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So I figured out a different way to play off two bases against Terran, and it's contrary to a lot of Zerg play that we've seen so far. Cept it works.
The Idea: Use T1 units/tech to play from two bases while securing a third. Very simple stuff, but has a lot of thought behind it.
The Logic: The Tier 2 options for Zerg are very nice, but they tend to have very little effect for the purposes they serve because they're so damn expensive.
Hydras:
If you try constructing a Hydra + X composition from two bases, the costs for the Hydra wind up cutting into your army heavily, and there are key periods where you're a squishy mess asking to be torn apart by a timing push.
Mutalisks:
If you go for Mutas, a reasonable Terran will see them coming from a mile away and have prepared air defenses, typically in the form of Thor. The 700/700 cost of going those first 7 mutas is never vindicated, because you can't harass efficiently with the 10-range bastard firing volleys at you. You can try to abuse the fact that 5 Mutas can take on a Thor, but chances are that it's marine or turret supported. It's a dead cost that returns nothing for it's point in the game.
Nydus:
Nydus is stupid for mid game. Just get drop.(Suppose I should elaborate. Basically, the costs of the Nydus worm don't make very much sense for that early in the game. Using it in this fashion is wasteful in my eyes. I think it should be used for expanding and mobility past a 3rd base. Anything before that doesn't seem meaningful.)
Infestors:
Annnnd Infestors don't exactly stand up to standard timing pushes.
Really though, the first three units you can make are the most effective against T en masse. Most combinations of Roach/Speedling/Baneling can kill a range of T pushes very efficiently. The other key to them is that they mass extremely well from 2 bases, allowing for aggression.
Aggression? But wait, what about air?
Here we kill two birds with one stone, and raise the Queen to the pedestal. Queens are nice for macro, but they're also nice for pushing and defending air. Typically with this approach, I'll build 2-3 queens extra for the pushing ability and transfuse.
EDIT: elaboration on air, since people don't like reading the whole thread.
Mass cloaked banshee is fucking retarded, but it nonetheless needs to be accounted for. Honestly just start massing queens if they start massing banshees. You've already got 4-5 on the field in the first place, so snowballing isn't that hard. Queens can be focused, true, but they're probably more efficient AA than hydras in the first place. A ball of queens just isn't approachable by a ball of banshees. They get outranged and take two volleys for every one they launch. The only difference between your retarded armies is that the Zerg one doesn't take gas and synergizes well with any composition, so you're pretty much free to tech whatever at that point. Mutas would be lolzy. You can lay down spores if you're feeling extra panicky, but it's honestly just standard air-defense,
And damnit people. The lair still comes out at the regular time, so you're fine against banshees. You just aren't making T2 units/structures. Just think of the T2 upgrades for the T1 units.
A BUILD ORDER:
14-pool
15-expand
Work your own timing for speed in here. There's precious little that Terran can put out early that absolutely requires ling speed, so delaying it in any capacity isn't the worst idea in the world.
3 queens+lair
Whatever happens, queue two queens in a row on your main hatch, and queue another on your expansion when it finishes. If you put three drones on gas when you start a queen, you have about 100 gas when the queen finishes. So take drones off gas between your speed gas and your lair gas for minerals. Lair after second queen on first hatch finishes.
1-2 queens
This gives you the three queens for dealing with early banshees, and the lair timing is for dealing with cloak. Use the third queen's energy solely for creep expansion/transfusion, as you see fit. And I literally mean using all of it on creep tumors if you can. The speed at which the creep expands can let it get to their front door by the time you're thinking about map control and can let you prep areas for flanking. Keep producing queens from the second hatch until you have 4-5 (general rule of thumb I keep is to have two queens creeping the map, a 5th would be if your purpose was to take a 3rd base quickly, which kickstarts the economy/spending better. With two queens and all existing tumors creeping at the same time, your scouting net becomes immense.
Sky's the Limit:
And that's it really. You lay the baneling nest or roach warren depending primarily on what you scout the Terran doing, and when they're doing it. Bionic is just asking for a baneling skewed composition, whereas mech asks for roaches. I tend to prefer roach/ling because it deals with everything save a marine/marauder/medivac bio ball, for which I'd add on banelings and burrow tech.
