The Archives

Archives Vol 1 -- August 1999

Old News from... August -- September -- October

Tues., Aug. 31	New BETA Layout for Netscape - Angelife
	Thanks to PureAnarchy (`Pure), a new beta layout of this site is now available. If you're having troubles with Netscape, this should solve them. Right now, only the main page is converted -- i.e., you will have to make use of your browser's BACK button to navigate the site properly. Please let me know in the forum if you make use of this layout. Temporarily, you can bookmark this directly with this url. Be warned that this url will cease to function in mid-September as we will be moving to a different service provider.
Sun., Aug. 29	New games I'm checking out... - Angelife
	TA:Kingdoms (ok not so new) -- don't buy. C&C: Tiberian Sun -- soso. If you liked C&C you should like this. StarFleet Command -- if it weren't for the horrible graphics implementation (on my card at least) and the annoyance of killing drones (missiles) this game could really rock... Kind of what BC3000AD could have been. More on all these later in a new reviews section.
	NWTR Tourney! - Angelife
	Yavoon' and others of the channel NWTR (no, it's NoWhere To Run, not neuter as in emasculate!) are putting together a 2v2 tourney. Famous teams such as PsiSoldier and Yavoon', FS-Chaos and FS-Rasz, to say nothing of SoylentRed and AngeLife are entered. Calibre of play should be quite high, except for Soy and me... you can check out the details here.
	I'm back... sort of! - Angelife
	After not playing for nearly a week, I finally returned to bnet last week. It was horrible. I managed to go 1-3, dragging poor old Chaos down to defeat. Actually, I think the game we won was the one I played worst in sadly... We did quite well against Drake and FS-Inferno (as always, I killed off all of ferno's SCV's and died to a monster tank push counter...) My worst blunder of the games was NOT to upgrade carrier capacity. DOH! (or DOPE! as Tino would say). Today I kind of redeemed myself and played an SCELITE exhibition game with FETO, along with Ras and Soy. We won and I did the usual "let Ras nearly die as she's 3v1'd before at long last blundering in to save the day".
Wed., Aug. 25	Star Crusaders Tourney! - Angelife
	Davy, of the The StarCrusaders, is putting together an open 1v1 tourney. They have some good players themselves; you can check out tourney information here.
Mon., Aug. 23	Idlers/BackFire game up! - Angelife
	Thanks to Inferno... he has finished the Idlers/BackFire report. It can be seen here. At long last we may see who wins this decisive game!
	Boy or Girl? - Angelife
	Good old Inferno (the Idle one) is kindly doing up a battle report for the SCElite Idlers/BackFire match. He did ask me: Is PuffCraft a girl? I larfed, as I am wont to do, and said "no". He then asked about Tino -- FS-Anarchy. I laughed again and replied in the negative, and thanked him for making sure. But then I got to thinking... Inferno was half right. I must extend my most sincere compliments to Anarchy and Puffy... Gentlemen, you may not be girls, but you sure play like girls!! And for those who've emailed me, since it's being written by Inferno, not me, that battle report should be up within sometime between Monday night and Tuesday night..
	SoylentRed wins at Fragapalooza! - Angelife
	Guess who goes undefeated against 32 other top SC/BW players at the SC Tourney of Fragapalooza '99? That's right, our very own SoylentRed. Congrats to Soy, who cleverly avoids being offensive cannoned!
Sun., Aug. 22	SCElite - Angelife
	"There can be only one" -- Highlander, and the logical outcome of todays match between the Idlers and BackFire. The two undefeated SCElite teams face off at 2pm Bnet time today... only one will emerge victorious. Inferno will be doing one of his usual excellent battle reports on the match and it will appear here in a day or two.
	SCElite Vote - Angelife
	Who will win the match? Will it be the mighty Puffy of BackFire? Will it be the Idlers? Vote and choose!
	Losing to FS... - Angelife
	Since I've been eager to post whenever I actually am on a team that beats the mighty FS, I will do the same about tonight's game(s)... FS-Inferno persuaded me to 1v1 him... ouch :/ I was pretty sure I'd lose, but didn't know by how much. Map was ShadowLands, which I last played when I beat up froggy... (rare, perhaps unique, occasion indeed) Inferno randomed and got Terran 9; I chose Toss and got 3. He went wraiths/tanks; I went reavers (slower dual bld because I was forgetful). he tank dropped me; I killed it with the reavers. I reaver dropped him and wiped out almost all of his peons while he was dropping my only expansion. I recooked reavers and a shuttle and started for temps, and lost to a nice repeated tank drop backed by a wraith and goliaths. I killed one of the tanks with a reaver drop, but lost everything else... I gg'd him and he was kind enough to share vision ... he had 3 bases to my one... ouch :(. And I don't have the excuse I was playing on fastest either :/. I was slow to expand, and handled units poorly. The sole high point was the microing of my reaver to wipe out almost all his scvs (at the main only) including the ones that ran away :). And let me amend that one time in 3 to one time in 10...
Sat., Aug. 21	Trash talkers - Angelife
