This game occured between two extremely good players, ..(Myst).. and Mantra!. If you are not already enlightened by these names, all you have to know is that ..(Myst).., whom I will just call Myst from now on had won tournaments which had Starcraft greats such as Pillars and Montaro among others. He also has a very good record against top players from clans such as x17, 1st~ and [IDEF]. Mantra!, too, is well known outside nohunters and is a very cool guy. You might have caught his name at I Can't Win or other sites like Starcraft.org.

[minor note : this was actually the second game they played. the other two were shorter, but nevertheless both players employed excellent tactics.]

Anyway, Myst selects Lost Temple as the map of choice. Knowing that his opponent is no pushover, he picks his best race, Zerg. If you have played or watched him before, well... you know how good he is with Zerg. If you don't, too bad. Mantra!, on the other hand, elected to pick random and as luck would have it, he too was Zerg and bestowed with the gosuest colour ever, purple. Myst started at the 9:00 starting position while Mantra! got the 12:00 position. GammaRayBurst & I were observers. And here you go, the obligatory 3D Lost Temple map needed to get a 10 nowadays :

The game began with both players sending their drones to their respective mineral patches perfectly. I think Myst didn't clone them, but moved them individually, however. Both of them morphed overlords on 8, and followed by a couple more drones. Overlords were sent all over the map for scouting. Myst, not knowing his opponents race, built a hatchery on 12 at his natural. Mantra!, already knowing that Myst was Zerg, built also built a hatchery on 12 not at his natural, but in front of his ramp. This is a good tactic to employ when you are powering because you have a single choke defending both your main and your natural. Lings are extremely fast and can blitz up your ramp and catch it undefended if you concentrate too much on your expansion.

Anyway, back to the game, Myst soon knew what Mantra!'s race was when Mantra! sent a drone to Myst's main for scouting. Both players then began their spawning pools at almost the same time, but the build orders diverged after this. Myst powered up even more, getting a 3rd hatch at his natural and more drones while Mantra! morphed in an Assimilator first then only a Hatchery at his natural,followed by an Evolution Chamber.

Myst transfered 6 drones to his natural when it was nearly completed and immediately started mining to maximize effeciency. By this time, one overlord from both players had reached the other persons base. Since units that attack air come later on, both players had recon for quite a long time. Both players now had their third hatcheries online. Mantra!, using three drones for gas, transfered 7 drones to his natural and built an evolution chamber in his main. Myst saw this with his overlord, of course. Myst, attempting to end it before Mantra! finishes his upgrades, builds another hatch at his main while attacking with 16 of his zerglings. While preparing his troops, he builds two Sunkens at his natural, using the hatcheries as a wall in case he gets counter attacked. Alas, even though Mantra! had fewer zerglings when Myst started moving, the length of time taken to travel was enough was Mantra! to build 8 more zerglings and stop the threat.

Unfortunately for Myst, his attack didn't even get past Mantra!'s initial hatchery. If he did, he would have had a rude shock. From the screenshots above, you can see that Myst had one overlord near the frontmost hatchery to know Mantra!'s troop count. However, behind that, out of the range of the overlord, Mantra! had already began morphing a Lair at his expansion. Soon, he added a Hydralisk Den to his tech, mainly for two purposes. One, is to get hydras to shoo away the overlords and two, to give him the option of building lurkers when his Lair completes. Only when his Hydralisk Den was two-thirds completed did Myst move his overlord and spot the Lair just being finished.

Myst, completely defying GammaRayBurst's and my expectations, executes a weird "counter". He builds another Hatchery in his main to bring up his total to 5, and then only starts on gas. Normally, I see players stop powering and begin teching when they see an opponent with higher tech than them, but Myst just simply got more drones and a Hydralisk Den.

Back at Mantra!'s base, his Hydralisk Den had completed some time ago and a few Hydras were already hatched. He used one to attack the Overlord in his main, and unfortunately, the Overlord escaped with only 17 hp left. Myst reacted wisely to this and pulled back his other Overlord at Mantra!'s natural.

