My god, its such a good build vs zerg. Get 2 zealots at choke, 3 pheonixs asap, run around kill overlords and lift/kill queens and drones. forces them to make spores and go hydras. At that point you get chargelots, a few stalkers and Dt's. Molesting overseers and overlords all the way. And they will get raped even harder if they make mutas. That is all thxs..
Just yesterday I warded off 6 phoenices that constantly tried to harass my precious drones and ovies... with about 5 queens. I didn't tech anywhere, I just went mass zerglings because I knew that after their investment into air they surely went stalker at most. Needless to say that zergling > stalker. Zerg shouldn't tech to spore/hydra just because of a few stray phoenix since a queen costs less than a phoenix and is more versatile, not to mention the added bonus of a full pool of energy for tumours and transfusion later on. And nowadays I get more queens than I used to so an early group of 3 phoenices wouldn't be a problem for me
However it's true that zerg often gets hydras vs. protoss, even without phoenix threat. It's actually a good team build, one person goes mass phoenixes with transition to other air if neccessery, the other goes chargelots to dt's to ht's. Key to success is super effective harrasment from both air and ground and that composition should be fairly effective against almost everything.
Queens are too slow to protect all your overlords, but even if you did have alot of queens you would need to keep all queens and overlords close. Which means you will have less scouting, and won't be able to spread creep as well. Which is still well worth it. I didn't imply to only make 3 total phoenixs, I just get 3 ASAP, then do other stuff.
I clumped up my ovies... it's not hard at all. Creep spreading and scouting are done by tumours and single lings. And when you have multiple queens, creep spreads really quickly. And I know you were basically saying rushing to phoenix but the queen is much lower on the tech tree so they come earlier - you can't catch up with phoenices unless you mass them, in which case spore colonies do become viable.
Kuvasz, it will depend on the opponent's committment to phoenix strat. if, say20 phoenixs come (somehow) and lift all ur queens, forcus fire and win, u SCREWED.
I think this may be the reason I've committed to the early ling/bling harass on protoss.. actually this and the fact that I need at least 2 x 200 cap Z army to take down a 200 cap (+ reinforcements) Protoss army. Late game is a hard task for zerg imo. still.. <3 ultralisks But I have been playing Protoss a lot more..
The best part about pheonixs is that even if the zerg does do lings, bangs and roaches, you can just lift them up and pick it off as they move around. Which shouldn't be hard if you continue to make pheonixs from 1 sg. I go 2 Sg if I see them go mutas. Defending your wall in as protoss early game is easy so long as you have 2 zealots on hold and sentries and stalkers behind that.
Against protoss i usually go FE and tech corrupters, your phoenix is pretty much useless then. Which id say most protoss I face start to mass out stalkers expecting a tech to broods but surprise 2x evo lings in mass as i grab my 3rd base and gain superior map control, which in response they get more zealots and then a quick tech to roachs for the mop up as i have massive gas/min to supply it and all the larvae in the world. Usually if they dont give up by then i just choke them out so they cant expand. phoenix's are good against an unprepared zerg player but like someoen mentioned before vs protoss i tend to get minimum 2 queens per base so its not so bad, and if a zerg player is making mutas after they see phoenix's they deserve to lose.
