First off, a warning: I was playing in this game, so I didn't take any screenshots and my memory of events might not be perfect. I tend to concentrate solely on the game, taking time off only to swear at my partner occasionally. That said, on to the report.

This was to be the first game of a best of three series, and since we had trouble deciding on the maps, darkhawke decided that mark4 and JV could choose the first map, m@sta and I could choose the second map, and darkhawke would pick the third if it proved necessary. This game was thus played on their map - Dire Straits.

M@sta and I had a plan - we were both going to drop mark4, and then he was going to continue dropping while I went power templar. We had tried this plan once before, only he powered and I dropped. It didn't work very well in that game, because I am more of a powerer so I expanded instead of concentrating on dropping units. We still won that one, but it was with Felix[TLK], who would not beat us in a 3v2 with stratus and crexis on his side. ^^ Anyway, that was our plan. They went protoss/terran, as we expected.

Darkhawke created the game on homosexual dire (a dire 2v2 UMS map where one side is "Dire Gay Men" and the other is "Dire Straight Men"), and m@sta and mark4 had the Dire Straight Men spots. They argued about who had to be gay, until I invited m@sta to come be gay with me. :O We got settled in, booted BB-Chargon, who also wanted to watch and gave the oh so helpful information of "thorn and m@sta < JV and mark4", and off we went.

M@sta started in the upper right, and I was in the upper left. It was at this point that I noticed how fast the game was going, and found out that darkhawke had set it to fastest. I spent the early portion of my build order divided equally between producing stuff and bitching about the speed, and as a consequence I was going slower than m@sta. I went pylon gateway cycor pylon robofacility pylon robo support bay pylon, pumping probes and dragoons pretty much constantly. M@sta was going 2 robofacilities, as planned.

I dropped two dragoons off at the lower left spot, and went to see what I could see. It turned out to be JV, and he had a tank somewhere in his base, so I didn't press the attack. One dragoon ended up in red, and the other one's hull was fully intact. I left the dragoons on his island in the northern corner so that anything he tried to pull on me would at least be harassed by my dragoons. They also killed the one marine he sent there for apparently the same purpose. :)

I had a reaver and a few other dragoons by now, and started on my observatory. Mark4 likes his janky DT/Reaver drop, and since we planned to double drop him we would need some detection. I dropped off a reaver and a dragoon out of his site range, while m@sta decided to try to attack cannons with his shuttle and got one reaver eaten by a DT, while the other retreated in the damaged shuttle. I sent my shuttle back to pick up two more dragoons, and sent a newly completed observer to mark4's base to keep DT away from my guys. m@sta had found another reaver, and dropped his two right next to my guys, even though a high templar was in plain sight. I started crawling my reaver away, and managed to avoid most of the psi storm - m@sta's reavers were right next to each other, and took the brunt of it. I kept attack with my reaver and dragoon, but mark4 was eventually able to fight them off when I moved my reaver out of my observer's sight range, and JV dropped two tanks in mark4's peon line and sieged them, which prevented anything more from happening.

We could have had the game won right there if m@sta had continued dropping before JV had come, but he decided to expand to the eastern island. *sigh*, so much for the plan. I expanded to the western island and started 3 stargates and heavy observer production. m@sta did get 6 reavers in 3 shuttles with speed though, and with my observers scouting, managed to shut down an expansion attempt by JV at the southern island, and another by mark4 on the western middle island. M@sta took the northern expansion during this time, while I concentrated on getting upgraded corsairs and Dweb.

Johnny Vegas decided to drop a pair of tanks, some marines, and an SCV on my western island in a hostile takeover attempt. I simply couldn't stand for this, so I dropped a dragoon and then a reaver right next to the tank. The dragoon's valient sacrifice enabled me to manually target the marines for destruction, seeing as how the tank wasn't a significant threat at that time. m@sta decided to help out anyway though, and dropped two reavers that managed to kill my reaver and one of my pylons, and nothing else. JV and mark4 might have notice a brief flurry of cursing as I momentarily forgot to hold CTRL down when I pressed enter to bitch at my partner. Actually at various points throughout the game they might have noticed something like "pkt:7Thorn.pud: fucker," "pkt:7Thorn.pud: moron," or "pkt:7Thorn.pud: FUCKIN DROP." My allied chat control was a little bit off in the game, but I can assure you that all these were directed at m@sta, who knows that I don't mean it. :D

Our opponents finally managed to grab an expansion with a few dragoons and some random M&Ms dropped in the middle of the southern expansion. m@sta had 6 reavers and they had like 4 dragoons and 8 M&Ms, but he fled anyway because he is a weenie. ^^ I think he managed to lose one shuttle to the dragoons, as he futilely circled the island, looking for a place to land that wouldn't result in him winning the battle.

