They spawn cross positions on Typhon Peaks. Losira opens hatch first, TOP proxy 2-racks. Losira is taken by surprise and loses the expansion, TOP returns home victorious while losing nothing but a single scv.
Following that, TOP expands and prepares a marine/hellion push, while Losira double-expands and gets his roach warren up. By the time the push arrives, Losira has several roaches out on the map and, coupled with amazing drone micro, manages to lose only a single drone (but most of his lings).
From there, Losira's production skyrockets. TOP tries to deny the third with a tank/marine push, but at this point Losira has simply too much. Speed roaches and banelings and tons of lings flood in and TOP loses all his tanks. The game is won at this point: Losira just masses a bit more and goes in for the kill.
Now this is what I don't understand:
Why did Losira not attempt harder to defend his expansion? At this level of play I usually see zergs sacrificing a lot to keep it up.
Given the huge setback of losing his expansion, how was Losira able to field two hatcheries, tons of drones and still be able to defend a push 5 minutes later with ample roaches and lings?
Why did Losira judge that it was safe to take the 3rd expo?
He was ahead there after that succesful attack, but lost due to going after Artosis motto: "When ahead, get more ahead", which translates imo pretty poorly into TvP and TvZ.
Why TOP lost: He committed to hellions and didn't get stim while Losira took a risk and double expanded(I think the reason for double expand was that he was down a base to long and couldn't use up all his minerals, so he threw down a hatch, greedily not making a macro hatch, but a 3rd). Losira also got a bit lucky by going roaches(well I didn't notice, did he spot the hellions?), so yeah TOP lost that more than Losira won tbh. Getting early stim or siege tanks and this game would've been a lot different.
TOP should've just taken the rest of his SCVs at home and sent everything at losira and just killed him.
On July 27 2011 01:54 Qxz wrote: Why did Losira judge that it was safe to take the 3rd expo?
He didn't. I didn't watch the game, but from how you described it, this is a pretty common strategy. When you know you are far behind, you must take a huge risk to come back and win. You basically can either all-in or double expo. TOP probably played too passively, and Losira could macro up and get back into the game with zergs great macro mechanics when they are untouched.
Now I'm not able to make judgement of Losira's decisions, but I think Losira was gambling and playing on the riskier side as it was either fall behind completely or go all in with macro. Perhaps he knew TOP and knew he wouldn't go for any banshee play as you can see Losira didn't even start his evo chamber until the 10 minute mark and the Lair at 12:20 ingame and no nearby overlords around the Terran's perimeter.
But it is definitely interesting that Losira was able to make it back which I can't completely understand how he did so.
Edit: Also another thing to note is Losira plays Roach/ling/bling heavily in his ZvT and sometimes ZvP so this is something that Losira is extremely comfortable with. Since this style of play is really all that Losira does, I think Losira was just able to play his build to perfection and then with a few strokes of luck with the mistakes that TOP made, was able to take the game.
I suppose Losira had a good guess on TOP, knowing that once he retreated after the 2 rax instead of continuing, it meant most likely an expo for TOP. then he saw the expo (confirming his guess) and so he expo to the third
and during the wait to expo for TOP (worried for baneling bust), he was powering to blue flame hellion where losira countered perfectly. He is a big fan of roach, ling and baneling afterall.
the rest is just him catching up and turned back to the standard game
The first attack did not do THAT much damage for the cost. There were fewer SCVs mining because of the Proxy Rax and then the SCV pull. Then Losira lost very few Drones. The result is despite losing the Hatch he had as much or more income. Losira lost production from the Hatch after it was destroyed, but TOP lost production from 2 Barracks he had to fly back to his base. Also because they were proxied he never built a tech lab or reactor on them which is essentially more production lost.
