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question: what do i have to do against protoss players that make void rays very fast? i know mutalisks are strong against void rays, but my enemy has void rays way faster then i got mutalisks.

Answer: Hydras counter voidrays pretty good. Just don't forget to spread lots of creep. Also if you want to stop voidray ball of death, you could pop out some infested terran to aid you in the battle.

queenz work very good against vdrs in the beginning... just scout toss and if you see that he's going fast vdrs make a few more queenz and dont forget to use transfusion....

Hello, I used to play zerg when SC2 came out, but then I quit for 2 years. Needless to say, I'm completely clueless. I'm trying to get my own game together, ie. master my general macro & early/midgame. These are my current tactics (I'm in silver):

ZvP
Roach spam (with excess minerals spent on lings), strong early pushes, trying to deny 3rd base to protoss while grabbing 3+ myself. If it gets to lategame, I'd prolly go either mass hydra (to counter air) or mass broodlords/corruptors (to counter colossi/stalker/templar army).

ZvT
Spam Lings+blings, with infestors later, spread creep, keep one base ahead of the terran, kill him when he pushes out, try to deny 3rd base, while expanding like a baws. Lategame, mass ultralisks.

ZvZ
Roach spam and early/midgame push attempting to deny 2nd or 3rd base, while expanding on my own. Later, depending on enemy composition, either infestors/blings (for ling/bling/hydra armies) or mass hydras (if he goes mutas or mass roach).

How are these general tactics? Are there any blatant mistakes I'm making here?

2nd Question: can anyone point me the way of a good baneling bust that works well in the current version of SC2? I remember winning a lot with that in season 1.

ZvP
Roach spam (with excess minerals spent on lings), strong early pushes, trying to deny 3rd base to protoss while grabbing 3+ myself. If it gets to lategame, I'd prolly go either mass hydra (to counter air) or mass broodlords/corruptors (to counter colossi/stalker/templar army).
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Well, this is not bad, but usually 2-base zerg cant win against 2-base protoss in mid game (if he goes for FFE(forge fast expand).
The best way against protoss is learn stephano 200/200 army before 12.minute mark. Its damn powerful, heavy macro game. (its best against FFE)
You take not just fast expand but two fast expands, you droning and droning and droning and if you do it right, you have soon huge army and you can start attacking opponent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77uAE1rFvWs

ZvT
Spam Lings+blings, with infestors later, spread creep, keep one base ahead of the terran, kill him when he pushes out, try to deny 3rd base, while expanding like a baws. Lategame, mass ultralisks.
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Yea, its good strategy.
If you want to make it as strong as possible, I wrote a tutorial how to easily beat terran (if he goes bio+tank). I dont use banes for example, but its up to you :). The important thing is upgrading.
http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/3686521923

ZvZ
Roach spam and early/midgame push attempting to deny 2nd or 3rd base, while expanding on my own. Later, depending on enemy composition, either infestors/blings (for ling/bling/hydra armies) or mass hydras (if he goes mutas or mass roach).
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The strongest composition is roach+infestors. Just spam fungal and it kills everything, try to fungal his infestors (if he has some) and avoid to lose yours.
Remember, that infestors "gathering" energy over time, so if you have a lot of them, you are stronger and stronger every sec :).
btw : Infested terran can inflict up to 279damage.
(but you mostly go only for fungals)

2nd Question: can anyone point me the way of a good baneling bust that works well in the current version of SC2? I remember winning a lot with that in season 1.
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I usually dont use banelings, so I do not have any advice :).

Hey, new RTS player here, I'm a FG player normally, new to starcraft, but I'm enjoying it so far. Three questions:
1. Scouting - recommended scouting parties at start, early mid and late game?
2. Terran heavy infantry (Marauder?) + marines rush. Best counters with zerg? Roach and Zerlings seem a tad lacking and I always come off worse in early push. Could use some advice.
3. The abbreviations/notation: I think I get some of it eg. Rax = Barracks? but some just confuses me, lol. Could somebody give me a list/link to a list of shorthand I need to know?

*edit*
One more:
When the term 'macro' is used here, what are people talking about?

Question: How do I counter a load of speedlings rushing straight into my natural? They just ruin any roach army I have -.- (ZvZ btw)

@ dTiMe

Answer: You need to place 2-4 Spine Crawlers and mix in some buildings so the lings cant get a good surround on your roaches and Spines, if you can build a nice wall mixed of Spines, Evo Chambers and Roaches, then you should be easily able to defend from any speedling attacks.

