The second round of SWC is over and here is my write up of it:
The teams were decided randomly with @kasami and @bonzai and myself on team 1 and @atavus, @wtfrank, @nyoom & @ricane on team 2.
bonzai and kasami both made a blistering start using swarm tactics that are popular in the botareana. @atavus and @wtfrank started the aggression very early one as they attacked bonzais remote mines at RCL2, he managed to fend them off with tiny 1H2M1R creeps.
After the blistering fast start, things settled down as we all levelled up and team 2 were able to catch up a bit, but as unfortunately ricane was unable to be online in the first day meaning he had to restart. @nyoom was very aggressive in this stage performing some rather advanced attacks against mainly stevetrov but also bonzai and kasami. He used a phalanax of 4 (or more) ranged / heal creeps that kept in a rigid 2x2 formation meaning they could concentrate fire and healing. Using these tactics he trashed one of stevetrov's rooms twice, another once and at least one of bonzais rooms. nyoom also launched an attack against the controller in "W5N3" and stevetrov just saved it with < 500 ticks to go.
stevetrov tried some swarm attacks but with no success.
@atavus and @bonzai had a intense fight over remote mining rooms with multi-creep squads being deployed on both sides and many creeps died on both sides before bonzai eventually gained the upper hand.
@wtfrank continued to harass through out the game, mainly attacking remote mining rooms. His creeps were relatively intelligent and retreated from a fight they didn't think they could win.
However, @wtfrank sacrificed economic growth for military might in the early game as so was unable to build bigger creeps in the later game.
stevetrov copied nyooms tactics to take out wtfrank.
As rooms started hitting RCL6 boosts became part of the equation.
nyoom had manged to obtain L, H & O giving him T2 healing boosts.
stevetrov had L, K(from kasami), H & U and managed to get RCL6 SK mineral mining running to give him O & Z. This meant he could make all T2 boosts. With this significant boost advantage, when no one had boosted defenders he was able to fight through nyoom defences to take him out. ricane was having problems with his defences meaning there were large holes in his ramparts so he fell easily to stevetrov's T2 creeps. atavus's was the only team 2 player able to withstand the onslaught. During this time stevetrov was able to get a X room upto RCL6 (it had been delayed by nyooms effective attacks) and allowed him to take the fight to atavus with T3 creeps, against T3 atavus didn't stand a chance and fell. With the defeat of atavus Team 2 had zero presence on the map and the game was over.