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5 Roach Rush (5RR)
Looking into other early options for zerg, I've come up with a very good opening against both terran and protoss: the 5 roach rush! It's capable of breaking into your opponents' base early on without going all-in. If it fails, one injection-round of drones and you're usually leading in the worker count.
Banelings are great, but way too expensive to use every game. Taking down a supply depot or pylon costs 250/125, and you have to have fighting units on top of that! With the 5RR, the roaches pull double duty by destroying the depot/pylon and still being around after it's gone. Not to mention they are fantastic against early zealots/marines.
Pros:
- Does significant damage or even wins outright vs some openings. The good thing is that it's strong against openings that we hate to see: stargate, 1-1-1, reaper, and hellion openings.
- Can get around the stupid wall-ins
- Doesn't wreck your economy. When the roaches are leaving your base, many times you're ahead in workers as well as putting your expansion down.
- If you break into their base, you can just rally and send more guys as your next round of larvae have popped.
- Crushes a 2-gate**
- Allows you to set up a hellion contain if you get there early enough
- Forces the game into certain channels: 4-gate, marauders/thor.
Cons:
- Completely fails against some openings (marauders, stalkers). I'm saying don't even attack type of fail because you'll insta-lose.
- If your opponent is opening with marauders or stalkers, you have to back-tech to zerglings ASAP or you'll often die outright.
- If your opponent opens with stalkers/marauders, you'll be behind economically than if you didn't rush.
- Forces the game into certain channels: 4-gate, marauders/thor.
Build Order
9 Overlord
13 Spawning Pool
13 Extractor
15 Overlord
Zergling
Queen
Drone
Drone
Roach Warren (latest you should start is when queen is 70% done)
Zergling speed when you have 100 gas
Drone
Overlord when queen pops, inject larvae
Drone
Take drones off gas once you have 125
Re-inject
5 Roaches (Warren, OL, and injection should all pop very close to each other)
Overlord (31/34 food)
Drone
Expansion when your roaches are walking to the enemy
Re-inject
Zerglings as you get the minerals, rallied to your opponent's base
Queen
UPDATE: taking drones off of gas greatly helps you to power drones and push out a queen for air defense if you should need it.
Use your zerglings to kill the enemy scout or shoo him away before you drop the roach warren: this isn't too necessary against terran as he'll have committed to his tech path by this point. Against protoss it's more so he doesn't start building stalkers/sentries. Many times they'll have multiple zealots blocking and the game is pretty easy. If they know roaches are coming, they just make stalkers and it's not going to happen for you.
Also, sometimes you'll want to do a 1-base muta strategy, or a simple pool->gas->hatch powering build. Keeping the worker out of there makes it a guessing game for THEM for once! This helps a lot in match play (or if you get paired against the same opponent in league), as your opponent will often be waiting for an attack that never comes.
A great thing about this strategy is that it's very flexible: it's not all-in by any means, but certainly can be. By the time the roaches leave your base, you'll have 18 drones and an expansion hatchery going down. If you get to the opponent's front door and you can't get in, pumping out 6+ drones from your recent injection pop puts you at equal count if not ahead of your opponent.
At your opponent's base, try and find the weakest spot. Against terran, it's often just focusing down a supply depot and barging in there. Roaches can hit repairing SCV's, which is really nice. You may lose a roach or two breaking down the depot, which is fine and normal. Against protoss, often the weakest link in the wall are the zealots. However, it's sometimes best to focus down a pylon if it's the only one powering the gateways/cyber. If you break the wall, rally and spam zerglings. Generally if you break in you tend to win immediately. If you don't break in, just spam drones and retreat.
Learn your roach micro! Move-Stop-Move-Stop to make the absolute most out of your roaches (the replays have tons of examples of this). Your opponents will often bring out their workers, and it's very important you don't get your roaches surrounded! Just lead them on a merry chase around their base, slowly killing them off and giving your zerglings time to get there.
