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Frustrated with Civ III and hoping for a patch that will cure all ills, I return to Starcraft. Battle.net greets me in its warm embrace and I start playing random games. A 3v1 Comp stomp where I backstab the other two idiots with a supply's worth of mutas, a 3v3 BGH where I nuke rush, a scout rush on lost temple, this is what Starcraft is all about, a guy who sucks beating down guys who suck more.
Act 1: Race Against Time
 Whenever you decide to do a Battlecruiser rush on The Lost Temple its always a race against time, especially when you've only built two marines for defense. Everything from a four pool to a reaver drop to a vulture rush will send you crying home to mama. And so those first 5 minutes are so very crucial. What strat will your opponent use. Will he bring you to your knees before you even have the chance to unleash your first bohemeth?
These were the questions racing through my mind as I cloned my first 4 SCVs to their respective mineral patches on the western plateau. I didn't know it yet but lotsofpizza, my worthy opponent, was doing the same thing with his Zerg drones (well, they all went to the same mineral patch, but you know what I mean) on the eastern plateau. I quickly built a barracks/depot at my choke and proceeded to hurriedly climb the tech tree. It wasn't long before one of lotsofpizza's overlords spotted me. The overlord meandered in for a close-up of my starports and paid for it with his life. My two marines returned to their post at my choke and feasted on overlord stew, not realizing that the apocalypse was soon to be upon them.
I reached the peak of the tech tree quickly and the production lights of my two starports began to blink giving me a reassuring feeling. Soon, two capital ships will be protecting my base from the lotsofpizza's evil Zerg hordes. In the meantime, I have been constructing a Command Center at my choke. Battlecruisers require a lot of vespian gas and I knew that I would need to secure a second node if I were to remain competitive. However, things didn't turn out exactly as I planned. Just as my Command Center finished completion, a pack of hungry zerglings arrived at my choke. The two marines fought bravely, but they still carried the scent of the overlord they had consumed and were quickly torn apart.
I lifted off my command center and started it toward the top left island. The zerglings charged right past it, into my main, and headed straight for my worker line. There they were faced with twice their number in SCVs. Fusion cutters faced off against hungry zergling jaws as the production lights of my starport continued to blink in the background. One SCV constructed a bunker, and soon the SCVs were joined by a lone marine who hopped into the bunker and began hammering away at the zergling incursion from the relative safety that the bunker provided. It wasn't long before the first wave was defeated and the SCVs let out a lusty cheer as the first two battlecruisers joined the fray.
Act 2: Give Me Ti-ime
I was ready to wreak havoc with my first two battlecruisers. I didn't know it at the time, but lotsofpizza had 3 hatches (one at his natural), a spawning pool, and nothing more. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to make it across the map to ravage his low-tech bases because wave after wave of zerglings continued to pour into my base, and each wave wore me down just a little bit more.
By this time, My island expansion was up and producing vespian gas. I started constructing two starports there and decided to evacuate my science facility to the relative safety that the island provided.  Unfortunately, the science facility met up with the first group of hydralisks. This development was disturbing for two reasons. 1) lotsofpizza now had stuff that could shoot up into the air, and 2) I could no longer build battlecruisers and was stuck with only three. I was pretty pissed off about this nasty turn of events and sent my battlecruisers to exact revenge on the hydralisks. I managed to take out the hydras losing only 1 cruiser in the process.
Since I hadn't scouted yet, I decided to send my two remaining cruisers to 12 o'clock hoping I could do some damage. Not only was his base not at 12, but while my cruisers were away another group of hydras arrived at my main. With only SCVs left to defend, my main fell. However, I did manage to lift off one of my starports and float it safely down to the western edge of the southern plateau. I also managed to complete my two starports and rebuild my science facility on my new island fortress. However, with only two BCs in my arsenal, and lotsofpizza owning the map, things were looking grim.
Act 3: Time Heals All Wounds
 With his hydras tearing through my main, lotsofpizza obviously assumed that the game was all but over. No need to build anymore hydras. And so, when my two BCs appeared over the northern horizon and started  pounding on the extractor in his main, they met with no resistance.
