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I've had pretty good results from doing this. Even on a game that the Terran just took one of the 3rd base locations as their first expo and I didn't notice, I crushed his attack. The amount of vision/creep I got right outside his base was awesome.
Let's go full theorycraft on this:
So the Zerg invests:
350 (Hatch + drone)
150 (queen)
200 (8 speedlings)
300 (2 spines + 2 drones)
1000 total minerals
The Zerg player GETS
Delay of Terran natural expo (and thus delay of a significant amount of income)
Vision of ground units moving out of the Terran base
Mindgame effect (if the Terran player panics/doesn't respond well)
Forces the Terran to react with specific builds (The Terran player can't just make Hellions like normal) thus narrowing down potential things to prepare for.
There's also some opportunity costs that the zerg pays by doing a build like this, but those are really hard to calculate.
To delay the terran CC. Lets assume that Zerg ends up losing all of this (all zerglings die, spines die, queen dies, etc.) for this delay, and doesn't end up killing any terran things (the ONLY effect is delaying the terran's natural... assume that Zerg is competent and blocks any attempt by the terran to take a 3rd before the terran takes his natural.
How long does the zerg have to delay the CC in order for this to be "worth it"? It seems like the simple answer would be that the Zerg needs to fully saturate his main, and gain 1000 minerals out of his natural BEFORE the Terran player takes his natural to break even. It's probably slightly less than this, since you PROBABLY will kill a few marines/SCVs as they try to break out, and you may save some of your zerglings.
Assuming that Zerg goes full drone production after the proxy hatch/queen/8 lings/2 spines, how long would it take to recoup those 1000 minerals? It takes 1 drone 25 minutes to mine that much, and 16 drones 1.5625 minutes to mine that much, and remember that the 50 minerals that you have to invest in each mining drone counts against you (each drone has to pay for itself before it can start paying off the 1000 mineral debt).
This may be a somewhat simplistic view, but I'm curious as to how long it takes the Terrans here to take their natural vs the time that they normally take it. Terrans:
- What time do you normally take your natural with the CC first on the high ground?
- In games where you get the bunker up in range of the hatchery, how long does it take to land your CC?
- In games where you don't get the bunker up and have to break out with a large Marine force (or tanks or whatever), what time do you take your natural?
With that data, we could easily figure out whether or not this is "worth it" or not.
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One advantage you get from delaying terran 2th base is that they will mine out main base much faster, because of mules.
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my dear fellow Terran players,
i have faced this troublesome build multiple times on ladder now and i can tell from experience that it can be abused.
so here s some facts:
1.we cannot stop zerg from building a hatch at our natural. accept this.
2.clearing the creep, even when the initial hatch is down and zerg has completely evacuated our space, will take a full minute and costs us atleast 2 scans.
3. the most efficient way of cleaning up the hatch + spine contain is via tank play (we attack, zerg cant attack us. good trade) having 2-3 tanks has this side effect of makeing us very safe against roach/ling/bane attacks thus the logical followup for our zerg opponent will be mutalisks.
4. ling speed cannot be done before 9:50
5. mutalisks wont grace the field before 12 minutes
5. zerg will be scrambling for minerals. 1000 minerals early on for the contain will mean that he is cutting some edges in terms of queens and creepspread in his main - natural area, in his ling count (why build lings if you have terran contained?) and possibly his drone count.
so here s how we abuse this.
upon seeing the hatch go down we respond with getting 2 geysers up, cancle the oc transformation, and prepare tank production with a 111 reac tlab tlab setup afap to eventually be able to clean up that mess in our natural.
we need either enough marines to push back a queen or a marine in a bunker to keep our ramp safe until tanks are out.
when we are finished with the defensive precations we try to get 6 reapers to wreck havoc in zergs main, remember our reaper timing will roughly work until the 10 minute mark so we have plenty of time! also 6 reapers can take on a queen without micro and one shot drones. so 6 is the go to number cuz we wont be having any hellions.
we will build an engibay relatively early so we can load 5 scvs into our spare cc and take the 3rd base with a planetary (this is a necessity since we will lose all mapcontrol when ling speed kicks in) and start +1 attack before zerg does.
we build a raven to avoid spending too many scans (we are short on scans because of the planetary at the 3rd)
our excess minerals will be pumped into a 3rd cc that we will use to take our natural with.
