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Hello people of teamliquid,
i have struggled a lot against the more and more popular stephano style of play with mass ling infestor , fast upgrades and so on.
The question "How do you beat Stephano" was asked several times at Assembly and i wanted to ask you, what you can do against his style of play?
Is it constant pressure like polt does it?
Are drops enough or do you need pushes and drops at the same time.
Do you have to be ahead in upgrades (wich is hard as terran imo)?
What are the key things that make you beat this style?
~so long.
/ps: take a look at this replay if you want. I killed about 40 drones and several hatches and still got owned (ofc he got really good fungals off).
http://drop.sc/130676
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Just use Polt as an example. MMM is a bitch to play against when you use that style.
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I face this style of play a lot in the ladder. It usually is very easy to read but its very hard to abuse. If you are good and open the game like Polt does you can heavily pressure the Zerg. The downside is that you will sacrifice earlier upgrades for it. Usually you can apply pressure to the third or keep them on 2 base until infestors are out.
Key to all of this is actually having your hellions alive until there are tech units out. You may not lose your hellions (6 is a good count and a lot better than 4) so they enable you to deny creep, allow you to pressure with medivacs. While your first medivacs pressure add your 3rd base and 3 barracks. By now you should already know what style the Zerg is using. If he's using the infestor style you are talking about I'd immediately start double-ebay and armory to 1-1-1 instantly. While you pressure, you can macro and build up additional 2 medivacs with 16 marines and pressure another place. By now infestors should be out and you have to be careful, try to move his army out of position while slowly macro'ing.
If you pressure, he will most likely not and you keep the danger of the superior upgrades at least defensive. The 3 barracks you added should be techlab and two reactors as you will need marauders. Marauders are very good to tank zergling attacks and make your army 'BIGGER' as in fungal doesn't hit as much. Key in fighting against ultra/ling/infestor is good control with your units. 200/200 vs 200/200 you can either complete crush with good positioning and control or get completely crushed.
In my opinion and my personal experience was, having your army spread out a lot to create walking distance as all the Zerg units are melee and fungal will never hit a lot. If you have 12+ tanks with +3 attack and a lot of bio Zerg will most likely not trade cost efficiently. Also you should always have a viking around to deny overlord scouting / creepspread.
The style is extreme frustrating to play against, but its the best practice you can get, glhf!
In addition I want to say, that I don't think Terrans experienced with ghosts a lot, so adding 2-3 ghosts to at least get 1 or 2 EMPs off the infestors would greatly increase your chance of actually winning the engagement.
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Imo drops are the best way to play against that style. Abuse the fact that he has no air control. Straight up pushes are probably not a good idea since the zerg will have so many lings that he will just crush them. Expand a lot with PF since you do not have to sit in your base defending against mutas and he cannot really attack if you are sieged well and put down some bunkers. Keep your tanks in front of the Marines so they cannot get fungaled without him losing the infestors. Make turrets against burrowed infestors. Add a second factory soon and try to get early upgrades too. Mixing in Marodeurs can be very good, as well as a ton of blue flame Hellions in case you are going mech. That is how I play against that style and it has been working quite well.
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My trick is deny economy. Like the reactor hellion opening is designed to, you are to delay the opponent third AND deny creepspread. Keeping the initial hellions alive while you get up stim, 1/1, and tanks to reinforce the contain is crucial. If he doesn't have a 3rd by 10 minutes you win the game easily as yours should be on the way and your upgrades will be done with a fair amount of tanks to kill the banes.
Polt style is powerful because he acts similarly to Stephano in TvZ, where he builds a strong economy and tier 1/2 army with heavy upgrades. The difference is that terran can be the agressor in many of the situations whereas attacking into fortified positions is rough for Z. Drop + push your tanks out to deny economy/deny cost effective trades with your bio. Because so much gas is going to banes/infestors/upgrades, you don't have to be worried about mutalisk sniping tanks and can be a bit more thinly defended on the main army while dropping with more of it and doing damage. (remaking drones is bad, making army is worse, delaying upgrades/expands/tech is terrible!).
MMM can work very well in earlier stages when the opponent invests in roaches for hellion defense, but can be very scary if you allow the zerg enough time to make 20 or so banelings. Even MKP loses his armies to absurb amount of banes.
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so let me just write it up:
Siege position - if you loose position you loose the game.
