I notice a lot of casters use the term momentum. Momentum is not by any means unique to Starcraft, so I’d like to share my view on what it actually means and how being aware of momentum can improve ones play.  It’s really important to be aware of momentum in play – and we are to a degree, but we don’t always have a name for it. It’s one of those things which are really good to be concious about.

Momentum, if we don’t delve deep into what a physicist would say, is when an event or an action has a positive, creating effect on following events and actions, creating a kind of snowball effect. For example, beating your opponents army in the open gives you momentum even if you can’t end the game right away. You will be able to focus more on economy and tech while the opponent is forced to rebuild. Or for example, harass creates momentum for the aggressive side as it often forces the opponent down a certain tech path while freeing time and options for the aggressor.

Recoqnizing momentum and using it to your advantage is really, really important. One shouldn’t mix momentum with just an advantage – an advantage is a temporary state where you are ahead of your opponent, but unless you have momentum you might not be able to capitalize on it. For example, if you beat your opponent out in the open but you don’t have the economy or the means to rebuild as fast. Then you might have a temporary advantage in army size, but you most definetely don’t have momentum to propel you forward, to victory!

I see economic play as the base for creating and maintaining momentum. Two Zerg vs Zerg examples:

1) Early 10-ish spawning pool baneling aggression. You might push in with your first 4-5 banelings and a few lings, causing significant economic damage to the opponent, thus granting you the advantage and a degree of momentum offensively.  You keep building more lings and banelings and push, trying to capitalize on the advantage, but the opponent manages to hold your pushes with a couple of banelings, a spine crawler and the queen, while building drones. You’ll soon find yourself  with a bunch of lings and banelings, not really being able to touch the opponents base, so you start building drones. But it’s too late, you’ve lost the advantage and the opponent has managed to gain some momentum from a strong economy.

2) Now the other option, with economic momentum in mind, might be to go for a 10-ish pool baneling rush, cause that 5-6 drones worth of damage, and instead of pushing it, just switching to pure economy. The opponent is forced to replenish drones and to get some defence, especially if you run some lings under his overlords. You will have the option of going double gas heavy eco mutas, or roaches to block your ramp if you want to be safe, and you should be way, way ahead in economy, while making your opponent feel under pressure. The feeling of pressure is really important in terms of momentum. Again, if you can create pressure and force an opponent to certain decisions, then you have momentum in your play.

This is why I see economic play as a base for momentum. Excluding all-ins, whatever early game tactic you pick, it should be designed to give you the momentum when entering mid-game. Momentum is putting a feeling of pressure on the opponent, having an economic advantage and forcing the opponent down certain paths.

A lack of momentum can have it’s uses as well. Momentum in itself creates a feeling of safety. If you do a succesful harass or cause damage to the opponent, you often feel safer and stronger, prompting you to improve economy and tech. Especially zerg have the option of spawning units fast and to tech switch quite rapidly, or at least change the army composition fast. I’ve won quite a few games where I take a lot of damage, such as the receiving player in example 1, and instead of overcomitting to defence I eco up for a moment and then just go purely for combat units for 1-2 minutes, and push. There is a window there, for a few minutes after the opponent gains a small victory, where if the opponent doesn’t immediately try to win the game by building more units and pushing again, you have a good chance of winning with a timed counter attack. Instant counter attack hardly works if you’ve just been damage – you often have the smaller army. But the feeling of safety the opponent gains from his attack can be used against him, as any teching or expanding he does will leave him vulnerable for a few minutes.

Certainly a lot of this can be eliminated by proper scouting. But on the other hand, this outlines how important it is to scout at the right times. Every time there is a shift in momentum is a great idea to take a look at the opponents base, if possible, as those are the times there is a real chance one or both of you will have to make a change in direction or emphasis.

And like any proper zerg player I won’t miss a chance to talk about balance. This is why I think zerg vs terran is currently unbalanced. Didn’t see this one coming, did you! The whole issue with zerg vs terran early game is that terran enters mid-game with a huge amount of momentum. Zerg has to spend all of early game simply defending and trying to stay alive, losing some drones (Feeling of pressure, being forced down certain paths, economic advantage?) while the terran can tech down any path he wishes, or could expand if he so chooses.

