EPTThe inspiration for this guide came from three things: the first is the general Zerg QQ that literally tends to spread everywhere (I personally believe the game itself is somewhat broken, and the problems should not be singled down to zerg as a race, but that's a completely irrelevant discussion in this thread.), the second was + Show Spoiler +
Nestea getting destroyed by MVP
I read the thread. Cocked my head a bit in thought. And then I promptly shook my head.
I want to start off by claiming that I'm fully one of the zergs that once upon a time shared that opinion: Ultras are useless. Waste of money. Never get them. Getting them just let's the terran win. Nearly ever game where I was ahead and made Ultras as a game-ender I promptly proceeded to lose. Why is this? Well quite frankly I wasn't using them properly. And I'm going to make a very bold statement here and say this: chances are that none of you are using Ultralisks properly.
I've played over a dozen ZvT's using this same Ultralisk strategy ever since the light bulb clicked on in my head. And counting games that had Ultras came out, I've lost a grand total of two times thus far (I'll get into why later).
Now this is not a "rush to Ultras guide." There will be no build order. Zerg's are a reactive race, and the terran opponent will set the pace. There is no magical way to get Ultralisks that will defend being bunkered in at your ramp, or the inevitable scv/rine all in off two rax. A zerg's job is to survive all the crap T can pull, and they do, but they still lose in the mid-late game because they persist on muta/ling/bling when there are better alternatives (Yes, this is the better alternative.). This is a guide to teach you how to use Ultralisks and why they are so good.
I want to mention Brood War a bit. Before anyone begins yelling at me about how SC2 and BW are two completely different games, allow me to maintain that this little paragraph here does in fact have relevance regarding how to properly use Ultralisks. In Brood War many unit compositions had a delicate balance and nicely complimented each other. Marines/Medics/Firebats all have the same movement speed. Tanks/Goliaths have the same movement speed, too. Duh, you might say. Marines/Marauders/Tanks have the same movement speed in SC2, too! On the zerg side in Brood War, mutas and speedlings had the same speed. Hydra/Lurk had a very similar speed. Speedlings were faster than lurkers, but not by much. The combinations had a certain synergy that allowed them to be used effectively because the units balanced each other out both in their roles and how fast they traveled on the map.
Think SC2 for a minute. The standard strategy for ZvT right now is Muta/Ling/Bling. Lings are way faster than Mutas, which are way faster than banelings. The synergy isn't quite there. It becomes even more awkward when you count in creep, which increases the speed of lings and banelings while doing nothing for the movement speed of mutalisks. This causes certain attack timings to go bad. Your lings might go in first and die when you need them for the surround so your banelings can hit the marines. Your banelings might go in first and die to tank fire. Your mutalisks might go in first and you'll lose a lot of them to stimmed marines. All around you'll find that there are complications here.
Banelings have a speed (when upgraded) of 2.95. Holy crap. Don't Ultralisks have that exact same speed? And they both benefit from creep in the same way? OMG Eurika!! Yes, baneling/ultra is a near perfect combo against pretty much any terran ground army. It completely and utterly decimates the marine/tank combo that is so popular these days. It completely and utterly decimates a maxed out mech army as well. Hell, you'll see in one of the screenshots later in this thread where the Terran went mass BC and still lost to Ultralisks. Yes, seriously.
My story of discovery starts off a few weeks ago. I was laddering, losing left and right and raging about how much zerg sucks and how I can only win ZvZ's and those are the only games keeping me so "high" ranked, when suddenly I find myself playing a ZvT on Jungle Basin. Fantastic, I cringe. But then again, what better map to experiment on than one you're guaranteed to lose on anyways? Away I go.
The terran opts to open up banshee, while I go the standard muta/ling/bling. His harrass does little, and we both take our nats and thirds. I opt for the right most expo, he naturally takes the middle and turtles up with a planetary fortress accompanied by bunkers/turrets/thors/banshees/tanks/marines/vikings/ravens as seen in the below pic. Mind you this was pre-patch so scv repair is still "imba" (this being pre-patch also the reason this is in screenshot mode instead of a replay - though rep will be included in the replay pack later anyways for those interested.)
![[image loading]](http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/2171/screenshot2011012403553.jpg)
Pictured above: a headache for any zerg player
I naturally have muta/ling/baneling... I have many... many lings and banelings. I have so many that apparently the terran decided to abandon all hopes of a ground army and own me with mass BC's instead since I spent so many resources on banelings. Really, at this point I feel lost. I started a fourth but I realize both it and my third could likely be taken out at any time. I have no idea what the T is doing in his base as I didn't invest that much into mutas and stimmed rines scare me. About all I can do is facepalm and make Ultralisks. I fully expect to lose as the terran isn't moving out and my only option is to attack headfront into a heavily defended planetary fortress. So I do just that. I close my eyes and pray.
![[image loading]](http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/8096/screenshot2011012403562.jpg)
Above: WTF just happened?
It takes me a moment to recover from the shock that yes I did just completely annihilate his army and his expo with relatively minimal losses. I proceed to my fourth, travel down, break the rocks with the ultras and proceed into the terran's natural. At this point I freak out when I see a bunch of bc's.
