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United States4879 Posts
Last night in Proleague, True annihilated Stork in Game 2 of JinAir vs. Samsung using an interesting mutalisk timing into swarm host play that allowed him to always be one step ahead of Stork compositionally. True's ability to take map control and always stay ahead of Stork was incredible and deserves a look.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/N0Nj1Gd.png)
Link:
True vs. Stork, Set 2
Of course, it's difficult to show exactly what True's ideal build order would have been in the event of zero pressure, but here is the closest I can get to his build order:
10 overlord
11 extractor trick
14 hatch
18 hatch
18 pool
18 gas
17 overlord
21 queen
23 overlord
23 zerglings x2
25 queen
27 zergling speed (5:00)
**pull drones off gas**
*additional zerglings to defend
31 overlord
33 queen
36 queen
*constant drones after defending
@6:00 overlord scout main base
@7:00 zergling poke
@7:15 drones back on gas
@7:45 gas x2
@100 gas -> lair
@9:00 gas x3
@100% lair -> spire (9:30)
@10:00 4th hatch
After ~20 mutalisks -> infestation pit/evo chamber
5th hatch when comfortable
+1 air attacks/overlord speed with mutalisks
+1 ranged attack/+2 air attacks as SH start
The Basic Format:
- Greedy economic opening
- Heavy ling production to gain map control
- Muta/ling to sustain map control and deal economic damage
- SH switch after Protoss invests in anti-air
- Add on corruptor/infestor (and eventually queens/BL) for final army
What Happened:
True's triple hatch before pool opening is obviously very greedy, but Stork attempts to punish it in the strongest way possible: zealot/stalker/stalker poke before nexus. Fortunately, with the early third hatch, True is able to amass a large amount of lings to push the pressure back. Once he has a ton of lings and ling speed, he is able to control the map, spot the Protoss army, and prevent an exceptionally early third base from going down.
This map control allows True to drone up safely on three bases while continually scouting for possible attacks (6:00-10:00). At 6:00, True sacs an overlord into the main base to check for tech while also spotting the front wall. When Stork attempts to take a 3rd at 7:30, True does his best to prevent it and also gets a lucky runby into the main base. Because this runby gets a lot of scouting information, True opts to skip a lot of scouting until much later. Throughout all of this scouting, he spots no stargate and no incoming attack, so he opts for a very fast spire.
When entering into the next phase of the game (10:00-15:00), True continually builds zerglings while spending all of his gas into mutas, allowing him to do tons of economic damage with runbys and mutalisk harass while keeping Stork pinned back on 3 bases. True uses this advantage to take a fourth and fifth base, spread tons of creep, and tech to swarm hosts. Just as Stork gets the phoenix numbers high enough to deal with mutalisks, however, he's met with a horde of locusts and zero colossus, a nightmare for any Protoss player.
As Stork attempts to get out colossi in order to deal with the swarm hosts, True is already ahead of him in terms of composition, adding on corruptors and infestors (17:00-end). The final result is a Protoss player stuck on 3 bases continually trading against a compositionally superior army. Though Stork attempts everything to stay alive, he eventually loses all of his tech units and is forced for tap out.
Additional Notes:
True skips most upgrades since muta/ling doesn't need upgrades to accomplish the goal of economic damage. Later, however, he starts air attack and ranged attack to benefit his end game composition of queen/corruptor/SH + infestor. Another important thing to note is that this game was played on Sejong Station, the most notorious SH map in the Proleague map pool; following this logic, this style could easily work on any map with a direct path and easy-to-defend fourth and/or fifth bases such as Habitation Station or Yoensu.
Obviously, True picked this particular opening because he scouted no stargate. In the event of a stargate, it's quite possible he might still go for a muta/corruptor opening, but using a queen-heavy opening, an infestor-based composition, or a hydralisk composition is also viable as a transition, though it may not give you the same amount of map control.
