EPT[G] 5 Roach Rush: early game without the all-in - Page 8
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hizBALLIN
United States163 Posts
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archon256
United States363 Posts
I prefer a slightly faster Roach Warren (as soon as pool pops) vs. 2-gate, and a more macro-oriented style vs. everything else. Still, thanks for posting this, sure does feel good to be aggressive vs. Terran early game. | ||
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Bair
United States698 Posts
EDIT: Small note on proxy timing. Against 2 gate proxy, the first 2 zealots (roughly) will be up to you to deal with with only your queen, 4 lings and drones. Shouldn't be a problem as you will already have roaches on the way. | ||
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SubtleArt
2710 Posts
On August 20 2010 13:41 hadoken5 wrote: 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. ITs because people are retarded and the first thing they do when they hear a new strat on the strat forum is dream up the worst possible situation for the build and use that as justification for why it sucks and why the OP should burn in hell. @ OP Nice writeup, pretty indepth. I've tried this 5 games now and I'm 4-1. Only in 2 of those games did I win outright though. Still, I'm suprised at how well this build can transition. Haven't tried it vs protoss tho, so we'll see how that goes another time. Btw, I'm impressed at how much detail you've given to this build. Annoyed at the nooby idiots who haven't hit diamond yet giving retarded critiques. Can we make it mandatory to post your division / points or something before you say anything in the strat forum? I know low level players can sometimes contribute good ideas but this is just getting ridiculous | ||
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Umpteen
United Kingdom1570 Posts
And when I say 'it didn't work out every time' I should probably elaborate: The first time, the roach warren popped, the larvae spurted into the air - and I hadn't made an extractor. Thinking quickly I feigned death until the game ended. The second time, the roach warren popped, the larvae spurted into the air - and I hadn't made an Overlord. I explained to the two roaches who did spawn that times were tough for everyone and in the current economic climate they were actually very lucky to have jobs at all. I think they took it pretty well. The third time, the roach warren popped and larvae spurted into the air with an Overlord already gargling triumphantly overhead. I hammered the keyboard, rallied to my opponent's ramp, and watched the five pulsing eggs with baited breath. I even remembered that I ought to be upgrading Zergling speed ASAP - and was temporarily delighted to notice that I already had easily enough gas to begin the research. "Hell of a build, this," I was thinking just as ten zerglings spawned. Eventually the short bus to adventure dropped me off and, pausing only to swill the taste of windowpane from my tongue, I started putting the actual build into practice. Jesus fuck. It was almost like playing a different RTS - and certainly a different race. My first opponent's reapers seemed quite taken aback to find Zerg in their own base with them. I heard one of them say "I dunno, Dave; mebbe they're a new kind of drone." If Dave said anything in reply, it was lost in the sound of his rocket-pack exploding. My second opponent seemed equally surprised. In fact, his probes were so curious about the new arrivals they followed them around and around their base like lost, acid-drenched puppies. Against a Zerg the outcome was less dramatic, but still potent. I cut a drone to drop an early spine crawler, which worked out really well. His early zergling harass couldn't achieve much, and my roaches deterred him from going banelings. He expended a good five or six hundred minerals focusing down my roach warren (I started a new one before the first one went down and lost maybe a second and a half of production) and then backed off. I teched to spire, made a couple of mutalisks, and prodded him just enough to ensure he went for hydras. Off creep, roaches with speed upgrade proved a very cost-effective defence, while my carefully conserved and ever-growing mutalisk ball poached drones, queens and tech buildings. In all seriousness, though, this is such a breath of fresh air. Aggression into expansion, that early? Hell yes. Just being able to distract my opponent from his otherwise peacefully uninterrupted macro routine is worth the price of admission. | ||
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EatThePath
United States3943 Posts
