The PiG Daily - Thinking critically about SC - Page 16

Lately I’ve heard many people say “Zerg don’t need build orders”, today I’m going to tell you why they’re completely, absolutely wrong, and maybe a little bit right.

Straight into replay

Replay of Leenock vs Keen showing. 12:00 show

With Terran, and to a lesser extent Protoss, having a tight build order that covers 95% of options and then relies mostly on positional adjustments and execution as well as some major reactions can usually get you by up to a decent league. However with Zerg you always need to be a lot more flexible. You will constantly be faced with the choice between building drones, or building army units. The opportunity to commit everything to aggression, all economy, or a bit of both. The entire goal of zerg is often summarised as “Always try to put off building army until the last possible moment so you have a strong economy” - and this one key to how zerg works is integral to being a strong well-rounded player. You need to be flexible, changing your production to fit the occasion, and always ready to change your plan at a moment's notice. When you play zerg you really have to think of yourself as an almost parasitic organism that relies on your opponent to make a certain move or direction so that you can react with it.


Lately, I’ve heard many people spouting this phrase “Zerg don’t need build orders” and I think people are trying to touch on that flexible and reactive nature of zerg. However since Zerg has to be so flexible, I think build orders still exist, just in a different form. For Zerg a build won’t be as strictly outlined in terms of supply or game timer, though those can still be used as benchmarks. Instead Zerg builds have a set of strong rules that force the player to reach their goal. For instance “Stay on just 2 gases until you saturate 3 mineral lines in PvZ” is a rule designed to ensure the zerg has enough mineral income to flood out the lings, roaches and queens needed to defend surprise attacks, whilst building a solid economic foundation.

These sorts of rules become more and more important for zerg, because of the flexible gameplay zergs find themselves in, it’s the only way they can ensure they meet consistent situations in game where their execution and understanding improve through experience.

Inevitably as you move to the upper rungs of ladder, builds become not just a system of rules, but also an entire set of reactions that change and adjust those rules in certain situations. For instance against a fast Protoss 2-base all-in using immortals and sentries, it’s very important to have a lot of ravagers. So when I scout no 3rd base from the protoss and think this is coming, I deviate and drop a 3rd gas earlier than I normally would.

I had a realisation when I was first learning zerg that knowing when to adjust these rules based on the situation was what allowed me to play zerg in a truly flexible and beautiful manner. However I never would have had any real consistency in my play if I didn’t already have the other rules. It was the original “build order” that allowed me to encounter the same situations many times and develop set responses.

So build orders are actually very important as zerg to help you learn how to adjust and react and play flexibly. Setting up that solid economic foundation and encountering situations over and over again is what allows us to learn when and how far we need to adapt.

Another great example of this is vs Stargate play in ZvP. I used to always struggle with phoenix play, and I still do if I haven’t played against it in a while. The reason is it forces such a drastic reaction that I sometimes forget some pieces of it. Because those phoenix are so mobile they will always kill some overlords and drones, and force spore crawlers. The mineral cost of it all adds up so much, that if I try to get my lair, upgrades, and army units at the normal times, my mineral income will be in the dumps. So I need to remind myself whenever playing phoenix to delay my gases even longer than normal and focus on droning hard to replace those losses.

So to summarise - I think zerg builds are incredibly important, but they are a bit different. Zerg play is always more flexible than the other races and so having some form of consistency through tight rules you follow with each style is very important. Memorising triggers or timings for all your structures, lair, hive and upgrades will really help you gain consistency. And as you gain consistency you start to learn all of the many beautiful adjustments that allow you to adapt to any and every situation with the grace and killer instinct that defines the swarm.

Thanks for listening to my thoughts today guys,

Please send in your replays for ICYFAR “A gentleman never attacks without warning” - you must dance a unit in enemy vision before you attack, info is in the youtube description and in twitch chat.

Don’t forget to hug a cactus, lick a penguin and of course, punch a watermelon to the moon!

I’ll see you guys next time, goodbye and goodnight!

