[G] Belial’s Comprehensive Guide to Everything ZvT!

Many people don't drone scout in ZvT, and that's fine. Your initial 2 lings can usually identify what T is doing (factory opener, expand, naked rax forcing you to be extra attentive), as well as your initial overlord (spotting a CC First/FE, sometimes even the wall-in). A good 2 rax will be obvious when Terran sends a strange scouting SCV (most Terrans don't SCV scout, and if they do, it's usually obvious what they are doing if it's hanging out the natural), and will hit before pool pops, so you won't be put in a position where you make the 'wrong' choices, because before you hit the fork in the road of "Do I make lots of lings and a spine?", the 2 rax will hit.

The drone scout allows you to make zero lings by seeing an obvious FE build (14+ SCVs/~2 SCVs per mineral patch with a gasless opener), but it's not horrible to make a pair of lings against a FE. It also allows you to catch Gas First openers, but those are uncommon these days, and you can usually pick out such builds with an overlord sac confirming too many marines for an expand build, as well as no natural put down.

You cannot let the bunker go up. The overlord over the natural should be spotting for bunkers, and the scouting SCV will obviously be suspicious, which should clue you off to the 2 rax. The rush will hit at ~17 supply, so at 16 supply you need to pull a drone to patrol the ramp or choke (if you didn't drone scout, you'll have to assume until the overlord arrives or there's clearly no marines at your base when your pool pops).

Queue ~3 drones to attack each bunker building SCV by shift+right click spamming on them so they follow the SCV as it builds. Have about 4-5 drones per marine, and make sure the drones never engage SCVs (they have more life). It's better to pull more drones rather than less, and all you are doing is just buying about 20 seconds by attacking bunker building SCVs and the initial 1-3 marines until your lings arrive.

You will make 6+2 lings, and a queen/spine. A single spine will completely end the rush as well as any SCV all-in follow-up (sometimes 2 on certain maps). You cannot make 2 queens like you normally do, you need 8 lings (don't make more than 12), and got to get that spine asap. When your lings pop, you will still need to use your drones - move command past his marine/SCV force - when done right, the drones will wrap behind the marines and attack them while the lings attack the SCVs. Once the spine pops, you can put the drones back to mining, and the rush is completely over.

A large part of holding this is making sure a bunker doesn't go up, and making sure to take the rush seriously and pull enough drones. You will be more ahead if you just pull more drones and hold it convincingly, then have to make more lings or lose drones because you don't pull enough drones when the rush first hits.

Your queens should deal with these. If Terran goes for a quick 11rax/12gas reaper, he has to kill at least 3 workers to make up for the build, so don’t worry if his reaper arrives super early and does damage. Just pull drones that he’s going for (pulling a drone he’s already shooting isn’t going to save it). If the reaper pressure is strong or it’s a fast reaper, I would recommend keeping all drones at the same mineral field until your queens pop.

Make sure to scout he expanded after such an opening. 5 rax reaper will beat you if you don’t have roaches or lots of static defense already set up (into roaches). Definitely sac an overlord if you don't see the expo in the natural - if he's going 5 rax reaper, he won't have enough marines to kill the overlord in time.

You need to spend about 300-450 minerals in defense against reactor hellion. 1 extra queen 2 spines, 2 extra queens, a queen and lings, whatever. Starting a queen after your first 2, or a spine, will finish in time to meet the first 2 hellions. With the queen buff, Zergs are able to get away with spending just around 300 now in 2 queens though.

The hellions are there to make sure you can’t run a drone out to take your third, so you will be forced to make a macro hatch instead of a third, and go 2 base macro hatch Lair or make early roaches. You should not be able to kill the hellions with just speedlings without seriously hurting your drone count, so you will be forced to just drone up on 2 bases before making units.

You can also make ~3 roaches to secure your third. This tends to be the reaction of people who go late lair, quick hive - by making roaches and a fast third, mutas will come out late, so roaches are relied upon to deal with drops (like marine/hellion drop) and early pressure instead of mutas and baneling speed. It’s up to you, and you can still go muta if you just make 3 roaches, but roaches do cost gas, and generally, the faster the third, the later the lair.

If Terran runs in his 4-6 hellions, it can be a great opportunity for you. Terran has to kill at least 8 drones to make losing 100% of his army and map control. Quickly pull drones (leave some by to attack and trap the hellions), and get your queens there. Only make some lings, if you make a full 20 lings, that's just a huge overreaction. Just continue droning, react quickly with pulling drones. If you can minimize the damage while trapping and killing all of his hellions, you can come out WAY ahead as he just lost his entire army and you can take your third for free.

