[H]Super Lategame ZvT vs Tank/Viking Camper

On July 20 2011 16:40 orionboss wrote:
After watching your replay I see several things that I believe you could improve upon to help you in this match up.

When I see a terran turtle up and mech, especially on a map like Shakuras, I try to avoid relying on early and mid game roaches for pressure. Although you do successfully drop his main several times to do damage, I believe that spending your gas on roaches to attack a sieged terran is not very cost effective. Instead of spending gas on swarms of roaches, I have much more success spending it on mutalisk.

There are several reasons I believe mutas are better in the mid game, which better prepares you for the late game against terran.
1. having large numbers of mutas can limit the number of seige tanks (which demolish your army if their numbers get to large)
2. the mutas keep him in his base and make it more difficult for him to secure additional bases (while you can secure your own)
3. forces him to build thors and turrets, which continues to lower his siege tank numbers

With this said about your transition into the late game, my advice for you in regard to your late game strategy is not to change the unit composition of your army at all. Instead, I think you should think about how you use your army more effectively.

An example in your game of poor army control and movement is your attack on his bottom expansion around the 31 minute mark. After you destroy the planetary fortress with a few ultras and broodlords, he moves his tanks force to defend the ramp towards his other bases. You then decided to drop three nydus worms and storm his ramp with ultras and roaches, losing 60 supply for a few tanks.

The mech army is EXTREMELY strong in a straight up fight, and you will lose that fight every time. However, your advantage lies in your army's mobility. Instead of putting three nydus networks in an already destroyed base, attack his now vulnerable main and production buildings, attack his front as he pulls back to defend, retreat before he can siege. Don't attack into chokes; don't attack his army straight on.

Other small tactics you could use to help you include infested terran bombs on sieged tanks to cause splash damage or dropping zerglings onto sieged tanks for the same effect.

I believe with a few small changes to your army positioning and movements you will be winning theses games easily. To quickly summarize my advice: don't change your unit composition, instead rely on your mobility to attack the terran where his tanks aren't, and be ready to swarm him when he unsieges.

Good luck with your future games

p.s. hopefully I don't come across as someone who thinks they understand everything about this (because I don't), just want to throw my opinion out there

On July 20 2011 16:53 FabledIntegral wrote:


You really think muta transition would have been good at that point? I never have any success with muta vs mech, and he built just loads of turrets. I'm talking about 30+. I felt I wouldn't be able to get anywhere with them, and I assume for cost corrupters fair better than mutas, but I'm not sure. He did have thors however which also made me wary. Thors + mass turrets will shut down mutas, I would think, since he did sprinkle them in. Like I said, I'm not sure. But keeping him in his base was never the problem - he never left!

Concerning storming the ramp, they were unsieged and I highly overestimated how good unsieged tanks are. I know their DPS is higher, but I figured with a decent number of roaches they'd be efficient - I was wrong. Also seeing them all clumped made me want to hit them iwth my ultras sooo badly.

I couldn't do Zergling bombs at any point in teh game due to the 40+ vikings going around. .

On July 20 2011 17:17 fezvez wrote:
So, a few things : regarding the vikings, well, yes, muta are much better than corrupters (the "counter guide" says so too ).Well, the turrets remained...

The other point I wanted to say is about the "best" army composition possible if you have huge amount of minerals/gaz. I have this idea that basically, all units are more or less worth their price. So, a very "supply-effective" unit would be the best one to have in a 200/200 army, right?

Roaches cost 75/25 for 2 supply. That's bad
Hydralisks cost 100/50 for 2 supply. A bit better
Banelings cost 200/100 for 2 supply. Woohoo!

Well, I guess you still need a few ultralisks in front of your baneling army to tank the first volley of the tanks.

Edit : That's the same idea that governs the fact that in FFA, people go for a 200/200 of void rays.

On July 20 2011 23:04 BigBossX wrote:
I don't understand the need to break a turtle terran, why not just let him turtle while you mine out the map and bank 783245326745327 minerals and 645634653 gas and 326453287453287453287 larva and wait for him to make a move, he cannot win if he does not attack. And when he does move out, multi pronged drops, nydus worms etc will rape his face. Obviously it's not going to benefit you to constantly throw away your expensive t3 units attacking a well defended turtle terran. Just my opinion from a terran p.o.v.

