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Note: all info in this thread is based on the SC2 build shown at PAX, which, though the CMs believed it was the same as the one at Blizzcon, was not confirmed as such, so there may be differences.
I have just come back from PAX, where blizzard had a large booth in the expo hall. Karune and a good number of other Blizzard employees were there and playing people, giving out beta keys to anyone who beat them.
I talked to Karune about the 1-hatch queen imbalance that TL had apparently found, and he was utterly unconvinced that it is the game winner it claims to be. He did acknowledge to the fact that it is a very powerful build, but that somebody who knows the game past trying to play like you do in BW can counter it without too much problem. He then went into a few details on the counter for toss.
basic BO for protoss counter, though I don't know the new supply timings they are fairly intuitive and doesn't include cutting probes.
Pylon at choke + scout, seeing 10-pool
2x GW at choke making a soft wall-in 1 zealot wide (this is easy with the new way buildings block paths)
on most current maps 6lings from 10 pool get there just after the 1st zealot spawns, and just as the 2nd GW finishes.
The zealot is in a gap 1-2 zerglings wide, meaning heavy losses, if you attempt to kill the zealot you may get in with 2-3 lings before the next 2 zealots pop out, but with the new zealots + worker micro, the choke remains solid while the 2-3 lings are dispatched
This comes down to that the toss has a choke to defend with zealots against lings, and this works very much the same way it does in BW, very badly for the zerg
At this point the zerg is facing both the threat of a 2-gate rush and an essentially unbreakable choke for lings
The protoss gets their obelisk and both gas right after the 2-gates push off the attack and they see if the zerg is continuing to press with lings (in which case keep a healthy number of zealots pumping) or swapping to hydras.
Going to hydra tech, still off 1-base, as trying to get an expansion means the protoss can overrun you with his 2-gate (queen cannot prevent scouts that are not on the creep, meaning your natural is scout-able)
As the protoss staying 1-base, whatever build it could be, from lair teching to mass hydra, the toss just needs to tech up slightly to stalkers warp gates and disruptors.
Now comes where the toss has to weather out the mass hydras until zealot charge finishes, which is done by a combination of stalkers on the ledge (all current maps provide a ramp for your main) and well placed force fields from the disruptors. The goal here is to micro back any stalkers on the ledge with low shields, preventing the hydras from getting free pot shots at the buildings from the low-ground (using overlord for the vision) as well as blocking off the ramp if 5-6 hydras get to the top, cutting off their escape and trapping them in range of the stalker force behind the gates.
What we/Karune found was that the toss is able to hold the choke without spamming just stalkers, allowing for a large combined group of zealots with charge and some stalker backup to cut through any amount of hydras you can get off 1-hatch.
At this point in the game it devolves into either a quick protoss steamroll, or a drawn out fight where it goes back and forth in the middle, essentially a fair game.
Karune, being primarily a Protoss player was unable to comment on specifics about the terran counter, but mentioned that it is the overpowering strat in ZvZ currently, and they are looking at ways to freshen up that match-up.
From what I observed of I believe Cydra playing terran, his off-race, he was able to hold his ramp by double supply depot + barracks wall-in, lifting the barracks and building a bunker in the spot the moment a chance appears. We didn't see him truly tested against a polished 6-ling into hydra build though, which was unfortunate.
In the games played, both against other blizzard employees and attendees 1-hatch queen's initial fury caught a number a bit off-guard, but soon defensive builds combined with timing attacks early mid-game were at the very least on balance with the people doing 1-hatch queen. I won't try and pretend we were experts at the game, so it may be that we are doing something with 1-hatch different then you guys were, but Karune's challenge to anyone trying it against him stood up, and he remained undefeated through all his games.
Additional notes, this may be completely wrong, it's just some observations I made after a successful muta harass.
In the one longer game I played against a Terran Cydra, I found how I believe muta harass will work now. In BW you're very able to micro well enough to kill off marines from the terran ball. This doesn't seem to be very true anymore. The change that makes muta harass still very viable though, is the removal of the medic. Since there is no Medic unit until starport, he will not have any significant numbers of them by the time you have your muta harass in full swing, in addition, they are slow and vulnerable.
In BW the reason the terran always had his marines in generally the correct area without having to split up was due to being able to stim, relying on medics to heal up that bit of damage. With no medics there, if the terran is not stimming his marines, you are able to dance around his base with your mutas picking off all sorts of things, simply moving when the marine ball arrives. If he is stimming, wait until they are all low hp, and then begin your harass on the marines. when you can split your shots and kill 5-10 marines/muta volley it's already over. If he has some medivacs around, generally I found they lagged behind the marine force and had slow healing (simply because of the reduced numbers compared to BW medics)
edit: couple spelling errors etc.
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United States12356 Posts
Congrats, you've won the "Daily MVP Award" for the SC2 forum. Good job! This post will definitely be useful.
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Zerg can make a few buildings (like 4?) And then just mass one unit and protoss needs to do all kinds of stuff to have a game? Sounds OK but not optimal to me. And about the muta harass, it's basically It's like in SC (no medics).
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Sounds like muta harass is brutal, and with hydras 4 shotting marines, terran might have to metal against zerg.
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Nice read! Do you have an idea of the highest iccup rank that lost to karune?
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Nice post. Thanks for the writeup.
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On September 07 2009 18:54 FortuneSyn wrote:
Nice read! Do you have an idea of the highest iccup rank that lost to karune?
