I recently played a ZvT match, which I obviously lost Afterwards, when I was watching the replay, I couldn't really make out a weakness in my opponent's build or a point in the match where i could have crushed him. Maybe it's just me being not-that-pro but I would really like to hear some opinions about that. I think if executed properly it can be very difficult to play against such a build. I will include the replay of the match I'm talking about in this thread and hope to get some feedback on what could have been better and where I could have pushed!
Use mutas to keep him on the defense until he has enough turrets to defend. Hopefully you can expand and get a much better economy in the mean time. When you pulls out if there is no hellions you can just use massive armies of zerglings to wear him down. At 20 zerglings for the cost of a Thor you should be able to win if you keep your macro up. If he gets hellions or if you want to be extra safe you can build roaches too but they're much harder to keep up with supply.
yea true..but I tried that..i let him see a few mutas which made him throw down a lot of turrets. My problem was that he just moved on with his whole army every time he took an expansion and due to the turrets i could not crush his main...i'm not sure if mass lings would have done any change because he had something around 10 siege tanks at the end...was just a difficult situation
Yeah I see that would take good micro to get a good sorround to properly defeat his army. Maybe borrowed roaches would fair better in this circumstance and then bring in the zerglings as they unborrow and attack.
I recently switched from protoss to terran and I constantly go tank/thor v Zerg. My play has gone from about a 600 diamond level toss to 1800 level terran play (judging this based on the people I'm able to consistently beat in in-house play). I find that if my opponent goes any kind of muta build it's an instant win for me because I just push and win. Doesn't matter that I lost all my SCVs I have MULEs.
What seems to work well for the zerg who face me is to expand twice asap and mass roaches and banelings while teching to greater spire or ultras (if ultras get drop tech so the ultras can be dropped straight into the mech ball). The zergs I play with complain that it's too hard to tell whether I'm going mech or bio and to this I say SACRIFICE SOME DAMN OVERLORDS/OVERSEERS. Changelings work occasionally too, but I'm pretty good at spotting them, so sac some overlords to see what tech im going.
I'll try to play some matches vZ tonight and upload the reps, but scouting seems to be the answer for terran mech imo
Mass lings and ultras should take it down. If not, maybe try and micro with infestors, but you'll need something to tank the damage as you get close. There's a game by LiquidRet that has this type of micro.
Against mech you can go muta/ling (use "magic box") or roach infestor (use nural parasite on thors). Bouth of the options beat mech outright, as long as you do it right, thats why mech play is non existant @ pro lvl TvZ
On November 18 2010 04:26 DoomsVille wrote: Dependingon the number of thors, magic boxed mutas are extremely effective.
It doesn't matter how many mutas survive, as long as all the thors die, even 1 muta alive wins the rest of the battle.
If you have roughly 5-6 mutas per thor, you're good to go.
That's 10 supply of mutas for every 6 supply of thors, assuming they don't cap. But yea I like this because mutas also do splash and take care of scvs.
I've seen lings and ultras take down almost everything in custom maps, and ultras have the same supply as thors. So not realistic in actual gameplay for ling/ultra?
On November 18 2010 04:23 Risen wrote: SACRIFICE SOME DAMN OVERLORDS/OVERSEERS.
I knew all the time which build order he chose..my problem was that i didn't know how to prevent his bo and counter it.
On November 18 2010 04:23 Risen wrote: I'll try to play some matches vZ tonight and upload the reps, but scouting seems to be the answer for terran mech imo
I'd be glad to see a replay which shows such a situation! thx a lot for that!
On November 18 2010 04:23 Risen wrote: I'll try to play some matches vZ tonight and upload the reps, but scouting seems to be the answer for terran mech imo
I'd be glad to see a replay which shows such a situation! thx a lot for that!
the key weakness of terran mech is mobility. u should have mutas constantly putting threat on him, so he is scared to move out/secure new expansions and has to spend lots of resources on turrets before being able to move out.
then u should know when he moves out and prepare ur forces to flank him and ideally catch him unsieged.
that's right indeed! guess that could have worked out quite well in that match. Next time I encounter such a build I try to contain him in his base. hopefully that's the ticket
I'm in the same situation as you I hate playing against thor tank. The way i handle it now is I mass expand and keep his tank numbers low by running in with lings/mutas and sacrificing them. Also overseers help tons when you contaminate their factories. So I guess my strategy is avoid being in a position where he has enough tanks. then of course lings/hydras destroy thors. |use infestors if he has rine support (or banelings its personal preference really)
Just watched your replay. I'm a ~1500 diamond Terran and ~1000 diamond Zerg, so I've played that build and played against it more than a few times.
