GSL Finals Analysis (Spoilers Obviously) - Page 16

On March 24 2011 14:40 lorkac wrote:
So you're saying his wins don't really count that much because no one has 4gated him?

You're Protoss. You want to 4gate. Your probe arrives at the Zerg base and finds pool first; you continue the plan. The 2nd Probe arrives to check the hatch, nothing there, you run up the ramp and OMG WTF lots of Zerglings. Do you risk doing an all in against someone who has a tonne of stuff? No, so you 3gate expand and know that Sentries allow you to survive.

On March 24 2011 10:09 Umpteen wrote:


I agree - just not with the reason you give, which is that Zerg players are so unimaginative that they've never tried playing aggressively.

I just watched MrBitter play a game that illustrates the point beautifully. Terran 2-raxes, brings some marines and an SCV. Bitter holds it, just, with no economy loss other than that incurred by making lings. He could have lost, right there, if he'd mis-microed - but he didn't.

Terran pushes again with more marines. This time Bitter delays him while roaches pop and stops the attack. Again, it was a close thing and he nearly lost a vital queen - imagine Terran barracks had 100hp each and that's pretty much how vulnerable Zerg production is in the early game. Bitter advances on the Terran base, where there is still no expo, but can't get in because of the solid wall.

Next it's blueflame hellions, which manage to scoot by the forward roaches and cook a few drones before dying to more roaches and queens. Still nothing major accomplished, though.

Then Terran rolls in with four SCV-repaired Thors, with a fifth and sixth on the way. Could just as easily have been Banshees with cloak. They might even have been next on the menu if the Thors hadn't sealed the deal. There was no way Bitter could have seen which was coming, and it would be impossible to prepare for both.

At no point was Bitter even close to being able to put pressure back on his opponent. Literally his only chance to win that game would have come from surviving and denying the expo until the Terran mined out his main.

That is one-base aggression: throwing a hail of assorted shit at your opponent without a care in the world until he misses a beat and folds. If Zerg could do that, you can bet your ass they would be. And they do - or at least I do - in ZvZ. Maybe it's different elsewhere on the ladder but I really enjoy ZvZ: parrying lings and banelings with roaches, timing a roach/baneling attack on his speedling expand, feinting with mutas and then striking when he's blown gas on Hydra... it's short-bus stuff, no doubt, but fun because there isn't that insurmountable defender's advantage and ever-present threat of sudden unscouted game-ending tech making me huddle in my base fantasising about taking a third and getting a really big load of drones.

I'm sure you're right about Zerg players having a negative mentality. But that's because it's not been like playing Terran, where rushing for pretty much every imaginable tech has turned out to be an awesome strategy. "Let's try rushing for cloaked banshees - wow, he really can't deal with that, can he. Ok, blueflame hellion. Yep, that works. Let's try dropping them... yep, that works too. Reapers - ok, they're actually going to have to take that one off us because it's just too good. Let's do Vikings for a laugh; it can't possibly work, they can't even shoot air-to-ground.... hey look, he's supply-blocked. Ok, let's just rush one tech after another off one base... awesome!"

Don't get me wrong: I appreciate these builds have been really well refined and take skill to execute. But there's just so much that works. Compare that to Zerg's experience: "Ok, let's rush to... oh. He made marines/4-gated me so I'm dead. Guess I'll have to watch what he's doing, tech slowly and try to get ahead in economy." It's remarkable how often I see people on shows like the 12 weeks with the Pros saying "Ideally, you just want to do this with lings." It's like: "Yeah, lings are a bit samey after a while but at least you get a fuck of a lot of them."

I'm sure you're right: there will be great aggressive Zerg builds in there somewhere; builds that will give T and P pause. But they aren't the kind of big, obvious builds you get naturally channelled into, like 4-gate or 'Rush to X'. They'll be something that just seems stupid, like Ultra/Baneling vs mech.