Whenever I encounter some little hitch, or some of my orbs get out of orbit, nothing pleases me so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down uneven places. www.twitter.com/day9tv
Day[9] United States. January 07 2009 08:16. Posts 7006
Whenever I encounter some little hitch, or some of my orbs get out of orbit, nothing pleases me so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down uneven places. www.twitter.com/day9tv
Day[9] United States. January 07 2009 08:17. Posts 7006
ok its working, anyone know how to embed it to look sexy/
Whenever I encounter some little hitch, or some of my orbs get out of orbit, nothing pleases me so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down uneven places. www.twitter.com/day9tv
Whenever I encounter some little hitch, or some of my orbs get out of orbit, nothing pleases me so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down uneven places. www.twitter.com/day9tv
Saracen United States. January 07 2009 08:26. Posts 3769
Pretty much. Econ is everything against mech... one time I got fooled pretty badly and almost won anyways because I just pumped mass hydra while keeping 3 expos or so. I stopped him from expanding once, but then got really greedy and tried to kill his entire army while he expanded again, and my economy hadn't had enough time to get huge quite yet and my army just withered.
I'm not so huge a fan of mass guardians though, I don't use them against the army so much as the expos... because if he can't have his goliathes in more than one place, so you can wipe out scvs and any few goliathes that come to defend. But my ground army is usually kaput at that point, so a frontal attack isn't that smart... just need to buy time to rebuild the army and crush the main mech force.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Wait, I play terran. Nooooooooooooooooooooo
tell the guy that interplanatar interaction is pivotal to terrans variety of optionitudals in the pre-midgame preperatories as well as the protosstinal deterriggation of elite zergling strikes - Stimey
Formerly FrozenArbiter
motbob United States. January 07 2009 09:15. Posts 6335
Hey everyone! This is Day[9], and I'm going to talk a little bit about defeating a Terran mech as a zerg player. So ever since Fantasy did his cute mech shit against GGplay, all anyone wants to do is mech. And that's fine; mech's cool; it's the current trend of the moment; it was never weak or strong. It's just an alternative type of play.
But the problem is that when I read the strategy forum or even watch the professionals play, I want to vomit. I feel like so much of the advice and the current ideas of how to play against mech is just totally wrong. Now, I'm a little unusual in that I've been around forever. I've been playing competitively for 10 years. There was a period way back when when mech was just as popular as it is now. That gave me the opportunity to spend a lot of time practicing against and thinking about the dynamics of mech play. So I want to share a little bit with you guys about my experience against mech and what I feel is the correct way to think about and counteract a good Terran mech player.
So first, let's talk about the strengths and weaknesses of a mech build, then let's analyse what's wrong with current thought and play, and then I'll give some more concrete tips at the end and even a loose build that you guys can play around with.
So, let's dive right in and talk about the three major strengths and weaknesses of mech, in my opinion. Number 1: mech is good with big, one-punch-style pushes. Number two: mech is great at holding territory and playing defensively. Number three: mech is great at fucking with the Zerg early game.
Let's go ahead and talk about those three concepts in depth. First, I'll talk about this one-punch style army concept that I mentioned. This idea is that in small numbers, Zerg has an advantage over a mech army. In medium sized armies they're fairly even. But once you start talking about big, large armies, the mech army is way better than whatever Zerg can throw at it. So, the way this manifests itself in games is that Terrans will much often favor a timing push that is significantly later in the game, because early-game pushes are just so dangerous. In fact, it's often a bad idea to be very aggressive early on as a meching Terran player.
Number two: holding territory and playing defensively. With seige tanks and mines and goliaths, you can set yourself up and plant yourself and be almost inpenatrable. Two great examples of this are Mind vs s2 on the Dec. 15th proleague,
which is a great example of the way mech can "hold the line" in a way that MnM can't.
Another good example is Flash vs Savior on Baekmagoji.
Flash just had so much stuff that when Savior attacked with infinity Ultralisks, they evaporated immediately and Flash was just sitting there pumping his fist like a 15 year old.
The third thing is that mech is very good at screwing with the zerg early on. This is because they don't need that barracks, so they can do things like proxy barracks openings that don't really screw with the later stages of their mech build, and because vultures are so fucking obnoxious. They plant mines and dart around and kill drones, and whatnot.
So yeah, that is what a mech army is good at, and I'll constantly be coming back and referring to these things throughout this rant...thing. Now let's talk about what mech is bad at.
In order, the three weaknesses that mech has (in my opinion) are thus: one, mech has a huge problem with mobility; two, mech is not very good with applying pressure throughout the game; three, mech play has a weak mid-game (sort of an extension of the first two weaknesses). I'll talk about those in depth.