In that game, you could have easily beat him had you had the proper tech and scouting. That was your biggest weakness. You didn't scout his base. At all. EVER. Near the very end of the game you tried a poke with 3-0 mutas, but it was far too late. As soon as he saw you make 5 mutas, he blew SO much money on turrets.
Also, you didn't spend any of your money. When his final doom push came, you had ~3k minerals and ~1500 gas. If the game hits 28 minutes and you're not on hive tech, you're pretty screwed, since if you try to use hatch tech units (you went roach ling) against a critical mass of tanks, its gg.
Containing him in his base doesn't have anything to do with it. The key is using your race's strengths. You play Zerg. They're an expanding/teching race. He played so passively the entire game (I think he left his base only for his doom push), that you definitely could have taken every base on your half of the map, made hive tech, and had 10+ ultras or brood lords when his push hit. Sure, contain him with mutas in the early game, but your mutas were so late that by the time you attempted to pin him in his main, it didn't matter.
Brood lords are very underused, and against anything with tanks in it, they are very good. Have you heard of zealot bombs in Brood War? Broodlings do a very similar thing. They attack the Thors and his tanks shoot at them, thus doing massive splash to his army. I go mass Roach/Brood Lord against Tank/Thor. As long as you scout and take as many bases as possible, you are pretty much guaranteed victory if Terran plays that passive.
I can't watch the replay at the moment, but the basics shouldn't change too much.
Mech has very limited mobility. This makes it difficult to secure expansions with Mech, and also makes it more challenging to stop expansions by your opponents.
Mech also happens to be very good cost-for-cost, and pushes VERY hard. If you let a Mech player push with a maxed army and you didn't out-macro them, you're probably in pretty rough shape - your army (most likely) won't be able to stop their push, and at that point they're free to start tearing into you. It's not a guaranteed loss, but it's a bad place to be.
First, expand. Take as many bases as you can, so that you can support as much production as possible.
Second, harass. Mech is going to have all kinds of trouble defending any kind of spread out position. It doesn't matter if he's moving his whole army, if he's spread out, you can get in SOMEWHERE - if he pushes for a third, send Mutas at his main. If he turrets up, he's spending a bunch of resources (which is great), but it also doesn't prevent you from, say, running a bunch of Speedlings into his main. If he moves his army back to stop you, hit him somewhere else. The more damage you can do, the longer it's going to take him to build up, which is great for you.
Third, don't be afraid to trade units with a Mech player. He should have less of a capacity to re-produce those units than you do, plus he's looking for critical mass. If you can trim him down a little and come out close to even, it's a win for you.
Fourth, don't forget about tech. If you're taking the map, shutting down expos, harassing your opponent's mineral lines/picking off depots/etc, and keeping his death-ball from getting too big whenever he exposes it, he's almost forced to turtle. If that's the case, you're going to have more of an opportunity (and need!) to tech: anything below T3 just isn't ideal for busting a turtling opponent. It just so happens that T3 units work pretty well against Mech as well, so there's little reason not to get them. Also, don't skimp on your upgrades! Your opponent probably won't be, and they make a big difference, especially in the late game.
Finally, don't get over-eager. If you've got a macro advantage and are teching and upgrading, time is on your side. Don't feel like you need to suicide your entire flock of Mutas to kill off turrets at his base so you can do some damage. Mech play is focused on winning with strong pushing. If at any point you lose a bunch of your army for no reason, your opponent has an opportunity to GG you right there. Your goal is to prevent him from being able to kill you with an all-out push. If you can do that, you've won, it's only a matter of time.
Thanks a lot Boundless & Dominator1370! Very helpful comments! I'll try to expand more and more quickly. Early expanding and harassing is just a big issue to me because I'm most of the time not entirely sure when to do so. Guess I just need to practice scouting and reacting more... Anyways thanks a lot to all you guys!
mass mutas are great agains this build, i was using it for a few games and it worked decently however next time he just went mass mutas and zerglings, while i had like 8 thors with +2 attack it still lost badly to mutas.
Obviously scouting zerg army composition is really important because i had like 10 tanks who did nothing plus some helions
From then on i always build marines no matter what, as its only real counter to mutas
Are there any replays with muta/ling or broodlords against terran mech? I've seen mutas completely murder battlecruisers, but i'm not sure if yamato has AoE like the thor.
From experience, I've only seen ultra/ling or infestor doing well against terran mech.
