[G] ZvT - Get Curious: A Killer Nydus Timing Inspired by Curious' Roach/Queen Nydus timing in the GSL (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2_Base_Nydus_%28vs._Terran%29)
Greeting TL forum-goers! I'm a low Masters player on NA and I'm hoping to give back to the community by consolidating my notes and recent ladder experience into a guide that I hope will add a deadly tool to your ZvT play. Credit where credit is due: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=370945 is where I first read about this build, but was disappointed by the lack of a real thought of build order in the replay and didn't feel like the gas timings in the Liquipedia entry. As a result, I spent a while experimenting on the ladder with different variations until I arrived at one that felt fairly smooth and has performed consistently!
This build is designed to mercilessly destroy any 1 Rax FE into MVP-style Hellion/Banshee play. It is a simple build-order win. It will also beat any mass Hellion, early mech openers, while being VERY strong against greedy bio. The only case in which you may not deal enough damage is against a player making significant numbers of marauders or rushing siege mode. Since both of these are in the minority of what you tend to see on ladder, you will pretty much always be ahead after this attack if he hasn't GG'd out yet.
15 Hatchery 16 Pool 17 OV @100% Pool - 4 Lings, 2 Queens 25 OV @100% Queens, 2 more Queens 33 OV @5 Minutes - 3 Extractors 40 OV @100 Gas - Lair @100 Gas - Ling Speed 41 Drones (16 on minerals at each base, 9 total on gas) + 10 supply from Queens and Lings means you stop making drones at 51 supply @48/80 Lair, Roach Warren 4 OVs @100% Lair, Nydus, 2 more Queens, Overseer Baneling nest if 1/1/1 formation is not scouted. @100% Roach Warren, however many roaches you feel is appropriate! I generally like to get 10. Nydus in or near his base by around 8:30 and either rally more units or transition.
Phase 1 - As you can see, the basics of this build are, well, basic. You open standard and are able to get your 3rd and 4th Queens up faster and get better mineral saturation due to your delayed gas (compared to Curious' build). This has the added benefit of keeping your gas hidden from the Terran who will normally see any gas made before 20ish supply and assume something fishy is coming. In this case, he'd be right and we would rather he didn't have all that time to make marauders and bunkers.
Most of my focus in refining this build came down the gas timings. It's fairly basic math: you need 800 gas by the 8:30 mark in order to get Lair, Ling Speed, Nydus, an Overseer, 10 Roaches, and an exit worm. At the rate of 100 gas per extractor we can backwards plan from that point to see that 3 extractors popping at 5:30 will generate 900 gas our timing if played perfectly. This 100 gas buffer from our requirement and perfect play allows for a little wiggle room as well as for adapting to what we scout.
One of the most crucial points in this build comes when your Overseer pops. If you scout heavy bio then you must immediately drop a Baneling nest and start making Lings instead of roaches. If you can confirm this by scouting earlier with Lings then you can go with only 8 roaches or so instead and have Banelings ready for your initial attack. In addition to confirming your opponents tech, your Overseer also serves to scout for potential dead space in themain for a Nydus as well as to detect cloaked Banshees. You should have at least 2 OVs by the Terran's base at this point so you can make a second if for some reason you lose the first.
Phase 2 Now for the actual attack!
At this point in the game you should have 10+ Roaches, 6 Queens (4 of whom are coming for the ride), and x number of ling/bling as the situation dictates. Make sure your roaches are front-loaded in the Nydus as you want them emerging first.
Ideally you will get your Nydus in your opponent's main. Some maps are much easier than others (Antiga, TDA, Daybreak, Shakuras, Condemned Ridge, Cloud Kingdom, Entombed all have great corners that can be abused). It really just comes down to the individual game. Luckily this build is almost as strong when you Nydus near the front and you can almost always pop another Nydus in the main while you bust the front.
As your emerges rally out of the Nydus, immediately drop a creep tumor with the first queen that you can. This will improve your maneuverability immensely as the creep rapidly spreads as well as be a general annoyance for the Terran. Getting 3-4 Banelings as quickly as possible will assure that SCV pulls are disastrous and really help your roaches against marine/marauder balls.
