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[PiG Strategy Articles] - Rule of 1 Gas ZvT

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
18 CommentsPost a Reply

[PiG Strategy Articles] - Rule of 1 Gas ZvT

Text byTL Strategy
Graphics byNixer
February 10th, 2017 16:00 GMT
The PiG DailyThe BuildKey Strategic PointsStages of LearningCommon Questions



PiG Daily Articles




Welcome to the first PiG Daily strategy article! The PiG Daily is a show by Jared "PiG" Krensel that focuses on StarCraft 2 strategy and becoming a better player. We've joined forces to create an article series that summarizes his dailies into short, digestible articles that provide insight on builds, tactics and game sense. By combining with Spawning Tool, this series will bring you the most comprehensive learning experience for build orders and strategies.

How to use Spawning Tool

We highly recommend using Spawning Tool in order to follow the basics of these builds. The PiG Daily and our strategy articles will serve as supplementary guides to understand the subtleties behind each decision.

This one features another Zerg build, this time in the form of a ZvT one gas style. The general idea behind this build is to stay on one gas for quite a while in the early game while droning up heavily to support the macro intensive mid game that Zerg can churn out. It utilises early queens, speedlings, and map vision to fend off early aggression while droning up heavily to full 3 base mineral saturation, and then transitions into 6 gas to tech up.

Link to the Spawning Tool Build

The Build






The Rule of 1-gas ZvT is a build that uses the bare minimum of gas to power up the huge production that Zerg need to mass muta-ling-bane in numbers that can rival the endless Terran bio-mine pushes. You will use a mineral-only defence of mass queens and lings to halt all early aggression and begin covering the map in creep. Meanwhile you use just a single gas geyser to get basics like upgrades started whilst all of your focus is on minerals. Since you focus so much on minerals you can afford to overwhelm aggression whilst massing drones and then suddenly explode into extra gas mining only once all 3 bases are fully saturated on 16+ drones on minerals.

This style jumps straight to the macro game where you have a big income and need to spend well. It will push you to organise your macro cycle and improve your spending. Creep spread is integral to the effectiveness of this style so you will need to focus a lot more on creep than you ever have before! Within a few games with this style you’ll find yourself with hordes of ling-bane swarming your opponent and relentlessly rolling over the top of their pushes… even when floating thousands of unspent minerals! As you get more experience you’ll improve your micro vs mines, learn when and how to use deadly counterattacks and to use any lull in pressure to grow your creep exponentially.


Rule of 1 Gas ZvT
13Overlord
17Hatchery
18Gas
17Pool
19Overlord
202x queens
242x zerglings
Pull off gas at 100 for ling speed
3rd queen ASAP
3:30 3rd hatchery + back on gas
Nonstop queen production and put back on gas
Continuous droning
4:45-5:00 2x evo chambers
5:10 optional baneling nest (can drop later if you scout well)
@3-base saturation — take 5 gases
~5:00-5:30 — 4th base + macro hatch (double macro hatch until you get better at spending money)
6:00 (your next 100 gas after 1-1 and bane nest) — Lair


  • 2-2 is a bit late in this game because of late lair and an engagement distracting Snute
  • Lair was very late this game because Snute made 4 safety banelings because he wasn’t scouting, he was worried about a big hellbat-marine-medivac attack.
  • Maximum 15 mutas: Huge focus on ling-bane
  • You can go corruptors or infestors → Ultras instead of mutas and this is still an ideal build for those styles. However mutas is the more common approach
  • In rare situations you can mass mutas very high off this opening and do big counterattacks with them’



Key Strategic Points



  • Taking the gas: Many players struggle with the mechanics of quickly taking so many gas at once whilst keeping up macro. My favourite method involves bouncing between each base and resetting its drone rally to the minerals whilst dropping the geysers. This way your new drones popping will naturally spread across all 3 bases rather than all running to the 3rd and then having to send them back to your main and natural gas geysers.

