Replay of the Week #6

ClouD begins at the bottom right position, leaving SquaLL at the bottom left. SquaLL makes his first overlord while ClouD warps in a pylon at the cliff overlooking his natural, putting down a gateway and scouting with the probe soon after. SquaLL chooses to overpool, making his pool at 9 and following it up with an 8 gas, whilst the protoss starts an assimilator, presumably for one gate tech.

SquaLL mines 100 gas and switches his drones back to mining minerals, researching ling speed whilst chasing off ClouD's scout probe, which is harassing his drones. Seeing the zerg build, ClouD makes two zealots to cover his ramp and cuts probe production for a small period, building his cybernetics core at 20 supply. SquaLL's overlord sees the zealots and his lings promptly run back home, with an expansion hatchery starting in his natural. Interestingly, he also cancels the ling speed upgrade, and manages to put down his third hatchery in his natural not long after the second one.

For his part, ClouD has started a stargate, whilst SquaLL finally resumes mining from his gas and puts down a hydralisk den, with his expansion almost completed. A single dragoon comes out of the protoss gateway, with only two zealots and that goon forming his army, although the stargate has almost completed and a Citadel is on its way. The gas that SquaLL mined earlier comes in useful, making himself a Lair as his expansion completes, though he does not have enough drones to maynard some from his main; he starts to research lurker tech, but his economy doesn't seem all that good to support it.

Zerg suffers a setback, with ClouD's completed corsair killing one of his overlords and creating a supply drop, though he does have another overlord in production. Strangely, ClouD decides to put a cannon on his cliff near the ramp, and also puts down a templar archives in his main, producing DTs from his gateway and starting a robotics facility at the same time. A single hydralisk is sent to the task of protecting all of SquaLL's overlords, but since the protoss does not build any extra corsairs, he is safe for the time being.

Wanting to expand, ClouD moves down his ramp and terrorises some of SquaLL's lings with a DT, killing three of them before they run home. He warps in a nexus as his robotics finishes, quickly putting down an observatory as well, which is unfortunate for SquaLL who is morphing his first lurkers, though ClouD's army is still very small.

With his lings not doing an awful lot of good, SquaLL attempts to runby ClouD's natural, and manages to get three speedlings into the protoss main, only managing to kill off a single probe before being neutralised. Meanwhile, SquaLL starts a spire in his main, and ClouD adds two extra gates as his expansion finishes. Some of SquaLL's lurkers burrow at nine o'clock as he expands there, with an overlord preventing any DT action there. ClouD's DT, which has been plain lazy for quite some time, finally decides to decimate overlords, with absolutely no antiair currently on the map to prevent it.

However, ClouD does not look to be in an overly good position. With his spire finished, SquaLL starts hatching eight mutalisks, putting down a fifth hatchery in the process, and the protoss looks to have almost no defence whatsoever; there are no cannons in ClouD's main, and the ones he has in his expansion do not protect his mineral line at all.

SquaLL capitalises on the lack of defence at ClouD's natural.
With some excellently-timed cannons and dragoons, ClouD defends in style with his defence completing as the mutalisks arrive. However, he loses his corsair, and storm research is only half completed; his two templars are effectively useless for the time being, so SquaLL terrorises the mineral line at the protoss natural, which is not all that well defended. ClouD loses a lot of probes, and also gets one of his templars sniped. With storm tech completed, SquaLL's mutalisks are badly injured by a well-placed storm, and call it a day, retreating back home.

A well aimed storm from ClouD sends SquaLL flying home.




At present, SquaLL has melee and armour upgrades on the way, possibly hinting towards a future ultralisk build, along with another two hatcheries, one of which is securing the 10 o'clock expansion. Compensating, ClouD increases his gateway count to five, and with the temporary upgrade advantage moves out with a dragoon-heavy force; he eliminates all but one of SquaLL's surviving mutalisks, even though he is only halfway through upgrading dragoon range. In doing so, he begins securing the three o'clock expansion, though SquaLL's rapidly growing lurker/ling army is likely to remove his map control before long. The zerg is also halfway through morphing a hive, and his first upgrades are not far from finishing.

