The Feared 2v2 Tournament - Round 1

Seer-the-feared and STD-Braveheart vs [TG]Snikch and [TG]Ishamael

The Feared, a rather well known clan on battle.net, was running a 2v2 tournament. I decided to lend my considerable experience as a tournament official (of various kinds) to the effort, and refereed three games. There were thirty-two teams signed up, but many of them didn't show; quite a few unregistered teams were thus let in, so most of the matches were played anyway. This is one of those matches.

The map: Lost Temple

The races: Seer-the-feared Protoss, STD-Braveheart Protoss, [TG]Snikch Protoss, [TG]Ishamael Random (Terran)

Ishamael was having some trouble with his mouse, so he didn't get to select his preferred protoss. He asked for a restart, but as discussions seemed to be going nowhere Snikch told him to just play with it, and he did.

As you can see, Snikch and Ishamael are white and red in the upper right, and Braveheart and Seer are blue and teal in the lower left. Seer scouts out Ishamael after building his first gateway, so the only person who randomed was discovered. Snikch and Ishamael scout soon after, and finally everyone has met everyone else. Everyone was going with a 2 barracks/gateway build order, so nothing tricky was going to happen anytime soon. Might as well attack then, right?

Wrong. All the players sit in their bases for a lot longer, with team turqoise going core/assimilator and seer also getting a forge, and team pink going hard infantry, with Ishamael getting a refinery during this time - It's a lot easier to support two barracks marines than 2 gateway zealots, after all. Finally, team pink decides to initiate the battle.

8 marines and 6 zealots start to make their way down to Seer's base...

But 3 of the zealots decide to go on a peon hunt halfway
across the map. Snikch notices this rather quickly though, so not much time is lost. The force makes it way to near Seer's mineral expansion before Braveheart starts sending out his zealots to help for the coming attack.

Too late! As you can see the zealots aren't even halfway there by the time the attack comes, and what an attack it is. Poor seer has been teching rather hard, and the cannons aren't done warping in yet. He's in a lot of trouble, and will need some help from his probes and his ally if he hopes to survive this first attack.

Neither come in time, and his choke is overrun. It's going to be tougher for Seer to get help from Braveheart now, because his opponents can hold the ramp if they so choose.

They choose not to, instead attempting to cause as much damage as possible. Braveheart's troops finally show up, and with a great rallying cry of "FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOM" and the support of Seer's probes, finally manage to put an end to the attack.

Unfortunately for them, reinforcements were on the way. Once again Braveheart's troops are slow to arrive to help his ally...

...and this time it proves fatal. (That is Braveheart's photon cannon, btw.) Snikch implores Braveheart to stay and finish the game instead of quitting with his ally, and Braveheart obliges.

Knowing that a 2v1 gets progressively harder as you allow both opponents to build up, Braveheart decides to attack Ishamael with a lone dark templar, praying that he can cause significant damage before being detected. Ishamael's troops are stationed away from his lone turret for detection, so Braveheart successfully penetrates Ishamael's detection-free main. Ishamael does, however, have a comsat station. Ish hastily tries to throw up a turret at his main, but the SCV building it is cut down by the dark templar. Ishamael tries to run his SCVs away, but with ingenius DT placement this is made all but impossible:

(As a bonus, you can let the kiddies play "Where's
Zeratul" in that picture.)

Ishamael runs his marines up and prepares to comsat, but he has already lost quite a few SCVs. He stims his marines, and attacks, but the dark templar just runs out of the comsat range, with 57 hps left. After waiting a while, the DT comes back for revenge, and chases marines south of Ishamael's command center...

And right into the detection range of the turret that another SCV completed. Crisis averted. Braveheart was pretty much gone at this point - it was just a matter of how his opponents chose to finish him. Team TG decides to do it in style.

They start by containing Braveheart at his ramp with a large force of zealots, dragoons, marines, and medics...

But before they can enact the second phase in their plan,
Braveheart drops a single reaver in on Ishamael. This proves
somewhat unsuccessful though, as the Reaver is killed by a pair of tanks after destroying only around 8 SCVs. This is cost effective (especially when considering the net effect of SCV's lost mining time), but not enough to turn the game in any real manner.

He also ran his shuttle right across Snikch's dragoons - well, at least we can be pretty sure he wasn't maphacking. ;)

Finally, we get to see the second part of the TG plan. A few tanks start shelling Braveheart's cannons at his natural's choke, and eventually also the cannons he built on his cliff in a failed attempt to ward off such an attack. Ishamael drops some medics onto the cliff to spot for the tanks, and I hear a thump followed by a whir. What could that be?

Oh my god! It is! Someone actually researched Optical Flare!

With his defenses weakened by the tanks, Braveheart was wide open for a massive assault, which Snikch provided.

Braveheart's templar fought valiently...

...but under the might of Snikch's army he was forced to
concede, with a gracious "gg".

Winners:

[TG]Ishamael and [TG]Snikch

Hope this worked... That preview thing is really messed up.