  • Double Macro hatch
    • When you’re first getting used to the style you will need 2 macro hatcheries and a 4th base all much earlier than you would with other builds. It’s important to get these early because once you hit 66 drones you’ll have an endless hunger for larva to mass out your ling-bane armies

  • Dumping Queen energy
    • As soon as your macro hatches and 4th base finish you should queue up your queens to “dump” a huge amount of injects all at once. This will turn these extra hatcheries into nonstop producing “larva-machines” without you having to learn an APM-inefficient inject cycle where you try to hit all 6 hatches.

  • Creep-spread
    • Don’t mass tumors — just 2-3 tumors in any one direction is more than enough — focus on spreading active tumors rather than throwing down masses of new tumors. This way you can get into a rhythm and do it regularly and APM-efficiently

  • Creep-queen hotkey and positioning
    • It’s vital you have a dedicated hotkey to your creep queens.
    • You need to manually target them onto medivacs in the earlygame
    • You need to be able to easily tell them to re-spread creep throughout the entire game
    • After you spread creep always use shift to queue them to walk back to a safe area — if you leave your queens exposed on the edge of creep they can easily be sniped by stimmed bio when you’re not watching

  • Don’t let him pull you around - You need to stop them disrupting your macro so you can focus on your build and spending your income constantly
    • Jump under the medivacs with lings whenever you force them to pickup so they can’t just unload off the edge of creep and poke back in again.
    • Even small ling counterattacks that you don’t micro heavily can pull your opponents attention away, buying you precious moments to get your macro in order
    • Clicking small squads of ling-bane into a push edging onto creep is a great way to force a lot of APM and attention away from your opponent — as well as being an efficient way to set off widow mines before the main engagement

  • Counterattacks
    • From 150 supply+ direct engagements can become problematic as the marauder wall thickens and the explosive damage of the mines and marines becomes harder to overwhelm. At this point you want to use your mobility to gain advantage rather than attacking in a huge blob into a pre-spread terran army off creep.
    • Huge ling counterattacks of 50-100 lings have great explosive power. You usually want to hit the natural and try to get some lings into the main on top of the production whilst the rest overwhelm any units at the rally point and clear the natural mineral line. Even the best players will usually react too slowly to raise their depots in time.
    • You can add banelings in and roll banes into mineral lines however as it hits slower and takes more time to set up it’s harder to master these counterattacks


Stages of Learning



Stage 1 - Refining the Opening
  • When you’re first learning you will struggle with building such a fast economy whilst defending pressure
  • Focus just on constant spending of larva and not getting supply blocked whilst spreading creep and defending
  • Drop evos, lair, bane nest, all around the same time when you have the spare APM and money - don’t stress over these being “late” once the economy building is natural you can work on getting these just right


Stage 2 - Rhythm
  • Stop at 66 drones each game — never go up to the ideal potential worker count of 75-80 drones. Only transfer drones to 4th base onwards as your bases mine out
  • Stay on muta-ling-bane and Lair tech all game. Never go Hive.
  • This will force you to focus on your earlygame buildup and simplify the mid to lategame
  • Allow yourself to focus on your creep + production + engagement rhythm and your handling of mutalingbane.


Common Questions



Isn’t your gas too slow? How will you get enough banelings or mutas to survive?
Zerglings are actually more important. Mutas and banelings can help you defend the first few waves but you'll be behind on production economy and won't be able to keep up unless they mess up their spreads vs banes. Staying on minerals early helps you ramp up your production as early as possible.

I can’t spend my money - is this build too advanced for me?
Even GM players can’t spend their money when they first start learning this style — it just takes a bit of practice! I regularly have gold-diamond players first learning this build floating vast amounts of minerals, but still crushing their opponents. Even though your spending won’t be perfect, following this build will push you into strong macro play and teach you to improve drastically at it.

