Mass expand, as it takes a very long time for them to get a large mass of units/upgrades and mech is very immoble, you should be able to get away with this. Now that you've got an economic advantage it's all about finding the right unit composition. I'm thinking mass air right work, as it completely ignores the tanks/hellions and with enough corruptors and broodlords you can easily take out the vikings/thors. Another option is mass roach with speed, as roaches are the only units zerg has that can stand up to tanks in the slightest.
You can also try to be really aggressive. As I said before, the mech ball is very immobile, so harassing the terran with nydus/drops should be very effective. You should probably progress into the same type of unit composition as I said before.
I'm not sure how either of these stratigies would work, I'm just speculating at this point. I haven't tested these out yet but I plan to.
On May 25 2010 09:07 Trinton07 wrote: I've got a few ideas
Mass expand, as it takes a very long time for them to get a large mass of units/upgrades and mech is very immoble, you should be able to get away with this. Now that you've got an economic advantage it's all about finding the right unit composition. I'm thinking mass air right work, as it completely ignores the tanks/hellions and with enough corruptors and broodlords you can easily take out the vikings/thors. Another option is mass roach with speed, as roaches are the only units zerg has that can stand up to tanks in the slightest.
You can also try to be really aggressive. As I said before, the mech ball is very immobile, so harassing the terran with nydus/drops should be very effective. You should probably progress into the same type of unit composition as I said before.
I'm not sure how either of these stratigies would work, I'm just speculating at this point. I haven't tested these out yet but I plan to.
My practice partner and me have been trying to figure out how to beat this mech strategy as zerg... the only ways i beat him are 3- as Trinton07 said- Mass Expand if the game carries on past 70 food but the most effective is speedling/baneling very early game thats how i beat him the most- then the other times it was base swap with nydus or drops- then as many others have said broodlords but that is risky because a lot of times he has vikings and BL are just so slow, but i have just started playing Terrran, Random now because it was so ridiculous how limited i was but now all i play are TvT's and their boring and its always who has better position with siege tanks, or more vikings :p
I have been having trouble specifically with the TLO opening. All of his harassing is actually reasonably easy to deflect but it just buys him so much time to get his expansion, to build up his army and he dictates the flow of the game. However, I did see Sen actually counter this build with roaches and drop. There's a timing window where you can reek havoc in his main. Of course, the problem is scouting this specific opening in the first place. The terran will have marines hugging the corners and all possible angles of his base so he can kill your slowvie as fast as he can.
Anyways, against a more conventional mech opening I've been doing some thinking. The weakness of mech is of course its immobility. So once you see him teching to mech and FEing you can easily secure an extra 2 bases. The problem with this of course is that he can build a force of 5~ thors, 12 tanks, and any combination of hellions/mauaaders/vikings off two bases.
I think our job is to delay him from getting there as long as possible so we can tech up to BLs/ultras and expand. So I was thining instead of getting that 4th base you can just grab a quick third one and be as annoying as possible off three bases. You get mutas, but of course as soon as he builds thors/marines/turrets your muta harass dies off. So MAYBE instead, you attack from 2 sides at the same time. So the idea behind this is getting drop tech and a lot of sling/blings. First and foremost you have to aggresively scout where his thors/rines are, where his tanks are, and so on and so forth. Most likely using a changeling. You load up a lot of sling/blings into ovies, on one or both sides of his base. You attack with the mutas (and maybe drop a few slings) on one side to lure his thors and rines over, while you drop the other side with sling/bings.
The goal of this would be to pick off turrets, stray units, scvs, tech labs and especially to drop slings on tanks on the ridges and what not. Even using an overseer here and there to corrupt his factories. So while doing this you tech or expand. It's pretty hard to pull off because rines, thors and turrets just rape mutas and overlords.
On May 08 2010 08:56 CheAse wrote: Try burrowing roaches and popping them up right around the terran army. Seems to work pretty well for my opponents.
The problem with this is that it's very easy to get all of your roaches annihilated if he notices them moving underground and throws a quick scan, which will directly lead to a push and a gg.
I've been playing like crazy since the new patch came out. I am completely out of ideas for ZvT. Thors destroy everything in the air and tanks destroy everything on the ground. And there's always the looming threat of a reactor marine+x push if you macro to hard to try get ahead. Or even a devastating drop on the cliffs above your expansion if you go roaches instead of mutas to stop the rush. Ultras still do sick damage against armored units but strangely enough non armored units can tank them! Weird... anyways I hope someone finds a solution to this.
Granted, the last game didn't last very long but it showed us what we can do anyhow. Especially in the early to midgame the terran mech is terribly immobile. Their strength comes from their position. Small chokes, well placed tanks, the high ground, buildings that block chokes. Their weakness in the beginning are their immobility, slowness, and small numbers.
