“I've seen pros do a lot of different things like sticking with ultra/ling, going hydra/lurk/defiler, going lurk/ling/defiler, going queens, going mutas, etc. What are the cost/benefits of each, and what is the correct response to mech transition? Also, when should we get additional evo chambers for upgrades. At the very least, a general idea of how to think about ZvT against mech transition would help immensely because at the moment, I don't think I understand this part of the match up at all.”
Don’t get ultra ling. Don't get mutas after the usual mid game amount. Don't get guardians (as a late game switch) Don't get ultra drops.
Do get ling lurk defiler scourge. Go to 4 bases. Stay on 4 bases. Start mixing in hydras. Drop 2 lurkers at each of terrans new mining bases. Do not doom drop. Start mixing in queens. Your final unit composition is mainly hydras, with ling lurk defiler scourge and overlord support and a squad of queens too.
So lets assume you defended the 1 vessel 3 tank mnm attack using lurk ling defiler scourge and are planning/using this build:
3 hat spire 4th hat (at 3rd base) Den Queens Hive Evo Defiler mound Nydus canal 5th hat (at main) 2nd evo 6th hat (4th base) 7th hat (at 3rd base) 8th hat (at 3rd base)
You get your 4th online using only ling lurker defiler scourge. After your 4th is online you go up to 8 hatcheries. You are still on ling lurk defiler scourge. Hydra upgrades are started in the evos but you are not mixing them in yet. You are mainly concerned with mnm tank vessel busts (which are controlled using the lurkers under darkswarm) and mnm drops (which are controlled using the scourge mainly, but ofcourse ling lurk swarm can clean up if they get through).
Terran is meanwhile moving up to 5 bases, 2 armouries, and 8 factories over time. You don’t need to see his main to know this. The simplest clues are his vessel count is low, and his marines are on 1-1. Just from his actions you can tell if he is being passive or not though. He has an MnM army outside one of your bases and is threatening busting at any moment using irradiate on your defiler and then stim attacking with tank support. He can bounce from one natural to the other quite quickly, but you have nydus canals so you can react. He probably wont actually commit to an attack though. If he loses that MnM army too early, he is weak so he will remain passive at your entrance. You can make him pull back half a screen using ling lurk defiler pokes. But don’t try to get map control more than that yet. From these pokes you confirm he has mech switched or not. Next, you want to start hydra speed and range and also drop tech. You start mixing in hydras now. You are clearing minefields either with lings or with hydra and overlords outside your naturals. Do not try to take a 5th base. You stay on 4 bases for a long time. Start pushing terran back to the halfway line. You are massing lings, lurkers, hydras, defiler now. If you want to move decisively into the middle of the map, use lings out in front to clear minefields. Its best to be patient and not lose lurkers or hydras to mines. Remember, lurkers under swarm are invincible and irradiate takes ages to kill them.
You have control of half the map. Your frontline is lurkers under swarm with overlords and hydras behind. Lings and scourge are supporting too. Drop tech is ready, and you are also now in a position to drop 2 lurkers at each terran mining base. Do not get tempted to do a ‘doom drop’. From this position, you launch several waves of attacks, all from 4 bases. This is an important attack phase for you. You goal is forcing ccs to lift, and maintaining control of half the map. If you can push your frontline forward so that terrans resupply lines have to go through your army then you have an advantage. During this offensive phase, you are getting your queen upgrades and looking to start your 5th and 6th base. Its important to put overlords at the 5th and 6th base so that if vult raids come in, you can pick up your drones. Note that sunkens don’t have the dps to protect drones at the 5th and 6th base, you will need hydras there aswell, don’t try to skimp on this. Also note that you are only mining from 4 bases at any one time. This is very important.
Your end game unit composition is required now. You have a squad of queens with energy, and you have hydra bulk with ling lurker defiler scourge and overlord support. The lurkers and defilers hold the line. Be patient when moving the lurkers and defilers, don’t suicide them into minefields or tanklines, let the terran come to them. To break lines, use queens to snipe tanks first. Lings go out in the front. Then move the hydras and cast swarm over them. Finally, move the lurkers up and burrow them under the swarm. Now retreat the hydras to behind the lurker line. From this forward position look for opportunities to get more mini 2 lurker drops in.
