Recently playing on the NA server i have been doing a few 3 gate expand builds and i have come across this new strategy that kind of mimics what protoss can do in terms of static defense but instead using spinecrawlers, zerglings, overlords and a proxy hatch right outside the base of the protoss.
This has happened a couple of times now and i could imagine some protoss players breaking down and losing to this kind of strategy as it seems pretty powerful because you dont really have the firepower to stop an early game proxy hatch without pulling alot of drones.
Basically, each time i see this i tech straight to dts while maintaining my front, because the zerg wont have any detection at all.
Void rays are not an option because the zerg player will build queens to deal with any air.
Breaking the front with an immortal or stalkers may not be that great as alot of zerglings are made and the range of the stalker/immortal is not greater than a spinecrawler being build out of vision from your high ground.
Proxy hatcheries are like any sort of cheese. Stay calm, have backup plans, maintain your macro and go for either a proxy expansion of your own using a warp prism to escape or something sneaky like DTs.
Thinking about it, your strategy of going for DTs really is the best option. You already have the double gas and 3 gateways, the proxy hatch is likely to go down when you're only at 2-3 sentries so you won't have yet invested too much gas into sentries and you can just immediately begin teching to DTs to warp in 3 on the low ground and snipe the spines.
Dt will definitely stop this build. This is very mineral intensive which also means the zerg would likely pull off gas after ling speed and will have a VERY delayed lair. A fast dt before 10 mins will totally kill the proxy hatch
I personally would just get a few cannons and go for robo tech. The robo tech gets you access to both colossus (long range) and warp prisms (expand elsewhere).
what i do is, cancel the 3rd gate, make a forge instead, and go for stargate (phoenix into VR). get 1 or 2 cannons to delay his progress. get +1attack and make zealots, since gas goes into stargate units.
On March 14 2011 15:16 sparC wrote: evo -> spore doesn't req. gas
what i do is, cancel the 3rd gate, make a forge instead, and go for stargate (phoenix into VR). get 1 or 2 cannons to delay his progress. get +1attack and make zealots, since gas goes into stargate units.
works great for me
a Zerg who has done this strategy a lot might expect DTs and make a spore crawler pre-emptively, but I wouldn't think that they would do that most of the time until they saw the DTs, by which time the DTs can be already at the hatchery and deny any spore crawlers.
a zerg who does this and loses to dts is like someone who cannon/bunkers a zerg in and loses to a nydus rush. read: it shouldnt work and if it did you got lucky / he's terrible.
i just make a pylon on the edge of my base away from his proxy hatch to warp units .. 4 gate + 1/2 cannons generally destroys this atleast till 3000 diamond since the zerg wont have much defenses at his main. important to have sentries to deny zerg vision up your ramp. safest way is ofc to go 2/3/4 gate robo and use prism (and atleast sniping his tech building before pushing out or outright killing him). collossi tech is good with range but chances are the zerg will go spire by then and then its bad. +1 is crucial.
I didn't watch the replay, but proxy hatchery can be very hard to stop. People seem to dismiss it as something that is very easy to block. My CSL teammate and I have practiced the proper response to proxy hatch on Xel Naga Caverns several times and it can be very hard to stop if you don't have experience against it. The zerg can expand straight to your natural and mine from it while you are contained. Also you must wall in with cannons because there will be roughly 6 zerglings and a queen at your doorstep when you have a zealot and a sentry and a spine crawler making at the bottom of your ramp. I guarantee most of the protoss shooting this down would lose to it the first few times they face it.
DT's might be good, but they're something that can be foiled too easily in my opinion. I've had a good deal of success going blink stalkers though. With Zerg's weak economy and low tech, coupled with buildings in your base you can take advantage of for protection, a ball of blink stalkers is very difficult for Zerg to stop. You can also blink off your main base platform and threaten them in other ways if you so choose. That's especially good for blinking around the spine crawlers and killing the proxy hatch.
The major downside to this is that you have to have at least a small stalker ball built up for this to work, so if it looks like you won't be able to have that small ball, then throwing down that dark shrine can be a good idea. Place a pylon at the edge of your main platform so you can warp some down and hit their drones at home.
I don't seem to understand the point of this. You can just warp units off your ledge and go kill zerg's main while he put a pretty good amount of his resources in front of your base.
