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So after scrolling through my Youtube feed, I stumbled upon a WCS game casted by HD and Painuser (HD supporters represent!) at WCS Australia/Oceania between MoonGlade and Knight which caused me to speculate on the question "If people are complaining about the Zerg remax so much, why not take it out of the equation?" Oh, here's part 2.
In the game posted above, HD and Painuser made a good point about how the Zerg player was stacked on larvae and with his huge bank (almost 20k minerals and 7k gas or something like that at one point) he could be able to remax on literally anything he see fit. But what the Terran player took advantage of was the immobility that was the late game Zerg army and nuke everything. Taking out hatcheries and LOTS of larvae. You could see in the first initial nuke or so that his goal wasn't to kill larvae, but to try and disrupt mining/kill tech structures. But as his nuking progressed, he'd start to nuke area closer to the larvae which severely cut down the Zerg's remax capability.
This got me to think, every race is capable of denying a Zerg mining, but that can only do so much because eventually the Zerg will have that ridiculous bank. But what if more players decided to not aim for the drones (though, those are still important too), but aim for the larvae? Every race has units that can aoe massive amounts of stacked larvae to death. Zerg have fungals/banelings, Terran have Hellions/Tanks/Nukes (though tanks are probably 1000x less practical when it comes to taking out larvae), Protoss have Archons/Storms. Each of these units are easy to drop too without too much hindrance to your main force at all, so why not? In many situations have I been abused and torn apart by drops (my drop defense is pretty bad, even at a high masters level) with several drone casualties where I've said "Fuck it, I'll just kill him." and won games because of my bank/re-max ability.
This comes at no expense to a Zerg because Infestor drops are becoming more and more prevalent and it's not hard to have 3 of your infestors go for drones while one (assuming they're full energy) uses 2 fungals to take down larvae at the main hatchery and macro hatchery if it's there. Terrans are already dropping/running by hellions here there and everywhere and without upgrades on both sides it takes 3 blue flame hellions to one shot larvae and late game nuking is always something I firmly believed should have never gone away. Protoss sending in DT's to harass could always morph an archon to tear apart some larvae or use that warp prism they have to load some High Templar into a killing spree.
These ramblings are brought to you by a Zerg player himself. Cheers.
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hellions with blue flame and dts kill larvae quick enough, and people have the choice to attack larvae if they run out of targets but queens and drones are considered way more valuable in the long run.
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I really don't see DT's as a valid option to killing larvae, as they're way too expensive, however a prism with HT's could easily clean up alot of hatches, as the larvae (obviously) will not be able to dodge the storms.
However the late game composition for the zerg is not very larvae-expensive, as it in 9 of 10 games tend to lean to brood lords / corruptor / infestor.
Interesting idea tho! 
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United States4883 Posts
It's pretty common for hellions, if they reach an early hatchery without a queen or drones yet, to focus down the larva.
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On August 23 2012 19:41 firemasterx wrote:I really don't see DT's as a valid option to killing larvae, as they're way too expensive, however a prism with HT's could easily clean up alot of hatches, as the larvae (obviously) will not be able to dodge the storms. However the late game composition for the zerg is not very larvae-expensive, as it in 9 of 10 games tend to lean to brood lords / corruptor / infestor. Interesting idea tho!
Collective harassment of larvae REALLY turns the tide, especially if you gun down the three or four main injected hatcheries. ZvP can flood roaches/lings to immediately overwhelm the opponent after the initial death ball collision and tech switches into ling/ultra will be gimped to hell because ultras suck without swarms of lings.
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I am thinking about it in ZvZ, since there it matters a lot at the start of the game who has more Larvae. One Baneling kills all the larvae I think?
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On August 23 2012 19:41 firemasterx wrote:I really don't see DT's as a valid option to killing larvae, as they're way too expensive, however a prism with HT's could easily clean up alot of hatches, as the larvae (obviously) will not be able to dodge the storms. However the late game composition for the zerg is not very larvae-expensive, as it in 9 of 10 games tend to lean to brood lords / corruptor / infestor. Interesting idea tho!
If using ghosts and nukes is a valid option for killing larvae, the cost of DTs may not be overly excessive for killing them.
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Interesting idea. Maybe storm drops will be more useful (I don't see them much, due to storm being smaller, now),and I always love seeing non-cheesy DT play, as well as nuke play, fun to watch.
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This is like killing babies. The larvaes are innocent!
But seriously, if this becomes standard zergs will just spend some of their ungodly banked minerals on extra hatcheries. It's not that expensive late game. Having central hatcheries banking larvae would be akin to Artosis pylons. It's a solvable exploit.
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This might be really potent in mid-game ZvZ, if you're both maxed and right before engaing you have 6-8 or so banelings to take out all of his larva as 1 bane kills larva and with 2 you would ensure all larva at a hatch would die (though you might need a few more to make sure of success) then you can engage and even if you lose the battle (really the army supply would be essenssially identical as 8 banes = 4 supply haha) you can remax, your opponent cannot build more than 20 or so supply of units.
I'd love to see this used, especially at a really high level!
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On August 24 2012 01:12 Ramiz1989 wrote:
I am thinking about it in ZvZ, since there it matters a lot at the start of the game who has more Larvae. One Baneling kills all the larvae I think?
Yes. I've been doing this since the beta. One baneling at the right time on their larva can flat out end the game.
