The PiG Daily - Thinking critically about SC - Page 2

Nerchio’s agile anti-muta ZvZ

Complete understanding of the matchup
Showed a way of dealing with mutas using an alternative to hydras/mutas where you get ling upgrades, queens and tech straight to Hive. We’ve seen it used before but usually in more static games where it feels the players skip the midgame. In this one Nerchio was always in an incredibly fast-paced and action packed situation and yet still balanced his play very intelligently


But also an understanding of how his opponent plays
Played in ways we don’t normally see because he was taking risks and cutting corners. He was abusing the incomplete information of his opponent, and doing a splendid job of piecing together what he could get away with despite his own limited information


Upgraded lings
These featured heavily in Nerchio’s play. They’re fantastic vs straight muta play, but very weak vs roach-baneling timing attacks where they can’t do crap
He identified Scarlett wanted to go muta-ling-bane and countered it by rushing for upgrades and using his lings mobility rather than anti-air to nullify the mutas
The mutas never could come harass because Nerchio always had more production (fast 3rd base) or better upgrades, sometimes even both. He used this to threaten and counterattack with lings constantly, forcing the mutas to stay at home, and doing critical damage when she moved out.
This allowed Nerchio to skip early anti-air and get a later response off a larger economy as he skipped the huge deny in his economy that is extra queens and spores

Maths
Standard AA setup on 3-base:
4 extra queens and 8 spores
600 minerals (queens) + 400 minerals/8larva (drones that turn into spores) + 600 minerals (spores)
1800 minerals and 8 larva. Most of which needs to be invested all at once at the same time as the opponent starts even just 5 mutalisks.
1800 minerals is the equivalent to 72 zerglings, or 36 drones.



Nerchio invests that money into ling aggression and purposefully limits and denies extra bases and any stability from Scarlett
So why can’t scarlett just defend on the ground and then get her mutas across the map?
She is teching very fast - if she got to mutas un-interrupted she could afford many banes, spines, lings to secure 3-base and send her mutas across the map.
However Nerchio’s pressure is relentless and he forces many lings and banes out of her
Since he is ONLY investing in economy (drones + 3rd hatch) and units whereas Scarlett is trying to invest in TECH + economy (lair, gas, 3rd base) she is forced to add more army to defend from nerchio, but she is spread thinner and can’t afford the trades as easily off her high-gas tech-focused economy.
This makes it hard for Scarlett to ever get the 3rd and gives Nerchio a big production and economy lead

TEXT ON SCREEN:

Nerchio’s spending money on: ARMY + ECONOMY

Scarlett wants to spend money on ECONOMY + TECH

However Nerchio attacks constantly and forces Scarlett to spend money on army also

Scarlett’s money is now spread too thin, she can’t afford a lot of army and can’t secure a 3rd base.

Nerchio’s tech is slower but he has a 3rd base over Scarlett. Scarlett’s advantage is the mutas

The mutas are nullified by the mobile ling counters and aggression that force them to stay home - they never get a chance to force the BIG RESPONSE they normally do. She can’t do much about it because they aren’t as mobile as lings, and her lings can’t match nerchio’s, she’s just too far behind in production, upgrades or both.

Questions! ASK NOW with @x5_PiG

G2

Run-through

Analysis

Going straight for ling upgrades
Queen-ling… aggression!?


Summary:

Mutas are indeed powerful, but Nerchio showed that it also matters HOW you get to mutalisks.
Scarlett was teching super fast, but skipping out on army, Nerchio abused this weakness and denied her using a 3rd base in many games
If Scarlett was going for slower, 3-base mutas, off a more solid economy + army. Nerchio might have been forced to tech to hive faster and do less runbys.

Hotkeys - Hotkey Trainer Arcade map
Control Groups
1 hatch/cc/nexi
2-4 Army
5 barracks/gateways (creep queen hotkey for zerg)
6 - factories/starports or Robo/SG (tab between them)
7 - upgrade buildings
8 - special building/secondary upgrades

Adding eggs to your hotkey
Remove select all army key to get used to it
We should always be trying to rely on our own hotkeys rather than select all army because select all army inhibits our ability to split up and counterattack, flank etc.


