On August 20 2010 23:58 brad drac wrote: I've been tinkering with a variant of this where I get my lair before queen and I do get some roaches out to defend. With good spotting, you can drop a couple of spines to defend against a heavy bio push. This way you can get the spire out before terran gets thors and a good bit faster than most would expect. If you think this strategy is all in, I don't think you understand what the term means. It does sacrifice a lot of economy for early harassment, but when the mutas pop, it will allow you to grab your expansion as it'll almost certainly pin T back to his base. Getting away with FEs as zerg is increasingly difficult, I think one base builds are a lot safer.
Here's a replay of my first attempt at this: http://sc2.replayers.com/replays/view/2374 I'm not and do not claim to be a very skilled player(supply blocked myself as the spire finished durp), and my opponent really should've reacted better when he scanned my hive, but I'm going to try it a few more times to see if it's actually viable.
All-in plays rely on a single act to determine the outcome of the game. This isn't the case here. This is a one base timing attack that expands as soon as the aggression starts. The only sacrifice you make to your economy is getting your natural up slower, since you're producing pure drones until your mutas pop. (that's approximately 30 supply worth of drones. Ample for one base) This build is very similar in concept to the 2 hatch muta builds that became so popular in BW about a year ago. Aggressive, but safe against 90% of Terran openings.
Also - in regards to your replay - that build just straight up wasn't this one... You got lair before queen, your second gas was late, you built 6 roaches, you got a 2nd queen before mutas, you didn't hide your spire, and you only made 2 mutas initially... Run the build as its detailed in the OP and then come back with an opinion. If nothing else, at least watch the replays before making baseless comments against it.
I don't think you understood my post. I have nothing against one base muta, I think it's a great build and one I've been using for quite a while. My post was about the possibility of a build where you make the lair before your first queen. Seeing as this is a [d] thread and not a [g] thread, I did not consider it inappropriate to post here to see if anyone thinks it's a viable alternative, just to get the mutas out as fast as possible so the terran player won't have had his usual time to prepare(as in fairness, who doesn't expect mutas from a one base zerg?). I realise, as I mentioned, I'm a low skill player and I made a lot of mistakes that game, mainly because it was my first proper attempt and I was just making it up on the fly, stress testing it to see how a terran would respond(hence not hiding the spire).
What I said about all ins was in response to the other posters who called one base muta all in. It is absolutely not(as I pretty clearly said), it just sacrifices the presumed economic boost of a very fast expo for the chance of doing some damage with a strong timing push.
Apologies - Just trying to respond to everyone's feedback. I guess the claws come out a little when its so overwhelmingly negative.
[B]On August 20 2010 23:58 brad drac wrote: I've been tinkering with a variant of this where I get my lair before queen and I do get some roaches out to defend. With good spotting, you can drop a couple of spines to defend against a heavy bio push. This way you can get the spire out before terran gets thors and a good bit faster than most would expect. If you think this strategy is all in, I don't think you understand what the term means. It does sacrifice a lot of economy for early harassment, but when the mutas pop, it will allow you to grab your expansion as it'll almost certainly pin T back to his base. Getting away with FEs as zerg is increasingly difficult, I think one base builds are a lot safer.
Here's a replay of my first attempt at this: http://sc2.replayers.com/replays/view/2374 I'm not and do not claim to be a very skilled player(supply blocked myself as the spire finished durp), and my opponent really should've reacted better when he scanned my hive, but I'm going to try it a few more times to see if it's actually viable.
I messed around with some Lair before queen builds as well, but I felt like doing that was putting yourself pretty all-in. You lose quite a few drones - both by virtue of speeding everything up, and by missing out on a larvae spit or two.
That said, going straight to lair is a little bit faster. Just remember that speeding it up also means less money in your pocket, making that roach switch a little bit more difficult.
It works out more or less exactly as mutalisks out 50s sooner at the cost of 8 larva, assuming perfect injection timing, no early creep tumour, and all larvae would be used as soon as they pop(are they with your build? I don't have SC2 on this computer so I can't check). Whether this 50s is worth it or not needs to be tested against a variety of builds to see, but I think in many cases it could well be.
