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The whole OP kinda made me facepalm with the constant [incorrect] use of the word "forcing" instead of pressure. In particular, this section really bothered me:
On October 07 2010 04:06 Gentso wrote:Now this is where Fruit becomes unique to other zerg players. After reacting, Fruit immediately starts forcing. Instead of using his first batch of mutas to react to the tank drop, he attacked with them and began forcing map control.
Any competent zerg will use all of their units - you're missing the difference between Fruit and other zergs completely. The major difference that I saw between Fruit and other zergs is in the number of hatcheries and queens he gets very early into the game, and his very efficient defense against early harass.
A key difference between his play and say that of Idra's is in his early hatches (usually 3 hatches on two bases at the same time other zergs rely on only two hatches). He generates enough larva to not need to decide between drones or army units - he can build both, unlike with the two-hatch build. This increased drone count quickly accumulates into the funding for a total of 5 hatcheries leading to a complete macro advantage. Fruit shines in his defense of a large number of bases - this accounted for his win on Delta Quadrant. Other (mostly US/EU) zergs refuse to build that third hatch because its inefficient - however because of the larva count fruit generates, he can produce many more drones to account for it.
The other key difference is fruit's almost guaranteed use of Roaches for early defense. Most zerg will rely on the speedling/spine crawler combination to prevent hellions and reapers, however Fruit makes only a handful of roaches to deal with the harassment. Zergs that are not Fruit and go Roaches usually amass too many roaches (the number to defense the harass without losing a drone) and they fall behind economically - Fruit will just take the hit in drone count from not having enough roaches and simply rebuild drones after the harass is delt with, which because of his early queens and hatcheries, he can rebuild much faster.
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Nice write up, thanks man. I agree that Cool is different from any other Zerg player out there, even though I still don't think he's the best. I think he won simply because his play was so unexpected by his opponents.
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From what I saw, Fruit didn't even HAVE a sizable army in most of his matches to defend until the enemy pushed out... which was usually so late that Fruit had 3-4 bases to pump an army instantly.. I have no idea what he would have done if the terran just attacked with an early thor/bio push around when Fruit takes his 3rd base and has no infestors or ultra out yet. Basically all he had in a lot of matches was a few banelings, a few zerglings, and 5-10 muta.
People who try to emulate Fruit on ladder lose because terrans on ladder do not play as passively as TOP or ITR did in their GSL matches.
THIS.
The most inspiring part of the finals was Fruitdealer's ability to sense what his opponent was going to do, especially where he was going to drop. This doesn't really help educate my zerg play though, as it's not what I have to deal with. I want to see Fruit crush a 2-base mech or mech bio push. How would he deal with 4 thors, 2 tanks and 15 hellions? Sure, you could baneling drop the main or nat, but what if he decides to base trade you?
By making 4-5 mutas Fruitdealer is able to essentially say to his opponent, if you don't make turrets or have thor/marine I will win this game because I have mutas. Since Hope had units that can shoot up, Fruit didn't need to make more mutas and could just use his mutas for scouting, light harassment, and what not.
It's essentially Fruit saying, "I want you to have Thors or marines in your unit composition because I feel comfortable fighting those units".
I understand this, in concept, but...think about it realistically. When was the last time you wanted your opponent to have lots of thors? What are you going to kill them with again? I would love to see Fruit fighting a strong 2-base thor centric push. Any reps out there?
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Maybe he seemed so good cause the terran player hopewhatever never really pressured him every game and let potseller just macro up and expand like crazy before he attacked or tried to. Oh look gold minerals and this terran isn't gonna try to stop me lolololol.
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I didn't watch the whole 7 games yet (only 3 so far), but let me tell ya, fruit dealer made hopetorture look like a low gold player in a gold vs. diamond match.(especially match 3)
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The FruitDealer has advanced the metagame with some nice ideas. The baneling drop on top of a surround with some fungal when possible has shown to be a very powerful move. Creep + Overlords to spot drops and prevent them. Abusing the zerg's superior macro when the enemy fast expands, he double fast expands. His micro is excellent as well. He also found an easy way to defend against siege tanks on the cliff on lost temple. Now he got alot of attention and many progamers who signed up for GSL2 will watch his games and be better prepared against his playstyle.
