Replay of the Week: NEXSickness vs. VeraJaniceTooth

Written by ZombieSC

Sickness spawns at the 11 o'clock position while his opponent, Vera, spawns at the 7 o'clock position. On Tal'Darim Altar, any position match-up is a long distance, but our zerg player chooses to only send an overlord scout while our protoss sends a probe shortly after placing a pylon in front of his expansion, signaling a fast expand on his part. The probe is lucky enough to scout correctly the first time, and fearing the probe will block his expansion, Vera opts to surrender his 15 hatch for a 15 pool instead. After a little dance between the drone and the probe, the probe places a pylon at the expansion and returns to scout the main base, while back at home the protoss throws down a nexus first, followed shortly by a forge.



Luckily for Vera, his overlord scouts this fast nexus and forge before hiding in the dead space behind the protoss' expansion. With the zerg's expansion still blocked, Vera opts to send his first four lings in an attempt to run inside Sickness' base before the canons finish, and very nearly does so. However, Sickness, with his great reaction times, throws down a few more canons to hold this ling pressure off, and our zerg player is forced to retreat.

Back at the zerg's base, a gateway has replaced the pylon to block Vera's expansion even further, but Sickness cancels it, feeling that he's done enough early-game harassment and knowing the zerglings will soon out-DPS the health. Vera immediately takes his expansion, but at a time of 5:18, a supply count of 26, and a handful of zerglings that could've been drones, Vera knows he's behind. He wisely decides to put the zerglings to good use, sending them to all the corners of the map for scouting purposes before taking his third hatchery.


Zerglings try to do some harassment while a gateway blocks his expansion.

As the protoss continues to take his economical lead, Vera decides to go for an early lair around the 6:30 mark – before any expansion is ready, amazingly. He then begins droning and teching, and with an overlord in the perfect position between Sickness' main and expansion, and zerglings checking the front, Vera knows what he can get away with. As the lair finishes for Vera, we see an interesting choice. Tunnelings Claws are started before the speed upgrade for the roaches, and burrow is nearly done researching as well. While this may seem like an odd choice, remember that Vera knows that protoss is most likely supporting his fast expand with sentries and zealots, and burrowed roaches are an easy answer to mass forcefields.

Back at Sickness' base, a Stargate and Twilight Council have been placed at around the 8-9 minute mark. A nice overseer scout at the 9:50 mark sees everything in the protoss' base, including the phoenix and void ray, but Vera decides that his roach aggression will still do damage, and sends his hidden roaches out. Back at home, however, Vera prepares for any sort of air counter-aggression by building a hydra den and multiple spore crawlers.


Protoss plans to surprise zerg with some void ray + phoenix harass, but the zerg scouts perfectly.

The roaches manage to surprise the protoss just as he sets up his third, but some nice forcefields manage to beat back the roaches. However, with Sickness' air counter-aggression thwarted by Vera, more zerg reinforcements are pouring into the front of the protoss' base. Another void ray arrives in time to deal some damage to the roaches, but the hydras also arrive just in time to finish it off. A Templar Archives had finished, but with storm mere seconds away, Sickness needs to hold this aggression off with great forcefields until storm is ready. Zerg units are pushing at his front door, but Sickness gets the lucky break – storm finishes and his high templars have just enough for one storm each, and this forces the zerg to retreat.

With the action settling down, we return to the zerg's base to see that a spire had been started and is nearly complete, but an even more interesting choice in tech can be seen: a Baneling Nest, Ventral Sacs and overlord speed. This can only mean one thing: baneling drops!

Sickness is now taking a fourth base while zerg prepares for his baneling drops. An infestation pit goes down as well as a fifth for our zerg, and a hive and pathogen glands are started.

The protoss player now has blink stalkers, high templar, and a number of void rays, while the zerg now has banelings ready to be dropped and a sizable army to support it. A huge battle arrives at the 18:30 mark, with Sickness doing some amazing micro to keep those banelings from ever dropping on his clumped-up army. The zerg is forced to retreat, but regroups with infestors and returns to the offensive, but even with fungal growth the overlords are unable to drop any banelings. Both armies are weakened, and both retreat back to their base.


The banelings, overlord speed, and ventral sacs all set up for some nice baneling drops, but the protoss's micro is too good.

Hive has now finished for Vera, and with that he immediately starts his Greater Spire. He's not willing to let the protoss gain a huge army however, and puts on the pressure even as he prepares to tech to broodlords. A multi-pronged attack with banelings destroy a few production facilities and the entire worker line of Sickness' third, but both attacks are cleaned up in due time.

Meanwhile Sickness is refusing to let Vera get too much of a base lead and drops his fifth at 22:40 before building up his army again. The two armies once again clash at the 26:00 minute mark but both retreat, and both decide to tech switch. Zerg is getting an Ultralisk Cavern, but back at the protoss' base we see that a Fleet Beacon had been put down and a Mothership has been started.

Ten ultralisks and the crackling upgrade are started back at the zerg's base, but with protoss' switch to a mostly air-heavy army, this is looking bad for our zerg player. They two meet once again at 35:00, one with a ground-heavy army and the other with an air-heavy army, and for a minute it looks like zerg will win. However, with a line of canons guarding the entrance to Sickness' base, the zerg units are picked apart, and now for the first time in the game, someone has momentum, and that someone is Sickness.


The battle of the giants. A mothership/air army faces an ultralisk/ground army.

Knowing he can't get past the blockade of canons, Vera tries to Nydus his way into the protoss' expansions in the upper-right hand corner of the map. It finishes, but a slick DT warp from the protoss catches the army off-guard. With no overseer in sight, Vera retreats back into the nydus, and it's destroyed.

Feeling that keeping his ground-heavy army is the best bet, Vera continues to make ultralisks despite the growing number of carriers, and a new mothership arrives. A final battle ensues at 40:00, but with such a heavy investment into air, and a dwindling economy for the zerg, the protoss takes the battle, and the game.


A nydus arrives, but it's too little too late. The final battle that decides the winner.


This game showed us action every step of the way, and both players displayed great skill in micro, macro, and harassment tactics. At a whopping 40 minutes long, this game showed us nearly every unit protoss and zerg have to offer, as well as every skill needed to play Starcraft 2 at a pro level. I hope you all enjoyed this replay and continue to come to GosuGamers for every one of your Starcraft 2 needs.