Make sure Terran expanded afterwards, and if he does, you will still need to sac an overlord eventually to confirm his follow-up.

Cued off by not seeing an expo for sure by ~30 supply, and more than 4 marines (maybe even a reactor rax), gas first, or double gas, you should be making a spore in your nat and main. It’s okay - even if Terran did expand, you will be ahead economically because for whatever reason, he didn’t float that expansion to his natural (also note, Terran can go banshee from 1 gas).

You will want to make up to 4 queens, if you haven’t already. It should be pretty obvious with no expo taken. You can continue droning up, and you should really start spreading creep quickly towards your third so you can take your third in reasonable time once you hold the banshees.

Even if Terran is doing something else with is 5+ marines, gas taking, somewhat empty base, build, you should be able to hold it with your 4+ queens and reactionary speedlings, banelings, and spines (thor, nuke rush, etc).

Made obvious by a total lack of marines and your overlord getting to see everything, this is at least 2 factories pumping out hellions (2xReactor or React/Tech).

If you find out really late, 3+ spines can buy enough time for you to throw down a roach warren and get roaches in time. Banelings, Queens, and walling off with a Macro Hatch and Evo Chambers can also help buy time.

This is the only all-in that really hits before 40 supply. Alarm bells should be going off when you see a naked rax and still no expo with your initial overlord by the natural and ling poke, and your 30 overlord sac should tell you all you need to know. If you aren't sure what Terran is doing off a naked rax with no expo floated down immediately, make 2 spines at your natural. 2 spines, your queens, and reactionary lings, are all it takes to hold this. You don't need banelings to hold this, and I'd recommend you get speed before baneling nest (but banelings still do own this).

Made obvious by too many marines from a single Rax (especially from a T who expanded), 4+ marines shooting your 30 overlord poke or ling poke, and a ton of rax that he can’t hide from an overlord even if he has 5 marines to shoot it down (10 marines shooting it down at 30 supply? obvious mass rax all-in).

Also, if Terran walls in at the low ground with a depot/rax, that’s a strong indication of a 3+ rax all-in.

Uh-oh - so he went reactor hellion at the start, but you see no expo around 30-35 at the natural, and so your overlord sac saw 2 more rax with tech labs instead of an expansion!

40+ supply, just make 3-5 spines (5 if you figured it out really late), and lots of reactionary speedlings. If you can get that baneling nest up, that would be great - wrap your lings behind his hellions, and let the banes tear them apart. He will have hellions, but not so many to kill the banelings before they kill off his trapped hellions. This is only difficult if you don’t see it coming.

There are 2 ways to play mutas:

1. 20+ Mutas and using lots of harass to keep T in his base, and micro to handle the 3 base push (less focus on upgrades, later hive). Stronger in mid-game, more vulnerable late-game.
2. 8-12 Mutas, and going for a fast 3 base hive, then Ultras to deal with the 3 base push (heavier focus on upgrades, quicker hive). Weaker in mid-game, stronger going into late-game.

You really just need to keep your mutas alive. You don’t need to go past about 24, and you can make as few as 8. The point of the mutas is to keep Terran in his base, and it’s not necessary to even harass Terran until high masters, really (I’d say the majority of my games, I rarely actually get in Terran’s base with the Mutas and do significant damage, it's what they force in the game flow that helps). Don’t be over-aggressive with your mutas.

The point of the mutas is 3 fold-
1. You force lots of turrets, and defensive posturing, which means Terran will expand later, add on rax later, and in general end up pushing out later
2. Do a ton of damage to pre-3/3/marine/medivac/tank 170+ armies.
3. Deal with drops

As long as you keep your mutas alive, you should generally crush any Terran push before he has some 3/3, mass medivac, marine, tank insane army. The reason is with good attack posturing, you will just crush any push (queue up focus fire on the tanks with mutas, make sure banes don’t hit anything but marines by boxing over them as they roll and re-directing them or having them on hotkey, spreading/flanking with ling/bane in some way). I find that my losses with mutas stem from losing too many mutas by being overly aggressive or mis-micro, while stronger wins come from being more careful with my mutas.

If you lose too many mutas, such as by flying over marines or being way too aggressive against his turrets and marines, you will queue Terran to push out, and you won’t have enough DPS to deal with it, as he kites your banelings and his tanks deal massive damage. By having a strong muta flock, you will punish kiting/splitting with your mutas, wreck those medivacs (which just makes marines insanely strong), and just deal a ton of extra DPS.

