{"id":16,"date":"2012-01-03T17:33:25","date_gmt":"2012-01-03T17:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/starcraft.kevinleung.com\/?p=16"},"modified":"2013-03-17T13:28:21","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T20:28:21","slug":"dapollos-zerg-tutorials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/?p=16","title":{"rendered":"dApollo&#8217;s Zerg Tutorials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>dApollo released a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PL0B7058D9D46661D1\">4-part Zerg tutorial series<\/a>\u00a0(and has started the Protoss series as I write), \u00a0and they&#8217;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&#8217;s a good mindset to have.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few things he emphasized:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Send in an overlord scout around 5:45 &#8211; 6:00 to see what they&#8217;re doing. This is right around the time when people really get into their game, and you can see what&#8217;s going on<\/li>\n<li>Get the evo chamber if you&#8217;re uncertain about stargate or banshee play (which he was relatively often), but don&#8217;t get spore crawlers. Because he drones so hard, the 75 minerals isn&#8217;t a big deal to be safe, but with good overlord positioning, you should have time to throw done reactive spore crawlers<\/li>\n<li>Get 3 queens ASAP. 2 are injecting larva, and the 3rd is spreading creep<\/li>\n<li>He was a big fan of a single spine crawler at the front, just to be safe. It&#8217;s not a huge investment, and I think it prevents a lot of silly situations<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I wrote down a few of his build orders, which shouldn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>dApollo 14 gas, 15 pool (ZvT, ZvP)<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>9 overlord<\/li>\n<li>12th drone scouts<\/li>\n<li>14th drone extractor<\/li>\n<li>15th drone pool<\/li>\n<li>15 overlord<\/li>\n<li>15 2 lings, queen (lings spread to towers, behind natural, scouting up ramp<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>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<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>dApollo defensive roaches (ZvZ)<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>9 overlord<\/li>\n<li>12th drone scouts<\/li>\n<li>14th pool<\/li>\n<li>16 overlord<\/li>\n<li>extractor when pool is almost done<\/li>\n<li>16 2 lings, queen (same as above)<\/li>\n<li>20 roach warren<\/li>\n<li>2nd queen somewhere in here<\/li>\n<li>25ish hatch<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>He points out that it doesn&#8217;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<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>dApollo 15 hatch defensive banelings (ZvZ)<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>9 overlord<\/li>\n<li>15 hatch<\/li>\n<li>15 pool<\/li>\n<li>17 extractor (pull out of gas after 50 gas<\/li>\n<li>16 overlord<\/li>\n<li>16 2 lings, queen<\/li>\n<li>20 spine crawler (send 1 drone to build instantly at the natural)<\/li>\n<li>20 queen<\/li>\n<li>baneling nest<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The tutorials were so popular, he&#8217;s apparently streaming now, so <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitch.tv\/dignitasapollo\/\">check that out<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>dApollo released a 4-part Zerg tutorial series\u00a0(and has started the Protoss series as I write), \u00a0and they&#8217;re absolutely fantastic. He starts out at the beginning of bronze and works up through diamond, winning about 20 games in a row. For &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/?p=16\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3,20],"tags":[21,10,22],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-build-orders","category-tips","category-zerg","tag-apollo","tag-dapollo","tag-link"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236,"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}