I know there were at least some C+'s around,
Karune says he's at about 200 APM in SC2 and that he only really loses to David Kim in the company if that gives you an idea of his skill level.
Also, Karune mentioned how Blizzard has a weekly Thursday "Game Night" where a large portion of the SC2 team + others gets together in the theater for a series of matches where different people practice shoutcasting the matches. It also is where they see the more creative BOs come out for the current build, as the different employees want to win on-stage, practicing and researching the current version for what will work.
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Karune said pretty much the same thing when I talked to him there, he wasn't worried at all that 1hatQ builds were out of control. He had some good points on how toss could counter it off one base, but I didn't hear anything particularly effective from him on how the other races would deal with it. He also told me that forge/FE was just as viable PvZ as it was in original starcraft, having no personal experience against a fast expo with 1hatQ I didn't press him on this, but from what I remember of TL's blizzcon experience, forge/FE was supposedly suicidal against a 1hat hydra bust.
I really should have brought up the fact that it's impossible to get any scouting information against the queen either, and you would still be reduced to guessing whether or not you need to take all those extra defensive measures just to survive an early 1hatQ attack. I left after 3:30 so I didn't see karune play against anyone who wasn't an absolute noob, I don't think any of the TL readers or the people that won beta keys got to play against him while I was there.
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On September 07 2009 19:08 CauthonLuck wrote:
Karune said pretty much the same thing when I talked to him there, he wasn't worried at all that 1hatQ builds were out of control. He had some good points on how toss could counter it off one base, but I didn't hear anything particularly effective from him on how the other races would deal with it. He also told me that forge/FE was just as viable PvZ as it was in original starcraft, having no personal experience against a fast expo with 1hatQ I didn't press him on this, but from what I remember of TL's blizzcon experience, forge/FE was supposedly suicidal against a 1hat hydra bust.
I really should have brought up the fact that it's impossible to get any scouting information against the queen either, and you would still be reduced to guessing whether or not you need to take all those extra defensive measures just to survive an early 1hatQ attack. I left after 3:30 so I didn't see karune play against anyone who wasn't an absolute noob, I don't think any of the TL readers or the people that won beta keys got to play against him while I was there.
I don't see forge fast expand working in the current build with larva inject how it is. Right now I'd say terran may need a small boost early game to vs the current incarnation of 1-hatch queen on a semi-level playing field. We also have to remember, that it is not a bad thing to have a matchup where one side is forced to defend hard against the other, until they can tech up.
I was one of the beta-key winners later in the day against Cydra, the long drawn out 20 minute ZvT game.
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Yo Shiladie, excellent writeup! Congrats again on the beta key. 
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Netherlands3659 Posts
Ok, so just like in the other thread, i'll say let's see in the beta whether it needs adjustments. The idea is not flawed...
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Sounds like rampless maps or maps with wide chokes are not longer an option in SC2 which map be a bit limiting for mapmakers
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I have not played SC2 but wouldn't just attacking the furthest gateway from the soft-zeal choak take it down before more zeals pop?
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In the other thread, there's a bunch of people who claim to have beaten them with 1hatQ while playing SC2 for the first time.
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On September 07 2009 18:24 Shiladie wrote:
on most current maps 6lings from 10 pool get there just after the 1st zealot spawns, and just as the 2nd GW finishes.
why would zerg want to make lings before queen?
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Germany14400 Posts
Can't wait to play again :-)
Imho this (the P build) is exactly what everyone tried. I now I have, and I played against it too. The problem still remains that you can not scout what the Zerg is doing with their larvae. If the Zerg is smart and just checks your build constantly they should be able to outproduce you safely still. I had I think 3 ZvP in a row against HB and the games he won with P with this build was when he was constantly hiding probes on the map to suicide them into my base for scouting - which would probably not work against a more able Zerg.
Also note that the few of us at those events are just screwing around. The better the players and the more understood the game is, the more powerful the "larvae uncertainty" will be.
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I haven't played SC2, but I have a question about scouting Zergs. Why is everyone saying you cannot scout the Zerg because of the queen? I thought the queen did very little damage, could you not simply run in with a probe, look real quick and run out?
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Germany14400 Posts
On September 07 2009 20:47 Salv wrote:
I haven't played SC2, but I have a question about scouting Zergs. Why is everyone saying you cannot scout the Zerg because of the queen? I thought the queen did very little damage, could you not simply run in with a probe, look real quick and run out?
I don't know why everyone says that. Zerglings are faster than workers and due to improved pathing constantly get hits on the scout while pursuing it, even when just told to a-move. The queen only adds to that should the worker come near the hatchery.
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Sweden33691 Posts
Pylon at choke + scout, seeing 10-poo
I thought it was a 13 pool? Which, if I'm correct, means you are not rushing or even trying to rush, all you are doing is keeping his probe from seeing what you are doing.
The protoss gets their obelisk and both gas right after the 2-gates push off the attack and they see if the zerg is continuing to press with lings (in which case keep a healthy number of zealots pumping) or swapping to hydras.
How ?
Anyway, I have no idea if it's actually imbalanced or not, but I think the above two points are interesting.
As for the comment about "trying to play like you would in BW" - what Karune described is EXACTLY how you'd play vs a 1 base (or other type of all-in) build in BW, with the possible difference of adding cannons.
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Russian Federation124 Posts
meh i think zerg are underpowered
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