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Point Of This Post
I believe I have found a way to play zerg that avoids the late game pitfalls that you fall in to with roach/hydra/corruptor. Below I outline the general strategy, and compare it with roach based play via an analysis of the recent code S match between + Show Spoiler +, as it was a beautiful display of core issues in the current ZvP meta.
Supplementary Replays
some recent ZvP replays
About Me
+ Show Spoiler +I played starcraft from 1998-2002 before I raged at goliaths and got sucked in to counter-strike. I came back to RTS during SC2 beta, so I have been away for a while. I have been casually watching pro brood war and GSL throughout this ~12 year timeframe. Playing around 3400 masters on the ladder. I am old.
Basic Strategy
+ Show Spoiler +This has nothing to do with build orders, it is just a loose framework of how to approach the match-up. The aim is to do the following, in no particular order:
- Get an expansion
- Get ling speed
- Get melee/armor upgrades
- Get banelings
- Get more bases
- Get overlord upgrades
- Get infestors
The aim is to reach the midgame with upgraded ling/baneling and infestors. Hydras or Ultras are added when econ allows for it
Why these upgrades? Why these units?
- You are going to be using a lot of lings, so get ling speed.
- You are going to be using banelings against sentries, so get drops and over lord speed
- +2 melee for your core army/allows 1 shot kills on workers with banelings/smooth ultra
transition
- +2 carapace keeps your ling armor on par with zeal attack upgrades, smooth ultra transition
- Infestors step in to mitigate damage once colossus hit critical mass. They also compliment
baneling drops when sentries are still in play. In other words you get extra force field
management at tier 2 instead of waiting for ultras. They are relatively safe from getting sniped
when there are baneling linebackers in front of them, making NP not a waste of time and energy
- Once infestors are in play, It is no longer pointless to invest in hydras vs colossus. Just as
banelings protect the infestors, the infestors in a way protect the hydras. In return the hydras
protect infestors from anything that gets by the banelings, such as unexpected flanks, phoenix,
and blink stalkers. This unit chemistry reminds me of a strong chess position where the pieces
work in unison and allow their teammates to play at their maximum potential (like D ROSE).
- Focusing on banelings rather than roaches opens up more early game larva for droning. The
simple ability to morph or not to morph should not be overlooked when squeezing out as many
drones as possible. With roaches you get safety right this instant, with zergling/baneling
you get econ right this instant, and safety when you need it.
When should I take my third?
- Against heavy sentry: as a general rule, if you have any chance of being monster ranched by
forcefields, you want to time it so that overlord drops has kicked in.
- Against anything else take it early. upgraded lings against stalkers is fun. Early void rays can
be annoying to expand against but if you plan ahead with an extra queen or two connecting your
your natural and third it should be easy to hold it. If you even think they are doing anything
more than one void ray, build a spore and walk it over there so you can plant it as soon as the
the hatch finishes or your creep gets there, whichever comes first.
What if they go dts and I wasn't ready for it?
- 4 emergency manually detonated banelings per dt is better than losing the game.
Strengths
+ Show Spoiler +This is an extremely focused strategy where each upgrade works together cohesively with the rest of your gas investments. This focus opens up more opportunities for droning harder, and in turn exponential gains on your way to the late game. Hydra drops compliment this style well, whether he is going colossus or not. Having a strong baneling foundation allows for two amazing units, hydra and infestor, to be added without a huge "what-if-he-transitions-to-x?" risk. I'd like to emphasize the fact that you get comfort at tier 2 without any huge rush to get to tier 3. A very natural and focused tech progression with a clear plan leads to confidence and smoothness in your play and should not be understated.
Weaknesses
+ Show Spoiler +Strong tactical play from the protoss is the biggest weakness. Any experienced protoss will be picking off overlords filled with banelings by using blink stalkers or anything else that shoots up. You can help with this by prioritizing sentries with fungal growth and a follow up drop on them. Once they are removed you no longer need to haul banes in overlords. Archons are sexy as hell against ling/baneling. This is balanced out by them being a prime target for NP. High temps are obviously a great choice against this, even just feedback is huge for increasing the potency of the toss army by taking away any advantages infestors give. Immortals are strong if you can avoid having them get surrounded by zerglings. Finally, you are vulnerable to sentry based attacks before drops come in to play, which is why it is critical to have drops done around the time a typical 6 gate timing hits. I will take playing with these weaknesses over supply hogs like roach/corruptor.
Comparison with roach/hydra and a Code-S case study
+ Show Spoiler +JulyZerg is fucking awesome. If you watch his game against MC: http://www.gomtv.net/2011gslsponsors2/vod/61321He played a strategy brilliantly. He maxed out fast against a stalker/sentry/col army with roach/hydra/corruptor/banelings in overlords. That is a sick composition, but he got absolutely and utterly destroyed. Why? I think it's for a several reasons. Let's go with the obvious fact that MC is amazing. His micro was flawless, expansion timing was godly, and his transition to HT was completely smooth. What could July have done? How could he have balanced his roach/corruptor/hydra composition so that he had a chance to even approach MC's army? Would he have done better to just not do banelings at all? Maybe, but my answer to this question is, I don't think there is really any possible way he could have balanced that better other than the fact he overproduced corruptors. But what would he make instead, more roaches? Sure he sloppily attack moved after his baneling drops got managed, but the game was over before that happened, and July knew it. I think a better question to ask is, what is wrong with his composition and what could be changed? Roaches and corruptors are supply hogs. Overproducing corruptors allows you to get a litttle bit suicidal on colossus to open up attack potential. Even after the colossus go down, sentries still stand. Roach/hydra isn't that good against stalker/sentry, especially when you have overproduced corruptors and are playing against a 3-4 base toss that is already transitioning in to high temps to make your hydras useless. July knows this so he gets baneling drops, the idea being that if he can get rid of the sentries his roach/hydra can actually attack. MC, being a step ahead made it impossible for july to get rid of sentries by keeping them back, and keeping overlords at bay with blink stalkers. Now July has killed the colossus sure, but he is left with a mostly useless roach army that gets dominated by forcefields, and a wasted investment of banelings and overlord drops. At the core of this scenario is one driving theme: the roaches keep you alive and allow you to max out, but your chances of attacking are absolutely nil with sentries in play. Your anti sentry plan got anti-anti-sentried so you're now stuck with 80-100 supply of useless roaches, no hive tech, and shitty upgrades. July's strategy, and in my opinion the current zerg approach lacks focus. There is no smooth hive transition because you spend all money(and supply) on corruptors. Against a player like MC, shit gets real before you have a chance to safely get to hive/brood lords. There isn't enough gas to go around for hive, 3-3 upgrades(let alone 2-2), corruptor upgrades, greater spire, banelings, and overlord drops. The composition is spread way too thin to have any chance at a reasonable time. Think about this: The entire point of going roaches is they are great defensively against gateway based attacks, and alternatives like ling/muta absolutely suck balls in this matchup. The transition to corruptor is pretty smooth as well once colossus are made in response. Roaches are simply not an effective core unit against protoss in the late game. I firmly believe they become obsolete against any 3+ base protoss. Starting with ling/baneling drops circumvents this need for roaches, and allows real chances for guaranteed sentry removal with fungal growth and banelings. Even if you can't attack, you can safely expand and naturally make your way to 3/5 ultras which decimate stalker/col/sentry/temp. I don't know what a player like MC would do against this defensive baneling drop in to infestor+hydra style, but I can almost guarantee it will look completely different than stalker/sentry/col.
