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Hi 
Here is my replay: replay
I tried roaches, but lost my first wave to a horrible burrow :S I know Im a noob, I play in platinum. The burrow under mass archons was probably the stupidest thing I have ever done
Probably answers will be how much money I had and little expos and larva injestions, but I know all that, working on it  Im mostly looking for the unit composition that beats mass archons
I saw Destiny last night lose to it with mass infestor lings, that didnt work...
I cant go BL because I only have enough eco to support two chambers.. dont think ultras are good idea hmm..
Thanks
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Try going infestors lings/drops vs mass archon toss, key is he needs a lot of gas to do so and to be safe he will require sentries to keep him safe while on 2 bases. Fast drop research will slow down the process of getting ht tech cause more sentries will be required. If this fails, infestors can come to play by NPing archons, this is a two way thing because archon now being massive means P's FF is useless cause they break their own ff anyway. Zergling unlike popular belief do quite well vs archons en masses. Choosing to NP archon is always a better choice compared to FGing the army cause the main composition of toss army will be zealots. After that you can follow up with baneling drops for mid game answer and for late game ultras will do rlly well along with FG (by then NPing is useless). Good luck !! =)
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Roaches and a couple of hydras will shut arcons down, obviously you want to keep your distance from them so shot and move back picking off all the zealots before you engage the arcons. Having good creep spread will help you x10
only burrow when hurt or to get around mass ForceFields.
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ok, just watching the replay.
Those DT's did WAY more damage than they should have, you lost over 20 workers to them!
At the 8 minute mark, you saw: 1 gateway 1 cyber core, 1 stalker 1 zealot, no expo. Every single alarm bell in your head should be going off at that point. Yet you had no additional overlords spread out, besides the one at the front (nice placement by the way). Having an ovie at the right side of his main would have spotted his gateways (lucky, but still) but he had so little stalkers that you could have scouted his entire base before he took the ovie out.
Think of the possibilities that the toss might be going for at that point: either DT's or heavy stargate play. Robo needs more support units than that. So if you see this little (and no expo!) at that point, throw down a spore crawler at each base. Would have won you the game.
The burrow play was pretty bad, i agree. The toss actually has less range than you, no need to close that gap that fast! A wide arc would have done a lot better.
Later on, you didn't see his 4th (which you could have easily taken out) due to no scouting at all on your part. Spread those overlords out! He isn't going stargate, one ovie per mineral line would have been safe and would have told you a lot more about what's going on.
You don't need 3 evo chambers for broodlords, the broodlings are mainly there to soak up damage while your roach hydra dishes it out behind them (on that note, why no hydra's vs pure gateway?), and given your massive resource bank of 4k/1k, you could have afforded them easily. Grab your spire a little earlier so you an morph it the moment your hive's finished.
Your macro was far from perfect, but i guess you noticed that yourself as well (and your opponent wasn't that good either) so i won't gripe too much on that. Just get your gas a bit earlier, you were banking 500 mins before you took your geisers!
So the main point: scouting. No expo by 7 minutes (earlier on higher lvls, but 7 minutes should be fine for plat) means cheese, probably air or DTs for toss -> scouting overlords + 1 spore.
Later on: spread ovie's to spot expo's.
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IntoTheSnow:
I like the idea about drops with banelings to take out zealots/probes. There are no sentries tho, just zealots and archons. But lings, Destiny lost to mass NPs and lings last night on his stream, dont know if lings are so good against Archons and zealots, then you need banelings AND NPs with those lings.
Aka_star:
Hydras against charge zealots?
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On May 27 2011 20:21 johanhar wrote:IntoTheSnow: I like the idea about drops with banelings to take out zealots/probes. There are no sentries tho, just zealots and archons. But lings, Destiny lost to mass NPs and lings last night on his stream, dont know if lings are so good against Archons and zealots, then you need banelings AND NPs with those lings. Aka_star: Hydras against charge zealots?
roach hydra against charge lots? YES. That mix is one of the more effective ones against chargelots, besides pure banelings and air obv.
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Demus:
Thanks for the analysis! Many good points, I will definitely learn from them.
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I have been playing a Spanishiwa opening in ZvP for a while now and my strat usually involves double evo chambers as Lair starts doing melee/carapace and teching mass ling with infestor and NP when I get to lair, if I see Robo it’s a quick hive going to ultra/crackling/infestor.
However then people started going quick archons and I was having a bit of trouble however I didn’t have to deviate from my build too much. Archons are really good against Zealots!if you fungal and then NP all the archons the zealots will die so so so fast because they are all balled up! Then your mass ling will finish off the archons no problem, you can even NP some of them again and have them fight each other if you have spare energy.. However its easy enough that if you miss the fungals you can get into to trouble, so I get a baneling nest and get a lot of banes to soak up most of the zealots charging in.
