EPTLately zerg has been struggling left right and center against both the hideous Terrans and the evil Protosses. Cries of imbalance amongst even zerg's greatest warriors creates fear in the hearts of the swarm. One of the many strategies that disheartens my fellow zergs is the new standard terran playstyle in TvZ, specifically the marine/tank composition, with or without thor support. While I believe that there are imbalances to be addressed within the game, the marine/tank composition, in my opinion, is probably not one of them, at least not to the extent that it is unplayable to go up against. As a top 100 SEA player (Sunrise #354) whose only proficient matchup is ZvT, I want to write this guide in the hope that the table may once again be turned in starcraft's most beautiful matchup.
Credentials* To be honest, if you want to see credential by rating, I would have little. SEA server's top 100 is a joke compared to NA. But I will tell you that I climbed to my position relying essentially on a single matchup, Zerg vs Terran. My understanding of ZvZ and ZvP is only passable, but when it comes to ZvT I am very confident.
Overview:
This article will be focused primarily on how to deal with a terran army consisting of marines/tanks with maybe thors and sometimes marauders. It will not discuss openings and specific build orders as such, as that will depend on your opponent's openings and early harass plans.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/9LhpU.jpg)
The marine tank combo is a simple, easy to macro, yet extremely cost-efficient strategy from the terran's point of view. The idea is to siege up at the desirable battlefield (probably outside zerg's natural), poke in with mobile infantry to do damage, and then run back to artillery support when the zerg responds. A good terran will spread out his tanks, micro his marines carefully against banelings and prevent surrounds at all costs. Marines have incredible dps when stimmed, and on mass will rip through a mineral line if given even a few seconds. Marines supported by medivacs can only be countered by banelings, which is in turn countered by terran's tanks. This playstyle is very mobile, can support heavy dropship play, and at the same time packs a punch when the terran decides to push. This army can also be macroed up very quickly, and, before zerg hit that critical hatchery count, created almost as fast as a zerg army. This all leads to very heavy pressure on the zerg. The weakness of this army is that it is actually very fragile, and therefore is vulnerable to units that can deal aoe damage quickly.
The Counterpart: Ling/Bling/Mutalisk
Carefully played ling/bling/muta is the proper response to marine/tank. Mutalisks scout, deal with drops, and snipe off stray tanks. lings tank siege tank shots for the banelings, which demolishes clumped marines. The blings are probably the most important unit in this matchup, as they are your most efficient damage dealer against the terran ball. Banelings are also a reasonably cost-effective solution to the age-old problem of being unable to counterattack terran expansions after a battle, as they can destroy planetary fortresses given that you have a large advantage. However, it is important to note that this combo is only an optimal "soft counter" to marine/tank, and everything will still have to depend on positioning, macro, and your ability to deal with terran drops harass.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/BM3yK.jpg)
Strengths:
- A very mobile army, even without creep spread. This makes it somewhat easier to deal with terran drops.
- Gives you the ability to do heavy harass (Mutalisk) while still retaining a punch in the engagements.
- Banelings is an efficient way to throw a superior economy at an opponent. Unlike roaches or hydralisks, banelings are virtually gauranteed to do damage whereas the former strongly relies on positioning.
Weaknesses:
- Very larvae intensive. This means that if you miss too many injects, you are in a bad position when the terran push comes. If terran can trade armies with you effectively before you have enough hatches, you are also in a very dangerous position.
- Units very fragile, meaning that you have to pay very careful attention to your army.
- Macro oriented army, so somewhat unforgiving. If the game is even and you lose an expansion, it is very difficult to come back.
- Apm intensive
Once you are able to establish a considerable macro advantage, upgraded banelings provide an easy and effective way of just throwing waves after waves of resources at your opponent until they crack.