In plenty of cases, I'm sure it would be of great benefit.
However, I still think you're giving up a lot of economy, and "fallback" in order to get your mutas out that much faster.
I'm theory-crafting here, but I have to feel like a Terran player who scouts a Zerg base with 2 gas, a pool, and a lair morphing is going to have to assume mutas.
At least by slowing things down a bit, we're getting a hardy amount of drones, while keeping the T somewhat in the dark as to what our game-plan is. (I've yet to play a Terran who didn't build at least 2 marauders after seeing the Roach Warren.)
Certainly lair before queen is viable. I just think it comes with a little more risk. (Reward too, for that matter.)
You could deny T's SCV scout before starting the lair or second gas, but a few zerglings should be able to manage that. I guess this would probably end up delaying your lair by around 30 seconds anyway(meaning mutas only 20s sooner). On the other hand, you could use the fact that a T who scouts super fast lair will likely assume fast mutas and respond accordingly with mass marines or tech rushing to AA, which could make it safer for you to expo. A 2-3 rax MM push would probably kill the hell out of this, but canceling the expo and dropping some spines could be an option if you see it coming. But yes, this is all theory crafting. I'll have to try it out some more.
Hey OP I just really want to say huge props to you man. Ignore all the negative feed back, I'm a newer sc2 player but I'm already diamond rank 10. I have to say I don't read many articles or watch many videos or anything because I feel the best way to learn is to train my self hardcore and find what works for me in each matchup. Ironically enough last week I was writing build orders down while brainstorming at work on my lunch break and I came up with a very similar one base muta build. I have since seen a large increase in my z v t wins and when I lose its usually do to poor transition macro on my part. I started doing so well with this style of strategy that my z v p started suffering because I was no longer as effective playing two base. I just want to say keep up the good work and good job basically stealing the ideas right out of my brain and putting them to words for the entire TL community. I would really love to talk more directly with you and maybe combine ideas on zerg to prove that zerg really isnt that far behind terran we just need the right ideas when playing. The main thing that caught me eye with your strategy that I felt clever when doing was dropping roach warren and hiding spire tech. It really does throw off the average dimaond terran player and force them into marauder siege prematurely. And to the guys who believe marines are the answer to all air, They must just run as soon as they see 5 marines because unless theres a full marine ball my mutas always win. Thors on the other hand....
On August 21 2010 13:38 Necator wrote: Hey OP I just really want to say huge props to you man. Ignore all the negative feed back, I'm a newer sc2 player but I'm already diamond rank 10. I have to say I don't read many articles or watch many videos or anything because I feel the best way to learn is to train my self hardcore and find what works for me in each matchup. Ironically enough last week I was writing build orders down while brainstorming at work on my lunch break and I came up with a very similar one base muta build. I have since seen a large increase in my z v t wins and when I lose its usually do to poor transition macro on my part. I started doing so well with this style of strategy that my z v p started suffering because I was no longer as effective playing two base. I just want to say keep up the good work and good job basically stealing the ideas right out of my brain and putting them to words for the entire TL community. I would really love to talk more directly with you and maybe combine ideas on zerg to prove that zerg really isnt that far behind terran we just need the right ideas when playing. The main thing that caught me eye with your strategy that I felt clever when doing was dropping roach warren and hiding spire tech. It really does throw off the average dimaond terran player and force them into marauder siege prematurely. And to the guys who believe marines are the answer to all air, They must just run as soon as they see 5 marines because unless theres a full marine ball my mutas always win. Thors on the other hand....
On August 21 2010 12:43 InfiniteIce wrote: Too many deprecating posts in this thread...for all you detractors, where are your replays?
In response to OP's post, 1base muta like this does work pretty well. I often skip the queen and get it when the lair finishes ((it, and the extra larva, will pop around the time your spire finishes)), especially on smaller maps like LT. [Yes, it's a 4-player map, but regardless of spawns the air and ground distances are pretty small...compare it to something like Kulas Ravine or Delta Quadrant]
I hadn't been able to find an appropriate followup to this thought, I think the roach flooding might work, as I had previously been teching to hive ASAP (infestation pit right after my first 6-7 mutas pop, straight to hive) but had found myself vulnerable to a base trading terran. Roach flood might be a nice followthrough, as OP suggests..
i have lots of replays showing it works against lesser players and those that are better and abuse certain time windows to smack me.
