I discovered mutaliks in ZvP recently. So I started to work on a two base "build" (not really a build, only a loose concept) involving mutalisks.
Here a replay of a game against a diamond protoss to show my basic concept. The game itself is pretty one-sided (which doesn't matter because it's only for showing the build).
My basic concept goes as follows:
Opening: 15 pool/16 hatch/20 gas. After mining 100 gas remove two drones from the extractor.
Get third queen to start spreading creep early (I realized how important map vision is while playing muta/ling).
Get lair at 100 gas, put drones back into the extractor and take all gas geysirs.
Get evo chamber and start the +1 defense upgrade (every protoss rushes +1 attack nowadays, so i figured getting carapace first might be a good idea).
Get some lings to take down rocks/deny scout/scout protoss tech, units and bases.
If I scout no gas at the protoss' expansion I start to add a ton of spine crawlers. Even if I don't scout an all-in I will add spine crawlers bit by bit.
Get third base at safe location, if not possible get third base far away from main/natural (enables you to counter-attack).
Build mutas and start harassing, get +1 air attack aswell.
Start +1 attack ground attack upgrade and get second evo chamber.
After my third base is saturated I usually start to pump out lings to deny the third base of protoss.
Gameplan after this:
Get a big mutalisk flock so protoss cannot move out of his base without risking a base race. Always theaten a counter-attack.
Tech to infestors and make A LOT of spine crawlers for defense.
Eventually get broodlords.
Questions to frequent mutalisk user (abuser LOL :p):
What are the biggest holes in my strategy?
Should I upgrade only attack for mutalisks until I have +3?
In which case it is useful to have banelings and baneling drops ready?
Yeah pretty much. Having watched your replay there was a lot of things you did really well. I would encourage you to counter attack with lings more often, especially when he is on two bases. The beauty of ling Muta is unless he has been building blink stalkers from the start, half of his army cannot not stand up to the muta ball. He needs to bring it all with him, so when attacking the main and have 20 or so lings attack the natural, feign to pull back with mutas and when he goes to engage lings come back in with Muta, if he leaves units in the main your Muta will clean them up.
Other than that, good job. Oh and never click attack on a Archon, use the H key and to maintain magic box. Also try and draw storms, have them cast storm while your moving (kinda like stutter step for Muta).
Anyway good stuff again, gonna rob a lot of what you did.
Regarding your concerns facing a two base push: I think the right move in this case is to go for his economy with the mutalisks, make a hidden base, evacuate drones if possible and remake pool and spire. I saw Stephano actually winning a game in this seemingly hopeless situation.
If you are up against a two base blink stalker all-in you are screwed. If I am able to scout it somehow, I will tech to infestors instead.
I'm not shure if I like the idea of going mutalisks from three base. Protoss has so much easier time to defend and you are not able to do early economic damage.
I just feel like you built don't take into account several things, like a 2 base stalkers push. your mutalisk pops at 11 minutes. Any form of stalker pressure or all in will strike before that. This would leave you with only lings and crawlers to defend. Besides it is not your mutalisk that helped you take a third. It was safe place becaused it was tucked away and blocked by rocks, that let you do it. You probably more than often lose it to zealot warp-in, on other maps. If you wanna play this type of delayed mutalisks, I would recommend to be more aggressive with your lings while taking the third. Which is more consitent with getting ling upgrades. I don't mean that you should sacrifice lings or play uncautiously with them.
If you going mutalisks, don't go banelings imo, your mutas actaully plays the blings part. Devoting more gas to something that doesn't add to your composition just seem bad. Rather tech to hive with that gas and get broods. The infestor is good but it doesn't serve any purpose if you go for delayed mutalisks. The mutalisks should delay the opponent so you can tech to hive. You can get the upgrades for the infestor while teching to hive but you should not plan to go from muta/ling into infestor/ling.