• 15 gas
• 15 pool
• If 1 marine out of barracks or a really long distance -> expand <<>> If straight tech lab -> queen & 4 lings & prevent bunker & ling speed
• Pull a couple of drones off gas, leave at least one, expand if haven’t yet.
• Don’t engage the first reaper with slow lings, just wait for speed before you go in, or go in at the same time the speed finishes to get a jump on the reaper and hopefully kill it.
• After 1st queen is done, go straight for a 2nd queen. When 2nd queen halfway done, check for more barracks. If more barracks, get a roach warren. Put drones back on gas.
• Lair when 2nd queen is done, should have just enough gas.
• Immediate roach speed and a few roaches
• Enter mid game!

It doesn’t sound too special, but it’s enough to get an expo and to live through reapers on most maps. One important point was not to overdo it on the drones (you can get more than in the daily though, as now reapers are a bit slower to build).

Here’s the daily.

And last thing: Since there’s already a bunch of subscribers (lots of love!) do comment and let me know if I’m too heavy on quoting the day9-dailies. I’m doing it because there’s hours and hours of material and not much of it concerns zerg, so I’m hoping it helps that I’m filtering the non-important stuff out. I haven’t had enough time to watch actual replays, but I should have more time in the coming weeks, so I’ll try and dig out some normal replays/casts and go less heavy on the day9 stuff .

We spend a lot of time and resources trying to figure out what is the optimal course of action to beat what the other guy is doing. More so as zerg, since zerg are seen as a reactive race. Often this vigor we have for doing the right thing, and I don’t talk about saving babies from burning buildings, can be our undoing. I’ll give you an example from my losing streak from before.

I had this odd losing streak, I think I won maybe 4 games out of 20. At first I had no idea what had changed, I just suddenly stopped winning games. Then I started analyzing my play a bit, the little I could out of all the frustration, and felt that I didn’t seem to have any game plan at all. That was weird, since I thought I had improved and understood the game much better than before. Then I played another ZvT and I think that’s when it hit me. I did have a game plan: I had them all at once. I scouted my opponents well, I saw what they were going for and I reacted. I read their play and tried to be one step ahead of them at all times. The result? I had too few units, but I had a roach warren, a baneling nest, a spire and a hydra den up when getting into midgame. Also, way too few drones.

I tried to have the optimal unit to counter each unit the opponent was throwing at me. I hope I’m not starting to sound like a broken record, but I think this is worth saying again. You can’t go wrong with economy. You can’t go wrong with a big army. Almost all the games I played, if I had only reacted to the first thing I scouted and went with whatever counters that, I would have been fine. If I had ignored the first signs and reacted to the 2nd thing  I saw them do I would have won most games. But for some reason I was possessed to do a bit of everything.

So what I’m getting at is that if you have no plan at all, or you spend too much time and resources trying to come up with one, you’ll lose anyway. It doesn’t matter what happens, you’ve lost before you even begin. It’s much, much better to pick a strategy and roll with it until something definitive happens that forces you to rethink it, even if it’s not the exact right thing you’re doing. If you have enough units and a decent enough economy, the odds are the opponent might hesitate, or might overextend their economy, or might build too much of an army themselves and if you just play solid yourself you’ll be ahead even if you don’t have enough banelings to kill all those marines, or enough hydras against that gateway army. You don’t *have* to have corruptors against the first colossi that gets out. Hell, sometimes a much better counter to colossi is to kill the other guy before he gets three of them than to sit back, let him build his colossi and get corruptors.

Think of online poker. Making money in online poker is all about one thing: To play optimally, by the odds, because the average person doesn’t. That alone puts you ahead the average, and if you’re ahead the average then your balance will be on the positive.

I  think this applies to gaming as well. If your basic play is solid enough, whatever you go for, then you can often be slightly ahead where it matters, so that perhaps you don’t have to react to all the variables as perfectly to retain your lead.

