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Anyways when I was playing a game as Zerg, a Terran player placed 2 raxes at the bottom of my ramp fully walling me in. While I ended up winning the game with a nyudus I thought the strategy had potential.
The goal of the 2 rax contain, is to completely seal the zerg in there base, for an extended period of time, if not the entire game. The reason this is so powerful is that it is actually quite difficult for the zerg to break out from the contain. The reason this is so much for effective than a double bunker contain is that barracks have much more hp as well as more surface area to mass repair. As well after the barracks are up you can use them to make units.
![[image loading]](http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/5397/raxcontain.png)
Besides the 2 raxes outside of the zergs choke, placing a bunker behind the raxes can make this build much safer.
Also This strategy works best on 2 maps, delta quadrant and steppes of war, this is because spine crawlers placed on initial creep cant reach raxes on these maps, while they can on most other maps. You could still do this on other maps but it would be difficult to hold off spine crawlers.
When taking this strategy into consideration, it is very important to consider all posible actions the zerg can take, and react to them.
1. Baneling bust, probably the weakest option available to the zerg, if the Terran was not already ahead busting through a rax with 10 or 11 banelings will severely weaken your army. Unless the Terran double expanded while building no units, he should be able to deal with the remaining lings/banelings. If they have a bunker down this will perform even worse.
2. roach bust, more effective than baneling bust, but I still believe it can be dealt with fairly easily. This is because marines in a bunker can shoot roaches from the other side of a rax. So the zerg would have to take significant losses trying to snipe rax. If the terran is quick enough they can repair the rax making it very difficult to kill.
3. spine crawler bust, On the maps where initial spines cannot reach rax this is a mediocre strategy. This is because it takes a long time for creep to extend far enough for spines to reach, if the Terran has teched to siege tanks the spines will be worthless. But if the Terran didn't get enough mm or tech to siege tanks this can break contain.
4. mutas, mutas are powerful, you are spread out trying to defend both the zergs choke and your base. If you got to much anti ground because you were scared of spines/roach/baneling you can lose instantly. But if you are confident mutas are coming and get enough turrets you should be fine.
5. nyudus/drop, I feel nyudus is the most powerful response to this strategy, it is very hard to cover your main and the choke. Also since the response to mutas and nyudus are very different it can be easy to prepare for the wrong thing and lose. Also it is possible to use nyudus to expand outside of contain, which can be difficult to deal with as much of your army is tied up at zerg choke.
6. broodlords, I have never seen broodlords used, since they take a long time to tech to. Since broodlords require hive and are the only use for a hive in this situation you should not be able to hide the tech.
7. hidden expo, This is actually a powerfull move as well, often when you set down the double rax contain you seal a scouting drone outside the contain. This drone has the ability to set down a hatchery. Since you are so weak in the beginning while setting up contain, the zerglings or units your opponent produces from this hatch can overwhelm you. They could even just drone up and defeat the purpose of the contain which is to starve the zerg of resources. While this can be effective vigilant scouting can shut this down, there are a limited amount of expansions and Terran should make sure to scout them.
8*. hidden tech, This isn't a way to break wall in itself but simply supplementary to the higher points. Because there is often a drone trapped outside wall you cant guarantee you can scout tech in base, since the drone could use hatchery trick to generate creep and build tech building anywhere. You could even hide a nyudus by using this trick by building base outside of base and building the mouth inside of base.
For the most part this is all that matters, the zerg strategies, as long as the Terran can respond to whatever of the above the zerg chooses to go he should be able to win.
Anyways, on a final note I still feel the need to test this more extensively, I have had a surprising amount of trouble finding zerg players to test this against. So if anyone reading this is a zerg player, on the US server id be very appreciative if you would play me in some games so I could test this out more.
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Just kill em with spine crawlers from up the ramp, I don't know how he'll get the tanks(that is some serious quick siege tech, especially considered he had to build 2 barracks very early and simultanously) to shoot up the ramp. You say it takes a long time for the creep to spread that far- its a lot faster than muta, nydus or blords.
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This is a tactic not a strategy as Day[9] would say.
If you base your whole game around this you will surely get nowhere, however incorporating this contain into your 2 rax something or other build which can survive without doing this should be explored basing your games off this.
I use this against insane ai to win in 4 minutes odd btw, quite fun. But not solid enough for me to put in my arsenal of things to tweak.
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My buddy does this in a lot of his ZvTs. He usually FEs right off it and just powers his economy ahead of the zerg in the first few minutes.
The best I've done against this start was taking a hidden expo with my scouting drone, using my queen's first 25 energy to tumor and then two spine crawlers to get out. If you can take the expo without him knowing then you can pretty much play just about the same as you always would.
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excuse me for being an idiot here, but what Z from dropping 1 creep tumor and double spining these buildings to death (i read your post but the spine section doesn't really make sense)? I mean you can fly them off but then again thats the whole point. Its not like you can't move spines?
I don't know about steppes of war (shown above), but it seems like you could reach the rax with the range from your first tumor, and if not you wait 15 seconds to retumor and move up the spines...there is no way he will have tanks there to take this out, and this is happening years before nydus is necessary/practical
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It takes 2 creep tumors on steppes of war to for spines to reach rax. Next of all the 2 rax contain doesn't slow down your tech that much since you would have built 1 of the raxes anyways. There may be a timing window before you have siege but when his spines can hit rax but I think you could repair for long enough to keep wall.
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i've got a hint that its far better to research both overlord upgrades than going nydus because it gives you mobility for the entire game and its indeed much better
i think everyone would use spine crawlers in this situation and this strategy doesnt have much potential imo if you are even able to place those buildings there because most of time an overlord will be watching the ramp
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What do you do about a zergling rush? There's no way you could have your two rax up before they can get a few lings out. If you're (somehow) sure they are not rushing, then this seems like an ok plan. It feels sort of all-in since you take some big risks not walling off your main, and having 300 mins invested that you probably cant get back if it fails. There's no way you can fly your rax away fast enough if things go south.
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It is easier to detect and stop drops as there are masses of overlords moving accross the map. Also unlike with nyudus, with a drop your units are isolated once the drop is completed, it takes time to get re-enforcements or retreat. With a nyudus you can attack without leaving your base vulnerable. Nyudus are more powerfull here than they are in a standard game because the terran is more spread out and less able to prevent heads from going up.
Also this would be vulnerable to a very fast pool, but I think for even a 10 pool, the raxes would already be building. The raxes don't have to be finished to stop a rush they only have to be building and as long as you make sure to have backup scv's you should be able to get raxes to finish. While this strategy would be weak to say a 6 pool, I feel that is an acceptable risk.
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in base hatchery for larvae close to the choke => fast creep => spine crawlers start killing rax 12 seconds after hatchery finishes.
fastest option and you can get a shitton of units out if the T was sloppy about his macro or doesnt have adequate defenses.
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I'm not sure how an extra hatch would give fast creep as they take about 2 minutes to build, unless you are talking about using cancel hatch to get the 3x3 creep. Also why would you want larva close to choke, the size of a zergs base is small and it is generally creeped up, so the time it would take to get to choke would be minimal regardless of where hatch was in base.
Also as far as terran having sloppy macro or inadequate defenses, I would think that kind of play could cause any player to lose a game, not just one in this situation.
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None of these T2 options are any good. The fact that it forces Zerg to stay on one base means it has already given Terran an advantage.
But anyways, I'm pretty sure any competent Zerg will just scout it easily (only a noob would miss a few raxes at his ramp) and then send a couple early zerglings to take it down.
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EPT
