[OverDrone]

I'm having trouble identifying if T is going Mech and also having some trouble to deal with it, will be grateful if there is advice!

[x5_Namakaye]

Biggest tell is the factories, if he makes more than 1 and doesnt add rax as well, he's going mech. As to how you beat it, most reliable way seems to be just keep making roaches and pummel him to death. How you do this is up to you, you can get drops, burrow or just a move at him.

[ChowMuddha]

well dont know how useful this will be but a T who mechs generally wont move out till about 14-16 min mark, so in that time you can probably have a decent roach army and take 4-5 bases and beat him by through hordes of tier 3 units, or as Namakaye said get a tonne of roaches and drop in his main and destroy his production facilities or his army what ever works best.

[Zepph]

Sac an overlord into the terrans base somewhere around 6:30 to 7 mins and see if he's making rax or factories. Generally meching terrans will start with the standard hellion banshee opening so make sure you're wary of what might be going on. If you for whatever reason can't sac an overlord in, make sure you're running lings into his nat to see what his unit composition is.

If they really commit to hellions that is another sign of mech. Particualrly if they get blue flame. Ideally, you still want to be looking around in their base at some point to make sure.

I suggest posting a replay so that people can give you some tips if you're after specific advice but some basic pointers for ZvMech would be:

1. Expand a lot. They're immobile, you're not.

2. Work towards brood lords!

3. Roach drops are great for dropping on top of siege tanks when you engage or even in their base if it's safe to do so. I find nyduses useful to deal with a turtling mech terran sometimes also.

4. If their army is too much for you to battle head on, weigh up your counter attacking options. They kind of have to walk around with their army in a huge clump and this often leaves things like their 3rd or 4th exposed, so you can try and exploit that.

[mGGDrGooSe]

Also, what league are you? for BSG level I would say just do a 2 (or 3 if you know how to early expand off of a T's fast expo) ling/bane/roach all in. BSG terrans wont have good enough macro to defend it. Only thing you need to worry about if they go for a relatively fast siege, they can have that by 10 minutes which makes it a bit harder. Aim for having roach and bane speed with about 12 roaches and however many ling/bane you can from 3 gas at their base by 930-10 and you will beat the vast majority of meching terrans.

In terms of openings, if they are going reactor hellion expand, start an evo (for ramp block) and a spine at 4.45-5 mins to deal with the 4 hellions at 530. If they are going 1 rax fe then you can delay that by about a minute. If you are opening 6 queen, then you can delay the evo until 7 minutes, which you still want to get incase of cloakshees. In BSG level, a 7 minute ovie sac is generally better odds than a 630 one, simply because they are slower and you can end up going in before they start building their tech.
Another thing to scout for if you see it is a 2nd gas early is probably mech or at least fast tech like early banshees. Someone better will need to correct me on this, but I believe most non fac/starport builds will get the cc before gas, rather than say rax, gas, cc builds? A little while ago, RuinD released a sizable replay pack of him doing mech. You can search through that for his build orders and take note of things like gas timings and when are good times to sac an ovie to see fac/starport counts.

If you want to play macro instead of all-inish, then make sure you have a well timed lair (8-9 minutes) because you cant get left behind in tech and upgrades. If you see double armory, you will probably either want to all-in them soon, or go dble spire to get 3/3 broods as well as the dble evo. 3/3 thors, especially with ravens, obliterate single spire play. Beware of hellion drops. 1 medivac can destroy you mineral line in seconds.

[FLuX]

Originally Posted by mGGDrGooSe

roach and bane speed

Can't have roach OR bane speed if you're going for a well timed 2 base roach/ling/bane all in.

Quick Comments

mGGDrGooSe:

can for 10 minute attack. Im not experienced in which is better though

[OverDrone]

Originally Posted by mGGDrGooSe

Also, what league are you? for BSG level I would say just do a 2 (or 3 if you know how to early expand off of a T's fast expo) ling/bane/roach all in. BSG terrans wont have good enough macro to defend it. Only thing you need to worry about if they go for a relatively fast siege, they can have that by 10 minutes which makes it a bit harder. Aim for having roach and bane speed with about 12 roaches and however many ling/bane you can from 3 gas at their base by 930-10 and you will beat the vast majority of meching terrans.

