On May 19 2010 14:55 BigDates wrote: So once i see his army move out from his nat, i should nydus the back of his base with ALL my army?
No thats silly only send enough to make it a hard decision for him. Preferably you'll still have enough of your main army to completely wipe him out if he rushes forward unsieged and out of position. You don't really want to base trade unless you're 1 base ahead of him. Burrow with move speed is ideal for this because you can really make him task saturated and his micro will suffer.
On May 16 2010 08:20 Equalizer wrote: Why? Well broodlords should be obvious since most of the damage they'll do will be the Terran's tanks killing his own units due to broodlings also thors aren't cost effective against them. So the Terran's only deffence against them is vikings which the corruptors will take care of just by out numbering them and corruptors' 2 armor and corruption skill on thors doesn't hurt either.
The problems with Corruptors vs Vikings is that their range is 9 vs the Corruptors 6. The Corruptors have to move towards the Terran ball of Thors and Marines if they want to take out the Vikings (who are firing at the Broodlords). This means that the Vikings can just be microed back and forth on top of the Thors and marines (if they went "TLO style" with more marines than marauders). Thors+Vikings+Marines can easily take out Corruptors.
Nydus wont work, Hes got tanks. Mutas metls to Thors, AND he will get vikings and thus own your BLs. If you get spire, hold back until you can come with hydra+BL.
Ive seen Terran late game mech beat a few times, but I think you as a Z is at a big disadvantage. There is no perfect solution that will give you the win every time. When Z beat late game terran mech, here is what I have observed;
They have macroed economy like crazy. At least +2 bases, preferably more. They have gone mass roaches with burrow-move, with some lings and then hydra, for midgame, containing T. They have transitioned into BLs for the final push to win. They have poked at the terrans 2 bases, again and again, but never commited to an all in, but enough to keep dealying terran, forcing him to spend resources on rebuilding and static defences. With heavy on roaches, when z is 200/200, you cannot let T get passed 150/200 because he will become to strong. As z you have 1 advantage, production capability, so loosing your army dosent even remotely compare to T loosing vital parts of his. If the map has a backdoor to his main, abuse it. Contain, contain, contain, and everytime T moves out, attack while Tanks are unsieged.
Moman VS Morrow demonstrates this quite nicely, morrow goes heavy on tank, thor, and moman outexpands him, contains and harasses him with burrowed roaches. Think he had a bunch of mutas at one time, but they melted away before doing to much.
Here's some more theorycrafting: I'm loving the infestor idea.
Sort of an all-in play. Get banelings, burrow, overlord speed/drop, cracklings, infestors.
Final combination: Lots of upgraded lings, lots of energized infestors, banelings in overlords.
Go for a fast expand with first 100 gas to zergling speed, 50 gas after to baneling nest. . 6 banelings positioned carefully can buy you time vs hellion harass. Utilize more banelings and eventually burrowed banelings(preferably in front of his base, where the hellions have to pass). in order to completely stop his hellions from making it into your 1. main, and if your able to, 2. expo. Use queens extremely defensively. Make 3 in the beginning in order to have one that always has energy for transfusion. It'll help with any air harass thats sure to follow.
Tech to overlord speed and drop. mass zerglings, banelings, and infestors (Im liking the 4-5 infestor idea. Free infested terrans = free units).
This way, with low tech, your able to 1. stop his hellion harass, if you position well. 2. stop his air harass with queens, 3. mass up drones.
When he moves out, sacrifice something to gain vision of his position. This is where the "all-in" play comes in. Load up maybe 20 banelings into overlords, and set those to a control group. now, gather ALL your overlords (what, 90 food?, so 9). With your incredible micro, send in the two control groups with overlords that don't have anything in them, efficiently "sacrificing" these overlords to get the baneling bomb in, while attacking with your zergling/infestor army.
Sounds incredibly micro intensive and a complete all-in. Luckily, your army is pretty low-cost.
