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Preface
I 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.
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Could a mod add a [G] tag please.
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what if the opponent doesn't fall for that and forces you to attack the spine?
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In this example the spine wouldnt finish before my lings, once my lings are out I would just 1a with everything and soon I would have a queen, even if I lost 7 drones at this point I would still be way ahead. If the spine went up sooner then he couldnt have reinforced his lings the same way he did in this game and I would have probably tagged the spine with 4 or so workers while trying to attack the lings with my drones and click injured ones back to patches.
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You really have to add a [G], the title looks like you ask for help ;-)
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you can kill a spine with minimum of 4 drones, and it wont be long until your lings are there for backup. As long as you are careful with drone micro you will tear apart anyone daring to go for an early pool rush.
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Yeah I know lol, somehow just forgot the tag, hopefully a mod sees this somewhat soon, I dunno why TL doesnt allow people to edit the titles of the post, thats really functionally the site should have.
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Do you save larvae to get 6 lings immediately? or opt for an extra drone or 2 to fight back earlier with?
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You are already so far ahead in drones it is wise to just make lings for a while, if I have complete view of the front of their base with an overlord and I can tell for sure no more lings or spines or anything are coming sometimes I will only make 1 set of lings and continue making drones, but you are so ahead on workers already its almost always better to make lings and not be overgreedy.
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Good general guide. Might I recommend uploading some replays showing you (or another player) defending a variety of early pools? That would round out the guide beautifully, especially if you put some commentary on there as well.
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I would be happy to commentate user submitted replays of people trying this, I could organize them by league and such. If I get early pooled more on ladder I can commentate those as well.
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On November 05 2011 07:10 BinxyBrown wrote:
I would be happy to commentate user submitted replays of people trying this, I could organize them by league and such. If I get early pooled more on ladder I can commentate those as well.
I should clarify, by commentate I just mean you type out a little blurb saying what happens and why the attack was defended (or not defended). No need to do a fully commentated Youtube video, unless you enjoy it.
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Yeah noone wants to see 10 6pools in a row. lol.
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Still need a [G] tag please. Anyone wanna post some reps of them fighting off early pools to complete the op?
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This is really good stuff and I would also like to see some short videos of this micro in action
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Very useful and detailed. Once again i'd like to ask for some replays of every kind of early pool (masters only please) if thats possible. Much apreciated
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Netherlands19130 Posts
I'll add the tag but this must have some replays attached to it or it will be closed.
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This is good, but only if the early pooler is stupid enough to get himselfs surrounded. Otherwise he will just hit and run untill he gets 10 lings at which point he can basically attack-move in into the drones. The better way of doing this is to engage him in the open, so that your drones gets as good of surface area as possible.
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Effective guide, used to have trouble with this. 
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Can you add replays? I think it would be easier to see than read.
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Yeah i can add some reps when it happens to me in game its pretty rare in masters atm for someone to early pool
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Nice guide!
My question is: Do you find it necessary to tailor your response depending on the different variations of early pool all ins? For example, a "standard" 6 pool, vs a 6 pool + spine, vs a 6 pool + spine + all drones.
I personally believe there are different ways and methods to handle each, and would love to hear your perspective on it.
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What do you do when they build a creative spine placement (like in between your mineral gland and spawning pool in the back? And they just camp around it with the lings soaking up damage until the spine finishes, if that spine finishes even a queen with lings can't kill it in that position. Especially with lings being well microed and somewhat reinforced or drone up? (especially if they do an economic 7pool spine build).
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If you get a flank on lings with drones the drones win pretty handily the general rule is to tag a spine with 4 or so drones and get the surround with the rest.
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really sick post, i ahve been needing something like this for zvz
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If they come lay two spines, doesn't this throw a wrench in your whole strat? In that case, it seems like you're the one on a timer
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This is a really really old tactic, can't believe there hasn't been a proper guide with images created already. I do appreciate your timings on the different pool rushes though, always good to get that extra bit of knowledge.
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what about when they go 6 pool all in with drone pull and offensive spine crawler?
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On November 25 2011 22:49 ShrieK wrote:
If they come lay two spines, doesn't this throw a wrench in your whole strat? In that case, it seems like you're the one on a timer
This is the only type of early pool i have trouble with with my 14g 14p open.. i have no idea how to beat it cause the lings can just camp the spines.. if i pull drones to attack i cant get a good surround :S
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have to say, early pool defense is one of my fav type of game because it is so micro intensive and have some smart thinking play
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This doesn't really address how to deal with spine crawlers. If they drop even 1 spine crawler on the edge of the creep right at the beginning the timer is on you at that point and you have to engage. You should pull all your drones and try to mineral walk the ones that are about to die back. If they drop 2 spines you're almost better off just bypassing it all and sending all your drones and lings when they pop to their base, drop an extractor at their base and eventually you win. However, again I think this post is misleading because you're still dealing with a micro battle in a lot of these situations and it's not some easy decision that is made that causes you to win almost every time.
