Kel-Morian Combine is a custom campaign created by RoughRider in 2022.
Mission 1 - “Hired Hand”: Just like the Umojans in Hoodwink, the Kel-Morians have the right color. I don’t know why Blizzard didn’t use green. When I saw the yellow Terran Factory I was thinking in the same sound file that played when rescuing it. When I rebuilt a Supply Depot in the separate area my SCV got stuck between four Depots, although it seems that there’s a lot of space between the Supply Depots, SCVs can’t move between them.
I killed purple in my first two attempts (almost killed orange too during my first take). When I restarted and tried this mission for the third time (I was losing Raynor) I didn’t attack any Zerg at all and harvested from the three relevant expansions. When I completed the mission there was a bug where the dialogue is out of place -Gardner says something when killing purple, but as I completed the objective without killing purple, those lines of dialogue activated when the purple Zerg surrendered as a consequence of my victory- so I guess what I couldn’t read there (text too fast) was related to the Zerg not controlling their Hive structures.
Mission 2 - “Deep Impact”: In this mission I tried a lot of different stuff. During my first attempts I wasn’t saving the game because I was losing too quickly and this is a small map. Getting the first mineral and gas expansions was the most difficult part in this level.
Infantry alone didn’t work well against the computer because, after I destroyed some enemy buildings, brown sent a lot of Vultures and my two or four Medics couldn’t make a difference against them. I was getting the range upgrade for my Marines and level 1 upgrades with Stim Packs, so I always spent all my remaining gas on Medics. I also tried saving some gas to repair Stone, but that didn’t work either. Then I remembered my vanilla strategy, using lots of Bunkers. That worked way better but I kept losing because I ran out of resources. I tried launching one big attack using all my minerals, to no avail. I think I tried almost 20 times (in one of my attempts I killed 774 brown units and lost only 27).
What worked the most were the Bunkers so I tried one last time, but at the same time I saved minerals by moving Marines from one Bunker to another (as I moved forward to the enemy base, some Bunkers in the back began to lose utility). That was the only strategy that worked. I saved 100 gas by not upgrading level 1 infantry defense, and using the gas to repair Stone. I got my Engineering Bay lifted to gain vision of high terrain. After I settled properly in the mineral and gas expansions I landed the structure to get level 1 defense. I advanced counterclockwise during the entire mission until I controlled all the map. I killed 1046 units and lost 141.
Mission 3 - “Ring of Steel”: I lifted the Command Center in the upper right corner to save it from the first Zerg attack. I realized too late that the main attacking composition was made of Zerg air units. So when I restarted this mission I built a lot of Wraiths and I saved the starting Command Centers in the beginning, to later claim the expansions by landing them when the time was right.
I got the third Mining Platform located south when I was about to reach the goal. I got the last platform in the center of the map when I had a mineral amount close to 10,000. Attack waves were very consecutive so it was taking too long to reach the mineral quota, and I was tired of Cloaking/Uncloaking my Wraiths, which made me decide not to defend the last expansion and just keep the Command Center alive. I was glad that I had decided to complete the optional objective when the mission ended.
Bonus Mission - “The Heist”: I lost some Marines but I kept both SCVs alive. When I reached the Vulture section, I left behind my two SCVs next to the two healing Beacons that were left over.
I was my own worst enemy during the Vulture section, as I lost a lot of Vultures to my own Spider Mines more than once. I lured the Zerglings to the enemy traps so I could destroy these more easily and open the door. It was intense trying to find the right doors while escaping from the Zerg (but brown Terran didn’t attack me). The room with the pillars full of Zerglings and Hydralisks had something wrong, these units didn’t attack me when I was passing by.
Mission 4 - “Rocky Situation”: The key was to make a lot of SCVs, and I defended with 8 Bunkers, one for each side of my base and the ones in the corners. I liked the cave-like setting, which gave me the impression of being vulnerable to the Zerg. The surprise commando assault was very cool, I actually thought that the map wouldn’t end there and that the next objective would be to eliminate the Zerg.
Mission 5 - “Overtime”: The objectives could have had a variation from 10,000 minerals, each mission requiring different amounts of minerals. But I think it was clever to have this plot twist that represented a change in what the player is required to do in order to complete the mission. Again, I didn’t attack any Zerg base, I just harvested. Two Bunkers and one Missile Turret per expansion and I was fine, I even expanded into the upper left corner with the aid of a Dropship.
I liked the fact that this is a thematic campaign. It was the appropriate campaign to have a Zerg Brood with invincible structures. It missed a greed type of game, where the player has to reach a certain amount of resources before the enemy. But missions were very original nevertheless.
Score: 8 out of 10.