Ladder Blog #11

I've had soooo much trouble with 15 hatch. It's sooooo hard to hold off 2 rax pressure, it's insane. I've lost to it so many times since I've started using the build. I think I've finally gotten down how to defend though.

1- Always keep your second overlord above your natural. To scout anything he brings in, keeps track of his unit numbers.
2- Don't go gas early. I don't have enough resources to defend if I do.
3- Keep a drone on the scout scv.
4- If the scout scv moves towards the natural, pull a few drones to the natural to defend against bunkers. If no bunkers, just wait until the natural is finished to mine.
5- Don't undermake zerglings, don't overmake zerglings. Souds simple, but this is the hardest part.

I've lost to a marauder hellion bust, several marine/hellion elevators, and anything else you care to name (except banshees. I actually haven't seen one in a while but I'm confident against those anyway. Tis been rough, but I think I'm solidifying. A bit. Still really hard to defend against all-ins. If a game gets into late game, I'm usually golden. Obviously since I try to go into late-game every game. The only reason I actually lose is I make too many drones. Then again, that's the only reason I win a lot of the time too.

I'm thinking of just using the 11 pool I use in ZvT instead. It's just as economic and it's sure as hell safer than 15 hatch. An alternative would be getting the pool up sooner. Instead of 17 supply, I'd do it around 16. I don't really want to resort to the this solution though.

I've been doing a lot of 1 base roach ling timing pushes and winning easily like that, since most people just don't get enough units. If not, I generally have a big enough econ to go into late game. I've been winning a lot of games.

And then I ran into this Korean player on 1on1 obs metalopolis.

I felt so outclassed that game. Every thing he could've done well, he did. He played so perfectly and I got absolutely demolished, it wasn't even close. After that game, I really felt like I had so much more to learn. It was eye-opening.

Now, I think I'm going to lean towards more drone focused early game. Same build as before, just sneak a few drones in before everything. Also, I need to keep reviewing Sen's daily on ZvZ. I still need to nail down the build orders. Thankfully, I got the NASL replay pack so I can reference those.

Mutas are really interesting imo. After watching a few Nestea games, I think I got a general idea of how to use them properly. I still don't understand the details. I wish Day9 would do a daily on it.

So before in ZvP, I didn't really memorize timings at all, I just went on instinct. Then I watched a daily where Day9 mentioned a timing. After a 1 gate expo, I'm safe for around 2 minutes until 8 minutes. I generalized and put a few arbitrary timings for other builds like 3 gate expo and forge fe. Suddenly, I'm doing a lot better.

I've been trying out 15 pool on Shakuras, since Protoss tends to go for forge FE most of the time. The logic is that I need 3 bases early. The 11 pool build I do gets me a lot of drones, but if I rush a third base, then I'm cutting drones and not really using the larva that I produce early on. But with a 15 hatch, I feel a lot less safe for some reason. Maybe I'm just not comfortable with it.

Instead, I think I'm going to go for Destiny's 11 pool instead of my version. HIs version gets a later queen, a faster natural hatch, and I assume I can get a faster third hatch since the queen's later.

I watched the Ret ZvP daily and oh man, he looks absolutely dominant. It's crazy. A problem I think I have is knowing when to stop drone production. Basically, I just stop without even counting. Well, actually, I don't even stop. I just start to make less. I think that might be a problem I have. I'll take a look at that later.