Phalanx's Daily #76: Winnin'~

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.


Clyde, the zealot. Often times forgotten about due to cutting corners in the early game, and is always brought around in clutch situations.

The match up is PvT, the map is whirlwind. I do believe that my highest win percentage is on this map... no wonder I like it so much. The huge map size helps me a lot with both my safe and greedy builds, buying me precious time.


I start off with a hearty "Good Luck Fun Have", after which I don't build my first probe until the 8 second mark.

Johnson gets off the scouting on my first guess, and I see only the single gas going down for the terran. Funny thing, now that I notice it, every single time I scout on this map I check the bases clockwise... and I usually seem to find them on the first rally point. Maybe the secret to this map is that I always spawn 1 base counter-clockwise from my enemy... Intruiging. Anyhow, I assume a simple reaper expand and go on with my build as always.


Run in, run out. Just like clockwork.

While preparing to take my natural, I make Johnson set down a proxy-ish pylon and proceed to check for the expansion. I get SUPER lucky because my opponent's marines just walked down the ramp without noticing my probe.. and so his depot was down >:D! Johnson probes right into the guy's main. Nothing quite like Johnson and his probings.


Stealth mode activate!

Thanks to Johnson's valiant scouting mission, I see that my enemy is in fact not going for an expansion at all... but a fast factory! How devious, a widow mine drop! If Johnson were a second or two later, I think that the marines would have completely denied me vision of his expansion, and I might have taken some serious damage from the consecutive drop.


Geewizz, thanks Johnson. Couldn't even have the decency to survive?

Once it had been scouted my opponent immediately threw down his expansion, switching over to a ground attack using the widow mines and marines. Probably rightly assumed that a drop wouldn't be worth the trouble. I had defenses out adequately in time, so I could hold off the pressure with minimal losses.


Second thought I lost 8 workers... maybe that wasn't very minimal.

To finish off the Early Game, Snowden was sent over to the Terran base to check for terrorist activity. I managed to snag some vision on a build up of tanks, and then of course started making some immortals. Had I been teching to colossi it might have been a problem because I would have needed 2 robos to make both colossi and immortals, but since I was going for Storm tech I could safely pump out immortals.


Hey kids, wanna blow some whistles?

Snowden got caught soon after I saw the army composition, making me blind against moveouts. I stupidly decide that would make a great opportunity to expand and do so around the 10 minute mark. My expanding to the 3rd in PvT is usually pretty late so I was consciously trying to get it done faster... but that kind of came back to bite me.


Imminent threat? No problem, just make more probes.

The terran moves out for his push, which I wayyyyy underestimated. His army was roughly 22 marines, 4 marauders, and 4 tanks, as opposed to my 2 zealots, 2 immortals, 4 stalkers and 2 ht. Pretty damn bad situation on paper. I of course had warpins, photon overcharge, and general defender's advantage, but it still was a horrifyingly strong push.



After picking off my 3rd (which I canceled JUST in time) the terran moved his tanks forward to siege me up. As usual, I also got supply blocked at the worst time possible... god I need to work on that. My army was still pathetic in comparison to his, and I desparately neded those immortals out.


I think tanks are pretty damn good, why don't more terrans mix them in?

I manage to land one money-storm onto his bio, although I completely wiff a second one.
Right when I needed an opportunity, I get it - the bio clumps up and oversteps when they're already hurt form the last poke!
Being the genious I am, I let him move the MMM back and split up.


Come on past self...

Still with only 2 immortals, I decide the time is ripe to step forward for a fight. Charge is 10 seconds away form completion and I totally should have waited for that, but no, I'm too stupid, and rushed forward. A timewarp behind the bio makes it a lot easier to catch them with the zealots, and even getting a good storm with my last remaining HT with energy. My zealots are massacred, but his support for the tanks also is annihilated.


Yeaaaaaah spells! +a-move!

While cleaning up the front, Emily is killed by literally the last marine left in the terran force... pretty sour 'bout that. The immortals make quick work of turning the left over tanks into scrap metal. While I had won the battle, I ended up in quite spot in economy. The terran now had his 3rd secured and had many more harvesters; as if MULES weren't enough...


Emily's fairy dust raining upon the protoss.

Both players now transitioned into macro mode. I was left with a lot of army that wasn't being used, and now that I check the replay I probably could have won with a huge counter attack, especially since my immortal numbers were pretty damn sexy. The only thing that I was definitely ahead on was tech, with better upgrades all around.

The game ended a lot sooner than I had expected. The trigger towards the downward spiral of all-in was a terran 2 pronged drop...



It should have been an extremely easy clean up, probably not even requiring a warp in. However, when i try to split off a few zealots to the drop at the natural, my control completely slips up... and my main army ends up waltzing around the ramp for a few crucial seconds, allowing the drop to kill off my 3rd base.


Sigh. This is why I can't have nice things.

I realize now that I just won't be able to win the macro game, and start streaming everything i've got towards my proxy pylon. My army is a whole lot better than his, with a colossi, a few archons, and a bunch of storms.


Choo Choo!!

For some reason the terran decides that the best means of attack is to go up the ramp voluntarily... it would have been a huge advantage for me had I not moved forward with only half of my units, while the rest lagged behind. He dumps most of his EMPs only my archons and zealots, leaving the templar full of energy for some juicy storms.


Aw yiss great storms and bad EMPs, today's a good day!

My army was quite a bit stronger than his because I was basically all-in at this point. He invested a little bit too much in his economy when I was revving up for an attack, and that cost him dearly. Those immortals that i made earlier also helped me a lot, giving me a ton of raw damage to just burst down his marauder-heavy army.


Aw yeah crappy storms! All kinds of storms today.

My opponent taps out shorty, and a lotabit more points are added to my rank <3.