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United States4883 Posts
Life just won Dreamhack Bucharest! He played like a true champion, at the top of his game. There were a lot of really good games, but G1 against Innovation showcased his classic ling control and constant aggression in a beautiful display of clever strategy. Without further ado, this is Life's simple and elegant roach/ling all-in:
The Game:
Life vs. Innovation, G1 on Overgrowth
The Build:
9 overlord
15 hatch
16 gas
16 pool
18 overlord
18 zergling x2
@100gas -> zergling speed
**pull 2 drones off gas**
20 queen x2
24 overlord
26 queen
33 overlord
36 overlord
@first larva -> zerglings x24
@6:00 roach warren
**drones back on gas**
46 overlord
@100% roach warren -> 8 roaches, gasx1
Flood with lings
Hits at 8:15 with 8 roaches/~40 lings
Life opens with a fairly standard hatch -> gas -> pool build, getting an early ling speed and relying on his queens and early lings to deal with reapers. With the first larva that pops off from larva inject (and just before zergling speed finishes), Life floods a round of lings to push the reaper/hellions back to defend and potentially outright win versus a Terran who hasn't walled yet. In this particular scenario, Innovation was being super greedy, skipping a bunker and even delaying his wall for a faster 3rd CC. This allowed Life to do a little more damage than usual, but even in the worst circumstance, it forces the Terran player to be defensive and creates a bit of a soft contain.
Behind this aggression, Life throws down a roach warren, puts drones back in gas, and begins to prepare for a followup attack. Again, this is brilliant because the Terran player is forced to be defensive and cannot scout freely; in the event of a scan, Terran has a 50% chance of guessing the right base. This allows the next set of larva to be spent on roaches that will begin to walk across the map. Life even sends his third queen to reinforce the strength of the roaches.
While waiting for the roaches to finish and walk across the map, Life buys time with his lings by threatening counterattacks and keeping the hellions from scouting the center of the map. During this time, it's very important to retain lings while still providing an aggressive stance. The more time you buy with the lings, the less notice Terran has of the incoming roaches.
WHY THIS WORKS:
If you're familiar with Zerg builds, this is probably pretty straightforward. In fact, it's a bit of a variation on the more common Roach/Baneling Allin. What makes Life's build a little bit different is the sparkling brilliance of his execution. Life constantly travels on the fine line between extraordinarily dangerous and very conservative with his unit control, making it very difficult to figure out exactly what he's doing.
In this game, his initial ling aggression isn't completely uncommon. But the way Life retains lings and never attempts to trade evenly allows him to continually pressure without weakening his control of the map. Normally this aggression is used to either trade for SCVs while the first two hellions move out or to "contain" the Terran while pushing out creep, macroing, and taking a third at home. However, Life uses this contain for a different purpose and immediately gears up to all-in.
The most important part of executing this build is buying time with the initial lings. The initial lings are not looking to trade with the hellions. They are trying to threaten counterattacks while keeping the hellions away from the center of the map.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jpHR8fe.png) Life intentionally draws the hellions to the left, away from the center of the map, to allow his roaches to cross without being spotted
The second gas that Life takes is to allow for banelings afterward. This gas is more of a precaution than anything and gives Life better flexibility to drop down a baneling nest and ensure that his bust will work. In this game, he sensed Innovation's weakness and was able to completely deny hellion scouting, allowing him to skip banelings entirely and just continue making roaches and zerglings. In the event of the initial pressure doing no damage and a bunker and full wall up at the natural, it's quite possible Life would have deferred to a baneling nest to help break the front.
All in all, it's a very straightforward and simple build, but worth learning for all Zerg players. Learning to branch off from a common strategy and either play heavy economically or into an allin greatly strengthens your play and allows you a lot of options against your opponents. Good luck, have fun  .
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Canada13430 Posts
The dark side is strong with this one.
Seriously, come back to protoss  At least this one is ZvT and not ZvP :D
Well written dude!
