Welcome to the third game! Remember [o]Mr.X won the first 2 games ZvT & ZvP... Without any delay, let's jump into the action :).

Again the Game-Q version of LT is used as battleground, and once more both players random. This time Mr.X doesn't draw his best race (Zerg), instead he gets Protoss at 9 while Whear is at 3 and he is Zerg! That should be interesting ;).

Mr.X scouts with the probe that starts his first pylon, and Whear is scouting with his overlords and later a drone. A bit risky, Whear gets his natural rather than building his first hatch below the ramp which is common at 3. There is no danger for him however, since Mr.X' build order is something like gate at 10, assimilator at 11, cyb.core at 12. Such an early core involves not building a zealot in your single gate for quite a while. He starts his second pylon at the south edge of his plateau and as soon as his cyb.core is finished, he starts a stargate at this hidden position.

Whear's drone arrives and scouts the protoss base, not finding the hidden tech at first. Seeing the early cyb.core and the absence of zealots, Whear suspects what is going on and gets gas after starting his third hatchery inside his main. Later, on the second try his drone finally finds the warping stargate - needless to say both scouting overlords make an U-turn now and speed towards 3 hoping to save their ass.

Mr.X also scouts Whear's base with his probe, and later leaves it at a safe distance from 3's ramp so he can spot if Whear will try to attack him with zerglings. It's interesting to note Mr.X' first zealot is out of the gate quite some time after that stargate has started warping, but this seems to be safe enough as Whear has started his pool after his expansion hatchery like most zerg players do. When his stargate nears completion, Mr.X also warps a citadel of adun, obviously he is going for a corsair/DT combo! =]

Now two zerglings find that probe that Mr.X has left in front of 3, and start chasing it. They kill it, but not before it makes it into the zerg base again. It finds out that Whear has skipped any defense after seeing that Mr.X is going for early tech, so the 2 zealots that the protoss player has now are immediately sent to try doing some damage. An overlord spots that, so Whear indeed takes measures and repels that attack with 8 zerglings - Mr.X' zealots run back home.

While this was happening, Mr.X has built a corsair and it is already attacking one of Whear's overlords at the zerg main. The first hydras hatch and are sent to attack the sair, but after the sair moves a bit to the side and starts attacking the overlord from a different angle, the hydras don't care to follow it until Whear directs them seconds later. That's enough for the corsair to score his first kill and Mr.X soon finds another victim - the overlord that saw his zealots in the center of the map has still not made it home, and he never makes it ;(.

Now having his overlords all under hydra protection, Whear starts a second extractor and a lair. Mr.X expands to his natural, with just 2 zealots and more importantly a dark templar as defense. As soon as his lair is finished, Whear starts the overlord speed upgrade. He is indeed aware that after going for DT/sair his opponent will expand, and to counter he sends an overlord and a drone towards 12's natural. There he starts a hatchery and sends some zerglings and a hydra do defend it.

Soon his overlords have their speed upgrade and Whear decides to launch an attack with about 20 hydras and 2 overlords as detectors. The overlords are so happy of the velocity - soon the hydras lag far behind them and the faster overlord is awarded with some plasma by Mr.X corsair. At the moment the hydras and the second overlord safely arrive at 9's natural, the protoss defense consists of 5 zealots, two dark templar and two high templar. Mr.X has a pylon close to his nexus, but it seems he didn't want to waste money on a forge and cannons - amazingly, not even a single defensive building has been built in this game so far!

Now the dancing begins - Whear doesn't want to stop his hydras and attack something, because he is afraid of losing them to storm, and Mr.X doesn't want to waste his templar's energy without being sure that he will do great damage... the first storm that he casts kills just 2 hydras and damages some other ones, so he gets even more conservative with his templars now and the dancing continues for quite a while without any casualties on both sides.

This actually benefits Mr.X, I felt at the start of this battle Whear had the edge, but now some more templars and zealots join out of 4 gateways that Mr.X has already and the tide turns. The best thing Whear can do now is place some of his hydras amongst the probes that are working at the expansion and Mr.X is forced to storm and kill those hydras and some of his own probes. Then the growing protoss army chases away the rest of the hydras and the corsair kills the overlord that was spotting for them.

Whear doesn't have any reasons to worry though, since he has expanded to 12's main during this battle. He has two evolution chambers and is upgrading his hydras now. Mr.X proceeds to take his mineral only, and wasting no time, he goes on the offensive with 12 speedy zealots, 4 high templar, 2 dark templar and his lonely corsair that has 4 kills so far.

