Saturday, June 25, 2011

Starcraft 2 Zerg Strategy - Discovering the Spanishiwa Style

So I recently discovered the Zerg style of Spanishiwa - a heavy macro-style Zerg with early-game weakness traded for mid-to-late game dominance with Broodlords.

You can see the guy's stream at Justin.tv - here's a sample of some streamed games.

Anyway, what's intriguing about the style is that it works against all 3 races, but takes gas REALLY late. This means no speedlings almost until getting your third base! He drones heavily until about 40 food, then takes all 4 gas. He takes his third around 50 food typically, and relies on an early 4 queens (that means ASAP), Spinecrawlers and Zerglings to defend even against ground pushes. None of these things require gas, meaning a massive mineral surplus.

I think one of the strengths of the build is that it plays upon the strength of Zerg - with a lot of minerals you can build workers faster than any other race, and as long as you can hold off a few early pushes, your midgame soars because of your high drone count. You can even get Hive around the 16 minute mark! You can also get a lot of gas-heavy units and sustain their production once you are on 3 bases with 6 gas, and Zergling / Speedling / Infestor into Broodlord seems to work pretty well for Spanishiwa. He often throws in Roaches and/or Banelings, and 5-10 Mutas for harassment.

Other tricks I've seen him use:
- Burrow banelings beneath your opponent's next expansion mineral line. 4 Banelings means a lot of dead workers, and they are pre-positioned!

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