2 Base Roach ZvZ by McMonroe

by Beardie
in Zerg vs Zerg
on August 22, 2018

+2/+1 52 Drone Roach Timing
52 Drone Roach Tunneling Claws
32 Drone Roach Queen Creep Highway
34 Drone Nydus Worm
27 Drone Roach Zergling All in
Muta Ling Bane

McMonroe Links

Detailed Wall Off

General Notes

Currently there are two types of viable macro ZvZ styles, the first is 3 base ling bane which most are familiar with because of PiG’s popular 3 base aggression videos, the second is to play a greedier early game off of 2 bases and walling off quickly so as not to die to early zergling floods.

The strength of two base roach styles comes from being hard to scout as well as early tech leads. With two base roach you can hide tech, all ins, or just transition to a third base and play a macro game while hitting a strong timing attack. This in combination makes it difficult for your opponent to react ideally. The main strength of two base roach styles is the early upgrades which give you an upgrade advantage in the mid-game. The builds throughout this guide are designed to take advantage of the tech lead (most often upgrades) that playing two base roach gives you, whether that be spire, upgrades or nydus worm.

In addition to the builds below, you can play a normal macro game off of the general opener found in the builds, however if your opponent reacts properly they will have an economy lead, this means they will be ahead once they catch up in upgrades.

Walling Off

How you wall off is important when doing 2 base builds since without the correct wall off you can die to ling bane floods which can break down your wall. Since zergling speed finishes for a hatch first build at 3:30, you want to make sure your wall is complete by that time. Another factor which is important is to ensure that it is possible to make a two layer wall behind your first, to give you enough time to defend and to slow down baneling busts.

Note: more detailed steps of how to wall off can be found at the bottom of the guide and the images can be downloaded here. An Imgur album can be found here.

Edit: there appears to be an error loading the embedded images for some users, I am working on a fix, however until then the imgur album should work.

Acid Plant

BlueShift

Cerulean Fall

Dreamcatcher

Fracture

$fracture3$

Lost and Found

Parasite

Full Wall Off

It is important to ensure as you put your queen on hold position that you can fit an evolution chamber to fully wall off behind it, sometimes if your queen is back too much it will block the evolution chamber from being placed.

Double Wall

There are also cases where you will have to create a two layer wall off similar to below.

1 Base All ins

While the build orders below are strong against Zerg 2 base or 3 base all ins, you will need to deviate from them and defend popular 1 base all ins and other very early all ins as you normally would defend them without a wall. This includes builds like 13/12, 12 pool expand and 12 pool drone pull spine rush.

Build Order

+2/+1 52 Drone Roach Timing

13 – Overlord
16 – Hatchery
18 – Extractor
17 – Spawning Pool
20 – Overlord
20 @100% Spawning Pool – 2x Queens
>Make Lings as a response to how many lings your opponent makes
>Make 0|2|4 Lings if they make 2|4|6 Lings
30 – Overlord
@100% Queens – 1 Queen + Lair | Lair in natural, Queen in main
2:50 – Evolution Chamber in Wall
3:00 – Roach Warren in wall
37 – Overlord
@3:15 – +1 Range and 2x Extractors
@3:30 – Second Evolution chamber in wall
@100% Lair – Roach Speed
> Go up to 42 drones (2 base 3 gas saturation + 1 drone to make your third base)
> Take a third base after reaching 42 drones, if they are pressuring with lings make 5 roaches first to secure the third. No later than 4:30.
> Make 10 Roaches to pressure – morph an overseer to scout* and contaminate- switch back to drones
> Move out with Roaches based on the scouting information**
@4:30 – +1 Carapace
@4:45 – 4th Gas
@100% +1 Range – +2 Range
@52 Drones – Constant Roach production
Use extra gas to make ravagers before your attack
Benchmark: @7:15 move out and hit at 7:30 with +2/+1, 52 drones and 180 supply

*Scouting: Before you move out, it’s recommended to start an overseer to scout. Look for what units your opponent is making, their drone count, evolution chamber position (try to contaminate it when you have 125 energy), and third base drone saturation. If your opponent is flooding upgraded lings or has no drones at the third they are likely just all inning so don’t move out and react according to the situation.

**Move out: If you scout him doing a normal response (going into roaches himself), move out. Going to his third is recommended to try and pick off drones or the queen if your opponent is not quite ready to defend. Since you’re droning behind this, it is important to not take a bad trade. Take what you can get but if they have 10+ roaches ready to defend just turn around and go home. Alternatively, you can hide 3 roaches to go to their third while sending 7 into their natural to draw their attention. Aim to get their roaches out of position, then send the 3 roaches into the third to focus fire workers.