Ctrl Click and double click
Ctrl click is a bit more reliable especially on moving units


Shift click de-selecting
cloning/scouts/back on gas
Shift Queing up actions
Insane multi-tasking often involves a lot of this - it looks to the observer like they’re everywhere - and sometimes they are but most of the time its nicely timed que’d up actions to hit at the same time as where they’re actively microing.
Camera Hotkeys
5-8 bases + rally pt
For Protoss rally pt = warpin pt

Advanced:

Rapid-fire
Great for corrosive bile, infested terran spam, warping in 5+ gateway units at a time
Control-group Stealing
Should be on by default

Macro

Macro is the art of constantly expanding your economy and building it stronger whilst also Teching, upgrading and spending your money on army. The key rules are:

Constantly build workers
Keep your money low
Spend the money as soon as it comes in so it can be used.
For instance if you invest in more workers, the earlier you get them the more time they get to mine!
Never get supply blocked
SOOO much better to have a big supply gap then to get blocked! Grinds your whole production to a halt Better to lose opportunity cost then freeze everything up

Macro Cycle
You can do small tasks in between, pros constantly bounce between things. However the important part is having one strong, rhythmical cycle:

Zerg
Every 30s
Inject
Produce
Overlords - last few larva on overlords every time - this steadily ramps up so you build 1 overlord/cycle for each base you have

The reason behind always macroing in a set order is that in Starcraft you always have a large number of actions to sustain macro. If you are doing everything in a random order you are guaranteed to have to constantly waste brain power thinking “what do I need to do now?”. So by memorising this order and carrying out your macro like this EVERY game you begin to do it by instinct without needing to think and therefore always covering all your bases. Not only that but the speed you macro at will increase noticeably.

So the goal here is that with every 30s macro cycle (the time it takes for injects to pop) you can go through this order automatically and speedily finish it in 10-15s. This leaves 25-30s for scouting, micro, building tech, and thinking about strategy.

Terran -22s
2xScvs/CC + drop mules
Que units on production
Que depots
From 40 supply (therabouts) you should always have 1 depot builder. That is, an scv constantly building depots. You should always que up another depot each time you return to base
Once you hit full 2-base production (roughly 5-rax + fact/starport) you need to add a second depot builder.
This way even if you are busy microing for a minute depots continue to be built. It also means you don’t need to keep pulling a worker off mining each time to go build depots, it becomes an easier and more habitual action

Protoss -22s
2xProbes/Nexus
Que units on production
Build pylons (1+/mining base)

My base is red on workers, should I stop building them?

Just rally that building to the next base, never stop building workers
Even if it’s red it’s ok. 18 workers per base is just as efficient as 16 workers. Anything up to 20 on each bases minerals is completely fine.
Anything under 16 is very bad!

When to transfer workers?
8:00 - transfer from main leaving 8 workers behind
11:00 - transfer from natural leaving 8 workers behind
We rarely get past the next marker, and always with different 3rd timings based on build so it’s not as set in stone.
Do this at the same time every game so it becomes habit! Especially in the middle and lower leagues I see players being very inconsistent with this. Even GMs often forget in high pressure games because it’s not a consistent habit.

What about when to add tech, production and upgrades?
As a beginner it’s not too important exactly when, as long as you’re building your economy up and spending your money
As you progress you can start to emulate patterns you see in pro play and learn efficient ways to head towards certain goals.

Micro

Attack-move!

Boxing micro
Try to do it with just 2 box + click actions to get used to doing an apm efficient version you can realistically have time to execute in a game
Spreading vs splash damage
Setting up a concave
More surface area
banana/moon
Doesn’t have to be perfect, just have them spread in the general shape and they’ll do the rest

Using Spellcasters

Get used to using 2 army control groups
To get started you can try always just move commanding (right click) your spellcasters on someone in your main army so they automatically follow
But they ALWAYS need their own hotkey
Often you only need to a-move, or spread and a-move your main army
Newer players more often make their army less effective by trying to micro too much
Spellcasters on the other hand need a lot more attention!

So a fight done well will often look like this:

Box click, box click to spread army
A-move
Control spellcasters

Example showing how to use infestors/vipers SLOW AT FIRST

Questions @x5_PiG also last Abathur code giveaway today!

