This opening is great for avoiding ling and baneling matches. It also has the potential for a very strong mid and late game depending on how your opponent reacts and how you deal with their aggression. This build helps you defend your early hatch with correctly positioned roaches. Using roaches not to be aggressive but to defend and wall is the key point of this opening.
Opening Build Order
9 overlord
14 hatch
15 pool
18 overlord
17 gas (or when pool about half way)
-save money after gas and overlord
-When pool pops place roach warren, spine at natural, 1 set of lings and a queen at your natural (all this can be done pretty much at the same time, don’t forget to place drones in gas too)
Drone till 20 food
20 overlord
*save money for when Roach Warren pops and start to build roaches as you have the larva and place them in key locations at your natural.
Execution
The above build order is only ideal if you are not under pressure but most zvz revolve around early pressure and this is especially true if you hatch so some adjustments must be made to the above build.
It’s very important to have your first 2 overlords placed correctly because you will need to know how many lings to make at the start to defend. Even better would be to send a drone at 14. You should have your first overlord directly going to your opponent’s base to get a timing on their gas and pool. On some maps you won’t have this luxury so you going to have to make do with knowledge of whether they expanded or not. Ideally you want to have 1 overlord looking over their gas and 2nd overlord looking outside their natural. Constantly be aware of what goes out of their base. If you see 2 sets of lings match their count. You don’t need to make more because you will have a spine and a queen soon after, along with some roaches. Just don’t get supply blocked with this build because roaches do eat in to the supply very very easily as you will find out. At most you will make 6 lings or 3 sets of lings.
When lings come to your main you should obviously try not to loss anything. Often you will have to defend your spine crawler while it is building but just be aware of your queen spawning at your natural you want to move her and create a wall at your ramp with the lings until your roaches come. If you see a constant stream of lings you might have to build a spine at your main and move it to your natural at a safer time. The timing on your roaches can be very close, just try to be aware of where they are being built and place them between buildings or mineral patches if you’re getting rushed. You are strong when you have your spine and your ramp blocked, but your very weak before that spine and wall.
If you don’t see any expansion from your opponents its best not to drone to hard and create 2-3 more roaches. Make sure you send the drones to your main and not keep then at your natural because if they are not expanding you should expect a baneling ling attack and if they see a wall they will go for drones at your natural. This build should be able to deal with any baneling and ling attack with proper positioning.
The above positioning with queen between the hatch and the spine creates for a very difficult defense to penetrate with just lings. Note the spine covers the ramp, roach wall and the hatchery.
-1 queen and a roach can block most ramps
-3 roaches can block a wall
-1 queen and 2 lings can block a wall (takes time to set up and fragile)
-Place your spine near the ramp but close enough to the hatch.
-Make sure have your roach up against anything to reduce surface areas of surrounds
-Do not move out with roaches unless you know you can get to the enemy safely and you have more roaches on the way to block your wall.
-Keep tabs on your overlords making sure you see what comes out and in of your opponents base.
-Use hold position with your roaches.
Things to note:
Build does not work on Tal’ darim Alter and Arid Plateau due to their open expansions.