Has anyone else ran into this strategy. It seems to be dominating most top diamond terrans play over the last few days. There are two variations. Both of them deny an expo and force roaches and both of them follow up with marauders (either 1 base all in, or fast expo with 6 reaper harass into 6 or so rax stim marauder all in).
This build is obnoxious to deal with. It seems like theres no real way to defend it competently 100% of the time. Roaches do fine against the reapers despite getting kited around all day. Reapers kill queens with ease especially when the numbers get larger. All the while the reapers can stay out of range of queen and roaches. Spine crawlers are so ineffective at dealing with the harass as reapers just do so much damage to buildings. You cannot attack the terran, you cannot do anything, you just have to sit and hope you have enough roaches to deal with the marauders, and then hope you have enough economy to deal with the midgame later on.
Do any zergs have a lot of experience dealing with this build? It seems to be the popular hard to deal with build of the week and I have not found a suitable way to deal with it that leaves me with a strong midgame economy. I've tried going for mutas to deal with the marauders, but if he's doing a 1base all in instead of the fast expo i instantly lose. I've tried several different subtle changes in my play and none of them leave me feeling confident. Every time I scout a techlab on the barracks now I get this really terrible feeling in my stomach. I would almost move to say that this build is OP.
yeah it seems pretty popular now since LzGamer's games were shown to the world during Day9's launch party. They talked about it a little bit and they mentioned that Machine and co. had no answer for this build
I suggest you try scouting on 10 (can probably get away with 12 if you're on a 2-player map), and if you see him doing this, go 15 hatch, 14 pool, and the timing will work out that you get your spine crawler about the same time as the first reaper, if he's going faster reaper (like 8 rax reaper), you can't do this, but you can get 14 pool 13 extractor and get quick ling speed to defend. You have to be good at defense to be a good zerg though. Make sure your important buildings are tucked away on creep and can't be sniped. You'll get 2 queens up right when your hatches go up which should be able to mostly defend with good micro. get a spine crawler at your natural and zergling speed fairly quickly. I would really do your best to defend with queens and lings and avoid roaches if you can. Get a creep tumor early (you can't support all the larva at first anyways), this will make it much riskier for the reapers as they have to go on creep. If you're having trouble put a spine crawler on one side of your main and use your queen to defend the other although honestly with a good overlord spread for vision you shouldn't need this. Keep building lings and tech to mutas, he's committed to bio and this is VERY effective against bio.
You cannot hatch first. It's going to be bunkered up. And most terrans will wait for 5 to 6 reapers before they really do any harassment. That spine crawler will die in two seconds. He's not going 10 rax reaper. He's doing a standard orbital opening into 3rax reaper or some fast expand variant. I really want you to understand i'm not talking about the 10rax reaper, or even the 1barracks reaper harass into the hellion marauder push. This is a whole new build. Opens up another world of obnoxious terran builds.
ive had this done to me and used this build to hold of reapers with lings and 2 spines and teched to mutas to end the game just have to have decent micro and good overlord placement im a mid level diamond player.
On August 04 2010 03 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 04 2010 03 end_of_the_skype_highlighting:48 Phayze wrote: You cannot hatch first. It's going to be bunkered up. And most terrans will wait for 5 to 6 reapers before they really do any harassment. That spine crawler will die in two seconds. He's not going 10 rax reaper. He's doing a standard orbital opening into 3rax reaper or some fast expand variant. I really want you to understand i'm not talking about the 10rax reaper, or even the 1barracks reaper harass into the hellion marauder push. This is a whole new build. Opens up another world of obnoxious terran builds.
Kill the SCV while it's building the bunker with one of your drones. But I still think this strategy is really hard to deal with, I imagine speedlings will do some goodness, but they die so fast when there are a lot of reapers.
My friend FireZerg, who is also a top diamond player stands by 1base muta but has also not found a method of dealing with this. You cannot survive vs this build without roaches. Reapers do too much damage vs buildings. I've played around 10 games versus this (Not many I know) but I know for sure that, If you're up against the 1base all in variant and are going sens muta build you will instantly lose because the push comes at around 50% spire. I did manage to take a game against a player who expanded into the tech rax explosion. It's just not as easy as building spine crawlers and killing the building scv with a drone. Because with any way you choose, you still have to deal with the 6+ reapers and the inevitable reaper + marauder reaper push which will dominate any composition you have (Excluding mutas which come out too late)
Mass reaper happens after you get the chance to fast expand. You can't just 1 base muta which is the obvious way to stop any tech lab barracks build cold. (Though ghost transition works nice vs 2 base muta.)
You basically need some kind of lair tech to hold them off. Speed roaches pretty decent. Mutas or infestors work great. Other than that you just need mass queen/roaches to hold back as long as you can. I cant' see speedlings working vs 3 rax reapers without lots of queen support. I think TLO used mass queen/ling into infestor to win this one.