Finally, Myst's Hydralisk Den was completed. However suddenly, my fellow observer alerted me with two extremely disturbing messages :

Judging from this, an attack should come soon. And come it did, but not before Mantra! morphed another Hatchery. 40-50 Zerglings and 4 Lurkers made their way west to Myst's base. Myst, as he normally does, tries to run a control group of Zerglings past and hit Mantra! base while the troops are out but unfortunately, he moved too slow and he was intercepted by Mantra!'s Zerglings. Since he just issued a move command instead of attack-move, he lost most of them while killing one or two.

Things were looking grimmer for Myst. He only had 3 Sunkens, 10 or so zerglings and a slightly lesser amount of hydras, all unupgraded compared to Mantra!'s massive army. However, Myst had a never say die attitude. Even as the hordes came pouring in, he still tried his best.

Through sheer detemination and his 5 hatcheries, he managed to stand ground. Using his narrow choke to his advantage, Myst placed his hydras and zerglings slightly in front to prevent Mantra! troops from coming in from all sides. This tactic, however, was susceptible to lurkers, so after building hydras from all hatcheries, he immediately focused his attention there and microed his hydras to kill any lurkers that came. That's why, in one of the screenshots above, you don't see the Myst's hydras attacking Mantra!'s zerglings. A few lurkers managed to burrow though and these killed a huge amount of hydras before sunkens killed them in turn. In the end, Myst lost almost all his hydras, but his 3 sunkens were still alive and his mining was not interrupted in the attack. For some weird reason, Mantra! does not reinforce this attack.

Then, 5 seconds later, the answer hit me like a ton of bricks. Secretly, Mantra! had been building a Spire in his main and already hatched 6 mutas. These he sent to Myst's base to kill stuff, and managed to kill 3-4 drones at the natural before being chased away by 10 hydras. But instead of running up and away from Myst, he utilized the mutalisks' speed and ran downwards, towards Myst's main. There, he killed around 6 more drones and got a free look at Myst's tech before Myst builds two Spore Colonies and forced him to retreat.

Back at Mantra!'s base, Myst tried to counter attack with around 12 zerglings. Sadly, like the last time, these didn't get past the first hatchery because of a lurker and some lings. During a short break after this, Mantra! expanded to the 3:00 main and added a Queen's Nest and Hive to his tech, presumably for cracklings. Myst, however, stuck to his strategy of mass hydras and already had 2 Evolution Chambers upgrading Range and Carapace. Also, he has recuperated from the previous attack quite nicely, having a good amount of hydras and drones mining. Also, he had finished upgrading the speed upgrade for overlords.

Sending an Overlord to Mantra!'s main from the west to east, Myst got a good peek of his tech and units. Even though Mantra! tried to kill this Overlord, once again this one survives with 8 hit points. Then, he sent this overlord to the south, this time finding out about Mantra!'s secret expansion which was undefended. Immediately, he sent 8 hydras to destroy it, while holding another 2 control groups at the center to slow down and kill any units that were sent to defend.

Due to being outupgraded, (Myst's hydras were 0/0 while I think Mantra!'s hydras were 0/2, and his zerglings were 1/2) Myst's troops lost the battle. But on the other end, his hydras manage to kill the expansion, thus making the number of expansions still equal. Unfortunately though, his natural was now threatened by Mantra!'s surviving troops. Again, when the attack comes, he uses his choke as an advantage for his ranged defenders. This wasn't enough though as his first 6 hydras were quickly killed by blood thirsty zerglings. However, suddenly, a very important thing happened that turned the battle into Myst's favour. His dual Evolution Chambers had finished upgrading. With 9 new Hydralisks he morphed from the 3 Hatcheries in his main, sunkens and these upgrades, he managed to repel the attack. One sunken was killed however. Mantra!'s could have ended the game here, but he failed to group his zerglings together before attacking, virtually sacrificing a control group one by one to the ranged hydras.

Knowing that Myst would concentrate on defending for now, Mantra! took the oppurtunity to expand to his mineral only. Myst, too, took his mineral only and protected it with around 8 Hydralisks. Then, he sent another overlord to scout Mantra!. Again, the lack of spores or other units at the mineral line revealed to Myst that Mantra! had already morphed in a Greater Spire.

After this, Myst tried to further push into Mantra!'s base with his hydras, but small amount of lings > small amount of hydras. However, he wasn't in that much of a trouble since many more hydras were morphing in.

