Starcraft 2 Skills: Build Integration

In this Idra vs sWs game, cast by Ipp of RageQuitTV, you can see that though Idra is changing his build, or strategy, he doesn't seem to have all the element coordinated yet.

I am not picking on Idra here, it just seems clear to me that he is either changing some of his game play, because of the influence of Stephano, or at least testing some of those concepts.

Since Idra is such a high profile, skilled player, I feel these games that show that even high level GM's have a learning curve for new builds may provide inspiration to others.

See also Idra vs Bound for a related post.

Replay:  http://drop.sc/148362

My comments & observations, with spoilers below the VOD.



Early in the game, Ipp makes a point about Idra not getting Roach speed, I think he missed the fact that Lair hadn't finished yet, so Idra couldn't get Roach speed till it finished.

I like several of the things Idra did or tried to do in this game, I really like him taking the Gold as 3rd, that is something I have been coaching Zerg players to do on several maps.

Since I am convinced in general it makes defending an expo easier for Zerg, Zerg units tend to be short ranged or melee units, so they need to get good surrounds.

The Central Gold bases on almost every map that has them is far more open than normal Naturals or thirds.

However, at ~13:26 game time (9:47 VOD time), Idra puts his 4th hatch down in the normal location for a 3rd.  I believe that was a rather large error.

I think he should have taken the other Gold base, the one closer to his Protoss opponent.

This would have provided several advantages:

• faster reinforcement for his Roach aggression
• deny logical 4th base to his opponent
• lots of minerals with 2 Gold bases, so he could have spined up a lot more, like Stephano does at times
• would have provided another layer of defense (aka Defense in Depth), both for his first gold base, but also for his main, layered defenses enable flanking, rear, & surrounding attacks
• in connection to denying his enemy a Gold base & adding a layer to his own defense, even if he lost the second Gold, he would have taken some of the resources from it, so it would be worth less to his enemy, additionally it would cost the enemy more time and units to take it, so if the game was really close it might throttle opponents income significantly even if enemy took it away from Idra
• It would also have strengthened the containment on Protoss

To see more posts about Idra just click the label Idra, that label & others can be found at the bottom left of every post.  Also selected Labels can be found in the Label Cloud at left side of blog.