EPTI see a lot of people on this forum ask for help on defending early pools, and I know that if you search for help you will get a lot of conflicting advice, I am going to attempt to explain how and why I react in a certain way vs early pools. It is very rare for me to lose to an early pool unless I'm playing really lazy even if I went hatch first and pooled on 16.
Timings
The difference between the timings of early pools is pretty key.
6 pools will leave their base at about 2:15 +/- 5 seconds
a 7 pool will leave the base at about 2:30 game time +/- 5 seconds.
8-9 pools come slightly later and often with drones for spine crawlers
10 pools can often come with more reinforcing lings and 2-3 drones for spines but much close to pool completion time.
If someone kills you with a weird pool timing watch the replay note the time and position of the map and try to memorize when it should hit your base on that map.
Precautions
Steps you can take to not be caught be surprise during an early pool build is to have a good overlord spread on your first 2, try and have at least one of them go to a common path of attack on the way to scout another base.
Some people like to drone scout in ZvZ as well, I personally don't really like it because I feel like with my build that I generally do, seeing it with a drone isn't going to change how I react to it until it would have been at my base anyways, and I often have a slightly later scout time after my second hatch has finished.
How to Micro vs an Early pool
The first thing you want to do is take a deep breath and remain calm, if you control well it is very likely you will be ahead in harvesters and units after a 6 pool with an earlier queen than them in many cases even if you lose upwards of 4 drones, with good control you can often limit this number to 1-2.
So you are like me and you don't drone scout you didn't see it coming with any of your overlords 6 lings are running up your ramp hungry for your drones, this is what you do.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3kd8b.jpg)
Box about half of your drones and be ready to mineral walk them to the other side of your minerals by clicking on the furthest patch away from your opponents lings
If 2 lings are a little overeager and have gotten ahead of the pack its okay to take these drones and attack those lings to get some early damage on them, then mineral walk when the rest of the lings show up.
It's important to remember that its your opponent who is on a timer, not you, you are in no rush to engage those lings, you just want to mine as peacefully as you can with as many drones as you can until your pool pops where you will immediately start a queen and make as many lings as necessary.
Thats great but what do I do if my opponent chases my drones?
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DJLzR.jpg)
As you can see in this image my opponent is running out of time, hes at 8 harvesters to 17 and my pool is almost done, this was a 15 hatch 16 pool btw in Masters league. He commits with the lings trying to do some damage.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/IBHhH.jpg)
I box all of my drones then click on the furthest mineral patch, once his lings are in the middle of my drones I quickly issue an attack command making short work of his lings.
The game is over at this point, I kill the lings and the spine before my lings have time to pop, if he had been more careful and ran as soon as I started moving however I would have just made a few lings and my queen as normal and used all my drones and my initial lings to fight him out of the base and kill the spine.
I hope this guide was helpful to at least 1 person, good luck and have fun crushing early pool builds with nothing but drones.
For people who just want a build order win vs early pools
If you just don't have the handspeed, or are in a league where 90% of your ZvZs are 6 pools and dont care if you are at a disadvantage for other pool timings I recommend the 11 overpool build:
Drone to 10
Extractor trick a drone to 11
overlord at 100 minerals
Spawning pool @ 200 minerals on 11 supply (this should go down about the same time as your overlord pops)
Gas anywhere between 11-15 supply depending on how aggressive you plan on being.
Drone to 15 make a queen and a ling then overlord.
Vs 14/14 you will have ling speed about the same time as them if you gas on 11, slightly later for the other gas timings, but you will have a much earlier queen to defend vs early lings of any kind. Your first set of lings will have just started as a 6 pool gets to your base and you should easily be able to buy time until your queen and more lings pop.