from there on out the game should be quite even in terms of supply, we have an upgrade advantage over the zerg with our +1 attack but are a bit delayed on our stim and combatshields. we have a very safe 3 base setup with tanks, turrets and a raven. our biggest concern now is to not take damage from the impending mutalisk switch.
mistakes you want to avoid:
getting the 3rd location blocked by some lings. clean those up with reapers.
makeing mines / hellions early on. they dont benefit us in our current situation. all they do is prolong a situation that is win win for the zerg
overmakeing marines early on. marines breaking a spine crawler contain ... good luck with that.
not takeing our second gas immediately. what are you going to do with more minerals? build marines? commandcenters that you cant land anywhere? more barracks? ... get gas and treat this as you would an early tank contain in tvt.
panic mistakes such as forgetting scv production / mule dropping /supply blocking / production idleing
going for early stim / combatshields. again this is the typical crush wall with head type of solution to a problem that can be solved with some slick backstabbing.
short version for the lazy reader:
go 111 reacRax tlab Fac tlabPort, make tanks + raven to break contain, land cc at 3rd and make pf. harras with primarily reapers (banshees/hellbat hellion mine drops) as much as possible. dont die to 12 minute mutas.
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On May 29 2013 07:33 TheSambassador wrote:
I've had pretty good results from doing this. Even on a game that the Terran just took one of the 3rd base locations as their first expo and I didn't notice, I crushed his attack. The amount of vision/creep I got right outside his base was awesome.
Let's go full theorycraft on this:
So the Zerg invests:
350 (Hatch + drone)
150 (queen)
200 (8 speedlings)
300 (2 spines + 2 drones)
1000 total minerals
The Zerg player GETS
Delay of Terran natural expo (and thus delay of a significant amount of income)
Vision of ground units moving out of the Terran base
Mindgame effect (if the Terran player panics/doesn't respond well)
Forces the Terran to react with specific builds (The Terran player can't just make Hellions like normal) thus narrowing down potential things to prepare for.
There's also some opportunity costs that the zerg pays by doing a build like this, but those are really hard to calculate.
To delay the terran CC. Lets assume that Zerg ends up losing all of this (all zerglings die, spines die, queen dies, etc.) for this delay, and doesn't end up killing any terran things (the ONLY effect is delaying the terran's natural... assume that Zerg is competent and blocks any attempt by the terran to take a 3rd before the terran takes his natural.
How long does the zerg have to delay the CC in order for this to be "worth it"? It seems like the simple answer would be that the Zerg needs to fully saturate his main, and gain 1000 minerals out of his natural BEFORE the Terran player takes his natural to break even. It's probably slightly less than this, since you PROBABLY will kill a few marines/SCVs as they try to break out, and you may save some of your zerglings.
Assuming that Zerg goes full drone production after the proxy hatch/queen/8 lings/2 spines, how long would it take to recoup those 1000 minerals? It takes 1 drone 25 minutes to mine that much, and 16 drones 1.5625 minutes to mine that much, and remember that the 50 minerals that you have to invest in each mining drone counts against you (each drone has to pay for itself before it can start paying off the 1000 mineral debt).
This may be a somewhat simplistic view, but I'm curious as to how long it takes the Terrans here to take their natural vs the time that they normally take it. Terrans:
- What time do you normally take your natural with the CC first on the high ground?
- In games where you get the bunker up in range of the hatchery, how long does it take to land your CC?
- In games where you don't get the bunker up and have to break out with a large Marine force (or tanks or whatever), what time do you take your natural?
With that data, we could easily figure out whether or not this is "worth it" or not.
If you delay the nat for say 1 minute, it costs the terran about ~600 minerals.
I've been fooling around with proxy hatches a lot against toss and terran, and it pays off a lot, worst case we are even after some micro battles. IMO its very important to also react to T's response. E.g. if the terran reacts with a bunker you might just cancel or skip the queen. You might even just build drones at the proxy hatch and send them home, the terran will assume you build lings and tends to panics/overproduce marines.
Another cheap trick is to build drones and put spines outside bunker range, since this will suck up DPS you have a better chance to get your queen through (lings can do the trick also). I prefer doing hatch first at his nat, because this can be planted+completed always.
The main gain is scouting and turn around the typical early game: You are harassing the Terran and force reactive play.
Since Terran needs DPS to bring the hatch down quickly, he will not build reapers or hellions early on, mostly marines and/or marauders. It might even be advantageous to cancel the hatch last second in order to just force a second rax of the terran and delay Terrans harrass units :-)
If you can put a tumor, you are way ahead. Terran has to push then in order to force units by the Zerg, else he will be totally behind.
