12 Pool Macro Build (ZvP)

H8 playing against skytoss? Sick of void rays sniping your bases? Wanna make a protoss really mad? This is the build order for you!

12 pool
14 overlord
14 queen and 6 lings
(Optional) Send a drone down to your nat to attack the probe/prepare to expand.
19 2 lings
20 2 lings (10 total)
21 hatchery
Make another overlord and inject when your queen pops.

That’s the basic build. Some people opt to go for hatch before queen, but because it gets blocked often I would advise to stick with queen first. After this you can either keep making lings or drone up, which you choose should depend on what you can get done with your opening lings.

Your first 6 lings should arrive at their natural about the time their first zealot finishes. If they are using it to fill their wall then get to work attacking a gateway. If they try to defend by dancing back and forth with their zealot, then split off 2-4 of your lings to threaten a breach any time the zealot moves. Else, surround and kill the zealot and then go for the pylon which will force them to pull probes. If they opened forge then you’ve likely stopped a dirty cannon cheeser in their tracks and you know their tech will be delayed as well.

There are a lot of variations for what you can do after this initial aggression. If you are doing immense damage/are confident in your micro abilities, you can opt for an earlier gas, say right after your hatch, to get speed and try to win off a ling flood. This works best if you kill a gateway/catch the opening adepts because the protoss will have a difficult time acquiring the necessary dps to defend.

You can also go for a moderate gas timing, say after your second queen starts. This works better if you can delay their opening adepts or force a full wall-off. It also allows you to wall-off on 2 base and stay in a competitive macro position because of how delayed their nexus should be from the 12 pool.

There’s also gasless 3 base, which makes you very vulnerable to their opening adepts in exchange for superior creep spread and economy. This build works when you cause immense damage to the protoss’ infrastructure, meaning you kill gate + core + force more buildings to rewall.