If you feel you can press the game to a close right here, simply rally Roaches/Lings to your Nydus and kill him. Otherwise it's time for...
It's also important to note here that many players will, upon seeing your Roaches and acknowledging that Hellions were a bad choice today, send those Hellions to your base to roast lings. Letting the Terran do this is pretty much the only way to make this attack 100% all-in. 3-4 Roaches rallied to your base instead of the Nydus will let you kill these as well as block your main ramp if necessary. Be careful!
Phase 3 ...the transition.
Here's what the situation should look like if your push is cleaned up: you have 41 Drones on 2 bases, Lair tech, and a pile of gas starting to build up. Your opponent is behind in econ and even at best in tech and you don't have to worry about him pushing out anytime soon.
Take a 3rd, drop double Evos for melee upgrades, and get your Infestors out. Depending on how much damage you did you may even feel safe to double expand, else you will probably want a macro Hatch. From this point on simply do whatever you do best and deny the Terran's 3rd as long as possible.
A lot of this can be concurrent to your attack. As you will be able to tell from my replays, I tend to float far more resources than I should be as I micro my attack when those resources could have immediately gone towards tech and drones. Still workin' on them mechanics!
The TLDR summary: 10 roach, 4 queen, lings as needed hit around 8:45 via Nydus following 3 gas at 5 mins and set you up to either take a 3rd while setting the Terran behind or go all-in and finish him off.
http://drop.sc/277848 Last game I played with this style that I thought I executed well. http://drop.sc/267605 - An example of the build vs. AI. http://drop.sc/267968 - My attack does a ton of damage but doesn't kill him. http://drop.sc/267596 - Alternate build by MLtLykhan where he takes a 3rd before attacking and you can see the Nydus out front. http://drop.sc/267595 I will add more as I get more, my replays are rather unorganized and some didn't get saved so this is it for now. As you can see I could definitely play better but it doesn't even really matter.
Hope you enjoyed this guide and get some use out of it when you're tilting on the ladder or in a BoX! I would also appreciate any feedback regarding the guide itself in addition to the build as this is the first time I have written one.
come on srsly? ... curious prepared something against a special opponent... this is only important if your going up against one of the strongest players in the world.
On October 26 2012 16:51 GodOfWarAReS wrote: come on srsly? ... curious prepared something against a special opponent... this is only important if your going up against one of the strongest players in the world.
This is an incredibly strong build against Hellion/Banshee openers that can do large amounts of damage and is difficult to deny. How is that irrelevant?
On October 26 2012 16:51 GodOfWarAReS wrote: come on srsly? ... curious prepared something against a special opponent... this is only important if your going up against one of the strongest players in the world.
Technically, this isn't Curious' build, it's the OP's. The OP simply drew key elements from Curious' build and formed his own. Curious' build was obviously a one-time-only build.
A suggestion, you can swap out the nydus and replace in overlord drop and speed if you want to try to salvage the game. Yes its a little slower but you get pickup micro against units and can assault tanks, There is far more utility in it so depending how you want to play.
Was just going to suggest in order to improve this build as you already suggested having a queen drop a tumor to prebuild 2-4 spines and load them in as static defense to make this ridiculously strong. As the creep tumor pops the creep will spread even more and you can continue to push into the terran with your spines and reinforcing army.
On October 27 2012 05:29 orBitual wrote: can't load buildings into a nydus
can someone confirm or deny this cause I swore I saw this on tlos stream forever ago. But if you can't would still be awesome to bring drones to build them
On October 26 2012 17:49 aka_star wrote: A suggestion, you can swap out the nydus and replace in overlord drop and speed if you want to try to salvage the game. Yes its a little slower but you get pickup micro against units and can assault tanks, There is far more utility in it so depending how you want to play.
Waiting for drop is a rather significant delay. This Attack is really strong because the Terran only has hellions, banshees and a small number of marines at that time. Roaches can deal with the marines and hellions and queens kill the banshees.
I've done similar stuff, mostly on maps like shakkuras where I don't particularly want to play a long zvt game. I can't imagine terrans holding it off without losing a ton of scvs. My version is also far more allinish as I reinforce with pure roach.
