2v2 is fun.

A strategy I "invented", might have been out before but never saw it before when doing it the first time(Did it like 6months or more ago the first time,but well it was similar in 1on1):

As PZ-Team vs ZX Team on some maps I go instantly with my first probe and wall the ramp of the zerg of with 2 pylons + forge with when on 10 supply. Ally goes 6/7 pool.
After that I build one canon to keep the Z ally in his base and go and build pylons at the other guys ramp and make some canons to crush the wallin so the lings get in.
Also nice is that overlords help with the sight

it's a pretty strong strategy, and it's hard to stop unless the other team has a zerg with them. if you're vs. a terran though, it can easily be stopped by bunker play. if you're playing vs. protoss/terran, both of them should be able to get up either bunker + forge himself and get some defensive cannons up.

Sorry might be my english but I don`t get it:

I think it`s best vz Z and X ? Unless = if not?

So you think it`s good only vs Z and X or ...?

Just trying to improve my english even more, I did realize that I still make some big mistakes.

time and i played like 15 2s one time going 13-2 just messing people up big time by 10 pooling w/ 6 lings and chronoboosting out 3 zealots and attacking with them. it never straight up wins, but it does so much damage.

Pretty strong and could probably get you to diamond/masters, but after that it will fail pretty badly. Every zerg in masters either 11 overpools or 10 pools, meaning there will be zerglings out before your cannons finish. I like where your thinking is going though.

And of course, there's always the chance your opponent can hold off a 7 pool with probes/scvs.

YES! I'm almost considering 10 pooling every game because of this. Pumping drones after a 10 pool 6 lings doesn't set you that far back. I usually 11 overpool and make 6 lings, which pay for themselves in one way or another. It's only natural to go to a 10 pool, which has a higher risk/reward.

10 pool with ol before pool isnt gunna cripple you and lets you do good pressure yeah

there is also a new 10 pool build meant for zvz some guy posted on TL that is supposed to somehow beat 14 pool speedling. i havent seen it in action yet, but sounds interesting. loses to banes obv.

also 10 pool baneling/slow ling rush can be very good when used together with a zealot rush.

ninash, it's a good strategy vs. zerg i guess. but if the other player pulls a few probes and such they should be able to hold it. that said, i've lost to that strategy a few times for sure, and it's tough to stop.

Wow... probably one of the most intense games I've played in a while.

I COMPLETELY **** up my opening because I was ****ing with pandora or something and didn't resaturate a gas when I had to... leading to my 6 infestor timing attack becoming a 4 infestor super late timing attack. And then I let him off the hook with few to no units so many times, but in the end... things got interesting.

Featured at the 30 min mark of this game is a 200 supply zerg army straight up engaging a 200 supply protoss army and killing the entire thing. I know. I too was amazed.

http://drop.sc/38816

oh and i know i made a quintillion mistakes in the game (not attacking when i could just go win, not breaking the rocks and getting those 12 and 6 o'clock expansions, no map vision, LOL creep spread, etc.), but would appreciate if anyone has any comments about my overall decision making.

this is a very new macro zvp style for me so i was just sort of concentrating on macroing right and getting the correct unit comp... but man my lack of map vision in that game was awful same with creep. all i needed to do a few times was take that 12 and 6 expansion and it's easily over.

The baneling bombs were interesting, esp against blink stalkers. As you said, vision was one of your critical errors, and your drop tech could have done a lot for you to get an even bigger upper hand in macro, like a baneling drop in the mineral line of his 3rd/4th or something. 2 creep tumors all game lol. A lot of those engagements prob would have looked different with creep spread just between your bases, let alone out towards the middle. Overall, it was a fun game to watch. Also, stop getting pwnt in chokes when you know he's got HTs

Interesting game.

Sending your lings to his 3rd while your mutas are being annoying at the nat/main is a quick GG.

Overall vision could be improved.

There were several battles in the middle game where you had 8+ corruptors doing a whole lot of nothing. Making even a few of those into broods would have made a nice difference.

Both sides did an awful lot of comp switching, which I found odd. Though when he randomly abandons colo in favor of VRs it just happens to save him from broodlords (lol).

Do you find the infestor timing attack vs P to be good? I have never tried throwing beachballs at them offensively.

Like you said, this all goes a lot smoother when your ling/infestor push is 6 infestors worth of ITs.

Be careful/cautious when you're showing him the mutas for the first time. When muta/ling was popular (before 6gate pushes etc.) it was always a worry for me. Sometimes you can catch them unprepared, do a lot of good probe harass and it's great. He goes nuts trying to go back and forth to catch your mutas. There were some games though, where I'd fly into his base with 7-9 mutas and he'd just say "LOL K BRO" and a-move his army to my base. In your case you might have been in a tough spot if he had chosen that route. Maybe toss up an extra spine or two as you're flying across the map. If he doesn't push you can just transfer them to your third.

