Starcraft – Since patch 1.1, are Hydras more viable against Terran

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.

Do you want to know how someone can lose or how he did lose?

Bly lost because he played very poorly: he did not build enough drones.

Take a moment to let that sink in, because its a very very big mistake and its the difference between a good Zerg player (like Fruit Seller) and a bad Zerg player (like Bly).

Instead of backing off after taking the Terran Natural, he continued to press in. He sends wave after wave of a consistently sized army. He does this because he's not building more drones so he cannot afford a larger army. By comparison Tarson's army gets larger and larger after every wave. He's able to continue to accumulate units because he has a fairly healthy economy. This is due in part to MULEs, but largely because Tarson built enough SCVs. Even after losing his Expo he still has as many workers as Bly does. Think about that for a second. He lose an entire base and all his workers in it and he still has more workers than his opponent.

This game could have easily been one that was featured on Day 9's Newbie Tuesday

I could point out a dozen mistakes that Bly made, but none of them matter nearly as much as his poor drone usage. Because of his lack of drones, his assault becomes almost an all in. So in response to your question How is it possible Zerg with biggest advantage can still loose to Terran? Bly didn't have a big advantage. He sacrificed his economy on a gamble and it didn't pay off.

But let's imagine another universe, where Tarson wasn't playing Bly but was playing against a better Zerg like IdrA; and let's assume IdrA made the same early push.

Now IdrA is sitting on 2 bases to Tarson's 1, but they have equal workers. So instead of continually pressing his advantage, IdrA decides to play like he always does: Macro. He sits back and takes a third base and powers drones. Tarson retakes his natural and now he's down 2 to 3 bases. Not a big advantage for IdrA, but remember a Zerg can make drones faster than a Terran, so it takes Tarson longer to saturate that 1 base than it does for IdrA to saturate his 3. Now IdrA has a huge economy and he goes Roach/Hydra (or these days he's favoring Muta/ling, but pretend).

Imagine that battle for a second... or don't, because it actually happened. IdrA knocked out Tarson in IEM, exactly like I described.

The smartest thing you can do in Starcraft if you are ahead is to get more ahead. Anyone who played seriously in Broodwars knows this because if you pressed like Bly did, you got destroyed 100% of the time. Now Starcraft 2 is still new so a lot of people feel like they can do crazy 2 base play, but if you look at the high end GSL matches you see less of that and more of people trying to get more ahead.

You also mentioned a quote talking about Marauders vs Banelings. Now I don't think that the relationship between these two units had anything to do with this loss, but let's talk about them for a second.

Banelings are a highly specialized unit. Their role is to act as Zerg splash damage on light units. By comparison the Marauder is a more generalized unit, designed to act as a Meat shield (much the way the Roach acts for the Zerg). So it makes sense that a Baneling doesn't function well against Marauders (as that's not their role), and it also makes sense that Marauders do a good job of preventing Banelings from striking other units (as that's their role).

I would hesitate to say that a unit is broken because its functioning in its role and another unit isn't functioning in something outside its role. But let's say you want a way to deal with MMM balls. Instead of sending it waves of Banelings on their own. Consider mixing in more Zerglings (Bly actually does this to large effect). Now let's vary our composition based on their unit mix. More Marines? More Banelings. More Marauders? More Zerglings. Can't find a good place to engage? Burrow/Drops/Fungal Growth/Wait and Flank.

Here is the key thing, none of this is any assessment of Banelings against Terran, but rather an assessment of the tactics used.