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2900~ Diamond Zerg player and I must start by saying that I have had trouble with this rush in the past. Majorly due to the fact that early zerg units consist of roaches and lings and this hard counters both especially with concussive shell. In the replay that follows I open with a 11 pool 18 hatch to be able to both keep a heavy drone count with early larva and also react to early pressure with access to early lings/speedlings.
I scout a single rax and I don't see anything else for a fair amount of time while trying to get as much info as I can with my scout. I see a single gas go up and continue to delay the second gas hoping to force him into marines and then follow up by throwing a bane nest when I think that this is working due to the marines being used to attack the extractor.
A bit earlier I do scout for a proxy and see none so I feel comfortable droning and mixing in a healthy amount of lings as well. I do have slight map control early game and I do see the rush coming.
I throw down a roach warren in hopes of being able to defend but the marauders smash them to bits. I then am forced to resort to pulling back to my main and attacking with drones and holding off the first rush. My losses are too heavy and I do scout the expansion coming up and figure my only hopes of winning this game is to take a 3rd along with my natural *due to the fact that it had been destroyed early game.*
Of course, to no avail, he has a second force ready to move out and secure the win while I attempt to macro.
I just cant seem to find a way around withstanding this rush. Any advice is appreciated and do please watch the replay.
Replay:
http://www.mediafire.com/?iwx5yxe72dpqia7
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Didn't watch the replay, but pure theory will tell you that marauders/hellions can be beaten by roach/ling, as long as you target the right units - focus down the hellions with roach fire and then surround the marauders with lings and clean up. This method requires that you have the right roach/ling ratio; if you see mostly marauders and only a couple hellions, then mass lings and only throw in a few roaches to take out hellions. If you see 6+ hellions, get 10-12 roaches or so and use your speedlings to surround the marauders once the hellions are out of the picture. Yes it requires micro - since you knew the rush was coming, it would've been good to keep your army hidden so you could come in from behind his army with lings to take out the marauders and attack the front of his army with roaches to get the hellions (usually hellions are at the front to waste lings, and marauders in the back to add their concussive support fire).
An alternative approach would've been to drop 3-4 spine crawlers and create a defense wall; then you could've harassed his attacking forces with roaches from behind the crawlers, or run in behind his army and surrounded with lings or something.
Sorry I didn't watch the replay; don't have time right now.
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On February 23 2011 15:18 skypig wrote:
Didn't watch the replay, but pure theory will tell you that marauders/hellions can be beaten by roach/ling, as long as you target the right units - focus down the hellions with roach fire and then surround the marauders with lings and clean up. This method requires that you have the right roach/ling ratio; if you see mostly marauders and only a couple hellions, then mass lings and only throw in a few roaches to take out hellions. If you see 6+ hellions, get 10-12 roaches or so and use your speedlings to surround the marauders once the hellions are out of the picture. Yes it requires micro - since you knew the rush was coming, it would've been good to keep your army hidden so you could come in from behind his army with lings to take out the marauders and attack the front of his army with roaches to get the hellions (usually hellions are at the front to waste lings, and marauders in the back to add their concussive support fire).
An alternative approach would've been to drop 3-4 spine crawlers and create a defense wall; then you could've harassed his attacking forces with roaches from behind the crawlers, or run in behind his army and surrounded with lings or something.
Sorry I didn't watch the replay; don't have time right now.
Appreciated, and I did indeed enter a micro intensive stage but the problem being that his army was much larger and my roach warren wasnt thrown until I saw his rush coming. I dont see a way around it really. Ideally in my tvz I will go speed/bane/muta and transition into roaches replacing the lings to create more worthy army. But I don't see it possible unless I predicted his marauder/blue flame rush and throw down a much, much earlier roach warren.
The reason I couldnt predict this was that he literally waited untill he had enough marines to take out my drone before throwing anything up and I sent my first expendable overlord after the initial rush.