On August 04 2010 03 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 04 2010 03 end_of_the_skype_highlighting:48 Phayze wrote: You cannot hatch first. It's going to be bunkered up. And most terrans will wait for 5 to 6 reapers before they really do any harassment. That spine crawler will die in two seconds. He's not going 10 rax reaper. He's doing a standard orbital opening into 3rax reaper or some fast expand variant. I really want you to understand i'm not talking about the 10rax reaper, or even the 1barracks reaper harass into the hellion marauder push. This is a whole new build. Opens up another world of obnoxious terran builds.
Kill the SCV while it's building the bunker with one of your drones. But I still think this strategy is really hard to deal with, I imagine speedlings will do some goodness, but they die so fast when there are a lot of reapers.
You can't actually reliably kill an scv building a bunker with ONE drone. They sometime have that gay'd building animation that makes them go into the bunker and become invulnerable. That, and you have to always keep track of your drone and make sure it's attking the scv. THey have a habit of losing the attk order when the scv moves.
On to OP, just theory crafting, but how about couple of zerglings at ramp to figure out when he's switching to rauders and then massing up speedlings? Or even an Overlord near ramp to poke in and out? If he's only got reapers/rauders then he must have few marines?
i dont see the point in getting roaches at all against this build, marauders absolutely shit on roaches.... and reapers are way too fast for roaches to be viable against them.
wouldn't mass speedlings/queens with a couple spine crawlers do the trick just fine until you can get muta/infestor out? a few banelings wouldnt hurt but i'd rather save the gas for lair/spire/infestation pit.
you could try backstabbing as well when they move out with their marauders.
I agree it doesn't seem roaches is the right answer, since marauders will simply tear them apart. Against reaper harass I find well placed spine crawler, speedlings, and a couple queens fends it off well. I haven't dealt with someone following up with mass Marauders, most likely because they see me with 12 slings.
On August 04 2010 04:32 EscPlan9 wrote: I agree it doesn't seem roaches is the right answer, since marauders will simply tear them apart. Against reaper harass I find well placed spine crawler, speedlings, and a couple queens fends it off well. I haven't dealt with someone following up with mass Marauders, most likely because they see me with 12 slings.
Trying to find when T is going marauder to counter with speedlings won't work either, if he's executing his strategy well enough he won't lose that many reapers and willl complement his marauders force with some reapers to kill speedlings if needed anyway.
Tried extra queens? being able to transfuse your buildings whiel your slow roaches get there is huge. Also, spreading creep in your base is really important. Speedlings on creep can probably handle decent #s of reaper, at least until you get lair tech. Other than that I got nothing for ya... fast muta maybe?
If you expect reapers, it's better off to open pool/gas instead of pool/hatch. If I see reapers after a pool/hatch opening, I get my gas ASAP and cancel my natural hatchery. I delay the first reaper with my queen, and keep building queens and drones while getting ling speed and a roach warren, then tech to lair for roach speed. When I have around 30 drones, I switch to ling/roach production. I'm pretty sure the timing works out so that I have my roaches out whenever he gets his nitro packs and starts pumping reapers out of more raxes (a few reapers aren't a big deal for queens, but mass reapers are). It's really important to spread creep throughout your main and extend it to your natural. Lings are amazing versus marauders without medivac support and of course roaches beat reapers straight up. Sorry about the vagueness. I'm still working out specifics since I haven't played against it that much. I'm also testing putting down a second hatch in the main if it seems like he's not getting his expansion any time soon.
Ensnare's reaper micro is much better than LZ's, except he has a different follow-up. Watch the ogs vs Prime games, it's mind boggling. This strategy could be even more dangerous in the hands of a korean pro.
This is such a hard build to counter, I think speedlings are better to deal with it because of numbers + speed, if you split control groups and try and sandwich and catch them off guard/when they're jumping up and down cliffs, also early creep spread. i've had good success vs lower level players.. cant speak for higher level players with better micro and multi tasking.. i assume i'd get owned
EDIT: After watching the videos again, yeah i would definitely get owned by this.. hopefully no one does it to me, i would probably rage quit
yes people please watch the games before commenting. I do not feel speedlings are the response at all. The reapers are just so strong vs them. And neither are spine crawlers because they just insta die and delay you too much. This build is super fair.
I think strifeco would have won if he had just gone infestation pit instead of spire to be honest. The Terran is heavily committed towards barracks units and infestors completely destroy barracks units not to mention a single FG means bye bye reapers if you have any other units on the map.
Machine just didn't know what hit him. I'm sure this is really tough to deal with but I'm also sure there are counters to it.
On August 04 2010 06:04 Phayze wrote: yes people please watch the games before commenting. I do not feel speedlings are the response at all. The reapers are just so strong vs them. And neither are spine crawlers because they just insta die and delay you too much.
I watched the videos. Machine didn't "go speedlings" to counter that. His gas was way late and he fast expanded.
This is pure theorycrafting, but I would say that the answer is light roaches, plenty of speedlings, and about 3 Spine crawlers. Group your Spines in a way that basically deters the Terran from taking that path. Keep the Roaches somewhat out and to the side. Chase the Reapers with the Roaches and try to flank and cut off the retreat with the speedlings.
Basically, try to lure him into a V and close it off with speedlings. Do this while you get a Spire. The name of this game is to buy time.