Muta/Ling Is Terrible
+ Show Spoiler +I'm going to go out on a limb here and say muta/ling is terrible against toss and should not be bothered with. The reason being you are critically vulnerable to forcefield pressure before your spire is up, and even after that, gshield is so good, as are phoenix transitions. Great harrasment combo for sure, but you eventually need to kill the death ball to win. I think some kind of ling/muta/corruptor combo has promise against phoenix/void/col, but un-upgraded muta/corruptor are too quick to become useless after a complete non-colossus transition to ground. For it to be useful there would have to be a well thought out path to broodlord and I don't see that happening while getting upgrades for both air and ground. It's possible, but not focused. As an example of a pretty good player falling in to this trap, watch + Show Spoiler +
Conclusion
+ Show Spoiler +Check out the replays for a basic idea of what you can get away with, and where there is room for improvement. There are like 10 games in that rep pack, but to make it easier I plan to edit this post later with replays that demonstrate all the key points against toss that I feel are stronger. I will also comment a couple of losses of mine that showcase mistakes I've made that are completely avoidable, such as overdroning, approaching a death ball the wrong way, impatient attacks, and trying to force a win and losing an advantage.
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Interesting, but I don't think that its that effective. The reason roaches and hydras are great are because they are durable, larvae efficient, and cost efficient. Banelings are incredibly supply efficient (400 banes beats any ground army except mass tanks and mass T3); but they aren't that larvae efficient and they cost a TON. Basically, roaches let you drone harder. However, relying partially on baneling drops, especially once collosi are out allows you to abuse their AoE damage against a protoss deathball. It will work, but it is going to cost more than the toss spent on their deathball.
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How do you deal with a protoss who incorporates air (carriers, mothership) and sentries into his deathball once he realizes you're primarily going baneling/infestor? Sentries IMO are the hardest thing for banelings to deal with.
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heres the thing tho your not saving larva going bling infestor. Zerglings take up more larva than roaches to get an affective mass.
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The banelings are quite awesome against deathballs.
But your strategy of just baneling infestor, is not very awesome.
See, for example, banelings against marine balls, are also great. But in ZvT, you dont just go mass baneling, and hope he goes mass marines. You either scout that he is going mass marines, and respond with banelings, or you harass with mutas, forcing him to make marines, and then you make banelings.
But the problem with your strategy, is that you are just hoping that the toss will make a deathball so you can use your banelings. There is nothing in your strat to force him to clump up, and there is nothing in your strat to punish him if he doesnt clump up. If he splits his ball in 5, and attacks all of your bases at once before reaching his supply cap, then you are basically dead.
Its true that the "standard" play for toss right now is to just sit back, and make a big deathball, yes. And if you leave a toss all alone, he will most likely just sit back and build a deathball by default, also true.
But since there is absolutely nothing in your strategy forcing him to do that, if you actually meet a toss who understands the purpose, and more importantly, the reason for forming a deathball....
Hell, he could even make a deathball, realize that you have absolutely nothing threatening to units that arent clumped up, spread out all his forces and attack you, and you cant do anything about it :/
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On February 12 2011 13:38 morimacil wrote:
The banelings are quite awesome against deathballs.
But your strategy of just baneling infestor, is not very awesome.
See, for example, banelings against marine balls, are also great. But in ZvT, you dont just go mass baneling, and hope he goes mass marines. You either scout that he is going mass marines, and respond with banelings, or you harass with mutas, forcing him to make marines, and then you make banelings.
But the problem with your strategy, is that you are just hoping that the toss will make a deathball so you can use your banelings. There is nothing in your strat to force him to clump up, and there is nothing in your strat to punish him if he doesnt clump up. If he splits his ball in 5, and attacks all of your bases at once before reaching his supply cap, then you are basically dead.
Its true that the "standard" play for toss right now is to just sit back, and make a big deathball, yes. And if you leave a toss all alone, he will most likely just sit back and build a deathball by default, also true.
But since there is absolutely nothing in your strategy forcing him to do that, if you actually meet a toss who understands the purpose, and more importantly, the reason for forming a deathball....
Hell, he could even make a deathball, realize that you have absolutely nothing threatening to units that arent clumped up, spread out all his forces and attack you, and you cant do anything about it :/
Correct me if I'm wrong but banelings are more larva efficient than roach. Take a simple case to hold some early pressure - 10 larva worth of lings vs 10 larva worth of roaches. You get 10 roaches which are nice defenders but they immediately cost 75/25. If you just build the 20 zerglings and wait to morph them until you absolutely need them, you will be able to get more drones out because you only spent 50 mins instead of 75 right at that moment when you committed the larva to defense. You can get on 4 gas quicker, and take a 3rd quicker. Of course 20 banelings costs twice as much than 10 roaches in the long run but you don't even have to commit all the lings to banelings anyway and having the option to choose when you make them is huge when you are trying to squeeze drones out. Just take what you need to survive and drone your balls off the rest of the time. Roach takes away some of this flexibility because you are spending the 75 minerals and 25 gas right that moment. Remember, this was an argument for larva efficiency, not cost efficiency. If you want to compare 10 roach vs 10 baneling + 10 ling go for it, but take in to consideration the flexibility i just mentioned seven times.
I am not intimidated at all against a toss spreading his forces. 2-2 lings shred separated units easily and you just keep your infestors ready to np immortal/archon/colossus/void rays/mothership/whatever. Banelings act as linebackers to shit on the chest of anyone who wants to approach the infestors. Besides all that, I question how much a toss can spread his units effectively when baneling splash radius is super retardedly large.