Certainly at tournaments or at high diamond you aren’t playing against the average, but then it’s even more important to go for something and go for it hard. Many builds and strategies are so well refined and efficient that unless you act immediately you’ve lost the game. So again: Scout, react and go for it, but don’t hesitate or second guess unless you have solid information to back it up. If you kind of expand and eco a little vs 4 gate, you lose. If you kind of go banelings against mass marine you lose. If you kind of push a little vs a fast expanding opponent, you lose. Just go for it!

The main thing about dealing with any cheesy non-regular tactic is to have a confident response. You can’t really hesitate as that’ll end up with you having a baneling nest, a roach warren and a hydra den with too few drones.  You just have to pick an approach and stick with it, because the other guy sure will have their build figured out. I like to think that a wrong decision is better than no decision at all.

I’ve been trying 1 base roaches, 1 base banelings, 1 base mutas and so forth with varying success, but this is just brilliant. If a protoss does a cannon wall in then his next 3-5 minutes will be completely based on being left alone. The best thing you can do? What Dimaga did. Even if he didn’t win the game right there he would have at least gotten the protoss off his game which is half a win already.

First, two Day9-dailies.  I’ll just summarize them here. First one is about economy and the mentality to Starcraft 2. Pay attention to how Day9 argues that we spend a lot of time and resources, both in and outside the game, figuring out the best ways to counter what the other person is doing. I mean figuring out which units to use against which comps. Day9 goes on to say that we ignore the fact that it doesn’t matter (to an extent) what units we build if we have enough of those units. Basically, the more we out-eco our opponent the less we have to worry about our unit composition. This is actually about Protoss vs Terran, but in my opinion this actually applies even more to zerg than to protoss.

There are certain obvious things in our play that we take for granted. For example trying to get a queen up as soon as possible after a pool finishes, or building an orbital command after the first barracks. These things are great in most situations, but there are times when there are better options. We might not see those options when we think we know exactly how to act. Here’s what Day9 has to say about questioning the obvious.

Finally there is the Korean game I saw. It summed up what Day9 had to say in the previous two videos quite well. Unfortunately I don’t have  a link to it, so I’ll have to try and explain it. It was some Korean guy who’s name I don’t even remember, but he did this great zerg build that was very basic yet so brilliant. He scouted a 2-gate. He got a pool at 15. Then he got an expansion, at 15. He only built two zerglings at this point. He didn’t get a gas. He did nothing but power build lings and then drones until he had pretty much both expansions fully saturated. Mass lings from two hatches easily outproduce 2 gates (where the rule of thumb is, 4 lings to each zealot, should the zealots not have forcefields or be able to fight next to a wall) and he had an expansion to boot. The toss transitioned to 4gate and once that got scouted, THEN he got gas, now from 3 geysirs at once, and transitioned to roach/hydra and kicked the living crap out of the protoss with his superior economy. The build doesn’t always work like this of course, but it’s the mentality that counts, not the build order.

I’ll clarify. The zerg questioned the obvious. He didn’t get gas, so he couldn’t roach the 2gate, he couldn’t get speedlings. He also got a slow queen, since he got a fast hatch. What did he gain? A huge economic advantage as 4 more drones on minerals meant he could spend every single larva from both his hatches to drones (and lings as necessary). 4 extra drones mining minerals really adds up when you have them early enough. What’d be the variations:

2 gate: Mass ling from two hatches, slow transition to roach by the time multiple sentries show up. Economic advantage from two hatches and mass drones.

4 gate: Power drone with no gas for the first few minutes, then several gas at once to hydras or roaches. The more you can boost your economy before you are forced to start producing units the better vs 4 gate. That early gas really does nothing for you before you start building roaches or hydras, so why not get tons of minerals (and drones, overlords) and then a lot of gas at once, rather than less minerals and gas slowly. Also, with all those extra minerals and drones you could get some more spine crawlers than usual.

Fast expanding protoss: You have the capability to build mass lings and you have a strong economy. You can pretty much end the game there with all those lings vs his 1 gate zealots. If he manages a complete wall in to his expo, then you can just expand one or two times more, as you’ll have tons of minerals.

Fast voids: You can pump queens like no tomorrow.

