Starcraft 2 Zerg Strategy Tips: Watching IdrA

IdrA is a professional Starcraft 2 player, renowned for his perfect build orders and infamous for his temper. He is a very experienced player, having played professionally during Starcraft: Brood War, and currently coaches other players as well as playing professionally in both North America and Europe. It's easy to pick up Starcraft 2 tips just by watching him play!

In the early game against Zerg, Protoss usually walls his ramp off with buildings plus a Zealot on Hold Position.  However, it is possible, using a Drone, to get into the Protoss base and scout, at least until the Protoss builds a Stalker to chase down the Drone...

How does this work?  Well, any worker unit can pass through other units on its way to a mineral patch, so if you click on a mineral patch in the enemy base, your worker will pass right through the blocking Zealot and into the Protoss base.

A Zerg Strategy to defend against gateway-heavy armies, with heavy use of Sentries, involves getting a good ball of Roaches, with the Burrow and Tunneling Claws upgrades.

Without these upgrades, a Protoss army with a lot of sentries can use Force Fields to split the Zerg force into small pieces, and kill the entire Zerg army by only engaging small pieces of it at a time.  This early in the game, the Zerg player won't have the resources to reinforce quickly, and whatever reinforcements the Zerg DOES make can be countered by a forward-placed pylon by the Protoss.

How, with the upgrades, the Zerg player can simply tunnel beneath the Protoss Force Fields, or Burrow as required to heal up his Roaches.  Because the Protoss has invested heavily in a Gateway attack force, they are unlikely to have an Observer to counter the burrowing.  By the time an Observer is available, the Zerg player should have Hydralisks to counter a Gateway army or Immortals, or Corruptors to counter Colossi.

In game 4 of a recent MLG series against LiquidHuK, IdRA counterattacked across a big map using Hydralisks.  However, since Hydralisks are so slow, he used the Overlord ability "Generate Creep" to make a quick "creep highway" upon which his slow Hydralisks could make a lightning-fast counterattack.

The other advantage of hydras on creep is that they can achieve a proper attack arc much more quickly.  Whenever possible, engage your enemy on creep!