Roaches need constant micro in combat. Both right-clicking on a building/unit and attack-move are strictly awful for roaches. What will happen is that the first line of roaches fire while the rest scamper around behind them. You need to right click in front of the unit/building you want to attack so they walk right up to it, then either stop or attack-move or right click on a unit. The AI treats them like a range unit, but you need to manually override that to treat them like a melee unit.
Once your opponent sees early roaches, they tend to make units that crush roaches: immortals, marauders, thors. This means a back-tech to zerglings is usually the best, which is why researching zergling speed is in there.
Keeping up with your injections is severely important to this strategy! Since you're on one hatchery for awhile, these injections are vital. Also, you really can't spare any energy for creep tumors until your 2nd hatch is up.
That's all there is to it! Marines and zealots at the ramp are pretty easy to deal with, and often you can force your way in. In that case, just rally and spam units to him. If the rush fails, it's not a huge loss as you have enough drones as well as an expansion hatch.
The 5RR channels the game away from super early air units and takes away some of the openings that are troublesome for zerg. However, if your opponent was making anti-roach units, then you're a little behind where you should be had you not rushed and you need to quickly back-tech into zerglings. Overall, the positives greatly outweigh the negatives.
**vs a 2-gate: include a few roaches/lings early on if the zealots will arrive before the injection pops.
EDIT: People have asked some intelligent questions in the thread, and I have tried to respond as well as i could. If you scan for my responses, there's a good chance your question was already answered.
Replays of it in action:
I'm going to show a few of replays where it just kills my opponent outright, and then one where the game goes further just to show how easy it is to rebound the instant things don't go well.
We have several 800+ diamond players in this group of replays, showing that this can topple almost anyone.
NOTE: All of the replays are on the old 13/15 build, but all of the ideas remain the same.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-140629.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-140630.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-140631.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-140632.jpg)
5RR vs fast stargate:
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-140633.jpg)
5RR vs FE protoss:
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-140634.jpg)
5RR vs 3 rax reaper:
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-142073.jpg)
5RR vs 5 rax reaper:
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-142074.jpg)
Example of 5RR where I don't deal too much damage and the game goes long:
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-140668.jpg)
EDIT: Replays where the game goes long. These aren't the best quality replays, just recent ones that show how to bounce back in macro after you're held off (keep the Income tab open when watching the replay). The result of the game isn't important, and neither are my glaring mistakes. =) Just that the opening transitions nicely into a macro game.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-141174.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-141175.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-141177.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-141178.jpg)
About me: Fistdantilus. 1100+ Rank 1 Diamond. I'm not amazing, or even very good, just OK for now.
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Seems to be a slower versions of this: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Baneling/Roach_Rush_(vs._Terran)
With a later expo and no banelings. Any damage you could do with your build, I would think the roach/baneling build would do even more damage (as it gets through the wall faster with the 5 roaches with the banelings). And with only 1 base (until after the attack starts), you will be less able to spam lings/drones to power or prevent a counter attack.
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Not bothering with the replays but it sounds great vs Terran. Trying it out now.
edit: x.x i hate no FE
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That build is an all-in. This isn't. There's no reason for the banelings as the roaches can do it cheaper and almost as good.
Once your opponent scans that baneling nest, they throw up bunkers like you wouldn't believe. Diamond terrans almost always scan for it too, FYI. If the attack doesn't succeed, with that build you may as well quit the game. This currently doesn't have that drawback.
EDIT: Watch the replays: I get through the wall consistently without banelings.
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I strongly disagree about the other build being all-in. Having personaly not dont much damage vr diamond players many times with it and still won the game! as well as had other diamond level players also not do damage and still recover. For instance he scans you, sees the baneling nest and puts down 2 bunkers at his ramp, no way your going to bust all of that, but you can just not attack, and drone pump out of both bases and be totaly fine in econ in no time while still being safe because he spent the 200 mins on bunkers (and 300 from scan).
Still I would say the other build puts you more behind economicly if it doesnt work (but with more possibilities to catch up given the extra larva from the earlier second hatch).
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14 drones and limited to one hatch, but that's NOT all-in?
