so if we're teching to ultras, say the cavern is 1/2 done, we've gone mutas and have 10-12 and then some assortment of lings and a few banelings, and we see the terran start to push out of his base with a standing army of MTM+ a few thors that we cannot kill, how's the best way to handle this in theory?
previously it was a viable strategy to make some infestors/spines and fungal everything in place until you could get out ultras/broods. what are we doing now? have a hydra den just in case, and spam those? make as many banelings we can and hope for a decent engage? counterattack and hope to draw his army home?
i'm finding that pretty much the only ZvTs i lose (other than to random early game cheese, or to mech) are this scenario. should i just make a billion spines and hope for the best?
I think this usually works pretty well. I guess spines as a last resort, because once you're ready to make ultras you'll wish you had those minerals back.
If I feel confident in a win (which is most of the time) sometimes I'll just sac a base (make sure to move your drones elsewhere) if it's the difference between fighting at a disadvantage versus getting more units out and fighting with an advantage.
I kind of got cannon rushed but he sucked and didn't even know (or didn't think to) he could mineral walk his probe to save it, so I killed his probe before the pylon finished and he just canceled it and expanded
Another 3 base carrier Protoss who...
- had 60 apm
- never crossed onto my side of the map until moving out with his carrier ball
- after encountering a burrowed ling at two potential 4th base locations, just gave up entirely on taking a 4th (making an observer? nah. make a pylon and cannon? nah. make an oracle and use revelation? nah. too hard)
While Soo is probably not as good as Rogue/Dark at lategame ZvT, it does seem like Maru's gotten a lot better at this split map mech style as he's practiced it more, and his form is really good right now. Soo resigning after the computer crash is just hilarious - like, "yeah I have a 2k/2k bank but idk what units I would even make with that right now, this army is unkillable". I feel you, dawg. That Terran composition is, like, the new Protoss deathball - sure, it's totally normal to have 60% of your supply in spellcasters (ravens/ghosts) that can't be attacked directly because everything you have just gets destroyed. Seems legit. I'm pretty sure Maru lost more ghosts in that game to his own nukes than to Soo's units.
Also, really bizarre decision by Soo in game 2 (I think?) to spam endless 2/2 lings/banes and 1/2 hydras in a pretty damn long game - did he even make a hive? The resources lost showed what a terrible decision that wound up being, he traded badly the entire game, no wonder he lost that one. Kinda frustrating to listen to Tastosis be like "wow Maru is redefining TvZ with this marauder heavy style" without ever mentioning the slow but steady snowballing of 15 minutes of trading down in upgrades.
Spoiler:
Honestly soo should have just gg'ed when he had a 10k/10k bank.
He was obviously just hanging out waiting to die. It was genuinely unclear to me whether Maru was trolling with all the ridiculous nuke **** he was doing.
I thought the John Wick game was pretty cool. I think the meta-altering thing is that soo expected that he could just push Maru over for not making siege tanks. (Which then leads to hive + ultras and terran losing.)
Fact-checking time:
- Other than initial cloaked banshee harass which killed 11 probes (not 20), Avilo never moved out of his base and let Showtime take 5 bases unchecked
- Avilo spent the whole game down on bases, including from the start when he went for high ground CC after (I think) starport
Mostly it's just hilarious how he's completely unwilling to change the way he plays or even consider any adjustments - if he can't turtle on 3-4 bases and hold against mass carrier that he lets his opponent build on a superior economy with no opposition, FIX THE GAME BLIZZARD! (oh but if I had 10 more ravens I could have just spammed seeker "anti-armor missile" to kill all the carriers and that's not broken at all)
Unclear if we'll get the chance to see more Avilo in this tournament, USA needs Neeb to all-kill Germany for us to have a chance of ever seeing him again
I thought Protoss being "so demanding of micro" was a joke
(really, really, really wish I could find a gif of the Starcrafts video with the Protoss commander or whatever up in his ship just pressing the "a" key over and over, just pretend it's here and if you haven't seen it then I'm sorry and I feel bad that I can't provide you with this joy)
While Soo is probably not as good as Rogue/Dark at lategame ZvT, it does seem like Maru's gotten a lot better at this split map mech style as he's practiced it more, and his form is really good right now. Soo resigning after the computer crash is just hilarious - like, "yeah I have a 2k/2k bank but idk what units I would even make with that right now, this army is unkillable". I feel you, dawg. That Terran composition is, like, the new Protoss deathball - sure, it's totally normal to have 60% of your supply in spellcasters (ravens/ghosts) that can't be attacked directly because everything you have just gets destroyed. Seems legit. I'm pretty sure Maru lost more ghosts in that game to his own nukes than to Soo's units.
Also, really bizarre decision by Soo in game 2 (I think?) to spam endless 2/2 lings/banes and 1/2 hydras in a pretty damn long game - did he even make a hive? The resources lost showed what a terrible decision that wound up being, he traded badly the entire game, no wonder he lost that one. Kinda frustrating to listen to Tastosis be like "wow Maru is redefining TvZ with this marauder heavy style" without ever mentioning the slow but steady snowballing of 15 minutes of trading down in upgrades.
Just watched these games. I got the feeling (to your second point) that it was Maru's insane micro that won him that game more than the bad unit comp? Like sure, fighting endlessly in small skirmishes vs bio down a full upgrade doesn't seem great but holy crap, Maru's micro was on point.
As to your first, I agree - didn't it used to be the case that the reason that spellcasters only was a bad unit comp was because it just got run over by brute force units, over and over? And now that isn't even an option since apparently ghost/raven hard counters every single unit comp if you get enough of them. Like sure mass zergling might do some damage if those are your only two units, but like 3 hellbats (or a PF) counter that.
Kinda like we talked earlier about how the only way to beat the obnoxious turtling terran style was to cost-ineffectively sac like 600 supply of gas units into their maze of defenses and hope that one time the armor cracks.
WCS Austin NA qualifier has avilo against some guy named THERIDDLER who also plays mech Terran and whose in-game name is "avilo". They played an hour long split map game on Backwater and the entire bracket is backed up because of them:
The admins gave them a draw so they started the same map again and it's an hour long split map game AGAIN. Click the above tweet, it's a thread, all the foreigners in the Korea house are watching it. It's hilarious. Fake avilo is winning. It's game 1 of a bo3. Real avilo is calling fake avilo a maphacker.