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On May 03 2011 03:13 Zago wrote:
It's not uncommon for me to get steam rolled in vs top 8 masters/grandmaster zvz players if I make an assumption about tech based on their gas and then can't zergling scout. I agree with darkforce though that this kind of metagame isn't common until upper tiers of play.
At lower levels people often simply forget to pull drones off gas so you still shouldn't use that to make big decisions (like teching to roaches before expanding).
On May 03 2011 03:13 Zago wrote:
Besides seeing a very early pool or trying to block a hatch, I see early drone scouts as pretty useless. The only information you can depend on after lings hatch is what you gain from seeing what a zerg is showing at their front and what you can infer from overlords (drone saturation mostly). Getting zerglings in a base to scout should always been seen as bonus and never depended on.
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In the very specific scenario where you open speed expand, the only thing you really need to find out asap is whether he is going banelings off of 1 base, and I don't think he can hide that from a ling poke at his front (he has to show at least if he made more than 6 lings). I agree that the drone scout is not very useful.
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On May 03 2011 03:13 Zago wrote:Show nested quote +On May 01 2011 21:04 Vandroy wrote:On May 01 2011 03:50 DarKFoRcE wrote:On April 30 2011 02:35 dementrio wrote:On April 30 2011 02:22 Beef Noodles wrote:
You drone scout in zvz? Is it just to scout for early blings? I never drone scout, so I've always wanted to hear from a drone-scouting player why they do it A drone scout is the only way you can check whether they stop mining gas after 100. The idea is that you can't expand behind speed alone if there is a possibility he is going banelings and a zerling scout comes too late to check for that. You can also opt to rush banelings yourself if you see them stop mining gas. I have mixed feelings about this because: - I think speedling expand can hold the ramp against banelings, sac the expo and be OKish. It's not an auto-win. - many people opt to continue mining gas as long as you have a scout in their base and then go for speed expand anyway, putting you behind if you decided to go roaches. Well he can just take his drones out of gas once your scouting drone dies. Sure he has mined a bit more gas than he needs, but if you base big decisions on such a rather small information you can be exploited. I personally would only dronescout on maps where you cant scout whether he went hatch first in time for you to decide how many lings to get. But overall drone scouting is a bit of a matter of taste, i know for example that morrow always does it. Overall a good guide, especially for lower levels this should work very well, the small inaccuricies will only become a problem against good players. Cool that you like the guide ^^, but can you really be that exploited by your drone scouting decisions, since you still follow up with zergling scouts shortly after your drone dies? Sure the opponent can take drones off or put them on gas when the drone scout dies but your first couple of zerglins should be able to see how much gas he has mined and also what tech he's going for and then you can readjust your build after that. The problem with zergling scouts is you can't depend on them to scout gas/tech in the main on most maps. Large ramps can be more difficult but any small-medium size ramp should blocked if your opponent is playing defensively. It's not uncommon for me to get steam rolled in vs top 8 masters/grandmaster zvz players if I make an assumption about tech based on their gas and then can't zergling scout. I agree with darkforce though that this kind of metagame isn't common until upper tiers of play. Two scenarios I can think of where I've been at a disadvantage because of this: 1) I scout opponent getting 100 gas then pulling drones and assuming I can do a speedling expand against another speedling expand. Opponent actually went right back on gas after my drone scout left and instead went speedling/baneling. 2) I scout opponent not stopping at 100 gas and assuming bling/speedling get roaches off 1 base, and find opponent stopped getting gas the moment I left his base and actually did a speedling expand. Besides seeing a very early pool or trying to block a hatch, I see early drone scouts as pretty useless. The only information you can depend on after lings hatch is what you gain from seeing what a zerg is showing at their front and what you can infer from overlords (drone saturation mostly). Getting zerglings in a base to scout should always been seen as bonus and never depended on.
You have some good points but I have to disagree, I think on most maps you can easily get your first zerglings inside your opponents base, even with small ramps like Xel'naga. Roaches and an extra queen comes out too late, and in my exprience(from watching and playing) very few player choose to leave their first lings behind to block the ramp.
1) I this case I choose to go for zergling/baneling aggression(against the speedling expand) so I will either enter a into a baneling war or encounter roaches, and then I can I expanding while having speedling map control. This is assuming I can't get a zergling into his base, otherwise I'd cancel my baneling nest upon seeing his roach warren and throw down my own.
2) In this scenario I will see his expand with my zerglings even if I can't get into my opponents base. I think this case is abit more troublesome becasue I basically have to go through with my roach/speedling expand. On the other hand his expansion will be delayed because he had to trick me and keep mining gas and then I think the roach/speedling expand does quite well or atleast not bad.
