Prologue

Hello, and welcome to yet another dialtone battle report. Let me be the first one to admit that this report was indeed created, as the rumors circulated lately claim, using cheap midget labor and the power of corn. Me and Ling have been playing Arranged Team for a long time now, and this is one of the better games from a streak we had last week. I won't go into great lengths to document every little move and choice in the game, if you have never played warcraft you'll probably feel lost after a while. Additionally, it's a good idea to watch the replay after reading this, to get a better feel of the game.

 

Chapter One
(in the beginning there was the "Azeroth bridge building company")

Blah, so we're ranked now and you'd think that bnet can do better than match us with teams barely inside the level margin? Right, we're either playing against level four or level sixteen teams, luckily more often than not it's level four. Rising up the ranks this way is too slow for my taste. Anyway, me and ling had already played over ten games that night and were still going strong. Another arranged team invite and this time we're matched against kek. and knasitehpirate. Right. No record for one of them, some eight wins to no losses on solo for the other one, right now we don't really now what to expect. Their team was level four at the time but they could be just rising up to level fifteen for all we knew. The random map pick was Bridge Too Near, a map with enough bridges to connect every lake in Finland, a bunch of troll creep camps a human can easily clean off with defend. There's two entrances to each base, a wide land bridge that leads directly in front of the gold mine, a a sideways stone bridge that comes from what one would consider a natural expansion.The way the map is layed and the bases centered, it's a rather small map, suitable for early rushing, which suits me just fine nowdays. I wont bore you with what creeps are great and what each of the dozen or so gnoll camps drops because there was hardly any creeping this game anyway. Specific build orders have been omitted too, the replay is right there to download, and can show this much better than i can.

To round it up: Knasit is purple Human at the top right of the map. His ally, kek, is blue Orc at the top left. I (OrcDork) control a red Human army at the lower right, with my ally, Lingor controlling green Night Elf from the lower left side of the map. If you find color inaccuracies and general screw ups on the screenshots it's team color's fault and i place entirely the blame on my pet monkey, Bart the Destroyer (he prefers to be called that).

lingoral: yeah
lingoral: there were 3 farmers
lingoral: and one thinking about starting as one
lingoral: dunno wtf they were doing
lingoral: one of them thought she invented an ergonomic leg rest
lingoral: she tried to convince us to eat goat

Chapter Two
(It's a great day in Lordaeron summer)

Anyway the game kicks off and i'm pretending to know how to play human at low right with Ling and his usual night elf hugging trees to the low left. Our opponents control human and orc armies at top right and top left. In this small map we can harass them early on without any scouting to disrupt quick tech, take a look at what they're going for and if we're lucky enough catch them off guard while they're creeping and kill any buildings under construction or early peons. All the while we try hide the fact that all i make is three footmen as i tech to keep level at 24 supply. I don't have to ask what ling is doing anymore, it's mostly harass with keeper or demon hunter while he masses hunts to keep us alive early.

Ling and i were discussing the finer points of english orthography and i had my mage on the way to human's base when i noticed a peasant running south to my base. I had a couple of footmen, and the third one rallied to my arch mage, and was already upgrading to keep. Probably a good thing the peasant wasn't called to militia first and i managed to kill him before he got far. I went on to become annoying at human's base while ling's demon hunter was chased by grunts and the spirit wolves kek's seer had summoned. I found knasi creeping the early trolls and ogre with an Arch mage and chased him back to his base. There wasn't much damage i could do to his this early but i did manage to kill a peasant and a footman before militia chased me away. He called only his woodcutting peasants to militia duty, a smart choice since he didn't need more to drive me off and this early, you don't want to lose a single second mining gold. The human had been powering footmen much more than me and he attacked me with 6 footies and his archmage. My tech build wasn't helping much to defend against this sort of attack and i had to ask ling for some help to fending him off. I immediately called my wood peasants to militia but not before he killed a farm building peasant that raised his mage to level two.

Chapter Three
(Or counterattack to the counter-counterattack)

We have enough units to do some real damage to knasi's base now and we're chasing his footmen and archmage back to his base. The plan is to kill militia and units, keep our heroes alive, slow them down enough to kill them later with stronger stuff. He calls his wood peasants to militia again as kek arrives from the west to help his partner with a farseer and some four grunts, and we take down a couple of peasants before their combined armies are too much to handle. Again we're running with a larger army behind our backs but ling has fresh huntresses on the way to my base and i just had my Mountain King trained. We meet them just after the bridge close to my base and make our stand there, a good position considering they have more units than us and have to get them through the bridge first so we only have a few of them to deal with at a time. Militia fill the gaps on our defenses and they retreat after their front grunt lines start to brake. Between orc casting a speed scroll to get out of there as fast as he can Ling managed to trap the archmage behind the bridge with hunts, a bolt after that and we leave human without his hero for a while.



We are again chasing them back to human's base again just as he gets a blood mage in time to stop us from overruning them right there. We are mostly dodging flame strike and running back and forth targeting grunts and footmen when i notice the red dots by ling's base. Oh hell, this isn't good manners is it now, kek had some peons run to ling's base from the back bridge and has been towering him. Too bad ling didn't spread his wood wisps around, we would have seen this faster. And who knew towers have more range than ancient protectors? I contemplated typing "imbalance" in mistyped capitals and discing right there for a second but before i could finish typing it i had to town portal out to keep my mountain king alive, with ling following some seconds later, right after killing the bloodmage with mana burn..

