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[G] An aggressive path in ZvP - Page 7

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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nahnah
Profile Joined April 2011
United Kingdom4 Posts
April 05 2011 18:41 GMT
#121
Hi Macpo....

Ive tried this strat and I cant seem to get it right. Could you have a look at the rep please and tell me where I go wrong. Im only a gold player and I have so much trouble v toss.

Any advice from anyone will be appreciated..

please see attached replay.



http://www.2shared.com/uploadComplete.jsp?sId=IJR4numfkUrfX9UB


Many thanks
Terkill
Profile Joined March 2011
Denmark38 Posts
April 06 2011 06:59 GMT
#122
So, how will this tactic deal with a 4gate again? You're sitting on a half done lair with tons of zerglins that just get OWNED by zealots and your base is being torn apart? I really can't see the significance in this tactic...
You're pro or you're noob. That's life
Fishermang
Profile Joined September 2010
Norway56 Posts
April 06 2011 07:45 GMT
#123
I guess you have to be able to scout a 4 gate before going this.

In any case, I am playing this on gold-platinum levels, and it works fantastically. I am finally actually looking forward to play against protoss. On these levels this strategy works even if you get there 1-2 minutes too late.

Funny how protoss seems to get thrown off by this agression. For too long has Zerg been passive :D Thank you Macpo, for making me twice the player I used to be!
ferry
Profile Joined December 2010
27 Posts
April 06 2011 08:06 GMT
#124
I have no experience playing as protoss, but isn't there a possibility to get at least 2 colossus out by 11 minutes with a decent gateway army? 3 Gate robo or 4 Gate robo perhaps? I suppose the early ling push can delay the colossus, but it seems if you scout him going early colossus, it's better to change the hydra drop. It seems that something like what happened in IdrA's game 2 against cruncher where he split his drops as well as combined them with a roach/corrupter push is a good option. To meet the 11m timing perhaps it could be a roach push combined with fewer hydras being dropped.
Mithrandir
Profile Joined March 2011
United States99 Posts
April 06 2011 08:15 GMT
#125
On April 06 2011 15:59 Terkill wrote:
So, how will this tactic deal with a 4gate again? You're sitting on a half done lair with tons of zerglins that just get OWNED by zealots and your base is being torn apart? I really can't see the significance in this tactic...


Sounds like you didn't even read the original post.

"First, make sure you are in the expected situation, i.e. that the toss is not 4 gating"

And, I might add, mass speedling is a great counter to many 4 gate variations.
nahnah
Profile Joined April 2011
United Kingdom4 Posts
April 06 2011 08:56 GMT
#126
Bump
Macpo
Profile Joined September 2010
453 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-06 09:21:55
April 06 2011 08:59 GMT
#127
In this build, you have to know that the guy is NOT four gating to switch to the strat. otherwise you just do some regular defense against 4 gate, with zerglings and roaches.

@ darkn3ss, sorry for misunderstanding your post! no problem, let's forget about this

@nahnah: Hi!
First, thanks for submitting a replay!. I am not sure I watch your replay, cause your link doesn't work with me. But I think I found it on the website (are you Itachi in the replay?)


The all point with this replay is that the guy did'nt really expand: it was a fake expand into four gate push... You should go for the zhm strat only once you know the guy is 3gate expanding. (overlord sac if necessary!). Here you didn't see his 4 gate coming, as your scouting is really bad (no poke at the entrance, no use of overlords or of the gas steal drone), and that's what cost you the game, because you just did the strat in an inappropriate situation (you really have to make sure he is 3 gate expanding).

To go into details, here is what I think about what you did. These are just impressions, some more important than others.


- You scout too early. Of course this is a matter of taste, but scouting with your 8th drone (9th not even finished) is too early (unless the guy was playing random). When you arrive at his base, you won't see anything!. I would personnally recommend scouting when you're 13 food. you will arrive before his cybernetic core, you should have time to react to any cheese or 2 gate pressure, you can still steal his gas...
when you drone is in his base, why don't you annoy him when he builds his cybernetic core? I think could do that and then steal gas.

