So I have picked Zerg to start my SC2 gaming and after playing my first few online games today I had a few questions about them.

1: What is the trick to Zerg macro? I understand that the Queen and hatchery micro is basically just good hotkey use, but I wasn't sure what I should build at any given time, as in "Do I focus on military atm or do I keep spamming Drones?". I just kind of kept one Drone queued at any given time, is this about right?

2: How do I deal with backdoors effectively? For example, in one game I felt I was doing fairly well but a group of maybe 6 Hellions snuck into my base and basically lost me the game in seconds by torching all my Drones. Is it just Zerg strategy that I must keep the enemy contained, or should I be spamming spine crawlers around my base?

3: I don't really understand what the extractor trick is useful for. I get the fact that you are getting one more drone before an Overlord is needed but how is that such a benefit? It seems to me that it isn't that big of a deal since you need to build that Overlord soon anyways, so am I missing something?

Those are all I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure as I play more games I'll think of others. I won 2 out of 4 of my first games though so perhaps there is still hope.

deaconferal wrote:

So I have picked Zerg to start my SC2 gaming and after playing my first few online games today I had a few questions about them. 1: What is the trick to Zerg macro? I understand that the Queen and hatchery micro is basically just good hotkey use, but I wasn't sure what I should build at any given time, as in "Do I focus on military atm or do I keep spamming Drones?". I just kind of kept one Drone queued at any given time, is this about right? 2: How do I deal with backdoors effectively? For example, in one game I felt I was doing fairly well but a group of maybe 6 Hellions snuck into my base and basically lost me the game in seconds by torching all my Drones. Is it just Zerg strategy that I must keep the enemy contained, or should I be spamming spine crawlers around my base? 3: I don't really understand what the extractor trick is useful for. I get the fact that you are getting one more drone before an Overlord is needed but how is that such a benefit? It seems to me that it isn't that big of a deal since you need to build that Overlord soon anyways, so am I missing something? Those are all I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure as I play more games I'll think of others. I won 2 out of 4 of my first games though so perhaps there is still hope.

1. you always try to go as much eco as possible, and build military when you have to (us spine crawlers, they are awesome defense)

2. put one overlord at the back door entrance and you'll see any backdoor raids

3. you don't miss anything, what you say is true. the exractior trick is not needed, 9 Overlord is the best somebody proved that mathematically
it has its use with a special build order (so the timings get even better), i forgot what that was though

same with terran building 10 rax 11 supply depot, where standard play is 10 supply depot and 12 rax

its always about timing. the faster u get that extractor up means the faster u can tech up, be it lair , hydra, etc

Thanks guys, that was quite helpful indeed. And thanks for clearing up the extractor thing, really had me baffled for a while.