Forbidden Donut

Okay, doing this from jotting things down as I watched so there's a bit of a time line to it.

1. Don't hide your first Overlord in the corner of your base, send him to a close base even on a big map like this. He'll reach the base by the time your worker scout checks out the other two.
2. Bind your scout worker so you can jump to him quick and easy and issue commands without having to leave your base. (Noticed you did do this eventually)
3. Wasn't much of a reason to make your spawning pool so late (16), had 300 or so minerals around 14. I always Extractor (@15) before Pool (@15 again). This will give you 100 or so gas as your pool finishes allowing you to start Zergling speed as fast as possible. There's almost nothing more important even mid/late game to have than Zergling speed.
4. You were forgetting your base while harassing with your drone.
5. Leading to you having too much money.
6. Scouting: After your worker scout you weren't scouting at all, this falls back on your Overlords, you should have had them all over the map at that point. Spread them out all over so you know exactly what your opponent is doing. Throw your first two lings on those two middle watchtowers as well. Higher levels of SC2 are won and lost almost entirely on scouting.
7. My trick for my first expo is when I make the expo hatchery I start my second queen. At the same time I do one last larva spit then with my next 25 energy I lay down a tumor and start the slow walk over to my expo. This usually times itself pretty well in getting my new queen out and my old queen to the expo as it's finishing.
8. Whenever you expo, move a chunk of your drones from your main to your expo. By that time you should be hitting 3 drones/patch on your main which is giving you diminishing returns.
9. Be more active scouting/running around with your lings, keep poking at his wall. You'd be surprised just how contained you can keep a human player just by showing him that you have units near his base. Mutas are even better at this, just running around the edge of their base not even attacking and you can keep a player afraid to move while you expand across the map.
10. You killed some important rocks to gain access to those towers (but didn't leave lings at them). But there are also rocks going into his high ground expansion that could have let you backdoor into his base. Always be active in destroying rocks that open up other avenues to opponents bases. It'll cause other players to be more defensive and help keep you in control.
11. Lair was incredibly slow, had he made one cloaked banshee he could have won the game with it. I'll lump this in with upgrades, you were rolling in money the entire game. Anytime you have that much money drop double evo chambers and start pumping upgrades. Against Terran you really want that early lair for muta harass and detection (don't cut troops necessarily unless you scout fast banshees but as soon as your econ will support it.
12. This sort of goes with the scouting thing but a turtling terran with tanks/M&M&M is extremely hard to attack. Muta harass and being ready to flank the shit out of them as soon as they start moving out (tanks unseiged) is key. Having control of watchtowers and extra overlords spread around lets you know exactly when you can rush in from two sides and crush them.
13. Thought you said you were good with creep. /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" /> Creep is free scouting and is extremely important to flanking and gaining important positioning on your opponent.
14. If a terran is making a lot of tanks, hydras (pre-patch) were really the last thing you'd want to do. With the tank nerf hydras can take three tanks shots directly now but they're still not optimum. Having those roaches in front help a lot as they can tank a lot more (plus he didn't have many tanks).
15. As a zerg you should always stay one expansion ahead of a terran or protoss. Well, not should but in the upper levels if a zerg isn't up an expansion they're at a severe handicap. Obviously you always want more income than your opponent but as zerg it's really key. Especially against an turtling terran it's easy to expand all over and take over the map, tech up and when he moves out you're in prime position to take him out having out upgraded him and have control of the map.
16. Be more proactive getting overlords, you kept supply blocking yourself and had tons of money and larva.

Overall techniques and such are pretty decent just doing and knowing the little things can make the world of difference.

Many thanks for this critique. I'll watch through the replay again with these notes in mind.

As for creep: I've discovered that I am pretty decent with creep when I am playing with one or more allies. I am not so decent otherwise, apparently. I've also found that I have a harder time producing creep when I am producing larva more efficiently since it is a long while until I have an extra 25 energy for the tumor. I'll try out the queen/tumor thing that you mentioned, and hopefully that will help out a lot.

I am confused by which units to fight tanks with.

You say roaches but they are armored units (i.e. taking increased damage from tanks)?

I've always been kind of afraid of using roaches against tanks.

Tanks are 35 damage to light - 50 to armored.

Roach
Race: Zerg
Life: 145
Armor: 1 (+4)
Movement: Normal
Cargo Size: 2
Attributes: Armored - Biological

Hydra
Race: Zerg
Life: 80
Armor: 0 (+3)
Movement: Normal
Cargo Size: 2
Attributes: Light - Biological


Won't they both get 3 shot? And if they have Marauders in the mix wouldn't roaches suffer even more?

Keep in mind I am a lowly noob when it comes to zerg, but this has been a question I have had for a while.

I'm not really good with Zerg so I don't have a great deal to say other than the moment your queen spawned you should have went creep tumor and abused it throughout the time. It looked like you started doing it at around 7 mins, when you had the queen near 5 or so. Other than that, I don't know. It looked pretty solid to me. I couldn't beat that player as a Zerg.

I strongly disagree with this. I do think it is important to get a creep tumor out quickly (and to manage it much better than I did), but I think the earliest you can responsibly do that is at the point Erling mentioned. It is absolutely essential to get larva incoming asap. Never is that more true than at the beginning of the game when one or two units can make or break your entire game.

Personally, (and take this with a grain of salt because I do very little vs people conventional games) I would argue for roaches for the very simple move while burrowed factor. You can easily move next to the tank on the field and pop up next to them inside their range. Plus, I find the ability to burrow, fully heal in only a few seconds, and resurface to fight again extremely valuable.

Granted I do realize this requires a little investment in some upgrades to make viable, but if you're facing tanks I would thing this would be time appropriate.

If it wasn't for the ability to hit air units, Hydralisks would be pretty useless.

That's how I see it I guess.

Plague you do have some points as I'm still thinking from pre-patch where tanks did 50 to everything. But in the end there's a lot of other things doing damage as well. To an extent lings and roaches are only there to be shot while things like your hydras dps, they need something to tank for them as their so fragile. The only thing they can really handle themselves are gateway protoss.

The problem is that it's never just tanks, so you can't really think like that. Or else the easy answer is mutas (or lings).

Hydras are slow as shit off creep, it's painful. Roaches with speed can get up on tanks much easier. Roaches are cheaper as well (meaning you'll have more). And as Phey has mentioned burrow move/heal can let you move in and unburrow right on top of the tanks (if they don't notice and scan). As the tanks blow the crap out of their own marines and such you flank with lings/banes. etc.

So much of countering a strategy can change map by map and can be completely situational depending on your income (mainly how much gas).

And yes, I would never EVER tumor first. The way I do it as I expand maybe delays my like 3rd one by a few seconds but that's about it. No more than just being distracted. Setting yourself 4 larva back for almost half a minute right at the start of the game will ruin your macro.