After work, I'll see if my roommate feels like testing it out for a while.
Yeah it seems unstoppable right now, i die to this all the time. Sometimes just reapers crush me sometimes its a follow up with marauders... the problem is that it really messes with your economy, the fucking out-range everything so its really tuff. Those who are saying anything about lair, lol, you cant even get to there TT
i just cannot wait for the patch oh god, when will it come
I'm ranked like 13 Platinum right now, and only started playing in phase 2 of the beta, so not nearly as good at micro as I'm sure y'all are, but I've been playing Terran and after watching the two games above have been doing this build vs. Zerg every single game.
It works horribly well (I am surprised Reapers are 1 supply) but one thing that did screw it up for me was the Zerg player stealing my second gas with his scout.
You kind of have to decide whether to kill the extractor with the reapers and give it away, or only attack with about 3 of them and not have any backup. 1 Marine can't kill the extractor if you cancel/rebuild.
IMO, the magic of this build isn't really how strong the Reapers are, but more how inexpensive they are minerals wise, it lets you follow up with a reasonably quick expansion and 5-6 Barracks much faster than other infantry builds. Whereas the Zerg player has to spend much more resources and time wise to block it.
You kind of have to decide whether to kill the extractor with the reapers and give it away, or only attack with about 3 of them and not have any backup. 1 Marine can't kill the extractor if you cancel/rebuild.
kill the extractor. revealing your reaper tech doesnt matter.
I'd have to agree with above poster. Since the reapers deal massive damage to buildings and extractors are pretty squishy it shouldn't really matter. Sure it might buy the Zerg a few seconds to ge t maybe another set of zerglings done but really in the grand scope of things unless he is expecting it beforehand he shouldn't be able to fend it off. Just kill the extractor and proceed to his base, this will matter even less since you are getting reaperspeed which means you'll be there in the blink of an eye anyhow.
I discussed this with my friend and we came up with a reasonably feasible strategy to counter this. you basically don't expand and place down 3 spinecrawlers close to your hatch/ in the mineral-line. And then you rally speedlings to his base and try to stay alive with a queen transfusing your spinecrawlers while you try to tech to mutas.
This should work in theory since it takes quite some buildup for the reapers so be able to deal efficiently with the crawlers and with lings beating up his front he has to divert some of his reapers to his main and that means it will take more time for him to get the critical mass of reapers needed to deal with the spinecrawlers which should give you enough time to get mutas and by then since your lings has been poking at his front he shouldn't ahve been able to expand and with the mutas coming it should be pretty much gg or atleast bring the game back to status quo.
1) queens, transfusion, spine crawlers into muta something. 2) defending with roach/queen/infusion and a tight base structure placement, later slow drop roaches into enemy main 3) attacking enemy front door with roaches, maybe with burrow/tunneling claws as well.
Transfusion costs, I believe, 50 energy whereas spawn larvae only costs 25. Since it really shouldn't be viable to cut spawn larvae the zerg has to make additional queens just to try to transfuse the crawlers. The terran also can follow this up with a number of very strong builds whereas the zerg is pretty much just trying to stay alive. I'm really not a fan of one base zerg plays but I think it's the only viable option for zerg here since I just don't think that they can cover both their expansion and their main when dealing with this.
Fast teching to mutas out of one base isn't really an optimal strategy either. The terran can make several missile turrents, rush out a thor, or just plain spam marines (though spamming marines isn't optimal since the zerg could transition into banelings). It just seems like even if the zerg can defend, the terran can outmacro and trounce the zerg on his follow through. This is part of the reason that I don't try to play zerg anymore lol.
I play terran, not zerg, but I think zerg has a response to this.
As other people said, going 1 base muta will allow you to survive but a good terran will scout the tech and plan accordingly. However, missile turrets are static and clearly vikings won't be online for quite a while with this build. This means that zerg can reasonably force the reapers back home, as seen in the LZ games posted before, and then take complete map control. I think zerg count out "simply outmacro the opponent" as a viable strategy. Check out Idra's winning games in the king of beta tourney. His wins were on big maps that allowed him to contain and expand. Looking at LZGamer's game vs. Strife above, I think strife could have won if he simply held the terran back and expanded. Instead, he wanted the quick win and rushed his units into a wall. I'm definitely going to try this as terran, but I think zerg is more than capable of holding it off.
1base muta comes too late, and the reapers 2 shot a spire. The marauders come before mutalisks finish and theres the gigantic possibility that the spire will get killed off. You have to build roaches to defend any sort of spire also, so that delays it massively. once the terran gets to 6 7 8 reapers he 2 shots a spine crawler too, so unless you have them in sets together (2+) you need roaches. You're already behind, you cannot afford spine crawlers. That lowers your drone count even more. I do not see any viable options against this build that progress you nicely into the mid game. It's nothing short of ridiculous.
I meant to go from roaches to mutas, exactly like Strife did in the video. He was in a fine position until that last attack. It really depends on your ability to macro while you micro your roaches.
