[G] Hydraless ZvZ - PiG's ZvZ

About 6 weeks ago I was sitting around watching GSTL and BumblebeePRIME (Terius), was dominating Leenock using his stock solid defensive ZvZ style. Bumblebee had a clear lead following the roach-infestor battles in the midgame and did the standard transition into hydralisks. Leenock was pressed up against the wall with no money to transition to hydras. Leenock was the last player for FXO and PRIME still had 2 more players on the bench. The situation looked quite bleak. Then Leenock did what he does best, make magic happen.

VoD: http://www.gomtv.net/2012gstls3/vod/70714/?set=7&lang=

Leenock put on his multitasking and positioning hat and began to pull Bumblebee around the map with roach counterattacks. He refused to fight a front-on, defensive battle which he knew he would lose, and abused the fact that Bumblebee’s hydras were extremely immobile. During this Leenock steadily built his infestor count, and defensively used them to control choke points, deterring a base-race. Eventually Leenocks roach counters were just trading so well and his infestor count was so high that the game shifted in his favour, and through sheer multitasking and positioning he rendered Bumblebee' army ineffective.

Important to note is that the map was Muspelheim. This map is wide open with many various paths and so is one of the best maps for this counter-attack style Leenock played. Nonetheless this game made me realise that this style had true potential. Leenocks position originally looked really quite bad but, despite Bumblebees good reactions and multi-tasking, Leenock looked like he was outclassing him. The strength and mobility of the faster and cheaper army composition was clearly very powerful.

A few days later on ladder I started thinking about the advantages of this sort of style and experimenting with it. Soon enough I realised that it not only is a fantastic way to work on your counterattacks and positioning, I also believe it is legitimately better than conventional roach-infestor-hydra ZvZ.
I never rewatched the VoD I just took the idea and went with it and created a play-style which has shown great success in mid-lategame. So here is my guide on how to execute my Hydraless ZvZ strategy.

Just get to the midgame, there’s plenty of guides out there on how to do this, I might release my own one day. The important thing is rather than cutting at 8 infestors and going hydras, keep building infestors, and eventually go add a lot of spines and head for broodlords. The idea with the hydra style is to create the perfect midgame deathball style army, to perform optimally in a perfect engagement. The idea with my style is to create a high-paced game where harass, counterattacks and solid defence are combined to try and buy time to get out the REAL deathball: broodlord-infestor.

Because hydras add such a punch into the zerg composition you need to execute extremely crisply in order to win with this style. You’re not hoping they don’t realise what you’re doing. You’re not hoping to get a ‘lucky’ counterattack. You’re playing a game of chess to force yourself into the winning position.

As this style relies heavily on counterattacks it is vital to deny scouting and map vision. Use an additional queen to chase any pesky overseers out of your territory. More importantly you should clear as many enemy overlords off the map as possible with 2 infested terrans per overlord for a cost-efficient cleanup of your opponents map vision. This is vital to preparing your counterattacks.

As soon as you hit about 180 supply you should be trying to transition into the lategame. This means stopping roach production and positioning counterattacks around the map. If you cleared out overlords previously setting these counterattacks up ahead of time is optimal. Depending on the situation and how you choose to play your counterattacks can be as small as 4 roaches, or as large as 15. More details will be found in the section on counterattacking below.


Drone count and spine crawlers

By this stage your drone count should be hitting a solid 75 on 4 base with gases taken at the 4th but minimal mineral mining. Your 4th is mainly a place to maynard from your main as it runs out later in the game. Nonetheless around this stage of the game you should build an additional 10-15 drones and as the money comes in, convert them all to spine crawlers with spores and at least 2 spines covering each burrowed-infestor approach path. Don’t let your money build too high before turning them into spines or you leave yourself open to timings. It is very risky to drone far over 65-70 in ZvZ without these spines and so your counterattacks are vital in buying time and pulling your opponent back if he moves out for a timing before your spines are finished.

Infestor count and when to go Hive + Spire + 2nd evo (for melee ups)

As you continue to build your infestor count constantly throughout the game, you will find the timing to head to hive + spire + 2nd evo that suits you. Personally I favour doing so at around 14 or more infestors, and never earlier than 10. Leenock prefers to just build 30 infestors and win without ever building a hive . The general idea is that you are investing a significant portion of money to later tech only once you have enough fungals to cripple an enemy that tries to force its army down your throat.

