Ladder Blog #10

Over the trip, I reviewed my 15/15 speedling opener. It's a solid build, but I think I'm leaning towards 15 hatch. Back in Brood War, as strategies evolved, everything eventually led to more economic openings. Right now, 14 cc and 12 nexus are pretty much one of the staple strategies in many matchups for Brood War Terran and Toss. 9 pool in ZvT Brood War is rarely used, and if it is, it's only to deter Terrans from going 14 cc too much.

I'm not going to stop using 15/15 completely. It's a good safe build that I'll use every now and then to make sure I stay sharp with it. Something to have in my arsenal in a BoX series. Starting now though, I'm going to try 15 hatch and try to defend with it.

At the moment, I'm not entirely sure how the build goes. In ZvZ, you go 15 hatch 15 gas 15 pool. ZvT? I've seen in the dailies that people tend to drone up to like 17 before putting down the pool, even before gas. I'm not entirely sure though.

Also, I like playing against mech. Counterattacks are fun. You have to use a gritty style of play though. Not a problem for me.

On my journey with the 15 pool spine crawler opening, I've come to a conclusion that I can't make it work. I've tried a lot of things, but it's just vulnurable to so many openings from the other guy. Against FE, you can get overrun by zerglings if you try to expand or otherwise get outmacroed. Against normal builds, you're put into a defensive position because of your spine crawler. You have so little map control with a late ling speed. I've revied the replay of the game it was used in a lot, but 1 game isn't much to go off of.

Instead, I looked at some other dailies for inspiration. I focused in on the Sen ZvZ daily. Though I couldn't get the replays for that because it was NASL, I got the basic build down. Unfortunately,I couldn't quite get a lot of the concepts Day was talking about. I mean I heard them, but I'll need to give it another listen to thoroughly understand it. Like larva counting seems like it'd bereally difficult in the heat of the moment. I think that's the one daily I'll need to study a lot.

For the mid-game, I've kinda figured out that I really like mutas. For basically the same reason they were so popular in BW. Fast, and manouverable. Picks off everything and are great for map control. Most people tend to lean towards hydras but that's pretty easy to deal with if we're even. I think I might need to incorporate more speedlings with a dash of banelings in case they do get critical mass.

A bigger problem would be infestors. A lot of people only get them after they stabalize with hydras but I think they're such a powerful unit against mutas. I'm not sure how well they'd work. It was worse when Fungal was 8 seconds but still. If fungal was a slow spell instead of freeze, it would be infinitely better for mutas.

Lately, more people have been going for robo builds. So my burrowed banes aren't as effective . Still, I've been doing just fine just like I thought I would, utilizing my ling muta manouverability. I've been thinking of adding overlord drop to my play. The one time I tried it, it really distracted me from my main goal a lot so I almost lost. I think if I practice with it some more, I can get it to work.

With Forge FE, I think if the Protoss goes robo, it forces him to be passive for just so long that it doesn't work. Consequently every Protoss I've faced has been going robo after Forge FE, the one thing (as far as I know) that hard counters my hydra bust. I'm tinkering with overlord drop but it's just so expensive. It'll help out my hydras a lot against colossi, but if he's going mass warpgate, it might be too much of an extra cost to be worth it. The problem is that the upgrade takes too long to research as a reaction to scouting the front. You have to do it in advance. Well, now that I think about it, I could overlord scout but that doesn't always work.