About mobility. Terran players often need to plant mines, but even if the Terran player isn't making many vultures, his tanks need to be seiged to maximize damage. So it's very difficult for a meched Terran to dart this way and that in the fashion that MnM does. And again (this is sort of an extention of the big push notion) the Terran can't really do these ninja-like things where it breaks its army into small pieces and splits up, because in small numbers, zerg is better against small groups of mech. So, Terran players suffer from a huge lack of mobility.
The second thing is the applying of pressure. Same thing: the Terran cannot break his army up and do dicotymous things, so the way mech players win is by doing huge pushes. Yeah, there's vulture harass in the mig-game, but I'll talk abouthow to negate that in a moment.
The third thing is the meched Terran's weak mid-game. That is the point in time when a Zerg player really needs to attack. The Terran player must play defensively in the midgame, because it can't push, and if it does vulture harass, it gets completely crushed by hydras. This is the point where Zerg can take a lot of expansions and win economically.
So, to recap, a meching Terran is very slow, but extremely strong. So the Zerg player cannot win by being cute. The Zerg player can't win with three lurkers and a dark swarm and feel clever. The Zerg player needs to win by having a lot of shit. And the way the Zerg does that is by creating a powerful economy by exploiting the Terran's midgame immobility.
Now, before I talk about good ways to deal with mech, I have to point out what is so bad about current theory and practice against mech. I can sum it up with the following: people play against mech the same way as they play against a MnM Terran. You just can't so that. For some reason, people think that you play a certain way against Terran, and it doesn't matter what Terran does. But against a meching Terran, you should treat it as a totally different matchup.
So let me list some things that are bad that you should not do. And yeah, there are obvious exceptions but on the whole, you should not do the following things.
-Don't go for a really fast mutalisk harass. I see a lot of players think they're really clever, getting their 3hatch, their spire, and going to kill a lot of SCVs, but the problem is that that doesn't work against goliaths. Against MnM it's great because the MnM sometimes gets isolated from each other and you can pick some off, and the SCVs can be taken out because the range upgrade is delayed blah blah blah... but goliaths have like infinite range and deal a fuckton of damage against air, so when you run in feeling so fucking clever, you leave with a bunch of dead mutalisks and the rest are red health. And that effectively gives you no advantage. It is very difficult to abuse a meching Terran with really aggressive harass. I mean, if you can pick off an SCV, do it, but don't make the cornerstone of your gameplay about getting an advantage with fast harassment because it will not happen.
-Do not rely on lurkers against a meching Terran. Against MnM, lurkers make perfect sense. Six lurkers can kill off like infinity MnM. I mean, you only need two lurkers to defend an entire expansion against Terran in the midgame. And again, a major purpose of lurkers is getting a little bit of map control in the midgame, because he doesn't have mobile detection. Meching players are already immobile in the midgame. They're not trying to attack in the midgame. They're going to wait until the later stages of the game where not only will they have detection, but they'll have an army that will completely kill the shit out of your lurkers. They'll have tanks and goliaths, which take many hits from lurkers and have very long range. So the fact that the lurker attack stacks is completely meaningless. In fact, if you do the math, you'll find that lurkers are extremely cost-ineffective at killing tanks, when compared to zerglings etc.
-Do not rely on defilers to beat a mech player. Now, this argument is a little tricky, but it's absolutely crucial that you understand this, or else your play against meched Terran will be crippled. Let's think about defilers against MnM. Defilers make perfect sense, because your lurkers that were oh-so-good in the midgame are now in serious danger from vessels and tanks. But hey, don't worry, you can throw down some dark swarms, and now you're totally safe against the MnM army. Now, against mech, it's not that defilers are bad, it's that defilers are significantly worse against mech when compared to MnM. Picture yourself getting ready to attack a mech army. It's spread out with tanks. The units are physically big, so even when they're as clustered as they can be, they're still fairly spread out. When the Terran has all his tanks seiged, and occasionally he'll have mines there too, your army will be eaten alive by the tanks, even in dark swarm, by the splash damage. You're dealing with 15-25 tanks against mech. You're not dealing with the 3-5 tanks you usually see against MnM. So, you just need to have a lot of units. You can't rely on the dark swarm. It is good, it might be the thing that tips the balance in your favor in a big battle, but you can't lock yourself into that mindset of "OK, I have my Hive, I need to get my defilers so that I can stay alive." That's the mindset that you have against a MnM player, not the mindset that you should have against a meching Terran player.
