This game took place during an official beta 2on2 tournament. Even though the tournament was "official," all that means is that Zileas was running it, which in my opinion does nothing but remove credibility. Certainly someone who is responsible for things such as this cannot be considered responsible at all.

     Just in case anyone somehow doesn't know what strifeshadow is, go learn a little bit about it here. The map is Mexican Standoff, a 6 player map great for 3on3s and 2on2s made by none other than Dudey.

Team 1 Lunar - Ethermoon forum regular and owner of the soon to be site www.ssedit.com.

testpig - Another ethermoon forum regular, but more notably a big fucking moron. See evidence here.
Team 2 Artius - None other than the lead and only programmer of Strifeshadow. You would think he would completely dominate everyone, but with all the typing in 1's and 0's or whatever he does, he has very little time to actually play, so is on a similar level to everyone else.

MysteryMan - No idea. I think he's one of the more "inconsequential" ethermoon forumers.

     Both teams got good spots, as they both share a choke. All the players go for 4-5 aether tower before rax builds, except for Lunar who takes a risk and expands to the lower right start spot first, hoping it won't be discovered. However, before his village is even halfway done a scouting zombie from Artius finds it. 5 skeletons and and a ranger are sent to destroy the outpost, while Lunar sends 2 rangers to defend it. I'm not sure why testpig didn't send anything to defend it immediately, but I'll bet you it has something to do with him being a stupid fuck.

     Lunar's rangers do a good job of stalling, while he attempts to build weatherstones for defense, but they soon die. It looks like the base is about to be torn down, when testpig shows up with 6 carvers. They easily dispose of the troops already there, but Artius and MysteryMan have sent a second wave of rangers and skeletons. The weatherstones Lunar has been struggling to make finally complete, and they are able to destroy the attackers.

     Artius has teched to dire changelings, and decides to show them off by attacking testpig. MysteryMan accompanies him, but the attack does poorly from the start, with their first steps into testpig's base setting off spike traps. Once inside, they meet up with even worse news - testpig has teched to chaos elementals. Without any anti air, they can do nothing but try and do as much damage as possible before the elementals kill them. Changelings are bad mothers though, and they take out his workshop and all of his ground forces before kicking it.
testpig once shaved his penis
and posted a picture of it on a forum

     As soon as the attack was destroyed, Lunar and testpig sent all of their forces right back at them. Testpig's elementals circled around Artius's base and entered from behind (oh yeah), while Lunar's rangers skirmished with skeletons at the entrance. Scouts from MysteryMan got the elementals out of Artius's base but couldn't take them out of the fight. They circled around outside again and returned to take potshots at skeletons busy fighting.


haha i bet you think im joking about that
     The rangers suicide the babbling inferno that has been attacking them during their fight, taking it down shortly before they perish as well. The elementals now go to harass MysteryMan's base, and kill a few towers before scouts drive them off. Lunar has another something up his sleeve. It's not quite clever enough to be called a trick, because it's just a bunch of rangers, but it's still something. Unfortunately for him they get absolutely destroyed by changelings and skeletons. Testpig has been using his cabalists for more than chaos elementals, and also has a dijinn now. He uses it and elementals to lay siege on the lower end of MysteryMan's base, while out of range scouts prevent them from advancing any further.
well im not

     As you can see, I am fucking elite with photoshop. What now Breeze? What now. You can also see that Artius is attacking testpig in a big way. He has around seven changelings, which in layman's terms means testpig is fucked harder than he would be in a San Francisco YMCA.
if you want to see it click here

     All of MysteryMan's scouts are lagging behind because they were dealing with the chaos dijinn, so testpig's elementals get a lot of free shots before they arrive. Most of the changelings are killed, but as soon as the scouts enter the elementals go down like George Carlin on a truck driver. Lunar sends help in the form of, you guessed it, rangers. You'd think someone that does as much acid as him would at least be a little more creative if nothing else.
     The rangers put a small dent in the attacking forces but hardly stop it. Artius and MysteryMan's troops go on to destroy Lunar's unprotected main, and completely raze it. Lunar's expansion is far more developed however, and the main is no great loss.
ok that wasn't an actual link
      MysteryMan and Artius now regroup their forces, and prepare to charge up testpig's ramp, expecting an easy victory. Testpig may be an idiot, but he isn't a quitter, so he filled his ramp with carvers, and started building turrets to aid his defense. As soon as the enemy skeletons arrive at his door, they are pelted by the chaos djinn safely out of reach of MysteryMan's archers. MysteryMan switches his archers to flight arrows, making his shafts less effective but increasing their range greatly, and begins focusing on the turrets. Testpig frantically repairs his turrets, makes new carvers, and micros his djinn in hopes of overcoming the much larger army.
i bet you could tell cuz you couldn't click it

      Testpig miraculously manages to keep his ramp. Artius, hoping to catch Lunar off guard, sends skeletons and changelings to attack him. As soon as the undead arrive they are met by scouts' arrows and nymphs casting balance on them, a spell which causes a unit to do 70% of its damage back at itself whenever it attacks. The attack is thoroughly destroyed, and Lunar immediately sends his scouts and nymphs to counter attack.
     Things are looking up, but Lunar makes the mistake of letting Artius's defending skeletons surround his scouts, so he gets handled like a woman on a Tokyo subway. Testpig decides to break free of MysteryMan's scouts containing him, so he sends out 6 carvers and his mighty djinn to fight them off. The carvers and scouts collide while the djinn attacks from afar. MysteryMan saw this was a losing battle, so he targeted the djinn and retreated after it was killed, with 4 scouts killed in the process.
you're a clever shit aren't you

     Lunar has produced 4 divan chairs and uses them to drop rangers, scouts, and nymphs in the back of MysteryMan's base. They take out some of his aether towers, and force MysteryMan to bring back his scouts from the middle to fend them off. Once MysteryMan's scouts arrive, the drop is quickly killed, but the damage is done. Artius recognizes this opportunity, and moves his skeletons, changelings, and newly created bone juggernauts to Lunar's base. Lunar knows that it would be suicide to run head first into a juggernaut push, so he loads rangers and scouts into his divan chairs, and drops them directly over the juggernauts.


     Two of the juggernauts are killed, but the changelings successfully protected the third. And now that Lunar has sacrificed his entire army in this attempt, the remaining skeletons are free to ravage his base. MysteryMan's horde of scouts finally catch up and seal his fate. Now that his partner is dead, what should testpig do? Well, if you pretend for a second that you are an imbecile, I'm sure you will reach the same conclusion that he did.


      Computer programmers are cold emotionless robots, so it is easy to catch them unprepared by strategies which do not follow logic. Of course mass traps just wouldn't compute for Artius, much to the chagrin of the skeletons that learned from his mistake. After setting off the first four spike traps he retreated and let his juggernauts kill those now exposed traps. Testpig wouldn't let that discourage him, fighting back with his freshly produced grenadiers.


     But alas, good things can't last forever, and neither can this game, because even with all of his traps and grenadiers testpig was soon overran by sheer numbers.


Kill Ratios

MysteryMan - 1.88
Artius - 1.66
testpig - .92
Lunar - .27 (ouch)

Lessons Learned
• Balance is a spell better used on heavy hitting units such as changelings, juggernauts, or grenadiers, rather than on skeletons and scouts. Since the spell only damages a unit as fast as that unit deals damage, it's better to target the heavy hitting ones.
• Don't be a stupid cunt like MysteryMan and use flight arrows when there's carvers right in front of you.
• Use the right units to counter the right units.
• Newt owns
• A-X sucks