Ladder Blog #4

Nothing much to report. I had a really terrible feeling loss where I perfectly defended a 1 base 3 banshee opening, and then lost because I tried to keep breaking him while forgetting to expand. That felt terrible. Otherwise, I'm doing fine.

Even though I'm doing pretty good, I still feel uncomfortable because of all the stuff Terran can pull. I've been facing more meching players and while my solution is to through money at them, sometimes I get starved on money, even with my big base advantage. Especially on Shakuras where the centre two expos are too hard to hold. Come to think of it, I should be using the 6 and 12 expos instead. Forgot they existed lol.

My last ZvT game. I got lucky with forcing him to cancel his CC early on. After that, it was just expanding a bunch and getting lots of units. There were some uncomfortable spots where I felt I was in a tight situation but I pulled out okay.

After some testing, I've figured out my 14/14 lingbane no speed build. Against hatch first, it won't work if your opponent rushes for defense. Which means if he knows it's coming, then you're screwed. If he doesn't know and thinks it's a speedling expo, then it can work.

Against any other build, it works fine. Roaches come out too late to defend, and it absolutely destroys speedling expo. With speedling expo, you generally want to be a little conservative with your zerglings since you need to defend. That lets me put up my banes fast and charge continually. Since he basically has 2 more drones on minerals and I have 3 more drones on gas, our economies are pretty equal, and since he spent 350 on the hatchery, I can take advantage of that. I've been working with this a lot, but I'm probably going to work on my mid-late ZvZ once I finish work in it. It'll be a great tool to have but not something for every game.

My current ZvZ repertoire includes

-Hatch First
-Speedling Expo
-14/14 ling baneling + speed
-14/14 ling baneling nospeed
-10 pool baneling

I think that's a solid variety of openings. All I need to do is solidify my midgame. I've been building up some work with mutas. If it's a map where I can seperate the main and natural by camping my mutas at the ramp, then i can run speedlings into the main and do a ton of damage. Well, depends on the map really. Metalopolis, won't work. Wallin and queens block it. Xel'naga caverns, will totally work. Great tactic.

I've been struggling with the MC stargate mid-game play. I've been countering it with corrupters and a solid ground force but it's tough to deal with the pheonixes. Corrupters are too slow. They can be on the defensive pretty well but it's tough to get on the offense unless the pheonix stop moving.

I'm thinking of doing an upgrade heavy hydra drop timing to beat this strategy. Since I'll have low drone count massing up hydras and spore crawlers, I'll focus on gas with overlord drop, speed, upgrades, and hydras, dropping around the 14 minute mark. Hopefully, I can work it out. I'll also need to figure out a passive way to deal with it, whether it be spire play, or infestors. Maybe just getting spores up and every base and going for ground play.