You’re telling me you’ve never wanted to be the person doing a 1 base ghost rush rather than defending it after all your encounters? smh, once I see brilliant builds in action I instantly have to try it. My favourites so far have been Serral’s 1+1 roach ravager push, the Maxpax build and Probe’s cannon rush immortal all-in. That’s why it pains me sometimes to watch SC2.
It really isn’t terribly brilliant though. The ghost is simply a very strong unit right now. Zerg has 4 units he can make at that stage in the game – lings, queens, roaches and banes. Every one of these is unviable vs ghosts. Snipe deletes roaches and queens. Lings are too expensive in larva cost. Banelings are the same as lings but even worse because of how slow they are. It’s obvious why ghosts work here. It’s like, ok, he snipes queens to make his BC transition stronger. That’s clever. But BCs are already strong & a huge vulnerability for zerg. It’s just a more complicated way to 2 port BC rush a zerg. It’s more interesting than your marine-apes who copy Maru’s latest build, but it’s not as interesting as swarmhost ultralisk. The game is rigged, in a hundred different ways, to prevent swarmhosts ultralisk from ever winning a game. How do you deal with medivacs and liberators? There is no answer. Swarmhost ultralisk does not have a clear answer to either of those. If a ghost rush sees a roach, he snipes it. That’s how easy the answers are. A common response to 1 base swarm host openers is a BC. What do you do with swarmhosts when a BC is out? I can tell you what to do. You add on burrow and when he tries to use the BC you distract with a locust wave. You immediately move the swarmhosts after doing so because a common scenario is he will teleport the BC to where the locusts came from. This negates his BC advantage. Sometimes you can even kill the BC because he’s distracted.
A 1 base ghost rush is an interesting way to play terran, but I wouldn’t want to play it.
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It seems to me that you just can’t let go of hots. 
My latest challenge is to win via burrowing swarm hosts in a terran’s main. So winning with swarmhosts is too easy, I now have to get them into the main & win via the burrow maneuver. The burrow maneuver has to be what wins. This is hard because you have to commit to keeping the swarm hosts in the terran’s main. So my theory behind it is to rush out burrow, make him waste lots of scans by doing little attacks and burrowing lings here and there. Then I hit him with a nydus and unload 20 swarmhosts in his main which I spread out and burrow. This works because he won’t have scans & because he will be distracted by the ling attacks so the nydus can go up.
Spoiler alert. All you have to do is leave 1 swarm host behind. This is common knowledge team game strats.
You can get some eco damage but that’s not going to win a game. The goal is to threaten his production so that he has to respond with a panic f2. That allows lings to delete mineral lines & force command centers to lift. He has a dilemma where he has to camp his army directly in his main while waiting for a scan yet he has to defend his bases too. That’s why it’s checkmate. His eco is gone and he still has a strong army so the final challenge is getting past his army which will base trade once he realizes it’s futile to camp on top of the swarm hosts. You retreat the swarm hosts (via a nydus) the moment he lifts his buildings & you make infestors which now defend vs his army with the swarm hosts.
This build is defeated by a single scan or a terran who right clicks on the nydus in his main. 1 base ghost rush is a million times stronger, lmao.
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Ruff’s ghost build is hindered by taking any damage at all on the medivac. You have to abuse a triangle setup to get maximum value otherwise your ghosts get surrounded while you’re evading queen’s AA.
Well you’re supposed to mix in a hellion allin with it. It’s hard to scout the ghost opener because the ghost just snipes the overlord. So you have no idea if he’s cranking hellions off a reactor or if he’s moving up the tech ladder to starport or if he’s expanding. That’s what makes it good. There are three options that each require a different response & the zerg has no scouting info. Option A, you want lots of queens. Option B, you want spines, and queens are worthless. Option C, you want drones and a third. The medivac is only one branch of the ghost opener tree. But vs the medivac version it’s best to open hatch gas pool & keep drones on 1 gas while going zergling speed, overlord speed, then lair. You take a third when you have minerals & you make queens non stop. At 16/16/16 saturation you add on 5 more gas. This gives you a complete defense vs the medivac ghost harass & gives you tons of queens vs the 2 port bc, followed by 6 gas spire. You identify the hellion variant by scouting unit movement paths with a ling. You cancel overlord speed / queens & build spines. VS a terran who simply makes a command center, you scout it with the overlord speed & take a fourth while pumping drones.
Oh there is another variant where he goes liberators off his starport and sets up liberation zones which protect the ghosts & allow him to snipe the queens easier. You beat that with spores and spines. You simply move the spores & spines into the liberation zone, nothing he has there can compete vs 3 spines and 2 spores. You can confirm that variant with a ling patrol scout to see the liberator leave. You immediately build the spores and spines. Make sure you have complete creep spread in all your sensitive areas so that you can move the buildings to wherever he attacks.
I’ve pretty much got it solved. There is 1 build that still perplexes me a bit and it’s a style that Vibe used to do & which he passed to livibee who then passed it to clown crunch. It’s the 14/14 ling bane allin that he coinflips and follows up with a fast lair and mutas. Meomaika does the same build. You basically have no option except to open pool first & spend your first 50 gas on a baneling nest & next 100 on a lair and go mutas yourself, but from a better eco. There is no other option vs that build. There are ways to survive the potential baneling allin but they put you behind so he just fires up a lair the moment he sees a full wall. You are required to commit to the baneling defense but he isn’t required to commit to the baneling attack. While you are ahead in eco for a moment it doesn’t last long because he drones & takes a third followed by 6 gas. From there the muta player has total map control and a permanent eco lead. Fighting from behind is fine vs most players but vs meomaika it’s not going to work. He will just kill you with the mutas even if you have vipers. I had a similar situation today vs a 5500 zerg called starkiller and it was a 30 minute game to undo the lead he created by simply going mutas.