If you fail to put a tumor but have completed a queen, you are behind (but not lost). If you decide to cancel or skip the queen and get some drones or lings out of the proxy larvae, I think the zerg is in a more advantageous position.
Build is 14 proxy, 15 pool 17 nat. depending on scouting you might first take your nat, then proxy .. however i haven't figured out under which circuumstances its better to first build nat. I usually go for proxy first. You don't need to run with 2 drones then because the hatch completes ~4'00 so you have enough larvae at the proxy to build lings and stuff.
If you just plant the proxy and skip any follow up (your nat is ~3'40 then), the terran can plant his expansion ~5'00. Even this does not put you behind significantly while still forcing the terran out of his early game build.
It kind a stops being effective if the terran has gone for a late expand agressive build (2 rax etc.). However in this case you get the advantage of knowing what's coming which pretty much nullifies early agression.
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On May 22 2013 16:36 MarlieChurphy wrote:
I'm going to say mass marine/marauder without stim would break this fast. 1 Build comes to mind, just drop like 5-7 barracks with no addons and start massing marines out. lings/queen and a couple crawlers shouldn't be able to hold it, and catz doesn't seem to be going for banes with this build. So he would have to sac lords to scout and not drone/tech/expand behind this. And even if he did go banes, they would be slow banes by the time you are breaking and in small numbers so the marine count should overwhelm the ling/bane numbers.
Also, terrans should be savvy to this in general and just send 2 scv down in order to stop the hatch from planting in the first place.
Its not about saving the hatch, its about delaying the expansion, and if you already started cc first, going 3 hatch doesnt slow the zerg down any in comparison. Your 7 rax push will already be slower for having built the cc first. Now, if you scout it, and you cancel the cc and throw down barracks, then you can push and probably win, but if he scouts the canceled cc... well, youre still in a lot of trouble.
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If it was a really good strategy to do, wouldn't the Koreans be copying it?
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On May 29 2013 11:12 Firestorm wrote:
If it was a really good strategy to do, wouldn't the Koreans be copying it?
they did hatch block frequently against toss FFE in SPL. Easiest way to prevent this is to block nat with a scv. I think, (1) not all viable builds/strats have been discovered yet in HOTs and (2) maybe it does not pay off that much at pro level. E.G. for me preventing early reaper/hellion harass has a higher value than for a pro player. Additionally on ladder you profit from non-standard play, because you know the build and follow ups much better than your opponent.
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damn u know rossi ;p im impressed
i used to do alot of hatch first at protoss base to counter forge fe, but that only worked against clueless ppl, this actually seems legit
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On May 29 2013 11:12 Firestorm wrote:
If it was a really good strategy to do, wouldn't the Koreans be copying it?
Sorry, but that's an incredibly ignorant response. You could say that about anything anywhere and never have to take any sort of cultural or region specific style/environment into consideration... and yea, you can't do that. The koreans ARE the best players in the world, and they WILL block expansions when they see fit to do so.
Koreans do this sort of stuff on ladder all the time, trust me, but you won't likely see it in a GSL final because Soulkey knows Innovation wont get mind-blocked from it and will react perfectly EVERY TIME!
One of the strongest parts of this build is the mental strain it puts on the unsuspecting Terran.
So yea, please at least consider what it is your saying before simply filling in the quick-reply box with spam.
EDIT: We don't know what we'll see in the GSL final, and against innovation standard play doesn't seem to be the best option.
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I've been planting my third in the protoss main lately. Amazing how it makes them forget to pay attention to their front door. And once the zerglings are in, the greedy Protoss who think they can just hold me off with a couple sentries, a zealot and a cannon are in for a world of hurt.
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One very good response to this build I once ran into was a Terran who, instead of building the CC on their highground when I blocked with my drone decided to throw it down on the lowground right next to the hatch. He was then able to make almost a perfect wall building his bunker and rax also on the lowground around my hatch. when the hatch finished he was able to have marines safely in bunker/behind wall and deflected zerglings/spines much more easily. I was only able to get a single tumor out which was cleaned up rather quickly.
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On May 29 2013 09:02 alpenrahm wrote:
my dear fellow Terran players,
i have faced this troublesome build multiple times on ladder now and i can tell from experience that it can be abused
(too long to quote in full)
By cancelling your CC your econ is going to be pretty horrible, and teching as you suggest is going to be very slow to reclaim your natural. I'm not convinced at all by the description - would like to see replays demonstrating that defense.