Then Losira got 3 expansions mining before Top landed his second. I believe there was an SCV cut in there, but it is hard to tell since this is a VOD and not a replay. As to why Losira went for the third. First of all he already had a decent size ling army because he had built them to defend his main. This allowed map control. Any attack would take a while to cross the map and provide plenty of time to either reinforce or run with drones. Also, Top's first priority would be to secure his natural, since that is more important than Losira's third.
Also, because Losira lost so few Drones and was stuck on 1 base for a bit he was larva limited and his minerals were climbing fairly high so basically he we about to have the income to support 3 hatches so the question is do you add a macro hatch in your main or take a third base.
I also learned a lot from this thread but there's one question that I am having a hard time figuring out and that is how did Losira decide that TOP was most likely not going banshee's. Since Losira scouted that TOP was trying to take an expo with the bunker that would tell Losira that most of his mineral's have been spent on that, leaving him free to do a variety of things with his gas.
On September 04 2011 18:04 Nightfal wrote: I also learned a lot from this thread but there's one question that I am having a hard time figuring out and that is how did Losira decide that TOP was most likely not going banshee's. Since Losira scouted that TOP was trying to take an expo with the bunker that would tell Losira that most of his mineral's have been spent on that, leaving him free to do a variety of things with his gas.
I guess Losira was willing to take the risk. He probably decided that there were ~10 possible tactics, and if he played the tactic he played here, he would be able to beat ~5 of them, so he just wished TOP to go for those. It's just a special tactic for playing from behind,
On September 04 2011 18:04 Nightfal wrote: I also learned a lot from this thread but there's one question that I am having a hard time figuring out and that is how did Losira decide that TOP was most likely not going banshee's. Since Losira scouted that TOP was trying to take an expo with the bunker that would tell Losira that most of his mineral's have been spent on that, leaving him free to do a variety of things with his gas.
after he lost his expo he basically took two bases and crossed his fingers, assuming a number of things could kill him. after that, he scouted small things over time which let him successfully cut corners and focus his build. one, the double bunker, implying there's marines to put in the bunker. two, a large group of marines to a point where he's clearly committed to using some kind of tech based off of them. 3, an extremely small amount of hellions came to his natural and got pushed back with ease. what he's reading there is the flow of TOP's tech, and if you notice, he put down an evo chamber not long after the hellions. at that point medivacs or blue flame is implied, but he puts it down because it's not entirely unreasonable since yes, he can't see where the gas is going.
it's never a reasonable thing to assume banshees or DTs from an opponent unless the units he's making imply it. hellions imply factory, small amount of hellions imply you might just be building them on your way to a starport, hellions being pure mineral imply you have a factory but are spending your gas on non-factory things, which could be both upgrades from barracks or gas units from the starport. expos and bunkers do not imply banshees in the same way because they do not show that there is a factory. you could just as easily have more barracks instead of 2 refineries and plan to go 1 base all in with 2 mules and huge amounts of barracks. that's why he only builds the evo after seeing hellions.
so, in short, and this is something i learned a long long time ago when terrans did nothing but all in. never assume banshees until you see something that implies factory units, i.e. factory units themselves or 1 barracks amount of marines. once you scout that, build an evo for safety purposes and somehow keep tabs on your opponent until you figure out their final transition. losira had units so he just pushed and found mass marine hellion, and at that point it's obvious they're either blue flame or preparing a drop or going marine upgrades or some combination.
There was a similar thread a few days ago about the proper response to a 2 rax, and I think this replay covers it perfectly. Instead of saccing drones and lings to break the contain, losira simply continues drone production, waits for TOP to pull back, and then pressures while double expoing. I think zergs have had this change of thinking and understanding, where they now know it's ok to lose the hatch, as you actually come out better on military and economy if you just let it fall and then scare the Terran into thinking a baneling bust is coming. Excellent play by losira.
Just finished watching. After losing the hatch he had three choices. -All in (Make an army and pray he gets up the ramp) -Play straight and hope for a super generous engagement that resets everything -Take a big economic risk and hope his opponent doesn't pressure.
Losira chose the third option and through a lot of skill and a lot of luck- pulled even.
