[G] How to Micro

This situation occurs when you are able to get zerglings inside of a protoss base. To make the most of this situation, you want to have speed upgrade.

(1) probes - kill as many probes as you can. You'll probably only have 30 seconds or so before the first zealot pops.

Usually it's best to target probes one at a time. Only attack-move if you don't see him stacking (any decent player knows how to stack his workers). As soon as he stacks, quickly back off. You don't want to be caught in a tangle of attacking probes. As soon as probes begin to acquire different patches, run in and kill again. Repeat as often as necessary.

Once a zealot comes to help, you'll have to change your micro a little. Instead of darting in and out of the mineral line, when the zealot comes to attack, move around the back of the mineral line, and attack the probes on the other side of the mineral line. Another option is to move away, luring the zealot away from the workers. When the zealot is far enough way, dart back and kill a probe while the zealot comes back to the workers. Repeat as often as you can.

If you have more than 4 zerglings, it might help to separate them into 2 groups. 1 group has 2 or 3 zerglings, and darts in and out of the mineral line killing probes. The other group can attack the other side of the mineral line for quicker killing, or can attack the nexus or stray buildings.

(2) Nexus
If he sends all of his probes to his natural, immediately target the nexus. If you can take out a nexus that early in the game, it's pretty much GG there. Any moment that cannot be spent attacking probes should be spent attacking the nexus.

(3) Stray buildings
Use your judgment here. If he has a cannon protecting his workers and/or multiple zealots, attack stray buildings. Almost any building will do, but if he has, say, 1 pylon powering 2 or 3 gateways, that makes a good target. Tech buildings (cyber core, stargate, citadel, temple) make good targets too.

if you want to hide tech on a map that has a ramp between your main and natural, put 2 zerglings on hold on the ramp. This will prevent the probe from seeing your tech.

Many times probes will move around the back of your minerals. Take 2 of your zerglings, and intercept the probe, trapping it behind your minerals and giving you at least a few extra hits.

As soon as you have zerglings, attack the probe, then shift-deselect one of them. Now, allow the zergling AI to continue chasing the probe while you control the remaining zerglings. This makes it especially difficult for the toss to keep his probe alive. See it in action here:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=0YWMFXH53XU
around 5:00 - 5:15, 5:45 - 6:05 (thanks to fusionsdf)

Normally, the probe will auto-run away when you attack it with a zergling. But if you walk up next to the probe, and let it attack you first, it will not run away. Surround the probe with zerglings, letting it attack once before you begin attacking. (thanks to overpool)

If you have at least a 4:1 ratio of zerglings to zealots, engage. Set up a flank if you can, and surround and kill any stray zealots.

If zealots have +1 attack, and you don't have any armor upgrades, avoid engaging, or run back to sunkens. You will get slaughtered if you try to engage directly.

If you have a group of zerglings that come across the protoss army, look for templar to try and pick off. This will help reduce storm for when your armies engage.

Always engage zerglings v dragoons if they don't have any support.

If there are reavers attacking your army, send over small clumps of zerglings (2-4) to the reaver. That way, the reaver wastes scarabs on 2 or 3 lings rather than punching a large hole in your army. Time the clumps so that they run over and attack the reaver just after it fires a scarab.

You'll need at least speed upgrade to take on zealots properly. This is mostly just basic dancing. Target a zealot, move back quickly during cooldown, and target the zealot again. Repeat until all the zealots are dead.

It isn't advised to take on speedlots with hydras until you have at least 2 full control groups. At that point, dancing back isn't really an option. Instead, select small clumps of hydras (2-4) and pull them back as they get attacked by zealots. This will ensure that hydras are attacking as often as possible, and taking as little damage as possible.

First, check if there's anything that can be targeted outside of the cannons' range. Usually this will only be a gateway or forge at most. Inch your hydras closer and closer until they are within range, then put them on hold. They will target the building, and then switch to any units that come to attack.