Lets get super theoretical now. Let me state now that 99 percent of all starcraft games wont get to this stage: Lets now imagine you have not been able to gain a significant advantage. It is 6 bases vs Terran’s 5. There is one empty base left. You can try 2 things. One is to play the defense game and try to trade as cost efficiently as possible. This style generally favours the terran though. My advice is to instead save up a little, then use 3 waves of dedicated army sniping. The idea is to snipe many tanks in a short period of time, significantly reduce the enemies core army size and then use your bank of resources to receive a huge resupply army. Your second wave attacks the enemy army again (not his bases) to hold his army count down. Then your 3rd wave comes in finishes off his army for good. The key is crippling the enemy backbone of siege tanks. Your gameplan revolves around getting that count down and holding it down long enough to win. In the perfect game of starcraft, neither player ever fully commits an attack. Instead, their entire gameplan is to get to a split map scenario. In the non mirror matchups, that doesn’t mean 6 bases each. In ZvT a split map is Zerg on 7 bases and Terran on 5. This can technically be even but depending on how the game went so far, either player could have an advantage at this late late stage of the game. Due to the nature of the game, Terran is stronger defensively so generally the onus is on Zerg to attack. The perfect strategy is to delay committing to this attack until the last possible moment. The last possible moment is as I described above; after Zerg is on 6 bases, has all upgrades and has a small reserve of money in the bank to be able to rapidly resupply. If Zerg waits any longer then he will run out of fresh expansions to take. It is the rules of the game that dictate he must attack. If maps were bigger than 128x128 and had more expansions then the perfect strategy would have an even later timing attack. It is these restrictions and rules that define what starcraft is. And over starcrafts lifetime, we the players have collectively decided that 128x128 maps lead to games that are of a certain average length of time that is desirable and also forces a certain amount of interaction that is the right mix of ‘exciting action’ compared to ‘defensive reaction time’.
Action vs Sea Ground Zero (note he gets guardians to defend the 3 tank 1 vessel attack, which generally I don’t support. However, it was vs a 5 rax and close air spawns so its allowed. After that, it’s another pretty good example. At the very end, Action gets ultras which I also don’t support, but he is only using them to seal the deal so its ok) http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/games/106021_Action_vs_Sea/vod
Also note that the above two games are both excellent examples of how Zerg beats terran 5 rax (which a few people have been asking about recently). The key is getting the extra zerglings and using them to completely wipe out the first mnm squad with muta ling. Also note these two KT zergs both generally favour getting the 3rd base before the hydra den too. Can make a separate thread for that though if you want.
Also, I know this post is only about the hydra queen style. If you want I can talk more about the ultra drop style which I believe is not as effective. But Ive spent long enough writing for now so that will be later.
there are many different ways of playing vs late mech, depending on map, how your and your enemy's build was, how many units each player has left, and what style u want to play.
he basically listed 1 of those ways to play. basically vs latemech, use his transition time to either get a good economy for lategame or to attack him while he is transitioning. when u go for good lategame economy, u have to do something vs his mines, u have to do something vs camping tanks and u have to do something to deny/harass his bases and prevent him from getting too many turrets. how u do all that depends on ....*check first sentence*
he already mentioned the standard good stuff vs late mech, lurker/defiler drops on mineral lines or lurker/defiler defence because of low vessel count, using drops to attack terran army to bomb his tanks because of his relatively low count of antiair units.
One thing I find an issue for zergs is Mutas in late game vs mech. Mutas are a solid opener vs terran but eventually you must transition out into a more cost effective army. So to combat mech you transition into lurkers and defend until dark swarm is out.
Now here is where the issue occurs. Late game comes around, the tank/vulture army is quite big and suddenly mutas become a really good unit to use. The problem is all your focus before this point was on ground and you forgot to get +2/+2 on your mutas. This means the natural progressing of the mech army and all the upgrades that come with it are far too strong. Just a few goliaths with range eat your muta flock. But if you focused on air upgrades throughout the game even without using mutas, then the transition into mutas later is much better for once those massive terran pushes start rolling toward your bases.
