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Nestea and Losira are unequivocally two of the absolute best Zerg's in the world, with ZvP being one of their more favored match-ups, boasting win %'s of 87 and 71.5 respectively.
I went through their previous 8 games in the GSL Ro4 and Ro8 to try to find some builds that I could copy for my own. 7/8 of the games begun with the Protoss forge fast expanding or doing a nexus first, so I decided to focus on those. Here are some similarities and trends I noticed amongst their builds.
In the game of drones you win or you die. There is hardly a more appropriate quote out there for what Nestea and Losira are doing in this match-up. Aside from a typical 14/15 gas for ling speed, they delay their gases for very long and use the extra income to really power drones hard. By hard, I mean that they normally only have 4 zerglings out on the map by the 8:30 mark. I mean that they make Ret look like an amateur at droning.
![[image loading]](http://www.carameldream.net/Starcraft/NesteaVSHongun.jpg)
shit he just killed 2 queens, 14 drones, and forced 6 spores, now I only have 80 drones left ;(
They don't seem to stop droning vs any build until they've saturated the minerals on their third base. Losira held off a 2 base 7 gate push with 60 drones. That is freaking clown shoes ok.
Losira and Nestea both start their lairs much later than I'm used to. Getting OL speed & burrow in time to scout and fend off a 6-7 gate push always seemed like the go to response for roaching players, but neither of them do this. They take very late gasses(with the exception of early ling speed), while expanding to their third around 30-33 supply. Losira for instance held off a 7 gate timing while still on hatchery tech, and Nestea never got a lair before 8:00 in his matches. That means that the earliest he could ever get burrow would be 11:00, too slow to deal with the 9-9:30 timing of large warpgate attacks.
This alone completely changed the way I'm approaching the match-up. I always thought I was bound to a certain lair timing or I'd just auto lose to big warpgate pushes, but it appears that that's not the case. They get such a big economy and so many drones from their late gases, that they can just throw roach/ling at the warpgate units and overcome them. A few spine crawlers seem to have a very important role in holding it too though.
Their evo chamber timings are scary similar, too much so to be a coincidence. 6:38, 6:48, 6:57, 6:50, 6:55, 6:49 evo timings in their games. Those two have definitely worked out a timing for when they'll need spores available for stargate/DT play. The evo chamber timing also coincides with gas. They put guys back in gas so that they'll have 100 gas for an upgrade when it finishes. They also start taking their extra gases around this time. How many they took was dependent on how tech heavy they were planning to be. Losira seemed to stick on 2 for awhile against Trickster's heavy mid-game attacks, while Nestea took 4 or more against the more passive Hongun.
They also place their roach warrens down just a few seconds before/after their evo chamber a lot of the time, giving them about 30 seconds of leeway to get some roaches out before any aggression can hit.
Overall this has proven to be a hard style to adopt, since less scouting with speed OL's means I have to read my opponents build better, and more drones always puts you at more immediate risk.
If anyone else has picked stuff up from their ZvP games that they've found useful, I'd love to hear about it.
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Very nice write-up. I've always been amazed at how easy Nestea and Losira make ZvP look. Tbh they make zerg look OP, and I play zerg xD I used to get my evo at 6 min but it looks like I can delay that quite a bit 
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great analysis and writeup, hits alot of points that are so important. once zerg has managed to safely saturate his third, there's not alot Protoss can do to be aggressive.
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Yeah I was so impressed by NesTea that I wrote up a rough guiede for my own use to try. So far it works really well, and can work with so many different tech routes. I think many protoss underestimate how much you can skip on defenses when they go stargate or DT - since you know nothing else will pressure you early.
+ Show Spoiler +
1st overlord to opponent expansion
9 overlorrd
14 pool
15 overlord.
15 queen
17 ling ling
19 Hatch
20 2nd queen
31 3rd hatch
36 2 more queens (4 total)
46 2 gas in main
7:00 evo chamber, roach warren must be started (a bit earlier is fine too).
7:45 ling speed, unless you got it from your first 100 gas.
8:00 spores in each base.
8:30 4 more gas.
8:30 +1 range attack or melee attack.
9:00 lair start
Full saturation on all bases. Chose tech, and get units.
Was my writeup about it.
I really, really like this style. You get such an overwhelming econ lead. While normally I would just be really behind, or just even, in econ, this works very well as long as you can live through it.