When you're ready to kill cannons, move in, kill a cannon, then quickly move back to deal with any units that are brought forward. DO NOT target the cannons with more than the necessary amount of hydras. If you try to target one cannon with too many hydras, they will try to move around buildings and units to kill the cannon, taking unnecessary damage. Depending on the size of the choke, only 8-10 hydras are necessary.

The moment you break his cannons, kill all the units that you can. If he retreats, move in further and kill probes. If he retreats units and probes, kill nexus. DON'T waste time with any other buildings, as soon as the nexus is killed, move into his main to kill more units and probes.

I tend to group scourge and mutas together when fighting corsairs. The best way to minimize splash is to first move right on top of the corsair, then attack. As soon as you start attacking, select small clumps of mutas (2-3 mutas) and move them to a different side of the corsair. Smart players will back their corsairs off and attack again, forcing you to split your mutas again. Repeat as often as necessary.

If he runs with his corsair, hit-and-chase with your mutas all the way back to his cannons/archons/dragoons, then back off.

Lastly, don't engage if he has as many corsairs as you do mutas. He will slaughter your entire air army and will take minimal losses.

Many times tosses will protect their workers with an archon. However, mutas have +1 range over archons, so with careful micro, you can hit an archon without being hit back.

DON'T EVER ATTACK-MOVE MUTAS INTO AN AREA WITH ARCHONS. They will auto-acquire your mutas, and kill them quickly.

If there is an archon guarding workers, snipe probes from the other side of the mineral patches that the archon is on.

If in a big battle with mutas and archons, micro the mutas away from the archons and attack other units until they are dead. If you can't do this, retreat your mutas away from the battle until the archons are dead, then move in.

Give the unload command to your group of overlords at the desired location. As soon as your overlords pass over the first building or begin taking cannon fire, begin quickly selecting overlords one-by-one and telling each to unload on itself. This is an ESSENTIAL skill to learn in order to quickly do crackling/ultra/defiler drops on toss expansions, as he will undoubtedly have cannons protecting it. Doing this allows units to begin attacking the moment they are dropped, not wasting time moving around, and also spreads out your units to minimalize storm damage. Make sure that the first command is an unload command, not a move command; that way, even if you're not fast enough to spread-drop each overlord, they will still drop all remaining units once they reach their destination.

First and foremost, NEVER BURROW LURKERS THAT ARE CLUMPED TOGETHER. One storm can deal 500-1000+ damage if you clump your lurkers.

When setting up a contain, space out lurks so that storm only hits at most 1 lurker.

During a battle, the fastest way to space out lurkers is to:

1)give a move command (or attack-move if they're grouped with other units) to your group of lurkers. Pick a spot such that each burrowed lurker along the way will be able to deal damage.
2)while the lurkers are moving, individually select each lurker and burrow it.

I don't recommend shift-deselecting your lurker group during a battle, as this is too time-consuming to do in the midst of a battle.

Sunkens have a range of 7, and lurkers have a range of 6, so if you're defending a base with sunk/lurk, put the lurks 1 in front of your sunks. That way, goons attacking your lurks will also take sunk damage, and vice versa.

This one is actually fairly easy. Just set up a flank. Hotkey as many units as you can, and surround the groups outside of the protoss army. Then, quickly attack-move each group into the army.

Defilers are hard to control, because they are slow, defenseless, have extremely little hp. and will often charge into the enemy doing nothing if you attack-move them with a group of units.

As for swarm, it's pretty easy, put a swarm over any ultras, cracklings, or lurkers that are attacking the enemy. If the protoss army retreats, WAIT until they turn back around and fight before laying down another swarm. Too often I see people laying down 5 or 6 swarms when they could've just placed 2 or 3 for the same effect. If you're getting hits with your army, and they are just running away, don't waste swarm.

Anytime your defiler is nearby a clump of protoss units, plague them. ALWAYS shift-queue a move command to retreat your defiler after a plague.

When dropping defilers along with crackling/ultra on an enemy base, put a swarm down next to the nexus. This will enable your cracklings/ultra to quickly kill the nexus without taking damage. Once that's completed, if you have remaining energy, put swarms over cannons.

