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I don't think anyone is arguing that this army is easily counterable using banelings w/ speed upgrade.
I think the problem, and why this works so well, is because most Terrans (read: 99%) go mech against Z. The Z is naturally expecting one or more of the following:
- Hellion Harass
- Thor Drop
- Banshees
- Vikings
The obvious defense to almost all of these harasses is to quick tech to t2 and rush either a few hydra or go muta to do your own harass and force the terran to missile tower up.
If you are going the FE approach, then you are usually relying on a relatively small group of lings + spine crawlers to hold off the hellions you expect while you make a third queen or maybe a few spores if you expect banshee/viking harass.
So a sudden push of 20+ marines with +1 and shields is going roll the anti-harass tech/eco build that is the right way to go against 99% of the terrans out there. Another thing to remember is that banelings are pretty terrible vs a large number of marines unless you have their speed upgrade, which you probably won't have unless you for some reason suspect this push.
Roaches would fall pretty hard to this as well unless you had a bunch of them, which most zergs probably wouldn't have quite yet. No reason for a zerg to be massing roaches at this point unless he suspects something fishy. A teching zerg might have a few mutas out right around his push time, but 4-6 mutas are going to do jack all to 20 shield marines with +1.
So basically, all he has to do is prevent scouting and any zerg will suspect some he's going for some sort of harass while building mech.
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The thing is, you're zerg and you see no gas/1 gas and a rax. Then later you see either depots and a rax with a few marines or a lot of rax, you kind of realize they're not going mech. If someone completely didn't scout and was completely unprepared for it, it's rough but it's fairly easy to scout and react to even if you get a pretty general sense of "he's doing a really weird bio build".
Also I don't think a rush to lair is how most zerg handle mech. Hellions can be handled with lings or roaches, thordrop is annoying but queens and lings can stop most of it, and banshees can be stopped by 3 queens. If they're doing a 1 base muta build, yeah the marines will be rough.
The marine push in general isn't too bad because it lets you stay mineral based/not too much gas investment and a relatively quick expo if you're not going allin but it's hardly unbeatable, unscoutable of revolutionary. Also it has the downside of ling/bling is very very fast so a counter attack is problematic if you mismicro.
Edit: also zerg has to keep scouting because it's not like on he's going mech i better get roaches to deal with the hellion harass because it could be one of several different mech variations: turtle mech, hellion marine push, blue flame hellion harass, basic hellion harrass, banshees, vikings, thorship, tank drop. That doesn't even really include the variations where you see the "mech" structures (factory/starport) but it's more bio based: maruader hellion push, marauder drop for building snipe, mass MM drop, marine tank, so to assume zerg isn't scouting that much because he knows "harass into mech" is coming isn't representative of higher (or even standard paranoid zerg because they've seen so much) level play.
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You can't do this at high level. Zerg will see no factory at the front and no hellions, and a lot of rines. Even if you manage to hide the marines magically, marines are completely terrible vs 3/4 of zerg's solutions in early game.
Banelings beat marines.
Roaches beat marines.
Crawlers beat marines, especially with transfusions.
Only lings do badly.
So you're cheesing by banking on zerg not going any of those builds from the start.
In addition, my 2 hatch infestor and muta builds are out before your attack by a good margin. I've timed holding off any allin bio aggression with just crawlers with those builds and its' elementary. You won't stand a chance if a zerg sees no FE and plays smart.
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3rax stim rush is fairly common i think. its a gimmick strat and with proper scouting easily countered by banelings/speedlings. it works on maps like steppes of war where the rush distance is miniscule, but if i were you id be worried more on the fact that your worst MU is tvz (because it is blatantly terran favored). watch a few replays and try hellion openers 
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I don't understand how you'll be preventing scouting, would any competent zerg just sac a overlord?
Basically what you're saying is that mass marines are great if unscouted, what about mass marauders if unscouted, or banshees, or, well anything if massed and unscouted.
If you mass one unit and your opponent isn't making enough of the units that are efficient at killing them they're screwed in any situation, not just with marines.
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This works on zerg players because for some reason no zergs on the US server sac overlords to scout. It baffles me. A scan costs about 270 resources but sacrificing an overlord for scouting is heresy for z players.
See marines -> make banelings -> win.
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A baneling nest is fully 100/50.
I always make one, especially given the first few zerglings I make to counter bunker rushes/reapers turn into a very nice 6ish banelings ... getting burrow and/or speed for the lings is generally a good idea in ZvT which means that the marines could easily run into a few pairs of burrowed banelings.
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I think going heavy roaches against a heavy marine buid is a bad idea. Sure roaches do all right against marines, but stemed marines can rip shit up, and once he sees roaches, he will get marauders and then your fucked as zerg. Better to go ling/banelings to start (against a very fast rush), then at tier2 get eather burrow and baneling speed, or overlord speed and drop. You can move a bunch of overlords over marines, and as they arnt all full of banelings the empty ones can tank for the full ones till you get over the marines, then its nights out for all those marines, follow up with lings (and muta too if he gets any marauders or hellions).
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Roaches....Banelings....Infestors....Lots of speedlings....