On June 22 2013 02:22 BisuDagger wrote: One thing I find an issue for zergs is Mutas in late game vs mech. Mutas are a solid opener vs terran but eventually you must transition out into a more cost effective army. So to combat mech you transition into lurkers and defend until dark swarm is out.
Now here is where the issue occurs. Late game comes around, the tank/vulture army is quite big and suddenly mutas become a really good unit to use. The problem is all your focus before this point was on ground and you forgot to get +2/+2 on your mutas. This means the natural progressing of the mech army and all the upgrades that come with it are far too strong. Just a few goliaths with range eat your muta flock. But if you focused on air upgrades throughout the game even without using mutas, then the transition into mutas later is much better for once those massive terran pushes start rolling toward your bases.
Well that was just a thought to consider.
:S the problem isn't often so much goliaths and upgrades as vessels.
When terran opens mech, he doesn't typically get vessels because they are too gas heavy, but with a mech switch he has the vessels left over to counter mutas. Of course, if the zerg manages to snipe them all, then mutas can be viable, but it's very situational.
Part of the strength of the mech switch is that the terran can go tank vulture because he has the vessels to protect him from mutas.
On June 22 2013 02:22 BisuDagger wrote: One thing I find an issue for zergs is Mutas in late game vs mech. Mutas are a solid opener vs terran but eventually you must transition out into a more cost effective army. So to combat mech you transition into lurkers and defend until dark swarm is out.
Now here is where the issue occurs. Late game comes around, the tank/vulture army is quite big and suddenly mutas become a really good unit to use. The problem is all your focus before this point was on ground and you forgot to get +2/+2 on your mutas. This means the natural progressing of the mech army and all the upgrades that come with it are far too strong. Just a few goliaths with range eat your muta flock. But if you focused on air upgrades throughout the game even without using mutas, then the transition into mutas later is much better for once those massive terran pushes start rolling toward your bases.
Well that was just a thought to consider.
This could work very well if the Zerg goes offensive enough on the ground to force nonstop Vulture production. Then a surprise Muta switch and all the tanks go poof. The timing window is still before ultra late game though, since by then the turret defense would sufficient, even with a low-count goliath and high-count tanks ^ Also what Kerpal said
I've been planning to experiment with muta assisted drops, once terran turtles a main with tanks and turrets, the turrets would auto-target the mutas right? so the drop could get through and kill the stuffs.
zergs just need to do a few things like, as soon as you get hive -> overlord speed : check for mech, if yes can do drops, etc, if not it wasnt that big an investment. also for the love of god get burrow after defiler den, it will solve all eraser problems.
On June 22 2013 03:49 kerpal wrote: I've been planning to experiment with muta assisted drops, once terran turtles a main with tanks and turrets, the turrets would auto-target the mutas right? so the drop could get through and kill the stuffs.
isn't it better to use more overlords since they A: are cheaper B: have 80 more hp
On June 22 2013 03:49 kerpal wrote: I've been planning to experiment with muta assisted drops, once terran turtles a main with tanks and turrets, the turrets would auto-target the mutas right? so the drop could get through and kill the stuffs.
isn't it better to use more overlords since they A: are cheaper B: have 80 more hp
But mutas took 13 turret hits to die w/o upgrade, overlords took 11
Don’t get ultra ling. Don't get mutas after the usual mid game amount. Don't get guardians (as a late game switch) Don't get ultra drops.
All of these can work, it's just not something you can do every time, it's something that should be in your repetoire as a possbillity
Guardians can fuck the terran over big time if he's too greedy with his gas and doesn't get enough vessels. Mutas can be good when, again, the terran is too gas greedy for the tanks and doesn't get enough vessels / goliaths both for picking off tanks but also for picking of scvs at the 3rd /4th which many terrans only defend with a small group of mnm, with mines or not at all since they have "map control". Ultra ling can end the game early if you can hit the right timing (you have to be slightly ahead though), ultras do REALLY well vs vulture tank as when the tanks are spread out over the entire map (which would counter hydras). you just have to be smart about it and not run 12 ultras in a minefield and ultra ling drops works as an extension of this
I can't be too specific with it though; I know how zerg works out in lategame but I have no idea on the specific variations of the mech switch (which there are plenty of), I am however pretty sure that some variations are weaker than others.