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Wow, awesome. GOnna try if it works for me immediately, it's good to have some variation. Life has always been one of my favorite players I look up to but I'm never able to do the stuff he does, that's why he's so good I guess. Thanks anyway, and by the way: You're damn quick!
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This is awesome.
I really like that you talk about the army movement here and what it accomplishes as strategy.
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East Gorteau22261 Posts
Thank you for writing this, particularly because it has Life in it. Looks like I'll play around with ling aggression on the ladder again.
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The first thought to pop into my head is that hellion/banshee/cc build is the perfect counter to this. But then again I'm not a pro, and they don't seem to really use that build much from what I've seen.
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United States4883 Posts
On April 29 2014 07:06 guN-viCe wrote:
The first thought to pop into my head is that hellion/banshee/cc build is the perfect counter to this. But then again I'm not a pro, and they don't seem to really use that build much from what I've seen.
That's a good point to bring up. The addition of the banshees will completely shut down most roach/bane busts, but so many players (and in particular Innovation) tend to skip banshees in order to get faster upgrades and hit a stronger 14:00 2/2 timing. In either case, you can still easily scout out the banshees, the third CC, everything BEFORE you put down the roach warren, so it's in no means a gamble-only build. Rather, it's a nice build to have in your back pocket to really punish greedy play.
I think what makes this build so much more immensely unique from older roach/bane busts is that it looks very much like an aggressive variant of normal macro play and it gets the second gas and baneling nest so much later so that you don't need to gamble.
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I ♥ your notes.
Keep it up.
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On April 29 2014 11:28 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2014 07:06 guN-viCe wrote:
The first thought to pop into my head is that hellion/banshee/cc build is the perfect counter to this. But then again I'm not a pro, and they don't seem to really use that build much from what I've seen. That's a good point to bring up. The addition of the banshees will completely shut down most roach/bane busts, but so many players (and in particular Innovation) tend to skip banshees in order to get faster upgrades and hit a stronger 14:00 2/2 timing. In either case, you can still easily scout out the banshees, the third CC, everything BEFORE you put down the roach warren, so it's in no means a gamble-only build. Rather, it's a nice build to have in your back pocket to really punish greedy play. I think what makes this build so much more immensely unique from older roach/bane busts is that it looks very much like an aggressive variant of normal macro play and it gets the second gas and baneling nest so much later so that you don't need to gamble.
well, a bunker and a completed wall by the time you move out with 2 reapers 6 hellions do prevent the runby threat quite nicely and marauders are usually added while stim is researching. The Roach ling phase of this play could be quite easily deflected.
The reason why innovation went for this ultra greedy approach can only be suspected in his inconfidence in a safe and solid macro play against life. All hail the Widowmine nerf! Its sad but since the nerf and innovations switch to acer it seems that his ability has decreased and he can only compete against the likes of life by going for gambles.
That said, the day will come when the big T will give birth to a new champion that will rule all Z and P with an iron fist!
Fuck protoss!
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On May 01 2014 08:00 alpenrahm wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2014 11:28 SC2John wrote:On April 29 2014 07:06 guN-viCe wrote:
The first thought to pop into my head is that hellion/banshee/cc build is the perfect counter to this. But then again I'm not a pro, and they don't seem to really use that build much from what I've seen. That's a good point to bring up. The addition of the banshees will completely shut down most roach/bane busts, but so many players (and in particular Innovation) tend to skip banshees in order to get faster upgrades and hit a stronger 14:00 2/2 timing. In either case, you can still easily scout out the banshees, the third CC, everything BEFORE you put down the roach warren, so it's in no means a gamble-only build. Rather, it's a nice build to have in your back pocket to really punish greedy play. I think what makes this build so much more immensely unique from older roach/bane busts is that it looks very much like an aggressive variant of normal macro play and it gets the second gas and baneling nest so much later so that you don't need to gamble. well, a bunker and a completed wall by the time you move out with 2 reapers 6 hellions do prevent the runby threat quite nicely and marauders are usually added while stim is researching. The Roach ling phase of this play could be quite easily deflected. The reason why innovation went for this ultra greedy approach can only be suspected in his inconfidence in a safe and solid macro play against life. All hail the Widowmine nerf! Its sad but since the nerf and innovations switch to acer it seems that his ability has decreased and he can only compete against the likes of life by going for gambles. That said, the day will come when the big T will give birth to a new champion that will rule all Z and P with an iron fist! Fuck protoss!