Chapter Four
(Or how kids these days have no manners at all)

The last attack didn't go that bad but the towers looming over Ling's base were a bad thing to have to cope with. Time for quick thinking, ling's base is pretty much undefended, he has ancients building but they won't last ten seconds to kek's incoming catapults. We are both nowhere close to getting anything to break the tower siege around ling's base except for footmen on defend, and even with them it wont be an easy task. I declare ling's base dead (without actually telling him that) and call another attack on human, i have sorcies, priests and a breaker this time and i know they must be hurting some after our last visit. I figure they have a couple of choices right now, they can go join the towers just outside ling's base to take it down faster, or they can come after me, hoping that i'm off to the night elf base to break the siege. Ling insightfully announces that the situation is "quite serious" on his base after orc eventually shows up with demolishers. Not that we need his damn base to win this game. We're off to human's base as catapults start working on ling's outlaying wells.

Kek and knasi's both have town portal scrolls on their heroes but they choose to level ling's base instead of rushing back to save the human camp. In the end we've cleared off vital production buildings and farms in knasi's base, leaving an altar and some worthless upgrade buildings, and ling had a total of two wisps left and a huntress hall they didn't notice. We leave anything not important standing on human's base and head for kek's base this time. I send a few peasants to erect some guard towers inside knasi's wrecked base, if this don't progress as they should the guard towers will finish off what's left of knasi and keep ling somewhat safe when he builds up there. For now though, it's much more important to stop them from powering or expanding. The problem is neither ling nor i have town portal scrolls on any heroes, there's really no going back anymore, if we don't kill or at least cripple orc severely right now we're in serious trouble.

Chapter Five
(Or how we build this city on rock and roll)

Orc bases aren't much fun to attack without siege weapons. From the lack of peons to kill to buildings being a pain in the ass to get around, to build-in defense, it's never a fun option. But then again, it's only a base right? We went on with ling's mass hunts, human casters and footmen to fight an orc with destroyers and a human with mass area of effect spells on an orc base, i could think of a dozen better alternatives to our units and they all involve clever combinations of knights, riflemen, mortar teams and inner fire.

Unit/Upgrades: Ling had almost a dozen upgraded huntresses (1-1) and a level three Demon Hunter with mana burn and evade .I had a level three Archmage with level 2 water elemental and lvl1 brilliance, a level two Mountain King with clap and bolt and a dozen mixed initiate casters, breakers and unupgraded footmen.
Knasi had a level three Archmage with level two water elemental, a level two Blood Mage with that flame strike and mana siphon and unupgraded riflemen. Kek had unupgraded Grunts and demolishers, a level three Farseer with chain lightning and spirit wolves and a fresh off the altar Tauren Chieftain with stomp.
Ling needs to learn how to control two heroes at some point, he is notorious for only bothering with a second one after the first 35 minutes of the game have passed and he hasn't been attacked (attacks on the first 35 minutes mess up his build of mass huntress halls). We had a superior army, they had superior placement and items, home production and home defense.

lingoral: so ive been poking my eye for a bit of practice tt
lingoral: its pretty soft actually
lingoral: squishy to the touch

Chapter Six
(Or how this wasn't funny the first time either)

The attack started well enough, meaning that nothing portaled back to kick our asses in the first few seconds, but our good luck didn't last long. Both of them portaled back at the same time, with grunts, demolishers and assorted human footmen and riflemen. We managed to kill the Tauren fairly quick, between mk bolt, mana burn and huntress focus fire the chieftain didn't survive long. They both portaled in a fairly open side of the orc base, where the cut trees and barracks formed a battleneck that helped them keep our melee troops running around. The benefits of defending a base showed immediately, and i was cursing the moment i chose to go for level two water elemental instead of getting blizzard.

Um, wait a second, what's that red blob on my base? Blah, orc is being amusing again, trying to tower me. Two towers i couldn't see where already finished and another two where under construction. Good thing for imbalance, i had a footie sitting there during this whole thing, defend, attack move, then call militia and follow him to the towers. It's surprising how much punishment a single footman on defend can take from two towers and not even go down to red health. A good thing he didn't micro the towers to attack the peasants or i would have lost a few before taking the towers down.

The fight at Orc's base was still raging, mostly me and ling running back and forth to avoid the Blood Mage's spells and catapult explosions. Huntresses do make a wonderful sight when they die to siege damage but that was the last thing i wanted to see. We got the edge when we managed to kill the under-microed tauren chieftain kek had just revived when he spawned right next to ling's huntresses and followed us when we pulled back, seconds after their farseer met a similar fate to my mountain king. Bad micro again and ling managed to kill the human archmage. The battle was going fairly even until this point, but after killing three of their four heroes in less than twenty seconds the scales were on our side. At the end, me and ling had both kept our heroes alive, while they had only a hurt blood mage to defend the orc base. But the fight was over by now, the mountain king had enough mana for one final bolt on the blood mage the only thing left fighting on the orc base was peons in burrows. An insightful balance comment was heard before they left the game and we could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Epilogue
(Or how monkeys are a tasty dish)

After watching the replay i was surprised to see how much the final battle could have been different had they manage to keep their heroes alive, it was quite close as it is and with an extra tauren and archmage, this game might have had a different ending.

I hope everyone enjoyed this report. It's been a long time since my last one and i went through maybe half a dozen possible reports that i abandoned after a few days. I'm now back to playing Frozen Throne again, so there might be some more reports of my games in the same style as this one.
-Dialtone (OrcDork) // Warsmith.org

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