Ok so here's the deal: I have been playing SC2 for a couple of weeks now and i'm really enjoying it. I have messed around with all the races and have decided that the Zerg is my favourite. The problem is, I am utterly terrible at playing them (pretty bad at all races to be honest). I understand how the game works, as i have done most of the campaign and have played tons of RTSs in the past. So far in my 1v1 career i have played around 10 games and won one of them (6pool on a Terran player who failed at blocking his choke and then ragequit xD). So what i'm asking is for some very nice person to teach me how to play Zerg to a decent standard. I'm not looking to be no.1 rated in the world, but would like to be a fairly competent player. I am not a moron and usually pick things up quite quickly so hopefully it shouldn't be too hard to show me a thing or two. I am on the EU servers, I have skype/vent and can dedicate a fair amount of time to this, so if you're interested in helping out a newb then please either reply or pm me or something along those lines. thanks .
Add me(Stirlitz.823) to your friends list, bro and I could help you train a little bit... We can play a few matches for every matchup and discuss them afterwards watching the reps... I wanna learn T and Z too in order to switch to random, so I'll focus my time there for a bit... My exams end on 10th of February, so till then my playtime will be minimal, but it'll rapidly increase after that... Cheers
Post some reps and I can tell you where you went wrong and help out that way as I'm not eu. will gladly look at reps though
What are you talking about? One person offered to help online if you added them and the other offered to look at replays which you didn't attach.
Hey, first replay, feel free to tell me where i went wrong. I'd appreciate some constructive criticism, rather than just: "lolololololololol, you suck go and play sim city!" Thank you.
heres another one that i only just played. i know i won it, but i also know that i played horribly so would like somebody to point out my major mistakes. thank you.
I watched the first one. You need to be jamming your S key and immediately making things. You were late in creating your drones and ovies which showed a big difference as early as the 14 supply mark - you had 200 minerals with your "constant" drone production when that should only happen at 15. 1 drone difference so early in the game is important. Also, you need to send out your ovie as soon as possible, and use the minimap for convenience. I prefer to scout the main with my first ovie and natural with my second. You had double gas at 11 supply. Completely unnecessary, and even the first one at 13 is early. Keep making drones after starting the pool. You don't have enough income to fund your extremely early roach warren either. You allow your larvae to play about in the field when you should be ordering them to make drones. At one point you had them selected for about 5 seconds before ordering them to morph into drones - speed up your decision making. And get rid of your larvae they're having a party down there. Group your hatcheries, queens, and units. You are more than twice as efficient that way because you can jump around to them quickly and you can reserve your mouse to direct commands and take off the load of selecting. You can also create drones and inject larvae while you're paying attention to the battle. So in general, look less at the pretty foliage and animations and think like a machine. Constantly hit the hatch group, S, V, DDDDDDD, queen inject, queen tumour, army shifting, scouting, S, V, DDDDDDD, etc.
No matter what race you play as you need to get the basics down like building a rich economy, unit counters, and hot keys. Start learning about the zerg. They fall behind in economy if they do not expand quickly which is why you should be expanding into your natural after getting your spawning pool and then defend it. You should be learning about scouting as well. Right when you know where your opponent is you need to send over 1 or 2 overlords at the corners of their base and then send them in to see what is going on. After expading early you want to have zerglings out, a queen at each base, and mostly likely spine crawlers to defend your natural from any early pressure like hellion harassment or gateway units. Then you should transition into units that should do well against your opponents strategy. If they are training marines and marauders then banelings is a great counter. If you are facing the 4 gate then roaches and hydralisks do well unless they tech to colossi. Just get the basics down. Zerg usually wins by gaining map control by expanding fast and spawning multiple units at a time to overhwelm their opponent. You should always be expanding faster than a terran or protoss player.
key flaws in game play style are 1 not enough drones 2 way to early gassing 3 not useing mins. 4 not understand the role of a given unit. the first two are pretty obvious build more drones dont double gas at the start so you can then build more drones. number three means that you cannot go pure muta the combo to go is muta plus zergling because lings cost no gas and move very fast. so build more hatches since you have the mins and build lings with the extra larva. lastly mutas are not attack units untill they reach a very high number, so try to avoid engaging any units that can attack back, which is resonably easy as mutas are some of the fastest units in the game. so use mutas to kill probes then just run away.
i decided to go double gas, because with single i didnt have the economy to support roach/hydra or mutas. when exactly should i be hitting that second gas?
You generally shouldn't be going straight for roach/hydra or muta, this will leave you wide open to early rushes. I'd say that the earliest you should get one gas is 13, I normally get it at around 15. You should focus on getting drones, getting a pool up and then getting a queen and some zerglings for defense (maybe a crawler or two as well, depending on the situation). I'd say that you don't need a second gas until after the first battle (unless for some reason neither of you attack for a long time).
thanks alot for your replies guys, they have been very helpful. I have another question: How do i know when i should be making units or drones with my larvae? Trying to get this balance right has been a big problem for a while now.
Constant scouting. Your permanent army should only consist of the things you would need to complement the army you would start producing the moment you spotted them pushing. That sounds (and is) very precise and hard to do so keep in mind that you will most likely be ahead in worker count. Hence, you can start producing an army sooner or grow your permanent one slightly. Better to overcompensate and do a counter attack than to underestimate their army and lose right away.
I can't help you out over skype but I do have a couple zerg strategies up on youtube and I think the best one is this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkeezpiltfg Anyways, just keep watching videos and using build orders and adjust them to your liking and I'm sure you will improve over time.
hi, from my point of view being mostly zerg player (just platinium), the best advice to improve is practice. Practice, practice, and then a little more practice hehe... no build orders, no special things to do... all you need is practice and then you will start noticing what to do when. Stacking to what othyers says will only get you a couple victorys and then noticing that when the other player hanges something you dont know what to do. And also, after every match lost you save the replay and see again, to catch what you should have done and when (i read this long ago on this forum and served me well). As a general comment to your question, I can tell what I usually do (not used to 1vs1, mostly 3vs3 or 4vs4). It all depends on oponent, if lot of toss I relax a little and if lot of zerg I get more aggressive. But mostly i go to 14 pool or expansion, get the roaches and when expansion is built start making workers fom 2 hatcheries for the new expansion while a mix of few lings and most roaches. Try to have 3 workers for gas/mineral while testing enemy with a couple lings to see how much army he has ... or better I like to use mutaling from the earlier the better. But that just me, and may work with you or not.