In terms of openings, if they are going reactor hellion expand, start an evo (for ramp block) and a spine at 4.45-5 mins to deal with the 4 hellions at 530. If they are going 1 rax fe then you can delay that by about a minute. If you are opening 6 queen, then you can delay the evo until 7 minutes, which you still want to get incase of cloakshees. In BSG level, a 7 minute ovie sac is generally better odds than a 630 one, simply because they are slower and you can end up going in before they start building their tech.
Another thing to scout for if you see it is a 2nd gas early is probably mech or at least fast tech like early banshees. Someone better will need to correct me on this, but I believe most non fac/starport builds will get the cc before gas, rather than say rax, gas, cc builds? A little while ago, RuinD released a sizable replay pack of him doing mech. You can search through that for his build orders and take note of things like gas timings and when are good times to sac an ovie to see fac/starport counts.

If you want to play macro instead of all-inish, then make sure you have a well timed lair (8-9 minutes) because you cant get left behind in tech and upgrades. If you see double armory, you will probably either want to all-in them soon, or go dble spire to get 3/3 broods as well as the dble evo. 3/3 thors, especially with ravens, obliterate single spire play. Beware of hellion drops. 1 medivac can destroy you mineral line in seconds.

Actually I'm Silver in both NA and SEA, I was laddering in NA and playing against a Platinum Terran. I was marcoing badly but roaches eat up supplies very fast! D:

[Zepph]

Originally Posted by OverDrone

Actually I'm Silver in both NA and SEA, I was laddering in NA and playing against a Platinum Terran. I was marcoing badly but roaches eat up supplies very fast! D:

I sincerely doubt you can play macro vs a meching terran without roaches. Lings and banes will be decimated by ground splash, mutas generally get destroyed once thors are out (although if you get mutas quickly before they have anything that shoots up you can win the game.)

The fact that they are 2 supply really shouldn't be your worry. The thing is that they are cheap and beefy so you need to spam them like no tomorrow and abuse the fact that you can replenish your army almost instantly whereas they need a long time to build back up into the big mech ball. All you really need to do is make sure you're pumping out enough overlords and upgrading your roaches.

DrGoose gave you some good advice in his explanation which may work quite well for your level.

I also suggest learning a strong opener (probably 6 queen build) vs terran which will help you vs both mech and everything else. A big thing about ZvT for lower levels is that you often overestimate how much of a threat you're under in the early game, since often there is very little that can come your way aside from say, a hellion banshee push (which 6 queens and a few lings if needed combat beautifully) if they're playing standard. So basically you can get away with expanding and droning for a long time before any attacks come. By the time something DOES hit, then you should have a tasty economy with which to produce a ton of units - whether that be roaches or lings - and deflect the attack.

That said though, BSGs tend to do some weird things so make sure you're scouting consistently to make sure no crazy all in is coming your way.

[HuT]

Roach / Corrupter, maybe banes if he's bad and doesnt split.

General rule is to not take damage from any harrass.

[jayaiwhy]

Drone as much as you can in the early game, but make just enough units to counter hellions.

Mech army isn't very mobile, so use that advantage to hit that "d" key while you can

[ryrymanpie]

Before i give advice i'd just like to say i am a gold terran player and am no way skilled...

Anyway, i have played straight mech against zerg before, and the main thing that i would suggest you do, is deny his third if possible, muta harress, banelings etc because if he gets a third up he can get his macro going and get about 10 factorys to be able to trade armies more effectively (10 factorys = 10 thors at a time = 60 supply a pop) but anyway, terran do not want to be trading armies when they go mech but that's another story.

I would say depending on his unit composition of mech you need to base your strategy... definately roaches and lings are a must but if you see him going say siege tanks over thors then get air dominance (mutas/corrupters/BL's) If you see him going mass thors then i'd say give infestors a go! I played against a high platinum zerg player who dropped me easily using neutral parasite (i think that's what its called) surprisingly very effective if he does not have the siege tanks to target fire the controlling infestors.

