Pony Express Issue 86: July 27 - Aug. 3, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7lr0i1t2BI&eurl

Today's game on outsider is between effort, the recently on-fire zerg from CJ, and stork, who, to my knowledge, has not shown any notable results since his starleague win. The game starts slightly unorthodox, with stork's 1gate into back expansion ala god's garden, going up against effort's overpool expo into 3 hatch tech. After a fairly conflict-free first 3 minutes, stork hints that he might spice things up as he throws down an early second gate, roughly about the same time as he starts his stargate. The watchful eyes of effort's overlord catches all the action, and stork, being too worried about a ling runby, refuses to unblock his ramp to kill it with his early dragoon, missing out on a great opportunity.




Entering the midgame, stork adds a third gateway before his citadel, and his core begins spinning, suggesting the same dragoon build that we saw movie use to much success against jaedong on heartbreak vs the 3 hatch spire into 5 hatch hydra build. As stork moves out with 3 zealots and 3 dragoons, effort tries a runby with his speedlings, but stork quickly blocks his ramp, preventing effort from getting into his main. Knowing stork's army is approaching, effort immediately throws up 3 additional sunkens, and his defense of 4 sunkens is more than enough to stop stork's force when it finally reaches his choke.




Having added mutas in the meantime, they now make their journey to stork's expo, where cannons and corsairs force them to retreat before doing significant damage. Stork, in a pretty commanding position now, with a superior ground army and corsairs to negate the air threat, decides to take his nat after making a foray into effort's nat, only to be turned away by 6 sunkens.




Effort, not being one to be discouraged by failure, returns to stork's back expo after massing up more mutas and adding scourge to his army. This time, he successfully takes out the cannons and forces the probes to retreat to safety. For some strange reason (probably to give time for cannons at his nat to warp in), stork waits for the nexus to be brought into the red before bringing his 5 corsairs and sizable dragoon army to defend the expo, but thankfully for him, effort retreats before the nexus dies. with the corsair army hot on his tails.





Both players now sit back for a while, stork idling his corsairs and some dragoons at his back expo, not wanting to let it get sniped by mutas, and effort taking his double gas expo. Poor decision by stork though, as effort basically has no anti air except for some mutas and scourge, which stork easily has outgunned. Now would've been a perfect opportunity to kill some overlords with his growing corsair fleet.


That is all of effort's defense against corsairs

Now on 3 bases, stork has yet to add a citadel or robotics, continuing to mass corsairs and zeal/goon. Tricking a zealot through the minerals into effort's double gas, he tries to deal some damage to effort's economy, but effort's mutas come and clean up easily, while stork retreats a huge corsair force of like 8-9 corsairs to 8 scourge, veering a bit too far on the safe side.




Stork eventually engages and kills a number of the mutas, but with some uncharacteristically poor micro, he loses a couple of corsairs to scourges, and pulls them back before getting any significant overlord kills, really throwing away plenty of chances with his absurdly safe play.




yes, 6 +1 upgraded corsairs retreating to 4 mutas and 2 scourge

Effort now decides that he's had enough of the corsair threat and brings his ling/lurker army out to engage stork's observer-less goon/zeal. Initially it seems like a suicide attack with effort's units being hopelessly outnumbered, and stork microing away from the burrowed lurkers while taking out the lings, but effort's grand plan is revealed when a group of scourge fly in during the battle and take out a good portion of stork's corsair fleet.




For some reason, effort decides to keep attacking stork's huge dragoon army, instead of macroing up and getting better tech and upgrades. Sure enough he loses all his lings, and with his observer out, stork no longer has to retreat to the lurkers.





We are now treated to a first person view of effort where we see he has hive and defiler tech already. Darkswarms and cracklings now descend on stork's largely goon army, and stork is forced to retreat with significant losses. Stork's harassing corsairs are also massacred by scourge while he is distracted, reducing their number to a measley 3.





However, lings are only so strong, and several darkswarms and plagues later, stork has fought his way back to effort's nat, which is now undefended except for 6 sunkens, having loaded the majority of his army into 5 overlords for a drop on stork's main. Stork spots the drop and moves to defend with his army that is supported by corsairs, and the overlords are forced to drop their load that quickly dies.






Unfortunately, stork seems very distracted this game, as his army is really big, and can probably easily take out effort's nat defense and storm into the main. However, stork instead chooses to send his zealots to take out a morphing hatchery at bottom right, and a 2 overlord drop at his expansion kills lots of probes. When stork finally cleans that up then decides to attack effort's nat, he has ultralisks out already, and effort repels the attack easily.





Another drop follows on stork's expansion, and effort's army rampages out of his main and takes out stork's other expansion. After some minor scruffling to stay in the game, stork GGs out having played a rather unremarkable game where he had plenty of chances but failed to take them and ended up losing.