Fistdantilus, can you clarify how this build handles stargate rush? I have a build that gets a void ray almost as fast as possible, followed by constant phoenix. Meanwhile you get stalkers after your first zealot, and zealots if you are out of gas or as your gates come up. I've faced all degrees of roach rush with this build, and it almost always goes my way. If my micro is bad, the worst case is that we both lose our bases and I have the strategic trump for a long time. Generally though I can hold it off with low or no losses, and then punish them in multiple ways: I can kill the roaches as i find them with a void ray, I can kill the overlords with phoenix, I can kill queens, I can kill some drones, I can kill hatcheries or tech structures. I continue to use the build because it has shown me that you usually only take as much damage as they do (even if its "eventually" when you can get to their base with a ray), so break even is the risk. Anyway, thoughts, if you care? | ||
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archon256
United States363 Posts
Granted, there are a lot of dumb Terran players in Diamond right now, but hopefully builds like these will help weed them out.  Also, amusing reply Umpteen, I enjoyed reading that a lot! | ||
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shrinkmaster
Germany947 Posts
EatThePath care to post a replay? Easier to evaluate something if you see it ingame instead of a wall of text. | ||
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tskarzyn
United States516 Posts
against Toss, you definitely neet to add in lings. any competent toss will have stalkers, but if you bring about 8 lings (speed upgrade not a must) you can flank the stalkers w/ good micro and let roaches melt them. | ||
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EatThePath
United States3943 Posts
On August 22 2010 11:32 shrinkmaster wrote: Thumbs up, Umpteen. I really enjoyed your post and it made me chuckle hard. EatThePath care to post a replay? Easier to evaluate something if you see it ingame instead of a wall of text. I'll try to find one that suits. | ||
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Fistdantilus
United States136 Posts
On August 22 2010 11:25 EatThePath wrote: Umpteen you made reading this whole thread more than worth it. Umpteen, that totally makes up for every outlandish comment in the thread. Thanks! =D | ||
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Dudemeister
Sweden314 Posts
I was struggeling a lot with early pressure but now I'm the one who puts the hurt on. | ||
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Fistdantilus
United States136 Posts
On August 22 2010 11:25 EatThePath wrote: Umpteen you made reading this whole thread more than worth it. Fistdantilus, can you clarify how this build handles stargate rush? I have a build that gets a void ray almost as fast as possible, followed by constant phoenix. Meanwhile you get stalkers after your first zealot, and zealots if you are out of gas or as your gates come up. I've faced all degrees of roach rush with this build, and it almost always goes my way. If my micro is bad, the worst case is that we both lose our bases and I have the strategic trump for a long time. Generally though I can hold it off with low or no losses, and then punish them in multiple ways: I can kill the roaches as i find them with a void ray, I can kill the overlords with phoenix, I can kill queens, I can kill some drones, I can kill hatcheries or tech structures. I continue to use the build because it has shown me that you usually only take as much damage as they do (even if its "eventually" when you can get to their base with a ray), so break even is the risk. Anyway, thoughts, if you care? Here's a game I played like an hour ago. =D Prologue: I had just played this person a few games prior where I beat him with the 5RR when he tried to FE on Blistering Sands. Sidenote: my winrate vs P/T players that try to fast expand against me is like 90%. So there's a huge chance he knows it's coming, but I see him teching hard and I just think "OK, let's do this". It's pretty much the fastest VR I've ever seen, and my thinking is: "I'll get inside, and spam zerglings to him while my queens build and I'll drop an evo and spores". However, I screw up the micro pretty badly when his VR gets to my base and I forget to build spore crawlers. >< I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've lost to VRs while doing the 5RR, but I still had a lot of chances to hold. The replay does show how close it can be, though. ![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-141487.jpg) To answer your question more directly: It's almost guaranteed I wreck the protoss base if they tech this hard, while I have good chances to hold off the VRs. | ||
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Bair
United States698 Posts
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-141545.jpg) He goes 2 gate, I go 5RR. I stop him and transition into a macro oriented build, getting mutas and GG. He was a 350 point diamond toss. ![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-141557.jpg) First time doing the 5RR. Beats a bio push and starts in with some harass on the base. Just a play player in a custom game. ![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-141559.jpg) I cannot remember this exactly, but it is against a 300 point zerg. Beats his ling/bane and proceeds to kick ass. | ||