I was pumped baby! My first razing of the game!! Flush with this victory, I moved on to his Lair. As my lasers started to pummel the building, his drones ran away, presumably to his expansion. The hitpoints went lower and lower. I kept wondering when the hydras would arrive to shoot me down. I tensed as the Lair's hitpoints went down into the red. Would I make it? Yup, I would, the building exploded into a bloody mass. And then the hydras began to arrive on the scene, forcing me to retreat. Both of my battlecruisers managed to escape and I flew them back to my island fortress for repair after a hard day's work. I found out later that overlord speed had been researching in that Lair making that victory all the more valuable for the time it bought me.
Time to break out 3 more battlecruisers. With those battlecruisers, I was ready to wreak more havoc on lotsofpizza's bases. Unbeknownst to me, at about the time my battlecruisers headed to the east, lotsofpizza launched 6 overlords full of hydras towards my island fortress in the west. The overlords' courses took them a little bit to the north of my battlecruisers' flight paths and they almost managed to escape unscathed. However, one of my BC's spotted them and fired a shot and the rest of the BC's responded to the alarm. One overlords was shot down, but they were moving at a pretty good clip and the rest managed to escape.
I knew I was in trouble then. 20 hydras landed in my island fortress which really wasn't much of a fortress since there were no troops defending it. However, I did have my five battlecruisers flying back to the island as fast as their pathetic excuses for thrusters could propel them. When they arrived at the island, I had a mini brainstorm. Instead of taking on the hydralisks head-to-head, I yamatoed the overlords effectively stranding the hydralisks on the island.
Act 4: A Time to Kill |
One final battlecruiser was produced from my starport before it exploded and now, with the destruction of my island, I was left with 6 battlecruisers and 1 lonely (but very important) starport floating in the bottom left hand corner of the map. It was now or never, and so I launched my assault.
As I flew over the center of the temple, I met the first resistance forces. 3 hydralisks unburrowed and started firing on me from behind. Two of my battlecruisers veered off to deal with this unexpected threat and at that very moment, a congo line of about 15 hydras started strolling by my other four battlecruisers. At first they were content to run by as lasers attempted to beat them into submission. Then suddenly, they seemed to realize what was happnening and began to fight. However, with a bit of micro, I managed to destroy all the hydralisks without losing a single battlecruiser and suddenly, the Red Sea parted.
 There was now nothing left between lotsofpizza's two bases and my battlecruisers but two lone spore colonies. Yamato took care of them and suddenly, I had the upper hand as my battlecruisers crushed first his expansion, and then his main with little to no resistance. However, lotsofpizza used his burrowing wisely and managed to salvage 6-7 drones. He sent them out all over the map constructing hatcheries in 5 different locations. Meanwhile, he worked on transporting his twenty remaining hydralisks from the island, back to the mainland. A game of cat and mouse ensued as my battered battlecruisers worked their way around the map searching for Zerg buildings with lotsofpizza's ravenous hydralisks never far behind.
I stayed close to cliffs and patrolled the map looking for the signs of telltale creep. There were only a few minor skirmishes between my battlecruisers and the hydralisks. Each time he caught up with me, I jumped to the other side of a cliff and made my getaway. Using this method, I managed to destroy 4 out of his 5 hatcheries, leaving only the one in the middle of the map. lotsofpizza had 2 drones left and was long distance mining the minerals at the 3 o'clock mineral only  expansion. I stumbled upon the drones and managed to kill them. Their presence and vector gave me a pretty good idea as to the location of the hatchery that they had originated from. I flew away from the 3 o'clock cliff to the wall in the middle of the temple. I spotted the hatchery and also the hydralisks that were protecting it.
The hydralisks were eager to protect their final building from destruction and sensing that now was their chance to final destroy the battlecruisers, charged forward spitting acid. Desparately, I selected all 6 of my battlecruisers, pressed my yamato hotkey, and left clicked on the hatchery. The sound of energy building combined with the sound of spitting hydralisks made for a tense moment. Then suddenly, 6 yamatoes slammed into lotsofpizza's hatchery and it exploded into a bloody mist.
I got a simple "oh shit" from lotsofpizza followed by a "lotsofpizza has been eliminated." I sighed with relief.
Cheers!
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