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I've been doing this 10 pool opener ZVZ every time for about 30+ games(mid masters) and its been extremely successful for me but its also somewhat punishing if you aren't highly aware. It's been my go to opening for zvz on ladder because it stops all the cheesy zvz openings and can do damage to a 14/14 or 15 hatch.
The Build
+ Show Spoiler +
10/10 Drop Pool
2x drones (1 extractor trick)
11/10 OL
11/18 x3 zerglings x1 Queen
16/18 x1 zergling
17/18 x1 zergling
18/18 OL
18/18 double extractor trick for second queen
18/26+ DRONES
in response to whatever the other zerg may do
20-26/26 take a Gas.
20-26/26 make Another queen if you see units Start to come towards your base
20-26/26 begin spine at EdgE of base for extra ramp defense and to move down to your inevitable expansion
2nd Queen should start right after the 1st queen (with a double extractor trick)
Concepts of the build
1. The 10 pool build will stop all forms of Cheese. When I do it and the opponent 6-9 pools, they normally gg at the sight of my 10pool and base.
2. Significant damage can be done to a 15/15 hatch/pool and 14/14 Gas/pool. If you Kill at least 2 drones I would maybe call it even, if you Kill 4+ consider yourself ahead.
3. You force your opponent to make lings while you are making drones from a faster injected hatch. When they see your 10 pool in their base their response is shit shit make lings. Throw your lings around their base the whole time while you macro. They will make more and more lings while sitting at maybe 12/12 drones expecting Another all in while you sit behind 16+ drones after your wave of lings
4. Queen blocking and Mass queens. Most certainly your opponent will think "well his all in failed, time to go Kill him" The early queen is so that you can take both queens and block the ramp with multiple transfuses rendering his bust useless while you sit at 20+ drones on your base compared to his 12-16 drones
tl;dr kill at least two drones with 10 pool. force an all in, defend all in, win because more drones
Other good general ideas to go along with this build
1. Keep an overlord at their Natural, you need to know if they expand or not after your 10 pool
2. Send a drone scout if you can't find the location of their base with overlords or educated guessing.
3. Keep making queens, they're a good all around unit and if you have excess minerals its not a bad idea to make more.
4. Start creep spread with your second queen to move to the Natural (I recommend only one creep tumor because you will want the energy for transfuse later)
5. Try to expand, this is an eco 10 pool for a ReasoN. If you can get up an expand (when you know their all in won't be successful. DO IT. Make sure you have the creep spread for your 4+ queens.
6. If they went 15/15 expand after you do damage to them (you should be able to take out at least 4 drones versus a 15/15, don't sit on 1 base.
6. Be prepared to be all inned or cheesed later back.
How to respond to...
Mass ling/Baneling on 1 base - If after your 10 pool they try to bust you with Mass ling or baneling, keep making queens (with your two queens already blocking ramp) make a spine near your front (Which can be transferred later at your expansion anyway) and drop a roach warren/evo chamber and get +1 meele. Don't waste too much Larva getting lings because queens should be able to hold your ramp, destroy him in your drone count compared to his because he's spending all his Money on Larva. TRANSFUSE TRANSFUSE TRANSFUSE
Mass ling/Roach, no baneling (1-2 base) If your opponent goes Mass ling, but doesn't try to break the front with banelings (and will normally fail at attempt to bust ramp, and attempt to expand behind failed Mass ling) drop an evo chamber and get +1. +1 speedlings will decimate his lings and roaches that are probably about to come out sooner or later.
Fast Expand Probably the strongest response to this build (Which no ONE rarely ever does because they are expecting a Super all in. Expand yourself with a sort of protoss-esque wall off with queens couple spines and evo chamber with hatchery to make a wall. Play it out like you normally would zvz.
So your 10 pool was succesful, their all in didn't work and your ahead eco wise. What now?
Keep scouting his base, he might be going for a fast lair (a lot of the time) for mutas or burrowed roaches or something because he know's he's behind. Keep making queens and get a lair yourself. Mass queens are good versus any sort of Cheese they can throw at you via lair tech.
