Waiting for WarCraft III
I've always prefered the setting of WarCraft over the setting of StarCraft, because, well I dig Fantasy more than I do Science Fiction. Thus when I heard of WarCraft III and World of WarCraft I scanned through pages and pages on the Internet to gather information about it. I got into what I call 'WarCraft Mood', so I pulled WarCraft II back out of the shell, the b.net edition of course and decided to let the spirits of my RTS ancestors rise again. So I booted up WC II and found myself automatically opening a game on Nowhere to Run or Hide ;). Its a small map, bases are not connected, but they are seperated by wood, so you can chop through. I win this game pretty easily, using a grunt rush. Not much competition here, so I moved on to play a bigger map. I am sorry that I don't have screenshots for this game, but I didn't plan on battlereporting this and WarCraft does not have the feature of saving replays.
The
Map:
Mysterious
Dragon Isle
The
Players:
RubiksCube[xD]
Humans bottom
position
Grunz.SlopTork
Orcs top
position
The
Game:
I
started my game in a normal way, building my Town Hall on the right side
of my gold mine. By getting the bottom spot I knew that I have a wood advantage,
because it's running right across my Town Hall, while his lumber is a tad
farer away. So much for map balance ;)
I contruct additional farms and peasants, while planning on my strategy. My plan for this game is to get knights as soon as possible and do various hit and runs on his peons, while expanding. I figure, if I keep him busy, he will most likely be happy he doesn't loose to many and forget about expanding in favor of rebuilding his economy. So I build a lumber mill and wall in a guard tower at my town hall for early game defense. On land maps, orc players tend to do a grunt rush from 3 barracks and I wanna tech quick, so this defense is absolutely what I need. The first wave comes when I only have two footmen ready, opposing 5 enemy grunts, so I guess he must've gone for the 3 rax build. I run my footmen around, so that the grunts chase them, while the tower takes potshots at them. When he starts attacking my wall, I attack his grunts with the footmen. He sees that this situation is hopeless, so he retreats his grunts to just outside my base. While building my stables, I contruct another guard tower to prevent any cheap offensive tower strategies, and he to retreats further.
RubiksCube:
"GG's" Observer: "GG's = Grins Grins?" 
When I finish my 3rd rax, while contiually pumping Knights from the two others I start upgrading to a Castle. Also I see my Gold Mine will be depleted soon, so I expand to the lower right gold mine. My Knights are now at 2-1 so I guess I am ready for the first raid. I have a flying machine patrolling two of his three direct expansions, but I don't know if he has expanded to the gold mine in his back. I do an end around move, crossing the eye of the dragon with my knights, which count in at about 12 by now. He has indeed expanded there, so I start out with killing of his tower and then start pounding on his peons until reinforcements arrive and I withdraw. At home I start the construction of a church, as well as a Mage Tower and add 2 more barracks. As I am about to secure the bottom middle gold mine for my expansion attempt all hell breaks loose. He comes in with about a dozen blood-lusted troll axe-throwers and slaughters the majority of my troops as well as a tower I was just setting up. Reinforcements from all 5 barracks, as well as his blood-lust wearing of can stop this though, but the damage is done. I wisely pick a peon from lumbering and put him in a place near his base, to spot troop movement.
When I saw Blood-Lust, I figured he'd soon have an army of Ogre Mages running me over. The spell Blood-Lust tripples the orc units Attack and Movement speed, so it's absolutely needed to get Paladins and their Healing ability when you see them. So I head over to my church and start the Paladin Upgrade. Also I finally manage to expand and the middle Gold Mine.
As
I set up my new base in the middle with 2 Towers, I sent my Flying Machine
across
the Map to scout for expansions. I find him having expanded to the middle
Gold Mine, just opposing me. My scout dies almost instantly to his towers
there, but I can see he has building a lot of Ogres. I put up a Mage Tower,
because I felt I might need the strong Human spells for this. I started
mixing my paladins with Archers by now, because I thought of the Dragons
the Orc could be building. Blood-Lusted Dragons travel at crazy speed and
do massive amounts of Damage. I shouldnt let him get the ressources to
built those, so I started to set up my attack on the middle expansion he
had taken. About 2 dozen Paladins, 6 Ballistas 3 Mages and a dozen archers
began sieging the towers at his expansion when he launched his counter.
A huge army of Ogres and Trolls broke into my lines. The Ogres were blood-lusted
and starte killing my Paladins left and right. I healed them where I could,
but managing heal is not an easy task to perform. I also stormed his lines
of Axe-Throwers. At home I quickly set up 6 Gryphonnests, because
my money was reaching incredible amounts, then I concentrated on the battle
again. To my advantage his micro wasnt as good as mine, I pulled back my
Paladins and let them be healed, stormed the front, while he just let his
forces attack.
My problem was, his Macro was a lot better. When I just seemed to have killed the most of his army, new Ogres came in. I stormed, healed and microed as if my life depended upon it, but it was to no avail. His troops were beginning to run over mine and he typed "GG", suggestion that I had lost this.
I typed my normal answer to this act of arrogance, "aint over yet" and flew my 10 Gryphons in. He had no axe-throwers left, because he had mainly built Ogres to counter the Paladins. With his only expansion lost (the other was depleted by then), he again typed "gg", ironicall in lower letters, as if he was ashamed, and then left the game.
After
Game thoughts:
That
was easily the most intense game I've fought since I started playing WC
II in b.net. It's always good to find people who are at you exact skill
level, they offer the best competition.
Lessons
Learned:
-
StarCraft Skills apply in WC II, too.
This has been a RubiksCube Production
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