also, don't get me wrong, I agree that your method is the "surefire" way, you just have alot more options than that, especially since the style you suggests makes for long and often turtly games, which alot of people do not want
On June 22 2013 03:49 kerpal wrote: I've been planning to experiment with muta assisted drops, once terran turtles a main with tanks and turrets, the turrets would auto-target the mutas right? so the drop could get through and kill the stuffs.
I know this guide isn't talking about pure mech openings, but in fantasy vs ggplay, ggplay does a muta assisted drop with 2 overlords filled with hydras. Fantasy had no turrets and his army was half way across the map, but the nature of mech allows for small amounts of tank Goliath to wreck small amounts of hydra muta, and then fantasy just crushed him with the superior army.
i really prefer the guardian combo because its much less risky than going for drops which he can quite easily defend from if he is able to scout the map correctly
killer is the "master" of the lurker/ling/defiler into ultra/ling defiler combo vs late mech. literally the moment he knows his defiler will be in time, he upgrades overlord speed then drop in his hive. he directly goes for lurker/defiler drops on terrans natural or 3rd base, while the terran is still busy setting up his 3rd and even 4th bases, just starting to get extra tanks and has rather few turrets to stop the harass. ultra/ling/defiler is very good when the terran does not have the time to set up enough tank/turret defences with big mine fileds. with that fast ovispeed + drop upgrade, u basically circumvent every mine field on the map, and more or less just move your army in those overlords. because of the lacking antiair, u often can directly drop on him or, drop in front of his base then just attack normally. the fact that u dont need extra hatches (compared to hydra oriented style), because ultras take a big amount of money, makes it easier to turn all money into ultra/defiler/ling (with hydra style, u first have to w8 for all new hatches to finish).
the style basically has a timeframe where it works very good, (for example, ultras with 2+2 armor vs "only" +1 tanks). in the game 4 in killer vs sea SRT final, which went into lategame with late mech, shows, that when u are behind in your eco + tech, it is very hard to use this style (without hydras), since lurker/defiler drops arent that effective anymore since he already has turrets + more tanks/vessel (in that game killer didnt even try to lurker/defiler drop him). if the terran manages to get on 5 bases (with tank/turret defence) while u are still "only" on ultra/ling/defiler drops without hydra upgrades, it gets rather hard, since then all new mines and turrets will be placed out on the map and they will soon be too much to handle for pure ultra/ling/defiler style. (in game 4 killer vs sea, killer should have taken the left and middle expo way sooner, because he basically let sea take 5 bases for free and then couldnt hold the base at 3 [which was predictable, killer just didnt have enough ressources to fall back to])
btw i have no idea if trutacz thinks that way, but this is my explanation of that style.
edit2: the hydra oriented style is easier to play (but it requires normally more bases because it takes slightly longer to be ready to attack). it is also a slightly more defensive version. u are allowed to make small mistakes. with ultra/ling, losing an ultra costs u way more, making a bad attack which makes 6 ultras explode to mines/tanks hurts u way more. u walk around with melee units vs range units only. it is harder to defend vulture harass.
it doesn't work out for him, but his opponent is flash, so yeah
I still think Mutas would be good. Even just one pack to bypass the spidermines and harass Terran's expansion. You get the added benefit of forcing Goliaths and reducing the number of Siege tanks on the map.
I have watched all recent matches from ASL. I just wanted to ask what is the current meta response to mech switch in tvz matchup. There aren't many Zerg players left so I can't learn anything. Have there been any new developments?
1. I've seen effort mix in hydras to take out mine fields, tanks and CCs. I've seen him add queens late game and take godlike engagements with them. I've see him do perfectly executed mutalisks switches to take out 10+ tanks and a a ton of scvs.
2. I've seen Zero be SUPER effective with his mutalisks and lings mid game to delay terran's 4th A TON. In the meantime he gets a fast 4th and pumps out a ton of ultralisks very early that become super effective with drop play.