Brought to you by the TL Strategy Team
Writer: PiG/TL Strategy
Graphics: shiroiusagi
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sa1Ko
Profile Joined July 2015
Argentina99 Posts
February 10 2017 16:58 GMT
#2
i´m waiting for the terran guide/strategy/build article...
Railgan
Profile Joined August 2010
Switzerland1507 Posts
February 10 2017 17:39 GMT
#3
On February 11 2017 01:58 sa1Ko wrote:
i´m waiting for the terran guide/strategy/build article...

Build 2 Medivacs and 16 Marines, Load the Marines into the Medivacs, Send them Across the map and kill the Zerg.
Grandmaster Zerg from Switzerland!!! www.twitch.tv/railgan // www.twitter.com/railgansc // www.youtube.com/c/railgansc
DERASTAT
Profile Joined May 2014
Germany99 Posts
February 10 2017 17:48 GMT
#4
The banner is wrong^^
Kajiu, Troll der Zerstörung
billynasty
Profile Joined October 2014
United States260 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-02-10 18:22:51
February 10 2017 18:20 GMT
#5
Thanks for the write up
i dont miss God but i sure miss Santa Claus
billynasty
Profile Joined October 2014
United States260 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-02-10 18:23:08
February 10 2017 18:21 GMT
#6
Here's the spawning tool link that you can view if anyone wants it: http://lotv.spawningtool.com/build/45833/
i dont miss God but i sure miss Santa Claus
CursOr
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
United States6335 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-02-10 20:47:59
February 10 2017 19:30 GMT
#7
Great guide, thank you!

What are some things I might scout that would cause me to sort of abandon the build and start making units? There have to be some thing I need to be scared of ... hellbat timings etc.

Is there a good time so sac an overlord? I usually throw one at Terran to see if I can scout something early like reactor factory or something.
CJ forever (-_-(-_-(-_-(-_-)-_-)-_-)-_-)
Saechiis
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Netherlands4989 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-02-10 20:24:04
February 10 2017 20:21 GMT
#8
I really love playing Zerg this way. I'm currently playing a variation where I get carapace before speed if I scout 16 marine drop. The gas timing works out so that they finish at the same time at 5:10 making the defense trivial.
I think esports is pretty nice.
Qwyn
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
United States2779 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-02-10 21:32:17
February 10 2017 21:30 GMT
#9
One minor nitpick: I think the word explosive is used a bit too many times, lol. It really starts to draw attention to itself later on.

EXPLOSIVE!

Great build, I've used this one for a long time and I am glad to see it now has an official place on TL.

Edit: not explosive, just "explode", I guess. It doesn't really matter, lol, and quite honestly explode is what this build does economically .
"Think of the hysteria following the realization that they consciously consume babies and raise the dead people from their graves" - N0
crash_to_desktop
Profile Joined October 2016
2 Posts
February 10 2017 22:40 GMT
#10
Is the replay available anywhere?
Argonauta
Profile Joined July 2016
Spain4906 Posts
February 10 2017 22:46 GMT
#11
It changes that much that you pull your drones off your first gas, I let them there and I cant see the diference...
Rogue | Maru | Scarlett | Trap
TL+ Member
ruypture
Profile Joined May 2014
United States367 Posts
February 10 2017 23:47 GMT
#12
hell yeah. i love mass ling low gas style
어윤수|이신형|이재동|이승형
PiGStarcraft
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Australia987 Posts
February 11 2017 01:04 GMT
#13
On February 11 2017 04:30 CursOr wrote:
Great guide, thank you!

What are some things I might scout that would cause me to sort of abandon the build and start making units? There have to be some thing I need to be scared of ... hellbat timings etc.

Is there a good time so sac an overlord? I usually throw one at Terran to see if I can scout something early like reactor factory or something.


Hey CursOr, great question. The guide was already PACKED with details and information so I thought adding scouting info to it would be a bit too much for now. There is info on reacting to 2-1-1 in the video

Sacrifing an overlord at 3:30 is a great time to see whats going on. Always send it right towards the top of their main ramp where their builidngs are situated. You should also simply run your first 6 lings across the map as soon as ling speed finishes and this will often allow you to see if it's a 2-1-1 (lots of marines), a helion opener (cars shooting fire at you) or something else (other stuff ).