On July 21 2011 01:25 FabledIntegral wrote:
Overall I simply don't understand how infestor/corrupter/broodlord would have even touched him this map. I tried it once, it didn't work super well, but vikings have such ridiculous range, and he had so many turrets to run behind. I can handle ten vikings. I can't handle 30 when 4 broodlords die in a single volley. He started building ghosts as well behind his tank lines. I'll probably try breaking the middle next time I play if the same thing happens, but still... from personal experience viking/raven shits on infestor/corrupter/BL because of PPD's and Seeker missiles (if you try to engage). And it's not like you can run when he has 30 vikings and 6 starports cranking out more regardless if you're going air or not...



Because if you watched the replay, it was on Shakuras Plateau, and I attempted to do exactly that, and banked around 8k/6k at one point. You can't do multipronged drops when he has literally around 30+ turrets across the maps, sensor towers, and around 30 vikings at a time.


Btw, I'm not saying it's not feasible, it just doesn't *seem* it to me. I didn't micro the greatest however, I had far too much faith in corrupters being able to take on vikings. He also slowly upgraded his vikings to 3/3 when mine were 2/0 or 3/0 so that really hurt. Was just too scared of going mutas since he had 3 Thors sprinkled in, and vs 30 vikings and 3 thors, are you going to touch him wiht mass muta?!

On July 21 2011 01:59 arbitrageur wrote:


Except people have made it work very well in pro games. Usually when this composition comes out, it destroys. Those guys are harder opponents than the guys you've tried them against. All your gripes may stem from mis-micro.

On July 21 2011 03:13 PanzerKing wrote:
I'll watch your replay when I'm home from work, but there's really no way you can lose to mech once you're on that many bases. Just build Ultras and lings and Nydus all over the place. He won't have any mobile response to Ultras - the mech will be too slow and he won't have stim or upgrades on his marauders. And if for some reason you decide to have a 20 minute no-rush game and you really end up with 8k minerals in the bank and a split map, build some extra overlords, prep a killer drop, put the empty overlords in front of the full ones, and drop ultras on his maxed army. They'll die to the splash, yours and theirs, and with the way that Vikings overkill, he won't get off more than one or two volleys, killing only a handful of empty overlords. You remax instantly and win the game, easy-peasy.

On July 21 2011 03:06 PhiliBiRD wrote:
vs mech, you just have to abuse the fact that you can rebuild your entire army in 40 seconds and it takes the terran 3-4x longer.


so max out, save up a bunch of money and try to clear his tank count, or viking count (something like that) then abuse his composition

On July 20 2011 17:17 fezvez wrote:
So, a few things : regarding the vikings, well, yes, muta are much better than corrupters (the "counter guide" says so too ).Well, the turrets remained...

The other point I wanted to say is about the "best" army composition possible if you have huge amount of minerals/gaz. I have this idea that basically, all units are more or less worth their price. So, a very "supply-effective" unit would be the best one to have in a 200/200 army, right?

Roaches cost 75/25 for 2 supply. That's bad
Hydralisks cost 100/50 for 2 supply. A bit better
Banelings cost 200/100 for 2 supply. Woohoo!

Well, I guess you still need a few ultralisks in front of your baneling army to tank the first volley of the tanks.

Edit : That's the same idea that governs the fact that in FFA, people go for a 200/200 of void rays.

On July 21 2011 03:47 DustinQQ wrote:

Just banelings are horrible against breaking tank lines.... that was horrible advice; its the same as throwing free money at the Terran. Only thing i would see breaking it would be Ultralisk crackling, you need something to tank the damage (ultras) and something to get up there quick to kill the tanks (zerglings).




To break what you were talking about.... I would've definitely went infestor broodlord. Use the broodlords to snipe off tanks, if the vikings come, fungal them as they should be stacked if they're trying to target your BLs...

On July 21 2011 03:20 FabledIntegral wrote:


He didn't build any rax units. It was pure tank with a few hellions in front to buffer the incoming army while he sieged. He slowly crept up on the map. I was on 7 base at one point (well, main was mined out). I did try drop play, as well as nydusing. You have to realize the map is Shakuras, so it's not hard to split map. He had mass missile turrets as well and sensor towers. Drops stopped working when he got a massive viking count. I'm talking about 30+ vikings. His ground army was still strong since he sacked all his SCVs as he was running around 8 orbitals.

There's only two routes to drop in the entire map. Through the top or bottom. There's nothing *to* drop in the middle. And with sensor towers, vikings can rip apart my ovies. I doubt the play is viable on maps like Metal or Tal'Darim.



He had enough production to remax at near the same rate I could.

When you're on 6port+ and 8facts (some with reactor on ports + facts), with a single production round you can replenish 40-50 supply. When your army doesn't consist of SCVs, you're not losing more than 50 supply anyways in a single go, especially when you have a ton of static defense as well.

On July 21 2011 03:58 PanzerKing wrote:


If you have 8k minerals in the bank, you can drop against 30 vikings just as easily as you can against 3 vikings. Make 20 extra ovies and sac them as a shield for your ultras. You're only going to lose a few before your drop is on top of him. I mean, he can't put those vikings on your half of the map. Fungal growth will shred them apart if he moves them more than a few units of distance from his siege tanks. So he gets a couple volleys from his 30 vikings, most of which is wasted on overkill, then you drop on top of him. Not in his base - literally directly on top of his army. The ultra splash damage is ridiculous, and so is the splash his tanks do to each other.

I remember Idra doing the same against some Werra guy on Metalopolis ages ago, close to the end of the beta. Idra crushed his 2-base push and instead of just killing him, let the guy take half the map just to show how much better Z's late game is. This guy built a ton of turrets and stacked a huge 3/3 mech army on the gold. Idra dropped Ultras on it and killed it effortlessly. There's a reason people aren't trying to split-map mech against Z. Mech wins with timing pushes before Z can field a large tier 3 army, not in a super late-game scenario.

On July 21 2011 04:03 FabledIntegral wrote:
I don't understand, when he can see any drop coming with sensor towers, how are your ovies not getting shredded? I know about using empty ovies, but he had a tonnn of vikings and mass missile turrets that would shoot all my movies when I did try drop play (not to mention when ovies with Ultras get sniped, so much money lost ). Even with 8k banked, when you try to mass ultra, you usually lose almost all your money in a single remax. You can't continually throw armies at him. Remaxing 100 supply of ultras is 5000 minerals in itself, and will insta drain all your gas. I did try drop play on his army but not the mass drop play you speak of. I'll retake a look at the replay to see if it was viable and if I could have broken through his defense (towards the end of the game, I missed a few timings during midgame by choosing to macro instead, and just not capitalizing, but that shit happens in a ton of games).

Note: he never once pushed my base a single time all game, nor did any drops. He harassed forward expansions with hellions a bit, but that's all. His viking never flew out in the open either to kill ovies or anything, they stayed strictly on his side to deny drops and hide behind missile turrets and sensor towers.

On July 21 2011 06:08 CrAzEdMiKe wrote:


Sensor towers are irrelevant. You're not trying to sneak attack him so much as brute force drop. Having 8k minerals in the bank means you could in theory make 10 overlords to head up the front, taking a bunch of viking/turret damage while your actual drop overlords make it into the territory you are attacking (whether that be his army or his base is up to you). He can move in with his vikings all he wants, but he won't know which overlords contain the units, and if he just attacks head on, theyll hit 1000 minerals of absolutely nothing.

Once your boys are on the ground smacking, his vikings don't do squat anymore. In fact, those vikings become a liability as they are using up supply to try and defend the skies, when the real battle is going on the ground.

On July 21 2011 07:42 Jayecks wrote:
I am the suck, but I'll give my 2 cents from the replay.

It seems like you really just missed a timing to switch over to muta production. I forgot to check, but with blue flame and siege on two base there is almost no way he had stim. That second drop that you invested in could have easily been 12 mutas and a couple of overlords full of zerglings and killed off a ton of SCVs, maybe a few supply depots or the armorys (which would have been huge). Suicide the zerglings on missle turrets/thors (there were none there) and use the mutas to clean up everything else.

As a Terran player, Mutas are an incredible pain to counter, especially on big maps with small ramps and multiple tiers (shakuras, backwater gulch, typhon peaks). One you hit a critical number of mutas (~30) there really isn't much the T can counter with outside the lumbering thor or mass marines with stim. Just throw away "spare" minerals on big bunches of lings and use them to clean up anything the mutas can't, play prevention and watch carefully for unsieged tanks to move in with lings. After a certain point you can just throw away the lings and switch to brood/infestor, which is pretty much the end game goal of most Z's playing these days.

If you had switched over to muta production/upgrades, he would've been caught with his pants down. Vikings are no match, even with upgrades, thors are incredibly slow, and he didn't have production capacity for marines in that particular window.

On July 21 2011 09:22 Lobotomist wrote:
I've had problems with this as well, and I think that it sorta comes down to tempo. Usually, from the zerg perspective (in ZvT) the slower the game tempo the better. If he's not attacking you, you can be making drones, expanding, teching and generally using the strengths of zerg to the fullest. If terran never attacked or harassed early you'd crush them. Instead, terrans usually hit certain timings that allow them to put pressure on. In general, the terran player needs to be pressuring, while the zerg player is trying to gain an economic/tech advantage.

This mindset needs to be reversed at some point in the game. Either once you're maxed or once you've fully developed your tech tree you need to become the aggressor. Once you've got a round of broodlords, you should attack with them. Do what damage you can, but when your broods get cleaned up, you need to be hitting him with another attack, usually with a switch to ultras or roaches (or something else that exploits the fact that he's dumped resources/supply into vikings). While you're doing this, you should be trying to drop his main or any other non-planetary expansions. If you need to doom-drop his main to do damage, so be it. Be sure to leave infestors and spinecrawlers along the main attack path so you can delay him in the event of a counter.

In general: Once late game hits, the clock is ticking. You need to become the aggressor. Drop, tech switch, nydus and attack until you win.

On the subject of your replay: you teched far too slow, especially your hive. Your infestation pit didn't go down until 16 minutes. Against strong mech timings pushes (especially anything thor-heavy, infestors with neural are a must-have. Also, I really don't like the choice to max out on pure roaches (generally) but being that you were going for drop play, roaches were a good choice there. The choice to go broods was questionable as well, as your roaches saw that he had put down a punch of starports to pump vikings. However, you still may have done well with the attack at the southeast base, if you'd been able to get infestors onto the high ground to fungal the vikings.

You did all the right stuff late (drop nydus, broodlords, etc) but you did it too slow. Also, you needed to hit him in multiple locations at the same time.

On July 21 2011 18:10 CatNzHat wrote:
This question comes up a lot in the strategy forums, and the problem is not the unit composition, but the way of thinking, zergs assume that they have to engage the terran army to beat it, they don't and they shouldn't.

The solution to your problem is to think outside the box, with nydus worms. If terran is able to 50/50 the map, then you probably lost early/mid game, however if it does get to this point, you should have a plan. The simplest of plans it to deny his fifth/sixth bases (talking about shakuras). Harass is third and fourth for sure, but really work on preventing him from ever establishing his fifth and sixth bases, nydus worms, drops, ling run bys, burrowed infestors, etc.. are all great tools for denying and harassing expansions of a terran player who utilizing a very immobile unit composition to control space.

On July 21 2011 18:39 Morfildur wrote:


I agree with CatNzHat.

Also, don't try to break it, move around it. He can't be everywhere at once, not with siege tanks. Drop on both sides with 5 overlords stuffed with 3/3 cracklings and 5 empty meatshield overlords each and just destroy his production. Add a few infestors in seperate overlords that you send in slightly later to fungal the vikings to death as soon as they close in to defend.

You'd be suprised how fast cracklings can destroy a whole base.

For breaking the tank line after destroying his production, Ultralisks are the key. They are really underrated, but they can tank a lot of damage. My usual strategy is to send 5-6 ultralisks in front and as soon as the tanks fire at them, send in a ton of cracklings. This allows the lings to get close to the tanks without half of them dying on the way.

I made a small video quite a while ago to show how effective it actually is, though ofc it depends on upgrades, target fireing, positioning, etc. Ofc it's against the more common marine/tank/thor, but it shows how easy it is to destroy a whole tank line once you get close enough with your units.

+ Show Spoiler +

On July 21 2011 18:52 Slithe wrote:
Many people have already mentioned ultralisks, and I also believe this is the right idea. If he has 30 vikings worth of supply, then his ground army will be significantly weaker. If you simply ignore the vikings, then I think you should be able to win the ground engagement.

On July 22 2011 02:12 STS17 wrote:
Simply put, just mass up your resources instead of constantly trying to break his turtle. If you have half the bases and he has half the bases just max out and continue to stockpile larva. Eventually he has to move out to make something happen because he will run out of resources as well (and since in this case you haven't been blowing all your money suiciding units you should have roughly equal resources. But the kicker is you can remax way faster then a terran can, so just throw wave after wave at him when he is trying to move towards you instead of fighting him on his terms in his territory.

Note: Don't do this against someone who is doing anything but sitting in their base and turtling like crazy.

On July 22 2011 01:59 Venomsflame wrote:
I watched the whole replay(it seems a lot of these people didn't), and the one thing that stuck out is why did you go air at all? Like you said he was MASSINGGG vikings. He had so many. And wasn't the whole ZvT plan late game for the first 4 or so months of StarCraft to get broodlords, force a lot of vikings and then switch to ultras hard? Well, he already did the first part for you, and he didn't make 10 or 12 vikings, he had a good 30+ or so. I really feel that ultra crackling with a good flank/positioning as he moved out was the way to go, with a roach remax once or twice.

That said, your opponent was very patient in pushing out and extending his lines, making it extremely frustrating on a map that makes it hard to engage him, but broodlords and corruptors were really not the way to go against that many vikings. His entire army and setup(Vikings/thors/turrets) were built to handle that kind of tech.

On July 22 2011 02:23 FabledIntegral wrote:


1. He never moved out. He crept. Big difference.
2. I did mass up like 8k/6k at one point. I also stockpiled a million larvae.
3. His army is 2x the size of me from lack of SCVs.
4. He can "remax" at the same rate at me with a ton of production facilities and being cost efficient.



Thanks for watching. It sounded like the general consensus was that I shouldn't have tried to overpower his vikings with corrupters and mutas would have been a poor choice as well. It's just when facing 30ish tanks, your gut instinct tells you Broodlords! Maybe I should have tried just steamrolling his tankline with ultra, it just feels counterintuitive. It's not like his viking count even reduced his tank count since he had so much free supply. =[

On July 21 2011 01:25 FabledIntegral wrote:
Overall I simply don't understand how infestor/corrupter/broodlord would have even touched him this map. I tried it once, it didn't work super well, but vikings have such ridiculous range, and he had so many turrets to run behind. I can handle ten vikings. I can't handle 30 when 4 broodlords die in a single volley. He started building ghosts as well behind his tank lines. I'll probably try breaking the middle next time I play if the same thing happens, but still... from personal experience viking/raven shits on infestor/corrupter/BL because of PPD's and Seeker missiles (if you try to engage). And it's not like you can run when he has 30 vikings and 6 starports cranking out more regardless if you're going air or not...



Because if you watched the replay, it was on Shakuras Plateau, and I attempted to do exactly that, and banked around 8k/6k at one point. You can't do multipronged drops when he has literally around 30+ turrets across the maps, sensor towers, and around 30 vikings at a time.


Btw, I'm not saying it's not feasible, it just doesn't *seem* it to me. I didn't micro the greatest however, I had far too much faith in corrupters being able to take on vikings. He also slowly upgraded his vikings to 3/3 when mine were 2/0 or 3/0 so that really hurt. Was just too scared of going mutas since he had 3 Thors sprinkled in, and vs 30 vikings and 3 thors, are you going to touch him wiht mass muta?!

On July 21 2011 10:28 FabledIntegral wrote:
I agree on the timings that I missed. So you think if I miss those timings, I pretty much lose?

On July 22 2011 02:23 FabledIntegral wrote:
Thanks for watching. It sounded like the general consensus was that I shouldn't have tried to overpower his vikings with corrupters and mutas would have been a poor choice as well. It's just when facing 30ish tanks, your gut instinct tells you Broodlords! Maybe I should have tried just steamrolling his tankline with ultra, it just feels counterintuitive. It's not like his viking count even reduced his tank count since he had so much free supply. =[

On July 22 2011 03:35 SeaSwift wrote:


Have you ever played Protoss vs Muta/ling?

If you miss the 5/6gate timing, your chances of winning shrink immensely. The only reason Muta/ling has died a bit in competitive play is because 5/6gates became popular and then Infestor play became common. Before that, ladder vs Zerg was considered really, really hard beyond the 4gate (which, naturally, all Zergs complained about).

So it seems a bit hypocritical of you to complain about this, even against Terran. In a few months, the game will be more fleshed out, there will be some discovered timings for you to exploit and chances are this strategy will become less popular once more.

On July 24 2011 16:14 orionboss wrote:
I just watched an interesting game between idra and drewbie in the first round of ipl (cant find vod). Similar to the situation you were in, the terran, drewbie, was making a heavy tank and hellion force and turtling from base to base. Idra responded by massing mutalisks (almost 30) to force the production of thors, and then researched neural parasite and broke the terran line by mind controlling the thors and fungaling the hellions while his mutas cleaned up.

In addition, I found a vod of mr. bitter and darkforce discussing zerg vs mech, and darkforce explains how he relies on mutalisks.

Mr. Bitter: 12 weeks with the pros, fighting mech with darkforce
http://blip.tv/learn-from-the-pros-with-mr-b/12-weeks-with-the-pros-fighting-mech-with-darkforce-4887624

Although this tactic might not be as effective on shakuras where your match was played, it is a good example of relying on mutalisks against a mech based army like I discussed earlier in the thread.

On July 26 2011 01:37 Big J wrote:
yeah, I have been in this situation too (sometimes) and I remember a game on shattered temple where I did Nydus, drops, composition switches etc etc...
Lately I prefer to bunker up myself in these situations. Get like 30spines and some spores and try not to lose ground when terran starts to slowpush you with Tank/Thor/Viking (+whatever he has got, depending on how the game went before).
Then you have kind of the same situation, but you have a supply advantage, because Spines don't cost any supply and you might have 220 supply anyways.
In terms of compositions I would say tons of Infestors, and broodlords complement this pretty nicely, because you can just use their artillery range to fight back terran artillery (fungal vs vikings, Broodlords vs Tanks). Then again you want something to attack him, once he unsieges:
some ultralisks+mainly a ton of stuff (roaches only when he has a lot of hellions, as they are supplyinefficient).

Gameplaywise I would also consider sacrificing some queens once you are maxed on larva, as they use up like 10supply and maybe replace them with 2-3extra hatches. But this once again depends on the amount of ressources you have at that time. If you don't have a lot of minerals left on your patches, I thikn it is better to keep the queens and the money.

On July 26 2011 04:10 vnlegend wrote:
So a lot of vikings, 3 thors, the rest tanks/hellions?? Sounds like any zerg army can beat this. Lots of vikings means a much smaller ground army.

I saw Trump turtle vs a Zerg for almost 2 hrs. He had a maxed mech army, tank,thor,viking,hellion with mass OC (so few scvs, probably 170+ supply mech army) and his army still got wiped out easily by mass ling, ultra, some infestor, and broodlords. It's all about engaging them as they move out. You need something to deny sight.

Infestor corrupter BL is one of the best combos and can tech switch to anything afterwards. Even noob plat league zergs try to go for it for the ez win. With enough infestors you can always take out the vikings. Vikings are armored.