Thursday, September 2, 2010

How to Stop a Turtling Terran

The Player:
 
We all know the player, they block off their ramp almost instantly with a combination of supply depots and barracks with an addon.  Your initial scout can usually make it past since the barracks takes a little bit of time to construct, but you often lose the drone after being walled in.  So now what?  Running lings up the ramp does no good as a single marine can take down a group of 6-8 lings easily, and a pair can decimate anybody trying to break through the choke.  Compounding the problem is that an SCV will normally be sitting around repairing what little damage is being done.
Our Response:

Well in Broodwar we didn't have banelings, but thankfully now we do!  If you come across a Terran who is heavily relying on his front door to keep out any sort of fast rush, a banelings nest is a great investment.  Ideally you will want to start off with a typical overlord at 10 supply, followed by a spawning pool at 11 or 12 or a fast expand perhaps.  Grab your dual gas as banelings are a costly gas investment in the early going.  A good idea would be do get one gas like most Zerg players do anyways to trick an early scout and not let them onto your tech.  After chasing out the SCV (or killing it with lings/drones) grab a second gas ASAP and build your baneling nest.  Cut back on drone production to the point where you can comfortably train lings as fast as the larva is available (you are remembering to inject with your queen right?) and don't supply lock yourself.  Amass a good army of lings (10-20) and camp outside the enemy base.

Some important notes so far: DO NOT, i repeat DO NOT morph your banelings until you are about to bust.  The longer you can hide your tech, the less time your opp has to react.  Only morph enough banelings to take out the building as they do less damage to troops.  This shouldn't be an issue msot of the time anyways since your low supply of gas and minerals will prevent you from morphing your entire ling pool into banelings.  Keep a good 6-8 zerglings out of harms way until the bust occurs.

This is often an all in strategy since your economy is already suffering due to the dual gas and constant army production so drone count will be lower.  Aim for the weakest building at the choke (often a supply depot, but hopefully a barracks addon was poorly placed and you can snipe it off.  Run the lings past any troops who may be stationed near the choke and go RIGHT FOR THE ECONOMY!  I cannot stress this point enough.  Your economy is suffering and their SCVs should be open for the killing.  Snipe as many as possible -- remember, your goal is not to take out the Terran opponent (although if the opportunity is there, go for broke) you are just trying to disrupt him enough that he will need to rebuild.

How do we win?

While attacking either tech up to Mutalisks (gas flow should be plentiful anyways) or grab your expansion if you haven't already.  While the Terran rebuilds their front door, you have the leniency to expand and rebuild your suffered economy.


Swarm on brothers!

10 comments:

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  4. Maan, fuck terrans

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  5. Thanks for the guide bro, love your blog!

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  6. Hey, just checking in, seeing what's new :-)

    Lots of love, clicks and support from Viking travels :-D

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mmm... Banelings. Going for the economy is a valid defense, but you're not describing a turtler. You're describing a standard terran player. All of them do the barracks-block. A turtler would likely have bunkers behind the supply depots by the time you get banelings, relying on repelling your attacks more than getting something dangerous, since Zerg kinda suck in the endgame. You would need to waste more lings on banes to get the bunkers, or just get gunned down as you pass by. If they turtle, the best approach is to open their side-wall: Most maps have one blocked by rocks. A ling or two will make short enough work of them without arousing too much attention-- or noise: You can hear marines firing even offscreen, but lings attack fairly quietly.

    ReplyDelete
  8. How would you stop a nexing protoss ;)?

    http://protrolling.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete