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Disclaimer: I got most of this from that first ZvZ Mr.Bitter with Ret, so all credit goes to them. I just thought I would type it out for people who don't watch Mr.Bitter, plus I get a little more specific then they did.
You only need to overlord scout on 2 player maps. 12 or 13 scout should be fine on 4 player maps. The only information you need is whether or not he fast expanded. However, it's very important in any zvz situation to have a line of overlords from his base to your base and to actually use the scouting info it gives. Also, having an overlord behind your opponent's natural mineral line is a great way to scout when he's making more drones.
The Build Order
15 hatch
15 pool
18 extractor
17 overlord
If you scout 6 lings and/or 2 drones !@#$%
- Don't worry, this build can hold 6-10 pools!
- Cancel your hatch and your extractor if you can.
- Keep building drones to 18/18, then build an overlord
- When the 6 lings and/or drones get to your base, pull all 18 drones, send 4 to each spine crawler and chase away the lings with the remaining 10 or 14 drones.
- As soon as your pool finishes, you should have at least 400-450 minerals saved up from canceling your hatch, so you can build 6 lings, a queen and a spine crawler.
- The micro takes practice, so don't get discouraged if it doesn't work the first time or two.
- Practice against a friend to avoid losing ladder points >.<
If you scout an empty natural:
- No more drones until you've held off the attack/all-in. Also, keep all your drones in your main.
- Roach warren and 1 queen as soon as your pool finishes. Don't make a 2nd queen until you hold off the attack.
- Skip metabolic boost until later. If you're on defense it won't matter.
- 8 lings followed by an overlord. Forgetting the overlord at this point will lose you the game.
- 3-5 roaches when warren finishes, send them to the gap between your ramp and your natural hatchery. Be ready to back them up to the ramp to prevent ling runby or move down to the hatch to scare lings away from attacking it.
Now you have to figure out if he's going pure speedling or speedling/baneling
Speedling:
- No more roaches (this is a big reason people lose to speedling all-ins. Building more than 4-5 roaches against a speedling all-inner is a guarunteed loss).
- pump nothing but lings
- get metabolic boost with your first 100 gas after the initial roaches and then take all drones off of gas
- pay close attention to whether or not more reinforcements are coming. When they stop coming for a while, he might be droning, try to send a ling or two in and count his drones/scout tech and army size.
Speedling/Baneling:
- Make as many roaches as you can off of 1 extractor and use excess minerals on lings
- One tell is that he'll have less speedlings than a speedling all-inner has and he'll try to hide them for the baneling morph.
- Try not to let him morph banelings too close to your base. Scare him away and make him have to make them far away and then waddle back. But be careful since you won't have speed on your lings.
- Try to have a good overlord spread to help you spot morphing banelings.
- When the speedling/baneling attack comes, pretend like you're a terran that has marine/tank and is running from banelings. You attack with your lings until the banelings get close, then you kite the banelings around your roaches so your roaches can kill the banelings. It's also great if they blow up on your roaches. Once all the banelings are dead, kill off his remaining lings with roach/lings.
If you hold off either of these all-ins, you should win. You can pump drones much faster than he can and you have two bases already. Make sure not to mass roaches and then move out without roach speed though, he can ling runby your minerals.
If you scout a fast expand:
- make 2 queens when pool finishes
- 6-8 lings for scouting purposes. If he makes lings too for scouting, send 1 of yours for scouting and send the rest back to defend.
- metabolic boost with first 100 gas
- use those lings to find out if he's droning or not, making a bunch of lings or built a baneling nest or roach warren or lair
- If you scout him droning, you have two choices: a) drone yourself or b) make about 12-16 more lings and try to punish him if he made too many drones or went straight for roaches without making any speedlings
- Next, you basically want to know the timing of his roach warren and make yours a little bit after him
- Now you're in a macro game, tech to lair, get your 2nd and 3rd gas, throw down 2 evo chambers if you want
- Drone up as much as you can while keeping tabs on his roach count. Your goal is to keep your roach count just lower than his count so that if he attacks you can make more while he moves across the map.
- Eventually take your 4th gas, take your 3rd base, maybe make a macro hatch, keep massing roaches or transition into roach/infestor or roach/hydra (roach/hydra may be obsolete now)
- Eventually you can add ultras or broodlords, idk, I never make it that far.
Replays
Holding a 9 pool with 15 hatch
Dimaga style 6 pool + drones vs. 15 hatch
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Thanks for the info. I will try this once I'm done with my campaign achievements.
One question, though. Will this work on Xel'Naga Caverns, or is the map too small for it?
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Works on most maps. Maybe not scrap station, probably better to open 15 extractor/14 pool or some variant. Gets a little harder the farther your hatch is from the ramp, but still doable I think.
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Im seeing more people go muta now. Is it just me?
Also, how do I deal with it? Infestors dont counter them as well as tey use to.