Generally, when engaging an army with defilers, you can attack-move them along with ultras and cracklings. Since those units are faster than defilers, they will engage the army before the defilers, so the defilers won't immediately die. As soon as your army engages, begin microing your defiler(s).

Oh, and remember to consume BEFORE you engage your opponent. Typically what I do is check my rally point, which will usually have both defilers and zerglings, and consume there. Then, hotkey up my army and move out. It's a pretty good system, not sure what the pros use, but it's quick and works for me. That way all you have to do is worry about checking your rally point every few seconds. After some practice, check rally->consume until max energy->hotkey units->move out will all become one 'block' of action (I tend to think of it as 'get defilers into the battle')

This one is tricky, and depends on the amount of cracklings you have, and the position and number of cannons. However, for up to ~8 cannons or so, you can do the following:

(1)move the first control group in all the way to the furthest cannon. Attack-move with the 2nd/3rd/etc. groups
(2)Once the first group reaches the back, attack-move to collapse and attack the cannons.

If you have adrenal glands, and at least +2 attack, you will shred the cannons. If you have +3 armor, that's even better, as cannons will take 3 shots to kill a zergling.

If you have time, split your zerglings among the cannons. Grab clumps of 4-5 zerglings and have them each attack a different cannon. If you have a 4:1 or 5:1 ratio of zerglings to cannons, this is the fastest method.

Nowadays, it seems all the rage to move out as soon as you have +1 speedlots and 2-3 archons. This is an extremely tricky situation, and you need to be fully aware of where the toss army is at all times. You will also need at minimum 2 sunks at each point you think the toss will attack at. Continually follow his army with overlords, or if there are enough safe spots, just put overlords everywhere you can.

If you went muta
PIck off as many zealots as you can, being careful to avoid any archon fire. If he's not moving, or he starts retreating his army, move back to his base and try to pick off any templar that just got built. When he engages, you need to be ready. Send in all of your zerglings/hydras you can. PAY ATTENTION TO THE ARCHONS. Command all of your sunks to attack one archon at a time. If you can't focus one at a time, then at least make sure your sunks are only attacking archons. After engaging with your army, select clumps of hydras and have them focus down the archons. While doing this, you need to keep darting in and out with your mutas and killing zealots. Whatever you do, don't let archons near your mutas, avoid them at all costs. Just one +1 archon attack does 33 + [5 * (number of mutas - 1)] damage, which can be up to 88 damage for a stack of 12 mutas!

if you went hydra/lurk
Same as above, target the archons with sunks, focus the archons with hydras, burrow lurkers and let them do their thing, and attack-move zerglings into this army. Snipe obs when you can. Remember to dance small clumps of hydras back as you are able.

For an example of how to defend this mid-game timing attack, see Spear v s2, Shinhan Proleague 08-09, Dec. 10th 2008:
+ Show Spoiler +

Hydras do 10 explosive damage, which does 50% to small units. Observers are small units. However, remember that shields take full damage from everything.

Observers have 20 shields and 40 hp. So that's 20/10 = 2 hits for shields, and 40/5 = 8 hits for their hp, making 10 hits total. So, for reference, it takes 10 hydras to one-shot an obs. So if you have 10 hydras in range, they can kill an obs in one hit. It will take 5 hydras to kill an obs in 2 hits, so keep that in mind. I usually do 6 hydras, since they may regenerate 1 shield in between the 2 hits.

So, if you see obs in range of your hydras during a battle, select 10 hydras if you can one-shot it, or select 5-6 if you can two-shot it; this kills the obs as fast and efficiently as possible, wasting no shots and no time.

Almost all of the same tips from the ZvP matchup against a scouting probe apply here as well. However, one thing you must be careful of: a bunker. If you see an scv building a bunker anywhere, immediately pull at least 3+ drones. Target the scv. If he cancels work on the bunker, he is probably bringing support scvs. If you see 2-3 more scvs come, pull all of your drones except 2 or 3 to defend. As soon as your nat finishes, lay a colony immediately. Keep your drones between the marine(s) and the bunker at all costs until the sunken finishes, and surround + kill the marine(s) if you get the opportunity.

