Welcome to the second game of this "best of 5" series. Quick reminder - in game 1 [o]Mr.X (Zerg) defeated [-Whear-] (Terran) with some massive lurker/hydra drops. To those who missed it, take a look here.

No need to mention the map, let's just say it is the Game-Q version. Both players random again, and to my disappointment I am about to watch a ZvP with Mr.X as Zerg for the 187-th time in my life :(. Whear receives a red Nexus at 3, Mr.X a blue hatchery at 9.

Whear scouts towards 6 with the probe that builds his first pylon (close to the ramp), since he wants to know early what he is facing and act accordingly. To his luck there he meets Mr.X' overlord slightly after having started his first gateway, so the randomness of his opponent doesn't affect the game (it doesn't affect Mr.X either, but anyway at 9 he would get his early expansion no matter what). So Whear decides to go dual Gates, and Mr.X takes his natural before getting a spawning pool.

Even having seen his opponent's race, the zerg player still sends a drone to scout - in the past Mr.X would rarely do that against a protoss player, but lately there are a lot of people doing early corsair or turbo reaver and such, which can really screw up a 4-5 hatch power build if not scouted in time. Whear's probe soon makes it to the zerg base and finds Mr.X building a 3rd hatchery already at the top of his ramp. Soon the probe starts attacking the hatchery at 9's natural that has already been finished, and it is soon joined by a zealot with two more on the way.

As those arrive, Mr.X already has 8 zerglings to fight the threat, and he also starts a creep colony behind the expansion hatchery. The two forces collide and 3 zerglings die, then the 3 zealots and the single probe retreat eastwards, where they are joined by two more zealots and the rush continues.

Mr.X is using his larvae at his expansion to build some more zerglings, but as the 5 zealots and probe arrive, he has just 7 of them and the sunken isn't ready yet... first he uses them to kill a one of the initial three zealots that was quite damaged, losing 2 zerglings in the process, then he runs the rest around, buying time for the sunken to get online. 2 more zerglings hatch, so now it's 7 zerglings and a sunken against 4 zealots and a probe, and Whear retreats, with another zealot being killed by the sunken.

It was quite a strong rush I must say, I thought Whear was very close to doing some really nasty damage to Mr.X, but the latter had the advantage of the big distance between 9 and 3. Whear has 2 more zealots coming, but obviously there is no point of trying another attack with just 5 zealots, so he retreats. At his base he already has an assimilator running, and a cyb.core is building.

Mr.X keeps powering, he has 2 overlords at Whear's base so he knows very well what's going on there and just builds a 4th hatchery at his main before getting two extractors. He also adds another sunken to his defense at the high ground where his 3rd hatchery is. Here Whear tries another attack with 8 zealots, but after sending a zealot to check out the defenses and seeing there is a sunken at the high ground, he wisely retreats his forces. At his base, he is working on getting templars, and not being able to stand the two overlords floating around looking at his buildings anymore, he also builds a single goon. That kills one of the overlords and scares away the other one.

To my surprise instead of his typical 5th hatchery, Mr.X builds his hydra den and starts upgrading to Lair as well. With his templar archives completed and a forge started, Whear builds a DT and sends it on a scouting mission. It arrives at X's mineral only just in time to stop an expansion attempt there, killing the drone after the hatchery was canceled. Overlords are quite close and Mr.X directs them towards the DT and tries to kill it with some hydras, also targeting one of his own units in the process (making Whear and to some extent me happy).

The DT escapes, and Mr.X safely builds his new expansion. Whear decides to expand too, and starts a nexus at his natural with 12 zealots, 2 cannons, a goon and 2 templars as an initial defense. He also ads 2 more gateways and starts researching goon range and upgrading +1 attack at his forge. Looking at Mr.X's base, it turns out he has some lurkers now and he is building a spire as well, with a queens nest to be added soon. Apparently he is trying to be cool and not use just hydras as in the past ;).

After sealing Whear's exit with some buried lurkers and hydras behind them, the zerg player proceeds to expand to 6's mineral only and sent 2 more drones a while later probably to take the rest of 6's resource nodes. Little does he know that Whear's DT has been patrolling the area for the last few minutes and there are no overlords in the vicinity... Here Whear hits the jackpot, as he attacks the hatchery at the mineral only, kills the drone after the hatch is canceled, and amazingly at the same exact moment the other 2 drones pass by and are killed as well =].

So no mass expands for Mr.X yet... Next thing he does is show 4 mutas to Whear, by trying to attack the probes at his main, but a defending cannon denies him from doing any damage. At least he totally confuses Whear, who is forced to frantically build more cannons around his main and natural, since he has mostly zealots and high templars. He also builds a robotics, since he needs observers to deal with the lurkers in front of his natural.

After bringing ovies to 6, Mr.X proceeds to expand at the 3 resource nodes there and also builds two evo chambers for upgrades. Whear moves his DT to scout the 12 position since he can't do any damage to 6. A new DT manages to slip by the lurkers after taking just 2 hits by them, and scouts the center, where he dies to hydras with overlord support.

Mr.X has his lurkers in front of Whear's base, a great number of hydras behind them and more groups of hydras waiting impatiently around the center. Prospects aren't looking good for Whear, and he knows he has to make the first move unless he wants Mr.X to take the rest of the map as well. As soon as he has his first observer he decides to break out of the containment with a badass army of about 30 speed upgraded zealots, 4 goons and 8 high templars.

This is where Mr.X brings in another confusing surprise - a queen comes by and ensnares everything, then goes away =\ .Whear waits a bit and proceeds to kill the lurkers in front of his base as soon as the ensnare effect is over. At this moment Mr.X upgrades are still 0/0/0, and Whear has just +1 attack. The first wave of zealots kill the lurkers, but take quite some splash damage due to bunching up, and then they have to engage the hydras that are waiting behind the lurkers.

Mr.X uses his queen again and the ensnared zealots are easily killed by the ranged hydras before they can close in and do damage. Then the rest of Whear's army arrives and after some very nice storming an enormous number of hydras die... unfortunately though, this has been just the main group of hydras that were standing behind the lurkers, and now Mr.X starts sending in the rest, group by group.

Since Whear has just his 4 goons and the templars left, he has to use storm at every small group of hydras that arrives and soon his templars run out of energy... he tries merging them to archons, but seeing the waves of hydras that keep arriving, he knows it's over and concedes the game with a gg. After the game he explained that this is his worst matchup and that he has to work on it most. Ironically, in the next game Mr.X drew Protoss and Whear - Zerg, it was a interesting game so check it out ;).

[o]Mr.X vs. [-Whear-] Game 3, PvZ !