They didn't stop with one expansion though. Mark4 took the western middle island quite quickly after this, with a force similar to the one used on the first island. JV was using wraiths and vessels to hunt my observers, which is a good idea but generally futile, as the time spent is worth more than the cost of the observer by far. By the time m@sta got around to dropping his reavers (now 4) there, mark4 had dropped 7 dragoons off on the eastern middle island, which m@sta decided to fly right over, losing both his shuttles. He was now also going carrier tech though, and with 2 expansions to my one he would be powerful even if he continued to manage his troops in this manner.

I had about 3 carriers now, at 2/1/2 upgrades. I also had 13 corsairs with 250 energy each, so I decided to attack the western middle island. I dwebbed basically the northern fourth of the island, but lost two of my three carriers to lockdown and psi storm anyway. I told m@sta to drop, so he went to the top of the island with a shuttle and just sat there for a couple seconds and then left, and complained that they wouldn't unload. He later came back and narrowly missed having his shuttle locked down - if lockdown didn't have such a long firing animation, we would have been without two reavers in the battle. M@sta finally comes in with his 12 carrier fleet (I was like wtf did that come from?), and with my upgraded carriers coming 3 at a time along with my virtually limitless supply of dweb, we are able to exterminate that island. During that fight mark4 must have used psi storm a dozen times and JV lockdown a half-dozen, but with my targetting the spellcasters first thing and m@sta's sheer numbers, that wasn't enough. M@sta lost several carriers to psi storm because he had them bunched up - I lost maybe one, because I had mine spread out. But hey, when you've got his economy who cares. During this battle m@sta reinforced his carriers with new recruits directly from his island, and he apparently didn't notice that they were running right over mark4's group of seven dragoons, still stationed on the eastern middle island. I personally saw two carriers explode there, and I'm sure there could have been more. Oh well.

We heard a "Nuclear Launch Detected" and scattered our carriers, mine to my island and m@sta to his northern island. He yelled at me about my corsairs which were still sitting where we thought the nuke was going to land, but I had found it on the southern end of my island. Silly terrans, trying to nuke across water. I stopped mining for a bit and moved all my men to the northern edge of the island, and the nuke ended up killing 2 photon cannons. I think I will take that trade. I sent my guys back to work and got on with the ethnic cleansing.

After we cleared off that island m@sta decided to have his revenge on mark4 by taking his 8 or so carriers and killing off all the dragoons there. There were apparently no templar there, so he didn't lose. =) I went dweb crazy on JV's southern expansion which was protected by photon cannons from mark4, and then sent my force of about 6 carriers at it. JV sent in a dropship with about 5 ghosts, and dropped them all off on the island. Knowing that they could be a huge pain in the arse, I queued up my carriers to attack them, then put a disruption web over them and moved my corsairs right on top of them. My plan worked, as not one single lockdown hit my carriers. m@sta was done killing dragoons now (though he didn't touch the expansion) and came to help me kill the southern expansion off, which we did.

At this point mark4 had his one expansion, while JV had none. M@sta still had his two, and I had mine along with a newly created expansion on the middle western island. Instead of giving JV a chance to build back up, we decided to take out his main. I attacked with my carriers, and noticed three ghosts which I targetted with my carriers. They didn't get any lockdowns off which I thought was odd, but some were probably too low on mana. he killed a pair of my carriers with cloaked wraiths before I remembered to send my corsairs (with 3 observers tagging along) into the fight, but other than that he didn't put up much resistance. mark4 dropped some templar, but it wasn't anywhere near enough to stop us. JV started whining that we leave him a building, but when we cleared his main he hadn't died. YOU NO GOOD MANNER PLAYER JOHNNY_VEGAS. Regardless he was basically out of the fight, and all that was left was taking down mark4.

This part of the game is a little hazy in my memory, but I think we killed mark4's expansion, and then m@sta killed an attempted expansion on the southern island while I went back and killed JV's attempt at rebuilding - he had like one command center and one barracks. He still wasn't eliminated, but he was at least pissed off. ;) At this point m@sta and I were sure that there were no expansions anywhere on the map, either established or new. We had killed off a few of mark4's carriers too, so we weren't
quite sure what tech he was doing.

My observer, which had been sitting in mark4's base the whole game, was killed by some brutal photon cannons. No, not just some. A TON. mark4 was completely contained in a 2v1, but he was trying to turtle a win out or something, with at least 15 photon cannons and a half-dozen templar around them. This from a guy who was forcing us to play only one game instead of the full series because he had to get up early the next day. :P All the cannons were north of his nexus though, so m@sta and I took our carriers south and attack moved north. I started dwebbing the cannons as we were losing interceptors, and with the way the cannons were built I put down two dwebs that disabled three cannons each, and a few more for twosies. I queue-attacked the templar, and there was really nothing he could do. JV complained that his siege tanks (remember the ones from the beginning? ^^) weren't getting any kills, so I dropped a probe near them to appease him. We killed most of mark4's stuff, and with "gg"s they left the game and darkhawke declared m@sta and me the victors.

No, neither of us so much as built a citadel of adun in that game. Templars are janky. :D