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Do not post in this thread if you have not read my entire post and watched 1 of my replays One line response is discouraged.
Hi, my friend saw this build on the ladder and tried it on me, it is extremely effective.
We played a total of 4 games and I couldn't figure out a way to stop it, he does a reactor on barracks opening, and throw down a CC into fast expand off 1 barracks. Getting only 1 gas for stim and shield upgrade, terran pumps out a rediculous amount of marines and send them on a rampage all over the map. How should zerg respond to it? Here is a serieis of games we played, I have replays for all of them.
I will commentate on each of the replay, what I tried to accomplish, and what could've been better and what was bad.
Here's game 1:
I don't know about the build yet, but I scouted reactor barracks and more barracks, so I expected some kind of all-in with marine/scv. I build roaches, but I scout later to find he already expanded.
At this point, I don't have enough to attack and my own expansion is behind, I tried to play catch up by expanding one more time, but it is very difficult to saturate all my bases properly and his timing sniped off my expo hatch, and things go downhill from there...
While he is pressuring he expands a lot all over the maps with planteary, and there's not much I can do to stop it since I'm so confined to my own creeps...
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/125564-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis
I think I played well this game, but I could probably connected my creeps better and stay on roach/bling longer while getting infestors. Some baneling feels powerful vs marine balls when they get bigger, just a dash of them. And maybe I should put spine crawlers at locations where I need to defend.
Here's game 2:
So I kind of know what the build is now, and I thought there is a period when his command center just landed where he couldn't reaped enough benefit. I expanded myself and was gearing toward a roach pressure.
However, he has a bunker ready and an obscene amount of marines, my pressure fails and he counter pressure, putting me behind.
I try to gamble by taking the gold, but the terran is too mobile and I have to tap out soon.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/125568-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis
This was a fail game :/
Here's game 3:
So I thought my pressure timing is too late, this time I applied pressure earlier, and at the critical moment when he has only few marines vs my 5 or 6 roaches. I manage to set up a containment while pumping out more roaches to keep my contain and made more drones. But he builds up a good marauder force and when I take a peek up the ramp I saw his army and I thought I couldn't continue to hold his ramp so I backed off and tried to stay defensive, and I thought of getting mutalisks so when his expansion is set up I would have some harassment. He push out at a good timing, kills my natural expansion and it's all downhill from there.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/125572-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis
I think I could've probably denied him from expanding longer by just holding the concave down his ramp so he could never come down, but the fear of losing my entire army out of position overtook me and I moved back. I wasn't sure what's the right response still... Muta transition is definitely not viable, however.
Here's game 4:
We switched roles. I'm a pure zerg player and he's random. So his ZvT should be a lot better than my TvZ. I just followed the build and he attempted a baneling bust. It fails and it is soon GG afterwards. I just had so many marines he couldn't kill all of them.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/125573-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis
This just shows how silly the whole thing can be. I don't play Terran at all and I can just execute this simple build and scrape away a win.
So please look at these replays and think of what could've been down to fair better. The timing on the expansion makes it extremely hard to do a pressure to stop that expand unless you know prior what build he is going for. I suppose you CAN scout the reactor and panic and start to mass roaches. But I don't think a direct counter to the expansion, or to prevent the expansion from being thrown down is the right answer as it is very fragile.
Then it leaves us to either stay on 2 base or take a fast 3rd base. I would love to take a 3rd base but the problem with that is normally when you see your opponent fast expand, we would say "he is in a defensive stance" and that gives us the freedom to extend ourself a bit more. However, with this build he has so many marines he can actually pressure himself, and there is a constant threat of when his mass MM ball can move out to do huge damage. It become extremely hard to saturate your 3 bases while he doesn't have to worry about saturation due to mules.
It is very hard to manage without mutalisks, as they are absolutely useless against his mass marines since he can just ignore and counter, and you would flop over and die. However, the lack of mutalisk means I cannot pin him to his base which really hurts my economy as I feel threatened at all times and cannot power drones. It will be NICE to have a ball of muta flying and baneling on the ground ready, however I have no idea how to reach that point w/o dying straight off to a well timed pressure.
I guess the weakeness to this build is the lack of medivacs, and infestors could probably work well. However the timing on the infestors have to be so precise there is no good way of getting to it that I can think of. I am stripped of gas since I have to produce many roaches to survive and still have enough larvae to make drones. (I dislike ling/bling as it sucks up all your larvae and leaves you weak to power, it is also cost-inefficient to suicide baneling into marines since he has 1 marine for 1 baneling. I need an army that can kill his and not die in the process, and roach is great vs marine w/o medivac support.
So yeah, shed some thought.
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ok, about first game.
about your build order, you can improve a litlle the execution (taking drones off gas sooner, reseach speed earlier) but that's ok. Close air position on metalopolis, you can try hatch first.
About scouting:
you sacrifice an overlord around the 5min30, and there is nothing to see expecially since your stole his gas.
You need to always have 1 zergling at his front, and you can even poke at his ramp to see what units he has.
You should always know where is his army, use lings to control watch tower, a couple of overloard to watch for drops between your main, 1 ling at his third to know when he expend, and 1 ling at his front to know when he leaves his base.
Watch your overlord placement, you loose to many of them, send 1 behind the mineral line of his next expension to see when he expend, but don't leave overlord where they can be killed by marines.
About reacting to his build:
When you saw his command center and few marines you put down a roach warren, few drones and 3 spine.
You don't need the roach warren and the 3 spine. Your opponent does not apply any pressure so you should make a maximum of drones.
