[Satu]

I've been meddling around with Infestor Ling in ZvT, and practiced it a few engagements with Soulbora (System ingame). Although I wasn't telling him exactly what I was going to be doing, I got the general idea of how to engage. If you dont know how to engage properly with infestor ling, you really do get smashed.

I'll cover how to engage two typical styled terran armies. But first,

What IS the infestor ling composition?
It consists of only infestors and speedlings. Because you are not meddling with many different kinds of tech, you can simply upgrade melee and carapace upgrades until they are maxed. This is made easier by the fact you'll already have an infestation pit to make your hive with, so its hard to forget to tech up. Once you have all of your upgrades, you can tech up to ultras. This will also be about the right time to reinforce with ultras, if you have been correctly engaging with infestor/ling earlier. If you have, then the ultras should finish the game.

Generally good ideas

Spread your lings out in an arc before engaging. If you are engaging into a choke, think about trying to flank from behind with half of your lings. Otherwise, the tanks can easily kill huge groups of lings. This step isn't vital, but does increase cost effectiveness.

If you are both maxed, you shouldn't win. Instead after losing the first engagement, pull back with your infestors and ensure none die, if possible. Once that has been achieved, remax with lings and go again. Since lings are relatively cheap to remax on, your money might increase over time. After two rounds of remaxing with lings, remax with ultras and roll them.

Vs. Marine Tank
Move command your infestors at about the line that the siege tanks can fire at. While they begin to move, attack move your speedlings in. The result should have the speedlings getting ahead of the infestors and everything positioned correctly to engage with all of your units at the same time.

Then, look at where the bio ball is. If it is close by, fungal it twice and kill it.

If it is far away, use a heap of infested terrans around the area of the tanks, as well as using neural parasite on a few. The result should be majority of the tanks being killed, and the rest being forced to kill the bioball.

If there are a lot of medivacs, make sure you focus some fungals on those as well, with infested terrans spawned underneath. Because you wont have mutalisks to deal with the medivacs, the medivac count can get high really quickly if you dont deal with it.

An alternative to both of the above, is to burrow all of your infestors, use a heap of infested terrans everywhere (The movecommand shift-queuing up an work well) and also engage with lings.

Vs. Terran Mech
They should have either a lot of tanks or a lot of hellions. Or both. So, you need to fungal the hellions and try to keep them as far away from your lings as possible. If you can, try to bait the hellions away from the terran army before you engage with the lings, and kill them with fungals.

If there are a lot of tanks, its basically the same concept for marine/tank. Heaps of neurals and infested terrans.

When engaging, you can neural every tank and thor you can, and throw infested terrans everywhere once you have neuralled enough.

Vs. Ghosts (With any composition)
Tbh, you just have to be tricky. Make two or three control groups of infestors and keep them split up. It'll mean higher APM, but it also will mean you wont die from EMPs. Although, sometimes the terran you go against simply cannot EMP all of your infestors even if they are in one ball. Really, I think that ghosts or tanks focusing the infestors are a terran's best chance of surviving the infestor ling engagements.

Alternatives?
I've experimented with burrowing infestors, or only single infestors and sending them under the terran army. This can give you a good idea of the unit composition RIGHT before you engage, and give you time to think about how to engage. Or, you can send infested terrans near all of the tanks. But I haven't actually done that without it being cost inefficient. Really, you should test it out yourself, but usually the tanks dont kill each other, only weaken teach other a BIT. Then the bioball cleans it all up, a scan goes down, your infestor(s) die.

Quick Comments

TAkrunch:

[TAkrunch]

Hmmm, very interesting. I also tried ling infestor for quite a while and it just wasn't working for me but i think its because my control when the battles occurred was just sub-par. I do however have a few questions cause i really liked the idea behind ling infestor.