Overall, the biggest emphasis of True's style is using lots of speedlings early on to scout and gain map control, giving him time to drone up; and then extending this theme with the muta/ling transition. Once he has a lot of economy (particularly a lot of gas) and plenty of creep spread, he can transition into a more "direct engagement" army of swarm hosts, corruptors, and infestors, eventually adding on queens and Blords to create the ultimate late game composition. The way in which True transitions is also quite clever, forcing the Protoss to react in wildly different ways and allowing him the time to always get one step ahead in the ultimate composition war of ZvP.
_
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United States248 Posts
Glad these are happening again :3 Good write up.
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As a Zealot, I must inform you, my Lord John, that while your fellow High Templar look askance at the aid you give to the alien scum, they still grudgingly commend you on another great SC2 Note. Even if you do encourage the alien scum in the production of those two most hated units of the Protoss Khala, the Mutalisk and the Swarmhost...
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I loved going muta into swarmhost. Had so many satisfying victories doing that :D. Nice write up!
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What a sick game!
Storks build, that 3 nexus into blink (I assume blink all-in, as that's the only version I've seen) seemed really bad in this particular game, though I have seen it be an effective build. It seemed like Stork's tech (the twilight council) was really, really late though, not even starting until 10 minutes. How much do you feel this is an effective response to seeing no stargate, and how much was Stork "behind" enough to allow it to happen?
Thanks for the analysis
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I've always thought that swarm host -> muta or muta -> swarm host is one of the most powerful tech switches in ZvP. They're both low tier (lair) units and they require completely different unit compositions to be beaten, plus they are both very good at keeping the protoss player in his base so that he can't hit any timing.
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Missed the game, but thanks for sharing the strat!
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Italy12124 Posts
I'm going to soultrain his ass for trying this shit next time i play him. Multiple times.
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Russian Federation4282 Posts
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United Kingdom10392 Posts
Really nice write up. I like the idea of skipping upgrades because of course you're not fighting his army.
keep em coming
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True's opener sounds really interesting... going to try this out in ZvP.
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United States4879 Posts
On March 04 2014 16:43 Lobotomist wrote:
What a sick game!
Storks build, that 3 nexus into blink (I assume blink all-in, as that's the only version I've seen) seemed really bad in this particular game, though I have seen it be an effective build. It seemed like Stork's tech (the twilight council) was really, really late though, not even starting until 10 minutes. How much do you feel this is an effective response to seeing no stargate, and how much was Stork "behind" enough to allow it to happen?
Thanks for the analysis
I'm not 100% familiar with the 3-base blink build, but Stork's blink did seem a little bit late. However, it's not like Stork didn't have blink stalkers by the time the pressure hit; it was really more of a problem with Stork's mutli-tasking, as he ended up getting his third about a minute late due to a ling runby and ended up losing 38 probes to the initial muta/ling push. For the rest of the game, Stork was fighting an uphill battle, made even more impossible by the wild tech switches of True.
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I faced similar builds a few times in the past, and I think it is the future in PvZ (sadly). SH's mean that your army is strong enough to fight the Protoss head on, and the Mutalisks mean that you can harass all the time. The Mutalisks will slowly kill away the Protoss economy, but the Swarm Hosts will not allow the Protoss to kill the Zerg before there are too many Mutalisks, thus the Protoss has no real option to beat this army.
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Russian Federation4282 Posts
On March 05 2014 02:32 moskonia wrote:
I faced similar builds a few times in the past, and I think it is the future in PvZ (sadly). SH's mean that your army is strong enough to fight the Protoss head on, and the Mutalisks mean that you can harass all the time. The Mutalisks will slowly kill away the Protoss economy, but the Swarm Hosts will not allow the Protoss to kill the Zerg before there are too many Mutalisks, thus the Protoss has no real option to beat this army.
Mass-phoenix and vrays?
