Bold vs. garrett12345678.

Battle Report by: Bold
Map: Dire Straits
Players: Bold-404 (Protoss) vs. garrett12345678 (Zerg)
Date: 3/21/00

As I promised here is my first match in a long time on Dire Straits.  In case you aren't familiar with it, it is a pretty popular 4 player island ladder map with start positions in each of the 4 corners and expansion islands throughout the sides and middle.  This was a public game and after a short while garrett12345678 (from now on garrett) joined.  He selected Zerg, and even though I am so much better with Protoss than any other race on islands, I chose Random.  Random is a very good choice for islands because it usually takes a while before your opponent can scout you.. so he can't really modify his build according to your race.  In this particular game garrett tried to con me into telling him my race.. he must have thought I was a newbie.  Anyway, I spawned Protoss bottom right!  My favorite match up on Dire.. PvZ.  Let the game begin.  I started with an island build (obviously), going pylon between 7th and 8th probe and gas on 9th.. followed by gateway on 13th probe.

Now it was time to chose a tech tree.  I decided to tech straight to corsairs in order to harass overlords and prevent drops and expansions.  But, since I wasn't producing many ground troops like I normally would on land, I was able to afford another tech at the same time.. so after my cybercore was up and I had started my stargate, I put up a citadel for my future production of mass templar. I also laid down a forge and spread a cannon network consisting of about 4 cannons so that they covered all of my buildings and probes.  At this point things were looking good, my first 2 corsairs popped out and I sent them out to find garret.  I found him at bottom left and began to harass his overlords as planned.

A couple hydras and spores chased my sairs away, but I managed to kill all 3 overlords you see above.  I put up a robo fac to get shuttles, and as soon as my first popped out I expanded to the island right above my main.  I continued to patrol my growing number of corsairs around the map.. scanning for expansions and possible drops/mutas. 

Everything seemed quiet so I decided to take another expansion.. this time at the island to the left of the first expansion.  Note: Against Zerg on islands, the best defense is a network of cannons with at least 3 templar on each island.  This should negate any mutalisk or hydralisk attack.  Archons also do a great job (with batteries next to them).  For the cost of 1 cannon, also put up a gateway on each expansion island so you don't have to keep shuttling troops over.

As you can expect, expansions = resources = big bad army.  I assembled a fleet of carriers, about 8 zealots, a ton of templar, a couple archons, and about 7 reavers.

Oh, and we can't forget about my corsairs with dweb..

Consequently, I threw down mass dweb and dropped shuttles upon shuttles of troops and raided garrett's main with my carriers.  I'm sorry, but without ANY expansions, you aren't going to have enough troops to fight off the carriers alone, never mind 7 reavers and a horde of templar.

As a matter of fact, 2 storms and a couple of sairs took out his entire force of mutas.

Game over.

There you have it folks. I've always loved Protoss vs. Zerg on Dire Straits ever since I read Zileas' strategies.  As you probably know he was the master of Protoss island games.  Although, I did happen to beat Zileas as Zerg vs. Protoss on islands back in the day (really I did).. it just so happens that it was 2 Zergs against him, he said he wanted to practice his micromanagement, and he nearly beat us, the game lasted a looong time.  He pretty much matched our expansions and the only reason I think he lost was because it's really hard to manage your forces at maximum efficiency when you have 2 people against you who only have to manage half the amount of units and structures.  Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this report.  That's all for now.

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