Now, Titan was rather unhappy, and said "Anybody can do that". He insisted that he much preferred ogre rules, because it made for a longer game. I told him that that just leads to ogre rushes, and I'd gladly prove it by playing him a 1 on 1, plains on high, with ogre rules in effect. He was sort of noncomittal on that, so I pointed out that high resources tend to lead to that, and that medium resources are even worse. (Trust me, they are.) Low resources are really the only way to GUARANTEE build up. Now, at the time I said this, I was operating under the assumption that EVERYONE plays under the town hall first rule. That IS something against which there isn't a defense. On high resources, there are several equally valid strategies you can adopt which can protect you against those TOWN HALL FIRST early grunt attacks.

So we agreed to play on low, and to let Vermeer sit in the corner and build blimps. So we started the game, I'm happily building my town hall, when Titan says "I don't know the colors. Can you tell me where you are?" So I told him, not wanting him to argue later that I only won due to the unfair advantage of knowing the colors. Soon after, I get attacked by a grunt and a peon. I realized he did the barracks first trick on me. We start arguing about whether or not this is the same thing as the early grunt attacks on High resources. He insists that it is, I point out that it isn't, because there ARE things you can do agaisnt the High resource attacks WITHOUT doing the same thing. When Azure and I smurfed as Sapper and Kaboom, building only sappers and demo teams, and no grunts, we held of some of those early grunt attacks and went on to win. There ARE defenses against it, and while I wish people wouldn't do it so much, I don't consider it to be the same as barracks first, and I wish people would realize this.

Anyway, then Titan asks where Vermeer is, and Vermeer tells me he is going to kill Titan with only peons. So Vermeer tells Titan where he is, and beats up the grunt with his peons. Then he comes and rescues my farm from Titan's peon. Vermeer also beats up Titan's stuff with his peons. We talk for a bit, before Vermeer's peons finish Titan off and our allied victory brings us to the Victory Screen. Now, I'm not mad at Titan, he was trying to do this to prove a point. But for all of you out there who think that early grunt attacks are unstoppable, BS, or in some other way illegal, they aren't. I almost never do them, and I almost always stop them. Barracks first IS unstoppable, and it is QUITE different.

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Alexx (Marshall)