It's 2v2 with PEG again!
Game 4 - thefourthman (T) and nilhaus (T) on Scorched Haven
We'd tweaked our strategy to be a bit better, we think, although we realized later that it doesn't work against certain opponents. The new idea was for me to 7 pool, cripple them early, while PEG hid a proxy pylon near or even in their base for a 4 warpgate rush following mine.
Unfortunately, if you look back at the whole Game 4 thing just above that last paragraph, there are two very, very important letters to note as to why my 7 pooling failed in this game. If they're not outright obvious to you, they should be. You see, Scorched Haven has a really, really small ramp. Got it yet? Yep, they were both walled off and I couldn't get in.
I power droned and transitioned into banes, while PEG continued his 4 gate stalker army building. We then both took our nats. PEG popped out an observer while I started transitioning towards mutas.
Then his observer spotted my archnemesis. Thors.
I immediately cancelled my spire and began pumping out one metric fuckton of lings to deal with them, hoping they'd do the nitwit thing and not use scvs to repair them mid-battle. Without us having any air units, the thors would be mostly useless. They were also going bio and seige tanks, something my banelings would chompchompchomp happily on.
They then threw BCs into the mix. I decided now would be a good time to throw down that spire again and build a few corruptors, however, I wouldn't get the chance because shit went down right then and there. We pushed across the map knowing that letting them turtle would be a badthing. We swooped in, my lings ate their thors, my banes busted down one of their walls. In the end, they lost both BCs, 4 thors, 2-3 tanks, and a ton of marines. I had a few speedlings left over, which is when I got clever.
In the middle of the gigantic fray that was going on, I morphed my speedlings into banelings, rolled into their expansion, and blew up their mineral line. PEG continued to just curbstomp. One of them tried to hide a command center which I spotted, and it was over.
+30 points!
Game 5 - rndm (T) and zarthur (R) on Monlyth Ridge
I believe in a post I made earlier I talked about a game where my 10 pool met another Z's 7 pool. Random guy was Zerg this time, so guess what he did. You see, this was me being on the other end of things; my 7 pool failed to his 10 pool. This is the second time tonight my 7 pooling failed (and not the last, I kept with it like a true soldier!)
Thankfully I didn't have the biggest failure of the game. The distinction of that went to PEG and his scouting, but at least we knew that unoccupied corner of the map wasn't hiding anything. I managed to take a queen down, but aside from that, no luck. More importantly, because he was Z as well, I wouldn't be able to just drone up massively and gain a quick economic advantage while PEG defended my ramp, because he could equally pop 7 drones at a time and outeconomy me anyways (or build enough units to shut anything down).
Zerg tried to do a speedling runby which was quickly shut down by the combined might of PEG's army and my banelings. Zerg then teched to mutas, and terran then did a seige tank + marine drop in my main that I was caught way out of position for. I essentially lost my main and spent the rest of the game trying desperately to not die for as long as I could.
My pool had been killed, but my spire was still up. This was somewhat fortunate as a good counter to mutas is having more mutas than the other guy. I did not have more mutas than the other guy. We sent a counterpush with my mutas for backup. PEG's 5 colossi pretty much evaporated, and I lost my entire army again. He then swooped his mutas across the map and finished off my lair and spire. We did manage to knock his muta numbers down a lot, though.
PEG expanded to the gold while the terran came in and took down my third, leaving a one base zerg and a two base protoss against a three base zerg and a two base terran.
Things weren't going well for us. I'd rebuilt my pool and my baneling nest at my nat, but I wasn't a factor anymore. PEG was now up to three bases, but the zerg's third base was a gold as well - we were down 1 base on them combined, and I had lost all my tech as well. This did lead to the quote of the night, "IF THEY WANNA DO THAT THEY CAN SUCK ON A HUNDRED OR SO BANELINGS AND IT WILL BE GLORIOUS". Which was my strategy at that point.