How to lose using this build
1. If you lose your Queen block (and you dont have a third queen or lings to back up, its probably gg. Try to save up energy on queens if you feel you have to for transfuse and keep producing queens and drones/lings. Keep a limit on the lings because they can't help in dps if its a queen blocked ramp.
2. You send lings to the wrong base.
3. You keep making lings instead of drones after initial ten lings. If you keep making lings its just more of an all in. This is an eco 10 pool. If you keep making lings you turn it into a shitty 10 pool all in with no gas making it even suckier.
Replays
[url blocked]
Included: Build VS cheese, build versus ling/bling bust, build versus fast expand (after you 10 pool them)
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Doesn't this put you really behind on ling speed and then delay your expansion along with banelings vs a 14/14? A 10 pool in ZvZ is really easy to defend if you have the right overlord positioning. Even without good overlord positioning, a 10 pool is still easy to defend with a 14/14
Personally, I think this build is bad if they just decide to macro.
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10p auto loses to 14g unless the defender screws up badly. Your strategy revolves around your opponent making too many lings and you making drones; this is a bad strategy because it leaves you with no army while droning (you will lose all your initial lings, for sure)
They get ling speed first so you'll have a hard time blocking the ramp in time while also affording everything you're talking about, then they get to expand first, get roaches first, and you lose the game.
You might fake people out into making too many lings at the wrong time but that is an amateur gold level mistake. Anyone who knows the game well enough will know to scout you frequently to look at your drones/units after holding your first attack.
People try this build on me a lot on ladder at high diamond/low masters, and it ends the same every time: they do a little ling feint and then drone really hard, then they die to my slow roaches because they have no tech or units and my expansion usually finishes first, and in spite of their hardcore droning they only ever match me if that.
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On December 15 2011 14:25 ChairManMao467 wrote:
Doesn't this put you really behind on ling speed and then delay your expansion along with banelings vs a 14/14? A 10 pool in ZvZ is really easy to defend if you have the right overlord positioning. Even without good overlord positioning, a 10 pool is still easy to defend with a 14/14
Personally, I think this build is bad if they just decide to macro.
Yes it is easy to defend but you aren't supposed to win with the build, you're supposed to kill 2+ drones and force them to make lings. After the initial attack you will be ahead on drones easy.
Yes also this delays ling speed, but you don't need ling speed until you decide to move out from your ramp. Banelings are normally not the best answer but 4+ queens is.
The thing is, if they decide to macro, you're even, because fortunately enough you decided to macro too. If they all in and fail, they lose.
On December 15 2011 14:38 darkscream wrote:
10p auto loses to 14g unless the defender screws up badly. Your strategy revolves around your opponent making too many lings and you making drones; this is a bad strategy because it leaves you with no army while droning (you will lose all your initial lings, for sure)
They get ling speed first so you'll have a hard time blocking the ramp in time while also affording everything you're talking about, then they get to expand first, get roaches first, and you lose the game.
You might fake people out into making too many lings at the wrong time but that is an amateur gold level mistake. Anyone who knows the game well enough will know to scout you frequently to look at your drones/units after holding your first attack.
People try this build on me a lot on ladder at high diamond/low masters, and it ends the same every time: they do a little ling feint and then drone really hard, then they die to my slow roaches because they have no tech or units and my expansion usually finishes first, and in spite of their hardcore droning they only ever match me if that.
No, they won't be able to see that because the ramp is blocked by two queens. They have no idea about how many drones or how hard you are teching, droning, or how many units you have made.
Having no army doesn't matter, they have 14 lings, what're they going to do with it with 2-3 queens blocking the ramp? They can't do anything and their lings are useless unless they start getting roaches.
If they get roaches then you drop an evo chamber, get +1 and expand with spines/queens/speedlings you will easily hold the roach push.
I haven't had much experience with early early roach pushes like a 7rr, I would assume that would destroy this build, but no one 7rr in zvz at least at masters level.