Valid transitions once you've secured the third can literally be any T2 unit. 3-base Mutalisk does bastardloads better than 2-base mutalisk, same with 3-base hydra. My personal fave is doing an infestor transition because the tech synergizes so well with my former roach/baneling burrow research. Infestors can MC and infested terran against mech, or FG against bio. They're also more AA detterent, so a possible way to lay off mass-queens (which I'll admit would look silly mid-game).
Tactics:
(Dumb section really, you can figure out most of this on your own, I'll just post answers to a couple things that people were asking about.)
What about Marauder/Hellion? Doesn't it directly counter Roach/Zergling?
First, stop thinking in hard counters. Marauder/Hellion isn't the strongest composition in the world, and it's key weakness is literally "being surrounded". If you send in roaches to absorb the initial chunk of damage and surround it with lings, it dies fast. The hellions are good against light units conditional to hitting a lot of them. If they each hit one zergling apiece, the damage is actually fucking terrible. Not even 1 shotting 1 ling? Nonsense. Then you have Marauders that just crumple hard to lings. You're using one unit as a catalyst for the other.
Won't the Terran still do the same pushes, but this time I only have crappy roaches/speedling/banelings to defend?
This isn't true, actually. Because with this approach, you're going to be a lot more aggressive. Classical Zerg play against other races is typically a glorified tech rush. You find ways to barely scrape by until the big mama units walk in and clean house. With roach/bane/ling you have a lot more "stuff" at your disposal earlier on, and the extremely rapid creep expansion allows you to apply pressure during periods where the Terran hasn't hit a critical mass yet.
i.e. most one-base pushes rely on T1 zerg tech to defend anyway, but the 2-base pushes take time to build up. During this time you can pressure with roaches because 1-2 tanks don't deal with tons roaches efficiently. Furthermore you can make use of burrow and baneling mines to effectively set up stop-lurker killzones, and force gas-heavy Ravens into play.
Basically Terrans would need a Raven to start pushing for real, and a not-shit-composition. HF crapping on people kiddies.
REPLAY SECTION:
#1:2-base roach play vs. 3-rax reaper
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/54065-2v2-terran-zerg-metalopolis
The build is infamous by now. 3-rax resembles 5-rax to some capacity, it's just their timing windows that are slightly skewed.
I'm noting it right here, I die in the video because I didn't care to plan a 3rd base transition strategy. Mistakes on either side wind up canceling each other out, and the timing window where roaches can kill what's defending the ramp is left intact.
my goals are:
-break the reaper contain with speed roaches
-execute a timing push that the T build is vulnerable to
-establish a third base
Early on, my resource management to 2nd base saturation is reasonable. Once base #2 saturates, I have an absurd excess of 1200 minerals. Really I want about 900 of those minerals to be turned into their weight in speedlings/4th queen. To that end, a second hatchery at the natural might be preferable, as well as sim-citying to further hold off the reapers.
I don't lose much to the reapers and manage to bust the contain at the time I wanted to. Right after the contain, there's a small window where if the T expanded, his army is vulnerable to a roach/ling composition. For this particular game, we were cross positions, so I didn't want to try my luck too much (It's a bloody narrow window, and I was missing those 900 minerals of speedlings). I loop around with some speed roaches and deny his third expansion while taking my own. (I also threw down a 4th at the gold, which was completely retarded)
Shortly after that I massacred his timing push with ling/roach/4 banes. He didn't stim, and I didn't get my surround+ late as shit banelings. The outcome of the fight would have been the same regardless because of the roach count, albeit a lot closer.
After that I shortly lose to a second timing push because I figure it's a good idea to just keep spamming low tier units without upgrades (didn't have a plan for my transition, so I look like a grade-A beta copper leaguer :/)
Ideally I'd have wanted my minerals spent, and my inexistant queen helping to goop up the map. In a perfect world, if you drew close positions, your creep to his nat was in place, and you broke the contain on time, there's a possibility to win straight up. I have reason to think that this is the case with a couple of other T builds, but it rests to be seen 
Edit: Thor drop/Tank drop sucks, you can only stall it out with a lot of spine crawlers. Basically; map imbalance, you automatically take an economy hit into whatever you're doing <_> Just save yourself the trouble and ban the damn thing lol.
EditEdit: Also, check out more recent replays where zergs smash 5-rax reaper, it's possible to go even with :o! Bumping the thread because I think it's become even more relevant with recent advancements. Additionally, I'm not going to be updating the thread much more. Enjoy it while it's here 
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This sounds good and all, but I really wanna see the build order, gas timings and all that.
