Ok, BR number ten (already). This little 2v2 game was played about a week or two after 1.08 came out. We were summonned to channel Smurfs for a 2v2, and with three people arriving i was happy to obs, cos then i wouldn't get shown up so badly.

Dark Continent..... When Allied settings are enabled, it is a top Vs bottom map. With it's twilight tile-set, no islands, and only 1 expansion point per player in 4v4, you can see how a freindly game of ChatCraft can erupt into a full blown war in mere seconds. Here are the players in today's little battle, I honestly can't remember who randomed, i think probably only one of them did, but here are their beginning build orders:

Team Smurfs

Dino.Smurf - Another member of the Smurf clan, a good player who beat me down severely back when I actually used to play the game. Just when I thought I was improving too, he seems to have the ability to turn it all up a gear at the right moment, and macro his ass off. He starts off right down at the bottom of the map, away from his opponents, with a white hatchery.

Team Hooman

S()me()ne - possibly a relation to The()vermind, but I doubt it. He's new to me in this game so I won't pretend I know him, sorry. He lands a brown command centre at the top right starting spot (a few screens below the top right corner) in close proximity to his teammate.

All of these builds are completed within the first five minutes, with only scouting to keep the players occupied.

At this point we introduce a new element into the game: the PAUSE BUTTON! ....which Joe.Smurf proceeds to make liberal use of, to his opponent's dismay, as he pushes off to the toilet.

Tiamat has used his two machine shops to research vulture speed and spider mines at the same time. He initiates hostilities by sending a pack of five vultures down the centre of the map in search of trouble. After laying a trail of mines along the way, they arrive at Dino.Smurf's main, and begin taking pot shots at the drones from behind the mineral line. Having lost all of his defensive zerglings to spider mines, Dino.Smurf morphs 12 more from the hatcheries in his main, and chases the bikers away (at the cost of a load more speedy zerglings). He begins an expansion on the plateau at the top left of the map, fortifying the entrances to his bases with numerous mines.

Joe.Smurf has mounted up a pimp squad of zealots around his ramp, and has proceeded along the cheesiest route possible.... the Gayrier rush! He has a fleet beacon and a second stargate warping in in his main. He's also expanding to a resource node somewhere down at the bottom left of the map. His partner Dino.Smurf is just recovering from the small mining raid and trying to get his three mining bases running at full capacity. He has added a hydralisk den and is working in the speed upgrade.

S()me()ne has been completing his tech, and now has a science facility in full working order. He orders his first 10 marines, 2 medics and seige tank down towards Dino.Smurf's second expansion with evil thoughts in mind. He also takes the time to expand to the resource node directly above Joe.Smurf's main base, not fortifying it yet with either troops or turrets. Having grouped up his troops in completely the wrong place (somewhere down to the right), he finds them and goes on to rally them to the right of the enemy expansion, just out of site of the creep.

....and then it happens again, Joe.Smurf "has to move his car so his parents can get their's in".....

After much grinding of teeth and tearing at hair, we finally get back underway. Joe.Smurf begins by maynarding 6-7 probes to his new expansion, but they run straight through the attack force and are all obliterated. This does give team Smurf knowledge of the upcoming attack on the expansion, and the single sunken colony there is defending in the wrong direction. Dino.Smurf quickly begins morphing all avaliable larvae into zerglings, but his low supply limit previously means that he has a lot of money spare. He quickly upgrades his initial hatchery into a lair and throws down three evolution chambers in his main. S()me()ne initiates the attack on the naked, un-mined expansion by seiging up what is now two tanks and taking pot shots at the hatchery. Joe.Smurf quickly sends his eight zealots around the back of the attack force while floating his two 4-interceptor blimps into position near the high ground. Tiamat sends in a pimp squad of around 12 vultures to help beat down the hapless zerglings that Dino.Smurf is massing as his form of defense, and a small battle ensues.

Eight interceptors fly out of their bays, pummelling the marines below, but eight interceptors suck totally, and Joe.Smurf quickly finds himself replacing the losses to stimmed marine fire. Fortunately he has those zealots, and while the sunken colony is taking care of Tiamat's vultures, S()me()ne sudenly finds his tanks taking hits from the zealot's warp blades. Soon the brown tanks are destroyed, and the infantry are getting sandwiched; Dino.Smurf follows up with a control group of speedlings and the threat is over for team Smurf... but not for team Hooman! They naw have to deal with turbo carriers and a powering Zerg.

