Beginner Zerg Builds for ZvZ – StarCraft: Remastered
Locating a build to learn the basics of StarCraft: Remastered can be daunting. Despite StarCraft: Remastered coming out in 2017, Brood War has been around a long time. The balance for Brood War has been settled for nearly 20 years, and in that time, people have come up with plenty of different strategies across all of the possible matchups, including Zerg vs. Zerg (aka ZvZ). Deciding on the right one when you don’t have much knowledge about the game can be difficult. It might be tempting to pick a “cheese” build to go for easy wins, but if you want to learn the basics of ZvZ and the Zerg race in general, it’s probably better to pick something that’s more standard and safe.
Liquidpedia, a long standing source for reliable StarCraft: Brood War builds and information, is an excellent resource to get you started and we recommend you take a look here at some of the ZvZ builds they suggest. Out of the many they have, we recommend the following opener build: 9 Pool. As the Liquidpedia entry aptly explains, the 9 Pool is a very standard ZvZ build that allows you to be aggressive enough to pressure, and also defend yourself from aggression.
That said, ZvZ is a very volatile matchup. If you don’t scout correctly, or go up against a build order that is a direct counter to the 9 Pool, you’re kind of just boned unless you out micro your opponent. Fortunately, at the lower MMR ranks, it’s certainly possible to outmaneuver and mind game your opponent. In ZvZ, your goal is to survive, try and get some damage done if you can, so you can get to Mutalisks. Once Mutalisks are out, your goal is to out macro and micro your opponent. Make more than your opponent and get more damage done without throwing away Mutalisks to bigger groups of Mutalisks or Scourges. Learning how to properly micro your Mutalisks is something that comes with practice. Give this video from Day9 a view to get a sense of how microing works in Brood War, as he pays special attention to Mutalisks.
Below you can see the opener in its entirety (credit to Liquidpedia). As much as you may want something that can you follow all the way until the end of the game, recall back to our beginner tips & tricks. Having a set plan that takes you all the way to the end game is difficult and not very realistic, unless you’re playing a No Rush 20 Minute game or something like that. You should have an opener like the one below to get you going, but after that, scout your opponent and react to what they have decided to do and figure out a plan for beating them. The Liquidpedia page for the Zerg vs. Zerg matchup in Brood War has more advanced tips for how you should transition plus other openers in case you want to try something different than what we recommend.
Note: The numbers is your supply in which you should begin building this unit/structure. Remember you should be constantly building workers to increase your supply until you have your bases saturated.
- 9 Spawning Pool
- 8 Extractor (remember Drones are used to create buildings)
- 7 Drone
- 8 Overlord
- 9 Drone
- When Spawning Pool finishes: 6 Zerglings
- As soon as you have 100 Gas: Upgrade to Lair
- As soon as you have 100 Gas again: Grab Zergling Speed
- As soon as Lair is complete, build a Spire
- 16 Overlord
- Once Spire is complete, start producing Mutalisks
Good luck, have fun out there in StarCraft: Remastered. Go make Kerrigan proud.