![[image loading]](http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/6995/screenshot2011012403573.jpg)
Lucky me his BC's do 9 dmg while my ultras have 6 armor. They all survive.
But of course, after this game I still wasn't convinced. As I'm sure none of you are either. If he had that many BC's, then his army wasn't all that big at the PF. All that supply could've been more tanks/thors/marines at his 3rd. But I couldn't shake the feeling off. The feeling that I was on to something. That this unit combination wasn't something terrans could easily deal with. It needed more testing.
The next game in my story occurred on Delta Quadrant. Are we noticing a trend here? Yup. The maps where I figure I'm bound to lose are the ones where I dare experiment. After fending off the initial marine rush, I proceed to go into muta/ling/bling. I begin to see more flaws in that unit combo this game. The terran attacked several times during the mid game, and I promptly defended. However all our skirmishes were mere army trades. His marines/tanks for my ling/bling. I'd have mutas left but he's able to easily reinforce marines to his main and on top of that has scary turrets plastered all over. I realize that I don't want to rely on my opponent making a mistake and leaving a hole in his defenses to allow muta harrass. In conclusion: turrets are scary.
![[image loading]](http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/5121/screenshot2011012417091.jpg)
Above: standard army trade. Afterwards Terran proceeds to get a third base in his front with a PF. My mutas are unable to stop it.
Despite the army trades, the terran is now macro'ing off 3 base and is turtled up in a way that I can't make any offensive. Recalling the events of Jungle Basin, I give in to temptation and make ultralisks while the terran maxes out on marine/tank/thor/medivac and moves out to make the finishing blow.
![[image loading]](http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/6251/screenshot2011012417114.jpg)
Not seen in picture: the above mentioned maxed out terran army that set up camp there a few short seconds ago
As clearly seen in the screenshot, I have ultralisks left over, just as I had in the game on Jungle Basin. Lings rebuild especially fast, as was shown in the Jungle Basin BC picture where his main was razed by ling reinforcements. As such, lings are able to reinforce very fast while your leftover Ultras lead the charge for the gg. leftover Mutas are moreoften than not unable to accomplish this, especially when there's a PF surrounded by turrets right in the front of the T's big turtle. This realization struck me very hard. I can make ultras, destroy the T army, and then reinforce the Ultras. The big advice people would give against turtle terrans is go broodlord to force vikings and then reinforce with Ultras. Umm... Ultras have a 70 second build time. I don't know about any of you zergs, but anytime I've tried going ultra after broodlord... I died. Why? Because broodlords don't tank your damage, and allow your ling/bling army to die. After the broodlords are dead to vikings, the terran still has a rine/tank army that your ling/bling failed to kill and are able to kill off your expansions one by one as you twiddle your thumbs waiting for ultralisks to spawn. And as soon as they do they die to mass marines because the terran is able to reinforce them much faster than any other of their units. Which means GG because you've just spent your gas on Ultras and Broodlords and don't have enough to make more banelings to counter the newly made marines.
Basically the conclusion I came up with here is that you don't reinforce with Ultras. You reinforce your ultras that survive the initial battle. And the reason they survive is because you still have your banelings. Ultras will tank the damage, their large size means that tank splash won't be landing on many banelings, and thus your banelings are free to target the marines while your ultras handle the tanks.
The marine/tank combo has thus been solved. As you can clearly see in replays. There are games where I charge ultras into a fully sieged tank line and come out the victor. The ultras soak up the damage, the banelings deal it. Sound familiar? It should if you played Brood War where crackling/ultra was the late-game ZvT. Unfortunately cracklings aren't as good in sc2 as they were in bw, and they are by far much faster than Ultralisks now thus their synergy is gone. Luckily banelings have been able to step into the role.
But wait!! You say. This is dumb. The T can just switch to mech. Thors rape Ultras.
Well luckily I was able to put Ultra/Bane vrs mech into practice as well.
So the game starts off rather interestingly, with fail banshee harass on his part and fail muta harass on mine. He turtles up his natural and takes his third. I take my third as well and the 6 natural + a gold. Again I'm doing the standard muta/bane/ling. But I notice something... he's not really making marines, and the ones he does have aren't being upgraded. FML, I have like 100 banelings and he has a pure mech army.
![[image loading]](http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/8812/screenshot2011012417162.jpg)
Indeed, it is.
The T maxes out a mech army and moves out. I managed to spawn 6 ultras in the meantime.
![[image loading]](http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/4626/screenshot2011012417181.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/1034/screenshot2011012417183.jpg)
Uhh... let's try that again.
![[image loading]](http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/2453/screenshot2011012417242.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/6084/screenshot2011012417251.jpg)
Damn.
The terrans lose their maxed armies over and over no matter the composition. And they simply don't have enough time to remax. The zerg, however, re-maxes in no time and is able to take the game immediately after the initial confrontation. This isn't army trading where both your armies die off and you're biting your nails nervous about whether you'll be able to scourge up another ling/bling army in time to defend the next push. This is you annihilating the Terran maxed out army with leftovers and proceeding to re-max and demolish everything else in your path.
