Another short video I made about valkyries. This was against a friend who was offracing. I only made it into a video because in the video he said "I swear, there will be blood if you make this a FPVOD." I thought it was just too funny not to post.
In the short video it clearly shows Zerg in a disadvantageous position but he started strong. As was discussed, an early timing push is very powerful against Valkyries. He did and broke my natural and I just barely defended. I then proceeded off 1 base against like.. 4 base..
The scourge he tried did nothing, even with cloning, and he was just too far behind then.
The thing about Valkyries is that there is no room to adapt as Zerg. Once you're behind, you're pretty much stuck there. You can't make any more units once you lose those scourge or devourers or hydras. The only options you have are to wait for enough money to make enough overlords to make units immediately after they're up. This is an entirely unviable way to play. You're just too far behind. Short of making TONS of spore colonies, you have absolutely nothing to do to get back in the game.
A lot of Zerg's prepare a good defense, but simply not enough to defend entirely. This means the Zerg has to play VERY safe, making damn well sure that his initial defense can hold off the Valkyries.
The weakness in the build is very clearly in the early game. It's very hard to defend your natural with standard 1-rax FE because of how much you're investing in 2port valk. If I try this build some more I'll probably try 1-rax FE into 1 port valk, adding additional rax early to defend possible breaks and muta harass, and then adding second port for valks and such. Still much crafting to do on the build.
In the meantime, I'm gonna ladder as standard for now and make more regular commentated FPvods. Feel free to add thoughts, opinions and/or varying success stories or whatever. =)
So anyone tryed his build vs "good" zergs? I mean over C+ /B- ranks. Because personally i had troubles early games because on the new fashion builds ( 2 hatch mutas , opened with lots of early speed gling with 9 pool or 12 pool) and vs all 3 hatch glings cheese / harrass waiting for mutas..
i like your videos! i've read maybe 50% of the posts in this thread skipping over all the flaming and inane comments so excuse me if what i'm saying is just a repeat. i've never tried experimenting with valks so this is just theorycrafting (which i don't often like to participate in!) and suggestions.
the build itself is pretty interesting. i think the most intuitive and effective counter would be some form of 3hatch hydras doing a fast nat break, though the problem is that the timing for when the zerg first sees the valks is after they've committed to lair tech. instead then i suggest (if the zerg went standard 3hatch spire) that they cease muta production and pumps some rounds of scourge while macroing heavily, taking 2-3 more expos to gear up for upgraded hydra production. the scourge will be effective because at this point in the game you'll only have 2 or so valks with 2 more reinforcing every minute or so, and the critical mass for when scourge simply can't hit valks looks to be rather high (from your video, ~6+ +1attack valks).
i suggest the mass expoing and fast upgraded hydras because the terran completely cedes map control and his upgrades for ground will be very delayed because of his heavy gas investment. mid-late game play likely will revolve around zerg stopping you from taking your third gas with hydra/lurk/defiler which should be pretty viable (i don't expect zergs to always react as poorly as the first one in your video, allowing you to mass that kind of tank blob seems like a worst-case scenario). basically, it's a zvp.
from the terran point of view, what i am uncomfortable with is the 2port opening since it makes you extremely passive and basically fucks you over if you lose any of your first few valks. what would you do if he took a few more bases and just made a lot of hydras? there's room here for experimentation with 1port.
i think you really have the right idea though with the very quick third base and dropship escorting. the big things i thought you could add into your game while watching your video was getting quick mines to plant at possible zerg expoes or in the middle of the map so that you could be greedier with your expo attempts (at least taking a third gas before the mineral only), and to switch to vessels faster. everything that counters your valks late game (defilers, queens, mass devourers and zerg air) is in turn very vulnerable to irradiate, so they should be invaluable in an even match. finally, after you take your third base i suggest plopping down a second ebay asap as your infantry upgrades will be way behind.
i haven't played in a while now but i guess boxer has his own way of inspiring people. i think i'll play a few tvzs on iccup myself =] good luck!
only reason corsair is so effective is they apply dark templar due to no vision, whenever there is an opening, nor they dont have a cooldown time when killing things but.....thus adding to this, vulture/valk? spider mine could be effective if placed on ramps correctly due to no detection while harassing drone, downside is if drones run away, vultures are sitting ducks, maybe kill larva or two, unable to destroy buildings fast but still unable to cause that much damage, maybe if there is a second drop of marine/medic, they'd be great, but that would be a heavy amount of apm >_>....but dark templar can destroy buildings much faster so i dont think vulture + overlordharass + marine medic is as great. pretty much wraith is much better for creating a "lead" because they are a natural flying, cloaked, air harassing P.O.S's, but i guess valk can give a surprise :D. ..nice video though.