In the first and second games Check dropped a lot. In fact ever since I've watched Sen's replays I always get drop and speed ASAP. 2 overlords full of speedlings and a few hydras/roaches can do a surprising amount of damage, especially if the terran is caught out of position.
I think his drops could have gone a lot better though. What he lacked in both games was scouting before the drop (moreso in the first game) and using more slings in his drops. Losing mules and scvs is sooooo damn annoying for terrans. They take an immediate, significant loss in their economy and scvs take a hell of while to rebuild. Losing 5-6 is terrible. Imagine constantly bombarding them with mutas and sling/roaches drops as you're expanding/teching to BLs. I haven't tested this myself yet but if the overseers corrupt ability can stop MULE usage, then that is just OPed and asking for abuse.
Which leads me to the third game. Check losst drones. He lost A LOT of drones in that game. But it didn't seem to matter because his unit composition was just so good in the end. He had a ton of roaches, a lot of broodlords, corruptors and infestors to FG the vikings (IIRC it takes 3 FGs to kill a viking).
So in the end, check used a similar strategy I proposed in the above post but with roach drops instead of sling/bling drops. Another thing I propose is making an extra Queen or two (I usually make 3) to make muta harassment last longer. Before he gets a critical amount of thors/marines, you can multiprong harass with mutas/drops and bring your weak mutas home for a quick transfusion. And extra 300 minerals seems cost effective to me. So I'm gonna try all this out with a practice partner today.
I opened a thread on this topic but it got locked by a mod because I was slow on getting the replay up but someone told me that basically you have to play this like BW PvT. You can't take their army head on and if they decide to move out you have to hit them before they get too far from their base so they will be forced to stay home and play D. This buys you time to build your macro wihle teching to broodlords. Broodlords are really your only hope. Normally a good push of 5 or so broodlords can be GG to a mech heavy force. They completely maul siege tanks and the friendly fire will probably kill most of the hellions too, after the tanks are occupied then you can move in with the ground force and wipe up. Generally you'll want a mix of speedlings and hydras to swarm the thors and protect your broodlords from vikings.
I dont remember who it was but i saw an awesome replay on metropolis where it was ZvT and T went bio but thats not important. Whats important is that the Z player was Johny-on-the-spot with his larva injections throughout the game so when it came down to a 200 v 200 food army clash, the Terran ended with a good chunk of their forces still alive at about 140 food but the zerg (who got obliterated) was already at 200 food before the terran could even get to the zergs base and was able to clear the rest of the terran's bio ball and push for a gg. So that being said... as much as the terran is going to be buying time to build up his victory mech fleet, you have to buy time once he gets into the critical mass range to get your broodlord air force up and running with the production support you need. Drop, nydus, harass with mutas, whatever. Just keep the terran at home and make him pay if he moves out to secure that 3rd econ by raping his main/natural. You don't have to kill him, just outrun him. Also, do things like harass his main and have a force ready to hit his 3rd as soon as he sends his forces home.
Also, I know that when i play terran i always send out a raven or 2 with my tanks so i wouldn't rely on the burrowed roach thing... All good terrans will have at least a raven or 2. I have lost mad siege tanks because this guy had 6 ultras burrowed where i went into siege mode... (lol@ sc2 burrowed ultras DX). That and they can really help against hydras which will generally be mixed in with pretty much any zerg ground army or worst case can dump their energy in harassing workers with turrets (and those turrets actually own, they last forever).
My only defeat is due to a mech terran that was litteraly spamming
5-6 hellions (upgraded) 4-5 tanks 2-3 thors (upgraded) 10-15 marauders (upgraded) 2-3 medivacs 1-2 tower defence spammer! upgraded 1-1 A - move in my base
I had all tech (including broodlords and ultra) In a normal fight I had 3-4 ultras ~30-40 lings 20 hydras 4-5 infestors (for fungal and NP as frenzy isn't THAT good besides on ultras(I think)) [note that at the end I tryed to add 5-10 roaches in each pack without any success] [note that I also tryed broodlords but he just pumped 4-5 vickings to own them]
I had 2x extra expension AT ALL TIME. My income was double his. I had a queen on each expansion and was spamming larva.