Because, really, in the end the only protoss early harass is zealots, and lings from two hatches outproduce his two gates, at least until he reaches a big enough zealot ball to trouble your lings, at which case you may have transitioned to roaches. You have nothing to fear early game, so why not use it to the best economic advantage. Speedlings really do nothing, as the protoss has nothing that kites your lings anyway. You only trade away the ability to chase down the zealots as they back out. One or two extra potshots from a few stalkers won’t worry lings at all, and fast stalker is the best thing that can happen to you even if you go slow ling.

I used to have trouble with protoss players, but I’m at around 8/10 win ratio vs protoss now at 900 points diamond. I’m not sure if you can call it a build, since it all varies from what the protoss does, but the basic idea is the same. Speedlings aren’t that much use early, and fast roaches cripple you and are easily countered. So why not take the best economic approach possible that still allows you to protect yourself from any early aggression, and leap ahead.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t have to think, but even if you get the gas at something like 25 or 30 and transition to roaches  if you think he’s going mass zealot with a few sentries, you’ll still have the roaches in time but you’ll have a way stronger economy and queen/creep/spine crawler/drone count.

I was blown away at how much stronger my economy felt just because I didn’t get that obvious fast gas. Of course this’ll be obvious to some people, but I got into 900 diamond without ever even thinking of trying it, so hell, maybe this’ll help someone else.

5 seconds more to Reaper build time: Excellent. It relieves some of the pressure fast reaper and mass reaper cause without making reapers useless. Currently fast reaper harass causes eco damage and easily forces a zerg player to a particular counter, which is extremely vulnerable to the natural follow up from Terran (see Morrow vs Idra post).

Tank damage nerf: Also quite subtle, but adds to the lifetime of hydras in mid-game, and lings with armor upgrades. Makes a mech or marine/tank push a little less powerful, as currently a lot of ZvT games end to a tank mix.

Battlecruisers: Meh. Necessary? I’m not so sure.

Warp gate and zealot build time nerf: I think this is justified, at least in ZvP. Both 4gate and 2gate put a huge amount of stress on a zerg player, and unless the zerg plays flawlessly they actually out-produce the zerg as well. More on this below.

Ultras: This might just be more of a buff than a nerf. Now ultras attacking structures deal aoe to repairing SCVs, for example. I’d rather see some fixes to ultras targeting AI and pathfinding.

I’m a bit bummed that there’s no changes to the whole queen/larva mechanic. Here’s why.

I’ve got my game down pretty well at the moment. I’m happy with most of the things I can do, both micro and macro wise. But I think like a third of the games that I lose, I lose because I fail at injects. I fail because of the absolutely unforgiving nature of injects. The most common situation is a mid-game fight, like a timed 4gate push or a marauder push following reaper harass. It’s usually a pretty micro intensive battle and it is in a point in the game where I have probably just got my expo running well, I have queens for both hatches and then the fight ensues. By now the early game has been pretty hectic so I have no larva stack in reserve and my unit output relies entirely on the fact that I have flawless injects. The terran or the protoss has a good production capacity where they can pump out all the resources they get from their one base to units immediately. Also, due to the nature of their play so far they most likely out-worker me or at least match my drone count.

So during the mid-game brawl that can last for several minutes of back and forth, especially vs an agressive 4gate, I have to keep injecting absolutely perfectly to have enough production capacity to match a 4gate or a 4-5 rax play. At least before the warp gate nerf.. anyway, if I miss injects for even 10 seconds, I will get absolutely trashed because I need both lings to counter stalkers/marauders and roaches to counter zealots/reapers/hellions so I have to output a lot of units, not just expensive ones that require less larva. Also, because zerg is mostly reactive and there won’t be that much creep spread early in the game, I can’t really choose my fights too well, especially since they are fought in front of my expansion it’s very easy for me (and in replays, a lot of higher level zerg) to miss injects. This is not made any easier by the fact that terran, for example, has both reapers and hellions capable of harass, while I can’t really harass their mineral line at all. That’d be fine, except that microing vs harass means more missed inject seconds. Those missed injects mean that suddenly my unit production grinds to a halt or at the very least I have to choose between building units to survive or building drones, while the enemy can keep marching in more units, even if they missed a chrono or a mule. It’s really an instant loss if there is a pause in injects at this stage.