Mineral walking workers
Useful for rush defence

Surrounding enemy workers
Pocket trick
Running away from harm (no pathing blocks so you can escape easier)
Attacking?
I used to copy this build in WoL off a 14/14 opening and had an insane winrate with it lol. I even used it in late 2012 several times off pool-hatch with a fake 3rd hatch cancel - worked a lot before the mothership core

Trick and small things

Shift + hold position queens on ramps
Queuing up attack commands with shift on an scv so your units pursue and resume attacking it after it shifts around the building
Hold position drones to block melee attackers

Summary: We just talked about a LOT of different things.

If you’re using this video to improve, choose 1-2 things. Practice them a bit and try to make them feel very natural before you try more things. Don’t try to learn everything at once! All of the notes will be posted in the TL thread.

Don’t be afraid to hop into a custom map to practice and learn new mechanics. If something’s brand new it’s best to practice it vs an easy AI, or even no opponent so you can focus on it in isolation.

Answer questions

End show!

PvT of Has vs Happy

Has vs Happy frozen temple
Aggression sees Happy’s crazily safe tech-rush build
Keeps up the pressure despite the start going horribly (losing mocore)
Goes FULL economy behind it
In this case it’s an exaggerated example of what we’ve been talking about. Obviously Happy’s paranoid because it’s Has, but we see this same sort of over-defensiveness from the defender, and greed behind the aggression all the time!

Intro

Before looking at the less obvious features of aggression, let’s talk about the basics. At its core Starcraft is an economy game, and that’s the main thing we always look at. If someone is aggressive, it means they invest less in economy, and more in army in order to try and damage or kill their opponent. Therefore if they don’t do a certain amount of damage, they’re behind, and the attack has failed.

This is definitely the MAIN part of understanding aggression.
However we rarely go deeper. Lots of situations where players first attack or 2 doesn’t achieve anything, and they go on to win with their transitions.

I remember last years wcs when I 9-pooled Targa 3 times in a ZvZ each time vs 15pool. He always had textbook defence, and yet I won the series 2-1 with macro transitions that ended in very even games. On a regular basis we see Has’s aggression defended only to break through on the 2nd or 3rd tech-switch.

So how when an attack doesn’t work, does the player who is so clearly behind in economy leverage himself back into the game? To understand this we need to look at the hidden advantages of aggression. The best way to do this is to look at games where the initial attack doesn’t achieve its goal - but the player still finds that way to win!






The first step to benefiting from these hidden advantages is not overcommitting
Learning to recognise when the attack isn’t going well and changing up the style of attack/pressure, not just funneling units up a ramp to their death
Sure you’ve attacked and didn’t do damage, so you’re behind in economy.
But if you preserve a lot of your units then you can still scout and
The threat is still there! They’re afraid to move out incase you’re still reinforcing




Scouting info - force them to show their unit composition
Infer from that what their build is
Usually can figure out everything that’s happening if the pressure is great enough
Pressure them so much they don’t have time to scout and are afraid of walking out into a huge allin
Leads to several consequences:

Don’t have time to think about scouting/transition
Are unsure if you’re still going all-in or committing to economy
This means you can often cut corners behind the aggression and beeline directly to a tech and economy that you can’t defend - but they don’t realise they can push.
Usually by the time they do push the corner cutting/greedy transition has paid off


Force them into a certain reaction whilst you’re already going into the best counter to that reaction

Space
We touched on the idea of opening up space and having vision
It’s also you’re completely safe due to gearing up for your own attack - you can be surprised by attacks and you will defend cos you already have so many units

Questions to @x5_PiG

Strength and Weakness:

Usually the defender fails to weigh up and fully understand what the aggressor is capable of
However if they do they can almost always find a sharp counter-timing to stop you from cutting corners and getting ahead
Example: STOP AT JUST 2 TANKS and get faster stim
Especially if it’s a brand new type of aggression it’s incredibly hard to do the mental calculations on what could be coming behind it - that’s why only the very best of the best pro players feel impervious to aggressive and cheesy play


We talked about how players tend to mis-read aggression unless they are the very best or have experience dealing with it. But even if they have a good grasp of the situation and what’s possible, The aggressor is usually still more familiar with the situation. He chose to do this build and force the game down this path, he’s practiced it many many times and has learnt devious and clever things to do from here. (spreading creep back, recognise when to rush mutas, Has going phenix after oracle to keep the pressure up and force the T to stay at home