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United States4991 Posts
The Challenge
Last Monday, I was having dinner with some folks I know, and I had a conversation with someone who'd just started a new account and was messing around with going mass Marines in a macro style. I said "hah, that sounds easy to get master league with" (on NA), and thus came about the Marine Challenge:
- Only units = SCVS, Marines, MULEs
- Have to play macro style (typically a 1 rax FE is what I did)
I started from bronze (deliberately lost my first 5 placements), and then I began the great journey.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wnhWC.png)
Well, I didn't have much option... 
I mostly predicted that I would have the easiest time in TvT, with TvZ being decent and TvP being very difficult. I was already a marine-heavy TvTer, and of my Terran matchups, I historically had the best results in TvT.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4RT33.png)
Who needs other units anyway?
TvP, I imagined that the entire matchup would be my opponent seeing I'm going mass Marines, and then turtling and making several Colossus. They would then proceed to move out and smash my face.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1jQWs.png)
...yeah...
For some reason, most people didn't do this. Were they afraid I would make Vikings? Did they want to appear gosu and beat me without Colossi but by harassing, upgrading, and being gosu? I don't know... They sometimes did try to transition into it, but their Zealot/Sentry/Immortal/Stalker heavy armies usually died to my +1/+1/Stim/Combat Shield Marines by the time they thought to start transitioning.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/57CGi.png)
Why would you make Immortals against someone going pure mass Marine
TvZ, only Infestors and Banelings were particularly worrisome. Against lower ranked players, I could fight straight up against mass Baneling/Zergling, but by the time I hit mid-master league players, I basically had to hope they didn't game my strategy and go pure Zergling/Baneling - my splits aren't good enough to fight people who can actually macro and make that . (I did win some against people who made 40+ Banelings, but on the whole I lost those games)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lN0UO.jpg)
Oh crap...
The Build
So what did I actually do? My opening didn't particularly deviate according to my enemy's race (although if I did scout them cheesing me, I would adapt accordingly  ).
1 Rax
SCV --> 16, then Orbital
1 Marine
CC
I'd then typically bunker my natural and get 3 raxes, then add dual gas. I'd go dual upgrades, then start stim, combat shields, and then use my gas to tech to armory. Since I only had Marines, I had to pull SCVs in some cases if my opponent pressured me with Marine/Tank early on, but on the whole Marines are pretty good.
Here is a table showing the distribution of my opening builds: + Show Spoiler +
The Results
Ultimately, coming up from bronze, I hit master league with a 51-8 record (I had been playing master league players for a while before I actually got promoted though).
- TvZ: 19-4 (82%)
- TvP: 16-4 (80%)
- TvT: 16-0 (100%)
- Average game length: 9:33
- My average APM (sc2gears): 135
- Times I was worker rushed: 1 (no I didn't lose to it, come on)
- Times I was cannon rushed: 2 (who cannon rushes a Terran?!?!)
I also found that, as I got to higher leagues, people got madder and madder about losing to mass Marines, and started calling me a cheeser, telling me I'd never hit master league with this strat, etc.
Final Disclaimer
I'm not claiming Terran is imbalanced, nor even that Marines are imbalanced. Marines are for sure really good, and are somewhat arguably the most versatile unit in the game, but that doesn't mean the race is imbalanced. This was just a for-fun challenge . After hitting master league, I don't really intend to keep playing this way to see how I can actually get (I was playing people who would probably be classified as "mid master").
The account I used (had no MMR due to having no 1v1 games last season): http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/2690915/1/Lorelei/ [note, 5 of the losses were from deliberate losses in placement ]
Here are the replays from the run FYI: https://rapidshare.com/files/2122706869/Reps.zip
 
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nice effort and a nice read!
I should try this sometime too  , but a 80% win rate vs zerg is pretty impressive with this strat  .
good luck further down the road.
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Interesting how this would play out if you allowed yourself to all-in aswell New MarineKing yo :D
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This kind of sounds like you were already mid to high masters so you were going to get there on a new account regardless of what strategy you used. I think that in the lower leagues as long as you're better than your opponent you're going to win no matter what unit composition you have. It is fun going mass marines sometimes, I only use this against zerg and I always get BM'd really hard.
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ahaha awesome ^^ nice job.
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losing the first 5 placement matches intentionally to be able to play the absolute worst players on the Bnet doesnt sound like a challenge to me at all sorry..
You described yourself that against equally skilled players it doesnt work so good anymore,so i dont really get the point of the thread. I could make a topic "The blink stalker challenge" or "mass roach challenge".. and smash bronze noobs my way up to master but meh...
