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Hello everyone, I know I don't usually ever post let alone make any threads, but tonight's SotG has inspired me to make this thread. First of all, for those that don't know, I am Revsoda on the ladder (not in rev, just no name change) and I am a High Masters Terran player on the North American server. Anyways, I heard Artosis talk about mech play in both TvT and TvP. Even Though I disagree with his points about why terrans don't go mech, I have decided to try mech out in TvP. I've always been a bio player in TvP and I used to go mech everygame against Terran when Blue Flame Hellions were really strong but I switched after the nerf and I feel bio is indeed stronger. But I have decided that for the next week, I will be going exclusively mech against Toss. This includes ghosts+mech, marine/thor/banshee (see jjakji vs Puzzle in gsl november on daybreak), and pure mech compositions to see if going mech every game is a viable strategy. I'll be saving all my games from this week and then I will be sending them to Day9. I don't really care if he sees them or not, this is really for pure experimentation and if he uses them that would be cool too 
Anyways, wish me luck. I might stream if anyone is interesting in hearing my thought process and what not. I feel mech is bad, but if Goody can win games off people that I can't beat, then there must be something to it right?
my sc2 ranks: http://sc2ranks.com/us/356795/RevSoda
My twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/supersoda13
P.S. I'll probably be editing this blog with a replay pack and my overall thoughts after one week of testing.
Update (12/12):
After around 5 or so days of testing the viability of mech in TvP, I have some things to share about my opinion of this strategy at High Masters/GM level. First off, I would say that the first couple days of testing were primarily spent theory crafting and using all sorts of BO's to test their viability and what not. After that, I went in to the Unit test map to try things out. What I learned over this time was that Mech was barely viable, and not viable on most maps. I played a lot of games and talked a lot with my team mate (Butteryllama) and we came to this conclusion. We also learned that pure mech is completely garbage and that ghost mech is the only form of Mech that can consistently work. But again, this only works on specific maps. The reason for this is because mech needs to get a minimum of three bases to be successful. But the composition itself, is very, very, very tricky to pull off. You need perfect defense and flawless positioning. But the major problem is that even if you defend really well and harass decently, your army composition isn't strong enough to warrant all the risks that you have to take to get there. The reason why mech is considered strong is that when you get maxed, you are supposed to roll your opponents army convincingly. The thing with mech in TvP is that your army isn't even that strong. When maxed, protoss can still attack into you even if you are fully sieged and everything. So I would say that bio is indeed better, I know a lot of you probably already knew this, but these are just my opinions and I feel its good to share my thoughts on the matter because I just lost a whole bunch of ladder points this week testing it out(LOL).
But if you have some sort of mech fetish, I will share what can be strong about mech and common tactics you can use. First all, most of my games started off with a fast expansion or the standard 1 marine + 2 marauder push (something like that). After that, I would consider getting a factory for tanks. Getting blue flame is really risky after expansion because if they gateway pressure you, you're dead and that's no fun. I see most people go starport after factory, but I strongly disagree with early starport play with mech. The reason for this is because harassing your protoss opponent when they are on two bases isn't very strong in my opinion. Any toss can sit stalkers in their mineral line while on two bases and easily fend off banshee or hellions if they are smart. I would rather suggest going 1 fac making tanks, add second factory, third cc, armory, 3rd and 4th factory, then starport. The two factories will keep you safe while you get a good amount of tanks up. The quick armory is good for early +1 and if you time that right, your +1 will finish when you want to take your third. Your starport will be done when you are on three base and then you can start dropping. This is strong because they will most likely be on 4 base and spreading out their army will be harder for them and harass is more likely to succeed. Also, I would like to point out that thors are not very good and they don't really add anything to the composition so only add one or two max. But anyway, once you get 4 base, you should consider adding another armory and getting more barracks for ghosts, which is mandatory if you want to win. If you do this right, you should have a lot of tanks, 15 or so hellions, 8 ghosts, and vikings/banshee (ratio depends on colossi account obviously). One raven can be good also but I would not consider making more than two as HT kind of owns them hard. If you play your cards right, you can win using this basic Mech strategy.
Of course this isn't the only way to win with mech and people are probably going to disagree with some stuff but this is what worked for me over the last week of playing and testing. But anyway, I'll be leaving a link to the games I played below. Thanks for reading and sorry for wall of text TT.
