6 Things I Constantly Forget

I've been spending some time watching replays, mostly because I'm frustrated with my inability to reliably win in Zerg vs Zerg. In this match up, for me at least, all good gameplay habits tend to go out the window and I start to panic as soon as I see the beady little eyes of the enemy zerglings coming to eat my face. Because that's what zerglings eat. My face. Moving on.


During the replay, between LiquidTLO(one of my favourite players) and KapeWyplac(no idea who he is), just as TLO was finishing off his opponent's last Hatchery, he hotkeyed back to his own main and injected some larvae with his queen. There was nothing left of his opponent and yet he was still playing like there were four more bases to destroy. That's when it hit me: part of the reason the good players are good is because they remember the small things.

In reality, I think it may be more likely that they have these small things so ingrained in them that they do them subconsciously. In either case, I realized that I don't even always do them consciously. In an effort to instill these small, but important, things into my brain and yours, here are the few main ones I managed to think of.

Spawn Larvae: There's nothing worse than a bored Queen.
Always be spawning larvae. Start as soon as your Queen clambers out of the Hatchery and do your best to keep doing it every 30 seconds after that. This sometimes comes into conflict with our next item, but that's what multiple Queens are for, amongst other things.

Spread Creep: It's like jam on toast; the more the better.. if you liked jam that comes from tumors..

Creep is the lifeblood of an effective Zerg defense and aids in scouting and map control as well. I am constantly forgetting to keep my creep tumors spawning disgusting copies of themselves, despite these advantages. Overlords are also an excellent method of creep spreading as you can put them out ahead of your tumors to avoid waiting for the creep to expand to the tumor's limit. Another interesting point is that if you spawn multiple creep tumors close together, they actually spread creep faster than if you were just using one tumor.

Upgrades: Don't let your Zerglings be the only ones without hats!
In the beginning, there was the Zergling and it was good. Then, a Marine came and put a bullet right between its beady little eyes. This was not good. The next day, that same Marine came. Pity its General didn't invest in upgrades like our little 3/3 Zergling's did. Our little Zergling now wears the Marine like a hat. Remember this story and always upgrade your units.

Scout: The first step to avoiding a trap is knowing it's there.. or watching it being built.
Zerg are a reactionary race. Anyone who says otherwise has been inhaling too many banelings. The most important facet of being reactionary is to know what you need to react to, so always be scouting. By the time you notice the Siege Tanks setting up shop on the cliffs above your mineral line, you're only reaction should be a firm face-palm and a stern promise to scout better next time. Overlords, Overseers, Drones, Zerglings, essentially any unit with a sight radius can act as a scout in one way or another.

I like to keep two Overlords by his main so I can send them in, one from each side, to give me the best chance of spotting tech before they eat gauss. Couple that with a zergling at each Xel'Naga tower, one at his natural to know when he moves out, and an Overlord at every expo and I have complete view of the map. It doesn't always pan out that way, but at least that's the plan.

Expand: Be the fat kid at the ice cream parlor-- don't let anyone else have any!
To be effective, Zerg should always have one more expansion than their opponent. This gives you better economy, better unit production, and the best chance to actually act like the Zerg and descend upon them in a giant swarm of slime-spewing, acid-spitting, pincer-snapping death. Now don't expand blindly. A safe bet is to expand after repelling a large push, when you see your opponent is expanding, or if they're turtling. The main theme of these reasons is that your opponent will not have the money to field the units needed to kill off your expo before it's well defended. This ties in well to our final point.

Keep Spending: If I've learned anything from the Real Housewives of.. nevermind.
Nothing is worse than having a large amount of minerals and gas just sitting in your stores for no apparent reason. Why? Because minerals and gas don't stop bullets. Or crazy Protoss laser swords. Or Ultralisks. Unless you're saving up for a Hatchery, or your spire is almost done and you want enough resources to pump out five ferocious wing'a'ling dragons ASAP, you should be trying to keep your stores as low as possible. Any time you're finding it hard to do this, look around and see if you can expand or build hatchery in your main to pump out more units. I've become better at this, but it used to be that I'd be sitting at over 1000 minerals and wondering why I lost.

I'll be focusing on keeping this list in mind when I play, especially when things get hectic. If anyone has other things for our list, feel free to post a comment below!