On October 07 2008 19:44 intrigue wrote: i like your videos! i've read maybe 50% of the posts in this thread skipping over all the flaming and inane comments so excuse me if what i'm saying is just a repeat. i've never tried experimenting with valks so this is just theorycrafting (which i don't often like to participate in!) and suggestions.
the build itself is pretty interesting. i think the most intuitive and effective counter would be some form of 3hatch hydras doing a fast nat break, though the problem is that the timing for when the zerg first sees the valks is after they've committed to lair tech. instead then i suggest (if the zerg went standard 3hatch spire) that they cease muta production and pumps some rounds of scourge while macroing heavily, taking 2-3 more expos to gear up for upgraded hydra production. the scourge will be effective because at this point in the game you'll only have 2 or so valks with 2 more reinforcing every minute or so, and the critical mass for when scourge simply can't hit valks looks to be rather high (from your video, ~6+ +1attack valks).
i suggest the mass expoing and fast upgraded hydras because the terran completely cedes map control and his upgrades for ground will be very delayed because of his heavy gas investment. mid-late game play likely will revolve around zerg stopping you from taking your third gas with hydra/lurk/defiler which should be pretty viable (i don't expect zergs to always react as poorly as the first one in your video, allowing you to mass that kind of tank blob seems like a worst-case scenario). basically, it's a zvp.
from the terran point of view, what i am uncomfortable with is the 2port opening since it makes you extremely passive and basically fucks you over if you lose any of your first few valks. what would you do if he took a few more bases and just made a lot of hydras? there's room here for experimentation with 1port.
i think you really have the right idea though with the very quick third base and dropship escorting. the big things i thought you could add into your game while watching your video was getting quick mines to plant at possible zerg expoes or in the middle of the map so that you could be greedier with your expo attempts (at least taking a third gas before the mineral only), and to switch to vessels faster. everything that counters your valks late game (defilers, queens, mass devourers and zerg air) is in turn very vulnerable to irradiate, so they should be invaluable in an even match. finally, after you take your third base i suggest plopping down a second ebay asap as your infantry upgrades will be way behind.
i haven't played in a while now but i guess boxer has his own way of inspiring people. i think i'll play a few tvzs on iccup myself =] good luck!
See, now this is a post.
The timing nat break seems to be something we can all agree on. The build is definitely susceptible to timing breaks, but I do believe with proper placement and preparation, the Terran can either defend or feign standard play.
It's true that if you lose your first few valks it sets you back immensely. After a few games with valks I've grown to be very careful with them while their numbers are small, like 2-5.
I like 1port after expand aswell because of the versatility. You can add the second port for continued harass or transition into (semi)standard play.
What would Terran do if he didn't apply pressure, opened den and took many bases? Something similar happened to this in the first game of the first video. Quick third, tanks and valk harass. Hydras are locked to defend their overlords. Unlike Wraiths, Valkyries have a lot of life, which means that they can move in, kill all the overlords in an AoE, and leave having only lost 1 or 2, whereas wraths do single-target and you'd lose many more. You cannot clump overlords, but you have to make them defendable aswell.
Spire builds and scourge SOUND logical and effective, but it's simply unreliable. Scourge have shitty AI and even if they're cloned, you don't know how successful it will be, and how many scourge you need. Everytime my opponent has tried spire defense, scourge get raped, then all your overlords fall, then they cannot produce any units whatsoever.
As I mentioned a couple posts ago, this build leaves 0 room for a zerg to make a mistake like that. It's a snowball effect. Once he loses his defense, he loses all his overlords so he can't make more units to defend, etc.. I've noticed that I can start abusing this sort of dynamic. Everytime I killed a group of overlords, I would clone my valks over the map to find more, knowing that scourge cannot be produced in the meantime and that my valkyries are safe to go in packs of 2.
