I watched the
SXSW Showmatch Stephano vs WhiteRa yesterday, and thought several of the games from that illustrated some of my thoughts about support units for Broodlords, especially the last game of the Showmatch.
So fair notice, there will be spoilers if you didn't see those games yet, I haven't seen VOD's go up for them yet, but I am sure they will.
In
Starcraft 2 Thoughts: Broodlords Support units Part 1, I mentioned using Spines and Spores to support Broodlords, though that post was more focused on ZvT, and strictly speaking Spines & Spores are structures or buildings not units ^_^
In the SXSW Showmatch Stephano frequently used Spines and/or Spores as a key component, and not just for supporting Broodlords, he is clearly using Spines as speed bumps, to buy time, as a standard component of his game play.
He is utilizing a
Defense in Depth, which provides several advantages, as well as some disadvantages, but the key advantage IMO is that it uses
TIME &
SPACE as resources to fight the enemy.
But back to Broodlord Support, in the last game of the SXSW Showmatch, Stephano was pushing with Spines, Broodlords, Infestors, and a few Queens.
I think with more Spores, you could skip most if not all of the Infestors, this would let you have more Queens, and Transfuse works very well on Spines & Spores in addition to the Broodlords and other Queens.
WhiteRa made several Motherships, not to mention lots of Voidrays, and Stephano was countering with ridiculous numbers of Corrupters.
He had more than 24 Corrupters a few times in that game, I think that was big part of the reason he made so many Spines, he wanted to be able to kill the Mothership quickly, and still have plenty of Corrupters left to morph into Broodlords, so out side of drones almost all his food was in Corrupters & Infestors, plus a few Queens.
He had to make Spines because so much food was in Corrupters.
I realized during this game, that having Spines + Spores supporting your Broodlords helps defend you vs Mothership.
Vortex only affect Units! Not Structures, so the Vortex isn't going to have any real impact on the Spine & Spore support.
This also means Zerg can try making two groups of Broodlords, a forward one that is attacking, that might get vortexed, and a 2nd supporting group just behind the front lines, that can move forward as soon as a Vortex goes off.
You might even want 3 groups of Broodlords, because a Mothership can have enough energy for 2 Vortexes if maxed on energy.
If your using Spines and Spores for supporting the Broodlords, instead of the normal Zerglings, you will have more food supply to work with, and Broodlords only take 4 Supply.
With 3 Groups you could have 2 groups both fighting, but spread out enough that it would take 2 Vortexes to get them.
Something worth testing IMO.
GL HF,
Cliff
See also:
Starcraft 2 Thoughts: Forward Defense when using a Slow Immobile Army
Starcraft 2 Thoughts: Corps d'armée: FXOBratOK vs Mill.Stephano