Fights would look like:
Frenzy ultras Send ultras Fungal x4 NP 3x tanks 1x Thor send lings/hydras Other tank focus my infestors (infestor dies) all my army vanish
Basicaly my 3-3 units (3-5 for ultras cause the +2 armor was done) vs his 1-1, my 200/200 vs his 150ish/200 army was litteraly getting destroyed. The difference is that I could get back to 200/200 in no time but even that... he could almost out produce me with 1 expand only. Basicaly I had EVERY TECH, upgraded everything that I could upgrade (even ventral sacs!!!) I ran to 3 evo chambers and 2 spires for faster upgrades. So basicaly I was decked out! The only thing left was to produce and A+move his base.... and I've never ever been able to kill the dude. At some point I was desesperate and started to have some bad macro and he over ran me!
I mean.... seriously.... how the heck 1-1 units totaly RAPE 3-3 and they are less! How the heck terran can produce with only 1 expand while I had 3 (and kept expanding as well). I mean... does anyone smell the OPness?
I had all tech (including broodlords and ultra) In a normal fight I had 3-4 ultras ~30-40 lings 20 hydras 4-5 infestors (for fungal and NP as frenzy isn't THAT good besides on ultras(I think)) [note that at the end I tryed to add 5-10 roaches in each pack without any success] [note that I also tryed broodlords but he just pumped 4-5 vickings to own them]
Sorry bud, I'm sure your pretty good, but thats a terrible army comp. Ultras are shit, dont make em, any amount of other units using the ressources you invested in that crap wouldve done better.
hydras/lings are bad vs mech. ( in my opinion, especially if its a marauder heavy army with hellions and tanks.)
I think the thor right now is a bit overrated, and zergs are scared to go mutas. But really, Mutas are the best answer to mech right now. They force your opponent into making turrest/thors/marines, and if your good enough with the harassment, he wont get away with 1 thor 4 marines and 1 thor.
What I mean is, by going mutas, you force him to invest into that shit. Things is, thor heavy with marines support are not so strong Vs a ling/roach/muta flank ( banelings if possible).
And the investement into thors/marines/turrets really thins his numbers of tanks/hellions/marauders.
It's not fail proof, and requires semi-good multitasking why you harass/expo/develop your tech and upgrades to slowly mix in roaches/lings/banelings into the mix.
I've had way more success with muta openings or roach/ling to mutas to defend hellion/marine harasses. I've basically turned the whole dynamic of the matchup around with mutas.
You just cant afford to not threaten with air, as tanks will roll over you.
Edit: btw, I'm no scrub, this is all top10-15 diamond league speech, so I'm not making this work vs shitty terrans. ( even had one using medivacs to make his thors keep up with my mutas, that was awesome lol)
Sorry bud, I'm sure your pretty good, but thats a terrible army comp. Ultras are shit, dont make em, any amount of other units using the ressources you invested in that crap wouldve done better.
Wierd, cause SLush is chilling in my vent and I asked him what he's doing vs Tmech and he is doing ultras with lings and infestors and win most of his match vs terran mech altho he agrees that Tmech is imba right now cause zerg just don't have any proper counter (or just didn't find em yet) and I trust SLush more than any other zerg on this forum unless you are Dimaga, no offence. His timming is better than mine (thats for sure... and also the reason he was like 400 points higher than me on platinum before reset (he was like 2500)) but trust me ultras are pretty good cause they are the reason why I push Tmech back to 40-50mins games instead of 15-20.
As for air, I do harass alot with them early but when you think about it (we tested it) 1 thor will take down about 5-6 muta (IF SPLITED, 9+ if staked), 3 thors will take down 15-18 mutas..... if you then tali in marines + turrets (cause I don't know if you played against any good Tmech but they do advance with turrets/bunkers well you'd need an army of 25+ mutalisk at the VERRY LEAST (aka 2500min/2500gaz/50food leaving your with about 70 food for your ground army (since you have to calculate drones))) and you haven't even started to kill 1 tank yet!
I mean I found a way to kill Tmech which consist on being super aggresive early on and than find a good timing window when they attack your base you just make a nydus in their main and do as much damage as you can! since you have 4-5 base by this time you basicaly just have to rebuild if needed (you should have enough minerals/gaz to build what ever and than you go dog fight his army 1 unit by 1 unit. To be honest I won my last 2 games against Tmech using this strat.... I just don't find this NORMAL that you have to go all the way to this kind of start in order to win against a Tmech. Seriously... zerg is in need of a good Tmech counter.... mobility isn't enough... SC1 =/= SC2... by this I mean that in SC1 mobility was enough to pressure the terran with zerglings.... now in SC2 too many shits can happen!
the best way to deal with terran mech is to not let him get that huge tank army.. once he gets 10+ tanks it gets almost unstopable you need to constant be offensive in game .. muta harras or ling run by to kill scv's or nydus/drop just be aggresive while you expand around the map because if you can contain terran on 1-2 base and you have 3-5 bases its just a matter of time before you can break him ...