Watch the replays//try the build out, I expect people to be skeptical but this build has been getting me 75%+ winrate (along with the fact that zvz is already my best matchup)
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A while back I used to experiment with some unorthodox styles in ZvZ and for a while I tried using a 10 pool opener every game. I found that in some situations it was good, very much so because of the surprise factor (not of the 10 pool itself, but the follow ups you can do afterwards). 10 pooling is surprisingly versatile and I found that it would allow you to avoid a lot of the "coin flip" feeling situations that commonly arise in the early game. Here are a few things I liked to do to follow up my 10 pool. Note that there are many strong mid game "cheeses" that come out of 10 pooling, but with the volatility of ZvZ I think its pretty hard to call anything a cheese barring 7 pools and spine crawler rushes. For those who care, I am a mid masters league player. I am not trying to say that these things would work for progamers as well as they did for me, and I don't even know if they will still work given metagame changes and also balance changes (infestor's fungal damage).
1. Speedling all in - Get three queens, block the ramp with 2, build an extra hatchery in your base and speedling all-in. I find this to work commonly versus players who do thing such as 15 pool/15 gas roach expand builds, but those seem to have fallen out of style in the last couple of months.
2. Speed/Burrow Roach (all in or expand) - 3 queens, block the ramp with 2, get a fast lair for speed roaches (burrow is optional, often time handy vs 15 hatching players since they don't always have a lair up for detection). You can choose to go all in here, but you can also expand behind it. If you are close enough to your opponent you can also use overlords to make a creep path to their base and bring your 2 extra queens that likely have a lot of transfuses on them.
3. 1 base mutalisk - This is actually not a cheese build, and it worked for a little while, at least at my level, however I don't think it would work much anymore with so many people going with quicker lairs for their own mutalisks nowadays. It is possible you will catch people off guard, but a good player should know how to beat it. If you want to try it though, you get the 3 queens like usual and as many spine crawlers as you need on one base. If they really try and kill you, don't be worried about getting 4-5 spines. Right when your mutas come out you will expand and spread creep at your natural to place your spines down for defense. From here you can go roach infestor or muta ling baneling or whatever you please. Note that the main goal for this build is to get map control for vision and creep spread. That way you can deny expansions and counter attack as much as possible. You almost never want to directly engage your enemy unless you tech switch out of mutas to something like roach infestor.
4. 1 base infestor zergling all in - This build was made popular by CatZ, Destiny, and Slush when they were all on ROOT. Basically you get queens to block your ramp, lair asap, infestor pit and pathogen glens asap and hit a timing with 4 or so infestors and a ton of zerglings. If they are going roaches then you want to catch as many roaches in a chain fungal and then attack immediately after. If you get 4 fungals on the majority of their roach army then they become very soft for your zerglings. If they go zergling baneling, then you can either fungal the banelings if they are clumped together, or fungal the zerglings while you kill their banelings with a few lings. One thing that really hurts this build is that infestors don't kill banelings in one hit anymore (I think) since their fungal got nerfed =(.
So here are some cool things that I found useful when going for a 10 pool. It is always a great thing to have a build that denies information and also has a lot of versatility. Even if your build sounds bad on paper, you can still get a lot of wins out of sheer unpredictability and your opponent trying to cover all bases, or they think they know what you are doing but guess wrong. Personally I found that the mutalisk opener was the most solid opener, but like I said I don't think it would work too well anymore.
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Just used this build in top diamond and I was very impressed.
I killed around 4-5 drones with the initial lings and my opponent proceeded to almost completely halt drone production on one base while going roaches with +1 attack. I threw down two evo chambers immediately and got just enough gas for +1/+1 lings. I also had enough economy to throw down an in-base hatch and a couple of spines to guard against the +1 roach attack. Lings were able to surround and easily take the win.
I really like this build despite it slightly relying on opponent fault.
Edit: Forgot to mention his initial opening was 14g/14
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In my normal ZvZ i usually go 14/14 into expand into mass ling and i find it really hard to see how this strat would be any good vs mine. If i see a 10pool ill be happy because its easy to stop with my 14/14. If you barricade yourself in your base i dont care at all because i already have an expansion down. Now i have speed, 2 hatcheries and all you have is 4 more drones?
