What’s next?

ViBE states “Pick one macro build and one all-in build”, which seems fair, so there are less new things to focus on at the same time. Let’s have a look at the different match-ups and see where a new strategy might bring the most benefit.

ZvP

Roach/Hydra is doing decently well in the current Gateway meta, so let’s not touch this and keep playing B2GM style against Protoss. Maybe slightly different openers like Pool first if there are too many cannon rushes, but we keep the overall game plan.

ZvZ

I still like Roach heavy styles here, so I will keep going for my +1 Roach timing and do little adjustments from there. It has served me well in the past and I can focus on defending speedling all-ins. Ling/Bane skirmish is just too stressful for me.

ZvT

This is the matchup where Roach/Hydra feels the weakest, especially against Bio heavy compositions. From some experiments with Ling/Baneling/Hydra I know I can handle the basic game plan and the micro part is not too stressful. Now I only need to learn how to properly do a speedling expand build.

Where to begin?

There are countless sources trying to tell me what the “Standard Zerg Build” is, and I tried to get an overview of the landscape. Coming from ViBE’s and PiG’s B2GM series I quickly realized one thing: Most of these guides are not targeted people below diamond or masters. As much as I love to listen to Lambo explaining all the ins and outs of a build, min-maxing things like building overlords only from the main Hatchery and making sense of subtle 5 second differences in the opponents build… all of this does not really apply to metal leaguers - which I just graduated from. Even if I get a build order down to follow it up to Hive tech in a custom game, there is no way I could replicate this in games with real opponents which I have to react to.

Sigil, a Masters player from the ATZ discord and Subreddit, recommended ZvT Standard opening vs Bio by Oreo to me, but watching the video I had to take so many notes that I could never get all these down to a satisfying level. It’s nice to see as a reference what is possible, but I need a more iterative approach than just trying to replicate the 100% solution over and over.

PandaBearMe advised to take it apart and focus on one aspect from Oreo’s video for a couple of weeks before picking the next one. At some point I would find myself with a really solid foundation to work off. Not necessarily for a certain play style but just good concepts that are solid base for many strategies. That sounds like a good analytical approach, but might only be worth it with a practice partner. On ladder, I would focus on the early game with a plan, but would then probably stay in that game for another 10+ minutes without guidance - probably picking up bad habits.

Sigil later pointed me in the direction of PiG’s Rule of 1 Gas ZvT and especially the section Stages of Learning. He advised me to break down Oreo’s ZvT opening into stages to work on and then focus first on getting down the first stage exactly, then transition over to the next stages but boiled down to the essentials. Then when first stage is all muscle memory, refine the next stage and so on.

Stage 1: Learning the fundamentals of the new build

Early game: Get this down as tight as possible

If this can be achieved, I consider it a “win” in my books. I will probably set up my replay parser to check these benchmarks.

General queues:

• First Overlord: Proxy locations along line 3rd ➡️ Back of T’s base
• Second Overlord: 4th ➡️ triangle 3rd ➡️ Front of our natural

Build:

• 16 Hatch, 18 Gas, 17 Pool
• Drones to 21, rally 21st Drone to 3rd
• Right before Pool finishes: 2 drones off gas ➡️ Natural
• @Pool: 2 Queens, 4 Zerglings
• 27 Overlord, 28 Drone, 28 Third Base Hatchery
• If no reaper @2:30: Scout T’s Natural with 2 Lings
• @Queens: Inject main, Tumor in natural
• @100 Gas: Ling speed

Mid-Game: This is where the practice focus is

For this stage, the mid-game plan is rough guidelines, so I have a plan what I need to do next. This will probably vary a lot after some enemy skirmish, but when watching the replay I can check, if I missed any of these fundamentals. Every not missed aspect will give bonus points in my books.

General queues:

• Spend all larvae first
• Inject with finished Queens, add them to the Queen control group, move them in front of the base. Start new queen at that hatchery. Up to 9 queens total.
• Create a ring of vision with Overlords
• Spread creep
• Split Army for better mobility or to surround big pushes

Build:

• @3rd Hatch:
  • 6-10 safety Zerglings: Second defense line behind queens against diving Hellions
• @Two base mineral saturation (or around 4:00): Baneling Nest
• @3rd Queen from one hatch finished:
  • Lair
  • 2nd gas
• @66 drones:
  • Total of 5 gasses
  • 4th base
  • 2x Evolution Chamber
  • 2x Macro Hatchery
• @Lair:
  • Bane speed
  • 1-1 Upgrades
  • Hydra den
  • Build Overseer and queue up to scout
• @4th Hatch finished:
  • Dump creep queen energy into 4th or macro hatch
• @Full 3 base saturation:
  • Enough Ling Bane to defend 2 Tank push
  • Drone up to at most 75 drones

Late Game:

Let’s not add too much new here for now. No casters, no Lurkers, nothing that will make late game more complicated than the mid-game. To quote PiG here: LBH should be enough to deal with everything the Terran can basically throw at us. Only if it comes to mass BC we might want a Spire here and replace Hydras with Corruptors.

Queues:

• Play defensively
• Baneling run bys on mineral lines (3rd/4th)
• Stay on Ling/Bane/Hydra
• Infestation Pit ➡️ Hive only for 3-3 and Adrenal Glands, otherwise stay on Lair tech

Conclusion & Next stage

So for now we only switch up our ZvT and use this to get more comfortable with Speedling expand builds or handling Ling/Bane armies. We will probably lose many ZvT games first and can use ZvZ and ZvP games to get in more reps on what we had done before our Diamond promotion.

But what if the Terran goes mech or BC?

Against Mech, we can probably fall back to our old Roach/Hydra build, or we go full Roach/Ravager instead. Against Battlecruisers, we could go Ling/Bane/Corruptor instead of LBH. Because I have lost to basically every BC-Terran lately this is a topic I plan to dive in to. After I got a plan and some improvement on that matter a blog post about playing against BC will follow.

After getting stage 1 down to a comfortable level of consistency, a next stage would probably tighten the mid-game phase of the build and also add more tech like Lurkers, but not casters yet. These would maybe come into play in a 3rd stage. I will add another blog post after I am done with stage 1 and link it here in this post. Until then there will probably be some progress posts including highlight or lowlight games as stream highlights and replays.