-Don't build Ultralisks. Ultralisks are great against MnM because the Ultra armor is so high that MnM shots barely do anything. The problem is against mech, it is the exact opposite. Ultralisks maximize the damage that a tank does. When a tank fires at a zergling, it can do at most 35 damage, because a zergling has 35 life. Against an Ultra, the tank does the full 70 damage, not including upgrades. When you throw splash damage and mines in there, Ultras get EATEN ALIVE by a mech army. For an example, watch the second Youtube video. You will laugh at how many Ultralisks Savior lost at the end of that game. Now I actually did a calculation on this, about Ultraling against mech. It's shocking how ineffective Ultraling is against mech in terms of damage taken vs damage dealt. A much better spending of your money is on simple ground units, like zerglings and hydralisks. Those are going to be the core of your army, because again, against mech, you're not trying to make a "cute" army, with defilers and lurkers and Ultralisks. You just want an army that is a lot of shit.
Part of the reason I think Ultraling is so popular is that players will develop an enormous economic advantage in the midgame, correctly so, and at that point it hardly matters what the Zerg does in terms of unit combination. Ultraling is simply the combo that the Zerg happens to use, so he incorrectly learns that it is the correct counter, when it is in fact not.
Again, all of what I've been talking about with the "MnM mindset" is just a more complicated way of saying that the Zerg is not taking advantage of the fundamental weaknesses of a meching Terran. And that is the midgame immobility. The Zerg player needs to establish an extremely strong economy then, and then crush the Terran in the later stages of the game, when the Terran is trying to do that big, one-punch push.
OK, great. Now that I've said all that stuff, I want to give a few tips on how to deal with a meching player, and then I'll finish things up with a build that I've done that's extremely effective, and you guys can play around with it. It's just a good solid base.
-Hydraling should be the bulk of your army. It minimizes the amount of damage that your army is taking, while maximizing the damage output that your army is doing. In addition, you should be making mutas all game long as an important component of your army. Mutas are not going to be used for harassment, it's just key to make sure that the Terran player is continuing to make lots of Goliaths, and when you expand as much as you will be doing, you can build a LOT of mutas anyway. You'll have 2 control groups of mutalisks in addition to your big-ass ground army.
-When you get that Hive tech up, an excellent method for busting a stationary push, or a Terran line that's just sitting there defending a whole bunch of expansions, a great way to bust that is to get a whole bunch of guardians. You can get like 15-20 guardians without much difficulty. Because again, you're delaying your hive tech by deciding to expand much more in the midgame. So by the time you get Hive, you have a really strong economy, and a whole bunch of mutas. Guardians have the same range as goliaths and they can break the tank lines really well for your ground army.
-Defilers should be the latest evolution of your play. They should be the last thing you transition to and incorperate into your army, because just having the huge army and the expansions is the most important thing. Once you get a defiler it will always help your army SOME but you want to always make sure your army is substantial enough.
-DON'T BUILD ULTRAS unless you feel very comfortable with using them. Ultras are very technical and difficult to use in ZvT mech.
-The most important tip that I can give against a meching player is that minerals are more important than gas. When you get an expo, don't make that first drone make a geyser. The bulk of your army is going to be lings, hydras, and mutas, and you're going to be expanding lots and lot. Minerals are critical for pretty much everything you want to do. A great thing about minerals being the resource you need is that you can take min-only expos that most players seem not to consider taking when fighting mech.
Let me finish things up with a really strong build order that's given me a lot of success through the years.
I'm done transcribing, could someone finish this up for me?
Here's the gist of the BO: go 12 hatch, scout the fast gas, build some hydras for defense against vult harass, get speed for hydras before lair, cluster your overlords so you can defend against 2 port wraith but still can move out and start spotting for mines, and then get lair before ling speed. Send ovies to places you want to expand. Get a spire. Power drone. Get mutas to delay the Terran's push. Get in the Terran's face and make him make goliaths, but don't be too aggressive. Start massing mutahydraling. Expand like crazzzy. You can have total map control and a huge economy while you still have a lair.
Get hive (eventually), get guardians, get glands ASAP.
Last edit: 2009-01-07 11:26:58
ಠ_ಠ
heyoka United States. January 07 2009 09:18. Posts 3111
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zer0das United States. January 07 2009 09:04. Posts 2335
Zoler Sweden. January 07 2009 09:13. Posts 5206
Too bad you just helped exactly every one of my opponents. ![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/73/Drcox_scrubs.jpg/200px-Drcox_scrubs.jpg)
motbob United States. January 07 2009 09:15. Posts 6335