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Most current replays.
http://drop.sc/329079
http://drop.sc/328301
http://drop.sc/329360
http://drop.sc/329431
http://drop.sc/329588
http://drop.sc/329656 - if ravens ever get popular it's going to be such a pain to play vs terran.
http://drop.sc/331031
http://drop.sc/331411
http://drop.sc/331634
http://drop.sc/332068 - best example of infestor/ultra/corruptor I think
http://drop.sc/334802
http://drop.sc/339317 - latest replay
Note that the title is not "How to kill a mine field". It's "How not to die in a mine field". Which is a confusing poorly worded title lol 
This video illustrates the problem very well. Flash wins the game based on mechanics alone. No fancy play no tricky unit combos just straight up macro and micro. Despite actually coming out ahead in a number of engagements the zerg can never take advantage of it due to the volatile nature of his unit combo, the mine field and the constant threat from the terran. A couple times he does risk taking his mutas around to the terran base but pays for it each time.
Flash vs BBoong TvZ
So I got to thinking about it and here was the answer I came up with.
How not to die in a mine field? Know it's there and don't walk into it. No one is stupid enough to do that right? Clearly we are.
Why do we do this? We're chasing the terran. Why doesn't the terran turn around and fight us? Because bio doesn't beat ling/bane. It never has. Before mines terrans used sieged tanks to kill the banelines off remember? They would run backwards and focus fire the tanks onto the banes. We went mutas to force stims and snipe tanks. And to have something that would survive the carnage down below because tanks can't shoot up.
In WoL terran invested heavily in their pushes. Tanks built slowly and cost a lot. They had to make them work. They could not afford just to trade cost effectively. They had to win convincingly. Mines build faster, cost less, burrow(siege up) faster. They are invisible and they shoot air units. But what can't they do? Mines aren't siege units. They control ground. They don't take ground from stationary defense.
If you haven't guessed it yet. Spinecrawlers. Now before you come up with all the reasons why spines wouldn't fill a much needed role in this fight think back to the game you just watched. The zerg was dumping all his minerals into zerglings. Desperately trying to keep the mines from moving into his base. He had no way to control that space between his expansion and the terran. It was not efficient at all. The problem is the mines.
You can't advance past spinecrawlers with mines. The spines out range the bio so they can't run foward and backward trying to draw you out. And if they commit to killing the spines your banelings will wreck them since the mines aren't in range.
So where do these excess minerals come from so we don't get overrun by an attack coming down another path without spines on it yet? I would say our best option is to begin building infestors and/or vipers while doing this. Gas heavy units that cost very little minerals will continue to grow and improve our army while we use excess minerals on spines.
So give me your feedback. Let's force terran to make tanks again.
PanzerElite summed this up very nicely. We desperately need to take the fight on our terms because mines are extremely cost effective for the terran.
On April 21 2013 03:55 PanzerElite wrote:
Seriously the OP is just telling to fortify your base in the lategame instead of wasting your minerals on lings that you just run into a minefield and get slaughtered without doing any damage. Instead of chasing down bio, just regroup add static defense and take the next fight on your terms, instead of running your units into a minefield.
Edit: Replays up top. A lot of the ideas came from the thread. I want to make a case for a odd unit combo. That is very effective.
Ultra/Corruptor/Infestor /w switch to broodlords after medivacs die.
Since I started skipping mutas I have had to find new ways to deal with medivacs. I found that if I made 4 corruptors early in the game I usually kept most of them for the entire game. Unlike mutas they never get attacked unless they are the only thing for the terran to hit. They have high health and a longer range to keep them out of harms way. So I did this as a way to efficiently keep the terrans medivac count down during fights. The benefits out weighed the costs as long as I didn't make them to early.
But with only 4 on the field the terran wasn't phased to much by this it was simply an inconvience for him and mostly just meant he couldn't hang out near my base with medivacs. Sort of like a terran making 1 viking to chase off your overlords. Annoying but not game ending. And they took some time to actually kill medivacs. Regardless it was a nice change over a small group of mutas since they survived much better.
