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So I've been having tons of trouble with Terran lately, and it feels like it's all been the same issue.
In this replay on Metalopolis, I get too much early pressure with marines, and he just rallies and continues making them, making it near impossible for me to do anything back. I make banelings and lings and take far too long getting out, but he had so many marines that I wanted a big, full push out.
I end up leaving because I was hopelessly behind and felt fucking stupid.
In this replay on Tal'Darim, he hits me with one big hard push of marines and marauders. I only messed up my build by not having two crawlers up, but besides that I feel like I was doing the Ice Fisher build pretty well. I just didn't have enough lings/Queens to stop him.
I feel a bit hopeless, and have no idea what to do. Thanks in advance for any advice.
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Watched both replays, here are some notes/advice for things to keep in mind.
Metalopolis game.
Your expansion was pretty late. With a speedling expand build you want to get your hatch down at 21, yours was at 24. As well you put drones back in gas before making your hatch, but at this point in the game you need to concentrate on getting minerals for drones, queens, spines, lings and more drones, don't worry about gas. Typically put guys back in gas when you are preparing to get lair, which you grab with first 100 gas, then baneling nest can come after that.
Always poke the front with your first lings you get out. You made 6 lings, put two on watchtowers, and immediately sent the other 4 right back to your base, check his ramp. If you are constantly doing that, you would have seen the massing up of marines, and known that you needed to react. Instead you were very blind, and had to try and account for anything.
You went roaches, you needed banelings, simple as that. Roaches fare ok against marines in small numbers, but once it gets too high, marines with their instant shooting and their dps will take out roaches much faster than your roaches can take them out. This comes back to checking the front, if you had done it earlier, not after your warren was built, you would have seen the lack of a factory, and marines stacked up, and could have gone banelings over roach. As well, an earlier second queen from your main to put down a single creep tumor helps wonders, as your lings and slow banes will work much much better.
The game was over after that first attack. You lost your whole army, had to pump units to stay alive, he massed up and you couldn't have held him. It all would have gone so differently if you had 6 banelings as opposed to 6 roaches. Moral of the game is to check the front, and don't go roach if you see massing marines and no factory, go banelings.
Tal'darim game is more of the same. You send a ling out nice and early, but then just leave it parked outside his base and never even see what he's doing until the 8 minute mark, which just happens to be when he's pushing out. At this point you have double evos down, which no upgrades will help you in the coming push as they will never be done, you have no baneling nest, no spines, no creep spread, and a lair started, which again, won't help you. Check the front, see what he's making. If he has a mass of units and you see no sign of any sort of expansion, i.e. bunkers pushing out, or his army sitting out in front of where his CC will land, then he is quite possibly going for some big push. That or some tech, which is where you sac the ovie.
One other thing, he showed some aggressive tendencies in the earliest part of the game, built a bunker at your nat, then you caught a marine rallied across the map. Both of those things should tell you he is most likely not going a high economy build but instead looking to attack.
Hope that helped, you can message me if you have any other questions.
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I don't do the whole spanishiwa build at all, so can't comment on how to do that better, but on a speedling opener, you just weren't being active enough. There are 4 or so types of bio pressure you need to be worried about.
1) Bunker rush (2 rax)
2) 5-6 rax marine all in
3) 3 rax stim
4) Fast Tank Push
The first 2 are pure marine, and can/will ship out as fast as possible, the later two are based on stim pack, and will have to wait for it to attack effectively
All of them are scoutable. Your first lings are very key to any matchup, but especially here. You really need your first few lings by his natural, and constantly poking up the ramp. He was being sloppy and rallying in view of the ramp, but the fact that he didn't put an attachment on his rax and wasn't posturing for an extremely early expand tells you that he's either A, going for a bio pressure timing, or B going for hidden hellions, that while later than the standard reactor hellions, will probably be blue flame, or C some type of banshee opening, but I'll ignore that mostly
In either case, I believe you're better off going banes and 1 spine at your natural than roaches, as I don't think roaches are very good at all outside of dealing with reactor hellions. You'll want to use your first 25 energy on spreading creep at your natural because using banes pre speed off creep is just bad if your opponent can micro at all. If he's being extremely aggressive rallying straight to your base and not building up a little ball first, you need to delay your lair, if he's building up his little ball, i think it's safe to get lair with your second 100 gas then bane nest @ 25% lair (if he is going blue flame or banshees you'll need the faster lair for overseers or bane speed. Also, get a third queen really fast for more creep spread/anti hellion/banshee. If he's going for the type of mass marine he is, he's going to want to ship out extremely early and when he does if your nest isn't down and you don't have the gas, cancel the lair and get the nest. Make exclusivley lings and spend all your gas on banes. Pull your drones on your expo and pull your queen(s) back. You need to buy time, and you're going to hit him with one big push out. Remember your hatchery can take some hits. Don't let it die, but let it buy you time. when the hatch gets to about 1/3 ship out and crunch down on the marines with your banes/lings/queens. Done correctly you should be able to save the hatch and come out with a commanding lead. Use your lings to delay his CC and make a lot of drones. Win a bit later with your outrageous economy.