Quick breakdown of what happened after TOP went home. He made a lot of production He expanded.
Losira expanded and mixed drones with lings. He took the lings he made and constantly had map presence with them. He refused to let TOP take his natural after making him think it was going to be an option a(ll in).
Then the push failed, the harass went dry and Losira turned a loss into a lead!
What can you learn from this? Map presence and awareness are some of the most valuable skills in Starcraft once you get past the basic three. Forcing your opponent to wall off for a baneling bust, denying the expansion, it's all great to put that momentum meme in your favor.
In my opinion the main reason TOP lost is the fact that he salvaged the bunkers and headed back home after killing the hatchery. There is no reason to let the zerg retake his natural only 1 min after loosing it. If I am in TOP's shoes i make a third bunker at the natural and play defensive. A zerg on 1 base cannot do much against a terran with mules. We saw the same aftermath at MLG Raleigh in NaDa vs DRG : NaDa kills the hatch but no drones, he backs off, DRG double expands and win.
On September 04 2011 18:54 Girondelle wrote: In my opinion the main reason TOP lost is the fact that he salvaged the bunkers and headed back home after killing the hatchery. There is no reason to let the zerg retake his natural only 1 min after loosing it. If I am in TOP's shoes i make a third bunker at the natural and play defensive. A zerg on 1 base cannot do much against a terran with mules. We saw the same aftermath at MLG Raleigh in NaDa vs DRG : NaDa kills the hatch but no drones, he backs off, DRG double expands and win.
the problem with that is terrans don't think it's actually viable to do that. you could easily go back to your base, put a marine at the third and macro like a normal game. if your marine blocks a random drone you know what's up before it happens and you might even kill the drone. your suggestion is viable but that's turning pressure into something highly commital since if you lose all those units and you force zerg to make the units to kill it, you will also fail to hold your expo to zerg's remaining units and things will get really weird.
hmm, something that i'm wondering here: Was it a mistake for TOP to pull back after he killed the hatch? I mean, zergs hatch first for the production, not the income (unless you're really free to be able to do what you want, but even then it takes another minute or so for that hatch to start kicking in, and that's with full drone production). Had he continued to camp losira's natural (keeping the bunkers up) i guess losira would have, at the very least, used up all of his lings just to bust that contain, and he'd probably have to produce even more, causing losira to be unable to double-expand (or at least, make it even more risky since he wouldn't have the map control with the lings, not without falling behind in eco).
I guess TOP cut workers and production time to get the proxy up, and since he didn't actually kill any drones and only a few lings, that only managed to make the proxy even up instead of pulling him ahead.
Probably TOP figured that it was "damage done" after the hatch went down, and that pressing into the main or trying to do a bunker contain would be too vulnerable, and it would be better to try to transition to a normal game and have an economic edge going in.
On September 04 2011 19:30 Nibbler89 wrote: I think the better question is how would top have won if losira didn't lose the hatch .
What? TOP didn't win in the first place... as I understand it, if losira also had an extra hatch TOP would have still lost, since the proxy cheese would be unsuccessful. One of us has horribly misunderstood the OP. I hope it's not me.
I feel like the people saying Losira took an economic risk by taking a fast third hatch are kind of wrong... His drone count after taking his 2nd hatch was higher than usual, so he is basically just getting that third hatch earlier as well so he can adapt his build to his higher drone count. If you watch the third hatch, he doesnt have any drones mining for like 3 minutes after it's fnished. It's really a case of 'whatever, might as well take this hatchery at an expo' because it's pretty neatly tucked away and easy to defend on blackwater.
On September 04 2011 18:54 Girondelle wrote: In my opinion the main reason TOP lost is the fact that he salvaged the bunkers and headed back home after killing the hatchery. There is no reason to let the zerg retake his natural only 1 min after loosing it. If I am in TOP's shoes i make a third bunker at the natural and play defensive. A zerg on 1 base cannot do much against a terran with mules. We saw the same aftermath at MLG Raleigh in NaDa vs DRG : NaDa kills the hatch but no drones, he backs off, DRG double expands and win.