52 Drone Roach Tunneling Claws

13 – Overlord
16 – Hatchery
18 – Extractor
17 – Spawning Pool
20 – Overlord
20 @100% Spawning Pool – 2x Queens
>Make Lings as a response to how many lings your opponent makes
>Make 0|2|4 Lings if they make 2|4|6 Lings
30 – Overlord
@100% Queens – 1 Queen + Lair | Lair in natural, Queen in main
2:50 – Evolution Chamber in Wall
3:00 – Roach Warren in wall
37 – Overlord
@3:15 – +1 Range and 2x Extractors
@3:30 – Second Evolution chamber in wall
@100% Lair – Roach Speed
> Go up to 42 drones (2 base 3 gas saturation + 1 drone to make your third base)
> Take a third base after reaching 42 drones, if they are pressuring with lings make 5 roaches first to secure the third. No later than 4:30.
> Make 10 Roaches to pressure – morph an overseer to scout – switch back to drones
@100% Roach Speed – Tunneling Claws + Burrow
@4:45 – 4th Gas
@100% +1 Range – +2 Range
@52 Drones – Roach Production

@5:50-6:00 Send 9-12 roaches out on the map. The idea here is to sort of distract your opponent. Move out before tunneling claws is done so they doesn’t expect it right away. Send these roaches to a hidden spot preferably close to your opponents base and then burrow them. Put 3-4 in each mineral line. 3 roaches 1 shot a drone. Get damage done and either all in off of 52 drones with +2 or just macro out.

32 Drone Roach Queen Creep Highway Timing

13 – Overlord
16 – Hatchery
18 – Extractor
17 – Spawning Pool
20 – Overlord
20 @100% Spawning Pool – 2x Queens
>Make Lings as a response to how many lings your opponent makes
>Make 0|2|4 Lings if they make 2|4|6 Lings
30 – Overlord
@100% Queens – 1 Queen + Lair | Lair in natural, Queen in main
2:50 – Evolution Chamber in Wall
3:00 – Roach Warren in wall + 2nd gas
> Drone to 32 (1 extra for 2nd evo for the wall)
3:15 – +1 Range
3:30 – Second Evolution Chamber in wall
@100% lair – roach speed and queen in natural
>Begin roach production
Inject with queen in natural and drop 1 creep tumor and then save energy on the first 2 queens for transfuse. Position your first 2 overlords normally for vision of your opponent flooding lings/moving out. The next overlords you want to be in position to create a creep highway, do your best to not make it obvious. Drop creep with the overlords once you are ready to move out. Send your 2 high energy queens out first to hunt overlords and then send the roaches in behind.
Benchmark: aim to be hitting at 5:30 with +1 range, roach speed, 2 queens, and ~90 supply Move out at ~90% roach speed and +1 attack.

34 Drone Roach Queen Nydus

13 – Overlord
16 – Hatchery
18 – Extractor
17 – Spawning Pool
20 – Overlord
20 @100% Spawning Pool – 2x Queens
>Make Lings as a response to how many lings your opponent makes
>Make 0|2|4 Lings if they make 2|4|6 Lings
30 – Overlord
@100% Queens – 1 Queen + Lair | Lair in natural, Queen in main
2:50 – Evolution Chamber in Wall
3:00 – Roach Warren in wall
37 – Overlord
3:15 – 2x Extractor
Drone to 34
>Alternate injecting the natural with your first 2 queens such that they both have 25 energy when you make the nydus worm. This will give them enough energy to transfuse once when they exit the nydus.
@100% Queen in main – Queen + Inject | Don’t inject with the next Queen
@100% lair – Nydus worm and constant roach production.
@100% nydus – Nydus them| QUEENS IN FIRST and then roaches transfuse the nydus to get all of your units out and drop a second nydus if the first dies
Note: Start +1 weapons if they are scouting your front with lings and then cancel it when you make the nydus. This build ends up looking similar to the 27 drone roach ling all-in, a +1 ling build, or 2 base muta, so it doesn’t matter much if they see an idle roach warren.

27 Drone Roach Ling All in

13 – Overlord
16 – Hatchery
18 – Extractor
17 – Spawning Pool
20 – Overlord
20 @100% Spawning Pool – 2x Queens
>Make Lings as a response to how many lings your opponent makes
>Make 0|2|4 Lings if they make 2|4|6 Lings
30 – Overlord
@100% Queens – 2 more queens + Zergling Speed | Send both these queens to your natural
2:50 Evolution Chamber | Start +1 on it if they have lings sitting outside your wall scouting, cancel it before you make roaches
3:00 Roach Warren
Drone to 27
3x Overlords
Once your first 2 queens have energy, drop a tumor at the front and a move them across the map to clear overlords
@100% Roach Warren – Flood Roaches and then Zerglings

Muta Ling Bane

Taking the Third

It is difficult securing your third base because you don’t want to waste gas on roaches. If he lets you take the third, take it after 44 drones (2 base 4 gas saturation.) If he doesn’t let you, wait until your mutas or ling speed is done to secure it. Flood lings and mutas.

Muta Bane Timing

Once your third base is about to finish, go into droning. Get +1 air weapons, bane nest, +2 melee, macro hatch, and 4th base. You have a strong timing at 63 drones on 5 gas where you can hit with ~16 mutas, and as many banelings as you can afford to destroy his hydra army right before he has lurkers or enough lurkers to defend himself.

Playing Muta against Roach

If he’s going for a roach build, you might want to delay the third in favor of spines. The lings can be used to counter attack while the roaches move out and the mutas can attack the roaches while they walk across the map.

McMonroe

McMonroe is a 6k+ Grandmaster Zerg player on the NA and EU Ladder, currently on sloth esports. Below you can find links to his twitch, twitter and discord server to access more of his content! If you would like coaching from McMonroe, you can email him at mcmonroe22@gmail.com or message him on discord or twitter.

Twitch Twitter Discord