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Respect , beautifull attitude!
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Mass t1 gets melted by Siege Tanks with marine support.
The new standard for Terran is the BioMech push, with tons of marines and 3-4 tanks at around the 7-9 min mark. It sucks.
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On August 06 2010 06:53 KingRajesh wrote:
Mass t1 gets melted by Siege Tanks with marine support.
The new standard for Terran is the BioMech push, with tons of marines and 3-4 tanks at around the 7-9 min mark. It sucks.
That's it, it doesn't. You're making a blanket statement with no support. Roaches are very resistant to tank fire, and can run up the rest of the T1 to deal with the army. Roach/baneling deals with this push.
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This is exactly how I'm playing ZvT at the moment, and it's working just fine. The only exception is if he's going extremely marauder heavy with medivacs, in which case I add mutas. It's probably worth it to note that you're going to need another hatch somewhere or else your minerals are going to soar midgame (which complements the extra early queens nicely).
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Wonderful point Jinjo. I like your thinking.
Do you have a replay for us to see it in practice?
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I'd really like to see replays.
Specifically anything dealing with cloaked banshee pressure or games that go into the late game. I'd be worried not so much about mid game pushes but being able to transition to a late game army fast enough to deal with the increasing number of mech units.
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extra queens, extra hatcheries, lots of roaches and banelings
I like it
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This is how I have been playing vT. However, I opt for a quicker lair and second gas not for tier two units, but for upgrades in this priority: roach speed, burrow, regen/burrow, ovi speed, ovi drop. My two base zerg strategy is similar to a Bulldog in BW PvT where the protoss would try to break terran's natural while expanding, but more economical and defensive in nature.
It is important to keep scouting to know when a terran is advancing his push. These are the perfect times to remind terran that pushing is going to cost them time, concentration, and resources.
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This is the same as I have always noticed, and I really like roach/speedling/bling.
But do you have any replays of you against a T who goes for very heavy air?
everytime I tried to do something similar for extended amounts of time I would always get punished severely by banshees.
Altough 2-3 queens can hold off like a very early banshee, most of the time I die just a bit later (well more like doing significant economic dmg wich adds up leading into the firstcoming push) because my queens are rebuilding and he masses up like 4-6 banshees with cloak.
But everytime (atleast it feels that way) that a terran sees my roach warren after a scan he gets 1 viking to pick off overlords that try to scout and just masses up some banshees.
I have a very hard time scouting, and techinguddenly to hydra's and pumping a bunch of hydra's is not really optimal against the other builds (imo, I just really dislike them against T) but if I don't do it i'll just get overrun by banshees.
I can't do any agression at all because of the sbanshee's, and in your case, your spreading yourself over 3 bases before getting actual AA and I don't see how you can defend that with queens.
Since the first ones get the queens (and if you spent all that mana on creep tumors you won't have the mana to transfuse).
It get's even worse on maps like desert oasis/scrap station where banshees are really popular, so I always feel if I get the slightest hint on those map of starport play that I just have to get hydra's or muta's out to deal with it.
I am not saying that it is a bad idea, I'm just asking how you deal with that heavy airplay against someone who is making sure you get as little scouting info as possible.
edit @KingRajesh, I actually found that with roach/bling/speedling those marine/tank pushes are actually fairly easy to hold off.
To not only ask, but to add to the Op.
My experience with this is not only that it can hold off early agression but that it also gives you a nice techpath into the later stages of the game.
Let's say he sticks to ground I always liked to get +1 armor and +1 melee attacks, the armor is obvious but the melee over ranged attack is because it provides dmg to both the zerglings and banelings and it gives you a nice "upgrade path" towards ultra's.
Then I like to add an infestation pit once I'm macro'ing/holding off stuff well, get some infestors out to supplement my army and lock annoying harass into place (for example vikings that are fungald and then throw some egss under them) or holding hellions into place.
And from there on tech to ultra/ling.
That is always the path that I preferred as a follow-up.
And I usually start cutting more and more banelings to free up gas for tech, since a lot of the time they will start skewing their army composition more towards marauders because of the roach/baneling and then zerglings start to become better while using up less gas.
But ye as you can see, air is a huge problem for me.
