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I just got beaten by an annoying Terran technique that involves lifting Barracks on top of SCVs while marines are firing from behind.
Inspired by my frustration I realized that Zerg can also use this trick, but less effectively.
I imagined a situation where the Terran is going metal and the Zerg user doesn't have zerglings or hydras to defend his ramp. In this dire situation you can use a drone and an overlord to prevent entry up the ramp, provided that you have a sunken colony nearby. The terran can't move up the ramp and the attack move command causes the vulture AI to attack the sunken colony instead.
Instructions:
Simply place the drone so that it blocks the ramp and give it the stop command.
Place the overlord on top of the drone so that the body of the overlord covers the drone completely.
Tentacles do not protect the drone! You must use the body!
Do realize that the drone is not protected from hold position fire if the Terran has a massive amount of vultures. This trick will take down a few vultures and buy you time to make a real meat wall.
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You'd need a decent amount of time knowing they are coming beforehand to do this
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Yea, you really need to know it's coming beforehand if you want to set this up correctly. I mean, you can always have an ovie flying there just in case, and all you need to do is put a drone, but it's very micro intensive and you have like 1 second to get it right if you're unawares. 
However, this seems awesome early game if you want to stop probes / scvs from coming in. Unless probes / scvs auto-attack if you attack move. Hmm, this is worth trying out.
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I like the idea, now i just have to practice it lol. It looks difficult- but hey NICE!
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On January 09 2009 04:46 NoobsOfWrath wrote:
You'd need a decent amount of time knowing they are coming beforehand to do this
This guy is a liar and a thief.
Great idea, it's very efficient.
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United States3824 Posts
Damn, you're on to us. Cool idea. Have you gotten it to work?
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Calgary25996 Posts
HOLY FUCK HOW DID I NOT THINK OF THIS?
Seriously, when I read this I was thinking close, but you are a hero. Thank you so much I'm going to use this A LOT.
I can't get over it hahahaa
THANK YOU!
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Had to log in just to comment - brilliant idea, but I am sad. I don't play zerg and always thought why zergs wouldn't do this with practice (yeah about 1 sec timing window) but now even mid-level and even low-level zerg will do this and I am SAD!
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lol neat. this would also block lings in zvz I believe, if it works in the same way to the terran one
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Application seems limited, as you should probably have lings out. In the scenario of your pictures a vulture would just slip up and behind the mineral line and completely stop mining there until you got the lings out anyways. Of course, when you do have the lings you put them on the top of the ramp to block vision.
Edit: Using the fact that the vulture wouldn't have vision and be able to shoot the drone as it moved up the ramp you should be able to block it enough for the sunk to kill a single vulture every time.
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Haha, I've had a similar though to use the overlord trick.
But my idea involved ovies over lurkers guarding a ramp vs an sk-terran preventing him from irridating the lurks therefore protecting your expo until tanks or drop ships. Or make him waste irridates on ovies then lurkers.
Although this would probably be more pratical.
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United States7166 Posts
oh wow this is a really cool trick, jeezes how come I couldnt get from the terran trick to this....
this is but 1 application.. imagine the possibilities
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Is there any known way to break this? This, and the Terran trick of holding SCVs under a floating building + having ranged units on top of the ramp? I'm really curious, as I do not know any way to break this early game (except with lurkers or mass Siege Tanks or w/e)
and LoL at all the people who never used this
I thought it was common knowledge
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On January 09 2009 06:23 minus_human wrote:
Is there any known way to break this? This, and the Terran trick of holding SCVs under a floating building + having ranged units on top of the ramp? I'm really curious, as I do not know any way to break this early game (except with lurkers or mass Siege Tanks or w/e)
and LoL at all the people who never used this
I thought it was common knowledge
Bring 3-4 workers (have vision to his minerals (zerg bit easier)) and drill through choke. Perhaps some units will be pushed away. So that your units can attack them.