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this has been bothering me too, im a plat zerg and every single zerg i face now does the exact same crap each time, 10 pool, then make an inbase hatch, then make 40-60 speedlings, then a move to ur base, then make 50 speedlings for defense with 1-4 spines, then go for mutas
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i go 15 hatch, 15 gas, 15 pool. first 100 gas, speed, take one off gas, next 50 gas get banes.
i only do this because whenever i 15hatch, so many noobs try to all in with speedlings/banes, so you're really safe against that. if he goes 1 base roach, he wont be able to fight off 2 hatches of speedlings for awhile, and by then you'll have your own roach den. and if he goes 15hatch himself, you can pressure really hard with speedling/banes if he just has speedlings. the only bad thing about my build is, 14gas/14pool he gets speed shortly before you do, i recently had a spine+queen on ramp to buy time until my banes/speed is done. (even if he goes 14/14 into 20baneling, my build holds it). gl hf
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On March 31 2011 14:17 Atrox wrote:
Im seeing more people go muta now. Is it just me?
Also, how do I deal with it? Infestors dont counter them as well as tey use to.
I don't know, I just find mutas so easy to deal with. 3 Queens is sufficient to hold off the first 5-6 if you use transfuse. Infestors + Hydra or Queen or Infested terrans can kill infinity mutas, and mutas cost so much money. This makes going mutas so risky because you can lose your million dollar army to a well placed fungal growth. If your opponent does go mutas, punish him by making roach/infestor and pushing his base, because if he has mutas, he shouldn't have much of a ground army.
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very informative post, well done
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On March 31 2011 14:26 Yacashui wrote:
this has been bothering me too, im a plat zerg and every single zerg i face now does the exact same crap each time, 10 pool, then make an inbase hatch, then make 40-60 speedlings, then a move to ur base, then make 50 speedlings for defense with 1-4 spines, then go for mutas
you need to scout man if the hatch is acually inbase (..!?) then its pretty obvious whats coming. just go early banelings to counter.
and the mutas.. as soon as lair is up, build an overseer and scout his tech. later use 2 overseers to fly over his bases and contaminate his hatches, and keep checking his tech. it might be easier for you to remember to scout if they have a purpose like that. my rule of thumb is: the moment I see a spire I gather my roaches and go for the kill. I build a hydra den and infestation pit as well just in case some freak occurrence occure and he doesnt die. mutas isnt viable as long as you stay on top of your scouting. mutas are only good zvz if they catch you with your pants down completely, dont let that happen and you'll be fine.
If you let him get mutas out in numbers, and he starts massing, infestors are still as good as they used to be. just practice laying down a new fungal every 4 sec, and they are just as locked in as they used to be.
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When I played zerg (protoss now because I have no soul) I would go 15 hatch on 4 player maps, only to get killed by a 10pool spinecrawler rush. I could never get anything out fast enough, so I stopped and just did a safe speedling expand every game. If i ever do switch back to zerg (one more buff and I will) I'll look to this thread for guidance.
Good Work!
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good post, i never open FE becouse im afraid of all ins with lings 
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Could you give replays of defending 6/7 pool with drones? The micro is such a huge part of it that it's hard to get a feel of what you need to do just by reading words.
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On April 02 2011 11:41 Najda wrote:
Could you give replays of defending 6/7 pool with drones? The micro is such a huge part of it that it's hard to get a feel of what you need to do just by reading words.
Sure, I just added a replay to the OP. It's a 9 pool replay, but it works against 6 and 7 pool as well.
One thing to note on xel'naga is that you need to scout with your first overlord the way I do in this replay. You need to first send it to your gold expansion and then towards your opponents natural. This allows you to scout the 6 lings and cancel your hatchery in time.
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Did you watch Dimaga vs Nestea?
+ Show Spoiler +Dimaga 10 pool double spines and all drones -2. Nestea is completely unable to hold it with 15 hatch. Did Nestea make a mistake here? I always 9 drone scout when hatching first to avoid this.
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On April 02 2011 12:26 samuraibael wrote:Did you watch Dimaga vs Nestea? + Show Spoiler +Dimaga 10 pool double spines and all drones -2. Nestea is completely unable to hold it with 15 hatch. Did Nestea make a mistake here? I always 9 drone scout when hatching first to avoid this.
nawh just a build order loss lol
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On April 02 2011 15:04 Chinesewonder wrote:
Thanks. Subbed
What does subbed mean?
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On April 02 2011 12:26 samuraibael wrote:Did you watch Dimaga vs Nestea? + Show Spoiler +Dimaga 10 pool double spines and all drones -2. Nestea is completely unable to hold it with 15 hatch. Did Nestea make a mistake here? I always 9 drone scout when hatching first to avoid this.
Just watched it.
I don't know if it can hold a 9 pool with drones brought along. I've never tested it.
I think in that case, it might be better to stall longer, rather than engage the building spine crawlers. The longer you stall, the better it is for you, because your opponent is even more all-in that usual. I'd be interested to see how not even attacking the spine crawler works and just continuing to mine minerals while scaring off the lings and drones when they get near. Then when pool finishes, you'll have so much money, so build 6 lings, a queen and a spine crawler or 2. Keep stalling until you have more lings then your opponent.
Maybe I'll test it out soon and let you know the results.
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Are you gonna maybe still do that?
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That looks good, but how do you survive a baneling bust that skips ling speed? you won't have roaches out and you only have 1 queen?
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.scstrats.com/images/zvz.png)
