EDIT: I should have mentioned this more explicitly, but the post is about fighting mech *before* BL/Infestor is viable for the Zerg to switch to. Clearly that is the composition of choice, but Zerg players don't always have time or resources to get to that tech before a big push happens.
Background: I'm currently a mid Diamond NA and KR Zerg who has an impeccable win rate against a pure bio and marine/tank Terran, but tend to struggle against a good meching player, so I'm always on the hunt for new an interesting strategies for defeating this "super army".
I just finished watching the VortiX vs mTwSuperNova game on Ohana. For those unaware, it was game two of a best of five during IEM Cologne. I would post a VOD, but I do not believe they are up yet. In the final big attack, VortiX (the Zerg), has an army almost entirely built on mutas and roaches. He had a couple of lings, but not enough to really influence much. On the other hand, SuperNova's army was mostly thor with several hellions and a couple of sieged tanks. Now, during the engagement, supplies and upgrades were similar, but the Zerg CRUSHED the Terran army and GG soon followed.
The Theory: Looking back and thinking about what happened, normally you assume that mutas are horrible against thors and roaches aren't spectacular against lots of thors either, due to survive-ability, not DPS; I believe the Terran at 6-8 thors. What seems to make me think that maybe mutas are good against mech, especially thors, is a combination of two things:
1) The thors auto target air first, so the mutas get absolutely shredded, but their DPS against thors isn't particularly good anyway, so why would you make them?
2) Roaches do decent DPS to mech, hence one reason why they are used, but suffer from being obliterated by mass Thors and tanks. Since the mutas are the first target of thors, it allows the roaches to freely DPS the thors, minus the tank of course. By the time the mutas are gone, most of the thors will be dead, leaving you a hardy army while trading "fragile supply", the mutas.
From what I can see, it is largely irrelevant if the mutas attack the thors or not. The battle could be microed in such a way as to have the mutas attack the tank line, in order to increase roach survive-ability, while the roaches do their damage to the thors, unimpeded because the thors will be targeting the mutas.
The Future: Where does this leave the meta if this turns out to be viable? I believe that you can be extremely successful with the standard 4-6 queen opening and then transitioning in spire play once you see the beginnings of mech. Terrans will inevitably begin thor production shortly in anticipation of mutas and think they are ahead with this choice, but don't realize the small mindedness of that decision. With the mutas out, you will be able to confine the Terran to his base, along with some minor harassment damage, until the critical army of mutas and roaches have been created. This also forces the Terran to produce fewer tanks/hellions or else risk losing their entire army to a muta ball. Once the big battle takes place and you gloriously defeat the Terran, you can either go for the kill or tech to BL/Infestor.
On a side note, if the Terran doesn't scout, or react to, the mutas, they just instantly lose so much that it won't matter what happens next because they will have few marines and nothing but tanks and hellions to defend.
Closing: Any thoughts? I've only recently begun to think about this as a viable strat as this game only took place ~1 hour ago, so I'm sure there are issues with the argument that I've presented. I'd love to hear feedback!
TL;DR Thors auto target mutas, so roaches beneath them can freely DPS without being hurt. Does this mean that making mutas and attacking the meching player with a muta/roach army is an efficient way to combat mech?
Last edit: 2012-08-19 05:14:35
SC2John United States. August 19 2012 02:08. Posts 925
I didn't watch this game, so I didn't see the circumstances of the battle. HOWEVER, I can lend the idea that mutas work well in forcing more thors into the army than tanks, making the muta/roach force really good. That being said, I don't think it's the thor auto-targeting that's the big deal, but the lack of tanks.
If you watch LastShadow's vlog about mech (), he talks about zerg's tech switch power over mech. Generally if a zerg is against a meching terran, they will want to pull tech switches constantly to mess with the composition of the terran army. This is kind of a cyclical flow chart:
As a zerg player, you want to skew the terran army toward a favouring of a particular unit, then doing an instant tech switch to negate that army composition. For example, if you build a lot of roaches or ultras, you kind of force more tanks into the mixture as terran needs to be able to deal with that critical mass of units quickly. Then, with an instatech switch to mutas, you negate the power of those tanks and allow yourself to deal with the mech army a lot easier due to the lack of thors. Terran will then try to respond by making vikings/thors, to which zerg should respond by making a bunch of speedlings.
Hope this lends some insight into your observations!
Seinken United States. August 19 2012 02:41. Posts 40
I personally believe the counter to mech is 100% roach drops with maybe a flock of 10 mutas. Infestors are hardly needed and you'll have a maxxed army ages before the terran does, if you constantly are trading tanks/thors with roaches you're always ahead.
A lot of zergs don't seem to like to abuse the air attack first thing, but 10 magic boxxed mutas will keep 8 thors out of the fight for an extremely long time (overkill, slow attack, etc).
