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This is a good strategy, but smack dab in the middle-of-the-road.
Do you want it to be a 10 min all-in push OR do you want decent economy and an army?
If you said yes to the decent economy and an army, then this build is for you.
If you said yes to the all-in attack, you shouldn't do this build.
For those of you who like to all-in, use a Zerg Build Order optimizer.
If you used said device, you could figure out that by the 9 minute mark you could have:
30 Zerglings, 14 Hydralisk, Ling Speed, Hydra Range, Melee +1.
You would only have 1 Base, 1 Queen, and 21 Drones, but a huge army.
If you were worried about them having a Colossus out before, imagine if your push came an entire minute earlier?
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Yeah but if you stay on one base for 9 minutes....the toss is just going to roll over you in some other way. And will obviously know you are going for some sort of one base allin. Fast Expansion is so common for zerg that if you don't do it, they know you are doing some sort of allin.
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Learn to deny scouting?
1. Speedlings can EASILY prevent all Protoss scouting until they get out a slow Observer.
2. Fake a fast expansion and cancel it at 99%, which would be long after their Probes are dead and you have Speedlings waiting outside of their ramp.
If they did a Forge+FE, and you did this 9 minute rush, I really doubt they will have a big enough army to stop your 30 Speedlings and 14 Hydralisk.
If they are doing a defensive 4 gate on 1 base, you will probably lose because you won't be able to deal enough effective damage due to forcefields on their cliff-ramp.
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3gate expo with proper scout (hallu ?/9min push) will stop you build.
3 canons and turtle until 2 colossus+range out.
Also, i believe that 15-17 nexus + mass gate have a huge army to hold you pressure at 10min mark (push timming for toss too :p ) but i since i almost never do that build i will not argue too much... ^^'
Very good build in the actual meta game ffe+stargate
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you wont have 2 collosus and range man.....especially if your going 3 gate expo with forge and plan to get 3 cannons lol
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interesting, i will try this out, it seems ever other toss i face now is going viodray/phoenix anyways. its probably because all the zergs are going ling/baling vs toss now lol
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Yea this is a great build to break the meta-game of how the 3gate expand progresses. But however, I cannot say that this is a "3gate - Expand Counter" as the 3gate expand is more of an opener than an actual build. What this will counter is a 3gate - Expand in where the Toss is not expecting a 2-base All-in from Zerg, or went mass stalkers expecting roaches.
A lot of Protoss completely underestimate just how quickly a zerg army can go from being 30 food below, to being 60 food ahead. (Numbers extremely exaggerated here but you get the idea.)
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Unfortunately, I am at work and can't watch replays. But as you didn't mention it in your first post, I guess you are not getting a 3rd queen.
The hydra push build is (as you already mentioned) known quite well already, but usually it involves getting a creep highway as hydras are soooo slow off creep. Sometimes getting 1 overseer to contaminate robotics to delay first or second colossus is added to the mix (as colossi are the main counter to this strat).
This strat can be quite strong, but at the very high levels it will fail (just watch incontrol handling it on his stream e.g. against destiny wherein inc states that such strats are the main reason why he usually trains against better players than destiny ;-). He simply adds some cannons and uses great force fields to delay the push until his colossus is out which then ends the push handily. Zerg is dead at this point as Ps eco is way ahead. ). Nevertheless, for high diamond it is still viable I guess and so it's no bad thing to play around with it for a while.
Unfortunately, if that strat gets more common P users will learn how to handle it properly. Maybe at this point, adding drop to the mix will be an interesting option  .
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I've played against low and mid masters with this as well...havent had a chance to take a shot at a higher master but I believe it would work.
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On March 08 2011 04:03 gta1 wrote:@Douillos: Edit: Ok I watched your replay and I first want to say that you really carried the build out very nicely...Your timings and everything were almost exactly as I said but I have to say a few things: 1.) No biggie but you had 2 drones on first gas for a bit.....really not big but its the first thing I wrote on my piece of paper  2.) Although I've never actually played against a straight up forge into Nexus, I must say that you could have easily won this had you scouted him out a little more in the beginning. He had absolutely no defense to prevent you from running into his main base with 10 lings and killing all his probes for the longest time. You wouldn't have been able to get his expo but that's when you should have transitioned into this. Watch my Zerg vs Chicanery game. Your never really committed to this build and with a gaping chasm like that in his build you really could have exploited it. 3.) I mentioned in one of the replay comments that if you see a pheonix come out, your allowed to move out much earlier than you would otherwise....they invest so much in a unit that is practically worthless by itself and with the build your going, it completely (or in theory) counters low pheonix amounts (even high pheonix counts really.) You could have walked right over while rallying zerglings and gone straight into his main base to end the game 30 seconds earlier. 4.) Make sure you fly an overlord in to see what he's doing....you really lacked scouting that game (Yes, even with a build as strong as this we sometimes are forced to ). 5.) After your first attack you should always get a spire up ASAP with this build. I know he was going mass pheonix, but most protoss will be gunning for collosus and you must anticipate that instantly. Also, some corrupters really would have helped you out. 6.) That protoss should be a zerg player because he expanded like a wild fire. He had 4 bases with the gold when you were just getting your 3rd saturated. You did start out behind because you did get much in your attack-> gotta go for the main in a situation like that. ***Really though, you carried that build out more precise than I ever did but I think in the end that's what actually got you. You still need to be looking for those opportunities for easy ways to get ahead. Most of the time I guarantee you'll straight up win (he did a rare, really odd build) but you get those speedlings in the beginning to get map control and for putting some pressure on to get you more ahead.....Good job anyway and if you keep trying you won't regret....Good Luck
Thanks for the advice.