Despite this I was still struggling to justify making corruptors over mutas since mutas can attack ground. But someone mentioned how terran medivac counts would get so high that infestors would have little to no effect. Thereby making the infestors somewhat useless if you did not have mutas to keep the medivac count low. And I've seen this before in many games where the terran has a small group of marines and marauders each with their own personal medivac doing way more damage than they should be able to. This got me rethinking my corruptor useage. If I could greatly reduce or even eliminate the terrans medivac count in every engagement his bio/mines+drops strategy would begin to fall apart. You can't stim and run to your mines anytime you feel like it if you don't have a lot of medivacs healing you.
So in the test game after the first major engagement I killed all but 2 of his medivacs with fungal/corruptor. I noticed something. He left me alone for a long time. No drops, no pokes at the front of my base. Then I realized he was rebuilding his medivacs. He couldn't do anything without them. So this is definitely a weakness worth exploiting.
Ok back to the reasoning behind corruptor over muta for this combo.
Pros
- Better range - won't die to mines or marine fire
- Doesn't have target priority over ground units
- Higher health
- Higher damage against medivacs + corruption 7.4 dps vs 5.9
- Has more potential later on if you decide you want broods
Cons
- Cost 50 more minerals - however I think they end up costing less since they die much less.
- Can't hit ground
- Slower move speed
This also synergizes with a more defensive play style. Mines can't really deal with infestors as some people pointed out in this thread especially when they are behind spines. You just need to kill the medivacs so that the infestors can have their full effect. With no tanks on the field and 10 range fungal this is much easier to do than in WoL.
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Well if you invest in stationary defenses, Terren drops will become so much more painful to deal with. Mines are a pain though. Hydra roach seems like the best composition to deal with bio mine. once they switch to tanks it might become a little harder to deal with.
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On April 21 2013 00:01 KaiserKieran wrote:
Well if you invest in stationary defenses, Terren drops will become so much more painful to deal with. Mines are a pain though. Hydra roach seems like the best composition to deal with bio mine. once they switch to tanks it might become a little harder to deal with.
Roach/Hydralisk feels so inefficient vs. Bio/Mine, and it is certainly way less mobile. I think Zergling/Baneling/Infestor is good, later on a couple of Vipers are good for Blinding Cloud, you also have the upgrades if you want to go Ultralisks later on.
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On April 21 2013 00:01 KaiserKieran wrote:
Well if you invest in stationary defenses, Terren drops will become so much more painful to deal with. Mines are a pain though. Hydra roach seems like the best composition to deal with bio mine. once they switch to tanks it might become a little harder to deal with.
On the contrary having stationary defense will make it easier to deal with drops since its less of a risk to split off part of your army to deal with it. I also must be clear that I'm not talking about building spines instead of an army. I'm talking about making enough to stabilize against the steady stream of MMMM coming to your base instead of spamming loads of zerglings which ultimately die without doing much damage.
Tanks will actually make the combo easier to deal with because they are such a costly, time consuming investment which will give you a window of opportunity anytime he loses tanks or needs to make them to attack.
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my take on it so far has been to not make banelings. Go straight from mutas into infestors. Overmake lings and crawlers to stay safe. It sets you up badly in terms of economy for a short while (3base vs 3base), but it sets you up beautifully in terms of tech and upgrades and allows you to fungal and IT harass a Terran.
Imo, you don't want to make banelings ever unless you want to bust. At all other times, making banelings vs MMMM means that the Terran can push you over and over again from 2-3bases without ever having to spread out further, because each time he pushes against lairtech he is costefficient. He doesn't damage you, but he forces you to play 2-2 ling/bling vs 3-3 MMMM pushes+ drops forever, until you either just lose because you fuck up your control vs mines or you miss 1-2 drops and everything snowballs.
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On April 21 2013 00:14 Big J wrote:
my take on it so far has been to not make banelings. Go straight from mutas into infestors. Overmake lings and crawlers to stay safe. It sets you up badly in terms of economy for a short while (3base vs 3base), but it sets you up beautifully in terms of tech and upgrades and allows you to fungal and IT harass a Terran.