Nada didn't back off properly. If he managed to salvage both bunkers and retained all of his scvs and rines, he would be fine. DRG didn't lose any drones, and the lings he massed up killed all of nada's forces cost effectively in terms of larva-wise, both drones and zerglings cost 1 larva. DRG didnt even bother to maynard his drones, he was mining with 100% of his drones. The only situation when terran should stay after killing zerg's natural is when his bunker placement has very small surface area for zerglings to attack, thus being able to trade cost effectively.
Instead of getting more ahead after being ahead, the proper way is getting more ahead while attempting to trade army. This way you can keep the losing side honest, you will kill him if he attempts to be greedy. Even if you are trading slightly cost ineffectively due to defender's advantage, you will still be ahead since economy grows exponentially.
On that map with those spawns, seeing roaches came a bit unexpected i belief and that allowed losira to get through with his double expand cheese. Since he didn't loose drones but 50% of his larva production, the decision to go on the larva cheap roaches was quiet good, but on that map attacking with them is pretty hopeless without speed. So imo thats why he went for the double expand (always be 1 base ahead of the terran).
If top would have scouted that in time, he would have probably won quiet easily. But since he never really get to kill drones, he was badly behind. (guess top went for the hatch since he never expected roaches on this map, so he decided to cut the larva production of losira and have him sit on a pile of overmins)
He also just stuck with producing units, he didn't get upgrades or even tech to lair until he had that 'one favourable battle'. Because he knew TOP was in a mindset of 'I have a huge advantage, better finish him off now'.
Also, those hellions were in a position to kill every drone on the expo when they attacked, that could have cost him the game easily. There was also the point with the burrowed banelings. TOP moved out to what I think was a marine tank push, but when he saw the banelings burrowing, he stopped dead in his tracks and sieged up. He didn't have detection at all - and no energy on the OC I think (saw the commentary not the replay) and there he missed a good window.
On September 04 2011 18:54 Girondelle wrote: In my opinion the main reason TOP lost is the fact that he salvaged the bunkers and headed back home after killing the hatchery. There is no reason to let the zerg retake his natural only 1 min after loosing it. If I am in TOP's shoes i make a third bunker at the natural and play defensive. A zerg on 1 base cannot do much against a terran with mules. We saw the same aftermath at MLG Raleigh in NaDa vs DRG : NaDa kills the hatch but no drones, he backs off, DRG double expands and win.
the problem with that is terrans don't think it's actually viable to do that. you could easily go back to your base, put a marine at the third and macro like a normal game. if your marine blocks a random drone you know what's up before it happens and you might even kill the drone. your suggestion is viable but that's turning pressure into something highly commital since if you lose all those units and you force zerg to make the units to kill it, you will also fail to hold your expo to zerg's remaining units and things will get really weird.
Yep it's true, but at least you force him to mine some gas to get either roaches or banelings wich is not a zerg wants to do. Losira pulled drones off gaz after he started ling speed. What you wanna do, is force the zerg to engage in a non cost effective fight in order to retake his natural. There after if you don't expand too quickly you should be safe and ahead.
I feel terran waited a lot before expanding, while having the ressources and armies to do so; he got overdefensive and waited for an all in (like a baneling bust) which never came...
TOP could probably have ended the game right away after killing off the expansion, or at least set up a heavy contain instead of just pulling back completely. TOP's next attacks were very cost inefficient due to Losira's great unit compositions and micro. I feel like TOP played way too passively and failed to use the correct units / upgrades at the right times.
On September 04 2011 21:56 aRRoSC2 wrote: TOP could probably have ended the game right away after killing off the expansion, or at least set up a heavy contain instead of just pulling back completely. TOP's next attacks were very cost inefficient due to Losira's great unit compositions and micro. I feel like TOP played way too passively and failed to use the correct units / upgrades at the right times.
