Here's a tutorial video talking about a general, safe, yet economic zergling speed opening, where we don't rush gases (the most common mistake) and focus on economy in our progression. The 2nd part of the video focuses on tips on how to play out a Roach-Hydra-Viper-Broodlord style.
Some more info about roach-hydra-viper-broodlord
This timing forces templar/collossi, so you tech-switch into broodlords. You drop your spire at the same time as you STARTED your vipers, immediately start greater spire as you’re moving out, so right after your attack you’re producing corruptors, making the army which is perfect against what you’ve forced out of the protoss, so even if your previous attack isn’t amazing, your next attack has been forced into a tech advantage. As you’re moving out with your broodlords you’re dropping an ultralisk cavern or starting spire upgrades for mutas (or both) and as you engage and trade + force out → Tempests, maybe voidrays, both which suck against ultra-hydra-viper, also not very good vs mutas.
In this method we always stay one-step ahead and play a high-economy, high-tech timing-attack focused style where we use waves of aggression to trade off before the slow protoss production can counter our army. We then have PRE-PLANNED tech-switches that allow us to exploit their out-dated unit composition.
This is an incredibly solid style with endless room for refinement. It's relatively easy to execute the general motions of it, but super hard to perfect. Adding spines in your main and 4th bases + leaving a few hydras in your main base to help defend zealot counters and prism drops are really important as you push with slow, maxxed out armies.
Been doing this for awhile now myself with pretty good success, but I sometimes skip the vipers and go straight to broodlords with the increase of protoss going mass blink stalker/sentry/immo into HT with no colossi. If they push before broodlords are out I can usually split my roach/hydra into their natural and third to make them turn around and buy time, or just base trade if they don't turn around while massing spines in my main with the broodlords at the top of the ramp. Also lots of queens and infestors work well with broodlords as you get into the really late game. Fungal all the blink stalkers and then mass transfuse the broodlords that are getting targeted down. Overall, nice little guide though :D
On June 19 2015 00:29 SC2Towelie wrote: Been doing this for awhile now myself with pretty good success, but I sometimes skip the vipers and go straight to broodlords with the increase of protoss going mass blink stalker/sentry/immo into HT with no colossi. If they push before broodlords are out I can usually split my roach/hydra into their natural and third to make them turn around and buy time, or just base trade if they don't turn around while massing spines in my main with the broodlords at the top of the ramp. Also lots of queens and infestors work well with broodlords as you get into the really late game. Fungal all the blink stalkers and then mass transfuse the broodlords that are getting targeted down. Overall, nice little guide though :D
More and more with these styles going straight to the broods and delaying the vipers is a fantastic plan. However to make the push still incredibly strong, still adding 1-2 vipers to support the broods and drop reactive blinding clouds on blink-stalkers makes it super hard for the protoss to deal with.
Queen-infestor is fantastic, but I dislike it with this style because I like to hit a series of crisp timings, and those units, whilst kicking ass defensively, struggle to be effective when forcing your way into an attack against protoss. That's my preference of how to play it out though, if you don't mind the game dragging on longer it's completely fine to use the queen-infestor and can be ridiculously strong if you use it right!
templar tech is so incredibly strong post-swarm hosts. i always felt not enough was said (before and after the patch) about the relationship of swarm hosts as a direct counter to templar and how their absence strengthens that classic robo/templar composition as a lategame wrecking ball. i have been trying to play upgraded lings into roach/hydra/viper (sometimes just roaches) straight into ultras, but my success with it has been very very shaky because it's so trendy to just continue immortal production while teching to storm, which can be very very effective against ultra switches if you don't trade well enough in the midgame, and templar tech just obliterates lategame upgraded ling floods (which i previously used a lot when storm wasn't as common )
this style looks great though. most of my zvp wins come from just plain macroing better or forcing a big decisive fight before their tech is strong, but i have a big weakness against slow, steady, solid defensive toss who want the lategame and know how to get there. definitely going to be trying this out on ladder
Been doing this and it's working great. I find that transitioning into ultralisks sometimes is good as well because sometimes they can scout the spire in time and just counter the tech switch. Having the ultra option as well can give you a transition after the BLords!
Thanks much for this! I, too, have been shaky in ZvP. Will try this build out. I'm using your ZvT build (as I told you in cologne ;-), and it's done a lot of good for me.
would you play this vs a ffe aswell or primaly against a gateway expand? i have the feeling that i am cutting a bit to much ecomomy with the early gas when the protoss cant put out super early aggresion.
On September 20 2015 21:28 SummitSC2 wrote: would you play this vs a ffe aswell or primaly against a gateway expand? i have the feeling that i am cutting a bit to much ecomomy with the early gas when the protoss cant put out super early aggresion.
i'd say vs gate expo, but to be honest you can hold any gate aggression off 3 hatch b4 pool [gasless] provided you scout it in time and cut drones and spam lings/queen (3hatch gives the larva for it).
On September 20 2015 21:28 SummitSC2 wrote: would you play this vs a ffe aswell or primaly against a gateway expand? i have the feeling that i am cutting a bit to much ecomomy with the early gas when the protoss cant put out super early aggresion.
If you get the vision then yeah you can just pull off gas/delay your ling speed a bit as you don't need it to start upgrading until 5:00 earliest. You can also swap into burrow instead of ling speed and burrow lings at their 3rd base locations if you fancy that style. You're correct that you don't need ling speed this early vs FFE, but even if you get ling speed because you don't see the FFE in time to delay it, you're still able to play from here 100% with only a small economic deficit.
I can't wait to try this on ladder once i've practiced it. Thanks a lot for sharing! Would you have some replays with this build? I'm really interested to compare with my execution to check the benchmarks. I always feel like I max out later than i should. Probably because i'm playing too safely and i don't make full drones because i'm afraid of all ins, or i invest in too much stuff before saturating. Getting roach warren and evo(s) after 3rd base saturation seems extremely late for me, i'm curious to see if i could defend early attacks with only lings. If there are no replays, do you have basic benchmarks in mind? Like when the 3rd base is saturated and when i should be maxed out to attack? Edit: ok by looking at the timer in the video, it looks like saturation is reached at around 9 minutes, and roach/hydra/viper max out by 13 minutes?
On September 22 2015 11:49 gobbledydook wrote: How do you beat this as Protoss, without hitting a timing attack before hive?
I think that base trading is a strong option vs broodlords if you can catch them out of position, as for beating them in a straight up fight, i don't think there is any composition that will straight up kill this composition with a-move.
You can still win by either controlling your comp better or having more units. I would add on tempest to out-siege against the broodlords, (which is only realistically quick enough if you opened stargate, but it requires extreme scouting on your part, you have to scout their spire morphing into greater spire fast enough to start stargates + fleet beacon)
EPT
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