As for scourge in general... Scourge can sneak in and narrowly avoid the AoE damage, but from what I've seen, when you have enough valks, you're pretty close to immune.
Also, you can micro your valkyries to surround overlords and to stay very close to a target they are firing at. If the valkyries are surrounding while firing, they pretty much make a giant bubble of AoE damage that scourge quickly dissipate to. The same effect is gained by simple floating your valkyrie ontop of the overlord it's trying to kill. This sounds like theorycraft but in practice it's really quite realistic. Scourge, even when cloned, haven't given me any issues so far. Not to say they don't work, just that I haven't seen it be too effective yet.
Timing pushes to break the Terran early and den openings are what I think are the most effective plans for Zerg, but this is just my opinion.
Some of the flames discouraged me from investigating further, but a quality post like this just re-ignites my curiosity with the build.
I didn't read the entire thread and I apologise if this point has been made already, but this strat already existed and was actually played frequently by vgundam very long ago
the only different thing boxer did is he got a dropship and used the valks to escort them
gundam used to get 3rax 1fac tanks and refuse to exp for temporary boost in units and he just got the valkyries because they cost high minerals and relatively few gas and it happened to match with the mins/gas he had left over
boxer did the exact same thing except a) he got a dropship, never saw gundam do that b) he actually expanded earlier.. gundam would often forgo expanding altogether and long distance mine when his minerals were out lol
just posting this because i heard tasteless say "never before seen" and no one else may remember
anyway for an old timer this game was the most awesome thing ever to watch it sent a chill down my spine srsly
oh and from what i remember from the zerg's POV counterattacking is the worst response because gundam would always get at least one bunker and the main idea for him was that if you only have to defend 1 base it's much easier to do so and you can play more aggressively because of that not fearing counterattacks and stuff
1 bunker does so much against counterattacks in low eco games
zerg just needs to play as if there's a time clock and "stay in it" until terran wears himself out and falls apart
And Nintu, I absolutely loved the video (the two games combined) - I enjoyed both your commentary and the games themselves, in a game that's becoming increasingly stagnant, things like this add a lot of fire and remind us why it's so spectacular in the first place. Please keep playing this more, refine the build, and post more videos!
I don't see how you can compare mass valks with sairs. Mass sair kills whatever air units you throw at them since their cooling rate and splash damage is insane. But to kill mass valks you just need to throw in one scourge or a few muta to make the valks fire, their cooling rate is so damn slow plus they can't shoot while moving (their acceleration is really slow) so follow that up with a group of cloned scourge and all valks are dead. Too costly imo, but I love valks anyway. Wish Blizzard would have balanced them as well as scouts so they would be more useful.
FE into 3port, Mass Valks with Wraiths works well against D level Zerg, they just try to make hydras, but they can't see the Wraiths and lose their Lair, usually resulting in a gg. The Valks move between the hatcheries to pick of spawning overlords, and wraiths/dropped marines focus fire the Den and Lair.
On October 07 2008 19:58 AltaiR_ wrote: only reason corsair is so effective is they apply dark templar due to no vision, whenever there is an opening, nor they dont have a cooldown time when killing things but.....thus adding to this, vulture/valk? spider mine could be effective if placed on ramps correctly due to no detection while harassing drone, downside is if drones run away, vultures are sitting ducks, maybe kill larva or two, unable to destroy buildings fast but still unable to cause that much damage, maybe if there is a second drop of marine/medic, they'd be great, but that would be a heavy amount of apm >_>....but dark templar can destroy buildings much faster so i dont think vulture + overlordharass + marine medic is as great. pretty much wraith is much better for creating a "lead" because they are a natural flying, cloaked, air harassing P.O.S's, but i guess valk can give a surprise :D. ..nice video though.
The timing break will be more effective than in sair/reaver, just because the valk build time is so long. If the zerg can spot the valk tech, then the zerg could counter in the same way that zerg counters toss (hydra to defend//keep the valk count lower).
Once zerg sees it, I'm thinking that the proper response is going to be something along the lines of mass expand//upgrades- T needs the m/m to do enough dps to fend off an all out counter once zerg sees the first valk.
I'm also curious about the proper response to a 2 hat muta build (or 2 hat lurker for that matter). Detection makes it so that you can't tech as fast, so i'm wondering how the build/supply numbers might end up working out.
EPT
