. Now the would-be peace-makers suddenly found themselves under a barrage of fire, and therefore resorted to clawing at the Protoss with their front limbs. Sadly for them, Zealots and cannons > un-upgraded frogs, and the results were bloody. This was a disastrous mission of peace and what resulted from this mis-understanding was actually one of the most bloody wars I’ve seen in a good while.

Now this was a fair way into the game as both players had teched like there was no tomorrow for the first ten minutes, neither wanting to make the first move. The gates were now open though, and both sides decided to finalise their plans for invasion. Muta/gaurd/crackling were on order from the cerebrate, Hybrid-IMC, whereas zeal/goon/temp were warping in from some distance down the road into the camp of Silver_Venom the executor. Strangely enough, Hybrid-IMC still had not bothered to expand; clearly intending to destroy his foe quickly with advanced tech, rather than slowly with expansions and numbers. Thus he let this occur in his only mining base:

Now that IS bad news, ah well, who needs minerals anyway? He then begins to stock up the necessary troops for a full-on assault, as he’s a little annoyed that the Protoss executor murdered his lings. He thus researches cocaine for his lings, along with the transporting upgrade for his overlords, and he loads several of them up with the afore-mentioned lings and uses queen(?) escort to bring them to the Protoss base. He also added another an excessive amount of defensive structures to his hive cluster.

What followed was an excellently orchestrated drop on Silver_Venom’s peon line, and with ALL of his troops below his ramp, he took an age and a half to bring them back in the numbers necessary to quell the invasion.

The result was a highly damaged base, lacking key pylons and some tech. The casualties were almost all Zerg however, as zealots own lings pretty hard. This was largely a success, but Hybrid-IMC was not satisfied merely to raze the Protoss main, so he then sent the Zerg expeditionary force to the 9:00 natural’s front door. This was a good trick to play, bait away the army and attack somewhere else in the confusion.

Sadly, a few defenders, including one particular high templar, had remained, and with the help of psionic storm and those cannons, the huge pack of cracklings (just look at the minimap) were beaten off with few losses. This line-formation attacking is going to have to end if Hybrid-IMC wants to get anywhere. In the end, the double-fronted attack didn’t do all that much damage, as all the probes were ran to the natural during the drop. See Hybrid-IMC, a natural expansion; Go on…. you know you want one…! To make matters worse for the cerebrate, the analytical few of you will have seen that there was a Protoss expansion at the 12:00 main before that attack got underway….. hmm. Hybrid-IMC answered this (although he didn’t know it existed) by taking his natural.

You can also see my Bengalaas hiding behind a tree near the temple =0. Anyway, I’ll bet you’re (not) wandering where exactly those guardians went during all the fighting…..no? well u should be, because they decided to lay siege to the Protoss assimilator from above the natural cliff. There were only three of them, but they were arranged in such a way that only one could be hit by storm at once, and storms were the initial (and unsuccessful) response.

Sadly for the cerebrate, Silver_Venom now utilises his extensive economical advantage to produce corsairs from two gates at his 12:00 expansion, and the guardians are without help against Protoss air units. The attack is quelled, but the existence of another enemy establishment is strongly hinted to Hybrid-IMC. The problem is he has insufficient troops to do any serious frontal damage to any of the Protoss bases, and so he builds up another strike force after Maynard-ing his drones to his now functional natural. Silver_Venom has an extensive advantage in troop count and has a good ability to mass produce more on demand. He is being a little cannon-happy, but compared to his Zerg opponent, his defences are sparse. He rallies an impressive army to the middle of the map and finds the temple at last. It is a pretty pathetic temple after all this trouble, so he promptly ignores it and decides to go and kill the infestation below him before opening a theme park in the temple grounds.

Yep, I’ve finally remembered to record upgrades at pivotal moments in the game…. Good for me! Anyway, Silver_Venom cannons up his natural to prevent any more mass-ling invasions or guardian shenanigans. He decides to clear the way for his assault by blitzing his opponent’s mineral line with a storm raid… my favourite strategy in SC. He pulls it off without a hitch as in the 6:00 position the peons clump towards the top of the mineral patches, and he exploits this advantage to the full.

