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Since I received a lot of complaints about this report's text blending into the backgound, I took the liberty of reposting it, ignore the previous report plz.

When I woke up this morning, the first sound I heard was the singing of birds. Ah, life is beautiful... Suddenly a heavy drumbeat cut through the air, ruining the natural beauty of the morning. I flew out of my bed only to discover that my rommate, upon seeing the I was awake, turned on his radio. The day was ruined. I grabbed my towel and ventured to the shower. The water refreshed me and made me ralize the not everything was lost. I still had StarCraft!

Well, no, this is not the way I am in real life; I just needed to get myself started on this BR. It all started last night. I have never befofe done a BR, but after reading multiple ones on this site, decided to try doing it myself and see what comes out of it. So after playing a few random public and nohunters games, I announced that I was looking for a good 1v1 to BR. I figured that would sound conincing enough for those people who look to become famous through BRs (haha, kids!), but at the same time would not oblige me to writing the report should I get lazy, as I could always claim that the game was "not good enough."

Apparently my trick worked, as two players responded right away to my request. One was 'Athos' and the other one was Absolution. I did not know either one of them, but their records were respectable, and I agreed to watch them. 'Athos' insisted on maing the game. I was not disappointed, however, because he made it on Prouving Grounds, and the only reason I would make is to avoid using the same old overplayed Temple (Actually, I don't think it's such a bad thing that people play on Temple so much, just think of all the sacrifices the temple priests give to the gods of SC). After a few comments and remarks 'Athos' started the game

Game 1

VS

The boring start

'Athos' started with a conservative build with some power inclinations, going Pylon, Gate, Gate, Pylon, Pylon, Assimilator (does this word bother anyone?) while constantly building probes. Absolution Sent his lord north, then does a hatchery on 12 and then adds a pool and an extractor simultaniously soon afterwards, giving himself a variety of options such as teching to lair, massing hydras, or just sitting on his ass, watching his drones work. As soon as the pool is complete, Absolution adds a hydra den and a sunken, placed safely behind his hatcheries. He also morplhs 6 lings and sends them to his enemy's base (his lord has arrived at top right and found nothing, so Absolution parked him at the 12 o'clock raised ground expansion.)<,/P>

Absolution has not been idle during this time and has been making zealots and has added a Cy. Core, that is half way done when the lings arrive at his base. One of the invaders dies quickly, as it runs into a pack of 6 zealots that kill it quickly, despite being involved in a conversation, trying to figure out why the Terrans find Medics hot. The remaining 5 lings do a pimpy turn right in front of the zealots, and showing off their sexy tails run around the base. They notice the Core warping and attack it. The zealots are slow to react and by the time three of them arrive on the scene to save the Core, the lings manage to bring it down to half the health. Right after they finish off the lings, they zealots return to their conversation.

It's getting hot

After the battle 'Athos' adds Citadel of Adun and 3dr Gateway, while massing zealots. Absolution builds an evolution chamber and builds up a force of Hydras. When 'Athos' has 9 zealots and 2 dragoons, he orders them to attack Absolution and brings them through top right, while at the same time bringing probe there to start an expansion (even though he does not do it right then). Absolution's overlord floating at 12 sees the army coming and when goons take a few potshots at it, the floating sac can take no more and tells everything to its master Absolution. Absolution sees a great tactical opportunity and orders his hydras to attack his adversary by going the opposite way, through the bottom left start. The hydras arrive at the protoss base just as the zealots and goons are about to reach the zerg hive cluster. The hydras attack the outlying buildings, quickly dispatching any zealots that appear. The protoss commander 'Athos', seeing his base on the verge of distruction, orders his troops to turn around and come rescue the base. By the time the protoss warriors arrive at their base, the nexus along with half the probes is gone, and even though they kill the hydras and try to rebuild the nexus, more hydras come into their base, claiming victory for Absolution. Not pleased with his perfomance this game, 'Athos' asks for a rematch and I agree to watch, hoping to see a longer game next time.

Victor: Absolution

Game Length: 10:02 (doh)

Game 2

VS

PvP, great :(

"Yes, the highly entartaining goon war!" I thought to myself when I saw two Protoss. I could not be more wrong... Since Absolution picked protoss, his enemy knew what race he was, but Absolutiondid not have such an advantage. He sent his 8th probe to scout, but it went in the wrong direction, and it was a while before Absolution found his adversary. At first it did seem as if the two opponents decided to go for the same strategy, both going pylon, gate, gate (the first gates were morplhed at the same EXACT time), pylon. Then the strategies diverged. 'Athos' went for assimilator then cy. core, going for dragoons as soon as he can build them, while Absolution builds another pylon then assimilator, but waits on the core for a bit and starts amassing zealots.