On May 29 2013 09:58 Schnullerbacke13 wrote:
Build is 14 proxy, 15 pool 17 nat.
[snip]
It kind a stops being effective if the terran has gone for a late expand agressive build (2 rax etc.). However in this case you get the advantage of knowing what's coming which pretty much nullifies early agression.
You are suggesting to blindly do a really early proxy against a terran who could be doing absolutely anything. "Knowing what's coming" doesn't exactly help if you can see what's coming but just punches you in the face and wins immediately anyway (eg proxy rax). There is a reason this is suggested only for against CC first, and that reason is because you know it's safe.
On May 29 2013 11:12 Firestorm wrote:
If it was a really good strategy to do, wouldn't the Koreans be copying it?
It takes a lot of time to carefully optimise and smooth out a build to be viable in a "best in world" setting. We didn't see much swarm host usage in ZvP for a while either, now it's much more common. Even if it does turn out not to be viable for the very best in the world, I'd be happy for it to be genuinely effective up to GM or so.
On May 29 2013 13:26 Falcon-sw wrote:
I've been planting my third in the protoss main lately. Amazing how it makes them forget to pay attention to their front door. And once the zerglings are in, the greedy Protoss who think they can just hold me off with a couple sentries, a zealot and a cannon are in for a world of hurt.
Let's try to keep this on-topic
On May 29 2013 13:59 YumYumGranola wrote:
One very good response to this build I once ran into was a Terran who, instead of building the CC on their highground when I blocked with my drone decided to throw it down on the lowground right next to the hatch. He was then able to make almost a perfect wall building his bunker and rax also on the lowground around my hatch. when the hatch finished he was able to have marines safely in bunker/behind wall and deflected zerglings/spines much more easily. I was only able to get a single tumor out which was cleaned up rather quickly.
Now THIS sounds very interesting. Do you have a replay of that game? This makes me think....
... there's no actual need to place the hatch at his natural - it just needs to be NEAR his natural. You don't need to physically stop the CC landing, or physically stop it being built at the nat - you just need to prevent mining. Bearing that in mind, it may be better to place the hatch somewhere else, depending on the map. Hmm... *ponders*
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On May 29 2013 09:58 Schnullerbacke13 wrote:
If you delay the nat for say 1 minute, it costs the terran about ~600 minerals.
Not really. That assumes full saturation (16 workers will mine ~640 minerals/minute). They can still use their MULES in their main, so the only additional income they get when they take that natural is from normal worker mining. They won't have 32 SCVs right at the time that they would normally take their natural.
The amount you deny goes up as they reach 32 SCVs and are still on 1 base.
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On May 29 2013 13:59 YumYumGranola wrote:
One very good response to this build I once ran into was a Terran who, instead of building the CC on their highground when I blocked with my drone decided to throw it down on the lowground right next to the hatch. He was then able to make almost a perfect wall building his bunker and rax also on the lowground around my hatch. when the hatch finished he was able to have marines safely in bunker/behind wall and deflected zerglings/spines much more easily. I was only able to get a single tumor out which was cleaned up rather quickly.
Why did you put down your hatch before he started his CC? Shouldn't the idea be that you attempt to block the natural, so he goes up and builds it on the high ground, and THEN you proxy? If he hasn't put down his CC yet, I don't think you should proxy. He could easily just throw up 2-3 rax with the money he has saved up.
You're not supposed to blind proxy your hatch for no reason. This is a proxy hatch in response to seeing a high-ground CC. The strength in this also comes with the Terran not having vision of his natural, so he discovers it a lot of the time when he's floating the CC over to land it, then having a "oh crap" moment. It also is strong because the Terran can't just pump out a ton of marines.
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On May 30 2013 00:13 TheSambassador wrote:Show nested quote +On May 29 2013 13:59 YumYumGranola wrote:
One very good response to this build I once ran into was a Terran who, instead of building the CC on their highground when I blocked with my drone decided to throw it down on the lowground right next to the hatch. He was then able to make almost a perfect wall building his bunker and rax also on the lowground around my hatch. when the hatch finished he was able to have marines safely in bunker/behind wall and deflected zerglings/spines much more easily. I was only able to get a single tumor out which was cleaned up rather quickly. Why did you put down your hatch before he started his CC? Shouldn't the idea be that you attempt to block the natural, so he goes up and builds it on the high ground, and THEN you proxy? If he hasn't put down his CC yet, I don't think you should proxy. He could easily just throw up 2-3 rax with the money he has saved up. You're not supposed to blind proxy your hatch for no reason. This is a proxy hatch in response to seeing a high-ground CC. The strength in this also comes with the Terran not having vision of his natural, so he discovers it a lot of the time when he's floating the CC over to land it, then having a "oh crap" moment. It also is strong because the Terran can't just pump out a ton of marines.