Also you have to know that stealing a gas is an incentive for toss to go 4 gate: he lacks gas to make sentries for an expand, and therefore may decide to go four gate. (although this is absolutely not necessary, of course toss can still expand). So if you don't like playing against 4 gate, stealing a gas is maybe not the best solution. (Although I would definitely recommend gas steal, AND practice against 4 gate, as this is the basic problem you want to get rid of when playing zvp; when you know how to deal with it, it's not that difficult to hold off).

- Bumps here and there: for the production of zerglings. you could do them when your pool finishes, but as you're dealing with your gas steal, it takes a while for them being done. (But this is really small details, no big deal).

- Why do you do 3 sets of zerglings (6 zerglings?). This is not absolutely problematic, but I just don't see the interest of 6 zerglings. Two zerglings is generally not enough in ZvP, as you need to scout and kill proxy pylons around your base (+ vision towers, + spotting at his entrance). But 4 is enough in my opinion: 2 for towers, 1 to scout around your base in key locations, where pylons could be, one to poke at his entrance. (important to see core chronoboost and 2nd unit, both of which are important signs of 4 gating.

Also, try to use your zerlings efficiently. I go further in the replay: what are your zerglings doing?? I am really not sure you should scout all over the map to check if he didn't make some weird expand, if there is no reason to think so.Moreover why do they do all the same thing, whereas you could send two to towers, one to the entrance, etc. I know this is a APM intensive, but if you can do that, I guess it's better... Also, you can keep one zergling in your base to prevent further scouting from the toss with probes. Here there is a probe coming in your base, that really should never have come that far. Keep toss in the dark!


- your gas steal is interesting, with the cancel trick especially. Have you ever thought at some point to use the drone to scout again? Cause you let the gas being built, but if you hadn't done that until 5 mn (and I know it can be difficult, for me too) , you could have taken your drone to scout his base and see he was 4 gating.

- More generally, why don't you use your overlord close to his base to scout his 4 gate?? I think this is a big mistake. His building placement wasn't very good, as he had not really hidden his 4th gate. You could have spotted that easily. Then it's easy, you don't go to lair, throw down a roach warren, pump lings, check proxy pylons again, and when roach warren is finished you use the gas to get roaches, and you should be doing really fine.

- At 26 food you have much money. Let's be clear, there is one thing I like, and one I dislike. The thing I like to do is to delay a bit my unit production at this stage while building overlords more than necessary, as it is the moment where you have to make a choice between zerglings and drones. That implies that your money rises a bit at that moment, and this is what you did, and that's fine. YET, the implication of this is to have information to make your decision!! as you don't have any poking zerglings, you absolutely don't know what he is doing. Therefore you're doing some blind zerglings (which is a bad thing).
My rule of thumb (mentioned in greater detail in the thread, earlier), is the following: if you see the expand already done, don't do zerglings to harass, that's too late. If you don't see the expand, do a wave of zerglings, it'll help to harass late expand or defend against someone not expanding, but doing some kind of late 1 base attack. OF course, this rule does NOT apply to toss doing 4 gate, as in that case you can just go lings.

- I am at the 7mn mark, and still you have not scouted his natural, and poked at his entrance!! What the hell are you doing?? you need information to take decisions

- Your zergling harassment is terrible . True, zergling harassment is a difficult decision to make at this stage of the game, I also regularly take the bad decision. Yet in this case it was pretty clear that you could not ingage his units.
I think your two possibilities were: not attacking when you see what he has ; or trying to go kill the nexus, without really ingaging his units. You would have suffer some losses, but not necessarily too much, and it would have been fine.
BUT why do you stop attacking the nexus when it's gonna get killed and attack his units?? you hesitate and do crap. that's really bad for two reasons. 1: because you lose a significant number of units to fight for later. 2. because when attacking, you have shown your opponent what you have. I think it's an important element to hide as much as possible what you have (as protoss is in the dark, between 4mn to 9mn.