	So I agree to play a game (with ferno) against "someone" and FS-Rasz. And what does "someone" proceed to do but ask us all when we last had sex. And then tell us (idlers) we suck. I bite my tongue and say nothing. And then he asks if I will date him?? I bite harder. And I scout him, and find he's gone fast toss exp-- at 9 o'clock, dumbest place for it, except maybe for noon. He keeps trash talking, over and over as we battle his probes, and yes, I quit the (UMS) game. Who wants this? Who wants to play like this, but for 16 year old boys with a testosterone fixation?! He's a good player, but he behaved like a jerk. To add insult to injury he flounces off and says we're not "skilled enough" for him. uh-huh. K, fine. Well "someone", chill out. Some people like the trash talk; some don't. I don't. I'm not going to play in 'friendly' games with trash talkers. Life's too short. As for whether I suck? Yep, compared to many in FS I do. Compared to all? nope. Can I give a good FS player a run for his money 1 time in ... say... 3? You bet (Make that one time in 10 ... I 1v1'd him and he won fairly handily -- he is good :/). General Rules as far as I'm concerned? Treat people as though they are your friends; don't back stab; don't trash talk. If they are inferior feel free to tell them why. Don't act like a prima donna. If you want to do that, don't play with anyone other than yourself. (Yes, nasty double meaning there :)
Fri., Aug. 20	New Poll... on What is the Next RTS game for you? - Angelife
	Old poll's results: very few play SC/BW fewer than 10 hours a week; 21% 10-20, 21% 20-30, 7% 30-40, and an amazing 36% are hard core addicts playing over 40 hours a week!
	FETO/BackFire Report Up, finally! - Angelife
	From the SCElite league, the two undefeated teams of FETO and BackFire encounter each other... who will emerge victorious? Read it here.
	I blunder into a win Wednesday night.. - Angelife
	Kudos to SoylentRed, who, with Psycho, manages to pull off an impressive upset win on Char Magma over Froggy, Anarchy, and Chaos the other night, no thanks to me. We were 3v3'ing; I was playing StupidCraft and tried to offensive cannon Froggy. Wish I had screenshots. My only slender contribution to the game was to help kill off Anarchy's base and his fleeing drones after mine had fallen. For the rest of the game I was pylon~girl, making ominous threats of my mighty carriers, much to poor Chaos' and Froggy's annoyance. Was a good game; could have gone either way at any point; alas, camera was not on so no battle report :(. Soylent was doing some cool micro like locking down shuttles filled with reavers... nice.
Wed., Aug. 18	Lame Update :) - Angelife
	OK, several things... First, added the FireSwarm page to the links; a highly capable clan with expert players. I can proudly report the Idlers were 3 for 3 last night against FS-Rogue, FS-Oka, and FS-Rasz (Rogue was only in the final game.) I guess truth in advertising forces me to report three prior humiliating defeats to FS-Chaos and FS-Froggy... though I did beat up Froggy on a 1v1 later :) I must say, I've learned a lot from these people, especially from losing to them! If you see them about, do go for a game. You can generally recognize them by the FS- prefix, though be warned, Clan ForSaken also uses this. I've also added the Enemies of FireSwarm page temporarily to the links, because it's such a hoot!
	SCElite League - Angelife
	Here, the Idlers (SoylentRed, Snake, Anarchy, ElIdlero, Ras and me) are undefeated, stretching our record to 5-0. Only one other undefeated team remains -- BackFire-- and we are playing them this Sunday on Ebon Lakes.
Mon., Aug. 16	New Game: Sovereign - Angelife
	From Verant, makers of EverQuest. Sovereign is a "3D Massively Multiplayer Real Time Strategy game, which allows anywhere from 4 to 500 players to play in the same game. It can be best described as a cross between the board game Diplomacy with games like Civilization II and Command and Conquer". Scheduled for 2H2000, you can find out about it here.
	New Section -- Tools - Angelife
	Added Tools section. Added new discussion on Fast Expansions on temple.
Sun., Aug. 15	New Section -- Stupid StarCraft Tricks - Angelife
	A new section for AngelCraft Properly speaking, this should include a game I did last night. See below, or click here.
Friday the 13th!	My Response to Fuzzy's Bedtime Story - Angelife
	Read it, but my summary is: "In the end, I question Fuzzy's manus manum lavat -- I would rather say (on the topic of servers), hostes sunt in manibus."
	New layout for Inferno - Angelife
	OK, ferno has a new layout for his page that is strangely familiar :).
Thurs., Aug 12	Fuzzy Speaks Out... - Angelife
	In a post on the bnet forums, Fuzzy vents his frustrations with BNET. His gentle bed time story is reproduced here. My own commentary on this is now up.
	Strategy Teaser... - Angelife
	Here's the first element of the mighty AngelCraft Strategy Guide... Kind of a teaser.
Wed., Aug 11	Angel Rambles... - Angelife
	Below, you can see my first ramblings... on new vs old school.
	Added Link to... - Angelife
	NWTR - NoWhere To Run -- good clanless website and channel First Editorial on NWTR -- on Speed! A Must Read for all who play on "fastest".
Tuesday, Aug 10	Added Link to... - Angelife
	The Vizier; an Idler; you can check out his VizierCraft here. Poll Results in -- people like the new layout People also think that SoylentRed gets cannoned a LOT!
Monday, Aug 9	Added Links - Angelife
	Added Archive, Idlers, Channels Sections.
Sunday, Aug 8	New Layout - PsiSoldier
	PsiSoldier has created a great new layout, cheerfully stolen by me! Soon some of the links at left will work, too!
Friday, Aug 6	Added Forum - Angelife
	Courtesy of GX Gamers, we now have a shared Idle Forum.
	Check out the exciting new poll and vote! Check out (inferno)'s page. Game Discussion added; links cleaned up.
Wednesday, Aug 4	New SCElite Battle Report - Angelife
	Added Dragons/Idlers Game, Idling in a Breath of Fire... will Soy be cannoned?
Tuesday, Aug 3	Silly Battle Report! - Angelife
	Added Abattoir Battle Report..

