Well ive had Warcraft 3 retail for almost a week now. Ive gotten a decent understanding of the game, ive seen some excellent replays but sadly (at the time of writing) their were no Battlereports of the retail version of Warcraft 3. So ive decided to step up to the plate and write one myself.

Only a game between to highly skilled players would do for this occasion, and not being highly skilled myself I ventured into channel ck on US-WEST servers. Their I saw a player called Losses challenging Tasteofmycheese to 1v1 battle-royal. For those of you whove been living in a cave of soughts Tasteofmycheese is currently #1 on the B.net West ladder. As for Losses I dont know who he is but lets just say he has some serious skills at Warcraft 3. The game was hosted and being the well mannered peeps they are observers were allowed.

The game started off very interestingly but sadly my modem decided that disconnecting would be a good thing to do :( I breifly contemplated reporting the 3 minutes of game I saw, but decided against it.

So I waited in the channel for awhile and I was kept amused by MarshalFaulk calling anyone who happened to type something he didn't like a Jew or a fag, nothing like a bit of baseless racism to make the laughter flow.

So I waited some more before finally Tasteofmycheese, Losses and the plethora of observers emerged from the game. Losses had been the victor and after a few minutes of post game discussion Tasteofmycheese requested a rematch, Losses accepted and I and a host of other observers were given the privalege of watching a truly awesome game!

TasteOfMyCheese was located at the 12:00 position while Losses was located at 6:00, the map was Lost Temple. Ill provide a mini-map for you as LT has changed somewhat with its transition to War3.

TasteOfMyCheese sent 3 acolytes to mine gold, begin constructing an Alter of Darkness and a Crypt before sending that acolyte to mine gold and ordered his lone ghould to begin chopping wood. Losses sent 3 wisps onto gold, began construction of a Moonwell and a Altar of Elders before sending that wisp off to harvest some lumber.

TasteOfMyCheese added a ziggurat or 2 and was producing ghouls out of his crypt. His hero of choice at this point in time was the ever potent Dread Lord whos Sleep spell allows the undead to really own the hell out of early game creeps!
Losses soon added a Hunters Hall and chose mighty Demon Hunter as his first hero. Losses decided to be a tech head and begun upgrading his Tree of Life to a Tree of Ages!

Losses is quick to move out with his Demon Hunter and gets a few creep kills from the center of the temple before running home to recharge its health from a Moonwell. TasteOfMyCheese moves his Dread Lord towards the center accompanied by 6 Ghouls.
TasteOfMyCheese ignores the creeps in the center and heads straight for Losses base, night time falls and with the creeps sleeping TasteOfMyCheese is able to move through the center of the temple with impunity.

TasteOfMyCheese charges into Losses base which is defended by his Demon Hunter and a cunningly placed Ancient Protector. TasteOfMyCheese attempts to trap Losses Demon Hunter but without success. Losses keeps his Demon Hunter on the move and allows his Ancient Protector to dish out the real damage. All in all the expedition ends in disaster for TasteOfMyCheese as he loses all 6 of his ghouls and his Dread Lord is brought to the brink of death while delivering only minor damage to Losses!

Now TasteOfMyCheese has ordered his Dread Lord back home and has begun upgrading his Necropolis while also begining to upgrade his ground troops armour. Losses filled with confidence after his decisive early game victory begins huntin more creeps while his second hero, a Priestess of the Moon, moves finishes construction. Losses also begins construction of 2 Ancients of Lore.

TasteOfMyCheese is not one to be kept down by a little setback though and once he has 5 Ghouls moves out to slay some creeps of his own. While on the other side of the map Losses fast tech bears its fruit in the form of the poten Dryads. These excellent ranged warriors can tear apart entire armies with careful micro! At this point Losses has 2 hero's, his Demon Hunter at level 2 and equiped with a Mantle of +3 intelligence, and Claws of +6 strength, a Healing scroll and a scroll of Town Portal. Losses Priestess of the Moon is sitting at level 1 and is only equiped with a Scroll of Town portal.
TasteOfMyCheese has 1 hero, a level 2 Dread Lord, that is equiped with Slippers of +3 Agility and a Scroll of Town Portal.

Both players continue to "Creep" (kill creeps) and TasteOfMyCheese summons his second hero, the mighty Death Knight.

A few minutes of silence pass as both payers continue to gather forces and mercilessly slaughter creeps. The next engagement comes when Losses attempts to kill the creeps at TasteOfMyCheese's natural. The problem for Losses being that TasteOfMyCheese's army happens to be doing the same thing.

Losses decides the better of the situation and retreats with TasteOfMyCheese's army in hot pursuit. The 2 armies clash inbetween the 3:00 position and the center of the temple. TasteOfMyCheese is able to trap Losses's Priestess of the Moon and Losses is forced to use a scroll of Town Portal to save his besieged hero.

In the meantime Losses has begun expanding to his natural while adding to his ever growing warmachine of Dryads. TasteOfMyCheese has added a Slaughterhouse and begun the production of the fearsome Abominations!

Losses moves out once again and collides with TasteOfMyCheese's forces in almost the exact same position as their last encounter. This time it is TasteOfMyCheese who makes use of a scroll of Town Portal to withdraw his army. Neither player makes any attempt to take advantage of the situation and the both return to slaughtering creeps, every second counts in the race for experience!