All the greatest things in life have a natural rhythm: music and art, how you relate to your friends and family. There’s a sort of natural flow to things when they just feel right. This rhythm is what we feel when we’re in our element, expressing ourselves in a way that suits our personality, our thoughts and our feelings. If we think about Starcraft it’s no different, it’s a blank canvas filled with infinite possibilities, finding our rhythm should be easy, and yet it’s the complete opposite. Starcraft is a lot like painting a picture or singing a song, except imagine someone by your side constantly painting over every stroke you make, or trying to drown out your singing with each verse. That’s kind of the way I see rhythm in Starcraft - it’s something which can be elusive, purely because there’s another person, behind another computer screen, and their only goal is to kick your ass.

Start Replay at 8:30

Before we get too deep into the theory here - let’s quickly discuss what I mean by rhythm. Here we have a famous game from the 2016 Blizzcon finals where Byun continually hit Dark from all sides and yet somehow Dark fought back from behind and won in an epic contest of wills. This game’s really cool because it shows the best zerg in the world somehow not losing his rhythm where any other player would have fallen apart. We’ll be watching from Dark’s viewpoint, you can already see he has a very quick rhythm to his game. He’s constantly spreading creep, injecting and fighting for map vision - all whilst spending his larva in every free moment he has.

Narrate.

Now that you see what I mean by rhythm - let’s talk about this concept more - whilst this beautiful game plays out in the background.


Rhythm is especially important for Terran as the “aggressive” race, but each race needs it in their own way. Protoss players have less consistent tasks, however they need to suddenly jump up their pace and then slow it down at various points of the game. In PvZ when a Protoss is dealing with baneling drops and huge ling run-bys they have to shift gears from calm macro to splitting and running probes, activating overcharges and warping in units all at lightning speed. This shifting of gears from steady to blazing fast play is traditionally the realm of the best players and might give us some insight into why many Protoss players struggle in LoTV - but more on that later.

ZvT/TvZ is to many the most satisfying matchup, and to many others, the most frustrating. I think this has a lot to do with rhythm. It’s so reliant on mechanics and there are many, many tasks need to be completed on both sides. A big reason for this is creep spread forces both players to contest the map. Zerg tries to get their creep out, and constantly spend actions fighting for the freedom to do so. Whilst the Terran looks to keep zerg distracted whilst clearing up and slowing creep. This creates near-constant interaction between the players and allows the viewers to enjoy a nonstop grappling match.

I think those who dislike ZvT/TvZ often struggle to find their rhythm and therefore find the matchup frustrating and feel the other race has the upper hand. The other guy is always able to attack from all sides, his marines and mines are more efficient, or if I’m not looking his banelings will just roll me over. Yet when you consider the push and pull, the effort for both players to find their rhythm, it opens up an entirely new way of looking at how you approach beating your opponent. I’ve won many games simply by throwing my opponent off their rhythm - indeed many trademark aggressive terran players who lacked strong macro, but could micro well, made careers out of this in WoL and HoTS. They would just rely on dropping from all sides and attacking over and over again with all sorts of creative timings to throw their opponent off. They almost always looked outclassed when they couldn’t mess up their opponents game-flow.

Players that grow frustrated often do need to find that rhythm. They need to find a way to bounce around and complete all their tasks. If the terran is pressuring too much, they need to learn to even the APM scales - sending in small ling and bane counters but not actively microing them is a low APM, low cost way to really strain an opponent's APM and totally disrupt their rhythm. If a Terran is in the middle of looking at his base, macroing and a counter runs in, he needs to jump to the location, run scvs, raise depots, stim marines, a-move the counter, and then try to remember where he was in his macro cycle - if you do this a few times, your opponent simply won’t have any spare apm to pressure you. Suddenly you’ll find your spending, injecting and creep spread all are happening way smoother because you’re not distracted and can do them in tight cycles in between sending in these counters. Even though the attacks themselves aren’t necessarily killing anything, they’re a great investment.