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I have been up against this before, don't build any lings unless there are not many hellions; throwing lings at a large amount of blueflame hellions is always a bad idea, especially with Marauders in the back to back them up. Be extremely Roach heavy but focus on getting Mutas which will be able to hard counter their force. Even though Marauders are strong against Roaches, all of the money they spent on Hellions will be nearly useless. However, if it looks like they are starting to loosen up on hellions then that is the cue to build more lings.
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If you know this is coming (sacrificial overlord is really the only way I think), then I think a couple extra queens and a few spines, map depending (I wouldn't recommend defending with just spines on xel naga, LT though is a great map for this, for example) would be most cost efficient while quick teching to mutas, which would shut this down immediately (and might even win the game outright).
I've struggled with this comp a lot and I really think dealing with just roach/ling requires a huge blunder on your opponents end (micro or macro).
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you can also stop this with speed/bane and 2-3 spine crawlers which is imo more supply friendly than roaches and the advantage is that neither of your units are very vulnerable to marauders - you need to surround the marauders when they start to attack your crawlers and then chase the hellions with banelings and attack them if they stay on creep - else just retreat because the advantage is yours
the real challange is to scout and anticipate this strategy imo - then its quite similar to zvp 4 gate
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Banelngs are not very good against helions, way to easy to split imo
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On February 23 2011 20:42 Diderick wrote:
Banelngs are not very good against helions, way to easy to split imo
and roaches are awful against marauders - roaches need 7 hits to kill one hellion while banelings need only 3; against roaches and lings the terran army is able to stay close together which means that your roaches have to come into marauder range to kill hellions - the goal is to make hellions run away
but maybe im the only one who doesnt like to make roaches in zvt especially because one roach needs the supply of 4 lings/banes and too much early overlords are quite of an investment
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I play terran and this is a really good opening if you know how to follow it up. I ussually skip the blueflame in favor of a reactor on the fac and push out when I have 6 hellions and stim. I beat zergs waaaay past my skill level with this... its awsome.
The best counter I've seen so far is a guy who sacrificed an ovie at about 4:30 - he realized what I was doing and cut drone production. He skipped the warren completely and waited with 3 spines and a shitload of slings and surrounded my hellions while the marauders were killing the spines.. I actually had a worker advantage after the battle but he denied my expo with his remaining lings and stomped me after that.
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On February 23 2011 15:18 skypig wrote:
Didn't watch the replay, but pure theory will tell you that marauders/hellions can be beaten by roach/ling, as long as you target the right units - focus down the hellions with roach fire and then surround the marauders with lings and clean up. This method requires that you have the right roach/ling ratio; if you see mostly marauders and only a couple hellions, then mass lings and only throw in a few roaches to take out hellions. If you see 6+ hellions, get 10-12 roaches or so and use your speedlings to surround the marauders once the hellions are out of the picture. Yes it requires micro - since you knew the rush was coming, it would've been good to keep your army hidden so you could come in from behind his army with lings to take out the marauders and attack the front of his army with roaches to get the hellions (usually hellions are at the front to waste lings, and marauders in the back to add their concussive support fire).
An alternative approach would've been to drop 3-4 spine crawlers and create a defense wall; then you could've harassed his attacking forces with roaches from behind the crawlers, or run in behind his army and surrounded with lings or something.
Sorry I didn't watch the replay; don't have time right now.
You can do it with just lings if you scout it in time.
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Hellions are killed easily enough by lings provided you surround them, and in a situation where he is micro'ing both hellion and marooder, you can flank surround and trap all his units between a spine and a bunch of lings.
Like most things, it's easy enough to stop if you scout it and anticipate, unfortunately zerg do not have any ability to to do things like that. So essentially you have to glance up at his wall and blindly guess what he is gonna be doing.
Extra lings is always good tho. Lings beat everything terren has in cost effectiveness, provided you get a decent enough surround.
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I like Sling and spines to defend from Hellion or Hellion/Marauder. Place the spines next to your hatch and force him to engage on your creep, Hopefully you have some creep spread going if not then its going to be more difficult to get a surround on the hellions. You'll lose a fair few lings killing the hellions so keep making them until the attack has ended.