S2 uses some very creative play. His style consisted of hydralisks, lurkers, defilers and queens. Instead of attacking Shinee's army he instead opts to continuously harm Shinee's economy instead. He efficiently uses hydralisks to clean up mine fields to open up attack paths to Shinee's expansions. Ever time S2 gets in trouble and is under fire, he holds off Shinee's army with lurkers under dark swarm until a well executed drop play or usage of queen's spawn broodlings neutralizes the threat.
Sorry for the quality, not sure what happened. I tried downloading the afreeca video directly using http://d-c.kr/ but it didn't load for me. So I used OBS to record my desktop. The quality was already worse after this step, but after uploading it to youtube it's even worse.
edit: apparently the quality is good, youtube now all of a sudden gives 1080p as well instead of only 360/480p max? Nice.
I don't think any of us mortals will be doing these things any time soon. Just using defiler, lurkers, and drops consume all my APM. Queens are gonna be clutch against the push once every couple of minutes but you'd have to be all over the map keeping Terran busy when they're out of energy. This strategy also falls apart if you don't keep the Vessel count low with scourge/plague/hydras.
Meanwhile Terran just has to play late game like they've been playing TvP.
Yeah, I watched that game from your channel and couldn't believe this was SKTzerg lol. Notably, he started building queen count really early which was great since he sniped the high ground tanks on 3rd and generally kept tank count under control during the whole game.
Edit: Holy crap, just watched Last vs Zero from recommended FPVOD thread (12/08 game 1). Similar hydra lurk aggression from Zero, with swarm contain at natural bridge and followup attack at 4th which would have won the game right there if he hadn't left behind that defiler, impressive play overall
On August 17 2016 15:49 AsianEcksDragon wrote: This strategy also falls apart if you don't keep the Vessel count low with scourge/plague/hydras.
Hydra/Plague makes it easy to kill vessels though, there are going to be hydras everywhere so you don't even need to control that much
People have been asking for an update about how to play vs mech switch. Its useful to understand what the terran is trying to do in an ideal situation. See my other thread, TvZ axiom build order for more details. But the basic build order terran wants to do is: 1 rax expo, ebay, academy, 3 rax, fac, star, science, 3rd cc inbase, 3 fac, armoury, 4th cc (at new main), 5 fac, 2nd armoury, 7 fac, 5th cc (at new nat), 9 fac (these 2 in new main), 11 fac (these 2 in main), 12 fac (this one in new main)
All the old options are still used occasionally. Hydra queen style has proven viable. Effort and Hero in particular employed it a lot through 2015 etc. Muta switch is seen every now and then, particularly if zerg feels he is behind slightly. Small numbers of guardians are used occasionally to harass more than anything. Both air options are often pretty weak. I offered to write about the ultra style back in the OP in 2013, which ofcourse has always been a very popular and effective style. Ultra ling swarm with a bit of defiler support is currently very popular. Mixed in with some ultra drops and followed up with more waves of ultra ling to overwhelm a terran position potentially. Lets go into a bit more detail briefly. In the midgame use mutaling to pick off mnm squads in the mid of the map in order to hold the 3rd base, and 3 lurkers on the ramp. Go up to 4 base and 8 hats as usual in the build order in the OP. Choosing when to go up to 5, 6 and 7 base is varied. Some will stay on 4 base for a tick, some will take a quick 5th but stay on 5 for a while, some will go to 6 quickly and stay on 6. Other times if Zerg feels he cant make a dent because he is a bit behind or if he just wants to play very defensively management style, he might even go to 7 base before starting the swarm phase. Or anywhere in between! The map and spawns plays a significant part in this. Generally there is nothing wrong with going to 5 base quite quickly on FS, use lurker defiler to claim the 5th. Its perfectly fine to make 3 sunkens at these new bases as well. For the ultra style you obviously get melee and carapace upgrades in the evos. You can do small 2 lurker drops as before still. Another popular option is to instead do a slightly more dedicated drop (but still not a full on doom drop) where you drop 2 lurkers, a defiler, and some lings into the terran main. Can use 4 overlords to perform this (not all full). Darkswarm over the lurkers, plague on depots, lings kill armouries hopefully and some depots. But its still just a distraction and draws terran units back, disrupts etc. When you have the ultra upgrades you can switch to the swarm phase. The perfect outcome is to break one of the