The entire point, though, is that the baneling/infestor composition is designed to take down death balls, but it is flexible enough to where you can do anything you want if he plays a real game. You aren't married to it. You always have the option of not morphing to banes at all. It is just the go-to to keep you alive against dumb all ins while you get on 8 gas and punish him for playing like a tool.
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On February 12 2011 13:16 Vod.kaholic wrote:
How do you deal with a protoss who incorporates air (carriers, mothership) and sentries into his deathball once he realizes you're primarily going baneling/infestor? Sentries IMO are the hardest thing for banelings to deal with.
If a protoss is going mass air I cut way back on banelings and put 12 ish in overlords for the sentries and switch to corruptor or hydra. I haven't faced heavy carrier play whlie doing this opening. In my experience straight hydra blows ass against carrier and hydra/infestor is fragile against it, so I think a corruptor switch is the strongest way to go. In the replays I posted there are several reps of forcefield being negligible because they were trying to attack spots that were protected by banelings in overlords.
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On February 12 2011 13:16 Vod.kaholic wrote:
How do you deal with a protoss who incorporates air (carriers, mothership) and sentries into his deathball once he realizes you're primarily going baneling/infestor? Sentries IMO are the hardest thing for banelings to deal with.
Really? Banelings melt sentries last time I checked. With map-control from zerglings, you can flank the protoss ball from whatever position you want to. If you bottle up all your units and wait for him to be at your choke, then yeah, sentries are hard to deal with. If protoss gets flanked from 3 directions to bait forcefields, then they are not really effective.
Also, its not as if the Protoss is suddenly going to have 5 void rays without the zerg player knowing. It's easy to toss up a hydra den or spire and make an adjustment.
For the OP:
I think a general framework of the build will help facilitate discussion. Such as...
Times when you scout, what to do when you scout it, and how you respond to it. You're going to get a lot of people saying "that is a weak build" or "thats so dumb [read: raven]", or "LOL 4 warp gate owns this". People are lazy and probably won't look at your replays.
I think by getting up your 3rd's and 4th's faster than usual by relying on banelings will set you up for a good mid/late game. It's Protoss' imperative to stop those expansions. From what I've seen, simple gateway pushes (read 4wg or 6gate stalker) aren't going to work. After a protoss scouts the baneling nest with whatever they SHOULD respond to it (templars or void rays). I think void rays are your biggest threat since it forces gas to be spent elsewhere that you may not want to.
For what its worth, banelings are really scary to play against. I think people overestimate how well sentries do on the offensive while in transit to the zerg players base. They aren't that great when they are out of position. They are also very gas intensive, which delays tech like a boss. Yeah, its cash when you get good forcefields, but try forcefielding on a 360 degree battlefield instead of at a choke. Any good zerg player will force Protoss players to burn forcefields en-route.
The protoss deathball is just that: a death ball. If it starts to split up then its effectiveness starts to drop drastically. I think this can be strong by focusing on banelings & infestors. Banelings are freaking fast, so they can essentially flank at a moments notice. Infestors ensure the deathball stays pretty tightly packed. The rest writes itself.
On February 12 2011 13:38 morimacil wrote:
But since there is absolutely nothing in your strategy forcing him to do that, if you actually meet a toss who understands the purpose, and more importantly, the reason for forming a deathball....
Hell, he could even make a deathball, realize that you have absolutely nothing threatening to units that arent clumped up, spread out all his forces and attack you, and you cant do anything about it :/
What? Splitting up a deathball is pretty much a sure way to lose.
EDIT: It's also pretty easy to spot protoss players that ARENT going for the deathball and adjust accordingly.
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Watched the first game, and that looked beautiful. I love how many lings and banelings there are, the only weakness looks like air, which is becoming more and more popular. You can always adapt to it, and if you do get him to spread his death ball then those extra 50 zerglings have something to be attacking. Definitely worth a shot just because how awesome it is to pull off.
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Well what I like in what you said is getting upgrades early for the banelings, I want to try going for the typical 2 base burrow roach so I can hold of 6 gates and then instead of going for a spire to get broodlords I'm going to use that money to get overlord upgrades, baneling upgrades, infestors and the banelings themselves. So I want to attack with my roaches, trap his army with some fungals and then move in and drop banelings while remaxing on hydras.
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II looked at this build and then decided to try it out. Been having trouble opening with lings to fend off a 4 gate even with extra queens. So I adapted it and did a roach opening that I was more comfortable with and switched over to banelings. Roaches are not food efficient but they're really gas efficient compared to banelings against smaller numbers and they do well on creep early on without speed, which banelings aren't great at.
Roaches allow me to get the lair down fast and get a quick scout in to spot the robo, templar or stargate tech and if I see robo go down it's banelings ahoy. On most maps it's easy to take out a third as they're establishing it due to the fact that you can get so many lings and banes out quickly. and anything short of high templar or colossi are just terrible at killing lings and banes quickly and zealots can be outmaneuvered.
I generally go with 4 or so infestors so that I can mind control the colossi after the banelings have hit because it allows the lings to clean up really well when they don't have to deal with it shooting them. I also like getting a lot of queens early with the roaches because you can use them for early defense, get more drones out, have some air defense and spread creep to make the banelings more effective. The creep spread is really important because it allows you to move your banelings out early, see the enemy coming and make them move faster so more of them collide instead of getting shot on the way into the deathball. With good creep spread you can keep a lot of bases protected.
Overall the concept is awesome. But anyone who uses it should know how and when to use it properly.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but banelings are more larva efficient than roach. Take a simple case to hold some early pressure - 10 larva worth of lings vs 10 larva worth of roaches. You get 10 roaches which are nice defenders but they immediately cost 75/25. If you just build the 20 zerglings and wait to morph them until you absolutely need them, you will be able to get more drones out because you only spent 50 mins instead of 75 right at that moment when you committed the larva to defense. You can get on 4 gas quicker, and take a 3rd quicker.
I'm not sure if you know what larvae efficiency means. The point is, 10 larvae worth of roaches tends to be stronger than 10 larvae worth of Lings. That means, instead of using 10 larvae to make Roaches, you make, say, 5. But you need 10 Larvae worth of Lings for the same defense. That means there's 5 extra drone larvae to use.
I'm not sure how you try to argue against larvae efficiency by completely ignoring larvae efficiency. It's sorta like arguing against a unit being cost efficient by ignoring how much they actually cost.
