[PanDMonium]

I ran a search on this topic before posting, so I hope this is not too redundant:

I'm on TW/KR and on the verge of breaking through to gold, but every once in a while I'll come across a player that makes me wonder why they're in my league. These terrans are making me neurotic. Trying to anticipate their next move and not overspend on static defense, all the while trying to establish a strong economy is making me nuts.

When they get the hellions out and go straight into cloaked banshee, it seems nearly impossible to keep all my drones and queens alive. If I buy roaches, it still does nothing about the banshees, and then they start bombing my spines from above. This replay for example, is one where after I finally am able to hold off the early harassment, I still end up at a huge economic disadvantage. Also, what does one do about that kind of composition, thors and banshees with bio?

http://www.sc2replayed.com/replay-videos/18569

I know that I shouldn't have let him get the gold, but I feel that if I pushed any earlier, he would have crushed my force. Also, did I just cut drones too early?

Been looking for replays / VODs of players that do really well fending this kind of stuff off without sacrificing too much of an economic advantage. Maybe my macro just isn't good enough to contend with this issue.

[Ruski]

I just have to say I am not a total expert on all things sc2 and zerg especially seeing I am a bronze protoss and all but I looked at your replay and come up with a couple of things that could help you out. I am not going to get into zerg timings though because I don't really know that many.

Scouting: With your first overlord you should scout your close air, use a drone to check your cross position cause drones are faster than overlords, by the time that your first drone scout went out your overlord would have seen where your opponent was. Also spotting the gas going down you know that your opponent is not going for an early expand and you can decide whether to tech up or not.

Send a ling to scout your opponents front, see if he has expanded and see what you can see behind wall off if there is a tech lab on barracks or reactor. If you did you would have seen the switch or presence of the factory and would have put steps forward to counteract that.

Spread some of your over lords and a few lings around so you know when your opponent is expanding, if you had an overlord just in range of the gold expansions where anti-air couldn’t get you, you would have spotted the gold expand landing. Map awareness is key, you might spot something your opponent didn’t want you to see and react to your scout.

Creep spread was fairly good but if you used up some of your queen’s extra energy it would have been a lot more widespread. Creep spread is your friend: it makes some people nervous walking on extensive creep spread. You also are aware of whats coming if your opponent walks on your creep, giving you that extra bit of time to react to whats about to come.

Macro: Missed a lot of larvae injects, you had so much energy on your queens. I do not play zerg but I think you can only use 1 larvae inject on a hatch at one time (so you can’t use two injects on one hatch at once) so you really only need one queen per hatch doing your injects.

You also had so much money and hardly any larvae to spend it on, its ok once you get a couple of bases up to pop down a couple macro hatches.

You should also always be one base up over terran, it gets really risky for a zerg if terran and zerg are on even bases. Every time he expands and its safe to do so you can do it too, you can expect to be little re-enforcements when an expansion is going up in early game so punish them for being greedy.

Gameplay: You overreacted a bit when you got attacked with the banshee, with 3 spore’s in each base you only need a couple of queens that early on to manage a couple of banshees. At that time with no expansion you should not see too many banshees if they are also making hellions.

You need to attack and try to deny bases going up especially with terrans on gold bases. All they need to do is send some scv's and call down a whole bunch of mules and they will get a massive economic advantage. A little more aggression would have been great, it seemed like after that first push with his 4 hellions and banshee that you just completely turtled up.

Last thing I want to point out is you had a few mutas made and out about 30-45 seconds before that large terran push, best thing about muta is their speed and manoeuvrability. With terran mech its very slow and clunky; harassing with muta is the best way to go with mech. You could get into the back of your opponents main sniping off all their scvs, making their army out of position. In your match your opponents marines had no upgrades except combat shield and no stim, so makes those mutas survive a little longer if your opponent decided to pull his marines back.

Would have been nice to see a few banes used on last push, would have melted so many marines than you could use the rest of you lings and roaches to clean up the rest of the thors. Would have been nice to see some hydras too knowing that your opponent was capable of having a few banshees on the field, hydras are dam strong especially on creep.

Quick Comments

	PanDMonium:
	mGGAequitas:

[sRDreaM]

First of I wanted to say wow that terran was good for his league anyways I do see a few mistakes from you

You started building 2 spores so quickly without any idea what the Terran was going so that was about 250 minerals gone inc 2 drones. What you could've done was sneak an overlord near his mineral line to see if his on 2 gas or 1 gas and move it away as soon as you see it so he doesn't spot your overlord on the minimap. If you think his going banshee then 1 spore is should be enough.

You built your 2nd spine crawler at your main base and you saw what happen when the hellions came in I usually see zergs build it at their natural and wall off their ramp with queens when they see incoming hellions.

