TvZ - The other end of the story

[WarlordR]

Replay of me (early/mid diamond) vs an early diamond Zerg, showing off the "Magic Box".

This replay features what may be considered a glitch, to do the impossible. Around 14:00, 4 Thors (1/1) get owned by 13 muta (0/0 or 0/1, not sure) leaving still 7 muta's alive.

[Aaryn_GenD]

i watcehd the game, and all i can say is:
didn't you notice how your 4 thors owned 5 of his 8 mutas in your base (first thor vs muta encounter) with just a single volley?
and magic box is not op lol it just helps a bit vs thors.
also 4 damaged thors without any repairing from SCV's are supposed to lose to 13 spread out mutas (that was the fight at his base).

i also didn't get why you got siege tech or why you made 3 factories. you should have expanded earlier, not when you were at a huge disadvantage, towards the end of the game you could have tried to sneak a cc with 5 scv's to the right side, where he didn't scout isntead of planting it right where he was sitting with 15+ mutas. ;-)
it was kinda unfair of you saying that it's lame or op all your opponent did was just outplaying you.

use marines+stimpacks!! thors are good when complimented by them with some SCV's to repair. then you'll see how your army vs his mass muta will go, i tell you it will go the other way unlike this game, magic box or not ;-)

[WarlordR]

Problem being that Thor's are supposed to be the hard counter to mutalisk, and by losing 4 thors (1 damaged slightly over half the hp, the others not/barely damaged) over 6 mutalisk seems kinda unfair to me.

Also the reason why I could take out the muta's in my base was because they were moving straight into my thors, heaping up and all of them taking AoE damage from the javelin missiles.

Mass marine neither is an option, banelings completely devastate any clumped up army, the only viable strategy might have been hellion/tank with viking support.

Leaving us with the issue; should you be able to avoid about 40% to 60% of the damage by pressing the 'Stop' button?

[Bart331]

I agree men, T has no chance at all vs Z

[WarlordR]

[quote=""Bart331""]I agree men, T has no chance at all vs Z [/quote]

Nothing personal but: contribute or don't respond, thx very much.

[Bart331]

dont forget muta cost 100/100 each, if he has 13 muta thats 1300/1300 res there. Also ur argument that marines arent viable is not true, tanks/thors just blast banelings away, i would never advice viking vs Z unless he has broodlords, marines/thor/turrets is perfect antiair. Your statement sounded like a big QQ post since T has PLENTY of options to seriously hurt the Z player in the early game and blast the Z player away in the midgame. Watch some good reps of pro T players to see how its done.

[Comadevil]

As Bart said:
13 Mutas 1300/1300
4 Thors 1200/800
So 13 Mutas cost almost 1/3 more. And it is harder to mine gas.
Also hard counters don't work usually like those clumped mutas with those 2 shots of a Thor and and the half is down

And this magic box doesn't work if u had marines with you or scvs on autorepair. Because the player can't choose which unit to attack, it is decided by the AI which unit the mutas will attack and the AI will likely not focus fire. If the player focus fires they clump up again. So the mutas will also attack marines during magic box and in this time the thors should have cleared it up or shot down some more of the mutas

And to be honest: i expect more from a diamond player than to rage in the game about the opness of magic box.
Zerg and magic box isn't OP. It is just as Aaryn said: The zerg outplayed you, because u left ur Thors on their own.

[WarlordR]

[quote=""Bart331""]dont forget muta cost 100/100 each, if he has 13 muta thats 1300/1300 res there. Also ur argument that marines arent viable is not true, tanks/thors just blast banelings away, i would never advice viking vs Z unless he has broodlords, marines/thor/turrets is perfect antiair. Your statement sounded like a big QQ post since T has PLENTY of options to seriously hurt the Z player in the early game and blast the Z player away in the midgame. Watch some good reps of pro T players to see how its done.[/quote]

Point taken, I should indeed have made some tanks to keep most ground forces away, but "tanks/thors just blast banelings away" - that is ridiculous, thors do lots of damage, but they fire way too slow to deal with any mass of small units.

Also the concept of a counter is to take out several of that certain unit without too much casualties, something that is applied when using a normal attack (muta's still take AoE dmg, but not a lot).

SCVs to repair would have made a difference aswell, but considering the muta's glaive attack it would be a matter of seconds untill they would all be dead or either it takes 20 SCVs to keep both the SCVs and the Thors repaired.

So; no, this is not a QQ post, yes, this is a sort-of reaction to the TvZ is imbalanced whining, and yes, I should have played better, yet im addressing the issue of the magic box here, not my playstyle.

Last time I checked my playstyle didn't make units are more or less OP.

[Aaryn_GenD]

believe me, the "not real hard counter system" is the best out there there is. else you get the same crap you got in aoe. where a unit type always completely destroys the other. leads to one-sided and boring battles with always the same unit compositions.
take stalker vs speedling - in small number speedlings own them, but once you get like 20 stalkers, the speedlings can only attack few of the stalkers at once, the stalkers in the middle of the ball are untouched the entire time aand shooting. and at choke points stalkers completely obliterate speedlings

if 3 thor would always win vs 20 muta because they are the "hard counter" that would be complete dumb^^ in aoe3 one cuir can beat 30 strelets at once

[WarlordR]

Yes, it's definately the best system, but theres still a difference to having units do what theyre supposed to (Thors designed to have AoE dmg), and allowing the player to ignore parts of the attack, if they wanted players to do that they would have left the AoE part out.

Anyway, thx for the responses all.

[Bart331]

After watching the game my thought on why you lost:

-No constant scv production
-Too late expo (u were running out of minerals when u tried to expo)
-U scan and see a spire (9:14) still it takes untill 12:14 before you start making turrets

You did huge damage with ur push but you just lost cause you went 1 base all in and had no macro to back it up. Also its funny to see how those hellions own 40 lings in 2 seconds

[Comadevil]

[quote=""WarlordR""]Thors designed to have AoE dmg), and allowing the player to ignore parts of the attack, if they wanted players to do that they would have left the AoE part out.
[/quote]
No. Because else players could focus fire Thors instead of only magic boxing. And that would be a total different story against Thors.
Also they would have given Thors a bigger radius for AoE damage if they should shoot down spread out mutas like if they are clumped

Also if the AoE damage would have been like u want it to be ZvT would have been turtle terran and boring mech fights mid klate game like it was after release

[huGGy]

What is magic boxing and is there something like an attack or focus fire move?

[WarlordR]

[quote=""HuggyPierre""]What is magic boxing and is there something like an attack or focus fire move?[/quote]

Magic boxing is moving units (think this only works with air) to your opponent's dudes and then ordering them to 'Stop', causing them to spread out and ignore splash damage.

And yes, attack move does exist.

[huGGy]

[quote=""WarlordR""][quote=""HuggyPierre""]What is magic boxing and is there something like an attack or focus fire move?[/quote]

Magic boxing is moving units (think this only works with air) to your opponent's dudes and then ordering them to 'Stop', causing them to spread out and ignore splash damage.

And yes, attack move does exist.[/quote]

What key is it by default? And does it work the same way like in AoE?