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Vaporized
United States1471 Posts
i won all 7. some highlights: one terran player (think he was in gold) had a very nice scan of 6 roaches popping. he had 2 marauders waiting when i got there. i still won with ling reinforcements. against a diamond toss 2 gate the timing was amusing. my roaches reached the ramp of my base right when i saw zealots pass the xel naga watchtower. he had 7ish zealots, i kited on creep and won easily. the most interesting game was probably against my friend who watched me do this. he wanted to play a 1v1. he went protoss and fast void rays. my roaches got to his base when a void ray was about half done. i was able to kill enough probes that i was clearly in the lead. as soon as i saw him going VR i spore colony'd up my base and teched asap to mutas, which won me the game. i think the key to this build is the economical use of larva. a ling/bling bust is so larva heavy it is all in. 5 or 6 larva used to make roaches is just a small setback in drone production. | ||
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Fistdantilus
United States136 Posts
On August 22 2010 12:40 Bair wrote: Okay, 3 replays. + Show Spoiler + He goes 2 gate, I go 5RR. I stop him and transition into a macro oriented build, getting mutas and GG. He was a 350 point diamond toss. + Show Spoiler + First time doing the 5RR. Beats a bio push and starts in with some harass on the base. Just a play player in a custom game. + Show Spoiler + I cannot remember this exactly, but it is against a 300 point zerg. Beats his ling/bane and proceeds to kick ass. These replays should be proof enough that you can power very quickly out of this build. They also look like very early games that I played with this build: I'd make some roaches and achieve some success, then back off to power right away. Game 1 especially, that was a 7 minute roflstomp win as he made waaaaay too many zealots. Try trusting the aggressive nature of the build a bit more and see what happens. REGARDING THE 5RR IN ZVZ Don't. =) 13 pool/13 extractor, stop making drones at 14. With your first 6-10 zerglings, poke into the enemy base. If your opponent is skipping straight to roaches, just kill his queen and run out (even if there's a spine crawler). It's a ridiculously easy way to win ZvZ, even though it may take you 10+ more minutes to convert that win. You'll get to lair first as your opponent will need to re-make his queen, which when combined with the larvae setback gives a huge edge no matter what tech path you take. | ||
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okaygo
United States83 Posts
On August 22 2010 13:13 Fistdantilus wrote: These replays should be proof enough that you can power very quickly out of this build. They also look like very early games that I played with this build: I'd make some roaches and achieve some success, then back off to power right away. Game 1 especially, that was a 7 minute roflstomp win as he made waaaaay too many zealots. Try trusting the aggressive nature of the build a bit more and see what happens. REGARDING THE 5RR IN ZVZ Don't. =) 13 pool/13 extractor, stop making drones at 14. With your first 6-10 zerglings, poke into the enemy base. If your opponent is skipping straight to roaches, just kill his queen and run out (even if there's a spine crawler). It's a ridiculously easy way to win ZvZ, even though it may take you 10+ more minutes to convert that win. You'll get to lair first as your opponent will need to re-make his queen, which when combined with the larvae setback gives a huge edge no matter what tech path you take. Luckily I have a variety of ZvsZ replays which highlight this build and it works just fine, timing is pretty critical, and you need to be reactive to the possibility of early lings. Simple scouting will let you alter the build to work in any situation, whether you need to go ling heavy, the point is this is a very economical opener which allows for fast roaches and pretty fast speed lings, you could even squeeze in a banelings nest.This build usually dictates a ling/muta game from the linging zerg, but a quick switch to hydra defeats that, and this I demonstrate the transition twice. The 13gas/15pool is a very strong zerg opener. ![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-141602.jpg) ![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-141603.jpg) ![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-141604.jpg) ![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-141605.jpg) | ||
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ZomgTossRush
United States1041 Posts
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Mooshfux
3 Posts
I play at 700+ Diamond level and it works as the OP describes. It gets shut down by fast stalker/marauder, which is expected. What I like most is that it punishes 2 gate builds that blindly builds zealots super hard. | ||
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ZomgTossRush
United States1041 Posts
Will try this in game 2marrow night! | ||
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