The great thing about this however is that the best counter to Archons is BroodLords as they have such low range the broodlings really mess with their pathing and makes them almost useless. And as im going a quick hive usually anyway if I see archons I just go broods instead of ultras!
Seriously A lof of infestors with bling/ling using fungal and NP is a good answer to mediumish groups of archons (like 4-6) with zealots.
By the time they have a 3rd or 4th base and can start addng in their other high tech units like Colossi or more stalkers/sentrys you can be on hive with broodlords and the Archons become almost useless.
Around 850 pt Masters EU
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So many great answers, thanks guys
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On May 27 2011 20:28 johanhar wrote:Demus: Thanks for the analysis! Many good points, I will definitely learn from them.
What demus said is completely true, and in fact, you were rubbishing what the person above said about hydra's and roaches, and demus was simply pointing out that you rubbishing that was unnecessary and in fact incorrect.
For the record, putting a smiley face at after being rude doesn't stop it being rude.
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Besides strategy and tactics, Hydra is the best straight up unit against archon, even more even than roaches because of their superior range and high dps. Roaches takes a lot of damage because of short range. As archon is gas intensive unit, protoss won't be able to have colossus soon enough. And hydra are good against any other gateway unit. Watch out to tech switch, colossus and HT.
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hydras do good vs archons, but are not so good vs chargelots. roaches are good vs zealots though. In general your roaches could hit and run the zealot and archon combination. Mutas are also a possibility but they would need the harass and everything to allow you to fight the archons, which is risky ^^. I like roaches vs many zealots just because you can kite those chargelots. Don't like infestors because of ht possibility. But if they stick with dt archons ^^ infestors are the first choice, not fungal though ;o
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
On May 27 2011 20:55 Surili wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 20:28 johanhar wrote:Demus: Thanks for the analysis! Many good points, I will definitely learn from them. What demus said is completely true, and in fact, you were rubbishing what the person above said about hydra's and roaches, and demus was simply pointing out that you rubbishing that was unnecessary and in fact incorrect. For the record, putting a smiley face at after being rude doesn't stop it being rude.
? Get a grip. He didn't 'rubbish' anything. He questioned, not rudely, something that didn't sound right to him, Demus explained it was right, and got thanked for it. Why must you see rudeness in this?
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On May 27 2011 20:21 Demus wrote:ok, just watching the replay. Those DT's did WAY more damage than they should have, you lost over 20 workers to them! At the 8 minute mark, you saw: 1 gateway 1 cyber core, 1 stalker 1 zealot, no expo. Every single alarm bell in your head should be going off at that point. + Show Spoiler +Yet you had no additional overlords spread out, besides the one at the front (nice placement by the way). Having an ovie at the right side of his main would have spotted his gateways (lucky, but still) but he had so little stalkers that you could have scouted his entire base before he took the ovie out.
Think of the possibilities that the toss might be going for at that point: either DT's or heavy stargate play. Robo needs more support units than that. So if you see this little (and no expo!) at that point, throw down a spore crawler at each base. Would have won you the game.
The burrow play was pretty bad, i agree. The toss actually has less range than you, no need to close that gap that fast! A wide arc would have done a lot better.
Later on, you didn't see his 4th (which you could have easily taken out) due to no scouting at all on your part. Spread those overlords out! He isn't going stargate, one ovie per mineral line would have been safe and would have told you a lot more about what's going on.
You don't need 3 evo chambers for broodlords, the broodlings are mainly there to soak up damage while your roach hydra dishes it out behind them (on that note, why no hydra's vs pure gateway?), and given your massive resource bank of 4k/1k, you could have afforded them easily. Grab your spire a little earlier so you an morph it the moment your hive's finished.
Your macro was far from perfect, but i guess you noticed that yourself as well (and your opponent wasn't that good either) so i won't gripe too much on that. Just get your gas a bit earlier, you were banking 500 mins before you took your geisers!
So the main point: scouting. No expo by 7 minutes (earlier on higher lvls, but 7 minutes should be fine for plat) means cheese, probably air or DTs for toss -> scouting overlords + 1 spore. Later on: spread ovie's to spot expo's.