I fail to see the advantage of this build.
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Update:
So far I am 3/3 in top diamond with this build against 14g/14p, and all 3 opponents followed up differently.
-First opponent went 14g/14p, I killed 4 workers, he went 1 base +1 roach, my +1/+1 lings won.
-Second opponent went 14g/14p, I killed 3 workers, he went defensive 2 base muta, i was able to mass ling before muta and win.
-Third opponent went 14g/14p, I killed 3 workers, he followed up roach/ling expand, we were neck and neck in econ, +1 lings with a macro hatch wins it for me. I still threw down an expo not too long after he did so the macro hatch wasn't necessarily an all-in here.
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It bothers me that you're advertising this as something that does well against 14/14.
If your opponent makes mistakes, then yes, you can come out ahead, but this is true of any build. I can go 15 hatch against your 6 pool, and if you make mistakes, I'm miles ahead. That doesn't change the fact that 6 pool is supposed to be a BO win against hatch first.
Likewise, 14/14, while not necessarily a BO win vs 10 pool, when played correctly should put the 14/14 player in a virtually unloseable position.
Drones should always be easily microd away from slow lings. Speedlings will obviously win against slow lings. The 14/14 player should have a tech lead, a drone lead, and a faster expand than the 10 pool player.
The rest is just scouting and proper follow-through.
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pretty much same psycoloical effect when squeezing in another drone:
10 extractor-trick=>drone,
11 pool *before* ovie (@1'22),
10 ovie,
10 extractor trick drone,
11..14 drones,
14 queen 16 ling 17 ling, kill scout,
17/18 expand (3'10--3'15).
works great against protoss, they lack scouting because of early lings/scout kill and have to suspect an allin. against z somewhat risky because of late speed. take gas after expansion at 17/18. You may get banes before speed in order to defend against fast speedlings.
When executed exact, you can get 32 drones @ 5'20..5'30 + 2 queens, which is actually better than hatch first dronecount wise.
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I used to do it, works pretty well until about low masters. After that, it puts you behind most of the time. At most you will kill 2-3 drones against good opponents, then you will behind in tech and you lose all map control. Your drones will be slightly ahead but he has mined longer with more drones and he now has map control and can drone as he wishes. I find it very difficult to win a game when my opponent responds properly when I do a 10 pool, you become very restricted in options while your opponent has a variety of tech paths.
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On December 15 2011 17:34 Reykd wrote:
In my normal ZvZ i usually go 14/14 into expand into mass ling and i find it really hard to see how this strat would be any good vs mine. If i see a 10pool ill be happy because its easy to stop with my 14/14. If you barricade yourself in your base i dont care at all because i already have an expansion down. Now i have speed, 2 hatcheries and all you have is 4 more drones?
I fail to see the advantage of this build.
When you see an expand, you drop yours instantly (speed should be starting to be researched at this time) You should be able to hold with queens/lings easily if they are expanding at this time. Those 4 drones are a huge deal if you are equal on expansions. True, if you fail to get your expansion up, there is a high likelihood you will fail
On December 15 2011 18:04 MrBitter wrote:
It bothers me that you're advertising this as something that does well against 14/14.
If your opponent makes mistakes, then yes, you can come out ahead, but this is true of any build. I can go 15 hatch against your 6 pool, and if you make mistakes, I'm miles ahead. That doesn't change the fact that 6 pool is supposed to be a BO win against hatch first.
Likewise, 14/14, while not necessarily a BO win vs 10 pool, when played correctly should put the 14/14 player in a virtually unloseable position.
Drones should always be easily microd away from slow lings. Speedlings will obviously win against slow lings. The 14/14 player should have a tech lead, a drone lead, and a faster expand than the 10 pool player.
The rest is just scouting and proper follow-through.
I don't advertise this as something that is necessarily good versus a 14/14 but if they play it perfect and you play it perfect you should be coming up around even.
