That's not entirely true, there are few top 200 players I've seen use it, Sen being the most notable example. It's just that, as is the mark with all good players, they only use the strategy in certain situations - as oppose to spaming it for easy ladder wins.
Having said this, would anyone care to comment on what certain situations specifically suggest this build should be invoked? Should it be the standard response to a 2-gate, and the reply for fast reapers? Anything else?
That's not entirely true, there are few top 200 players I've seen use it, Sen being the most notable example. It's just that, as is the mark with all good players, they only use the strategy in certain situations - as oppose to spaming it for easy ladder wins.
Having said this, would anyone care to comment on what certain situations specifically suggest this build should be invoked? Should it be the standard response to a 2-gate, and the reply for fast reapers? Anything else?
I think if you look back on the last few pages, everyone pretty much is commenting about said situations
On September 09 2010 12:34 Galleon.frigate wrote: Heh ya I've finding more resistance to it...
I'm really finding so few wall-ins with a pylon or depo. With no weak point the roachs don't have the power to punch in and do the eco damage needed to make the build shine.
Still it's a nice build to have around for when I do see that depo
Look at the Dimaga style ZvP thread.
I have found on most maps a scout (OL or a 12 ish drone on 4 player maps) gets there right at the decision point for the warren versus hatchery, the rest of the build is similar (you go 13 pool gas or gas pool, 15 OL, queen right away, then at 20 it's hatchery for the dimaga style or warren for the 5RR). Now when your scout gets there if you see a weak front (hellion/(1/1/1/) or 2 gate) you go 5RR, otherwise you drop expand immediately and get the evo (and immediately the 1/0 ling upgrades).
The 1/0 (or 0/1 if you prefer) lings destroy marine marauder as well as gateway pushes so they are a great opener and a strong economy for any transition. The 5RR is more situational but a good option to have if you scout a 2 gate or weak front.
this opening achieves nothing. I playtested this (1200 MMR rated zerg) a ton in both custom games and ladder and this is what I gained as insight:
against toss the roaches will be fodder once the cyber core gets out (which even with a 2 gate opening is too fast for the roaches to do any real damage since they're slow as hell off creep), plus you'll be behind on minerals which you'll inevitably need to get out mass lings ass the tosses army will mostly be immortal/stalker/sentry with very few zealots when he pushes.
often times when the toss scouts the roach warren (read: always) even with a two gate the first stalker will be out right as the roaches reach his base (yes, they're THAT slow) with the exception beeing steppes of war, delta quadrant closed positions and maybe lt/metalopolis closed positions (on metalopolis just 6-3 and 9-12 starting positions obviously).
against terran it's just terrible. if the terran goes reaper opening but scouts early roaches, he has like 0 problems to switch to one of two strats: invisible banshees, tank/marine (yes that actually counters roaches pretty fucking hard unless you make 0 drones and focus 100% on roach/ling production) or pure marauder push. the problem here is mostly that you won't even be remotely able to scout it if you're playing against a smart terran so you're basically gambling from that point on.
it's one more build where you sacrifice even more econ (Yes, that hatchery will come even later) in order to be a little bit safer vs certain openings. but in my opinion, speedling opening achieves the same thing, but with a far bigger econ advantage and earlier expansion.
i just tested this strategy in a ZvZ (plat league) and i could contain him perfectly in his one base with constant ling roach pressure and he ended loosing because he got mined out... i side teched to hydras in case he went muta but he didnt so i continued roach ling... thanks for the strat btw
That's not entirely true, there are few top 200 players I've seen use it, Sen being the most notable example. It's just that, as is the mark with all good players, they only use the strategy in certain situations - as oppose to spaming it for easy ladder wins.
Having said this, would anyone care to comment on what certain situations specifically suggest this build should be invoked? Should it be the standard response to a 2-gate, and the reply for fast reapers? Anything else?
It works well against tech builds and some early pushes. The problem is that it is hard to spot some of the tech builds (like the difference between a fast VR and a 4 gate) early enough.
General things that trigger the transition to 5RR for me are: - 2 gate - Barracks with no addon at front - Barracks+ factory spotted (this requires the factory to be close to the front or part of the wall). - Maybe reapers ... be careful though because reapers become marauders really fast.
For a 2 gate you don't need to win the game, just the fact that they 2 gated and you got a nice safe expand means you are ahead going into the midgame.