I don't think there's a really cost effective way to contain a zerg given the unit production off a two-rax.
Well few days ago i played one top eu zerg i killed his expo with 2 rax (not proxy),after that he did doble expo and i did same marine helion push he just had too many units and too powerfull eco after i asked him how is that posible after getting too far befind he sad that i lost 3 scvs and i was scared of counter allin so i waited to ling to putt expo in nat so he got a lot ahead,also he sad that zerg are making mistake with pulling all drones just to take bunker.
On September 04 2011 21:56 aRRoSC2 wrote: TOP could probably have ended the game right away after killing off the expansion, or at least set up a heavy contain instead of just pulling back completely. TOP's next attacks were very cost inefficient due to Losira's great unit compositions and micro. I feel like TOP played way too passively and failed to use the correct units / upgrades at the right times.
I don't think there's a really cost effective way to contain a zerg given the unit production off a two-rax.
well, the easiest way is to drop a scan in his main about 30 seconds after you finished off his hatch to see if he's mining gas. If he is, prepare for the all-in. If he isn't, drop 3 more raxes and just go and kill him with his crippled production (after you've verified that he's not going quick banelings off of it). I remember Idra saying that the main reason why he hatched first (was a while back, but still) was that otherwise he wouldn't have enough larvae to hold off a marine scv all-in. Ergo, killing off his hatch would mean that he'd be unable to stop it.
whats your problem guys? nothing special if you ask me so after the bunker rush they are equal on harvesting workers (yeah actually they are not but terran has mules) look at the army size: Losira has tons of speedlings top has a few marines. furthermore top has to rearange all of his buildings cause he maybe has to defend a banelingbus allin. So he cant produce units for a short period of time. he cant keep up with zerg droning. he cant go out cause his army is still too small and therefore he cant expand.
Meanwhile losira can drone up like crazy and is in early midgame already 10drones and 2 bases ahead. yeah maybe he got a little bit lucky going roaches but as we all know losira he probably knew what hes doing cause he probably experienced such attacks before and he probalby could defend that with banelings too so yeah.
from that point on its a regular zvt and losira won
On September 04 2011 22:48 Coopa826 wrote: whats your problem guys? nothing special if you ask me so after the bunker rush they are equal on harvesting workers (yeah actually they are not but terran has mules) look at the army size: Losira has tons of speedlings top has a few marines. furthermore top has to rearange all of his buildings cause he maybe has to defend a banelingbus allin. So he cant produce units for a short period of time. he cant keep up with zerg droning. he cant go out cause his army is still too small and therefore he cant expand.
Meanwhile losira can drone up like crazy and is in early midgame already 10drones and 2 bases ahead. yeah maybe he got a little bit lucky going roaches but as we all know losira he probably knew what hes doing cause he probably experienced such attacks before and he probalby could defend that with banelings too so yeah.
from that point on its a regular zvt and losira won
well, the crazy thing here is that, after killing the hatch, zerg is still ahead or at least equal. basically, either TOP did something wrong, or 11/11 proxy barracks is just a bad build period.
I feel like if Top had followed up with Banshees instead of the usual marine tank play he would have won. Considering that it's Losira he's facing, the banshees probably wouldn't have won outright but maybe would have at least been able to pick off the 3rd.
While it was definitely a bit of a risky play to take the fast 3rd, I don't think it's quite as fluky as ppl are making out in this thread. After TOP fell back, Losira moved out with his lings and forced a cancel on a low-ground bunker at TOP's natural. From this, he could reasonably deduce that TOP was going for an expo rather than a 1-base play like banshees or some all-in. He confirmed it seconds later by running up TOP's ramp and seeing (I believe) the CC after TOP moved it to help simcity in case of a baneling bust.
My opinion is that it was a calculated risk by Losira, and his experience and game sense served him well. Sure TOP could have been faking an expo and going banshees, but unless you suspect mind-games, I think what Losira saw indicated a terran expo, and therefore a later attack.