In that last video MadRhetoric, LzGamer also favored a lot more reapers than he needed. Many players are now favoring stopping at 8 or 9, and massing marauders with stim off 2base, and relying on missile turrets to completely shut down any muta shenanigans. If you watched the video, LzGamer had 2bases, was up over 20 workers, and also had a significant army advantage. The mutalisks were a waste of resources (Hell wen the spire completed he only had 200 gas = 2 mutalisks saved up) because of the marine count, LzGamer was well defended against any sort of harass (Even over his barackks) and had a significant worker advantage with 2OC's muling + 20++ scvs. As zerg, your macro extends as far as your larvae permits and i'm sure the macro was fine that game MadRhetoric. I'm still continuing practicing against this build and have made much progress. But despite what you do you're still going to be behind. It's really hard to get ahead vs this style of play and I always feel as if i'm trying to get out from the slums.
I've had a lot of trouble with this build as well. I either straight up lose to the reapers or build up a ton of roaches and get owned 2 mins later by marauders. No less 3x by the same guy. Very maddening.
The more effective harass for the terran is when he builds up 3-5 reapers with speed than the ultra fast reaper. i've tried to baneling bust this but he smartly held up and defended. Then when i had nothing in my base he began the attack.
I will try the multiple queen/spines though that might work since you can spread more creep in your base. It's hard though with the big mains of LT and such.
The only counter I can see to this is double gas steal but then you lose quite a few minerals (extractors + lost mining) and the terran can probably just get away with mass marines at that point :\
Some Terran just did this to me on the ladder - I thought it was an absolutely trash strategy, but perhaps he just executed poorly.
Lately I've been 14 gas 13 pooling vs. Terran, opting to take a slightly delayed expansion (around 20 food), and my speedlings absolutely dominated his mass reapers with nitro packs. Rushing speed in this manner, only one reaper gets out before you get Zergling speed.
From there I went into a 2 base mutalisk -> mass expand, using roach/hydra/ling to stop the marauder + thor (in retrospect I should probably just muta/ling/bling).
Here's the replay. I have to warn you in advance that my Zerg is super rusty having not played them for a solid two months. But even so, that play seemed a little risky at best.
Stike, I watched the replay and your opponent was garbage. He built his expo way late. Watch the game vs incontrol, You will see why speedlings just do not work. He is not doing the build correctly. He hadnt even expanded yet and climbed up to 900 minerals. Had not even started marauder production. by the time your mutas came. When he's supposed to attack with marauders before the spire completes. Also he stopped after 4 or 5 reapers, did not kill any queens or structure etc. This build is all about the critical mass of reapers that two shot any tech structure and even 20+ zerglings would have trouble killing.
I think my usual build would do decently (not against those players but against that build executed at my low diamond level).
Open fast speedling (13-14 gas into 12-13 pool) going for queen, 6 lings then drones+expand, fast speed as soon as pool pops. Second hundred gas goes to lair, next 50 goes to baneling nest during the upgrade. Then make drones/lings depending on scouting and make mutas asap.
This means a few things. For one, you don't make banelings (so you spend no gas) against reapers which accelerates your mutas and makes more mutas pop at first (notably in the strifeco game he had 12+roaches meaning some extra mutas). For two you can have roughly 4 lings to a reaper and while 10 reapers are painful, 20 speedlings on the front and 20 on the back will hurt them.
Once the mutas pop you have speedlings/baneling/muta which is the ideal composition to beat a pure bio Terran. Roaches just get hurt too much by marauders.
Another interesting thing with speedlings is to intercept reinforcements (much like countering a 2 gate).
In the machine game I think he just went for a more econ heavy build against a very aggressive 1 base. Making fewer drones and just spamming out speedlings could well be the solution. Also note that LT is a stupid map for reapers because of that retarded cliff over the natural.
i would try turtling up with a queen and two spines contiunuously adding lings. a hatchery in the main if you can defend it and keep building lings but not over committing. no chasing the reapers just massing while teching to lair. when you have 30~ speed lings move out and try and surround the reapers. early creep tumors are key to doing this since speedlings barely out pace reapers.
what makes this strat so strong is the aggressiveness of the terran with the reapers if you can just stay calm and defend without letting your queens start chasing, then it will be much harder for him to pick them off and thus much harder for him to cause damage. zergs also get to over eager with thier lings letting them get cliffed and picked off and kited. you have to wait and save em till you have enough to stop the harrass all together.
surrounds are the key to killing reapers. one group goes around the back the other attacks head on.
On August 04 2010 11:47 Phayze wrote: Stike, I watched the replay and your opponent was garbage. He built his expo way late. Watch the game vs incontrol, You will see why speedlings just do not work. He is not doing the build correctly. He hadnt even expanded yet and climbed up to 900 minerals. Had not even started marauder production. by the time your mutas came. When he's supposed to attack with marauders before the spire completes. Also he stopped after 4 or 5 reapers, did not kill any queens or structure etc. This build is all about the critical mass of reapers that two shot any tech structure and even 20+ zerglings would have trouble killing.
Yeah, I have to admit he was indeed pretty bad. If I ever run into this strategy against a decent player, we'll see how it goes.