Please don't respond anymore. =(
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i think this could work vs toss on a map like blistering sands where the back door is easy to pressure. but on maps like kulas or even lt i think that there's just too many ways to punish a build like this. its quite standard for ps to add in a sentry vs. z and once they see your warren go up they can add in stalkers quite easily.
im not sure if you're only building 2 zerglings (i think that's what you meant), but if that's the case, then i don't think a p player would lose their scout before you throw down your roach warren.
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I don't see how you could suggest this build as a 900 rating diamond. 2 gate zealot pressure into 2 gate zealot+stalker destroys this from what I've seen (or just quick stalker/sentry). The combination of zealots with stalkers beats zerglings with roaches I've found.
A roach rush build will be scouted and any decent player would react to it.
Personally, I came up with a faster roach rush build, back when roaches were better units (actually, among the first weeks of the beta). I'd go 12 pool before overlord, then double gas (again) cancel 1, drone, overlord, then obviously roach warren when pool finishes.
The problem is that roaches are the worst t2/t1.5 unit in the game due to their slow speed and short range. Only with upgrades do they become decent, but by that point, they can be hard countered even more.
Maybe I should watch some replays, but personally I don't like doing that mcuh. Reading a few posts is generally much much quicker.
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Watch the replays?
I face sentries and win.
I kill workers with only 2 zerglings, or chase them away. Both are fine.
Blistering Sands and Kulas Ravine are both very good for this, as both have backdoors you can knock down if the front door isn't an option.
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Try 15 drones (compared to the 17 drones you would have at the time), and on 2 hatcheries.
I'm not saying its better econ build, but its not all-in.
Read this thread if you want to learn more:http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=143155
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kulas' backdoor takes too long to knock down though cuz you have 2 sets of rocks to go through imo. by that time even 4 gate should be able to take this on. i watched one replay (asp) and i do think it can be powerful if the protoss player doesn't react to the roach warren being thrown down like in the replay i saw. the guy continued making zealots and chronoing out probes when he should be chronoing out stalkers and sentries.
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Okay, we'll take them one at a time.
I don't see how you could suggest this build as a 900 rating diamond. 2 gate zealot pressure into 2 gate zealot+stalker destroys this from what I've seen (or just quick stalker/sentry). The combination of zealots with stalkers beats zerglings with roaches I've found.
The 2-gate zealots don't get there in time. If they arrive early with 3, you delay them with your queen and maybe make an extra set of lings to hold. Once the roaches pop, you eat through 5 free zealots with roach micro. It's not difficult.
A roach rush build will be scouted and any decent player would react to it.
How will they scout it, exactly? The roaches usually aren't in my base when the scan goes down, and the worker is dead or gone. Sometimes they do scout it with a late worker, mostly they don't.
Personally, I came up with a faster roach rush build, back when roaches were better units (actually, among the first weeks of the beta). I'd go 12 pool before overlord, then double gas (again) cancel 1, drone, overlord, then obviously roach warren when pool finishes.
A 6-pool is faster than a 14 pool at getting lings out, why don't you do that every game? See what I'm getting at?
The problem is that roaches are the worst t2/t1.5 unit in the game due to their slow speed and short range. Only with upgrades do they become decent, but by that point, they can be hard countered even more.
I actually don't build any more than these 5 roaches, ever. They are just to get through the buildings.
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On August 20 2010 12:13 obsid wrote:
Try 15 drones (compared to the 17 drones you would have at the time), and on 2 hatcheries.
I'm not saying its better econ build, but its not all-in.
Read this thread if you want to learn more:http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=143155
Correct, the link you give here has a build that is not an all-in.
However, being hatch before pool I can assure you it's slower than what I posted as well as having fewer drones. I can't see the advantage to it as written, but I think this person is pretty close if they ditch the banelings.
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Wow those are some bad terran players lol. What league was this (or were the people you faced as I assume it wasnt ranked). No repair on the wall at all in any of the games I wantched, and one of the guys tried a proxy 3 rax marine rush lol. And the other guy rushed starport. Clearly anyone doing eather of those stupid things will lose to this build no problem.