Imo, you don't want to make banelings ever unless you want to bust. At all other times, making banelings vs MMMM means that the Terran can push you over and over again from 2-3bases without ever having to spread out further, because each time he pushes against lairtech he is costefficient. He doesn't damage you, but he forces you to play 2-2 ling/bling vs 3-3 MMMM pushes+ drops forever, until you either just lose because you fuck up your control vs mines or you miss 1-2 drops and everything snowballs.
I agree I go straight to hive asap. And I also try not to over make banelings. But I think trying not to over make zerglings could be a drastic improvement as well. They are cheap but largely ineffective in many situations. And they don't do much to stop the mines from advancing. Buying enough time for your tech to kick in may just mean placing some spines to take advantage of the lack of tanks in the terran army. Unfortunately on the mutas I'm unsure as to whether or not they are skipable since I've never faced flash or fantasy level drop play. I do like to make 4 corruptors with my army to kill off medivacs. They do the job better than mutas because I don't need to tell them to attack the medivacs and they have a long range and better health/armor and they don't get priority targeting by marines so they die less.
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On April 21 2013 00:14 Big J wrote:
my take on it so far has been to not make banelings. Go straight from mutas into infestors. Overmake lings and crawlers to stay safe. It sets you up badly in terms of economy for a short while (3base vs 3base), but it sets you up beautifully in terms of tech and upgrades and allows you to fungal and IT harass a Terran.
Imo, you don't want to make banelings ever unless you want to bust. At all other times, making banelings vs MMMM means that the Terran can push you over and over again from 2-3bases without ever having to spread out further, because each time he pushes against lairtech he is costefficient. He doesn't damage you, but he forces you to play 2-2 ling/bling vs 3-3 MMMM pushes+ drops forever, until you either just lose because you fuck up your control vs mines or you miss 1-2 drops and everything snowballs.
The problem with skipping banes though is that if the terran pushes before your 2/2 finishes and before mutas are out, you simply don't have enough larvae to pump out enough pure ling to defend bio/mine. I like the flexibility that a baneling nest gives in terms of defense because if you see the push coming you can instantly morph most of your lings into banes while more lings are popping. So maybe build a baneling nest but not make banes unless hits that timing I'm talking about.
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On April 21 2013 00:25 Uhh Negative wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2013 00:14 Big J wrote:
my take on it so far has been to not make banelings. Go straight from mutas into infestors. Overmake lings and crawlers to stay safe. It sets you up badly in terms of economy for a short while (3base vs 3base), but it sets you up beautifully in terms of tech and upgrades and allows you to fungal and IT harass a Terran.
Imo, you don't want to make banelings ever unless you want to bust. At all other times, making banelings vs MMMM means that the Terran can push you over and over again from 2-3bases without ever having to spread out further, because each time he pushes against lairtech he is costefficient. He doesn't damage you, but he forces you to play 2-2 ling/bling vs 3-3 MMMM pushes+ drops forever, until you either just lose because you fuck up your control vs mines or you miss 1-2 drops and everything snowballs. The problem with skipping banes though is that if the terran pushes before your 2/2 finishes and before mutas are out, you simply don't have enough larvae to pump out enough pure ling to defend bio/mine. I like the flexibility that a baneling nest gives in terms of defense because if you see the push coming you can instantly morph most of your lings into banes while more lings are popping. So maybe build a baneling nest but not make banes unless hits that timing I'm talking about.
Ya definitely I always get baneling nest and baneling speed even if I don't make a ton of them. You just have to have it to react quickly enough.
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bio can beat ling baneling as long as they are well upgraded, micro'd and enough medivac.
that's why tanks were always used to target the banelings and infestors; to protect the bio. there were terrans using siege tanks to block of lings and banelings from getting close to the bio.
The problem with your recommendation is that if you invested too early, a high bio count will just kill the spines no problem.