Aveng3r United States. August 19 2012 02:46. Posts 624
Mutas against mech are certainly annoying to deal with and can win you the game outright if the meching player isnt prepared. However it is easily defeated if you respond properly to it. If the terran player turtles up and slowly expands and reaches his super army, there is nothing that roaches and mutas can do. There will be no "glorious defeat" of the terran army if it is built properly and zerg has roaches and mutas. Your strategy basically revolves around poor terran scouting. It is true that you can catch a terran off guard if you rush for a lot of mutas or a lot of roaches and terran had the wrong composition, but if terran plays it correctly, there is no way that roach muta can defeat a mech army in a straight up battle.
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Willzzz United Kingdom. August 19 2012 02:53. Posts 684
I feel Supernova made some mistakes that game by going too Thor heavy too early. When MVP plays mech he gets way more tanks so any roaches will get destroyed regardless of what the thors are targeting.
Denzil United Kingdom. August 19 2012 03:31. Posts 3509
Muta can help to force Thors turrets an even auto win against a tank hellion player who is feeling smart but roaches countering and dropping and nydusing are way more effective while you work on infestor broodlord
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On August 19 2012 02:46 Aveng3r wrote: Mutas against mech are certainly annoying to deal with and can win you the game outright if the meching player isnt prepared. However it is easily defeated if you respond properly to it. If the terran player turtles up and slowly expands and reaches his super army, there is nothing that roaches and mutas can do. There will be no "glorious defeat" of the terran army if it is built properly and zerg has roaches and mutas. Your strategy basically revolves around poor terran scouting. It is true that you can catch a terran off guard if you rush for a lot of mutas or a lot of roaches and terran had the wrong composition, but if terran plays it correctly, there is no way that roach muta can defeat a mech army in a straight up battle.
Did you read the OP? It's about the utility of mutas for absorbing Thor shots -- thors will be doing minor damage to mutas while the roaches clean up house. It's not about a surprise mutalisk transition to catch him with no anti-air, it's about abusing the thor's target priority so that the roaches eat his army alive.
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SC2John United States. August 19 2012 04:43. Posts 925
On August 19 2012 02:46 Aveng3r wrote: Mutas against mech are certainly annoying to deal with and can win you the game outright if the meching player isnt prepared. However it is easily defeated if you respond properly to it. If the terran player turtles up and slowly expands and reaches his super army, there is nothing that roaches and mutas can do. There will be no "glorious defeat" of the terran army if it is built properly and zerg has roaches and mutas. Your strategy basically revolves around poor terran scouting. It is true that you can catch a terran off guard if you rush for a lot of mutas or a lot of roaches and terran had the wrong composition, but if terran plays it correctly, there is no way that roach muta can defeat a mech army in a straight up battle.
Did you read the OP? It's about the utility of mutas for absorbing Thor shots -- thors will be doing minor damage to mutas while the roaches clean up house. It's not about a surprise mutalisk transition to catch him with no anti-air, it's about abusing the thor's target priority so that the roaches eat his army alive.
No, he's right. If built properly, the mech army will obliterate any non-BL army on the map, and even then sometimes. A poster above me mentioned that Supernova overbuilt thors, and THAT'S the true strength of this play. It's not really about the mutas taking away thor priority shots, it's about the terran overmaking thors and undermaking tanks to deal with mutas while the zerg player tech switches to roaches.
EDIT:
On August 19 2012 02:53 Willzzz wrote: I feel Supernova made some mistakes that game by going too Thor heavy too early. When MVP plays mech he gets way more tanks so any roaches will get destroyed regardless of what the thors are targeting.
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Last edit: 2012-08-19 04:45:17
Lobotomist United States. August 19 2012 04:54. Posts 1230
ZvMech used to play out like this (when 2 base muta was the standard, or at least fast muta): Zerg player deflects any early harass, goes to lair and muta to get map control. Zerg player sees terran going mech, stops building mutas, switches to roaches Terran player knows zerg has muta tech, and therefore must keep a critical mass of thors so that zerg can't tech switch to pure muta Zerg tries to get broodlords out before terran does 3+ base doom push.
The threat that the zerg player could switch to pure muta and crush the mech army if there weren't enough thors influenced the game, but rarely did that switch actually happen.
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FakePseudo Belgium. August 19 2012 05:05. Posts 209
Regardless of what people said about the massive muta switch, which was not the point OP wanted to make; I wonder why nobody came up with the idea of using overlords as tanks/buffer rather than them so expensive mutas (maybe because thors will prioritize only air attacking units? Should try this out)
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shadogi United States. August 19 2012 05:12. Posts 194
On August 19 2012 05:05 FakePseudo wrote: Regardless of what people said about the massive muta switch, which was not the point OP wanted to make; I wonder why nobody came up with the idea of using overlords as tanks/buffer rather than them so expensive mutas (maybe because thors will prioritize only air attacking units? Should try this out)
If I recall correctly, overlords are really low on the priority list of nearly every unit, so they won't end up buffering many, if any, shots from the thors.
