I'm posting this for a friend who doesn't normally use TL but thinks it will be helpful. He said he'd use his new account to discuss/answer questions.
Hi guys,
This is my first post and probably only post, so I'll try to make it count. I'm about to quit sc2 due to foreseeing a very busy schedule in the next few months. But I'd like to share my basic zvt strategy since a lot of zergs are having trouble with the ZvT matchup.
I'm about a 600 level diamond zerg, and ZvT is my best matchup by far, and I win most of my ZvT games against opponents anywhere from the 400s to the 800s in diamond. (If they get above 800, then they become beyond my skill level and it's just I'm too noob to do anything to win). My ZvP and ZvZ, however, aren't that good and that's keeping me back.
My basic strategy is early game to defend until I get mutalisks. Speedling with first 100 gas, then start teching to muta. After I get muta I start upgrading muta non-stop and commit fully to muta. I find that that's actually enough to win me a lot of my ZvT games. Go in his base and harrass with your muta, and try to pick off lone thors obviously. Meanwhile take a couple extra expos while ur opponent is holed up in his base (the key is start mining gas first!). Eventually, when he pushes out with like 4 thors, you should have 4 bases mining and at least 20-ish muta. That should be able to take care of his army. I like to mix ling/baneling in there for any bio units that come along with the thors. If he moves out with anything less than 5 thors, you should be able to just roll over him with your 20 something muta. I had a game where b/c of that early harrass, by the time a 6-thor (plus tank and hellions) push came out I had 23 muta upgraded 1-1, and completely destroyed his push while having 10 muta left over. And we all know that zergs can pump out a lot more muta much faster than terrans can pump out thors if you've kept him to 2 base. One extra benefit is that mass mutas really do pretty well against any variation the terran can throw at you midgame, like mass vikings or mass banshees that I see frequently in ladder games at this level.
I do dislike roach/hydra/speedling builds, because those depend so much on timing and you're at the mercy of your opponent in terms of when he wants to push and where the attack happens. With mass muta, you have control most of the game and can actually abuse the mobility that zergs are known for.
Obviously as I'm only a 600 level zerg I'm not that good a player, but as I'm winning a big majority of my games against equally skilled or slightly better terrans I feel I should should share this with other zergs having problems with the matchup. Even the games I lose, I feel that it's because I screwed up somewhere or the opponent had a really nice play rather than a problem with the build or any race imbalance issues. Hopefully the better zergs can actually improve upon this build and do some serious damage with it. Let me know if you do :p
Here are a couple replays that demonstrate this relatively well. I have a bunch more reps but I'm not gonna upload them all.
Uh if he makes any amount of thors with marines he will die instantly. Heck he could make about 10 turrets and get his third and then its just GG. Pretty much any thor timing push could dominate any build with mutas.
I'm sorry, I'm a bit skeptical about this working against a push. Thors and marines absolutely tear up any amount of mutas, even if you have the carapace upgrade. Hell, even just marines without the massive thor AoE could take out 8-9 mutas in an end game push.
The only success that I've had with mutas is doing a sling/bling/infestor/muta build, where you NP his thors and just run down the rest of his army. However, it's very gas intensive so it doesn't really work early game.
I know it sounds counter intuitive. But like I said, I win most of my games as ZvT at this level. Any early game push you should be able to counter with your mutas + speedlings. Any mid game push you should be able to counter with your mutas + banelings. Remember to control your banelings well to splash them into their marines instead of their thors. And by late game, you should have brood lords to deal with their push.
I can usually handle any push mid game up to 5 thors and a bunch of marines pretty well.
Also, you should make an effort to go into his base and pick off his first 1-2 thors. That slows his push by a LOT since thors take a long time to make. Another variation is to take some overseers to corrupt his factory if you're having that much trouble with his early pushes. But usually your harrass and picking off thors should keep him in his base until you're powering from 4 bases and 8 gasses.
As a Terran player I find Mutalisk and Banelings the hardest to play against. It's so difficult to get more than one expo against a lot of Mutalisk since they're containing you until you decide to push and then they just baneling all your marines and then pick the Thor's off with their mass mutalisk.
It really doesn't sound like it will work, and you don't even provide enough detail to test this out. Do you go for an early expand, or do the first muta harass off one base? That's a very crucial piece of information you omit. How do you defend? Just speedlings? Spine crawlers? How do you deal with reapers? Hellions? Banshees? Early MM timing push? MM/Tank push before mutas?
Etc..
I mean 'mass mutas' is a pretty vague strategy, especially when all zerg players have tried that and seen it fail - if you're going to push it as a valid strategy, you really need to detail what you do instead of 'build a lot of mutas and kill all his stuff'.
On August 14 2010 05:10 fdsdfg wrote: It really doesn't sound like it will work, and you don't even provide enough detail to test this out. Do you go for an early expand, or do the first muta harass off one base? That's a very crucial piece of information you omit. How do you defend? Just speedlings? Spine crawlers? How do you deal with reapers? Hellions? Banshees? Early MM timing push? MM/Tank push before mutas?
Etc..
I mean 'mass mutas' is a pretty vague strategy, especially when all zerg players have tried that and seen it fail - if you're going to push it as a valid strategy, you really need to detail what you do instead of 'build a lot of mutas and kill all his stuff'.
You should look at the replay and read the page of text if you want some details.
On August 14 2010 05:10 fdsdfg wrote: It really doesn't sound like it will work, and you don't even provide enough detail to test this out. Do you go for an early expand, or do the first muta harass off one base? That's a very crucial piece of information you omit. How do you defend? Just speedlings? Spine crawlers? How do you deal with reapers? Hellions? Banshees? Early MM timing push? MM/Tank push before mutas?
Etc..
I mean 'mass mutas' is a pretty vague strategy, especially when all zerg players have tried that and seen it fail - if you're going to push it as a valid strategy, you really need to detail what you do instead of 'build a lot of mutas and kill all his stuff'.
I guess this is why I listed it as discussion instead of a guide. You probably should watch the two replays to get an idea and then ask specific questions rather than just request he go into a lot of detail. He might do it anyway though I don't know.
He's not claiming to have perfected it and thinks other good players can improve on what he does... why don't you ask him how he would deal with 'blah' if you think there's a weakness (after watching the reps lol)
I hatch first expo. I uploaded 2 replays that you can check out for more concrete details. I have like a dozen other ones that I can upload too.
Defending I already said. First 100 gas speedling. That an a spine crawler or two can defend against any type of hellion harrass. Against reapers I drop a bunch of spine crawlers all over the bases and try to micro with lings. (I can post a replay of this if you want, but that game didn't end up going muta vs thor b/c the terran went mass viking after reapering, which is utterly raped by muta). Defending against banshee is to use 2 queens + transfusion and morph and overseer ASAP.
Scouting MM timing push and MM tank push is generally pretty easy for me. If I see reactors going down on his wall barracks with no factory lift-and-switch or that I see lots of marines + some tanks if I suicide a ling up his ramp or sac an ovie, it's pretty safe for me to assume timing push. In that case I just mass up speedlings for a while and wait for his push to come out, then surround and kill.
Sorry about it, it's my first post and I don't know the rules. But I'll try to respond to all your questions. But please watch the replays first, and I can post some more of them if you want.
On August 14 2010 05:02 Endymion wrote: I'm sorry, I'm a bit skeptical about this working against a push. Thors and marines absolutely tear up any amount of mutas, even if you have the carapace upgrade. Hell, even just marines without the massive thor AoE could take out 8-9 mutas in an end game push.
The only success that I've had with mutas is doing a sling/bling/infestor/muta build, where you NP his thors and just run down the rest of his army. However, it's very gas intensive so it doesn't really work early game.
Like I said in my initial post, if you see a thor mix with bio then add banelings to the mix.
Watch replay number 2. Replay number 1 is a pure mech terran army. Replay number 2 is a marine/thor terran army.
after watching the replays i can point out some major flaws in the terran play. however this is still the style i like to play since it has incredible mobility compared to the terrans terrible mobility. and allows you to defend multiple expansions while containing the terran and limiting him to a timing attack (which you can scout and prepare for ).
late game i really like switching from muta ling into brood lord roach hydra if i can get away with it. ultra ling infestor if i dont have quite have as much gas.
the key to this build really is upgrading your lings and mutas and focusing hard on harrassment and picking off tech labs on factories or thors. also almost as important is not clumping your mutas in the engagement. to do this move past the enemy or just click s or h and then focusing down the thors. another key at least when i play this style is makeing a third hatch in the main and getting a super early 3rd. the reason for this is because muta ling leaves you with a ton of minerals and you neeeeeed the third hatch for enough larva to support it. lings take tons of larva so there hidden cost is in the extra hatch.
edit : i have some reps of this style im mid 500 zerg diamond, so im not incredibly good. ill post em later as im at work right now.
edit: was just thinking about the metagame in BW where t players would build up hella tanks marines medics and goliaths for a timing push and zerg players would force the t into making goliaths and rines and keep them from moving out with tons of insane mutalisk micro, while expanding to make things even.
I agree with you that going speedlings / banelings => muta => muta + broodlords (+ ultralisks, because I think that comes a time where glings are just not enough) seems the best way to go against Terran.
The fact that it keep the Terran defending in his base while letting you harass is huge.
I watched your first replay and I have to say that I dislike your strategy. It requires far too much gas. During the late game you were running off of 4 bases with fully saturated gas, and not only were you not posing a significant advantage over your opponent, but you were using up ALL of your gas. In my opinion (plat), if you are going to be fully saturating gas on 4 bases, then you should have teched to brood lords. You could have easily mass produced Brood Lords, and they would have given you a much more confident victory(plus they outrange missile turrets)
I watched the third game, and while I enjoyed watching it (lol @ the terran's opening), the reason you won was he had terrible macro and you had 3 more bases than him. You really could have built whatever units you wanted to win it.
I usually mass produce brood lords near the end on 4 base. Just that game I was far enough ahead that I was lazy and just didn't do it. Obviously the goal is always to get to brood lords (and if you've been following my build, both brood lords and broodlings should be 2-2 at that point, so it makes for an utterly perfect transition). If you watch the 2nd replay, I definitely transitioned to brood lords at that point.
And what's wrong with requiring far too much gas? I was just using all my gas that's all. I can easily do the same build on 3 base. The reason the first game got somewhat close was because I made a mistake and completely mistimed my attack on his push, thus losing by 3rd despite killing his force. What should have happened was me killing his push without losing my 3rd, and I'd still have tons of gas.
On August 14 2010 06:22 Ghin wrote: I watched the third game, and while I enjoyed watching it (lol @ the terran's opening), the reason you won was he had terrible macro and you had 3 more bases than him. You really could have built whatever units you wanted to win it.
You are right of course. But part of the point of my post was that with this build it really helps you get many more bases. As you can see in all of these replays, I am pretty much free to expand because of how mobile my army is and I can defend all of my bases at the same time. Meanwhile you keep the terran confined to 2 bases, and part of his "terrible macro" as you say has to do with me constantly harrassing him and killing his workers/supply depots. Thus the advantage you claim I believe actually comes from the basic strategy itself.
this actually sounds pretty good... especially since thors do next to no air damage, and most players don't get more than 2, favoring tanks as the prime usage of their factories.
Very cool idea, will have to try it out w/ my friends later!!
On August 14 2010 06:22 Ghin wrote: I watched the third game, and while I enjoyed watching it (lol @ the terran's opening), the reason you won was he had terrible macro and you had 3 more bases than him. You really could have built whatever units you wanted to win it.
You are right of course. But part of the point of my post was that with this build it really helps you get many more bases. As you can see in all of these replays, I am pretty much free to expand because of how mobile my army is and I can defend all of my bases at the same time. Meanwhile you keep the terran confined to 2 bases, and part of his "terrible macro" as you say has to do with me constantly harrassing him and killing his workers/supply depots. Thus the advantage you claim I believe actually comes from the basic strategy itself.
Sorry I meant bad MICRO. You didn't need to fly under missile turrets sometimes. I may experiment with this, but I will surely try to tech to Brood Lords faster, or Ultras.
Sorry I meant bad MICRO. You didn't need to fly under missile turrets sometimes. I may experiment with this, but I will surely try to tech to Brood Lords faster, or Ultras.
Yeah, like I said. I'm not a great player and neither are my opponents. I'm sure you can improve on my build.
But I feel like you're missing the point slightly. The main purpose of the build is to build enough of an advantage so you can end the game WITH hive tech later on, esp brood lords. The build itself is not meant to be game ending. Most zergs seem like they lose the game early-mid game and don't even make it to late game. What I'm doing seems to get you to late game usually, and with tons of resources/larvae to spare.
If you watch replay 2. I maxed at 200/200. Then I decided to be uber n00b and threw all my forces at his seiged units at his choke. But that's ok, I had already transitioned to brood lords. And by a side effect of my build, both broodlords and broodlings are 2-2 upgraded by that point.
On August 14 2010 06:26 uberdeluxe wrote: this actually sounds pretty good... especially since thors do next to no air damage, and most players don't get more than 2, favoring tanks as the prime usage of their factories.
Very cool idea, will have to try it out w/ my friends later!!
Actually that's not really true. Most terrans at the diamond level will spam thors when they see you mass muta. I see most zergs running away and switching to ground forces right away, then getting pummelled midgame by a push. I'm saying that that doesn't necessarily need to happen.
Thors don't do too much air damage, but they splash like crazy. So like the other poster said, just fly over the thors and you're fine.
This strategy forces the Terran to do a lot of things that they don't like having to do against Zerg. Mutas force Marines, Turrets, and Thors. This means less minerals for tanks which absolutely eat up the zerg ground army. Sure it's gas heavy for zerg but that's the beauty of the Mutalisk. It provides the map control and containment necessary to expand and get 3 or 4 bases worth of gas up.
As evidenced by the replays, blings turn marines into green goo awfully quickly and missile turrets cost 100 minerals plus SCV time and attention to build. Each one that I make him build is a victory for me. I can keep picking away at his base until he turrets up and then keep my muta force to pick off tanks and other units when his army is on the move. Any mass of zerg units running head on into a competent terran defensive position will lose, the mutas give you the ability to flank from the air and take out important support units that could otherwise cripple your suicide loving ground army.
Anyway, I like this strategy a lot for ZvT because it actually feels like the Zerg player has some control over the game. It's difficult to find a ZvT where the zerg isn't constantly defending and just barely surviving until he can trade armies and overwhelm with stockpiled larvae.
zergling baneling muta is very strong and ive lost to it quite a few times.
however the zerg needs to send his ling/banelings into battle first blow up 1/2 the marines then the 20 muta arrive to clean up a couple lone thor/marines
if the muta come in while all the marines/thors are still alive they will just melt
How fast do you get the mutas? I open with pre-igniter Hellions and use 4-6 of them to kill the zerglings and then kill a ton of drones into Thors. I doubt your mutas would be ready to stop Hellion harassment.
I mass muta lings and banelings and have very few problems with terrans, i have to say. Jusst non stop harrasment with mutas, take 3rd expo macro lings and banelings in mean time get hive if he pushes 3rd you should have enough forces to destroy his push and then gg or get to ultras and lings.
On August 14 2010 06:26 uberdeluxe wrote: this actually sounds pretty good... especially since thors do next to no air damage, and most players don't get more than 2, favoring tanks as the prime usage of their factories.
Very cool idea, will have to try it out w/ my friends later!!
Actually that's not really true. Most terrans at the diamond level will spam thors when they see you mass muta. I see most zergs running away and switching to ground forces right away, then getting pummelled midgame by a push. I'm saying that that doesn't necessarily need to happen.
Thors don't do too much air damage, but they splash like crazy. So like the other poster said, just fly over the thors and you're fine.
Orly... I diamond level myself, but I usually go for a roach/hydra/ling/infestor kind of mix, so I didn't know about the whole, people responding with mass thors. However if theres less tanks, hydras could be pretty effective? I guess this muta thing is something you really have to transition into/out of.
Also, as long as we are talking about mech counters, nydussing 30-ish lings behind him late-game can make him unseige, and totally punishable from the front with your main army, especially if you have ultras.
On August 14 2010 06:44 vnlegend wrote: How fast do you get the mutas? I open with pre-igniter Hellions and use 4-6 of them to kill the zerglings and then kill a ton of drones into Thors. I doubt your mutas would be ready to stop Hellion harassment.
I sometimes do have some problems with that. But if that happens I escape my drones to my main and sunk up my nat. And let my queen block ramp. Then I wait for either you to screw up with your hellion micro or for my first couple muta to arrive. They definitely won't arrive b4 ur hellions show up, but I can sacrifice a little economy b/c I'll have map control very soon.
Oh, and I like to sacrifice 1 early muta for a faster +1 air carapace, which I start as soon as spire finishes.
Orly... I diamond level myself, but I usually go for a roach/hydra/ling/infestor kind of mix, so I didn't know about the whole, people responding with mass thors. However if theres less tanks, hydras could be pretty effective? I guess this muta thing is something you really have to transition into/out of.
Also, as long as we are talking about mech counters, nydussing 30-ish lings behind him late-game can make him unseige, and totally punishable from the front with your main army, especially if you have ultras.
I actually never transition out of mutaling baneling until hive tech, where I transition to broodlords since it's just such a natural transition with all the upgrades done. But you have plenty of map contorl/resources to pull it off. And yeah terrans like to spam thors against u when they see muta.
Although recently, I've had a couple 500-600 level terrans go pure viking when they saw me mass muta. I was like... wtf? and a-moved my way to win. Another terran decided to go ghosts and snipe. That worked fine for my first 6-muta harrass.... but when my next 30 muta showed up it was over.
I just tried it in a couple zvts and they work fine if not scouted. They aren't the counter since you are banking on him not having enough thors but it gives your opponent something to think about. Hopefully if zergs do this enough, Terrans will be forced into making more thors and weakening their tank line tremendously.
On August 14 2010 06:47 ahcho00 wrote: if u don't get roaches like my terran makes u...u will get harassed by a lot of my helions?
If you make the 4-5 hellions WITHOUT pre-igniter upgrade, my speedlings take care of that perfectly fine no problem most games.
If you do make the upgrade, I usually sacrifice some eco and move my drones to main while blocking ramp with 1-2 queens, and wait for muta or sunk up nat.
This is very strong if it gets through, however, I will be knocking on your door with 5 infernal pre-igniter hellions, 5-8 marines and 2 thors before you get a critical amount of mutalisks up + I'll bring SCVs on autorepair. I don't think this build can do a lot against that.
On August 14 2010 06:52 kNyTTyM wrote: I just tried it in a couple zvts and they work fine if not scouted. They aren't the counter since you are banking on him not having enough thors but it gives your opponent something to think about. Hopefully if zergs do this enough, Terrans will be forced into making more thors and weakening their tank line tremendously.
It actually works fine for me every game even if they scout it. I put my spire right by my main hatch so it gets scanned every single game... and terrans do expect it. And I still usually come out on top with it. Maybe your timings are a little off since you just started trying the build?
On August 14 2010 06:52 kNyTTyM wrote: I just tried it in a couple zvts and they work fine if not scouted. They aren't the counter since you are banking on him not having enough thors but it gives your opponent something to think about. Hopefully if zergs do this enough, Terrans will be forced into making more thors and weakening their tank line tremendously.