Your Ling/Bane army should also always be near his base, ready to counter-attack or runby if he ever moves out. Having them near your base, such as being forced to pull your entire ling/bane army back home to deal with a drop, is terrible (never let that happen!).

If Terran ever moves out, you should try to force him back home with ling/bane counter-attacking and your mutas (don’t force the issue by attacking a PF or strongly entrenched Terran with a few defensive tanks left behind though). If he continues on, and you can’t do more damage than he can in the short time he has to rush to your base, cut off his reinforcements and force him to siege up every step of the way. By the time he reaches your base, you will just have a much larger ling/bane/muta army than he has marine/tank, and crush it, if not have Hive tech out.

Magic box his thors first in a battle if he has any (use hold+focus fire to kill it quickly), then queue up all his tanks. Personally, I will move command my ling/bane army slightly behind his marines (See Destiny’s Baneling Rape Analogy) and then a-move for a ‘stick’, and then quickly box over my banelings to make sure they hit his marines instead of tanks. You CANNOT let your banelings hit anything but marines! Having a separate hotkey for banes, or 1 for ling/bane and 2 for just those banes so you can redirect them, are good ideas too. Spreading your ling/bane before engaging is also extremely useful - a quick way to do that is to patrol your ling/bane in a long route up/down to his left/right push (make sense?). A long patrol command will split your ling/bane really well, but setting up groups of ling/bane to attack from multiple paths, or a flank, is even better if you take the time for it. Try as much as possible to engage on creep, or when he’s most unsieged.

Eventually, you will need Hive, and deny his bases aggressively. You want to start trading so that you aren’t at 200/200 with BL tech out, lest Terran capitalize on you losing a ton of supply in a battle with his superior army and push in before your Hive Tech is ready, but you also can’t attack so cost inefficiently into sieged tanks, so just do as much as you can to deny bases and bleed supply that way as you replace with infestors, corruptors, and eventually morph those into broodlords. Never just lose all of your mutas or banelings at once (such as sacrificing a ton of banes into a PF while the game is still even) - this will force Terran to just push out.

When Terran's army gets around 160+ supply, and 3/3, lots of tanks, 2 thors, medivacs, all the necessary upgrades, he'll reach a point where it'll be very hard to win with just ling/bane/muta, so you will need to either micro much better than he does or position better, or you will need higher tech.

There will be a trade off of either making less mutas, and teching quicker, or making more mutas, and teching later. It's up to you and the map design (ie a map that is bad for muta harass, might make making more than 10 mutas a poor choice, but against an extremely aggressive Terran, you may not want to tech too quickly). Generally, it's seen as a trade-off between double evo upgrades, and lots of mutas, but you can do both if you don't plan to go Hive soon (eg a map like TDA where mobility and counterattacking is king).

Note, if Terran stays low tier on marine/tank or marine/marauder, or is hyper-aggressive, instead of teching more towards ghosts, medivacs, thors, vikings, tanks, hold off on the Greater Spire, and instead go for 3/3 Adrenal and ling/bane/muta, so he can’t own you with superior mobility on maps that have multiple attack routes and your 4-5-6+ bases start to be really spread out (TDA, Cloud Kingdom, as opposed to Shakuras, Daybreak).

Generally, you want to go later lair with this style, because you really want to race towards Hive tech and make the mid-game as short as possible, and to do that, you are going for a much stronger econ early on by having a faster third and later lair - you don't need t2 units like mutas or infestors if you have strong upgrades early on, as well, so you aren't as reliant on lair tech. You also aren't spending as much gas on mutas or banelings, but instead on infestors (a unit with purpose in late-game) and teching.

This sort of play revolves around you turtling, going toward fast hive. This is stronger on maps where Mutas are worse on - lack of airspace so you can deal with drops easier with a ground army, a close by, easy third that makes ling/bane/muta aggression easier to deal with but also makes defending your own third against drops and aggression easier with a ground army, further expos going towards the opponent.

Going Infestor is best done by taking a very fast third, sometimes even taking a third with a couple roaches vs hellions, with a late lair but fast 3 base hive. You deal with Terran aggression and drops using roach/ling/bane/upgrades on hatch tech instead of lair tech, then infestors and static defense, and then go fast hive to take your fourth and put the pressure on Terran before he gets a strong 3 base army.

Going as high as 85 drones, possibly 100 if you can take a fourth, and then constantly make static defense at your bases to deal with drops, is one way to play it. You will need baneling speed, and try not to make too many roaches (or rather, try not to lose the roaches you make), so you can get infestors, and faster hive tech. You deal with drops using spines/spores, patrolling banelings, and an infestor or two, as well as a defensive ground army, instead of mutas, while going fast hive on 3 base.