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it's his gameplay that's really strong that doesn't really have a weakness and if it does, it'll be early pressure which his micro covers up and from cloaked units like the banshees/DTs.
other than that, you will lose to him...I can't see someone's army go straight up and beat a Fruit Dealer
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On October 07 2010 04:27 hoovehand wrote:
i do think that the metagame is too strong atm...
-_-[/QUOTE]
Wtf does that even mean????
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To keep it simple. He expands like a real S class SC1 pro-gamer would and micro his units to force aggression. Seems like most Zerg fails is because they don't expand when they can't attack (or when the opponent focuses on defense), and when they do, they lack the micro and multi-tasking skill to defend.
This is more about timing and "game sense" since all the tricks on how to use units effectively can be used by other progamers. Fruitdealer expands as early and as much as possible.
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On October 07 2010 05:47 Fa1nT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2010 05:36 awesomoecalypse wrote:Terrans are the race that decide with force that Zerg need counter with. If it is the other way around, the Terran is not playing correctly Cool is very aggressive. One thing I noticed is that he often uses aggression to defend. That is, the enemy will start a push towards Cool's base, and rather than either meeting them in the middle or fighting in his own base, he'd run units around the side and up to the enemy's base, forcing their army to return to defend. Another thing I picked up on is how much emphasis Cool places on getting a good surround. I mean, every Zerg knows that surrounding is important. But Cool treats it as *essential*. He will happily engage with half an army just to be able to send his other half around the back for a surround. That IdrA style of just running waves and waves of units directly at the enemy and relying on economy to allow him to brute force his way to a victory is the exact opposite of how Cool plays. The last thing, of course, is baneling drops. I don't think there was a single match where Cool made banelings where he didn't drop them. From what I saw, Fruit didn't even HAVE a sizable army in most of his matches to defend until the enemy pushed out... which was usually so late that Fruit had 3-4 bases to pump an army instantly.. I have no idea what he would have done if the terran just attacked with an early thor/bio push around when Fruit takes his 3rd base and has no infestors or ultra out yet. Basically all he had in a lot of matches was a few banelings, a few zerglings, and 5-10 muta. People who try to emulate Fruit on ladder lose because terrans on ladder do not play as passively as TOP or ITR did in their GSL matches. You say they played passively because Fruit forced them to do so with "pressure", but putting pressure on terrans (who specialize in defense) is kinda.... difficult.
Wait wait wait. did we watch the same games? I dont remember all of the details of each game that well, but from the 4 games Fruitdealer won, there were 2 games where ITR put tanks up on elevation by one of Fruits expos and 1 game where he proxy reapers. How is that "playing passively"?
After he lost the first game (yes he was passive there), he decided to switch it up and play aggressively from the start. Fruitdealer shut them all down, or just ignored and went for the counter attack.
Its very strange. Youd think zerg players would celebrate Fruitdealers non-reactive play style and try to emulate it, but so many of them seem to want so badly for Blizzard to fix all their problems for them that they attribute Fruitdealers victories mainly to ITRs deficiencies.
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Only one thing I realized about Fruitseller was his innovation.
Everyone including IdrA did nothing but whine about Zerg and rigidly never adapted. Fruitseller owned Terran bio with creative baneling drop bombs from overlords during fights and disgusting Fungal play.
Ironically enough, Fruitseller commented ZvP was harder to face, not ZvT.
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Yeah, I don't get the "Terran didn't play aggressively enough" criticism.
ITR did tank drops on two of the most abusive maps that exist for that strategy. He also did proxy reaper.
LiveForever harassed with literally every harassing units Terran has. Cool went for a fast hatchery in one game, and LiveForever straight up killed it with reapers. He then harassed with Hellions and did some econ damage, and then he harassed with cloaked Banshees before Cool had detection and did even more damage. With harassment he straight up killed like 20 drones and a hatchery.
I mean seriously, if that isn't "aggressive", then what the hell is?
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On October 07 2010 15:54 Darkren wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2010 04:27 hoovehand wrote:
i do think that the metagame is too strong atm... -_-
Wtf does that even mean????[/QUOTE]
lol, makes me think of the day9 episode where he goes on his "metagame" rant about people who overuse the word "metagame".