Also, one more thing is that I'm not banking on him not having enough thors. I usually ACTIVELY try to go into his base with my first muta and pick off his first 1-2 thors, as well as any scvs/lone bio units that are around. Maybe I'll corrupt a factory even b4 my spire or get to kill an armory after my spire. That actually delays his push by such a large amount that by the time it comes you're on 4 bases and have mass banelings.
On August 14 2010 06:53 ChickenLips wrote: This is very strong if it gets through, however, I will be knocking on your door with 5 infernal pre-igniter hellions, 5-8 marines and 2 thors before you get a critical amount of mutalisks up + I'll bring SCVs on autorepair. I don't think this build can do a lot against that.
That may be possible. I haven't seen that happen to me so I can't really provide a counter to that. I feel like by the time you have 2 thors I should have enough muta/ling/sunken to handle it, but I haven't seen that done to me so I can't really comment.
Sounds like how the koreans tend to play. There is always a hole you can exploit with mutalisks, you just have to find it. It takes a good bit of micro though.
I like the build, but it does seem to be very vulnerable to an early 6hellion and 1tank, handfull of marines push at your nat. That can get to you in time to put a real dent in your gas income. I will test around with it.
On August 14 2010 04:56 micronesia wrote: I'm posting this for a friend who doesn't normally use TL but thinks it will be helpful. He said he'd use his new account to discuss/answer questions.
Hi guys,
This is my first post and probably only post, so I'll try to make it count. I'm about to quit sc2 due to foreseeing a very busy schedule in the next few months. But I'd like to share my basic zvt strategy since a lot of zergs are having trouble with the ZvT matchup.
I'm about a 600 level diamond zerg, and ZvT is my best matchup by far, and I win most of my ZvT games against opponents anywhere from the 400s to the 800s in diamond. (If they get above 800, then they become beyond my skill level and it's just I'm too noob to do anything to win). My ZvP and ZvZ, however, aren't that good and that's keeping me back.
My basic strategy is early game to defend until I get mutalisks. Speedling with first 100 gas, then start teching to muta. After I get muta I start upgrading muta non-stop and commit fully to muta. I find that that's actually enough to win me a lot of my ZvT games. Go in his base and harrass with your muta, and try to pick off lone thors obviously. Meanwhile take a couple extra expos while ur opponent is holed up in his base (the key is start mining gas first!). Eventually, when he pushes out with like 4 thors, you should have 4 bases mining and at least 20-ish muta. That should be able to take care of his army. I like to mix ling/baneling in there for any bio units that come along with the thors. If he moves out with anything less than 5 thors, you should be able to just roll over him with your 20 something muta. I had a game where b/c of that early harrass, by the time a 6-thor (plus tank and hellions) push came out I had 23 muta upgraded 1-1, and completely destroyed his push while having 10 muta left over. And we all know that zergs can pump out a lot more muta much faster than terrans can pump out thors if you've kept him to 2 base. One extra benefit is that mass mutas really do pretty well against any variation the terran can throw at you midgame, like mass vikings or mass banshees that I see frequently in ladder games at this level.
I do dislike roach/hydra/speedling builds, because those depend so much on timing and you're at the mercy of your opponent in terms of when he wants to push and where the attack happens. With mass muta, you have control most of the game and can actually abuse the mobility that zergs are known for.
Obviously as I'm only a 600 level zerg I'm not that good a player, but as I'm winning a big majority of my games against equally skilled or slightly better terrans I feel I should should share this with other zergs having problems with the matchup. Even the games I lose, I feel that it's because I screwed up somewhere or the opponent had a really nice play rather than a problem with the build or any race imbalance issues. Hopefully the better zergs can actually improve upon this build and do some serious damage with it. Let me know if you do :p
Here are a couple replays that demonstrate this relatively well. I have a bunch more reps but I'm not gonna upload them all.
I support this. I am only a 450 point diamond noob, but I mass mutas against terran always when I play zerg. I used to do it because that's how bw builds were. Then I did it because it became the easiest thing to do and still got wins. Now I still use mutas because you can out number thors too quickly early on. Vikings do nothing against mutas, a good option can be mass marines with tanks like we already see. Marines are good against generally anything but roach/hydra and that's why you use tanks - but with 4-5 mutas picking them off so easily, you die very quick.
But what is scary and underused about zerg, they can switch tech so quickly. I can't wait for high level zerg players to invent builds with all sorts of techs and unit combos. I played one zerg where he combo banelings, zerglings, hydras and mutas late game, pretty effective against bio late game. I thought I could crush him without infestors but I was wrong.
He did open reaper. Don't think spamming lings would work as all my drones would have died. And he would have likely just massed up more reaper if he saw me doing that.
Another way he can simply kill you off early is by MMM timing push right before spire finishes. I think it was Morrow who did this build vs Dimaga (who rushed for mutas) on Steppes. I can think of a number of timings where this build would be very vulnerable to a timing push with hellion/thor/marine as well since making mutas requires you to use ALL of your gas.
"He did open reaper. Don't think spamming lings would work as all my drones would have died. And he would have likely just massed up more reaper if he saw me doing that."
It would have worked I guarantee it to you specially with the fast expansion(LOLOL) , if you had gotten speed with the 100 gas and not waited until you had 300 gas.
2 base mass speedling > 1 barracks reaper.
See he hasnt blocked his main: get natural get 20 workers more or less , less is fine. 100 gas get speed move drones out of gas
spam zergling into victory.
What can he do really? you can leave a few lings + queen on your base to stop his harassment , anyhow if he keeps harassing he isnt too bright , you have a queen for defense and his base is unguarded vs mass ling....
EDIT: I've had 2 diamond terrans not block off their base like that but they went for mass barracks, still I just spammed lings from 2 bases and won.
On August 14 2010 08:16 teamsolid wrote: Another way he can simply kill you off early is by MMM timing push right before spire finishes. I think it was Morrow who did this build vs Dimaga (who rushed for mutas) on Steppes. I can think of a number of timings where this build would be very vulnerable to a timing push with hellion/thor/marine as well since making mutas requires you to use ALL of your gas.
You are assuming that the build is completely inflexible and that players are machines and can't adapt. I mentioned in my post. It's usually relatively easy to scout MM timing push. I usually kill these with mass lings just fine. Muta will be slightly later b/c you made 40 speedlings and a spinecrawler, but he's now behind b/c of his timing push.
On August 14 2010 08:16 gustavo wrote: "He did open reaper. Don't think spamming lings would work as all my drones would have died. And he would have likely just massed up more reaper if he saw me doing that."
It would have worked I guarantee it to you specially with the fast expansion(LOLOL) , if you had gotten speed with the 100 gas and not waited until you had 300 gas.
2 base mass speedling > 1 barracks reaper.
See he hasnt blocked his main: get natural get 20 workers more or less , less is fine. 100 gas get speed move drones out of gas
spam zergling into victory.
What can he do really? you can leave a few lings + queen on your base to stop his harassment , anyhow if he keeps harassing he isnt too bright , you have a queen for defense and his base is unguarded vs mass ling....
EDIT: I've had 2 diamond terrans not block off their base like that but they went for mass barracks, still I just spammed lings from 2 bases and won.
Yes, mutas are the best answer to T mech, and I can't see how people can argue about it.
Just think about it a second, what cause problems as a Z against T mech ? Units not able to hit air, aka tanks and hellions.
Ok, Thors do fairly well against mutas, but thors are slow as fuck, and sure can't chase mutas. If T has to park some of them in his base with turrets to defend, it's ressources and time he won't use to attack you or get a bigger tank count, which leaves a lot of room for Z to expand and tech to ultras.
The main thing about using mutas is simply not to lose too much of them so you can either mass a sizable ground force or tech to ultras (which wreck mech) while T is contained.
As for turrets, please... Sure you don't want to commit too much to mutas so you can tech get ground units etc etc, but when you start having a big enough number of mutas turrets hardly do anything unless you spam turrets everywhere TD like. And in this case, Z will be waaaaaaaay ahead because of all the ressources T wasted for such things, while also not being able to expand as much as he could want to. And once ultras are out, it's over.
The most important thing some people don't understand is that mutas are not here to kill the T player but to put him way behind by making him waste a shiton of ressources to defend against mutas, such as turrets, and more thors than he'dd like to have
Good post cArn. I actually prefer broodlords. Since you've been upgrading muta/ling/baneling the entire time, broodlords is on the same tech tree and come out fully upgraded. Ultras probably work fine too.
This is the strategy I have the most trouble with as Terran. Can you tell me what unit composition Terran can make that gives you a rough time with this strat?
The toughest time I get are from thor-marine-maurauder, but the terran player must have really good control. So that even when he is surprised by muta-ling-baneling, he can form a spontaneous wall with his maurauders to absorb baneling hits and run marines back to shoot at muta.
In that case I have to pick my spots so that I can actually hit the marines with my baneling otherwise the marines just shred my muta while the thors absorb damage.
Although recently, I've had a couple 500-600 level terrans go pure viking when they saw me mass muta. I was like... wtf? and a-moved my way to win. Another terran decided to go ghosts and snipe. That worked fine for my first 6-muta harrass.... but when my next 30 muta showed up it was over.
I lol'd. Not a bad strategy. Similar to my own, usually by the time im done harassing with mutas and exploiting every single hole in their air defense, i've got 3-4 bases and broodlord tech, meanwhile the growth of the terran has been stunted as he's having so much fun with the mutas he's losing track of time and his macro aside from "BUILD AIR DEFENSE!!!".
I'm a random player so my TvZ is a little unorthodox, but I open 10 rax into a second rax and do the reactor swap to fact to get double hellions and then push with about 5 marines, 1 or 2 marauders and 2 hellions ala TLO. I'll roast lings and less than 3 spines shouldn't stop me from killing at least a queen. Your mutas could stay and clean me up or go and harrass my base, but the damage from the push seems like it would set you back more than it would me. If I get up your ramp and see that you don't have a roach warren or hyda dren then I'm able to respond. I guess the real strength of this strat is that I'd be too afraid to commit to thor/rine if you could tech switch to roach/hydra.
On August 14 2010 08:33 Xapti wrote: Muta opener might be decent vs mech, I remember hearing about it in beta.
but DEFINITELY NOT a commited muta build... that's suicide. Mass vikings, turrets, marines thors, they are all cost-effective vs mutalisks.
Did you watch the replays?
Mass vikings and turrets literally get shredded by muta. Marines and thors are good, but they will be overrun very soon because of containment and the zerg taking the map.
On August 14 2010 08:44 shutdown_exploded wrote: I'm a random player so my TvZ is a little unorthodox, but I open 10 rax into a second rax and do the reactor swap to fact to get double hellions and then push with about 5 marines, 1 or 2 marauders and 2 hellions ala TLO. I'll roast lings and less than 3 spines shouldn't stop me from killing at least a queen. Your mutas could stay and clean me up or go and harrass my base, but the damage from the push seems like it would set you back more than it would me. If I get up your ramp and see that you don't have a roach warren or hyda dren then I'm able to respond. I guess the real strength of this strat is that I'd be too afraid to commit to thor/rine if you could tech switch to roach/hydra.
To be honest, the marine/maruauder hellion push got done to me almost every single game in phase 2 beta. No matter how good ur micro is, 20 speedlings will kill that almost instantly with surround. I got so many wins from that. Because if you incorporate maurauders to plan against roaches, you wont have enough hellion.
On August 14 2010 08:16 teamsolid wrote: Another way he can simply kill you off early is by MMM timing push right before spire finishes. I think it was Morrow who did this build vs Dimaga (who rushed for mutas) on Steppes. I can think of a number of timings where this build would be very vulnerable to a timing push with hellion/thor/marine as well since making mutas requires you to use ALL of your gas.
You are assuming that the build is completely inflexible and that players are machines and can't adapt. I mentioned in my post. It's usually relatively easy to scout MM timing push. I usually kill these with mass lings just fine. Muta will be slightly later b/c you made 40 speedlings and a spinecrawler, but he's now behind b/c of his timing push.
This is exactly what happened. Dimaga scouted Strelok's MM build and started massing pure ling, and by the time the Terran army (5 marauder + 12 marine with stim + bunker building) was at his doorstep he had exactly 40 lings and 22 harvesters with a spire JUST finishing at 7:30. Despite what might happen at lower levels, when a Terran has good control, cuts scvs and has perfect timing, your lings will get shredded.
I tried this on metalopolis, and he had one thor near his ramp. From this position he barely had to move to defend anywhere in either his main or (mining) natural, and he could very easily pull off SCVs to repair it. I put 8 mutas against the thor and he was able to out-repair my DPS.
What to do here? He went mass thors and vikings here, and started attacking my mineral lines. I went roach/ling/infestor, fought off his vikings, and the final battle was just 8 thors vs my ground army and he obliterated it.. I had NP on 4 of his thors but he just one-shotted all my infestors to free them. I probably wouldn't have been able to pull out late game if I hadn't spent an early 1000/1000 to kill 3 scvs.
I don't know what harass I can do when at any moment missiles can barrel in bringing a bunch of mutas down 30% health (can't see as far as thors can shoot) - especially on a cramped map like metalopolis. What can be done?
People should try this build. I just did, and it works at my level (300 diamond for those that cares). Even when I got thor dropped and spire taken down, once 7-8 mutas pop out the second time, You have all the time in the world to throw down 2 expansions. I ended up losing, because I had 3k min and 2k gas in the bank (not used to having so much money that soon). His final push only had 4 thors and 6 tanks with 6-7 viking support. Failed micro and late ling pop sealed my fate even though i had 20ish mutas. HOWEVER, it was the FIRST time (in diamond) i felt like i was in control against a T =D
^ post above me (Xapti) MAss vikings loses to mass mutas. Turrets are strong, but expensive so if he builds mass turrets, your still good. As OP says, snipe the marines like in SC:BW. Even then you can snipe the first raven (ie, sniping Sci Vessel in Sc;Bw) to delay his push even more, if he pushes out w/o it, you can use burrowed banelings w/e.
On August 14 2010 09:43 fdsdfg wrote: I tried this on metalopolis, and he had one thor near his ramp. From this position he barely had to move to defend anywhere in either his main or (mining) natural, and he could very easily pull off SCVs to repair it. I put 8 mutas against the thor and he was able to out-repair my DPS.
What to do here? He went mass thors and vikings here, and started attacking my mineral lines. I went roach/ling/infestor, fought off his vikings, and the final battle was just 8 thors vs my ground army and he obliterated it.. I had NP on 4 of his thors but he just one-shotted all my infestors to free them. I probably wouldn't have been able to pull out late game if I hadn't spent an early 1000/1000 to kill 3 scvs.
I don't know what harass I can do when at any moment missiles can barrel in bringing a bunch of mutas down 30% health (can't see as far as thors can shoot) - especially on a cramped map like metalopolis. What can be done?
Lol mass thors + vikings would lose to lings + hydras? Thors do bonus to Roaches remember?
On August 14 2010 09:43 fdsdfg wrote: I tried this on metalopolis, and he had one thor near his ramp. From this position he barely had to move to defend anywhere in either his main or (mining) natural, and he could very easily pull off SCVs to repair it. I put 8 mutas against the thor and he was able to out-repair my DPS.
What to do here? He went mass thors and vikings here, and started attacking my mineral lines. I went roach/ling/infestor, fought off his vikings, and the final battle was just 8 thors vs my ground army and he obliterated it.. I had NP on 4 of his thors but he just one-shotted all my infestors to free them. I probably wouldn't have been able to pull out late game if I hadn't spent an early 1000/1000 to kill 3 scvs.
I don't know what harass I can do when at any moment missiles can barrel in bringing a bunch of mutas down 30% health (can't see as far as thors can shoot) - especially on a cramped map like metalopolis. What can be done?
Lol mass thors + vikings would lose to lings + hydras? Thors do bonus to Roaches remember?
I think you're the one that should remember what unit type thors do bonus damage to.
On August 14 2010 09:43 fdsdfg wrote: I tried this on metalopolis, and he had one thor near his ramp. From this position he barely had to move to defend anywhere in either his main or (mining) natural, and he could very easily pull off SCVs to repair it. I put 8 mutas against the thor and he was able to out-repair my DPS.
What to do here? He went mass thors and vikings here, and started attacking my mineral lines. I went roach/ling/infestor, fought off his vikings, and the final battle was just 8 thors vs my ground army and he obliterated it.. I had NP on 4 of his thors but he just one-shotted all my infestors to free them. I probably wouldn't have been able to pull out late game if I hadn't spent an early 1000/1000 to kill 3 scvs.
I don't know what harass I can do when at any moment missiles can barrel in bringing a bunch of mutas down 30% health (can't see as far as thors can shoot) - especially on a cramped map like metalopolis. What can be done?
Well don't engage 1 thor with SCVS repairing when u only have 8 muta.
Wait a bit, double expo, and keep pumping those muta. Pretty soon ull have like 20 muta against like 3 thors and then u can engage. Fly over, spread, then target thors 1 by 1. Also start making your baneling.
Yeah, im 750 terran, and this build is absolutely discusting.
Thors DO NOT counter muta. Zergs needs to learn to press far behind the thor and the press hold as soon as they are above the thor(s). By doing this you wont get any splash damage which renders the thors useless (or atleast less cost effective). And with 10 mutas you can just take out turrets.
All these whiny zergs need to try out this build and own some terran.
And if the terran overcommit to thors, just mass lings/roach.
This of course doesnt deal with the fact that terran has a tons of openings, but it will certainly own a lot of meching terrans if you get to the midgame.
Most important, dont let your mutas bunch together, this is done by pressing far behind why you are going. Nothing more stupid than watching a zerg attack click the thor to have them bunch up for the aoe, get scared, run away just to have the thor deal a second round of huge aoe and then proceed to go on TL and whine about mech and thor aoe.
It's not a bad idea, if you can catch him with the right timing (before he thinks to turret up, and with enough time to hold off his third). I wouldn't rely on this as an effective end-game strategy, though; it's more of a means to an end.
On August 14 2010 09:44 me_viet wrote: People should try this build. I just did, and it works at my level (300 diamond for those that cares). Even when I got thor dropped and spire taken down, once 7-8 mutas pop out the second time, You have all the time in the world to throw down 2 expansions. I ended up losing, because I had 3k min and 2k gas in the bank (not used to having so much money that soon). His final push only had 4 thors and 6 tanks with 6-7 viking support. Failed micro and late ling pop sealed my fate even though i had 20ish mutas. HOWEVER, it was the FIRST time (in diamond) i felt like i was in control against a T =D
^ post above me (Xapti) MAss vikings loses to mass mutas. Turrets are strong, but expensive so if he builds mass turrets, your still good. As OP says, snipe the marines like in SC:BW. Even then you can snipe the first raven (ie, sniping Sci Vessel in Sc;Bw) to delay his push even more, if he pushes out w/o it, you can use burrowed banelings w/e.
Good I was hoping people would actually try it out first before passing judgement. I gave it to a couple friends who immediately had a lot of success with it as well when they had been having trouble with ZvT also.