Unfortunately at the time our gold base was essentially killed off, I only had gotten to 38 or so banelings, which is a lot less catchy. The terran had just taken his third base, which I took out all the workers at. I also took out half of the zerg's lings at that point. PEG lost his push, I rolled some more banelings back to the terran's third and took out six mules and all his SCVs again.
Unfortunately the whole "PEG lost his push" thing meant the terran just came over and flattened us both.
-8 points!
Game 6 - Chenzo (T) and saladfingers (T) on Scorched Haven
We came to the easy decision to not try to cheese them and instead to play a more macro-oriented game. This is unfortunate because for the duration of this match we were struck with a severe case of the retardeds. By which we mean I was struck with a severe case of the retardeds.
I decided it'd be best for PEG to put down a quick forge and build some cannons while I fast expanded and macro'd up to terrifying heights. This was mistake #1. It managed to throw PEG's timings off completely and marginalize him for the remainder of the game.
Big mistake two was me deciding to go with roaches against 2 terran players. Any time there is two terran players, they alwaysalwaysalwaysalways go MMM + siege tanks + a thor or two. Banelings would have ripped them apart, but no, I was going to play it properly. Properly in my mind apparently means roaches. I did gas steal one of them though, which was entertaining enough.
They pushed a bio ball, my roaches melted, the cannons got shut off as the pylon got sniped right as I spread creep under them thus not allowing us to reactivate them, we lost quickly.
-8 points!
Game 7 - VonVonVon (P) and Horn (T) on Scorched Haven
We were finally getting to put our 4 gate + 7 pool strategy into full effect now that we wouldn't be walled off or outpooled by the other guys. I missed my drone timing slightly because I was busy being a bit of a cunt, which slowed us down by a negligible amount.
It's a funny thing, because they did try to wall off; they tried to share a wall on the massive stretch between their two ramps, which would allow them to both take their nats really quickly as well. My rush hits perfectly. I take down the pylon powering his first gate before he can get a unit out, and then proceed to take down all but 2 of his probes. We're in a huge lead already.
Fortunately, them walling off with their production buildings let me see that the terran was going for everyone's favorite mostly bio based build. Baneling time! I also decided to tech towards a spire after changing my mind on my original decision to head towards hydras.
The other guys were going bio and mass void rays. Nothing really interesting happened until we were ready to push. I morphed a bunch of banes to bust their wall with, and then we set off. It went really heavily in our favor, and I still had 21 banes left by the time the main skirmish was over.
I carpet-bombed the protoss' mineral line at his nat, and then pushed mutas into his main, taking out a few more void rays as I went. The terran tried to expand right near us. This lead after the game to another quote of the day, "MY FAVORITE UNIT IS THE SENSOR TOWER!". He built four of them over the course of the game. It was hilarious.
Undefended expansion vs mutas + protoss ball is also hilarious.
We ended up taking down 2 more attempted expansions (and an attempted attack on PEG's third), at which point PEG gg'd them, which I took as my cue to go help end it right then and there. And so we did.
+34 points!
Game 8 - Starven (T) and Mecca (P) on Scorched Haven
This was the first of two times we managed to actually do the strategy we'd planned on from the start. I got my 7 pool off great. The terran's scouting SCV saw my lings as they were marching across the map, which was just too late. My rush wasn't quite as successful as I'd have hoped it would be. I didn't take down all that many probes, but I did completely defuse their 2 gate rush before it even happened.
PEG then started warping stuff in from his proxy pylon. The toss was forced to send the probes to try to hold if off, I waited and massed lings with speed. The second my ~26 lings ran into the toss' base, they gg'd out.
+28 points!
Game 9 - elmatador (T) and Venom (P) on Discord IV
This is the craziest game I've ever played. To begin with, we were very motivated going into it - win and we'd likely be 5th in our division, which would be amazingly awesome (and the highest ranked I've ever been in anything as far as SC2 is concerned). The issue is that the rush distance on this map is very, very long.