I think of this as more of a good build for ladder play. It will defeat all 6 pool 7 pool 8 pool 9 pool builds just as a BO win. I've found almost 30% of the zvzs I play are with an opponent that does a very early pool. I definitely don't think of this as something pros in tournaments should use (maybe they could make it work.. i don't know.) And it can do significant damage to 15 hatch do the point of putting you very far ahead.
Workers being microd away.. sure, but I have never not gotten at least 2 drones kills versus a 14/14 putting worker count even or in my favor. I guess they could completely run there drones away in circles (someone did this before) but the loss of mining time hurt them pretty bad.
Versus a good 14/14 player that drones right after fending off the 10 lings, and expands very quickly they can be ahead simply because the lack of map control or awareness of the 10 pooling player, but economically I have not found any advantage for the 14p player.
Speedlings yes win against slowlings, but by the time they have speedlings, you aren't trying to attack anymore, you have 2-4 queens an expansion with 2 spines evo chamber wall off. If they rush the speedlings on a 1base all in the queen wall easily stops them.
I don't believe this is necessarily a good build versus a 14gp but I think of it more as a good ladder build, stopping all forms of cheese, punishing 15 hatch, and can get you at least even or sometimes even ahead versus a 14gp. I've found that the wins I have gotten versus cheese and 15 hatch using this build are significantly higher than the losses i have suffered versus a 14pool.
On December 15 2011 18:26 ILoveCoffee wrote:
I used to do it, works pretty well until about low masters. After that, it puts you behind most of the time. At most you will kill 2-3 drones against good opponents, then you will behind in tech and you lose all map control. Your drones will be slightly ahead but he has mined longer with more drones and he now has map control and can drone as he wishes. I find it very difficult to win a game when my opponent responds properly when I do a 10 pool, you become very restricted in options while your opponent has a variety of tech paths.
Yes this is the biggest weakness of this build but if they decide to drone, you are already droning and should catch up to make it almost even. This is assuming if they make no mistakes by all inning you or losing too many drones. If they all in you and fail or they lose more than 4 drones then you win if you play it right
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This build should never do well vs 14/14
Any good zerg player will have an ovie near your natural/middle of map and see you're still making lings and they'll continue to pump out lings as well and speed will win and if you don't send lings/make lings the other player just sits back expands and has banes for defense
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Lol, I just tried this out on the ladder for the first time. I'm mid-high diamond, and it works beautifully against early pool builds and other cheeses. Though I am def not going trousers build when it is easy to scout me (close by air on metal, for example). As others have stated before, it really only works cause of the surprise factor. 14/14 is the least surprising opening right now, so I'm going to continue to play around with this.
Thanks, I've been getting a little bored of 14/14 every ZvZ (and they happen often)
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On December 16 2011 04:50 glabius wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 17:34 Reykd wrote:
In my normal ZvZ i usually go 14/14 into expand into mass ling and i find it really hard to see how this strat would be any good vs mine. If i see a 10pool ill be happy because its easy to stop with my 14/14. If you barricade yourself in your base i dont care at all because i already have an expansion down. Now i have speed, 2 hatcheries and all you have is 4 more drones?
I fail to see the advantage of this build. When you see an expand, you drop yours instantly (speed should be starting to be researched at this time) You should be able to hold with queens/lings easily if they are expanding at this time. Those 4 drones are a huge deal if you are equal on expansions. True, if you fail to get your expansion up, there is a high likelihood you will fail Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 18:04 MrBitter wrote:
It bothers me that you're advertising this as something that does well against 14/14.
If your opponent makes mistakes, then yes, you can come out ahead, but this is true of any build. I can go 15 hatch against your 6 pool, and if you make mistakes, I'm miles ahead. That doesn't change the fact that 6 pool is supposed to be a BO win against hatch first.
Likewise, 14/14, while not necessarily a BO win vs 10 pool, when played correctly should put the 14/14 player in a virtually unloseable position.
Drones should always be easily microd away from slow lings. Speedlings will obviously win against slow lings. The 14/14 player should have a tech lead, a drone lead, and a faster expand than the 10 pool player.