Great build I must say, the timing is just perfect ^^
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On March 08 2011 07:03 gta1 wrote:
you wont have 2 collosus and range man.....especially if your going 3 gate expo with forge and plan to get 3 cannons lol
I said "and turtle until 2colossus out" ^^'
Colossus/sentry/stalker path with 3g expo is gaz heavy so 3canons is not a problem
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2 hatch hydra is a great build against Protoss FE, since like you said, hydras don't get owned by FF as much, plus they can shoot up so your timing attack doesn't get stopped by 2 void rays. It works best against FE > stargate builds which are pretty popular. It works decently even against players who try to get colossus asap because this attack should come when P has at most 1 colossus without range. Any gateway heavy build though will have an advantage over this sort of attack, especially if they just defend and fight you off creep.
1 problem with this build is that the fast lair is scoutable - maybe you can chase the initial scouting probe away with your first 4 lings in time, but if the protoss is smart and does additional scouting he could easily see that fast lair, which will tip him off to some sort of 2 base all in. 4 speedlings is not enough to deny scouting from a good protoss.
Creep is essential to this build - on maps or positions where you are close, spreading a creep highway between your bases is absolutely vital. If you can creep to your opponent's base, I've even seen players add spine crawlers to their attack which work really well. If the bases are farther away, bring overlords to spread creep, or even try nydusing right outside their base.
Another great variation of this build especially on close air positions is to just do a big drop. It's pretty much instant win if the protoss tries any sort of tech. Drops essentially negate forcefields, which is what a protoss relies on to survive any early attack.
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United Kingdom971 Posts
I think if you're on close enough positions - and I imagine you are if you're comfortable with the hydra follow-through - you should get 5-8 roaches with some ling support as they push out with their sentries to epand. You need that army anyway, as you can get seriously mauled by a sentry heavy 3-gate push if you don't prepare for it (Huk uses this a lot in his PvZ). While droning behind it, you push in with your roaches and pick off the sentries (or at least try to get them to burn some energy). Once they get a few stalkers or some sim-city and cannons out, you have to fall back, but in often it can be such a surprise Protoss can lose a lot of sentries. That severely weakens them for a hydra/ling followup, or delays them while they replace their sentries. And either way, you're not going to have 3-gate pressure do any damage.
I think it was Gerbil who demonstrated this on Mr Bitter's 12 Weeks series.
Naturally the hard part is knowing when to go back to droning, and keeping up with injects while fighting.
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+1 speedlots with some sentries win against this build i think. or just a lot of cannons while you tech up to storm or collossi
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Compare your G1 to Moon vs Socke - Socke gets his expo down 25 seconds earlier than your protoss, first phoenix comes out of stargate at 8:00 giving him plenty of time to scout your low drone count and react with cannons and robotics bay. Moon plays reactively here, teching drop and delaying his third upon seeing robo bay and collects his free win. Note that the mass hydra and drop was reactive, and if socke had added 5 more gateways as Ace did in the finals, he likely wouldn't have done the same strategy.
G2 - You're 20 harvesters behind with no sign of a 3rd, even though again protoss's expansion was ~50 seconds late because he went forge before expansion and made a cannon behind his mineral line for no reason. Common theme so far - no hallucination scout. Again, if protoss adds cannons after scouting your low drones and fast lair and manages to delay, the 20 worker lead will roll you.
G3 - Proper ling scouting would have showed you that his expansion was really late (i.e. past 6:15). This alone should prompt you to make some early defensive zerglings and at least one crawler. Upon seeing his expo go down, you could use your defensive lings to cancel his expo without having to commit to your 10 min hydra push (which, again, is blind). The point being that there are other, safer ways to punish this guy's expansion which don't include blindly massing hydras.