Ah yes, the ever-popular Muta micro. This changed dramatically during the July era due to the discovery of stacking mutalisks. There are numerous threads and guides about this, so rather than try to re-invent the wheel, I'll use an existing one:

1. Chill's All-things Mutalisk guide: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=58620

2. Muta micro map: http://rapidshare.com/files/106183719/MUTA_MICRO.scx.html
This will help you train your muta micro.

As a piece of advice, this is probably the single most essential skill to learn in the ZvT matchup. Practice your muta micro a LOT, and you will see a noticeable increase in skill in your ZvTs.

you can still take on small groups of marines before you get zergling speed. Just make sure you DO NOT send your entire control group of zerglings after one marine. He will micro them away, and the other marines will get free shots. Split up your zerglings, 2 per marine. He won't be able to micro all of them, and will have to retreat them all away to a choke or a ramp.
insert pics here

Always look for stray vessels during fights, or attempting to make raids on your workers. As usual, the best way to kill multiple vessels simultaneously is to clone a group of them. Select the entire group, right-click a vessel, shift-deselect 2, right-click another vessel, etc. until all of your scourge have a target.

To kill vessels that are sticking too far out from the ball, group the scourge with zerglings. Since scourge do not have an air attack, marines will auto-acquire the zerglings instead of the scourge, allowing the scourge to kill the vessel.

When moving your army into position, put the zerglings a bit further away from the Ball. When moving your control groups in, move the lurker group right before the others. Since the lurkers are slower, and a bit closer, they will arrive at the same time as the zerglings. That way your entire army engages the ball at the same time.

When moving lurkers, make sure they are close enough to target tanks so that they can target the tanks. This will force the Terran to unsiege and move back, or end up losing the tanks. Once the tanks die, terran will be forced to retreat his m&m away from your lurkers.

If you know you have superior numbers, move your zerglings past the marines. Then, when the mearines try to run away, attack-move into them to prevent them from running.

Just as muta control is to early-mid game, defilers are to late-game. You MUST become good at defiler control in order to get good at late-game ZvT. Practice this as much as you can. All of the defiler's abilities should be fully utilized to wo win.

Swarm: Swarm renders everything except tank-splash useless. Place swarms so that about 75% of it covers the ball of m&m/tank, and 25% extends out towards your army, ensuring that your army doesn't die while trying to close in on the ball.
insert pics of good and bad swarm placement here

After you place your first swarm, terran will start to retreat. DON'T haphazardly place your 2nd and 3rd swarm. WAIT until you see which way he moves his forces. Then place the swarm nearby your initial swarm, BEING CAREFUL not to overlap. Overlapped swarms = a few pixels closer to a base you could've been. The only time it's good to pre-place your 2nd/3rd swarms is if the ball is backed into a corner, and has nowhere to run, or only one direction to run. In that case, put the 2nd/3rd swarm down quick to block them from escaping.

If swarming from multiple directions, place a swarm for each direction (i.e. if flanking from 3 directions, 3 initial swarms should be placed).

Since Terran effectiveness is maximized when its ball is as tightly packed as possible, they are especially succeptible to plague. Plague whenever you can, but don't use plague at the expense of swarms. Here are some tips for using plague:

(1)Plague vessel groups - The single most devastating use of plague is to take an entire cloud of vessels hp down to 1. Vessels have 200 hp. A plague cast on 8 vessels does approx. 1600 damage! Very deadly. Make 1 or 2 mutalisks to clean up the vessels. Mutalisks are best because each attack bounces twice, which kills up to 3 1 hp vessels per shot.
insert pic of plaguing vessles

(2)Plague Terran Ball BEFORE engaging - The purpose here is to weaken the army before engaging. However this will rarely happen because A) Terran will likely have his vessels out hunting defilers, casting irradiate on them before they can get within range, and B) The terran ball will likely have sieged tanks, which have a range of 12, which is greater than plague's range of 9, which will kill the defiler before it gets a plague off. Still, if you are quick, and catch the terran in a moment where his tanks are unsieged, a plague can do massive amounts of damage.