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you can counter it with lings and maby few spines. you just need a good creep spread. speedlings on creep are faster than helions, so just surround Them to reduce splash and dont let Them escape and kill them. maruders shouldnt be a problem than. while defending this push tech to mutas and counter him. you should have enough gas if you were making only lings. than you can deny his EXPO for a Long time with mutaling or even kill him right away
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Hold off with a few spine crawlers until you get up to quick mutalisks.
As Terran, I can say I had many "oh shit, forgot about mutalisks, gg" moments when producing too many ground units, focusing too hard on winning the game quickly rather than thinking about my opponent long-term plan.
The problem with roaches is that they put you in a defensive mold. Mutas can both defend and harass. And end the game if your opponent don't have engineering bay+turrets / lots of marines with stim.
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theres a harder push with reactored hellion into hellion, marine, marauder, medivac. the rines allow you to survive initial mutas and win the game right there.
but for this, muta + spine/ling solves
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Can any fellow terrans share their replays of blue flame/non blue flame + bio openers? I've been having a lot of trouble with zergs lately... thanks!
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Hmm for now I can think of morrow vs idra IEM game 4 on steppes of war where morrow went for a 3 rax marauder and one reactor factory push. And also thebestfou vs ret game 2 on jungle basin. Should be from gsl 3.
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The ideal way to deal with this would be mutas. So if U have any clue that this is comming, thorw down a spire ASAP.
Anyway, if you have to face this with no mutas, I would thorw down 3 spines, and make as many lings as posible (if U surround the hellions, they're not that effective against lings). It would probably be a good idea to take some of your lings out of Ur base (hidden somewere) so that U can have a flank on him and surround easily when U engage. Also, U should be careful about when to engage.
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Muta is not an answer, this arrives well before muta does. And even then it could kill both your hatches before the mutas kill the marooder.
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Specifically on this replay: I think that the leading problem is that at 6:47 you have a third extractor up and running, but you won't be able to gain benefits from that gas for a long time. If you go mutas that's another 60 seconds (lair at 20/80), plus 100 of spire, plus 33 of build time: 193 seconds. Infestors are, similarly, 190 seconds (60 lair + 50 pit + 30 glands + 50 build). You can only do that if you're sure that a timing push won't hit you, otherwise you're several hundreds resources down (700 unspent gas when the push hits you, to give a specific example). Fixing this, either by not getting the third gas as quickly or by refining your scouting, should probably be enough on its own.
Other factors/suggestions:
- the composition could have been spotted a lot earlier. Running a zergling up the ramp can give you a lot of information, for only 25 minerals and half a larva (assuming you do lose the zergling, that is. If not, all the better). Of course, this is not failproof as T could deny scouting by not holding all of his troops at the choke, but in this particular case it would have worked.
- pay attention to the minimap. At 8:10, you can clearly see that you have an incoming push (and not just some hellion harass to cover an expo), but you do not look and check the composition. In fact, I suspect that you were thinking that all that was arriving was hellion harass and that T was going mech. The placement of the spine crawler and the fact that you spent 150 minerals on tech (roach warren) is why I'm saying that. A more correct reply for that specific situation would have been to morph banelings with that
- you could improve the distribution of mineral-digging drones between your natural and the main. It wasn't an enormous problem, but I think that you would have been able to scrounge up an extra 100 mins or so (drones after the 16th give much less income, as the difference between 2 and 3 workers per patch is not as big as that between 1 and 2).
- creep spread. Consider altering your BO to get a third queen, or if you don't do that then you could babysit the one tumors you lay at the start more closely. One of the factors that went against you in the fight was being blindsided by the hellions on the left side of your natural. Having creep to cover the left side of the hole in front of it would have warned you of their approach.
- micro. You ran your troops into enemy fire, then withdrew them after no or minimal engagement. This sort of potshots cost you a significant fraction of your army (6 zerglings out of 22 at the very start of the engagement, to cite one moment). This probably ties in with the lack of creep spread and of minimap attention, as you might have done that in reaction to seeing a larger army than what you expected.
Hope it helps.
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EPT
