Has anyone else ran into this strategy. It seems to be dominating most top diamond terrans play over the last few days. There are two variations. Both of them deny an expo and force roaches and both of them follow up with marauders (either 1 base all in, or fast expo with 6 reaper harass into 6 or so rax stim marauder all in).
This build is obnoxious to deal with. It seems like theres no real way to defend it competently 100% of the time. Roaches do fine against the reapers despite getting kited around all day. Reapers kill queens with ease especially when the numbers get larger. All the while the reapers can stay out of range of queen and roaches. Spine crawlers are so ineffective at dealing with the harass as reapers just do so much damage to buildings. You cannot attack the terran, you cannot do anything, you just have to sit and hope you have enough roaches to deal with the marauders, and then hope you have enough economy to deal with the midgame later on.
Do any zergs have a lot of experience dealing with this build? It seems to be the popular hard to deal with build of the week and I have not found a suitable way to deal with it that leaves me with a strong midgame economy. I've tried going for mutas to deal with the marauders, but if he's doing a 1base all in instead of the fast expo i instantly lose. I've tried several different subtle changes in my play and none of them leave me feeling confident. Every time I scout a techlab on the barracks now I get this really terrible feeling in my stomach. I would almost move to say that this build is OP.
yeah it seems pretty popular now since LzGamer's games were shown to the world during Day9's launch party. They talked about it a little bit and they mentioned that Machine and co. had no answer for this build
I suggest you try scouting on 10 (can probably get away with 12 if you're on a 2-player map), and if you see him doing this, go 15 hatch, 14 pool, and the timing will work out that you get your spine crawler about the same time as the first reaper, if he's going faster reaper (like 8 rax reaper), you can't do this, but you can get 14 pool 13 extractor and get quick ling speed to defend. You have to be good at defense to be a good zerg though. Make sure your important buildings are tucked away on creep and can't be sniped. You'll get 2 queens up right when your hatches go up which should be able to mostly defend with good micro. get a spine crawler at your natural and zergling speed fairly quickly. I would really do your best to defend with queens and lings and avoid roaches if you can. Get a creep tumor early (you can't support all the larva at first anyways), this will make it much riskier for the reapers as they have to go on creep. If you're having trouble put a spine crawler on one side of your main and use your queen to defend the other although honestly with a good overlord spread for vision you shouldn't need this. Keep building lings and tech to mutas, he's committed to bio and this is VERY effective against bio.
You cannot hatch first. It's going to be bunkered up. And most terrans will wait for 5 to 6 reapers before they really do any harassment. That spine crawler will die in two seconds. He's not going 10 rax reaper. He's doing a standard orbital opening into 3rax reaper or some fast expand variant. I really want you to understand i'm not talking about the 10rax reaper, or even the 1barracks reaper harass into the hellion marauder push. This is a whole new build. Opens up another world of obnoxious terran builds.
ive had this done to me and used this build to hold of reapers with lings and 2 spines and teched to mutas to end the game just have to have decent micro and good overlord placement im a mid level diamond player.
On August 04 2010 03 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 04 2010 03 end_of_the_skype_highlighting:48 Phayze wrote: You cannot hatch first. It's going to be bunkered up. And most terrans will wait for 5 to 6 reapers before they really do any harassment. That spine crawler will die in two seconds. He's not going 10 rax reaper. He's doing a standard orbital opening into 3rax reaper or some fast expand variant. I really want you to understand i'm not talking about the 10rax reaper, or even the 1barracks reaper harass into the hellion marauder push. This is a whole new build. Opens up another world of obnoxious terran builds.
Kill the SCV while it's building the bunker with one of your drones. But I still think this strategy is really hard to deal with, I imagine speedlings will do some goodness, but they die so fast when there are a lot of reapers.
My friend FireZerg, who is also a top diamond player stands by 1base muta but has also not found a method of dealing with this. You cannot survive vs this build without roaches. Reapers do too much damage vs buildings. I've played around 10 games versus this (Not many I know) but I know for sure that, If you're up against the 1base all in variant and are going sens muta build you will instantly lose because the push comes at around 50% spire. I did manage to take a game against a player who expanded into the tech rax explosion. It's just not as easy as building spine crawlers and killing the building scv with a drone. Because with any way you choose, you still have to deal with the 6+ reapers and the inevitable reaper + marauder reaper push which will dominate any composition you have (Excluding mutas which come out too late)
Mass reaper happens after you get the chance to fast expand. You can't just 1 base muta which is the obvious way to stop any tech lab barracks build cold. (Though ghost transition works nice vs 2 base muta.)