I think this is the issue: The simple fact that injects are so unforgiving at those crucial times when games are decided. If the injects had less of an impact (a little faster larva spawns, 4 larva max, less larva from inject?) or even a stacking possibility, (inject twice simultaneously, twice the amount of larva, with a penalty of one larva due to stacked injects!) it’d be a bit less extreme to miss injects.

This is not to say that I don’t have to work on my micro to be able to not miss those injects, but even pros do miss them from time to time. It is an issue of effort required for an effective result and on the other hand the penalty for failure, which should be roughly similar for all races.

Before I go all out on introducing myself, I thought I’d throw in something that’s actually interesting. That’d be the surprise final win of Morrow over Idra, claiming a nice 5000$ in price money on the side.

Idra came in heavily favoured; being Idra after all, and MorroW actually got in as a backup for Brat_OK. I didn’t know who MorroW was, so of course I had to find out. I found this gem of an interview Morrow the Professional that tells quite a lot. There’s a man who takes his Craft seriously!

Anyway, to the game itself. MorroW, coming in as an underdog, decided to do something a bit drastic and deny Idra what he is famous for: The long, inevitable macro grind. Idra has great mechanics, but it’s the long game you really don’t want to engage in. So MorroW threw down this insane mass reaper push tactic, that by now has come to define a lot of terran openers. I’m not so interested in the build itself, so I’ll say that it involved a ton of reapers. The build itself isn’t all that won him the tournament.

Game 1 was quite simple, MorroW won with the early advantage he got out of the reapers, and his mid-game transition just pushed Idra over.

Game 2 he wen’t for the same and again got Idra off a bit again, but Idra manages to keep his expo up this time and cleans it up with some sweet baneling/muta action.

Now game 3 is where MorroWs plan starts paying off, as well as the beauty of mass reaper. Regardless of Idra seemingly getting his game down vs mass reaper in game 2, MorroW goes reapers again. Knowing Idra, he must be furious by now. Constant reaper pushing is horribly stressful and seemingly too effective, so Idra with his strong belief of overpowered terran must not be taking it too kindly. Mass reaper may gimp your eco a bit in the beginning, as any early agression does, but the great thing is that it doesn’t require any kind of transition to beat it’s own natural counter. Idra is forced to go roach to survive, and to what end? MorroW already has 4 rax up in his base with tech labs in all, pumping out marauders while his reapers keep up the pressure and force Idra to keep commiting to roaches. It’s vile to be forced to build units whose counter you know is being built on the other side of the map.

Game 4 is very basic. 3 games mass reaper in a row pays off – Idra builds a roach warren without sufficient knowledge of what is actually going on. He has to, you need those roaches out fast or you’re dead vs mass reaper. What does MorroW do? A very basic timed push with some SCVs thrown in for flavor (a very underrepresented little trick in the diamond ladder, still). The few roaches and lings that would have been sufficient vs reapers get killed easily. Game over, cash in, partay for MorroW. I didn’t see if they interviewed Idra after the game, somewhere I read that they did, but I was unable to find the interview. Supposedly Idra behaved himself in a sudden bout of sportsmanship, so all’s well.

Except that the last four terrans I’ve played in diamond have gone for mass reaper. Fortunately their micro isn’t quite as good as MorroWs, so Idra’s fast roach counter worked wonders. Whew, perhaps that build isn’t going to become a hit. At least until terrans learn that zerg know the counter is roaches, so they start feinting reapers and go marauders instead, so zerg will start feinting roaches to lure marauders, so.. err, we’re really back in square one.

The strength of MorroWs mass reaper wasn’t really in the build itself. It’s just another demonstration of the flexibility of terran early game aggression. I’m not heavily in favour of nerfing, so I’m going to suggest that instead of nerfing terran early game aggression options or speed, I’d rather see more early game options for zerg and protoss, so that we could all have a bit more eventful early games instead of the usual timed push preparation.