On November 18 2010 04:23 Risen wrote: I recently switched from protoss to terran and I constantly go tank/thor v Zerg. My play has gone from about a 600 diamond level toss to 1800 level terran play (judging this based on the people I'm able to consistently beat in in-house play). I find that if my opponent goes any kind of muta build it's an instant win for me because I just push and win. Doesn't matter that I lost all my SCVs I have MULEs.
What seems to work well for the zerg who face me is to expand twice asap and mass roaches and banelings while teching to greater spire or ultras (if ultras get drop tech so the ultras can be dropped straight into the mech ball). The zergs I play with complain that it's too hard to tell whether I'm going mech or bio and to this I say SACRIFICE SOME DAMN OVERLORDS/OVERSEERS. Changelings work occasionally too, but I'm pretty good at spotting them, so sac some overlords to see what tech im going.
I'll try to play some matches vZ tonight and upload the reps, but scouting seems to be the answer for terran mech imo
I still think muta ling could hold this off until very end game. Siege tanks are terrible against zerglings until a very high critical mass and thors aren't great either.
Your only defense against mutas would be mass thors, but that would cut down on your tank count significantly which you would need to stop mass lings from absolutely ruining you. From my experience, mass thors will lose to mass muta if you let the zerg player macro up very much and he magic boxes.
I find scouting this build early on and applying lots of pressure works quite well. This builds only good once they get a large deathball, until then they can't move out. Harassment works great as well, but that only works until they get enough thors.
On November 18 2010 04:23 Risen wrote: I recently switched from protoss to terran and I constantly go tank/thor v Zerg. My play has gone from about a 600 diamond level toss to 1800 level terran play (judging this based on the people I'm able to consistently beat in in-house play). I find that if my opponent goes any kind of muta build it's an instant win for me because I just push and win. Doesn't matter that I lost all my SCVs I have MULEs.
What seems to work well for the zerg who face me is to expand twice asap and mass roaches and banelings while teching to greater spire or ultras (if ultras get drop tech so the ultras can be dropped straight into the mech ball). The zergs I play with complain that it's too hard to tell whether I'm going mech or bio and to this I say SACRIFICE SOME DAMN OVERLORDS/OVERSEERS. Changelings work occasionally too, but I'm pretty good at spotting them, so sac some overlords to see what tech im going.
I'll try to play some matches vZ tonight and upload the reps, but scouting seems to be the answer for terran mech imo
I still think muta ling could hold this off until very end game. Siege tanks are terrible against zerglings until a very high critical mass and thors aren't great either.
Your only defense against mutas would be mass thors, but that would cut down on your tank count significantly which you would need to stop mass lings from absolutely ruining you. From my experience, mass thors will lose to mass muta if you let the zerg player macro up very much and he magic boxes.
How do you stop muta ling with that build?
Wait hold on... my question is how do you magic box with mass mutas. I think mass mutas can't take mass thors, but if the opponent spent minerals on turrets and tanks, he wouldn't have the critical mass of thors. I really think some replays would help...i've never seen a match where mutas beated mass thors and i always go muta/ling.
Stats-wise a fully upgraded thor does 27 damage with splash to mutas. They have range of 10 vs mutas' range of 3. Thors also can have up to armor 4.
Essentially, if you select a group of Mutalisks (note: this stops working so well around 36 Mutalisks - split them into multiple groups if you get that many) and then click in the center of it, they will naturally all fly to that point, then spread out far enough that Thor splash should only hit 1 Mutalisk at a time, assuming they don't group up again. To ensure this, once they're spread out, move (not attack move, and don't click in the center of your group or they'll try to re-cluster) your group of Mutas directly over the the Thors and stop them there (you can use stop or hold position as you prefer). They'll fire down on the Thors, and the Thors will have to single-target them down. Note that his Thors can still kill your Mutas pretty effectively, but it's not an out-and-out slaughter the moment Thors step on the field.
Also remember, your Mutas aren't alone. If your opponent, say, has more Thors than tanks, you can engage first with your ground troops, then fly your Mutas in once the ground army engages. If your opponent has more tanks/Hellions than Thors, you can lead with the Mutas. Either way, your mobility and air/ground mix lets you engage on favorable terms to exploit any lack of anti-air or anti-ground.
As a side note, you're absolutely right that at some point, you're probably better off with T3 units, which is (ironically) what makes Muta/ling so good: you force him to get a bunch of anti-air to deal with the Mutas while teching up to Hive and getting 3/3 melee/carapace for your Zerglings, then you tech-shift to 3/5 Ultras with 3/3 Cracklings. If at any point you need anti-air again, your Spire is still there - you're only a production cycle away. Realistically, though, you're ground-pushing so hard at this point that any air-play is an all-in attempt at a base-trade which probably won't work.