The rest is just scouting and proper follow-through. I don't advertise this as something that is necessarily good versus a 14/14 but if they play it perfect and you play it perfect you should be coming up around even. I think of this as more of a good build for ladder play. It will defeat all 6 pool 7 pool 8 pool 9 pool builds just as a BO win. I've found almost 30% of the zvzs I play are with an opponent that does a very early pool. I definitely don't think of this as something pros in tournaments should use (maybe they could make it work.. i don't know.) And it can do significant damage to 15 hatch do the point of putting you very far ahead. Workers being microd away.. sure, but I have never not gotten at least 2 drones kills versus a 14/14 putting worker count even or in my favor. I guess they could completely run there drones away in circles (someone did this before) but the loss of mining time hurt them pretty bad. Versus a good 14/14 player that drones right after fending off the 10 lings, and expands very quickly they can be ahead simply because the lack of map control or awareness of the 10 pooling player, but economically I have not found any advantage for the 14p player. Speedlings yes win against slowlings, but by the time they have speedlings, you aren't trying to attack anymore, you have 2-4 queens an expansion with 2 spines evo chamber wall off. If they rush the speedlings on a 1base all in the queen wall easily stops them. I don't believe this is necessarily a good build versus a 14gp but I think of it more as a good ladder build, stopping all forms of cheese, punishing 15 hatch, and can get you at least even or sometimes even ahead versus a 14gp. I've found that the wins I have gotten versus cheese and 15 hatch using this build are significantly higher than the losses i have suffered versus a 14pool. Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 18:26 ILoveCoffee wrote:
I used to do it, works pretty well until about low masters. After that, it puts you behind most of the time. At most you will kill 2-3 drones against good opponents, then you will behind in tech and you lose all map control. Your drones will be slightly ahead but he has mined longer with more drones and he now has map control and can drone as he wishes. I find it very difficult to win a game when my opponent responds properly when I do a 10 pool, you become very restricted in options while your opponent has a variety of tech paths. Yes this is the biggest weakness of this build but if they decide to drone, you are already droning and should catch up to make it almost even. This is assuming if they make no mistakes by all inning you or losing too many drones. If they all in you and fail or they lose more than 4 drones then you win if you play it right
Sooo, according to you, it auto wins vs 15 hatch, auto wins vs earlier pool and is even vs 14/14. Gratz mate, you have solved ZvZ. Under your explanations, this is the only build you should ever do in the matchup. You should just admit that it puts you at a huge disadvantage vs 14/14, and stop assuming you'll get 2 drone kills. DRG held off a 7 pool with pure drone micro whilst dancing his lings, a good player will lose 0 drones to initial lings. Now, you play with late expo, late ling speed and late drones.
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On December 18 2011 09:15 TheLindyHop wrote:
Lol, I just tried this out on the ladder for the first time. I'm mid-high diamond, and it works beautifully against early pool builds and other cheeses. Though I am def not going trousers build when it is easy to scout me (close by air on metal, for example). As others have stated before, it really only works cause of the surprise factor. 14/14 is the least surprising opening right now, so I'm going to continue to play around with this.
Thanks, I've been getting a little bored of 14/14 every ZvZ (and they happen often)
Preston:
As we tried one night and it turned out that if there is no drone loss, the build actually puts you behind. I am not sure about opening with this build every single zvz, but it is definitely a good build to know the build to use in a tournament setting.
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Excuse me, any update on the build order of this?
I just want to see the optimum version where an expansion in thrown down before any queens.
thanks
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Did you really dig out a completely outdated thread when there are threads like the Zeg help me where you could answer those questions? Do you know doing that kind of thing is not welcomed on TL? Take a look at the op of the Z help me thread before posting.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On January 23 2013 14:51 Discarder wrote:
Excuse me, any update on the build order of this?
I just want to see the optimum version where an expansion in thrown down before any queens.
thanks
It's a rather standard build these days, as the above poster mentioned you can use one of the other zerg help threads that are around to get advice on this. Closing this.
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EPT
