hi guys I need some help handling turtle players now. I am in bronze league now and I see turtle players a lot. I know with turtle players I just need to shut down them and expend crazy, which I do in general, but still I believe there are some better way of dealing with them as zerg I don't know yet. with people playing terran as example, they take one natural expo and guard it with siege tanks and massive anti air. with that they can manage to reach the critical mass in number, being it massive air units like battleships + thors. the trick is when they go defensive it is very hard to scout, as any overlords or muta will die before even reaching their base; their base is saturated so no space for worm neither; the moment that I am maxed out he is maxed out as well, and probabily bigger in battle number as I would have more drones. every game like this takes 40 min or more. their MMM balls and high level research eventually become very hard to break down, as zerg is not extremely strong in the later game. if I send in my air attach to their base it gets shut down too, as attacking turtle players they will have the upper hand for their siege tanks or antiair towers. what can I do if they just won't come out? after my attack is countered I will have moment of weakness to their counter push of their mass MMM balls, or void rays. I have half half chance to win, depending on how good they are in their own games, but is there some critical thing I am missing? how do I improve from where I am? any help is good help!
How about trying a baneling bust as shown here on Youtube:- HDStarCraft Zerg Tutorials: Baneling Busting The Terran Doors It's great against those who don't know how to defend against it. It might work in your current league. For those longer games it's best to transition into a Zergling, Mutalisk and Baneling build. Mutalisk for harass and Banelings for his Bio Ball of MMMs. Always have good map control, take those Xel' Naga towers as much as possible with zerglings and scout with overlords. When you see his army move out get your Mutalisks into his mineral line and morph your zerglings into banelings. From here 2 things may happen :- 1.) He decides to push forward - all in perhaps? 2.) He decides to retreat So, for 1.) make sure you have enough Banelings to mop his ground units and after harassing the mineral lines or killing off his reinforcement with Mutalisks send them back to support your zergling/baneling army. This is where you have to be quick. Make as much forces as you can and destroy him. Zerg's production capabilties are way better than the other 2 races. In the case for 2.) keep on harassing as much as possible to deter further expansions while you macro up. From what I know an army of fully upgraded mutalisks can take down anything. Always remember Zerg is a reactionary race. You have to react to what the enemy is doing more so than the other 2. =)
If your really need to see what is going on in his base send in a couple of speed upgraded overlords from different directions, and maybe one overseer to drop a changeling just inside his base while he chases those down.
I do reasonable map control by spreading creeps and taking the towers, and send ungrouped zergs all over the mines so if they try to expend I will know and shut them down. most of the terrans these days use siege tanks to guard the gate so banelings barely make it to the gate through the chokepoint. damn the range of the tanks. protoss player started to lay matrix of canons, since canon attack both air and ground it is very expensive battle for me to fight. my recent a few loses to turtle games mainly because they went massive air and I found zerg air less effective when facing their T3-T4 units, corruptors do not really counter their mass battleships and vikings behind. I guess there are micro controls required. after all I think play full defensive is their game and if I have to play their game then I have low hand. is there any thing that banelings are not very effective against?
If its clear thats he going to turtle on you have you considered after getting you hydra defence force built that you might want to build a large force of infestors? A fully charged infestor can summon 8 infested marines each, so 20 fully charged infestors can summon 160 infested marines! If he's dumb enough to give you the time and space to get crtical mass in infestors up, then he's army of battleship might get a nasty shock when they try to leave his base! Also make sure you upgrade too. Thors might be nasty, but they don't do so well when fully upgraded zerglings are swarming them.
Against turtling terran you will want expand, scout out his army composition (lots of marines means lots of banelings for you) and go tier 3. No need to try to destroy a turtler early in the game, as you said he will have the advantage and it could wind up in your army being wiped out fairly easily and zerg does not have any early options outside of baneling bust to breaking a siege since zerg tend to do better in a open battlefield rather than in closed clumped up buildings. Harrass if you can with air units but don't get your forces wiped out. Generally teching to brood lords is best vs terran. Against protoss ultralisk is usually your best bet to deal with his army since blink stalkers do pretty well against broodlords.
For an early finish, go with a baneling bust and rush speedlings into his base. HDStarcraft has a good video of this on youtube. For this build it is imperative to strike before he gets siege tanks. Muta does very well against turtles in the low-level leagues. Most of the time they don't have missile turrets around their mineral lines. Heck, even gold/platinum league players don't on occasion. You can hit their mineral line and then switch back and forth from hitting his expansion, his front, etc. Just don't mass muta too much, as thors are a hard counter for them. They are only for harassing against terran. If he turtles and doesn't attack before massing up units it should be fairly easy to pull out 10 broodlords and 20 corruptors to smash their forces. By the time he gets Thors you should be well on your way to having BL. Broodlords crush bio.
Thx guys for the feed back. they are all very helpful, opening up my options. I found Baneling bust is less successful to turtle players these days, as they all learnt to place a siege tank or marine team behind their depots at chock point. I guess the game is now to force them to build a lot of anti air towers, that way they do not have enough resource to tech up and if I choke him at natural I should have a good chance. I am yet to see broodlord to be successful in a game. might be because when I get to broodlord normally i am already having upperhand and do not need them? will try next time. good rivals always escort their expansion though.
1 or two seige tanks wont stop a baneling bust. you just gotta send them in waves. Do a Feint Rally lings to the top of them ramp then back down as they are runing out send in the banes. The beauty of baneling bust is for say if they rush to get tanks and seige mode they wont usually have that much of anything else. Also a proper baneling bust should come out fast enough before they are able to amass to many tanks. As for broodlords, Broodlords have won me a decent amount of games. However they always finish in the nick of time. I use them generally against protoss. My first 5 usually finish as they are knocking on my door with a massive mixup of units.
Try a simpler approach of tech and harass. Make mutalisks, force them to get thors or towers and then finish off your harass with brood lords since they can keep causing damage without taking damage due to their long range and ability to keep other units at bay. It isn't the fastest solution but brood lords and corruptors along with even the most basic army can win battles of attrition remarkable easilly
I usually try to prevent that a turtle can expand. Spread the creep around as much as possible and make sure you got alot more income than the turtle player does. There is no need to attack. Only attack him if he's on the move to grap an expension. When you control the map you should alway's win. It takes alot of macro to have alot of bases with zerg. Just try to practice that.