What I find to be useful, is getting one more ling egg at some point, so I have 4 lings. 1 for a xel naga between bases, 1 outside their base, and two continously scouting to check for pylons, and then cover likely exits from his base for stargate play.
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I think alot of zergs dont drone enough early game because they dont scout enough so they dont know when the enemy is gonna attack so they needlessly make units. If you want to get out of the lower leagues drones more and scout more and you'll notice a difference
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You can't play this like a build order. They are just insanely good at scouting and knowing what to look for. Especially Nestea, was amazed by his play vs + Show Spoiler +. That droning was sick and the sickest thing was that it was all reactionary. Maybe a bit risky but overall it looked safe
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Losira and Nestea make FE into tech openings by Protoss look awful, they make stuff like 2 Star phoenix look completely unviable, and hold off all variants of the warpgate all ins (I'm not sure I've seen them play against +2 Blink, but I'm sure such a common build is still crushed often enough). From what we saw at MLG, fast 3rd + colossus was crushed as well by Losira when facing Naniwa (shakuras game), which makes me think the range of viable Protoss builds vs Zerg are dwindling. I think Huk's pressure based style, whilst taking a 3rd, and massing Blink stalkers is very good, but I have never seen him play vs Nestea and Losira. Obv, Huk got thrashed by Losira in Code A but that was a long time ago and Huk is much better now.
I also would like to see if MC continues to do stargate every game, even though it seems it cannot stop a Zerg from getting 80 drones.
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On July 27 2011 01:00 JoeAWESOME wrote:You can't play this like a build order. They are just insanely good at scouting and knowing what to look for. Especially Nestea, was amazed by his play vs + Show Spoiler +. That droning was sick and the sickest thing was that it was all reactionary. Maybe a bit risky but overall it looked safe
Sure you can play it like a build order, as long as you keep the following in mind:
- It is only viable against forge fast expand. Changes a lot vs 1 - 3 gate expo.
- By default, it's safe against any stargate or DT opening.
- Mass ling, and reactionary spinecrawlers, is your defense against a 5-6-7 gate push, with or without +1.
- Counter attack to the natural / main is your defense against a quick gateway + colossus push, if the map allows for it.
- Sacking your 3rd. to kill his natural, is always worth it.
But the key here is that... you are relying on static defenses quite a bit, and creep mobility since your roaches will be slow. So a 4th queen, will get creep up between the bases, and out on the map - and then you can move your static defenses around easier to help defend against pushes.
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This style revolves around a quick third and on some common B.net maps I don't see how this is an option. Tal' Darim Altar has destructible rocks that will take your 4 zerglings 1 hour to destroy. In some tournament versions of the map the rocks were removed, but on bnet we're still stuck with them.
Xel Naga Caverns has rocks at the gold and rocks blocking the direct path to the safer 3rd. Any quick 3rd on that map will be nigh impossible to defend. Same story on Backwater Gulch.
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I agree that against FFE you can get away with much later tech because he has much later tech. On shak/tal'darim (where I expect FE) I always expand without gas (pool first), take a very fast 3rd, drone like heck, then take a lot of geysers at the same time and tech. ling speed, lair, evo ups all at the same time and explode as soon as you hit lair. You can either do the insane 3 base roach stuff (kyrix vs hongun, min vs genius, min vs genius) where you have 170 supply roach at 11:30 with upgrades and then just attack constantly. Or you can do ling infestor, or mutalisk, or whatever you want.
It was great to see nestea kicking ass with the fast 3rd, and the crossfire game shows how it doesn't have to be all about eco.
On July 27 2011 01:30 Qxz wrote:
This style revolves around a quick third and on some common B.net maps I don't see how this is an option. Tal' Darim Altar has destructible rocks that will take your 4 zerglings 1 hour to destroy. In some tournament versions of the map the rocks were removed, but on bnet we're still stuck with them.
Xel Naga Caverns has rocks at the gold and rocks blocking the direct path to the safer 3rd. Any quick 3rd on that map will be nigh impossible to defend. Same story on Backwater Gulch.
Build a macro hatch next to the rocks instead of a 3rd. It'll end up being pretty similar to the original version with 5 mineral patches and one geyser. Your lings and queen (and maybe a spine) poke away at the rocks and you take it around the time you'd normally want a 4th hatch (usually macro hatch) and it becomes a full base.
On xel'naga... you can start the hatch right away but it's pretty exposed until you kill the rocks, but forge expand is pretty unsafe on that map anyway. I would prefer to take one of the side expos and play counterattack (like he did on crossfire). I have not considered placing a macro hatch next to the gold rocks until this moment but I don't think it's worth the risk. Since I have to sac the gold 90% of my games on xel'naga it'd be pretty crippling to have 2 hatches there.