Anyway, i would find it very hard to play ZvT once they have a 200 mech army going especially if they're half decent and have been doing hellion run bys which is another point i'd like to make, make sure you have your expansions well protected and you have map control, as others have pointed out mech army is really slow, but if they can siege up on your base it puts you in a very bad situation.

Something i have lost to a few times because i stupidly negelected to put up turrets and make marines.. his muta ball dropped me however this was in that 0-12 minute window where thors are not up yet.

Anyway, i hope i've made some sense but basically you need good engagements and to trade your army efficiently which can be hard to do; mech is usually very weak from 0:00 to about 12:00. If you're going BL's make sure you leave corrupters to take care of vikings... its very easy to get 3 SP's out with reactors and pump vikings..... very very easy.

[ryrymanpie]

Last thing i'd like to add and this is something i have been experiencing great success with which i think can be used by all races. I am sure you've heard the elitist peeps saying "Macro is the only thing necessary from B-D" well i wouldn't say that is 100% correct but there is some proof to the pudding..

As opposed to trying to implement various BO's and strategies etc... focus on droning; scouting and hitting your injects and massing up your army in accordance with how you scout, in other words focus on your macro... i have been doing this at a gold level and have had GREAT success its bumped my win ratio up to 80%...

I suggest you do the same, i too have been caught up in the technical jargen of this game and trying different BO's and watching pros micro and trying to replicate this, but the reality of the situation is that the people who are extremely good are able to perform micro and macro at the same time efficiently. For instance... i think zerg can max out at like 12-14 minutes? Terran could have out 4 siege tanks... if you march up to his base with 100 food of roachs.... those siege tanks aren't going to do shit...

I suggest (if you haven't already) checking out filtersc's zerg videos... he has some very good fundamentals that are macro orientated that will help you get it down. The build i think he uses is something that Stephano made up which maxes out with roaches at 14 minutes on 3 base..... definitely worth a look in.

Hope i am making sense.

Regards,

Ryrymanpie

[FLuX]

With regards to the above, you could probably use Stephano style but the fact that it is so weak up till about the 8:30-9:00 mark when you start producing your first units means that you might struggle. Also, with good solid macro and mechanics you can cut that 14 minutes down to 11:30 with roach speed, + 1 and burrow. This build is definitely what you should be using for ZvP, but I don't know how effective it would be ZvT, to be honest like Ryry said, it would probably work vs mech at lower leagues. You might have to build maybe 6 or so roaches and push creep out the front of your natural to connect to your third though, that'll delay your timings but it'll still be tough to handle. Also try getting drops with it, I hear terrans hate drops. (Ironic, right?)

[Xara]

The biggest giveaway to mech play is multiple factories with no additional barracks. In general, whichever building Terran has the most of is what they're playing on, Barracks being bio, Factories being mech, Starports being sky (though I'm usually the only one I ever see in my ladders playing Sky Terran). I haven't played that much in recent months, so I can't tell you exactly when you should scout, but keep your scouting active and do your best to spot what they're doing.

The biggest flaw to Terran mech is immobility, and that is one huge flaw in this game, bigger than it was in Brood War. I like to make the very general World Wars comparison, where the first game (Brood War) was a game of power and positioning, and the second (Wings of Liberty) is a game of movement and attacking.
The Terran mech army is without question the most powerful and cost-efficient army in this game once it's set up, so I rarely like fighting it head-on unless I already know I have an overwhelming advantage. What it also means is that Terran mech armies have the tendency to play NaDa's Tornado Terran style, macro up while harassing, keeping you from attacking until they're 200/200, and then move out a 200 supply army with the knowledge that it can and will crush anything that tries to stand directly against it. Once they move out your proactive scouting and Overlord placement should give you a general sense of where their army is at all times.