Ps. Have better overlord position like a ring round your base and expos. Which can spots drops etc. Besides lings and mutas is very good to drill a locations. You pull all of his stalkers to the main with your mutas when the stalkers arrive you retreat and regroup with your lings.Then drill the front or a third base or whatnot. Other such tactics can be beneficial like hitting with lings in one spot and mutas another, etc.
umm, 3 base muta is always better than 2 base muta. I really like the fact that mutalisks can give you so much not just a threat to counter attacks, but also a huge window to drone and tech switch. Usually people go back to roach/ling mix after gaining a huge advantage of economy and eventually to infestor/BL/corruptor mix. Or, even better, if you hold off a 2 base gateway timing with roach/ling on 3 bases, you can immediate drone and tech to mutas and indefintely denying protoss's third base with your roach/ling/muta force, which I think would be a lot better than normal ling/muta on 2 bases. There are a lot of materials to look at if you need further information.
Consensus: Yes, youre doing it right. There are some small things you can improve upon that I go over in the replay review.
Wow, thank you SO much for the feedback!
Edit: Haha, yes i won. I just wanted to know if my basic build is acceptable. I felt I exectued it quiet good in this replay, thats why I uploaded it as an example. But nevertheless: thanks for your advice!
Consensus: Yes, youre doing it right. There are some small things you can improve upon that I go over in the replay review.
Quite frankly you really added nothing to it, you clearly didnt experience the match up enough as a zerg going mutas, but I guess it was nice to spend time on it?
For OP : The thing is, you based your whole strategy on doing damage with the mutas, and thats where the big mistake was. When you first came into his main with mutas and he pulled around 8 sentries 6 stalkers, the front was like : 1 zealot 1 sentry 1 canon if i remember right, thing is with mutas in ZvP, you wont win vs an equal skill opponent with that type of play. You need to have your zerglings posted around the natural, when you see the stalkers sentries come up, you back the mutas send the lings in the natural, try to kill by priority : 1 sentries 2 canons 3 probes, when he gets his army to defend the natural you send the mutas in the main again. Likely 60% of the time he'll send only stalkers in the main, leaving the sentries on the natural fragile to a ling surround if he's not careful (and he shouldnt be even at diamond+ level, since he's focused on the mutas), like Day9 pointed out, the most important thing is KILLING SENTRIES. You must always remember that, you kill sentries, his future attacks wont be potent, you clearly inflicted a huge hit on his "gas potential", and what are mutas weak against? really gas heavy units, if he replaces the sentries, he's open for mutas, if he doesnt, he's open for lings and roaches. Also, always have a Roach Warren quite fast when you go muta, 100% ling defense wont do it most of the time, but try to avoid making roaches for nothing, they're taking supply and gas and you really dont want that with a muta play, for the ground if you cant manage to overwelm him with mutas and you feel fragile for an attack, adding 3/4 infestors, and 30% roach 70% lings should do the trick if you're careful for storms and if you snipe colossus. Also, I know that as a zerg killing canons feels useless and "ffs it's op i've lost so much shit killing a mineral cost building", but it will open harass opportunities, plus, a large groupe of muta can kill canons quite fast, loosing 1 or 2 mutas but keeping him on the defensive and paranoia mode is sometimes way more important than saving those mutas. You want him to loose his ground, his patience, make mistakes because he feels outplayed by multi front attacks, then if he goes for trade base you simply win, your army does way more damage than his on buildings, you can relocate quite easily he cant, and you can get back to your base really quickly since your army is so freaking mobile. About the +1 defense, I actually do it too, but when I see that Day9 advise to get the attack up I dont know, both are good for some situations, the thing is, it's actually quite good to get +1 attack because you can immediatly go for +2 attack whereas the +2 defense is quite useless that early, and costs a good deal of gas that you need, focusing on attack means you're going to play very well actually, because it assures that your lings run bys and attacks on the natural will do damage with +2, whereas if you simply try to attack move a ground army you'll die really quick. It's more a question of being safe, I guess on certain map you could go for the +1 defense on others +2 attack, but if you go for +2 atk you need to have roach speed ready and produce them whenever you're attacked, because your lings will die like flies Hope it helped, see ya!