On August 14 2010 10:00 Tythos wrote: It's not a bad idea, if you can catch him with the right timing (before he thinks to turret up, and with enough time to hold off his third). I wouldn't rely on this as an effective end-game strategy, though; it's more of a means to an end.
I acutally don't tihnk it's that timing based. As I've said I've had a lot of success against it, and I havne't ever hard to rely on something timing related. Just modify it a little bit as you see fit in different games.
And yes, it's not end-game, but it's meant to give you all the time you need to get 4 bases and the resources you need to mass up brood lords.
From a terran players perspective, the thing that bothers me about the replays in the OP is that the terrans go for tanks when there is no real roach threat. To me that just seems like a waste of gas.
I have seen some similar strategies (most zergs seems to go lings+mutas), and what works really great for me is to just go for an early armory and spend my gas on weapon upgrades, thors and infernal pre-igniter. From that position I usually have enough thors to fight any muta threat, especially when I get some weapon upgrades done and thors only need two salvos to kill mutas.
I'm not saying that I don't believe in mass mutas, but I do believe that you have to give the terran a reason to spend his gas on other things than thors and their upgrades.
Thors DO NOT counter muta. Zergs needs to learn to press far behind the thor and the press hold as soon as they are above the thor(s). By doing this you wont get any splash damage
Can someone explain this to me? Thor's still do splash to targets right above them, right? It's just that by setting the move command beyond the thors the mutas don't bunch up for the attack?
After the hold position command you can still target fire a thor without them bunching, but then how do you micro for the other thors in the group?
Thors DO NOT counter muta. Zergs needs to learn to press far behind the thor and the press hold as soon as they are above the thor(s). By doing this you wont get any splash damage
Can someone explain this to me? Thor's still do splash to targets right above them, right? It's just that by setting the move command beyond the thors the mutas don't bunch up for the attack?
After the hold position command you can still target fire a thor without them bunching, but then how do you micro for the other thors in the group?
Tbh im not sure, but I'd imaginge its a question of distance between each muta and not the placement of them and "the center of the thor".
Recently I've been using a muta/ling strat that transitions into ultras (mid diamond). I find that the speed of lings makes a doom push very difficult because unless the player is tank hopping I can run my zerglings into him when he is unprepared. Hellions make this a difficult maneuver but not impossible. Also with muta harass you force him to split his forces somewhat or lose the game.
I really like mutalisk harass because it does a couple of things. 1. Slow down his economy (this is obvious) 2. Cause the over production of thors which really are ineffective against upgraded zerglings 3. Delay or cause a premature push, some players will push when they are uncomfortable because with an effective mutalisk harass they get behind in the worker count and feel that the longer the game lasts the farther behind they will fall. Or they will turtle up with thors in their mineral lines and only push out when they think they can end the game. A premature push is easily defended, a late push will allow me to get ultras to 3/3(6) and produce them to my hearts content.
This zerg player is 100% correct. Mass mutas slaughters mech. All you have to do is do the move over and attack trick to spread over the thors and you win easily. I've been playing a lot of really good Z players who have just been annihilating me with it. Thors aren't good against mutas that are spread even a little bit.
You can also use mass mutas to take down turrets and force the Terran to 1-2 bases.
There are seriously so many answers to Terran mech it's not even funny. It makes the Zerg whining even more stupid.
I'm around 400 points platinum and I usually end up winning with mutas and some speedlings. I think I'm going to just harass with mutas, but then I found I've built 20 and harassed so well that the enemy is cramped and poor, so I just end it. I'm waiting for this to stop working but so far it hasn't.
I'd love if someone would explain the trick to make mutas spread out in detail.
On August 14 2010 10:18 Burn2Memory wrote: pretty interesting game between Check and maka that I just watched. Check going mass muta vs maka even though he had multiple thors and AA turrets.
Very good replay imo. Check and maka are really good players. Check showing that mutas are in-fact, not useless vs terran. They're very good actually. + Show Spoiler +
Maka (terran) at the end says in rough translation: "Fuck, is this balanced?"
600 diamond Z and I support this build. If you want to see somebody other than the OP use massive amounts of mutas in ZvT I can give replays as well.
My personal points with this build is 1 hide the spire, and 2 hide the mutas until you have 10+.
DO NOT go harass with 4-6 as that small a number really just isn't scary and can be pushed away with a handful of marines and a few turrets, costing you tons of gas for every muta you lose.. But if 11 mutas show up out of nowhere, it can often seal the deal right there. If not, I continue to mass mutas while pouring extra minerals in lings. Wait for him to push out, as long as you are 4:1 muta:thor (I've had like 30+ in some games), and have enough lings to keep everything occupied for just a few seconds, you'll win the fight. The odd thing here is, as numbers go up, the mutaling becomes more and more effective due to glaive bouncing.
You can do this all the way into 4 bases and hive tech, then switch to ultras and finish the game.
When I am fighting a zerg who doesn't build roaches I am able to build 4 hellions with infernal upgrade, put them in a drop ship, and roast all his drones in his main before he gets his mutas out. Second, when a zerg tries to muta contain me I just expand as usual and use dropships to move my thors to my expos when he tries to muta harass. They arrive to defend before mutas can kill off the turrets. This way I am able to use my expos to keep my thor production even to their muta count. Thor drop can also be used to deny zerg from further expos.
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.
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.
It doesn't matter if Mutas aren't cost efficient against thor, thors are the only mech units that shoot up. If you go nearly all mutas and the opponent has a mech army, you should be able to kill all the thors with your mutas. That means you win the fight. Note that gas is the restricting factor on both mutas and thors, and since you're almost always a base up (especially with fast expands), you have more gas.
The move-stop is the best I've seen and had actually work in practice. For those who don't know how it works:
Mutas don't clump up when moving, only when attacking a specific target, so move your mutas a screen or two away from the target Thors, stop, spread them out manually if they don't spread out enough on their own. Move your Mutas about a screen PAST the Thors, and press Stop right when your mutas are directly on top of the Thors, you will have a solid spread and surround. From there, select a few mutas and micro as needed, but don't A-move with the whole bunch as this will undo your nice spread.
Especially if the Thors are in a close line, your mutas will do so much damage due to glaive bouncing, it is possible to come out ahead (you still have to have spent like 2x the gas initially).
I wathced the reps ROFL, just as i thought the terrans were playing awful. Just to note, the comment below is a bit sarcastic maybe some might find it agressive, it's not, i just found the games funny, i love that Zergs are thinking and want to come up with new ways of beating T, keep it up, however i should write my crticism:
For those who dont want to watch the rep, here's a brief report: LT ZvT: Our zerg opens hatch first, the terran opens fast reapers. Now those of you who actually met properly done reaper rushes vs fast exp know that it is GG time. However the T made his rax near his CC, he waited a couple seconds to throw down the techlab, didnt rally his first reaper so it stayed for some more seconds, so it arrived late, and the bunker building attempt was just a waste of money. Well no problem, Terrans won from worse situations then this. However the T made 7 more reapers and done nothing with them. He once tried to hop in the main and kill sg but just got his ass kicked by an easy surround. The reapers were sitting on their asses. No Watchtower control, no 3rd base denial, nothing. So Z gets his third up, gets his mutas out slaughters the reapers who start randomly wonder at the middle of the map. And heads to the main. In the main he is greeted be 1 Thor 5 siegetanks and 10 hellions. The lone thor (i call him 14 minute Thor) had no scvs no turrets no marines, so yeah he died to 10+ mutas. The T had some not that well placed turrets, 2 in total at his nat so he soon had to evacuate that. I just stopped watching. Yes, mutas counter Thors, if you get 7 reapers, 10 hellions and 5 tanks befor getting your first thor, and the T lets you take over the map whenever you want.
ZvT on BS Again our friendly neighbour Zerg goes for a hatch first, our terran decides to double bunker rush, which is an utter failure, props for you though to be able to respound correctly, but still, the T loses 2 bunkers, marines, scvs, Zerg keeps his natural np. So out Terran is quite behind, and he decides to go colacked banshee. He gets 1 out, researches cloack, sends his banshee into the corner and lets her there. But he has a Fact with a techlab, so he might get out a Thor still in time. However he celverly supply blocks himself. Unfortunately his armory is on the middle of nothing, no turrets or anything nearby, mutas pick it up, he even sends 3 scvs there just as a bonus. The first Thor (14th minutes again) is picked up by 11-12 mutas, great. The 2nd thor pops though and it has 3 marines to support him, and a 4th coming soon, + a number of SCVs. The zerg's 10-11 mutas which are already +1 engage that "army" and what do you think happens? The mutas retreat after picking up the thor and a couple scvs, but losin all but 2 of their pack. So as you can clearly see mutas > thors. i quit watching at mutas being 2/1 terrans unit being 0/0, 4 base vs 2 base.
ZvT Steppes He fast expands AGAIN which is quite simply amazing, as i die 10-10 times when i try fast exping on SoW, as the rush distance tehre is like half of that on BS and LT crossmap. However now the T doesnt attack. instead he gets 2 factories with techlab and raxes and starts pumping marines and tanks. I'm sitting there and thinking, "How will this Zerg not die to this timing push?" he had 22 lings and 1 crawler on the field when the T had at leas 4 tanks and 14 marines, Spire just started. But the T seems very passive, doesnt attack, takes his exp with this badass army. I say to myself, that's okay, he has 2 facts with techlabs he has scan, he'll know mutas are on the way, 2 thors will pop, he'll be fine, and will take a third, slowpush etc. Did this happen? NO. He made more tanks and more marines, until he realized mutas are breating on his neck so he quickly got some out, so he survies. However he thinks upgrades are for pussies and keeps making more thors and tanks with marines, finally starts a +1 on mech too. By the time it finishes the Zerg is on 4 base, 2/1 upgrades and a bunch of banelings.
TL:DR: First game: hatch first vs failed rush, useless terra units, late thor 2nd game: hatch first vs really badly failing rush, losing the armory, supply blocking the thor 3rd game: super uber passive siege-tank loving terra just gets punished for being stubborn.
The terrans seemed to have a gameplan which did not involve defending against mutas. They did not adapt, they didnt get upgrades they werent putting pressure or in a bad way. Lot of players in diamond do that, especially terrans. They simply blind counter some builds and remain vulnerable to others, even though they have scan. Terran has the advantage that most of his unit mixes arent hard countered by anything really, so even when they lost it looks closer then it should, so they just keep doing it and probably have a good WR with it. It's actually a shame ppl like that are at diamond, but what you gonna do.
In conclusion Mutas do NOT counter Thors, unless the terran is failing really hard.
Though if you have a rep where the T isnt failing hardcore, or at least is aware of what you're doing and gets multiple thors out with support (marine/viking/raven/ slowpush with turrets, anything). When the T has 20+ worker s and you have 60+ workers because the T fails at his early game, well those dont really prove anythingf.
I tried the build myself, had a couple success with it, and then get crushed by an opponent who did a timing push with some marines and a tank (before my muta came out).
I had (in a very similar way to your third replay, and as described by Geo.Rion just above) only ~20 zerglings (without speed, because I sucked ) and a spine crawler. The marine was aware of that, attacked me, and destroyed me
How would you have reacted ? I knew his push was coming, as I scouted it, and built more glings (and started researching speed -_-' ) but it was way too late.
Do not misunderstand me: I think going slings => mutas => broodlords is the way to go against Terran, especially mech, but I'm not good enough to do it properly, and I'm only asking advice, not criticizing the concept behind the build
I personally alway build a bling nest and at least 3-4 blings. If nothing else it keeps T inside his base for the first few minutes of the game and gives you plenty of time to get those mutas out.
The bling nest is a necessity any time you know T is going bio or if you have no clue what he's doing and can't scout adequately IMO.
If you had made a bling nest and 4 blings you'd have spent 150 gas, that's 1 1/2 mutas and not much at all as far as spire timing. Would it have made the difference?
Maybe. I'm certainly not good enough to do that kind of theorycrafting
I understand the value of banelings against bio, but is a small number of banelings (without speed) able to do anything to a sieged tank and 4 / 5 marines ? Yeah, of course, "hit them before they are camping on your doorstep" :p
I feel like some posters are thinking too much of DPS vs DPS.
Now granted in a T and P player who has just recently picked up Z, I just played a few games where this has actually worked. now my opponents weren't amazing, but all at the official "diamond" level. Here is some points at why I think it can work:
1. If you know you aren't getting timing attacked. Yes its rare, but if u have time to get to those first 5-6 mutas u seem to be in decent, but not great shape. I acheived this by running a ling in and seeing one of my opponents have rax-lab fact-lacb and a starport going up. I knew I didn't need to make a single ling so i powered, hard.
2. The mobility of thors is retarded, I would say even worse than tanks in this manner. Odd concept, but the fact that t player will naturally be more cautious with their pricier thors(than tanks) means usually less aggressive attacks.
3. In a standard main, thors/turrets cant cover everything. There is not reason you shouldnt be able to find some sort of hole (thats what she said). And at some point, id'd say around 18-22ish mutas turrets don't do junk. And its 100 minerals down the drain, more importantly 2 less marines in a counter attack.
4. Expand everywhere, but the nat. I have expo'd across map and golds. Never at my nat. This isn't a new idea, but I think it is critical in this strategy. At the very least, he is going to take out ur expo, and you can have free reign in the t base. On top of that, if the force decides to move to ur main, you have main re-enforcements+plus ur mutas. The Terran does not have to mobility to retreat to their main like you the zerg do.
5. In my experience I like to transition to muta/ling. My not be the best transition, but it has worked for me. I think its possible because the best counters to muta and lings are marines and hellions, both require 50 and 100 minerals respectively. Minerals that have probably been wasted on rebuilt scvs and turrets.For once the t might be mineral starving and gas heavy.
Like I said before, I'm not gosu zerg player, but I do see some sort of potential in this play style. The key is to never encounter the t on his terms. Only on yours. Whether it be running around his main, or right at your doorstep.
Can people PLEASE stop theorycrafting, and just try it?
On August 14 2010 17:14 zomgtossrush wrote: Can people PLEASE stop theorycrafting, and just try it?
Such wise words.
Yeah I know right? I'm not saying im like fucking amazing at that this and this build is fixing tvz, but I took the suggestion, added my own little style to it, and posted my experiences.
When all these OP bashes go play 10 games trying this strategy and it just fails hard everytime, then they should post.
On August 14 2010 16:14 Geo.Rion wrote: I wathced the reps ROFL, just as i thought the terrans were playing awful.
I agree. I watched 2 out of 3 players: None showed that mutas counter Terran mech, but that bad players can lose.. (Not saying the tactic dont work)
1) Bunker rush.. and doesnt even bother salvaging them when the bunkers are dieing... 2) Ehm.. Hello Sim City with tanks and marines? A Terran that doesnt really do anything.
You get speedling speed really late. Early hellion harass would have killed all your drone line. 1 crawler dont make a difference if the Terran player runs past it.
Give replays against aggressive Terrans! And watch the replay before posting it, so you notice if the Terran does really big and obvious mistakes. Then the replays arent that interesting
I thought it was standard to do muta ling bling against Terran? Atleast to transition into a late game strat like broods or ultras? I ALWAYS go muta lg vs Terran and have a good win % vs them. As a high plat player (450), I almost have no probs (unless my micro or macro slips which is the cause of ALL my losses) with terrans. The most Terran I lose to do an all in early bioball medivac drop. They go MMM and drop past my spine crawlers at my natural and bypass all my defenses early game. If I get mutas up, I can almost alway prolong the game to atleast 25-30 minutes, if not win outright. Mutas are SO good against Terran that I thought this was common knowlede. 14 pool 15 hatch with 3 spine crawlers at nay with an extra queen if needed and I am fine. I'm posting from my iPhone or else I'd post up a couple of my closer replays vs 500-600 plat Terran/random terrans.
If mutas aren't already widely regarded at the one thing that Zerg can do to survive to lategame vs Terran, I must say that most Zergs are missing a HUGE oppertunity for wins against them. Like most people, I acknowledge TvZ Imba but mutas allow for a hue advantage, even on two base into mass expo/muta. You really have to harass their scv line while they push out and hit your spine crawlers, then wait till they push in with thors and pick off siege tanks with mutas, and rines with blings. 3-4 thors are no match for 15 ligs and 10-15 mutas.
That is exactly what I have been doing against Terran and surprisingly, it works really well. Thor and marines still rape air but its not as bad as the ridiculous Siege tanks and stim Marauder. Of course you have to micro your mutas and spread them out when fighting a thor and also harrass them properly. Don't just go for the mineral lines because normally there will be turrets up. Just hit any buildings not protected. Look specifically for add-ons and supply depos.
You need to get banelings for the marines because they are just so cost efficient against mutas. Mutas are clearly a superior T2 choice compared to damn hyrdas which are pretty much useless against Terran's ground bullshit. I have been winning lots of ZvT game since I adapted this strategy 1 or 2 weeks ago. You just have to becareful of early marine push or MM pushes before your mutas are out.
Edit: People shouldn't misunderstand that muta counter mech because they far from counter thors. You just have to micro properly and harrass the T to throw them off their game. Also, as mentioned above it is clearly a much better choice compared to Hydra and its impossible a decent terran won't attack you before you reach Hive tech.
Just tried this against a Terran who used 2 rax -> expo -> Mech, and it worked like a charm. Granted, I'm only a mid-Platinum player, so take that as you will. Nonetheless, it's definitely something I'd recommend to all mid/low Zerg players. As long as the Terran doesn't have perfect anti-Muta mechanics, you can force him to stay in his 2 bases massing up marines, Thors and missile turrets, while you're free to expand all over the map (I ended the game with 5 bases, during which I built a Roach/Baneling army to counter his primarily Marine/Thor army and then teched to Ultras, which was a bit of overkill).
Sniping that first Thor is definitely key, and you also need to spread your Mutas out in advance.
On August 14 2010 16:14 Geo.Rion wrote: I wathced the reps ROFL, just as i thought the terrans were playing awful. Just to note, the comment below is a bit sarcastic maybe some might find it agressive, it's not, i just found the games funny, i love that Zergs are thinking and want to come up with new ways of beating T, keep it up, however i should write my crticism:
For those who dont want to watch the rep, here's a brief report: LT ZvT: Our zerg opens hatch first, the terran opens fast reapers. Now those of you who actually met properly done reaper rushes vs fast exp know that it is GG time. However the T made his rax near his CC, he waited a couple seconds to throw down the techlab, didnt rally his first reaper so it stayed for some more seconds, so it arrived late, and the bunker building attempt was just a waste of money. Well no problem, Terrans won from worse situations then this. However the T made 7 more reapers and done nothing with them. He once tried to hop in the main and kill sg but just got his ass kicked by an easy surround. The reapers were sitting on their asses. No Watchtower control, no 3rd base denial, nothing. So Z gets his third up, gets his mutas out slaughters the reapers who start randomly wonder at the middle of the map. And heads to the main. In the main he is greeted be 1 Thor 5 siegetanks and 10 hellions. The lone thor (i call him 14 minute Thor) had no scvs no turrets no marines, so yeah he died to 10+ mutas. The T had some not that well placed turrets, 2 in total at his nat so he soon had to evacuate that. I just stopped watching. Yes, mutas counter Thors, if you get 7 reapers, 10 hellions and 5 tanks befor getting your first thor, and the T lets you take over the map whenever you want.