I don't very much like Zerg vs. Terran in general. If this is really as overpowered as people say it is, then bleh >.<
Well, a Zerg just won the KOTB. ZvT isn't imba, imo.
What really sucks for me, as terran, is the fact that reapers don't shoot overlords. You can have huge vision of all the entry points to your base and speedlings to block the reapers as they jump in with creep everywhere. You'll have to add a few roaches to your composition to add in some security for an expansion, I guess that gets you into the mid game?
On August 04 2010 14:01 ApacheChief wrote: Well, a Zerg just won the KOTB. ZvT isn't imba, imo.
What really sucks for me, as terran, is the fact that reapers don't shoot overlords. You can have huge vision of all the entry points to your base and speedlings to block the reapers as they jump in with creep everywhere. You'll have to add a few roaches to your composition to add in some security for an expansion, I guess that gets you into the mid game?
Your conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from your premise. I'm certain that nobody tries harder than IdrA right now - he's putting his entire life into Starcraft 2. The fact that he won could also be due to the fact that he's simply better than the other players.
Not to mention that he himself said that zerg is awful somewhere on Team Liquid. I'm sure that quote will become famous soon enough.
I play at a lower level (plat), so I haven't been up against the kind of micro that makes this build really strong, but I've seen this quite a bit lately, and I've been very successful against it by focusing on abusing burrow. Even if you can only sneak a couple of burrowed roaches here or there, two roaches popping up while he's trying to kite the obvious front roach line is a few easy kills. You don't need to build a lot of roaches as long as you can keep him from building a huge reaper ball, so every kill means another drone for you. And because roaches get free regen from being burrowed, you can really focus on force preservation and stay strong against speed reaps trying to kite your roaches. Burrow also works great with banelings, which you'll be getting anyway, since the number of rax this build requires almost forces him into some kind of bio play.
I've only lost to this a couple of times... the result of bad scouting or bad roach/burrow micro. Typically I'll stall him off with roaches while researching burrow, drone up and tech bling/lair while playing micro games, and his harass usually comes to an abrupt end when his reaper ball runs over burrowed blings or gets split and/or trapped. Then I can expo (if I FE'd) or double expo and tech while containing him with burrow blings. This also dovetails nicely with a fast burrow roach harass or attack.
The concern then is the fast switch into a marauder push off of two bases, since he's able to take his natural uncontested. Speedlings with fast infestor or muta, used in combination with burrow bling and whatever burrow roach you have left, and it's all over.
Check does a great job at fending that off but that build isn't remotely similar to the build by LzGamer. Defending two quick reapers is one thing... Defending against 8 a minute or two later is another. No easy task!
After watching the LZGamer matches, I gotta say this build looks to have no actual counter at the moment, or any especially good way of dealing with it even. In my initial analysis, I thought of it only in terms of the mild 2-4 reaper harass - not 6 or more! Then remembered the similar problem zerg faces against tanks - the smart-firing mechanism where they will not target the same zergling. And with the mobility of the reapers mixed with that, there isn't much zerg can do at the moment.
Would be interested to hear some responses from experienced zerg players who have faced this
On August 04 2010 16:25 Iri wrote: I play at a lower level (plat), so I haven't been up against the kind of micro that makes this build really strong, but I've seen this quite a bit lately, and I've been very successful against it by focusing on abusing burrow. Even if you can only sneak a couple of burrowed roaches here or there, two roaches popping up while he's trying to kite the obvious front roach line is a few easy kills. You don't need to build a lot of roaches as long as you can keep him from building a huge reaper ball, so every kill means another drone for you. And because roaches get free regen from being burrowed, you can really focus on force preservation and stay strong against speed reaps trying to kite your roaches. Burrow also works great with banelings, which you'll be getting anyway, since the number of rax this build requires almost forces him into some kind of bio play.
I've only lost to this a couple of times... the result of bad scouting or bad roach/burrow micro. Typically I'll stall him off with roaches while researching burrow, drone up and tech bling/lair while playing micro games, and his harass usually comes to an abrupt end when his reaper ball runs over burrowed blings or gets split and/or trapped. Then I can expo (if I FE'd) or double expo and tech while containing him with burrow blings. This also dovetails nicely with a fast burrow roach harass or attack.
The concern then is the fast switch into a marauder push off of two bases, since he's able to take his natural uncontested. Speedlings with fast infestor or muta, used in combination with burrow bling and whatever burrow roach you have left, and it's all over.
You have a rep? Reapers should be tearing you a new one long before you can get lair and burrow research, would be interesting to see.
On August 04 2010 14:01 ApacheChief wrote: Well, a Zerg just won the KOTB. ZvT isn't imba, imo.
What really sucks for me, as terran, is the fact that reapers don't shoot overlords. You can have huge vision of all the entry points to your base and speedlings to block the reapers as they jump in with creep everywhere. You'll have to add a few roaches to your composition to add in some security for an expansion, I guess that gets you into the mid game?
Yeah, that Zerg who won got to the finals by beating QXC. QXC is a good player, but not near IdrA's level. I'm sure Rainbow would have destroyed IdrA if they met in the finals and if he is as good as people say. (I never watched his games)
Reapers shooting Overlords would even be so dumb. Terran already has the Marine which denies all Overlord scouting until Lair tech.