To support this, i'd say get a 3rd hatchery that "walls off" your natural expo. You get more larva, have a natural choke thats able to be defended easier than open space where hellions can get in, That way, you'd mass up your army of zerglings pretty damn fast. Your goal, with the banelings, is to take out as many units as possible so you can overwhelm with zerglings. Combined with the infested terran, zerg should efficiently be able to mass a LOT of units fairly quickly, fairly early in the game, before the T has a critical mass of unit, while stopping any potential harass from the T.
Travis said it all, i'll just add that you need to scout the terran army and adjust your army composition accordingly. (and yes i am 1500+ plat on the eu server) When i play mech vs zerg i lose if the zerg masses the right unit and has a good macro so he can throw army after army at me while producing always the right units.
I`m around 1700 platinium and i have been experienting stuff against this.
I think opening with mutas is safest thing to do. It forces terran get mariners or thors. In either cases i get third quite fast and hope terran is impatient and tries to push that. Muta-ling-bling is imho decent against any 100 pop terran army. Against Mech use blings to blow up helions and lings to swarm rest of his army. In small scale battles even mutas do fine against thors if you spread mutas against splash and he has no scvs for repair. If you can handle thors with mutas and lings, mutas will clean rest of his army. This is all assuming he moves out before reaching pop 170 army.
Cant beat 170 mech army so you can just bank on the fact that he attacks faster since there is nothing to lose.
On May 19 2010 20:58 Arir wrote: I`m around 1700 platinium and i have been experienting stuff against this.
I think opening with mutas is safest thing to do. It forces terran get mariners or thors. In either cases i get third quite fast and hope terran is impatient and tries to push that. Muta-ling-bling is imho decent against any 100 pop terran army. Against Mech use blings to blow up helions and lings to swarm rest of his army. In small scale battles even mutas do fine against thors if you spread mutas against splash and he has no scvs for repair. If you can handle thors with mutas and lings, mutas will clean rest of his army. This is all assuming he moves out before reaching pop 170 army.
Cant beat 170 mech army so you can just bank on the fact that he attacks faster since there is nothing to lose.
I imagine you switch to upgraded roaches if he continues to build up anti-air units? Where do you spend your time/resources upgrading in the early/mid-game? Earlier on, when you just have ling/muta, do you go for melee attack and muta air attack upgrades first?
I'm a decent plat toss player... probably 1500+, but am maybe 1400 or so zerg. Definitely looking for help from the zerg perspective against terran.
If you see a terran going pure mech then just abuse his immobility (nydus worm, expanding, etc). Also abuse burrow! If you let the terran make a full mech army then you are dead .
If you see a terran going pure mech then just abuse his immobility (nydus worm, expanding, etc). Also abuse burrow! If you let the terran make a full mech army then you are dead .
I tend to notice my opponent only falls for the burrowed roaches once. After that, doesn't work so well. I'm honestly surprised it even works the one time, considering all top players can and will do it in alot of games.
1 Thor with a few marines is not the problem. 4-5 thors with MM ball support is the problem.
In order for those UMS tactics to be effective, you are going to have to split up your mutas into twice as many groups as there are Thors. so vs. 4 Thors, you would have to split up into 8 groups of mutas each not overlapping in splash zones. Now that is some crazy-ass micro required right there.
Hey all. New to the forum even if i have been lurking quite a bit. Never played BW, started with SC2 beta, slowly worked my way up from copper to around 1400ish plat.
Here's my bit of advice. First, i hear hydras and mutas. No way, those aren't gonna work, hydras get burnt by hellions, aoeinstagibd by even just a few siege tanks splashing, mutas get blasted by thors and aren't that awesome against metal in general, bad idea.
