[Apth]

Originally Posted by NXZ

Guys I need help . My Zerg vs Terran is pretty solid vs Marine Tank (I play a ling/infestor style with the occasional incorporation of speedroaches) however last night i played 2 practice games with DaNoSauR who went mech both games.

http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=704

Things I Liked
There were some reasonably sexy techswitches in there, and your mechanics are solid as hell. Creep spread wasn't bad either.

Macro Hatch
You could probably have thrown down a macro hatch around the 12 minute mark. You had a decent bit of bank, you wern't saving for anything particular as Hive tech was still a ways off, and all your injects were spot on. If Resources > Production, More Production.

Econ Advantage
Most of that game you spent taking the economic advantage - for example, your response to your opponent taking a third was to expand, rather than any sort of aggression.

When you take an economic advantage over your opponent, you should look for opportunities to trade armies. This is because proportional to economy, your opponents units are worth more than yours - you have a better economy, so you're able to replenish your army easier.

Once you get to high pop/200v200 engagements, this advantage fades quickly.

Immobility of Mech
Mech suffers from deathball syndrome - a mech army sticks together, or it dies. Because each element of mech relies so heavily on the others (Hellions and tanks need Thors protection from air, Thors and Tanks need Hellions to protect from lings, etc) your opponent is unable to divide his army.

So put your opponent in a position where he has to do the one thing he can't do.

There was a decent bit of harassment in the late-late game, with roaches hitting your opponent's outlying expo's, but this could have happened a *lot* earlier.
Zerg has a huge mobility advantage over mech, which you didn't really utilise. This flows nicely on to my final point:

Immobility of Brood Lords
The moment you tech'ed to Broods, you lost your mobility advantage, and it forced you to engage your opponent head on or risk a base trade. This is a decent position to be in the lategame, but the entire game leading up to that you should have been taking advantage of your mobility.

Overall
IMO, you played this match far too passively. Yes, your opponent let you sit back and macro up a storm, but that doesn't mean you should let him do the same. Your opponents unit composition gave you the opportunity for aggression and harassment - you didn't necessarily need to try and kill him, but he was able to expand uncontested until the very late stages of the game.

You want your opponent to feel penned into his base. You want him to feel like expanding is an exercise in futility. You want him to feel like you're taking the rest of the map while he sits in his corner making sure his siege tanks are neatly overlapping.

./2c, hope that helps. ggwp

Quick Comments

	xGKingdelete:
	SLCN.NXZ:	thank you!!!!

[SLCN.NXZ]

Originally Posted by Apth

Things I Liked
There were some reasonably sexy techswitches in there, and your mechanics are solid as hell. Creep spread wasn't bad either.

Macro Hatch
You could probably have thrown down a macro hatch around the 12 minute mark. You had a decent bit of bank, you wern't saving for anything particular as Hive tech was still a ways off, and all your injects were spot on. If Resources > Production, More Production.

Econ Advantage
Most of that game you spent taking the economic advantage - for example, your response to your opponent taking a third was to expand, rather than any sort of aggression.

When you take an economic advantage over your opponent, you should look for opportunities to trade armies. This is because proportional to economy, your opponents units are worth more than yours - you have a better economy, so you're able to replenish your army easier.

Once you get to high pop/200v200 engagements, this advantage fades quickly.

Immobility of Mech
Mech suffers from deathball syndrome - a mech army sticks together, or it dies. Because each element of mech relies so heavily on the others (Hellions and tanks need Thors protection from air, Thors and Tanks need Hellions to protect from lings, etc) your opponent is unable to divide his army.

So put your opponent in a position where he has to do the one thing he can't do.

There was a decent bit of harassment in the late-late game, with roaches hitting your opponent's outlying expo's, but this could have happened a *lot* earlier.
Zerg has a huge mobility advantage over mech, which you didn't really utilise. This flows nicely on to my final point:

Immobility of Brood Lords
The moment you tech'ed to Broods, you lost your mobility advantage, and it forced you to engage your opponent head on or risk a base trade. This is a decent position to be in the lategame, but the entire game leading up to that you should have been taking advantage of your mobility.

