EPT![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/rp5CJ.png)
Introduction
Hello and glad to see you reading my guide. If you opened this topic you probably have trouble with this match up, or atleast you're confused by it. I'd be glad to tell you how I do my ZvZ's and share my ideas about the matchup.
Rank and other off-topic banter
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Please note that the following is written by a 2250 Diamond Zerg. If you are higher diamond than that and you prefer to compare ranks rather than information, please share your views in this topic as well 
, I'd be glad to spark up a discussion.
, I'd be glad to spark up a discussion.The build: A quick introduction.
The build that I use as the title suggests is a speedling expand. It focusses on getting early map controll with speedlings to ensure your natural expansion to go up without the fuss of defending for the first half of the match when going hatch first.
Buildorder
- Send first spawned drone to scout ( Stylistic choice, reasons in the spoiler tags. )
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I prefer to send out a scouting drone because of the ease of defending early pool builds, and the ability to hatchblock should the opponent go for hatch first.
Some people prefer to stay in the dark and try to destroy early pool builds with good drone micro. I however prefer to get a 12 pool when facing a 6-7 pool because of the ease it gives of defending versus the lings. Besides, you're ahead by 6 drones anyway. Still, this isnt a neccesairy step if you are good enough with your drone micro. - 9 Overlord
- 14 gas
- 14 pool
- 16 overlord
- Start taking off 2 drones when you have 88 gas.
- Build queen + zergling speed as pool finishes.
- Zerglings until 22 food
- 22 Overlord
- 22 Hatchery
- Continious zerglings until 26
After that everything is based off of scouting.
The build: Further explanation and why it works.
The reason why I use this build is its versatility and its macropower. After experimenting with Hatch first builds I came to the conclusion that it isnt actually more economical versus a pool-hatch build.
Zerg versus zerg in the early game relies completely on getting map controll, and holding on to it. Going quick roaches ensures that you need to defend until you get a sufficient number of roaches to come out on top versus speedlings. Going hatch first ensures that your speed research is delayed by a good amount, still giving up map controll versus a speedling build.
Map controll = droning. If you are sure your opponent can't move out for a while, you can drone up your expansion, and a macro advantage in ZvZ almost always guarantees a victory. Unlike for example ZvP, where an unscouted DT or Voidray can completely wreck your world.
Lets say we are up against a hatch first build. As you move out and reach his expansion, his lings will pop out. Probably enough to be even with your lings. However, as your speed upgrade finishes well before his, your zerglings will reach his base in no time.
As you pressure him into making more and more lings ( or even spinecrawlers. ) you drone up. Don't overdo it. 5 – 8 drones is enough for an advantage. If you're lucky you might even snipe his hatchery before he can retaliate well enough. As he gets speed himself you should retreat and rely on your defenders advantage. This tiny drone advantage is often enough to get a significant advantage in the mid game.
Scouting information ( 26 food and beyond ).
Here is a list of responses I use when scouting certain things. They made sure I maintain my macro advantage in many a game. I send my first overlord to my opponents base and hover it between their ramp and natural expansion, this ensures that you know when he gets his expo and what leaves his base.
Hatchery first.
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When you scout a hatchery first, you build more and more speedlings. His production will be behind yours as your queen is out sooner and your natural expansion hatchery will finish not all that long after his hatchery.
You should be able to outnumber his ling numbers and thus put significant damage on his hatchery. Make sure you engage his lings outside of ramps or tiny spaces. Your speedlings will surround his slowlings much faster in the open, giving you a greater advantage in battle.
If he puts down a spine don't hesitate to try and snipe it. Keep the pressure on him until his speedupgrade finishes. This ensures him making a lot of lings, any tiny drone advantage he will try to get will be punished by losing the ling number battle and being overrun. Make the occasional drone between speedling production and fall back as his speedupgrade or spinecrawler finishes.
Drone your heart out and react to his followup. As you near 50 gas with your lonely gas drone, build a banelings nest and put 2 drones back in gas. This gives you a defenders advantage versus speedlings. If you scout a roach warren in his main build 2 spines near your natural and cancel the baneling nest, building a roach warren instead.
You wont be able to match his roach numbers, but because you have lots of speedlings, a dash of roaches and spinecrawler support, you will be able to hold most pushes easily. You can even catch retreating roaches with your speedlings to kill them off.
Spinecrawlers up in the main or near the ramp.
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This shows you a critical thing. The opponent wants to defend for a while so he can tech or build an army. You have complete mapcontroll. Don't be light on your S and D buttons here. Drone up and get a roach warren. Build a spine if you are making non-stop drones. Keep a zergling outside his base to see when he is moving out. The possibilities of his choices include a one-base roach push ( often with +1 range attack ), a 2 hatch speedling agression or a one base mutalisk play. So change appropriately.
I find getting a roach army and building one or two spines to be sufficient against most pushes. But make sure you build an evolution chamber so you can put spores around your natural and main mineral lines incase he goes for mutalisks.
Roach warren.
