Sunday, April 8, 2007

Lost Five But Found Glory

So, last night was filled with losing money, and conquering the vast regions of space. At work, a particular grocery store that starts with the letter ‘Z’ I was having a particularily rough time, what with spilling stuff, dropping boxes, and knocking salad off its display. So I decided that I would take my fifteen minute break, and settle down with some milk and one hell of a bagel.

What’s this now?

Oh, it seems that I had misplaced my five dollars. Well that’s just grand. I would have probably taken this news slightly better had my day been going well, and had it been the first time I had lost money at work. The pants have now cost me a total of fifteen dollars since I’ve gotten them, and all of that money has come from my work lunch/break funding. But this is both unexciting, and irrelevant to the main happenings of Saturday.

When I arrived home from my dreary day at work, I was informed that Andrew had gone off to one “Jordan’s House”. Well, that’s great, I think to myself, just fan-freaking-tastic. But, wait! I am expected to join the group to fill the shoes of the fourth player. So I down some very much needed food, and catch the next ride to the fabled Grant Residence.

I show up, and step inside, the first look into the house I’ve had in my sixteen years of living. I step downstairs, and join the crew, already at their stations, and expecting me, it seems. Jordan, Binks and I joined forces to defeat Andrew several times in Melee games, easily outnumbering, and destroying his forces. A few risqué capture the flags tactic gets Andrew right back in the game, and he’s determined to defeat us in one final match.

The arena is set, Binks as the dominant Protoss, and Jordan and I, by our powers combined, form Captain Plan – I mean a joint Terran force. Andrew starts off the game with a bang by destroying most of my base with several speedy marines, and I am forced to retreat to my allies’ side of the already small map.

Andrew builds up a sizeable force, revealed to us by Jordan’s communications satellite sweeps, and quickly launches a convert strike against Jordan’s base of operations. Many good people die, but Jordan lives, and begins to rise from the ashes, alongside me. Binks is still at large, and Jordan and I cower in his shadow, hoping to stay alive for as long as possible. We begin to build up small forces to defend ourselves as well as Binkle, the last hope. The map is completely divided, Andrew’s commie blue forces on the left, and our joint forces of freedom on the right, but the Blue army is quickly marching its way across the only bridge on the whole map.

Binkle protects his allies from complete obliteration, and begins to launch attacks on Andrew’s expanding bases. Jordan and I begin to ‘Shit disturb’ as we use our own small strike-groups to hit miners, supply depots and fetal bases. The battles rage on, and our Terran forces take a lot of land on the left, and the Royal Binks Air force begins to wipe out the remains of Andrew’s main Goliath forces. Andrew attempts to fight off the Binks Carriers with Terran Battle Cruisers, but it just isn’t enough. With an almost fully exhausted map, and one hell of a fight, the Glorious Allies of Binkle, Jordan and Stu claim victory over the Blue land of Andrew. Tanks may rust, Carriers may fall and Bullets may break, but our free people will never forget that day in history. Many have left us, but they will not die in our hearts!

Lest we forget the sacrifices made that day.

(It's late. Cut me some freakin' slack!)

7 comments:

JGrant said...

Epic descriptions Stu. I still cannot believe he didn't kill me. I had two machine shops, a supply depot, and a flying factory making vultures. That was the extent of my assault force.

I still cannot believe we won that. Those are the games you treasure. The ones that are so close that you think it might all end, and then you snatch victory away from the jaws of defeat (or in Andrew's case, you snatch defeat away from the jaws of victory).

SAGAMAN said...

I love reading about Starcraft battles. It's almost as if I was there are the scene...

*sniff

JGrant said...

Poor Caleb...

We need to get you in on this "crafting of the stars" sometime soon, otherwise you may die of envy.

Unknown said...

I thought that the Carrier/Siege Tank combo worked quite effectively against goliaths and other ground troops.


Speaking of Goliaths; I think that a big turning point in the battle was when Andrew flew in three shuttles to try and drop in some troops. His attention must've been drawn elsewhere for a time, because before he deployed the contents of the shuttles my carriers destroyed them.

Judging from the scream of agony, he lost a lot of Goliaths.

I'm always surprised at how adept Andrew is at creating large battlecruser fleets, and deploying them in places. I need to do better resource management; I ended up running out of cash at one point. In my defense, I was trying to micromanage a few carriers so that they wouldn't be destroyed for most of the game, which takes a bit of concentration.

Danger said...

Yeah, those shuttles had 12 fully upgraded goliaths. I don't think I would have won, but it would have made things much tougher for you.

I had sent those shuttles to drop troops, but I think Jordan's guys were sitting where the shuttles were supposed to unload, so they couldn't drop and I didn't realize what happened until they were dead.

Stu said...

That very same thing has happened to me many a time in our games. Perhaps not on such a large scale, but you'll notice they do enduce a lot of swearing, and questioning of 'What the fuck is that?!'

JGrant said...

Yeah, nice micromanaging. Your fleet seemed to be a lot larger than it actually was, because it was all over the place.

And yeah, I had buildings up at the base where Andrew's dropships got stuck. And that was all too sweet when you destroyed everything.