Endersshadow- Top Left, Night Elf.
MARKTHELLAMA- Top Right, Undead.
Sboxl-Silver- Bottom Left, Night Elf.
Aw]Divx- Bottom Right, Undead.
Mark and I landed at the northern posistions on the map, and I started my usual altar + well build. Unfortunately I forgot to
place the moonwell on my ramp for fast healing. This in turn resulted in the following (demoralizing) conversation:
Both UD's began their respective tech to fiends while myself and Sboxl made more wells,
laying down some ancients of war a little afterwards. I also started to build a hunters hall at around the same time, but
Sboxl was content with his two ancients, obviously stream lining archers. At this time I also sent my warden to his
base to harass some wisps, but found a keeper waiting for me. Two wisps instantly detonated my Warden while she stood caught in an entangle, as did all of the others I attempted to kill. Some more entangles and a coil from Divx's newly arrived death knight had me teleporting away a bit early into the game. At this time Mark had traveled to the bottom of Sboxl's
ramp with his death knight and three fiends, but I told him to back off since his fiends were easy entangle bait.
Having healed at home, I started running towards Mark as he went ahead anyway and engaged the small
creeps at the base of Sboxl's ramp. Knowing that our enemies were around, I pinged for Mark to "get the hell out with love." And not a moment too soon, for at that same time
Aw]Divx came charging from the east with some fiends in tow, and Sboxl
began sniping at him with his keeper and two archers he had made during the lull. Mark
initially held his ground, killing one archer, but retreated when one of his fiends was entangled and killed (I told you so).
I, being the cautious mother goose of our AT group, predictably
fell back with my warden and some huntresses.
Mark however, being the strong bull with certain autoerotic tendencies of our AT group, began to
go at it with Divx. As the relatively boring battle of fiend on vs. fiend began, I went
downstairs, grabbed a drink, checked for any good movies on TV, made a quick phone call, went back upstairs, played some
Enter the Matrix, returned to my desk, and found them STILL FIGHTING. Knowing that I had to end this unbearable stalemate,
I rushed in with my hunts, and we managed to push Divx all the way back to his base.
As our army rushed up the ramp in pursuit, Mark's death knight was manually targeted by a
nerubian tower, and its slowing effects left him helpless in the middle of the battle. At this point
Sboxl teleported in, but I pushed him back farther into the undead base after targeting his keeper repeatedly.
Things were looking good for us, until I realized that the stupid death knight was close to dying. The target of almost 12
fiends and that damn tower, I took control of the hero and bade him goodbye as he teleported to safety with 2 hp left.
Unfortunately this also brought about the teleportation of all of Mark's fiends. Crap. I
retreated my warden and huntresses out of the battle, and thus the early game ended.
As we both healed in our bases, our opponents began to creep Divx's natural. We waited for a few
more moments before Mark asked me which base we should hit. I pinged Divx's
base to show that we should attack, and we set off. Almost immediately after we stumbled on top of them after they
finished the creeps, just picking up the items.
Mark, who lead our charge, fell back to let me in, and the air filled with the sounds of bouncing glaives and
spider bogies. Sboxl raised some treants on my flank to try and divert us from their main units,
but they died quickly with some focus fire. I lost two huntresses in quick succesion to fiends, but danced them back and
forth away from danger, allowing Mark extra time to kill the three huntresses flanking me.
Two archers then presented themselves before me (hehe), and I hastily killed them to rid my hunts of
any extra piercing damage. Mark also had his hands full with the opposing fiends, but wasn't in
too much damage as he outnumbered them slightly. The death knights of both undead players ran willy-nilly around the
battlefield, healing any wounded fiends with a timely death coil. In the meantime I had lost another huntress, and was
considering retreat if we didn't pull something out of our asses quick.
Mark pulled out that something. Knowing that my huntresses took 200% damage from the
piercing damage of fiends, he decided to right click his forces right on top of Divx. While this
did no harm to the opposing fiends, it scared Divx into retreating. After reviewing the replay I
found this odd, until I realized that maybe he thought we were trying to surround them. In any case,
Sboxl followed his team mate up his ramp, managing to mess up the pathing of two fiends that were coming with him.
Any other unit in the warcraft universe may have had a chance of escaping, but unfortunately fiend pathing is worse than
that of goons. They provided some more experience. We quickly pursued them up the ramp in an attempt to capitalize on the
battle.