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If they make the spine at the edge of the creep then leave it like that. what is it going to do, hit the hatch?
He timed the spine so the lings will be there to fight your drones. If you attack there you will lose drones to the lings and mining time. And he will cancel and rebuild if you are close to killing it.
Instead build your own spine crawler and queen (or two spines) so that he cant move the spine in range of your mineral line. Try not to lose any drones, and make lings constantly. You will just want to attack when your hatch is low on health.
Your spine will not be too late compared to his, cause he has to wait auntil his lings reach your base to start it, which is just seconds away from your own pool.
After your own spine or two are done, he can only cause damage with his spine to your hatch, cause his lings would have to enter your spine's range to attack anything.
When you got enough stuff and your hatch is getting low on health, unroot your spines, send the queen to attack to draw spine fire, send your own spines to root in range of his, and then all your lings and drones to attack and mineral walk back hurt drones.
Trick: I always 10 drone scout, so i have a drone at their base to make my own spine hidden in the fog of war to move in range of his mineral line whenever i have the spare minerals. Cheezers don't expect to be cheezed back 
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Something this guide should include is the hold position worker micro technique from the 6pool guide. It's just as effective for early worker defense as it is for a drone rush.
The technique revolves around the targetting priority ai. Basically, the default targetting behaviour is to preferentially attack "hostile" units before "passive" units.* Workers do not automatically attack enemy units, so they count as "passive" units unless they're on an attack command. I'm talking about the same priorities that can cause a ling runby to ignore the mineral line in favor of fighting the defending units.
When you're fighting with your workers, you can exploit this behaviour to your benefit. Since workers don't automatically attack enemies, any command overriding the active attack command of a fighting worker also instantly ends their "hostile" status, causing them to drop in targetting priority. If there were enemy units attacking that worker, that will cause them to switch targets in favour of attacking an eligible "hostile" unit (unless your opponent is manually targetting). However, once the enemy units switch to a "hostile" target, your worker reverting to hostile status only puts it at equal priority with the (new) current target, and that by itself won't cause the enemy units to switch back. (it can in combination with other factors, ie new target out of range)
So to putting itt to use: when one of your workers is taking damage, you can select it and press H to instantly shift its attackers off to a different target, then a-click immediately to resume attacking. This is much faster, more dps-efficient, and less prone to pathing issues than trying to pull them back normally. It's also not a position- or direction-sensitive command sequence, so you can select the workers taking damage out of the group selection window instead of mineral stacking and then trying to see what's going on under all the health bars.
Credit for the technique goes to the author of the 6pool guide. Learned it there, incorporated it, it's really good.
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On November 07 2011 06:39 Kornholi0 wrote:
What do you do when they build a creative spine placement (like in between your mineral gland and spawning pool in the back? And they just camp around it with the lings soaking up damage until the spine finishes, if that spine finishes even a queen with lings can't kill it in that position. Especially with lings being well microed and somewhat reinforced or drone up? (especially if they do an economic 7pool spine build).
This is what has been killing me. I can defend just an early pool with 14g/14p. An early pool gets ugly when he adds a spine dropped as his lings arrive. His lings are there to defend his spine and if I drone attack the spine, the lings kill them. If I wait, his spine murders my drones or lings. The multi-tasking demands are on the defender in this case, not the aggressor.
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So is the consensus that the best counter to a double spine 7 pool is just to do a full counter attack and base trade?
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Agreed that the single or double spine follow up to this is the toughest version of the 6-7 pool. The good players will not throw up the spine until their lings are running up the ramp. At that point, they'll build the spines in range of your spawn pool (not mineral line or hatch). The reason for this is it creates a faster timer since the pool doesn't have that many hit points.
So what do you do? There are 2 things you can do:
- Build as many lings as you can before the spawn pool dies, and then run to his base with everything and go base trade scenario
- Or you build 2 spines yourself and hope you can draw some shots. In this scenario you actually want to leave like 2 drones mining and take the rest to pressure the lings back behind the spines. Kinda like you do against an early 2 rax bunker pressure. You want to push them away from the spines so that once your lings hatch they can take out at least one of the spines. Since you'll have limited lings and are fighting with your drones you won't have many so all of this has to be microed super well. This is where the aforementioned drone Hold position micro is super important.
It your opponent executes it well, it is pretty tough to hold but it's possible and sometimes it even continues on to a normal game believe it or not.
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On November 26 2011 06:22 Baseic wrote:
So is the consensus that the best counter to a double spine 7 pool is just to do a full counter attack and base trade?
This is actually one of the best answer :D
Or you could just scout at 9. If you see <10pool, you throw a pool asap and stay in his base with your drone while looking for a spine in your creep. The usual followup for the opponent is to rampblock with double queens and get roach. You can start gas as soon as your first ling hatch. Expo at 21, baneling nest around 25. Then you can cancel his expansion (if he try to get one) or make spines/blings if you sense something fishy.
