Ladder Blog #8

Tal'darim altar is a really unique map in many regards. As a mapper, when it was first released as a test map, I hated it. Way too Zerg favoured (or so I thought), what with its huge distances and wide open expansion layout. I considered it one of the worst maps out of the pack.

Now, it's not so much imbalanced, but it's still a really unique map compared to the Blizzard maps. I don't think this is a bad thing at all (since blizzard maps suck) but it forces me to handle with some unusual stuff that I don't have to deal with on other maps.

My problem of the day is dealing with Hellion openings. On most maps, I just deal with them using speedlings. If that doesn't work, I add more speedlings. I only go roaches if I see blue flame. On Tal'darim, the problem is that you can't block the ramp with two queens and the natural is really wide open. On most maps, Terran don't go extreme heavy hellions to open because they know that even if they kill all my speedlings, they won't be able to get up the ramp and two spine crawlers protect the natural so they'll have a bunch of hellions that are relatively useless.

On Tal'darim, hellions run around to the back of the natural, terrorize my drones, then when they're done, they just run into my main. They're in such numbers that they can even take out my queens.

It seems I'm at an impasse. Basically, I'm forced to go roaches.

I've experimented around with some timings. I haven't had many games to test (since it's a specific matchup and map). The first time I tried roaches, I got it around 30 supply I think, and they popped way too late to defend against the harass. I fended it off eventually but was defeated by a later push.

Next game I got to test, I put down my roach warren as soon as I saw the reactor and the factory. I think the timing was alright but I messed up the rest of my build because of it. I expected Blue flame since I saw a techlab factory and reactor barracks and a hellion early on (Thought he'd switch the rax and fac when blue flame finished). Turns out he was just going for a massive tank marine push off of one base and I got rolled.

I think I have the roach timing down, but I have to figure out scouting better. It's seriously practically impossible, which is why I hate ZvT.

So I've basically decided how I'm going to deal with things. On maps where the ramp is blockable and I can scout his natural relatively early for certain (Xel'Naga, Metal, Shattered), I'll be going for the 15 pool spine crawler opening. On other maps (Tal'Darim, Scrap Station), I'll go line/bane. The logic is, if I can see if he's going early expo and ling/bane has a chance to completely fail, then i should go safe and play econ. Otherwise, ling/bane is so powerful that I don't want to bother.

With the spine crawler opening against FE, I've thought on how to take advantage of my early gas lead to defend against any mass ling attacks. I've been thinking of using a baneling defense while expanding. I can't afford to fall too far behind but at the same time, I want to play safe. I think this is the best choice for now. In other situations, I'll probably still be going speedling muta, though I want to see if I can expand at the same time. Maybe, maybe not. I haven't had many test games for this so far.

This has been my stable matchup for a while now. Other than random 3 gate pressure killing me and stupid 4 gate all-ins, I think I'm pretty solid. My late-game's getting better every time I play.

I think my issue is when to transition out of ling/bane muta. I need to get to ultras. The earlier the better since they're so powerful. That timing will probably sort itself out once I get around to it but there's another problem too. If the Toss adds a few immortals, suddenly the ultras suck hard. Thus, I tried out Broodlords.

I HAAAATE BROODLORDS.

Let me repeat, I HAAAAAATE BROODLORDS.

They're so slow, vulnurable, and require far too much babysitting. Sure they can take down entire bases but doesn't matter if the Toss is taking out my bases at ten times the speed.

So I need to find a way to deal with immortals while going ultras. The best option is probably infestors with neural parasite but that means I'll only be going for a few ultralisks so I can afford the gas for the infestors. That said, that doesn't mean it's going to be terrible. Infestors are pretty good after all, but I'll have to learn how to use them first. They feel clunky to me, as I said before. I suppose it'll be a good learning experience.