Tiamat seems unphased by all this, he continues rolling out tanks from the two factories in his main, and having expanded to the top right during the assault, he's powering SCVs out of three command centres. S()me()ne also seems to have not noticed the carriers as he too is massing tanks and firebats while waiting for his first science vessel to emerge. Evidently the zerglings worried him more than the carriers. Suddenly he is in trouble, as three red blimps begin seiging his only expansion from the cliffs to the south. Tiamat remains true to his reputation and ignores the conventional response of goliaths in favour of adding a covert ops facility to his science facility. He already has a barracks and an academy, and is looking to be headed for ghosts.

Amazingly, a small squad of about 4 marines with medic support are enough to scare off the carriers, and they drift with the winds towards the top right of the map. With his partner conga-line dancing a group of zerglings to level the few remaining buildings, it becomes a little clearer why Joe.Smurf felt happy to leave a command centre in the yellow. Dino.Smurf is churing out hydra-ling while getting all avaliable ground upgrades. He begins to morph a hatchery on the south of the two start points right in the centre of the map (below Joe.Smurf's main). The Carriers finally arrive at the top right, and begin to lay into the undefended expansion that they find there. Tiamat, finally having enough of this nonsense and having his armoury finished, begins researching the charon booster while queueing up golliaths from four factories. His lockdown upgrade is complete, and he is charging up energy for his ghosts, but he is helpless to prevent the rape of his partner's expansion just above the centre of the map, leaving just a floating command centre.

Joe.Smurf begin a second expansion at the bottom right corner, and starts loading up observer tech at his first expansion. Once the command centre in the top right falls, he retreats his three carriers to join two more in his main. Now i'm not entirely sure what S()me()ne was thinking at this point, perhaps he didn't scout Joe.Smurf properly at the start, but he proceeds to order his only spare command centre to float to the south. I hope you remember what was south of his expansion... well its only Joe.Smurf's main. S()me()ne innitiates a tank drop on the low ground above Joe.Smurf's main meneral line. The carriers, who were about to utilise their inherent advantage in most engagements against flying buildings to waste his command centre, are called away to deal with the peon raid.

Sadly, 5 carriers tend to barely defeat two seige tanks and a dropship, and the attack is quelled for the loss of around 10 probes. The tanks fought bravely but never really stood a chance against the five Duff blimps soaring above them. After nearly an eternity, Joe.Smurf finally realises that there's a foreign command centre hovering over his carrier tech, and he gives the order to blast it out of the skies. Tiamat intends to take none of this carreir gayness, and mobilises a considerable mech army from his main. Three ghosts, six goliaths and six seige tanks patrol down the centre of the map, destined for Joe.Smurf's cheese production facilites, whilst as he re-expands to the top right resouse node at the same time as his partner expands to a node down near the bottom right of the map.

Joe.Smurf's carriers were on the way towards the top left expansion during this buildup, and once his assimilator and nexus come under fire from the tanks below, he quickle re-routes them to the scene while transferring his probes to his new bottom-left expansion. Those probes happen to run straight through S()me()ne's new expansion on the way, alerting team Smurf to it's existance. Accompanying the assault are wraiths and infantry from S()me()ne, and when Dino.Smurf sends up around two control groups of 1:1 hydralisks to beat back the metal, they are 'encoraged' to get the hell out of there and mass a little further back. The carrier pimp squad arrives on the scene to a celebratory hail of goliath fire and two quick lockdowns. The gayriers show their true colours by running the hell away just as fast as they had arrived. Joe.Smurf promptly opens a warp rift for a nexus at an expansion node up against the middle-right of the map while his partner's hydralisks dispose of S()me()ne's second expansion attempt at the lower right, leaving
S()me()ne with no income at all.