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The baneling bomb destories the sentries and zealots within the army as well as taking out all the shields on most of the stalkers.
This will mean:
If protoss engages he will not be able to forcefield out your army to stop the surround, nor will he be able to use guardian shield. All his units will also have half the effective hit points.
Backs up - lets you macro up hard to get to a 300 food push.
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On February 12 2011 18:29 Lochat wrote:Show nested quote +
Correct me if I'm wrong but banelings are more larva efficient than roach. Take a simple case to hold some early pressure - 10 larva worth of lings vs 10 larva worth of roaches. You get 10 roaches which are nice defenders but they immediately cost 75/25. If you just build the 20 zerglings and wait to morph them until you absolutely need them, you will be able to get more drones out because you only spent 50 mins instead of 75 right at that moment when you committed the larva to defense. You can get on 4 gas quicker, and take a 3rd quicker.
I'm not sure if you know what larvae efficiency means. The point is, 10 larvae worth of roaches tends to be stronger than 10 larvae worth of Lings. That means, instead of using 10 larvae to make Roaches, you make, say, 5. But you need 10 Larvae worth of Lings for the same defense. That means there's 5 extra drone larvae to use. I'm not sure how you try to argue against larvae efficiency by completely ignoring larvae efficiency. It's sorta like arguing against a unit being cost efficient by ignoring how much they actually cost.
Not if you morph them into banelings. a roach is more larva efficient than 2 lings, but not two banelings. That's 1 larva for 100/50 worth of army. Against a large ball of units that works out to be way way more efficient when you consider how many attacks a roach will get off on average before it dies to the death ball compared to how many units a baneling can splash.
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What? Splitting up a deathball is pretty much a sure way to lose.
Not really. Its a sure way to lose if your opponent actually has something that can punish you for splitting up your units, thats true.
Against something like muta-ling, if you split up your army, then the full zerg army can engage each split up part separately, meaning that zerg wins the battles easily.
If you spread it out, then not everything is shooting at once, and lings get super nice surrounds, so its awesome for the zerg.
Just imagine for example a single zealot attacking your expo.
You are going muta-ling: Great, a free zealot!
You are going roach hydra: Great, a free zealot!
You are going infestor baneling: Uh. Use up 5 banelings to kill a single zealot? Or fungal growth it with a few infested marines?
The issue is, with other styles, any stray units are free pickings, forcing the toss units to stay together, and eventually form what we came to know as the deathball. With just infestor-bling, you dont have that.
Single colossus wandering around, away from his deathball. Against other styles: wohoo! free colossus! :D
But against bling-infestor? Using up 18 banelings to blow it up isnt really a great option.
Neural parasite and a bunch of infested tewrrans is probably the best thing to take it out, but even then, its still 175 energy from your infestors, so its still not a super awesome deal really.
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well said morimacil. if i see a zerg with this composition, i'm going to separate my colossi into individual groups with a few gateway units each, and strike all over his base at once. nothing he can do.
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Im sure you two above posters realize he doesnt have to morph every ling right
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so many of your opponents read this as some kind of pre-lair allin i guess? so they get void rays, which turn out to do be really useless most of the time.
a lot of the battles you won could have gone in P's favor if they forcefielded better, or got templar/archons instead of some of these other useless units.
still seems like a pretty good style, though.
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i m also a about 2800 master zerg and im using a quite similar build, so id like to correct some mistakes your post has^^
1. HT doenst work well against banelings. a baneling with speed can roll through a storm off creep and survive with 1 hp, so a toss needs multiple storms to stop banelings, making hts quite useless
2. i personally found out that adding a few queens to support your mix (like +5) allow you to
- spread creep waaay more efficient
- deal with voidrays
- allow you to use neural parasite (infestor+transfuse)
- strenghen hive tech
3. using ling/bling/queen allows you to tech to hive on 2 base, if you play on a map that blizzard made cause they hate expanding players (half joke but you know what im talking about)
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I like this style, and I think it could work fine, especially since it is non-standard. It makes perfect sense to fight clumped armies with area of effect attacks. I've really been trying to figure out how to incorporate infestors in ZvP to combat the deathball protoss. I haven't focused on baneling use as much, but I've started to experiment. Colossi with gateway units concentrate so much firepower into such a small space that it is really difficult for zerg to take that on with a traditional army. If you consider a Colossi/Void/Zealot army, consists of 3 "types" of units that can occupy the same space on the battle field...
air units
normal ground
cliff walking ground, that can stand "over" normal ground.
...then we can see the incredible power of just a single fungal growth to hit a ridiculous amount of units at once. It would be possible to hit 6 voids, 8 zeals, and 2 colossus, with a single fungal, dealing 608 points of damage (16 targets x 38 damage). A single baneling actually has a splash of 2.2 versus just 2.0 for fungal, so while it couldn't hit the voids, might hit a couple more zealots producing the following damage...
10 zeals (350 damage), 2 cols (40 damage), for a total of 390 damage from a single 50/25 half supply unit.
Such is the power of area effect attacks on clumped/stacked armies. Compare that potential to the expected damage output of a roach or a hydra, or even a corruptor, and you'll see that for cost, they can't measure up.
Lets not ignore the fact that Neural Parasite on Colossus is another powerful form of area of attack for the infestor. As a hypothetical example of what Neural Parasiting a single Colossus could do, we take the Colossus DPS of 18.2, if it hits on average, just 3 protoss units per attack, it could do a total of 819 damage (15 secs * 18.2 DPS * 3 units). This only improves with target firing the center of the protoss ball, especially if the ball is tightly packed and fungaled.
This style is often going to lead to either an easy win, or a devastating loss. So fragile are banes and infestors, that it becomes primarily a battle of micro between you and your opponent. Yes its hard to neural parasite Colossus and/or Voids, but it all comes down to proper technique and good micro. Successful Neural Parasiting often involves either immobilizing the enemy with fungal, with swarms of units, or by taking advantage of terrain.
Crash 8 banelings into a single stalker? LOSS
Get 22 banelings pinned in by forcefields and shot down by Colossus? LOSS
Fungal a tightly packed ball and drop banes on to it? WIN!
One of its strengths is that you have more tools for harassing the protoss. You can try to get banelings into his probe line, you can fungal/infested terran probe lines, you can drop banes, you can burrow ambush with banes, etc...
Maxed armies of ling/bane/infestor are huge, thanks to their low supply requirements. That is not even considering the capacity of a 2 supply unit (infestor) potentially being able to spawn 8 infested terran.
