"The units march in a single file which would have been comical under different circumstances, but lives are at stake and jokes should not be made. Ever."
- mattzarella's Good Old Fashioned Fun
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| Soul of the Samurai | | | Author: | | | IP: | XXXX | | Date: | 07/27/99 01:07 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 2, Max: 9, Min: 9
Lifetime Rating for Heartcutter: 7.5238 |  | Map: Lost Temple (Ghaaa! Aargh! Temple again!)
Heartcutter: Terran 12:00 (Ghack! Ick! Can't get that second add on!)
Stimmed`Angel: Toss 9:00 (Yuck, Ack! Best starting position, and Toss to boot!)
So I grab a quick game during a work break. Sigh! Can only get into another temple game. And I can't even have a beer at my desk! Not even a Kirin or Asahi.
I do a standard build of 8 depot, Rax, Rax, depot x3, acad.
Deon does a stand-up job of recon. He broke a tackle at the ramp, did an end-around past two other Zels, busted into the peon line and came back with the info. Dual gate with gas before cyb core. 3 zels.
What does that mean?
It means a conservative build. He can be flexible.
So Deon comes home. And he brings his 3 Zel friends behind him. Lucky for me, I've built a bunker at my ramp. We end up heavily damaging one Zel and chase away the other 2. Protoss has a lot to learn about honor.
I begin an ebay, my new CC, turret at the exp and hordes of marines and some meds. He does very minor harassment with some DT. Little did I know until later, that he'd already expanded to 6:00. During the lull, I happily massed, tech'ed and expanded. Took my natural. My troops practiced their Kempo.
I went attacking 6:00 with a not-quite charged up comsat, and took a force of M&M down there. Sure enough, some DT ninja came along and tried to spoil the party. I had enough for 1 scan, and managed to vape 1 DT. We arrive down to the 6:00, and that's when a Psistorm cut loose and nailed a bunch of marines.
DT no nothing of honor. They are cowards.
No sweat. You know what I do next? That's right. I try and hit it again. When my comsat reached the magical number of 30 (It's not a magical number, really), I send down another group of 12 M&M and a tank. Sure enough, I get ambushed again. I comsat and see 3 DT and a zel. My well disciplined marines and tank take down the offending troops and proceed into range. I siege up and begin smashing a cannon when a new DT pops out. No scan available.
All of my samurai are going to die. It is the way. I stim and run into his fledgling peon line and proceed to teach the Protoss the error of his ways. The tank explodes. My marines are ankle deep in golden metallic shards of probes. As the last of the probes exploded, so did the last of the marines.
They fought hard. They died well. But their souls are restless. They must not have died in vain.
So I sent another group into the meatgrinder at 6:00. This was another group of 12 with a couple of scvs and 2 tanks.
Jumped by ninjas again. I decide to pull out this time. We head over to 3:00 and set up camp with a bunker, 2 tanks and a tower. The new CC is already en route (with instructions to immediately build a new comsat). I instruct my other CCs to build 5 SCVs each, and route them to the new expansion. This is the best thing to do when you can't Maynard.
By our ancestors, the 6:00 expansion must die.
So with another brave band, and a couple of suicidal drop pilots, we make for 6. I scan and see a bunch of zels and 4 templar. Really messy. Time for divine wind.
Our souls are prepared for the journey beyond. How is yours?
Kamakaze! I unload the dropships in the midst of the zealots and templar. Insane? Yes. Foolish? No.
He storms my dropships. And his zealots. And his templar.
Everyone who did not die in the assault, died in the Psistorm. I lost 12 marines. He lost 4 templar and 4 zealots. We died with honor
So I send another crew down to 6:00. He hasn't had the free resources to replace the dead probes, and consequently, when I get there, there are very few of them around. Another DT appears and the coward is quickly vaped. This time was the last time I would have to visit 6:00. Everything was destroyed except for a a cannon on tthe far side. I frankly did not want to spill any more valiant blood here.
At this point he stages a counterattack on my 3:00. Corsairs come D-webbing, Zels and Goons come in for cleanup.
Everyone jumped out of the webbed bunker and engaged the toss. I immediately routed reinforcements from my main to 3:00 and brought the samurai from 6:00. I began to float the CC away from the fight, when my samurai arrived and swung the battle.
I, of course, expanded during this fight to the 3:00 2nd natural. Ghosts were also coming online. The light shall vanquish the dark.
Hell is a very big place. Big enough for me to send his entire army there.
Now it was just cleanup. To sum up, I proceeded to his 2nd natural and set up house. I danced away from a couple of storms, got hit by one or two, and proceeded into his main. A few lockdowns later (including a carrier), the game was mine.