Even if the drone scout info can be exploited to some extent you atleast need to do it to know if your opponent is going hatch first or otherwise your 14gas/14pool is going to be even further behind in my humble opinion.
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Added a replay of speedling expand vs hatch first(with roaches) for those interested.
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great guide for everyone who struggles with ZvZ!
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Thanks a lot; fantastic guide, and your English is great, better than most natives. Keep it up!
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I find speedling expand to be very weak to a non-roach 15 hatch, i.e pure speedling attack (once they get speed) or baneling play.
Have you considered sending an early scout(9ish maybe) and going 15 hatch on most maps?
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On May 05 2011 19:04 CtrlAltDefeat wrote:
I find speedling expand to be very weak to a non-roach 15 hatch, i.e pure speedling attack (once they get speed) or baneling play.
Have you considered sending an early scout(9ish maybe) and going 15 hatch on most maps?
I do agree that the speedling expand is weakest against someone choosing to use all their resources to make only lings and then when his speed kicks in he just overruns you. On the other hand I think this it's really risky for your opponent to not use roaches or spines, because if you opted for fast baneling nest(putting guys back into gas or just keep 1-2 on gas while expanding) he could just straight up die, and with his opening he can't really know what your're doing.
Should you face someone doing this I think the best thing to do is to note that he's not making spines and instead alot of lings, a roach defender probably won't make more then ~8 lings. Then from there put drones back on gas and opt for a earlier baneling nest or roach warren, delaying your second, queen. You could also choose to leave 1-2 drones on gas before expanding or just put drones back straight after the expansion goes up, this leaves you with possiblity to get a really fast baneling nest if your opponent should choose to make alot of lings however you will be slightly worse off against a roach expander.
I did consider going for a 15 hatch with the early scout but I chose the 14gas/14pool instead because of it's good flexibility(I think I wrote mostly why in section 1.0 though) among other things.
Ps. I will try to get some replays off speedling expanding vs 15 hatch mass speedling
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I think there's no reason to go 15 hatch honestly. There are build order losses and 15 hatch is not better or worse than any other build in that matter, and a 15hatch into roach (the only "safe" 15hatch) is forced to take big risks against speed expand, like blindly droning or blindly allin with slow roaches, because they have no way to get scouting in. you only get a clear advantage against really bad players who would do something dumb like 1 base roach/banelings, and its much much harder to play than speed expand.
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This game just now made me 2 games / 2 and will make me win more. Thank you very much for the nice guide!
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Added a replay off speedling expand vs hatch first into mass speedling(Vandroy vs Skinky), not the perfect game but I would try to play it out something like this, my guess is that a roach switch will be too slow. The reasoning is that since I don't see spines or a roach warren and instead lots of lings I can add more drones to gas and throw down a baneling nest.
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It is an impressive guide!
One thing I want to notice is that if your op just go 2 queens wall-in, and extremely fast one based muta, how can u defend with that? mass muta just end the game with those roach army....so I do go hydras always If I am wrong please just correct me.
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I have a few issues, the main one is 14 gas 14 pool against hatch first. I honestly think the hatch first player has a pretty sizable advantage (barring close positions and possibly 1v1 maps). I've played around with this a lot at a high diamond low masters level and the spanishiwa style just seems to wreck this with a few spines and queens blocking the ramp. I think they can cost effectively stifle any harass and get so far ahead economically it's ridiculous. You can pressure them and do fake pressures to try to get them to overmake lings but I really am not sure how to beat them besides catching them really off guard with a timing attack and that's tenuous at best. Every time I hatch first and see that they did 14 gas 14 pool I hear Dimaga's voice in my head saying "ok now I win" and I almost always do unless I make a mistake.
Now if I hatch first and they do a 9 or 10 pool and make spines in my base I think I'm pretty much dead and this build counters that well, I'm really stressed with the matchup lately honestly.
As far as your muta idea goes, I really hate mutas zvz and I think they're completely cheesy and just outright dumb. If the spire gets scouted at all your opponent can just throw down a hydra den and you've lost because you've essentially wasted 1k 1k. Even if it doesn't get scouted if the other player attacks you with roaches as you're attacking with mutas a really odd scenario forms where you can go kill the roaches with mutas but likely not before they've sniped all your hatcheries and the other player has gotten a hydra den up or you can try to do a base trade scenario where the roaches will structure kill faster. If you switch to mutas later on in the game after you've been massing roaches than it's likely that the other player will have added infestors or hydras with his army which both wreck mutas. I just don't see any merit in mutas.
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going 14 gas 14 pool is awesome. Appreciate it, doing a lot better in ZvZ now that I know how to open!
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On May 06 2011 13:01 DicW wrote:It is an impressive guide! One thing I want to notice is that if your op just go 2 queens wall-in, and extremely fast one based muta, how can u defend with that? mass muta just end the game with those roach army....so I do go hydras always If I am wrong please just correct me.