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If you scout a roach warren, retreat your zerglings and make one yourself. Put 2 drones back on gas and build a couple of overlords. Make 2 or 3 drones as you stock up on minerals and gas. Once your roach warren pops you should have enough resources to build around 6 or 7 roaches. Enough to hold a roach push easily.
If his push doesnt come quick, build a spinecrawler or two. This makes engaging your natural with his roaches non-cost effective unless he greatly outnumbers your roaches ( which he shouldn't, you have the macro advantage after all ).
Speedling expand ( roughly or exactly the same build as this one ).
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This one is a bit more tricky. As his speedling numbers will match yours, you have to make a banelings nest once you hit 50 gas with your drone. When you put it down put 2 drones back in gas and continiue to build up speedlings.
Engage only when it favours you. If he has a better surround don't be afraid to simply pull back, he will crush your ling forces with ease if you let him get a better surround.
Keep the pressure on him. Make sure your ling forces are near his base, forcing some more zerglings out of him. There is a great difference between equal ling forces near your opponents base, and the same forces near yours.
Make banelings in a place where you are sure he won't engage for a while. This might mean you have to retreat back to your base for a while to make sure the banelings have enough time to complete. I have put some micro-tips for baneling usage later in this guide.
After the second engagement ( army trade or just general brawls ) build a roach warren and transition into a regular midgame roach army. If he continiues to build banelings, your roaches should be able to tank them.
After this micro-intensive phase, you'll want to macro up and do general midgame stuff ( build roaches, make sure he doesnt go spire and delaying his third ect. ). You're probably equal in macro right now. So don't let your guard down. This guide won't go lenghty about the midgame or lategame, as I feel my knowledge about those are not as sufficient to write about on TL. However I will put some tips that work for me in the stylistic choices section.
Early lair + 2 gas.
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Probably mutalisks. Make an evo chamber and start making queens from both your hatcheries. Start your lair after your second queen in your main pops. Build lots of drones and transition into roaches. When you scout his spire building, place a couple of sporecrawlers around your mineral line. His muta's have to do damage and because you have so much anti air, he won't be able to.
Simply outmacro and 1a into his base with a roach/hydra force.
Micro tips and stylistic choices I use.
This is an extra section filled with general ZvZ tips.
Eggs inside your controll group.
This ensures your lings and roaches will be inside your controll group before they spawn. Giving you more time to focus on the battle.
The trick is to spend your larva in waves. For example select 6 larva and make those into zergling eggs. With the eggs still selected, press Shift + your controll group. This will add the eggs to your controll group. As the units pop, they will remain in the controll group and so you won't have any lings left behind or a bad rally point ruining your day.
Baneling spread and controll grouping.
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When you morph banelings, always keep them on a seperate hotkey. I use 2 or 3, depending on the stage of the game. Make sure your banelings aren't inside your other controll groups. You don't want to accidently detonate them on roaches when you attack with your lings.
When you are done pressing 'E' , shift-controll click the banelings in your army controll group and press Controll + current controll group to 'clean' your controll group from banelings. Then put your banelings on a different hotkey, like 2.
When your banelings are on a different controll group, click each baneling individually and give it a different rally point. Fan it out so each baneling will be a good bit away from his fellow banelings.
Before
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/oHKKv.png)
After
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/TRUQr.png)
When given a move command
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/Ud4qw.png)
When you move your banelings now, you will have a line of seperate banelings without all the fuss of microing them during a battle. You can just move them and make sure each baneling has a maximum amount of kills each. If your opponent tries to combat this file of banelings by sending one ling in attack move towards you, just attackmove with your lings to keep your blings protected.
Your banelings are cost-effective when they hit 4 or more zerglings, or 3 or more banelings. Never attack move across the map to make sure you don't lose them.
When you are done pressing 'E' , shift-controll click the banelings in your army controll group and press Controll + current controll group to 'clean' your controll group from banelings. Then put your banelings on a different hotkey, like 2.
When your banelings are on a different controll group, click each baneling individually and give it a different rally point. Fan it out so each baneling will be a good bit away from his fellow banelings.
Before
After
When given a move command
When you move your banelings now, you will have a line of seperate banelings without all the fuss of microing them during a battle. You can just move them and make sure each baneling has a maximum amount of kills each. If your opponent tries to combat this file of banelings by sending one ling in attack move towards you, just attackmove with your lings to keep your blings protected.
Your banelings are cost-effective when they hit 4 or more zerglings, or 3 or more banelings. Never attack move across the map to make sure you don't lose them.
Taking care of lings when they are attacking your destructable rocks.
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This one is an example of how to react to the opponents zerglings when they are trying to break your rocks on say, blistering sands, assuming you have banelings and roaches. Send your banelings into the lings escape path. On blistering that's most often the brush. Then attack with your roaches from the south. If he simply moves his lings away, they will run headfirst into banelings, giving you loads of kills.