I don't think we see this strategy very often because the micro requirement is so intense. Zerg already spends a lot of APM on macro, that it can be very difficult to devote the time to carefully managing an army composed of suicide bombers and spell casters.
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On February 12 2011 19:24 morimacil wrote:Not really. Its a sure way to lose if your opponent actually has something that can punish you for splitting up your units, thats true. Against something like muta-ling, if you split up your army, then the full zerg army can engage each split up part separately, meaning that zerg wins the battles easily. If you spread it out, then not everything is shooting at once, and lings get super nice surrounds, so its awesome for the zerg. Just imagine for example a single zealot attacking your expo. You are going muta-ling: Great, a free zealot! You are going roach hydra: Great, a free zealot! You are going infestor baneling: Uh. Use up 5 banelings to kill a single zealot? Or fungal growth it with a few infested marines? The issue is, with other styles, any stray units are free pickings, forcing the toss units to stay together, and eventually form what we came to know as the deathball. With just infestor-bling, you dont have that. Single colossus wandering around, away from his deathball. Against other styles: wohoo! free colossus! :D But against bling-infestor? Using up 18 banelings to blow it up isnt really a great option. Neural parasite and a bunch of infested tewrrans is probably the best thing to take it out, but even then, its still 175 energy from your infestors, so its still not a super awesome deal really.
What are you talking about? I don't even...
You do realize the zerg player is going to have mountains of zerglings at his disposal right? Splitting up your colossi against zerglings, blings, and infestors is not a smart idea.
He isn't going to tunnel vision himself into only having baneling and infestor as you're implying.
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Well that really seems to be the main focus of his post though.
"The goal is to get a solid baneling/infestor composition with all relevant upgrades to these units"
"What is different about this is, you rely purely on banelings and queens to survive"
"It will blow ass against 40 banelings + whatever infestors you mustered."
And so on, the OP doesnt really mention using lings at any point in his game, and goes outof his way to mention he will be going pure infestor baneling multiple times.
It could just be that the OP's post isnt descriptive of what he actually meant, and perhaps he is just going for ling-bling-infestor instead of ling-bling muta. In which case its probably a good idea to point out that the style has been done a lot in ZvT, usually with a few roaches in there, so there might be stuff to gain from it, and it might be worth incorporating some roaches, since they are more efficient against toss than terran in general, and are integral to the ZvT build to efficiently punish small groups of units, something that fungal and blings cant really do.
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On February 13 2011 04:19 morimacil wrote:
Well that really seems to be the main focus of his post though.
"The goal is to get a solid baneling/infestor composition with all relevant upgrades to these units"
"What is different about this is, you rely purely on banelings and queens to survive"
"It will blow ass against 40 banelings + whatever infestors you mustered."
And so on, the OP doesnt really mention using lings at any point in his game, and goes outof his way to mention he will be going pure infestor baneling multiple times.
It could just be that the OP's post isnt descriptive of what he actually meant, and perhaps he is just going for ling-bling-infestor instead of ling-bling muta. In which case its probably a good idea to point out that the style has been done a lot in ZvT, usually with a few roaches in there, so there might be stuff to gain from it, and it might be worth incorporating some roaches, since they are more efficient against toss than terran in general, and are integral to the ZvT build to efficiently punish small groups of units, something that fungal and blings cant really do.
Check out his conclusion.
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On February 13 2011 04:19 morimacil wrote:
Well that really seems to be the main focus of his post though.
"The goal is to get a solid baneling/infestor composition with all relevant upgrades to these units"
"What is different about this is, you rely purely on banelings and queens to survive"
"It will blow ass against 40 banelings + whatever infestors you mustered."
And so on, the OP doesnt really mention using lings at any point in his game, and goes outof his way to mention he will be going pure infestor baneling multiple times.
It could just be that the OP's post isnt descriptive of what he actually meant, and perhaps he is just going for ling-bling-infestor instead of ling-bling muta. In which case its probably a good idea to point out that the style has been done a lot in ZvT, usually with a few roaches in there, so there might be stuff to gain from it, and it might be worth incorporating some roaches, since they are more efficient against toss than terran in general, and are integral to the ZvT build to efficiently punish small groups of units, something that fungal and blings cant really do.
You should really read the whole OP before making blanket statements...
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Canada749 Posts
On February 12 2011 19:07 Ziggitz wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2011 18:29 Lochat wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong but banelings are more larva efficient than roach. Take a simple case to hold some early pressure - 10 larva worth of lings vs 10 larva worth of roaches. You get 10 roaches which are nice defenders but they immediately cost 75/25. If you just build the 20 zerglings and wait to morph them until you absolutely need them, you will be able to get more drones out because you only spent 50 mins instead of 75 right at that moment when you committed the larva to defense. You can get on 4 gas quicker, and take a 3rd quicker.
I'm not sure if you know what larvae efficiency means. The point is, 10 larvae worth of roaches tends to be stronger than 10 larvae worth of Lings. That means, instead of using 10 larvae to make Roaches, you make, say, 5. But you need 10 Larvae worth of Lings for the same defense. That means there's 5 extra drone larvae to use. I'm not sure how you try to argue against larvae efficiency by completely ignoring larvae efficiency. It's sorta like arguing against a unit being cost efficient by ignoring how much they actually cost. Not if you morph them into banelings. a roach is more larva efficient than 2 lings, but not two banelings. That's 1 larva for 100/50 worth of army. Against a large ball of units that works out to be way way more efficient when you consider how many attacks a roach will get off on average before it dies to the death ball compared to how many units a baneling can splash.
Except for the fact that they have to kill themselves when they attack and thus you have absolutely no army after the battle, not really putting you ahead unless you've really been able to out expand him (in which case any other army could have done it).
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On February 12 2011 21:17 jamesmax wrote:
Im sure you two above posters realize he doesnt have to morph every ling right
so what? what the hell are 15 lings and a few banes gonna do against a colossus and 5-8 gateway units?
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I don't play Protoss as competitively as Terran, but I'm much more comfortable vs Blings/Infestors with a Protoss ball as I am with a Terran ball (which I think speaks for itself). I've always been jealous at how much easier it is for Protoss to stop this. I usually just spam a few storms, blink a couple of Stalkers in the way, throw up a couple forcefields, and "run away" to spread my units and attack move back into the BLings to minimize damage. Protoss units are so bulky I've never thought it was cost effective to throw masses of BLings at a Protoss ball of death. Even under FG, Forcields, storms, stalker, and colossus fire are enough to kill a lot of the BLings before they get to you. IMO, this becomes especially true if Protoss has no fear of getting shot down (or have their colossus sniped by Hydras/Roaches) in the process.