Never "abandon the build" this is a macro build and is naturally reflexive! You start with a framework like this and you follow your general rules of scouting - you see signs of aggression, you build as many units as you need, and then you resume the build. The build is mostly not set on supply counts but an ORDER so it is flexible and adjustable based on what you have to react to. So even if you're 2 minutes later than normal taking your gases, your order is still the same, drone 3-mineral lines, then take all your gases.

Vs a hellbat timing you just need to pull all your queens to the front and follow the rules of micro vs hellbat pushes. Here's an old video showing decent queen micro, some terrible ling engages, but some great ones. Pull back queens individually in a giant arc so hellbats don't deal splash, when they spread to chase you down, engage with lings

Progamerwww.twitch.tv/x5_pig | pigrandom88@gmail.com | @x5_PiG | www.facebook.com/pigSC2
PiGStarcraft
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Australia987 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-02-11 01:10:39
February 11 2017 01:09 GMT
#14
On February 11 2017 07:40 crash_to_desktop wrote:
Is the replay available anywhere?


The replay is always a near perfect example and is available on SpawningTool, the link was wrong but should be fixed now:

http://lotv.spawningtool.com/25716/

(can find the links in the middle of the build post on spawning tool: http://lotv.spawningtool.com/build/45833/)


On February 11 2017 07:46 Argonauta wrote:
It changes that much that you pull your drones off your first gas, I let them there and I cant see the diference...


Starcraft is a game of details, you can choose to ignore small details like this, especially if you're not super high level. The more details you pay attention to, the more edges you take and the more chances for victory.
Progamerwww.twitch.tv/x5_pig | pigrandom88@gmail.com | @x5_PiG | www.facebook.com/pigSC2
PiGStarcraft
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Australia987 Posts
February 11 2017 01:12 GMT
#15
On February 11 2017 01:58 sa1Ko wrote:
i´m waiting for the terran guide/strategy/build article...


There will be several posted here on TL over the coming weeks. However if you're looking for builds and strategy right now, I already have many up on my youtube channel. Here's a playlist of all my TERRAN dailies:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFUDU8AOevUdGldXWE5C7U8H2cCB53RYU

And for my most recent Terran guide on Maru's TvP opening from WESG:

Progamerwww.twitch.tv/x5_pig | pigrandom88@gmail.com | @x5_PiG | www.facebook.com/pigSC2
Xelothar
Profile Joined September 2013
Germany3 Posts
February 11 2017 11:27 GMT
#16
Amazing guide Pig! I really appreciate the work and effort you put into these guides. They are so well done, that I patiently wait for every new guide to pop up in order to practice and play them on ladder eventually.

What always amazes me is, that the builds are so well thought through. With the build order, the video, the description and explanation in the video it's really an awesome package to become a better player.

Thank you.
Clbull
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
United Kingdom1439 Posts
February 11 2017 17:44 GMT
#17
ZvT was one of those matchups I really struggled with in LotV because of the Liberator and buffed Siege Tank. This build however makes ZvT look effortless. It's almost genius to think that delaying your gas in favour of actually making drones, queens and lings gives you an unbeatably powerful early game.
yoshi245
Profile Joined May 2011
United States2969 Posts
February 12 2017 06:05 GMT
#18
On February 11 2017 01:58 sa1Ko wrote:
i´m waiting for the terran guide/strategy/build article...


Feels like it may be awhile.
"Numbers speak about the past, not the present." -Thorzain
BronzeKnee
Profile Joined March 2011
United States5217 Posts
February 12 2017 06:59 GMT
#19
On February 11 2017 02:39 Railgan wrote:
Show nested quote +
On February 11 2017 01:58 sa1Ko wrote:
i´m waiting for the terran guide/strategy/build article...

Build 2 Medivacs and 16 Marines, Load the Marines into the Medivacs, Send them Across the map and kill the Zerg.


This build also works in PvT.
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