Against it, you can do any of the following:
1) Once you see them move out, you can stick all sorts of weird and wonderful things up the rear end of their base: Mutalisk, Nydus, doom drop, backdoor aerial siege, you name it, even a frontdoor drive-by if you see it isn't defended. You do this to an undefended base and mech immobility means Terran is suddenly playing an all-in attack because they can't get back in time to deal with your attack before they lose their whole base, and you can withdraw any time you want if you need the units to defend or even backflank the impending attack.
2) Race your tech to BroodLord and take advantage of the combination of Terran mech's lack of mobility and lack of long-range anti-air to out-siege them.
3) Use burrowed Roaches to your advantage. Siege Tanks do a lot of friendly splash, so sticking any tanky unit into their lines without them knowing causes a massive amount of chaos. Be aware that Roaches are classified as Armored, so in a straight-up fight Sieged Tanks do melt through them like a hot knife through butter. I wouldn't advise using Roaches without Burrow and Tunneling Claws.
4) If you find that they're not using the terrain to their advantage like they should, you can out-position them by using high-ground tactics and LoS manipulation. The core units of Terran's mech army are all armored, which makes Neural Siege Tanks or Thors a very good support unit if you can get ahold of one. Be sure that they don't have any air units spotting for them before you try this.
5) The damage output of Terran mech is large single-target burst with some splash. If you don't think they're building as many Hellions as they should, you can consider adding a mass of Zerglings to your army.
6) Spend most of the early-game expanding like a madman and build a few harassment units. After all, you have 5-Range 175HP Queens and they can't move their stuff out the front without you putting your stuff in the rear, so what can they do about it?

Units-wise:
-Zerglings are decent if they don't have enough splash damage in their composition and can be used as meatshields for the incoming army, but shouldn't be your entire army.
-Roaches should be your main ground unit, and you should use Burrowed movement to its fullest.
-Infestors are very situational, and should only be used if you feel you have a tactical advantage. You need to be able to use Infested Terran and Neural Parasite without being punished for it. If you do have that advantage, Infested Eggs can make good siege breakers.
-Mutalisks are an amazing harassment unit, and don't just use them for mineral lines, you can use them to pick off any stray Tanks you catch out of position. Any units you kill now will make that deathball that much less intimidating when they finally decide to attack. Make sure to utilitze the magic box trick for those Thors.
-Corruptors should only be used if they compliment their mech with heavy air. You shouldn't need too much of this so it's advisable to morph most of them into BroodLords when you have the tech.
-BroodLords will be your lategame/endgame. Terran in general doesn't have a lot of long range GTA (Ground-to-Air), so BroodLords and their ATG siege-breaker style means the immobile Terran mech will have a very hard time dealing with this, and you can use them to end the game by pushing them slowly into their base, using their own siege style against them.

[ToRSpookToR]

Originally Posted by Xara

-Corruptors should only be used if they compliment their mech with heavy air. You shouldn't need too much of this so it's advisable to morph most of them into BroodLords when you have the tech.
-BroodLords will be your lategame/endgame. Terran in general doesn't have a lot of long range GTA (Ground-to-Air), so BroodLords and their ATG siege-breaker style means the immobile Terran mech will have a very hard time dealing with this, and you can use them to end the game by pushing them slowly into their base, using their own siege style against them.

da fuq10char

Quick Comments

ROOTPetraeus:

spook stop it

[FLuX]

Originally Posted by FLuX

mGGDrGooSe: can for 10 minute attack. Im not experienced in which is better though

I can basically guarantee that the speed doesn't matter. Look up DRG's roach/ling/bane all in (or is it?) write-up by TangSC, it's a really heavy pressure behind which you can expand and tech (albeit slightly delayed), and you can usually completely end the game with it.

[x5.Stormz]

Originally Posted by FLuX

I can basically guarantee that the speed doesn't matter. Look up DRG's roach/ling/bane all in (or is it?) write-up by TangSC, it's a really heavy pressure behind which you can expand and tech (albeit slightly delayed), and you can usually completely end the game with it.

This is the build I use most ZvTs I play in. One thing to be careful of is cloaked banshees. By the time your attack moves out if the terran is going hellion banshee they will usually have at least two banshees at the time of your attack so just be sure to get a evolution chamber and be prepared to make spores.

!fhlg

[YourFather]

I've been reading this 6 queens opener, can anyone give me the build order? Cause I usually only do 4Q openers...

A replay will be great too if you guys have it...

Walter@esports.sg

Thanks!