(3)Plague Terran Ball AFTER engaging - This is what most pros do. After attack-moving your army into the Terran ball, and/or casting swarm, individually select defilers that have the energy and plague the army. Be sure to place the plague so that it doesn't hit the terran army. Always try to plague behind the front line if possible. insert pic to illustrate

If you see a vessel about to irradiate one of your defilers, quickly launch off a final swarm or plague if you can before the defiler goes to waste.

ALWAYS get the energy upgrade for defilers (metasynaptic node i think). Defilers are one of the only casters who can fully utilize 250 energy. Casting a swarm (100 energy), and then walking under it to cast plague (150 energy) is absolutely devastating, and the only thing terran can do is be quick enough to irradiate and have the defiler die before it gets its spells off, or get lucky and the defiler happens to die from tank splash while under the swarm (or mass firebats, but that rarely happens)

This is really just a combination of the above micro. Sounds easy right? Well it's not.

Set up a flank if you can, hotkeying as much as your army as possible. What I typically do is group my defilers together with my crackling/ultra groups. Attack-move into the terran ball. If you have lurkers, move them either under a swarm, or close enough to target tanks before burrowing. Immediately after attack-moving, launch swarms. After launching 1-2 swarms, start cloning scourge to kill vessels. After that, if you are quick enough and have the energy, start launching plagues. Lastly, continue placing swarms as the terran retreats. With practice, each of these steps will become like second nature, until you can do everything in about 2 seconds. GL, this is the hardest part of engaging large late-game armies in ZvT.

Firstly, don't put all your tech buildings at one base! I can't tell you how many times I've seen one or two dropships of m&m take out a spire, den, ultra cavern, and defiler mound all at once. Spread out your tech buildings so that they don't all die to one drop. As soon as you see the drop, send a pair of scourge to the dropship. Then, unburrow and move your lurks within range. Don't keep them spread apart, or the terran will pick them off individually. If you have lurks defending the base, then 1 group of zerglings (or 1 ultra) should take care of them.

Once you have maxed updgrades (3-3) on your cracklings, you have a force to be reckoned with. For a mere 3 actions (drag-select 12 zerglings, 'attack', left-click on mini-map) you can send only 6 supply to completely raze an undefended (or even half-assedly defended) terran base. USE IT. Unlike protoss, who have 0-supply cannons, Terran has no way of efficiently defending a base without using up supply. Use this to your advantage; as soon as late game hits, and you get adrenal upgrade, you should be constantly sending groups of zerglings out to stop Terran expos. Since zerg will have way too many units/hatches to accomodate everything within your 10 hotkey groups, constatly send out zergling groups to go expo-hunting in between microing your army and macroing from your hatches. It will help your multitasking out tremendously and will cut down on terran expos guaranteed. Since terran wants to keep his entire army in the ball, if he is able to take an expo without devoting any ground defense to it, he will always attempt to do it. FORCE him to use his army to defend his expos. 12 cracklings will always beat any terran 6-supply equivalent (except for maybe 4 marines/firebats in a bunker and a tank), and so you shouldn't have to compromise your army to deflect terran expos in the late-game.

Don't engage speedlings if you don't have speed upgrade yourself. In fact, if you don't have speed, it's probably not a good idea to wander outside of your ramp/choke in the first place. There isn't much micro you can do here, just position your army so that zerglings don't get stuck behind other zerglings, and run around not attacking. The battle will pretty much be decided by speed, upgrades, and who flanked and who didn't. However, after engaging, if you have the speed, select groups of 2 zerglings and have them target one zergling.

Ok, so you made your way into a base with a group of zerglings. Now what? First off, check if there's a sunken protecting his workers. If it protects all of his workers, don't worry about workers. The exception is, if you have enough zerglings to kill all of his workers even with a sunken there. If you have that opportunity, take it. Trading your zerglings for all (or almost all) of his workers will always work out in your favor. Now, if he's protected with a sunken, check and see if there is a building that ISN'T protected by sunkens, such as an extractor, pool, or spire. If you can take that out, kill it.

