"Hey... a tip, if you want to get a 10, make sure your report has annoying text color, staged pics, an unrefined look, and is ultra wide. Just helping you out. :)"
-Dabel/EggFooYoung
|
| quick text only of tonight's zeus vs nada ogn match | | | Author: | | | IP: | px1wh.vcXXXX | | Date: | 02/13/04 04:02 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 2, Max: 8, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for Napoleic: 8.0000 |   | Zeus vs Nada on Guillotine:
This is an Ongamenet professional match, played on the 13th of February. This is in the opening group play. For more information on the ongament tournament format, please check out www.teamliquid.net.
The players are Nada, terran, vs Zeus, protoss. Nada is probably the favourite, as he has more tourney wins, and in fact is widely regarded as the best player in Brood War today, and among the best ever. Zeus has been around forever though, has loads of tourney experience, and the map favours protoss, so it should be a very good game.
I watched this game in first person point of view from Nada's view point. This means that I can only see what Nada does. It has a big advantage in terms of me being able to see every click that Nada makes, alllowing me to get right inside his head. It also makes it more exciting, not knowing what the opponent is up to. It does make it a little harder to battlereport though. I'll do my best.
The game was played on Guillotine, a flat desert map. It tends to favour toss because of the lack of significant ramps and levels. It greatly enhances toss's mobility advantage and allows toss to fight on favourable terrain quite easily.
The game opens with Nada at 7 (bottom left) going for a standard depot/rax wallin with gas. Zeus is at the 2 oclock position (top right) and elects to start with 1 zealot first before going goons. On this map that's not such an unusual choice because of the low travel time between mains and the possibility that Nada might not wall in.
Zeus arrives with his first zealot and goon while Nada is just beginning to build his tank. This gives Zeus a good 40 seconds to try to get through the wall.
Nada sends 3 scvs to hold the wallin, repairing the depot and each other as Zeus's zealot attacks the wall and his goon attacks the scvs. After losing 1 scv, Nada's tank finishes and chases away the goons. Zeus had researched range while this was going on, hoping to snag some more free kills, but Nada had researched siege mode and forced Zeus to flee. Because Zeus saw that Nada had gone siege mode he knows that Vultures are out of the question. This opens up 2 big opportunities to Zeus: He can expand very quickly, or he can dt drop without worrying about mines and vultures. Zeus knows that Nada cannot early push him, so he knows that Nada will probably be either doing fac cc or fac port.
Nada suspects a drop of some kind and makes an ebay. He had also elected to go fact port and try a 2 tank drop. Now that Guillotines walls are wide enough to land tanks on, this is a viable opening in tvp. Unfortunately since he revealed his siege mode to Zeus it won't be completely unsuspected.
Nada goes straight east with his first drop ship, intending to hit Zeus's main first. However, Zeus had made a pylon over top of Nada's natural to the east, and the ship flew right over it. Knowing Nada's options, Zeus countered both of them with one excellent move. The pylon not only scouted the drop ship, but had Nada elected to CC first, the pylon would have blocked it from landing, delaying Nada significantly. Excellent play by Zeus.
Now that Zeus sees the ship, Nada obviously cannot drop him, so he just kills the pylon.
I can't see what Zeus is doing but I suspect he is expanding right now.
So does Nada, because he sends his ship around the other way to try to drop Zeus's expansion. I believe that Zeus knows this drop is coming, due to the timing and the fact that it's the obvious play at this point.
Zeus didn't expand right away though. It turned out that he had teched to a DT drop before making his nexus. As Nada's ship heads out north of his main, Zeus unloads a couple of DT's into Nada's main. The first thing they do is attack Nada's under construction expansion cc, delaying him very badly. They try to kill some other stuff, but Nada was fairly well defended with turrets since he had made his ebay so quickly. Zeus is probably expanding now. That will put him a full minute ahead of Nada.
By the time Nada gets to Zeus's natural, the nexus is just finishing. Nada seems to have some indecision and isn't sure what he wants to do. He was probably hoping there would be probes to kill, but Zeus wisely kept them back at his main until after removing the drop ship threat. Nada eventually drops on the wall overlooking Zeus's natural minerals, but Zeus's goons quickly surround and kill both tanks and the drop ship with no losses. Zeus is now astronomically ahead. He is ahead in both Mass and Power, which means that mistake free play from here ensures his victory.
Nada knows he's getting badly raped, and is forced to continue to turtle to stay alive. He walls off the mutual entrance to his main and natural with his barracks and ebay and lands his cc at his nat. Zeus cannot possibly attack such a well defended base, but I'm sure it doesn't really bother him. I presume he's expanding again at this point, possibly twice, since he is so far ahead.
Nada leaves his base with vultures to try to harass Zeus, but Zeus has walled off his mutual entrance to his main and natural with a gateway and cybernetics core. There's no way the vultures can get through.
Nada meanwhile tried another 2 tank drop on Zeus's natural, coming in from the east. Knowing how far behind he is, Nada is using everything he can to try to get back in it. Zeus calmly backs off with his goons though and drops on the tanks with zealots. Nada loses his 2 tanks without doing any damage. Zeus only pulls further ahead as time goes by.
In a routine scanner sweep, Nada uncovers Zeus's big plan. Zeus had only expanded 1 more time, but has also made 3 stargates and a Fleet Beacon. It's a midgame Carrier fork, and Nada has barely any anti air!
