This is precisely the sort of build that I have the most problem with as T.
Mass, well controlled muta, is so much better than thor, that I would imagine it will eventually not be feasible to get multiple thor at all, since thor will be completely useless in pushing out at this point (120+ food plus). Muta will just easily overpower any reasonable number of thor (4-6).
Marine is completely bad and unreliable, especially if you are escorting Thor. There will not be enough seige to get rid of the banelings, and even if there were, marines would still get smoked too efficiently, and leave your Thors naked. --
The only solution I can think of is to continually pump ghost and use snipe to make sure he is losing muta each time for harass.
I also think ghost will eventually be core to the matchup. While some of the earlier T units are vastly more efficient than Z ground (hellion/tank), Z has both air + ultra/broodlord to force inefficient units like ghosts. I think snipe will take the place of irradiate as a wildcard to take down tech switches. Otherwise, bouncing back and force between ultra/brood in itself is a huge problem.
+1. I've been playing pretty much all of my ZvTs this way since Phase 2.
The issue is surviving until you've got spire tech and 10+ mutalisks. Hellion drops/harassment, cliff abuse, and even heavy reaper play really, really hurt early game.
I've been experimenting with delaying the spire + mutalisk tech until I'm in the process of getting my third established. Zergling/baneling/roach, with good army positioning, can generally handle most middlegame terran pushes, and if you've already got two bases saturated and are getting gas at a third, you can easily build 12 mutalisks immediately after your spire finishes.
That being said, I don't think a lot of terran players are used to (1) being seriously hurt by mutalisk harass and (2) as a result, having to significantly adapt the usual NR20 walloff + biomech turtle play. That may explain some of why this is (fairly) effective.
As an aside, mass mutalisk is RIDICULOUS in team games as a shared money build. 50 mutalisks, because of the splash, pretty much own absolutely everything, especially given how early you can hit critical mass with somebody else feeding you gas.
Why the hell would you 1 base muta? That's asking to get chewed up by timing, since you won't have enough resources.
The idea is that you want to sit on enough gas to really pump a ton of muta. If T is doing a timing push that isn't susceptible to muta, then you can't get mute first. You have to block the push first. But afterwards, when you have been sitting 2-3 base for a while, you can just crank out a ton of muta when you are not in danger and severely restrict T map control.
The issue with 1-base mutalisk play is that good terran players will generally throw down a couple of turrets, then a-move and kill you right away.
Zerg's T2 is pretty squishy in small numbers, so in my experience if you delay your T2 play until you're on 2+ bases you can make a much more meaningful transition into mutalisks.
The game from check vs maka does not show this strat, we never get to see mutats head on against thors and maka was using bio almost throughtout the whole game. If I understand this correctly, this strat is throwing mutalisk at thors.
I'm a BIG fan of this style. I never had much trouble with my ZvT (My ZvP is the iffy matchup). I always get mutas, even against bio builds. Against mech you really contain the terran for a while. You gain map control. You can pick off his annoying little drops if he tries it. You force him to build more thors and marines and turrets than he'd want to.
My favourite unit composition is muta, roach banelings (Against mech AND bio too). And I find that it works pretty well against mech. If you're really aggresive with drops, and focus on denying his third then you can tech relatively easily to BLs while restricting him to two bases. And your mass mutas early on should have chipped away at his viking count the entire time.
I haven't tried to commit to mutas though with 1-1 upgrades while sticking solely to ling/blings. But I'll definitely give it a try.
I think everybody needs to play with it a little bit, and eventually a strong timing will come out. I personally throw down my expo while I'm upgrading to lair, I set up the 2 expo extractors before its done so I can immediately double my gas when ready. Spire goes up immediately, obviously.
This reduces my early game exposure to harassment when I don't need the gas, and has me ready to go when I do. I personally don't rush for Lair TOO fast (you have to go kinda quick due to banshees) and I always get my 2nd queen immediately after my first to help defend against hellions and spread creep.
While my stuff is upgrading back home, I will poke at his ramp with lings/blings/roaches and see what I can get him to build for defense (the more marauders and tanks, the better).
