EPTOne thing that always bugged me about the zerg race (and protoss) is that we rarely ever see drops being utilized when honestly I think we have even better drop options than terran. Protoss can warp in units to make a drop feel unlimited and zergs have 20+ dropships lying around for the small cost of 300/300 (speed + drop)
Anyways, after seeing a lack of drops being used I decided to come up with my own build that aims for that strong max zerg army which can avoid the one thing that protoss armies need to survive... + Show Spoiler +
forcefields
This build does work against FFE or against gate expand but I find it is easier to execute against FFE since you aren't pressured too much.
The Build Part1:
+ Show Spoiler +
For the first part of this build it is simply normal zerg 3 base play as follows:
15Pool
16 Overlord
16 Queen
18 4x zerglings
20 Hatchery (Natural Expansion)
19 2-4x Drone
21-23 Hatchery (Third Base)
20-22 Queen
22 Overlord
22 7x Drones
29 Queen
From here you simply need to drone/overlord as you normally would. When necessary, make a couple lings to defend a scouting zealot and always be on the look out for probes.
15Pool
16 Overlord
16 Queen
18 4x zerglings
20 Hatchery (Natural Expansion)
19 2-4x Drone
21-23 Hatchery (Third Base)
20-22 Queen
22 Overlord
22 7x Drones
29 Queen
From here you simply need to drone/overlord as you normally would. When necessary, make a couple lings to defend a scouting zealot and always be on the look out for probes.
The Build Part 2:
+ Show Spoiler +
Here we start making it a little more of our own. I also switch over to time as opposed to supply since your supply varies based on your macro and how many supply blocks you had and such.
6:30 2x Gas
7:00 3rd Gas
6:45-7:15 Roach Warren
7:00 evo
8:00 Lair
7:35 Missile Attacks Level 1
Make Roaches as needed to defend. Pure roach can hold off gate pressure at this point, you will add hydras later for when they have a stronger push.
8:15 4th Gas
8:45 5th Gas
9:15 6th Gas
9:10 2nd Evo
9:30 - Lair completed - Start Roach speed and Hydra Den
9:45 Ground Carapace Level 1
10:15 Missile Attacks Level 2
10:20 - Start Overlord Drop Upgrade
10:20 - Start Hydralisk Range Upgrade
Start Making Hydras and Roaches intermixed.
11:30 Start Overlord Speed Upgrade (so it will match up with Drop Completing)
6:30 2x Gas
7:00 3rd Gas
6:45-7:15 Roach Warren
7:00 evo
8:00 Lair
7:35 Missile Attacks Level 1
Make Roaches as needed to defend. Pure roach can hold off gate pressure at this point, you will add hydras later for when they have a stronger push.
8:15 4th Gas
8:45 5th Gas
9:15 6th Gas
9:10 2nd Evo
9:30 - Lair completed - Start Roach speed and Hydra Den
9:45 Ground Carapace Level 1
10:15 Missile Attacks Level 2
10:20 - Start Overlord Drop Upgrade
10:20 - Start Hydralisk Range Upgrade
Start Making Hydras and Roaches intermixed.
11:30 Start Overlord Speed Upgrade (so it will match up with Drop Completing)
The Build Part 3 (Attacking!)
+ Show Spoiler +
At around 12:30 you should be at 165+ supply depending on how well you macroed before and how many losses you took defending. I actually have maxed at 12:30 with this build including a decent amount of hydras so it's possible to still max at a decent time.
At this point, push out with your army and start walking over towards your opponents base. Also have your overlords kind of grouped up beforehand so you aren't searching for
overlords when you push.
12:30 - Take a 4th base
When you get to his base, load up. If he is inside of his base that's okay, move your overlords over his army and drop.
IMPORTANT: Drop while moving by pressing "D" and clicking on each overlord. You do not want your overlords to have to stop and drop.
OPTIONAL: take 2 of your loaded overlords and send them around to his mineral lines. This creates a 3 pronged attack and makes it so even if he holds, he will be short on probes as roach+hydra snipe off probes very quickly.
Set your hatch rally to the front of his base so you can start attacking there while doing damage up top.
13:00 - Spire if he has too many collosus and you can't seem to focus fire them down. Back your rally off a tiny bit and prepare to go for a 2nd drop since he will have a lot less units now but you will still be maxed. Also start making corrupters to deal with the collo.
14:00-15:00 Take a 5th base and throw down an infestation pit to start working towards late game.