The resulting battle played out much like the previous. Sboxl's keeper was again
kept largely out of the action due to my focus fire, and that pesky death knight once again retreated, this time with 64
hp. At this time I saw Divx's damaged death knight towards the left of his base, trying to get around
Sboxl's huntresses and keeper. I rushed in with several huntresses and my warden, and a shadow
strike and lucky glaive ended his pitiful existence. Meanwhile Mark's fiends had done no damage
to our opponent's base, and we again retreated as one due to those nerubian towers. Sboxl and
Divx didn't pursue, considering themselves lucky that they'd survived twice now.
At this point myself, Mark, and Sboxl all pick up a naga witch. A
new hero to TFT, she is an excellent hero sniper with her cold arrows, which slows down both a unit's movement and attack
speed. She can also put in those final points of damage with forked lightning, which does a tremendous amount of damage to
three (3) targets. Combined with my warden's shadow strike, the addition of the naga witch makes for an extremely lethal
combination for killing heroes...(Yeah that's foreshadowing folks).
For some reason or another, Mark now decided to creep the goblin merchant outside of Divx's base. After killing the murlocs stationed there, he proceeded down the ramp where he spotted
Divx's
army. A trailing meat wagon (siege unit) is killed with the aid of frost arrow, but Mark
turned tail and ran
when our opponent's turned on him as one. I had already collected my units in the middle of the map, not knowing that
was the lane Mark would try and retreat down. What followed wasn't pretty: his army was pincered
between my own and the armies of our opponents, and a frost arrow and entangle from Sboxl
finally killed the death knight.
"Hehe, 3 strikes you're out."
Right. With the death knight (not to mention his lovely speed aura) gone, we both raced back towards my wells for healing.
My face turned grim however when we saw them (in a sneaky move) turn to begin assaulting Mark's
base. With Albino sobbing for me
to stay, I smacked him in the face, told him it was my duty to turn this tide, and teleported heroically to the aid of his base.
Right on top of two armies. Crap.
While Mark's teleport-scroll-lacking army sauntered to my rescue, my huntresses and newly trained
mountain giants (yeah I'd been teching) struggled to hang on. Waves of fire and rocks rained down upon my units,
called forth by a newly trained
Pitlord (another buyable hero in TFT) of Divx's. As my huntresses began to collapse around me,
my warden picked up my flag Iwo Jima
like, and swore that this battle wouldn't be lost. Down to one huntress, two mountain giants, and my two heroes, I was
going to make a stand right there damnit.
But then Mark ran up his ramp from behind, his
troops calmly singing the Canadian Anthem as they let loose completely on the exposed flank of our enemies. A shout went up
among my troops at the sight of reinforcements, and with twice the determination we had before we pushed farther into their
ranks.
"FOR VICTOREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
"FOR THE QUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!"
Completely taken aback by Mark's flank attack, Sboxl and Divx lost control of the battle. They managed to kill a mountain giant and several of
Mark's fiends, but with the amount of damage they were taking mounting on both sides, they were forced into a
full retreat. This made it even sweeter, as the huge be-hinds of Mark's fiends blocked the ramp
quite nicely.
The Pitlord, scared out of his mind in all of the confusion of what was once a sure victory, stumbled around the purple
undead base. The things he saw occur; the tearing apart of a fiend by an angry mountain giant, the shattering of a
huntress' skull by an arrow, only increased his fear and desire to escape.
Wait.
He had seen no archers in the night elf army in their battles. Where had that arrow come from? Suddenly he
understood. He turned around quietly (for a Pitlord), saw a brief flash, and
almost smiled. As he looked down at his stomach, he saw an assassin's knife hanging there, its deadly poison already beginning
to spread. As he looked up, a night elf warrior and naga stood there, filling his vision. The naga fit an arrow into her
bow, sighted him, and loosed it. Almost immediately after the Pitlord felt the missile slam into his underbelly.
As he stared on, his life force waning, the distant sound of battle filling his ears, he saw the night elf approach.
With deadly calm, she walked up to the pitlord, wrenched her knife free, and in a flash of movement slit his throat with it.
"Retreat! Retreat!"
The naga shot another arrow at the mountain giant before her, but grimaced at the little effect it had.
Suddenly she saw a night elf Warden run past her into the fray, torn up fiends the only evidence of her passing.
She began to knock another arrow specially for her, but before finishing stiffened over. As she felt her side go numb
her hand brushed an arrow, in her up to the tail feathers.
