here we see the broken unit meta in action: I plop archer lab which would be guaranteed win if he plop glaive lab, but instead he plop moderator lab which can not be countered by amphib so he won

broken unit meta is very fun, I always enjoyed playing rock paper scissors

I did queue a grizzly but being forced to concede the whole map to get a 2k unit out made it feel a bit pointless

I cant think of any that would realistically work to prevent me from conceding the whole map in early game amphib vs JJ. What can beat pyro / moderator? Pretty much everything is hard countered by moderator except maybe buoy but those are expensive, slow and inaccurate and not very good in low numbers, would probably get jumped on by pyro.

Grizzly is OP but trying to rush it is a losing move.

Mybe the correct play was to abandon the lab altogether and just spam porc. How much metal does reclaiming a lab give?

Amph is just too slow for this map. You can't expect to push out of your base unless you hardcounter the enemy factory. The only reason Amph is popular right now is Grizzly, but on this map your Grizzly will be always out of position and Archer alone can't beat everything.

Ducks are very under-rated.

I feel that in many ways Archer being better made people grow more lazy about playing Amph. Sure, moderator is a problem, but they are slow and fragile. To be a real threat, he is committing at least 700m at a location. With a committed ball like that, ducks are free to have small pyro-defeating squads and to harass limiting expansion potential.

As game scales up, both Boey and Grizzly can transition into late-game parity.

Takes killing 3 ducks for a moderator to make cost.

2 Ducks insta-kill a moderator
3 Ducks instakill a screening pyro.

1 Duck is just shy of the ability to close, shoot, and then shoot again at a reloading moderator. If the moderator isnt kiting ideally, it does have the time.

They arent godlike against them, but they certainly arent bad vs moderators.

RyMarq : Sure, at even metal cost the ducks will rip the moderators to pieces. Hell, even at 2/3rds metal cost they'll probably win.
However, this needs to be an actual mass battle.
You have to decide you're going to mass units, mass them, hope Godde hasn't noticed and made a placeholder or stardust and then charge. Little raids of yours just get picked off with no attrition to the enemy and no chance to run away (unless you're paying attention to that particular raid at that particular moment).

And once you've decided to pick that battle you have to judge that you can win and wholeheartedly commit, you can't back out if things don't go well and if you lose? You've probably lost that game.
Particularly difficult as you have to know how big the force opposing you is, calculate how many ducks you'd need and then decide to battle. Merely knowing what you're facing and where it is means you've won the information war (and probably the game).

Would Ducks have been Drone's best bet here? Yeah. But would they have given Drone a win against those Moderators? Much iffier.