Now, I'll be the first to admit this strategy isn't foolproof. The obvious weakness is the low muta count which is vulnerable to dropship play. You'll see in replays dropships used to great effect against me, oftentimes nearly winning the terran the game. Yes, I said nearly, because like every smart player one needs to adapt accordingly. If the terran is focusing more on dropships than maxing out their ground army, you will need to switch your amazingly awesome ultra bum rush strategy to a more air-oriented one and make enough mutalisks to deal with those nasty medivacs.
Similarly I believe you shouldn't invest too much into mutalisks. They are very fragile and if you're unable to harass I'm even willing to say they do you more harm than good as they are often times unable to directly engage the terran army. And the biggest advantage I believe that relying on ultralisks over mutalisks is that ultralisks share upgrades with banelings and zerglings whilst mutalisks do not. I mentioned the Nestea games at the beginning of this thread. His usual upgrades in his games against MVP were 2/1 zerglings/banelings and 2/0 mutalisks.
For the majority of his games I was wishing Nestea would abandon his ling/baneling/muta builds and just go for ultralisks. However with those upgrades his ultralisks would've likely failed as well. I've refined my build pretty carefully over the past few games. I've realized that I shouldn't rely on muta/ling/bling to win me games. However, I still need to rely on them to survive until ultralisks are out. Getting attack upgrades will not help me survive. Muta upgrades are there for harassment and engagements, because mutalisks die fast they need to do a lot of damage fast. It is the same deal for zerglings and banelings. They die exceptionally fast that Nestea wanted to get as much out of them as he could, so he got attack upgrades. I prefer the land carapace and nothing for mutalisks (as I don't rely on them to win me the game). With less mutalisks you'll be able to have more banelings, and you're relying on these banelings to keep you alive so it's best to spread creep as soon as you can and get carapace and baneling speed as soon as you can as well. Even at the expense of earlier mutalisks. After all, the terran is making marines. They do low damage at a high rate. I figure it makes a lot more sense to get those carapace upgrades out first regardless of units so you're ready for when the ultras come out. Banelings will still do a ton of damage to them even without weapon ups.
The first terran push will always come before Ultras are ready, thus a good flank on creep is a necessity. Luckily zergs shouldn't have too many problems with the first push, else they have more important things to worry about than "how do I break a turtle terran that just maxes out and a-moves?" Positioning is of course everything, catch the terran out of position and you'll survive. Allow him to set up, and you're very likely screwed.
I'll go into the games I lost using this strategy so terrans know what to do and zergs know what to be wary of. You'll see the build I've settled on in the replays. I find it works very well and is able to keep me safe from most openings. In a few of the reps you'll see me defending hellions with speedlings. I find this isn't a good idea. One game on metalopolis close positions I lost to fast blue flame hellions before my spire was even up as I simply got outmicro'ed in the early game.
Remember in Brood War that workers, and by extension zerglings, died super fast to lurkers. Hellions are just lurkers that don't need to burrow in order to shoot. It's likely more worthwhile to make a few roaches in order to defend against hellions than relying on your speedling micro being superior.
Another game to mention was on Steppes of War. There were similar blue flame hellion harass and I persisted on using speedlings as a defense. I actually held them all off, but the amount of lings lost was too great and took it's toll on me later in the game. The terran was able to push out and set up a sieged position just under the ledge of my natural with his marines secured safely way behind the tanks and a thor near the ramp leading up to my natural. My low muta count was unable to defend this and the tanks ripped apart the ling/blings before they could take out the marines. The ultras popped as my natural and third were taken out, and like I mentioned above regarding "reinforcing with Ultras" that's a big no-no and ultras are next to useless by themselves and were promptly killed by marine reinforcements. This was, however, a game where I allowed the terran to set up a strong position that was undefendable with muta/ling/bling alone.
The third game I want to mention was a ZvT on Lost Temple. This is the game that presented me with the obvious counter to my build. The terran turtled to his natural, walled off with 3 barracks, expanded to the island, and later took his gold. He persisted in dropping my expo's, had a solid marine pump from something like 15 reactored barracks and continued making tanks and thors. Despite having 5 bases of my own and constantly killing off his pushes, with his solid macro with reactored barracks' this was being an army trade. And this was not good, after all the only reason I didn't want to commit to muta/ling/bling was because those battles were merely army trades. After every clash I'd reinforce... but so would he. His marines kept coming, and after being decimated by too many drops, I was unable to keep the baneling production going and eventually one of his pushes rolled me over.
I, however, don't feel that the last game negates this strategy as it was simply my inability to defeat a clearly superior player. Other zergs with better macro and decision making in regards to dealing with drops would likely have made a much better attempt. Likewise that game was also pre-patch thus my build had not quite yet been refined and I was unable to properly adapt with a decent mutalisk switch to deal with the drops.
To conclude, of course, I will present the replays. Included in the replay pack are 10 ZvT's, all players of current 2500-3000 master rating, 4 pre-patch replays (shown in the screenshots, you can watch these offline only), 6 current patch. They are named accordingly.
download here: [url blocked]
