EPTLike most of you probably have experienced on the ladder, many zergs have started to do variations on Spanishiwa's "Ice Fisher" build, where you go no-gas until both bases are fully saturated mineral-wise (usually about 40 supply).
I guess most of you has seen the episode, so I wont go into to much detail, but basically you fast expand, get a few queens, spines, and hold off all early aggression with slow lings only.
Then you get 4 gases, and with the huge upswing in gas you get lair, ling speed, +1/+1 melee, overlord speed and drop tech. You then get banelings, a ton of infestors and tech to hive.
The reason I like this build is the capability for aggression. You can do baneling drops, burrow infestors and all-kill workers with 2 x 2 fungals, do nydus, and all that good jazz.
I'm still sitting in platinum league (top 25, yay me!) and most players here are used to the normal zerg style. Which is the normal zerg style, you ask?
Defend, then defend. Then take a third, and defend. Then maybe some defence, and some more defending. Eventually you push out when you have 200/200 and 10k/5k and do what Day[9] calls a "300 food push".
I got really tired of that style, because in all honesty its fairly boring. With this style there stuff happening, ALL THE TIME, and you are never left with nothing to do. Most players can't even deal with all the pressure and you're sure to kill his worker line once or twice (Four banelings with +1 actually kills an entire worker line really easily, and that makes me super-happy! :D )
Even if every single attempt at harass fails, I still have a fan-fucking-tastic army. At the very last my constant harass will force the guy to stay back in his base (if he moves out, ling-counterattack! *evil grin* ) So I take spread out expansions, and stay ahead of him in bases). I do a fast hive-tech, and when its actually time to fight I usually have ultras/brood lords. (I favor ultras almost always. they're unstoppable with fungal and a few transfuses).
For a while, the only thing that killed me was, you guessed it, Four-fucking-warpgate.
I'm the greediest player you've ever seen, so I relied on 4-5 spines and some queens, which actually weren't enough to hold it. I died to it a few times and eventually learned to hold it, by sacrificing some drones for a high ling count. Since he's on one base, I can actually afford it.
Most 4-gating protosses haven't learned to play properly, and just leave if you hold the 4 gate, so free wins for me! :D
This style seems, to a protoss or terran, quite unbeatable. In fact, I very rarely lose to toss/terran now, which is pretty damn good.
If you want to beat this style consistently, you have to be more harass-ey than the zerg is. Against a terran who does continuous drops in spread out locations, gets a few banshees, and generally makes my life miserable its a lot easier to lose, than against a terran who just sits on 2/3 base and macros.
Same for toss. Active blink stalkers, harassing phoenix/void rays and that sort of thing is hard to deal with, but that might be just because I am in fact a platinum player, and I havent really got the APM or micro to deal with all that at once.
This, however, says nothing about the dreadful matchup that is ZvZ.
Despite trying to figure the matchup up for the longest time, I still haven't a clue on what the fuck I'm supposed to do in this matchup.
Usually I try to FE on 15/16, and usually I can hold it unless he did a 6/10 pool. Then he also expands and I cant deal with it, since I only have slow lings. Then I get gas and start getting roaches/infestors. Then I just have no idea what to do..
Currently I'm trying to do roach/hydra/infestor against ling/muta and ultra/roach/infestor against roach/hydra/infestor. I'm not completely satisfied with these builds, but it's the best I've got, and unless something crazy happends (like missing 4 banelings and losing 15 drones Q.Q) it's usually a pretty even game. In ling/muta I usually win, but what more often is the case is roach/hydra/infestor, and that just comes down to who gets the better fungals. If I manage to get my ultras close to his roaches I usually win, if he fungals them away he usually wins.
I'm thinking about getting hydras in the late game, and gradually stopping roach production, so that my lategame composition is ultra/hydra/infestor, but I haven't really tried it out yet, it feels like you need 3 base to pull that off, so it all depends on the map.
Last but not least, I'd love some feedback from you guys. How could I improve my writing?
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