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United States12607 Posts
I'm surprised pros don't use this to stop the first few vultures from entering the main...I suppose they are constantly ferrying units up and down their ramp, so would rather not block it.
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one question are you supposed to use the stop command like you said or the hold command or does it not even matter.
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On January 09 2009 06:27 Too_MuchZerg wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2009 06:23 minus_human wrote:
Is there any known way to break this? This, and the Terran trick of holding SCVs under a floating building + having ranged units on top of the ramp? I'm really curious, as I do not know any way to break this early game (except with lurkers or mass Siege Tanks or w/e)
and LoL at all the people who never used this
I thought it was common knowledge
Bring 3-4 workers (have vision to his minerals (zerg bit easier)) and drill through choke. Perhaps some units will be pushed away. So that your units can attack them.
Ah yes, the drill, of course. Thanks for reminding me, however I was curious if there was any other way, since you don't always have the ability to see some minerals that are inside of his base
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On January 09 2009 05:02 Chill wrote:
HOLY FUCK HOW DID I NOT THINK OF THIS?
Seriously, when I read this I was thinking close, but you are a hero. Thank you so much I'm going to use this A LOT.
I can't get over it hahahaa
THANK YOU!
I thought you where going to say something about closing too  but I agree it's really good stuff
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That's actually a really nice idea but you have to be sure you get that ovie positioned exactly on top.
I've had terrible experiences of being denied entry to a (ramped) T base by 1 scv, 1 marine (behind the scv) and a floating barracks over the scv when I had my zealots coming from my proxy gate(s).
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You can do this as protoss but we have to go higher up the tech tree.
Shuttles can cover a Probe in a pinch but Carriers are best. ^^
(I'm obviously kidding here)
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The idea is quite good but i see it much more efective as said in the lurker way to hold ramp and prevent irradiate, and also this could change ZvZ if placing some ling near the drone make the enemy lings AI attack ur lings instead the drone.
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wow genius! thank you so much
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Interesting idea, could be effective a few certain scenarioes and would be good to keep in the memory bank just in case.
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Nice. And for the people saying that you reallly need to know that its coming, well its usually blatantly obvious when the terran may be getting vults.
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If you go to the bottom of the ramp, you won't have vision of the sunken, which will = attacking the drone. Unless the sunken is extremely close to the drone, this'll be a bit hard to pull off. Of course it'll stall them, but not as long as the scv under rax.
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Worker has high ground bonus as well. Vs a probe will win 90% of the time walling ramp.
edit- actually I'm curious now what the actual percentage is if in order to kill a drone with a probe on a 30% miss chance. edit edit - IRC agreed with 9 hits at 60% each, its 99% chance for probe to lose.
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On January 09 2009 09:06 CharlieMurphy wrote:
Worker has high ground bonus as well. Vs a probe will win 90% of the time walling ramp.
edit- actually I'm curious now what the actual percentage is if in order to kill a drone with a probe on a 30% miss chance. edit edit - IRC agreed with 9 hits at 60% each, its 99% chance for probe to lose.
Wouldn't that be 9 hits at 70% each? But it makes no difference as it's near 100% as well.
Also, if you carefully place workers on ramps, just above where high ground begins, you can block effectually with a single peon.
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On January 09 2009 06:40 WhenHellfreezes wrote:
one question are you supposed to use the stop command like you said or the hold command or does it not even matter.
Since there's an overlord with your drone, you can hold position. There is a very tiny risk of your drone moving as it attacks the vultures that try to go up the ramp and it just may move out of the way although vultures are probably getting analed by the sunkens by this point. If the drone moves even the slightest bit it could be targetted by the vultures and your drone block becomes nullified.
Many people also won't realize that there's a drone blocking and may spam clicking until they get up, so hold position is the safer and obviously best method to choose (no reason not to)
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May work on Protoss zealots but doubt it will work on marines.
