Just played a ZvZ on Arid Plateau where literally everything went wrong for me. Watching the replay, I was behind the entire game in almost every metric, then managed to win off of a desperate all-in. Allow me to describe in a few bullets:
- He 11 pooled me. I went hatch first, and accidentally built my pool even later than I should have
- Thankfully, I drone scouted the rush at his ramp, canceled my natural, then microed well enough to hold
- He was ahead on workers and went in for a roach push while I was rebuilding my economy
- Thankfully, I saw his roach warren go down with an OL scout and got my units out just in time, with spine crawlers to boot
- Through the middle of the game, he had more units attacking and more workers at almost every moment
- Thankfully, Arid Plateau is really narrow entrances into the natural, which nullified a lot of his advantage. And spine crawlers were good, even though my placement was awful
- He got up a 3rd base while continuing to pressure me and even nydus’ed to force me to cancel my 3rd and scramble to the back of my base
- Thankfully, I had +2 ranged attack and squeezed out a few hydras at the end. And he never transferred his drones from his mined out main to his 3rd
Had he been a little better, I would’ve lost that game very badly. Instead of macroing behind his immediate advantage as he rushed me while I flubbed my build, he tried to go for the kill, and the map worked really well to my advantage to stay on 2 bases.
Lesson 1: upgrades and tech are really good. I’m certain that the +2 was the difference because he had more roaches than I did
Lesson 2: spine crawlers are really good in enclosed spaces, but I need to position them better. The 2nd spine crawler should’ve been in my mineral line, closer to backdoor side