Phalanx's Daily #48: Bllinkstalker vs Mech

Johnson, the lovable 1-st scouting probe! Dream profession is Aiur Head Chef.


Mike the stalker. Hardest working of them all, and single-handedly preventing scouting and pressure, while receiving the least credit.


Emily, the mothership core. Has a secret love for education, but quickly gets out of hand and fires photons all over the place if pissed off.


Snowden, the sneaky observer, watching out for the protoss race. He checks your computer history too.

The beginning of the game isn't anything extremely crazy, just scout around with Johnson and find his 1st gas geyser. I naturally assume that this guy is another one of those reaper-expanders and move along with my build as usual.


Seriously guys lest be more original.

However... though time ticks on, niether Mike nor Emily see any reapers coming. I think that it's kind of odd that the enemy hasn't hit me with a reaper yet, and throw down 2 additional gateways and start chronoboosting out WarpGate tech. Johnson stays around to make sure that he hasn't expanded yet. As it turns out, my enemy seemed to be making a factory before command center.


Take that back Johnson, this guy might be original.

My terran enemy started up a pretty defensive opening with widowmine&expansion. Waiting for the widowmines made his expansion a bit later, and he also walled in with bunker at his main ramp rather than natural ramp - not sure why he did that. I get up fast stalkers to pressure but the widowmines easily deny damage.

OSHITOSHITOSHITOSHIT MIKE DONT LEAVE ME

I think that the only time my enemy scanned me was when I was still on 1-base, and he clearly overreacts to my light attempt at stalker pressure. He overmakes bunkers within his base and even pre-emptively pulls a few SCVs nearby. He now starts to transition into more mech units, getting out a faster tank and adding on more factories.


If this guy went for a normal expo then went mech I probably would have been screwed.

I had warped in a bunch of stalkers at the right-in-your-face proxy pylon, and as a result I ended up containing him for quite a while longer. His tanks force my stalkers to keep their distance by a long shot, and he even had the firepower to break through if he so wished. Perhaps he was content with just using his extra orbital for mules, perhaps he thought I had a lot more units than he did. In any case he was kept cooped up by stalkers while I comfortably expanded and started to tech.


Hey guys look I'm gonna light my fart on fire!

I'm so unfamiliar with blink play, especially against terrans. While I know of many good utilizations of it, I just never find myself in the position where it seems like it's worth the resources to get blink. I had already built up a fair number of stalkers, so I just decide at this point that the game is going to be mass blink stalkers. I get up my Twilight Council and start boosting out blink while at the same time calling in Snowden the observer so that I could blink up onto the high ground.


Hey, you guys see that? I've actually retained my improvement about my building placement! Congratulate me!

While waiting for blink, I get a cute little pick up of marines as they moved in to try and kill my proxy pylon. His marines decided to not focus it and instead allow the zealots to warp in, ending in their demise at the hands of a stalker flank.


Where the hell are you guys shooting??

His continual attempt to move down the ramp loses him a siege tank and even more marines. My proxy pylon is rad as shit.


Yeaaaah blow up that fag, he's in siege mode but he's defending. Like wtf.

Although supply wise the game is going extremely evenly, the resources lost tab is extremely bad for me. While stalkers may be strong enmass, they are anything but cheap. Losing a couple of them in exchange for some marines loses me a lot more money for the supply.
As blink finishes research I make use of Snowden's excellent vision to blink onto a tank and begin my assult.


Ring around the rosey, pocket full of Khala, Hellbats Hellbats, we all blink down~

Let me assure you people, those siegetanks tore my stalkers apart like there was no tomorrow (I don't even see how that can make sense!). I tried to focus tanks down as much as I could, followed by focusing the hellbats and running away. Very bad resources wise, but I break pretty even on supply until the very end up my harass. In the end it goes fine because I have an income advantage and he lost a few workesr too.


Boop.

My enemy confidently chases me out and goes to land his orbital at his natural at long last... but thanks to that awesome proxy pylon I manage to give him a good smack in the face for moving out.


That's right, float away.

As I go to try and secure my third base, the terran goes for a big drop with 5 hellbats.



I just happened to miss the drop moving out; However, the lack of hellbats at his base made for the perfect opportunity to move into his base. With no units nearby to defend his base, I get to go on a rampage against his SCVs. Since I see a good opening for it, I also decide to target fire down and kill off a ton of his SCVs.


Oh yeah all you can eat buffet!

The terran's hellbat drop does very, very little damage thanks to some quick probe escapes. Emily also helps out tons to buy time at my main base while more stalkers warped in. I must say that I defended pretty superbly, losing only 6 probes while he lost 2 medivacs and 3 hellbats.


Probe Centipede.

Pressure against him is kept up even higher as I continue to warp in using my proxy pylon. Seriously, that pylons my MVP.


Blink onto dem tanks all day err day!

The terran finally gets up his natural, but at this point I finally have a supply lead, greatly thanks to his drop doing far less damage than my blink stalker harass. I keep some light harass on his 3rd using blink stalkers behind the mineral line (out of range of PF). As he goes and diverts his hellbats to deal with the few stalkers at his 3rd, I move in for another big blink up into his main. I decide to go for his production, and take out 3 factories and safely escape.


Hah, and I thought that terrans had the most annoying harass!

The supply difference begins to favor me more and more, as the terran lacks in both economy and means of using what little money he does get. He transitions into cloak banshees, probably hoping to take me by surprise... But not many things can stand up to the stalker ball of my size.


Mass repair for air units, so mean!

I taste victory near, and go in for a bit of a risky blink right onto all of his units. It doesn't go badly, although I lose my observer, causing me to have to back off against the banshees for a little bit.


Bathing in napalm!

Once I get up a couple of observers once again, I move in and blink up for the win.


GG!!!