From there if you haven't won, you can transition into the late game and continue with your upgrades. Do not be afraid to overmake corrupters as the only thing he has to deal with your army is collosus so once they are dead he has to back off or you can charge him and drop him.
At this point, push out with your army and start walking over towards your opponents base. Also have your overlords kind of grouped up beforehand so you aren't searching for
overlords when you push.
12:30 - Take a 4th base
When you get to his base, load up. If he is inside of his base that's okay, move your overlords over his army and drop.
IMPORTANT: Drop while moving by pressing "D" and clicking on each overlord. You do not want your overlords to have to stop and drop.
OPTIONAL: take 2 of your loaded overlords and send them around to his mineral lines. This creates a 3 pronged attack and makes it so even if he holds, he will be short on probes as roach+hydra snipe off probes very quickly.
Set your hatch rally to the front of his base so you can start attacking there while doing damage up top.
13:00 - Spire if he has too many collosus and you can't seem to focus fire them down. Back your rally off a tiny bit and prepare to go for a 2nd drop since he will have a lot less units now but you will still be maxed. Also start making corrupters to deal with the collo.
14:00-15:00 Take a 5th base and throw down an infestation pit to start working towards late game.
From there if you haven't won, you can transition into the late game and continue with your upgrades. Do not be afraid to overmake corrupters as the only thing he has to deal with your army is collosus so once they are dead he has to back off or you can charge him and drop him.
Discussion:
+ Show Spoiler +
Q: What happens if they go for a 2 base push/all in (Immortals, blink stalkers, etc)
A: This is where the hydras will do wonders for you. Having a Roach/Hydra army with range gives you SO much more Dps that you otherwise lacked. This was the main reason I actually started adding hydras into my builds because I would lose to 2 base all ins despite being like 170/200 roach vs 115/200 their army. The roach simply does not have the damage necessary nor the range vs good ff's. The problem that I faced was after getting hydras, I couldn't push into their base since they would have ff's and then they would simply tech to collo, push out, and I'd lose then. By adding drops I was able to force an engagement which is exactly what zerg wants to do (and the engagement would be on top of their forces so forcefields wouldn't do much for them.
Q: Won't you lose overlords by dropping on top of their army?
A: Yes, sometimes you will. There are 2 things to say about this though. The first thing is if you drop with an overlord early before you get to the army, all of his army will start to fire at the 4 units dropped which will give you time to move your other overlords over his army. If he focus fires your overlords, big deal it really doesn't hurt too much. You have a 200/200 army vs his 120/200 army. Would you sacrifice 8-16 supply to get an engagement where forcefields didn't matter? I sure know I would.
Q: What about 2 base Collosus Timings?
A: Yes, this can be difficult to hold. That is kind of the counter to this build but even then you are not completely out of it. If you scout he is going for that, you can simply invest more into roaches and less into hydras (since they get destroyed). The other thing is, by investing a lot into the collosus tech, they generally have less of a ground army with their push (or it comes later) so you can drop down a spire and start getting some corrupters out.
Q: When do I not want to engage his army?
A: When he has 3 or more collosus. I've find through experience that generally I can handle 2 collosus if I get good position on them (always try to keep a couple overlords full that you just move around with the collosus and drop right on top of them then focus fire). However, once he hits 3-4 collosus they simply melt your army too quickly and you are going to need corrupters. As I said before, feel free to overmake corrupters (10-12 easy) and just try and snipe his collo, even if it cost a few corrupters. Because as soon as you can get those numbers down, your army becomes more powerful and you can drop all over him.
Q: Are there variations to this build?
A: YES! This build is just something that I've been playing around with for the last month and I'd actually like other people to try stuff out to see what works better. Maybe invest the gas into banelings instead of roaches? I know for a long time I just did the drop with 0/1 upgrades but now I've recently worked it in to a 1/2 upgrade hit which makes it that much stronger AND gives you a better transition into later game if they hold it off. I think there is still a lot unexplored here but I really just wanted to utilize Stephano's 200/200 max army and make it even stronger/able to force engagements.
Q: I don't see the point of going up to overlord speed/drop if you are going hydras
A: There are 4 major reasons for this. Now I can say that I have simply gone roach hydra ling and hit lots of timings without drop that absolutely crush, but those feel different and generally work better on more open maps where it's easier to hit multiple fronts.