ZvT on BS Again our friendly neighbour Zerg goes for a hatch first, our terran decides to double bunker rush, which is an utter failure, props for you though to be able to respound correctly, but still, the T loses 2 bunkers, marines, scvs, Zerg keeps his natural np. So out Terran is quite behind, and he decides to go colacked banshee. He gets 1 out, researches cloack, sends his banshee into the corner and lets her there. But he has a Fact with a techlab, so he might get out a Thor still in time. However he celverly supply blocks himself. Unfortunately his armory is on the middle of nothing, no turrets or anything nearby, mutas pick it up, he even sends 3 scvs there just as a bonus. The first Thor (14th minutes again) is picked up by 11-12 mutas, great. The 2nd thor pops though and it has 3 marines to support him, and a 4th coming soon, + a number of SCVs. The zerg's 10-11 mutas which are already +1 engage that "army" and what do you think happens? The mutas retreat after picking up the thor and a couple scvs, but losin all but 2 of their pack. So as you can clearly see mutas > thors. i quit watching at mutas being 2/1 terrans unit being 0/0, 4 base vs 2 base.
ZvT Steppes He fast expands AGAIN which is quite simply amazing, as i die 10-10 times when i try fast exping on SoW, as the rush distance tehre is like half of that on BS and LT crossmap. However now the T doesnt attack. instead he gets 2 factories with techlab and raxes and starts pumping marines and tanks. I'm sitting there and thinking, "How will this Zerg not die to this timing push?" he had 22 lings and 1 crawler on the field when the T had at leas 4 tanks and 14 marines, Spire just started. But the T seems very passive, doesnt attack, takes his exp with this badass army. I say to myself, that's okay, he has 2 facts with techlabs he has scan, he'll know mutas are on the way, 2 thors will pop, he'll be fine, and will take a third, slowpush etc. Did this happen? NO. He made more tanks and more marines, until he realized mutas are breating on his neck so he quickly got some out, so he survies. However he thinks upgrades are for pussies and keeps making more thors and tanks with marines, finally starts a +1 on mech too. By the time it finishes the Zerg is on 4 base, 2/1 upgrades and a bunch of banelings.
TL:DR: First game: hatch first vs failed rush, useless terra units, late thor 2nd game: hatch first vs really badly failing rush, losing the armory, supply blocking the thor 3rd game: super uber passive siege-tank loving terra just gets punished for being stubborn.
The terrans seemed to have a gameplan which did not involve defending against mutas. They did not adapt, they didnt get upgrades they werent putting pressure or in a bad way. Lot of players in diamond do that, especially terrans. They simply blind counter some builds and remain vulnerable to others, even though they have scan. Terran has the advantage that most of his unit mixes arent hard countered by anything really, so even when they lost it looks closer then it should, so they just keep doing it and probably have a good WR with it. It's actually a shame ppl like that are at diamond, but what you gonna do.
In conclusion Mutas do NOT counter Thors, unless the terran is failing really hard.
Though if you have a rep where the T isnt failing hardcore, or at least is aware of what you're doing and gets multiple thors out with support (marine/viking/raven/ slowpush with turrets, anything). When the T has 20+ worker s and you have 60+ workers because the T fails at his early game, well those dont really prove anythingf.
I have run out of replays but I will try to play some later today and upload some replays.
The problematic thing is that a lot of terrans are doing stuff like mass MMM/viking/mass ghosts at this level so it's not really demonstrating anything as muta simply roll over those.
Also, I always FE hatch first and I rarely have a problem with rushes. A lot of t's will bunker me but I'll overcome that decently well.
Oh, the one play u mentioned where I went for a thor and had 2 muta left over, I did that on purpose and do that frequently. B/c when I go for a thor surrounded by like 6 scv's, I lower his thor count and I kill all 6 scvs with splash. Meanwhile I have 10 more muta building at my base.
I know that my opponents and myself aren't the best players, and I've noted that in my OP. However, I'm just trying to let some other zergs know that with this build, I can beat most of the terrans at my level (600) and even better (up to like 800 rating). I'm sure a better zerg can improve the timing/decisions on the build and play it against the higher level terrans too (maybe yourself).
As a terran player, mutalisk seems to be the hardest thing to deal with that zerg can do. Usually when I tell people that I seem to only lose TvZ when they go muta, they just tell me to make more thors or turrets... but it's just not that easy. Thors take a long time to make, and are horribly slow. If he's making a good number of mutalisks, you can't just park a thor at every base for defense, they'll just die, even when being repaired if the zerg doesn't horribly clump the mutas. Making a bunch of turrets isn't the easiest solution in the world either. A large group of mutalisks is going to be able to take out two turrets at a time with minimal losses, and any building not being protected by turrets is as good as gone. So you need triple coverage of your whole base with turrets? That gets expensive, and he's just going to come in and kill you with speedlings as you couldn't afford ground units. It's not impossible to beat, it's just extremely difficult, especially if your multitasking skills aren't excellent, which is everyone below high diamond.
On August 14 2010 16:49 Nuage wrote: I tried the build myself, had a couple success with it, and then get crushed by an opponent who did a timing push with some marines and a tank (before my muta came out).
I had (in a very similar way to your third replay, and as described by Geo.Rion just above) only ~20 zerglings (without speed, because I sucked ) and a spine crawler. The marine was aware of that, attacked me, and destroyed me
How would you have reacted ? I knew his push was coming, as I scouted it, and built more glings (and started researching speed -_-' ) but it was way too late.
Do not misunderstand me: I think going slings => mutas => broodlords is the way to go against Terran, especially mech, but I'm not good enough to do it properly, and I'm only asking advice, not criticizing the concept behind the build
Nuage.
Basically, if his push starts coming out (seen by my ling in front of his base), i pump like 20 more speedling and hide my first 20 speedlings. By the time his push arrives, my lings just popped and i have a perfect surround.
On August 14 2010 16:14 Geo.Rion wrote: I wathced the reps ROFL, just as i thought the terrans were playing awful.
I agree. I watched 2 out of 3 players: None showed that mutas counter Terran mech, but that bad players can lose.. (Not saying the tactic dont work)
1) Bunker rush.. and doesnt even bother salvaging them when the bunkers are dieing... 2) Ehm.. Hello Sim City with tanks and marines? A Terran that doesnt really do anything.
You get speedling speed really late. Early hellion harass would have killed all your drone line. 1 crawler dont make a difference if the Terran player runs past it.
Give replays against aggressive Terrans! And watch the replay before posting it, so you notice if the Terran does really big and obvious mistakes. Then the replays arent that interesting
Ok. I guess mutas countering terran mech isn't the best statement. THey're not a hard counter, like maurauder is to roaches.
But it's a style counter, as it gives you what you need to hit late game. How many times have you went a ground force and died to his maurauder/marine/thor push before you hit late game and felt like you had no control over the game?
I will try to post more reps I guess. My zvt's ran out on the "last 10 unsaved reps" thing.
regardless of whether it's effective or not, this muta build, the terran player in the first game was...beyond horrible. let's not say anything about his macro. after scanning your spire, he continued to build hellions out of both his techlab factories, and proceeded to throw down random turrets around his base. somewhere around 6 minutes i believe, you could've 1aed yourway into his base and probably killed off all the scvs with your 12 speedlings.
he had an armory up very early with 2 techlab facs, however he decided to build a ton of hellions and not harass.
your strat aims to get mutas fast(atleast before enough thors are out to deal with your mutas), however you sat on 1 gas even after your expo is fully saturated, resulting in lack of gas (only enough for 6 mutas vs. like 10 larvae when spire popped).
i'm all for trying out this strat, mutas give insane map control, but how did you know he was going thors and not m/m/+m maybe? because a handful of lings and 3 spine crawlers won't hold even a 20 food m/m ball
again, this terran was horrible.
after watching the second video, and watching you run your mutas into his 2 thors limiting his thor count, and losing nearly 4 instantly, after having to back off, picking off 1 thor and before the marines get in range. at this point you had no banelings, he has 8 to 9 seige tanks, thors, and a lot of marines with stim. my question is, what's your answer to him 1a-ing your base? i understand that you'll have mutas in his base, it'll be a base trade, but if that was his goal as well and just lolturret spam, what do you have to answer to that? there is no way you'll be able to engage his army head on, nor are there infestors or roaches or hydras or anything else out in your base. this is a pure "harass heavy and hope i don't get attacked" build, it's nice, but when they just decided to lol-1a, it's painful to not be able to do anything in response when you're 1+base and like 30 food ahead.
EDIT: i'm currently switching to zerg (from toss to terran and now zerg) mid level diamond player, i'm not here to bash this strat by all means, but 400~600 level terran players "usually" aren't this passive/bad, if you can post replays of losing games, maybe it'll be easier to see how this strat can be improved. ie. would infestors early be more effective with FG be more effective in dealing with him pushing, or teching hydras etc etc.
On August 14 2010 22:49 Conris wrote: i've just watched the first video...
regardless of whether it's effective or not, this muta build, the terran player in the first game was...beyond horrible. let's not say anything about his macro. after scanning your spire, he continued to build hellions out of both his techlab factories, and proceeded to throw down random turrets around his base. somewhere around 6 minutes i believe, you could've 1aed yourway into his base and probably killed off all the scvs with your 12 speedlings.
he had an armory up very early with 2 techlab facs, however he decided to build a ton of hellions and not harass.
I don't pretend to be some uber gosu, neither are my opponents.
your strat aims to get mutas fast(atleast before enough thors are out to deal with your mutas), however you sat on 1 gas even after your expo is fully saturated, resulting in lack of gas (only enough for 6 mutas vs. like 10 larvae when spire popped).
If you think my basic premise is to get mutas fast, then you are missing the entire point of the build. It's not timing dependent. I often delay my muta severely when I scout fast pushes in order to have the lings and surround to counter the fast pushes. The late gas was a mistake on my part, and again I reiterate by no means am I a perfect player.
i'm all for trying out this strat, mutas give insane map control, but how did you know he was going thors and not m/m/+m maybe? because a handful of lings and 3 spine crawlers won't hold even a 20 food m/m ball
Muta + baneling is the counter to MMM, so I'm not quite sre what you're going for here. If he had gone MMM it would have been played the same way except with more baneling. If he had gone an early MM push, well honestly I usually rape those with lings when they're not backed up by hellions.
again, this terran was horrible.
after watching the second video, and watching you run your mutas into his 2 thors, and losing nearly 4 instantly, after having to back off, picking off 1 thor and before the marines get in range. at this point you had no banelings, he has 8 to 9 seige tanks, thors, and a lot of marines with stim. my question is, what's your answer to him 1a-ing your base? i understand that you'll have mutas in his base, it'll be a base trade, but if that was his goal as well and just lolturret spam, what do you have to answer to that? there is no way you'll be able to engage his army head on, nor are there infestors or roaches or hydras or anything else out in your base.
Did you notice my 30ish lings near the top xel naga tower? That and the bunch of muta that I just spawned and more lings on the way can perfectly destroy his 1a-ing my base. I would kill a few more buildings with muta (like supplies), then run back and still be in time to save my base. Plus, he doesn't dare move out yet.
this is a pure "harass heavy and hope i don't get attacked" build, it's nice, but when they just decided to lol-1a, it's painful to not be able to do anything in response when you're 1+base and like 30 food ahead.
I dont think so. Like I said, I win a lot of games ZvT against a lot of T variation, and my build has seemed to deal with all of them pretty well (except mass BCs one game). Your roly-polies SHOULD mostly be done by the time he pushes out after your initial harrass. And that usually stops the push dead in his tracks.
I'm sure very good terrans can outplay me by a lot, but I'm only claiming that me using this build against similarly skilled or slightly better terrans has resulted in me winning most of my ZvTs.
EDIT: i'm currently switching to zerg (from toss to terran and now zerg) mid level diamond player, i'm not here to bash this strat by all means, but 400~600 level terran players "usually" aren't this passive/bad, if you can post replays of losing games, maybe it'll be easier to see how this strat can be improved. ie. would infestors early be more effective with FG be more effective in dealing with him pushing, or teching hydras etc etc.
I will try posting more replays later. But the terran in the first replay was a ~570ish terran back when I played him and at the top of his division at that point (650 level terran right now as I just checked). The terran in the 2nd replay was a bit worse, 400-ish terran.
Also, one more deal with the 2nd terran. I believe he was preparing to timing push me with marines + tanks. However, if you noticed i sacrificed an ovie. I personally believe that made him think I scouted his push and was ready to defend it, and so he made the poor decision to expand instead.
thanks for the speedy response and the sections it was broken down into.
m/m/m: this is on stepsofwar. at 9 minutes, sufficient time for a m/m/m push, you had no banelings nest up, and your mutas just popped (few seconds after). you had no information about his base other than a rax and fac with no addon, i understand baneling/muta deals with m/m well, but that's on paper, you did not scout this, so it doesn't apply, meaning you went along with this strat regardless of what he was doing, so, banelings are irrelevant.
if the goal is not for 2base fast muta into more muta to overwhelm the default "thors rape muta" mentality, what is? because between your muta and your initial 6 drone and hatch, there was no effective defense or harass. i guess my question here is, when you were sitting on let's just say 20 lings and 1 spinecrawler, waiting on your spire, and no having scouted their base at all, what would your response be if he showed up with an m/m/m ball, or even just marine tanks, note that your baneling nest was not up.
i understand the concept of a delayed unit, but between a rushed and a delayed unit, the time gap is the scariest and most vulnerable, zerglings aren't a very efficient way to deal with terran...whether it be m/m/m or just hellion marauder. again, i'm not here to rip on anything, but what was the ace in the hole so to speak, that you had, if he decided to attack(again baneling nest was not up and you did not scout)
Mass mutalisks is very rare IMO (at least in the games I've played/watched) and I suspect this build works well because its unexpected. Terran spots the spire and builds a few thors and turrets and thinks he's covered against any muta harrass. Once the thors are out and holds off the initial muta harrass, the assumption is that Zerg is going to give up on the mutas.
nice idea. But the first two replays are against some pretty rigid Terrans. The first guy doesnt make any marines (WTF?) and makes reapers even though you have spine crawlers everywhere. He scans but makes 2 missile turrets(need at least 3-4 to deter) for an inevitable muta harass. THe 2nd guy just turtles and doesnt scan lmao. Try your strat against a decent MMM ball with mech support. but ye reasonable strat just depends on how shit the terran player is.
On August 14 2010 23:14 Conris wrote: thanks for the speedy response and the sections it was broken down into.
m/m/m: this is on stepsofwar. at 9 minutes, sufficient time for a m/m/m push, you had no banelings nest up, and your mutas just popped (few seconds after). you had no information about his base other than a rax and fac with no addon, i understand baneling/muta deals with m/m well, but that's on paper, you did not scout this, so it doesn't apply, meaning you went along with this strat regardless of what he was doing, so, banelings are irrelevant.
if the goal is not for 2base fast muta into more muta to overwhelm the default "thors rape muta" mentality, what is? because between your muta and your initial 6 drone and hatch, there was no effective defense or harass. i guess my question here is, when you were sitting on let's just say 20 lings and 1 spinecrawler, waiting on your spire, and no having scouted their base at all, what would your response be if he showed up with an m/m/m ball, or even just marine tanks, note that your baneling nest was not up.
Personally, I would just make 20 more ling as soon as his units move out. By the time he gets to your base and/or kills your spine crawler and queen, you have 40 lings total ready to flank him.
And I did scout. I sacrificed an ovie early to see that. That's why I made the lings in the first place and was ready to make more. And I had a ling at his nat ready to see if he moved out.
On August 14 2010 23:27 Pking wrote: Mass mutalisks is very rare IMO (at least in the games I've played/watched) and I suspect this build works well because its unexpected. Terran spots the spire and builds a few thors and turrets and thinks he's covered against any muta harrass. Once the thors are out and holds off the initial muta harrass, the assumption is that Zerg is going to give up on the mutas.
I'm sorry if I come off as bm right now, but have you read the dozen or so posts by terran players themselves in this very thread that said the mass muta build is the hardest build they usually come across?
I think a much better use of mutas would be as a transition to broodlords and or ultras.
You are forcing terran to mass thors, turrets and marines. That leaves terran with few tanks, if terran makes tanks and skips on thors then you can expect an easy win with mass mutas.
However, once terran gets a good anti air combination you can switch to brood lords to counter thor marines.
Also instead of massing mutas only, a muta ling combo with blings added if there is a sizable bio force.
If only mutas could morph into broodlords.... kinda reminds me of BW..
I will post a few more replays I guess. Most of these aren't muta vs thor, but they show what I do to counter early game harrassment and stuff.
Replay 1: Opponent: 550 level terran, Xel Naga Caverns Game opens with him using lzgamer's 3 rax reaper build or some variation (ofcourse with not as good micro) and me playing pretty standard with hatch first and sunkening up then teching to muta http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?iaqflxf882akr7y
Replay 2: Opponent: I'm not sure what level this guy is, since I did a search on sc2ranks and there are a ton of ppl with the same name. I'm assuming 500-600 level diamond tho since those are who I get matched up against, Xel Naga caverns Game opens with him bunker rushing, then 3 hellion harrass immediately after before I even get speed. Then 2 vikings come out before my lair is halfway done, while he expoes. I played poorly early game and lost a lot to harrass, but once my muta came out it was fine. http://www.mediafire.com/?g3tvjwuqtjjcctd
Replay 3: (for all you ppl saying the opponents I play just suck) Opponent: 786 diamond terran, ranked 2nd in his division, Steppes Opponent opens hellion harrass into viking/thor/maurauder push, and loses first push and quits http://www.mediafire.com/?y28m21eso8941jb
Replay 4: (for ppl worreid about early game harrass) Opponent: 674 diamond terran, Steppes I couldn't hatch first expo this game b/c he brought an early SCV and built a bunker there (which he later salvaged as my lings came out, that bastard). So I had to pool first. Then he brings 3 hellions, and transitions into banshees b4 my spire is done. http://www.mediafire.com/?l0z5870k320s5um
On August 14 2010 23:54 Rev0lution wrote: I think a much better use of mutas would be as a transition to broodlords and or ultras.
You are forcing terran to mass thors, turrets and marines. That leaves terran with few tanks, if terran makes tanks and skips on thors then you can expect an easy win with mass mutas.
However, once terran gets a good anti air combination you can switch to brood lords to counter thor marines.
Also instead of massing mutas only, a muta ling combo with blings added if there is a sizable bio force.
If only mutas could morph into broodlords.... kinda reminds me of BW..
That's what I usually do. Mutaling is a very good transition to brood lords, like I say above. B/c by the time your broodlords come out your brood lords AND broodlings are both 2-2 if you've been playing with this build.
On August 14 2010 23:27 Pking wrote: Mass mutalisks is very rare IMO (at least in the games I've played/watched) and I suspect this build works well because its unexpected. Terran spots the spire and builds a few thors and turrets and thinks he's covered against any muta harrass. Once the thors are out and holds off the initial muta harrass, the assumption is that Zerg is going to give up on the mutas.
I'm sorry if I come off as bm right now, but have you read the dozen or so posts by terran players themselves in this very thread that said the mass muta build is the hardest build they usually come across?
