[MSL] Overcome All

As said before, this week zerg prevailed. In the three ZvTs, zergs went 3-0, and in five ZvP, zergs prevailed four times to one. And in ZvZ... uh, zergs won every time. Surprise! Either way, though some of the games might have been blatantly obvious which side would win (Calm vs Jaehoon?) for the most part zergs played well. RorO's win over Stork was definitely very solid, and even though Fantasy and Leta made some questionable choices, Soulkey and great played well enough to take advantage of the mistakes. If you've spent the last week without internet, or if you happen to live under a rock (where did that phrase come from anyway?) let's take a look at the results for this week. And if you'd like to take a comprehensive look at the MSL, check the R&S thread here.

                                                                                    -swanized

This game played between Soulkey and great was very similar to one they played back in June. In that game, Soulkey was forced to spore to defend very fast mutalisks and used his defensive advantage to tech to hive. Instead of following up on this, great opted for a fast third and gets hydras and defilers, while Soulkey went for air support in the form of queens. Though the initial aerial battle ended in Soulkey's favor, he was unable to damage great's economy too much. In the end, great's hydra/ling/lurker army supported by defilers was able to keep Soulkey from taking too many bases and eventually busted Soulkey's natural. To read more about this game and previous hivetech ZvZ games, check swanized's thread here.

If you read the ZvZ battle report above in this article, you should see that this most recent game is almost exactly the same as the one just described, with the only major difference being devourer/guardian instead of queens. In both games, great completely rolled Soulkey, despite the "oh my gosh so exciting!!!" nature of the games.

So then, what does great do differently? And in terms of our limited spectrum, what does great do that is correct? swanized and I will attempt to go on a journey to explore this conundrum that is lategame ZvZ.

For the most part, I will be talking about the zerg units and how they affect lategame ZvZ. swanized will deal with how they were used in this specific game between Neo.G_Soulkey and great.

First off, just a short note on the how and why this game made it to this late stage--so far all the ZvZ games that have made it to lategame have been the result of a fast-muta approach for one player forcing the slower-teching player to spore up. This discrepancy in opening is pretty important--despite what we all want, we're not going to be seeing many [unintentional] lategame ZvZs from identical openings. This recent game is no different. great's plan right from the start of the game was to play a very aggressive 1hatch mutalisk build, since his lair had started before any zerglings were made. Though he was unable to end the game with his initial mutaling attack, he didn't suicide any mutas into spores, so he was able to maintain map control. This allowed him to expand, and since Soulkey was "contained", he teched.

Soulkey initially did a good job with hiding his tech, since many ZvZ games that involve spores still wind up ending on the "who has the larger muta flock" battle. great originally was playing this game, since he focused on taking a third and massing mutalisks (with +1 carapace), readying for the battle. However, after great scouted the hive with his scourge though, he immediately put down spores of his own and started teching himself. With so many spores on the map for both players, this makes muta incursions very cost-ineffective. In the same sense, mutalisk-supported zergling busts are no longer possible. If one player tries to mass zerglings, he won't be able to prevent the defender from killing off his zerglings with mutalisks.

Looking at it this way, teching is the optimal idea. Both players assume a more defensive stance, one that is not normally associated with the fast-paced mindset needed for ZvZ.

At this point, since maintaining air supremacy is still the dominant strategy, there are three viable tech routes for a player in this case: queens, devourers, and defilers. Later on, when ground battles become more important guardians, hydralisks, lurkers, and ultralisks come into the picture.

Since queens can be gotten before hive tech, they are definitely the fastest and easiest to get, but they are also the least effective. While ensnare does slow down both movement and attack speed, its effects aren't as deleterious to the opponent as one would think. When it comes down to mass muta vs mass muta, neither player moves his mutas around much, thus kind of making the movement decrease useless. The 18% decreased attack speed is nice, and can easily turn the tide when both sides have a similar number of mutalisks. However, in this case great had both the larva and gas advantage, so even with ensnare Soulkey faced a risk of losing the crucial battle.

In my eyes, queens are best used when both players have similar-sized mutalisk fleets. Scourge use is still important, but if we discount the fact that both players will be using scourge effectively, the attack speed decrease given by ensnare gives the queen user an advantage. Later on, queens may be used for broodling and parasite, which would make breaking lurker lines easier. However, ultralisks can serve the same purpose but with more offensive powers. Out of all the units in the zerg arsenal, the queen remains the most confusing one to me, since it's not one I can logically deconstruct--trial and error and much testing in the future will have to suffice, it seems.