Just yesterday I went against this exact style (Also in Platinum; also ZvP) and if you run a ling to their door and see just a zealot and a stalker throw all your lings against the door. You won't get the door down, you probably will take a lot of damage (On ~10 zerglings though, not a huge investment) but he will either have to warp in units which sucks for him or he'll show is hand and you'll see the shimmer of DTs running around behind his wall. I got the ladder and the 4 DTs he meant to ruin my mineral line with were stopped right at the front door by a spore crawler and overseers. That one LITTLE thing was enough to give me enough of a lead that I could afford a murder of mutas and a pack of lings/roaches. Zealot/Archon (And forced stalker cause of mutas) cannot stand up to a two pronged attack at his front door and mineral line.
Well at least in platinum.
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On May 27 2011 20:55 Surili wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 20:28 johanhar wrote:Demus: Thanks for the analysis! Many good points, I will definitely learn from them. What demus said is completely true, and in fact, you were rubbishing what the person above said about hydra's and roaches, and demus was simply pointing out that you rubbishing that was unnecessary and in fact incorrect. For the record, putting a smiley face at after being rude doesn't stop it being rude.
Rubbishing, no, questioning because Im still new to this. It was an honest "thank you", he had many great points abut my lack of scouting and macro
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i havent read whole thread but roaches are very good counter to archons, especially if you can spread them enough. because as we know you wont want any splash damage;)
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roaches still outrange archons so you can actually fungal growth and get free shots in. The other thing is to box your roaches and separate them to reduce the splash.
And you can neural parasite archons (which is stupid imo... They are pure energy!, but nevertheless)
hypothetically you should be able to have 2 infestors to each archon so NP'ing all of them should be viable... Realistically (probably only one infestor), just get a lot of stuff and attack upgrades. Archons really aren't that good. Protoss is unlikely to be upgrading shields so you'll effectively be ahead in upgrades.
Even lings are effective, as while the archons are wasting shots on pure mineral units the roaches will be doing damage.
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United States324 Posts
Just played a 'toss who went archon/chargelot. I responded with hydra/roach. Hydras got eaten by the chargelots. Everything got eaten by the archons. It was fun. He ended the game saying he could do that with his feet. 
Next time I'll go infestor/hydra, I think.
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Just go kill him in the early/midgame, no?
User was warned for this post
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if the enemy has enough gas to go mass archons, you will have enough gas to go
2 Infestor per Archon (1 for fungal 1 for NP)
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well roaches do work great against archons... but since you tried it and had bad results then maybe u should try for roach/infestors and try to NP the archons. since mass archons are usually mixed with zealots since its a gasheavy build roaches is prob the optimal unit to go for so i wouldnt recommend removing them from the army comp.
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If they are massing enough archons to kill a roach-based army, then they probably already had a lead.
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infestors, roaches, hydras, brood lords. just don't build anything that has ling in the name.
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If he can go mass archon you should be able to go ultras or broodlord. If you can't then you are WAY behind. If he has 4-5 archons you should be able to deal with that w/roach hydra. (Way more roaches).
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On May 27 2011 20:27 Demus wrote:
roach hydra against charge lots? YES. That mix is one of the more effective ones against chargelots, besides pure banelings and air obv.
i would like to differ
pure Hydra/roach get's beaten by zealot/archon
you would think that it's good but somehow it is not
my test showed that hydra/roach sucks against an even supply and cost zealot/archon mix (19 zealot + 3 archon vs 12 roach + 12 hydra)
both armys had 1/1, zerg had roachspeed and grooved spine and toss had charge
like the people above already mentioned... go infestor + something (not hydra!)
and hope he doesn't bring feedback with him or attacks too early
i personally think that zergs not able to confront this composition in a straight fight without the use of infestors or broodlords
btw, if the toss micros well, then banelings are wastet
an archon can tank 21 banelings
if he pulls back his zealots he will end up fine... way better than you are
and "if he has mass archon you can have t3 units" doesn't apply
you can push pretty early with 3 archons + charge... that's already devastating + ultras are not good against zealot archon 
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Oh those DTs hurt - the game was essentially over at that point (but not necessarily). Since you really just want to have a discussion of unit comp I'll try.
As a heavy ling/infestor/ultra user myself I began to see archon style a lot more from toss (since colossus play vs NP / ultra is not ideal). If you closely watch replays you'll notice infestors are often not of as much use with zealots meandering forward into them, and generally just having a lot of DPS output against lings (as opposed to stalkers which are kind of worthless against lings). The archons end up being more of a distraction than a true threat for costs (for cost lings are rather good) (and zealot + archon are both quite decent against ultras).
Solutions:
1. baneling. Be it in drops or not, banelings do more or less guaranteed damage and are only really disrupted by sentry (at which point the archon count diminishes greatly and drops become more useful -- but with ultras FF kind of pointless). Also with less than ideal macro banelings are an easy way to mineral/gas dump and increase strength of existing ling army.
2. ling (or other) drop harass. Archons manage to be even less mobile than colossus.