On August 04 2010 14:01 ApacheChief wrote: Well, a Zerg just won the KOTB. ZvT isn't imba, imo.
What really sucks for me, as terran, is the fact that reapers don't shoot overlords. You can have huge vision of all the entry points to your base and speedlings to block the reapers as they jump in with creep everywhere. You'll have to add a few roaches to your composition to add in some security for an expansion, I guess that gets you into the mid game?
Yeah, that Zerg who won got to the finals by beating QXC. QXC is a good player, but not near IdrA's level. I'm sure Rainbow would have destroyed IdrA if they met in the finals and if he is as good as people say. (I never watched his games)
Reapers shooting Overlords would even be so dumb. Terran already has the Marine which denies all Overlord scouting until Lair tech.
I couldn't believe I read that reapers need to be strengthened more against Zerg early game either. lol
I am just a gold level Zerg but I would try and last until I can get fungal growth. Seems like the only solution to those fuckers. Lasting that long against the fastest unit in the game that takes buildings down as fast as an Ultraliks, however, that is the problem.
I agree with whoever said they open 14 gas 14 pool (at least thats how i do it), and expo at 20. If you can keep that first harass off with early speedlings so you don't lose too many lings, you can then build some roaches as you tech to lair.
Then you should have speedlings for the first wave of reapers, and when they push with however many reapers they've decided to build (you say usually 8-9). you will do your best with slings and roaches. and from that if they are coming with marauder reaper you can hold it with ling/roach/sc with mutas coming if you hold off the attack?
I've only watched the videos, haven't seen it myself, so I don't know how viable holding off that marauder reaper push is with this build. I just don't think any early expand is gonna get you ling speed fast enough to save your first 6-8 lings and not burn them to the first wave of reapers. and you'll need every ling you've got to hold off the big reaper push.
I think this build alone makes me want to switch to Protoss. Lings in decent numbers can hold it off long enough, but keeping a count on reapers and the tech switch becomes difficult. Roaches do a pretty good job, but can't keep up with the Reapers until you get a decent number in which marauder/reaper rapes face.
I am a 450 point Diamond Zerg (so obviously not a pro) but my greatest success vs. reaper builds has been a 15 hatch, 14 pool. Immediately make 2 queens and play hardcore defense (immediately make a creep tumor with one of the queens instead of injecting), adding more drones and queens as you need them while you get zergling speed.
Just hang out when they start making a bunker at your expo, and wait for your first set of about 8-10 zerglings and the 2 queens to pop out to clear the bunkers out. From here you are free to set up a nice spine crawler defense and eco up. Then transition into whatever best suites your opponents build after reapers.
Also a gas steal is crucial with you scouting drone to delay the reapers, and lower their reaper numbers.
On August 05 2010 03:46 CrunkOwns wrote: I am a 450 point Diamond Zerg (so obviously not a pro) but my greatest success vs. reaper builds has been a 15 hatch, 14 pool. Immediately make 2 queens and play hardcore defense (immediately make a creep tumor with one of the queens instead of injecting), adding more drones and queens as you need them while you get zergling speed.
Just hang out when they start making a bunker at your expo, and wait for your first set of about 8-10 zerglings and the 2 queens to pop out to clear the bunkers out. From here you are free to set up a nice spine crawler defense and eco up. Then transition into whatever best suites your opponents build after reapers.
Also a gas steal is crucial with you scouting drone to delay the reapers, and lower their reaper numbers.
If you 15 hatch 14 pool you can usually get away with making the expo but if the terran does a 8 rax proxy reaper build you are going to be very far behind, + after you kill the bunker he gets to keep his reapers.
Gas steal does nothing, normally terrans don't move out until they have a decent amount of reapers, and they don't get their second gas until the other two rax start(or at least how I do it and I'm never short on gas+still get my expo up fast). Which in conclusions gives ample time for the first reaper to wack away at the stolen gas.
On August 04 2010 12:22 Saracen wrote: You mean something more like THIS?
Jeez I was on the edge of my seat through that, even the breakout only left you with queens. Seems like reaper build leave zerg very little room for error.
On August 04 2010 12:22 Saracen wrote: You mean something more like THIS?
Jeez I was on the edge of my seat through that, even the breakout only left you with queens. Seems like reaper build leave zerg very little room for error.
All good all-in builds leave the defender with very little room for error. But if you stop the all-in, you win the game. Sure, we both made some mistakes. His reaper control wasn't top notch, and I lost a few more drones than necessary, and I didn't transfuse my roaches well during the break-out. But I think the game was played at a high enough level to show that the strategy isn't unbeatable (though, if the Terran does something like mass reaper into expand, that's a whole different matter). Anyways, to the OP, I hope that rep was what you were looking for...
On August 04 2010 12:22 Saracen wrote: You mean something more like THIS?
Jeez I was on the edge of my seat through that, even the breakout only left you with queens. Seems like reaper build leave zerg very little room for error.