The aftermath reveals that there are only THREE drones left alive in Hybrid-IMC’s entire base (except those on gas in his main), but his attention seemed a little diverted. This is the time to strike for Silver_Venom, who prepares his troops for battle by painting his face half blue, half white; and shouting “Freedom!!!” several times. They’re just about to charge the English horsemen when something catches their eye…… It’s probably nothing serious, y’know, a kazillion cracklings and 2 lurkers being dropped in the EXACT SAME SPOT as last time never did anyone any damage now did it!?!

Just as the building’s shields were getting back to full, all hell rains down on them in the second drop of the game. I think Silver_Venom’s next move was a little controversial myself, but he then recalled ALL his attack force back to his main, arriving as they would in single-line formation against this lot above…. Hmmm. Now I did promise some huge pictures, and here’s the first; the lings tear the main down and rout the reinforcements with great efficiency. You can also see two forges in the (above) picture there, only one of them ever completed an upgrade….. bummer!

Not a single building was left in Silver_Venom’s main, but he managed to transfer the majority of his tech to his 12:00 expansion before it was all lost. This was an amazing reversal of the situation by Hybrid-IMC, who has cut his resources disadvantage considerably. Intent upon keeping it that way for a while he morphs some lurkers on his cliff to defend against those pesky templar, and he sends his death-squad down the 9:00 ramp to annihalate the natural. This goes down harder than cannonball on Jupiter, as Silver_Venom has been re-enforcing his defence against just such a threat.

The executor has also now expanded to his original mineral-only and has taken the 12:00 natural too. So much for a resource dis-advantage, it’s now four mining bases against one! Sadly, the excess profits from this have gone into Silver_Venom’s new hobby which involves turtle-ing up his remaining resource nodes with cannon after cannon after cannon after… well, you get the picture, and if you don’t, here it is:

Clearly if you are going to build THAT many cannons, you need four forges to do it with…! Now the problem with cannons is that they don’t get up and rape your opponent’s base while he’s vulnerable, try as they might, so the devastating counter-attack I was expecting never quite got underway. He did sacrifice the majority of his corsairs on a fly-by of the Zerg main where he gets a look at the tech, the defences, the lack of troops and he also gets to kill several overlords on the way through. All the tech and more from the old Protoss main has been replaced, but his cannons are unable to stop a new development by Hybrid-IMC in his resource gathering strategy.

A serious peon transfer was initiated to the new expansion and both sides built up a little. Now some of you asked me to do more base-shots as well as excessive pictures, so here’s one of the 12:00 main, and it took FLIPPIN’ AGES so no hassle plz thanx gw, and don’t expect too many more!

That wasn’t easy; believe you me! Anyway, as you can see, zealots are the order of the day from Silver_Venom to combat those nasty little cracklings, along with corsairs to kill those pesky overlords. He amassed an impressive number of both and got three of his four forges up and running to make his units more cost-effective. He was also fortifying his templar reserves and leaving them back to store up manna. Hybrid-IMC has switched to ground-only and is amassing hydralisks at the moment (bummer for zealots eh!), and he has given up on mutalisks due to the large numbers of corsairs patrolling the map (as well he might). The cerebrate takes time out to use an overlord and some hydralisks to go observer-hunting around his 3:00 expansion, he also realised that his latest resource spot was the object of much scrutiny, and may be under threat. As soon as his armour and shield upgrades kicked in, the Protoss executor ordered all hands forward towards the 3:00 natural expansion. Sadly, he didn’t mass them outside of the base (probably trying to catch Hybrid-IMC by surprise), but just attack-moved them from his own valley. What then happened was a tragic debacle where two-thirds of the attack force was caught up behind the 3:00 mineral-only’s minerals for the ENTIRE duration of the assault. Oh, and BTW, I remembered the upgrades again =D

Yes those pictures ARE in chronological order. MORE MICRO SLEEPY HEAD!!!!! This attack was a botched up mess from the start, and the 3:00 natural survived completely unscathed. Around now Hybrid-IMC takes an expansion in the 3:00 main, yet Silver_Venom still has the majority of troops from the last attack as he pulled back after figuring out what the hell happened. This may have been a good thing as the sheer number of cracklings coming up as re-enforcements from 6:00 had the potential to swamp the invaders from behind. Silver_Venom then masses observers a little and shows off by neglecting to harvest any gas from his first natural expansion site.

