Hello! My first post on this forum, sorry if anything is wrong. Also sorry for bad english. I'm quite a new player, currently plat with zerg. Today I played against a weird turtle Zerg with fast lurkers, brood lords and vipers. Replay:http://ggtracker.com/matches/6932190 I completely outmacroed my opponent and managed to contain him on 2 bases until 16 min, when I forgot to check if he still trying to expand (my biggest mistake in that game, I suppose). In result the game stalled for whole 50 minutes becouse I didn't know how to assault him. I scouted lurkers, so I decided to wait for my ultras. But even with them, any my attack failed against queens transfusing the wall-off all the time. I was losing a lot of units while doing nearly no damage. I tried corruptors but opponent simply abducted them all into mass spore crawlers.
So the question is, how to assault against such turtling? I never played against vipers or broodlords before, and never tried them myself (at 34:00 I tried to do some parasitic bombs but was mashing the wrong hotkey and failed). Would properly managed vipers be a solution here? Or should have I made some broodlords myself and protect them from abduct with some AA? I never made too much more queens than bases before, but in the end they won me the game. Probably a dozen of queens earlier in the game transfusing ultras would end it on spot?
This ended up being really long, but it's for the best. If you choose to follow my advice, focus on one specific aspect of what I say here at a time, since it can be overwhelming to try and keep up with everything, I've been there. Also, I do give advice on how to engage further down, not just avoid the situation.
One of the main counters to these types of things is to stop it before it happens. In pretty much all match-ups, but zvz is one I tend to be particularly careful with, you really need to keep scouting in mind. By the time you scouted the lurker tech, you were already too late since the lurker den was already finished and way before you scouted it. So first off: scout! keepp scouting and don't stop until you know for sure what your opponent is up to generally speaking (are they going for roaches, fast hydras, spire?). Eventually you will know on instict more or less when stuff is supposed to go down, but between 3 to 4 minutes is a good rule of thumb to go check what's up (in pretty much any match-up really). Maybe in platinum you could move it to 4-5 minutes.
The hydra den went up around 4:50 along with the infestation pit, that alone should ring bells if scouted on time. For one it tells you your opponent is going for A LOT of tech that they can't really afford to pair with a strong enough army, so going for an all-out attack with roaches could have ended the game (there was barely any army present). that video by lowko explains a very basic roach timing. It is a a timing build, but you can adapt the general concepts on it to incorporate in your play against these weird things, I actually learned a lot of stuff from it and have used those concepts to get a fairly good winrate in zvz (I've been a mid-top diamond player for a while now).
Check your lair timing I realized you were getting double upgrades and getting close to 3 base saturation without a lair (your opponent had already a completed lurker den and you were still on hatch tech!). In zvz specially you really want to have a fairly early lair in most cases were the game isn't going bananas. In fact, getting a lair is much more important than going for double upgrades like most players in lower leagues do. It opens up spire tech and roach speed, and having +1 attack roaches with speed is much better in most cases than having +1 +1 slow roaches. Also, lair will open up +2 upgrades which are CRUCIAL in roach vs roach.
I also noticed you were banking lots of minerals and had barely any gas. The moment you see that happening: get more gases! Really! Pig made a really good video on managing economy for general rules to follow when saturating bases and that stuff: it should help preventing that imbalance of minerals/gas to happen in the first place but don't feel bad if you don't get it right: it happens to everyone, even the pros if you look at the resources closely.
Lastly: overseers! getting one even when you haven't seen you need it and keeping it with your army is really useful. It prevents getting caught with your pants down and can spawn changelings to help you scout. At around 10 minutes you did an attack in which you could have gotten most of the guy's lurkers if you had an overseer In fact, that attack could have maybe won the game straight up if executed correctly. The guy had barely anything.
But oh well, let's say you screwed up and damn you're already there (like on this game).
First off: DON'T A MOVE INTO IT. EVER. UNBIND THE ATTACK KEY FOR THIS SCENARIO. Well that last part was an exageration, but seriously. I see this game and it has mutas or broodlords written all over it.