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if im not mistaken, storm, fungal, and banelings ignore the armor on larva and thus instant kill them. idk why ppl dont do this more often, especially with storm drops. its basically the equillavent of killing an entire production of gateways/barracks instantly. well maybe not to that extreme, but u get the idea.
killing like 30+ on 2 hatches in the main during the late game is actually better than going for drones imo. larva cant run away and if the zerg is maxed he cant do shit to stop it since he cant hatch anything while maxed. i guess its just so not common that ppl forget about it.
On August 24 2012 01:53 ddrddrddrddr wrote:
This is like killing babies. The larvaes are innocent!
But seriously, if this becomes standard zergs will just spend some of their ungodly banked minerals on extra hatcheries. It's not that expensive late game. Having central hatcheries banking larvae would be akin to Artosis pylons. It's a solvable exploit.
that wont really solve much of anything during the late game when zerg is maxed. zerg cant hatch new units so he will always have idle larva sitting around. this means u can take ur time and storm/bane/nuke larva. once u do that u kill the zergs max army and he cant remax again no matter how hard he injects because the zergs larva stockpile is gone. protoss storm drops have the easiest time doing this with warp prisms during the late game. 1 storm can cover an entire hatcheries worth of larva.
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I posted this about this subject over at the root forums under Drebiews TvZ
Larvae have a pretty high armor it is like 9 or 10? . marines will not kill them fast enough. (or ever i think) so you need AOE to clear them up since AOE generally ignores armour. (except maybe DT's who have a high dps attack and can kill them in a single swing)
Something to worth mentioning is that in the mid to late game zerg might have anywhere from 3-5 bases plus a few macro hatches. Would it really be worth the time, apm, resource sink? theres just so much larvae on the board.
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On August 24 2012 02:29 danl9rm wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2012 01:12 Ramiz1989 wrote:
I am thinking about it in ZvZ, since there it matters a lot at the start of the game who has more Larvae. One Baneling kills all the larvae I think? Yes. I've been doing this since the beta. One baneling at the right time on their larva can flat out end the game.
If that's the case, how come more people aren't doing it at a higher level ZvZ? Always going for the drones, this seems like a better target in the ling/bling wars?
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On August 24 2012 02:53 xelf wrote:
I posted this about this subject over at the root forums under Drebiews TvZ
Larvae have a pretty high armor it is like 9 or 10? . marines will not kill them fast enough. (or ever i think) so you need AOE to clear them up since AOE generally ignores armour. (except maybe DT's who have a high dps attack and can kill them in a single swing)
Something to worth mentioning is that in the mid to late game zerg might have anywhere from 3-5 bases plus a few macro hatches. Would it really be worth the time, apm, resource sink? theres just so much larvae on the board.
In the mid game, maybe not, but picture a ZvP late game on a map like shakuras plateau. If it reaches the point where zerg is waiting on the engagement, is 3/3/3 and just waiting to remax off anything he needs, well if you get 4 Warp Prism + 1 HT per prisim (16 supply worth) well it can effectively wipe out 2 bases(larvae wise) per warp prisim so that's a total of 8 bases. Then you force the engagement and i'm pretty sure a 184 VS 200 battle can be won by the P, if anything he will have a better remax power off gates because he killed all the larvaes of the Z.
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It's better to kill spire, hive, hatchery or infestation pit. After those are dead, sure you can go for larvae, but taking out tech is a better use of resources.
The ability to remax quickly is not the problem. It's the fact that zerg can use all larvae for any unit, it can be 20 ultralisks, 200 zerrglings or 20 broodlords, while other races would need three times as much production to be able to cover enaugh tech needed to fight it.
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On August 24 2012 02:53 xelf wrote:
I posted this about this subject over at the root forums under Drebiews TvZ
Larvae have a pretty high armor it is like 9 or 10? . marines will not kill them fast enough. (or ever i think) so you need AOE to clear them up since AOE generally ignores armour. (except maybe DT's who have a high dps attack and can kill them in a single swing)
Something to worth mentioning is that in the mid to late game zerg might have anywhere from 3-5 bases plus a few macro hatches. Would it really be worth the time, apm, resource sink? theres just so much larvae on the board.
a few blue flame hellions basically fry them in 1-2 shots
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mid game its better to kill units, because you are then forcing your opponent to spend his own larva to replace them, but lategame this could help a ton to stop the 120 ling 5 ultra remax.
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larvae are stupidly strong, even half the health/armor would still be a joke... tbh its just something that doesnt feel right (rax b4 depot, overlord speed, roach r 3 etc etc.
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On August 24 2012 03:03 pAzand wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2012 02:29 danl9rm wrote:On August 24 2012 01:12 Ramiz1989 wrote:
I am thinking about it in ZvZ, since there it matters a lot at the start of the game who has more Larvae. One Baneling kills all the larvae I think? Yes. I've been doing this since the beta. One baneling at the right time on their larva can flat out end the game. If that's the case, how come more people aren't doing it at a higher level ZvZ? Always going for the drones, this seems like a better target in the ling/bling wars?
I honestly don't know. My suspicion is that they are usually making drones behind an attack when I, myself, am making more zerglings (lol).
My go-to tactic is to send 2 or more banelings into the mineral line to get as many drones as possible. If I ever only have 1 baneling left, I send it into the larva. If the enemy knows it's coming though, they can just make units. You really need to have them pulling drones when you do it, so the larva aren't morphing.
It all gets a bit tricky, but if you are in the situation enough, you'll see opportunities for it. It really is powerful in zvz. I can't say for other matchups.
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EPT