Early game - scouting the marine tank build:
It is widely known that terran openings are mostly very flexible, and that most openings can transition quite safely into a standard marine tank style of play. You can expect reactor hellions, two rax openings, 2 port banshees, fast expands, and 3 rax pushes to all have a reasonable chance of transitioning into bio tank. Because this guide is not concerned with how to fend off terran's early game, which deserves an entire new guide on its own, this section will be primarily concerned with how to identify a marine tank user in the earliest possible instance. There is no concrete supply count on which zerg should sack an overlord to scout a one basing terran. A rule of thumb is to sack an overlord at around 30 supply if you cannot get any information by poking the wallin with your zerglings, since this is the point when a terran going factory expand will have his CC halfway done, and therefore scouting at this interval will allow you to make decisions about droning in a timely manner.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/qWIUS.jpg)
A Terran going for an early one rax fast expand (as a response to a 14 hatch) right on the natural location will naturally be quite easy to scout, as a good terran will be using production buildings to make sim-cities at his natural, allowing you to see their army composition. Often, terrans would go for some form of one base speedpush, which should be scoutable at 30 supply, before their expansion. It is of course very important to adapt to these heavily aggressive forms of play. Keep in mind that the later the terran set up his expansion, the more ahead you are if you hold off his early push. Often against a terran who stays on one base for any longer than 35 supply it is great to just get a blind Baneling's Nest.
A significant decision to make for the early game is whether or not one should open with roaches, and this depends largely on the intensity of the hellion harass. I personally prefer to use just speedlings with queens/spines and defend until mutalisks are out, but this playstyle can be very vulnerable to a terran who simply decides to mass hellions early and delay his tanks, or to do hellion drops. If you want to be "insured" against hellion harass, it is best to get some roaches. The tradeoff to getting roaches is that in my opinion they are not an optimal unit to use against massed marines and tanks, and so they serve little purpose except for the early game.
Use general ZvT guidelines such as keeping lings beside the watchtowers and avoiding your units getting scanned and you should be able to keep him in the dark while having map control.
Midgame:
If the terran opted for a fast expand build, either after factory or the first rax, an optimal timing to get lair would be between 35-40 supply, depending how much you invested in early defenses. Many zergs will opt to morph an overseer as soon as lair is done to confirm terran's strategy, or for insurance against banshees. The most crucial decision, however, will be the first tech choice after lair - Baneling with speed or spire first. Once again, this depends on your scouting. Needless to say, against somebody who is going for midgame banshees going spire first entails a great advantage. Once the banshee harass is shut down you will be able to drone for it would be a while before terran can mass an army. Generally, I prefer banelings first, because spire first put you at a very difficult position against someone who simply does a very fast 3/4 rax 1 fact push off two bases, or even pure bio (delayed tanks) off two bases. These situations are almost autoloss for zerg, while against unscouted banshees you can at least delay with queens and get spores, so therefore baneling first is the safe choice unless you know for certain that terran is investing in banshees. the key upgrade is obviously baneling speed, as without it you cannot engage terran off creep. try to spread creep as much as you feasibly can, for in the lategame your creep spread will determine how much warning you have of terran drops and hellion harass.
Put up two evolution chamber and start researching upgrades. Start with carapace level one, then concentrate solely on melee. If terran haven't upgraded his vehicle damage, then he would need 2 tank shots to kill carapaced upgraded zerglings, which allows them to tank more damage for your banes.
Position your overlord around the map, and have one vomit creep at terran's potential 3rd's locations.
In general, ZvT midgame against a bio-tank user works out like this:
Spire first (while making queens and using transfuse) > banshees off 2 bases, passive play
Baneling first > 5 rax push, 4 rax 1 fact push (all off 2 bases)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/Q0agE.jpg)
Remember that ZvT is very unforgiving, and a wrong tech choice is often instant defeat, so it is important to get as much information as possible! When you make the correct tech choice, you cannot end the game straight away because terran is defensively strong. The correct way is to use that advantage to make more drones and take more bases while fending off harassments on your economy, until your advantage is such that it is overwhelming enough to seal the win. This style of play takes a lot of practice and game-sense to learn, and does not have much room for mistakes, so expect to lose a LOT of games before you start to pick up wins against marine/tank.