I guess this would work better on some maps than others, but I'd have a hard time seeing this work properly on Metalopolis for example.
Edit: And as someone has pointed out, even when I play Terran, my usual response to heavy BLing play is splitting up my forces into 2, and even adding drops (which is extremely effective). The effectiveness of mass BLings is when all the BLings are together, so have you to split them up, the effectiveness of the build drops dramatically.
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just went and watched all the reps, and I will say that the build is very interesting. The use of NP was pretty sweet because nobody ever uses it. I already go ling/bane/infestor vs most terran (favor infestor over muta, if i ever end up getting muta) so I don't think it will be hard to use in this situation, scary thing about this is storm but nowhere in the OP do you say you have to stick bane/infestor all game ^.^ thanks for the reps, they were very helpful
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http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/139159-1v1-protoss-zerg-metalopolis vs a 2700-something Protoss, really fun
Have been trying to mix in banelings in a lot of ways in ZvP, most recently I've been going LingBanelingInfestor and trying to delay him until Ultralisks so I can smash down the forcefields so my banes actually deal some damage. I love that you don't run into supply problems near as much as RoachHydra, feels so good :D
Played a bunch of close position meta games too, in scrappy games ling/baneling is great, especially for counter attacking.
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FF>Baneling. However, I think banelings are really strong and underused in this matchup. I've recently had success using them early game to stop 4 gate pressure. I've also used them to great effect late game. But midgame before you get OV speed/drop or ultralisk I feel banelings just get dominated by forcefields. For this reason I really think midgame zerg needs something more then banes.
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I absolutely love baneling drops in ZvP. They are quite cost efficient against almost any composition, and as evidenced in this game they still do well against big deathballs of stalkers and immortals. Later, baneling drops can be absolutely devastating when supported by endgame units. I'm still trying to find a place for infestors in my build because gas is hard to come by.
This is vs a 3.1K masters:
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-188979.jpg)
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On February 12 2011 19:07 Ziggitz wrote:
Not if you morph them into banelings. a roach is more larva efficient than 2 lings, but not two banelings. That's 1 larva for 100/50 worth of army. Against a large ball of units that works out to be way way more efficient when you consider how many attacks a roach will get off on average before it dies to the death ball compared to how many units a baneling can splash.
You're talking about supply efficiency more than larvae efficiency at this point. Larvae efficiency is less of a concern when Protoss has a 200/200 deathball than supply efficiency is. When Protoss has a deathball, you're not concerned about droning up at that stage in the game, you're concerned about being steam-rolled, and hoping you have enough resources to re-max and hope your second wave doesn't get smashed. I don't think anyone is saying banelings aren't supply efficient in this thread.
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I've tried baneling openers in ZvP and had some success. I've tried busting expo+cannon setups but that hasn't worked against good FFs. However it does feel fairly safe against gateway pressure, especially with a relatively quick hydra den. Burrow is another potential first pick at lair tech, if you're worried about pure gateway pressure at your natural. Ling bane hydra into spire tech can play out fairly well, since your early composition almost forces colossus, at which point you roll out the corruptors. Lategame, your broodlings max out on upgrades quickly since you've favored melee upgrades.
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As a Protoss player I find that this composition is very hard to deal with without HT. the infestors absolutely destroy Colossi with Neural Parasite, and the usual composition within a Colossi army is sentry, stalker which without Colossi gets demolished by banelings and lings. If its unscouted (which is hard to do since a simple poke will reveal all the units that zerg has and what composition he is going for) then it destroys. HT/Zeal/Immortal/Archon destroys it handily by feedbacking the infestors as well as storming everything else. at that point if the zerg doesnt switch it up fast the game is over in P's favor. Voids are generally bad against this as they have a lot of trouble killing all of the lings. but Colossi/Void or Colossi/Phoenix will do well as the void/phoenix will snipe all of the infestors and the well rounded P death ball will finish off the rest (using FF to defend from/snipe banes)
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My idea of the Protoss death ball versus Zerg includes Void Rays, which pure baneling + infestor play is going to have a damn hard time stopping.
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I stopped reading when the post asserted making banelings to defend was more larva efficient than making roaches.
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i've been using something like this in zvp i'm about 3400 masters, im not decided yet if it's viable or not, i've been winning pretty decently with it
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So, I've tried this, and it does work pretty well against people who go robo off 2 base. However I can't survive a 6gate with lingbane. I've tried various things, like getting really fast +1/+1, or getting a quick macro hatch and rely on numbers, go heavy on the banelings.
The problem is that baneling speed barely finishes by the time they hit so you are confined on your creep. this does not allow you to make him waste too many forcefields by dancing in front of his army before he is in your base. and a typical 6gate has TONS of forcefields available which will nullify your first banelings and you really don't have time to morph any more when he is at your door esp since once he is inrange of your ramp it gets ffed infinetly.
This is the number one problem with this style as if you are forced to go roach to survive a 6gate it's pretty rough to transition into lingbane afterwards.
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On February 14 2011 14:56 unit wrote:
As a Protoss player I find that this composition is very hard to deal with without HT. the infestors absolutely destroy Colossi with Neural Parasite, and the usual composition within a Colossi army is sentry, stalker which without Colossi gets demolished by banelings and lings. If its unscouted (which is hard to do since a simple poke will reveal all the units that zerg has and what composition he is going for) then it destroys. HT/Zeal/Immortal/Archon destroys it handily by feedbacking the infestors as well as storming everything else. at that point if the zerg doesnt switch it up fast the game is over in P's favor. Voids are generally bad against this as they have a lot of trouble killing all of the lings. but Colossi/Void or Colossi/Phoenix will do well as the void/phoenix will snipe all of the infestors and the well rounded P death ball will finish off the rest (using FF to defend from/snipe banes)
As a sidebar, its really hard to feedback the infestors when theres a ling/bling carpet all around you. Just putting that out there. And it doesn't destroy it "handily". More than likely your HT are going to get pounded by banelings. Also, ideally you would want that unit composition in the late game, true, but getting there on equal footing is a bit more tricky.
Again, its hard to snipe infestors with phoenix or void ray because of fungal growth and ITs. By the time you are looking to snipe infestors hes hemorrhaging energy. I've tried it, its hard for the phoenix to be effective past the initial 3-4 you make after harassing. The best case scenario is to keep your phoenix alive to mitigate NP via graviton beam, which means not flying them by the zerg's base when his infestors are in play.