On October 27 2012 05:29 orBitual wrote: can't load buildings into a nydus
can someone confirm or deny this cause I swore I saw this on tlos stream forever ago. But if you can't would still be awesome to bring drones to build them
with this build, its very hard to comeback after the push if the terran did a bio opener. what do you need to scout to be sure that you'll do a lot of damages using this build?
On October 26 2012 17:49 aka_star wrote: A suggestion, you can swap out the nydus and replace in overlord drop and speed if you want to try to salvage the game. Yes its a little slower but you get pickup micro against units and can assault tanks, There is far more utility in it so depending how you want to play.
This was one of the first things I considered when I began working on this timing.
While I like the idea of a major drop timing and then being able to threaten drops throughout the game, this attack will probably come too late. Ventral Sacs is 130 seconds meaning you would need to start lair at around 4:30 to hit a similar timing. Even that is assuming that you are close by air on a map like Antiga where you could have rallied your OVs to a spot near his base before OV speed finished.
I plan on experimenting with this in the future, probably for a slightly later timing. The window against Hellion/Banshee is actually fairly long so I think it could be made to work. I feel like this would have a similar effect to Muta harass, making the Terran feel like he can't leave his base and likely forcing some turrets at his periphery for only a 300/300 investment on your part.
On October 27 2012 05:29 orBitual wrote: can't load buildings into a nydus
can someone confirm or deny this cause I swore I saw this on tlos stream forever ago. But if you can't would still be awesome to bring drones to build them
Confirmed, you cannot bring spines into a nydus.
You dont load spines into nydus, you load drones and use them to make spines once you get some creep.
Pretty cool build. It's so easy to lose track of your macro while doing this though, but maybe I just need some more practice. (Only done it vs AI twice now)..
So I used this a couple of times on EU ladder (platinum league) and it worked like a charm! Of course my timings were off, and I wasn't able to execute it nearly as perfectly as I would like to... but man is it devastating.
The key to this build (for me) is finding the right place to pop the nydus, and to never stop replenishing the roaches and lings and whatever you can bring. Most of the terran army will be at the natural, or out and about the map, so it's a perfect opportunity to bring down buildings, economy, etc.
Even spreading creep all over that terran base is so satisfying, because even if you fail, he has to scan his own base to get rid of those creep tumors = less MULEs.
Good job on bringing this guide to the masses. Much obliged
As soon as I read this guide I went to ladder. I'm diamond on KR, So not the highest level of opponents.
I did this build and I must say it is actually quite fun to use, Getting the creep all over the Terrans natural is amazing! Delays mining from the natural for so long! If you guys aren't using location hotkeys I would recommend doing it. Location hotkeys make taking your 3rd very fast and easy, It actually helps me with this build quite a bit, Less time placing hatcheries more time microing!
Earlygame Nydus is always sort of allin because a few workers even can kill it off. In addition, you realize whether the opponent is building "scouting" supply depots or not too late in order to pull back of the strat.
In any case, move the spotting overlord in quite some bit. I see soooo many, even pros, to just scratch the edge of the presumably sneaky place to place the nydus, only to find a supply depot or pylon a few yards away.
On November 19 2012 19:06 Mahtasooma wrote: Earlygame Nydus is always sort of allin because a few workers even can kill it off. In addition, you realize whether the opponent is building "scouting" supply depots or not too late in order to pull back of the strat.
In any case, move the spotting overlord in quite some bit. I see soooo many, even pros, to just scratch the edge of the presumably sneaky place to place the nydus, only to find a supply depot or pylon a few yards away.
Can't you position overlords for multiple nydus (if necessary) to make it harder for him to kill them all? As a last resort, if you really can't get a nydus up inside his base, maybe place one outside his base just to reduce queens traveling time significantly? If queens were fast, this build could work without nydus, I see nydus mainly as a way of teleporting the queens...
Of course the front will be better protected, but it may still do damage.
Again, you can just pop the nydus near their natural ramp and still be able to break a player going hellion/banshee with an issue. It really isn't worth going for a blatant worm in their base that he will have vision of because you have to remember that each one is costing you 100/100...
Since I first wrote this guide I've started dropping a baneling nest at the same time as my roach warren regardless of what I think the Terran is doing because this is the magic number for bunkers, depots, and killing any SCV pulls instantly.