At this point your swarm is very fragile as you have only 2 hatches and this strategy requires a lot of larvae as it is very ling heavy. One Terran counter to your style of play is simply to constantly trade bio balls efficiently with you, forcing you to spend larvae on units and not on drones, before you can get up more hatcheries. On small maps, it is very difficult to get out of that situation. the best you can do then if to make larvaes count more by morphing more banelings while getting up additional hatches. This is a problem at this stage of the game only because the armies are small, so it is easy for terrans to micro well enough such that they can trade armies for your larvae-intensive units efficiently.
There is no set expansion timing, but regardless of whether you take an expand you will need a macro hatch for muta/ling/bling to work. You should start your third hatch, either at an expansion or inbase, at around 70 supply, although that is by no means set in stone. As soon as you realise that your mineral count is stacking up, your saturations are good, and you have no larvae, that is what you should be doing. If you opened banelings, you will need your third hatch sooner than someone who opened muta.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/B2c0Q.jpg)
The terran, if he hasn't done so already, will most likely push at around the time when your third hatch is going up or just finishing. If you opened baneling first, you should not try to get mutalisks until you have finished dealing with this push. if you went muta first, your baneling tech should now be ready as your mutas would have forced at least some turrets and thus delayed his push. In my opinion you actually only need your third hatch for larvae, and not for income, as it turns out that in most of my games my losses in terms of gas and mineral weren't actually higher than that of terrans, and in fact quite the opposite in the games I win. So, in terms of resource efficiency, muta ling bling can match marine tank, with the decisive factor being larvae counts. This implies that if you want to play it safe, unless given long rush distance, you should make your third hatch inbase, and expand after you deal with terran's midgame push.
Constant inject/ good macro is so so important!
Engaging the terran army:
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/WrOq5.jpg)
You need to already have a sizable amount of lings by the time the terran leaves his base/staging area. Morph banelings as soon as he leaves his base. If you already have a large number of lings/banes it is often possible to catch a terran army on the move, in a clump, and unsieged, and kill the attack right there without losing very many units at all. A terran normally expects a zerg to make banelings only as he moves out, so he would traverse as much of the rush distance as possible without having to siege up during the time the banes are morphing. If you invested in a bane/ling army before he moved out, catching his army in the open like this is possible. However, this should not be expected too often.
If a terran pushes forward slowly and methodically, keep your army just outside the range of the siege tanks. The reason is that when you click attack move, your lings will be just ahead of your banelings, thus soaking up siege tank fire, while your banelings are close behind your lings such that the terran has to run his marines away immediately and not be able to fire much on the lings.
Keep overlords beside the terran's army to check their positioning, and attack if he unsieges too many tanks at once. Use any mutalisk you may have at this point to damage/ pick off stray tanks or anything else that looks vulnerable. cut his reinforcements if possible.
Often terran will make the mistake of having his back to an obstacle/edge, in which case he will not be able to run back his marines and therefore is perfect for attack. Flanking is also viable if you can keep the terran in the dark about where your army is.
There are two hotkey setup I use to fight this sort of battle, depending on the situation.
Remember to inject while doing all this!
1. If you caught the terran army on the move (great position!) without any tanks sieged, simply put all your lings/blings on one hotkey. Run your army past the opponent's army, and hit attack move. Your lings will trap his forces while your banelings melt them from behind. Easy. Done.
