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Hello,
I've played this type of game more than a few times now and I always lose vs it.
Basically the terran has a wall at his ramp with barracks and 2 supply depots or sometimes if I'm lucky he already incorporates the factory so it's easier to tell what he's going for.
Upon seeing this I decide to skip all lings aside from two to deal with scouting scv. Normally I also send out one ling evading the vulture so I can check whether he's getting a cc behind the vulture or not etc.
I also tend to send all overlords back to my natural so I don't lose them versus a possible wraith opener.
The next part of the game is always very similar. I don't have a lot of lings because they can easily become dead weight depending on what the terran is doing (4 speed vulture drop for example). So instead I keep the ling count to a minimum and get a hydralisk den with some hydras by the time wraiths would arrive. I try to throw down my spire when lair finishes and see how the game unfolds.
Versus all types of 1 base play this works decently aside from the 1 base tank push.
Here's a game I played where this terran made 2 factories and skipped the first vulture to get a faster tank and siege mode. He had his tank siege up at my natural at 4:45 minutes in the game.
What should I do differently?
I've come up with a few things:
1) I shouldn't send back all overlords to my natural. Instead I should always try to get an overlord very close to the terran's main/natural possibly to suicide it and see what he's doing. If he ends up doing wraiths, then so be it. Losing 1 overlord is detrimental but not worse than outright losing the game vs a 1 base tank push.
2) I should not have kept my 2 lings on his scv, I should have send one out to his base, then I would have noticed the lack of a vulture and I possibly could have kept the ling there until he moved out.
3) I should build the sunken much farther away from my natural hatchery. I tend to build it as close to my hatch as possible in case they get lucky and try to move it behind the mineral line. But I think I can't do that any more. If the sunken is as far out as possible, I could possibly make another sunken behind it and delay his push some more.
4) Upon seeing him move out I should then get the hydra speed upgrade and start building a lot of hydralisks.
http://bwreplays.com/4d1zn
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His execution was pretty good. It was also an all-in since he had no backup plan if it failed. The vulture opening also makes it hard to scout, and you didn't have an ovie at his nat so it was basically the worst situation for you.
You should always get ling speed after lair, even if the Terran is going 1 base. There are simply too many ways in which speedlings can help.
I usually do Lair, ling speed, then hydra den. If I have no idea whether the Terran is going wraiths I'll make two hydras, one for each base. Otherwise, I'll skip hydras altogether.
Anyway, his tank sieges at around 5:15. At this point, you have around 27 supply and just started your spire.
If I were you, I would do the following. Let's assume you upgraded ling speed. Let's also assume you only made 2 hydras. Ling speed will finish at 5:25. As soon as you realize the tank is sieging at 5:15, make only lings until 35 supply. You will have 16 lings that pop around 5:45. As soon as those lings pop, attack with your lings and hydras. We're talking 16 lings and 2 hydras versus 2 tanks, 3 vultures, 2 scvs, 3 marines, and a bunker. IGNORE EVERYTHING BUT THE TANKS. I'd actually send the hydras in first to take tank fire, then run lings to surround and kill the tanks.
I made a custom map with exactly this scenario, and I was able to kill all the tanks and still have a bunch of lings left. The battle will take around 20 game seconds. DO NOT ENGAGE ANYTHING ELSE. At this point he will probably have at most another tank or one or two vultures rallying from his base to yours, which you should cut off with your remaining speedlings since the bunker only covers your nat. If you're worried about your nat, just move all the drones to your main. His remaining couple vultures and marines will not be enough to finish off your nat hatchery, and if he really pushes into your main you can pump a few more lings and clean that up. At 6:30 or so your spire will be finished. Just pump mutas then and you win.
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United States1429 Posts
That style of Terran is really inefficient. I think you could've crushed it easily. The first thing I noticed was you didn't send a ling to the terran's base right away, or any ling at all for the entire time. Also, I noticed your gas hovered at 128 before you got the Lair because you didn't have enough minerals from investing it into that early sunk. I'd recommend having just 2 drones mining if you went for a standard 3 hatch muta gas timing. Then add on 3 when lair starts. That way you have enough minerals to spend larvae, get your hydra den once you have 50 gas after you make your lair, and you can afford a hydra upgrade right off the bat easily. If you had done that you might've had hydra speed done at the least by the time the siege tanks were attacking you. Regardless of what Terran went, as long as it's a mech opener, hydra speed is always a safe upgrade to get.
You didn't really have the resources to easily start a hydra upgrade though. Also, you started making a spire, a risky choice, relying on slow hydras to defend. In the case terran went 2 port wraith, vulture drops, or in the rare case of the replay, a 2 fac push, that could backfire unless you absolutely know what terran is up to. Additionally, the spire took away a good amount of resources from the army you could've built. When the tanks show up you can mass a lot of slow lings, which you want to prioritize over hydras w/o range. Be patient with when you decide to engage. Let the hatch take some damage to near death, it's fine as long as you engage before it dies. You just need to judge that you have absolutely enough units to kill off the push. Transfer drones away to the main if you have to.
As for your practice of retreating overlords to your main, I think putting an overlord at the opponent's nat is okay. Even if the opponent goes for a wraith opener, the ease of having that scouting info on whether terran is pushing or taking an expo is worth the possible death of the overlord, as you can always make another one. In some cases you can even suicide the overlord to see what Terran is up to if they're being unusually quiet.
You should ask a friend or someone to do that exact same push several times and you can test different responses, seeing how the methods are in practice. Stryker's approach also seems pretty good too. Any ling backstabs really destroy that push centric type of Terran play.
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Thanks for the replies, appreciate it. I also asked trutacz and eon on their streams and they agreed with your assessment Stryker. Ling speed is basically a necessity vs almost all builds unless you can get a lucky scout. Next they mentioned that versus this particular one it's important to get a lot of zerglings to intercept reinforcements, use sunkens to delay and have a spire building in the background. Finally I didn't get a definitive answer but they didn't like suiciding overlords at all instead mentioning to always use a zergling instead.
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