Overall
IMO, you played this match far too passively. Yes, your opponent let you sit back and macro up a storm, but that doesn't mean you should let him do the same. Your opponents unit composition gave you the opportunity for aggression and harassment - you didn't necessarily need to try and kill him, but he was able to expand uncontested until the very late stages of the game.

You want your opponent to feel penned into his base. You want him to feel like expanding is an exercise in futility. You want him to feel like you're taking the rest of the map while he sits in his corner making sure his siege tanks are neatly overlapping.

./2c, hope that helps. ggwp

hmmmm, yeah these are all definitely things i could've done better. The reason i applied almost no aggression in the game was that I was rushing broods so i wanted to bank as much gas as possible. I made some roaches and tried to not show him the roach count when he scanned. basically my goal was to prevent him from attacking so i could get up a massive broodlord infestor death army. However, he may have played too greedy and I could've had the option to poke a little more aggressively. i think this is more of a scouting issue, I think maybe i should keep tabs on his army size and positioning with overseers and changelings and stuff so that if he is taking his expansions to greedy I can slam out a bunch of roaches and be ok.

But definitely my goal in the game was basically save all my gas for broods and if he decides to push build tons of roaches with my built up larva and take out the push. While waiting take lots of bases. But yeah like I said I should've scouted more so that I could abuse any potential I had to make securing an expansion for him more difficult.

On the other hand, my passivity with my roaches was moreso that if i attack and he sneaks 8 hellions by (he didn't do any of that in the game which I think was the major contributor to my win) and kills my 3rd and 4th drone lines. However there were some points where he could've done that anyway so I don't know.

With the style i played in that game (fast broodlords), perhaps I should research drops and drop a few lings (don't cost gas) in his main while hitting his third with my roach army. I don't know, i feel like the style I went for encourages passivity which may or may not be a good thing.

[Apth]

Originally Posted by NXZ

With the style i played in that game (fast broodlords), perhaps I should research drops and drop a few lings (don't cost gas) in his main while hitting his third with my roach army. I don't know, i feel like the style I went for encourages passivity which may or may not be a good thing.

Absent aggression, your opponent is able to sit back and think about what you're doing. Aggression - even if is just the occasional ling drop - takes your opponents mind off you, making fast broodlords even more effective when they hit, because your opponent isn't as prepared.

Again, you don't have to be actually doing damage to your opponent - I feel that small amounts of aggression is still infinitely more beneficial than no aggression at all.

[Nemo]

@FuturBoy : Analysis here : http://www.twitch.tv/nemoulysses/b/313929169

Sorry the sound is still too low. But I hope you will get the genera idea.

Summary

• Make a gas sooner if you want to 3 gate robo
• Always be sure to have your zealots in front of your army
• As soon as you have sieged him, expand because you had a huge lot of money
• When expanding make as many units as you can from your existing buildings. Don't go 6 gates on one base. You begin to add more gates when your expand is begining to produce minerals and minerals is going high
• Take a Third before bing mined utin your main. You never want to be on only one mining base.
• Don't over tech. Begin by colossi on 2 base then blink when you take your 3rd.
• As you see charge is not useful against Force Field and Colossus combo ...

I think you are better than your opponent. He just play simpler than you did.

Quick Comments

xGKingdelete:

[Paroxysm]

http://drop.sc/160389

Ok, so lately I have been struggling in all of my matchups, but I played this game against someone who is decent in a clan war. I felt that I played alright since I am just coming back to starcraft 2 and he is at a high standard, however there are a few things I don't understand. I want to pick up some flaws in my play, and I had a look at it myself, but i'm uncertain where I could improve some aspects. I felt as though I was incredibly far behind for the majority of the game, but that I couldn't push out due to the fear of being completely destroyed. Hopefully you guys will be able to help me out

Oh, it is a ZvT, Metalopolis, I'm Masters, he's apparently a GM player. Pretty standard play from both players I believe.