terran positions by overwhelming. Lay down a few darkswarms, then go for it. This style is effective. Its probably fair to say that its slightly less demanding from a management point of view, and that’s a huge bonus that shouldn’t be ignored. You still need to be able to recognise if you can keep pushing or if Terran is locked down and you need to switch to the next stage of securing a new base and doing more drop focused ultra play. ZvT as mentioned is changing though. The most popular strats follow fashion in a way, and whoever the most successful players are, their styles will be emulated the most. Flash is getting into his groove, and new maps are getting picked up a bit more now too. We are at the start of a new era of ZvT so its all very exciting, what with new players coming back to brood war, and even streaming their fpv on afreeca. Flash vs Zero ASL Ro16 on Overwatch, timestamped to lategame
I posted the OP in 2013 over 3 years ago. ZvT has been in a slightly funny position over the last couple of years because of who the active players are has been changing a lot. Mind was dominating for a bit, Last was too. Hero stepped up and brought things back for zerg a bit with his excellent lurker and defiler control. Effort and Zero came back and helped turns things around. Then Flash came back and its all chaos again. But Flash is being challenged in TvZ still. My timeline might be wrong, that’s just a rough feeling.
There was a period where every zerg was going overpool regularly. Zero and Effort were both using this. There was a period where zerg was delaying 3rd base a lot, and getting hive then making an instant nydus as soon as the 3rd base finished. Zero in particular was using this. Effort would use it but more if he realised he couldn’t hold his 3rd base, so he would cancel the 3rd and back stab hard. We are talking spring 2015 roughly for the 2 above. There was a period where Mind in particular was pushing with 2 tanks and no vessel, relying on scan, which caused some problems for zerg. There is the very popular 3 speed vult style where you skip tanks and instead use speed vults to potentially run straight past the lurkers holding the ramp into the zerg 3rd and score drone kills or draw the lurker shots away from the ramp so the mnm can advance up and kill the lurkers. Zergs are now using a simple trick that helps prevent the vults getting in though. They keep 1 lurker unburrowed sitting blocking the ramp. Additionally just keep some lings at the top of the ramp to help block the runby and dish out dps.
Hero has very good lurker defiler control. Also, he was happy to go lurker ling defiler for extended amount of time compared to most zergs. He is happy to use hydra heavy late games or ultralisk late game styles. Effort is more about lurker defiler for defense, and fully explored hydra heavy lategame styles. He also would more often choose to cancel his 3rd base and do strong back stab attacks, or heavy muta harass on the terran main in the midgame more than other zergs. Zero in particular experimented with the faster hive, delayed 3rd base the most. He favoured ultra drop style more for his lategame. Killer in particular would favour the ultra ling swarm style where you macro billion lings and a move with ultras on the ground. All zergs use this style ofcourse, Zero likes it too. It is a powerful option.
Some small tricks that zerg have been using since the hybrid league in 2012: Staggered sunkens at the nat. Sometimes zerg make 2 sunkens and the 3rd one is touching but infront. (Any additional sunkens are placed further out infront again, but that was already common before sc2 switch). The most extreme example of staggered sunks at the nat was this game where Effort made 6 sunkens, but in pairs, each infront of the other. EffOrt (Z) vs Last (T) Draemong Starleague Ro16 May 2015 + Show Spoiler +
Sunkens at the 3rd base. Its now very common for zerg to make atleast 1 sunken at the 3rd. 2 sunks isnt uncommon, and Effort was even getting 3 sunks quite regularly at one point. Like I said though, ZvT has been in a slightly funny position over the last couple of years depending on which players were active. Effort did a phase where he would get his 3rd base and stay on 3 base for a bit longer, getting a 2nd hat at the 3rd base and massing up before taking the 4th base. Perhaps it was because he was struggling to secure a 4th base at the time or perhaps he was sort of unchallenged, so he could afford to get 3 sunkens just to be extra safe in a way. Hard to know the motives and thought process of players. But perhaps now that the bar has risen on the Terran side, it is no longer feasible to get 3 sunkens at the 3rd base, have to rely on lurker ling defiler to defend drops properly (at the highest level). So consider making 3 sunks at your 3rd base, hell if Effort does it then it cant be a bad thing for us mere mortals.