+ Show Spoiler +
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On November 20 2011 06:56 Falcon_NL wrote:nice effort and a nice read! I should try this sometime too , but a 80% win rate vs zerg is pretty impressive with this strat . good luck further down the road.
If he's innately much better than his opponent, he could have done anything and won. Don't take the statistics at face value.
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I'm glad for you but as a Z you just crushed my soul a little bit.
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On November 20 2011 07:48 ae wrote:losing the first 5 placement matches intentionally to be able to play the absolute worst players on the Bnet doesnt sound like a challenge to me at all sorry.. You described yourself that against equally skilled players it doesnt work so good anymore,so i dont really get the point of the thread. I could make a topic "The blink stalker challenge" or "mass roach challenge".. and smash bronze noobs my way up to master but meh... + Show Spoiler +
Can you share some insight on going to masters by playing bronze players? It's not like you hit masters when youre not consistently beating masters. It's not about bragging he just tried something out to see if it would work.
Edit: Also Insane why do you have no icon at your name? :O:O
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United States4991 Posts
As I mentioned, I did play quite a few players who were in master league, so it's not like I was just crushing super low ranked players to get it. The winrates are inflated because lots of the games were vs lower ranked players. My winrate was still decent against low-mid master though.
No icon because I didn't want one .
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arr im writing shit.. i see you wanted to try this gainst all levels so yeah i kinda understand the losing of placement matches now
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Croatia9461 Posts
haha reminds me of a BGH monobattles.
Nice work Peter ^^
edit: let me know if you wanna bgh sometimes (like right now!)
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haha, reminds me of the guy who did a bunch of blogs on his worker rushes!
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Rofl.
Basically every answer in the "Terran Help Me Thread" from now on should be "Make more Marines".
I approve. I've never lost because I had "too many Marines".
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On November 20 2011 06:23 Insane wrote:
Why would you make Immortals against someone going pure mass Marine
-1 Immortal has virtually the same DPS against light as 2 stalkers (Technically slightly less b/c Immortal attack speed is 0.01 less than a Stalker, lol)
-Immortals do not overkill as they have no projectile animation, which means practically speaking Immortals do more damage vs Marines because stalkers' projectile animation takes so freaking long.
-200 hp vs 160 hp, meaning more of an Immortals overall health has 1 armor, which stops a lot of damage vs marines' low damage high rate of fire attacks.
-3 supply vs 4 supply, iirc.
So yeah they are basically less terrible vs marines than stalkers are. Obviously stalkers are awful against everything (lol lose to 3 marines wtf) but that is beside the point.
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What was your rank/mmr before doing this?
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On November 20 2011 11:31 Geovu wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2011 06:23 Insane wrote:
Why would you make Immortals against someone going pure mass Marine
-1 Immortal has virtually the same DPS against light as 2 stalkers (Technically slightly less b/c Immortal attack speed is 0.01 less than a Stalker, lol) -Immortals do not overkill as they have no projectile animation, which means practically speaking Immortals do more damage vs Marines because stalkers' projectile animation takes so freaking long. -200 hp vs 160 hp, meaning more of an Immortals overall health has 1 armor, which stops a lot of damage vs marines' low damage high rate of fire attacks. -3 supply vs 4 supply, iirc. So yeah they are basically less terrible vs marines than stalkers are. Obviously stalkers are awful against everything (lol lose to 3 marines wtf) but that is beside the point.
Yet you kinda have to make this crap unit if you want a chance of defending your natural since zealots will just get kited all day.
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How do Zergs lose against mass marine!? Practically the only thing you need to do is memorize the hotkeys for banelings and infestors!
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On November 20 2011 12:34 Hidden_MotiveS wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2011 11:31 Geovu wrote:On November 20 2011 06:23 Insane wrote:
Why would you make Immortals against someone going pure mass Marine
-1 Immortal has virtually the same DPS against light as 2 stalkers (Technically slightly less b/c Immortal attack speed is 0.01 less than a Stalker, lol) -Immortals do not overkill as they have no projectile animation, which means practically speaking Immortals do more damage vs Marines because stalkers' projectile animation takes so freaking long. -200 hp vs 160 hp, meaning more of an Immortals overall health has 1 armor, which stops a lot of damage vs marines' low damage high rate of fire attacks. -3 supply vs 4 supply, iirc. So yeah they are basically less terrible vs marines than stalkers are. Obviously stalkers are awful against everything (lol lose to 3 marines wtf) but that is beside the point. Yet you kinda have to make this crap unit if you want a chance of defending your natural since zealots will just get kited all day.
Why are you guys missing the point of his statement of confusion on some guy making immortals against marines? He is saying that colossi are far more preferable to make, not that immortals are awful against pure marine (which they are, compared to colossi).
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/SModI.png)
