I do think that it was very impressive just how much he came back from my initial harass + first push by soley relying on mutas. I think it bought him the time he needed to reexpand and get back in the game.
However, I feel that if you fall behind in the early game to harass you just may not be able to catch up in time.
That's true. But don't you think if you fall severely behind using ANY build you wouldn't be able to catch back up? Muta gives you a much stronger chance of evening the gap. If you watch CheckPrime (Painkiller) vs Skidayo replay, he does something similar. He loses his nat to Skidayo's cliff tanks on LT. But once his muta came out, he was golden.
I think that massing mutas is a great strat but it can also be very risky engaging turrents. If you attack a couple of turrents with a mass of mutas you'll win easily. However, if your opponent has just out and out turtled with turrents and you can't see them until you engage, you'll take signifigant losses before you can pull out. Even worse, if you engage turrents and clump up and a thor gets the jump on you, you are going to take heavy losses.
That's up to the player I guess. If he made a billion turrets I just won't harrass as much in that area. If he covered up his entire 2 bases with turrets then he wasted a bunch of resources and I'm ahead either way. I just power up drones and wait for his push (now clearly delayed b/c of spamming turrets) to come out so I can smash some banelings into them and clean up with mass muta.
I feel like being highly aggressive with mutas is key to winning with them but at the same time it's super risky to do so because you can't see a terran player's army placement all the time.
It depends. Some games I'm aggressive, some games I'm not if the terran defends real well. Either way, he's (at least most of the time) too scared to come out of his base and/or his push is delayed. Giving you time to expand and build up more units. Every game is different I guess.
On August 15 2010 07:20 Pking wrote: Just a thought but the building armor upgrade (giving +2 armor to turrets) might be something to consider when countering this strat.
It might be worth it, no only for the turrets but also for the add-ons and supply depots. the Hi-Sec Auto Tracking (+1 rang for turrets) should be worth the cost too.
If you're going to turtle up vs mass mutas, the +2space upgrade for bunks is prob the best cost effective ebay upgrade, since you can put say 4 up accross your (2) base, then remove them and push with the extra minerals. plus it keeps your squishy marines alive alot longer. it should be noted also that the dps on a full 6marines with stim could do more dmg to a muta ball then any other terran defences.
On August 15 2010 08:29 Prophecy3 wrote: If you're going to turtle up vs mass mutas, the +2space upgrade for bunks is prob the best cost effective ebay upgrade, since you can put say 4 up accross your (2) base, then remove them and push with the extra minerals. plus it keeps your squishy marines alive alot longer. it should be noted also that the dps on a full 6marines with stim could do more dmg to a muta ball then any other terran defences.
Just sayin'.. Just sayin'..
That is 300 (+ 100) mineral investment per bunker, that is 5 missile turrets. Marines also cost supply. There are benefits with using bunkers (salvage and you can use marines for pushing), but for pure AA (e.g. protecting mineral line) I'd go with turrets.
Hey everyone, so earlier today I had a chance to watch micronesia's replays. I even had the chance to use it myself. IT HAS WORKED WONDERS. I've played 2 terrans and won even though they were both in diamond (I'm in plat). It felt good
Oh, you mean what we've all been saying is true about mass muta?
And you only believe it when the top pros pull it out?
Seriously, top players are amazing, but they don't always use the best strats. I think they get set in a certain way and rely too much on their superior skill that sometimes their strats are weaker.
I'm adding another replay that I just played 2 mins ago.
This is against a rating 945 terran (probably 950+ before this game), so hopefully no more of the "your terrans suck" statements.
It was a very awesome game. The terran was very very micro and harrass heavy. Myself I actually thought I played a relatively poor game in terms of harrassment denial and ended up losing way too much to harrassment. Could have done a lot better. But you can kind of see how I deal with it. I actually kind of thought during this game that against this kind of heavy harrassment terran, it's very hard to deal with if you have the immobile hydra/roach army, even if you have creep everywhere. Muta lends itself better.
Edit: oh btw, obviously I myself have much room for improvement as well. so anyone who's watched my reps for my build but are also willing to give me some pointers I would love to hear them too. thanks.
