EPTMe: 11p/18h
Him: Zealot rush into turtling on first one and then two bases before trying for the standard zealot/stalker/colossus deathball.
My response: After dealing with the zealots I scouted his expansion and went for three base mutalisk. With the map control that gave me I was able to deny attempts at taking a third, establish six bases mining gas and simply overwhelm his stalker numbers with mutalisks.
Specific Lessons Learned:
I was really pleased with my macro and decision-making in this game. I made a conscious choice to play a long game, taking lots of expansions and denying his, and I never gave him a chance to recover after the initial zealot rush failed.
ZvP on Xel'Naga Caverns
Me: 11p/18h
Him: Attempted cannon rush/proxy (spotted and killed probe, took no damage) into three-gate zealot (scouted his gates, killed zealots with roaches, took no damage) into turtling behind a couple of dozen cannons on two bases, then making void rays and a mothership. Which he then a-moved for the win.
Specific Lessons Learned:
It seems it's not possible to build enough +1 mutalisks off four bases worth of gas to compete with void ray production off two bases worth of gas. That came as something of a surprise. I thought I would be able to keep dipping in, sniping a couple of Voids and backing out before they built charge, but it seems they scale too well for that.
I can only assume infestors are the way to go if the game gets to that point, since everything else I have at my disposal is worse at killing Void Rays than mutalisks are. Unfortunately it's probably going to be ages before I encounter that unit composition again to test it out.
More realistically, I think a strong two-base hydralisk push would have won the game for me at a much earlier stage, since that would have hit when the early advantage I'd gained was at its greatest.
EDIT: After much experimentation in the unit tester, I discovered the following:
1. Corruptors don't win, gas for gas, against Void Rays. They do a little better than mutalisks, but not much. Not for the first time I feel Corruptors, the only absolutely dedicated A-A unit in the game, are a bit short-changed in the range department.
3. Infestors can win the fight very efficiently, but it's tricky and you need a lot of room to retreat. Fungaling the leading void rays doesn't block the ones at the back, so they can come through and attack. A combination of fungals and infested terrans works best, maybe with corruptor/hydra support.
2. Hydras slaughter void rays gas-for-gas. If I had hosed out Hydra off my three/four bases he would have lost very hard indeed. The only caveat is that the food cap prevents Hydra continuing to scale to deal with larger numbers of VRs.
The State of the Brain
The loss on Xel'Naga caverns tested my new-found resolve to the limit. Here was someone who tried to proxy/cannon rush me and failed, tried to zealot rush me and failed, tucked himself away behind cannons while I took the rest of the map, built one type of unit with a mothership cherry on top and just a-moved through me.
Remarkably, I managed to stay calm. The fault was mine, after all, in thinking he wouldn't be able to hit a critical mass versus mutalisks off two bases. Nor did I do anything clever like split my forces or build infestors. I let him do something easy that won him the game.
On the other hand I did really well in preventing him winning with two equally easy strategies right at the start, so providing I can work on my decision-making and take better advantage in future, I should be able to win more games that play out this way.
Thanks for reading.
Keep up the good work.