Eventually, you have broodlords on 3-4 bases. If you didn’t take too much damage, you can get those broodlords out quick enough and gain an advantage in the game by having broodlords out earlier than Terran can be prepared for them. Drops are one of the biggest ‘counters’ to this sort of play, so defending drops is critical to how you enter the late-game (overlord spread, spines+spores, infestors left at some bases, and patrolling banelings).

Recently we are seeing a resurgence of Ultralisk play in ZvT, in conjunction with quick Hive play. Going quick Hive (or even 'standard' hive) into broodlords leaves you extremely vulnerable, no matter how quick you go for Hive or how easily you got your third. Ultras, however, come out quicker than Broodlords.

A way to think of them, is as Tier 2.5, and then broodlords as Tier 3. Going Ultras can be a great choice if you want to make mid-game extremely short, and move into late-game safely. Going just fast hive into broodlords is extremely risky.

Of course, you will eventually want to move on to a pure Broodlord army. The point of Ultras though, is to get you there. If you stayed on Lair tech longer, you may want to just skip Ultras.

Broodlords are much greedier than Ultras, and can leave a large timing when Terran can kill you. They are extremely slow, and drops can lose you the game as a base that just barely doesn't have enough spine/ling/bane defense will be lost. They are much better on maps that tend to be split map though, to prevent counter-attacking, and are extremely cost efficient, unlike Ultras.

However, they are extremely cost efficient, and ANY Terran army can be handled by just making more broodlords, corruptors, infestors, queens, or static defense.

Broodlords need a ton of support, as they are frail and can be sniped by thors and vikings. You really need mass creep spread for broodlords, so you can use queens in conjunction with their siege range, and tons of spores and spines to protect them, as well as Infestors. This is impossible to afford on anything less than 5+ bases.

If Terran has lots of Thors, make more broodlords. If Terran has lots of bio, infestors. Vikings, infestors and spores and corruptors. The problem, is the cost and mobility - it's getting to that pure BL/Corruptor/Queen/Mass Spore/Spine/Infestor army that is the challenge.

Don’t let the wall-off complete, don’t let him finish a bunker in his mineral line. If he does wall-off, do everything you can to break it before a marine and repairing SCVs end your cheese. A drone scout to block the 2nd depot is critical, but this build isn’t really great against Terran.

Great if Terran does not get factory tech, like 1 rax FE into 4 rax. Instead of going for a third and 4xGas, Lair at 40+ supply, you decide at 40 supply to go for 2 x gas, baneling nest, and mass lings. Quite the coinflip, since if Terran knows what you are doing, he can hold with lots of bunkers, but extremely strong if Terran skimps out on factory tech.

28 Roach Warren, make 3 overlords and pool larva, morph 8+ roaches and send towards Terran. You can reinforce with speedlings, or choose to drone up instead. Note that you can only reinforce with speedlings if you took gas before 20.

Terran’s initial 2 hellions will arrive before your roaches pop, so you will need to defend the first 2-4 hellions as you normally do. If Terran doesn’t make marauders, a siege tank, or bunkers, as well as lift-off from his nat, he will take a ton of damage, but if he scouts that this is coming, he should be prepared.

Popular recently in the metagame to punish Terran’s going Fast Third, this is close to a build order win against Fast Third terrans (they have a small chance of holding if they see what you are up to in time and go for marauder/tank/bunkers and lift off at the nat immediately), and punishes any Terran who doesn't make siege tanks in reasonable time (medivacs+marauders can go a long way to defending, but a terran going bio+hellions can be in trouble).

~45 3 x Gas (or 2xGas ~33)
~45 Roach Warren, Speed, stockpile overlords and larva
@100% Roach Warren, 8+ Roaches, baneling nest, rally forward speedlings to morph into mass banes

Target wall-offs, bunker, attacking SCVs (40 SCVs can cause a huge shield against non-splash roaches and lings, so they are a big target if you want your attack to be effective on a practical level). Push back hellions with just 2-3 forward roaches, so he thinks you are going for a third against hellions instead of an all-in, and try to hide your tech so a lucky scan doesn’t reveal what you are doing. Hiding your army and morphing banes until the last moment, to the side, is a good idea too.

Using super fast mutas, you can punish a FE into Fast Third. If Terran does not take a fast third, you aren't so far behind that you lose, as you can quickly secure your third.

Open Gas, Speed, Lair
2xGas when Lair is nearly finished, Spire,
~5+ Mutas when Spire is done