If he has all of his buildings and all of his workers protected by sunkens, it's still probably best to try and kill as many workers as possible. Just don't lose a large amount of zerglings doing it. As long as you don't lose a huge amount of zerglings, trading zerglings for enemy drones is always a good idea.

If you get hit with an offensive sunken, don't panic, pull off 3 drones per colony and immediately begin attacking. Lay down a colony of your own if you haven't already. Once zerglings hatch, defend yourself with both zerglings + drones.

Btw 3 drones is the best number, and will kill a colony just as it finishes morphing into a sunken, IF you attack the colony as soon as it is laid.

Use your group of muta and focus on one muta at a time. Shift-click all of the opposing muta, so that your muta will switch as soon as they kill one. If you can see which muta of yours is being focused quick enough, select it and back it away, to give your mutas free hits. This battle is also almost always determined by number and upgrades.

Not much to say here, always put 2 scourge to a muta. If you have a group, shift-clone them whenever enemy mutas are within sight range and you have the opportunity. If you have a group of mutas, and also a group of scourge, it can help to have your scourge move-follow your mutas. Then, when your mutas engage, your scourge are nearby, but still behind the mutas, so you can quickly grab and clone them.

If you have a lot of time on your hands for practicing, and nimble fingers, you can abuse a glitch in the AI of scourge by using your mutas. It was discovered by someone chinese and is called the Chinese Triangle. Look here for instructions:
http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=m41zVGA86p4


Also, a complete TL thread about the Chinese Triangle: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=65335

This is probably the most common type of battle you'll face in ZvZ. For this type of battle, you don't want to throw 2 scourge at each muta. You want to put 1 scourge to a muta. Scourge do 110 damage, so 1 scourge will put a full-health muta at 10 hp. So, for 75 gas/25 minerals/1 supply/1 larva, you can take 2 mutas (100 gas/100 minerals/2 supply/ 1 larva each) down to 10 health. This will allow your remaining mutas to clean up. This is the most economical approach to taking down opposing mutas, but it is very micro-intensive.

Watch for the zerglings to try and target one marine. Move him back and give your other marines free hits. If you see your marines getting targeted separately, retreat and group them, or move back to a choke, or even better, a ramp.

Don't engage speedlings without medics.

First, make sure you have at least 1 or 2 firebats. Zerg will almost surely have either a zergling scout or cliffed overlord watching your troop movement. As soon as you get the amount of medics you want, move out. To make the trip as quick as possible, and give the zerg the least amount of time to react, stim FIRST then move out to his base. Once your MMF arrives outside of his (probably still morphing) sunks, stop and wait for your medics to heal you. The moment your last marine gets healed up to full health, move in for the break. Move your firebats in first; they take 3 sunken hits to kill, as opposed to marines' 2 hits. Immediately after, move in medics. You want medics to be in position to instantly start healing your marines as soon as they take their first sunken hit, as opposed to trailing behind, and taking a second to walk up to your marines when they move in to shoot the sunks.

Target active sunks first, then morphing sunks if there are any. If he moves a group of zerglings in, quickly attack-move the area to auto-target the zerglings. Once they are dead, resume focusing the sunks one at a time. If you're able to kill all the sunks with any marines remaining, congratulations, your sunken break succeeded.

Scan first, and drop a weak spot or tech-heavy spot if there are any. 7 marines + 1 medic. Your priorities are:

1) drones
2) defiler mound/ultra cavern
3) evo chamber (unless he already has full upgrades)
4) spawning pool
5) other buildings (spire, den, hatch, etc.)
6) extractor

Set up tanks just outside of sunken creep. Siege and immediately focus sunks one at a time. The moment that there are enough sunks for your to handle, move in with your m&m. Too many times I see people waiting until all of the sunks are killed before moving in with their massive m&m army. If you can break his sunkens after your tanks kill just one sunk, do it.

