It's been quiet...

(discover the strenght of Roaches!)

around the eSF Team NewStarHoseo (NSHoseo) lately in Wings of Liberty. That's because they focused entirely on Heart of the Swarm and one of the players that impressed me alot with his performance is SSanaEE.
This Zerg, going by the name of "Kim Tae Gyun" opened the GSTL Preseason game of NSH vs MVP and was paired up with MVP_Killer, who he managed to take a win over by the usage of the fearsome Swarmhost Corrupter composition and then went on to play MVP_Dream. Eventhough he lost that game the opener he played made me curious and I broke it down and realized that it's an effecient opening for Zergs to play in order to get ahead early in Heart of the Swarm Terran vs Zerg.
(The VoDs of the GSTL PreSeason are free to watch for everyone so click here in order to watch the game yourself)
Long story short, here is the "17Gas Roach" opener that I first saw being executed as a non allin build by NSHoseo SSanaEE.

General idea

With the tools Blizzard gave us Zergs for the Hatcherytech we are once again up to do some early aggression. SSanaEE took this to heart and decided to put together an opener that consists of early Roaches with Burrow to delay the Terran and even potentionally killing him if he doesn't scout and react at all.

The advantage the new Roaches have is the ability to disengage without the need of the Roachspeed upgrade. 

This means that even if the Terran is not opening with Hellions (which is the ideal opener to play this opening against) you are at least even. In fact you can still get ahead by proper Roach control and Burrowmicro.

The Buildorder

(start droning after you move out)

15 Natural Hatchery
16 Pool 

17 Gas 

17 Overlord

@100% Pool; 2xQueen

27 Roachwarren
26 Overlord

(transition against Mech)

@100% Queen; start Burrow

32 2x Overlord

@100% Warren; start 5-6 Roaches

44 Overlord

(alot of droning and standartalysed play)

7:00 Third Base

Tipps: 

Use the main queen to spread creep once after the Roachwarren finished because you are not going to have the Minerals to turn all of those Larvae into Drones just yet.

It's just an opener, to transition from it properly make a third queen in your nat and either use the next 100 

on the Speedling upgrade if you see massive Bio play that you need to combat with alot of Lings early. If you don't just put down two Evolutionchambers and upgrade either +1Meele or +1Range in combination with +1Carapace depending on what the Terran plays (Bio or Mech) and how you react to those.

The execution

(Burrowmicro is similar to Blink Stalkers)

As soon as your Roaches reach his base you have different priorities. If he doesnt have a Bunker and only has 2 Marines and 2 Hellions you can engage him head on with burrow micro. However if he has a bunker up, which is the most common thing to encounter, you want to focus down as many SCVs as you possibly can without losing any Roaches. The key to this opener is it to not only kill his SCVs and keep him busy, it's also to waste Scans and if you execute your attack properly you can force up to three and sometimes even more scans out of the Terran. 

In the following I will post Replays of me trying (really trying, my macro and transitions are mostly really terrible in those games) out the Roachopener with good execution.

G1 Starstation (edited)

G2 Starstation

G3 Antiga Shipyard

These were random laddergames that I played against more or less good opponents. It's just about the way I tried to engage and burrow that might interest you.

Let's summarize it all

The 17Gas Roach opener is not on the same level of standart like the 4 Queen opener is but it is definitively a build that you can frequently throw at your opponent especially in a best of 3 or in the Ladder where you are not playing against the same opponent over and over again because this build got it's weaknesses like Hellions just bypassing and running into the Zergs Mainbase etc. but if it's surprising the Terran and especially looking like an all in at first sight it's going to go pretty well for you.

I hope this helped some of you out, especially the ones struggeling with mech because this opener is basically made to counter mechopenings with that really early Roachwarren and Burrow.
As far as that goes, Myu~

also check out SSanaEE stream at http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/SSanaEE

A crazy world we live in

Meteoroids are crushing into Soviet Russia, the Pope decided to step back from being just that and here in germany an eighteen year old teenager still strifes for the top of the Starcraft II ladder.

In less than 30 days Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm is going to be released and therefore a new chapter in my Starcraft 'career' will be made. 

I don't really want to look back to Wings of Liberty all too much because I personally disliked it more and more towards the end of the game. The direction WoL was heading at is just not my style of play. It was heavily relying on camping and just massing up the ultimate deathball of doom for all of the three races so I stepped away from it as soon as possible, meaning when the Beta was finally playable without one second of delay from europe and eventhough the delay is still existing the game is more playable now.

So let's talk Heart of the Swarm and my possibilities of doing well in that game.
First of all I like where Blizzard is taking Zerg, they moved alot of stuff to the Hatcherytech and enable me to tech up way faster where I normally was "I have to wait for the Lair to finish, now I have all this gas to not do stuff with" I can just go for burrow and overlordspeed while the Lair is morphing. That change gives Zerg more abilities to get active early as supposed to waiting for those upgrades way after the Lair is done.
The Swarmhost is a cool utility unit that can be used reactionary in ZvP to counter openings with a Robotics and possibly be a core unit in latergame ZvZ because of their free units that trade exceptionally with the basic Roach Hydra composition.

Vipers in combination with Ultralisk and Hydralisk do a great army against lategame Mech in ZvT and combined with Infestors, which is arguebly a bit harder to control, they could form the ultimate weapon of Zerg against Protoss, Terran and in our Mirrormatchup.
The buff to the Mutalisk and the Hydra also plays directly into my hands because it supports the style of play I used to play before HotS was even announced, being super aggressive ZvP tactics with late/midgame mass Mutalisktransitions to kill an army that is not relying on Archons aswell as beating Archon Immortalheavy three base pushes with Hydras and also utilising Hydras in combination with Banelingdrops.

All in all I am super happy about the game at this point in time and I hope with the release of the game the annoying delay will go away and I'll be able to play at 100%. As far as that goes I am trying to gather new replays but it's decently hard because I still suck really hard at this new game and I wouldnt like to have replays of me out there in which I am super bad.
~Myu