For the cyber you can still push, just retreat if you see too many stalkers (or stalker and a sentry as you don't want to get FFed on the ramp). If the stalkers chase down their ramp, turn around and destroy them with the speedling/roach, if he doesn't chase, transition to mid game (again, toss doesn't have an expand).
I tend to do some threat with roaches against protoss (Not so much terran, because marines stay in the ball with marauders) to force sentrys and stalkers.
With just 8 speedlings doing a surround to the ranged units and microing the roaches, you can really punish him.
Is a battle that comes down to micro. But you have the advantage because you choose when and where to engage and speedlings excel at cuting reinforcements.
Nothing more jummy than getting a couple of strain stalkers or even zealots.
Mostly because a good protoss can really force spines, roaches and zearlings in order to save the natural, and in that time he will be able expand freely and get ahead in probes with cronoboost.
Sometimes is better to wait a little and forcing him with a nice mix of speedlings/roaches really give you the freedom to move arround and keep him on his toes.
I hate doing things that basically shout out "WE ARE GONNA FIGHT AT MY PLACE".
I think this will be scary vs P when the next patch comes out because you're pretty much forced to 10gate everytime vs Z. When I 10gate it always seems to slow down my 4 gate so that this push will come out before my gates finish ( just barely on the last match, I lost to this going 10gate into 4 gate once I scouted he wasnt rushing)
Well there's 31 pages, and I am curious if there was ever any discussion regarding what to do when the other person (we'll say protoss) puts down a gateway and cybernetics core for a wall. You can't exactly break that down, and a stalker has twice the range of a roach. If a sentry pops out then you're just completely stuck there.
What happened in a game just now is the protoss player went phoenixes and just started sniping my queens and overlords. From there on out it's just a losing battle, and I don't see how one would be able to recover from that.
just gotta say i love this strategy VS protoss. just won my 6th game in a row, 4 of the games were won outright during the rush, 2 i had to take advantage of the fact that i contained him in 1 base and macro my way to victory but a win is a win. thanks
On September 12 2010 02:06 blgdinger wrote: Well there's 31 pages, and I am curious if there was ever any discussion regarding what to do when the other person (we'll say protoss) puts down a gateway and cybernetics core for a wall. You can't exactly break that down, and a stalker has twice the range of a roach. If a sentry pops out then you're just completely stuck there.
What happened in a game just now is the protoss player went phoenixes and just started sniping my queens and overlords. From there on out it's just a losing battle, and I don't see how one would be able to recover from that.
I have a game where my 5RR got countered at first (cyber core) so I transitioned into something else, if the rush doesnt work but you manage to save your army you can usually keep them scared into 1-basing and you can take the economic advantage and out-macro at that point:
On September 12 2010 02:06 blgdinger wrote: Well there's 31 pages, and I am curious if there was ever any discussion regarding what to do when the other person (we'll say protoss) puts down a gateway and cybernetics core for a wall. You can't exactly break that down, and a stalker has twice the range of a roach. If a sentry pops out then you're just completely stuck there.
What happened in a game just now is the protoss player went phoenixes and just started sniping my queens and overlords. From there on out it's just a losing battle, and I don't see how one would be able to recover from that.
You are right. you don't break a core and gateway.. what you do is contain him, don't waste your army, if you cant bust in.. and prepare for a air raid. Vray or Phoenix... i usually go with muta when i see this. Having him contained in 1 base means 2 things.. air or collosus. so having a spire counters both easily. Basically 2 base vs 1 base.. OUTMACRO him
some french guy claiming a counter to this strat.. i have no idea what he's saying but i just look at the gameplay.... if you see this.. what do you do??
I'd abort the attack or hit the destructable rocks instead (hit rocks if there are any, abort if there aint a backdoor). it's his sim city that kills the push
Go to around 1minute in and look at this core and gateway placement. It causes your forces to be narrowed through a chokepoint made of his buildings. The zerg player also didn't beeline straight for the mineral line after breaking in (and didn't wait for his lings to be a bit closer before trying to get in). This set him rather behind as he lost all his units without really doing anything to hamper the protoss, and the toss just moved a stalker to block off the 2nd wave of reinforcements.
His options should have been to bust the pylon with the roaches to avoid the whole funneling effect of the wall off, or even better to attack the back door instead.
