[Paroxysm]

Alright Guys, recently I have been thinking about strategies in ZvZ that could be used instead of the increasingly popular Mass Roach, Roach Hydra, Ling Bling or Roach Infestor builds. I was thinking about the underused Overseers in game, and how they never seem to be made unless the opponent goes for invisible units (which doesnt happen in zvz). Now, mid - late game zerg has anywhere around 3 + hatcheries which are the ONLY sources of units.

The important part of what I'm trying to say here is. If you are going in for the kill, the chances that you will do so much more damage increase at an incredible rate if you contaminate his 'x' amount of hatcheries just before your armies engage.

For example, if your opponent has 3 hatcheries, and you have 6 overseers with 75 mana, as your army pushes out you can contaminate his hatcheries and prevent any further larva spawning. If you do this twice during the fight, it is unlikely that they will have any reinforcements. You will however, and your army will be far larger by the time both rounds of contaminate are finished.

This is just a basic view of it and it is all THEORETICAL. If anyone is interested in furthering this style of ZvZ it would be extremely helpful and the results could be gamechanging (but they also could fail epically...)

If you have any thoughts on this matter please post below!

tl;dr - I am investigating the use of Overseers and their spell 'Contaminate' in ZvZ games to potentially come up with a new strategy. If you are interested in helping, leave a post.

[Satu]

I have seen overseers be useful in ZvZ, but overmaking them really sacrifices army value.

Worst case scenario is if your opponent was just happening to make army units as you were making overseers, seeing as all your recent gas has been invested into overseers and not army units, you lose.

So its a bit of a risk, unless you already have a large army advantage, in which case you could win without the overseers in many cases.

[Benji]

6 Overseers is 600 Gas

When you're on 3 base, the limiting factor in building units is most likely gas

600 gas = 24 Roaches = 48 Supply

If you're significantly ahead and your army can beat his army with this gas investment, your best bet is to simply keep your injects going and rally in your own speed roaches and simply beat him with overwhelming forces.

If you're both maxed out and are banking money, you're also banking larva so this strategy will have little effect, and will hurt your ability to remax.

Overseers are great when you're doing timings and are about to suprise him with an attack, it limits his ability to react and defend.

If you have a signifncant lead, it can also work, but if you have a significant lead, dumping the gas into Roaches or Infestors will have a similar effect. Its (in my opinion) not something that will work in a standard game consistantly.

[Paroxysm]

What about if you are maxed and about to push out. You will have (generally) a rising mineral and gas count. Would it be viable at all?

[Benji]

Originally Posted by TAParoxysm

What about if you are maxed and about to push out. You will have (generally) a rising mineral and gas count. Would it be viable at all?

If you're maxed, they're proberbly maxed too. When you're maxed, you end up pooling larva anyway, So you're basically trading the ability to remax as soon as your army dies for your opponants ability to create units about a minute later (Depends how much larva he has around). Keep in mind as well that even though you've stopped production, in the long term you've spent money that only delays the spending of his money. He still has that 600 gas to invest into Tech or Upgrades regardless if he can make units or not which is bad in the long run for you.

Call me crazy, but the only way I can think of this working is with perhaps a baneling drop onto the larva to clear it all away at the same time, but I think that's simply going a bit far, and if you spend your APM doing this, you risk losing the actual battle, which negates your entire plan.

[Paroxysm]

I see, I see. When you put it that way it does seem really impractical to even attempt it...

[Apth]

Contaminating hatcheries is only effective in the early game. Why?

Early game, a one or two unit difference in forces makes a huge difference. A round or two of contaminates on your opponents hatcheries could very well mean victory.

Late game, a handful of units is less important - more important are composition, upgrades, and positioning. A round of contaminates on your opponents hatcheries will not guarantee you any advantage, with a huge gas investment on your part.

Rushing to lair tech early game and investing in an overseer with leave you with significantly less gas than usual. Your resource allocation to your early-game units is going to be mineral heavy; you may even need to skip zergling speed.

I'd suggest trying some sort of queen/slowling composition, with the objective of constant pressure as soon as the first contaminate is up. Not sure what your mid-game transition would be.

/2c

[crAzerk]

As Benji has mentioned, utilizing Contaminate is probably only viable for timing pushes. All too often I have fallen prey to a very simple but effective technique that I summarize VERY generally as such:

Drone hard to get a decent economy
Start Contaminate spamming (with 2 overseers), even better if you can time it with larva injects though that's usually based on luck.
While doing so, start massing up an army.
Push and kill.

Very effective, already existent strategy. And as mentioned, not too effective towards the mid-late game.

[Cordance]

How does contaminate vs upgrades do just as a general question across the field.

[HDPhoenix]

You Tube

You Tube

Old game between Soft (nGenMaster) and GLaDe (FXOmOOnGLaDe)

[Benji]

Originally Posted by Cordance

How does contaminate vs upgrades do just as a general question across the field.

It's not bad, if you get an overseer to scout, contaminating evos is one of the best things to do.

[WakingLife]

contaminate vs. upgrades is really good, it generally screws up timing attacks that are based on roach speed w/ +1 or burrow, also contaminating an pathogen glands can give u a small window to attack and if its past the first 30 seconds of research and his dumped into infestors, it'll make them useless for 30 seconds