A mysterious power prevents SquaLL making his expansion.
ClouD unfortunately moves forward just before his second upgrade finishes, and even though he gets a good storm on SquaLL's lurkers, he is forced back by a superior 1-1 ling army and a relatively large number of lurks. With three running expansions, ClouD now has nine gateways pumping, but is only just keeping level with SquaLL's supply rating. However, he does have quite a number of archons, which help him to win the ensuing fight.

SquaLL is undeterred by storms and forces ClouD back.
SquaLL takes the second top-left expansion, not building anything particular with his hive tech just yet. Some lings delay ClouD's attempt to take a fourth base at the top right, though they are quickly routed and the expansion is restarted. Some of the protoss army heads into SquaLL's top left expansions in single file, though they regroup near his sunkens and attack. Another half quickly pulverizes the lone sunken at his undefended natural, but SquaLL pulverises both attempts and loses relatively little in the process, with huge numbers of lings decimating ClouD's army.

Finally, SquaLL makes use of his hive, completing a defiler mound in his main base, though his top two expansions are doing very little at present. He sends his forces to the top right, taking on ClouD's army briefly in the choke before a high templar melts half of his army in one go, forcing him straight back again.

The notoriously irritating templar returns.

The upgrades for SquaLL refer to Armour, Melee and Missile weapons respectively. SquaLL takes the 12 o'clock expansion, though at the moment it doesn't look as though he has the power to keep it, with ClouD's army outpowering him at present. A huge fight near SquaLL's natural seems to be dominated by ClouD; however, masses of well-upgraded lings come without end, eventually leaving him victorious with only a handful of archons and a few dragoons left alive with several hotkeys of lings hatching. On top of that, an ultralisk cavern has finished for the zerg, with the speed upgrade on its way.

Zergling defense, level one: Trivial.








Levels two and three weren't so easy, but they were conquered.
SquaLL is hatching so many units that he has surpassed ClouD's supply rating; he is not far from having ten ultralisks, and a huge army of lings is complimented by a defiler. Said defiler and a group of lings head towards ClouD's top right expansion, with a single swarm neutralising all of the cannons there and allowing the lings to reduce the nexus to dust along with its defences. 3-3 upgrades have finished for SquaLL, with plague on the way and ClouD having 2-1-3; wanting revenge for his expansion, ClouD promptly destroys SquaLL's 12 o'clock base, causing an angry backlash from his rather menacing horde of ultralisks. Due to fighting in the choke, SquaLL's ultralisks are largely clumped together and are badly injured by several storms, rendering him weak against the many archons in the protoss army, even with swarms.

The ultralisks can only soak up so many storms.
SquaLL's forces move to decimate ClouD's top right natural expansion; it is mainly defenceless with only three cannons, but ClouD abandons it in favour of killing off the top left and nine o'clock expansions, eliminating the injured ultralisks stationed there with relative ease. In the meantime, SquaLL also cuts down the protoss base at three o'clock, leaving him with only one running mineral line which will be mined out very soon. This apparently isn't enough for the zerg, whose lings then decimate ClouD's natural.

The protoss army, having wiped out the two top left expansions, reduces the nine o'clock expansion to dust, crippling SquaLL's economy; neither player now has any expansions at all, though ClouD sends a probe to expand on the six o'clock island base. With no fighting units left for SquaLL, ClouD's last remaining unit on the left side of the map - a dragoon - attempts to take out the large group of drones mining there, and forces them to maynard back home as ling reinforcements arrive. However, SquaLL has no minerals at present, and a group of four DTs and some corsairs approach; SquaLL attempts to take off and expand at 6, but finds ClouD's completed nexus there and his drone is overrun by a pack of angry probes.

ClouD smashes in SquaLL's nine o'clock expansion.
SquaLL then unloads a few lings in the six o'clock island, forcing ClouD to pick up his probes in a shuttle and wait for the problem to be solved. ClouD's DTs enter the zerg natural and kill off the lings stationed there, along with the lone spore colony which could see them. With no minerals left, and no way to come back into the game, SquaLL gives up. GG.

With nothing left, SquaLL types out.
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