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SENSENSENSENSENSEN
You should watch some of his older streams and add your input. I'm really interested in your replays and timings
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This works well against low level Terrans, but a lot of good Terrans react to this by expanding relatively sooner than they ordinarily would, and then your 2 base mass Tier 1 doesn't seem as effective. Then, you are pressured by a 2 base Terran which makes it hard to get your 3rd base. How do you respond to this?
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i would assume a simple bio army would rip apart t1 zerg, since you don't have speed on roaches or banelings.
you pretty much have to go t2 if you want your roaches to be effective vs terran t2 army. i like how this works and we'll have to see though, just adding in some theorycraft.
air shouldn't be that big of a problem, however you have to turtle when they go air.
very interested in replays, since i play the more traditional 2 base -> muta -> baneling or roach -> infestor ultralisk.
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I've posted this before but I think with this strat, you can use this tactic quite effectively with good micro and multi tasking.
+ Show Spoiler +Possible playing around with overlords and drops?
1. Upgrade ovie sacs and speed.
2. Load Queen.
3. Move to untaken mineral expos of opponent.
4. Ovie generate creep, Queen makes creep tumor.
5. Spread the creep tumors with the regenerating ability.
6. Repeat at all other expos.
Best used against Terran since they need to have a scan to remove the creep tumor. If they get a Raven, it's high up on the tech tree and requires a bit of gas to make as well. You can even sneak a drop into the main of the Terran, lay down 1 - 3 tumors and spread them one at a time into the Terran's base. You'll get scouting, him wasting gas for a raven, or him wasting a scan. If you spread them one at a time and you lay like 3 tumors, you can make him waste 3 scans :D
If you do this early enough, his base is gonna have a bunch creep that he can't build on. And it set you up for a drop where the creep will give you a huge advantage if he doesn't do anything about it.
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On August 06 2010 06:53 KingRajesh wrote:
Mass t1 gets melted by Siege Tanks with marine support.
The new standard for Terran is the BioMech push, with tons of marines and 3-4 tanks at around the 7-9 min mark. It sucks.
As I see what he is saying, this isn't necessarily pure t1 but more of a 3rd base before tier 2 units idea.
Note: tier 2 units. I think I will try this idea to some extent as my 2 base muta has been having trouble.
I still think fast speedlings are king but going fast speedlings, 6 ling queen 20 expand and then going for a few roaches and/or banelings rather than lair and getting a fast 3rd could work. At that point I think getting the lair for roach upgrades, burrow, OL speed and such would be good. Essentially a 2 base muta where the first 6-7 mutas are instead a 3rd, some upgrades and some drones.
Just remember the baneling nest is most likely a necessity because a bio push could hurt this build quite a lot.
edit: upgrades mean access to spore crawlers, queens + spore crawler should be able to hold off banshees, especially once creep tumors are spreading and tell you where everything is.
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I like the "T1" style against Terrans but you need the T2 upgrades to make them useful (however, i think by saying "T2 options for zerg are too expensive and inefficient" you were refering to the units, not the upgrades). Yet i think roaches get eaten by tanks pretty fast once he gets about 5 in siege mode. Even though i have to admit they are propably the most durable unit than any other zerg unit before ultralisks against tanks.
But: despites that you dont have any replays i dont think you are right when you say:
"If you go for Mutas, a reasonable Terran will see them coming from a mile away and have prepared air defenses, typically in the form of Thor. The 700/700 cost of going those first 7 mutas is never vindicated, because you can't harass efficiently with the 10-range bastard firing volleys at you. You can try to abuse the fact that 5 Mutas can take on a Thor, but chances are that it's marine or turret supported. It's a dead cost that returns nothing for it's point in the game."
My arguments:
1. By going Mutas you force the terran to invest in: Tower, Armoy, Thors or more marines. It isn't like he gets all of that for free.
(This just came into my mind: If you still want to play roachs, i like the idea to feint Mutas and go for a hidden Roach Warren, if you really think they invest in all those things because of a scanned spire)
2. You don't necessarily need to invest in 7 mutas for pure harass.
3. The terran, as you said, is forced to make thors and they get eaten by cracklings and roaches. Thats something good i guess. I rather have some more thors than a banshee harass or more siege tanks.
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When I do this I get blue-flamed-helion and maraudered with some tank support. And I have a hassle dealing with that. So does my spine crawler defense. I feel without mutas I get steam rolled.
Thats like the reason I go muta to force T out of marauder and helions going marines and thors instead of helion marauder. So then my lings and roaches can actually try and win the game or ultras if Im at that stage in the game.
