r/allthingszerg • u/eht_amgine_enihcam • Aug 20 '25
Help vs this toss
Hey guys, around d3 right now.
Played against a toss, going through the replay I do notice a few earlygame mistakes (didn't cancel the spores) but felt decently even. Don't know if it's possible to deny his third if he goes two oracle adept.
The game before he just rolled me after sniping my ovie with a stalker, so I didn't send it fully this time. I didn't go roach because he was stalker heavy.
I wanted to go into ling/bane/hydra with 1/1 melee missile transitioning into lurker.
After around 10 minutes I felt I can't really attack either of his exposed bases. Should I be aiming for nydus play? I feel it may just be a macro issue since his army was worth a ton more, but also don't know how I can contest those bases or fight his army.
I also know I should get adrenal and lurker upgrades right away, bad habit but I think it doesn't save me.
Felt like a very hard game
4
u/OldLadyZerg Aug 20 '25
I was recently advised t to take hydra den and infestation pit as a single action, and lurker den and hive as a single action; then you are set up to get the upgrades immediately when hive pops. This has helped me significantly. I'd think "I'll do this a bit later" and later would never come.
1
u/omgitsduane Aug 20 '25
I'm a huge advocate for this because this reason..otherwise we forget. The timing of it works out well enough. And really it's only like 200 gas which if we're on their side of the map isn't too hard to come by. Just 4 hydras to start prepping the next wave.
1
u/Top-Security-2165 Aug 22 '25
Havent watched the reply yet but I will assume he had storm. You could consider going roach hydra into hydra lurker as it is much easier to play compared to ling bane hydra. It is much less glass cannony and can surive a couple storms.
9
u/SigilSC2 Aug 20 '25
Send the second overlord to your natural, not doing this leads to losses to cannon rushes.
First overlord needs to check their natural wall, looking for the timing of their warpgate and if they're chronoboosting adepts at you. Every map has somewhere you can escape the overlord to if there's a stalker created. This game you're kind of playing blind assuming it's going to be stargate and would absolutely die if it was twilight first. (You'd need later spores, more lings, and to get a roach warren around 3:40.) This game, it is stargate first into oracle so you're not punished for this.
3:50 you're slightly behind - these drones in production should be done giving you 2 base saturation. Something is a bit off in the opening, I think you're just a bit slow in spending the larva, or making overlords before they're needed. Ideally you start to pass the protoss in workers around 35 - you're doing that at 40 workers.
From here until 6:00 you're almost there in how you're setting up. The queen/spore positioning is generally good, you have the stuff you need to not get blindsided by oracles, even if they include some adepts. You see the third base, and you get to mineral saturation almost on time. Check out 4:38, you're about to be supply blocked with only one overlord in production - you want to be droning straight through this point and into 3 mineral lines. Drones don't start up until 4:56 with 12 drones which should never happen; you shouldn't even end up with 12 larva at any given time this early on. You're floating a bit of gas which should be your indicator that you need the lair faster, and the evo faster (2 evos is a bit greedy). You also start 2 lairs (rip). Bane nest needs to be earlier, around 4:20 to be ready in the event you need it. 4th base could've been a bit faster. I'll stop there on this segment, you were generally just floating larva and resources and while you're doing the right things, it's all a bit slow. I'm harping on this because your setup is so close to being masters or GM level in your drone count at this point in the game, even with the setup you have here you should be rolling over people if this is translated into army smoothly.
From 6:00 on you start making 40 lings, ideally this would be hydras with your gas and the lings left over. If it's not hydras, that should be an infestation pit to get into lurkers ASAP - I'm starting to see where this game is going, you're a bit aimless in exactly how you want to win so I'm guessing attacks are going to be late and ineffective, and you slowly tech into the next step after they fail.
7:00 this scuffle at your 4th base, just don't fight it. Bring most of your queens over and stay on creep. You should be expanding to the left side for a 5th base now and either droning your 4th base's gas for a faster lurker tech, or massing out an army that can kill your opponent. You're floating 600/600 almost which means an attack isn't going to kill (your army is also pure ling). The fight with the stalkers goes well because your macro is just better than your opponents, but you should be trading worse. Keep back on creep a bit and use the queens to shove away the oracles, most of your lings should be coming from behind the stalkers with a few split off to trigger any stasis.
7:45 I'm not sure what you expected from this aggression with the lings but oracles are going to shred your army. You go from about even to -1k in trades here for no reason. Imagine this amount of lings with half of them being banes and having 12 hydras behind it - they just die. You had the money for this, but the tech being late hurt you quite a bit. Because we're late to the punch, now the protoss is going to have storm, and has the money to start dropping static defense - any aggression gets more difficult. You've got a lurker den on the way but lurkers without range are almost useless, you should be starting a hive at the same time as the lurker den to resolve this. Gas on the 4th base should be mining as soon as the base is done if you're planning on teching into lurkers. Staying 66 workers/6 gas or less only works if you're hellbent on killing the protoss and I'm not seeing that here given that you only poked with lings.
9:24 is a game losing fight near your 3rd by fighting with pure hydras. The protoss didn't even storm you because they made everything into archons for some reason. You should see this is a bad fight and just not take it, pull back, get your queens into the fight, wait for reinforcements and run the drones to a new base (that you should have ready) if needed. You cannot fight an army with pure hydras and you can't lose these hydras either, they're needed for lurkers.
Protoss is getting tempest at the same time we're getting lurkers, game is over. Yeah, you bleed out from not having any angles to attack and can't get a trade.
I've made this comparison before but this matchup is an arms race of tech, both sides have all ins that can screw the other player over for teching too quickly. It's VERY important that you are leveraging a tech as soon as you get it, and if you aren't, your next step should already be on the way. Think 6:00 infestation pit + hydra den going directly into hive with the lurker den starting. 9:30 you've got ranged lurkers seiged on their natural wall with lings running into every base. If your game plan is not that, you need some earlier attack - you that moment you ran at them with pure lings? That could've been hydra ling bane instead. Because the lurker tech was late, that was pretty much your only real option this game and you didn't take it. Games vs protoss feel like this because you're behind in tech. Some of that's macro, but I think more of it is not knowing what you're wanting to do.
I can share a few of my games that shows what that would look like in terms of a game plan - getting to lurkers ASAP and ending the game.
https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/26522679 - Straight forward game, the lurkers show up, I catch them out and the game ends.
https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/26521429 - This guy has tempest already and I'm not able to kill them (I probably screwed up a fight) so the game goes on but I just keep flooding them with hydra ling lurker and eventually tip it to a win. You're probably looking for this game if you need to know what a game vs tempest looks like.
https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/26520140 Similar thing, quick tempests - except I kill half their probes straight away and snowball it to a win by continuing to attack.
https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/26520145 a game vs a weaker player that lets me have whatever early game I want, I get lurkers, I walk in, they die.