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Wtf does that even mean????[/QUOTE]
I think he just mean people are paying way too much attention to what other people are doing. If some player says, "x unit is useless in this matchup", then rather than trying it for themselves and experimenting, they just follow the pack.
Cool is interesting because his play is not what you'd expect, and if you'd gone on the boards and said, "hey guys, I think I'm gonna go 3 hatch on 2 bases, and make like 3 roaches for defense. I know I'll lose a lot of drones, but I'll be droning so hard it won't even matter." Everyone would just say, "stfu n00b, that'd never work." And everyone would be wrong.
Check out Plexa's "Is it viable?" threads on the strategy boards, where he's showing that a lot of units and playstyles people dismiss out of hand are actually surprisingly useful.
"Metagame" is kind of a stupid word. but at the same time, I agree with his general point--the game is still very young. people should not be boxing themselves in with preconceived ideas about what is viable and what isn't. Be willing to experiment and try new things.
Cool was, and he just won 81 grand.
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Calgary25986 Posts
I have a huge problem with this writeup. You start with the foregone conclusion "Of course Zerg is reactionary." Did I miss that article? Any race can be played with a reactionary style. I don't think the racial dynamic is understood enough yet that you can just slap down that statement without justifying it.
Then, you seem to focus on the "reactions" because of race, as opposed to the situations at hand.
Example: Fruitdealer expanded on Lost Temple. HopeTorture did a Tank drop. FruitDealer reacted. FruitDealer killed HopeTorture.
I can easily write this the other way.
Counter-Example: Terran is, of course, the reactionary race. If you don't react perfectly, you will lose. We can see this clearly in game 2. FruitDealer expanded on Lost Temple. This forced HopeTorture to react by playing a 1-base drop build. Unfortunately, he didn't execute it perfectly. After it was defeated, he couldn't react to the Zerg properly and was crushed.
I think the theme of this article is written as a foregone conclusion, and as someone who didn't agree with the initial premise, I didn't feel anything written helped to convince me.
The analysis seems really flimsy to me. It boils down to "FruitDealer is really fucking good. He harasses well. He often counter-attacks after defending." I get no tangibles from this article explaining what he specifically did or why it's so strong.
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I don't think the games with Hopetorture are good examples of ZvT I mean sure Cool is an awesome player but Hopetorture tried to play a macro game with a zerg player.
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Fruitdealer played an expansive style (SC1 Zerg S-class style) and to play against it u really have to be like Flash with his groups of marines threatening every expansion there is, simultaneously. Easier said than done.
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On October 07 2010 04:34 Toxigen wrote:
I've really gotta say I didn't really pay attention to exactly how much Fruitseller not only:
1. Gets away with droning under pressure (i.e., making the least necessary amount of units, beforehand, to defend harassment and pushes)
But also:
2. Doesn't get bullied or intimidated into making an army when he doesn't need to (and also has no fear of taking a 3rd and 4th even with a very small army)
...until I watched Day9's recent daily about drone timings. I had to admit, even as a diamond Zerg, I've had a lot of games where I felt I lost because I "made too many drones and not enough army" when the EXACT opposite was most likely the cause of my defeat.
I should have been making more drones EARLIER and making more army LATER instead of getting intimidated by good harassment into wasting larvae on army I didn't really need too soon (on top of losing drones to harassment). It's a dangerous spiral!
I must say I absolutely agree with what you wrote here. I myself am a diamond zerg and on watching replays of my loss, it is precisely because I overreacted to harass that I spiraled down into the 'lower income=less troops=less drones made' cycle. I suppose it is the micro that allows for proper defense with very little that sets apart the good players from the pros. Will have to work on the basics of micro and also, map awareness (creep tumors/overlord placements) to improve my game
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Just as a semantic aside, the word 'reactionary' essentially means someone who is opposed to political change. The word you're looking for is 'reactive'.
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I think a lot of it is awareness and ability to react while executing multiple other tasks. In game 1 he stopped 3 drop at once and managed to harass a bit on his own, it was incredible.
I think what amazed me the most his fast expand on Kulas. He built the spine crawlers up against the ledge forcing the terran to drop his tank to the far left of the ledge. Then as soon as the tank started to drop, he had 3 roaches ready to cut him off and deny the harrass.
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EPT