Stopping just tanks and marines with a roach ball/drop is not that hard but is not why the match up is so hard.
But maybe the answer to my problem above is banelings. Cause I saw a game between LZ and some Z. And even though he had a lot of marauders and thors (some marines) mass baneling owned that even when LZs army was like 1k minerals bigger.
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On August 06 2010 06:45 JinjoBust wrote:
Alright, I won't dwell long on the situation. IdrA screams "imba" because he got pissed and a billion shrieks from a billion little zergs blot out the sound-space.
So I figured out a different way to play off two bases against Terran, and it's contrary to a lot of Zerg play that we've seen so far. Cept it works.
The Idea: Use T1 units/tech to play from two bases while securing a third. Very simple stuff, but has a lot of thought behind it.
The Logic: The Tier 2 options for Zerg are very nice, but they tend to have very little effect for the purposes they serve because they're so damn expensive.
If you try constructing a Hydra + X composition from two bases, the costs for the Hydra wind up cutting into your army heavily, and there are key periods where you're a squishy mess asking to be torn apart by a timing push.
If you go for Mutas, a reasonable Terran will see them coming from a mile away and have prepared air defenses, typically in the form of Thor. The 700/700 cost of going those first 7 mutas is never vindicated, because you can't harass efficiently with the 10-range bastard firing volleys at you. You can try to abuse the fact that 5 Mutas can take on a Thor, but chances are that it's marine or turret supported. It's a dead cost that returns nothing for it's point in the game.
Nydus is stupid for mid game. Just get drop.(Suppose I should elaborate. Basically, the costs of the Nydus worm don't make very much sense for that early in the game. It's like a surprise drop maybe. But from my experiences it works more like a cheese.) Annnnd Infestors don't exactly stand up to standard timing pushes.
Really though, the first three units you can make are the most effective against T en masse. Most combinations of Roach/Speedling/Baneling can kill a range of T pushes very efficiently. The other key to them is that they mass extremely well from 2 bases, allowing for aggression.
Aggression? But wait, what about air?
Here we kill two birds with one stone, and raise the Queen to the pedestal. Queens are nice for macro, but they're also nice for pushing and defending air. Typically with this approach, I'll build 2-3 queens extra for the pushing ability and transfuse.
The pushing ability is a thing of beauty. Creeping the map this quickly REALLY gives you map control, and allows roaches to work at expansion denial before speed upgrade hits. You can actually launch attacks at the natural if it's scantily defended with a baneling/roach combo. The roaches run the banelings in, basically. And with this deal, there's no way a T is going to grab their third when you've basically creeped it.
At the same time, Queens can actively work to defend against banshees and vikings, since your creep perimeter is large enough to not hinder their movements. Any pinpointed banshee attack can be defended by gathering some of the macro queens as well, and the invis isn't really that useful because you're getting the lair upgrade anyway. Just buckle down and defend, build spores if you really need to.
Three Bases: Here there's multiple USEFUL transitions to T2 tech, and they come at a very nice timing this time. Generally, you'll get your third up very quickly because there's less of a threat from ground pushes that you can see from a mile away. You can do roach burrow against mech pushes, baneling burrow against bio pushes, transition to 3-hatch muta or 3-hatch hydra, even add Infestors to your ground army. The possibilities are endless, and I haven't come near to exhausting them.
Basically Terrans would need a Raven to start pushing for real, and a not-shit-composition. HF crapping on people kiddies. I'll post reps as I play genius games that show off this approach's power.
While i like your thought process i would like to ask a few things... what if the terran uses a Brat_OK push while you're teching roaches?
You either A) Expanded and just lost the game because of lack of defense or B) have to use crisis management, lots of spine crawlers to defend 1 base, he'll probably take his nat and beat you with a follow-up
Also, i suggest doing what alot of zergs are now doing, 14 gas 14 pool (Make 1 drone after gas before pool) and put 3 in gas. After 100 gas take them off and get ling speed. It means you can A) Deny expansions, B) Defend your nat C) Easily claim towers etc. If its a map like Kulas i try and break his 3rds rocks slowly, so then when he expands i can send ~30 lings in there and gut the expansion before his tanks are up.
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Awesome OP. Has anyone tried it out? I'd love to see some replays. I'll try to get some replays of my own out here for others to study/critique/etc.
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EPT