If the Zerg adds a decent amount of spine crawlers before you push you're pretty much screwed from there when Zerg hits midgame and starts busting out a nice muta/baneling/ling army.
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It's a variation of this: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/3_Barracks_(vs._Zerg)
I used it a lot with success at the beginning of beta but when I got high enough on the ladder Z's started getting good enough to stop it.
A straight up baneling bust is NOT a counter at all, in fact I'd let them bust down my wall and then I'd clean up with the rest of my forces.
What worked best against me when I did it:
- Banelings off 2 base, but more defensively. They'd flank with the banelings when I reached their nat and the rines die very quickly. Even if the battle was close, my infrastructure was all rax with reactors and they'd have baneling tech so the rest of the game was heavily Z favored.
- Fast expo into spine crawlers and roaches for defense at the nat. This would be a close battle but if the Z survives he is in much better economic shape.
Other stuff that does NOT work:
- Mutas. If they attack the T mineral line, just attack with all your infantry and T will win the base race by far.
- Speedlings. Marines > lings in large numbers
- Infestor - doesn't come out quick enough
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This seems like it would only work on zergs who don't scout properly (yes there are plenty of those even in diamond).
Mass roach probably won't work, since marines out-range them, and a big enough ball of +1 marines will kill roaches too fast.
However banelings should definitely work. Especially if you do it DIMAGA-style, by surrounding the marines with speedlings so they can't stim & run away from the banelings. And you didn't say you got stim upgrade, only +1 and combat shields. banelings on creep > non-stim marines. And if you wait too long to attack and zerg gets lair, speedbanes on creep >>>> marines, stim or not.
if you're zerg and you scout only 1-2 marines at terran's wallin, and you haven't been hellion harassed, thor dropped, or banshee harassed, you should know something weird is up. Sac an overlord into terran's base and see what army he has.
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i saw my enemy doing 3 racks so i put up a banelings nest and insta lair into muta. using changelings to watch his armies movement (right click on of the marines and they'll move with them, he never noticed unless he was looking at the army while the changeling ran in :D ) and had burrow. burrowed on the big choke on steppes and unburrowed when he went over the minefield and meanwhile the lings cleaned up my mutas moved in to kill all of his SCV's and any missile turrets he had.
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Hey, do you have a replay of this ?
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If you have a rax with tech lab why don´t you build some marauders anyway? Should probably go for stim instead of shield or +1 then but if you have just some marauders that you can park in front of your marines roaches sunkens and banelings become much easier to handle and they don´t even take that much longer to build: marine(25s) marauder(30s).
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It's a very interesting strategy, and it's looking like the metagame favors it rather heavily nowadays. When the beta went down, people were still doing MMM balls against me as Zerg, and I was wiping them out fairly easily with Muta/Ling. Now that the beta's back, I'm seeing a LOT more reactors on barracks in my ZvT games.
Once in particular I got pushed fairly early by a ball of Marines, Unsiege'd Tanks, and a few medivacs, and my Mutalings got slaughtered. To this day I'm still trying to figure out what I should've done about it.
On a slight tangent, it always bothers me when I see good players using siege'd tanks to kill buildings when they're clearly in mobile range. The numbers clearly show that DPS is better in mobile against single targets... I guess it must just be a throwback to Brood War....
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Zergs go banelings on me after they see like 5 marines. Doing this would end so tragically vs banelings. 
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7377 Posts
i'm not contribuiting, sorry, i just want to state it for the record that you're probably the first Terran who wrote this sentence "TvZ was my weakest match up" on this forum
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I've lost to this 3 Rax marine build 3 times in a row before figuring out how to beat it.
It's very very simple, even if you're FEing. Sac an ovie at around 25 food, that's usually when the other 2 barracks are being built or almost complete. You have to scout his 3rax early or an variation of it (2 rax Factory for hellions in the mix etc etc.) and respond to it appropriately. After seeing the 3 rax, immediately put down a bling nest, 2 spine crawlers in the front of the natural and bring your queens to transfuse. Spam your speedlings while teching to lair in order to upgrade your blings. Usually the terran force comes to attack either before their stim is done or after. Your speed upgrade for your blings will be coming VERY close to the timing of stim, so you need to becareful not to die before then. If you see the terran using stim, do not engage, wait for stim to go away for as long as possible and then push in. If you don't have speed upgrade for blings they'll melt away to stimmed rines.
That's how i handle the 3rax, I haven't lost to it since. I honestly really sympathize with Idra when he rages to these kind of timing pushes. It's very hard to deal with, and takes a lot of skill to survive and follow up. When I held it off for the first time I felt a HUGE amount of satisfaction, I mean I felt that my determination to survive all these timing pushes from Terran and Protoss players makes you stand out in the SC2 community. Now there's the tank push to deal with... there's always something for us Zerg players to deal with, we need to stick together and beat these Terran and Protoss bastards =).
Zerg Fighting!
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How to counter if t he doesn't allow to scout? T just places the rines at the ovie path, no way to get in to see raxes before the push. After he moves out there no way to build > 4 sunks, which die. TT
I cant go bling if i see walling, since if goes banshee or CC i will get rolled later cause of sacrificing economy for bling.
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EPT