Also there was a game in the current GSL season in which the Terran player actually just took his second set of queens and, after dropping several creep tumors, just walked them all the way across the map. He then rallied roaches to them and was able to basically do the same thing but without the nydus and fewer queens. A cute trick here is to have your OV near their base drop some creep for your queens to plant more tumors, allowing you to push creep along with your attack.
I'm pretty sure this was on Cloud Kingdom but I've watched so many games recently that I really have no idea which one this was. Trying to track it down now...
Thanks so much for this build order! I am going to practice it a lot, because I have a rivalry with a terran friend of mine that really likes lucifron's heavy hellinon/banshe opening, and i need to crush him!
I can provide high level replays of (i hope) perfect execution if anyone's interested.
On November 20 2012 17:33 usNEUX wrote: Again, you can just pop the nydus near their natural ramp and still be able to break a player going hellion/banshee with an issue. It really isn't worth going for a blatant worm in their base that he will have vision of because you have to remember that each one is costing you 100/100...
Since I first wrote this guide I've started dropping a baneling nest at the same time as my roach warren regardless of what I think the Terran is doing because this is the magic number for bunkers, depots, and killing any SCV pulls instantly.
Also there was a game in the current GSL season in which the Terran player actually just took his second set of queens and, after dropping several creep tumors, just walked them all the way across the map. He then rallied roaches to them and was able to basically do the same thing but without the nydus and fewer queens. A cute trick here is to have your OV near their base drop some creep for your queens to plant more tumors, allowing you to push creep along with your attack.
I'm pretty sure this was on Cloud Kingdom but I've watched so many games recently that I really have no idea which one this was. Trying to track it down now...
leenock vs bogus, in game 1 he did a roach/baneling timing with 2 queens and lair, and spread creep outside his opponents base. It was less of an all-in and more of a contain on the natural. in game 2 he did the roach/queen nydus.
There's the second game with the nydus (game 1 without). He hits at 9 minutes without banelings, constantly rallying to his nydus, and beats the hellions into 3 rax as innovation pulls all his SCVs.
Game 1 he starts moving his 2 queens across the map around 7:45, probably should have started earlier and then his attack could have hit faster. He attacks the natural with like 9 roaches, 2 queens, and lots of banelings. He gets SO close to taking out the natural CC but barely misses it. Definitely a very powerful timing that isn't even all-in. He doesn't make any additional units after his push and instead expands and gets his tech.
Also another replay http://drop.sc/277848 (that I added to the OP as well) of a game I just played. It's just a fairly well executed example game where my resources didn't skyrocket during my attack.
As this build does very badly vs a fast siege tech or marauder play, I would recommend doing a 2 base infestor build like Life loves to do instead. You don't really come out behind and it removes the small part of luck involved with the build.
It cost more gas and min. But i like to get another worm exit out. If done while in a fight (not after the fight), it will catch the terran off guard!!
I'd like to see some gas timing scouting information from the terran before 545 (ur 3x extractors) so that you're sure they're not just going bio. I don't see how you can touch bio builds that aren't too greedy with this unless you actually get a nydus inside their base... which should never happen if they are covering all their bases.
To answer somebody elses question about multiple overlords for nydus placement, sure it will help but one nydus network can only build one worm at a time... so they just have to walk from the first nydus that's building to the second in order to prevent them from coming up.
I think sacrificing an OV to scout right before your roach warren and baneling nest hatch to check his composition would be the best way to see for sure what's going on. If you scout bio you just go heavier on the banelings and less so on the roaches. You could even just forego the nydus if he doesn't have any banshees anyway. At this point you are basically doing a standard roach ling bling bust and can hit a bit earlier. You can also start your infestor tech and upgrades earlier since you are saving 300/300 from not using the nydus. The only plays that really stop this attack (no nydus, no queen) in its tracks are fast siege mode and banshees. It might not be a game ending attack but as long as you do SOME damage I think you can end up even if not ahead.
Think of it as a greed check? If he went 3CC and skimped on bunkers he will die. If not, the game goes on.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i45.tinypic.com/nqs9qa.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gqRy0.png)