Marodeurs are a nice addition to your army since fungals won't hurt them as much.
big spread of army
no streight pushing but a lot of drops
Is there any way to deny the 3rd at the beginning?
I feel like: If he gets the drone pass your hellions and starts the 3rd you can't do anything about it.
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France13021 Posts
I can't go much into details right now, but once you know the zerg is playing that style, upgrade your stuff.
Upgraded lings are as incredibly strong as upgraded marines, so keeping up on upgrades is very important.
Drops are very useful once the zerg got t3 and lot of far away bases, and you can use one to distract the zerg a bit and advance your army enough.
And you'll have to use scans to check for tech.
Make sure to have a good simcity and don't be afraid of using sensor towers
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On March 13 2012 07:48 ntssauce wrote:
so let me just write it up:
Siege position - if you loose position you loose the game.
Marodeurs are a nice addition to your army since fungals won't hurt them as much.
big spread of army
no streight pushing but a lot of drops
Is there any way to deny the 3rd at the beginning?
I feel like: If he gets the drone pass your hellions and starts the 3rd you can't do anything about it.
Get the replays of Assemble Winter. Stephano vs Polt and use the build he uses.
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The infestor ling style takes a lot of skill to execute against a good terran. Just because a zerg on ladder plays a style inspired by him doesn't mean they are playing like stephano :p. Infestor ling isn't that much different then ling bannelling muta; you need to put pressure on the zerg before three bases. You need to be in seige modes before big engagements. You need to manage the creep. You need to drop when you pull the army out of position. Keep your marines split for fungals like against bannelings. Send small groups of marines ahead to harrass infestors when you get the oppertunity; its not worth a fungal to kill 4 or 5 marines spread out with 2 medivacs over head. The biggest difference between ling infestor and ling bannelings is you can afford to lead with your tanks against ling infestor. There is nothing to stop you from slow pushing, so slow push aggressively (if that makes sense). Be constantly leap frogging tanks, and be dropping in the mean time to keep your zerg opponent from getting to many ideas about flanks and attacking.
The hardest part about ling infestor is the fast hive tech. You need to expand aggressively and get out your late game units fast. And you need to do all that while keeping up with upgrades, denying bases, ect. If zerg gets up five bases with good creep spread and good upgrades then there is really nothing you can do. Practice a lot. You really have to out play the zerg. There aren't any easy answers, that is just how the matchup is.
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mid master zerg who recently swapped to stephano style with huge success.
For Protoss its simple stop going all-in every game and take a 3rd, dont QQ when going blink/ collosis /3rd all at once and you fail. decide when teching,units, or expanding is best for the situation and do it well.
For terran drop play is the one thing that is very hard to deal with, the 2nd thing to keep in mind is that lings consume a large amounts of minerals and LARVA! what this means is that if zerg is slacking on injects or if he cant get a 4th up its very hard to deal with strong positional play as we simply dont have the larva. to through away. and for last the ghost is a good unit and just b/c you dont want to use snipe anymore doesnt mean EMP or even snipe is any less effective vs infestors. keep infestor count low (or energy) and keep ultras from coming b/c thats our game closer.
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What about when the zerg adds like 6+ spines to each expansion later in the game? Dropping with 8 marines into 6 spines doesn't really work too well, and i feel like committing 2 dropships for 16 marines is too much.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but whenever I play against ling/infestor the zerg just adds like 6 spines to each base and my drop play can't do anything, so I'm stuck and end up losing.
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On March 13 2012 08:03 genius_man16 wrote:
What about when the zerg adds like 6+ spines to each expansion later in the game? Dropping with 8 marines into 6 spines doesn't really work too well, and i feel like committing 2 dropships for 16 marines is too much.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but whenever I play against ling/infestor the zerg just adds like 6 spines to each base and my drop play can't do anything, so I'm stuck and end up losing.
I personally would agree, but its your / our lack of ability to play Terran to its full potential. I personally think a drop cannot happen when you play massling style with infestors, since if you have good scouting / map awareness you will never unload a medivac or even two before lings are there. Also usually before the very lategame where drops are effective again Zerg has superior upgrades.
The key lies within not letting the pressure go down. You need to pressure from start to finish or be insanely well prepared like Polt with positioning and macro. He usually never misses a beat. Pull the Zerg out of position or have him split his army while you move into position. Viking can greatly help your drops if he doesn't see it coming.