If you are capped as your greater spire is upgrading than get more aggressive with your roach counterattacks to trade off supply and steadily build towards 8 corruptors. If you can hide your tech to broodlords completely you can often hit a timing with your first 8 broodlords and simply win the game vs an unprepared opponent. If your opponent doesn’t have a spire up they will struggle to handle it and are often forced to basetrade. With experience you should always win this situation.

As you start getting broodlords you should be building more and more spines and replacing these with fresh drones, this puts you in a good position to slow down their counterattacking basetrade and bring your army back to crush it. Leaving just 1-2 infestors around to choke them up (or using reinforcing infestors) at key points will severely hamper your opponents basetrade.

Basetrade to-do list

1. Bring your army back, don’t try to baserace using broodlords, it almost never works unless you KNOW your opponent has no way to build corruptors, AND you have some uprooted crawlers with your army.
2. Split off enough roaches to cripple their key economy points, usually try to snipe 2 mining bases or kill off a good number of drones
3. Build as many new roaches as possible to scramble to defend
4. Rebuild any tech at far/protected bases if it looks like they’ll get into your main.
5. Don’t panic! That’s the worst thing you can do in a basetrade!

The key points of these counters are not to hope your opponent isn’t defending and you get in and cause free or super-efficient damage. The point is to buy time for you to cement a defensive spine-festor defence. By having two roach counter-attacks positioned on the map somewhat sneakily, you force your opponent to either commit to a huge attack and take catastrophic damage at home, or split their army and weaken their deathball. As their army is forced to split it becomes more and more difficult for them to engage your well placed fungals and spines and they are forced into fighting skirmishes with your counterattacks, but are unable to win the single decisive victory that they need. Their hydras are becoming more and more worthless by the minute. Meanwhile you are building the ultimate tier three unit and a huge infestor count.

So you need to just force them to split their army with your counters, not actually kill that much. That being said we still want to do as much damage as possible and throw them off their game. By hiding roaches away from attack paths and having fantastic map vision, you can wait until they move out and then strike two places at once, often killing huge numbers of drones.
Priority of counterattacks:
1. Drones
2. Hatcheries – (if the drones run away even doing damage is fantastic for a later snipe)
3. Tech! If you can kill their spire whilst morphing your own broodlords this can win you the game
4. Queens – useful to kill but not as drastic as killing drones, you’re using a slow composition and so usually can’t force a fight during your opponents subsequent larva crisis

If your name isn’t ST_Life then chances are you’ll need to get in the habit of queing your counterattacks. When I send off counter-parties I shift-click them to a hidden location (Avoiding overseers) to wait to strike, or if the game is already all messy and fighting is going on then I shift-click them straight to the enemy target and que up an attack-move at the target. This way your roaches will at least reach their rear lines before engaging enemy reinforcements/drones.

A personal favourite of mine is to shift-hold position right in the mineral line. This avoids focusing on enemy units rallying out and focuses your roaches on drones/hatcheries/queens. This is optimal in the heat of heavy multitasking as your opponent is more likely to not pull drones away. Ultimately this trick will ensure your roaches do maximum damage rather than chasing enemy reinforcements, without you having to actively micro them, however it may end up on queens, hatcheries and extractors if your opponent reacts quickly.

“I think another reason why a style like that is hard to adapt to is egg rallying because you dont want to send out roaches then remake a control group, because you lose all the eggs in the control group and shift removing a bunch of roaches is significantly more apm intensive.” –NXZ

I have just gotten really fast at doing this “shift-removing” through practice, it’s not too difficult. Just send your whole army on the que’d up counter path, de-select ~5 roaches and bring your army back, renumber, and it’s all done. To see an example of this in action: http://www.twitch.tv/ttpig/b/347299017?t=228m you will notice it only takes half a second to send off a 3-4 roach counterattack to my opponent’s 3rd base. It’s right on 3:48:10 and I’m not even watching my army so watch my bottom display bar for de-selecting roaches after clicking on the mini-map. The whole thing takes only half a second. Practice makes perfect! If you watch the rest of the lategame you can see how powerful these constant counterattacks are.

