Armicades, armacades, and armorcades

Armicade* is a made-up word which combines armory and barricade. Functionally, an armicade is an armory which has been constructed in order to block the path of aliens and especially Tyrants. Armicades are used in order to resist prolonged sieges during sudden death.

Two properties of armories allow them to function as useful barricades: they can be rebuilt during sudden death (on the Dretch*Storm server, but not on all servers), and they have a large bounding box. Since armicades can be rebuilt, humans employ them in order to protect structures which cannot be rebuilt. An attentive human will rebuild the armicade every time it is destroyed, preventing Tyrants from reaching other structures.

Armicades are most frequently used on ATCS. Typically, the humans will place a single armicade on the narrow ramp leading up to the default reactor. This armicade completely blocks Tyrants from accessing the ledge, thus protecting the turrets, nodes, and other structures. Armicades can be used effectively on other maps, also, but they are most efficient when a single armory can be used to restrict access to the entire human base.

There are three strategies for defeating an armicade:

1. Destroy the armicade permanently by killing the armory immediately prior to sudden death. If the armicade has been destroyed when sudden death begins then the humans will not be able to rebuild it. Therefore the humans should expect a large, coordinated attack approximately 30 seconds before sudden death.

2. Go around it. Marauders and dragoons can usually bypass an armicade altogether by jumping over it or around it.

3. Brute force. Kill the armicade repeatedly, and then attack the vulnerable human structures as often as possible. Typically, an advanced dragoon is the safest choice for initially bringing down the armicade. The armicade's large bounding box makes it easy to snipe. Once the armicade is down the aliens can keep it down if they are vigilant. If new construction begins then it should be attacked immediately, since new constructions are extremely weak initially.

* Note that many players use alternate spellings such as armacade, armorcade, etc... Technically, the spelling ought to be armorade, but that sounds more like a soft drink than a defensive strategy. The word barricade is a combination of barrique (the French word for barrel; early barricades were often composed of barrels) and the suffix -ade.