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United States4879 Posts
On March 05 2014 02:32 moskonia wrote:
I faced similar builds a few times in the past, and I think it is the future in PvZ (sadly). SH's mean that your army is strong enough to fight the Protoss head on, and the Mutalisks mean that you can harass all the time. The Mutalisks will slowly kill away the Protoss economy, but the Swarm Hosts will not allow the Protoss to kill the Zerg before there are too many Mutalisks, thus the Protoss has no real option to beat this army.
Put into a different context, Protoss actually has a major advantage versus muta/SH. The fact that Zerg invests so heavily into mutalisks which do not do well in direct engagements and can be blunted by 8-10 ranged phoenixes makes Zerg's main army much weaker, even with the infestors.
The power of True's tech switch has more to do with forcing the Protoss to react in wildly different ways than it does with the actual power of mutalisks + swarm hosts. If Protoss is playing well and scouting very well, he can anticipate the switches much better and better adapt to the situation. For instance, Stork scouts mutalisks and goes triple stargate phoenix production before anything else; perhaps a better Protoss player would have gone 1 or 2 stargates instead and started templar/colossus tech much sooner, already anticipating a possible roach or SH switch. All in all, PvZ is all about getting into the head of your opponent and getting to the right composition first.
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great guide! Thank you for making a clear build order by supply instead of time!
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On March 05 2014 01:26 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2014 16:43 Lobotomist wrote:
What a sick game!
Storks build, that 3 nexus into blink (I assume blink all-in, as that's the only version I've seen) seemed really bad in this particular game, though I have seen it be an effective build. It seemed like Stork's tech (the twilight council) was really, really late though, not even starting until 10 minutes. How much do you feel this is an effective response to seeing no stargate, and how much was Stork "behind" enough to allow it to happen?
Thanks for the analysis I'm not 100% familiar with the 3-base blink build, but Stork's blink did seem a little bit late. However, it's not like Stork didn't have blink stalkers by the time the pressure hit; it was really more of a problem with Stork's mutli-tasking, as he ended up getting his third about a minute late due to a ling runby and ended up losing 38 probes to the initial muta/ling push. For the rest of the game, Stork was fighting an uphill battle, made even more impossible by the wild tech switches of True.
Stork didn't have blink when the mutas/lings hit and killed 20 probes. Blink was done at 13:10. Stork's blink was way too late it is hard to see True's play would have the same effect in a normal game.
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United States4879 Posts
On March 06 2014 13:15 crawlert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2014 01:26 SC2John wrote:On March 04 2014 16:43 Lobotomist wrote:
What a sick game!
Storks build, that 3 nexus into blink (I assume blink all-in, as that's the only version I've seen) seemed really bad in this particular game, though I have seen it be an effective build. It seemed like Stork's tech (the twilight council) was really, really late though, not even starting until 10 minutes. How much do you feel this is an effective response to seeing no stargate, and how much was Stork "behind" enough to allow it to happen?
Thanks for the analysis I'm not 100% familiar with the 3-base blink build, but Stork's blink did seem a little bit late. However, it's not like Stork didn't have blink stalkers by the time the pressure hit; it was really more of a problem with Stork's mutli-tasking, as he ended up getting his third about a minute late due to a ling runby and ended up losing 38 probes to the initial muta/ling push. For the rest of the game, Stork was fighting an uphill battle, made even more impossible by the wild tech switches of True. Stork didn't have blink when the mutas/lings hit and killed 20 probes. Blink was done at 13:10. Stork's blink was way too late it is hard to see True's play would have the same effect in a normal game.
The initial pressure was a ling runby, not muta harass. Unfortunately, that had more to do with Stork miscontrolling his FF than whether or not blink was late. You have to remember that he was also a little delayed from the earlier ling runby which delayed his 3rd base for almost a minute. I'm not saying Stork played the greatest game in the world, but True did an amazing job of forcing mistakes out of his opponent and pulling the Protoss army composition wildly in every direction.
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EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LRaQdWw.png)