rule all Z and P but only fuck protoss? no fucks given for zerg? T.T
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United States4883 Posts
On May 01 2014 08:00 alpenrahm wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2014 11:28 SC2John wrote:On April 29 2014 07:06 guN-viCe wrote:
The first thought to pop into my head is that hellion/banshee/cc build is the perfect counter to this. But then again I'm not a pro, and they don't seem to really use that build much from what I've seen. That's a good point to bring up. The addition of the banshees will completely shut down most roach/bane busts, but so many players (and in particular Innovation) tend to skip banshees in order to get faster upgrades and hit a stronger 14:00 2/2 timing. In either case, you can still easily scout out the banshees, the third CC, everything BEFORE you put down the roach warren, so it's in no means a gamble-only build. Rather, it's a nice build to have in your back pocket to really punish greedy play. I think what makes this build so much more immensely unique from older roach/bane busts is that it looks very much like an aggressive variant of normal macro play and it gets the second gas and baneling nest so much later so that you don't need to gamble. well, a bunker and a completed wall by the time you move out with 2 reapers 6 hellions do prevent the runby threat quite nicely and marauders are usually added while stim is researching. The Roach ling phase of this play could be quite easily deflected. The reason why innovation went for this ultra greedy approach can only be suspected in his inconfidence in a safe and solid macro play against life. All hail the Widowmine nerf! Its sad but since the nerf and innovations switch to acer it seems that his ability has decreased and he can only compete against the likes of life by going for gambles. That said, the day will come when the big T will give birth to a new champion that will rule all Z and P with an iron fist! Fuck protoss!
Innovation is widely known for his extreme greed, especially in TvZ. That's how he got reverse sweeped by Soulkey last year. Innovation isn't afraid to play a standard game, this is just how he always plays a standard game. This has nothing to do with perceived TvZ imbalance or the widow mine nerf lol. Stop being ridiculous.
That said, it's definitely possible to just have a wall up and start producing marauders. The point of this build is not necessarily that it's a great all-in that will always catch a Terran off guard; it's an opening that looks fairly standard, can do some damage, but also has the flexibility to transition straight into standard play. If Life's overlord scout had spotted a starport and banshees incoming, he could have easily just skipped the roach phase, continued to drone, and taken a third as planned. But that's not what Life saw. Life was able to spot everything, from the 3rd CC before a bunker, the lack of a wall at the natural, the double ebays before extra rax, and no starport; using this information, he was able to use his normal aggressive ling opening to transition into a hard-hitting, sickkk all-in . Alternatively, it's also possible to just do the roach pressure and followup with drones for a fairly economical pressure.
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Awesome!
Would you consider this build doable in lower leagues? I.e. people that are not artists like Life ^^
Is it hard microing those early lings?
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United States4883 Posts
On May 14 2014 19:05 Quixotic_tv wrote:
Awesome!
Would you consider this build doable in lower leagues? I.e. people that are not artists like Life ^^
Is it hard microing those early lings?
Yeah, it's a great build for lower level players. In general, most builds built on 10:00 or shorter game plans (AKA 1 and 2-base allins) are GREAT to pick up as you're still learning. The early lings aren't that hard to micro, just make sure you're paying attention to them and not actually trading them with hellions; you just need to keep them out of reach of the hellions, but close enough to your opponent's base to threaten a runby.
BTW, this all-in is amazing. I've done it a lot on ladder and I have a pretty high success rate with it.
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EPT