@ RVTSyn

Answer 1 : Early game scouting involves overlords and Speedlings, Midgame involves speedlings, Overlords and Overseers (possibly with speed upgrade), lategame generally doesnt involve much scouting at all as you already know what is your opponent most likely doing.

Answer 2 : Best counter to Bio-Balls (Marine-Marauder and possibly Medivacs) are a mix of Banelings/Zerglings, possibly with some added Infestors or Mutas. Banelings are mostly important part tho as they explode most of their force.

Answer 3 : Not sure if I can give you a list, but feel free to post some of that stuff here and I will clear it up.

Answer 4 : Macro and Micro are terms describing your ability to handle certain mechanics of the game.
Macro involves managing your economy well, your base building, unit productions, worker/unit balance, creep spreading, income and so on.
Micro on the other hand describes your ability to control your units efficiently in the heat of battle, managing them either individually or in groups.

Question: is it possible to cycle through units in one control group? For what i mean i would like to have all my queens in one control group and by using hot keys cycle through them all to inject larva to all my hatcheries. Using different hot key for each queen can take a lot of keys and be impractical. Is there another idea of how a noob zerg-player such as myself can use inject larvae efficiently?

@ Ummon

Answer: According to my knowledge there is no such function. You can however cycle through different unit TYPES of the same group by pressing Tab.

If you like having all queens in one control group then I would suggest using the good old minimap click technique (clicking inject larva and a left clicking the hatchery square on the minimap).

19/07/2012 23:53Posted by Ummon

Question: is it possible to cycle through units in one control group? For what i mean i would like to have all my queens in one control group and by using hot keys cycle through them all to inject larva to all my hatcheries. Using different hot key for each queen can take a lot of keys and be impractical. Is there another idea of how a noob zerg-player such as myself can use inject larvae efficiently?

The closest thing to this would be backspace method or camera hotkey method.
Or you could inject like stephano.

ZvP (2 questions):
So far I've seen this twice and both worked on me... I'll explain the situation shortly:
Protos goes FFE, and fills his bases with (around) 6 Photon Cannons. Harassing me on my 3rd with fast hit and runs. takes a 3rd with cannons again. When I try to harass or attack cannons deal big amount of dmg and he counter attacks.

Question: How should I respond to such build ?

And I really can't put my finger on how to defend 2 base all stalker and 3-4 Immortals denying my 3rd . I tried roach + hydra with nice upgrades but beaten.

Question: How can I redeem my 3rd and push that army back?

ZvT: I loose 4 games out of 5 when I play against Terran, I learned how to deal with MMM balls but: Terran goes Medivac + Marine harass (constantly) and MMM + Siege tanks.

Question: How do I defend harassing and MMM + Siege tanks?

thank you very much for reading and helping.

Answer You just need to scout him very hard. That's like the most important thing. If you see like 7 gateways from toss then expect a big attack and build some army. Also what are the timings for the toss attacks. Have you tried 12 min roach cap? It eats every gateway unit that toss makes.

Question Well i have been struggling against protoss and im wondering what kind of build should i do. I personally like to go 12 min roach cap but i also like muta ling into gg lords and infestors. It's just so hard to decide which build should i make. So i was wondering is there anyone who could tell me what build to do and when.

Also i rarely do all ins and i'm rly macro focused person.

Thank you

Watch Targa and learn how to play the race :)

Question: If you use the minimap inject technique, does it use the closest queen available? I'm afraid it'll make a random queen move half the map on an adventure, wasting some time.

*Never used that method (never even heard about it). But i think it works like the normal inject style. If you have 3 bases and 3 queens with 25 energy hotkeyed up then it should work. Im not 100% sure. Try custom game? I just suggest you to inject with base camera switching.

Question - Where can I see some new builds and timings. I am playing zerg but I am struggling against almost any mutch up. I lack builds and I don't know any timings that I might hit or when I should scout my opponent. Thank you!

I have the same problem as IPFreely - lack of builds for different match ups, unaware of timings that can hit me and problems scouting.

answer for ipfreely ifu haven't checked out filtersc on youtube I can recommend it bronze to master series http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co8yNKYIJc0&list=PL46B7ACACEDD7C954&index=1&feature=plpp_video