The magic box is a really important micro step that i dont think many zerg "muta rushers" in the western servers understand. Let us consider this: Muta play is an integral part of many korean SC2 players, and in korea zergs do not remotely have the amount of zerg QQ as we have here. In fact, zerg in the korean servers are "balanced" enough that half the top 20 diamonds in KR are, in fact, zerg, NOT TERRAN. This is not to say that koreans are more gosu than us, but simply that koreans have a better understanding of zerg play from BW. In comes the magic box. In ZvT in BW, there wasn't the thor, but there was the valkyrie. Both thors and valks have splash. How did the koreans handle this? By splitting forces, simply cos BW valk's splash is bigger than thor's splash.
Realistically, with adequate micro, it only takes ~4 mutas per thor. Not saying that it's cost effective, but think of the build time of a thor, now think how much larvae you have with each inject. Thus, my point is that muta builds are not as bad as you think (esp. the OP's build that starts harrass with mutas around the same time that the terran pushes his army, forcing a retreat or split) and muta builds should really be quite a bread and butter build for zerg, as opposed to current zergs' speedling harrass - if blizzard won't fix it, don't use it!
For anyone who hasn't been following the magic box thread, you need a ratio of about 3:1 mutas to thor.
In lower numbers you need a few more muta, and in higher numbers you need a few less. On average, 3:1 is the sweet-spot.
And for the record, if you use this build, you will have 5-7 mutas out in time for Terran's first thor.
Edit: Just played a second game against mass reaper, that I also won. Reaper harass with 2-3 reapers might be more effective. But the mass reaper style play just doesn't work. Mutas pop around the same time as the initial attack, and the build is so obvious that its easy to have some roaches out as well.
Always get that queen up first, whatever time advantage you gain from teching to lair first is lost by all the larvae you didn't spawn. You could get at least 6 more drones than if you tech to lair first, allowing you to increase your minerals per minute income.
Those added minerals would allow to create more defenses, faster.
So after IEM, I think we can all count on seeing a lot more reaper plays. Someone posted a while ago that this build would lose to reaper antics.
This is not the case. This build is very strong against reapers for 3 reasons.
1.) You have a very early roach warren, so 1-3 reaper harass will get shut down. 2.) Mutas pop around the same time of the big reaper push, negating it completely. 3.) A Terran player who invests so heavily in early reapers will have no anti air back home.
I feel kinda cheesey bumping my own thread so many times, but I wanted to state that I crossed over the 900 diamond threshold today using this build almost exclusively in ZvT.
And man, there's been so much mass reaper play lately. This just destroys it.
I have been using 1 base Muta for a while now. Think it was Sen who first had this build in the beta. Although i get speedlings instead of roaches + hide the spire with some lord spewing creep in a corner.
Regarding lair before queen, has anybody tried to build a second in-base hatch instead of the queen ? I think this way you come out faster and with better eco compared to just "lair before queen". Instead of scouting you build up higher productions caps (queen + 2 hatches) so in case of a rush you may pump out defense in time (e.g. you can build 2 queens in parallel in case of banshees, mass zerglings in case of hellions). Note that you can have an overseer at 5'20 to do some scouting. If you hide the 2cnd in base hatch, maybe the T starts looking for a hidden expo all over the map ;-)
Theorycraft build (did no scout, built no zergs or defense except the 6:00 queen) 13 gas 13 pool, 3 on gas 16 hatch, build 2cnd gas when starting lair and put 3 drones on scnd gas 3:30 pool 5:00 2cnd hatch finished + spire done 20/28 6'00 queen out 6'40 spire 7'30 5 mutas 43/52 250/250 (<= could have been speed and some lings or a bane nest).
since my apm sucks, it should be possible with perfect execution to get muta's additionaö 15s earlier (~7'15).
EPT