G4 - What's funny about this game is that you BM him for 4gating when he's not actually 4gating (he just isn't good and so his chrono is piling up instead of being spent on WG for a timely expansion). What's even funnier is that you would've died if he was actually 4gating because it would've hit just about when your lair was morphing and your expo just started mining. Protoss also was doing an inefficient build, some hybrid of the 1base hide-5-phoenixes-and-then-expand style and socke's build where you add 1 stargate and get a scouting phoenix at 8:00. Both of you floating over 600 of each resource make it hard to apply the results of this game to higher level play.
G5 - You can make roaches, hydras, or broodlords when you get the kind of advantage you did in that game, this isn't proof that your build is good.
I've tried to criticize the build more than the players, but when the only explanation for it working is that the protoss was not good it's hard to avoid. The idea of a hydra timing attack is a good one that we see get put into use once in a while (Idra on steppes, Moon going hydra drop in close air vs fast colo), but I don't advise that anyone follows your timings because they'll get you killed vs a competent player. I'll leave it to someone else to analyze the other half of the replays, but I wouldn't expect to see anything different.
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i used to do this for a while and was pretty successful. it is really a very efficient "strat".
i stopped incorporating it into my regular play though because its has a somewhat all-innish flavour to it. if it is scouted, i.e. your hydra den, the lack of a third, amassing hydra numbers and the toss knows whats up he will try to rush out colossus. granted, he might not get a big number out by the time it hits and its most likely going to lack the range upgrade thus enabling you hydras to actually shoot back at the colossus but should you fail in this attack consider yourself severely behind, as you will not have a third up and ready and wont have enough gas for a decent amount of corruptors AND hydras to counter colossi+ gateway units. on top of that you wont have roach tech and are stuck on hyras and lings....vs gateway units and upcoming colossi....think about it.
ive been doing variations of this build as well, such as building a nydus on large rush distance maps, such as scrap station. you can do this by either trying to get a nydus into their main if youre lucky or more solidly having a scout near his natural and spawning the nydus exit right there and continue to pump out units from there on. on short rush distances it is of course perfectly fine to use ovies for spreading creep between your bases.
these days however i only use it anymore when i know my opponent has not gone for colossi yet but rather air for example or has a delayed expansion or a failed 4gate. just any situation in which i know he will definitely not be ready for the amount of hydras i can throw at his face.
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just played 3 games against toss and all i can say is wow. This works incredibly well.
The first game that I played was on scrap station and my opponent went for a 3 gate with stargate into expand. He brought his first VR over to my base which got demolished by some surprise hydras and I proceeded to mass units until about 9 minutes and then pushed through the middle rocks and demolished his army.
The second game I played was against a 4 gate toss player in cross spots. I was skeptical to go ling hydra against this but I made sure to throw down 3 spines in front of my hatch and needless to say I ripped his push apart and proceeded to march across the map with my hydras and demolish his army and win the game.
The last game i played was against a 3 gate FE toss and once I saw this I decided to make the push at 10 minutes to his base and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop me. He got a few nice FFs off to delay the hydras but after the FFs wore out my hydras went to work and won me another game.
I should probably post some of the replays but am about to watch the gsl (go sansZenith!) but if i remember in the morning or after gsl is over i will edit the post and add the replays for each game
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@sooch: Someones scared lol.....I'll ignore you because I know it works well vs good players...its been proven. I think your comments are kinda blind btw. It's real easy to watch a replay and pick out 50 things the protoss or zerg player could have done but many people wont do all 50 things. All of us aren't pro's dood. Maybe if you've read one of the 25 people that can incorporate it into their play in someway you wouldn't be cynical. If you could share your #1 Masters magical build with us I'd really love that...THANKS!
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On March 10 2011 20:36 gta1 wrote:
@sooch: Someones scared lol.....I'll ignore you because I know it works well vs good players...its been proven. I think your comments are kinda blind btw. It's real easy to watch a replay and pick out 50 things the protoss or zerg player could have done but many people wont do all 50 things. All of us aren't pro's dood. Maybe if you've read one of the 25 people that can incorporate it into their play in someway you wouldn't be cynical. If you could share your #1 Masters magical build with us I'd really love that...THANKS!
I'm telling you WHY your build is working (i.e. your opponents actually aren't good). Just because it's working doesn't mean it's good/safe/worth learning. You can't dismiss my comments on the basis that "oh nobody's going to play properly like you say" or "oh you're scared". My race is irrelevant here. I gave you good criticism based on what I saw in the replays, and it would make you a better player if you tried to understand what I was saying rather than ignore me. It's a strategy forum, after all, which implies dialogue.
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EPT