First contact

At this point Absolution's probe found the enemy base with only 3 zealots. Absolution immediately attacks while adding 3rd gate and and citadel of adun, seemingly going for templars. As the 4 Absolution's zealots arrive at 'Athos' base, they are greeted by 3 zealots supported by 2 dragoons. Just as his troops engage the enemy, Absolution sends 3 new zeals to his enemy while he starts researching zealot speed. When the 3 new zealots arrive, the previous 4 have already been destroyed, and the newcomers are easily dealt with. 'Athos' has 2 dragoons left and he counters as soon as 2 more pop out of the gateway. 4 goons arrive at Absolution's base, kill the defending zealots and lunge right into the probe stream, but are killed by the desperate probes just as 3 more zealots pop out of the gateway. Things start looking grim for Absolution as his enemy seems to be able firght more cost-effectively with his goons than Absolution with his zealots.

Just you wait!

'Athos', not wanting to take the pressure off his opponent sends 4 more dragoons and starts working on Robotic Facility. But 4 dragoons are greeted at Absolution's base with 6 speedy zealots and are forced to retreat. Absolution decides not to follow, but for just a second. During this second, however, 'Athos' builds 2 more pylons, a shuttle, robotics support bay, and starts an expansion at the bottom right. Absolution, as if sensing the looming danger, attacks his enemy with 8 speedy 1-0-0 zealots. 'Athos', only has 5 dragoons to defend and retreats them into the probe stream. The zealots follow the escaping dragoons, and when they pass by the robo fac, a reaver pops out, but is instantly killed, before 'Athos' can do anything. The zealots then attack the robotic facility and destroy it in short order. At this point 'Athos' get REALLY MAD and attacks the invaders with 5 dragoons, 1 zealot, and half his probes. Absolution's zealots, however, do not cooperate and instead of trying to clumsily get around the pesky probes, attack the robotic freaks, guided by the sharp intuition of their leader, who decides that it's more important to hurt his adversary's economy (or maybe the zealots just decide to sexually harass the probes, who knows...). Indeed, Absolution succeeds in killing half of all the probes that his enemy has before his zealots go down.

Let's take a second to breathe

With half of his probes destroyed, 'Athos' looks to rebuild. Unfortunately, his bottom right expansion has only a few probes mining there since he has been devoting most of his resurces to building technology and troops. At the same time, Absolution expands to his natural (naturals on Proving Grounds are mineral only, but it does not matter too much to Absolution, whose unit choice is zealots.)

And now, back to action!

By the time when Absolution's natral comes on line, 'Athos' has rebuilt his robotics facility, has constructed a shuttle and a reaver and is sending this deadly combo right to the probe stream in Absolution's main. This, potentially killer drop, however does not do any damage at all since 'Athos', instead of landing the reaver behind the minerals, lands it right in the probe stream, in range of a canon that takes a few shots at the reaver. 'Athos' Picks his reaver up just as a few zealot arrive on the scene and perk under the shuttle. At that point 'Athos' did something strange: he ordered his shuttle to return to his base instead of killing all the probes and zealots through the infamous reaver popping technique. The situation later became more clear. It appeared that the shuttle remembered the atrocious
rape that the zealots committed on the probes and fled.

Just as the shuttle left, Absolution erected (I know this word is ambiguous, but it's present in all and every battle report, so I have it too:) 3 canons at his expansion, just as his zealot found 'Athos's bottome right expansion and attacked the probes. 'Athos's 3 goons arrived soon and sent the zealot into retirement, but Absolution sent 4 more zealots to attack the expansion, just as he added 2 more gates and a templar archives in his main base. The 4 zealots arrived at bottom right and attacked the probes, ignoring dragoon fire, finishing hte probes rather quickly ('Athos' still had shit for probe count there. Then the zealots attacked the dragoons, but at that moment 'Athos's reaer arrived in its respective shuttle and the zealots vaporized in blaze of glory and some sort of blue smoke/fire kinda thing. 'Athos' thought he was safe for a bit, but that's where he was wrong. Absolution's army of about 10 zealots and 2 archons knocked on the door at 'Athos's main (well, it was more like they just walked in, but for the sake of the metaphor...) and proceeded to raze everything in sight. gg's were said and 'Athos' left while I, remembering my loss from the first game, made Absolution ally with me, giving me a win:).

Lessons learned:

-Speed zealots are good in PvP if you have enough minerals to pay for them. This tech choice also opens the way to archons that work very well when combined with zealots.

-If you drop yur reaver and forced to pick it up, do not flee unless your opponent brings in something that actually threatens you. Fly a bit away, drop the reaver and blow up the probes along with any troops (especially the zealots) that show off.

-See people, there ARE in fact other maps besides temple!

Here is just a funny picture I found on the internet (this sign DOES indeed exist):