In ZvT you usually build roach against helion/thors, you know this is not coming. Against a bio play, when you already have ling speed, just stick with lings/bannelings, and when you are ready get muta.
So, when you see the terran fast expend and you have no army, just make more drones and take your third. Make sure you have a good vision of the map. If he is doing marines, make bannelings and lings and muta to harrass/deal with drops.
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I haven't watched the replay, but im at 2700 diamond terran and i haven't got much, but some game insight, and this is the build I use as my standard build. Zerg macro is the strongest, so if i FE, and zerg 14 hatch, and i leave the zerg alone for too long, he will out macro me. If i try to push out with my small army, its quite small naturally cause i expanded, he just have some spare larvaes that he uses for banelings and speedlings. The best reply to this build, if you're good at macro and multitaksing is, spling, bling and mutas. Just harass the shit out of terran if he tries to move out, while harrassing him, secure a third base and creep spread. This is the standard TvZ and what about 95% of zerg players do.
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Watching Game three atm:
When you broke through with the roaches, you had enough power to push up past that bunker, and take out a bunch more stuff, especially if you took out the marauder. I like to pick off the reactors, and maybe work around to the scv's.
Roaches are good for an early pressure, HOWEVER, the best way of dealing with it all in my opinion is speedling, baneling and mutas.
Once you have those roaches, which ARE good vs the marines, I may have had some banlines up the ramp there, poke with the roaches on his front so he would come away from expo, and go in with the banes to take out the scv's.
Also, the banes really eat up a mass marine army unless the guy has like pro micro. Also, buried banes are GREAT! Especially cuz he doesn't seem to scan.
Another note, try to position your spines so he faces them first. Then flank, OR, try to fight behind (roaches range doesn't work the greatest with that, BUT, this also makes the marines shoot the spines before your roaches. Banes for the flank would be great in this situation as well.
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http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/126003-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis
Just tried it again, felt bit better, did roach -> infestor since it's hard to micro slow bane against marines before speed when I'm bit spread thin.
It works fairly well but he kept pressuring me and I can't stop him from taking expansions. Eventually I crumbed up and its GG.
Some comments?
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You can go 14 hatch 14 pool on pretty much any map (DQ and Sow are hard but doable) and be fine vs marine pressure especially if he doesn´t even go 2rax. Then if you see the terran expanding, don´t try to put pressure on him, just power drones. You need to work on your creep spread, even banes without speed are good on creep. Vs Marine openings I go ling roach banes with a very fast third and stay on tier 1 longer than usual. Then get infestors on tier 2 and fast tier 3. Upgrade carapace asap. Roaches alone just don´t cut it vs higher marine counts.
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On January 09 2011 18:29 evanthebouncy! wrote:http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/126003-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolisJust tried it again, felt bit better, did roach -> infestor since it's hard to micro slow bane against marines before speed when I'm bit spread thin. It works fairly well but he kept pressuring me and I can't stop him from taking expansions. Eventually I crumbed up and its GG. Some comments?
Hey, I just watched that replay and I have some general advice that might help you out:
- Your initial raoches. Why did you build them? I'd say all of these could've been drones.
- You had 2 evo chambers and researched nothing till around 20 minutes. He was on 1:2 when you started 1:1.
- You kept splitting your army and got killed due to too many marines on one army. Many marines kill some blings, but no amount of marines kill a freaking tons of banelings + roaches + infestors. . Yes, marines are mobile, but you are even more mobile. How about some more nydus worm action? Get creative, you seem a little too stuck on these "I gotta do this because the pros do that. I don't see this so I don't do this"
- You had 9 Infestors, a roach and some lings when he had 90 Marines. You kept defending your gold for almost nothing, you lost so much and he just a few marines. Retreat when it's not cost effective to defend(like TLO said- > "Why losing thousands of minerals when you can instead just retreat and build a new one for 300 minerals?"
- Against marines, blings work just fine. you just have to do it right. Fungal THEN blings, not blings then fungal etc etc.
- Don't sacrifice your roaches, you need them after you lost all your blings to a marineball. If you can't get your blings good positioned, just retreat or trick him(bling drop, nydus worm etc)
- Don't expand when you're under such pressure. You expanded when you had almost nothing to defend it. That was risky and you got punished for it.
I'm not saying that you played bad, you did basically the right thing, but you just didn't execute it as well as you could.
My advice:
Stick to the basics, but don't limit yourself there. Get creative! Marines are so easily killed, but they kill things even easier. So try to think of ways to kill them without letting them kill too much.
I love nydus worms against such a terran. He attacks? Get a nydus behind him and when he retreats ...BAM! He runs into some banelings. And then I have my roaches(or maybe even mutas? Depends.) to kill his ecoline or go for the last kill.
Flanking is also a good thing.
Mass Marines are good, yes, but they never beat a zerg with some creativity and enough economy.
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you dont get roaches against mass marines. Against 2 rax mass marines fast expand, I just make zerglings until I know hes not going to push by keeping a constant eye on the marine number and map position of them. Then ill stop and ill start droning which will usually be around 28-30ish supply
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Watched your 2nd and 3rd games.
2nd game, you lost your initial roaches just to kill some scvs. Then, you had 1k minerals later in the game that you didn't use.
3rd game, you went 1 base roaches, but then you expanded before you attacked. That just weakens your attack, since you could've spent that money on lings. Either commit to the attack and stay on one base or expand and don't attack at all.
In both games, terran had a higher food count so your macro needs more work. Banes both games would've helped.
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EPT
