EPTAlthough I would have been able to happily bore you with this armchair hypothesis any time over the last few years, preferably over a hefty Islay malt, it isn't something I've consciously applied into my day-to-day life until very recently.
Naturally, it was two SC2-related experiences that brought it to the fore: I happened to read TangSC's guide to roach/ling aggression against Terran, and at the same time started watching the Stoic 'Intimate ZvX' series of VoDs.
The latter completely blew me away. All of a sudden I understood what it meant to have a plan as a Zerg, which had hitherto felt like an entirely futile exercise. My opponent wasn't in complete and uncontested control of the game; my job was not to take punches to the face until his arm got tired. Zerg is Judo or Aikido to their Karate.
Meanwhile, although opinions remain divided as to the absolute merits of TangSC's roach/ling build at various levels of play, messing around with it blew me away in a different, though closely related sense.
I had not been consciously aware, until I first sent my roaches out towards the Terran base, just how powerful and deep-rooted a narrative I'd layered atop the ZvX matchups. Faced with the need to be reactive but not knowing how to combine that need with a gameplan, faced with a range of economic, tech and aggressive builds from my opponents but not knowing how to exploit them to my advantage, and faced with their greater inherent defender's advantage, I had cast about for an appropriate narrative and latched onto the only one in my library that fit: they were the bullies and I the victim.
The fact the matchups were statistically well balanced, I put to one side; I assumed it would eventually fit into my story in a way I didn't currently understand. If that sounds at all familiar to you, welcome to the human race.
But the combination of TangSC's ZvT build, which gave me a solid, safe core with decent timings for deviation into tech, aggression or economy, and the strategic insight from the Stoic VoDs, meant that story no longer fit. My opponents weren't the bad guys. What they were doing wasn't 'abusive'. Defending an attack doesn't entitle me to win the game, or even be at an advantage - that's the hero/villain story trying to impose itself again. Nor does being ahead in bases, food, or upgrades. Indeed, the Stoic VoDs made me realise my whole conception of 'being ahead' as a Zerg was incredibly crude and simplistic.
I played a TvZ just today where I was at one point 180 food to 120-ish, four bases to two, and ended up losing. Normally this would inspire a good deal of fuming and bitterness. But because I wasn't pre-emptively acting out the role of helpless victim/heroic underdog, the emotional payload didn't hit. I watched the replay, and saw that I lost myself the game when I baneling-busted the planetary fortress at his third, despite putting him on one mining base to my three and 20 workers to my 60. Why? Because neither my unit composition nor my stockpile of resources and larvae were ready to trade well with his (entirely untouched) army. So instead of knocking him down a base and crushing his army when it was forced to attack, I knocked him down a base, traded poorly with his army and suddenly found myself trading poorly over and over while he evened up the food count and closed in on my bases. If I'd hit sooner or planned better (say, incorporating a couple of infestors to delay his desperation-attack cost-effectively after the bust), the game would have been mine in convincing fashion. But because I was still thinking in terms of a one-punch takedown rather than the methodical disassembly to which Zerg is more suited, I blew it.
If any of this resonates at all with you, dear reader, I urge you to do what I did: try the build, watch the VoDs, but most importantly think very hard about the story you impose on your games. Change that, and I can guarantee SC2 will feel like a whole new game.
Thanks for reading.