Once toss secures his third it's pretty much a given that his fourth is going to be free, so play accordingly and get to 5. Luckily the towers on Shakuras are placed perfectly as to show when he's trying to take one of the pocket expos. If you had held them it would have been easier to end the game. When you see one of them go up you ask yourself: Can my army kill his straight up and take out the expo?

yes-->go do it
no-->attack the opposite side natural with the fast part of your army, send the slow part behind to snipe off the pocket expo when he tries to react to the diversion. Retract diversion force if possible.

The other way to play it out would have been a heavier emphasis on drops. Like I said above, the 4th on Shakuras is essentially free once they secure the third. It's rarely defended by anything more than a cannon or two. Something that might help with the style you were playing could have been a 16 ling drop in the main, 16 ling drop at the fourth, then rove the middle with your main army. You wait to see how he reacts (usually not well) and go from there.

Combining the fungal+bane drops was a nice move.

Making a bunch of 0/0 roaches is kinda dangerous when your opponent is sitting at 3/1.

Don't run through a choke with banelings/lings when he has storm on the other side. Go straight through the middle of the map. If he doesn't come to you, you can feign into the nat and pull back down the ramp as he moves away from his expo and catch him in the open.

Obv the big mistakes have already been touched on: creep spread, map vision. Double infestation pit+roach warren blocking ultras from leaving main are minor lol-worthy mistakes.

Yeah for sure. My concentration that game (and every ZvP I've laddered recently) was just focusing on macro and unit comp with that new build. I decided I wouldn't even try to worry about a lot of the details unless they came up.

Today I'm going to start trying to incorporate harass (bane drops & more run-bys) and creep spread into the build. I'm still trying to figure where I can squeeze a 3rd queen out earlier, and I've been a bit frustrated in nailing down the gas timings vs. various toss opens (altho I think this build is safe against pretty much everything except perhaps a very aggressive 5/6 gate).

And yeah, **** HTs. I thought I had dodged all the storms like a baller in that one engagement until he landed 2 mega money shots on me that made me a very sad panda, but he lost all his HTs/archons in the process, so it was ok.

Yeah with the corruptors I felt like I just needed them cause he could smash out void rays so fast, and I didn't want to overcommit to hydras. A retech to BLs might have been good, but I felt like I was solidly ahead and wanted to just keep mashing him on the ground. If I had waited for those extra 6 corruptors before going in my first BL engagement, I prob win right there, but I was actually pretty surprised to see the VRs. I didn't think he had scouted my tech, but otoh it's a natural switch to anticipate.

Which leads to the composition switches... yeah it seemed like both of us kept trying to anticipate/counter the other's tech switches and there was some leveling going on all game. My switch to hydras was anticipating his move away from colossus, but I didn't think he could get storm up in time. I was researching burrow and burrow move as well as +3 ranged thinking storm was coming SOON, but didn't have it ready in time to expect it so quick. As it stood, I attack 10 seconds earlier and he has 0 storms and just dies.

He blindly countered the BLs I think (I'd h ave to rewatch from his vision to check for sure), but after seeing corruptors used in that one engagement, a tech switch to BLs is inevitable. He doesn't really need to see it to know it's coming. He also reacted to the ultras well (altho maybe made too many zealots considering I had banes and +3 melee), but my overall macro was just too far ahead of his for it to really matter at that point.

I finally had to admit to myself last week that my ZvP is garbage and I need to stop stubbornly trying the same style all the time, so I'm basically building from the ground up and doing analysis like this. I'm pretty confident in my ZvT strategy overall (altho my ZvT macro needs a lot of work), and my ZvZ is pretty good... but my ZvP decision making simply needs to be completely reworked.

I really like the infested terran attack. If it fails, all you lost is energy. It has a very nice synergy with the tech switch to mutalisks and lets me drone massively behind it, giving up any economic edge I lent him by going for the 2 base attack. It is supposed to hit with 6 infestors (not 4) a bit earlier than that, so that game isn't really a great example of the attack done properly. Sometimes you get lucky and catch a zealot/sentry ball out in the open, chain fungal it and then your +1 lings will just pass through the red health zeals like butter.

The double infestation pit was a misclick. I have a bad habit of misclick building infestation pits when I try to build an ultra dens. My record in 1 game is 4 infestation pits. The double roach warren was because I had to kill the one blocking off my main :-(.

The roaches are basically just a meat shield. I'm still toying with the idea of getting +1 carapace rather than +1 melee. All I want the roaches to do is be around to mop up survivors/take damage while the bane drops deal out the real pain. I'm not too sure on that tech switch yet. I've seen various pros go different ways. Monster, for example, stayed on pure muta/ling/infestor vs. MC, but he also did a lot of damage with his timing, denied MC's 3rd and was clearly ahead. I'm not sure if he'd do something different otherwise. I saw one replay of Slush v. Time where Slush immediately teched to roaches (and promptly died to Time's 2 base colossus push, but he did not have drops or banes).

