I don't know how many folks have seen this recent tourney match between Idra and AllAboutYou:
After seeing this and realizing how difficult early marine aggression is to defend (the main-nat distance, the tight defense spot near the nat, the rush time), I have done the same three times. Each time I succeed with pretty basic drone micro in taking out all of the opponent's workers.
Does anyone have any experience with this? How would you defend this as Terran? I feel like this is just a 'secret move' that I have in my pocket against T, but it's been so effective that I wonder how many other people have tried it and what their result is.
As a followup, T often lifts up and moves to the island expo (i block the gold with a drone). At this point Z is something like 3 minutes ahead of the T, so just macro mode into mutas is really impossible to lose.
easy to defend. As soon as I see drones come up my ramp I cancel my barracks to get enough money for repair. I build my first depot at my gas.. so it does not get killed.
I just take all my SCVs and put them on autorepair and then I go fucking kill the 12 drones with my 13-14 scvs with repair. The key is not to lose SCV that are building. That breaks you.
On January 04 2011 04:49 wmd221 wrote: Your opponents are not doing this rush correctly by any means if you have more scv's than they have drones, heh
Yeah, it ends up being 12 drones in your base as the 12th scv pops. If they're not quick enough to cancel the barracks and run that SCV back, they also lose the one building the barracks (plus any scouting SCV).
On January 04 2011 04:50 JiSu wrote: On maps like these just scout and build SD early like 9 instead at 10. SD at 9 scout at 9. Make sure no dumb cheese happen
But still, what's your response? Now you have one less SCV who scouted and isn't going to be in the beginning of the fight, plus one less when they arrive for cutting SCVs for the supply depot. Even if you try to wall off your main, the drones can pick off the building SCVs and you won't have time or the cash to put up a barracks before they're in.
by watching some of PsY's casts, I think that the most effective way for T to hold this off is to remain in the mineral line and use their outer 4 scvs mining in the extreme mineral patches as a sort of wall against the drones. the scvs in the middle can simply repair the outer 4 scvs quite safely.
On January 04 2011 04:57 SirOwnsalot wrote: by watching some of PsY's casts, I think that the most effective way for T to hold this off is to remain in the mineral line and use their outer 4 scvs mining in the extreme mineral patches as a sort of wall against the drones. the scvs in the middle can simply repair the outer 4 scvs quite safely.
I've come across this, and I just mineral walk half my drones to get a full surround, and it's very effective. Even with repair, a concave tends to win, especially since Z can pull red drones out of the battle and put them back in the battle queue while they heal a bit
yea idra tried this in ladder, the T blocked off with supply depo and Idra got there realized it and rage quit >_< a build that is probably harder to pull off than a 6 pool
I do this every time I get ZvT on steppes. The one loss I have is when the terran just ran his scvs around not engaging my drones until he had a marine out, at which point he protected his marine with all his scvs and won. Alternatively if you wall off at the bottom of the ramp it's an auto win.
On January 04 2011 05:16 Saracen wrote: T can just wall off to stall until he gets the worker advantage.
If you get there at the right time, he can't afford to wall off the top of his ramp unless he put his first supply there, which is becoming less and less popular.
I'm sure T can beat this, and will have to adjust their early game to be safe against this - but I really want to spread the word of the relative effectiveness of this in order to make T's stop playing this map like Kulas where they can just macro as hard as they want from the start.
Very easy to deal with and it started from the Morrow vs Strelok game
I did a lot of practice with this with my team... All you need to do as terran is cancel your rax, continue to make scvs(Cancel Rax for repair money)... then it becomes a micro battle but not really since you will be ahead in the count... If you can try to pick off the last two drones that come in by the zerg if not shouldn't matter too much because you will still be ahead.
Once you get about 14 workers put 1 on repair and a-move when you have the concave or equal, make sure that all scvs are attacking except the one that is repairing
You can't just wall off if the Z does it right. The correct zerg way to do it is to send 1-2 drones at the right time, earlier, before the rest. You can block the wall-off location with those drones until the rest arrive (similar to how this is done when you six pool). But yeah, if the zerg doesn't do this, you can quickly wall off to buy time if you scout it.
