FFA: Position, Teaming, 3 ways, and Rice's orc ground

[CellPhoneCancer]

Alright, so I'm changing the URL and host because yousendit.com apparently isn't stable? I hope this is the correct link now:

http://files.filefront.com/AudioCommentary3zip/;3970182;;/fileinfo.html

No idea how this host is...I assume I get spam from filefront?

Music? Variable bit-rate MP3s? Oh yeah, I pulled out all the stops on this one. I think I recorded myself at a lower bitrate than usual though, so its a bit fuzzier :blush:

Also, I believe I tell you to turn on fog of war in the middle, but forget to mention to turn it back off...don't feel obligated to keep it on this time around (for too long anyhow).

The title says most of it. Enjoy, and, as usual, comments are always appreciated.

[Frozgard]

Hum I get a "Page not found" Error :(

[zandamotr]

please for the love of god stop using yousendit.com, after like 25 downloads or whatever it can't be downloaded anymore, because i'm in europe i miss a lot of commentarys by the time i wake up becuase of this :(

[CellPhoneCancer]

Hmm...thanks for the post zand, you're the first to complain about it. I'll see if I still have a university account to host this.

[Frozgard]

Excellent audio again. Thanks a lot for this. One question though: why didn't rice add 20 food of bats to deal with Pencil quickly? He could have taken out most of the gargs with the bats and then he would have bought some more time to deal with the chims. When I play orc FFA, I tend to go mostly ground and deal with mass light air by having constantly 20 food of bats.

[altqq]

Once again, a great audio. The music at the beginning was much louder than your voice so it was a bit of a shock at the beginning. Other than that, the skill level in the replay was top notch, though I was hoping to see another replay with you in it. The Orc ground is getting borderline repetitive, and another human audio would be appreciated.

What about... a live FFA audio? :D

[mattbandelt]

nice 1 man, yea the music in the beginning blew my ear drums out... ill send u the doctor bill and u can cover that for me k.. thx gg. Anyway poor rice that shit was depressing they teamed his ass, but they didnt really talk about it, so it was just bad luck i think. Great ac looking forward to more solos. Im interested in the human a/cs as well.. something different though..so whoever wants to cover that thx.

[CellPhoneCancer]

Argh, next time I'll equalize everything and THEN increase the volume...

In response to Frozgard, I think many of the top FFA orcs have a dislike for bats. Sure, bats will counter lots of light air like gargs, but they're also a very expensive solution that has to be rebuilt as soon as you use them. Bats give a hell of a lot more experience than a HH/Zerk when killed (assuming your opponent can kill them before the suicide.). The kind of army Rice was using, on the other hand, does extremely well against mass gargs, does not suffer large casualties, and does not need to be rebuilt. Rice's army ends up dying to Pencil's mostly because Pencil at the end is at 100 and Rice is at something like 65. Pencil was splitting his army a bit between destros, gargs, and frosts, though, so you have to remember that if he sees rice with 10 bats (and 10 is a really large number of bats) he probably has good enough micro to wait for the correct moment to hit stone form, and then focus the bats or your heroes with his heavier air and coil/carrion/nova. As soon as he creates enough confusion, the gargs return and kill off the bats. Even if you get off 1 or 2 unstable concoctions, pencil ALWAYS has healing scrolls to negate the splash...I don't think he'd particularly mind losing a cheap garg at the expense of your bat. Finally, 10 bats at the expense of what? 10 bats is 20 food, and Rice, at 100 food, was probably using 10-12 zerks...i.e. 20-24 food. I suppose he could have removed a tauren or two, but Rice loves to use the tauren to push the front line. I believe he wants the tauren to really hurt his opponent's heroes to either kill them, force them to TP, or create confusion.

As far as that replay went, I don't believe Rice really ever had an opening where if he had pushed Pencil, Fly wouldnt' have attacked him. Remember that Fly can throw owl all over the place. Had Rice pushed and suicided all his bats, he's very likely to have to face Fly, this time at a 20 food disadvantage :crazy:

And yeah, like I said, I'm getting bored with orc ground as well, so I'll see if I can produce or dig up either an UD or HU replay...let the elves burn.

[Frozgard]

Good points about the rebuilding and the micro things. I have to admit that my FFA games have been at around lvl 35 only so I haven't met people with superior micro yet and using stone form at the right time is definitely not easy (not even the lvl 40 UDs I play in solo use it against bats).

From a cost benefit ratio, I think that the orc wins out on it, since 1 bat kills at least 1 garg (unless the UD has a scroll of protection) and it's 185/30 against 160/40 plus experience.

The food thing is indeed an issue. Against mass air I tend to go for:
- About 24 peons (three mines, 8 to 10 on wood)
- 3 heros
- 2 Taurens
- 4 Shamans
- 2 Docs
- 1 Spirit Walker
- 1 Kodo
- 10 Headhunters

This is 88 food which leaves room for 6 bats.

But then again it's true that the main reason Rice lost was the teaming, not the army composition.