On March 14 2011 17:00 superbabosheki wrote: I don't seem to understand the point of this. You can just warp units off your ledge and go kill zerg's main while he put a pretty good amount of his resources in front of your base.
If you didnt see, the zerg gets alot of zerglings... speedlings infact, so how are you gonna just la-de-da up 4 zealots or something in the meantime off the ledge when he can catch it with lings AND you have to hold your front or you die...
Well theres a couple of things you can do to help against this. Checking your nat to see the hatch before its actually finished and crawlers are building would be nice. Actually making an extra structure as soon as you scout it would be good too. You were going for a 3 gate expand it seems. As soon as you see the hatch, the 3 gate expand isnt an option anymore. So at that point, you should do something to spend your money. Staying on 3gate and letting your money go up to 1k isnt good. You are not going to spend your money on a nexus. So whatever you choose, robo, extra gateway, stargate, or council, you should throw it down as soon as you see the contain going up and have the money, not 1 minute later when you see your money getting high.
DTs worked for you there, because the zerg was going really all-in, staying on 12 drones, not teching, and just trying to get inside your base and end the game asap. But its super easy for a zerg to make a round or 2 of drones once hes got you contained and his spines are poking away at your buildings. then they can tech to lair, get an evo, or whatever they want really, after hes poking at your wall and has you contained, the zerg can do what he wants, he doesnt need to make pure lings nonstop off 12 drones and try to end it right away, sacrificing wave after wave of lings into forcefields. And obviously, sacrificing wave after wave of lings into forcefields isnt the best thing to do.
As Zerg you always rum around the map and look for pylons. So get a probe and scout your base and prevent zerg vom building a hatch in front of your base. I mean a hatch is not just a 2x2 tiny building...
When this happened to me, i did a three gate but i already had a proxy pylon near his base i moved all my units out and rolled his base while i blocked my ramp with buildings and a few units.
On March 14 2011 17:00 superbabosheki wrote: I don't seem to understand the point of this. You can just warp units off your ledge and go kill zerg's main while he put a pretty good amount of his resources in front of your base.
If you didnt see, the zerg gets alot of zerglings... speedlings infact, so how are you gonna just la-de-da up 4 zealots or something in the meantime off the ledge when he can catch it with lings AND you have to hold your front or you die...
Please watch the replays.
So proxy hatchery with spines and queens, as well as speedlings. One base vs one base? P will have a tech advantage, and can do much more off one base than Z can. I've played vs this strategy twice and not only is it really easy to scout, it is really easy to counter. If you would like to play vs me I will show you over 10 ways to beat it.
Whether it be a 3 gate blink stalker rush which will crush it timing wise, or a solid break(which if executed cleanly will work perfectly fine), or a dt rush, or a 2 gate stargate where you attack as soon as you have one void and one pheonix while rallying only pheonixes, or w/e. All I'm saying is that it is a shitty strategy and easy to bust.
I would recommend you to throw couple cannons and go quick stargate. Get voidray and two phoenix, then you can hit his main. Pretty sure you will kill it.
it's not 1 base vs 1 base. The zerg expands to your natural. You'll fall behind pretty quickly if you don't get out of it fast.
One time I lost to DTs because he sent all his other units in a suicide mission against the spine wall to snipe the spore crawler, but I don't think I'd lose to that tactic twice (had I realized what he was doing I could have transfused the spore more than enough times). Air is not good against queens without ground support, and warpins out of your base edge are dealt with by just a few speedlings.
I haven't used this much, but so far I think the blink stalker response mentioned above would be the most effective. Another tactic would be to get a warp prism to elevator some units out while simultaneously warping some, with ranged support from the high ground, which should be able to overpower the mobile army he has.
As a zerg who has used this strat I have the most trouble with units that can out range my spines and have a decent amount of hits. So things like tanks and collosi seriously shut the proxy spine/hatch down. It is hard to stop as toss since so many people open 1-4 gate and do not get a robot till late game allowing for the zerg to just build a massive wall that moves at you. By minute 6-7 it is possible for the zerg to have like 4-6 crawlers and 30+ lings out in front of ur main. Also the hatch won't pop usually till around minute 4:30-5 so if you don't see anything happening at his main prepare for it by building forge at top of ramp and the canons should have vision over spines as long as ovis are killed. Get to colossi with thermal and destroy.