1. hydras are slow. I think we can all agree that hydras need a speed buff or upgrade option at the hydra den. The overlord speed gives your hydras this speed since they can just carry them everywhere. (PLUS ADDED BONUS: Overlords can drop creep so when you do drops in his base, tell all 20 of your overlords to spread creep and you will get a nice laugh)
2. I watched 10 pro replays PvZ that lasted longer than 15 minutes. After discarding the games that were really weird because of too many units lost early on, the average protoss army at 13 minutes was 120/200 supply. Now I have a 200/200 army at that time with a lot of dps thanks to the hydras. Tell me what is the one thing that protoss was given to makeup for this difference and defend at all points in the game? FORCEFIELDS. How many engagements have you had with a protoss army where you know you would absolutely crush him except for the fact that he had forcefields? Too many to count for me at least. So this is where I decided to completely abuse the fact that we get 25 dropships instantaneously and just get drop/speed to fly right over his army and negate forcefields from doing anything. Not only can you negate forcefields in the engagement, but you can negate simcity and terrain difficulties. Think about playing on shakuras plateau and trying to kill off the protoss base by fighting up the ramp. With sim city, ramps, and forcefields, you simply cannot engage up his ramp. This gives him time to sit back, relax, and make a few collosus until he has that deathball amount that just hurts so much to deal with. By getting drops, you can just fly right past this and drop in a position that is favorable for you instead, thus crushing him and forcing an engagement.
3. Hydras are a great defensive unit but honestly they are a dead tech path and so the longer you sit on them, the less valuable they become. You NEED to trade up to start working towards your later game army and so I decided rather than trading trying to push up a ramp and getting obliterated, why not trade more cost efficiently by dropping into his base.
4. you now have DROPS! If you watch my youtube video I showcase the beauty of having drops by not only dropping on top of his army to avoid forcefields, but also dropping his main and third base mineral lines. The more places that the protoss player has to focus, the more chance of mistake for him to make and the better off you are. From there on out you can continue to do drops (maybe infestor drops late game or ling drops or anything) and this is a part of the game that is pretty much completely unexplored in this match up. Now all of the sudden toss players have to start worrying about drops and worst case they have to throw up cannons at their mineral lines which is less money for their army.
Something else I would simply like to point out is now you have DROP PLAY! Most protoss players never have to deal with drops from a zerg so all of the sudden you can start sending in 1 overlord to each mineral line full of hydras and just completely wreck his probes. Pick up, back out, and repeat. Eventually this will force him to get cannons or leave units there and it will just be an added annoyance for protoss players to deal with in the ZvP match up.
A: This is where the hydras will do wonders for you. Having a Roach/Hydra army with range gives you SO much more Dps that you otherwise lacked. This was the main reason I actually started adding hydras into my builds because I would lose to 2 base all ins despite being like 170/200 roach vs 115/200 their army. The roach simply does not have the damage necessary nor the range vs good ff's. The problem that I faced was after getting hydras, I couldn't push into their base since they would have ff's and then they would simply tech to collo, push out, and I'd lose then. By adding drops I was able to force an engagement which is exactly what zerg wants to do (and the engagement would be on top of their forces so forcefields wouldn't do much for them.
Q: Won't you lose overlords by dropping on top of their army?
A: Yes, sometimes you will. There are 2 things to say about this though. The first thing is if you drop with an overlord early before you get to the army, all of his army will start to fire at the 4 units dropped which will give you time to move your other overlords over his army. If he focus fires your overlords, big deal it really doesn't hurt too much. You have a 200/200 army vs his 120/200 army. Would you sacrifice 8-16 supply to get an engagement where forcefields didn't matter? I sure know I would.
Q: What about 2 base Collosus Timings?
A: Yes, this can be difficult to hold. That is kind of the counter to this build but even then you are not completely out of it. If you scout he is going for that, you can simply invest more into roaches and less into hydras (since they get destroyed). The other thing is, by investing a lot into the collosus tech, they generally have less of a ground army with their push (or it comes later) so you can drop down a spire and start getting some corrupters out.
Q: When do I not want to engage his army?
A: When he has 3 or more collosus. I've find through experience that generally I can handle 2 collosus if I get good position on them (always try to keep a couple overlords full that you just move around with the collosus and drop right on top of them then focus fire). However, once he hits 3-4 collosus they simply melt your army too quickly and you are going to need corrupters. As I said before, feel free to overmake corrupters (10-12 easy) and just try and snipe his collo, even if it cost a few corrupters. Because as soon as you can get those numbers down, your army becomes more powerful and you can drop all over him.