3. mutas: box against archon helps. Ling/muta is still strong against toss in general
4. earlier aggression. DT buys map control for expand, but it really doesn't buy map control if you know what I mean. DTs cannot kill roaches fast enough to prevent substantial damage to an expo (even at natural), and robo may be delayed to allow burrow shenanigans.
5. have fun! When my normal ZvP starting to get abnormal with this newfound trickery it reinforced to me realize just how amazing/dynamic SC2 really is
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3 archons is 900 gas + the 200 gas templar archives... that's a LOT of gas.
The Archon's range, while recently buffed, is still only 3. Given that most Protoss don't even both with Shield upgrades until later in the game, you could focus fire the archons with the hydras and let roaches tank a bit. 3 volleys from 10 Hydras kills an Archon no problem... even without upgrades. Zealots, even chargelots, are a joke against roaches without any other support.
If they're going Archon/Zealot, lings are literally useless. Archons one-shot lings, and the splash lets zealots one-shot them afterwards. Don't even bother.
Really, the answer is to focus down the Archons. While Infestors can lock them down for a few seconds, it's not really super great to spend an entire fungal on 1-2 archons. Archons are surprisingly squishy due to their lack of any real armor. They die FAST with some simple focus fire.
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On May 29 2011 05:53 Falcon-sw wrote:Just played a 'toss who went archon/chargelot. I responded with hydra/roach. Hydras got eaten by the chargelots. Everything got eaten by the archons. It was fun. He ended the game saying he could do that with his feet. Next time I'll go infestor/hydra, I think.
I think roach/hydra would have been quite effective against chargelot/archon. Perhaps micro your hydras a bit better so they are always out of range of charge, or micro your roaches so they are always protecting the hydras? Roaches should be there en masse to soak up damage and physically limit mobility of the opponent's army. An infestor or two would seriously help this composition to fungal the chargelots.
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On June 02 2011 06:28 Marzuki wrote:
I think roach/hydra would have been quite effective against chargelot/archon. Perhaps micro your hydras a bit better so they are always out of range of charge, or micro your roaches so they are always protecting the hydras? Roaches should be there en masse to soak up damage and physically limit mobility of the opponent's army. An infestor or two would seriously help this composition to fungal the chargelots.
Trust me, pure Hydra roach doesn't work
or... can anyone explain me y it would?
every amount of hydra roach will get eaten alive by an kinda even amount of zealot archon
the zealots deal really well against roaches (with charge you can't really micro the roaches and a roach looses to a zealot) and the archons with their 40+ dmg really kill everything... especially hydras (2 shots) once in range
your only "hope" with such an army would be suiciding and sniping all archons... you will loose your army, but the archons are hard to replenish and if not killed... they will just heal up to full health
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I love to get overlord speed right after lair finishes and roach burrow to stay alive vs any 6 gate business.
Doing these two things also keep you completely safe against any archon/zealot midgame pushes.
I still haven't seen too much of this on ladder, but playing custom with a few friends tells me a few things to note about zealot/archon.
1. Always invest in burrow. It keeps you 100% safe against 6gate and any midgame zealot archon pushes.
2. Creep spread is outrageously more important if you can start engaging his army in the middle of the map and kite him all the way back to your natural with roach/hydra
3. Fighting this army kinda flips the matchup on its head because fighting in chokes can be benificial.
4. After surviving the midgame with burrowed roaches/hydras you can transition into tier 3 because of how useless zealots are in the lategame vs infestors.
5. Multipronged attacks are amazing at slowing Protoss down when Protoss has a low stalker count. This works because Protoss usually deal with drops and nydus with a large number of blink stalkers. Without this kind of mobility, pulling the army apart becomes that much more effective.
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On May 27 2011 20:27 Demus wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2011 20:21 johanhar wrote:IntoTheSnow: I like the idea about drops with banelings to take out zealots/probes. There are no sentries tho, just zealots and archons. But lings, Destiny lost to mass NPs and lings last night on his stream, dont know if lings are so good against Archons and zealots, then you need banelings AND NPs with those lings. Aka_star: Hydras against charge zealots? roach hydra against charge lots? YES. That mix is one of the more effective ones against chargelots, besides pure banelings and air obv.
This is extremely true, but the emphasis really need to be that its MOSTLY roaches with A FEW hydras, way way way way WAYYYY too often to people going for a 1:1 ratio of roach:hydra. You need about 2-3 (mostly on the 3 end) roaches for each hydra in this sort of build, That "meatshield" is oh so very important.
Oh and never forget the good ol scoot n shoot, + bringing in speed overlords for creep never hurts.
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EPT