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On November 26 2011 07:09 Erasme wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2011 06:22 Baseic wrote:
So is the consensus that the best counter to a double spine 7 pool is just to do a full counter attack and base trade? This is actually one of the best answer :D Or you could just scout at 9. If you see <10pool, you throw a pool asap and stay in his base with your drone while looking for a spine in your creep. The usual followup for the opponent is to rampblock with double queens and get roach. You can start gas as soon as your first ling hatch. Expo at 21, baneling nest around 25. Then you can cancel his expansion (if he try to get one) or make spines/blings if you sense something fishy.
I think 9 scout costs too much vs 14/14. If you scout early, you can go 15 hatch of course, but if you scout last position, you will be a bit behind I think, or you still have to take the guess and go hatch first.
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On November 26 2011 06:32 ChanmanV wrote:
Agreed that the single or double spine follow up to this is the toughest version of the 6-7 pool. The good players will not throw up the spine until their lings are running up the ramp. At that point, they'll build the spines in range of your spawn pool (not mineral line or hatch). The reason for this is it creates a faster timer since the pool doesn't have that many hit points.
So what do you do? There are 2 things you can do:
- Build as many lings as you can before the spawn pool dies, and then run to his base with everything and go base trade scenario
- Or you build 2 spines yourself and hope you can draw some shots. In this scenario you actually want to leave like 2 drones mining and take the rest to pressure the lings back behind the spines. Kinda like you do against an early 2 rax bunker pressure. You want to push them away from the spines so that once your lings hatch they can take out at least one of the spines. Since you'll have limited lings and are fighting with your drones you won't have many so all of this has to be microed super well. This is where the aforementioned drone Hold position micro is super important.
It your opponent executes it well, it is pretty tough to hold but it's possible and sometimes it even continues on to a normal game believe it or not.
never considered base race.. it should be doable though since you bring your drones you can throw down extractors at his ex-base and protect it... winning strategy??
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On November 26 2011 08:59 JEEPFiretruck wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2011 06:32 ChanmanV wrote:
Agreed that the single or double spine follow up to this is the toughest version of the 6-7 pool. The good players will not throw up the spine until their lings are running up the ramp. At that point, they'll build the spines in range of your spawn pool (not mineral line or hatch). The reason for this is it creates a faster timer since the pool doesn't have that many hit points.
So what do you do? There are 2 things you can do:
- Build as many lings as you can before the spawn pool dies, and then run to his base with everything and go base trade scenario
- Or you build 2 spines yourself and hope you can draw some shots. In this scenario you actually want to leave like 2 drones mining and take the rest to pressure the lings back behind the spines. Kinda like you do against an early 2 rax bunker pressure. You want to push them away from the spines so that once your lings hatch they can take out at least one of the spines. Since you'll have limited lings and are fighting with your drones you won't have many so all of this has to be microed super well. This is where the aforementioned drone Hold position micro is super important.
It your opponent executes it well, it is pretty tough to hold but it's possible and sometimes it even continues on to a normal game believe it or not. never considered base race.. it should be doable though since you bring your drones you can throw down extractors at his ex-base and protect it... winning strategy??
Should work, wait for his crawlers to finish, just keep mining and make lings, gather all forces and move to his base, he can't engage, and he will have to uproot his crawlers, you can then kill him.
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Thank you. I will definitely be trying this next time some random player tries to cheese me. A+
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So if you go 15 hatch and someone does a 6 pool and brings all their drones is there a way to hold (assuming you canceled hatch right away and made a pool) or can you just leave right away?
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I dont get it at all.
For me it's hard to attack with my drones, because i need to attack just one enemy because they are passive units...so i will always lost a lot of drones trying to kill one ling at a time.
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On December 30 2011 00:15 Maggost wrote:
I dont get it at all.
For me it's hard to attack with my drones, because i need to attack just one enemy because they are passive units...so i will always lost a lot of drones trying to kill one ling at a time.
You need to "attack move".
Do that by pressing "A" and then left click on the ground in the general direction of your enemy. Your drones will attack anything between them and the point you clicked.
For grid or custom keysetups the attack key might be different.
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On December 30 2011 00:35 Garbels wrote:
You need to "attack move".
Do that by pressing "A" and then left click on the ground in the general direction of your enemy. Your drones will attack anything between them and the point you clicked.
For grid or custom keysetups the attack key might be different.
Really? i didnt knew that! i will practice that.
Thank you
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This is why I generally like doing 11 pool 18 hatch in ZvZ, as you get a pool early enough that if you scout their early pool you just put a spine crawler in your minerals and instantly win.
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14/14 is pretty safe vs early pools. With good drone micro, as demonstrated in this guide, you can effectively stop any early ling aggression and still get your pool up in time to defend additional attacks - all while being nicely ahead.
Slightly safer still is a 13pool build into roaches, I believe its destiny's ZvZ build that he claimed was unbeatable. It offers you good protection from really early ling pushes but also gets roaches out early to stop any bling play and can be followed up with either a strong roach/ling push or by taking the expo as normal. Either way, an early pool build will suffer.
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EPT