                                                                                    -swanized

Teching to devourers takes longer than it does to tech to queens, but in aerial battles they are more useful. Since acid spores stack up to 9, a mutalisk fleet with 4 or 5 devourers will make short work of one that does not have any devourer support, even if the opposing fleet is much larger. In the battle for air supremacy, the devourer is a Zerg's best weapon, and it is treated as such here. In this game, I do believe Soulkey made the right choice to tech to devourers. With his devourers, he won the first air battle at great's natural easily.

                                                                                    -swanized

great chose the third tech route. Skipping greater spire tech completely, he went straight for defilers, supported by two defiler mounds. Now, defiler tech definitely is the slowest. To make defilers viable against air you need both plague and consume, making defiler tech costly and slow. However, it is the most powerful of the three choices listed above, since after upgraded defilers get out, mutalisks are useless. Plague makes them very weak, and dark swarm prevents them from being able to defend against zerglings. Defilers are a good choice if you have an economic advantage, and that's what great does. Despite losing the air battle, he doesn't take economic damage since he has so many spores out, and simultaneous hydralisk teching means lurkers prevent zerglings from doing anything.

Speaking of lurkers, they should be simultaneously researched alongside defilers. While hydralisks aren't that useful in ZvZ (in small numbers, they absolutely die to mutalisks), lurkers are insanely useful. Two lurkers completely stop ravaging zergings, and if supported by spores they can't be picked off by mutalisks since, well, they can't be seen. great's faster lurker tech allowed him to defend his bases for low costs while using the resources saved to macro up large armies. As if lurkers themselves aren't awesome enough, swarmed lurkers are pretty much invincible to everything but ultralisks. After defense is sufficient and a player is looking to take map control with his ground-based army, hydralisks and zerglings should be used to escort lurkers out into the open. As with all other Zerg matchups, roving cracklings should be used to scout and take down undefended expansions as well, a fact that great made clear in his post-game interview.

As if Soulkey weren't behind enough, he decided to make offensive guardians. We all know how absurdly bad guardians are in ZvT, since they end up dying to one or two wraiths. The same is true for lategame ZvZ. Guardians get wiped out by scourge, and later on by swarmed hydralisks. Spending 150/200 to assault two or three drones is definitely not worth it when the expensive guardian is killed by a 25/75 pair of scourge. While I do agree with Soulkey's defensive use of guardians to snipe great's defilers, he should have left him at home to defend his bases. I really don't see any use for offensive guardians in ZvZ (unless you're so far ahead) since guardians are slow, expensive, and take a long time to make... while scourge are cheap, fast, and spawn quickly.

                                                                                    -swanized

Lastly, the ultralisk. As with other matchups, ultralisks shouldn't hit the field until a player has sufficient gas (5 bases) to sustain them. In ZvZ, the ultralisk is the game-ending unit. Once ground-based armies become the focus of the game, it's almost impossible for one zerg to break another zerg's swarm-supported lurker line without ultralisks. With their 400 HP they can tank quite a bit of damage, allowing the rest of the forces afterward to mop up.

                                                                                    -swanized

With each unit individually stated, how does one bring them all together into the lategame? I can see both the devourer and defiler tech routes being viable options--devourer for a more control-oriented play into expansion and defiler for a player that already has ascertained a larva/economy advantage through the midgame. After both sides have defilers and lurkers to defend, it comes down to protecting expansions and macroing up ground armies. Guardians can be employed defensively to snipe key opposing units like defilers, but used offensively they are just a use of precious gas. In the end, should one player gain a significant advantage over the other, he should just tech to ultralisks and break through the defender's lurker line, ending the game.

Weirdly enough, I see lategame ZvZ evolving into something like TvT. While TvT focuses more early on about ground control, later on it comes down to dropships. This parallels the ZvZ shift from air to ground (TvT it goes ground to air), since degrees of map control in TvT change between the ground-based and aerial-based phases. Vultures are like zerglings--they run around trying to harass enemy bases and miners. Hydralisks and lurkers act akin to goliaths and tanks as the ground force, with the hydralisk/goliath supporting the more immobile siege unit (lurker/tank). And if the game drags out long enough, battlecruisers/ultralisks force the end.

Interesting, wouldn't you say?