If you invested too much, you will be dropped to where your spines and spores are not.
the mines also have lower attack priority compared to bio, the spines will auto target the bio ball first.
honestly you can't play this matchup without muta at all, if you rush to hive, you will get crushed before you reach there. any other unit composition without muta get dropped like hell, your resources won't be there to support your hive tech
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On April 21 2013 00:14 Big J wrote:
Imo, you don't want to make banelings ever unless you want to bust.
It's not about what Zerg wants to do, it's about what Zerg is forced to do. Zergs do not morph Banelings out of pleasure, but because otherwise they will simply lose to critical mass of Marines in a tight formation. Your plan to jump straight to Infestors from Mutalisks without conceding any Baneling has major flaws; you will have severe issues defending the first Medivac push (particularly if Terran manages to land his troops behind mineral lines), and you will be in a world of pain if Terran hits you with 40+ Marines in a ball before you have Infestors out.
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Im not sure that you have found the solution. The only thing that I see this doing is preventing terran from moving his mines into forward positions, spine crawlers need a lot of creep for that to be significant. Maybe you could get overlords to poop creep or somethings. Also drops are gonna be a pain for you to deal with, and spending larvae on remaking drones after making spines isnt what you really wanna do either.
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On April 21 2013 00:32 ETisME wrote:
bio can beat ling baneling as long as they are well upgraded, micro'd and enough medivac.
that's why tanks were always used to target the banelings and infestors; to protect the bio. there were terrans using siege tanks to block of lings and banelings from getting close to the bio.
The problem with your recommendation is that if you invested too early, a high bio count will just kill the spines no problem.
If you invested too much, you will be dropped to where your spines and spores are not.
the mines also have lower attack priority compared to bio, the spines will auto target the bio ball first.
honestly you can't play this matchup without muta at all, if you rush to hive, you will get crushed before you reach there. any other unit composition without muta get dropped like hell, your resources won't be there to support your hive tech
this sums it up perfectly.
and to add to your OP: you dont have excess minerals...in your replay posted the zerg dies with no min and over 1k gas. in fact vs a good terran that always pressures you will have to constantly build units or die. and depending on mapsize you will literally need sth. like 50 spines to makes this work...never ever will you have 7,5k min for 50 spines ^^
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On April 21 2013 00:32 ETisME wrote:
The problem with your recommendation is that if you invested too early, a high bio count will just kill the spines no problem.
If you invested too much, you will be dropped to where your spines and spores are not.
the mines also have lower attack priority compared to bio, the spines will auto target the bio ball first.
You have to find the sweet spot. Obviously building a bunch of spines to early will result in bad things happening. You need to wait until you have excess minerals and only make an appropriate amount for the situation. This should stop you from dying to MMMM streaming across the map trying to push mines into your base.
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On April 21 2013 00:25 Uhh Negative wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2013 00:14 Big J wrote:
my take on it so far has been to not make banelings. Go straight from mutas into infestors. Overmake lings and crawlers to stay safe. It sets you up badly in terms of economy for a short while (3base vs 3base), but it sets you up beautifully in terms of tech and upgrades and allows you to fungal and IT harass a Terran.
Imo, you don't want to make banelings ever unless you want to bust. At all other times, making banelings vs MMMM means that the Terran can push you over and over again from 2-3bases without ever having to spread out further, because each time he pushes against lairtech he is costefficient. He doesn't damage you, but he forces you to play 2-2 ling/bling vs 3-3 MMMM pushes+ drops forever, until you either just lose because you fuck up your control vs mines or you miss 1-2 drops and everything snowballs. The problem with skipping banes though is that if the terran pushes before your 2/2 finishes and before mutas are out, you simply don't have enough larvae to pump out enough pure ling to defend bio/mine. I like the flexibility that a baneling nest gives in terms of defense because if you see the push coming you can instantly morph most of your lings into banes while more lings are popping. So maybe build a baneling nest but not make banes unless hits that timing I'm talking about.
well, that's why you don't want to fall behind in upgrades. Basically something like hatch first into 1-1 into third into 2-2 and muta. Then pathogen glands with the first 150gas after 10mutas is what I'm aiming for. 4hatcheries with at least four queens on 3bases to have enough larva.