Lurker morphing staggering. When you make the first 3 lurkers, don’t morph them all at once. Start morphing 1 (or 2) of them at the top of the ramp, then a few seconds later start morphing the other 2 (or 1) directly on the ramp thus blocking it. When mnm arrive, the top lurker(s) finish first and can burrow safely and they in turn protect the still morphing egg(s). The mnm have to retreat so the final lurkers can finish morphing in safety. Whereas if all lurkers finish at the same time, mnm can instant kill the lurker as it finishes morphing using the bug. If a lurker takes damage at the precise moment of morphing completing it vanishes in a puff of smoke. And the mnm are standing close enough to snipe the remaining 2 if done perfectly.
Those are all small tricks that have helped zerg survive to the lategame more consistently. Once you are in the lategame, its standard to make 2 additional hats at the 3rd base (the new main). This is standard whether going hydra late game or ultra ling late game.
In my own games, I've been getting some success by doing the following things in no particular order:
- Hydralisks are absolutely fantastic at taking 5th and 6th base by cleaning up mines and preventing vultures from just sniping 3 lurkers, and a vessel from sniping your defiler etc.
- Hydralisks are fantastic at cleaning up mine fields. Next you use lurkers and defilers to hold a zone as close to the terran as you can. This way they can't as easily place mines right outside of your bases.
- Connect your 5th and 6th bases with nydus networks to your production hubs. You want to have defilers and lurkers to be able to defend and delay tanks from killing these outlying bases in an instant. Too many times I just lose a base because a defiler gets sniped before I can react or my 3 key lurkers get irradiated and I can't get any new lurkers and defilers there on time.
- Guardians are not a bad thing. If terran's especially greedy with taking his 3rd/4th/5th, doesn't have any goliaths, only 1-2 vessels and a single starport. There's a very nice timing here for a guardian attack. Some guardians can also be great to harrass natural bases over the cliffs. Just make sure you actually defend them by having some scourge there and possibly some mutas.
- If terran has a complete wall of turrets at his new main, some guardians can also be used to clear these up so you can drop again.
- Queens are absolutely fantastic. They're hard to use, but better get practicing now since an era of terran domination is lurking all above us.
- Your main army in the ultra late game should still just be ultralisk zerglings in my opinion. You just want to complement it with hydralisks to clean up minefields, to take out floating barracks, and to damage floating CCs so you can infest them with your queens.
also i was inspired by Julia for this,while playing vs him TvZ doing mech,i noticed that guards are no so bad with upgrades and hitting a good timing for this.
so i read this thread yesterday (specifically the interesting post regarding killer rushing ovie speed/ventral sacs asap after consume) and i can confirm that it's extremely strong on FS... you can wipe a whole terran main with 5 ovies of only ling/defiler/lurker if you secure the ramp correctly, and the terran can't quickly bust you given nydus/swarm/lurker.. it also requires the attention of the full terran army so you can kill/deny 3rd and 4th expo with macro surplus during your drop... you can also take your 4th/5th pretty easily with the pressure..
you can also simultaneously drop their natural with lurkers which they probably won't notice and kill all of their scvs lol. pretty dope play style.. i tried it vs a B on fish level terran that i practice with and it owned him when he's normally a master of the bio/tank/vessel into mech transition.
it definitely beats clearing fucking mine fields, i hate vultures
:D sorry i don't post replays especially with practice partners.. i was just saying killer has good strats and they're effective at high levels, i haven't tried a fast drop build likes that vs terran before. it seems to be pretty effective on FS
Queens are really good against the terran as they switch. Watching hero play, he'll have 8+ queens as the terran is tech switching. In the first fight he can take out half the tanks and steamroll the rest of the army with hydra ling lurker.
EPT
