Never Say Die....Never Give Up (Part I)

What would you do if your plan to drop your opponents base fails? What about what happens if the enemy devises a plan to counter your drop? Would you quit? Stop your strategy and switch to a new plan of action? What happens if the enemy devises another plan to counter your new strategy again? The 3rd game (shown in 2 parts) shows how two wrongs make a right and how persistency pays.

The game starts off with 2 terrans (FF and Druggy) vs 2 zergs (Pip and Raz) in the map known as Sin Gaema Gowen. FF messaged Druggy to mimic his style and just drop at the Zerg base that was most prone to a drop.

The Planning Stage

Phase 1: FF begins to gather as many troops as he can. Each troops were meticulously chosen for a do or die drop. It was so meticulously planned that the support troops were placed in one Dropship while the infantry was placed on another......


Phase 2 (The Trap) : Unknown to both FF and Druggy, Pip had anticipated their strategy. He knew that the Terraners were planning to drop at the far left of his base. Fortunately, there was a squad of mutalisks ready to take out anything that tries to drop into his base.


Phase 3 (Interception and the Drop of Death) : On the mid way to Pips base, the 4 terran dropships were ambushed in mid air by the mutalisks. The mutalisks were successful to take out a dropship containing half a dozen of marines but could not finish of the remaining dropships. With this to their advantage, the troops all dropped off at Pips base. Unfortunately for them , Pips, teammate had a plan to wipe out the remaining forces of FF and Druggy.

Authors note: Dear Readers, in case you are wondering what I am talking about, please refer to the title "Zerg Lurker Egg" in the picture....



Phase 4 (Wipeout) : The Lurker eggs were hatched, and the Mutalisk were ready to take out the remaining dropship survivors. With this in mind, Pip and Raz only shared one thought "Charge!"


To be continued......

The 2nd Game : The Return of The King, The Fall of Druggy.....

In the 419 skirmishes, there existed a player by the name of Druggy. Whenever Druggy played as Protoss, everyone would try and stop him from teching. Reason? Druggy had this signature move called the "Smart Storm" (as named by Pip). Druggy was a normal player at most when he was not teching. Simple troops, lots of defence and he tries to spend his resources like any normal player would.

However, once Druggy teched up, Starcraft becomes known as Castcraft. Reason? Utilizing the powers of the High templar psionic storms and that of the Dark Archons maelstorms, Druggy combines both their powers to create havoc in the battlefield.

The 2nd game shows the fall of Druggy when he fought against Pip, the King of Massers. After his last defeat from FF, Pip was determined to win no matter the cost....

Authors note: It will be difficult to show the game in detail with this blog as there were 2 other players involved. So for the sake of the readers, we will be shown how both sides (in midgame) prepared themselves prior to and after the battle.

Druggy's Preparation:-

Phase 1 : Druggy started out with 2 Archons, A Dragoon and 2 High Templars at the ledge of his base. The Templars were placed on the ledge so as to give them a better view to psi-storm any who tries to attack.

Phase 2 : Druggy adds a Dark Archon after sacrificing 2 of his Dark Templars. A Shuttle was prepared to provide even greater line of sight on the top ledge of the map. Should Pip tried to drop and siege Druggy's base, all he had to do was just mind- control his dropship and the occupants in it....

Phase 3 : To add a little bit more terror in Pip's army, Druggy added another Dark Archon and a High templar.

Pip's Preparation:-

Phase 1: Lots of tanks...Pip had to make sure he can carry out a "siege storm" of his own.

Phase 2: Knowing that the Protoss High Templar will be utterly defenceless after they utilize the psi storms, what Pip needed was something quick to wipe the High Templar before they can gain more energy to unleash another storm. For this, the Terran Vultures which were suitable for wiping out infantry, was built.

Phase 3: Just in case the first squad was wiped out by the High Templars, a second squad of machines would be needed to continue on sieging the Protoss so that their shields and mana won't be replenished.


Phase 4: Finally, to seal Druggy's doom, a Science Vessel would also be needed to EMP all Templars, Archons and Dark Archons so that all would be left standing between Pip's victory is the sound of the Protoss troops being vanquished.

The Battle Stage.

Battle Stage 1: Pip begins by messaging to his teammate, Raz, to help "soften" Druggy's troops by forcing him to unleash his spells. Druggy manage to stop Raz cold with his spells (as was expected by Pip).


Battle Stage2: The remaining troops of Raz, (3 hydras) and the first squad of Pip's troops moves in for the kill.