It took her a moment to realize that she had been shot, but she finally turned towards her attacker. There stood another naga witch, and
she was waving. Confused, she attempted to wave back, but before doing so was smacked into the air by the
mountain giant's fist. She flew above the awful carnage below her, her eyes still locked on the other naga. She closed her
eyes then, realizing those familiar blue symbols being drawn in the air by her counterpart. As a single tear fell down her
cheek, she was blasted through the roof of a nearby crpyt with a surge of lightning.
As the red death knight looked on in awe at the fate of the naga general, he decided that he wanted no more part in this battle.
Screaming otherwordly curses at his undead steed, he raced past the purple crypt fiends before they could attempt to block
his escape. He looked over his shoulder then, to see if there was any pursuit. Had he been in possesion of a heart at the
time, he was sure it would've froze at the sight.
For he saw that damned
Warden chasing him, leaping high over piles of dead bodies, and moving on an intercept course
for him. As the knight's steed accelerated down the hill that had led to that great disaster, his thoughts turned to glee as
he realized that he would escape. When he looked over his shoulder, he had lost sight of the warden. He turned his head
back confidently, and therefore never saw the blink of the warden, who landed a feet behind him. As he galloped off
into the distance, she smiled, drew forth her dagger, and launched it. Having full confidence in her own abilities, she ran
up the hill again towards the battle, as her knife, singing through the air, found the death knight's back.
For those of you who failed to read the previous paragraphs, I killed three of their heroes, and
Mark destroyed their entire army. We took a moment to heal outside his base, saying some prayers for the dead as two
more mountain giants rallied toward us. The amount of bodies that littered the ground in his base was ridiculous. Think
of Breeze's So Much Blood report, um...only bloodier. The picture
can tell you better than I:
|
Late
Game! (It's almost over)
|
As soon as the mountain giants reached us we began to head south, towards the natural to check for an expansion. What we
found was a fairly intact army that our opponents had created during the northern rout. Let's just say leave it at
"Their macro > Jesus'".
Battle lines were quickly thrown out the window as my army surged forward, the heroes of Sboxl's army in plain view. As Mark followed my lead his fiends began to sow
confusion among the enemy ranks, dealing damage while being constantly healed from his statues. In the meantime my hunts
and taunting mountain giants had split Sboxl's forces into two halves, leaving a wide gap for
my Warden and naga to get through. Sensing what was to come, Sboxl tried to run his naga away
before some frost arrows and a shadow strike brought her down.
My Warden's thirst for blood hardly quenched, I turned my
attention toward that keeper that had been harassing us the entire game. Smiling at the thought of his head above my mantle,
I quickly clicked "d" then "f" and brought him into the red with a nice shadow strike and forked lightning. At this point I
wasn't even aware of the battle anymore, but Mark, knowing of my fetish for killing enemy heroes,
kindly took over my forces. His fiends, although still battling, had destroyed all of Divx's lumber
ghouls that he had ferried over from his base, and were still going strong with forked lightning to back them up. Spider
bogies, glaives, ridiculously sized stone fists; you name it, it was flying that battle. Knowing
full well the trouble he would be in if he stole my hero kill, Mark proceeded to lay off the
keeper fleeing before him, instead aiming some forked lightning to finish off some of Divx's fiends.
As the battle began to wind down (there were still a few ghouls fighting my mountain giants :)) I turned my full attention
towards that keeper. Almost out of my range, a lucky frost arrow nailed him in the back, slowing his movements. My Warden,
knowing the game was over, ran past him, knife drawn. And he was dead.
After the battle a rousing "gg" was exchanged by all the players involved. I led the game in overall score, with 7
hero kills. Not bad, but I've done better >:). A great game by Sboxl-Silver and
Aw]Divx, and Mark didn't do too poorly either. I would like to thank my local cable
service for this report, for without them screwing up the line outside, I would've never had enough time to work on this.
Thanks guys! If you have any criticism, constructive or otherwise, or even just an old fashioned flame, please feel free to
mail me at Qacpilot@aol.com. The replay of the match can be found
here.
Love to:
- EldritchEvil for proofreading this report, cleaning up my awful code, offering to do the work with the pictures, and being an EV:N masta. I
assure you any and all mistakes in the report are his fault entirely.
- AlbinoSquirrel, for being a funny guy who never tires of TD.
- Dag, for giving 7's and thinking his knowledge is greater than mine when it comes to LOTR.
- Raters in general.
- Jon, whose constant witticisms bring meaning to my life.
- Xenoxion, who showed me how to make cool lists like the one you're reading now.
- And finally FlavorOfYellow, whose constant anger at my reports brings forth both inspiration and gratification.
As for those of you who were wondering about the title...
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