This isn't by any means an end-all-be-all. Mass marines will destroy mutas, a solid mix of marines and thors can hold me back from your base, and I'm sure plenty of other strats will evolve. But for those who have read my baneling gambit thread, this is what I prefer to transition into after my econ is bumpin.
mutas are one of the msot cost inefficient unit in the game, the only 2 ways to win with mas muta: 1. opponent fails at defending the harass really badly 2. the opponent doesnt realize and makes a buch of marauderts/tanks. Idk how is that possible as he sees your mutas and has maphack scan, but still.
I tried mass muta with lings or banelings-lings against mech and had little success even against realtively bad opponents
On August 14 2010 14:37 Geo.Rion wrote: mutas are one of the msot cost inefficient unit in the game, the only 2 ways to win with mas muta: 1. opponent fails at defending the harass really badly 2. the opponent doesnt realize and makes a buch of marauderts/tanks. Idk how is that possible as he sees your mutas and has maphack scan, but still.
I tried mass muta with lings or banelings-lings against mech and had little success even against realtively bad opponents
Cost inefficient against what? Thors? no. Marines? yes. However linx/baneling owns that. Just make sure you know what composition he's on and adjust. You said it was mech, so im guessing it wasnt marines.
has anyone attempted a double factory build? What I mean by that is you drop a second factory after your first finishes. If your timing is good you end up with 6 marines 3 or 4 hellions and a tank or two with seige. All before mutas come out. (tried and true. the push gets to your base about 20 seconds before one base mutas pop out). I lose the first push if he goes mutas because I don't have enough anit-air, but his econ his devestated. and as I push I throw down an armory so by the time my push is defeated I have a thor, second almost done, a handful of marines and a tank or two, so I can defend any counter push, and once I get three thors or so it's lights out. I realize that three isn't that many against mutas, but remember I destroyed your econ.
If you don't rush to muta and have a stronger ground army it is more up in there air. I do admit that between my first push and the time I get my thors or is very scary as I am very sucseptible to air. But if I get the timing right, it is literally impossible for them to get mutas before my first push reaches their base. And then they need the mutas to defend. Against two base muta, I've never had a problem. Fast expand usually die in the first push (which happens in the first 7 min game time) and then they can't pump muta like they want to. If for some reason they were able to hold my push off, mutas would be very scary. But with my timing...I just haven't had an issue at all.
I don't like being passive, and am therefore a very aggressive terran player which is interesting as most mech players are passive. Maybe that has something to do with it, but I get units really fast and have never gone longer than 25 min in a game against Zerg (last 3 zerg games were against high diamond players, longest one was 23 min. average is 17-18) most die at either my 2nd or 3rd push. The game that went 25 min long he held off my first push, but my second one decimated his expo and he just didn't have enough mutas to keep me back. He had about 6 on my second push and killed it, but not before I killed his expo. Maybe his downfall was he then tried to harass and lost quite a few mutas as I was prepared for it.
Wow, I'm just babbling. sorry I have no replays to post; my computer didn't have enough ram until recently so it would freeze after every game and I would have to close SC2 and it destroyed the replays each time.
I'm platinum lvl, and have never lost with this strategy.
Edit: maybe if he had had banelings instead of just muta/ling it would have stalled me as I had only a few tanks. but getting banelings would prolong his mutas giving me a larger window of attack and harass as well as keep his muta count low. remember I'm talking about first push at about 7:15, second at 11:00-13:00, and the third between the 16 and 18 min mark. I'm talking about early early pushes before you can really mass mutas.
Also, people keep saying pick off a lone thor...I've never lost a thor to mutas like that. I always have marines around them and scvs can get there fast enough to repair. And if that doesn't cover it, then it is late enough in the game that I'll have two thors and that will cover it...I've never ever lost a "lone thor" in my base.
On August 14 2010 14:55 Jaemis wrote: Also, people keep saying pick off a lone thor...I've never lost a thor to mutas like that. I always have marines around them and scvs can get there fast enough to repair. And if that doesn't cover it, then it is late enough in the game that I'll have two thors and that will cover it...I've never ever lost a "lone thor" in my base.
People are talking about when they come to attack you, not attacking it in their base.
On August 14 2010 14:37 Geo.Rion wrote: mutas are one of the msot cost inefficient unit in the game, the only 2 ways to win with mas muta: 1. opponent fails at defending the harass really badly 2. the opponent doesnt realize and makes a buch of marauderts/tanks. Idk how is that possible as he sees your mutas and has maphack scan, but still.