All good all-in builds leave the defender with very little room for error. But if you stop the all-in, you win the game. Sure, we both made some mistakes. His reaper control wasn't top notch, and I lost a few more drones than necessary, and I didn't transfuse my roaches well during the break-out. But I think the game was played at a high enough level to show that the strategy isn't unbeatable (though, if the Terran does something like mass reaper into expand, that's a whole different matter). Anyways, to the OP, I hope that rep was what you were looking for...
nice play, but i think torch kinda blew it no stim or combat shields, and he had tons of idle scvs all game
On August 04 2010 12:22 Saracen wrote: You mean something more like THIS?
Jeez I was on the edge of my seat through that, even the breakout only left you with queens. Seems like reaper build leave zerg very little room for error.
All good all-in builds leave the defender with very little room for error. But if you stop the all-in, you win the game. Sure, we both made some mistakes. His reaper control wasn't top notch, and I lost a few more drones than necessary, and I didn't transfuse my roaches well during the break-out. But I think the game was played at a high enough level to show that the strategy isn't unbeatable (though, if the Terran does something like mass reaper into expand, that's a whole different matter). Anyways, to the OP, I hope that rep was what you were looking for...
nice play, but i think torch kinda blew it no stim or combat shields, and he had tons of idle scvs all game
Wasn't aware of that. I didn't watch the rep I don't know how much those tech investments would have helped though without medivac support, especially considering the time it takes to tech to stim/shields, and investing early game would have hurt his harass considerably, I'm assuming...
If you expand the creep as often as possible and keep massing speedlings it is usually enough to hold it off. Speedlings on creep are more difficult to deal with than roaches, imo.
Edit: tech into banelings, too. Don't do mutas. 99% of zergs do mutas which is not a good option.
On August 04 2010 12:22 Saracen wrote: You mean something more like THIS?
It was a pretty good game, but that Terran didnt really do an optimal build. When you are doing a reaper rush I dont think you should sit at 500 minerals / 200 gas a long time. He was also for some reason supply blocked on the first reaper, though it probably didnt matter that much.
The Terran player could have justed walled in Zerg and expanded. The Terran player definitely should not try to walk in after there were dozens of queens/roaches/lings.
The strength of the 3 rax reaper build is not the reapers, but rather the transition. Sure, the reapers can straight up kill you, but even if you defend sucessfully, terran is able to expand and transition into MnMnM easily without any real losses (since this denies zerg a fast hatch). At this point, Zerg either has to go all-in or play from behind.
ive been using this build 100% in TvZ now its probably given me a 80% win rate vs zerg.
some times i win outright with reapers other times i just overwhelm them with a FE + 8 racks stim marines/maruders
most of the time when i lose its either to
1) mis micro/runnning in to army in transit 2) very good control of speedlings + a couple roaches or banelings on cliffs
some zergs just attack move with lings which = fail you MUST try to surround, and if they try to hop a cliff thats where your roaches or banelings lay waiting.
my build goes 10 supply 12 racks 12 refinery (cut 1 scv) train 1 marine then tech 100 gas right as tech finishes (train reaper/upgrade nitro)
from here i throw down supply another gas + 2 more racks pump reapers till i have 4-5 pressure expand and throw down another 3-4 racks
Watching the Strifecro game it was fairly obvious that Strife could have won that even after the Reaper nonsense, yet made some play mistakes that cost him the game. You can say that LzGamer's opening and transitions weren't optimal, but neither was Strifecro's (I think you could do it with just Speedlings on creep and no Roaches). For one thing, his misuse of the Mutalisks was appalling. Running them to Lz's base to try to harass instead of simply defending/picking off Reapers and macroing up was a game changing error. It was apparent he was in "panic mode" and not really thinking properly about what to do with his units, and I think the "panic mode" aspect of this opening is what has a lot of Zerg players' panties up in a bunch!
The fact of the matter is it seems like the discussion so far has been nigh exclusively about how much damage this build does, without considering the ramifications for the Terran player. Gas gets so heavily invested in Tech Labs/Reapers/Nitro Packs and later Marauder/Stim/Concussive(?) that transitioning into any sort of higher tech (Factory and above) gets delayed significantly. The Terran player locks himself into Tier 1 until after he gets his 4th geyser up and running. Compare this with the Zerg player in this situation who can tech to Tier 2 off of a single Extractor.
Infestors seem like a solid answer. A well-placed Fungal Growth will decimate the Reaper army and can be used to delay Marauder pushes or help Speedlings get into a position to kill the ball. Someone suggested Banelings and that seems like a terrible idea to me as you're never going to be able to use them to kill Reapers resource-efficiently and they're even less efficient against Marauder balls. From Infestor tech you can transition into Hive (if he stays on this 6-8 Barracks mass Reaper/Marauder/Marine nonsense) and get a few Ultralisks to break down his door and end the game with Speedlings. Seems fairly straightforward to me.
On August 04 2010 03:48 Phayze wrote: You cannot hatch first. It's going to be bunkered up. And most terrans will wait for 5 to 6 reapers before they really do any harassment. That spine crawler will die in two seconds. He's not going 10 rax reaper. He's doing a standard orbital opening into 3rax reaper or some fast expand variant. I really want you to understand i'm not talking about the 10rax reaper, or even the 1barracks reaper harass into the hellion marauder push. This is a whole new build. Opens up another world of obnoxious terran builds.