2. If an opponent is prepared, use one hotkey with all the lings/bling, and then use a second hotkey with only banelings, and a third one for mutas, obviously. When engaging, first attack-move your army into his, then use the baneling hotkey to take your banelings near the opponet's marines using right click. Unless if you can melt a lot of marines, it is usually better to let the terran's units detonate your banelings for you. They will attack the nearest unit (banelings), which results in their army being melted, and also wastes their own army's dps. Having the marines explode your suicide units is so cost effective since it means you have more lings and mutas left over. If you are in a position where a-moving banelings is best, then make sure they are not going to target the tanks, as they would be very cost-inefficient. Usually, if you want to chase after units with banelings, right click is best. There is not much to say about the muta hotkey, except that make sure you use the hold position magic box when attacking an army supported by thors.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/xQQeM.jpg)
To be honest, this style of play doesn't take much micro from the zerg part and is mostly about your macro and injects. Contrary to many players, I think you can never morph too many banelings, since a strong terran will be able to spread his marines very well, and you cannot afford to let the terran have a group of marines left over after the battle since their insanely high dps will rip through your economy before you have more banelings ready.
If all went well, you should have defeated terran's first push, and if so you are able to take and saturate at least one base, if not two. As nothing in ZvT is concrete, how much additional economy you can claim from the advantage is something you can only learn by playing a lot of ZvTs. One thing to note though, is that it is very easy to outdrone a terran (as opposed to a protoss who has chronoboost), so there is a lot of wriggle room between playing safe and super greedy. So if you want to use some of this advantage to play safe and make some units while you make drones, that's okay too.
If you didn't have mutas before the push, now is the time to get them and start harassing.
Terran should have expanded a while after you killed their push, but you should be able to saturate a 4th base just right after his third is operational. If the terran did not do a midgame push, then the situation is a bit more tricky, in that case take a base whenever you see a new CC being planted down.
If you are behind, i.e terran managed to kill off a lot of drones during his push, which usually means gg but if you are to make a comeback it must be a macro comeback, since making more suicide units in that situation is no more than delaying the end. Instead you have to be way more greedy and try to squeeze in more drones whenever you can to make up for the loss.
Lategame:
I define the lategame as a time when the zerg has a strong economy running, and have the larvae capacity to remake his forces quickly.
Transitioning: If terran continues to play only marine tank, you actually don't need to transition into anything. Zerg's T3 really isn't that efficient against marines. Ultralisk are beaten by pure marine and medivacs while broodlords just aren't worth the investment against heavy bio. If you have a lot of bases, and want to spend your money quicker, then it may be beneficial to get ultralisk if you are not comfortable with lategame macro. But in general, transitioning into T3 against marine tank is not optimal. Get hive tech solely for upgrades, unless the terran is going for some sort of mech transition.
(I am very annoyed that zerg's T3 is beaten by terran's T1, but that sort of make things simple since you can just continue to play ling/bling if the terran doesn't transition)
Infestors, although good against marines, are shut down quickly by tanks. In my opinion they aren't worth getting and it is better to spend the gas on banelings and mutalisk. Getting infestors against drops would not really be needed as mutalisks are there to deal with it.
A good lategame terran player would utilise his drops to take advantage of the fact that you are spread across multiple bases. You should keep overlords and creep spread all around the map to spot those attempts. A medivac full of marines do incredible amounts of damage to your drones if even given a few seconds of free shots, so you must keep your eyes open. try and use the mutas to intercept the drops before it hits the ground. If you lose your muta ball and cannot immediately replace them, you will find it very difficult to deal with these harass and will most likely lose the game because of it. Drops are so so powerful if they are allowed to do damage, so keep your eyes peeled.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/rjJvz.jpg)
Overlord positioning is important in the lategame, as it allows you to know when terran expands, pushes, and drops.
Sometimes the terran would play the lategame in a very squad based approach, send off multiple small armies at your separate expansions. He is able to do so since he will not fear a counter at his expos due to his planetaries. In that situation you absolutely have to split up your army and not let him catch a naked expo. This play is effective as the fragility of the bioball means that it is most efficient in small numbers, which can be easily microed, is flexible, yet still do heavy damage. Losing even a single expansion full of drones this way spells disaster!
You should have, off 3 (mining) bases, 5 hatches to support your larvae production. It never hurts to have more hatches if you float substantial amount of minerals.
