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basically this is my strategy.
Opening
On maps with easily defendable nats: 15hatch/14 pool UNLESS i scout opponent going for a fast pool ("fast" meaning, before 1st overlord, e.g. 6/7/8/9/10 pool). "Econ opening"
On other maps: 14gas/14pool speedling/baneling "speedling opening"
Early game
Econ opening:
1. if opponent is going one base banelings, make spine crawlers once nat finishes, get 2 queens asap, defend with speedling/crawler/queen. This is tough, but since you're on a map with an easily defendable nat, you should be able to defend it with smart crawler placement, and by blocking your ramp with queens.
2. If opponent also goes econ opening, get gas around 16/17 supply, go for 2 hatch speedling/baneling to either force him to get banelings, or force him to make crawlers
3. if opponent goes one base roaches, make roach warren & 1-2 crawlers, and then drone like crazy and keep close watch on entrance to his base. If he moves out, make a bunch of roaches to defend
speedling opening:
1. if opponent went hatch-first, speedling/baneling should win for sure, since you should only be doing speedling opening on maps that are bad for hatch-first; this is exactly why you DON'T hatch-first on these maps
2. if opponent went speedling opening: it comes down to speedling/baneling wars until someone can get an advantage or win the game
3. if opponent goes for roaches, cancel baneling nest, get roach warren, put down hatch at natural, and then drone like crazy and keep close watch on entrance to his base. If he moves out, make a bunch of roaches to defend.
Mid-game/late-game
Mid-game is roach wars, backed by infestors. You need to have a overseer constantly scouting to see if he's making a switch to muta. Assuming you are both equal going into the mid-game, if he tries to make a muta switch he will not have as many roaches as you, and you can probably attack him and end it before he gets too many mutas out.
Infestors do 2 things:
1. FG softens up his roach ball so that your roach ball will win. Also if you outnumber his roaches, FG will prevent him from retreating, and end the game there.
2. FG + queens defends your base against mutas until you can get hydras out, at which point FG + hydras will simply destroy mutas easily.
get evo chamber as soon as you have at least 2 gas and feel comfortable doing so (i don't have a good exact timing for this atm  ) and start +1 ranged attack. Evo chamber should be constantly upgrading, in the following order: +1 attack, +2 attack, +1 carapace, +2 carapace. The reason you get +attack upgrades first, is because roaches get +2 damage per attack upgrades, but only +1 armor per armor upgrades.
If your opponent makes a tech-switch to muta and you aren't able to punish, you'll have to go on the defensive for a bit. Make 1-2 extra infestors, 1-2 extra queens until you can get some hydra out. Once you have sufficient hydra, attack with roach/hydra/infestor/queen. FG any banelings & mutas, roach/hydra/queen kills everything.
If the game goes to 3+ bases, you should get hive and go for broodlord or ultra. Another option on 3base is to make a large tech-switch to muta, as you will build up a lot of gas if you make only roach/infestor on 3 bases (unless you make an obscene amount of infestors).
This is what I do, it works up to 2500.
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I have actually improved to 2150 ish will probably be 2200 soon. I still fell like the only way I win ZvZ is with roach all ins before mutalisks come into play. But once my opponent has mutalisks I feel helpless.
On December 09 2010 05:21 PLxDratewka wrote:
I am very good ZvZ and will be happy to give u some ideas as how to win, in exchange for good strategy/guidance in ZvT. If you are interested email me at: areks13@gmail.com and we can schedule some practice games so you can understand as how to play ZvZ. Ooo I am in Dim. 2100’s and still moving up but I keep losing all ZvT’s...
Yeah I can help you with ZvT, it's probably my best MU. I only really lose ever lose ZvT if I fail at micro when I get pushed sub 9 minutes into the game.
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I used to have alot of issues to until I sat down with my friend for a weekend or two as we were both struggling, i'm 1.2k he's 2.2k, after about 30 matches or so we can now dominate in alot of ZvZ
The general opening we go with is a 14 pool 14 gas, and get out some early +1 speed roaches, you can get enough early to defend your ramp, and once you get about 10+ out you can make an extremely aggressive and hard to hold off push especially if they haven't been keeping up in upgrades or FE.
And on scrap station give up, I always do particularly stupid builds and they seem to work my most recent was a 10 Gas 13 Pool 16 Ling speed 16 Queen 21 Bane nest, once you start researching speed take a drone of gas and just mass out lings until 30-ish supplies morph all the banes you can and go for an attack, if they go for roaches free drone kills otherwise ling/bane micro gooo.
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zvz has been my favorite matchup so far, it's so absurdly volatile it's hilarious. just remember, hydras aren't the counter to mutas, infestors are the counter to mutas.
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I win around 80% of my ZvZ... it is certainly my strongest match-up.
I go roach/hydra on every map with an easily defended ramp. And I never go infestors or mutas in ZvZ. In fact, I have literally never lost a game to an opponent who went infestor or muta. They are a terrible waste of gas that should otherwise be spent in upgrades and hydras.
My only losses come from maps without a choke, where it comes down to ling-bling all-ins.