What IMO is the key against T mech is: 1 early pressurem trying to make him grab his natural as late as possible, even just by threatening and not really engaging. 2 mid game is the tricky part. IMO you want to put down a spire no matter you're not gonna produce mutas, that will force the T to produce thors and will make him need a considerable amount of time to pump out let's say 5 siege tanks, and will make him sink money in turrets around his minerals. Otherwise you don't put it down and you get an earlier tanks critical mass but you'll prolly have the door open for drops. 3 Get ventral sacs and pneumatized carapace as soon as possible. Spread your creep around with ovies and tumors, especially along the path he'll have to walk to come to your base. As soon as he moves out, you make a drop with lings/banelings. He's too slow to come back anyway, and he won't have turrets all around his base to prevent it, and no siege tanks to defend a base while he atatcks because simply he can't afford to tie that much resources into defense. Most you could find might be some rines into a bunker. You can go for heavier drops with roaches as well, they're cheap compared to the obscene amount of gas a mech army needs. 4 Don't have your army in front of your natural, have it outta along the way he'll walk to come to your base (and you'll know he's coming because of creep/tumors/ovies/xel naga/single zergling burrowed right outta his base, whatever. If you don't and get surprised by a mech push, meh, you're not using the zerg as they IMO should be). A T always scans in front of his army, and will prolly have 3-4 scans ready when he moves out, have your roaches and lings burrowed outta the predictable location of the scans and you'll manage to get him from behind once he sieges. If he has a raven, well, that's bad. But TBH having a raven in a T mech isn't that easy, tanks and thors cost an awful lot of gas and even with 2 bases having 3 factories pumping metals won't really allow much to spare into a raven untill late game, also considering usually a T will get some vikings or medivac first for map control/drops, and considering PDD doesn't work aginst roaches, so no really any reason to grab a raven if Z doesn't have mutas/hydras en masse, and simply relay on OC scans in case of burrowed units, which leads to what i was saying before: don't get him burrowed coming from his front. Usually a T will feel safe to push with 4-6 tanks (which already takes a considerable amount of time to get, given he needs thors as well), waiting more could mean leaving complete map control to Z, which is bad.
To sum it up, pressure early on, expand your creep non stop, harass as much as possible, don't be stupid and suicide those poor roaches having them tunnel their way right in front of the T, even if he didn't see 'em borrow, he'll scan.
Easier said than done, indeed
big ass edit: i see mention of marauders. That's a complete different scenario, and IMO doesn't fit into the T mech definition. To have a decent amount of marauders, he must have the usual 3 raxes, prolly marines to fend off possible air, no thors if he still wants siege tanks, definately no raven because he gotta pump out medivacs for the bio part of his army. And that basically ends up in a bio ball with siege tanks support (few and late) or into the usual marauder hellion thor (which i find harder to counter 'cause it's more suited to fend off both roaches and hydras) which again isn't really into the hard T mech i referred to, even if the important considerations still apply. IMO.
On May 20 2010 01:06 TheRyanBurke wrote: Here are 2 short vids showing how to attack Thor with Muta and not get owned.
Lead in with Corrupter, cast on Thor, split up Mutas to minimize splash.
750/700 vs 300/200
then 1050/1000 vs 600/200 and no stim on marines
also thats only 1 thor. Once they get 3, they can take on retardedly more mutas due to 1 shotting them (or if they are +2 attack, they can 1 shot with only 2 if you have 0 armor on mutas)
Very, very inefficient and not a good situation for zerg to use muta vs thor. It's like using roaches to counter immortals. It may work vs only 1 immortal, but the more there are, it gets exponentially worse
i've been frustrated with effectiveness vs. terran mech too. Has anyone tried mass (and i mean MASS, like 50-70) bling? could bling combined with roaches to mop up the rest be the answer?
On May 20 2010 02:58 megacake wrote: i've been frustrated with effectiveness vs. terran mech too. Has anyone tried mass (and i mean MASS, like 50-70) bling? could bling combined with roaches to mop up the rest be the answer?
tanks kill banelings 4-8 per blast, per tank
While being super weak and hard countered by siege tanks, 50 banelings = 2500/1250. Quite an investment there to be 1-shotted by a unit it doesn't even work against
then it's settled, there is no effective zerg counter to terran mech atm? i believe it, you need more than a 1 base lead too outmacro the terrans at the moment. nydus networking is cute and will get you a few snipes but a couple sensors kind of easily counters that.
I know terran's are supposed to be versatile, but with a little bit of everything in their army they are damned near unstoppable right now.
Hope they are crappy terrans who still neglect mech? That, or neuter their economy before they get more than 2 tanks Backstabbing works well, if you time it right after they move out. If it gets to that point hope they stay dfefensive enough to tech to broodlords :p
EPT
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