No doubt it is hard to deal with. I did read those and I agree that it is hard but in my experience its not something you encounter that often.
I play at a slightly lower level (300-600 diamond) and use this all the time, it works wonders.
While I probably play worse than you overall something I have found helpful are in base hatches. I had a game (will post replay later) where I got to 150 lings while spending all the gas on mutas. The fact is, 50 banelings + 100 lings will break through anything short of 10 sieged tanks. The main point here is to turn that huge surplus of minerals into a huge surplus of hatcheries overlords and lings. In my experience enough lings will kill just about anything that isn't totally walled in and enough banelings will take care of any wall. This is all doable while still doing your muta build, just remember to add hatches and keep popping out lings with those extra minerals.
Thanks for the tip. Will definitely try that and incorporate burrow as well. I do find in my games that I'm using up all my gas but often have like 1-2k surplus minerals.
On August 15 2010 00:04 D-Rose wrote: I will post a few more replays I guess. Most of these aren't muta vs thor, but they show what I do to counter early game harrassment and stuff.
Replay 1: Opponent: 550 level terran, Xel Naga Caverns Game opens with him using lzgamer's 3 rax reaper build or some variation (ofcourse with not as good micro) and me playing pretty standard with hatch first and sunkening up then teching to muta http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?iaqflxf882akr7y
Replay 2: Opponent: I'm not sure what level this guy is, since I did a search on sc2ranks and there are a ton of ppl with the same name. I'm assuming 500-600 level diamond tho since those are who I get matched up against, Xel Naga caverns Game opens with him bunker rushing, then 3 hellion harrass immediately after before I even get speed. Then 2 vikings come out before my lair is halfway done, while he expoes. I played poorly early game and lost a lot to harrass, but once my muta came out it was fine. http://www.mediafire.com/?g3tvjwuqtjjcctd
Replay 3: (for all you ppl saying the opponents I play just suck) Opponent: 786 diamond terran, ranked 2nd in his division, Steppes Opponent opens hellion harrass into viking/thor/maurauder push, and loses first push and quits http://www.mediafire.com/?y28m21eso8941jb
Replay 4: (for ppl worreid about early game harrass) Opponent: 674 diamond terran, Steppes I couldn't hatch first expo this game b/c he brought an early SCV and built a bunker there (which he later salvaged as my lings came out, that bastard). So I had to pool first. Then he brings 3 hellions, and transitions into banshees b4 my spire is done. http://www.mediafire.com/?l0z5870k320s5um
Hey D-Rose, I've been using a very similar build to yours, but instead of massing mutas I simply get between 10-20(depends on what my opponent is doing) and go heavier on the lings/blings while teching to ultra. Differences aside, I've found that it's actually way safer and just as economical to get an early pool(12pool with double etrick conserves larva while getting a really early queen) and expand much later(usually just after lair). I just get a single pair of lings for scouting and drone like crazy until about the third larva pop(this is usually when the first hellion arrives when people are doing 1 hellion poking and 10 lings can deal with that since speed is researched around this time).
This way I am almost completely immune to early reaper/bunker play(I don't expand until speedlings are out) and I still have enough larva to deal with early pressure(such as hellion or MM play). As you, I found that spending my second 100 gas on lair gives me a spire just in time for banshee play, which means I don't even have to worry about banshees ever as my mutas will always spawn just in time. Basically, the only thing I need to scout for is early MM pushes and high numbers of blueflame hellions(which can arrive slightly before spire pops). MM I deal with by simply making lings, like you, but large numbers of hellion I usually just hold off on sending my drones to my expo until spire is done. That way I can block off my ramp with a queen and be perfectly safe(on maps with large chokes, I usually place a pair of sunkens near the choke, but on small chokes I can usually be fine without any sunkens at all).
All in all, I approve of this build(550 diamond zerg, playing mostly 700-750 diamond terrans) and I've only lost once in my last 10 zvt games because I mismicroed my banelings straight into 4 tanks instead of his MM ball(doh!).
On August 15 2010 00:04 D-Rose wrote: Replay 3: (for all you ppl saying the opponents I play just suck) Opponent: 786 diamond terran, ranked 2nd in his division, Steppes Opponent opens hellion harrass into viking/thor/maurauder push, and loses first push and quits http://www.mediafire.com/?y28m21eso8941jb
Wow, either he had a really bad day or the skill level on the NA-servers is really low (but I guess there are quite a lot of bad diamond players in EU as well).
He pretty much didn't scout at all and then he went marauders + tanks against lings and mutas. Not to mention the failed viking harass that didn't kill anything and his inability to use the limited amount of intel he managed to get from his vikings. I guess it was to late to do anything when he finally scouted considering the production buildings he had, but still. Finally he gets caught completely out of position by the lings and you get an easy victory.
I still believe the build is incredibly vulnerable to hellions+thors (the game between IdrA and Silver on metalopolis should be a good example). If you used a roach warren and maybe even some roaches to trick the terrans into going marauders and/or tanks, the replays could possibly be interesting. Right now it just feels like you face bad terrans that fail to scout what you're doing, and then the replays means little to nothing.
On August 15 2010 00:04 D-Rose wrote: Replay 3: (for all you ppl saying the opponents I play just suck) Opponent: 786 diamond terran, ranked 2nd in his division, Steppes Opponent opens hellion harrass into viking/thor/maurauder push, and loses first push and quits http://www.mediafire.com/?y28m21eso8941jb
Wow, either he had a really bad day or the skill level on the NA-servers is really low (but I guess there are quite a lot of bad diamond players in EU as well).
He pretty much didn't scout at all and then he went marauders + tanks against lings and mutas. Not to mention the failed viking harass that didn't kill anything and his inability to use the limited amount of intel he managed to get from his vikings. I guess it was to late to do anything when he finally scouted considering the production buildings he had, but still. Finally he gets caught completely out of position by the lings and you get an easy victory.
I still believe the build is incredibly vulnerable to hellions+thors (the game between IdrA and Silver on metalopolis should be a good example). If you used a roach warren and maybe even some roaches to trick the terrans into going marauders and/or tanks, the replays could possibly be interesting. Right now it just feels like you face bad terrans that fail to scout what you're doing, and then the replays means little to nothing.
Ok, I guess I can't really say anything in response to that. I'm not that good myself so I don't face terrans that much better than me and thus have no idea if it really works at higher levels. (Although I guess even if I did and lose with the build, it might just be an issue of skill and the terran player being just plainly better).
But usually against hellion thor i flank and smash my +1 banelings into his hellions, then my lings have pretty much free reign. If the terrans are at better levles, like you're saying, then maybe that doesn't work.
On August 15 2010 00:04 D-Rose wrote: I will post a few more replays I guess. Most of these aren't muta vs thor, but they show what I do to counter early game harrassment and stuff.
Replay 1: Opponent: 550 level terran, Xel Naga Caverns Game opens with him using lzgamer's 3 rax reaper build or some variation (ofcourse with not as good micro) and me playing pretty standard with hatch first and sunkening up then teching to muta http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?iaqflxf882akr7y
Replay 2: Opponent: I'm not sure what level this guy is, since I did a search on sc2ranks and there are a ton of ppl with the same name. I'm assuming 500-600 level diamond tho since those are who I get matched up against, Xel Naga caverns Game opens with him bunker rushing, then 3 hellion harrass immediately after before I even get speed. Then 2 vikings come out before my lair is halfway done, while he expoes. I played poorly early game and lost a lot to harrass, but once my muta came out it was fine. http://www.mediafire.com/?g3tvjwuqtjjcctd
Replay 3: (for all you ppl saying the opponents I play just suck) Opponent: 786 diamond terran, ranked 2nd in his division, Steppes Opponent opens hellion harrass into viking/thor/maurauder push, and loses first push and quits http://www.mediafire.com/?y28m21eso8941jb
Replay 4: (for ppl worreid about early game harrass) Opponent: 674 diamond terran, Steppes I couldn't hatch first expo this game b/c he brought an early SCV and built a bunker there (which he later salvaged as my lings came out, that bastard). So I had to pool first. Then he brings 3 hellions, and transitions into banshees b4 my spire is done. http://www.mediafire.com/?l0z5870k320s5um
Hey D-Rose, I've been using a very similar build to yours, but instead of massing mutas I simply get between 10-20(depends on what my opponent is doing) and go heavier on the lings/blings while teching to ultra. Differences aside, I've found that it's actually way safer and just as economical to get an early pool(12pool with double etrick conserves larva while getting a really early queen) and expand much later(usually just after lair). I just get a single pair of lings for scouting and drone like crazy until about the third larva pop(this is usually when the first hellion arrives when people are doing 1 hellion poking and 10 lings can deal with that since speed is researched around this time).
This way I am almost completely immune to early reaper/bunker play(I don't expand until speedlings are out) and I still have enough larva to deal with early pressure(such as hellion or MM play). As you, I found that spending my second 100 gas on lair gives me a spire just in time for banshee play, which means I don't even have to worry about banshees ever as my mutas will always spawn just in time. Basically, the only thing I need to scout for is early MM pushes and high numbers of blueflame hellions(which can arrive slightly before spire pops). MM I deal with by simply making lings, like you, but large numbers of hellion I usually just hold off on sending my drones to my expo until spire is done. That way I can block off my ramp with a queen and be perfectly safe(on maps with large chokes, I usually place a pair of sunkens near the choke, but on small chokes I can usually be fine without any sunkens at all).
All in all, I approve of this build(550 diamond zerg, playing mostly 700-750 diamond terrans) and I've only lost once in my last 10 zvt games because I mismicroed my banelings straight into 4 tanks instead of his MM ball(doh!).
Heh ok, I'll keep that in mind and experiment with this too ^^. I usually like to FE though just because I'm a risk taker and I want more gas :p
I watched the replays. I like the mass muta, however I looked at the early game and T seems to have the upperhand. In one of the games specifically, if the T player decided to move out with his marines and a few tanks it seemed like he would have easily broke through (Steppes replay). I would be just scared of an early game push if the T player ops for an early start on mech rather than a reaper harass.
On August 15 2010 01:02 sLiniss wrote: I watched the replays. I like the mass muta, however I looked at the early game and T seems to have the upperhand. In one of the games specifically, if the T player decided to move out with his marines and a few tanks it seemed like he would have easily broke through (Steppes replay). I would be just scared of an early game push if the T player ops for an early start on mech rather than a reaper harass.
Like I said, I usually manage to hold those off. I made 20 or so ling in preparation when I sac'ed an ovie and scouted his probably planned timing push. If he hadn't changed his mind upon being discovered, once he pushed out I would have popped more lings from my main and put my other lings in position to flank (at around the top cliff near watch tower). I'm usually able to hold off timing pushes pretty well in my games. But as other people have alluded to, maybe at higher levels (800+) then the timing/unit control becomes so good that it doesn't work anymore (and/or next time I go on ladder and someone's read this thread and knows exactly what I'm going to do and plans exactly how to counter me at just the right time).
the stupidity and lack of comprehension in so many of these replies is really astounding.
as for the OP, this should be a lesson not to post replays that are not better vetted. all you get are a bunch of copper zergs poopooing things they don't even understand.
On August 15 2010 01:16 naventus wrote: the stupidity and lack of comprehension in so many of these replies is really astounding.
as for the OP, this should be a lesson not to post replays that are not better vetted. all you get are a bunch of copper zergs poopooing things they don't even understand.
These forums sadden me. A very good player tries to help by posting what he does in a matchup that most consider imbalanced, with tons of replays, and everyone has to jump in and claim that the Terrans all suck and it would never work. Apparently only Idra is allowed to post Zerg advice - but I'm sure the Terrans all suck in his replays too.
Anyway, thanks a ton for this, I'll be sure to try it out. Although it might be better to add a few roaches in (or at least let a roach warren get scanned, it's only minerals anyway) just so the Terran is forced to make marauders or tanks early on.
I'd appreciate it if some other players who have tried the build and had success with it to also post their replays, so we can get a range of replays of different skill levels and I'm not the only one here defending it.
On August 15 2010 01:27 QuakerOats wrote: Anyway, thanks a ton for this, I'll be sure to try it out. Although it might be better to add a few roaches in (or at least let a roach warren get scanned, it's only minerals anyway) just so the Terran is forced to make marauders or tanks early on.
I've actually done this before back when I was at the lower levels. Hide my spire at my nat and make a roach warren in main. I actually ended up surprising with my first few muta quite a few times and ending the game right there or giving me a huge advantage.
I didn't think that would work at the higher levels, though, so I stopped doing it.
On August 15 2010 01:27 QuakerOats wrote: These forums sadden me. A very good player tries to help by posting what he does in a matchup that most consider imbalanced, with tons of replays, and everyone has to jump in and claim that the Terrans all suck and it would never work. Apparently only Idra is allowed to post Zerg advice - but I'm sure the Terrans all suck in his replays too.
Anyway, thanks a ton for this, I'll be sure to try it out. Although it might be better to add a few roaches in (or at least let a roach warren get scanned, it's only minerals anyway) just so the Terran is forced to make marauders or tanks early on.
I have just been trying to point out what I feel are the weak parts of the strategy from a terran perspective (~600 diamond), since most zergs I face go for lings+mutas. The replays show what happens if the terran spends too much on tanks and marauders, the problem is just that the terrans fail to scout or adapt to the situation in the replays.
With signs of roaches it is probably much more likely that the terran goes for more pure anti-ground units and if he still goes for thors+hellions you should be in a better position to defeat the army by going roach heavy instead.
Thanks for posting, I will definately try this out, it seems a very decent approach to zvt. Seems to really help keep your 3rd safe and allow you to take an earlier 4th
I just played a guy and he tried this strat agianst me. I'm wondering what he did wrong... I think he wasn't agressive enough in the muta harass, if I'm not mistaken? Muta micro wasn't good enough?
BTW in game my own macro flagged alot and I didn't stim-run my marines around his blings in circles, but I'm looking for improvement.
Thors really aren't solid anti air, they are strong against clusters of mutalisks, so if you have your mutalisks split up into multiple groups and have them spread out in the attacks against thors, the damage you can do is massive.
It's a solid strat that will be very micro intesnive, making it not for everyone, but if you can do it,enjoy your tvz wins.
On August 15 2010 02:44 sikyon wrote: I just played a guy and he tried this strat agianst me. I'm wondering what he did wrong... I think he wasn't agressive enough in the muta harass, if I'm not mistaken? Muta micro wasn't good enough?
BTW in game my own macro flagged alot and I didn't stim-run my marines around his blings in circles, but I'm looking for improvement.
Well first of all, he was tremendously delayed by a poor response to your harrass, then got killed by the push right after. So you went into the mid game significantly ahead.
He did some good harrassment with his initial muta. But then inexplicably as your push was moving out, he refused to engage 4 turrets with 20+ muta, which would have forced you back to your main. He also made almost no ling before your push arrived at his doorstep, and then he clumped mutas when engaging thors. Normally, if I don't screw up msasively, that kind of push like you did on the 2nd push I should be able to deal with very easily without losing my nat, and I'd be still on 3-4 bases and powering to hive.
In the end he had so much gas (1400) could be 14 more muta to add to his collection. He didn't upgrade his muta at all, and even in the last attack, he decided to send his units in small waves. First let his banelings die, then let his lings die, then let his sunkens die, and then let his muta die. Better to wait for thors to engange sunkens then send in all the muta-ling-baneling
You just played very well and he had a poor response to it, I feel.
But just think about this. The guy played a poor early game, lost his nat and a ton of drones to early harrass. However, once his muta came out, he regained even an advantage at that point I feel, with 20+ muta and 3 bases. Which he later proceeded to lose that advantage by some poor decisions.
Just wondering how many zergs would be able to turn such an early game disadvantage into a mid game advantage by going a roach/hydra/ling ground build.
Well I read two pages of this, and didn't really see any Pro Terrans throwing down some counters to this strat.. So I guess I'll try and throw down a couple suggestions.
I think after this build is scouted by Terran, I think there's a clear path to go, and that's EBay tech. Along with the obvious Marine/Thor.
upgraded bunks. and +2 building armor with a +1 Inf Damge.
One thing this build really relies on is harrassing Terran and closing him into his base early game to get some mass exps down to keep up on your gas.
Getting the expanded bunk upgrade (100/100) soon as Ebay tech is up will allow 6marines to be in a bunk, and with +2 armor that takes muta base dmg down to 7base. you probably only need 3bunks max. Also throwing down Sensor towers reduces Muta harss quite a bit because you can position your army much faster and more effectively. it would also probably be wise to push with a couple hellions (so you're looking at a 2rax/2fac build with a possible fe at beginning). The beauty of this is that the defensive investment isn't permanent like turrets.
I Haven't faced higher level players yet, but Bling/Muta is pretty much the VoidRays of tvz.
Mutalings have always been a sturdy zerg build. No idea why people are critiquing it now especially since it certainly seems a strong option given that you don't have to worry about irradiate, more expensive turret, medivac instead of medics, no marine range upgrade ... Kudos to D-Rose for actually stepping up to the plate and proving it.
On August 15 2010 03:34 Prophecy3 wrote: Well I read two pages of this, and didn't really see any Pro Terrans throwing down some counters to this strat.. So I guess I'll try and throw down a couple suggestions.
I think after this build is scouted by Terran, I think there's a clear path to go, and that's EBay tech. Along with the obvious Marine/Thor.
upgraded bunks. and +2 building armor with a +1 Inf Damge.
One thing this build really relies on is harrassing Terran and closing him into his base early game to get some mass exps down to keep up on your gas.
Getting the expanded bunk upgrade (100/100) soon as Ebay tech is up will allow 6marines to be in a bunk, and with +2 armor that takes muta base dmg down to 7base. you probably only need 3bunks max. Also throwing down Sensor towers reduces Muta harss quite a bit because you can position your army much faster and more effectively. it would also probably be wise to push with a couple hellions (so you're looking at a 2rax/2fac build with a possible fe at beginning). The beauty of this is that the defensive investment isn't permanent like turrets.
I Haven't faced higher level players yet, but Bling/Muta is pretty much the VoidRays of tvz.
Hope this helps some Terrans
How would you know if zerg is going for mass mutalisk? Spire and Bnest are standard in ZvT. Maybe zerg will transition Ultra/infestor/broodlord/nydus worm or maybe not.
It's a possibility that terrans below a certain skill level just don't have the right multitasking to fight this off, just for me it's demanding on my apm to continue to macro and harass and have to deal with a 6 or 7 muta harass, but with 20+ mutas your positioning and response times just have to be that much higher.
On August 15 2010 03:34 Prophecy3 wrote: Well I read two pages of this, and didn't really see any Pro Terrans throwing down some counters to this strat.. So I guess I'll try and throw down a couple suggestions.
I think after this build is scouted by Terran, I think there's a clear path to go, and that's EBay tech. Along with the obvious Marine/Thor.
upgraded bunks. and +2 building armor with a +1 Inf Damge.
One thing this build really relies on is harrassing Terran and closing him into his base early game to get some mass exps down to keep up on your gas.