Edit: Thought i should add that, it really wont pay quickly, this is a very intensive micro gameplay, the more you play it, the more you'll get used to be active and keep your macro up, the more you'll see opportunities and "units feel" (like "is it good for me to attack those stalkers with my muta count? would i loose too much?" etc). You just need to not give up on it because you will absolutely loose to some protoss 2 base timings at first
Gaaah and I forgot your question about bling drops, man this post is long xD. Personally I would say no absolutely not, it is way too much of a gas investment to go well with a muta strategy, but getting drops absolutely, and even maybe adding few banelings on your army, but a real baneling drop style with like 12 16 banelings in overlord is too much I think, banelings cant reinforce quickly which is a strenght of muta style zvp, if you get an edge and feel is army is too small, full zergling production time and finish that sucker off! Plus he's already got lots of stalkers most likely with blink, and can work around your overlords, baneling drops vs army are effective vs a really heavy sentry army, or death balls, which shouldnt be the case here, and baneling drops on his mineral lines well no, because he will have canons there to defend against mutas and he will be careful about his base, so I'd say no, but zerglings drop to avoid a well defended natural wall can be nice when he's on the way to your base for example
Consensus: Yes, youre doing it right. There are some small things you can improve upon that I go over in the replay review.
Quite frankly you really added nothing to it, you clearly didnt experience the match up enough as a zerg going mutas, but I guess it was nice to spend time on it?
Thank you for the feedback (the first part) I try not to spend too much time on matchups that don't have a T at least on one side unless it is something specific like muta play versus toss. I am working on not just talking my ass off about nothing and hopefully the end goal of these posts are for the OP and others to be forced into getting another view of their own replays. Not trying to derail bluemarmot's thread too much, but is there any specific I could improve upon? Thanks again.
Consensus: Yes, youre doing it right. There are some small things you can improve upon that I go over in the replay review.
Quite frankly you really added nothing to it, you clearly didnt experience the match up enough as a zerg going mutas, but I guess it was nice to spend time on it?
Thank you for the feedback (the first part) I try not to spend too much time on matchups that don't have a T at least on one side unless it is something specific like muta play versus toss. I am working on not just talking my ass off about nothing and hopefully the end goal of these posts are for the OP and others to be forced into getting another view of their own replays. Not trying to derail bluemarmot's thread too much, but is there any specific I could improve upon? Thanks again.
I think you were too focused on the actions and not on the strategy part, like what he could have done instead of focusing on what he did, and maybe too focused on the protoss play (who was quite terrible) and maybe try to look more for the zerg expand timings, upgrades etc. Maybe you're a little too much in the moment, which would be good if you were casting a game, but for a strategical analysis it makes you miss most of the important things to say, but I'm sure you actually know them, it's easy to write up something but when you find yourself speaking into a mic it must be easy to get carried away and loose tracks, anyway gl with your work it's still quite nice to take time to advice random TLers
not much of a zerg player but i can tell you that 2 base muta is no where nearly as good as 3 base muta going for a fast third after you scout FFE, defend timings with roach ling and go muta after that.
I've been trying to do muta/ling in zvp for a while now. It all mostly depends on the map. I use it mainly against FFE, where I take a quick 3rd base. Depending on the map, I defend any 2base gateway builds (which I've been encountering less and less these days, protoss seems to be favouring heavy macro styles) with some combination of spinecrawlers, lings, and maybe roaches (e.g. shakuras it's easy to defend with just spinecrawlers and some lings, other maps spinecrawlers might be useless and you gotta use ling/roach or burrowed roaches which will delay your muta).