I tried mass muta with lings or banelings-lings against mech and had little success even against realtively bad opponents
Cost inefficient against what? Thors? no. Marines? yes. However linx/baneling owns that. Just make sure you know what composition he's on and adjust. You said it was mech, so im guessing it wasnt marines.
sure as hell they are cost inefficient against thor, even with the best split possible. I'm so upset when some ppl say muta > thor, even with a perfect split which is impossible in real action thors do decently against the same ammount of mutas / cost. And if you let your mutas clump up just for a second at the wrong time, you're done.
And i was saying most inefficient as dmg/ cost and health/ cost in general, their big strength is mobility which i can abuse against P well, against T much much less, as they got units with insane range and their static defence (turrets) are incredibly strong until your mutas are well upraded.
But im going to watch now the reps, lets see this muta > thor thing, everyone who ever told this and wanted to prove it showed me a rep/Vod where 2 thors were getting raped by 15 mutas and a bunch of speedlings.
Really looking forward to the evolution of this, till we get something similiar to the 3-hatch Muta build of BW days. Except this time around, we're not restricted by larva counts.
This thread is pure win. OP is my hero. After reading all the posts I'm convinced that this strat is going to fix ZvT. I like to think that Blizzard knew all along and was just waiting for us to pick up on this.
Just thinking about it, most zergs are afraid of going muta's against mech because thor's "counter" mutalisks. Well the thor AA rate of fire is super slow and all thats really doing the damage is the splash. If you tell your mutas to just fly over the thors and then attack instead of telling them to directly attack it (which clumps them up) then the threat of splash damage magically vanishes. Once the thors are gone, muta's have free reign over the rest of the mech army. Add some banelings into the mix to counter any marines and you got yourself a balanced match-up. All done with units tier2 and below... no need to rush for tier 3 anymore to have a chance!
And just to clarify, missile turrets don't do splash damage so a large clump (20-30) of mutalisks can take them out fairly quickly. Turrets are only strong in the early-mid game when Zerg is just getting his first mutas. Vikings do not counter mutas in the slightest because they move and fire slower and only do bonus dmg to "armored" units. Also marines get demolished by banelings.
I really do think that this is a valid solution to mech in TvZ. It would be ironic if blizzard nerfs the mutalisk or buffs thor's AA when players start doing this in mass.
A way to hide this build is to make a spire off-site with the generate creep mechanic (a little risky if spotted . You can also toss down a hydralisk den & roach warren in your main to confuse the Terran into thinking you're going standard hydra roach. Just something to try out. Basically you want the Terran to be as unprepared as possible for mass muta so you can maximize your advantage ASAP.
This doesn't fix ZvT. It is still just as fragile as any other strat Z does in that, if you kill his whole army, you have gained a small advantage, but if he kills even MOST of your mutas you can lose right there.
Mutalisks stack REALLY well, but this also has the effect of them losing 90% of their power when 40% of them die.
This is just a strat that mostly works. Thors still beat mutas in even cost, and this is made even worse with marines. As a whole, ZvT is still a situation of "play perfectly for 30 minutes or lose" this just gives you some mildly effective options for harass instead of sitting around waiting for T to push when he feels like it.
On August 14 2010 15:40 Jermstuddog wrote: This doesn't fix ZvT. It is still just as fragile as any other strat Z does in that, if you kill his whole army, you have gained a small advantage, but if he kills even MOST of your mutas you can lose right there.
Mutalisks stack REALLY well, but this also has the effect of them losing 90% of their power when 40% of them die.
This is just a strat that mostly works. Thors still beat mutas in even cost, and this is made even worse with marines. As a whole, ZvT is still a situation of "play perfectly for 30 minutes or lose" this just gives you some mildly effective options for harass instead of sitting around waiting for T to push when he feels like it.
Mutalisks are about 50% as cost effective as Thors in equal numbers, that's correct.
The only way to overcome this theoretically is having some kick-ass micro, but I have not quite seen any Muta micro that is quite that effective yet when your fighitng more than 1-2 Thors... due to Mutas range being so low in comparison to Thors AoE range.
EPT
. You can also toss down a hydralisk den & roach warren in your main to confuse the Terran into thinking you're going standard hydra roach. Just something to try out. Basically you want the Terran to be as unprepared as possible for mass muta so you can maximize your advantage ASAP.