With the attacking momentum clearly on their side, team Hooman shrug off S()me()ne's expansion loss and begin to work their way around the bottom of Joe.Smurf's main to the carrier tech. In an amuing moment, 8 burrowed hydralisks are run over by a couple of tanks and goliaths simply because of the burrow controls; you see, if you have 10 hydralisks burrowed and one of them gets shot, it'll un-burrow on the spot. If you then hit the un-burrow button with that hydralisk selected, then instead of the other 9 un-burrowing to help their freind out, that single hydralisk will try to burrow again. It was clear that this was happening to Dino.Smurf here because the hydralisks under fire would pop up and then try to burrow again as he tried to get the rest out of the ground. It's a very frustrating control glitch, and it lost Dino.Smurf all of his ambush squad while he inflicted no casualties. Tiamat also takes the time to finish off the assimilator, nexus a few pylons and one of the gateways from his vantage point above Joe.Smurf's plateau.

Another carrier tried to get funny with the attackers, and was locked down instantly. The remaining three dropped back, but Joe.Smurf could hardly sacrifice his main to the seige tanks, so he pushed on regardless. Two more lockdowns and a shed load of goliath fire, and there is one badly damaged carrier left that is capable of fighting. However, Tiamat doesn't use his goliaths to kill the disabled carriers, leaving only a couple of ghosts to take pot-shots, so when he orders an un-cloaked ghost to point a little red laser at the construction facilities there, a carrier's lockdown wears off right at that moment and it kills the ghost out-right, costing Tiamat the build time and resource cost of that nuke.... gw =/

A set of speedy zealots are dispatched to clean up the mess that the carriers left, but they are only succsessful in whitling the attack force down to two tanks and a infantry unites a little further back; Joe.Smurf's main remains under bombardment for as long as it takes the carrier to finish off the last two tanks. Dino.Smurf has added a spire at his bottom left expansion, and has placed a hatchery at the resource node that he stole earlier from S()me()ne. In response to his dire financial situation, S()me()ne expands back to the node above Joe.Smurf's main under the protective blanket of Tiamat's goliath reinforcements.

Team Smurf aren't just happy just standing by and watching this happen, so they mount a joint attack of 5 carriers and around 16 hydralisks. It doesn't take long before Tiamat reacts with his ghosts, and three lockdowns the goliaths on station there are enough to end the carrier threat, while reinforcement vultures from S()me()ne's main manage to fend off the hydralsks. The expansion was almost entirely lost, but in one of those classic 'just in time' moments, the defenders prevail and the command centre is completed. Joe.Smurf used the cover of this attack to begin warping in a nexus at the mid-left resource node.

You guessed it! Tiamat knows the importance of momentum, and he is determined not to lose it again. A cloaked ghost is hidden below Joe.Smurf's main plateau, and the nuke is aimed right at the templar archives above. Someone once told me a picture is worth a thousand words..... its a bitch that i wasn't allowed to put seven pictures in for my 'end of year report' then isn't it!

No resistance this time around, and the nuke manages to kill... A WHOLE TWO HYDRALISKS!!!! (and an innocent kakaru that was just gliding by)

Not content with the psychological damage that this has caused to his opponents, Tiamat constructs another nuke while sending his ghost up onto the plateau. This guy, cool as a cucumber, steps up and delivers the killer blow to the burning remains of Joe.Smurf's main, taking the threat of any more carriers out of the game.

Offering no resistance at all, Joe.Smurf has opted for a new strategy, and is beginning to warp in gateways at the bottom-right of the map. He had long since abandoned his old main, and most of the ground troop tech had been replaced elsewhere. After scanning fledgling expansion at the mid-left, Tiamat decides to do things the conventional way this time. He sends ten 1:1 goliaths and five SCV's to take the spot for himself, and they begin the cute little conga line down the map. At the same time, Dino.Smurf finally wakes up and realises that he's supposed to be fighting a war; thus he mobilises his massive 3:3 hydralisk army and initiates his own line going UP the left hand side of the map. Just as the first few goliaths begin to ascend the ramp to the expansion, the hydralisks ram into their flank... and there are a lot of hydralisks, i count thirty six of the creatures closing in on the mech army.

Tiamat's no fool, and he pulls back once he sees the size of the army upon him. At the same time, Joe.Smurf is sending the first wave of random ground troops (from his TWELVE new gateways) up the right side of the map, and Dino.Smurf proves that he's not been idle by throwing over a control group of mutalisks at S()me()ne's new expansion; this guy just can't catch a break! With Hydralisks from one side, Protoss ground troops from the other side, and a mutalisk pimp squad in the middle, the attack roles in. Twelve cloaked wraiths and a few tanks and ghosts are the inital obstacle, but Joe.Smurf transferred his templar tech too, and storms begin to fly over the wraiths and the mining SCVs.