This was tried on me 3 times, once it worked because I wasn't aware that people did this kind of cheese. The other two times I scouted it and out of those 2 times the hatchery finished once, and I just went to town on it with 4 probes and a stalker and sentry while keeping my zealot in the gap to block zerglings. by the time he could make lings out of the proxy hatch it had already lost a good amount of health and I just kept adding on stalkers while getting robo tech. Eventually I killed the hatchery and the queen, built up an army off 2 gates and got a single colossus and pushed out. The other time someone did this to me, the hatchery was forced to cancel because it would have been too low on health to be of use. He tried to expand but it was too late and I walked over him. Now, I just scout in my base for a few seconds.
I have used this strategy a lot and the robo is the way to go. The spore crawlers and mass queesn almost always come after a decent contain because the zerg will expect you to go air or DT to try and do what warpgate cannot. Also when I do successfully pull this strategy off I wall of my main with spines, mine from his natural and then try to go spire for mutas to kill off/give vision of top of ramp. Also with lair comes an overseer. The robo wins because you just drop in my base or expands elsewhere then the DPS of immortals and range of colossi do work. The counter that almost killed me the other day was he rebuilt at my natural with nexus, forge, 2 stars, and 2 gates, cannons, zealots and voids, which almost destroyed me. He managed to get the 2 stars up b4 I killed his cyber.
If you succesfully scout a 3 gate expand or 4gate or something that doesn't require tech it could be much more effective, but if you scout that the protoss has already begun another tech path, it may not be as effective.
I know a guy doing this build a bit and I think dt is a viable option to counter it however cols are probably better not that I have tested it my self. The problem with dt is it takes forever to get and all they need to stop it is one spore crawler if they are smart.
On March 15 2011 13:21 azn_dude1 wrote: Voids are actually an option, believe it or not. Zerg will not have 2 queens at their proxy hatch by the time you have 1 void.
If you have a void out that quickly, it means you don't have the sentry count to forcefield your ramp which means GG when the 40+ speedlings push into your base
On March 14 2011 17:00 superbabosheki wrote: I don't seem to understand the point of this. You can just warp units off your ledge and go kill zerg's main while he put a pretty good amount of his resources in front of your base.
If you didnt see, the zerg gets alot of zerglings... speedlings infact, so how are you gonna just la-de-da up 4 zealots or something in the meantime off the ledge when he can catch it with lings AND you have to hold your front or you die...
Please watch the replays.
So proxy hatchery with spines and queens, as well as speedlings. One base vs one base? P will have a tech advantage, and can do much more off one base than Z can. I've played vs this strategy twice and not only is it really easy to scout, it is really easy to counter. If you would like to play vs me I will show you over 10 ways to beat it.
Whether it be a 3 gate blink stalker rush which will crush it timing wise, or a solid break(which if executed cleanly will work perfectly fine), or a dt rush, or a 2 gate stargate where you attack as soon as you have one void and one pheonix while rallying only pheonixes, or w/e. All I'm saying is that it is a shitty strategy and easy to bust.
Actually your pompousness is just due to ignorance. There is only a few proper responses to this and the best one is DT's.
Any kind of timing push out of your base will fail. CpJayy.842 if you think you can beat it with 10 different responses.
I found that proxy hatches are terrible in SC2. I used it back in the beta, because it was a build I used with success in Starcraft 1 (in-base proxy hatches). I would in-base proxy hatch; In my opinion in-base proxy is better, although I have done out of base and don't see any viability to it.
It simply doesn't work vs good players, or even the most common stuff like 4 warp gate. They can obviously scout it quite easily, and change their build appropriately, and micro-manage.
4 warp gate dominates it because they will be able to pressure from the start and produce much more units on the battlefield faster than zerg can considering their main hatchery is so far away.
Aside from 4 WG, immortals dominate roaches and spines, and it's not hard for protoss to stall/defend until that point of time - stalkers being faster and longer range than roaches, and zealots (with a few probes if necessary) are able to handle zerglings quite easily.
Whoa I guess I should have watched the replay. In base proxy hatch is terrible, but I'm talking about how on a 2 player map you can proxy at your opponents natural and build spine crawlers and queens to try to break his front. This was used successfully in GSL.
On March 14 2011 15:16 sparC wrote: evo -> spore doesn't req. gas
what i do is, cancel the 3rd gate, make a forge instead, and go for stargate (phoenix into VR). get 1 or 2 cannons to delay his progress. get +1attack and make zealots, since gas goes into stargate units.
works great for me
I have only come across this a couple of times, and I did the same thing with success. One time I even killed his hatch with 1 cannon haha.