Thats the beauty of Mutaling. You have the timing window where your harassment and mobility can keep him in his base, and that's exactly the window where you have to take the map and beat him to T3 tech.
The nice thing about Tank/Thor is that both of those units are relatively high up the tech tree, so there's not really a "big scary unit" (as day9 says) that Terran is rushing up to from there. Mutaling gives you mobility, lots of bases, and from there you can get your big scary units - Ultras and Cracklings.
If he pushes out solidly with thors I would go ling, funny thing happened to me when vs my mate,If u get a good surround on each though and the opposition is busy clicking somewhere else the thors won't focus fire and keep spinning around making look like they are break dancing haha. But if the player is focused I would back it up with muta (magic box) or if u have some infesters close by mind control so they don't attack n keep them still and kill them
I like the idea of Broodlords someone mentioned earlier, but only get a few as they are expensive and they are there to have broodlings cause tank splash damage to the Terran's own units.
Expand expand expand, Terran mech takes forever to replace so keep his army count low with muta harass and speedling ambush on unguarded bases or flank reinforcements.
You can deal with Mech play in so many different was, either directly with Roach Infestor (There's others that work, but it'd take a long time to list off and my wrist hurts, so yeah lol) like we saw Ret do, or indirectly with Speedling/Muta (lots of counterattacks, pick off thors and tanks that are all alone etc.).
The most fun for me is to just do lots of counterattacks, if you see them pushing out to secure an expansion, attack where they just moved out from with speedlings, then when they move back to defend just run. The immobility of Mech is in my opinion the biggest weakness. That and if you catch the tanks out of siege.
Ok so I'm a super low level Zerg player trying to claw my way up and seem to be having the same issues. I can deal with the cheesy stuff (bunker rushes and the like), but it's this normal play that gives me the most problems (Tanks especially, and the occasional Thor). Especially the Early/Midgame 4-6 Tanks (w/SiegTech) plus MMball.
I usually use Speedling/Roach tech to Spire, Muta, die technique.
I am thinking that Infestors may be a huge help, but whenever I try to use them I just plain die. They all get picked off way before they help me out. I don't really know the best way to utilize them. Do I fungal? Grab some tanks with Neural? And what's the best positioning for the infestors? Or am I even on the right path here?
Mass roaches shits on mech really, really hard. You just abuse the fact that the Terran HAS to be sieged up to be able to kill your forces. This means that you can either attack his base before he reaches your base by baiting siege mode, or attack him when he's not sieged up (using ovies/creep for sight).
I wasnt able to see the replay cus of some error , and i didnt start playing the game until about november 30th so im not sure if this option was around then but .... One broodlord beats one thor , also if they are going a thor/ tank build then when the tanks kill the broodlings they will splash dmg onto the thor * i think*.
Now , one might ask why not just use lings to get the tanks to splash on the thors.
Oh this is actually pretty simple. Go standard and get a relatively fast third while harrading with mutas. Remember, you dont have to kill 100204728 scvs with your mutas. The longer u delay the death mech ball from pushing, the better. Transition into mass ground units. Like mass. Like day9 would say, just have more shit than the terran. So roaches and lings mainly. If u can magic box mutas, they are extremely effective verse small numbers of thors. So if that terran is like hurhur im so cool i can defend each base with one thor u can punish him pretty badly. Also, remember, mech is extremely immobile. This means u can mass expand, drop, and nydus pretty effectively. You also may need an in base hatch because ur producing a lot of units that cost larva. Oh yes, and dont forget upgrades.
stupid comp . anyways Now one might ask why not just use zerglings to get the tanks to splash on the thors , and that is lings can be attacked throughout their journery of where they are coming from and where they are going , where as broodlings can only be attacked at their destination. Plus with zerg stomp * Thors and hellions* ** that can be counted by broodlords and ultras** hellions crush zerglings. hellions also crush broodlings but yet again any type of splash dmg used to kill the broodlings will also affect whatever the broodlings are attacking.
Seeing that One broodlord beats one thor and tanks cant attack air , you would be crushing that combo with one unit. So you would be able to adopt an offensive unit to your army that could be chosen based on what else your opponent has.
Lastly to get broodlords you need to have a spire , which means you can harass your opponent with them and make him/her build missile turrets and then have your broodlords come in and destroy the turrets because broodlords outrange them.
EPT
plus some helions 