Nada definately needs to go on the offensive now, particularly with his vultures, which are eating up supply. Normally vultures are great, but Zeus is almost exclusively goons and carriers. Vultures are weak against goons and useless against Carriers, so Nada needs to get rid of them to clear up supply for goliaths. He of course wants to do as much damage as possible with the one's he's made though.
Nada can't get in the front door so he tries dropping Zeus's main with 4 vultures. Zeus's main is well defended by a cannon though, and Nada's drop ship abandoned the vultures. They are quickly hunted down and destroyed by dragoons without doing damage.
Nada looks like he wants to try a frontal assault. Since Zeus teched to carriers and expanded at the same time, his ground army is probably at it's weakest right now. Nada is still really far behind though, so it's certainly not certain he can win a center fight even though now would be best time so far to try to.
Nada rolls out with about 10 tanks and 12 vultures. Nada is known as a macro king, so this is a very small force by his standards. After moving a short distance, Nada lost his nerve and sieged up just above his main. He is still sending in his vultures though.
Nada has about 18 vultures in total, and is looking for a way to try to do some damage. First he hits Zeus's newest expansion at 3 oclock. Zeus got up some cannons though and sent his goons down there. Rushing around the goons, Nada now takes this opportunity to try to hit Zeus's natural again.
Nada gets about 15 vultures into Zeus's natural while his goons were out of his base. This is a very good play by Nada. Zeus only has his carriers and 2 cannons to kill the vultures, and the carriers don't have many interceptors yet. Nada kills the cannons with about 8 vultures to spare and then kills all of the probes still there. I'm not sure that Zeus was able to save any of them. Nada's vultures weren't going to do him any good in a fight anyways, so trading those 18 in for about 20 probe kills was a huge plus for him. That's the best he could have hoped for given that Zeus's unit choice made his vultures irrelevant.
While that was going on, Nada expanded to the southern 9 oclock base. Now that his vultures are all dead, Nada has a big supply surplus that he quickly fills with Goliaths. He also makes another starport and begins pumping wraiths to help counter the carriers.
From Nada's periodic scanning of Zeus's army, it looks as though Zeus has an active force of 3-6 carriers and 20 or more dragoons, with a handful of high templar in support. Zeus's army is not too strong right now, compared to Nada's, but still more than enough to win a straight center fight and maintain map control.
Zeus lost an observer to a turret at 9, so he now knows about that base. He moves in from the north. Nada scans this movement and tries to ambush Zeus by moving in around him to cut off escape. His plan is to trap the dragoons with his superiour tank force while ambushing the carriers with cloaked wraiths. As the battle begins, Nada scans repeatedly around the battlefield and picks off observers with goliaths and cloaked wraiths. Zeus retreats right away after forcing Nada to lift off and run away his CC. Zeus doesn't want to risk losing his army in a big fight right now when he's so far ahead in power. However Nada did get his tanks around behind and into Zeus's escape route successfully. The goons ignore the tank fire and run around to an alternate escape route, but many of them are killed before they can escape. Meanwhile observers are dropping left and right, and Nada sends in the cloaked wraiths. Zeus had made very many observers though, and Nada was not able to kill them all fast enough. After getting out of tank range, the goons turn and fire on the wraiths. Zeus also gets off a nice psi storm on them. The wraiths drop like flies without being able to kill any carriers, and Nada runs away with the 3 he has left.
Many dragoons died and Nada did get to keep his expansion, but Zeus was so far ahead that that battle counts as a victory. He more than maintained his power edge and didn't lose any carriers. Carrier's get exponentially more powerful as their numbers grow, so Nada failing to get any of them while he had a chance is a major defeat.
At this point I'm sure Zeus expanded again, probably to the other 12 oclock base, the natural to the top left base. He has at least 6 carriers now, and Nada lost almost all of his wraiths. He isn't bothering to replace them either. If he had made a science facility it would be easy to start producing ghosts, but by now it's probably too late and too expensive.
Zeus begins to harass Nada's natural expansion with his carriers, and it looks like he has 7 of them. Nada has only goliaths to stop this force, and he only has about 20 of them. I can't make out the upgrades, but unless Nada is way ahead in upgrades that won't be enough.
Zeus is winning the fight, killing goliaths without losing any carriers. He can't make any headway though, and Nada keeps replacing the goliaths. Zeus pulls back for a while, probably to replace lost interceptors. A scan by Nada confirms that Zeus has expanded to the other 12 base as I suspected.
Rather than head back into combat with Nada at his natural, Zeus has brought his carriers back up and around to 9 again for another hit. Zeus attacks 9 with a bigger army this time, consisting of around 20-25 goons, a couple of archons, back up high templars, and his 7 odd carriers. Nada wasn't able to get a chance to prepare for this attack as before and his tanks and goliaths are now poorly positioned.
The fight is joined but this time Zeus has the better positioning. His high templars get off a lot of really nice storms to break through Nada's tank and goliath defenses, and chase away the reinforcements. 9 crumbles under the onslaught with few losses other than the archons to Zeus.
Nada fights on for a little while longer but the game is over. An excellent start by Zeus with the offensive pylon and dt drop, which enabled him to get a huge edge in power.
|
|
|
|
Home
Forum
Starcraft Tournaments