- you get slightly supply blocked when he attacks. But this is really a detail, I don't think it would have changed anything. The main problem here is that you didn't scout the 4 gate coming...




"Courage consists, however, in agreeing to flee rather than live tranquilly and hypocritically in false refuges." G. Deleuze
Macpo
Profile Joined September 2010
453 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-06 09:21:19
April 06 2011 09:04 GMT
#128
On April 06 2011 17:06 ferry wrote:
I have no experience playing as protoss, but isn't there a possibility to get at least 2 colossus out by 11 minutes with a decent gateway army? 3 Gate robo or 4 Gate robo perhaps? I suppose the early ling push can delay the colossus, but it seems if you scout him going early colossus, it's better to change the hydra drop. It seems that something like what happened in IdrA's game 2 against cruncher where he split his drops as well as combined them with a roach/corrupter push is a good option. To meet the 11m timing perhaps it could be a roach push combined with fewer hydras being dropped.


I really think you can't have 2 colossi at the 11 mn mark (in the case of fast expands). Most people don't even have one, some have one popping around the time the drop happens, but I really haven't met someone with two colossi yet...
"Courage consists, however, in agreeing to flee rather than live tranquilly and hypocritically in false refuges." G. Deleuze
OptimusYale
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
Korea (South)1005 Posts
April 06 2011 09:18 GMT
#129
I was thinking about something like this the other day but I was thinking more along the infestor drops with fungals on their workers with a few terrans to polish it off. this will help you also retreat your amy as you fungal a few units in their choke and they cant get to you whilst you move to your ovies for an escape. And with this strat you can also punish a non detection protoss with burrowed instestors with inf. terrans at their nat at the same time also throw in some roaches into the drop to take damage/ block shit up to protect them...

Actually came to me in a dream but my lack of sc time hurts me alot
nahnah
Profile Joined April 2011
United Kingdom4 Posts
April 06 2011 09:46 GMT
#130
Macpo,


Yes I was itachi. Thanks alot for the comments i will bear them in mind. I guess there's no need for 3 sets of zerglings and I should definately scout more. I will try again and certainly improve on this!

Cheers
fenX
Profile Joined February 2011
France127 Posts
April 06 2011 09:51 GMT
#131
I like the idea behind this, like "if your opponent is doing or might be doing something you can't deal with, just kill him before he does it".

Likewise I've been opening 5RR in almost all of my ZvP and it works really well (at least at my level - platinium) against most protoss builds :
- against forge-expand : depends on the map, most of times roaches can sneak into the main and kill it, or kill the expand, or force to build tons of canons everywhere while I can just stop roach production, double expand and mass drone for a while
- against 4 gates : forces the 4 gate to be used for defense, with good micro it allows me to do enough damages to transition to standard midgame with a big advantage
- against stargate : roaches can kill all the toss ground army and do significant damage to his economy before the first void ray pop and deal with them instead of going for an attack, wich buy me enough time to get spore crawlers or hydras
- against 2gates+robo : I usually get reppelled when immortal pops, and that's actually the only case that give me lots of trouble but I sometimes manage to deal with it by transitionning to speedlings+hydras (and at that points it looks similar to what you're doing)

Being agressive as zerg is good, even if it hurts your early economy you can always catch up quickly by building 10 drones at once whenever you have the opportunity, other races can't do that
My map thread : http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=195518
Macpo
Profile Joined September 2010
453 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-09 14:14:24
April 09 2011 07:23 GMT
#132
On April 05 2011 00:39 pAnatiC wrote:

What do you think about also dropping 2-3 drones to put spinecrawlers in the enemy base? When he has got no coloss, then it might be not so bad?