Getting the expanded bunk upgrade (100/100) soon as Ebay tech is up will allow 6marines to be in a bunk, and with +2 armor that takes muta base dmg down to 7base. you probably only need 3bunks max. Also throwing down Sensor towers reduces Muta harss quite a bit because you can position your army much faster and more effectively. it would also probably be wise to push with a couple hellions (so you're looking at a 2rax/2fac build with a possible fe at beginning). The beauty of this is that the defensive investment isn't permanent like turrets.
I Haven't faced higher level players yet, but Bling/Muta is pretty much the VoidRays of tvz.
Hope this helps some Terrans
How would you know if zerg is going for mass mutalisk? Spire and Bnest are standard in ZvT. Maybe zerg will transition Ultra/infestor/broodlord/nydus worm or maybe not.
I think that's one of the strengths of zerg, the Terran might see a spire and a den/warren, and not know how many Thors/Tanks to get. If I get too many Tanks and not enough Thors/rines, mutas will own you when you move out. And vice versa, though Thors do not that bad against roaches, and are pretty good against hydras. You have to be smart with scouting, scans and just have a good game sense. Muta harass is a pain to deal with against a good player too, can put you off your normal game.
good gawd, finally, Ive been preachin heavy muta usage in ZvMech or ZvT in general since the start of beta and all those fucktards would only answer " LOL THORS".
Thors do not own mutas that much. In fact they rape unmicroed mutas. This is approximative, but 15-20 mutas with a supplement of roaches/banelings/lings will rape the bejesus out of any thor + anything mid-game army.
So in regards to OP, yes, mutas are incredibly powerful in ZvT, its just that most zergs dont see past the 9 mutas getting raped by 2 thors and a pack of marines.
I sometimes go pure mutas and lings/blings if the terrran doesnt react accordingly and jsut end it there with harass and good surrounds.
Otherwise, I think that if your going against stronger players, pure mutas or no switch thereafter might be throw you out of the game the mutas helped you stay in.
Now, my build usually goes into lings to mutas adding roaches/blings to fast hive into ultralisks. Because man, Ultralisks just rape anything in the terran ground army arsenal.
Just wondering, how do you stop the terran from getting more than 3 thors?
Because he can easily get enough thors on 2 bases that doesnt matter how many mutalisks you have, you'll always lose. Getting MORE mutas doesn't sound like a great strategy if the terran can get... MORE thors.
I try to pick off as many thors as i can. Usually i'll pick off like one.... so his push, when it comes, will have like 4 thors. Which should be no problem to deal with. If it's just 4 thors with no marine backup, my 20-ish muta can kill all of them while losing like 6 muta. If he has marine backup you need to micro a bit with banelings.
I always go mass muta against terran, and I think it's absolutly viable, thors are slow, marines gets owned by mass muta (and if needed banelings) vikings are just bad and turrets end up costing too much.
Then it's just harras, expend, and finaly drown him in a swarm of fully upgraded Ultralisks. (if everything goes well of course) Plus it's just fun.
here's a replay if anyone is interested. (I would also love any criticism about my play)
On August 15 2010 02:44 sikyon wrote: I just played a guy and he tried this strat agianst me. I'm wondering what he did wrong... I think he wasn't agressive enough in the muta harass, if I'm not mistaken? Muta micro wasn't good enough?
BTW in game my own macro flagged alot and I didn't stim-run my marines around his blings in circles, but I'm looking for improvement.
Well first of all, he was tremendously delayed by a poor response to your harrass, then got killed by the push right after. So you went into the mid game significantly ahead.
He did some good harrassment with his initial muta. But then inexplicably as your push was moving out, he refused to engage 4 turrets with 20+ muta, which would have forced you back to your main. He also made almost no ling before your push arrived at his doorstep, and then he clumped mutas when engaging thors. Normally, if I don't screw up msasively, that kind of push like you did on the 2nd push I should be able to deal with very easily without losing my nat, and I'd be still on 3-4 bases and powering to hive.
In the end he had so much gas (1400) could be 14 more muta to add to his collection. He didn't upgrade his muta at all, and even in the last attack, he decided to send his units in small waves. First let his banelings die, then let his lings die, then let his sunkens die, and then let his muta die. Better to wait for thors to engange sunkens then send in all the muta-ling-baneling
You just played very well and he had a poor response to it, I feel.
But just think about this. The guy played a poor early game, lost his nat and a ton of drones to early harrass. However, once his muta came out, he regained even an advantage at that point I feel, with 20+ muta and 3 bases. Which he later proceeded to lose that advantage by some poor decisions.
Just wondering how many zergs would be able to turn such an early game disadvantage into a mid game advantage by going a roach/hydra/ling ground build.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As I already stated I am a low diamond player myself (so worse play than you I guess).
I have found that opening speedlings is safer, 1 base 13 gas 12 pool, drone to 14, OL, and get a queen and speed as soon as pool pops. Not having an expand means no bunker rush and only 1 base to defend from harass. You get the expand around 20 at roughly the same time as the lair. By this time you can have a fair few speedlings to defend with.
One of the basic things to remember is that a bunch of ling/baneling will at least clean out the marines from an army and when you hit 20+ mutas you can kill 4 thors easily (just move over and hold position) once the marines are gone. Then the rest of the hellion/marauder/tank are free kills (which makes it well worth the loss of a few mutas).
On top of that Zerg generally faces the problem of not being able to counter attack after winning a battle. The absolute best units for a quick counter though are mutas (because they don't care about walls and siege tanks) and the ling/baneling combo (because they can bust in) which means that after a successful battle you can do serious economic damage immediately (whereas roach hydra usually has to be passive).
On August 15 2010 11:59 HeyJude wrote: 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.
You click v, minimap, v, minimap, v, minimap.
Then 40 seconds later you do 5stttttzzzzzzvv
Heh, I actually just lost my last 4 zvt. But I thot it was due to bad play in general from me.
Wow was my reaction as well. Looks like he hotkeyed the mutas into "mini groups" then attacked the thor group from 10, 12, and 2 o clock all at once then held position continually spreading his mutas out. Im not sure, but it almost doesn't look like he was actually focus firing. I think if one selects the entire mass of mutas they will clump, but if you either hold position or select small groups at a time and target attack, they may not clump as bad. go ahead and correct me if im wrong on this, as this is just speculation. Definately gonna try this.
Also, here is the 2nd half to the video, im not sure if it was also posted. At about 7:30 in the below video he takes on 4 thors with nothing but about 15 mutas and comes out ahead. I am very impressed with this!
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 harass heavy. Myself I actually thought I played a relatively poor game in terms of harassment denial and ended up losing way too much to harassment. 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 harassment 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.
At 10 minutes when his vikings moved in you had 3 queens (which i thought was nice) but you didn't engage with your queens, only your mutas. Your queens had energy for heal, which is pretty amazing early game for mutas if you're against vikings. At 14 minutes you got flustered by the attack and sat on larva for awhile even though you desperately needed to morph them.
I liked how easy you made it look to shut down hellion harass. Put a sunken on the outside and have a queen ling ambush at the ramp. I would have liked a queen block though.
The terran was good but his strat to get more vikings against your mutas was obviously failing and he didn't adapt. I think if he went heavier on the marines with a touch of vikings and medivacs he would have been much better off. But then again, you would just baneling the hell out of him. I think I'll be stealing your strat.
It seems that going mass muta (or, to be fair, sling / bling / mutas, with a strong component on muta, not just 5 ou 6 to harass) is the standard way Check play against Terran - with a lot of success (it is visible on his games against Cargo & JustFake, viewable in VOD on HDStarcraft Youtube channel).
He tends to not fast expand (or at least, not as fast as you), prefering to stay in one base to manage the first helions or reaper harass. But the concept is the same. That should end the "this wouldn't work at top level" remarks :p
I'm currenlty DLing a lot more game from Check vs Terran, to check (eh !) if he do the same strat.
Perhaps against 1base Terran mass muta is more effective, but 2base Terran (Delta Quadrant) can have far too many marines and Thors for any amount of mutas to handle if he scouts the transition into heavy mutas. Microing mutalisks can really only help so much. The way that air units bunch together, your entire group of mutas is going to be taking terrible terrible damage from the first volley off the Thors, even if you micro well after that.
Not only that, but Thors and Marines are very, very capable of pushing back at you. With the support of a couple seiged tanks you won't be in any position to hold your base, confront his thors, and there's no way you'll win a base race.
Been doing this 2v2. Starting with roaches to hold push, then switch to mutas with my T partner funneling gas to me while he masses marines. Not applicable to 1v1, and probably not applicable to higher level play, but it's actually been fun to play Z this way, when I was having no fun before. So there's that
Zerokaiser, I think the issues you bring up are easily assuaged by havig better micro. If yo've already got 20+ mutas, you take take a bit of damage to kill the seige tanks( the real damage dealers ) to allow for blings to move in. Max you won't lose more than 6 mutas BEng generous to Terran. Stimpack marines are still a problem, but without seige tanks, Zerg is easily capable of fighting Terran head on in a ground war vs rines and thors. The fact that you'll still have mutas alive after killing the tanks is a huge plus in redirecting marine and Thor attacking AI away from ground units (hopefully sling bling roach) and let your forces clean up.
Seige tanks are the main issue when fighting Terran ground, and mutas are easily able to keep their numbers down by sniping, picking off reinforcement tanks, and, f need be, suiciding to kill all tanks before retreating the wounded mutas.
On the other hand, on my last game against a Terran, he responded to the mutas with Ghosts. They really melted my mutalisks... I was still able to win, but some defending cloacked ghosts can shut down muta harass quite quickly (and bringing an OL to harass is not exactly the easiest thing to do ^^).
On August 15 2010 19:56 Nuage wrote: On the other hand, on my last game against a Terran, he responded to the mutas with Ghosts. They really melted my mutalisks... I was still able to win, but some defending cloacked ghosts can shut down muta harass quite quickly (and bringing an OL to harass is not exactly the easiest thing to do ^^).
Nuage.
and how is it then mech? Ghosts have quite the gas cost.
I also watched Check's replays and that's pretty much the strategy I use against every terran as well. The basic concept is abusing Zerg's mobility. The ones stating that this strategy doesn't work against mass marines and mass Thors are right, but the problem is that the terran won't be able to have mass marines and mass thors. Against small numbers of marines and Thors, Mutas do pretty well. Add Speedlings to the mix and the Thors don't know what do shoot at and are taken out in seconds. If you watch Check's replay one can see that he uses his Mutas all the time while macroing his base to keep the Terran extremely busy. So this strategy is very stressful, because you can never lean back, wall yourself in and build an unstoppable mech ball. Some of the most difficult terrans to deal with are those who secure their three bases (turrets, tanks, marines, bunkers, planetary fortress, engineering bays), max their mech army and slowly push out taking out one important expo after another while harrassing your expos with hellions. Even if Zerg controls the whole map, the terran is often able to hold long enough to build this fearsome mech army. So early pressure (often mutas are the only solution to get into their main) and abusing Terran's immobility with everything Zerg has to offer (creep, drops, Nydus worm, Speedlings, Mutas) are key in this matchup. Against MMM I like the use of creep even more (with muta micro I usually forget about the creep) as your Zerglings are ultra fast on creep and able to defend your expos pretty well. With infestors and banelings every MMM ball will have its difficulties.
For "muta micro" you can just let them split up nicely, do a normal move past the thors and hold position over them. With the natural spacing the thors will hit 1, maybe 2 mutas with a volley. It does mean the mutas don't focus fire but that is much less important than them not clumping.
If there are marines around bring in the zerglings just a little before the mutas.
Right so, I'm terrible (Gold) and have been doing this for awhile. I beat a diamond toss (not sure of his points..sorry) with this the other day using this strat and he was flabbergasted. I'm at work currently, I'll up the replay when I get home if anyone is interested...if I still have it.
This being said thors were shutting my shit down HARD primarily because of splash damage I think. It looks like the key is to issue move command (right click) past the thors and then hit H to issue the Hold command while they're directly overhead? At this point then I shouldn't concern myself with focus fire just let it happen as it happens?
I doubt my micro is good enough for this, but would best case scenario be to split your groups up even more and do this with like 3 different groups all at once?
On August 15 2010 22:35 ConsummateK wrote: This being said thors were shutting my shit down HARD primarily because of splash damage I think. It looks like the key is to issue move command (right click) past the thors and then hit H to issue the Hold command while they're directly overhead? At this point then I shouldn't concern myself with focus fire just let it happen as it happens?
You need to spread out the Muta beforehand (By selecting all your Muta and spamming stop, followed by manually spreading them out even further) THEN you need to order the move command past the Thor, making sure you don't accidentally give them an attack command, which causes them to bunch up.
It's pretty easy, actually. The only problem is that if he gets too many Thors, your muta will end up attacking different Thors, and if they're all being repaired by SCVs, it gets really hard to kill them all without losing everything.
That's why you need to grab more expos and switch tech to Roaches ASAP, and possibly bring along Banelings to kill SCV and Marine escorts. (Infestors to NP the Thors could also be cute, haven't tried it yet though).
On August 15 2010 22:35 ConsummateK wrote: This being said thors were shutting my shit down HARD primarily because of splash damage I think. It looks like the key is to issue move command (right click) past the thors and then hit H to issue the Hold command while they're directly overhead? At this point then I shouldn't concern myself with focus fire just let it happen as it happens?
You need to spread out the Muta beforehand (By selecting all your Muta and spamming stop, followed by manually spreading them out even further) THEN you need to order the move command past the Thor, making sure you don't accidentally give them an attack command, which causes them to bunch up.
It's pretty easy, actually. The only problem is that if he gets too many Thors, your muta will end up attacking different Thors, and if they're all being repaired by SCVs, it gets really hard to kill them all without losing everything.
That's why you need to grab more expos and switch tech to Roaches ASAP, and possibly bring along Banelings to kill SCV and Marine escorts. (Infestors to NP the Thors could also be cute, haven't tried it yet though).
This.
The baneling/speedling attack is very important if the thors have any marine or scv support (and when they don't I'm like a kid at a candy shop lol). The banelings, especially if you have 20+ of them, should be mixed into the speedlings (this avoids splash to the banelings to some extent) and just A moved really. The radius of their explosion combined with the Terran formation in a ball is enough for them to do fair damage to everything but especially destroy scvs, marines and hellions (never forget that hellions get really hurt by banelings, this allows your speedlings to live a lot longer).
The thors tanks and marauders that are left are all vulnerable to lings (if any are still alive) and the mutas take out the thors pretty fast once the support is gone (not to mention the thors usually take over 100 damage from various banelings due to their size). That leaves the mutas to clean up marauders and tanks.
As a side note it is well worth having extra queens both for extra in base hatches, creep spreading but especially transfusions. A 150 mineral investment gives you a free muta every minute game time or 40 seconds real time I believe (I always have one in the red to transfuse). That's a pretty good investment and allows you to come back really fast (rather than risk losing a full pack of mutas in the red to a lucky thor shot.
watched the replays, I think the most important thing that you do that hardly anyone else does is get air upgrades.
2-2 mutas are so much better than 0-0 mutas against thors.
Thors do 4 attacks per volley, that means each level of air carapace decreases Thor's attack by 4.
With just level 1 air carapace, thor do 8 damage per attack to mutas, instead of 12; this is huge. If you can stay ahead on air carapace, mutas become much better vs thors.
On August 16 2010 15:28 BlasiuS wrote: watched the replays, I think the most important thing that you do that hardly anyone else does is get air upgrades.
2-2 mutas are so much better than 0-0 mutas against thors.
Thors do 4 attacks per volley, that means each level of air carapace decreases Thor's attack by 4.
With just level 1 air carapace, thor do 8 damage per attack to mutas, instead of 12; this is huge. If you can stay ahead on air carapace, mutas become much better vs thors.
Wait... I thought it was 4x12 = 48? so If you have +1 carapace you merely decrease it to 4x11=44?
It doesn't work well in lategame vs a camping terran from personal experience. They waltz aroudn with mass Thor/Siege Tanks/Viking and it's just not possible to kill him, as backstabs aren't viable vs a large amount of turrets.
On August 16 2010 15:28 BlasiuS wrote: watched the replays, I think the most important thing that you do that hardly anyone else does is get air upgrades.
2-2 mutas are so much better than 0-0 mutas against thors.
Thors do 4 attacks per volley, that means each level of air carapace decreases Thor's attack by 4.
With just level 1 air carapace, thor do 8 damage per attack to mutas, instead of 12; this is huge. If you can stay ahead on air carapace, mutas become much better vs thors.
Wait... I thought it was 4x12 = 48? so If you have +1 carapace you merely decrease it to 4x11=44?
Maybe I'm wrong.
I'm pretty sure you're right. Each attack does 12 damage, with carapace means, it does 11 damage, so 4x11 is 44 instead of 4x12=48. But the problem is in both cases a mutalisk (125 hp) dies in 3 volleys. So the difference kicks in at +2 carapace against unupgraded Thors, where they need 4 volleys to kill a mutalisk (3 volleys doing 120 damage).
On August 16 2010 18:48 Cajun2k1 wrote: I'm pretty sure you're right. Each attack does 12 damage, with carapace means, it does 11 damage, so 4x11 is 44 instead of 4x12=48. But the problem is in both cases a mutalisk (125 hp) dies in 3 volleys. So the difference kicks in at +2 carapace against unupgraded Thors, where they need 4 volleys to kill a mutalisk (3 volleys doing 120 damage).
Mutas have 120 hp, they seem to regenerate one hp during the volley, so they still survive the 3 volleys against +2 carapace though. Another important thing with carapace upgrades is that they prevent mutas from getting killed by 2 volleys once the terran gets +2 weapons.
Muta vs thor battles are pretty interesting though. If the mutas are mismicroed they die instantly, but thors without micro are pretty bad as well since the thors seems to like to shoot at the same muta, wasting a ton of firepower if you have many thors.
On August 16 2010 15:28 BlasiuS wrote: watched the replays, I think the most important thing that you do that hardly anyone else does is get air upgrades.
2-2 mutas are so much better than 0-0 mutas against thors.
Thors do 4 attacks per volley, that means each level of air carapace decreases Thor's attack by 4.
With just level 1 air carapace, thor do 8 damage per attack to mutas, instead of 12; this is huge. If you can stay ahead on air carapace, mutas become much better vs thors.
Wait... I thought it was 4x12 = 48? so If you have +1 carapace you merely decrease it to 4x11=44?
Maybe I'm wrong.
no you're right, i fucked up my math pretty bad there :X
guess it doesn't do as much as I thought maybe you should get +1 attack first
Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like the +1 carapace helps your mutas survive better b/c it reduces splash damage as well, which isn't as much as the full 44 damage. So I feel like it's not just the simple math of mutas die to 3 hits no matter what carapace they have. Anyone know for sure?
I'm only mid plat z, but part of the reason I've gotten there is because of z v t. I look forward to it because, ATM, I don't feel that T is dealing with mass muta the best they can.
When going against mass Muta, I don't see why (more) T doesn't use ravens and point defense drone.
Missle turrets are stronger now and, while muta's can out number them, thors can do lots of damage to them. I feel that a few PDD's thrown over a mineral line or a defensive position could REALLY shut down any harass.
Lol at most T's I play responding to mutas with vikings... those get hella-pwnd
Has anyone delt with ravens thrown into the mix? I feel like that gives Terran's an even bigger edge...