On backwater if they forge expand, I take the gold very quickly and usually do an aggressive 3 hatch roach ling timing attack.
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The LosirA/Trickster game on Dual Sight was especially an eye-opener for me. I had no idea you could hold off that ridiculously strong timing with virtually no tech, just Roach/Ling with maybe an evo upgrade.
It's amazing how safe they feel just Droning until the 8 minute mark. I learned a lot about when to throw up my 3rd and how to get good production going BEFORE that push, instead of during it, which is how I died a lot of the time.
Props to NesTea and LosirA, making ZvP look easy.
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Liquipedia has some more info about this build:
 3 Hatch 1 Gas
I'm using it in most of my ZvPs.
Does this build work against 3 gate sentry expand? Do LosirA or NesTea ever use this against anything other than FFE?
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On July 27 2011 00:26 Tachion wrote:
Losira held off a 2 base 7 gate push with 60 drones.
I would absolutely love to see that game. Can anyone please provide a link or at least where that happened (tourney/stream and estimated date)?
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As a Protoss player who FFEs every game, I can tell you that the number 1 mistake zergs make when they play against FFE is not scouting well enough and over droning. You think you're safe for awhile, but oftentimes you actually have less time to drone than you think.
Anytime between 8 minutes and 11-12 minutes, there are a number of big 2 base attacks I can do and there generally isn't 1 answer for everything - you can't blind counter anything I throw at you. For example, mass lings will be weak against 6 gate +1 zeal, blind hydras without roaches will be weak against a standard warpgate attack, mass roach will be weak against gateway/robo with lots of sentries and some immortals. Also, even if you manage to completely deny something like stargate harass, you can't just assume I'm going to follow it up with colossus, because I can also have a 6 gate coming right behind it which will kill you if you think you're safe and start making more drones.
So in other words, Nestea and Losira obviously have a lot of experience and react well to scouting and other cues. It's not that easy to just lawl and make 80 drones without dying.
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On July 27 2011 00:26 Tachion wrote:
If anyone else has picked stuff up from their ZvP games that they've found useful, I'd love to hear about it.
Hey Tachion,
First off -- this post is money. Money money money. Studying Nestea & Losira's ZvP has been something I've also been doing (unofficially) for the past few weeks. Except, you went one step further and wrote everything down and compiled average timings over all of their games vs. Forge FE.
The next direction for your post should look at Nestea & Losira's scouting practices in all of these Forge FE games. I feel like the timings of Protoss gases are huge indicators of the protoss followup (Stargate, DT, Robo, Warpgate), and I've noticed Nestea & Losira have worked out good overlord placements & ling runbys to check the gas.
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:o.
I pretty much react the same way they do, makes me feel good :D
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Basically I think they're carrying over the paradigm from BW that Zerg wants to do things as late as possible. You want to order your lurkers at the last second, morph your sunkens at the last second, especially in ZvZ when the people would go to 3 base without a pool, because they felt whoever did first would be slightly behind.
So if you can delay as much as you can without dieing, you'll reap the benefits of having more drones -without dieing (or losing too many drones to equalize or fall behind). I always have the toughest time against Zerg players that understand what to look for in order to do this safely.
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On July 27 2011 03:11 CecilSunkure wrote:
Basically I think they're carrying over the paradigm from BW that Zerg wants to do things as late as possible. You want to order your lurkers at the last second, morph your sunkens at the last second, especially in ZvZ when the people would go to 3 base without a pool, because they felt whoever did first would be slightly behind.
So if you can delay as much as you can without dieing, you'll reap the benefits of having more drones -without dieing (or losing too many drones to equalize or fall behind). I always have the toughest time against Zerg players that understand what to look for in order to do this safely.
Only when there were maphacks^^
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I've fallen in love with ZvP ever since I've adopted this style. Losira's dominance at MLG Columbus was quite inspiring. The only thing I really have difficulty with is the warpgate pushes that occur just after the first round of drones at the third. Does anyone have any replays of this style holding off any of the 2 base warpgate pushes?
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Only Python close air positions allowed things like that to happen, fyi.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/drone.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/thumb/5/5e/Lair.png/250px-Lair.png)
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/thumb/4/4d/Evolution_Chamber.png/250px-Evolution_Chamber.png)