Thanks in advance guys

[Next_rim]

Here are two replays:

1) Random who turned zerg, and dropped the shit out of me.
2) Over9000 banelings, and i BARELY won. After every engagement I thought I was going to lose this one. You get to see my staple 3-3-3 carriers in this one

http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=773
http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=774

Need the following feedback:

1) How to deal with such zerg when you are on the ground
2) What can I improve to not get crushed so miserably by every damn baneling on the map (sim city, scouting, idk)

[Apth]

Originally Posted by Paroxysm

http://drop.sc/160389

Oh, it is a ZvT, Metalopolis, I'm Masters, he's apparently a GM player. Pretty standard play from both players I believe.

Thanks in advance guys

I'm a bit stuck on this one, tbh.

Some high-level Zerg feedback would be appreciated.

[ROOTPetraeus]

Originally Posted by Paroxysm

http://drop.sc/160389

Ok, so lately I have been struggling in all of my matchups, but I played this game against someone who is decent in a clan war. I felt that I played alright since I am just coming back to starcraft 2 and he is at a high standard, however there are a few things I don't understand. I want to pick up some flaws in my play, and I had a look at it myself, but i'm uncertain where I could improve some aspects. I felt as though I was incredibly far behind for the majority of the game, but that I couldn't push out due to the fear of being completely destroyed. Hopefully you guys will be able to help me out

Oh, it is a ZvT, Metalopolis, I'm Masters, he's apparently a GM player. Pretty standard play from both players I believe.

Thanks in advance guys

Firstly he's a Masters player
Anyway, here goes.


You start off fine, pretty solid opening. However you take all 4 gas geysers REALLY early. This can be good for quick muta/infestor play but your lair isn't early enough to make that work. Because of this, you are really behind in minerals.


Here is where the game starts to go downhill. You waste a lot of units because your roaches block the banelings from connecting. When terran push up that ramp a flank from the lower ground is often effective. Even though you manage to clean up, the terran has the gold base up now and your fourth base isn't even started. Also, look at the amount of gas you have. This is all stockpiled from that early 4 gas and most of it should be minerals.


Your muta's are really late because of the amount of roaches you made. The terran made the switch to marine tank quite early so you probably could have stayed on ling/bane. Its 4 base to 4 base but you don't have enough drones and your fourth isn't mining at all. About 80 workers is good, 70 is too little.
Also you should be getting Hive around this time.


A lot of your engagements seemed rushed. In this fight, you wasted half your lings before pulling back...
When the Terran is in a position like that, don't feel pressured to engage. You can wait for him to advance or even counter attack.


By this point, the game is over. Your muta's haven't done any harass even though his main is virtually undefended. You lose your fourth and he still maintains the position on the left side where you keep engaging.

Overall I think you need to be more aggressive, especially when you are behind in economy. Taking that gold, especially as an orbital leaves you open to counter attacks. That game you were really behind because of the gas at the start but I think improved engagements could have brought you back.

Looking back, most of this feedback is quite negative... but I hope it helps!

Quick Comments

	mGGAequitas:	pretty pictures
	Apth:
	Paroxysm:	I think I love you <3
	mGGDaedalus:	too much gas early makes such a huge difference to a game
	Nemo:	Very good analysis

[Paroxysm]

That's really good advice! It's a great start for helping me to improve Pet! When is a good time to take my gases, if i may ask? And yes, the engagements were incredibly rushed. I felt as though I was under too much pressure, and that If i didn't do anything I would lose anyway.

According to spook this guy is better than Dano, so I thought he was GM haha :S

Thanks again Pet!

