Ladder Blog #6

AHHHH TWO RAX!!

Yeah, so in my 15/15 speedling build, I've been facing a lot of 2 rax. You might think, speedling builds would own two rax. Well no. With my first larva inject, I've been getting drones. I think I need to hold off on that until I scout their front. If I see 2 rax or a lot of marines, get zerglings instead of drones.

I've modified my build a bit. Before, I got an overlord on 15 supply, and waited for the pool to pop. This way, I got 2 pairs of lings right as the pool finished, and another pair around two seconds later. Now, I'm adding an extra drone and going for the overlord at 16 supply. A tiny adjustment, but I think it's for the better.

I've added in a specific timing for my overlord scout. At 6 minutes, I'll sac an overlord into their base to see what they're doing. Earlier if I see only a few marines at the front and nothing else.

Ironically, the first time I implemented this, I scouted a banshee and completely defended against it, and then proceeded to get rolled by a 1 base marine tank push since he only made 1 banshee. God, that's a ****ing terrible feeling. I need to figure out how to do something against that.

Okay, so I've been abusing the 14/14 bane build a bit more and I've spotted some adjustments to make. Against a 14/14 speedling or baneling from the opponent, I should generally keep my lings back from the middle and morph closer to home as soon as the bane nest is done. IIf the opponent is making absolutely no lings and straight for roach and I morph in the middle, then he'll have roaches up in time to defend. Instead, I should rally to his main if I see he's not making lings. Then morph as close to his base as possible to save as much time as possible.

This roach first build I've only faced once. I didn't check the replay (I shouldl have. It's now lost in my replay folder somewhere) so I don't know if it was a 14/14 build or what. If it's an earlier pool, then all I have to do is back off and econ up. If not... I might have to figure out something clever.

Anyway, if I can't scout him, then I'll have to risk it and morph in the middle. Not the most ideal option but it's a compromise.

Another option I see is only morphing two banes at the start, and once those are done, morph the rest of my lings into banes. That might be a better solution.

I haven't had many PvZs this laddering session. One was where I ran into his base and only saw a pylon. I was thinking that he was going nexus first and just played around with him casually, keeping my lings alive in his base. Then I spot 5 zealots in my base and get owned.

The other was an MC build. He got an early advantage on me because I thought he was going for a fake 3 gate expo into 5 gate and I overproduced zerglings. He got the void ray out and I was scrambling for anti air, only having a lair halfway done with no third base. But then I saw that he had taken his own third ridiculously fast, before my third. I just massed hydraling into there and managed to win.

I still probably would've lost if he hadn't chased my hydras out of his choke point. He got to greedy and tried to kill my retreating hydras, forcefielding a bunch of them, but then he got surrounded by my reinforcement hydraling and lost his entire gateway force. After that, it was just cleanup and he GG'd.