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Teachings of the swarm

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Zyrre Sweden291 Posts November 26 2011 20:09 GMT #1 Teachings of the swarm is my attempt to increase my ability to retain more of the knowledge I get when playing. I'm a top masters Zerg player on EU. I will write one of these whenever I feel like I've realized something new, found a new trick to defend that pesky cheese, or something similar. I hope this will help me to understand the fundamentals of every in-game situation faster, while giving you some helpful tips and hints and perhaps even some entertainment. The first thing I'll talk about is those goddamn blueflame hellions. We've all been there. Calmly droning away on 2 bases with a couple of hellions outside the natural. There's even a spine at the front. And some lings. And 2 queens. Oh, it looks like he has a few more hellions behind those two. Oh, all my drones are dead. Now there are two different strats I have been losing to. One of them I've had under decent control for a while and it is the ~10-12 BF hellion runby with an early CC. My main plan vs that is to have 2-3 banes, 1 spine and 2 queens when they arrive. They cant run past the spine and banes in one go which gives me time to transfer most of my drones to my main and shut of the ramp with a queen. After that I just wait for mutas, so this is the relatively late attack. The one I've had more problems with is the ~10 or more BF hellion attack from one base or with a late CC. I faced "BaDMonkeY" on the ladder today and managed to crush it with relative ease. This was my setup when the first few arrived: The quick third queen is very important, not only for blocking and damage but also because you need that early tumor. Not as important on this map which has a pretty small choke, but for sure nescessary on maps with wider naturals like meta or shattered. I believe an early second spine is also useful on those maps. This is how i positioned myself after i saw he had 6 hellions.He microed back with hurt hellions and was killing one of my queens, while producing more hellions. I started an extra queen as soon as i thought he might be doing this build, but it wouldnt be in time. I pulled a drone out and placed it right next to the queen and immideatly built a spine in the queens place when it died. When his BF finished he had 9 hellions and went in again to take down my other queen. As you can see here my next queen is a second away from being able to block again. This was my mistake however, it was idling at the hatchery for a few seconds after it spawned. So he did get through with 5 hellions but it looked like this: And I was producing more speedlings at my main during this time, so he only got ~5 dronekills before his hellions were dead, He GG'd after that. The main points I take away from that game and my other recent games against these strategies are simple. - Always morph 2-3 banes when your blingnest is done. - Always get 3 queens and 1 spine (2 for wide open naturals) - Always get one evo for further blocking - React quickly to 5+ hellions with more queens, buildings and drone transfering A good idea if you lose to a certain timing like this is to check the replay and count the resources you have at the time he attacked(as in what buildings you have, how many queens etc.), and then go in to a game all alone and try to set up a more efficient wall. Another thing I realized today affects this situation: I used to press the minerals, press attack, mine minerals until drone attack cooldown is done, press attack and repeat. I noticed however that because not all drones attack every time, i can spam attack a lot faster, not worrying about the attack cooldown because there are always drones that didn't attack the last time that gladly will do so now. I lost this game because I made a mistake not to spread out my drones after I broke out of my pylon prison. This let him make a cannon blocked on all sides by pylons and I had to GG when I failed to take it down. Feel free to comment, discuss and add your own tips and tricks to these precarious situations.

Vortigan Denmark306 Posts November 27 2011 00:58 GMT #2 When u press the minerals and attack with ur drones, do u focus one pylon or do u just a-move?

Zyrre Sweden291 Posts November 27 2011 10:19 GMT #3 I just a-move, I think it's more important to do it fast then to get down a specific pylon. Unless of course the toss has already double-walled somewhere with cannons, but that hasn't happened to me yet.

Vortigan Denmark306 Posts November 27 2011 11:53 GMT #4 cool, thanks

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