We’re back with another replay spotlight! This time, I went hunting for Grandmaster games with Swarmhosts. I could hardly believe my eyes when I found this replay with 38 Swarmhosts built — until I realized while watching it that it’s on the Balance Test Map. If you aren’t familiar with the changes, check them out!

The replay chosen for this week features Railgan (who accounts for almost all of the Grandmaster Swarmhost replays I searched for) vs Indy in a 21 minute ZvP: https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/3460429

Indy uses a Phoenix opener and Railgan goes for a fast Lair to get our first glimpse of the changes by using Fungal Growth while burrowed to catch the unsuspecting Phoenix.

Unfortunately, building Infesters that early wasn’t very economical for Raingan, putting him behind going into the mid-game. He tries to use Deep Tunnel in combo with Infested Terrans as seen below, but it doesn’t quite cover the investment of getting so many Infesters. It does look hilarious, though!

Thats OK — maybe the Swarmhosts can get him back into the game, right? Meanwhile, our Protoss player is trying out some new toys himself, starting with the Tempest. Cleverly, he discovers you can use the Tempest’s new ability to kill Creep Tumors even if you don’t have detection.

At this point, our hero Railgan is down a base and 12 workers, but is slightly up in army supply thanks to his 20 Swarm Hosts. But how will they fare vs Tempests?

Well, as it turns out, not very well. Even so, Railgan was able to wipe out Indy’s ground army and take some cost-effective trades with a combination of Fungal, Neural Parasite, and Swarmhosts in engagements like the one below.

Overall, the replay provided a better look at the new Infestor and the Tempest than it did the Swarmhost: while it was valiant of Railgan to try, it seems even with their reduced cost Swarmhosts are still better as a harass unit than for straight up engagements. Tempests, on the other hand, often looked terrifying.

It was a back and forth game that did a good job of showing off some of the design changes, but in the end, Railgan’s rough start left him unable to produce a strong enough army to defeat Indy’s fleet of Carriers and Tempests.

If you want to watch it all, download the replay here: https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/3460429

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- Sc2replaystats.com staff

Post written by Justin “TheSkunk” Purdy