They spawn cross positions on Typhon Peaks. Losira opens hatch first, TOP proxy 2-racks. Losira is taken by surprise and loses the expansion, TOP returns home victorious while losing nothing but a single scv.
Following that, TOP expands and prepares a marine/hellion push, while Losira double-expands and gets his roach warren up. By the time the push arrives, Losira has several roaches out on the map and, coupled with amazing drone micro, manages to lose only a single drone (but most of his lings).
From there, Losira's production skyrockets. TOP tries to deny the third with a tank/marine push, but at this point Losira has simply too much. Speed roaches and banelings and tons of lings flood in and TOP loses all his tanks. The game is won at this point: Losira just masses a bit more and goes in for the kill.
Now this is what I don't understand:
Why did Losira not attempt harder to defend his expansion? At this level of play I usually see zergs sacrificing a lot to keep it up.
Given the huge setback of losing his expansion, how was Losira able to field two hatcheries, tons of drones and still be able to defend a push 5 minutes later with ample roaches and lings?
Why did Losira judge that it was safe to take the 3rd expo?
He was ahead there after that succesful attack, but lost due to going after Artosis motto: "When ahead, get more ahead", which translates imo pretty poorly into TvP and TvZ.
Why TOP lost: He committed to hellions and didn't get stim while Losira took a risk and double expanded(I think the reason for double expand was that he was down a base to long and couldn't use up all his minerals, so he threw down a hatch, greedily not making a macro hatch, but a 3rd). Losira also got a bit lucky by going roaches(well I didn't notice, did he spot the hellions?), so yeah TOP lost that more than Losira won tbh. Getting early stim or siege tanks and this game would've been a lot different.
TOP should've just taken the rest of his SCVs at home and sent everything at losira and just killed him.
On July 27 2011 01:54 Qxz wrote: Why did Losira judge that it was safe to take the 3rd expo?
He didn't. I didn't watch the game, but from how you described it, this is a pretty common strategy. When you know you are far behind, you must take a huge risk to come back and win. You basically can either all-in or double expo. TOP probably played too passively, and Losira could macro up and get back into the game with zergs great macro mechanics when they are untouched.
Now I'm not able to make judgement of Losira's decisions, but I think Losira was gambling and playing on the riskier side as it was either fall behind completely or go all in with macro. Perhaps he knew TOP and knew he wouldn't go for any banshee play as you can see Losira didn't even start his evo chamber until the 10 minute mark and the Lair at 12:20 ingame and no nearby overlords around the Terran's perimeter.
But it is definitely interesting that Losira was able to make it back which I can't completely understand how he did so.
Edit: Also another thing to note is Losira plays Roach/ling/bling heavily in his ZvT and sometimes ZvP so this is something that Losira is extremely comfortable with. Since this style of play is really all that Losira does, I think Losira was just able to play his build to perfection and then with a few strokes of luck with the mistakes that TOP made, was able to take the game.
I suppose Losira had a good guess on TOP, knowing that once he retreated after the 2 rax instead of continuing, it meant most likely an expo for TOP. then he saw the expo (confirming his guess) and so he expo to the third
and during the wait to expo for TOP (worried for baneling bust), he was powering to blue flame hellion where losira countered perfectly. He is a big fan of roach, ling and baneling afterall.
the rest is just him catching up and turned back to the standard game
The first attack did not do THAT much damage for the cost. There were fewer SCVs mining because of the Proxy Rax and then the SCV pull. Then Losira lost very few Drones. The result is despite losing the Hatch he had as much or more income. Losira lost production from the Hatch after it was destroyed, but TOP lost production from 2 Barracks he had to fly back to his base. Also because they were proxied he never built a tech lab or reactor on them which is essentially more production lost.
Then Losira got 3 expansions mining before Top landed his second. I believe there was an SCV cut in there, but it is hard to tell since this is a VOD and not a replay. As to why Losira went for the third. First of all he already had a decent size ling army because he had built them to defend his main. This allowed map control. Any attack would take a while to cross the map and provide plenty of time to either reinforce or run with drones. Also, Top's first priority would be to secure his natural, since that is more important than Losira's third.
Also, because Losira lost so few Drones and was stuck on 1 base for a bit he was larva limited and his minerals were climbing fairly high so basically he we about to have the income to support 3 hatches so the question is do you add a macro hatch in your main or take a third base.
I also learned a lot from this thread but there's one question that I am having a hard time figuring out and that is how did Losira decide that TOP was most likely not going banshee's. Since Losira scouted that TOP was trying to take an expo with the bunker that would tell Losira that most of his mineral's have been spent on that, leaving him free to do a variety of things with his gas.
On September 04 2011 18:04 Nightfal wrote: I also learned a lot from this thread but there's one question that I am having a hard time figuring out and that is how did Losira decide that TOP was most likely not going banshee's. Since Losira scouted that TOP was trying to take an expo with the bunker that would tell Losira that most of his mineral's have been spent on that, leaving him free to do a variety of things with his gas.