I struggle as well, but if you can beat that style, you can beat any style I think.
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On March 13 2012 07:39 Type|NarutO wrote:
I face this style of play a lot in the ladder. It usually is very easy to read but its very hard to abuse. If you are good and open the game like Polt does you can heavily pressure the Zerg. The downside is that you will sacrifice earlier upgrades for it. Usually you can apply pressure to the third or keep them on 2 base until infestors are out.
Key to all of this is actually having your hellions alive until there are tech units out. You may not lose your hellions (6 is a good count and a lot better than 4) so they enable you to deny creep, allow you to pressure with medivacs. While your first medivacs pressure add your 3rd base and 3 barracks. By now you should already know what style the Zerg is using. If he's using the infestor style you are talking about I'd immediately start double-ebay and armory to 1-1-1 instantly. While you pressure, you can macro and build up additional 2 medivacs with 16 marines and pressure another place. By now infestors should be out and you have to be careful, try to move his army out of position while slowly macro'ing.
If you pressure, he will most likely not and you keep the danger of the superior upgrades at least defensive. The 3 barracks you added should be techlab and two reactors as you will need marauders. Marauders are very good to tank zergling attacks and make your army 'BIGGER' as in fungal doesn't hit as much. Key in fighting against ultra/ling/infestor is good control with your units. 200/200 vs 200/200 you can either complete crush with good positioning and control or get completely crushed.
In my opinion and my personal experience was, having your army spread out a lot to create walking distance as all the Zerg units are melee and fungal will never hit a lot. If you have 12+ tanks with +3 attack and a lot of bio Zerg will most likely not trade cost efficiently. Also you should always have a viking around to deny overlord scouting / creepspread.
The style is extreme frustrating to play against, but its the best practice you can get, glhf!
In addition I want to say, that I don't think Terrans experienced with ghosts a lot, so adding 2-3 ghosts to at least get 1 or 2 EMPs off the infestors would greatly increase your chance of actually winning the engagement.
How do you scout and actully tell if its stephano style ling infestor or a standard ling baneling mutalisk play?
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Usually Zergs that go for that heavy ling / infestor style will have 2 early evolution chambers and they will probably even have a macro-hatchery in base. An additional hint could be that they are trying to kill the hellions at all costs. They need to make tons of lings anyways and killing the hellions as long as there are no marines/medivacs around is their best shot.
Obviously it could still be muta play, there is no way to confirm it by 100%, but the trend goes towards infestors nowadays.
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The issue isn't so much the style of play, but rather the decisions you make in your games. Rather than phrasing your question as how to beat Stephano, you should think in terms of how you can play better yourself.
In this game, your opponent opened with an extremely fast 3rd base, in fact finishing it before even your natural was taken. This warrants some kind of reaction from you - either a fast 3rd yourself or you need to put some pressure on him. The 4 hellions did decent damage, but during that time, you failed to take your natural and you forgot to make workers. You finally take your natural at 9 minutes (very late) and by 10 minutes you're about 10 workers behind where you'd be with constant production.
This puts you in a tough position, with your 2 base tank marine timing coming from a much weaker economy than usual against an opponent who is happily mining on 3 bases. Your army gets crushed, you have no 3rd base, and the game is pretty much over from there, before your opponent even got any infestors. You also neglect to get combat shield for your marines all game, which certainly doesn't help.
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On March 13 2012 08:11 ShaneFeit wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 07:39 Type|NarutO wrote:
I face this style of play a lot in the ladder. It usually is very easy to read but its very hard to abuse. If you are good and open the game like Polt does you can heavily pressure the Zerg. The downside is that you will sacrifice earlier upgrades for it. Usually you can apply pressure to the third or keep them on 2 base until infestors are out.
Key to all of this is actually having your hellions alive until there are tech units out. You may not lose your hellions (6 is a good count and a lot better than 4) so they enable you to deny creep, allow you to pressure with medivacs. While your first medivacs pressure add your 3rd base and 3 barracks. By now you should already know what style the Zerg is using. If he's using the infestor style you are talking about I'd immediately start double-ebay and armory to 1-1-1 instantly. While you pressure, you can macro and build up additional 2 medivacs with 16 marines and pressure another place. By now infestors should be out and you have to be careful, try to move his army out of position while slowly macro'ing.