Marines can just move outside of Sunken's range but still within range of the drone and just pick it off. The reason why it works with Terran is that the Zergling will try to hit the Marine but get blocked by the SCV. In this situation, the Marine (or Vulture or Tank or any ranged unit) won't try to hit the sunken because it isn't even in range. Just hold position outside of the Sunken range and the marine won't aggro. It is a cool idea but I fear it may be very limited in its application.
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Great idea. Its always so annoying when I run my zerglings up a ramp only to find the ramp blocked  , it will be nice to be able to do the same.I will certainly try to incorporate this into my game. Thank you very much!
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If an scv attack-moved up that ramp, would it start attacking the drone?
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nice try, i wonder its effectiveness though.
Inmost recent game, Up has his rax there for sight
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On January 09 2009 12:14 capek wrote:
May work on Protoss zealots but doubt it will work on marines.
Marines can just move outside of Sunken's range but still within range of the drone and just pick it off. The reason why it works with Terran is that the Zergling will try to hit the Marine but get blocked by the SCV. In this situation, the Marine (or Vulture or Tank or any ranged unit) won't try to hit the sunken because it isn't even in range. Just hold position outside of the Sunken range and the marine won't aggro. It is a cool idea but I fear it may be very limited in its application.
You're wrong. What kind of idiot Zerg player doesn't place his sunks in range of the path to the ramp? Most zerg players place their sunks near the ramp so your theory is out the window
Besides, this is for vultures, not marines. Do you send a lone marine up the ramp to harrass? Any decent Z player will micro their drones to kill 1 marine
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hey buddy. nice idea. also, lurker eggs are pretty damn tough. you're retreating to your base, and you can do it, take a damaged hydralisk and make him into a lurker egg right on the ramp. they are tough as nails and last a little bit. given, its not a supply depot but it buys you some time. as long as we are talking about blocking ramps with zergs ;P
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On January 09 2009 06:23 minus_human wrote:
Is there any known way to break this? This, and the Terran trick of holding SCVs under a floating building + having ranged units on top of the ramp? I'm really curious, as I do not know any way to break this early game (except with lurkers or mass Siege Tanks or w/e)
and LoL at all the people who never used this
I thought it was common knowledge
if its only like 1 rine so that you arne't gonna lose all your units doing this, say with 6 zealots from your proxy gates or whatever, you can try to inch the zealots up really slowly usinghold position until they are right next to the scv, at which point they will attack it. can be really difficult and frustrating. but if it's only 1 rine, it'll take him like 500 shots to kill each zealot.
On January 09 2009 16:09 cUrsOr wrote:
hey buddy. nice idea. also, lurker eggs are pretty damn tough. you're retreating to your base, and you can do it, take a damaged hydralisk and make him into a lurker egg right on the ramp. they are tough as nails and last a little bit. given, its not a supply depot but it buys you some time. as long as we are talking about blocking ramps with zergs ;P
yea a lurker egg is significantly better than a depot, plus they are shooting uphill so 75% to hit or 70% or w/e it is
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me and my friend won a 2v2 because of this accidentally once
I had no drones left and didn't do anything for like 3 minutes and they completely ignored me because they thought I was dead and then I was spam clicking one of my ovies for fun and there was a drone underneath
cool stuff
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United States17042 Posts
that's pretty cool. Any argument involving the drone blocking the ramp against marines isn't very good- the marines will pop the ovie in a matter of seconds, and if you can hold position outside of the range of the sunk with the marine, you'll hit the ovie anyway (until the ovie dies). could be pretty useful against vults though.
also,using an ovie with a lurker egg against vults might be enough against a distracted T to buy you a decent amount of time.
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On January 09 2009 04:46 NoobsOfWrath wrote:
You'd need a decent amount of time knowing they are coming beforehand to do this
For sure, slow-ver-lords for the lose.
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I just use 2 drones to block the ramp and its pretty much safe. Assuming that early in the game they will only have 1 or 2 vultures. They can't see up the ramp until they are on it anyway.
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