Extrapolating, but he said he successfully blocked the terran attempting to CC first on lowground. The terran, instead of building on highground, placed his CC next to the zerg's hatch. It's pretty easy to see when a terran is trying to place a CC 
I'd still love to see this game - the terran's response (to effectively use the zerg's hatch as part of a wall) sounds very good.
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On May 29 2013 13:59 YumYumGranola wrote:Extrapolating, but he said he successfully blocked the terran attempting to CC first on lowground. The terran, instead of building on highground, placed his CC next to the zerg's hatch. It's pretty easy to see when a terran is trying to place a CC I'd still love to see this game - the terran's response (to effectively use the zerg's hatch as part of a wall) sounds very good.
It's definitely map dependent, as some maps have a super tiny choke that you could easily do this on. That said, I still wouldn't proxy hatch until I am sure that he is putting his CC on the high ground. This is a specific build to a specific type of CC first, and throwing down a proxy hatch isn't going to work if you know that they'll be able to wall off their natural.
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In the Meta episode where they talked about this, Catz mentioned that if the Terran is intending low-ground 14CC and it's a map where you know the opponent's spawn location (2p or 4p cross-spawns), you can force this by blocking the low-ground attempt. If you are actually that worried about running into this build (for instance, you see it frequently on ladder), I would recommend the following very tiny adjustment...
Most players rally their 13th SCV to the natural for the low-ground CC OR send an SCV @300 minerals, whichever hits first. What you can do if you expect to face this build is rally SCV #12 to the low ground, and shift + a-move path it in the area where the drone would have to go to build the Hatchery. That way you will see the early Drone scout, and even if you have to build the CC @ high-ground to not be delayed too long, you will still be able to block the hatchery attempt at the natural if you micro correctly. True, the Zerg can just go 3 Hatch before Pool off of this, but that is way more standard and easier to deal with on the fly than this build. The early SCV positioning only costs you a few minerals since your 13th SCV is able to mine right away (even if you end up going high-ground, the 13th SCV still gets a trip or two).
This is on the principle of 'just-enough', making just enough of an adjustment to maybe deal with the situation without skewing any other aspects of your play.
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On May 29 2013 11:35 konicki wrote:Show nested quote +On May 29 2013 11:12 Firestorm wrote:
If it was a really good strategy to do, wouldn't the Koreans be copying it? Sorry, but that's an incredibly ignorant response. You could say that about anything anywhere and never have to take any sort of cultural or region specific style/environment into consideration... and yea, you can't do that. The koreans ARE the best players in the world, and they WILL block expansions when they see fit to do so. Koreans do this sort of stuff on ladder all the time, trust me, but you won't likely see it in a GSL final because Soulkey knows Innovation wont get mind-blocked from it and will react perfectly EVERY TIME! One of the strongest parts of this build is the mental strain it puts on the unsuspecting Terran. So yea, please at least consider what it is your saying before simply filling in the quick-reply box with spam. EDIT: We don't know what we'll see in the GSL final, and against innovation standard play doesn't seem to be the best option.
That's kind of an ignorant response from you, sir. He made a pretty good point I thought, and you didn't really answer his question. You just kinda dodged it by making it sound like a ridiculous question to ask. Korean T's 14/15cc on the highground atleast 50% of the time, how come I can't think of a time when aKorean zerg responded with this build?
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On May 29 2013 11:12 Firestorm wrote:
If it was a really good strategy to do, wouldn't the Koreans be copying it?
As you say this, watch the GSL of 5/30. Observe MKP vs T8_True. Now, feel the burn of irony.
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On May 30 2013 12:53 ander wrote:
That's kind of an ignorant response from you, sir. He made a pretty good point I thought, and you didn't really answer his question. You just kinda dodged it by making it sound like a ridiculous question to ask. Korean T's 14/15cc on the highground atleast 50% of the time, how come I can't think of a time when aKorean zerg responded with this build?
True just did in MKP vs True. He didn't build spinecrawlers with it but it allowed him to go to a very fast 3base.
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EPT