The main base was awfully exposed the whole time. there where only a few spores here and there (and a luker on the minerals, how cute). How would you know you could have done that? well, scout! If you see the guy is turtling so hard the last thing you want to do is attack into his position. The defense is setup so he will have the absolute advantage, and you learned that the bad way. Instead, when you seee someone turtling like that, check for other opennings. Drops, brood lords or anything to get into the main base would have done so much for you. But even if the guy had a ring of spores around the main, you could have gotten a few broodlords and chipped away at those spores to eventually create an openning. If he tries to abduct, you should have corroptors and vipers of your own ready to abduct the vipers when they come and kill them with corruptors. Yes you may lose a lot of units to mistakes, but remember: you opponent is on two bases and you are on the entire map, you can afford to throw away 4 broodlords a viper and 3 corruptors if that means killing a viper (this comment is not meant to be mathematically exact, but you get the point).
This method can also cause your opponent to waste a lot of money into building static defense everywhere and thus they deplete their resources faster. In any case; always remember that when you see someone turtle, first thing you should think is to find other avenues for attack.
Looking at your first attack with ultras, you just tried to shove your army up, which failed. That really isn't surprising but here's my take on what you could have done: instead of trying to headbutt in, you could have gotten more ravagers instead of having so much roach/hydra that could barely even attack because of the choke. Coupling the ravagers with overseers for high-ground vision and using corrosive bile to break the wall before going in would have been a good option. If you break the wall that way and go in with say 5-6 ultras (I think you tried to break it with just 2 which really doesn't do much) you could probably have taken the game there (well, maybe if you had that attack ready a bit earlier, which you definitely could have with your resources).
This continued through-out the game and I've had had it happen to myself as well. You know you have won, but you can't finish it off. If your first ultra attack did pretty much nothing, then you have to reconsider your composition.
Ultras are funny because they can be really good in some situations but they have a counter people sometimes don't even realize: buildings. Seriously, buildings make ultras waste attacks, lose time and sometimes even screw them up in such a way that they are not even attacking at all and are just trying to get through, that's why you see terran players build lots of stuff in front of their third bases in TvZ (it also helps against ling-bane).
Anyway, hope this post helps and doesn't scare you away from starcraft lol, if you have any questions feel free to send me a message or something. Have fun in your future games! :D
Another really important thing I noticed is that you kept fighting against the broodlings with your army. DON'T DO THAT!!! EVER!!! when you have broodlords shooting at your army and you can't readily kill the broodlords you run away. Don't kill the broodlings, they will die on their own. If you stay to kill one wave that's enough time for another wave to be launched and for damage to be dealt to your army which is free, because broodlings don't cost anything and you aren't killing any broodlords. You lost A LOT by trying to kill off all the broodlings and that alone made the game much closer than it should have been.
Thanks a lot for the advices! You're so damn right about my late lair, I keep forgetting it while doing other stuff. Will try to make it earlier against non-rush zerg. And yes, I guess I really suck at scouting, I should likely focus on improving it. And of course thanks for pointing out about finding openings. Though it wasn't an option when he abandoned 1st two bases and turtled in 3rd, I should have definetely attacked his main instead of trying to walk the ramp to natural.
I guess, against vipers and broodlords I must really make my own vipers, just for abduct, right?
On January 16 2017 16:50 Kostyazz wrote: I guess, against vipers and broodlords I must really make my own vipers, just for abduct, right?
Yeah, you can try to brute force it with other units, but if your opponent is managing their vipers right, then having vipers of your own to abduct their units is a really good way to just starve them out and win the attrition war. Also, vipers can BC their lurkers if you happen to find a good opportunity to attack, this can be riskier though and I don't think it's the best option unless you HAVE to.
I innovated the lurker turtle style that you see a lot of players attempting to duplicate right now.
End game theory results in both players making upwards of 10+ vipers to abduct the opponent's vipers with their own vipers. It turns out the most powerful end game unit in ZvZ is the viper since lurkers/hydras will beat everything on the ground, and with spores you can abduct broodlords.
This might just be a problem with the viper being too overpowered as a unit in general though.
On January 18 2017 06:09 avilo wrote: I innovated the lurker turtle style that you see a lot of players attempting to duplicate right now.
End game theory results in both players making upwards of 10+ vipers to abduct the opponent's vipers with their own vipers. It turns out the most powerful end game unit in ZvZ is the viper since lurkers/hydras will beat everything on the ground, and with spores you can abduct broodlords.
This might just be a problem with the viper being too overpowered as a unit in general though.