One great tactic I've been doing is to do with ling runbys. Once it becomes obvious the lings are getting useless (sometime shortly after midgame), it is awesome to maximise their damage by doing ling runbys, which will get easily defended, the key is to split off a bunch of lings and run them into the next nearest expansions. I almost always manage to sneak a substantial amount of lings into the toss's main when I do a runby at their natural. They often don't have enough time to micro probes at the natural and warp in a zealot or FF (if you are playing vs lower diamonds like me chances are they will even FF the ramp after your lings have run up, thus blocking his units outside his base) at the main's wallin at the same time, and often won't anyway because they think their walloff and cannons at natural are sufficient. This has often won me games even though it rarely does direct damage - I have found that when I do this when the toss is moving out with their army to attack, it can turn it back or even outright make it idle while the toss focuses all attention on defending his base: this becomes even more likely if you are hitting a different base with mutas at the same time. All of which gives you enough time to actually mount a defense against a deathball that would otherwise annihilate muta/ling.
Also I have found that instead of wasting all the lings, morphing them into banelings for use head-on against the deathball is great, since chances are you've been keeping his sentry count low anyway. I have had a few games where I had nothing but mutas and lings and no spines against a nearly maxed toss, despite colossus and sentries around half of the army can get blown up if you walk up 30 or so banelings, even without bling speed. Very useful in a pinch. I haven't experimented with drops yet though.
If the toss isn't going FFE I will usually just go mass macro a roach/hydra ball and hit them head-on, with nydus worm behind the frontline pumping out reinforcements before they can get too many colossus, but some builds can still be susceptible to muta play.
I can provide a some replays if you like, I've been playing this style a lot lately. Nothing very impressive though, I'm not that good lol.
I really like going muta ling bane, then teching to ultras later.
In my mind heres what i'm doing when i'm muta harassing.
1. Kill Workers 2. Kill Sentries 3. Destroy Tech Buildings 4. INJECT! Injects are CRUTIAL WITH MUTA LING. if you still have minerals left when you mass lings, then you do not have enough larva, essentially bc you missed injects or are only on 2 hatch. I would like to point out, having enough larva is honestly the difference. 5. Counter. Have some lings hiding somewhere for runbys.
2 base muta is kind of... gimmicky. It's like a semi good all-in to have.
It used to be a popular build about a year ago, but MC basically made it no longer a viable macro way to play due to 2 base mass gateway play (as others have discussed here) and stargate openers. With the greater popularity of warp prisms and robo openings over gateway all-ins and stargate, 2 base muta has become more useful, but you are still banking on the hope the opponent opens one way over another.
That said, JulyZerg does it a lot. There's a good example of him doing it on Antiga against Hero.
You will ahve a huge problem against mass gateway. You'll have to spine up to survive, even if your mutas are out, and then he can retreat and take his third with a huge lead.
And ditch that +1 carapace upgrade. It's much more important you have mutalisks than upgrades for ground units, since you are only making pure mutas, maybe lings, and then infestors and broodlords. Also, toss will always outpace zerg in upgrades, and +1 carapace will never finish in time against gateway pressure (it takes over 3 minutes to get +1 carapace!) and by that time Toss will be working on +2. Never get ground upgrades, except melee, and much later on. +3 zealots still only 2 shot lings, so don't worry.
mmm i dont understand at all how there can be zergs players asking by this yet , 2 base muta has been discussed 1000 times since the beta even, it´s not solid , is almost all in because if you lose part of your first muta you are basic in gg, 2 base play dont let you put out enough mutas if you are suffering losses and you cant defend 2 base timmings neither.
Maybe this gameplay works in low leagues but I think that from gold or platinum already know how to destroy it.
Your biggest hole is you're breaking the first law like zerg , you always want to keep ahead in expans , is very stupid focus in 2 base play when 2 base toss play its pretty much deadly than yours. By the other hand you can´t adequately defend 2 base toss timmings with this build, so your entery build are based about you are not getting crushed before muta?
You will have hard times with actual metagame , I've been watching in ladder tons of builds about massive warp-in with prism around 8-9 min, very hard to hold warp cycles of zealot +1 without roaches, your spire or lair being sniped is almost inevitable. You should try to run same kind of roach safe expand and get your spire with your thirth , by far much more solid build for enjoy muta play imo.
I would stay away from this build, you will lose a lot to 2 base all-ins with it. I much prefer the build described in decaf's guide. You secure 3 bases first, counter any 2-base play and then go into mutalisk play.
EPT