I don't think mutas from one base are a problem especially if your opponent chooses to wall his ramp with 2 queens. The fastest possilbe way to get mutas(from 14gas/14pool) is to start lair as soon as your queen finsihes(you could skip queen but that's not really viable) and then block your ramp with 3 roaches. Should your opponent do this and then start a spire asap then it will finish at ~7.10 and the mutas mutas pop ~7.43, however this can max be 4-5 mutas since there won't be enough gas on one base.
So when I see a zerg going for one base I like to get 1-2 additional queens because queens are really good defensive units both against ground and air with their transfuse. Then when your opponent shows his hand(4-5 mutas) you can defend this with your queens easily and then go for infestors or hydras should he choose to make more mutas. In this situation I do think you will be ahead since you have your expansion up and I think 1base muta is pretty weak.
On May 06 2011 14:51 proxY_ wrote:
I have a few issues, the main one is 14 gas 14 pool against hatch first. I honestly think the hatch first player has a pretty sizable advantage (barring close positions and possibly 1v1 maps). I've played around with this a lot at a high diamond low masters level and the spanishiwa style just seems to wreck this with a few spines and queens blocking the ramp. I think they can cost effectively stifle any harass and get so far ahead economically it's ridiculous. You can pressure them and do fake pressures to try to get them to overmake lings but I really am not sure how to beat them besides catching them really off guard with a timing attack and that's tenuous at best. Every time I hatch first and see that they did 14 gas 14 pool I hear Dimaga's voice in my head saying "ok now I win" and I almost always do unless I make a mistake.
Now if I hatch first and they do a 9 or 10 pool and make spines in my base I think I'm pretty much dead and this build counters that well, I'm really stressed with the matchup lately honestly.
As far as your muta idea goes, I really hate mutas zvz and I think they're completely cheesy and just outright dumb. If the spire gets scouted at all your opponent can just throw down a hydra den and you've lost because you've essentially wasted 1k 1k. Even if it doesn't get scouted if the other player attacks you with roaches as you're attacking with mutas a really odd scenario forms where you can go kill the roaches with mutas but likely not before they've sniped all your hatcheries and the other player has gotten a hydra den up or you can try to do a base trade scenario where the roaches will structure kill faster. If you switch to mutas later on in the game after you've been massing roaches than it's likely that the other player will have added infestors or hydras with his army which both wreck mutas. I just don't see any merit in mutas.
I havn't played against the exact spanishiwa style but when I see someone making spine crawlers and their natural then I know that they are taking a very defensive apporach to their hatch first. The best thing to do then, in my opinion, is to just stop at ~10 lings and then make your first inject into drones and then keep on droneing(don't forget to time the second queen so she can inject the natural when it finishes).
You can in this situation keep very good check on you opponent while he has to maybe add another spine, another queen just to be safe, because he's playing in the dark. So with your opponent having to put down atleast 2 spines and ~10 lings to get control of his natural before spines finishes and also walk down his second queen to block the ramp, I don't see that you are too bad off against this with your own speedling expand.
About the mutas; I think a switch to them mid-game can be good as long as you don't overmake them becasue then you'll just die, and they might not also not fit every situation so scout your opponent before you choose if you should put down a spire or not. In the worst case scenario(assuming you don't die) you still get all his overlords around the map, complete map control until your opponent has enough hydra/infestor and also the possibilty to deny all scouting, which is pretty good in my opinion.
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You should make a ZvT and ZvP guide as well.
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Also add that the spanishiwa build takes no gas until half an hour in the game, you can simply take a 3rd at the 5 minute mark and roll over it every time because it has absolutely no way to be aggressive. The unsafe hatch first into mass lings is much harder to deal with, but I guess we can't get rid of BO losses.
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Your upgrades section isn't exactly well developed... Seems to me that regardless of upgrades if you have more infestors you win and upgrades seem to hinder more infestors... Would you suggest getting upgrades after you get your initial infestors?
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Does anyone have any advice on when a good time to get Ultras is, if you both go Roach/hydra/infestor (which is what everyone does post-infestor buff). One of the problems I have been having is that on maps with ramps or chokes into the natural It is impossible to attack if he has infestors, especially on Talder'im.
Close position Shattered Temple is another one, you can shut down all expo attempts with 2 nydus worms at the other 2 bases. The natural on that map is really tight though which makes attacking it again, impossible with the threat of infestors :<
Also I don't think getting the armour upgrade is worth it, Fungal makes it a useless upgrade imo.
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Really good guide. The only problem I noticed is that you should talk more about close position problems. All too often someone will just ling all in you in close positions and the roach timing isn't enough to deal with it, even with the few lings you keep pumping for initial defense.
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EPT