I've played against a terran that went ghosts... but he wasn't a really really high rating terran or anything. Are you sure you can spam snipe on 15-ish muta before all your ghosts die?
On August 15 2010 10:10 D-Rose wrote: I'm adding another replay that I just played 2 mins ago.
This is against a rating 945 terran (probably 950+ before this game), so hopefully no more of the "your terrans suck" statements.
It was a very awesome game. The terran was very very micro and harrass heavy. Myself I actually thought I played a relatively poor game in terms of harrassment denial and ended up losing way too much to harrassment. Could have done a lot better. But you can kind of see how I deal with it. I actually kind of thought during this game that against this kind of heavy harrassment terran, it's very hard to deal with if you have the immobile hydra/roach army, even if you have creep everywhere. Muta lends itself better.
Ok, I won't write that the terran sucks even though I don't agree with his strategy (it could probably have worked if he found a way to use the extra gas he had for ravens or something).
I guess the big problem I have is that the title of the thread is about mutas as a counter to mech. When I hear mech I think of thors and tanks with hellion support as the major part of the army composition, but the actual replays feature a lot of bio and starport play with some mech units for support.
If the terran relies on marines as anti-air, he is in really bad shape if a couple of blings hit them and vikings on their own aren't that good against mutas. In these situations the strategy is very viable since it's very difficult to make a comeback as terran if you get behind in anti-air power.
It all depends when you actually engage the ghosts and with how many mutas. If you like harrassing early on and peek inside the terran and mismicro even for a split second with your mutas (by overextending ), ghosts snipe will absolutely punish you if you lose too many mutas early on. Say you have 6 mutas on first engagement and lose about 2-3 and as long as terran have a thor that is damaged and it will be repaired and thor will be cost effective over the long run.
Thor does extremely low dps 16 DPS vs light, but at least it can do a bit of damage vs roaches.
My micro isn't up to scratch but watch the game where Qxc vs machine, qxc uses ghosts. Machine did play extremely poorly though.
D-Rose you've actually done a huge favor for the community by making this topic. Mass mutas actually does beat mech as long as the map isn't too terran favored. I main terran and I find muta openings the most difficult to beat. The ghost spam strategy is extremely high risk for terran but is actually the only standard way to deal with mutas. I believe planetary fortress spam 550/150 is the way Blizzard actually wanted it to play out. The ghost snipe was never intended to be used against protoss but against zerg. Snipe ultras snipe broodlords etc and planetary fortresses placed at choke points(where ghosts can fall back to) not just minerals lines.
The game hasn't been tested to death, as you can actually see muta does beat mech, and ghost hellion marauder, PF + mass turrets are soon forming the standard play against zerg. However the terran has to play blindly early stages by not scanning at all and muling all the time.(turrets are darn expensive)
Mass mutas is actually the norm vs protoss(who don't get phoenix stargate openings) and terran mech. Also I'd like to add that baneling drops(with overlords -easily affordable at this stage) on top of marines/thor is the way to go instead of charging banelings. Against thor marauder you win smash baneling at it.
Mutas are the MOST annoying zerg units to fight against..
1. They are quite fast. 2. Can do ok dmg to air and ground. 3. Not too expensive.
So it's versatile enough to use as harass or backup for an army. If you harass, they either have to commit resources to build defenses, or they lose a lot of workers. You can always hit another spot thats undefended. It annoys the crap out of everyone imo having to deal with a pack of flying raptors that prevents them expanding or moving out leaving their base undefended.
Whaaat, this thing is a new concept? I have lost countless games of TvZ to this stuff. I thought I just lost because I was bad..
I honestly thought that people had realized by now that mutas own thors, its just a matter of correct numbers. You NEED marines to get mutalisks down but what can you do about the banelings when all your money is invested in only thor and marine.
I watched all of the OP's replays and tbh I wasn't too impressed with his opponents' play(although I do use the exact same strat, ling/muta). I must ask though, how do you inject larva when every queen is on same hotkey? I feel like I'm behind or something, currently I have all my queens/hatches on separate keys.
EPT
