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While I see a lot of pro games that don't rely heavily on mass muta play in ZvZ, my matchups lately rarely stray from the mass mutas (if they make it that far). In most games, whoever gets mutas first wins. What's worse, mass lings and blings are starting to come into play to support the mutas.
ling/bling/muta vs roach/hydra/infestor
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/125126-1v1-zerg-metalopolis
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This was a ladder match so we were theoretically evenly matched. I was practicing muta counter play with hydras and infestors. He was aggressive initially but only poked afterwards, waiting for a big advantage. Though he had map control to stop my expansions, I kept harass pressure on his 3rd to keep us even. In the end, my roaches tanked a huge (HUGE) bling push, but another bling push went through my hydras and infestors. Combine that unit loss with some of my army not hotkeyed in the finale and I lost.
ling/roach/muta vs ling/roach/muta
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/125016-1v1-zerg-xelnaga-caverns
+ Show Spoiler +
This was a league match so please ignore the part where he is just better than me. He was able to secure his expansion faster through aggression then build more stuff. It wasn't even close.
I realize my micro and macro are not perfect. If that is the reason why these strategies aren't working, then by all means share it. My bigger concern is knowing what the end-goal is to handle mass muta play. Once I know that I can focus on the other parts to get me there. I've seen a few instances where I had a timing window to attack before mutas popped but I'm having a hard time seeing those windows and capitalizing on them.
The downside to roach/hydra/infestor is the gas demands. It forces expansions due to the gas needs and expansions are tough to hold without map control. The downside to muta versus muta is whoever gets the spire first tends to have more mutas.
Is there some tidbit I'm missing here on how to handle the ling/bling/muta play? It feels like I have to mass the same unit to win, contrary to other unit choices:
ling < ling/bling
ling/bling < roach
roach < roach/hydra
muta < muta/corruptor ???
I'm 2200 platinum, if you are the kind of person that cares.
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Whenever my enemy goes mass-mutas, I usually win - simply because I regularly use infestors and got reasonable good micro with them.
A couple of queens or hydras and some infestors (with burrow, so they don't escape to early) is all you need. Let them attack and fungal them as soon as they bunch up - heck, if you haven got enough queens/hydras you can actually kill the mutas with just fungal growth if you got a few infestors.
Balance out the higher gas consumption by making mainly roaches and zerglings as your ground army (and don't try mutas *and* infestors... it should be obvious you will be short of gas like that) - your infestors can support your army after you kill the mutas and the damage from fungal is enough to be a serious problem to hydras. Infestors can pretty much turn every fight around in ZvZ.
Just watched the replay:
Mass Muta and Mass Banelings is what you want with so many infestors out - you simply failed at micro at key moments.
Dont fungal mutas and spit ITs below them - just keep using fungal growth every few seconds.
And when those banelings blew up most of your infestors and a good chunk of your hydras, 2-3 good places fungals would have wasted all of his banelings.
Dont run put the infestors in your army, there are chances the rest of the units screw with your micro - I always keep them seperated and on a seperate hotkeygroup.
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-NOTE-
Like an idiot I wrote this thinking you were the winner, I'm gonna watch again :D
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the metalopolis-game was purely lost due to massive lack of infestor-control :-/
dropping 20 infested terrans when you got a fungal on the mutas in your main and then just letting them fly away was kinda bad..
also the bling attacks would have been easily destroyed with proper fungals.
other than that, watch for you creep spread.. it was non-existing during the first 25mins of the game and always lacking connection to you 3rd and you surely had the energy for some creep tumors on your queens 
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not watched the replays but if he goes mutas you should be scout the spire and make infestors
and fungal growth trap while they come to harass, meanwhile make roaches and some hydras and you'll be fine
as for scouting the spire you should be able to tell (he wont have roaches/hydras, and most lilkely less army than you)
edit; its better to keep fungal growthing than to use 1 fungal and then infested terrans
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Here's what I noticed: You went for both mutas and infestors after roaches. Unless you're going to try and get air control (and build more mutas/corruptors then him) going for mutas after your opponent does is generally a bad idea. Going for infestors is a solid idea, but you will need to go hydra as well, if he goes for that many mutas. At 27:02 you had a chance to fungal ALL his mutas and slaughter them with hydras, but you weren't paying attention. You never took your gases at your third base. Also, the fourth base was probably overkill. During the first battle with his muta-roach-ling force, you had extra queens which was good, but you didn't use the queens to transfuse eachother, which was bad.
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infestors alone counter mutas lings and banelings
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The first game was a big experiment with infestors. A fungal then infested terrans didn't work too well in contrast to how well it works on medivacs. I see that now but it sure looks horrible in the replay :p. What I saw, and everybody is agreeing upon, is fungal itself can be enough to deter the mutas or even kill them.
A big folly of mine was not knowing how micro intensive infestors are. I'll freely admit I haven't used them enough to see the good and bad uses of them. They are usually an afterthought but this game they served a pivotal role.
I've lost so many games to mutas because I didn't get anti-air in time that I'm nearly pre-programmed to go for the spire. Against Terran and Protoss, no problem, but the intense pressure during ZvZ changes everything.
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Here is a replay with some successful infestor play:
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/126448-1v1-zerg-blistering-sands
+ Show Spoiler +
My droning is pretty horrific in this game; mistakes from both players are present. The early muta fear was justified in this game but the roach counter bought enough time to get hydras out. The infestors allowed securing map control. Not only do all the mutas get caught in a fungal but burrowed roaches also get caught in another fungal.
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It's almost always bad to go Mutalisk in ZvZ, even when the map has long distances.
Whoever gets Mutalisk won't have enough gas for anything else but Lings/Blings/Roaches.
Roach+Hydra+Infester's dominate Mutalisk+Ling+Bling/Roach.
Save all of your energy for fungal growth.
Mutalisk that can't move are free kills to Hydralisk that out-range them.
Banelings and Zerglings basically die to a single fungal growth.
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On January 10 2011 18:45 Sajuuk7 wrote:
It's almost always bad to go Mutalisk in ZvZ, even when the map has long distances.
Whoever gets Mutalisk won't have enough gas for anything else but Lings/Blings/Roaches.
Unless they use map control to take an extra expansion or two....
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EPT
