Micromanaging Saves the Day

QOTD:

Sakabatou Yellow StarTideRising Purple CPU1 Green CPU2 (Zerg) Red

I start out my anti-zerg start which is barracks, depot, bunker academy. Before I could get to the bunker I notice Star exploring building his barracks near the choke. I modify this idea and rush and SCV to find my own choke. I quickly build a bunker and depot around it to stop rushing zerg. I had just finished my factory attachment when I notice purple being sliced away by a red lurker/zergling rush.

This guy got a rough start to begin with and losses most of his base. He quickly picks up and moves north into a nice little mountain cubby hole. About this time I am getting major rushed by a red/green combo that crushes my expansion. I pull back my Command Center and spare Barracks only to get my Command Center destroyed by enemy forces. The barracks survives fortunitely.

My ally seems to be in hard shape. He has two zerg expansions to his south and east. I am low on resources and have lost my chief expansion. I do a quick scan and find a second expansion area on a mountain ridge to the east of my main. I pull everything I have and litteraly stop all productions until I get 400 resources to build a second Command Center. Once complete I barracade myself in with missle turrents and bunkers for protecting against queens.

I finish just in time to run out of minerals in my main. I scoop up all my SCV's and drop them at my expansion like nothing happened. Things are getting tough though. Zergling rushes can't get past my 8 tanks guarding my choke but the air threats get thicker. It was here I begin to start a fleet of battlecruisers.

I have to pause here and thank Star. He didn't nearly get destroyed early on in the game. He stuck in and pulled back. If he had quit, it never would have gone as well as it did. He locked himself up tight and let nothing inside. I gave him some quick advice about bunkers but beyond that, he locked down his base and the east ridge above a red expanse. This was the only thing that stopped red from breaking into my main and cutting off my air supply.

Resources were dead. I had only 3.5k in minerals and enough gas to last a while. I build 12 cruisers and extra defense on my upper ridge. The scourge were the biggest problem. I would move my fleet in and knock some distance on the green main. The snotty bastards kept hitting me hard with scourge. I knew it was just me out here against two armies... I had to do this right.

I pulled back and repaired my ships. If I hadn't done this, I never would have made it. This was where the game changed hands. I did a scanner sweep on all chief expanses and found the Zerg where dry. It was all about who owned who. Once I had my ships repaired I went into finish off green's main. They had given me the most problem in the game so far. It was like a hot knife through swiss cheese (inside joke). The problem was red attacked in the middle of all this and knocked my 8 tanks down to 2. I rebuilt the walls I had in place and knocked them back all that I could.

Again, I pulled back and repaired my ships. I knew it was the last oppertunity to do so. Once I was ready, I let the captains kiss their wives or, um, well, you know and sent them out. It was a rain of fire. I would scan in advance, find the spore colonies and Yamato them. Once the anti-air structures were gone, I sent them in to clean it up.

Me, crushing the third of five expanses.

I did this task for about three expanses and my ally who was appologizing for doing nothing but cleaning up his old main's location. He never fully realized just how much he held back the zerg for me. To compensate, he unloaded a nice load of marines into the last of the expansions and cleaned out the rest of the hive.

Lessons Learned:

1: Expansions are nice, micromanaging is better, Micromanaging with expansions is best.

2: Choke points are easier to defend but still can fall to the enemy.

3: I can win a 2vs2 cpu game with someone not as good as me (who isn't good in the first place)