Category Archives: Zerg

Stephano’s muta-less ZvT

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My Starcraft separation continues amidst other things in life, but I did get to watch 2 or 3 games from the SHOUTcraft Invitational 4 finals this weekend between Stephano (Z) and Thorzain (T). My opinion of Thorzain goes up and down, but he has already participated in one of the best ZvT finals I’ve ever watched against DRG in the Dreamhack Valencia finals (VODs here). That series was traditional Marine-Medivac-Tank against Ling-Baneling-Muta and really showed how back and forth it could be.

The Stephano-Thorzain series (VODs here), however, shows how Stephano completely blows that matchup apart. Best I could tell, Thorzain played it by the book: early hellion pressure while expanding, transition into marine-tank with some early pressure, and then into the midgame. Stephano completely crushed this by going for a ling-infestor composition with a lot of lings early. This did a few things for him:

  • the tank count never got very high because Stephano had so many lings out. When the first push came, he just kept pumping lings. Without a sufficient number of tanks, Thorzain was always vulnerable
  • to make them less vulnerable and more effective, Thorzain spread his tanks. When he did this, Stephano used Infested Terran bombs to have the tanks splash and kill themselves
  • with low tank counts, Thorzain’s marines were vulnerable to fungals and banelings, and that completely opened up the game
  • since Stephano had the infestation pit and not a particularly heavy commitment to the midgame, he got Hive quickly and started tier 3 before Thorzain could really ever build his perfect composition

SC2NoobSchool appears to have a tutorial about this style, though I admittedly haven’t watched it myself. I’m not really sure how terran is expected to deal with this, as Thorzain even stuck by hellions a little longer in a few games, to no avail, as the ridiculous ling count always got a surround.

We’ll see how popular this style gets as we get back into tournament season.

dApollo’s Zerg Tutorials

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dApollo released a 4-part Zerg tutorial series (and has started the Protoss series as I write),  and they’re absolutely fantastic. He starts out at the beginning of bronze and works up through diamond, winning about 20 games in a row. For low-level players like me, he advocates playing safe and scouting a lot. Obviously, Apollo is much smarter than I am and knows how to interpret different scouts and prepare accordingly, but I think it’s a good mindset to have.

Here are a few things he emphasized:

  • Send in an overlord scout around 5:45 – 6:00 to see what they’re doing. This is right around the time when people really get into their game, and you can see what’s going on
  • Get the evo chamber if you’re uncertain about stargate or banshee play (which he was relatively often), but don’t get spore crawlers. Because he drones so hard, the 75 minerals isn’t a big deal to be safe, but with good overlord positioning, you should have time to throw done reactive spore crawlers
  • Get 3 queens ASAP. 2 are injecting larva, and the 3rd is spreading creep
  • He was a big fan of a single spine crawler at the front, just to be safe. It’s not a huge investment, and I think it prevents a lot of silly situations

I wrote down a few of his build orders, which shouldn’t be too surprising. Note that his early buildings are with a certain drone, not at a certain supply, so he has constant drone production.

dApollo 14 gas, 15 pool (ZvT, ZvP)

  • 9 overlord
  • 12th drone scouts
  • 14th drone extractor
  • 15th drone pool
  • 15 overlord
  • 15 2 lings, queen (lings spread to towers, behind natural, scouting up ramp

In ZvZ, he prefers to play defensively, though he did show a few strong counters and some aggressive play. At the bronze/silver level, he did a defensive roach build

dApollo defensive roaches (ZvZ)

  • 9 overlord
  • 12th drone scouts
  • 14th pool
  • 16 overlord
  • extractor when pool is almost done
  • 16 2 lings, queen (same as above)
  • 20 roach warren
  • 2nd queen somewhere in here
  • 25ish hatch

He points out that it doesn’t work as well at the higher levels because roaches are slow, and you end up giving away the map in these cases. Instead, he prefers a hatch first opening at higher levels, with defensive banelings

dApollo 15 hatch defensive banelings (ZvZ)

  • 9 overlord
  • 15 hatch
  • 15 pool
  • 17 extractor (pull out of gas after 50 gas
  • 16 overlord
  • 16 2 lings, queen
  • 20 spine crawler (send 1 drone to build instantly at the natural)
  • 20 queen
  • baneling nest

He keeps 1 baneling on the high ground, 1 on the low ground, and 1 in front and depends on good micro to stave attacks off.

The tutorials were so popular, he’s apparently streaming now, so check that out.

Defending against hellion harass

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Learned this one while watching Ret’s stream. If you think they’re going early hellion harass, keep your queens on the low ground and lings at the top. When they see the opportunity, they’ll definitely try to go up the ramp. Trap them with the lings on the ramp as they’re trying to run by. The queens will be shooting the entire time and can more quickly reinforce when they go for the drones at the natural. And the lings are fast enough to get there anyways.