TasteOfMyCheese sends 3 ghouls into Losses natural expansion in an attempt to slaughter some helpless Wisps, this prompts Losses to summon his whole army to deal with the threat through the use of a Town Portal scroll!

Both players then send their armies to kill the creeps in the bottom left corner with catastrophic results. The 2 armies clash in the most serious battle seen so far in the match! I'll let the pictures do the talking in this case!

Every Dryad was microed to perfection in that battle and by the time TasteOfMyCheese's troops had scaled the hill they were left in a position where they were forced to retreat. TasteOfMyCheese almost lost his hero's but made use of the Goblin Merchants to purchase health potions and was able to stave of death. Losses then ran his troops past which proved to be folly and soon it was he who was retreating. Losses then regrouped, summoned a Rock Golem and drove TasteOfMyCheese back who then promptly Town Portaled his ass the hell out of there!

While the battle was going on TasteOfMyCheese expanded to the 9:00 natural in the hope it would go unnoticed. That last battle had cost TasteOfMyCheese a lot and he was in no position to contest map control, he just had to lay low and work his way back into the game.

Sadly for TasteOfMyCheese that was not to be. Losses promptly scouted the 9:00 position and made short work of TasteOfMyCheese fledgling expo. So now Losses had map control and an expansion, things looked bad for TasteOfMyCheese.

TasteOfMyCheese was not the kind of player to take a kick in the teeth like that lying down, no sir! He purchased a Goblin Shredder from his local Goblin Labarotory who took over the woodchopping duties. He then grabbed all available units and intercepted Losses army who promptly made use of a scroll of Town Portal.

TasteOfMyCheese then took his army south to take care of those creeps in the bottom left which were left unscathed after the battle. It just so happens that Losses had the exact same idea!

The 2 armies met at the same point but the positions were reversed, the outcome however was not. Both players microed furiously with Losses's microing his troops like a madman and TasteOfMyCheese once again making use of the Goblin Merchants to heal his battered Heros! Soon the tide swung in Losses favour and TasteOfMyCheese was forced to Town Portal his ass the hell out of there!

During the heat of combat TasteOfMyCheese had expanded to his natural thus leveling the expansion count, infact as a result of upkeep TasteOfMyCheese was now pulling in more resources than Losses, but would it be enough to make up for his lack of unit count?

Losses expanded to the highky prized bottom left corner, determined to hold his resource advantage. While TasteOfMyCheese cleared out the creep in the top right hand corner.

Your probably asking yourselves right now why I described this as a truly awesome game. Was it to suck unwitting readers in? No, I do not succumb to such levels of trickery. But at this point every single major engagement has been won by Losses, hes got a bigger army, more expansions and awesome micro which is making his Dryads almost impossible to beat in open combat. But TasteOfMyCheese is the #1 on the B.net West ladder, and you dont get to that level of play without having a few Aces up your sleeve. TasteOfMyCheese decides to play his trump card.

TasteOfMyCheese kills the creeps at the Goblin Laboratory near the 6:00 location, and purchases 2 goblin sappers, these little dynamos pack a whopping punch VS buildings and are quite possible the coolest sounding little guys on the planet :)

TasteOfMyCheese then procedes to carry out a 2 pronged attack on Losses. The 2 sappers move towards Losses bottom left base while the bulk of TasteOfMyCheese's army attacks Losses natural.

When TasteOfMyCheese's army hit Losses natural, he promptly Town Portalled his army to the scene, but disaster struck for Losses. You see Losses army consisted purely of Dryads, a ranged attacker, and when he Portalled his way into battle his army landed in between the trees and TasteOfMyCheese's army or melee attackers. Not only was Losses army crushed but at the same time the Sappers destroyed his base in the bottom left.

Losses was able to skillfully pull his army out of the trap but he no longer had the numbers to be cost effective with his ranged units and his army began taking heavy casualties. His one saving grace was the small force of Chimeras he had begun producing in case of such an eventuality.

So the aftermath of the battle? Losses bottom left and natural expansions were destroyed, along with the bulk of his army although he was able to establish a base at the 3:00 main. TasteOfMyCheese suffered minor casualties only and begun setting up a new base in the top right corner.

Losses had begun to amass an army of Chimeras which were chasing TasteOfMyCheese's helpless troops around the map.

TasteOfMyCheese sent his army to the 3:00 position in what would no doubt be a game deciding confrontation.

TasteOfMyCheese hit the expansion with everything he had and Losses realising that it was now or never warped his army in to save the expansion. Both sides took massive damage, TasteOfMyCheese even summoned the mighty Infernal to aid his side. When the dust settled all that remained were TasteOfMyCheese's 2 heros, Losses Priestess of the Moon and 3 Chimeras. It appeard as though Losses had triumphed until a small handful of Gargoyles flew into battle. Although he fought bravely the game had slipped beyond Losses reach, his Chimeras were hunted down by the Gargoyles and he had only the income from his rebuilt natural to regather his army with. GG's were exchanged by all and TasteOfMyCheese had pulled off one of the alltime great comebacks!

I really hope you all enjoyed watching the game as mutch as I enjoyed observing it. Im always up for a game my name on US EAST is FuRY and my name on US WEST is UncleSam.
Anyone who doesn't like my grammar/loading times can blow me cuz I really dont care :)
I would like to thank the players for putting up with my shocking connection and allowing me to observe their fantastic game :)
Im now going to pull a JoeSmurf and ask Mark4 to give me a frontpage hookup :P

Signing off for now, Furious!