I am in Diamond League (but not a 'Pro'), so this might not work on very high level. This is what i do asuming he just plays defensivly will some harass and macros up the "unbeatable" army: - Open with Speedlings against early harass. This allows me to make my expansion savely too. - Build spire and make some Mutas, they help to defend and threaten (!) harass. So just dont overcommit, the goal is to keep him in his base and waste some money on turrets (or build Thors). -Make an Investor Pit and tech to Hive, while expanding aggressively. To have some Investory is pretty important as they help to defend against both Bio (Fungal Growth) and Mech (Parasite). -Once you have Lair make a Greater Spire and get BLs out, use your Mutas if you have any left and Corruptors to protect them from Air threats. - Now you are able to push. You can support this composition with Cracklings, as you have quit some Minerals leftover sometimes. Ideally you want to get some Hydras, which help against large amounts of Vikings. Make sure to have enough Broodlords in this case, Broodlings are needed to tank the dmg.
Note that mass Roach is pretty decent if he decides to push preemptively, means if he dont have the critical amount of tanks to melt everything. So watch him closely and be ready to throw down some Roaches. Also if you want to upgrade, Air Damage is pretty good of course, on the ground i would focus on Armor, as it helps all types of ground units.
This is just a rough sketch of an build, it offers the possiblities for harassment and gives you a reasonable well chance to fight his main army. What i have noticed is that in many cases i want to saturate my expanions with the MINIMUM amount of drones at the minerals, but expand much faster instead to aquire additional Gas. I compare this concept to BW ZvT against Bio, where the Z rushes for Hive to get out Defilers.
Yes, pretty much. If you want to beat a mech terran you *NEED* to get broodlords. Against those the only option for terran are vikings and those can be countered with mutas and hydra. Plus you can pump your air units out quicker than he does if you did not neglect your macro.
Let’s face it, there is always a way to win a game – but if you look at about even skill level players in Z vs T, Tyran will win 90% of the time. I really hoop that Blizzard is going to fix this unbalance in middle – late game….
I had a bad game vs Terran recently on Metapolis (we both appeared on the right so closest). I went 14 pool, 15 hatch and then a couple of spines, lings and roaches for defense. Then I put the spire to build. By the time I had 7 mutas and went to harass him he attacked me with 5-6 upgraded helions, couple of thors and marauders. I had no chance. I knew my mutas would get destroyed if I returned to defend so I went to raze his base (managed to kill scvs and CC but he had turtled at his exp) and he razed my exp + base
Anyway my point was, the speedling, muta thing will not work if the enemy gets early thors (which he can easily). And the thor, marauder, helion combination can deal with anything Zerg has by that point. Thors probably hit as strong as tanks (40 damage per attack). Marauders rape roaches and upgraded helions rape lings and do a lot of damage to hydras as well. We all know what Thors do to mutas.
Archangel could you please link the replay here, i am interested in that game. I cant tell till i have watched this, but maybe your mutas came out too late? Being in close position sucks in any case though.
unfortunately the best answer right now is to just out macro him. thats what the zerg race has always been about, its just that in this particular version there aren't enough answers b/ ultraliskss have literally the worst pathing possible.
I wanted to post both replays of my loses against terrans recently (and one of a extremely lame tactic on Desert Oasis which I won in the end somehow) but as I only today created an account here (I been reading this forum for a while) I could not make new topics.
I will put the replays in this topic then when I get home.
It feels to me like no different from ZvTmech in BW
Be fast, hit everywhere, isolate/surround his mechball, massive flank, pray
Keep just enough mutas to force the terran to have to invest in thors. After loads of harass, when the terran moves out towards your base, do a ridiculous massive flank with everything. Don't hotkey all your mutas together!!
On May 26 2010 21:41 Konsume wrote: Diamond 11-1 [157 points] here
My only defeat is due to a mech terran that was litteraly spamming
5-6 hellions (upgraded) 4-5 tanks 2-3 thors (upgraded) 10-15 marauders (upgraded) 2-3 medivacs 1-2 tower defence spammer! upgraded 1-1 A - move in my base
I had all tech (including broodlords and ultra) In a normal fight I had 3-4 ultras ~30-40 lings 20 hydras 4-5 infestors (for fungal and NP as frenzy isn't THAT good besides on ultras(I think)) [note that at the end I tryed to add 5-10 roaches in each pack without any success] [note that I also tryed broodlords but he just pumped 4-5 vickings to own them]
take the resources you spent on melee upgrades, ultra cavern, ultra upgrades, & ultra, and spend it on corruptor/brood lords instead. You would have easily beaten that army. only 2-3 thors, and no vikings.
EPT