And yeah w/ regards to a counter to the mutas... many pros have been making massive spine walls that cover their whole side of the map when muta harassing. This is something I should probably do. However, I felt like in that game since his army was so small (I just assumed from looking at his army when I did my timing that he was going to take a 3rd with 5 gates and some tech and thankfully I was correct) that I'm pretty sure there's no way he can kill me. If he does decide to do that, I spine the **** out of whatever base he isn't attacking and go for a base trade with my muta/ling. I dunno if I win, but it's my best shot.

On drops... good point. 4 banes in an OL could have ended that game umpteen times by dropping on his 4th or 3rd. He had no spotting and no protection (he couldn't afford it either). I actually had an OL filled with banes rallied behind his main, but forgot about it the entire game lol. Focusing on harass is my next goal with this build. Will try to incorporate nydus play and/or drops. Basically I was thinking roach drop in the 4th, nydus w/ lings in the main and infestors/roaches/bane clouds trollface.jpeging behind a bunch of spines in the middle in case he decides to counter (and going ahead and attacking his nat if he pulls his whole army somewhere else).

I think overall this style of play is really hard to deal with. Double robo colossus is prob the best response and/or a 2 base colo push, but if you do enough damage/cause him to waste enough FFs, I think you can use the infestor's rebuilt energy + spines to survive long enough.

Also my SQ this game was 88. GM here I come amirite? Amirite guys?


guys?

:-(

about the upgrade thing in the above post, i think if you're planning on use bane drops as heavily as you did, you simply cannot forgo melee attack. banelings benefit exponentially from melee upgrades. Also as we talked about last night, you definitely should be bane bombing his mineral lines throughout the game, and we all know what +2 banes do to probes. perhaps rush to +2 melee and then concentrate on armor for the rest of the game?

Wow, the foo fighters are playing at blizz con.

so i feel like once terran gets a 3rd i just lose.

just played teran on shakuras. he moves out with tank/marine push at std timing. I kill every SCV in his main base with mutas while he is out on the map. i clean up the push, losing only my 3rd that just hatched, no drones, and no other economic damage. he simply floats his 3rd CC down and makes an lol planetary, gets thors, and masses tank/marine/thor and theres not a whole lot i can do about it.

cool game

i feel like you probably made a mistake

I am offended by the Zerg strategy discussion in the BBV thread. More whining about Terran IMO.

Just keeps getting better and better. Now all they need to do is give me diablo 3 beta...ONE TIME

Here's a replay of my ZvP build getting absolutely ****ing raped 6 ways to Sunday. Was this just a bad engage by me? I had trouble navigating the OL drops + microing the roaches vs the zealots. Honestly I was just feeling lazy lol. I think I was straight out-macro'd and out-played, tho, and the engage didn't have a lot to do with it. Guy was like 1300 masters prob the best player I've been matched up against on ladder in a long time.

http://drop.sc/38896

lol i lose to the most horrible players sometimes. typhon peaks vertical spawn a toss preemptively cannons my nat in full range of my vision, which is obviously ******ed because i can just take the convenient 3rd as my nat instead and then expand wherever i want on the map.

but can i do that? hell no. i gotta try and proxy hatch him and then when that fails, try a massive hydra ling drop and when that fails i get to reward a horrible player for his miserable open. amazing!

As for your replay, I have to say that everything that could have went wrong did in that game. Your opponent was savvy to your scheme, he prevented FG with good phoenix pickups, and he had aerial splash dmg and a high damage army. I liked your creep spread and using crawlers to secure your front, but the big problem is where you set up. That little gap double choke is an awful place to fight from, and your toss opponent took full advantage IMO. If I were you, I would have opened up your rocks to your 3rd myself to try to mitigate that effect, at least if you were going in normal battle mode.

Edit: I see you weren't engaging from the choke, but he still had a great arc on you because you only exited one way. It's still a huge disadvantaged fight obv, the only way it could get worse is if he had blink

and now i cant win a ****ing game because ive forgotten how to inject. barely just lost like 3-4 games in a row w/ over 1000 minerals in the bank and like maxed energy on all my queens. wow. guess today isn't a day i should be playing sc2.

also still completely clueless on how to beat 1 stargate play. i mean my open defends against it well, but with the neural nerf i cant just transition into infestor/roach to deal with the next stage (colossus). i dont feel comfortable making mutas because a) it's hard to secure a 3rd against 1 stargate (while he comfortably takes his 3rd and LOL @ me taking a 4th) and b) he can just chrono out phoenix and im ****ed and/or forced into a base trade. if i make corruptors and they mash out immortals or chargelot/archon im ****ed, and once i kill all their colossus my corruptors are useless and then they remax on chargelot archon or something. sigh. and if i make hydralisks obviously i lose because hydras are horrible units.