But yeah, good sim city can be annoying for us to deal with. Sad thing is if that zerg had gone in through the backdoor it'd probably have been GG for the toss as he could've moved straight to the worker line with his lines and use his roaches to delay the voids/stalkers/zealots from messing with the lings (and then pull ahead in worked coutn and out macro)
Yeah, i dont get why he would need to claim a counter, there are plenty of counters, its just that the current metagame means that people tech too much against zerg as they see the early game as weak, and you punish them for it. Just chucking out 3 stalkers will GG the 5RR, but that doesnt happen much. In that game i agree with the above, abort the attack, get some extra queens, consolidate your expand and just play that game as normal.
some french guy claiming a counter to this strat.. i have no idea what he's saying but i just look at the gameplay.... if you see this.. what do you do??
A few thoughts regarding that video/counter strat.
1) - the protoss would essentially have to do this build blind because it would require the protoss to avoid extra gates/units really early just so there's enough minerals/gas to get the voids out fast enough. This is doubled if the zerg keeps the protoss scout from seeing the roach warren, and better yet if they keep them from seeing there's no natural going down. (which is pretty easy to do by the way). the one gate into core into stargate while having both gases early - there's next to no defense early. A baneling bust would mess up this protoss because the voids just take so damn long to kill zerglings. Also there are solid econ builds that don't see a expo hatch going down till after 20...so seeing a zerg on one base after 20 does not necessarily mean early aggression. If a zerg did a standard 20-22 hatch with lings and an extra queen or two the fast void ray is useless save for killing a few overlords caught outside your base.
2) If i did do a 5RR and the protoss GUESSED right, and I quickly found that my initial roaches became void ray fodder, i would do one of two things. a) get a 3rd, 4th, 5th ect queen out while extending creep towards my natural. I'd stay on one base but essentially ignore building any military units. Instead I'd power drones like crazy, well past 30. The Toss isn't going to have the land army to punish your power droning and he's not going to be able to do much void damage vs your queens. Then when creep can enable my queens to move freely between the main and natural I'd go expo and be intantly saturated on 2 bases. I would then move to corruptor/mutas/lings.
or
b) Knowing that he's basically undefended save for voids, I'd throw down a baneling nest and start spamming zerglings. This is an all, but I feel like the protoss would be hard pressed to stop it with only one gateway up to pump zealots/sentry. The banelings would be to take down the blocking zealot (if he rebuilt it) or the blocking pilon (if the wall is solid) I'd then just suicide my zerglings into his main and target his drones while constantly rallying zerglings into his base. If i got to the point during or slightly before this attack where I had an extra 300 minerals i would expand because his void is going to have to stay at home and defend the push, giving you time to get it up and hopefully for your queens(min 2 at this point) to get creep to the expo.
Summary: - I think the toss build counters the 5RR if you know its coming, but it would lose to other builds - and there's not a great way for the toss to scout exactly what you're planning. - Even if my roaches exploded into goo I feel zerg can still pull the game out just because queens are so awesome vs protoss air and the toss is so weakened (infrastructure and ground army wise ) - Void rays suck vs lings
plat 1v1 player here. I have to say this. I won 12 straight games with the 5RR. This strategy is incredibly. Yes of course it can be defended, but since the scouting probe dies to only 2 lings, your opponent thinks he is pretty safe only seeing a 13 pool. Wonderful strategy very well thought about and explicitly explained. Kudos OP
On September 14 2010 04:57 truckerdaves wrote: plat 1v1 player here. I have to say this. I won 12 straight games with the 5RR. This strategy is incredibly. Yes of course it can be defended, but since the scouting probe dies to only 2 lings, your opponent thinks he is pretty safe only seeing a 13 pool. Wonderful strategy very well thought about and explicitly explained. Kudos OP
It is pretty freaking effective in platinum I am on a 7-streak right now myself. I am sure I'll be in diamond soon with this strat alone. Just gotta get it down better vs Terran. It seems Terran can counter it pretty easy with a bunker though. I have yet to lose to a Protoss using this :D
Be prepared to lose a lot once you get artificially ranked higher in diamond because of your win streaks.
I ended up having to completely rethink the way I played, because it put me from Plat rank 1 to Diamond rank 1 about 800 + points. The 10 game win streaks went away pretty hard and I had to actually learn how to play. Now that I did I am 11-1 during my last 12 games in Diamond 700+ points climbing back up.