It is important to have enough ling/blings to kill off any pushes the terran throws at you without losing any economy. Often, after you "win" a battle against terran, and you don't have many banelings left over, you should make more units instead of drones and morph more banelings. This is because marine armies are actually very easy to replace, and often a terran would simply gather up his newly rallied marines after he loses a battle and attack your expos again if he thinks that you have droned up and don't have enough banelings. Very important to play it safe and not lose to simple things like this, or all your hard work will all be in vain. This is made easier by the fact that you can easily outdrone a terran if the game is even, so you do not actually surrender that much advantage if you opt to play it safe by making more units than you needed.
Never try to kill a terran unless if you are sure you can win (or you need to allin). Use any army advantage resulting from battles/ denied drops to secure more bases, make drones, and make hatches.
If you feel, after a battle or if you have many more bases over your opponent, that you are at a position of great advantage, you can try baneling busting some of terran's planetary fortresses. Usually terran would only have 3 bases, with their main mined out, so busting down their third will be very effective. It takes 19 banelings to destroy a fortress, so you should bring 25 or so just to be sure. You can run the leftovers into scvs so there is no wastage there. Add in with a sprinkle of lings to draw fire first.
If you set everything on one hotkey, your lings should run in first and soak up PF shots, and whatever tank shots mustered against you, then your banelings can run into the PF and kill it. Make sure you did bring enough banelings or this will be a terrible terrible waste. Run whatever remaining banelings into their scvs, doing as much damage as you can.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/IXPgA.jpg)
You may question if this was worth it, since on paper the cost of 20 banelings, or 75*20=1500 is vastly greater than the cost of the PF 400+300=700. However, you would have stopped terran's mining, and maybe killed a good number of scvs. If you did this from a position of superior macro advantage then this is actually very decisive.
Make sure that you remake banelings immediately after you done this so that you won't die if the terran decide to make a last-ditch push. from my experience terrans almost always push after you bust one of his PFs, so make sure you don't die!
Once you are in a macro position to remake armies over and over and have an overwhelming base advantage, simply make banelings + lings, throw them at your opponent's army (unless they are sheltered by a PF, in which case bust it down), while defending your expos with mutas and harassing. Rinse and repeat, and terran will lose the game. Make sure, as always, keep on top of injects, creep spread, and don't give terran any window in which you don't have units.
Situational Tactics:
Army-heavy midgame: If you are on close spawn position, and therefore in a disadvantaged position to play a longer game, something you can do if you know the terran is going to push early (very likely considering the spawns)is to make a lot of units in the midgame at the expense of your drone counts, such that your army will kill terran's early push and have enough leftover to finish him off. This is essentially an allin but it maybe your best bet for close spawn games. Roaches are actually very good for this, as they are great against marine tank balls without medivacs, which would not be there for terran's early push. You would still have roaches left after a battle, as opposed to banelings, which you can use to quickly finish the game. The problem, of course, is that many terrans would expect zerg to play aggressively on close spawns, which means that this style of play may become less effective over time.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/DaT5v.jpg)
Magic box Muta: This is used to avoid the splash damage of the thors, and should be utilised whenever you engage a terran army with thor support. After you committed your zerglings/banelings, simply click the mutas past the terran ball from a distance far enough such that they spread out before coming into thor's firing range. Issue hold postion command right as they are hovering above the terran units, and they will fight while retaining their formation. Note that this should only be used against terran armies in conjunction with your ling/bling in a confrontation, as marines would melt your mutas anyway even if the thor does less splash damage. You can however, fromt time to time, pick off lone thors using this tactic.