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A two-gate zealot into stalkers will give you problems if you only have roaches, especially if you expand soon after the first five roaches pop. However if you mix in some lings to backstab the stalkers while pulling the zealots with the roaches, you should be fine.
EDIT: For the record, I was agreeing with the OP that his 5-roach build can do well against 2-gate toss if executed properly.
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It's like none of you even read the post before responding? =(
Wow those are some bad terran players lol. What league was this (or were the people you faced as I assume it wasnt ranked).
All diamond. Several 800+ diamond; didn't check them all.
Repairing the depot doesn't work because the roaches just snipe the SCV. There's no point in even trying.
A two-gate zealot into stalkers will give you problems if you only have roaches, especially if you expand soon after the first five roaches pop. However if you mix in some lings to backstab the stalkers while pulling the zealots with the roaches, you should be fine.
Re-copying from my original post:
"Once your opponent sees early roaches, they tend to make units that crush roaches: immortals, marauders, thors. This means a back-tech to zerglings is usually the best, which is why researching zergling speed is in there."
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I like how in the second game your opponent called your strategy cheesy while he was going for the triple proxy barracks.
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On August 20 2010 12:16 Fistdantilus wrote:
Okay, we'll take them one at a time.
The 2-gate zealots don't get there in time. If they arrive early with 3, you delay them with your queen and maybe make an extra set of lings to hold. Once the roaches pop, you eat through 5 free zealots with roach micro. It's not difficult.
How will they scout it, exactly? The roaches usually aren't in my base when the scan goes down, and the worker is dead or gone. Sometimes they do scout it with a late worker, mostly they don't.
you DO NOT eat through 5 free zealots. How the hell could you get away with saying that as a 900 diamond? good players run away when they are in danger, and zealots are the same speed as roaches, so you don't be dealing any major damage to the zealots.
Not only that, but as long as roaches don't have speed upgrade or are on creep, they aren't that strong against zealots. Microed roaches can beat an equal number of zealots (unmicroed, zealots win), but it's not hard to get stalkers and or more than 5 zealots in the time it takes to get 5 roaches to the opponent.
When it comes to scouting, how do you expect the scout to be dead? what are you going to kill the scout with? lings will pop out AFTER the roach warren starts unless you start it AFTER the queen is halfway done (assuming you start queen as soon as possible). Maybe a delayed roach warren would not be scouted unless they did double scout (which I find still happens), but that just makes the roaches that much slower. I could see this strategy being good against terran though, as long as the warren is delayed a bit more. This way you will be able to attack them when they will likely do a wall off quick tech build.
I simply don't see it being viable vs protoss though.
With regards to my 12pool before overlord roach rush, I wasn't saying it is better (although I can't say it is worse), just thought I'd mention it while on the topic.
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He was asking about 2-gate zealot pressure. To have pressure, wouldn't you assume those zealots are in the base? If they're in the base, my roaches are on creep. Even if the zealots run away, often the zealots die at their own ramp because there aren't enough stalkers yet built.
Not only that, but as long as roaches don't have speed upgrade or are on creep, they aren't that strong against zealots.
So wait. Before you're claiming that the zealots would run away because they wouldn't allow themselves to die unnecessarily, but now you're claiming that the most the roaches can hope for is equal losses. Which is it? What's the point of running then if everything just dies?
Micro'ed roaches > zealots early game, and it's not close.
When it comes to scouting, how do you expect the scout to be dead? what are you going to kill the scout with? lings that pop out AFTER the roach warren starts? How the hell could you possibly say you wouldn't be scouted?
I'm scouted every single game. It takes seconds for two lings to kill a worker, so I'm really confused why everyone is up in arms over this. All I'm saying is that I put down the warren after my lings pop. My opponent can either run his worker away or let it die. Either way is good to me.
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Thank you for this. Don't understand the critisicm. You even posted an example on how you easily transitioned from the attack. And you had all yourr bases saturated quickly. You didn't lose as a result of your strategy.
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EPT