+ Show Spoiler +I have gotten mixed results with it so far. But I'm hardly playing Z these days - with the Muta vs Muta crap going on in ZvZ - so I can only talk about a handful of games so far. I believe that if I made a build out of it, I would actually have quite good success against Terrans who don't use tanks.
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On April 21 2013 00:36 Decendos wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2013 00:32 ETisME wrote:
bio can beat ling baneling as long as they are well upgraded, micro'd and enough medivac.
that's why tanks were always used to target the banelings and infestors; to protect the bio. there were terrans using siege tanks to block of lings and banelings from getting close to the bio.
The problem with your recommendation is that if you invested too early, a high bio count will just kill the spines no problem.
If you invested too much, you will be dropped to where your spines and spores are not.
the mines also have lower attack priority compared to bio, the spines will auto target the bio ball first.
honestly you can't play this matchup without muta at all, if you rush to hive, you will get crushed before you reach there. any other unit composition without muta get dropped like hell, your resources won't be there to support your hive tech this sums it up perfectly. and to add to your OP: you dont have excess minerals...in your replay posted the zerg dies with no min and over 1k gas. in fact vs a good terran that always pressures you will have to constantly build units or die. and depending on mapsize you will literally need sth. like 50 spines to makes this work...never ever will you have 7,5k min for 50 spines ^^
You're missing my point. The zerg had great macro. He dumped all his minerals into zerglings and many times having a lot of zerglings only resulting in him losing a lot of zerglings to mines. And in fact he did have spines down covering the shorter root into his expansion which the terran completely avoided. It would not have been difficult for him to continue making them throughout the game to fortify his position and force the terran to take a less optimal route in my opinion.
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Marauders plaster spinecrawlers really easily, and you'll be hard-pressed to ever find a base layout/engagement where you can kill mines with spines alone (I think they take what - 3 or 4 spine hits?). I think to do what you're describing, you actually just want "long ranged attacks", which is one of the areas where Zerg falls short by design. Broodlords and fungal growths are both great at pushing back mine-centric armies - it's just too bad they're at the end of the tech tree and mines are at the beginning.
At the risk of sounding like a nut, I'd like to see high-level players (who can survive to the very late game against biomine by trading single lings and sniping mines with mutas) start to mass-contaminate factories and construct timing attacks around that. This sorta ties in with what you said about siege tanks - if someone is turtling in their base with tanks, it's very difficult to engage without broodlords, but if they're turtling with mines and producing mines, those only shoot every 40 seconds..
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Maniac has a great point. Tanks were a big reason standard became standard in WoL. It's time to rethink our style.
But the key isn't *just* static defense, though I totally agree with him about a mid-game spine wall between nat / 3rd. That really keeps the mine push at bay while your power units deal with his M&M.
The key is infestors. The idea you can't skip mutas is simply wrong. Infestors shut down mine-marine hard - they even hit and expose burrowed mines, and static + infestor deals with drops long enough for troops to come in.
People forget, though nerfed, fungal still works great vs mass marine. The only reason not to build infestors *was* tanks. Tanks are the reason you needed mutas. Mutas are good for counter pressure, drop defense and sniping tanks. For the investment, you needed all three for them to be worthwhile making a unit that is useless in a head-on engagement. With tanks out of the picture, throw away the mutas and go straight to roach/infestor. You will stop his front pressure hard, and give you enough time to go to tier 3 and get whatever you want to close the game out (ultra brood mass-swarm viper).
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On April 21 2013 00:44 ManiacTheZealot wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2013 00:36 Decendos wrote:On April 21 2013 00:32 ETisME wrote:
bio can beat ling baneling as long as they are well upgraded, micro'd and enough medivac.
that's why tanks were always used to target the banelings and infestors; to protect the bio. there were terrans using siege tanks to block of lings and banelings from getting close to the bio.
