I've found queens to be increasingly important lately because of the pressure you face in early game - I almost always get four queens before I take a third (two for injects, two to spread creep/defend at front of natural), the exception being ZvP when Toss does FFE. Once I get up to 4/5 bases I'll usually just be on one queen per base since my creep should be pretty good by that point and I'll have an army on the map for defense. I'm even considering making 5 queens before third my standard in ZvT now that every Terran wants to **** with you with hellion/reaper/maybe banshees for the first 8 minutes of the game and I have difficulty holding my third against it.

queens are really good to have for lots of reasons. def sounds like you have too few, like goofy said. even if you overmake you can just turbo spread creep and itll be nice and thick that way

pretty fun in customs with baddies vP to just make queens and transfuse vs gateway armies. doesnt work out as well vs stim..

remember when you used to troll me for going 4 queens vs terran econ builds??

Yeah, I literally started playing Z like maybe a week ago when they added all the classes to the starter edition

I don't. But, that does still sound slightly silly, because the biggest benefit of having extra queens is for early defense vs hellions (aka, not an econ build) w/o having to spend larva on units.

5 Queen opening is now my standard vs T... Might even start doing 6. They're too good vs everything early game terran has to not get. It might delay my gas income slightly, but it's so worth it when they show up with banshees or mass hellion that I don't scout.

IEM Katowice will have $100k winner-take-all prize pool

I can't help but think that
- this sucks for players, the last thing they need is for the best players to get even higher paydays while lower finishers in tournaments get zilch for their time and effort
- this will make for an awesome tournament to watch

So far Revival, Oz, Life, Naniwa, CJ Hero, and San are qualified. The top two from IEM Sao Paulo and IEM Cologne will also get spots, and there will be qualifiers for the last six.

Obv top two split the money in some fashion, maybe top 4.

That is unbelievably ******ed

1 for every base plus like 2 extra for spreading creep. 1 for the first two is a big mistake. You need larva production to ramp up massively once you have a 2 base econ and injecting is key. In something like ZvT if you go hatch first you make 2 queens simultaneously after pool for example. Or if going pool first you make 2 queens in a row so that as soon as the second base finishes there is a queen there.

Ok that makes a lot of sense for sure. I played a guy last night (I mostly practice vs bots) who went like mass marine/medivacs. I started pumping out my banes/ling/mutas but just forgot to put spires down (fail) and lost to stupid medivac harass. I felt so stupid after the game as he wasn't very good and prob should've won. For some reason I constantly forget to lay those and spines. I really don't get why it's just something I keep forgetting that I have the option to use. I had some ok muta harass on his main but just couldn't snowball it in my direction (mostly due to failure of spires). Well it's ok live and learn. It was hilarious though watching him march his massive marine army up my ramp and having like 30~ banelings lol.

You mean spores right? Multitask harrass is the ultimate killer of zerg in lower levels as they usually have enough units but cannot defend in more than one place at once. Static defense is really important for this reason. Two spores two spines at each base after a certain minute if you are struggling. Don't bother playing bots, man up and ladder imo!

I still forget to put static defense down all the time.

Spores are definitely good but on top of that - map vision is one of your biggest weapons as a Zerg. On some maps it's difficult (**** you Heavy Rain) but on most maps you can get overlords spread such that with good minimap spotting (if you don't look at the minimap, like, all the time, LOOK AT THE MINIMAP ALL THE TIME) you will see drops incoming well before they're at your base. Then you just a-move your muta ball and laugh as full medivacs explode out of the sky. It's really ****ing satisfying.

Here's an example for me, on Yeonsu:



Between these overlords, controlling the watchtowers with a ling at each (and taking them back if Terran gets uppity with me), and creep spread, they ain't doing **** to me that I'm not gonna know about well in advance.

Burrowed lings around the map is something people don't do enough either. So much vision, overlord spread, burrowed lings and good creep spread and its like having map hacks.

Yeah. That and burrowed banes are two things that are easy and I should be doing way more and I always forget to, even though I almost always get burrow to put lings at 3rd/4th base locations and make them waste a scan (+ know when those bases go down).

Reading some pros reactions to that annoucement is hilarious. Obviously all the butthurt ones are the ones who probably don't even have a shot to qualify, let alone win it.

I like this event a lot. We don't need every event to be like little league where everyone gets a trophy (or a payout). WCS and IEM's normal events (their payouts are pretty flat iirc) take care of that. All the pros complaining should get off their lazy asses and practice instead of bitching, because that's the sole reason they won't ever get near this tournament. It's gonna be a sick spectacle and I can't wait for it.

while i agree with this to some extent, mostly that the 9-16th people aren't going hungry without their $400 or w.e they would normally get, and that having a huge one-off tourney could be pretty sick, i assume they aren't going to make the most of it.

did they say if matches are bo3/5/7? bo3 would be pretty atrocious trying to showcase the goat tourney or w.e they are going for, but bo7 would be pretty long.. also not sure how qualifiers work, but assuming people outside worlds top 30ish make it is almost a waste of a spot. lastly, they should really look into a good map pool (w/o daedalus pt).

I think as a one off it's an awesome idea. If it started becoming more popular and being a lot of tournaments it would be really negative imo.

Also no ****ing way they don't deal behind the scenes right?

Oh yeah, it's basically guaranteed top 2 chop before the finals. I bet Life is a big enough sicko to deny a chop, though. The kid just doesn't give any ****s whatsoever.

The Korean Tom Dwan. "Wanna run it twice?" "nah".

and life is like 14 so his need for money has to be rather low

would be funny if someone luckboxes finals and is doing the most desperate chop ever behind the scenes

how do terrans get vision of like anything

seems so easy for the other two races

**** this game