I guess Losira was willing to take the risk. He probably decided that there were ~10 possible tactics, and if he played the tactic he played here, he would be able to beat ~5 of them, so he just wished TOP to go for those. It's just a special tactic for playing from behind,
On September 04 2011 18:04 Nightfal wrote: I also learned a lot from this thread but there's one question that I am having a hard time figuring out and that is how did Losira decide that TOP was most likely not going banshee's. Since Losira scouted that TOP was trying to take an expo with the bunker that would tell Losira that most of his mineral's have been spent on that, leaving him free to do a variety of things with his gas.
after he lost his expo he basically took two bases and crossed his fingers, assuming a number of things could kill him. after that, he scouted small things over time which let him successfully cut corners and focus his build. one, the double bunker, implying there's marines to put in the bunker. two, a large group of marines to a point where he's clearly committed to using some kind of tech based off of them. 3, an extremely small amount of hellions came to his natural and got pushed back with ease. what he's reading there is the flow of TOP's tech, and if you notice, he put down an evo chamber not long after the hellions. at that point medivacs or blue flame is implied, but he puts it down because it's not entirely unreasonable since yes, he can't see where the gas is going.
it's never a reasonable thing to assume banshees or DTs from an opponent unless the units he's making imply it. hellions imply factory, small amount of hellions imply you might just be building them on your way to a starport, hellions being pure mineral imply you have a factory but are spending your gas on non-factory things, which could be both upgrades from barracks or gas units from the starport. expos and bunkers do not imply banshees in the same way because they do not show that there is a factory. you could just as easily have more barracks instead of 2 refineries and plan to go 1 base all in with 2 mules and huge amounts of barracks. that's why he only builds the evo after seeing hellions.
so, in short, and this is something i learned a long long time ago when terrans did nothing but all in. never assume banshees until you see something that implies factory units, i.e. factory units themselves or 1 barracks amount of marines. once you scout that, build an evo for safety purposes and somehow keep tabs on your opponent until you figure out their final transition. losira had units so he just pushed and found mass marine hellion, and at that point it's obvious they're either blue flame or preparing a drop or going marine upgrades or some combination.
There was a similar thread a few days ago about the proper response to a 2 rax, and I think this replay covers it perfectly. Instead of saccing drones and lings to break the contain, losira simply continues drone production, waits for TOP to pull back, and then pressures while double expoing. I think zergs have had this change of thinking and understanding, where they now know it's ok to lose the hatch, as you actually come out better on military and economy if you just let it fall and then scare the Terran into thinking a baneling bust is coming. Excellent play by losira.
Just finished watching. After losing the hatch he had three choices. -All in (Make an army and pray he gets up the ramp) -Play straight and hope for a super generous engagement that resets everything -Take a big economic risk and hope his opponent doesn't pressure.
Losira chose the third option and through a lot of skill and a lot of luck- pulled even.
Quick breakdown of what happened after TOP went home. He made a lot of production He expanded.
Losira expanded and mixed drones with lings. He took the lings he made and constantly had map presence with them. He refused to let TOP take his natural after making him think it was going to be an option a(ll in).
Then the push failed, the harass went dry and Losira turned a loss into a lead!
What can you learn from this? Map presence and awareness are some of the most valuable skills in Starcraft once you get past the basic three. Forcing your opponent to wall off for a baneling bust, denying the expansion, it's all great to put that momentum meme in your favor.
In my opinion the main reason TOP lost is the fact that he salvaged the bunkers and headed back home after killing the hatchery. There is no reason to let the zerg retake his natural only 1 min after loosing it. If I am in TOP's shoes i make a third bunker at the natural and play defensive. A zerg on 1 base cannot do much against a terran with mules. We saw the same aftermath at MLG Raleigh in NaDa vs DRG : NaDa kills the hatch but no drones, he backs off, DRG double expands and win.
On September 04 2011 18:54 Girondelle wrote: In my opinion the main reason TOP lost is the fact that he salvaged the bunkers and headed back home after killing the hatchery. There is no reason to let the zerg retake his natural only 1 min after loosing it. If I am in TOP's shoes i make a third bunker at the natural and play defensive. A zerg on 1 base cannot do much against a terran with mules. We saw the same aftermath at MLG Raleigh in NaDa vs DRG : NaDa kills the hatch but no drones, he backs off, DRG double expands and win.
the problem with that is terrans don't think it's actually viable to do that. you could easily go back to your base, put a marine at the third and macro like a normal game. if your marine blocks a random drone you know what's up before it happens and you might even kill the drone. your suggestion is viable but that's turning pressure into something highly commital since if you lose all those units and you force zerg to make the units to kill it, you will also fail to hold your expo to zerg's remaining units and things will get really weird.
hmm, something that i'm wondering here: Was it a mistake for TOP to pull back after he killed the hatch? I mean, zergs hatch first for the production, not the income (unless you're really free to be able to do what you want, but even then it takes another minute or so for that hatch to start kicking in, and that's with full drone production). Had he continued to camp losira's natural (keeping the bunkers up) i guess losira would have, at the very least, used up all of his lings just to bust that contain, and he'd probably have to produce even more, causing losira to be unable to double-expand (or at least, make it even more risky since he wouldn't have the map control with the lings, not without falling behind in eco).
I guess TOP cut workers and production time to get the proxy up, and since he didn't actually kill any drones and only a few lings, that only managed to make the proxy even up instead of pulling him ahead.
Probably TOP figured that it was "damage done" after the hatch went down, and that pressing into the main or trying to do a bunker contain would be too vulnerable, and it would be better to try to transition to a normal game and have an economic edge going in.
On September 04 2011 19:30 Nibbler89 wrote: I think the better question is how would top have won if losira didn't lose the hatch .
What? TOP didn't win in the first place... as I understand it, if losira also had an extra hatch TOP would have still lost, since the proxy cheese would be unsuccessful. One of us has horribly misunderstood the OP. I hope it's not me.
I feel like the people saying Losira took an economic risk by taking a fast third hatch are kind of wrong... His drone count after taking his 2nd hatch was higher than usual, so he is basically just getting that third hatch earlier as well so he can adapt his build to his higher drone count. If you watch the third hatch, he doesnt have any drones mining for like 3 minutes after it's fnished. It's really a case of 'whatever, might as well take this hatchery at an expo' because it's pretty neatly tucked away and easy to defend on blackwater.
EPT
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