Putting all your overlords on one controll group during the first stages of the game
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This one is more of an ease of use for me. If I have all my overlords on one controll group and I spot mutalisks, I can more easily select all my overlords and retreat them to one specific point ( like a sporecrawler ) more quickly rather than leaving them across the map for my opponent to pick off.
Also I can just press 0g to make all my overlords spread creep. If I have placed them far enough apart from eachother I can ensure a good and quick creepbed.
Also I can just press 0g to make all my overlords spread creep. If I have placed them far enough apart from eachother I can ensure a good and quick creepbed.
Spawning pool placement
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![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/SfMr5.png)
I like to place my spawning pool slightly overlapping my gas way, but not blocking the gas.
This gives you a nice choke to work with, should a speedling runby ever occur. You can also block it off with a queen on hold position.
Attempted runby, foiled by queen placement.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/dcJAH.png)
This also prevents someone blocking your gas with an evolution chamber.
Roach/ling micro
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If you have a roach/zergling force, you should always try to move your speedlings behind the roaches before you engage. This traps them into place and makes sure they can't retreat if they find the fight to be non-beneficial.
Push, wait, this isn't winable.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/u6yB0.png)
RETREAT, GAAAHH
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/CiMoO.png)
In the end, noone got to the chopper
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/Fe9Yp.png)
General tips and common sence
- Fungal growth onehits banelings. If the opponent has forced hydra's on you because he went mutalisk, don't forget to get an infestor out. To catch the muta's or to counter his banelings. Its never a bad idea to tech for infestor versus baneling or mutalisks.
- If the opponent is going hydra with his roaches, be sure to get burrow and burrowmovement for roaches. If you can unburrow on top of his hydraball, you can decimate it quite quickly and overrun the remaining roaches.
- Always put your roaches on an additional controll group when you have hydra's in the mix. ( Hydra+ roaches on 1, roaches on 2 for example ) Before you engage, you can easily press 2 and get the roaches infront first, then attack to shield your hydra's from banelings.
- If you attack in the midgame with your roach force and the opponent opened speedlings, ALWAYS leave 5 roaches behind on your ramp on hold position. You don't want him equaling the hurt on you because you left your door open while your roaches were attacking him.
- Keep one speedling on the opponents future third. Not only can you scout when he is taking it, but you have a good chance of killing the drone if he doesnt bring support, delaying his third by a few precious seconds.
- Don't forget transfuse in those clutch engagements. If he is focussing a roach with a small force you can easily make him waste more shots on that roach, delaying damage on the rest of your army.
Replays
Eik is my username. This section contains both wins and losses to keep things objective.
Number of replays: 10
Wins:7 Losses:3
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WIN - Speedling Expand versus a Late expand. - extra: instead of going for regular build, went for slightly faster baneling nest before hatch.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/123921-1v1-zerg-xelnaga-caverns
LOSS - Speedling Expand versus a 14 gas 14 pool build. - extra: How to lose a ZvZ if your micro is exceptionally, exceptionally horrible ( didn't see the banes >.< ).
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/123925-1v1-zerg-metalopolis
WIN - Speedling Expand versus an 8 pool on scrap station.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/123926-1v1-zerg-scrap-station
WIN - Speedling Expand versus a 14 pool 14 gas build. After first banelings detonated on my drones I fell back and went into defensive mode with my banelings. Losing my hatch, the opponent transitioned into 2 hatch speedling baneling. Slowly macroing back and winning in the end with superior micro and slight macro advantage.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/123929-1v1-zerg-scrap-station
WIN - Speedling Expand versus 13 gas 13 pool. Opponent droned a bit too much and banelings coupled with speedlings overthrew him utterly.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/123931-1v1-zerg-xelnaga-caverns
WIN - Speedling Expand versus 1 base roach. Opponent directly went for roaches, then teched to burrow. After a couple of brawls, the opponent leaves the game due to the imminent outmacroing.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/123934-1v1-zerg-delta-quadrant
WIN - Speedling Expand versus overpool -> roach transition.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/123936-1v1-zerg-xelnaga-caverns
WIN - Speedling Expand versus 15 hatch 15 pool ( NOTE, the build ret goes doesn't involve going straight to roaches, this guy did and lost the game due to my ability to snipe the hatchery ).
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/123939-1v1-zerg-delta-quadrant
LOSS - Speedling Expand versus early INBASE hatch first then pool then natural expo hatch. Impeccable micro lost me like 15 zerglings to one baneling. Lategame lost due to expansions being blocked.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/123943-1v1-zerg-lost-temple
LOSS - Speedling Expand versus a late expand build. Sniped hatchery with speedlings, but later lost to mutalisks containing me. He got more bases up with his midgame mapcontroll and overran me.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/123944-1v1-zerg-lost-temple
Conclusion
I hope this guide helps someone out. Either by giving you a solid opening in ZvZ, or by broadening your knowledge about the match up. I use it in all my ZvZ's, and often it gives me a good advantage in the midgame. I find it to be the safest macro-oriented build for ZvZ out there, and I wouldn't ever hatch first anymore.
Let the discussion commence
( will post more pictures, including replays later ).