And so, there was peace once again.
--
Excerpt from the Book of Heartcutter
Detailed Terran operational briefing: The Protoss Conflict
Fighting against toss is a challenge that requires strict mental preparation.
Chapter 1: You can allow Protoss 1 expansion. Never more.
Carriers are indeed a bad thing to face. Terran have no easy counters to them. Accept this. If you allow multiple expansions, you will have to deal with mass carriers. Do not let it come to this.
Chapter 2: Do not fear DTs. Cure them.
A Toss player rushing to DTs has a number of effective options to use against a terran player. He can have DT before you have tanks, so respect this. There are only 2 true ways it can mess you up; catch you without detection, or contain you. If you can have base detection and yet still expand, you have won the DT war. Understand this. DTs become fairly unimportant if you can play to 'cure' their effectiveness.
Chapter 3: Psistorm is out there. Take precautions.
The Bunker/Turret/Tank is the most effective way to prevent massive damage by Psistorm. Use this at expansions as well as tank pushes, as well as turbo newbie'ing any expansion. It is usually strong enough to allow you to route additional troops to save an expansion if it's under attack.
Chapter 4: Know how you will win. Then go and win.
It is about knowing the way. I have not beat any truly good Protoss player with just tanks and marines. It has always come down to using ghosts. Continually build toward these, always moving forward and teching to get the lockdown army is crucial to victory (3/3 is also very good as well). Just by making sure that you don't lose until you hit ghosts. Your superior expansions will usually grant you the win.
Chapter 5: Respect the law of diminishing returns. Also respect it's inverse. Both apply to playing Terran vs. Toss.
The law of diminishing returns states that you gain less of a value for each additional unit you add. If you have 1 car in your garage, great. If you have 5 cars, you'll have problems because of the upkeep, and the limited usefulness. And you could have actually gotten by with just 1, and spent the cash you saved on a house. This is aimed particularly at the Wraith. Having 1 Wraith is fantastic, as it can do so many things (scouting, shuttle interdiction, cleaning up a reaver in your base). Even if it dies, you can always build another. Having 5 wraiths opens yourself up to corsairs, storms, mass cannons, mass goons. And wouldn't you rather have 1 wraith, 1 CC and 4 SCVs than have just 5 Wraiths. Usually, yes. Almost certainly on land maps.
The inverse applies to things like money, water and sex. It's nice to have lunch money. It's nicer to have a fat paycheck. It's even nicer to own the profits from Star Wars Phantom Menace. Granted, diminishing marginal utility kicks in eventually, but typically, the more you have, the better things become. This is also true in the case of Starcraft. Marines become more powerful the more you add. Same with expansions. I can't imagine a Toss player fearing a single marine, but try attacking him with waves of 80 and see how they feel about it.
Chapter 6: You'll win some, and you'll lose some. Just make sure you learn something from the losses.
I can't stress this enough. I play starcraft and refine my build orders. And you know what? I lose some games. I lose them by trying out new strategies and builds and I learn a whole lot about my game this way. Some of my strats are pretty tough. Some are crappy. But having a selection of strategies allows me to be flexible and keeps the game fresh for me. That is probably the best part of playing terran. Strats such as nuking your own dropship to hide the dot, or dropping firebats in the enemy peon line, or even nuking your own floating CC to kill the attacking enemy troops is the essence of playing terran. Knowing that you can come back from hardships that would kill a Prot or Zerg player makes it all the more fun.
Another thing is that you want the minimize the amount of times you need to be a prick. You're gonna lose some of your games. Don't be a jerk about it. Learn something and go on. With Terran, you're gonna lose a lot of games, but then you're pretty much going to stop losing. Until that time, be a good sport. Thank your opponent for the game then move on. Berating or flaming your opponent does very little good. Yes, I know there are some total bastards out there, and some do deserve it. Just keep it to a minimum.
You'll also know when you've mastered Terran, because you'll feel like you have. Do Zerg players feel like they've master Starcraft because they can 4-pool you? Some do, that's for sure. When you have found 'the way' with Terran, you will be nearly unstoppable. The trick is, that it will take a whole lot of work to get there.
Good luck, and I hope you enjoyed reading it. Be the Samurai.
-Heartcutter
| | Battle Shots! | 
Deon is THE MAN!! Got the info and got outta there! He gets two weeks of leave for that manouver.
Siege. Unsiege. Move. Siege. Fighting that waskly D-Web.
Carrier eh? Meet Casper.
Dancing around storm. Sometimes it works...
and sometimes it doesn't. Btw: It took 4 storms to finally nail those troops.
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