If you have a little breathing room, excess minerals or wish to grow your infestor count then ling packs are a fantastic counter-attack option. They have more surprise damage potential than roaches due to their extreme mobility and DPS, especially as your melee ups for the broods start kicking in. Even un-upgraded ling counterattacks can be used to focus down an expansion in a matter of seconds, hunt down your opponents spire before they can build corruptors or split up and cause general chaos.
First person vod of adding in ling counters whilst defending roach-hydra: http://www.twitch.tv/ttpig/b/347833712?t=248m

You need to be unafraid of attacking. I know that I used to have a lot of trouble with getting excited and halting my macro whilst attacking, even with small counters. This is probably the result of playing super defensive and macro style for too long. Don’t get frustrated if this is the case for you, just practice the aggression and more and more you’ll find yourself nicely executing a three-pronged counterattack whilst calmly morphing broodlords and adding spines at home.

View the replay vs Yekke from the pack above for an example of this.

This build is powerful, but has its weak points. The key weakness of this build is your inability to fight a front-on battle with your opponents army. As a result you rely on fungal growth and spine crawlers to hold when defending. Nonetheless though, there are times, especially if you are behind, that you simply cannot hold onto your 4th base. Part of the reason for this is that you are ALWAYS committing a portion of your already weaker composition to counter-attacking. There will be situations where your defence is thin and even fighting with spines you can’t hold a ball of infested terrans as well as a line of roach-hydra. In these scenarios you need the game sense to turn and retreat the moment your opponent empties their infested-terrans. You’re counterattacks should already be wreaking havoc on your opponents economy and so it’s your job to cut your losses at your 4th and pull back to the easier-to defend 3rd base and natural. Use this time to land as many fungals as possible to soften up their army so you can hold on at the next defensive line.

Essentially you’re setting up what is like a line of trenches. Your infestors when used in defensive positions are incredibly hard to overwhelm especially if you stagger their defence and focus on fungals not just infested terrans. Your opponent will often kill your 4th but in return lose a base or 20 drones of their own and so it ends up largely even. Add the fact that your broods should be finishing up around now and you end up in an advantageous position. See replay vs Yekke for an example of this.

Note: A few people have asked me “what if they stop your counterattacks whilst killing your 4th?” Well, if you’re opponent is committing enough to defend the counters he shouldn’t be breaking through your 4th, he just shouldn’t have enough stuff if you land your fungals and infested terrans correctly.

Yes, I know from experience it has amazing potential to come back from behind. The rest of this guide is based on an even game. However when you are behind you will just need to rely even more-so on the use of counterattacks, spines and infestors, potentially only on 3-base whilst you try to get out your deathball and make some magic happen with brood-infestor. This style is actually better suited to being behind as built into the build is the consideration that your 4th may need to be sacrificed if your opponent hits a perfect timing – this won’t necessarily put you behind.

I rarely see players that go into hydralisks come back from a big disadvantage in ZvZ, however I personally have made it happen many times by skipping them.

Ultras are heavily reliant upon upgrades to be useful. And if you have to wait for upgrades it's no good, as ultras become less and less useful over time. So with a roach-infestor, single evo chamber build where you're focusing on ranged attack both melee and carapace are largely neglected, so if you were to go ultras, they'd only be at something like 1-1 or at best 2-1 when you reach a situation where you want to be trading them off, often vs 2-2 or 3-3 roach-hydra-infestor. The nature of the way I like to execute this build means you're usually going Hive whilst at just +2 ranged and still upgrading +1 carapace. As you go Hive you grab a 2nd evo and start melee upgrades and if the game drags on this makes a big difference, however in the short term you can still just do a 1-1 broodlord push and it's very effective. 1-1 Ultras aren't nearly as intimidating unfortunately.

Broodlords on the other hand are very useful no matter the upgrades, but also don't lose efficacy over time, rather they can be used to huge effect whether at 1-1 broodlings, or 3-3 broodlings. If you wait for 3-3 with Ultras their usually is no opening to force them down (the opponent can spine up everywhere and your ultras can't find a nice angle). So if you do choose to do a similar style yet with Ultralisks start your melee upgrades much earlier than I suggest and it can still work very nicely! Counterattacks will still be the key!