I was thinking earlier, not sure if it was mentioned already, but:
Wouldn't be viable to have 1 or 2 corruptors with your mutas against thors? Thors receiving 20% more damage should just explode against a pack of mutas, right?
On August 17 2010 03:55 dantroid225 wrote: I'm only mid plat z, but part of the reason I've gotten there is because of z v t. I look forward to it because, ATM, I don't feel that T is dealing with mass muta the best they can.
When going against mass Muta, I don't see why (more) T doesn't use ravens and point defense drone.
Missle turrets are stronger now and, while muta's can out number them, thors can do lots of damage to them. I feel that a few PDD's thrown over a mineral line or a defensive position could REALLY shut down any harass.
Lol at most T's I play responding to mutas with vikings... those get hella-pwnd
Has anyone delt with ravens thrown into the mix? I feel like that gives Terran's an even bigger edge...
Mass marines, some marauders, and siege tanks against mass muta / ling / baneling / infestor. No chance.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that hunter seeker missile is the only solution once zerg hits 20+ mutas. And that's if the zerg doesn't run away... It works great in 3v3 and 4v4 games though.
PDD over mineral lines is a brilliant idea too. The only problem is the insane gas cost on ravens coupled with high energy cost of their spells. They're a pretty exclusive tech.
On August 17 2010 04:15 Jermstuddog wrote: This thread: There is no claim that mass mutas wins vs marines, but it does win vs thors so long as you start with 2x the gas invested.
If you're up against mass marines, roaches and banelings are still the way.
I play 1-1-1 vs Zerg, and typically get a Thor out after 2 hellions and my first tank. I reactor my rax early and pump marines, swapping reactor with a factory later so I can get a tech lab for infantry upgrades. If I scout spire, I add 2 rax, switch factory production to thors, get an ebay down for turrets around minerals, and add vikings with excess gas. I also take my nat if I haven't already and feel like I'm not ready to push. This is typical diamond-level play. Tell me how you will beat this once you commit to mass mutas, presuming that I don't go overboard on Thors and keep my tank / hellion count rising in case of tech switch.
On August 17 2010 03:55 dantroid225 wrote: I'm only mid plat z, but part of the reason I've gotten there is because of z v t. I look forward to it because, ATM, I don't feel that T is dealing with mass muta the best they can.
When going against mass Muta, I don't see why (more) T doesn't use ravens and point defense drone.
Missle turrets are stronger now and, while muta's can out number them, thors can do lots of damage to them. I feel that a few PDD's thrown over a mineral line or a defensive position could REALLY shut down any harass.
Lol at most T's I play responding to mutas with vikings... those get hella-pwnd
Has anyone delt with ravens thrown into the mix? I feel like that gives Terran's an even bigger edge...
Ghosts are a better option
Because of snipe? That sounds kinda situational as oppossed to ravens that are an all around support unit and can be useful for the rest of the game.
Late game v Terran, if it gets there, I usually go broodlords and Hydras (to take out vikings) and baneling support. I feel like that, TOO, could get shut down by placing PDD's and then using vikings on the Broodlords, but I never see anyone tech that way...
On August 17 2010 03:55 dantroid225 wrote: I'm only mid plat z, but part of the reason I've gotten there is because of z v t. I look forward to it because, ATM, I don't feel that T is dealing with mass muta the best they can.
When going against mass Muta, I don't see why (more) T doesn't use ravens and point defense drone.
Missle turrets are stronger now and, while muta's can out number them, thors can do lots of damage to them. I feel that a few PDD's thrown over a mineral line or a defensive position could REALLY shut down any harass.
Lol at most T's I play responding to mutas with vikings... those get hella-pwnd
Has anyone delt with ravens thrown into the mix? I feel like that gives Terran's an even bigger edge...
Ghosts are a better option
Because of snipe? That sounds kinda situational as oppossed to ravens that are an all around support unit and can be useful for the rest of the game.
Late game v Terran, if it gets there, I usually go broodlords and Hydras (to take out vikings) and baneling support. I feel like that, TOO, could get shut down by placing PDD's and then using vikings on the Broodlords, but I never see anyone tech that way...
A full-energy ghost can take out 3-4 mutas by himself with snipe and a bit of help. I don't really like building them in TvZ though, 2 vikings have the same gas cost and can double as ovie hunters once you decide to put a stop to your muta folly.
Hydra + bro lord loses to BC + viking + existing ground army (presuming we both chilled out and teched for 10 minutes). You will never actually make bro lords in a diamond 1v1 unless you have a huge macro lead and have effectively won the game already.
On August 17 2010 03:55 dantroid225 wrote: I'm only mid plat z, but part of the reason I've gotten there is because of z v t. I look forward to it because, ATM, I don't feel that T is dealing with mass muta the best they can.
When going against mass Muta, I don't see why (more) T doesn't use ravens and point defense drone.
Missle turrets are stronger now and, while muta's can out number them, thors can do lots of damage to them. I feel that a few PDD's thrown over a mineral line or a defensive position could REALLY shut down any harass.
Lol at most T's I play responding to mutas with vikings... those get hella-pwnd
Has anyone delt with ravens thrown into the mix? I feel like that gives Terran's an even bigger edge...
Ghosts are a better option
Because of snipe? That sounds kinda situational as oppossed to ravens that are an all around support unit and can be useful for the rest of the game.
Late game v Terran, if it gets there, I usually go broodlords and Hydras (to take out vikings) and baneling support. I feel like that, TOO, could get shut down by placing PDD's and then using vikings on the Broodlords, but I never see anyone tech that way...
I hope you're not seriously saying that doing damage is situational Can't possibly see how an instant-cast direct damage ability with no cooldown can ever be considered 'situational'. Snipe counters muta, broodlords, hydras, and stray infestors extremely well, and still works to a lesser degree against banelings, roaches, & corruptors.
Also ghosts can nuke and EMP infestors which are very key in ZvT from what I've seen/read/played.
The problem with ghosts is how gas heavy they are. Snipe is nice but after a certain point you just can't snipe stuff fast enough to be worth it. Plus you're VERY vulnerable to a ground attack without siege tanks.
I do agree ghosts have a role in lategame TvZ, but only as a counter to infestors with EMP, and for nuke harass.
I just watched that CheckPrime game on youtube against MakaPrime (posted above). That was some great play and really goes to show that the mobility of mutalisks can go a very long way to defeating your opponent. As a zerg player, I for one am taking note of this play. He had 40 mutalisks at one point.
On August 17 2010 04:15 Jermstuddog wrote: This thread: There is no claim that mass mutas wins vs marines, but it does win vs thors so long as you start with 2x the gas invested.
If you're up against mass marines, roaches and banelings are still the way.
I play 1-1-1 vs Zerg, and typically get a Thor out after 2 hellions and my first tank. I reactor my rax early and pump marines, swapping reactor with a factory later so I can get a tech lab for infantry upgrades. If I scout spire, I add 2 rax, switch factory production to thors, get an ebay down for turrets around minerals, and add vikings with excess gas. I also take my nat if I haven't already and feel like I'm not ready to push. This is typical diamond-level play. Tell me how you will beat this once you commit to mass mutas, presuming that I don't go overboard on Thors and keep my tank / hellion count rising in case of tech switch.
its not JUST mass muta... banelings and speedlings are in the mix as well, banelings entire point is to destroy escorting marines/helions, and if you have a small helion count he really could just use the mass ling with muta to clean up. banelings do decent against helions as well with flanks, carapace upgrade, and/or having some zerglings act as fodder first.
it takes 3? banelings to kill a helion and 8? banelings to kill a tank so its not exactly super cost efficient but splash makes it fine (as long as they can get in range). the point i'm making with this is that banelings aren't exactly useless vs mech either.
if the heavy muta he produces can force you into a defensive position then he can potentially expand heavily and acquire the mass gas that he needs to keep up production and tech as well.
so he just stand with marines near his thors, and harras is over... Dunno if it was posted in above, but you can send 1 muta a bit forward, then folowed by others, it will give u a sight of where thor shoot aswell as waste his 3 sec cooldown attack on muta.
Uhm, this works (as do many things) against Terran who aren't very good at mech, but it's pretty questionable against good mech play. All the replays I watched were just players who were too passive, turtled up while investing way too much in tanks, then helpless against mass air when all they had were a few Thors/marines. Duh? You probably could have gone fast Broodlords and won quicker. I mean really, you got away with hatch first on Steppes? Huh... Last time I saw Zerg try that on Steppes I immediately put a bunker between the bases and streamed in Marines and Reapers until GG...
In regard to the ultimate unit composition I'm also not so sure. Against anyone who scouts you're not going to make it to the critical amount of Mutas needed, which is something like 15-20 before you can even touch their army. Zerglings alone will not be able to cope with Hellions and Marines at all and while Banelings help you'll be hurting your Muta production greatly by dealing with early pushes.
That said, this would probably be pretty consistent against Platinum and under play. I wouldn't recommend going the super greedy hatch first builds and if you see them pushing you really do need to switch to something quickly, but it would work. Not sure it's innovative though. Mass air against a turtling Terran that is favoring tanks should be a nobrainer.
I came looking for this post .. except I'm terran and I'm trying to figure out how to beat it. The problem I have with it is the fact that I cant move around the map.
If the guy has mass Mutalisks, lets say 20+ I need atleast as many marines AND some thors in order to even hang with it. The problem comes in the second I try to take an expansion the mutalisks pick it off. If I move my units out to try and defend the expansion, the mutalisks hit the back of my base!!!
I'm a gold level player, so by no means an expert, but it seems that with just Mutalisks and speedlings, that Terrans can be harassed to the point of not being able to expand.
Lets say the Terran attempts to push out in order to attack an expansion, all the Zerg has to do is HIT once and run ... every time you do that a slow moving thor just about dies.
Its very frustrating, I feel like I honestly cant do anything but sit in my base and turtle while he grabs all of the expansions.
On August 19 2010 08:48 egotrip21 wrote: I came looking for this post .. except I'm terran and I'm trying to figure out how to beat it. The problem I have with it is the fact that I cant move around the map.
If the guy has mass Mutalisks, lets say 20+ I need atleast as many marines AND some thors in order to even hang with it. The problem comes in the second I try to take an expansion the mutalisks pick it off. If I move my units out to try and defend the expansion, the mutalisks hit the back of my base!!!
I'm a gold level player, so by no means an expert, but it seems that with just Mutalisks and speedlings, that Terrans can be harassed to the point of not being able to expand.
Lets say the Terran attempts to push out in order to attack an expansion, all the Zerg has to do is HIT once and run ... every time you do that a slow moving thor just about dies.
Its very frustrating, I feel like I honestly cant do anything but sit in my base and turtle while he grabs all of the expansions.
There's a lot of bad info in this thread, so be careful. The basic premise of using mutas in ZvT is that he is getting enough to be able to quickly kill 1-2 thors without taking losses. A flock of half-health mutas kills you just as fast. The solution is to anticipate it. I play 1-1-1, my factory production looks something like this:
1) 2 hellions for marine + hellion push vs FE 2) tech lab 3) 1 tank while building armory 4) 1 thor
By this point, you should know whether or not he is going mutas. The main thing you should be looking for from a scan is lack of roaches and banelings / baneling nest. Not saying that you won't see banelings eventually, but you certainly won't early on unless he is going for a baneling bust or you went 3 rax. Be wary of wily zergs starting buildings while your scan is going, it could be a fakeout.
Anyway, when I go 1-1-1, I typically get a viking from my first starport, then a medivac if there is any opportunity for thorship or siegedrops. The viking comes out before their spire so you can use it to scout their base to look for one and have enough time to respond before mutas become a problem.
I agree with whomever said Terran hasn't really found a way to deal with muta (at least in plat/low diamond ).
I like the idea of using mutalisks because yes, it forces marines. What's amazing against bio? Banelings. Muta/banelings/infestors is a great composition against terran, imo. You can buff your ground army as you see fit (and situationally) with either hydralisks or roach and neural parasite his thors- with an eventual tech to ultras and brood lords, but I think muta harass is still very strong in SC2 despite the slight nerf mutalisks have seen in the transition.
The player may get mass tanks/thors. But if you contain him to two bases while you claim the map, this will be difficult for him to do as effectively as he'd like. Bio will almost certainly be forced to a degree which is fairly readily mopped up with bling/speedling.
The only way to kill mass mutas is with a few lucky hunter seeker missiles (hope he doesn't run away). But that's a TON of gas. Works great in 3v3 and 4v4 matchups though.
I've been doing some experimentation and I'm close to perfecting a stable build order that basically insta-wins against muta openings (and possibly anything but mass roach or insane mass zergling/baneling. I think developing early timing pushes that completely prevent mass muta play is the real solution.
lol ... its so funny when zerg tries this. it's almost an insta-lose for them. At approx 6.30 min when u apparently have jack sh*t in your base terrans can push out with 3-4 preigniter hellions and about 10 marines. You lose your zerglings, you lose your queen(s) you lose most of your drones. As the terran pushes out, by the time he reaches your expo with the rines he will have an armory otw and a second factory. Switch fact with rax reactor and start getting more hellions, a couple of marines and start producing thors. Push out with 2-3 thors, 6-10ish hellions and a couple of marines and 5 scvs for repair. Get your CC going. IF zerg survives the 2nd push, which most of the time he doesnt unless he switched fast to roaches he will deff lose 90-100% of his drones and prolly his expo while u have your expo up and running. 3rd push is gg. There are "some" counters but 95% of the time this is what happens when u FE into mutas.
On August 21 2010 22:44 hecticSc wrote: lol ... its so funny when zerg tries this. it's almost an insta-lose for them. At approx 6.30 min when u apparently have jack sh*t in your base terrans can push out with 3-4 preigniter hellions and about 10 marines. You lose your zerglings, you lose your queen(s) you lose most of your drones. As the terran pushes out, by the time he reaches your expo with the rines he will have an armory otw and a second factory. Switch fact with rax reactor and start getting more hellions, a couple of marines and start producing thors. Push out with 2-3 thors, 6-10ish hellions and a couple of marines and 5 scvs for repair. Get your CC going. IF zerg survives the 2nd push, which most of the time he doesnt unless he switched fast to roaches he will deff lose 90-100% of his drones and prolly his expo while u have your expo up and running. 3rd push is gg. There are "some" counters but 95% of the time this is what happens when u FE into mutas.
That, or you get into the IEM finals. One of the two.
Finally zerg can stop crying after watching idra vs tarson lol
All it takes is a new trick new build new something instead of this stagnant whining and asking for a patch. As a terran player I fear this new muta technique which was displayed viably at the highest levels (time to think of a way to counter this instead of QQ)
This is a great thing for sc2, hopefully people will now realize that its the meta game that needs to change, not the balance. The evolution of sc2 is heading in the right direction.
On August 22 2010 02:15 metaphoR wrote: Finally zerg can stop crying after watching idra vs tarson lol
All it takes is a new trick new build new something instead of this stagnant whining and asking for a patch. As a terran player I fear this new muta technique which was displayed viably at the highest levels (time to think of a way to counter this instead of QQ)
This is a great thing for sc2, hopefully people will now realize that its the meta game that needs to change, not the balance. The evolution of sc2 is heading in the right direction.
Mass Marine does a solid job at dealing with Mutas. Stimmed Marines shred the Mutas without having to rely on splash damage, and can be replenished much faster. You just need enough of a head start to get the Reactors and researches done (read: don't tech switch into it after a Hellion-Banshee opening, a Reaper-Marauder opening works better for that).
On August 22 2010 02:15 metaphoR wrote: Finally zerg can stop crying after watching idra vs tarson lol
All it takes is a new trick new build new something instead of this stagnant whining and asking for a patch. As a terran player I fear this new muta technique which was displayed viably at the highest levels (time to think of a way to counter this instead of QQ)
This is a great thing for sc2, hopefully people will now realize that its the meta game that needs to change, not the balance. The evolution of sc2 is heading in the right direction.
Mass Marine does a solid job at dealing with Mutas. Stimmed Marines shred the Mutas without having to rely on splash damage, and can be replenished much faster. You just need enough of a head start to get the Reactors and researches done (read: don't tech switch into it after a Hellion-Banshee opening, a Reaper-Marauder opening works better for that).
Watch other replays of Dimaga or ZvT where the T goes bio to deal with mutats. What ends up happening is the zerg going ling/baneling + muta and ends up winning most of the games.
On August 22 2010 02:15 metaphoR wrote: Finally zerg can stop crying after watching idra vs tarson lol
All it takes is a new trick new build new something instead of this stagnant whining and asking for a patch. As a terran player I fear this new muta technique which was displayed viably at the highest levels (time to think of a way to counter this instead of QQ)
This is a great thing for sc2, hopefully people will now realize that its the meta game that needs to change, not the balance. The evolution of sc2 is heading in the right direction.
Mass Marine does a solid job at dealing with Mutas. Stimmed Marines shred the Mutas without having to rely on splash damage, and can be replenished much faster. You just need enough of a head start to get the Reactors and researches done (read: don't tech switch into it after a Hellion-Banshee opening, a Reaper-Marauder opening works better for that).
Watch other replays of Dimaga or ZvT where the T goes bio to deal with mutats. What ends up happening is the zerg going ling/baneling + muta and ends up winning most of the games.
I said dealing with *Mutas*. Banelings have to be dealt with another way, along with Zerglings.
On August 22 2010 02:44 REM.ca wrote: It's going to be soooo funny reading the comments about this strategy post IEM and comparing them to the comments pre-IEM.
How hillarious that Idra, of all people, would head the "Ok, maybe zerg isn't UP after all" campaign.
On August 21 2010 22:44 hecticSc wrote: lol ... its so funny when zerg tries this. it's almost an insta-lose for them. At approx 6.30 min when u apparently have jack sh*t in your base terrans can push out with 3-4 preigniter hellions and about 10 marines. You lose your zerglings, you lose your queen(s) you lose most of your drones. As the terran pushes out, by the time he reaches your expo with the rines he will have an armory otw and a second factory. Switch fact with rax reactor and start getting more hellions, a couple of marines and start producing thors. Push out with 2-3 thors, 6-10ish hellions and a couple of marines and 5 scvs for repair. Get your CC going. IF zerg survives the 2nd push, which most of the time he doesnt unless he switched fast to roaches he will deff lose 90-100% of his drones and prolly his expo while u have your expo up and running. 3rd push is gg. There are "some" counters but 95% of the time this is what happens when u FE into mutas.
That, or you get into the IEM finals. One of the two.
IdrA is The Best Zerg, and one of the best players in the SC2 community right now. With Zero mistakes and perfect scouting, and Terran being unprepared for Mass Mutas, it worked. Had Tarson had a little more time, or got a clutch scan the Muta push would've been resisted and turned away, it took another solid few minutes of continuous Muta pressure to lock the game in IdrAs favour.
What i'm saying is; It's a Very soft counter to Terran Mech, and relies mainly on Terran being unprepared and over committing to ground for it to be effective.
It is hardly a soft counter. Have fun trying to take your 3rd base or attacking Z as pure mech. In either case you will have dilute your ground with marines/ghosts, which is exactly what Z wants.