Joe.Smurf has also attained arbiter tech at his first expansion, and is charging up energy while waiting for the upgrades to be researched. It becomes very apparent in no time at all that the defenses are inadequate, and the expansion is going to fall. Tiamat quickly cloaks up a ghost and sets a little red laser right in the heart of the hydralisk army, a devastating move that will vapourise the entire lot of them. Yet again though there is a hiccup in the plan, Joe.Smurf has brought observers with him (despite storming one of them), and literally half a second before the nuke would have fallen on the back of the army, the cloak is negated leaving the ghost somewhat vulnerable... Ten angry hydralisks promptly turn around and blow the crap out of the poor little guy leaving Tiamat to suffer his loss.

With two nuke silos, Tiamat doesn't even waste a thought on it, and as the Smurf army advances, he selects one of 8 cloaked ghosts to launch another nuke right into their body.. But he used the front ghost in the group, and it dies before the warning can even be given. Joe.Smurf quickly spreads a psionic storm across the infantry defence, killing half in one go, and it is just sheer numbers from this point owards that allow team Smurf to push on through. Tiamat is still micro-ing his ass off though, and two dragoons are locked down, but 20 hydralisks avidly take their place on the front line, and the attack just keeps rolling.

On the other side of the map, stiff defence from S()me()ne's metal/wraith combo are only enough to slow Joe.Smurf's war machine down, because as soon as the Terran commander makes a stand, storm materialises above his units demonstrating the Protoss executor's excellent multi-tasking abilities for macro-ing and fighting a war on two fronts. Twenty mutalisks run on into the top left expansion and begin to lay waste to it. Tiamat has switched over exclusively to M&M at the moment and has eleven barracks constantly flashing for marines, medics and ghosts, mostly located around his top right expansion. however, his 0:0 marines have insufficient medic support to hold back the 3:3 hydralisk hoards, but i did laugh profusely when i saw one spider mine turn six hydralisks into Zerg stew!

The mutalisk count now matches the hydralisks, with over thirty of each on the front line razing Tiamat's main, it is clear that both members of team Smurf have been macro-ing really hard. The upgrades are beginning to kick in too, as Dino.Smurf's mutalisks have hit 2:1 and Joe.Smurf's ground units are at 1:0:2. Compare that to Tiamat's 0:1 marines that he is massing in his only surviving expansion. S()me()ne has been totally broke for a few minutes now, and with not a single fighting unit in his main, he is helpless to stop almost thirty random protoss ground troops and even more mutalisks from violating his base in a manner that even the Fox Network wouldn't dare show.

Me? yes i'll show you it, but it's pretty big so here's the link to save downloading time.... Don't i just spoil you guys!

It's only now that i notice that Tiamat is still researching marine range in his academy, and it is iunder heavy fire! He'll just have to get along withough it now as the remnants of his old tech are destroyed leaving him with nine barracks, a command centre at a fully saturated resorce node and about 15 supply depots. Finally, the hydralisk hoardes patrol into the wester entrance to Tiamat's final stronghold, just as S()me()ne quits the game. The barracks and upgrades work against Tiamat as they channel his units in one at a time onto the hydralisks. At the same time an arbiter hovers over and recalls in around 9 protoss units, accompanied by a masive push into the southern entrance by the remainder of Joe.Smurf's army. This is finally too much for Tiamat, and as his defences buckle under the intense pressure he says his GG's leaving team Smurf as the victors.

This was a really great match to watch, i enjoyed it immensely. ALL players showed excellent skill and micro where required, and Team smurf managed to totally deny S()me()ne any resources other than those in his main. My start location was the only one not expanded to, and well over half the map was mined dry. I'd give you a picture of the statistics, but you can just check them put for yourself on the replay, so gogogo and hf.

How did Team Smurf win then? What did they do to totally destroy their opponents?

Props to the players for an excellent game, thanks to random people like FLS and WWC3 for some random HTML help. LuckyNewbie:P and ~CattleBruiser~, i couldn't have done the javascript without you, 'Cheers' =] Hope you all had fun, i'll leave it at that, so go post a comment on it, and make sure you let the two mouse-over pics load =]

Ling-erie