Also, if he is going for the stim timing, remember stim takes 3 minutes and he's probably not going to hit you until it's finished, so take the time to make drones. Don't freak out and be all units all the time. Switch to lings about a minute before the stim is done. If you know he's doing this, make 2-3 spines while you're droning, try to get bane speed before it hits too. Your 3 queens, and spines and lots of ling/bane should be plenty to beat a stim timing.
As a last note, don't rage when you lose.
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Ok, metalopolis game:
You open up with what looks like a 12 extractor into a 13 pool. This is really strange. To defend the type of early game bio pushes you are having trouble with, and you will just have to trust me on this, the best opener is a 15 hatch, 15 gas, 15 pool. If you a doing the icebreaker build, then just go 15 hatch, 15 pool. It is a pretty minor thing, but by opening up in a funky way like that you set yourself behind economically, and in a game where 50 minerals and a round of zerglings can make the difference between victory and defeat, that is important.
You go for early roaches, which doesn't make sense because you only scouted one barracks. The 5 racks pressure he did you held off... but the response wasn't the best. A fast banneling nest and spines would have been better. My advice to you in this situation is to scout more, if you need to sacrafice an OL. A 5 racks all in like that doesn't stand a chance against 4 spines and 14 or so zerglings.
After that he spammed infinity marines and kept you contained to one base. There really isn't anything else to learn from that game except to scout better and earlier. I think you knew what to do to stop that, you just didn't do it fast enough. Scout and you can win that game every time.
Taldarim:
This game was better, I liked the 15 hatch and the icebreaker build. If you review the BO from spanishwa though, it calls for a lot of queens and spine crawlers for defense. You had a handful of zerglings without speed to meet the bio army with stem, so it makes sense you lost there.
I think for now, it would be better for you to open up 15 hatch, 15 gas, 15 pool and revisit spanishwas build for later. The reason being, the ice breaker build is a great tool to use as an opener, but it requires an understand of scouting, transfuse micro, and macro mechanics that is difficult to understand and frustrating to use at a lower level. If you zerglings had speed, and maybe you had bannelings too that push would have been easier to deal with. You are going to see a lot of that on the ladder until about the diamond level.
Here is a simple tip I picked up watching destinys stream (I think it was him anyway). After about 7:00 min, if terran hasn't expanded, then they are up to something. Some builds expand later as a part of the strategy, but they all involve some sort of harrass. A one base bio ball push with stem like that is a good example. At about 7 minutes, if terran hasn't expanded. start making more zerglings. I would say devote about 1/2 your larva to zerglings at that point,and sacrafice an OL to try and see whats up. if you have 20 zerglings and a spine crawler or two to great him with this attack, things wouldn't have faired so well for him.
I hope that helps. I play a diamond level zerg and a pretty crappy terran, if you want to work on something and I happen to be on, feel free to message me in chat. mothergoose.851. gl gl.
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Okay, so from the previous posts, I can tell that probably my biggest issue is still accurate scouting and response. Also, having tighter builds.
I'm always afraid to do the Ice Fisher (Spanishiwa's) build on close maps like Metalopolis, because even when I watch his games, I still don't feel safe enough from early pressure. With the Speedling expand, I just need to be tighter with it.
But I'll definitely continue my attempts to better my scouting, react more appropriately, and tighten and refine my builds.
Thanks for the help, everybody.
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EPT
