Starcraft – How to deal with Terran harassment as Zerg

starcraft-2

http://sc2rep.net/replays/starcraft-2-replay-z-atnmardow-vs-t-naama-delta-quadrant-09-06-2010

How can I win this game as Zerg? First zerg gets harassed by a bunch of hellions, so you must get a couple of zerglings and roaches. When you tech towards those units, you have invisible banshee killing your queens/drones. So you must quickly tech up to mutas/hydras, but when you have 2-3 mutas finished and you take out those banshees, you now have MM ball with tanks in front of your base, because that terran was all the time massing these units. And because you were forced to tech in this early stage of game, you don't have much units. And GG is inevitable.

Best Answer

First off, if that's your replay, well done. I saw excellent micro in a number of places. For those of you who didn't watch the replay, he goes early gas into speedling, delayed expand. Gets bogged down by Hellion/Banshee harasses and eventually rolled by BioMech (I think I counted 4 Barracks).

Looking over the replay I saw two major problems:

  1. You were always reacting
  2. Your macro isn't on par with your micro

I'll try to help address these both.

Early on you scout Rax straight into Factory, as a Zerg player this should be a tell tail sign for hellion harassment. Your natural response should be: 1) Spine Crawler at the Ramp, 2) Roaches. I did notice you eventually transitioned into Roaches but it was after the Hellion harassment started. Now its possibly you just underestimated your opponent, but I still recommend that Spine Crawler. The next thing to note is that 1:1:1 builds mean early Starport and that means Vikings. To protect your Overlords you're going to need Spore Crawlers, their range is just too long to protect with Queens alone. A couple Spore Crawlers will limit the range his vikings can attack from and save most of your Overlords. You do eventually get Spore Crawlers, but only after Banshee harassment has started. Even though you scouted his build I'm not seeing any adjustments prior to his units getting on the field.

Early harassment is very annoying to deal with and taxing on both your mental strength and your concentration; so its not extremely surprising that your macro started to fall by the wayside. You spent a lot of effort trying to shut down Hellions with Speedlings. While this is doable, its very taxing (especially if you fail). Its not that I think you can't shut down Hellion Harassment with Speedlings (because you certainly can), but you need to think of less costly ways to do it. You start to fall behind in the Drone count when his Banshees come out and you attempt to tech to tier 2. By the time he readies his final push you have a handful of Roaches and a dozen Zerglings against a strong BioMech push. Now to your credit the banshees do kill some of your drones, but largely you stop producing them. I'd say this is mostly the result of the extra pressure of the situation you're in. By the time he pushes he's out macro'd you so badly there really is nothing you can do.

So I've come up with a quick list of things for you to work on:

  1. Zergling surround on Hellions -> Grab a buddy and spend a couple hours working on this
  2. Spine Crawlers near the expo
  3. Reacting to what you scout -> grab YABOT, put it on Random, and then practice responding to a number of different builds. Don't deviate from your plan, but throw down a Baneling nest when you see 3 Rax, push to T2 when you see Robo, etc.
  4. Crisis management -> Play some 4-5 Insane vs You, and just see how long you can survive. Don't let your mind get overwhelmed even if your base is.

That last one is a little Zen.

And no matter what anyone tells you, if your opponent has Banshees and you're still in Tier 1, its OK. Try to calmly respond with a few Spore Crawlers and get back to your plan.

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