On January 02 2011 07:21 RageQuitter wrote:
Video is a much better way to explain things. Here you go, post this in the OP if you want:
Video is a much better way to explain things. Here you go, post this in the OP if you want:
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/2cC9w.jpg)
Marine tank push into expand: Sometimes Terrans do a super early marine tank push into expand with just a handful of units. In this situation it is important not to "give away" free units to the terran ball. If you don't have the forces, you should at least have spines at your natural at this stage. Let the tanks siege up against your spines while massing zerglings. try and use your existing forces to cut off reinforcements. Once you have enough speedlings, send in your queens first such that they soak up the first volley of tank shots (but try not to lose them), and use your speedlings to surround the marine, thereby causing splash damage to be dealt to them from the tanks. If you have to, pull drones as well, but try to use them only for cleanup. On some maps, e.g. close spawn metapolis, this push is simply imbalanced, since the high ground allows terran to siege up his tanks and use his marines to kite your forces easily.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/5dI1w.jpg)
Lastly, replays and analysis:
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-177730.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-177725.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-177717.jpg)
These games showcases carefully executed Muta/Ling/Bling against Marine/tank/Thor(?) games that ended in macro oreiented victories. These tend to be marked with heavy baneling use at the end to throw an absolute economic advantage at an opponent. Some players prefered heavy dropship play, which I dealt with using mutalisks. the key to this playstyle is to keep up with your macro, make sound droning decisions, harass, and above all protect your economy at all costs. Losing even one base with drones at virtualy any stage of the game spells disaster! This is somewhat reminisient of Broodwar's ZvT. Note that I barely transitioned at all in the "lategame".
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-177722.jpg)
In this game the terran's first push was caught in the open without any tanks sieged until it was too late. See how easy it is to destroy a terran army if you catch him unaware! situations like this gives you enormous advantage as you can simply drone like a madman after the failed push. Note his army was again destroyed in a similar manner in the second push, and after which he has no chance. Moral is: If you see a terran army moving carelessly, take your opportunity.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-177716.jpg)
This game is slightly different in that terran did a super early marine + tank push before expand. I defeated it by massing zerglings and using queens to tank the first few tank shots. Terran then transitioned into a standard marine/tank/thor.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-177718.jpg)
In this game, terran opted for early banshees, which I scouted and opted for spire first. This put me at a large advantage which I was able to retain throughout the game.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-177728.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-177741.jpg)
In these two games, I anticipated some form of early push by the opponent simply because of the close spawns. In the first game I simply made more units than necessary to hold off the first push at the expense of drone count, leaving me with enough leftover to just kill him after I killed his push. This is made easier by the short distance. The idea was spontaneous in the second game, when i realised he was not going to stop his aggression.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-177729.jpg)
This game shows how deadly small squad tactics is in lategame TvZ. Terran sent multi-pronged attacks at my expos, which due to the ridicuolous marine dps are able to do so much damage if you are not careful. Never underestimate the damage a few marines can do!
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-177724.jpg)
In this game I was ahead by a large margin until I made a critical micro mistake (forgot to magic box) which resulted in Terran being able to drop harass unhindered thereafter. This shows that you really need to be on top of everything against marine tank, because one mistake will lead to everything going to custard.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-177726.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-177720.jpg)
These games illustrate a crucial weakness of this strategy: early Terran pressure using well-microed bio units before you have additional hatcheries. This forces you to spend larvae on zerglings, with no breathing rooms to make drones. On some maps this can be very deadly, especially if the terran micros well hit you before your banelings have speed.
*note that these replays are somewhat old as I haven't played the game for about 3 weeks, but I think they still illustrate the points made in this guide clearly.
Hopefully this guide can assist those zerg players in the lower leagues who are struggling in the ZvT matchup, or diamond players who are not comfortable in ZvT. In my opinion, unlike going up against protoss colossi balls with their gazillion forcefields, terran armies are actually quite fragile and easy to kill. ZvT also give you a lot of wriggle room as far as droning and unit production goes, which isn't the case against chornoboost. If you are confident in Ling/muta/bling and can hold off early game terran aggression well, then ZvT should become for you one of the easier matchups.
I'll be sure to give this a thurough read, it looks very promising 
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/3 Tank Push %28vs. Zerg%29