The positives of pressure to throw off your opponent really are twofold - you’re not only disrupting their rhythm - but you’re also making it easier to get into your own rhythm as your opponent can’t spare the apm to pressure you in return. We often talk about seemingly intangible advantages and edges in Starcraft, where we say things like “the veteran just put too much pressure on him and the rookie was playing a great game but eventually crumbled”. This isn’t just casters trying to emphasise the mental side of the game - it’s also us talking about the very tangible effect that exerting pressure has in disrupting and slowing down your opponent’s ability to achieve what they want in the game.

I personally recently had some hard times laddering all 3 races on my main account - some of you would have seen me grow quite frustrated on stream as I struggled to execute defensive macro play in all matchups. I would often get in a good position and then my opponent would outposition me with one big baneling surround on my protoss army, or in TvT they’d be way behind but I’ld let a doom-drop into my base. I was getting frustrated at how hard it is to play purely defensive, macro play. So I decided it was time for a change. I didn’t want to abandon macro and just start all-inning every game. However I knew I needed to do something to disrupt my opponents rhythms - and to make it easier for me to find my own rhythm. The answer was pressure. In ZvT I started sending in those counterattacks I was talking about - not always needing to do damage - but just using them as a low APM way to strain my opponent and pull the pressure off me. As Protoss I started using adept shades in the midgame and warp prisms far more consistently to keep active threats on the map against my opponents. As Terran I focused on consistently doing small single drops continuously. My builds were essentially the same - I was just making sure I was pressuring my opponent a little more. Being a little assertive. The effects were massive. Within a few games I felt more confident and more in control then I had in a long time. There were games where my opponents would fall way behind to the pressure and I’d get easy wins. There were other games where the pressure didn’t really achieve anything directly - yet somehow those mistakes that were happening earlier just weren’t happening anymore. I realised my opponents weren’t as free to attack me constantly. They couldn’t always dictate the pace of the game, and as such needed more attention on finding their own rhythm. As I was taking control of the pace of the game I suddenly found my rhythm much easier, and felt like I was on fire.

To finish up let’s have a quick word about Protoss. I think specifically the change from Protoss’ calm macro to high speed defence is VERY hard to learn. I think most players instead of trying to learn that really should focus on doing what I did where you actively use a prism and try to poke in and do a little damage every minute if possible. Maybe even more if you have the apm. I feel like this forces you to play faster, and almost “stay warm” for when you get hit with multiple drops, or multiple ling runbys. It allows you to not feel as “jolted” by a sudden change in pace. I really do recommend it. For those who still dislike defending as Protoss - I really would recommend studying and learning from Patience. Patience’ entire style is that of the most rhythmic Protoss player out there - he always looks to be doing things and bouncing around. Often his play is inefficient and he makes some terrible moves and blunders, but is also so good in scrappy situations and has a way of forcing his games to be matched with the fast-paced style of Protoss that he loves to play. Even though each race has it’s own unique strengths and weaknesses - styles which are “dominant” amongst the playerbase. I feel like Starcraft is such a diverse game you should never feel like it forces you to play a way you don’t want to. There’s a huge range of choice and sometimes you just need to find a way to indulge how you want to play the game.

To summarise, what really have I said today?
Remember that rhythm is important, and sometimes the problem isn’t necessarily “I’m bad at macro” but it’s, “I’m bad at macro when my opponent is harassing from 3 sides and I have 0 map vision or map control”.
Are there things constantly interrupting your rhythm?
Are you giving too much freedom to your opponent?
Start pressuring more!
Don’t be worried about doing massive damage, even losing units for no direct damage can be well worth it!
If you struggle in a matchup, especially ZvT or TvZ - find a way to get that rhythm back!

I hope you’ve all enjoyed me trying to think about Starcraft in a different way today. I really enjoy these shows where I share my thoughts on topics like this, let me know if you’d like to see more of them.

Don’t forget to hug a watermelon, kick a walrus and of course cunch a pactus to the poon