Marine Rush Replay, Help Me Out?

I just played a game as Zerg vs a Terran. His strategy was to throw down 4 racks in a rather economical manner.

I saw it and went baneling, and it didn't really work out. After his first push, I made some drones and 6 lings, to scout with as I sacked my OL to figure out he was marine rushing. Instead of transitioning, he just massed more marines, and steamrolled me.

Here it is.

http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/57501-1v1-terran-zerg-xelnaga-caverns

Here are my concerns.

-Marine rush is super easy to do. As shown.
-I scouted it and reacted well (IMO)
-It is still relatively economical, I mean, he had more workers than me, and I was building drones when I could

What could I have done better? I feel the only weak spot may have been going baneling, or how I used the banelings, or not canceling my expo when I saw the marine push. I don't think making the drones after the first push was a mistake, I mean he could've just as easily started to tech up as mass more marines. If I didn't make those drones, I would've lost the macro battle.

If you mention baneling busts, I agree it may have worked here. Make some more blings and rush his base, but I

A) Didn't have the units to do that and live
B) He could've easily just put a couple of his four racks to block the bling bust.

 

To be honest with you, I don't think you did anything wrong. You just did it too slow and with too few numbers for it to be effective.

Banelings was the smart move, but by the time he really steam rolled you, you should've had a decent pack of them.

Instead of expanding so early, build another hatchery next to your first one, and use it to spawn mass zerglings and banelings when someone tries this strategy on you. Otherwise you will continue to be steamrolled.

 

What exactly was too slow? I think I did a decent job with the standard build.

I feel this will just lead to them going into my base and killing a hatch rather than going for my expo. I don't see any big tactical difference in defending a hatch outside (where I can use it for more than production) and defending a hatch inside.

 

Diamond league? Well, im not a zerg player and im a bronze player rofl, but what I think went wrong were:

1. You let too many overlords die, you put them in easy places for marines to kill them off.

2. When you saw 4 barracks, you should have gotten banes and zerglings alot of them asap, you took a bit too much time, so when he attacked you barely made it alive. Then you continued to make drones, I didnt see the point of that since you were lacking any army really, and you were just wasting from the limiting supply you had, so when he attacked once more you had a very small force which couldn't hold it off.

Once again, Im in no means a diamond player ( Though I think the leagues are really twisted currently) or a zerg player, but these mistakes just seem well oblivious to me.

 

Reasoner,

His Overlord placements were pretty spot-on, actually. In fact, it would have been good to have one more advance Overlord towards the middle-map to have extra warning of an impending attack. The sacrificial overlord is well worth it's cost for the intel it gives.

Also, he threw down his baneling nest about as fast as possible in response to scouting the 4-barracks from the Overlord.



VampireBob,

The scouting of the 4-barracks was used as the trigger for the Banelings Nest, but the drone's scouting would have been the best trigger possible. His 12-barracks was standard, but the lack of any gas along with the second barracks and no orbital command construction were the cues for his strategy. Overall, it'd actually be best for the Terran player to throw down the Refinery (and cancel after) once he's got his first marine on the way (to kill the drone) to trick you into thinking the build is more standard. If he's going for the all-in Marine rush (without attempting to hide it) he may as well have gone for 10-rax and gotten that critical 30-second advance on the timing push. The timing of his build order is fairly all-in despite the economical start because his rush is delayed (12-rax) and he would have been more than two (real-time) minutes away from making any kind of transitions (factory) upon seeing your banelings in his first push.


On your end, I'm looking at two different options:

If the correct scouting trigger is used (the earlier warning signs), it'd be interesting to see what would happen if you cancel the natural expo as you mentioned and go into one-base baneling bust. He made no attempts to scout at all so he wouldn't have been able to spot the double-extractors one-base play. Consequently, his barracks would still be spaced out in the manner seen in the replay and the baneling bust would secure the win.

If the correct warning signs are spotted but you don't want to cancel the fast expand, I'm wondering how it would play out if you went into double-queen (one at each) and speedling with two spine crawlers positioned in between the two bases. They'd get first volley on the marines and two spine crawlers will one-shot a marine. If the defense is neck and neck, then larvae spawning waits in favor of transfusion on the spine crawlers. Given the delay on his ability to transition, you could possibly convert your two-base macro and 4-extractors into a mid-game speedling baneling composition and break his block before he would even get close to having siege or a critical-mass of hellions.


From a general game-play POV, I think a a few of the first zergling batch could have been posted out on the map. One at the base of the Terran's ramp, and one at the relevant xel-naga tower. The extra time would be nice to have as far as switching over from drone production.

If you're interested in trying out this match-up further, I'll offer to play a handful of matches as the Terran marine-rusher for testing purposes.

 

I pretty much threw it down as soon as I saw him putting down his third and fourth rax. As BambooPanda said, I could've spotted the play a bit sooner, but you don't seem to be saying I should've seen that.

Also just noticed my hatch finished right before I scouted the four racks.

Here's my reasoning. He just pushed, most players don't just make more of whatever unit they just used to push and push again. They tech a little bit first. I figured, hey, now's probably a good time to macro a bit more. I misread and died.

Here's the concerning thing for me, I wasn't ahead in the worker count. So even if I had just made an army, and won that battle, he'd have 7-10 more workers than me.

Yeah...I got into Diamond on a disconnect (although I was highish Plat league before) and it isn't going so well.

I did scout him moving out. When I sacked my Overlord I spotted him leaving his base.

I thought he was going for a 2 racks marine push, which the speedlings would've dealt with. It wasn't until I saw four racks that I realized the push was bigger.

So there's another thing I need to look out for when scouting. Great.

Here's my big issue. This four racks play, super easy to do. Even if you do the refinery juke, it's not difficult. Lets say he did do that, so my response would've been the proper one, at least decently executed. He didn't even micro his units and he still won.

Let's say I did scout it right off, and got my baneling nest up early, not expo and his push fails miserably. He can just wall in with his racks, put some marines behind it, and I'm far behind in economy.

Admittedly, he isn't in a great spot to tech up from, but neither am I really. I'd need to get enough gas to get lair, probably would also need to grab my natural expansion. It seems the best I can do is force a tie in the opening exchange rather than getting an advantage.

 

It doesn't seem like you did anything drastically wrong. Sometimes cheese manages to take down good players. Now if you knew this guy personally and played him a lot, you'd know this is one of his strategies and you could be more prepared for it.

Zerg is my worst race but...

-I tend to get my second queen out at about the same time my expo finishes. This will help with macro while also supplying some defense.
-I tend to get spine crawlers early if I spot a rush, fairly soon after my expo finishes and the creep expands a bit. Queens, spine crawlers, zerlings, and maybe some banelings should work well.
-Sending a pair of zerglings to the watchtowers is cheap intel.

 

I'm a mid platinum player, not very good at all as a zerg but Terran is my main race.

The only thing I could see you doing differently is maybe when you scouted his 4rax get a fast spine crawler protecting your expo and the ramp to your main. That combined with the speedlings should have held that first attack off with less losses. Could have pulled the queen down too.

 

There is nothing you can do. I am a platinum random player and I exploit the OP marine to WTFPWN the zerg all the time. Even if you don't expo, you'd lose in the long run because zerg often require early expo to remain competitive.

I'd blame it to the game.