They left a hole in their wall by mistake; my lings got in and didn't do much damage, but PEG put down his pylon and got ready for the 4 gate rush anyways. They went for a marine ball because every terran ever ever ever goes for marines, as well as a zealot/phoenix composition. This is notable for a reason.
We continued our heavy, heavy pressure for as long as we could before giving up. This is also important for a reason. PEG went for a gutsy move and took his first expansion at the gold.
While PEG's entire army was across the map, the phoenixes swooped in and I didn't really have much of anything that hit air. This began the most bizarre quasi-base trade situation ever. I had just double expanded to a position south of us, figuring nobody would notice it had even happened. Unfortunately, they noticed. They went to kill off my expansion with pure marines, which I took out with banelings. Phoenixes were harassing my other mineral lines. I ended up sacrificing both expansions so that they'd be kept busy while we worked our way up (I could easily work off of two bases at the tech level I was at anyways).
We counterpushed. They took out the pylons on most of PEG's production buildings, but they didn't manage to kill them off. Phoenixes sniped my overlords. Our push would have to work if we were going to survive. Thankfully, it did. We broke down their wall with ease. My banes and speedlings took out all of the terran's SCVs at their main. My remaining speedlings then ran around the base, taking out all the pylons of the protoss and the supply depots + production buildings of the terran. The protoss was dead, whether they were ready to admit it or not.
I started a spire to shut down the phoenix harassment. PEG continued to recover from the losses he'd suffered through the earlier battle. The protoss attempted to double expand to get back into the game, having lost an attempt at taking the other gold base. The terran went into hardcore turtling mode. My taking down their depots and pylons at their former mains helped immensely, supply blocking them both and slowing them down.
I had mined out both of my mains and didn't yet expand (although I could have, the phoenixes gave them map control until my spire finished and I could get some mutas out, and I didn't want to risk it being spotted and losing it again). The terran had turtled to become almost impenetrable. We were still in for a very, very rough match. I morphed the speedlings I'd been using to take down his supply into banes, and rolled to bust down his defenses. I failed at this, and began building a whole bunch of mutas to wrest map control from the phoenixes.
The funny thing about this that although I didn't realize is that at the time I went to do this, there was only one phoenix left. I could have expanded ages ago, but I didn't need to except for gas anyways - I had failed to do any macroing whatsoever during the massive battle and was sitting on a huge 10k bank of minerals. No point in wasting 300 of them right now to get more. PEG figured out that they didn't really have any detection and went for DTs. The toss finally went down.
It was now 2v1, with the eventual odds heavily stacked in our favor; as long as we could continue to deny expansions, we had full map control and would choke out the terran. We spent our time thinking up creative ways to kill him instead. The terran had built a raven to stop the DTs. Our plan was for me to swoop in with my mutas, take out the raven, and let the DTs mop up from there.
The raven survived with 12 health. Plan B! We'd forced him deep enough into marines only territory that he had no real backup plan for an assload of banelings. Which was what I started making, alongside 10 more mutas. The mutas swooped in and began their endless harassment plans. The final push included 55 banelings. 55 is very, very many banelings.
I still had 28 left when the guy finally gave up.
+12 points!
Summary:
So my second major 2v2 night ended really, really well, with us going 4-2 overall and gaining a total of 88 points and putting us 5th in our bronze league division. Our play has improved considerably team-wise, we're completely on the same page in most everything, and I'd expect us to be silver sooner rather than later. Exciting!
Stats so far:
vs PT - 4-1
vs TT - 1-1
vs TZ - 1-1
vs PP - 0-1
vs ZP - 0-1
with PEG - 6-5
Discord IV - 1-0
High Orbit - 1-1
Khaydarin Depths - 0-2
Monlyth Ridge - 0-1
Ruins of Tarsonis - 1-0
Scorched Haven - 3-1
Days 4-5 Replay Pack: http://rapidshare.com/files/455677572/d4-5replays.zip
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