If you pressure, he will most likely not and you keep the danger of the superior upgrades at least defensive. The 3 barracks you added should be techlab and two reactors as you will need marauders. Marauders are very good to tank zergling attacks and make your army 'BIGGER' as in fungal doesn't hit as much. Key in fighting against ultra/ling/infestor is good control with your units. 200/200 vs 200/200 you can either complete crush with good positioning and control or get completely crushed.
In my opinion and my personal experience was, having your army spread out a lot to create walking distance as all the Zerg units are melee and fungal will never hit a lot. If you have 12+ tanks with +3 attack and a lot of bio Zerg will most likely not trade cost efficiently. Also you should always have a viking around to deny overlord scouting / creepspread.
The style is extreme frustrating to play against, but its the best practice you can get, glhf!
In addition I want to say, that I don't think Terrans experienced with ghosts a lot, so adding 2-3 ghosts to at least get 1 or 2 EMPs off the infestors would greatly increase your chance of actually winning the engagement. How do you scout and actully tell if its stephano style ling infestor or a standard ling baneling mutalisk play?
fast double evo for delayed lair.
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On March 13 2012 07:23 ntssauce wrote:
"How do you beat Stephano"
Smack him with a flipchair before the game starts.
Jokes aside. I assume you mean the early macro hatch with mass mass lings. I feel MKPs hellion reactor expand with another reactored fac instantly would work well. Show 2-4 hellions and hide the rest, then hit with 12-16 hellions and go roast like a madman. Queens and a few spines wont help, and hellions in those numbers can´t be countered by mass ling surround, you will force a roach transition, in which case you can switch back to reactored marines with double tanks production.
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I'm a zerg, but I'll just add what I find difficult to deal with when I do that.
1. A VIKING. Like, one viking. Goodbye all the overlords. Without mutas you just can't really kill the viking, and it just flies around the map shooting at overlords, which is why I end up keeping most between main/nat. They have a big range too so unless you have creep spread in the main it can even be hard to the queen to kill it before infestors are out. And a poor overlord spread really helps with the next point...
2. Drops can be really difficult to deal with. Early if you drop behind the minerals it's tough because you don't really have banes. Later on not so much at the main/nat but at 3rd/4th. You can deal with it, but if you're leaving an infestor at each base and have built spines or left lings then that's taking from elsewhere. I found the style let me get a lot of bases once infestors were out (if they go hellions they are strong before that) but it can be hard to adequately defend them all.
3. A raven. It can be hard to attack siege positions if they can see the burrowed infestors. That's just how I play though.
4. Good tank positioning. You can't force movement like you can with broodlords, if the Z wants to engage it's where the T wants, unless you can catch them en route.
These things don't seem to apply to the very top, but may be useful to some people.
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It's not too hard really. Push the front of their base, whilst dropping every single base they have. As taxing as that may be on your apm, there is no way a Zerg can defend it all. (I'm a Zerg -> Thats how I lose ZvT). Also if you're not pushing the front, do like triple medivac drops, snipe hatch, pickup, go next base.
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On March 13 2012 09:28 Host- wrote:
It's not too hard really. Push the front of their base, whilst dropping every single base they have. As taxing as that may be on your apm, there is no way a Zerg can defend it all. (I'm a Zerg -> Thats how I lose ZvT). Also if you're not pushing the front, do like triple medivac drops, snipe hatch, pickup, go next base.
It's not too hard really. Yes it is. It is very fucking hard. Please don't act like you would be some Code S caliber. If you drop 3 places at once and push the front, you will get overrun with your main push. Even if you would be able to snipe 1 expansion from those 3 drops, you would still be behind because you just gave away your whole army probably very cost-inefficient.
Counter attacks, complete loss of mapcontrol is what you get in addition to that. Most Zergs will also have spines and a handful of lings defending their bases, so no, what you suggest is not the solution and certainly not easy.
Watch Stephano vs Happy and how well Happy played on Shakuras with complete abuse of the map which isn't possible on most maps or at least no in that same fashion and he still barely won by the skin of his teeth. Happy by the way is very fast and has very high APM and did drop 3 bases at once all the time.
=.= Seriously. I don't want to judge, but I don't think you are insanely high on the ladder, otherwise you wouldn't talk like that.
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EPT