Always keep your medics between your marines and the enemy. They will create a barrier, making it harder and take longer for their units to reach your marines. The way I do it is, select my group of medics, and quickly click on a large unit (like an ultra). If being swarmed by zerglings, I quickly click back and forth on the ground directly in front of the marines.

Look for chokes. If you're near a choke, and you have the time/speed, block the choke with the medics and put them on hold. This will create a medic wall, and the zerg will have to physically target the medics if they want to get through the wall.

Firstly, always keep marines stimmed when lurkers are nearby. When he moves in, target a lurker. When he burrows his lurkers, wait until the lurker is halfway into the ground before moving away. Always move in and attack when you see unburrowed lurkers. Watch out for a 'bait' lurker, which is a lurker that he knows you will tahttp://www.teamliquid.net/forum/edit.php?action=edit&post_id=1&topic_id=79611&currentpage=1rget, and he will move him back, luring your m&m into more, already burrowed lurkers. Also, any time you move out with m&m, and you don't have vessels, SCAN first. If you're hit with a lurker-hold surprise attack, your entire m&m force could be gone in 1-2 lurker attacks.

After your turrets are set up, you want a group of m&m at each gap or outer edge of your base, to snipe mutas as they come in.

When you're skirmishing with a group of mutas there's a few things to keep in mind:

1) As always, BE STIMMED 100% of the time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but stimmed marines move at the same speed as mutas (maybe even slightly faster). This allows you to keep up with the muta hit-and-run tactics.

2)When you see a group of muta within sight range of your marines, move forward and target one. This serves a couple of purposes:

a.Muta micro requires the zerg player to click near the marine they want to target, then attack in range, then move back. If you're moving towards the mutas as they attempt to micro, you will disrupt them and get free hits in the process.

b.Similarly, if you're stimmed marines are moving during the muta micro, there is a better chance that the zerg player will mis-click the ground or a different marine, and you will get more hits.

Good vessel use wins TvZs. Keep your vessels protected, use their energy, pick the right targets, and you will reduce the zerg army to small (and large) pools of blood. Firstly, target priorities for Irradiate:

1) Defilers - defilers will devastate your armies if you leave them alive. Irradiate immediately on sight, take no prisoners, no questions, no excuses, these are #1 target always always always.

2) Ultras - Irradiate ultras after the defilers are gone. Don't irradiate the ultras when they are running to engage your army, the irradiate splash will kill your m&m/workers.

3) Lurkers - if there are no defilers or ultras (or he hasn't reached hive tech yet), start irradiating lurkers.

Another possibility with irradiate is 2 vessels irradiating each other. This should be done only if there are no ultras/defilers/lurkers around, and your vessels come across an unprotected base. Even in that case, you need to be quick, because scourge are on the way.

In general, keep your vessels hotkeyed at all times, and keep them near your m&m force. Only venture out from the protection of m&m to do a quick irradiate, and then move them back.

Scan where you think the zerg army is. If you uncover potential irradiate targets, shift-clone them to the different targets, then move them back.

It might help to shift-queue a move back after doing an irradiate.

Replays
Insert Dimaga v Haypro on Tiamat

Defensive Matrix

Sometimes, there may be no useful targets for irradiate, or, as most often the case, you don't have time to wait for the irradiate to kill a unit before it charges into your army. This is the time to pull out an amazing defensive matrix. Some good candidates for defensive matrix:

1) The foremost marine in a lurker attack - this one works wonders. Matrix a marine, and send him running through the lurker field a split second before you send the rest of your army to engage. They will all target him, and many will miss because he is running so fast he will only take splash. This will give the entire rest of your army free hits on the lurkers. This is an advanced move that can save your entire m&m force from dying in 1 or 2 seconds from lurker splash.

2) Tanks near the front line - zerg will often try to target tanks, as tanks are very good against lurkers. Turn this around by matrixing a tank that is being targeted. This will give the rest of your army free hits as well as allowing your tanks to continue killing lurks.

Against scourge, always retreat back past the back of your m&m force. This gives every marine an opportunity to shoot down those annoying scourge.