You actually can hatch first... as long as it's not done on something like DO. By the time the bunker gets down and you have two reapers in your bunker (assuming 10rax), you'll have 2 queens and 8 lings. 14 hatch is my standard opening BO. It's stronger than 13 pool 15 hatch because you have two queens to fight with. Move the queens in first to tank the first shot or two before he target fires the lings. You'll also have transfusion from the first queen around the time the hatch would die if he had focus fired on it. I guess if he brought along more than he typical 2 SCVs total you would lose, but for some odd reason ppl never do that.
Saracen, how would you have responded had he not waited a year and a half to kill the overlord in your base? It looked like that would've supply blocked you at least at one or two different points in time, plus you wouldn't know exactly what was coming. Or were you too busy to pay attention to what was coming anyway? Also, do you think you could have stood up to this attack on lost temple, or would the number of entrances have just made it too difficult (assuming a skilled opponent)?
All else aside, if you see this build you better hope you are working with a contained base.
Edit: Unfortunately it looked like you put a lot more effort into that defense than he had to put into the offense Wonder how significant 1 or 1.5 food roaches would be...
wat about early zergling harass to the terran's base? in hopes to buy some times from reapers to get to you, then hopefully you can build some defense against it
From what i gather of the responses in this thread, i think the general way to stop this would be to just open speedling expand and take a later hatch at about 20+ supply. I think the main part of the build is to just have creep all around and then build your tech buildings so that they cant snipe it.
Can someone clarify whether a queen spawning creep tumor first to help spread creep be efficient? I think you wont have enough minerals to support unit production anyway
On August 05 2010 03:31 Liquid`Jinro wrote: Speedlings+lots of creep. You can't micro against lings on creep...
I did this build a ton months ago, it's good sure but zergs that really emphasize creep makes it a difficult game.
Creep spreading + position of spawning pool makes a HUGE difference vs Reaper harrass. Reapers are most effective when they can run circles around your base and that path is going to go behind your minerals so they can pick off drones. This is somewhat map dependent but if you can block that small path with your pool you can pin them in with your slings + queen. A lot of zerg don't put their pool back there and that is a mistake vs terran imo.
On August 05 2010 03:31 Liquid`Jinro wrote: Speedlings+lots of creep. You can't micro against lings on creep...
I did this build a ton months ago, it's good sure but zergs that really emphasize creep makes it a difficult game.
Creep spreading + position of spawning pool makes a HUGE difference vs Reaper harrass. Reapers are most effective when they can run circles around your base and that path is going to go behind your minerals so they can pick off drones. This is somewhat map dependent but if you can block that small path with your pool you can pin them in with your slings + queen. A lot of zerg don't put their pool back there and that is a mistake vs terran imo.
Not just reapers, but hellions too. Might not be able to stop it with building positioning alone, but you do a good job towards it.
Speaking as a Terran, it is possible for Zerg to still expo when Terran starts pulling these shenanigans. As long as you prevent a bunker from coming up you're still capable of defending your expo. My biggest recommendation would be to get zergling speed and a second queen, although if getting roaches + second queen is faster, by all means try it out. After you're on 2 base... you're on your own. I've had very little difficulty transitioning out of mass reaper, especially since Terran can afford to scan Zerg's tech now that Zerg has no economic advantage. My best advice is to pull off something unexpected, hide lair tech in a really obscure corner of your base or something. Also, taking minimal damage from reapers is a necessity to stand a chance, so make whatever kind of defense you need to hold them off.
you pretty much have todo a speedling into roach opening & contineu with speedlings
you CAN make it with speedlings & banelings only but its tricky you have to know when & where hes comming up your cliff & position banelings there the reapers come up unknowing & splash all gone this is tricky
Why would one go into roach? Based on the replays it seems the transition (if you survive) goes to marines and marauders, roaches won't fare too well against that. Spling/bling while teching to Lair seems to make more sense. In the Check videos he goes spling/bling into muta.
On August 05 2010 03:31 Liquid`Jinro wrote: Speedlings+lots of creep. You can't micro against lings on creep...
I did this build a ton months ago, it's good sure but zergs that really emphasize creep makes it a difficult game.
Creep spreading + position of spawning pool makes a HUGE difference vs Reaper harrass. Reapers are most effective when they can run circles around your base and that path is going to go behind your minerals so they can pick off drones. This is somewhat map dependent but if you can block that small path with your pool you can pin them in with your slings + queen. A lot of zerg don't put their pool back there and that is a mistake vs terran imo.
Not just reapers, but hellions too. Might not be able to stop it with building positioning alone, but you do a good job towards it.
Yeah I've had my hellion harrass get owned by a spawning pool behind the minerals as well.
EPT
I don't know how much those tech investments would have helped though without medivac support, especially considering the time it takes to tech to stim/shields, and investing early game would have hurt his harass considerably, I'm assuming...
Wonder how significant 1 or 1.5 food roaches would be...