Lastly...... forcefield doesn't defend against banes in overlords. Forcefield becomes so useless after a certain period in the game and you're just wasting your gas. Maybe if someone can provide a replay that uses sentries decently; I haven't been able to use them effectively though. The zerg just has too much flexibility in maneuvering so I tend not to get sentries after the 7-10 minute mark and use my gas elsewhere (although I still use them for hallucination scouts).
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On February 14 2011 10:22 Siraz wrote:
FF>Baneling. However, I think banelings are really strong and underused in this matchup. I've recently had success using them early game to stop 4 gate pressure. I've also used them to great effect late game. But midgame before you get OV speed/drop or ultralisk I feel banelings just get dominated by forcefields. For this reason I really think midgame zerg needs something more then banes.
I'm sure FF>zerg in general lol... ever see how much damage 12 roaches that are in front of FF do? crap. The other 2/3 of your army is doing the derp dance behind the FF while getting wailed on by the collosi once the front roach army is toast, in theory at least centrifuged banelings get to take out nearly all the front stalkers, which forces him to go zealots which have to hit the banelings lol.
I'm also positive OP's baneling build is just to drone hard, and not to smash his army, but keep his deathball low by constantly running banelings into his ball until your 3rds economy kicks in.
Because I've had 160 ish food and roach/hydra out, and my 3rd just got saturated, and I get stomped, at the score screen I'm only 1000 minerals ahead since my 3rd did nothing.
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I don't understand, from personal experience colossus destroy my banelings and forcefields don't exactly help the cause.
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This was so refreshing and fun! (Might not be a totally "new" concept, but the replays were entertaining!) I registered here to post on this thread (finally :p). Thanks a ton, Sluggy.
I've been testing out races and trying out all kinds of builds and playstyles to see which I am most comfortable with. I think this kinda baneling/brood lord/ultralisk play could be good. I am pretty much a 2v2+ player, so I need solid responses and branches for various race combinations and I have a protoss friend who plays around stalker + phoenix. I'm excited!
Also, a request to the OP: Could you post replays where you had some 1 base early aggression from your toss opponent?
Another, lower priority and off topic request: Do you use this much against Terran as well? Replays here too please!
Thanks and Cheers!
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On February 14 2011 19:43 FabledIntegral wrote:
I don't understand, from personal experience colossus destroy my banelings and forcefields don't exactly help the cause.
This is exactly why you use overlord drop banelings instead.
I want to comment that you under estimate the ability to have a standing army to clean up the left overs from your banelings. If you use banes/infestor alone, and it doesn't kill everything, then you're in trouble.
These days I will have a roach hydra army to engage the protoss deathball while baneling dropping.
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Wouldn't a standard army of gateway/robo army destroy this? The only light units would be zlots/sentries. Sentries could just FF and pick off blings as they struggle to get through to the deathball and colossi with their range of 9 would act like slightly gimped siege tanks while immortals could tank a ton of the damage.
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I had someone try this against me, and i just spammed zealots and congolined them to the win
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the main problem I can see with this is forcefields make banelings extremely hard to use vs P 
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I incorporate ~25 baneling in drops all the time. Mass banes might work... but if you misclick once your screwed bc its kind of like a one shot deal
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Couple things: 2-2 lings destroy unsupported colossus really fast, especially when their shields are already dented. Getting drops and overlord speed are recommended as soon as lair finishes to deal with forcefield. You aren't going to panic when he tech switches to colossus. You are going to say fuck you i'm making more drones, upgrades, infestation pit and expanding twice. The idea is to take advantage of the fact that he is going heavy tier 3 on a unit that takes 3 hours to build. Morph banelings as needed. Make like 40 of them if he stayed on two base for his big colossus attack. When you are comfortable just keep bane dropping his mineral lines.
Once your economy is 3+base and you have 4-7 infestors, you are going to want to switch to either hydras, hive units, roaches, or whatever you want. 4 base zerg with already upgraded ground can make any units they want. If he wants to expand with cannons take advantage of the fact that you researched drops as one of your priorities.
On February 15 2011 04:48 bsrealm wrote:
This was so refreshing and fun! (Might not be a totally "new" concept, but the replays were entertaining!) I registered here to post on this thread (finally :p). Thanks a ton, Sluggy.
I've been testing out races and trying out all kinds of builds and playstyles to see which I am most comfortable with. I think this kinda baneling/brood lord/ultralisk play could be good. I am pretty much a 2v2+ player, so I need solid responses and branches for various race combinations and I have a protoss friend who plays around stalker + phoenix. I'm excited!
Also, a request to the OP: Could you post replays where you had some 1 base early aggression from your toss opponent?
Another, lower priority and off topic request: Do you use this much against Terran as well? Replays here too please!
Thanks and Cheers!
Hey man I'm glad you enjoyed the replays. I just played a ZvT last night close positions on temple that used some of the same principles except he was super aggressive with drops on my cliff so we were both 2 base the entire game.
ZvT w/ early drops
I don't have any replays saved of getting 4 gated but my general plan to handle it is to get ling speed, and at another 50 gas build a baneling nest and leave just one on gas. By the time it finishes you have enough for 4-5 banelings which is enough to dent the zealots to help your lings clean up. Just stall as long as possible, constant lings. If it is an ongoing struggle, make sure to squeeze out a drone every once in a while so you can get 2-3 on gas for more banelings and keep a constant production flow. If you don't die, eventually his units become useless and he will either try to expand or panic and go void rays or dt or something. If he is doing a delayed 4 gate you can try to get 25ish drones + 3 hatch + 3 queen and +1 melee before pulling drones off gas. These builds are harder to read. If you think 1 base void ray shennanigans are going to occur don't skip on the queens. Also 4 banelings kill a dt so you can use that as a panic if you don't have lair or spores yet.
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Awesome video. Worst-case replays are always the best :D
Been having some great success with this overall. Every encounter feels so end-of-the-worldy. Will the banelings get good positioning, surround, dropped, etc. This makes it so exciting and rewarding to pull it off. And there is a lot less sentry action in 3v3s. Just a couple for initial defense and guardian shield.
I think its crucial to get a strategy that fits your style and I think this is it for me. When I just started out SC2 I tried this kinda thing, but wasn't good enough on micro, didn't really focus on picking a style and didn't stick with it for long enough. Now, I am ready!