Marines are not the complete answer. Early on, if the build is some sort of reaper pressure -> bio, then yea you can probably fit a bio push against Z before Muta mass (he will be forced not to muta first). But if you do mech variant first, I think the better solution is to grab ghost. Between 6-8 ghost, off your 3 techlab rax, can keep the muta harass off your back with snipe.
The problem of course is that if Z goes roaches, you will be in trouble (needed to have pumped marauder). So there is a blindspot just as well for T's that FE.
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HSM could be useful later on though against broodlord/corruptor. You can soften them up with HSM, and then snipe/viking the rest. Otherwise, without HSM, viking vs Z air is uphill (will easily be overpowered/outproduced). Turrets are also probably pretty good, with the relevant upgrades. If you start massing up a bunch of raven late, you can probably just spam the turrets at expos vs mutas.
1. The muta vs. thor thing is great, yes, but it isn't new (courtesy of Zelniq, AFAIK).
2. The issue with ZvT isn't when the Z has 2+ bases saturated and a spire. It's dying to reapers, reapers into marauders, blue flame hellion drops, banshees, and the 8 million other openings T has to harass Z early game before the second expansion is fully up and running.
In fact, the very THREAT of reaper harass makes hatchery first builds basically impossible (given that they're auto-lose). That makes it hard to macro vs. the T early into early-mid game. After that, if you can make a meaningful transition into T2, stuff is OK.
People (Z players and T players alike) need to stop being "HURR DURR OP" bandwagon-ers and play the game. ONE pro-game/series doesn't change the verdict on balance in an entire matchup. Is the metagame evolving? Yes. Might ZvT still be slightly imbalanced (T early, Z late)? Yes. Does that matter for 99.99% of the players posting on TL? No.
On August 21 2010 22:44 hecticSc wrote: lol ... its so funny when zerg tries this. it's almost an insta-lose for them. At approx 6.30 min when u apparently have jack sh*t in your base terrans can push out with 3-4 preigniter hellions and about 10 marines. You lose your zerglings, you lose your queen(s) you lose most of your drones. As the terran pushes out, by the time he reaches your expo with the rines he will have an armory otw and a second factory. Switch fact with rax reactor and start getting more hellions, a couple of marines and start producing thors. Push out with 2-3 thors, 6-10ish hellions and a couple of marines and 5 scvs for repair. Get your CC going. IF zerg survives the 2nd push, which most of the time he doesnt unless he switched fast to roaches he will deff lose 90-100% of his drones and prolly his expo while u have your expo up and running. 3rd push is gg. There are "some" counters but 95% of the time this is what happens when u FE into mutas.
That, or you get into the IEM finals. One of the two.
IdrA is The Best Zerg, and one of the best players in the SC2 community right now. With Zero mistakes and perfect scouting, and Terran being unprepared for Mass Mutas, it worked. Had Tarson had a little more time, or got a clutch scan the Muta push would've been resisted and turned away, it took another solid few minutes of continuous Muta pressure to lock the game in IdrAs favour.
What i'm saying is; It's a Very soft counter to Terran Mech, and relies mainly on Terran being unprepared and over committing to ground for it to be effective.
rofl what ? unprepared ?? He already had a thor almost completed when the first mutas did pop out, and after getting his expo he had like 3 factories pumping thors and 1 hellions (with some hellions in between), don't talk crap when you obviously didn't even see the game. He was as prepared against this muta / ling as it gets, but even with those 5 or 6 thors he got completely raped by the mutas alone, and couldn't replenish fast enough because you know what, thors are expensive and long to produce.
Really hate when people talk about things they obviously didn't even look at
Also, to clarify things, I'm not saying hey look at this game, mutas are imbalanced against Terran, Idra was simply better than Tarson that game, I'm just saying all this zerg cryfest bandwagon have to stop after all those actual demonstrations that it's just bullshit. I've always been thinking TvZ is a balanced matchup and the most enjoyable to play/watch, and reasons to confort my opinion don't cease to appear.
PS : It has been a fucking long time I've told zergs I know who complain about this matchup mutas are very good, seems I was right
i like really eary mutas off 2 base and force the T into thors and marines. Then i poop creep somewhere not likley to be scouted and lay down roach W and steam roll with 2 base macro
The biggest issue with Zerg is early game. Once you have 2-3 bases, you can replenish drones very rapidly, so even if a Terran successfully roasts an entire base's worth of drones with blue flame hellions, you're not as SOL as the other races are when that happens. The problem is getting there.
I think bigger maps would make this match-up pretty balanced if not in favor of Zerg. I mean, Terran really has no way to defend a huge area with mech and Fungal Growth + Banelings are just so, so powerful against maneuverable bio mixes. And giving Zerg that extra breathing space would significantly lessen the power of early game pressure by Terran.
On August 21 2010 22:44 hecticSc wrote: lol ... its so funny when zerg tries this. it's almost an insta-lose for them. At approx 6.30 min when u apparently have jack sh*t in your base terrans can push out with 3-4 preigniter hellions and about 10 marines. You lose your zerglings, you lose your queen(s) you lose most of your drones. As the terran pushes out, by the time he reaches your expo with the rines he will have an armory otw and a second factory. Switch fact with rax reactor and start getting more hellions, a couple of marines and start producing thors. Push out with 2-3 thors, 6-10ish hellions and a couple of marines and 5 scvs for repair. Get your CC going. IF zerg survives the 2nd push, which most of the time he doesnt unless he switched fast to roaches he will deff lose 90-100% of his drones and prolly his expo while u have your expo up and running. 3rd push is gg. There are "some" counters but 95% of the time this is what happens when u FE into mutas.
That, or you get into the IEM finals. One of the two.
IdrA is The Best Zerg, and one of the best players in the SC2 community right now. With Zero mistakes and perfect scouting, and Terran being unprepared for Mass Mutas, it worked. Had Tarson had a little more time, or got a clutch scan the Muta push would've been resisted and turned away, it took another solid few minutes of continuous Muta pressure to lock the game in IdrAs favour.
What i'm saying is; It's a Very soft counter to Terran Mech, and relies mainly on Terran being unprepared and over committing to ground for it to be effective.
What could have Tarson done in that game when you mean unprepared? Idra was going to take the whole map if he didn't push and he would of been repelled if he took a third. Plus broodlords were coming.
On August 21 2010 22:44 hecticSc wrote: lol ... its so funny when zerg tries this. it's almost an insta-lose for them. At approx 6.30 min when u apparently have jack sh*t in your base terrans can push out with 3-4 preigniter hellions and about 10 marines. You lose your zerglings, you lose your queen(s) you lose most of your drones. As the terran pushes out, by the time he reaches your expo with the rines he will have an armory otw and a second factory. Switch fact with rax reactor and start getting more hellions, a couple of marines and start producing thors. Push out with 2-3 thors, 6-10ish hellions and a couple of marines and 5 scvs for repair. Get your CC going. IF zerg survives the 2nd push, which most of the time he doesnt unless he switched fast to roaches he will deff lose 90-100% of his drones and prolly his expo while u have your expo up and running. 3rd push is gg. There are "some" counters but 95% of the time this is what happens when u FE into mutas.
That, or you get into the IEM finals. One of the two.
IdrA is The Best Zerg, and one of the best players in the SC2 community right now. With Zero mistakes and perfect scouting, and Terran being unprepared for Mass Mutas, it worked. Had Tarson had a little more time, or got a clutch scan the Muta push would've been resisted and turned away, it took another solid few minutes of continuous Muta pressure to lock the game in IdrAs favour.
What i'm saying is; It's a Very soft counter to Terran Mech, and relies mainly on Terran being unprepared and over committing to ground for it to be effective.
What could have Tarson done in that game when you mean unprepared? Idra was going to take the whole map if he didn't push and he would of been repelled if he took a third. Plus broodlords were coming.
He could've scouted that there was ONLY mutas and made marines with combat shield and stim instead of those ~20 hellions. Up the marine count a bit and make less hellions. I mean Idra didn't even have a baneling nest down in that game. Mass mutas can be good but it was especially good that game since only 1/3 of Tarson's army was able to attack Idra's army.
Sure Idra could've had baneling support but morphing a lot of banelings takes gas and that means less mutas. At the end it was something like ~3500/3500 army from Idra vs. Tarson's ~1500/1500 Thors (one of which was out of range anyway).
Not to take anything away from this strategy but I wouldn't use that game as a good reference point.
On August 21 2010 22:44 hecticSc wrote: lol ... its so funny when zerg tries this. it's almost an insta-lose for them. At approx 6.30 min when u apparently have jack sh*t in your base terrans can push out with 3-4 preigniter hellions and about 10 marines. You lose your zerglings, you lose your queen(s) you lose most of your drones. As the terran pushes out, by the time he reaches your expo with the rines he will have an armory otw and a second factory. Switch fact with rax reactor and start getting more hellions, a couple of marines and start producing thors. Push out with 2-3 thors, 6-10ish hellions and a couple of marines and 5 scvs for repair. Get your CC going. IF zerg survives the 2nd push, which most of the time he doesnt unless he switched fast to roaches he will deff lose 90-100% of his drones and prolly his expo while u have your expo up and running. 3rd push is gg. There are "some" counters but 95% of the time this is what happens when u FE into mutas.
That, or you get into the IEM finals. One of the two.
IdrA is The Best Zerg, and one of the best players in the SC2 community right now. With Zero mistakes and perfect scouting, and Terran being unprepared for Mass Mutas, it worked. Had Tarson had a little more time, or got a clutch scan the Muta push would've been resisted and turned away, it took another solid few minutes of continuous Muta pressure to lock the game in IdrAs favour.
What i'm saying is; It's a Very soft counter to Terran Mech, and relies mainly on Terran being unprepared and over committing to ground for it to be effective.
What could have Tarson done in that game when you mean unprepared? Idra was going to take the whole map if he didn't push and he would of been repelled if he took a third. Plus broodlords were coming.
He could've scouted that there was ONLY mutas and made marines with combat shield and stim instead of those ~20 hellions. Up the marine count a bit and make less hellions. I mean Idra didn't even have a baneling nest down in that game. Mass mutas can be good but it was especially good that game since only 1/3 of Tarson's army was able to attack Idra's army.
Sure Idra could've had baneling support but morphing a lot of banelings takes gas and that means less mutas. At the end it was something like ~3500/3500 army from Idra vs. Tarson's ~1500/1500 Thors (one of which was out of range anyway).
Not to take anything away from this strategy but I wouldn't use that game as a good reference point.
You do not make a valid point, It is pretty clear that mech terran rapes mutas before this game from the previous IEM games. Lets assume Idra sees more marines instead of hellions and put up a baneling nest. Now 4 banelings will take away one 1 muta in gas cost so lets say Idra makes 16 banelings. Thats 4 less mutas (Lets say 8 less just for this dicussion) Idra had 32 mutas in that game so lets say he had 24 to begin the battle, he lost 4 in the actually game so lets say he lost 10 fighting the marine/thor mix since with Idra's flanking skill that would have annihilated the marine count. Idra would of still came out ahead.
On August 21 2010 22:44 hecticSc wrote: lol ... its so funny when zerg tries this. it's almost an insta-lose for them. At approx 6.30 min when u apparently have jack sh*t in your base terrans can push out with 3-4 preigniter hellions and about 10 marines. You lose your zerglings, you lose your queen(s) you lose most of your drones. As the terran pushes out, by the time he reaches your expo with the rines he will have an armory otw and a second factory. Switch fact with rax reactor and start getting more hellions, a couple of marines and start producing thors. Push out with 2-3 thors, 6-10ish hellions and a couple of marines and 5 scvs for repair. Get your CC going. IF zerg survives the 2nd push, which most of the time he doesnt unless he switched fast to roaches he will deff lose 90-100% of his drones and prolly his expo while u have your expo up and running. 3rd push is gg. There are "some" counters but 95% of the time this is what happens when u FE into mutas.
That, or you get into the IEM finals. One of the two.
IdrA is The Best Zerg, and one of the best players in the SC2 community right now. With Zero mistakes and perfect scouting, and Terran being unprepared for Mass Mutas, it worked. Had Tarson had a little more time, or got a clutch scan the Muta push would've been resisted and turned away, it took another solid few minutes of continuous Muta pressure to lock the game in IdrAs favour.
What i'm saying is; It's a Very soft counter to Terran Mech, and relies mainly on Terran being unprepared and over committing to ground for it to be effective.
What could have Tarson done in that game when you mean unprepared? Idra was going to take the whole map if he didn't push and he would of been repelled if he took a third. Plus broodlords were coming.
He could've scouted that there was ONLY mutas and made marines with combat shield and stim instead of those ~20 hellions. Up the marine count a bit and make less hellions. I mean Idra didn't even have a baneling nest down in that game. Mass mutas can be good but it was especially good that game since only 1/3 of Tarson's army was able to attack Idra's army.
Sure Idra could've had baneling support but morphing a lot of banelings takes gas and that means less mutas. At the end it was something like ~3500/3500 army from Idra vs. Tarson's ~1500/1500 Thors (one of which was out of range anyway).
Not to take anything away from this strategy but I wouldn't use that game as a good reference point.
You do not make a valid point, It is pretty clear that mech terran rapes mutas before this game from the previous IEM games. Lets assume Idra sees more marines instead of hellions and put up a baneling nest. Now 4 banelings will take away one 1 muta in gas cost so lets say Idra makes 16 banelings. Thats 4 less mutas (Lets say 8 less just for this dicussion) Idra had 32 mutas in that game so lets say he had 24 to begin the battle, he lost 4 in the actually game so lets say he lost 10 fighting the marine/thor mix since with Idra's flanking skill that would have annihilated the marine count. Idra would of still came out ahead.
Yup and Tarson had 5 tanks that would've done well against the banelings. I'm not arguing Idra shouldn't / wouldn't have won the game - all I'm saying is Tarson's unit composition was very far from optimal. He even had 5 marauders in the mix for whatever reason.
You asked "What could have Tarson done in that game when you mean unprepared?" and I gave you an answer. He could've done better scouting and have better gamesense instead of building units according to what he assumed Idra would build.
Mass mutas is a really valid strategy but I wouldn't take much away from that game.
Mass Marines+ few thors> mutas. Tanks>bling/sling. All he needed was less helions, less thors, more tanks and marines with stim/combatshield to win. Mutas cant engage since under a ball of marines they die instant so Z is forced to try and do a good fungle+baneling attack on marines which is easily stopped by tanks/helions.
On August 22 2010 10:58 ruiyang wrote: Mass Marines+ few thors> mutas. Tanks>bling/sling. All he needed was less helions, less thors, more tanks and marines with stim/combatshield to win. Mutas cant engage since under a ball of marines they die instant so Z is forced to try and do a good fungle+baneling attack on marines which is easily stopped by tanks/helions.
That must be why DeMusliM and MorroW both had to resort to reaper cheese to stop DIMAGA and IdrA (DeMusliM failing, MorroW 1-0 so far on the "usage of imba units to win" count).
On August 22 2010 10:58 ruiyang wrote: Mass Marines+ few thors> mutas. Tanks>bling/sling. All he needed was less helions, less thors, more tanks and marines with stim/combatshield to win. Mutas cant engage since under a ball of marines they die instant so Z is forced to try and do a good fungle+baneling attack on marines which is easily stopped by tanks/helions.
That must be why DeMusliM and MorroW both had to resort to reaper cheese to stop DIMAGA and IdrA (DeMusliM failing, MorroW 1-0 so far on the "usage of imba units to win" count).
"easily stopped", spare me.
Reaper rush is generally to avoid Z in going fast expand. I don't know if u ever played zerg, but bio/mech is always better than pure pech in TvZ. As a Z its impossible to deal with it only using mutas. U need blings with infestors which will cut mutas heavily and they still fail against sieged up tanks. I'm just saying that mass muta won't work against a prepared terran and not one that expects that 6 thors beats 30 mutas with 0 other unit support. There's a reason why Z top players call OPand thats cus terran can answer ANYTHING zerg can throw at them if well prepared. And no, I'm not a low diamond.
What i dont get is, most zerg go for mutas for the early gare harass and mapcontrol. But i dont get why most zergs chose to transition into ultras after, it just doesnt make any sense to me.
Vikings do bonus damage vs heavy, mutas own vikings. If you already have aircontrol with 20+ mutas and you are teching lair to make gass intensive units - why not just make it broodlords and corrupters. You don't have to deal with siegetanks, thors dont do bonus damage to heavy units, you outrange turrets/bunkers, planetary fortress doesnt hit air, marauders cant shoot you obviously etc etc.
Just seems like the more natural transition when you already have aircontrol, and you dont have to deal with the bioball/mech because only two of their usual units can actually shoot air. Your also a threat to turtling terrans that bunker up expos with PF and wait for you to suicide units. The only thing he can really do is basetrade...or watch as you chip away his army/base. Zerg air is really really strong, terran ground is really really strong - isnt it logical?
On August 22 2010 10:58 ruiyang wrote: Mass Marines+ few thors> mutas. Tanks>bling/sling. All he needed was less helions, less thors, more tanks and marines with stim/combatshield to win. Mutas cant engage since under a ball of marines they die instant so Z is forced to try and do a good fungle+baneling attack on marines which is easily stopped by tanks/helions.
That must be why DeMusliM and MorroW both had to resort to reaper cheese to stop DIMAGA and IdrA (DeMusliM failing, MorroW 1-0 so far on the "usage of imba units to win" count).
On August 22 2010 10:58 ruiyang wrote: Mass Marines+ few thors> mutas. Tanks>bling/sling. All he needed was less helions, less thors, more tanks and marines with stim/combatshield to win. Mutas cant engage since under a ball of marines they die instant so Z is forced to try and do a good fungle+baneling attack on marines which is easily stopped by tanks/helions.
That must be why DeMusliM and MorroW both had to resort to reaper cheese to stop DIMAGA and IdrA (DeMusliM failing, MorroW 1-0 so far on the "usage of imba units to win" count).
"easily stopped", spare me.
Reaper rush is generally to avoid Z in going fast expand. I don't know if u ever played zerg, but bio/mech is always better than pure pech in TvZ. As a Z its impossible to deal with it only using mutas. U need blings with infestors which will cut mutas heavily and they still fail against sieged up tanks. I'm just saying that mass muta won't work against a prepared terran and not one that expects that 6 thors beats 30 mutas with 0 other unit support. There's a reason why Z top players call OPand thats cus terran can answer ANYTHING zerg can throw at them if well prepared. And no, I'm not a low diamond.
If you watch IEM games you would know that siege tanks only won 1 game out of 4 or 5 games vs ling/bling/muta composition (Should be the one where Sarens or Demuslim had perfect tank positioning). Obviously you won't go pure muta if the terran is going bio/mech thats just a no brainer to get blings .Also I am a zerg player so theres no bias here....
EPT
I was hoping people would actually try it out first before passing judgement. I gave it to a couple friends who immediately had a lot of success with it as well when they had been having trouble with ZvT also.![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-138758.jpg)
. 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.![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-138983.jpg)
Can't possibly see how an instant-cast direct damage ability with no cooldown can ever be considered 'situational'. Snipe counters muta, broodlords, hydras, and stray infestors extremely well, and still works to a lesser degree against banelings, roaches, & corruptors.
