We sat down for a five player game. All rules were official, except we couldn't remember the erratta'd Scrouge text, so we played without it. I don't think it mattered



Aldaris was "Sir Not Appearing in this Film".

Yours Truly was Arcturusk Mengsk, the villanous Red Terran. ("I'll get you, Red Terran!"). I played the part.



I stated out on a 2/2/1 world, and it was adjacent to only two other worlds, Tassadar's homeworld and an empty 2/1/1/1. Feeling no pressure from Tassadar, I went for the fast expand. There was a little problem though, as the Queen of Blades had a mobilize order underneath my orders. We negotiated a truce to split the world, each getting two regions, me, somehow being given the clearly inferior gas-1 in exchange for "peace" with the purple Zerg.



My plan was to pay a visit to Tassadar's homeworld, a juicy 1/1/2/2. It would have been a splendid little war, I'm sure. However, Tassadar mounted a Sicilian Expedition to the to other side of the galaxy, and placed all three of his Zealots in one space, where they were scorched out of existance by an avalanche of Overmind green zerg. Attacking Tassadar's homeworld when he had literally no military would have led to him being eliminated, and me jumping out as immediate leader. Then I would have instilled the ire of all the other races.

For some reason I completely overlooked that I could have invaded the Blue Terran Raynor. So that left just the Purple Zerg Queen.

I quietly researched Cloak and Nuke and Spidermines. Because of the pact, I had plenty of room to manuever with my cloakable Ghost, so with no way for it to die there was no reason to actually build the barracks-3 to get more ghosts.

When it came, the sneak attack campaign was swift and brutal: 3 zerglings and 2 Hydralisks nuked out of existance, only about 1 marine lost.

The Purple Zerg launched a counter attack, but spider mines were just too good, and all but a Queen perished. The Queen, however, would spend the rest of the game denying me the 2-mineral on that world.

The only ability of the queens was their Parasite, and I have to say I was really impressed by how handy it was. It kept me from getting swarmy with the cloaks and spider mines. Knowing the combat cards in advance removes much uncertainty. Next game I think I'll go to town on Queen upgrades. They're cheap and good, especially against the Vulture/Wraith combo.

An event card cut my opponent's transport link to this contested world, so the war was over, and I'd won. Further, the loss of the transport encouraged him even more to go after the Green Zerg Overmind, who at this point was dominating three worlds and pushing onto his fourth. I heartily encouraged this initiative, and the table consensus was that the Green Zerg Overmind had just gotten too big too fast from crippling the Yellow Protoss Tassadar.

For his part, Yellow Tassadar had had to hyperspace storm out of existance his Z-axis border with the Green Zerg Overmind. But after being left alone to craft an Archon, revenge was on his mind. He negotiated a reservation on Blue Terran Raynor's homeworld, so that he could wage war on the Green Zerg. Normally these arrangements are too cumbersome and break down almost immediately, but this alliance held. The reason was that it was a big planet - 4 regions, and one of the region was used by both factions as a neutral unit marshalling space for troops that would be almost immediately shipped off world.

Green Zerg Overmind, faced with assault on one side by Yellow Tassadar, and on the other by Purple Zerg Queen, decided to resist Purple Zerg Queen. That battle would flow back and forth over Victor V, with Mutalisks dominating both sides' orders of battle.

The End Draws Near
Turn four ended with me, Red Terran, and Green Zerg Queen in the lead for victory points at 11. The Stage 2 deck had but 7 cards left in it. We entered the fifth turn with the assumption that it would be the last. Everyone carefully reviewed eachother's Special Victory Conditions and came to the following conclusions:

Green Zerg Overmind had two safe bases and could probably build a third if we let him out of our sites.
Red Terran Mengsk was in good position to take complete control of two planets - indeed had almost controlled them totally all game.
Yellow Protoss Tassadar was still extremely far from his SVC, owing to his early loss of Zealotry to occupy spaces.
Purple Zerg Queen could fairly easily get a third conquest point, but would have to build a transport somewhere to do so.
Blue Terran Raynor needed just a mineral patch here or there to win. He'd been peaceful all game, and had a huge pile of vultures, marines, and even a few Siege Tanks.

My plan was to take two worlds, but not include in that the world which everyone was expecting, which bordered three other major powers including the crouching tiger Blue Terran Raynor. Instead, I would blitz onto Purple Zerg Queen's world and take it, and hopefully see the inevitable pile of orders rain down on a world I no longer cared about.

That's pretty much how it happened, but speak of the devil, I got a 4th VP that turn for my troubles, and since Normal Victory comes before Special Victory, I won.

Good thing I got 15 VP too, since at least two other players had also furfilled their SVCs.
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Cool things that worked well for me this game:

1) The early Nuke/Cloak combo. Due to the R&D Event Card, I had the nuke cloak combo in hand at the start of Turn 2. Does even an archon really want to mess with a ghost with room to run and a finger on the button? No. This makes playing with Arcturusk kind of fun. That ghost is a powerful defensive deterrent to people without Detector, and had they gotten detector deployed I would just have built Bunker too.
2) Vultures with Spider Mines. These things are just crazy good. I think their deployment forced Purple Zerg Queen to go fully to the air track.
3) Putting a garrison marine on every back-country region. It prevents any unfortunate event card "surpises", and means you're just not as susceptible to the wild swings in the game.
4) Not getting too far out in front. I left that to Green Zerg Overmind, and he payed a heavy price for it. Consolidation of position is the order of the day in the midgame.

Ideas that probably weren't so great:
1) Buying the second Nuke. Before I could get it in hand the ghost got killed by Green Zerg Queen. I'm not about to tech back up there to get another.
2) Getting obsessed with Battle Cruisers I spent turn 4 teching to Battle Cruisers, and only ever built one of the beggars. It was handy for beating up Mutalisks, to be sure, but an extravagence. For the same money I could have had 3 goliaths and saved two actions. Those are also quite solid versus Mutas.
3) The early pact which I violated. This is surely going to haunt me in later games.
4) Failing to see the freakin adjacency I had to the Blue Terran's homeworld! Duh.

Overall it was a good game. The only sad things I feel are remorse that Yellow Protoss got so screwed in the opening, that Blue Terran never saw combat all game(!) and that I broke that pact with the Purple Zerg.

But the game did have a lot of cool things. Most people went Big Air. The two Zergs and I saw heavy combat. The combat outcomes were mostly predictable, which I take to mean we're getting more experienced as a group at the game.
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I'm sure others in the group will chime in with their stories this gets approved. We've got a photo of the map coming too.