Lol I love this strat. And yes, the reason it has become so popular is because a student mentioned it to Destiny and he tried in a ladder game and won first try, and quite convincingly. I also did it right after I saw that (2700 diamond NA) and won my first 2 games with it. It is quite difficult to stop. I find the only things that stop it is 4 warpgating with alot of sentries (to render lings useless) or holding off long enough to get out 2 void rays.
But yes, it is a very fun strategy to do as Zerg and it is unexpected. Also, quite good. Thanks Destiny!
On March 15 2011 15:00 DeadZone wrote: Lol I love this strat. And yes, the reason it has become so popular is because a student mentioned it to Destiny and he tried in a ladder game and won first try, and quite convincingly. I also did it right after I saw that (2700 diamond NA) and won my first 2 games with it. It is quite difficult to stop. I find the only things that stop it is 4 warpgating with alot of sentries (to render lings useless) or holding off long enough to get out 2 void rays.
But yes, it is a very fun strategy to do as Zerg and it is unexpected. Also, quite good. Thanks Destiny!
Now i see where it got its popularity. I hate that guy even more now.
Yeah I just got dealt with this strat on scrapstation (huge base area to hide a hatch in the corner), I made two huge mistakes that cost me the game as I started building at my natural. I...
1. Built a robotics facility too close to the ledge, in range of spine crawlers 2. Did not kill his hatchery after spine crawlers failed to safely move down the ramp, as I thought he had more spine crawlers defending it (he did not)
Now that I look back and do a bit of research, cannons have the same range as spine crawlers (7) so with my forge especially (since I was FEing) I would have been fine if I matched his spines with cannons, as they take 12s to root and are no stronger than cannons (16 dps each, 300 hp/shield each with cannon shield regen matching spine armor).
Be sure to expand when you see it coming though if you haven't already, because zerg will likely have expanded once or twice to take advantage of their contain on you.
The thing is that the spine crawlers are designed do knock down your wall. then the speedlings come in and go chaos on your probes and stalkers (if you went that tech) not even a void ray will save you.
Yup. inFeZa is right. And someone mentioned getting roaches or the zerg player expanding on the previous page, this is completely incorrect. The zerg player will of only expanded to your natural. He has a very low drone count because he is producing only lings and spine crawlers in order to hold off the protoss. He will not have a 3rd hatchery (unless he is doing it completely wrong and is a nub). And as for roaches, not a chance. Too much supply and the zerg player will have not nearly enough drones to be mining gas. Its 100% lings, spine crawlers, and queens.
Keep in mind, this is a build that is supposed to end the game in 10 minutes or less. This isn't a long term thing and is quite difficult to transition out of. It will end quickly, if it fails, Zerg will likely lose.
Check your natural with a probe before he gets metabolic boost if you see the hatch, voidray asap, you should be able to destroy it, chronosboosting a voidray. charge up the VR on your building before attack the hatch if the queen is here (pre charged VR > 1 queen)
On March 16 2011 10:47 inFeZa wrote: The thing is that the spine crawlers are designed do knock down your wall. then the speedlings come in and go chaos on your probes and stalkers (if you went that tech) not even a void ray will save you.
If you miss the hatch going up, you can just build 4 sentries to hold the ramp indefinitely while teching to colossus or whatever. The only way to lose is to get panicked and miss a forcefield.
Hm... Stargate / Robotech seems better in my opinion because DT Tech is very risky... with the Robo you can expand anywhere else and if the Zerg doesn't scout it it gives you powerful advantages ... what about the Scouting Probe? If you could keep the scouting Probe alive you don't need the Warpprism and do a fast Expo into Stargate/Robo tech... can't look at those Replays because I am at work :/ will watch them later on.
On March 16 2011 15:22 jexz wrote: Check your natural with a probe before he gets metabolic boost if you see the hatch, voidray asap, you should be able to destroy it, chronosboosting a voidray. charge up the VR on your building before attack the hatch if the queen is here (pre charged VR > 1 queen)
So if zerg steals gas in addition to this, what is the response? Save all gas for voidray? We can't use any army units to kill the extractor because they're all needed at the front to prevent speedling runby.
EPT
Thanks Destiny!