Until the guardians came. A single Guardian laid seige to Myst's natural, killing most of the the drones there before it got too close to the edge of the cliff and was killed by hydras. However, another two were already being morphed by the time the first one was killed. These two were microed better though, they didn't venture any further than the cliff. Myst tried to destroy Mantra!'s mineral only knowing that he had sacrificed troops for tech, but good flanking tactics with zerglings ended the hydra rampage.

Myst, reacting as quickly as possible, lost a few drones at his expansion by this second attck before he moved them away. He was now mining from only 1 base since his natural and mineral only were too dangerous to mine from. Handling these setbacks one at a time, he first morphs lurkers at his mineral only so that zerglings (the brunt of Mantra!'s force, since he morphed gas-heavy guardians) could not assault him. He burrowed them close together so a spine volley can kill 34289343 zerglings at one time. Suddenly, I noticed a few flying units from both sides gathering at Myst's natural. What happened was one weird battle.

Yes, that's right, the famed Scourge War. In his main, Myst had finished building a Spire which I failed to spot and built a bunch of scourge. Myst cloned his properly, and killed all guardians. Mantra!'s scourge on the other hand sacrificed themselves to kill Myst's scourge. The remaining ones killed a few of Myst's overlord. Usually, players will use mutalisks to kill the guardians, but Myst already predicting scourge would be coming soon, used his own.

Immediately after that, Myst built 6 mutalisks secretly and flew them to Mantra!'s mineral only, killing quite a number of drones before Mantra! brought some hydras to defend the base. Mantra!'s army was mostly zerglings at the time, because guardians and scourge simply take a lot of gas. When Mantra! brought the hydras down to kill the mutas, Myst did exactly what Mantra! did the other time: he ran them into Mantra!'s natural. Since this was the first time that Myst was using air units to attack, there wasn't even a single spore colony there. Mantra! only had a few hydralisks there that were quickly dispatched off by Myst before he continued killing even more drones. Note that Mantra! only had 2 mineral patches left in his main, and his expansion at 3:00 hasn't morphed in yet.

Finally, after owning at least 12 drones, Myst ran his mutalisks to the 3:00 main. Again, when Mantra! gave chase he didn't clone his 4 scourges properly and only killed 1 of them.

How true, GRB. That small group of mutalisks virtually changed the whole outcome of the game. Now, Myst had 2 carapace upgrades and 2 range upgrades. Using a massive hydra and lurker army, he pressed on to gain dominance of the center area. Since Mantra! just lost many drones, Myst attacked, guessing that Mantra! was rebuilding drones now, not troops. And he was right. Even though Mantra!'s forces were 1/3 (1 melee upgrade, 1 range upgrade, & 3 carapace) he had too many zerglings compared to hydras. Lurkers just need 2 volleys to kill an enormous amount of zerglings. In short, Mantra! was owned by Myst's perfect timing. After losing most of his units and both of his expansion (Myst placed an overlord at the 3:00 natural early on) he conceeded.

other thots
1) Myst is very very very good.
2) Zerg vs Zerg - imbalanced.
3) Never give up... Honestly, I thought Myst was gonna lose until the very end. Those few mutalisks won him the game. Amazing.
4) Always keep on switching strateegies to keep you opponent on his/her toes... Mantra! was totally unprepared for the muta raid. But then again, Mantra! too switched from muta/ling to lurker/ling, then guardian/scourge and finally mass cracklings. But he still lost.
5) 2/2 Hydras are excellent units if reinforced with lurkers.
6) Mantra! should have contained Myst more instead of expanding twice quickly.
7) Both players can own me anytime. Myst especially.

bonus rap
Well, one day I went into clan ~nohunters as usual, to find 2 guys rapping because they were bored. Yes, I know that SCV~007 is the pioneer of this "Rap in BR" thingie. Yes, I have lighting effects and 3D images like Breeze!. Yes, this almost deserves a 1.

Well, that's all for this BR, round 2 & round 3 of the rap competition will be coming in my next BRs. So go and comment and vote for who wins or something like that, k? And oh yeah here is a link to my gosu homepage : http://redrival.com/seph/. Visit it when you have the time. Comments and criticism welcome.