You basically need some kind of lair tech to hold them off. Speed roaches pretty decent. Mutas or infestors work great. Other than that you just need mass queen/roaches to hold back as long as you can. I cant' see speedlings working vs 3 rax reapers without lots of queen support. I think TLO used mass queen/ling into infestor to win this one.
On August 04 2010 03 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 04 2010 03 end_of_the_skype_highlighting:48 Phayze wrote: You cannot hatch first. It's going to be bunkered up. And most terrans will wait for 5 to 6 reapers before they really do any harassment. That spine crawler will die in two seconds. He's not going 10 rax reaper. He's doing a standard orbital opening into 3rax reaper or some fast expand variant. I really want you to understand i'm not talking about the 10rax reaper, or even the 1barracks reaper harass into the hellion marauder push. This is a whole new build. Opens up another world of obnoxious terran builds.
Kill the SCV while it's building the bunker with one of your drones. But I still think this strategy is really hard to deal with, I imagine speedlings will do some goodness, but they die so fast when there are a lot of reapers.
You can't actually reliably kill an scv building a bunker with ONE drone. They sometime have that gay'd building animation that makes them go into the bunker and become invulnerable. That, and you have to always keep track of your drone and make sure it's attking the scv. THey have a habit of losing the attk order when the scv moves.
On to OP, just theory crafting, but how about couple of zerglings at ramp to figure out when he's switching to rauders and then massing up speedlings? Or even an Overlord near ramp to poke in and out? If he's only got reapers/rauders then he must have few marines?
i dont see the point in getting roaches at all against this build, marauders absolutely shit on roaches.... and reapers are way too fast for roaches to be viable against them.
wouldn't mass speedlings/queens with a couple spine crawlers do the trick just fine until you can get muta/infestor out? a few banelings wouldnt hurt but i'd rather save the gas for lair/spire/infestation pit.
you could try backstabbing as well when they move out with their marauders.
I agree it doesn't seem roaches is the right answer, since marauders will simply tear them apart. Against reaper harass I find well placed spine crawler, speedlings, and a couple queens fends it off well. I haven't dealt with someone following up with mass Marauders, most likely because they see me with 12 slings.
On August 04 2010 04:32 EscPlan9 wrote: I agree it doesn't seem roaches is the right answer, since marauders will simply tear them apart. Against reaper harass I find well placed spine crawler, speedlings, and a couple queens fends it off well. I haven't dealt with someone following up with mass Marauders, most likely because they see me with 12 slings.
Trying to find when T is going marauder to counter with speedlings won't work either, if he's executing his strategy well enough he won't lose that many reapers and willl complement his marauders force with some reapers to kill speedlings if needed anyway.
Tried extra queens? being able to transfuse your buildings whiel your slow roaches get there is huge. Also, spreading creep in your base is really important. Speedlings on creep can probably handle decent #s of reaper, at least until you get lair tech. Other than that I got nothing for ya... fast muta maybe?
If you expect reapers, it's better off to open pool/gas instead of pool/hatch. If I see reapers after a pool/hatch opening, I get my gas ASAP and cancel my natural hatchery. I delay the first reaper with my queen, and keep building queens and drones while getting ling speed and a roach warren, then tech to lair for roach speed. When I have around 30 drones, I switch to ling/roach production. I'm pretty sure the timing works out so that I have my roaches out whenever he gets his nitro packs and starts pumping reapers out of more raxes (a few reapers aren't a big deal for queens, but mass reapers are). It's really important to spread creep throughout your main and extend it to your natural. Lings are amazing versus marauders without medivac support and of course roaches beat reapers straight up. Sorry about the vagueness. I'm still working out specifics since I haven't played against it that much. I'm also testing putting down a second hatch in the main if it seems like he's not getting his expansion any time soon.
EPT
