The first half of this mission relates to the good old standby, the brood lord. You will start with a small force of mutalisks, which you must use to hunt and kill the two brood lords slowly crossing the middle of the map. Focus their fire on the enemy mutalisks first, then have them take down the brood lords- if you take other tactics, you will lose mutalisks and/or time as your own force gets whittled away. Once you’ve collected the DNA, return the mutalisks to the broken ventilation pipe they spawned from. They will duck into the pipe as Abathur ‘spins’ the DNA, then a fresh set of seven mutalisks will emerge. Convert them all to brood lords and move them to the empty center of the map. When they arrive, Abathur will deliver an additional cluster of mutalisks to you. You must then use the brood lords to clear the enemy forces out- it is easiest if you start by taking out the central cluster of towers, then move along one side of the Terran defense platform. Make sure you keep the mutalisks nearby to handle any vikings that try to ruin your brood lords. Beware of the enemy drop pods that will come in as you near the Northeast corner of the map- they contain marines who will distract your brood lords and goliaths and vikings that can take them out if you’re incautious. Eventually, you’ll come within striking distance of the command center- this is the building you need to destroy to complete the mission. Don’t worry about the rest of the enemy forces- killing the command center ends the first chunk of the mission in victory for you.
The second portion of the mission takes place on a jungle world- you’re given a trio of the new mutalisk morph, the viper. They will start with their Abduct ability, which can be used to drag both enemy and friendly units through the air to the viper’s location. This also has the added benefit of briefly stunning enemy units, preventing them from attacking. You will first use it to drag a trio of abominations down a cliff to the river, then as you continue down the jungle path to pull two individual and one pair of siege tanks into melee range. The more difficult part comes when Abathur instructs you on the use of the Disabling Cloud ability, which shuts down enemy unit attacks in its area of effect. You will first need to keep the bunker ahead and the units that spill out of it from destroying your aberrations as they strike towards the cliff. Then, with the addition of two more aberrations, you will need to abduct the five up the cliff towards the enemy base. Once there, use the Disabling Cloud and Abduct abilities to prevent the Terran forces from killing off your aberrations. If you feel it is necessary, you can have one of your vipers Consume an aberration for additional energy, but you shouldn’t actually need it. With the crystals secured, it’s back to the evolution pit to make your choice.
Brood lords are an excellent assault choice, assuming you have some way to protect them from enemy air units. Unfortunately, while mutalisks are decent quick-response units, they aren’t as good at protecting your air forces as you would like (evidenced by the fact that the brood lord portion of the mission has you using more mutalisks at once than brood lords). If you do use brood lords, you’re probably going to be depending on hydralisks, swarm hosts, and queens to keep your brood lords in shape, as other options just tend not to work quite as well. This is not to say that that is a bad choice- brood lords go well with hydralisks, providing a steady supply of broodlings to keep the hydralisks defended, and the swarm tactics enabled by combining brood lords and swarm hosts can be rather impressive as well as having a good long range to keep your units out of too much danger.
Vipers, on the other hand, provide you with your replacement for the apparently extinct corruptor strain of aerial Zerg. If you are able to micromanage their abilities well, they are incredibly useful, and their anti-air attack is very powerful- but they lack any way to attack ground forces directly. This means that they combine well with roaches, zerglings, ultralisks and aberrations- so long as you can keep their energy up and their disabling clouds going. These are definitely the micromanagement option on the mutalisk morphs, leaving brood lords for those less adept at administering more than a few commands per second.