Here Whear does something very sneaky - he has two groups of hydras, one to the north of the center, and one to the south. In the middle is an overlord that sees Mr.X troops running to the east (time for the corsair to get his 5th kill). Whear runs his hydras around the walls that surround the temple and strikes Mr.X while his army is in the center... the latter sees that in time though - he casts a neat storm on some of the hydras over the northern wall and runs back to defend his natural. Whear forces his hydras not to attack the warping nexus at the mineral only but rather try to take down the expansion at the natural.

There are 24 hydras, but too bad for them there is no space for dancing - they have the nexus to their left and Mr.X' angry army to their right - 3 storms kill most of them and the rest easily fall to the speedy zealots and invisible dark templar before any real damage is done! Whear is continuing to take over the map meanwhile though, now he starts a hatchery at 6's natural. Unfortunately for him Mr.X wastes no time and sends his units on a new attack, and Whear doesn't have many units at that time...

The protoss player makes a nice decision here - 8 zealots and 2 dark templar are sent to bring down 12, meeting almost no resistance there - Whear sends all his hydras to deal with the threat but on the way he notices the main part of Mr.X army going for his main! So Whear decides to let his expansions die and save his main - a spectacular battle ensues, with 30+ hydras engaging 5 goons, 8 zealots and 5 templars from two directions - very nice flanking by Whear, and he wins that battle although with some heavy losses due to fast storming by Mr.X.

The small strike team that has destroyed 12's main at first tried to join that battle in front of Whear's main, but then seeing that there is no point anymore, Mr.X sends them to 12's natural and destroys it too...

Whear, meanwhile, decides to attack Mr.X mineral only meeting absolutely no resistance there, and after destroying the nexus there he attacks 9's natural. Here 4 goons, 2 zealots and 2 high templar finally stop the invaders, but before dying the 1/1 hydras bring the nexus down! Whear tries to save some surviving hydras, but on the way back home they meet the 8 zealots and 2 dark templar that were so successful at 12 and die to them.

Now we need an update of the situation =\. Whear has his main and natural running, and his hatchery at 6 is almost done. Mr.X has just his main and a mass of probes harvesting it. Both players start to rebuild now - Whear builds hatcheries at 6's main, 6's mineral only, and 12's natural. Mr.X starts new nexuses at his natural and his mineral only. He also decides to attack yet again! He goes out with 12 zealots, 6 goons and those two dark templars that are surviving everything so far.

But Whear has an unpleasant surprise for him - LURKERS! About 10 lurkers and 15 hydras don't engage Mr.X army, but rather run past it and head for his natural! Mr.X cancels the nexus at his mineral only, but the one at his natural is completed already and the lurkers are buried around it, spread nicely so that templars can't kill more than one at once.

Mr.X has no detection or whatsoever, remember in this game cannons and sunkens haven't been built yet... Luckily at least he has a forge where he is researching +1 attack, so he builds 2 cannons at the top of his ramp now... The nexus is lost, but as soon as the cannons warp in Mr.X uses his troops to attack the lurkers that are in range of the cannons, and storms the rest.

Now he starts a new nexus, and sadly he has to distance mine meanwhile since his main has dried out... He is building just templars now, and he has some goons and zealots left over from the last battle (the DT's have died it seems T.T). With 8 templars and those ground troops he decides to check out what's going on outside of his base, but Whear is doing an excellent job - he is containing his opponent with a few buried lurkers and hydras behind them, while getting his expansions running and also taking 12's main again.

When Mr.X' natural starts working and he has some goons produced and his templars charged, he goes out for a last spectacular battle - yeah last because he has just 7-8 zealots, 4 goons and 8 templars. For the record I'll mention he has +1 attack now. Whear has the whole map, a number of hydras that I can't even count and 2/2 upgrades...

A real massacre takes place a bit to the east of 9's natural - Mr.X units are flanked from all directions, and the 8 templars cast a protective ring of storm... Whear doesn't really need to dance or something, true an enormous number of hydras die but so do the protoss troops as well and it is over - 9's natural is soon flooded by hydras and Mr.X concedes the game with a gg...

A really well played game I must say, zerg did what he should do - expand all over and power, and toss was as aggressive as possible. Whear probably underestimated Mr.X aggressiveness at some point when he lost his expansions at 12, but then the lurkers were a nice decision that secured him the map and the victory in this game. Combined with the great micro and spectacular battles this was a very enjoyable game to observe as well, thanks to the performers! So it's 2:1 now this is getting interesting :).

[o]Mr.X vs. [-Whear-] Game 4, ZvT !