I highly recommend you take a look at this thread. It has my general strategy and a few replays to show you what I mean.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=167807
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On November 26 2010 02:45 Trevoc wrote:
I'm on the other side of this fence. I find ZvZ very easy to win. I usually set up some early ling pressure to see what they're going to do. If they go lings, I go banelings and if they go roach I do the same. The key to this is to put enough pressure on them to force more roaches than they need. By the time they've made so many roaches.. you have mutas. It always seems to play out this way for me ~2k diamond Z
going roach-->muta can lead to a losing base trade unless you manage to ninja out a drone. If he brings drones with his speed roach/ling army, you will lose horribly, and even if your mutas would otherwise be able to win the base trade, he can use your creep to make spores while he annihilates your main (similarly if you try to use mutas on his army while he attacks your main he can spore it up).
I didn't end up seeing this happen to often above 1500 diamond, prolly because mutas so rarely get made. But I have won a good number of games where this happened when I went for roach speed and they went for spire (assuming they dont send out a few drones when they see me sending mine across the the map, of course I usually do this with a drone or two myself, although mutas are prolly better at hunting down random extractors than lings roaches). Generally they spend all their money trying to get as many lings/spines up as possible rather than just try to win the base trade.
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On November 26 2010 03:41 ganjazerg wrote:
its the strongest ZvZ opening by far. unless you screw up, it beats everything. even if you only pull off mediocre execution, you will come out ahead. the early mobility speed gives you is ridiculously strong, and reinforcements arrive in your enemies base super fast. you can outmicro even larger numbers of enemy lings, pick off drones and run around wrecking havoc. your opponent doesnt have time to tech or do anything. he will be screwed unless he did a similar build.
Roach ramp block? horrible economy?
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On December 09 2010 05:51 Jtn wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2010 05:40 TheMariner wrote:
I am a silver, so take this with a grain of salt (even though this still wiped the floor with a 1900 diamond about a week ago with my horrible execution of the timing push). Basically what I've started doing is a +1 Speedling Push that hits at about the 6 minute mark with about 30 some odd lings.
Still working this out, but the rough BO is:
10 Pool
10 Gas - 3 drones on gas
10 OL
10 Queen
Cut drone production, swap to ling production
12 Evo Chamber
@100 gas - +1 Attack
@100 gas - Ling Speed
All drones on minerals, none on gas
Basically, I just leave 6 or so lings at my ramp to prevent scouting and keep them from scouting the mass of lings building up in my base. Just keep spits going, and be sure to chase enemy OL's out of your base with your queen. I try to keep my Evo Chamber as hidden as possible, but it not always feasible. Both upgrade at the same time if you did everything properly, and you can then push out with approximately 26 +1 speedlings. Just push out and dominate.
Thus far, I have not actually found anything that this loses to. The only time that I have actually lost with this is when I let myself get supply blocked twice and the other guy 7 RR'ed me. 14 lings < 7 roaches. I expect that mass baneling play would stop this, but even in the game against the 1900 diamond that I mentioned, he had banelings ready, but simply did not expect the number of lings that I was able to put out.
I can throw up a replay if you want. So what happens if they blocked the ramp with roaches and are teching to muta or infestor?
If its a ramp like Scrap Station, I can just throw them at the wall until one drops, and then they mop up and the reinforcements clean up. Otherwise, I'm screwed.
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I had tons of trouble with ZvZ and just recently started doing fairly well. It might be a temporary hotstreak, but what I've been doing is scouting on 9 and if I see they're getting pool around 14 or later (they usually always do) I go 14 hatch with fast gas/speed, and just pump a bunch of lings.
I attack around the time speed finishes. If they got really fast blings or roaches they can hold me off, so I just fall back and have a runby threat or some defense in my base. Then I go with whatever tech they had, and have that plus lots of lings and a few spine crawlers for defense while I tech to mutas. If they got roaches or banelings, I mix in some roaches. If they went mass ling too, I get some banelings.
If they got hydras against my mutas, I attack with roach/baneling. Banelings ROCK hydras. Roach/baneling roflstomps roach/hydra unless infestors are mixed in to kill the blings.
Really, the bottom line is that I've started focusing more on high-economy speedling aggression and it seems to work ok.
~1950 zerg
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Information is invaluable in ZvZ. Dare I say, more than any other MU. Something you can do early on is send a scout around 10 food. If you're lucky, you can pretend to run out of his base and then run back in and hide it in a corner in his base. Might want to keep it on a short patrol, so that you don't get pincered if he finds you and tries to kill you with a few workers.
You can use this drone later to scout that key baneling nest, roach warren, lair, etc.
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On November 26 2010 02:41 tx.zyclon wrote:
a good way to learn is to download replays of high level zvzs. dimaga, sen, idra. look through their cam and examine what they do, why they might be doing it, etc.. Then that also will give you maybe a better understanding into your own replays as well. I'm sure people here will watch them and help too, but just so you can help yourself even more.
the problem about its is, first there are nearly no zvz on a decent level, and second, they almost always are ling bling all ins vs ling bling. ive seen several replays from idra, and they where all ling bling
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On December 10 2010 15:20 Shamaya wrote:
Information is invaluable in ZvZ. Dare I say, more than any other MU. Something you can do early on is send a scout around 10 food. If you're lucky, you can pretend to run out of his base and then run back in and hide it in a corner in his base. Might want to keep it on a short patrol, so that you don't get pincered if he finds you and tries to kill you with a few workers.
You can use this drone later to scout that key baneling nest, roach warren, lair, etc.
You can get that information with ling pressure too. 
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EPT
