[G] The Art Of ZvP 2 - Page 8

On December 22 2010 23:00 ZerG~LegenD wrote:

The first thing you need to do is notice that he is doing the build. When combining an expansion with Stargate tech they will have less units that normally and thus you won't really be able to do much pushing (which allows you to Drone and tech hard), they will also be more inclined to get Cannons and perhaps most importantly they will get their Assimilators much earlier in their natural.

With a normal Warpgate/Robo based build they normally delay their Assimilators for a while. I don't know exactly when you normally take them but I don't think it's before 10 minutes, on the other hand the Void Ray/Colossi build requires you to take them right of the bat when the Nexus completes. So sacrifice Zerglings into his natural to keep tabs on his army count and his Assimilator timing do learn that he's up to some tech heavy build.

Now, when you know he's going to be teching rather than pushing, get a Spire right away and also try to scout what tech he's getting with an Overseer. If it's Stargate, get +1 Air Attack and an Infestation Pit and Mutalisks and expand as much as you possibly can. Get ~2 Infestors, if he goes out to harass you'll Fungal his army and smash it. When you have Infestors he pretty much cannot leave his base with an air based army so he will turtle and throw everything on one limit fight.

Here's some pointers for winning the last battle:

• Get dual Spires as soon as possible and upgrade both Air Attack and Air Armor.
  
• Remove all Observers from your army and try to keep your Mutalisk/Corruptor ratio hidden while sacrificing Mutalisks or Overlords or Zerglings to find out his Phoenix/Void Ray ratio.
  
• Suicide all ground units to free up supply.
  
• Build a lot of Spore Crawlers in locations you cannot afford to lose, like your main and expansions with a lot of Minerals/Gas remainin.
  
• Use the "Extractor Trick" with Spine Crawlers to go beyond the 200 supply limit without sacrificing your Drones.
  
• Try to separate his army into two halves with Fungal Growth and fight them one at a time.
  
• Use Corruption.
  
• If he uses Vortex, run your whole army into it so that he won't get to fight one half at a time.
  
• Get an extra hidden Spire somewhere on the map so you can keep making units even if he wins the first battle and snipes your initial Spires.
  

Here's a replay against ZeeRaX, he's a 3.1k Diamond Protoss from an S-class division and has been using that playstyle since September, at least, and I think he's the original inventor of the playstyle. So he should be pretty good with it.

Some notes though, I upgraded my ground units too so that I would be able to remake a Hydralisk army should I lose my air one. I don't think that is necessary though and will probably only slow you down. Also, I think high level Protosses are blind countering the Roach opening too heavily nowadays so I've started opening Muta/Ling on all maps which means I was prepared for this tech path right from the start.