Well, I am not sure, but I am afraid spines wouldn't have time to finish... Yet, if this is not the case, if spines can be built on time (during the drop), that could definitely be interesting (and spectacular!), especially in the variations of the build where you built more than 40 drones and have extra minerals to spend! Definitely worth a try. If you have any replay to submit...
"Courage consists, however, in agreeing to flee rather than live tranquilly and hypocritically in false refuges." G. Deleuze
KozlikSikula
Profile Joined April 2011
Slovakia2 Posts
April 09 2011 11:07 GMT
#133
Mr. you are a god to me. I was having extreme troubles to win vs toss (i never cheese and play more macro style), but I literaly crashed terran at same level. Just tried this tactics, totaly screwed my build order and was playing terrible, and despite it i won big time.

Mr. you are a god to me.
Lingy
Profile Joined December 2010
England201 Posts
April 09 2011 14:06 GMT
#134
Sounds pretty cool im going to try it out for a few games!
Hydraliskuuuuhh
Akatsuki1012
Profile Joined September 2010
Philippines41 Posts
April 10 2011 11:48 GMT
#135
This was a great thread man, worked like a charm, just like you said. Although something still bothers me. Does your thread imply that the late game deathball is just unbeatable and zerg has no choice but to kill off protoss before getting to late game? And if not, do you have any advice on how to beat the typical colo/vr deathball? I'm really struggling with that.
Rawr
jungeMann
Profile Joined April 2011
Germany10 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-10 12:37:20
April 10 2011 12:36 GMT
#136
@Macpo:
Why do you suggest to drop this strategy if you anticipate a 4gp?
2 injected hatches pumping ling/hydra crush 4gp. Or is it impossible to get the hydras going this early?
TibblesEvilCat
Profile Joined March 2010
United Kingdom766 Posts
April 10 2011 13:13 GMT
#137
i did this sort of style back in beta, and just died to the rate at which protos made zealots and terran made marines, lead to epic games, my tip are.
At leaste 12drones, 16 is like magic number to keep making units, add a few more to get an expo, the issue is setting expo up as serriousley if you didnt u'ld dry out.
I give this ago again.
Live Fast Die Young :D
Fishermang
Profile Joined September 2010
Norway56 Posts
April 10 2011 13:13 GMT
#138
Now we need to come up with something similar against terran! :D
Macpo
Profile Joined September 2010
453 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-10 13:42:57
April 10 2011 13:25 GMT
#139
@ Akatsuki: I think dealing with protoss ball is very difficult (have you seen Idra vs Cruncher recently?), requires very good macro, to be successful supposes that you already have an advantage; you often feel that you won only because a specific thing in the game. Thousands of proposals were made on this issue, the latest one was the infestor buff, which soon appeared to be quite useless (go see threads on this!).

So for me the conclusion drawn long ago was: give up any long term strategy with protoss 1. zerg is weak in the beginning (can't really make nice pushes, except very cheesy ones like wzp 3 roach lings push). 2. zerg is weak in the endgame. 3. Therefore it has to strikes in the midgame.I would recommend anyone to do the same, you will feel free again!

I have been looking for tons of roaches compositions and strats, (I had identified that the 11th mn mark is important) and finally switch to hydras. One day by chance I realised that the muta transition was very effective.

@jungeMann : I just feel pretty comfortable vs any 4gate push, when I defend it with roaches and zerglings. Given that you can see most of the time that it is coming, I just don't see any reason to try to go for Hydra ling defense - which is in my opinion a bit more risky, especially against early pushes.

@Fishermang : I have something similar vs terran (i mean an aggressive one and a half base opening with midgame push), maybe some day I 'll do something on this^^ (I find it a bit less convincing, although playable).
"Courage consists, however, in agreeing to flee rather than live tranquilly and hypocritically in false refuges." G. Deleuze
Fishermang
Profile Joined September 2010
Norway56 Posts
April 10 2011 14:20 GMT
#140
Would you care to share what you have? I would love to try something alternative to the passive reacting approach!
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