The problem with your recommendation is that if you invested too early, a high bio count will just kill the spines no problem.
If you invested too much, you will be dropped to where your spines and spores are not.
the mines also have lower attack priority compared to bio, the spines will auto target the bio ball first.
honestly you can't play this matchup without muta at all, if you rush to hive, you will get crushed before you reach there. any other unit composition without muta get dropped like hell, your resources won't be there to support your hive tech this sums it up perfectly. and to add to your OP: you dont have excess minerals...in your replay posted the zerg dies with no min and over 1k gas. in fact vs a good terran that always pressures you will have to constantly build units or die. and depending on mapsize you will literally need sth. like 50 spines to makes this work...never ever will you have 7,5k min for 50 spines ^^ You're missing my point. The zerg had great macro. He dumped all his minerals into zerglings and many times having a lot of zerglings only resulting in him losing a lot of zerglings to mines. And in fact he did have spines down covering the shorter root into his expansion which the terran completely avoided. It would not have been difficult for him to continue making them throughout the game to fortify his position and force the terran to take a less optimal route in my opinion.
thats the point. he HAS to make lings or will die. those 4 spines were great yeah....but you cant make 50 spines...you need lings or will just die to everything. if he does 1-2 drops while attacking...hf defending that without lings^^
On April 21 2013 00:53 DaemonX wrote:
Maniac has a great point. Tanks were a big reason standard became standard in WoL. It's time to rethink our style.
But the key isn't *just* static defense, though I totally agree with him about a mid-game spine wall between nat / 3rd. That really keeps the mine push at bay while your power units deal with his M&M.
The key is infestors. The idea you can't skip mutas is simply wrong. Infestors shut down mine-marine hard - they even hit and expose burrowed mines, and static + infestor deals with drops long enough for troops to come in.
People forget, though nerfed, fungal still works great vs mass marine. The only reason not to build infestors *was* tanks. Tanks are the reason you needed mutas. Mutas are good for counter pressure, drop defense and sniping tanks. For the investment, you needed all three for them to be worthwhile making a unit that is useless in a head-on engagement. With tanks out of the picture, throw away the mutas and go straight to roach/infestor. You will stop his front pressure hard, and give you enough time to go to tier 3 and get whatever you want to close the game out (ultra brood mass-swarm viper).
well...no  3 things that are horrible for infestors: fungal very slow (stim bio very fast...you hit much less units than in wol), no extra damage vs armored (this is a smaller one but still notable) and speedmedivacs are insanely fast which in combination with slower fungal = ling infestor is horrible on most maps where you will just get dropped to death. it might be possible on some maps though. we will see. but doesnt change anything against the main problem which are mines. you will still need to send in your ling bling to kill stuff...fungal wont kill stuff...it will hold stuff in place, not more + once T gets 8+ medivacs your fungals are pretty much useless.
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On April 21 2013 00:53 DaemonX wrote:
Maniac has a great point. Tanks were a big reason standard became standard in WoL. It's time to rethink our style.
But the key isn't *just* static defense, though I totally agree with him about a mid-game spine wall between nat / 3rd. That really keeps the mine push at bay while your power units deal with his M&M.
The key is infestors. The idea you can't skip mutas is simply wrong. Infestors shut down mine-marine hard - they even hit and expose burrowed mines, and static + infestor deals with drops long enough for troops to come in.
People forget, though nerfed, fungal still works great vs mass marine. The only reason not to build infestors *was* tanks. Tanks are the reason you needed mutas. Mutas are good for counter pressure, drop defense and sniping tanks. For the investment, you needed all three for them to be worthwhile making a unit that is useless in a head-on engagement. With tanks out of the picture, throw away the mutas and go straight to roach/infestor. You will stop his front pressure hard, and give you enough time to go to tier 3 and get whatever you want to close the game out (ultra brood mass-swarm viper).
Ya I agree. And ya the spines aren't the complete picture. I just wanted to highlight that part because I've seen so many zergs die unnecessarily due to strategies they held over from WoL.
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EPT