- roughly how many infestors do you usually find your self ending up with? as when i did it i think i use to always over make infestors and when i engaged i always lost alot of infestors without them casting any spells. (ie as many infestors as he has tanks or if u have 60 lings u have 5+ infestors)

- i'd also like to know if u ever fungal the sieged tanks to do additional damage or do you rely on the infested terrans to kill the tanks ( via splash damage). I asked this because i always had a hard time dealing with terrans who siege up and then keep their hellion force behind the front 1-2 tanks and only used them to defend the tanks from lings.

- and finnaly this isn't about the army use but, how many macro hatches if any did u find yourself needing. I personnally found that i would need 1 macro hatch on 2 bases, 2 macro hatches on 3/4 bases ( but that could be because my macro was off a bit)

thanks

[Satu]

Originally Posted by krunch

- roughly how many infestors do you usually find your self ending up with? as when i did it i think i use to always over make infestors and when i engaged i always lost alot of infestors without them casting any spells. (ie as many infestors as he has tanks or if u have 60 lings u have 5+ infestors)

- i'd also like to know if u ever fungal the sieged tanks to do additional damage or do you rely on the infested terrans to kill the tanks ( via splash damage). I asked this because i always had a hard time dealing with terrans who siege up and then keep their hellion force behind the front 1-2 tanks and only used them to defend the tanks from lings.

- and finnaly this isn't about the army use but, how many macro hatches if any did u find yourself needing. I personnally found that i would need 1 macro hatch on 2 bases, 2 macro hatches on 3/4 bases ( but that could be because my macro was off a bit)

thanks

1. Infestors die easily. You need to make more than you actually need, so I make about 10-20. It depends on what stage of the game it is, but I'd usually like to have about 20 if its lategame. I can usually burn up the energy on infested terrans on about 20 within about 10 seconds, if they all have full energy.

2. I only fungal the tanks if they are practically on top of the bioball, or if they are all grouped up close.

3. I actually find myself not needing many or any macro hatches at all, I've found this works off 4base if you're mining off all at once. Although, the build is ling heavy, and thus should be larvae heavy. The better you are at injecting, the better you should do.

[NDG.Stitch]

hmm well, my friend, a high Masters zerg that is capable of beating a lot of the GM's usually transitions into ultras against Marine Tank. I mean + ultras are just ultimate destruction...
but its interesting, and i have my doubts on sticking with JUST ling infestors.

[TAkrunch]

I think it says that he eventually does tech up to ultras as they are the obvious tech choice for someone who already has +2 +2 on melee, and infestation pit (allowing him to get hive), and some infestors already that go so well with ultras.

However this guide helps ppl deal with terrans who choose to attack b4 you are able to get to hive. which is pretty much every terran.

[TAkrunch]

wow 10-20 infestors is ALOT of gas, do you feel like they are worth the gas? I always felt like they were a good unit to have 5-6 of until u teched to ultras or something. I always found it hard to get my moneys worth of mass infestors but yeah, maybe i'm just using them wrong.

[Satu]

Originally Posted by krunch

wow 10-20 infestors is ALOT of gas, do you feel like they are worth the gas? I always felt like they were a good unit to have 5-6 of until u teched to ultras or something. I always found it hard to get my moneys worth of mass infestors but yeah, maybe i'm just using them wrong.

5-6 is useless within two emps or two tank volleys.

All of the infestors stay alive with every engagement, why not ensure that there is a large portion of your army staying alive?

And yes, it is a big gas investment, so is muta ling baneling. You can pretty much structure your economy the same, or similar to.

[TAkrunch]

hmmm yeah i didn't really think about the gas you'd save by not going banelings. guess u can easily afford to get alot more if u just dont get the banes. might try that out =)

[Satu]

Originally Posted by krunch

hmmm yeah i didn't really think about the gas you'd save by not going banelings. guess u can easily afford to get alot more if u just dont get the banes. might try that out =)

You might need banes early on, be sure to make a bane nest around same time as lair. But otherwise, you wont be massing banes later on, as fungals can pretty much replace banelings. Its a LOT more cost efficient.