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Your build sucks against 12 pool, zealot archon + mutas. h ttps://imgur.com/a/gtrkvGl
Which one. I have a thousand. 14 hatch before overlord hard counters 12 pool and you can kill the 12 pooler in under 4 minutes. I can show you screenshots where I do that to meomaika and snake. At the end of one of the games, meomaika said “I am feeling sick” before leaving. Zealot archon is very easy to deal with as long as you go roaches into swarm hosts. It’s boring but it’s doable. Blink based styles into colossus are a lot stronger because the normal way to counter ground toss is via swarm host but the colossus tech preempts that. You also want to go infestation pit for fungal (vs the stalkers) and hive (vipers vs the colossi) so swarm hosts would be a natural part of the build but it’s not a good idea. So he has a value engine & you are on a timer to get out vipers before the colossi kill you meanwhile you can’t expand because zealots hit opposite of his stalkers & a prism goes for your main. Even if you make it to vipers, it’s a cinch for him to simply add on templar – he doesn’t even need storm, he simply needs to be able to feedback the vipers. So it makes him be defensive for a moment and then you’re back into trouble. Of course unless you’re name’s Creator and you throw an army to mass banelings. Only way to beat ground toss is to open mass ling into hydra lurker, you can afford it because you went lings, but that makes you vulnerable to archon zealot. So basically you are flipping a coin & half the time you just die and the other half the game goes on but the protoss has an advantage.
Yeah it’s a 2 base speedroach build. That dies to a protoss who makes a void ray. VS vibe’s build it’s a decent counter as long as you can get past the baneling allin. Getting past the baneling allin is very hard without a full wall. You can’t afford a full wall if you take a gas and you have to have a faster natural hatchery than 16 if you want to get creep out on time.
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I had more success with a stronger nydus timing instead of +1 for hydras. I’m with Elazer here, upgrades are a scam.
Nydus with the hydras, or nydus with +1 swarm hosts? With swarm hosts, you have to go upgrades sometimes or the wall becomes too big of a tell. One of the big issues with 2 base hydra is your ability to trade vs a zerg who takes a third, and an upgrade lead helps to cancel out his economic lead. If you went a nydus, you’d have to be camping on 2 base with no hope for ever getting a third, and you’d probably just get amoved by a roach player anyway because you are counter-attacking with the nydus which means even less supply for defending.
A better way to do it is to research overlord speed which is a tell for swarm hosts. Then you do hydra drops. He wants his overlords spread out vs the nydus & the hydra drops kill every overlord in sight. He chases the 1 or 2 overlords going after his overlords, and that’s when you do a big drop in the main. He’s too busy panicking about losing all his overlords to think about attacking you. Players like Snake will reflexively defend at all times in scenarios like that which is why you can go balls-to-the-wall with the aggression.
https://i.imgur.com/HR6nokj.mp4
That’s why I don’t like going roach. He isn’t gm because he doesn’t play ranked but he is GM level in mmr. It just demolishes people. If you are wanting to abuse the strongest strat for free wins then the roach is a good option. You can get pretty high on the ladder with basically no effort. It’s the “protoss” way of playing zerg. The roach is also oppressive in zvz, but in zvt it’s good*. The asterisk is there because it’s complicated. Roaches in zvt have scenarios where they are absolute gigatrash. They are strong as a tempo play, but if you are slowed down & miss timings they go from being good to being totally worthless. So they are almost always good for defense but for offense it’s purely tempo by hitting very specific timings. For example, killing a 3cc build with a 3 hatch ravager ling flood.
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So, what you’re saying is that the strength of roaches is INSANE??? True. When are Protoss players going to revert back to double robo instead of trying to outzerg the zergs.
Crimson Court is the most zerg favored map I’ve seen in a long time.
Sadly the REEEEEEEEEEEEEs to remove the multiple rocks in a single choke worked. SAD.
All right, be honest, do you believe this protoss is Grandmaster?
https://i.imgur.com/72wpQc4.mp4
Yeah, that seems like low gm play for a Protoss. Once they know what a warp prism is they’re sent off to high GM in endless PvPs.
Just to unpack it here.
- Doesn’t see the attack until its at his door.
- Floats 1400 minerals.
- No stutter step.
- Oracles aren’t targeting banelings.
- One pylon for the battery that is overcharged.
- Robo at the front which is promptly unpowered.
- 4th base on the way vs an allin from zerg.
- Gets his entire army stuck in a choke and which promptly dies to banelings and biles.
These are the people dominating gm. I can’t recall having seen a zerg or a terran play this poorly in gm. Subtract 300 mmr and that’s the dude’s proper ranking. I got a whopping 6 points by beating him & would’ve lost 80 if the dude simply knew how to micro. 
Decided to get the zealot rush achievement against a 5k protoss. Sentry would be proud.
h ttps://imgur.com/a/TqhDnwD