Quick Comments

mGGDaedalus:

try taking 3 instead of 4 and adding the 4th later

[ROOTPetraeus]

Originally Posted by Paroxysm

That's really good advice! It's a great start for helping me to improve Pet! When is a good time to take my gases, if i may ask? And yes, the engagements were incredibly rushed. I felt as though I was under too much pressure, and that If i didn't do anything I would lose anyway.

According to spook this guy is better than Dano, so I thought he was GM haha :S

Thanks again Pet!

Um really not sure about timings >.< ZvP is the only MU where I have timings for anything at the moment... Maybe check out some replays from players better than myself :S But since there are a lot of different openers for ZvT (I do double evo ling festor) its hard to give standard gas timings.

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by Next_rim

Here are two replays:

1) Random who turned zerg, and dropped the shit out of me.
2) Over9000 banelings, and i BARELY won. After every engagement I thought I was going to lose this one. You get to see my staple 3-3-3 carriers in this one

http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=773
http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=774

Need the following feedback:

1) How to deal with such zerg when you are on the ground
2) What can I improve to not get crushed so miserably by every damn baneling on the map (sim city, scouting, idk)

For the first replay:
1)You need sentries verse mass ling. Watch the replay, keep an eye on the sentry count. You had three when you moved out, which isn't going to do much verse 100 zerglings and banelings, especially after he baited out 4 forcefields.
When you expand, you have to have a sim city as soon as possible. Building the sim city also takes up minerals, leaving you with excess gas to build more sentries. Sentries. Just always ask yourself "What would happen if he ran in with 30 speedlings right now?".
If you do end up losing some of your early game sentries, you have to rebuild them. When I 1gate/3gate expand, I usually aim for about 6 sentries, but you can go for even more if you want.

2)Army compositions. Once he gets banelings, it gets a bit tricky. I myself have trouble against zergs who do this style. If you split up your army, the lings get more surface area. If you clump up your army, the banelings destroy everything. With the gateway army you had just then, unless you did really really perfect forcefields, you couldn't engage that. You need some kind of AOE. High templar or collosus. Also, against army compositions with lots of zerglings, you want good attack and defense upgrades. So double forge would help a lot.

2)Scouting. Try to get a scout of his main base as soon as you can. Your first observer, at about 13 mins, saw a swarm of lings and banes with some overlords. That's too late. You need an earlier observer, or a hallucinated phoenix to scout.
Key things you should be looking for when you scout:

• Does he have a third base? (if not, he's either going all-in, or teching really fast, most likely to mutalisks)
• What is his lair timing? (if not, then you know 100% that he'll be relying on speedlings and roaches for a long time. He won't have any scary tech units such as mutas or infestors for a long time)
• Does he have any T2 buildings? (spire, infestation pit, hydra den)
• Is he taking a lot of his gas geysers? (if he does, it usually means he's teching really fast to infestors, or going for lots of mutas. Either way, you have to pressure him as soon as possible to stop that. Sometimes you can even just win if he's really greedy. Note that in this game, he took all of his geysers but didn't tech really fast or go for mutas. That was a mistake on his part, resulting in him having 1k extra gas)

So anyway, if you scouted him earlier, you would have noticed no roach warren. No roaches means you can just get a bunch of gateways, +1 zealots, and go kill him.
He gets an early baneling nest, as well. If you scouted that, you would have known he was going for a ling bane overlord drop style, and prepared accordingly.

Watch the replay again, and look for points where you could have just moved out and killed him. Note that on these spawn positions on antiga, you already have a pylon close to his third at the edge of your base. IMO antiga is incredibly protoss favoured in these positions.


In Summary
Sorry pretty tired atm couldn't be bothered to do a proper analysis. I hope all of the above makes sense.

• no roach warren means there is a timing where you can just go and kill him.
• sim city, don't lose your sentries
• you have to scout what he's doing and play a style that "counters" it

Quick Comments

Nemo:

Awesome as usual

[Apth]

Bout time I had one of my replays in here.