Practiced this like 25 times with PsY. There is no hard counter. You just have to worker micro, and hope you come out ahead. The best thing to do is fight in the mineral line and have the SCVs in the back repair but the Z player can stop this by splitting drones into two groups and attacking the back and the front simultaneously.
Basically you need to avoid a straight-up confrontation. You want to get in a fight in a narrow space and auto-repair with non-attacking SCVs.
On January 04 2011 05:35 iEchoic wrote: You can't just wall off if the Z does it right. The correct zerg way to do it is to send 1-2 drones at the right time, earlier, before the rest. You can block the wall-off location with those drones until the rest arrive (similar to how this is done when you six pool). But yeah, if the zerg doesn't do this, you can quickly wall off to buy time if you scout it.
Practiced this like 25 times with PsY. There is no hard counter. You just have to worker micro, and hope you come out ahead. The best thing to do is fight in the mineral line and have the SCVs in the back repair but the Z player can stop this by splitting drones into two groups and attacking the back and the front simultaneously.
Basically you need to avoid a straight-up confrontation. You want to get in a fight in a narrow space and auto-repair with non-attacking SCVs.
Meh, this seemed pretty easy to stop the first time I encountered it in ladder, I did a quick cast of it since it only took 3 minutes.
Feel free to let me know your thoughts, I noticed my opponent sent his drones slightly earlier and left the last 2 not quite rallied as fast as they could've been, but with that positioning 2 more drones sitting in the back won't help at all so it doesn't matter, basically it seems to me just not building a rax when you scout this (should be pretty easy to see coming with an 11 scout or so, even if your opponent tries to "jook"" you as I think Slush did with some success in EG Masters), sitting in your mineral line, continuing to make scvs and having 4ish scvs on auto repair hard counters this strategy... Also not sure if him right clicking my minerals to quickly move into position might be good or bad. Final thought would be that even doing any kind of splitting drones is going to buy time for that crucial 13th scv to get out...
Upon rewatching IdrA do it, it really looks like he phased just a couple drones across to get a concave, definitely nice touch and good micro, I guess I would be curious to test it more but I definitely think Terran has the advantage with this.
On January 04 2011 05:35 iEchoic wrote: You can't just wall off if the Z does it right. The correct zerg way to do it is to send 1-2 drones at the right time, earlier, before the rest. You can block the wall-off location with those drones until the rest arrive (similar to how this is done when you six pool). But yeah, if the zerg doesn't do this, you can quickly wall off to buy time if you scout it.
Practiced this like 25 times with PsY. There is no hard counter. You just have to worker micro, and hope you come out ahead. The best thing to do is fight in the mineral line and have the SCVs in the back repair but the Z player can stop this by splitting drones into two groups and attacking the back and the front simultaneously.
Basically you need to avoid a straight-up confrontation. You want to get in a fight in a narrow space and auto-repair with non-attacking SCVs.
Meh, this seemed pretty easy to stop the first time I encountered it in ladder, I did a quick cast of it since it only took 3 minutes.
You responded well, but a lot of situational stuff made that look easier than it should be:
1) He didn't split his drones. This doesn't take any more time, you just put 4-5 drones in a ctrl group and go around and both of groups arrive at the minerals at the same time. I'm not sure about the mineral thing he did, it didn't look terrible but I'm not convinced it's as good as surrounding the mineral line.
2) He attacked on the depot side. This meant that two more drones came and did nothing because they got stuck on the depot. He never fixed them.
It's something that basically depends entirely on micro, he just didn't micro as well.
On January 04 2011 19:01 Elean wrote: I've not even tested if it is possible, but can't you just wall at the bottom of the ramp with 1 supply and 1 barracks ?
This actually makes it worse - the rax is exposing so much surface area that the drones will kill the rax very quickly, and the working scv will die while constructing if he continues to work.
The first time I saw a drone rush on this map was from PsyStarcraft, and seeing as it hasn't yet been posted here, HUSSAH!
What better way to abuse the short rush distance than to uh... Rush. Very effective on this map and always entertaining, although its completely micro based that decides who will end up on top.
Edit: Oh, and even though terran can repair themselves, keep in mind SCVs cannot repair AND attack at the same time. Therefore, if a zerg gets a good surround, they have a really good chance at winning with this strategy, although it is still possible for terran to do effective repair micro in confined spaces.
EPT