All right, there's "new school" and "old school". (For those not familiar with the terms, check below). Personally, I think New School is the most fun -- not necessarily the best, but the most fun. After all, watching 58745947 hydras die to storms from a few well placed templar... seeing SoylentRed's battlecruisers die to those simple little templar that cost me so little as my goons take out his evil science vessels that want to irradiate... what can be more satisfying? (well satisfying and legal, and involving starcraft at least!)

On the other hand, some maps are indubitably Old School. It's unclear to me how you can "new school" on Killing Fields, for example. Also, I've got good friends who can often outplay me (Hiya Ras, Blackies) who are definitely Old School, no apologies, massing types.

What's the point of this meandering? Well, at some future time, I intend to put together a discussion of the schools, with some examples and analysis. At the present, I simply want to note something I've noticed: a lot of "Old School" players love Fastest... now... I hate this speed. An editorial at NWTR backs me up on this, nicely. However... in my case, I've got to walk the walk and talk the talk. If I can't play well at fastest, and school decently with old-schoolers, then that's pretty pathetic; and I've little right to criticize them.

So, now and then, I will do some -- what to me is -- silliness. I'll play on fastest. Heck I'll play BGH even *barf* and do all this dumb massing stuff. In part, I'm doing this to be fair. In part, I'm also doing it because I believe it will improve my game... For ultimately, I've become convinced that the division into Old and New schools is artificial. Above all, in this game, as in life, you must be adaptive. Those who don't, as Darwin would say, die. Those who do, get to 1800 on Ladder :/.

Cheers all,
--AngeLife.

PS-- Old school? New School? What do they mean?
Essentially "Old School" comes out of the WarCraft II Days -- mass up a bunch of zealots... whoops err... ummm ogre type grunt thingies... and build a lot of them and attack, especially on a rush. New School... well units like defilers, science vessels, and templar (of both types) are new school. You don't deploy these units en masse, usually, you micromanage each unit, hopefully to devastating effect.

OK, so you've all seen Blizzard's silly new map of the week, Abattoir?
    I thought I had seen the dumbest map.
    I thought I had seen the face of the ultimate SCV rush
    I thought I would escape bloodbath forever...
    But then they created Abattoir.

- Diary of a Seasoned Battle Reporter.

So SoylentRed and I are sitting around Idle on Sunday... he's been at the beer, and I'm just as bad, operating on only 3 hours of sleep. We get to talking about how nice err... silly err... stupid it would be to do a 4v4 on Abattoir. So we create it. And no one joins. And then PaperCut suggests hey, play 4 or 5 comps, you two, and I'll watch. We're just stupid enough to do this... to find out what happens when a player who gets cannoned in a lot (Soylent) and the hottest Battle Reporter in Channel Idle take on the comp, read here.