The correct answer to this question is that Zerg is overpowered =P
However, essentially the thing with Zerg is that they have one of the highest recovery rates for being their race. The get more ahead syndrome only works very well against Protoss and Terran, because there is ONLY so much that they *can* do, where as the decision tree for Zerg is crazy.
Hence, since Losira was pretty behind, the ONLY plausible thing that he could've probably done *is* the double expo. Once you've narrowed your choices down, then you pretty much have what it takes as your path to get back. Once you get back, you win~
Simple as that. Perhaps if Losira was Toss, TOP expanding would have put him much much farther ahead.
I'm actually being serious here; two equally skilled opponents together in this same situation yields a different outcome (zerg loses). Basically, LosirA takes a risk to get back in the game and TOP didn't respond correctly, that's about it.
Although he seemed a bit undecided about whether or not he could defend against the 2 rax he eventually decided not to and didn't lose any drones. So he wasn't actually that far behind.
His early 3rd was basically a macro hatch early on he didn't have drones for it. He ended up not needing lair tech to defend which basically put him back in the game. The terran made a mistake by not making anything to deal with roaches in his timed attack.
So basically Lorsira wasn't doing anything to fancy he was just sacing all his tech in the hopes that the terran screws up and lets him back into the game. Which he did. The terran thought he was so far ahead he could just walk over and win. He would have been had Losira tried to tech.
On July 27 2011 02:05 Zarahtra wrote: He was ahead there after that succesful attack, but lost due to going after Artosis motto: "When ahead, get more ahead", which translates imo pretty poorly into TvP and TvZ.
No. The Artosis motto works fine, but you can't let someone double expand when they have no way to defend it.
Losira got lucky and Top put on no pressure. Not only that, but a hellion follow-up was a terrible idea honestly. He should have immediately grabbed stim and did a nice marine tank timing while taking a third.
Losira took the two expansions because when TOP killed the overlords he had to halt production to get more ovies up, letting his money skyrocket. Once he got the overlords up, he still wasnt able to use all of his resources because he didnt have enough larvae and there was simply too much money. Double expanding makes sense at this point because: 1. He can afford too 2. Because he was so far behind he wanted to drone as hard as possible to reduce TOP's lead by double expanding while delaying TOP's expansion 3. if TOP had pushed he would have only been able to destroy one of the expansions, meaning that Losira could lose one while sending reinforcements to the other 4. its always a good thing to have as many hatches as you can as zerg, even if they dont mine instantly, because they produce larvae, and a fully saturated base is able to support production off of more then one hatchery
Losira didn't get pushed when he double expo'd. Those banelings were amazing <3 He was agressive with his lings, and macro'd up. He had excellent micro (nearly perfect), and was smart with his units; he didn't try to save his natural. btw he didn't lose an scv, the 50 mins were from salvaging the bunkers
Top only killed the hatchery, an overlord and a couple of zerglings with his attack.
This may looks like a lot, but not if you consider that TOP's cheese was really allin. Proxying the barrax, that's a loss of mining time, plus he had to slightly cut scv for it. Then, he send 5 SCV out of 14, that's a huge deal.
Then, he had to fly his barracks to his main. Huge loss in production time, he couldn't produce marines, had to make bunkers etc....
TOP simply pulled back without doing the damage he needed with his cheese. Just look at the supply, they are even when he pulls back. Their economy is probably also even. But zerg has complete map control and is allowed to secure 2 base while denying terran's expo.
TOP made 2 mistakes: pulling back without doing enough damage to compensate the cheese investment. Not scouting after pulling back and blind countering a banneling bust that never came.
Another way to see it: 5 workers not mining during 3 minutes, that's roughly 5*3*40=600 mineral lost. It completely compensates the unit loss of Losira. The only problem for zerg at this point is the lack of production, which is compensated by the double expand.
EPT
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