Linky:
http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=779

Not quite sure what I should do differently here. I should have waited for my upgrades to finish, because when we engaged it was +2 attack vs my nothing, but I reckon I still would have lost.

Positioning wasn't fantastic either, and those forcefields really butchered me, but comparing our armies as he was walking across the map - in a hypothetical situation where I engaged in the open, I wouldn't have had enough.

Cheers dudes.

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by Apth

Bout time I had one of my replays in here.

Linky:
http://www.sc2sea.com/replays.php?do=viewreplay&id=779

Not quite sure what I should do differently here. I should have waited for my upgrades to finish, because when we engaged it was +2 attack vs my nothing, but I reckon I still would have lost.

Positioning wasn't fantastic either, and those forcefields really butchered me, but comparing our armies as he was walking across the map - in a hypothetical situation where I engaged in the open, I wouldn't have had enough.

Cheers dudes.

As soon as he walked up that ramp it was game over. The way to beat heavy heavy sentry all ins like that is to have a lot of roach ling and engage in the open, preferably on creep. In fact, that's pretty much how you beat every protoss all in. Except the ones with high tech like collosus/void rays.

It's true that in this game you didn't have enough stuff to engage it at that point. I think it's because you were setting yourself up for the midgame too much. You can't really tech that hard with double upgrades if he's going to do some gateway all in like that.


You ended up having too much gas. I'm not sure exactly how many geysers zerg are meant to get, but I'm guessing 3. It's not a problem if you have too many minerals - those just go to zerglings. But if you have too much gas, you cant produce enough units to defend.


I think a lot of it came down to scouting. You didn't really have any idea that he was going to do that until he pushed out to your base with a giant army, so you were playing blind. I think you need to get two overlords near his base, one sitting in his third to suicide scout later, and one checking the gas at the natural. You had one near the gas at the natural, but you weren't using it to check the gas timings.

If you did have the overlord there, you would have seen that he took those gas way early. Normally this indicates some kind of heavy tech play, usually stargate or DTs. But in this game he just used the gas to get a crapton of sentries.

Since no stargate units or DTs appeared, you have to wonder where the gas is going. I would be thinking some kind of collosus timing, or some kind of all in with lots of sentries.

I have no idea what I'm talking about. Get a sacrificial overlord scout so you know exactly what he's doing and can respond appropriately.


If you take a quick third against an FFE you need to drone up heavily. Watch the replay and keep an eye on the worker count. You made too many lings early. Against 2 zealot pressure you only need to have a queen and around 8 zerglings. If you made those zerglings to take down the rocks, you shouldn't hvae. You have plenty of time to take them down, you have to prioritise droning up early on. Don't miss injects!

In Summary

• Scout to know exactly what he's doing
• Don't tech up until after you've held off the all in for sure
• Don't get too much gas until when you want to tech
• Drone up as quickly as you can early on
• Hydras suck

[Apth]

Originally Posted by delete12

In Summary

• Scout to know exactly what he's doing
• Don't tech up until after you've held off the all in for sure
• Don't get too much gas until when you want to tech
• Drone up as quickly as you can early on
• Hydras suck

Yeah that makes a lot of sense. I do need to be more diligent with my scouting, but it's good to know I'm not doing anything fundamentally wrong; just minor tweaks that need to be made.

And on looking at the replay again, those early lings really did murder my econ.

Cheers dude, much appreciated

[Jaywalk]

hi guys, havent put a replay in here before. I was wondering if someone could help me with my PvP.

I felt like I should have easily won this game, but this one engage was terrible for some reason and i cant work out why, im pretty sure that lost me the game.

I actually forgot my forges so my upgrades where a bit slow, so already worked out that mistake, but im sure there's a million others.

any help would be very much appreciated.

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by ToREchoFive

hi guys, havent put a replay in here before. I was wondering if someone could help me with my PvP.