Battle Stage4: In a state of panic, Druggy unleashes several Psionic storms. But Pip had a gambit here as the tanks had a longer range and an armor that could withstand at least one psi-storm. While Druggy had wiped out 3 tanks, there were at least 6 more tanks waiting outside his base.

At this time, the High Templars were out of energy because of the heavy psi-storming done earlier, and the Dark Archons were out of energy because of the maelstorming done to Raz's troops.


Battle Stage 5 ( The Fall of Druggy) : Pip's troops moved in to the base, ignoring all the casters and begin sieging and wiping out all of Druggy resource line and the remaining troops in the base.


Author's note: A good game played by Pip. Superb massing skills (as always) , anticipated every single move of his opponents, and the appropriate safeguards were used to ensure victory.

The 1st game: FFl v Pip

GAME 1: FF v Pip
Map: Sin Gaema Gowen

Players	Race	Starting position in map
Freefrag ("FF")	Zerg	12
Pipboy ("Pip")	Protoss	6

Authors note: A game to show that when playing Starcraft, a Zerg sunken can beat a Protoss Sunken anytime.... Also a game to show whether you should play either honorably or evil, but never both.....

The game starts up with FF opening with his ala-trademark style " fast expansion" outside his natural. Pip, having started off by scouting with his probe soon found his opponent's expansion. Seeing his opponent expanding gave Pip an idea that he wanted to try for so long.

It was at that moment, a darkness emerged and engulfed the honorable exterior of Pip. "Ooo...FF is expanding. good....good....." Pip thought. Skillfully, he moves his probe unseen by FF's troops. And then.....

"Zwark!" The sound of an evil tactician is born!

Note the mini-map: See how close the canons are build to FF's base?

FF, being unaware of the impending doom of the cannons, went on building his expansion. With great care, the creep slowly covered the surrounding ground with new born larvae popping out of the hive. "Good" FF thought. This will serve as a sieging ground to start his sieging against Pip. But wait! what was that sound?

Note the pic: See how much EVEN CLOSER the canons are build to FF's base?

FF notices that Pip did the unthinkable- a dark tactic!!!

The sight of the first cannot began to glow when FF began to notice that there was a probe near the proximity of his base.

“Damn it”. FF thought. He has to think of something quickly before the photon cannon is finished warping.

He then remembered a game he won when he played with Druggy (to be told at a later chapter). Quickly, using an idle drone, he morphed it into a creep colony. Now, in terms of building tiers, a creep colony had to be built first before it can be changed into a sunken colony. Therefore, there were 2 building tiers that to needs to be achieved before a sunken colony could attack. However, from his game with Druggy, FF knew that a sunken colony would have a faster build time and more hit points (“HP”) than a cannon. The creep from the sunken colony would also prevent the Protoss pylon influence to grow. Even if the build time was slow also, there was no way that a cannon could deal more damage than a sunken.

“Success!” FF gleefully thought when the cannon was defeated by the sunken. However, his victory was short lived when he realize Pip had already a dozen Zealots waiting at the front door of his expansion. Not only that, while the sunken colony had stopped the growth of cannon surrounding the base, there were still the other cannons to deal with.

“Wait a minute….Pip just started to learn his dark tactics…how could an honorable player like him have massed troops and build cannons at the same time? There must be some struggle with the dark and light inside of Pip” He thought.

True enough, there was indeed a struggle with the dark and light forces residing within Pip. “Hmm….I must use this to my advantage” thought FF. Fortunately, there was enough troops in the expansion to defend against the zealot rush and the cannons, being the stationery objects they are, can’t move without the sphere of influence of a Pylon. FF smiled. He knew what to do. All he had to do was just wait…..

“Hmm…..what to do ? What to do? My cannons are on the north-east of FF’s base. My Zealots are on the south west of his base.” Shall I attack or shall I just wait? If I wait, all FF has to do is amass his army and just either breakthrough my army or cannons” thought Pip.

“Oh ! I know! I’ll attack that sunken colony, that way I can continue to build more cannons.” Skillfully using his macro abilities, Pip highlights a dozen Protoss Zealots and have them attack the sunken colony.

However, FF had several troops waiting to defend the sunken at the cost of their lives. The Zerglings served as wonderful meat shields against the Protoss Zealots despite having a 35 hit points only. At the same time also, the sunken was giving the severest punishment to all that comes within the proximity of the creep.

“BWAHAHAHA!!!” the game was echoed with the triumphant laughter of FF

All that remains now was to decimate the remaining force of Pip. With the huge amount of resources gathered from the surviving expansion, FF had amassed an immeasurable amount of zerglings.

The remainder of the game is best illustrate by the following pics when FF zerglings hammered Pip's entrance:-