You overreacted and built more spores you saw his banshee and he didn't reveal cloak so that could've indicate it's not a cloak banshee mmm you also built 3 evolution chamber O_O

I can't say anymore because I'm not a zerg player but thats what I usually see from my replays when I vs Zerg.

Quick Comments

	Ruski:	Yeah the spine on top of ramp I forgot to add
	MooZfY:
	PanDMonium:

[Akilos]

you did over-react with the spore crawlers and your 1st overlord should be scouting the closest spawn possible you could have put zergling or two in the xel naga towers just to keep check in case an early push does come out from the terran base you could have also gotten alot more units out harass a little bit along side trying to not miss an inject on your hatcheries and like ruski said punish anyone who gets greedy .

Quick Comments

PanDMonium:

[TASlowHands]

Best to take things one at a time when you consider how to beat early harassment. Dont stress. The most important thing under pressure is to stay calm.

With both harassment options, hellions and banshees, queens are your friend. I like to have 4. 2 to spread creep and 2 to inject. Now to make sure we dont lose too much to hellions we want a wall off to make sure they dont dive up our ramp. Some zergs like to use queens to block their ramp, im not a fan, what I do is place an evolution chamber at the bottom of my ramp towards the front and then a spine next to it

it looks like this.




1 queen is in the main injecting to make 4 queens. I picked shattered temple on purpose because its a wide open natural that needs 2 spines to defend as I show here

This is pretty good at defending hellions. If he dives hellions past this his hellions will take a lot of damage, to the extent where a few lings along with the queens could pretty easily kill them.

The beauty of this kind of wall is that you now have an evo chamber anyway, so indirectly you are prepared for banshees as you have 4 queens and the option to build spores. I dont build spores unitl I see banshees, either with an overlord scout, on the minimap or worst case, in my base.

Now dont overact with static defense. 2 spines should be more than enough for the hellions + lings or roaches. since you already have 4 queens try and do just 1 spore per base and get lair ASAP. We really dont wanna throw down more than 2 spores if possible. However if hes making a lot of banshees like more than 3 then add more spores and queens. Try and transfuse weak queens where possible, losing them is bad, you should have good amounts of energy on the 2 queens you built to spread creep/defend.

Try not to build blind spores, remember spores build pretty quick too so if a banshee comes in without you scouting it, which is the worst case scenario dont panic, first attack with your 4 queens to determine if he got cloak or not. If he didnt, no spores are needed yet, if he does have cloak transfer your drones and immediately build a spore in both mineral lines, they should finish in time. Remember you have 4 queens so you only need spores in case of cloak banshees or mass cloakless banshees (as in 4+)

Now if hes getting cute and harassing in the main with banshees and the nat with hellions at the same time dont worry, leave all your ground units to supplement your wall and spine(s) and concentrate on killing the banshees with the queens. Trust me if you do that you'll have an unhappy terran that just lost his banshees and hellions.

This general simcity/defensive posture will hold pretty much any hellion banshee harassment.

Quick Comments

PanDMonium:

Excellent advice, thank you.

[FLuX]

I won't write too much.

Generally, build spine crawler at 5:00 if you're denied scouting. Run a ling up his ramp as soon as your first 4 initial lings (which you didn't build) pop, so that you can get a scout on what units he's building.

With banshees, queens are enough. If he has cloak, then throw down spores. 4 queens on two base is good as was mentioned by another poster; 2 for injects, 2 for creep.
No ling speed. Ling speed is essential for map control, and stops hellions from taking the map.
Zerg's strength is their reactive nature; so you have to know what your opponent is doing. When he came at you with 8 thors, you didn't stand a chance with what you had.
You also made a baneling nest, even though you scouted mech. Best thing to do is infestation pit, with both infestor upgrades researched as soon as lair pops. NP his thors and make them kill each other/his army. You'll take out his push, then you can counter-attack with your roaches while taking a 4th, etc etc.

I'd write more but there's apart from this, there's not much else. Remember your race's strengths, weaknesses; and know your opponent's races strengths and weaknesses.

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PanDMonium:

[Testie]

i found gas first helions into cloack banshee expand is very good agains zerg

[Easy]

Im around Top silver- Gold on the korean server and Terrans are really good there. Something I figgured out is that with the gasless 5 queen build of spanishiwa you can hold it off pretty easy buying static defense and using your queens to move around.

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HDPhoenix:

This right here is the easiest and most efficient way to do it.

[HDPhoenix]

Just want to note that going reactor hellions into banshees is a very expensive build, and he will not have much else. As you can't attack with hatchery units (can't shoot air), you're left defending so defend like a pro. Having 3 queens and 2 spines will shut down most run bys, and even if they roast many many drones, you should still be ahead as you've been just droning constantly.

Get your 48 drones, go from 1 gas into 4, get upgrades then push with ling/roach/infestor with upgrades

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Ruski: