Byul-inspired counterattacking mutalingbane guide

In the early game you just want to survive and drone up as heavily as possible. Going over all Terran openings would take way too much space, but I'll try to give some pointers. Your initial overlord should scout the wall of Terran in his main base. If you see barracks with reactor it's most likely going to be 16 marine drop, if it's factory with reactor it's naturally hellions. With factory opening, your second overlord should poke what's behind the initial wall. There is plenty of options for terran. The things you want to scout the most is whether he has starport or third CC, his addons and armory. The most common followup to hellion openings is 1-1-1 on 2 bases. Techlab on starport generally means ravens or banshees, if techlab is researching, it's most likely cloak. If starport has reactor it's possible that it's also liberators. Armory means naturally hellbats and if there is only one addon – reactor, it very often means hellbat push.

The most common timings you have to watch out for:

Timings from hellion openings:

4:00 – 4 hellions runby to kill your drones – have queens in position and 10-12 lings behind them to prevent the runby. It's critical that you have overlord spread in front of entrances to your natural and third and you see this coming.

4:15/4:25 – The earliest hellbat pushes – In order to counter them you need to start either baneling nest or roach warren at 3:30 then it's ezmode usually. If you like to be greedy and have good micro, you can also hold it with queen ling, 5 queens plus 20 lings from behind, target down medivac, split lings, split queens and transfuse. Remember to make spores at 4:40 to counter incoming liberators, banshees or ravens. They are often a followup.

4:25 – widow mine drop, get some spores, can be even reactively, just split stuff.

4:40 – Banshee with cloak, start your spores at 4:20 (hehe).

~4:50 – Hellbat Banshee pushes – to hold them you really need to have bane nest/roach warren, which means that I always start them at around 4:00 against hellion openings in order to be safe.


Timings from Barracks openings

5:05 - 16 marines – 4-5 queens in position, 32+ lings to surround. Start building lings at 4:20 and additional queens at 4:00. (also, if terran skips reaper, he might come with this timing 20 seconds sooner)

5:30 - 3 medivac marine 2 cyclone push. It's surprisingly strong, and you really need to have banelings to counter it, so start your bane nest not later than 4:30.

5:30 – Hellbat marine stim push, the same as above, get many banes.

6:20 – 4 medivac combat shield push with +1 atk. This thing is really scary, you need at least 12 slowbanes and 40-50 lings to hold this properly. I have a build adjustment that I start my lair at 4:00 and then bane nest right away. This way when lair finishes I can start bane speed and have it ready for this timing. It delays +1+1 a bit but speedbanes make holding such pushes much easier.

Of course at different levels of gameplay, the timings might not be as crisp, but it's still fine to build stuff at around the timings I said, it will grant you safety so you will not die while having reasonable economy, and that's the goal of early game.

Quite good timing for spire is 7:00. Beforehand, you want to develop economy, ling count, queen count and upgrades. In case he went for raven harrass, you can rush spire even at 5:30 or 6:00, which will shorten the period of harrass. Naturally it varies since there could have been pressure, but 7:00 is a good benchmark and if you delay it more, Terran can get pretty nasty with both pushes and drops.
In mid game you really want to have the 66 drone count at least. Because mutas are relatively expensive, eventually you want to reach 75 drone count to pump really tons of stuff. However if you go straight 75, terran has freedom to move out and he sets up the contain at your fourth and the game becomes a parade push, which is favourable thing for terran. This means that you should build 66 drones and then mass zerglings, much more than is necessary to defend.

Good defensive setup:


This is basically impossible for Terran to push into assuming you have constant ling production coming from your eggs. This means that all the lings that you currently have in that army can be used to counterattack, because you are safe. The number of your banelings may vary, at the beginning of midgame you will have less than this, later, maybe even more.

Here starts the fun part. Creep is the border of your territory. You don't ever want to fight off of it with your main army. It's been said tons of times, but I want to emphasise this so much – zerg is never cost effective off creep vs bio if the numbers are even. So, what to do about it? A couple of things, but let's figure out first, Why runbys are good and basically necessary?

1. You can't attack head on, because you fight off creep.
2. You damage Terrans economy.
3. You fight against Bio that doesn't have medivacs often, so your lings trade extremely well against marines.
4. You force Terran to micro at 2 places. This is extremely beneficial for zerg, because terran army is more micro intensive, so at the same time when you hit him with runby, send a portion of your banes from main army to try to kill some of his main army
5. You often force Terran to stay in base, which is a good thing – you can build up economy, muta flock and spread creep.
6. This is sick: If you managed to deal a lot of damage to Terran, or even better, you jumped on top of his production – he has to really hurry. This means he has to run into your creep and then take engagement there. This is bad situation for Terran. They always want to take time with their pushes – they want to pre-split their bio, set up mines, slowly wait until creep disappears. By forcing him to basetrade, you put him in super uncomfortable position, then just morph 30+ banes and you should win.
Point 6 forces smart Terrans to pull back to his base whenever you threaten the basetrade, which means you can easily grow as zerg.


Economically, you want to be at 4 bases and 1 macro hatch and inject them all constantly. Also, It's pretty important that you grab 7th and 8th gas when you feel safe, because that's when you can launch serious muta production or tech to hive/infestors. You can't do it too early, because you might struggle with having enough minerals to build lings.

There are 3 critical moments in midgame:

1. Zerg taking 4th base and holding it.
Terran will always try to break 4th base of Zerg and this makes sense, because if Terran manages to do it, he will almost always win. 4th base is important, because minerals mine out from main base, it provides important creep at forward location, provides a lot of larvae, and 7th and 8th gas. It's also very important to have creep from your 3rd base to the 4th prior to building it, because otherwise your queens won't reach the location and in pre-muta phase, queens are very helpful.

2. Terran trying to set up a parade push and forward siege location at Zerg's 4th.
This eventually most likely will happen, but as a Zerg you should delay, disrupt and weaken as much as possible. Breaking this feels like breaking free for Zerg, suddenly you can harrass Terran much more easily, push him back to his base and setup backstabs. You delay this the most by having forward creep, so you really have to care so much about your mechanics there and your macro cycle. (more advice on this in section 6) Another way to delay Terran is to have obviously 30 lings waiting for him to move out. You don't have to necessarily deal damage, if you see that terran is coming back, you should also retreat with your lings. The threat of aggression is very often more scary than actual aggression. Also, if you can't do economical damage, you can always try to intercept his reinforcements, this weakens his main army so it's also worth it. In section 3 I've described how to beat such contains.

3. Terran taking 4th base.
Assuming point 1 and point 2 went well, you most likely built up a nice muta flock with +1 or +2 attack and you traded a lot of ling bane vs bio etc. Every trade after which you were free to produce mutas safely, is a win for you. You managed to push back the Terran, maybe with some losses, but if you did, you are most likely ahead. Now, the rule of not engaging off creep still kinda applies. I've seen (and done myself..) million throws in this situation. Instead of direct engagement, I'd say starving Terran is the best way to win. If you manage to catch the CC flying to 4th base or you snipe it while being built or you even kill it once it's done, suddenly the Terran has massive income loss, because he mines out his main and natural much quicker than Zerg. His 4th is absolutely critical and denying it over and over is basically a win condition for Zerg. You can notice that other styles including ultralisks often try to apply pressure at the 4th of Terran and it's for the same reason. Once Terran tries to get 4th base, his defenses are extremely streched, because there is so much locations to defend – his production, his third, his 4th and even the natural is kinda good to target as well. Also, I've noticed that when it comes to muta flock action, very often killing command centers is much more worthwhile than killing SCV's. CC's unlock additional mineral patches and mules, and killing them cripples Terran economy much more than killing SCV's. If you manage to do kill 4th twice, the game is over.

MLB is and should be really heavy midgame style. In HOTS, people barely ever tried to tech up to hive, because all those 3 critical moments I described in previous section will always happen before hive. In Lotv however, you don't have to be as strict and teching to hive is definitely viable. You have to keep in mind you weaken your midgame by teching to hive, so there has to be a reason for teching, like you got ahead somehow or he goes for 150 army supply push with not many scv's, or if terran just 100% camps. In most of these cases, mutaling bane should do just fine, but with full terran defensive mode, hive is actually quite good response, both ultra infestor or broodlord infestor are fine. Hive off of mutas is in my opinion actually much more scary than off of ravager infestor because you should have access to 10 gases as opposed to 8, which means you can make seriously TONS of ultras. Mutas also retain very good utility in lategame, because very often Terrans like to drop in lategame, because hive units are quite slow. Also, the harrassment option is still great, and they are quite good actually at picking off liberators.