Hybrid-IMC decided that map control is a right and not a privilege, and sends a bunch of hydralisks to just above the temple. These are promptly NOT spotted by the mass-observers-in-one-place-you-already-control strategy being employed by Silver_Venom, and so when he moves his attack force southwards, he runs into a small surprise…

He still quickly overpowers the Zerg units, but once he regains map control, he returns to his natural for afternoon tea, leaving it open for Hybrid-IMC to re-dominate. What follows is possibly the biggest collage I’ve ever made, depicting another desperate attempt by the cerebrate to hold onto the centre of the map, and an equally desperate resistance by Silver_Venom to retain the offensive initiative.

Basically, with the help of storm and a little cannon-hugging (Protoss hippies….) the Zerg rout the executor’s army but are stopped at the 12:00 main’s ramp. Now for someone with more expansions, more money, stronger unit upgrades and a longer name; Silver_Venom is not really pressing his advantage home at the moment (Y’RECKON?!!?!??!!?). Hybrid-IMC is still in dire financial straights at the moment though and he elects to tech to a more cost-effective unit, as well as taking an aggressive expansion at the 3:00 mineral-only (seeing how his own is not good enough for him). The only reason for the Zerg’s continued existence must be the colour imbalance that makes purple always win…….

At this point, those masses of resources and gateways in Silver_Venom’s base begin to rear their ugly heads, and a huge army of zealots gets ready to rumble in Zerg-macro time. The problem that Hybrid-IMC finds is that he has more than enough hatcheries, just not a sufficient steady income at the moment, and when this new wave hits his budding expansion he throws all he has into the fire, but comes up short. Not interested in crippling his opponent economically (as he’s already far ahead), Silver_Venom goes straight for the jugular and storms the natural and main of 6:00 on a hunt for tech. This is FINALLY too much for the happy-go-lucky Hybrid-IMC and as he watches his tech get laid to waste, he bids a hearty GG, responded to in kind by the victor, Silver_Venom.

FINALLY that line-formation attacking pays off; well you DID out-number him as Toss Vs Zerg, so what did you expect? Well that wraps it all up fairly nicely and we can all go back to NH for the players to bug me for the next 3 days for not finishing the BR quickly enough (sorry, bug me less and it’ll be better and will not make you look as bad as it might).

YESSSSS!!! I have remembered the scores, I even put a border around them (MS-Paint it may be) so please read them to make it worth my while bothering in the first place. Just think how much you’d flame me if I did NOT include them =P

Didn’t read them? …. Nah, I kinda thought u wouldn’t have… oh well (bleeding ingrates, in my day kids learned respect blah blah old man rantings etc). Anyway, It’s Overall/Units/Structures/Resources for those who care. It’s interesting that Silver_Venom razed less structures than Hybrid-IMC, and yet still went on to victory (although the game ended before the Zerg main was destroyed fully).

Now, I have no idea whether you want a ‘lessons learned’ part (nobody ever learns from them anyway), so I decided to do something original and make stupid images with StarCraft units. Please kill me if I have gone too far this time!

To all of you who intend to click on the comments section and tell me that I’ve (A) made far too many images, (B) written this report in the style of an arrogant arse, (C) gone and ruined my growing reputation as a battle-reporter (lol), or (D) you want me to go back to the old ‘lesson learned’ section instead of the crap above; then PLEASE FEEL FREE (although I do already know, and I don’t intend to do it again).

Thanx to the players, may I never have to repeatedly write you names again, thanx to the()vermind for telling me to write this BR and just not post it if I thought it was crap (bet u wish I didn’t), and finally a shout out to my milkman for keeping me in stock every day…… I WUB U ALL!!!!!!

Ling-erie