I felt like I should have easily won this game, but this one engage was terrible for some reason and i cant work out why, im pretty sure that lost me the game.

I actually forgot my forges so my upgrades where a bit slow, so already worked out that mistake, but im sure there's a million others.

any help would be very much appreciated.

Replay analysis here : http://www.twitch.tv/nemoulysses/b/316047397

Summary

• Don't make a 4 gate and expand in the same time. 4 gate, try to kill and if it fails and you think you have a opportunity to expand expand after the push
• Same with the 3rd, don't make 4 more gateways, a robotic facility and twilight council and a 3rd in the same time. You found yourself unable to make units after that
• You're not making enough units from your structures. That's your major weakness today. Make units from all your structure all the time as soon as they are ready to produce. Expand and make new structures from your excess after you produced at the maximum.

Quick Comments

	xGKingdelete:	whoops, didn't see that one. thanks for covering!
	Jaywalk:	thanks nemo, i have noticed myself doing these two things at once very often. ill work on it! should i be really constantly making units... always always?

[mGGAequitas]

http://drop.sc/167264

i'm really not sure what more i could have done in this game.
I scouted him going mass marines so i make a tonne of stalkers and try to kite his marines across the map, the only thing i see that i could have done better is keep my sentries alive (sorry delete ) to use guardian shield when the army arrived at my base. I felt my macro was pretty good I had a higher income than him once he sent his first wave of scvs. should i just have sacrificed my natural and defended with forcefield while teching to collosus or something?

thanks for any help

[Flaunt]

amazing work nemo . love the screenshots

Quick Comments

Nemo:

Thanks ! :)

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by Aequitas

http://drop.sc/167264

i'm really not sure what more i could have done in this game.
I scouted him going mass marines so i make a tonne of stalkers and try to kite his marines across the map, the only thing i see that i could have done better is keep my sentries alive (sorry delete ) to use guardian shield when the army arrived at my base. I felt my macro was pretty good I had a higher income than him once he sent his first wave of scvs. should i just have sacrificed my natural and defended with forcefield while teching to collosus or something?

thanks for any help

If you can't win a battle, don't fight it. As soon as you saw him pull scvs with his first push you should have taken probes from natural to main and sacrificed the nexus. The lost mining time would have hurt him more than it hurt you, and if he tried to move up the ramp you have forcefield.

For the second push, you had no sentries. Because you tried to kite with them in the main army. What you should have done was send the sentries home and kite with stalkers only. Stalkers can kite no stim marines because of the range/speed advantage etc you should know this. Kiting with sentries is about as effective as kiting with zealots.

Guardian shield would have nullified 40% of the damage taken. Or you could have sacrificed natural and forcefielded main. Remember that he's on one mining base as well, and already lost the SCVs he took with his army.

You didn't do any kiting with the stalkers after he moved up your ramp at the end. I think you might have been able to out micro him, or at least whittle his army a bit more and even win in that situation.

Don't get zealots against mass marine unless you have a good amount of sentries to support them. Pure stalker was the way to go, every time you warped in a zealot it died doing 0 damage.

This point is pretty important. Set up a concave with your stalkers every time you engage. Don't ball them up. If you watch the replay, sometimes the stalkers at the back weren't really shooting at the marines. Also, if you set up a concave you can pull back injured stalkers to the back line easily.

Quick Comments

	Nemo:	Grand Master taking on his time to help
	mGGAequitas:	cheers :D

[bombertaylor]

hi everyone, I am Dia leauege.

1st replay : http://drop.sc/168904

I am struggling with protoss timing push with void phinix and +1 zealot. Everytime he pushes I dont have enough roach to def.Is there anyway to counter it ?.
Even I know it's coming I still cannot def it. When I face this build on ladder, how can Zerg stop this if cannot scout out?. If Zerg sack an overlord he even behind in timing.

2nd replay http://drop.sc/168908

This one even faster because just +1 zelot with sentries.

Thank everyone.