I played only 3v3s today and didn't really need the infestors much. Had lots of room to move around on most maps. Ground/melee upgrades are the bomb. And with the banelings-on-demand stance, you get gas to usually hit up all upgrades and tech early which makes it even better. Most, heck all, of my opponents don't even have upgrades on.
I also like the overall "patience" and "lazy response" of this style. Now I dont care if I cannot prevent the opponent from macroing up too much, because I know (from those 10 videos, and a couple of my own games) that you can take care of pretty much anything :D. This does make me a bit too passive at times (which cost us a couple of games where we were clearly ahead, but didn't control the map as much as we should have).
I can't tell you how pleased I am to have discovered this post. Do keep sending me tough/close games versus all races (even if its via PMs so we dont annoy people here). Do you keep this up versus zerg? What if they go banelings/zerglings as well?
@DTs: I saw you use the 4 banelings in a couple of your videos whilst the overseer mutated/walked in.
@4gate/other early pressure: In a couple of 3v3 matchups today, I dominated early pushes (if they didnt attack me, hehe. One of my teammates just sucks, we are pretty much handicapped if the going gets tough). I had so much room to move around and I picked off reinforcements and such while my terran/toss team mates held off using sentries and the usual blocks. Cut on the expansion to get some crawlers to stop their lings from harassing me and once the early units were dead, I expoed up. A few banelings did help as you suggested. Pretty much stopped all drone production and had a couple on gas.
@Air: In 3v3, there is an increased chance that you get air from someone. My toss ally goes stalkers + phoenix in most cases and with a couple of corruptors and extra queens (love 'em for base AA), its fine.
Once again, awesome stuff, keep sending in the replays! Perhaps you should have a DropBox or something of your replays folder so I can just pick them up as you play games :D
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This sounds very similar to what I've been trying, thanks for putting it into words better than I could  I love massling + upgrades and I always morph banes when I see him pushing out. I love how it allows for aggression if you see an opening and how free your gas feels to get upgrades like ovy, seer, burrow, hive (for 3/3 and adrenal)
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The argument that all protoss has to do is split up his army because zerg has no way to take advantage of this seems to be forgetting that banelings are morphed from zerglings. The zerg isn't required to morph 100% of them into banes. A split up army is tasty pickings for zerglings
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Pure theorycrafting on my part as I do not have a chance to try this (low masters for what it is worth) but due to the prevalence of colossi over HTs in ZvP, FF might be a non-issue if you use a NP'd colossi to destroy any FFs your opponent puts down. Combined with the immobility of FG, and you are set to melt a deathball.
The kicker is you have to run in with lings, NP'd the colossi, then FG the ball (else the colossi will be FG'd and cannot break FFs) then run the banelings in all in a rather short period of time.
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Did a massive overhaul on the original post and added an analysis of a pro level game.
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So i have to bump that thread. Imo it deserve way more attention.
I'm very curious about those new ZvP that we saw recently and this strat in particular seems to me the most solid. No rushes to Ultra without upgrades, no investment in potential useless teck, and most of all a solid eco and drone count.
And now we have the new modification on PTR, fungal seems to get back to instant cast but with the buff on damage ( shorter duration and bonus to armoured ). This could make that strat even stronger.
Regarding the Acquanda thread, it's not as specific. I see more that as a very aggressive eco playing where Sluggy wants to have his T2 sooner to have drop and speed bane. But both use the same army comp.
Either way this is how i feel ZvP should be played, Roaches and hydra are more of a support unit considering that their not as supply effective as a bane/ling composition. Obviously the terrain is freaking important with that strat.
Sluggy in the OP there are some "Supplementary Replays" but it's seems like the one i had. Do you have more to share ?
I would be glad to have some as a top diamond kind of casual, i find some situation pretty hardy to handle without any model. Mostly the 2 stargate opening where the protoss harrass a tone. I guess that i don't make enough ling at the mid game, you seems to always produce a good amount and maybe you can answer those heavy air investment by some ground aggression. I'm kind of lost when i'm facing that i have to say.
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As a protoss player, fungal growth on my blink stalkers is very tough to deal with. Im sure overlord bane drops on top of other would be very difficult.
Hydra drops are so deadly against protoss. Many protoss (including me) use blink stalkers to counter zerg drop play, as our composition is usually colosis and gateway units. Unless a stargate is mixed in. But as we know, hydras are pretty good against stalkers without colosis. You have to catch the colosis out of position though, otherwise the colosis will have time to reach the drop location.
Finally, you are vulnerable to sentry based attacks before drops come in to play, which is why it is critical to have drops done around the time a typical 6 gate timing hits.
This is exactly what I was going to say. The 'HuK' style 3 gate FE with sentry is very popular. A 5-6 gate timing is very popular follow up to that. I heards drops cost 300/300? Even if you drop his main, will you have enough army in general to win in a base trade?
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I wouldn't be surprised if either he or xog saw this thread and they started messing with it. Two days after the OP was made i see mr. bitter posting about how aquanda and xog are using this in some KOTH. There have been posts popping up about zerg-jesus Sheth using versions of this as well, so that answers questions about validity^^
super_bricklayer: Thanks for your comments, and I completely agree about these fast hive builds being too flimsy. Right now what is happening is protoss are on auto-pilot, using an 'incontrol' standard style every game, regardless of what the zerg is doing. That works great when zerg is going roach/hydra/corruptor, but this destroys it. I have played many games of protoss doing expand(or sometimes even just 1 base) in to 2 stargate openings. I'm not sure if I have any saved. It is easy to get caught off guard and lose a bunch of overlords to this, but it is also completely manageable by skipping drops and getting infestors first. Meanwhile you should be forcing cannons with your lings and killing destructible rocks while calmly droning and preparing to take your 3rd.
I know I have few games of close positions on slag pits that can be awkward but winnable. I still have plans to extend this thread a bit to show what can go horribly wrong and how to fix it. I have some more games against void/col and non-colossus openings as well that I will organize and upload when I get home.
Quaffle: I initially use drops defensively just so I can happily keep my econ/tech going when he is doing a big sentry/col timing. After that phase is over it is on to baneling dropping mineral lines and later on doing hydra drops wherever his army isn't. I think it's perfect because you can send off 8-12 hydras for a drop harass and still have sufficient baneling/infestor/ling in case he counters, so I don't really get in to base trade situations. Another thing that fits in to this is following the drop with a nydus for a super fast retreat if needed, or reinforcements if there is potential for more damage.
The combination of drops + nydus in the late game has a ton of possibilities and gets around the shitty situation where the toss just kills all nydus attempts with probes.
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EPT