Q: Are there variations to this build?
A: YES! This build is just something that I've been playing around with for the last month and I'd actually like other people to try stuff out to see what works better. Maybe invest the gas into banelings instead of roaches? I know for a long time I just did the drop with 0/1 upgrades but now I've recently worked it in to a 1/2 upgrade hit which makes it that much stronger AND gives you a better transition into later game if they hold it off. I think there is still a lot unexplored here but I really just wanted to utilize Stephano's 200/200 max army and make it even stronger/able to force engagements.
Q: I don't see the point of going up to overlord speed/drop if you are going hydras
A: There are 4 major reasons for this. Now I can say that I have simply gone roach hydra ling and hit lots of timings without drop that absolutely crush, but those feel different and generally work better on more open maps where it's easier to hit multiple fronts.
1. hydras are slow. I think we can all agree that hydras need a speed buff or upgrade option at the hydra den. The overlord speed gives your hydras this speed since they can just carry them everywhere. (PLUS ADDED BONUS: Overlords can drop creep so when you do drops in his base, tell all 20 of your overlords to spread creep and you will get a nice laugh)
2. I watched 10 pro replays PvZ that lasted longer than 15 minutes. After discarding the games that were really weird because of too many units lost early on, the average protoss army at 13 minutes was 120/200 supply. Now I have a 200/200 army at that time with a lot of dps thanks to the hydras. Tell me what is the one thing that protoss was given to makeup for this difference and defend at all points in the game? FORCEFIELDS. How many engagements have you had with a protoss army where you know you would absolutely crush him except for the fact that he had forcefields? Too many to count for me at least. So this is where I decided to completely abuse the fact that we get 25 dropships instantaneously and just get drop/speed to fly right over his army and negate forcefields from doing anything. Not only can you negate forcefields in the engagement, but you can negate simcity and terrain difficulties. Think about playing on shakuras plateau and trying to kill off the protoss base by fighting up the ramp. With sim city, ramps, and forcefields, you simply cannot engage up his ramp. This gives him time to sit back, relax, and make a few collosus until he has that deathball amount that just hurts so much to deal with. By getting drops, you can just fly right past this and drop in a position that is favorable for you instead, thus crushing him and forcing an engagement.
3. Hydras are a great defensive unit but honestly they are a dead tech path and so the longer you sit on them, the less valuable they become. You NEED to trade up to start working towards your later game army and so I decided rather than trading trying to push up a ramp and getting obliterated, why not trade more cost efficiently by dropping into his base.
4. you now have DROPS! If you watch my youtube video I showcase the beauty of having drops by not only dropping on top of his army to avoid forcefields, but also dropping his main and third base mineral lines. The more places that the protoss player has to focus, the more chance of mistake for him to make and the better off you are. From there on out you can continue to do drops (maybe infestor drops late game or ling drops or anything) and this is a part of the game that is pretty much completely unexplored in this match up. Now all of the sudden toss players have to start worrying about drops and worst case they have to throw up cannons at their mineral lines which is less money for their army.
Something else I would simply like to point out is now you have DROP PLAY! Most protoss players never have to deal with drops from a zerg so all of the sudden you can start sending in 1 overlord to each mineral line full of hydras and just completely wreck his probes. Pick up, back out, and repeat. Eventually this will force him to get cannons or leave units there and it will just be an added annoyance for protoss players to deal with in the ZvP match up.
If there is anything else added to my guide that you would like to see, please let me know. This is my first guide so it's probably going to have a few mistakes/be missing a few things.
Video of commentary:
My youtube channel: www.youtube.com/mrllamasc
Replay 1 from video: http://drop.sc/170249
Replay 2 from video: http://drop.sc/170250
Replay 3 (I do the build almost optimally here, but I only go for +1 upgrade, not 1/2): http://drop.sc/170251
Edit: As requested, here are additional replays. I would like to state that these replays are a LOT earlier versions though before I refined it more to my liking so they are very rough around the edges and the timings are probably different. Regardless, you still get to see the playstyle.
Replay 4: http://drop.sc/159696 (Vs good top 8 Masters)
Replay 5: http://drop.sc/170892
Replay 6: http://drop.sc/161348
Replay 7: http://drop.sc/170894
Replay 8: http://drop.sc/171416 (vs top 8 masters/max at 12:30)
-MrLlama