On August 19 2012 05:05 FakePseudo wrote: Regardless of what people said about the massive muta switch, which was not the point OP wanted to make; I wonder why nobody came up with the idea of using overlords as tanks/buffer rather than them so expensive mutas (maybe because thors will prioritize only air attacking units? Should try this out)
If I recall correctly, overlords are really low on the priority list of nearly every unit, so they won't end up buffering many, if any, shots from the thors.
You are correct, overlords will tank zero damage as long as there are zerg units in range.
Willzzz United Kingdom. August 19 2012 05:37. Posts 684
Potentially OLs might delay the first shot due to cooldown from their air attack, but after that they won't do much apart from make it harder for the terran to target fire units underneath them.
Seinken United States. August 19 2012 05:56. Posts 40
This is why I suggested roach drops on top of the muta thing. Thors will shoot at overlords first, and then after that will only shoot at what can shoot back, prioritizing air. What happens is the thors shoot the first volley into the OLs, you begin doing move-drops with OLs and then bring the magic boxxed mutas into the fight. The thors are basically useless walking HP bars for the duration of the fight. All you have to do at that point is make sure your drops were spread out enough to avoid a majority of tank splash, and you'll usually trade very nicely in your favor.
Aulisemia United States. August 19 2012 06:17. Posts 112
Early Muta timings are extremely strong if you know your opponent is going to be mech focused. Thors are expensive, slow and inefficient against the other typical zerg response of mass roach. Un-upgraded marines do ok, but they're slow and eat up food you want to be spending on other things. It obviously forces turrets and that is minerals not being spent on hellions or infrastructure.
Once you start moving into the mid-game, they become weaker and weaker but do fairly well as a mass tech switch if you can kill all of their thors/ravens. Even making just a handful of mutas will make mech players very paranoid and invest into units they don't want to, but it's not a focus play you want to drill hard on.
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Aveng3r United States. August 19 2012 06:21. Posts 624
On August 19 2012 02:46 Aveng3r wrote: Mutas against mech are certainly annoying to deal with and can win you the game outright if the meching player isnt prepared. However it is easily defeated if you respond properly to it. If the terran player turtles up and slowly expands and reaches his super army, there is nothing that roaches and mutas can do. There will be no "glorious defeat" of the terran army if it is built properly and zerg has roaches and mutas. Your strategy basically revolves around poor terran scouting. It is true that you can catch a terran off guard if you rush for a lot of mutas or a lot of roaches and terran had the wrong composition, but if terran plays it correctly, there is no way that roach muta can defeat a mech army in a straight up battle.
Did you read the OP? It's about the utility of mutas for absorbing Thor shots -- thors will be doing minor damage to mutas while the roaches clean up house. It's not about a surprise mutalisk transition to catch him with no anti-air, it's about abusing the thor's target priority so that the roaches eat his army alive.
well yeah I can see what you are saying, but in practice it doesnt really work that way. I play mech a lot versus zerg, and its like if the zerg player ever has enough mutas that it takes more than a few thor shots (assuming you have scouted what you are up against and have made the proper amount of thors of course) than there is no way that he can have enough roaches to "eat his army alive". the amount of mutas that it would take to accomplish this means that you will have a drastically reduced roach count, and even a small number of tanks/hellions can chew through smaller roach numbers. there simply isnt enough supply room for a zerg player to have enough mutas to keep the thors busy while also having enough roaches to simply run over the mech army. there will be enough tanks to deal with the roaches. I see what you are saying, but lk have you ever tried to overwhelm a mech army with mutas and roaches? if the terran player knows what he is doing, its not gonna happen.
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Willzzz United Kingdom. August 19 2012 07:09. Posts 684
On August 19 2012 06:17 Aulisemia wrote: Early Muta timings are extremely strong if you know your opponent is going to be mech focused. Thors are expensive, slow and inefficient against the other typical zerg response of mass roach. Un-upgraded marines do ok, but they're slow and eat up food you want to be spending on other things. It obviously forces turrets and that is minerals not being spent on hellions or infrastructure.
Once you start moving into the mid-game, they become weaker and weaker but do fairly well as a mass tech switch if you can kill all of their thors/ravens. Even making just a handful of mutas will make mech players very paranoid and invest into units they don't want to, but it's not a focus play you want to drill hard on.
A meching player usually has plenty of minerals and should be building turrets anyway.
Marines do take up some supply, but mech takes a while to max out and terran can easily sac marines when he eventually gets to 200/200.
What about corruptors? It might only work if the terran has something in the air to shoot, but it takes thors forever to kill them.
The mutas can also be suprisingly effective but like others said, it's kind of an all-in to go big muta against mech. If you can overwhelm the thors, you're in fantastic shape but if they respond sufficiently and in time, it's a bust.
Seinken United States. August 19 2012 07:50. Posts 40
The problem is you wont get your mutas in the tank line without the Thors destroying them. Also you can't get your roaches to kill the thors without tanks killing them. Basicly it's pretty hard since roaches and mutas have very small range compared to sieged tanks and thor's AA.
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Mavvie Canada. August 19 2012 03:39. Posts 850