P.P.S. I stopped playing mech because I lost so much after around 5 or so days so it was technically not a full week. But it was enough testing to draw conclusions from. Also, there were some games that I didn't include in the replay pack because they were just in base all ins from the toss.
Replay Pack
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Sounds like a good idea! If the games are good enough then im sure Day[9] will do a daily using them, after all he did say he wants more TvP mech and thats exactly what youyr sending him!
Edit: You could also try air terran? Banshee viking raven into BCs while you spend all your minerals on mass expanding OC's
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United Kingdom20263 Posts
I wouldnt consider marine/thor/banshee Mech, only one of those 3 units benefits from vehicle upgrades, and is built from a factory - alongside this, THE counter play involves a crapton of high templar (storms on marines+banshees, feedbacks on banshees+thors) which would just seem weird vs pure mech with sc2 storm damage and radius.
Aside from that, im glad that somebody has finally decided to do this, and it will be interesting to see some of your results.
Good luck 
If you want something to start out with, as a protoss player i have found hellions amazingly difficult to deal with in early/midgame (before multiple colossi) because they trash zealots cost for cost, and stalkers are amazingly low damage vs light units (try killing 10 hellions with 6 stalkers, about equal cost) so all in all it is just hard to deal with the raw HP of the hellions with no units that are good vs light, splash damage is always nice on them of course, but they act as a buffer for siege tank shots, and atleast pre-patch, it wasnt too hard to just surround a few immortals and hold position or something while the low damage hellion flames ate hardened shield and the tanks shelled away at the protoss army, it is deceptively hard to hold off a hellion heavy push after 1gate expand into 3gate robo, so i think it is worth your time to look into.
I would offer to play a ton of pvt's with you, but im on EU 
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United Kingdom20263 Posts
On December 07 2011 19:36 FlaminGinjaNinja wrote:
Sounds like a good idea! If the games are good enough then im sure Day[9] will do a daily using them, after all he did say he wants more TvP mech and thats exactly what youyr sending him!
Edit: You could also try air terran? Banshee viking raven into BCs while you spend all your minerals on mass expanding OC's
Air terran is kinda gimmicky and vunerable to templar, i dont think it is viable as a game style, whereas mech has some potential
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On December 07 2011 19:41 Cyro wrote:I wouldnt consider marine/thor/banshee Mech, only one of those 3 units benefits from vehicle upgrades, and is built from a factory - alongside this, THE counter play involves a crapton of high templar (storms on marines+banshees, feedbacks on banshees+thors) which would just seem weird vs pure mech with sc2 storm damage and radius. Aside from that, im glad that somebody has finally decided to do this, and it will be interesting to see some of your results. Good luck If you want something to start out with, as a protoss player i have found hellions amazingly difficult to deal with in early/midgame (before multiple colossi) because they trash zealots cost for cost, and stalkers are amazingly low damage vs light units (try killing 10 hellions with 6 stalkers, about equal cost) so all in all it is just hard to deal with the raw HP of the hellions with no units that are good vs light, splash damage is always nice on them of course, but they act as a buffer for siege tank shots, and atleast pre-patch, it wasnt too hard to just surround a few immortals and hold position or something while the low damage hellion flames ate hardened shield and the tanks shelled away at the protoss army, it is deceptively hard to hold off a hellion heavy push after 1gate expand into 3gate robo, so i think it is worth your time to look into. I would offer to play a ton of pvt's with you, but im on EU
The point isn't to use absolute pure mech, it is to not use standard marine/marauder/medivac compositions. At least, that is what I think. So marine/thor/banshee seems like it is worth mention, especially since I consider starport tech also a part of mech.
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United Kingdom20263 Posts
On December 07 2011 19:48 sSoda wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 19:41 Cyro wrote:I wouldnt consider marine/thor/banshee Mech, only one of those 3 units benefits from vehicle upgrades, and is built from a factory - alongside this, THE counter play involves a crapton of high templar (storms on marines+banshees, feedbacks on banshees+thors) which would just seem weird vs pure mech with sc2 storm damage and radius. Aside from that, im glad that somebody has finally decided to do this, and it will be interesting to see some of your results. Good luck If you want something to start out with, as a protoss player i have found hellions amazingly difficult to deal with in early/midgame (before multiple colossi) because they trash zealots cost for cost, and stalkers are amazingly low damage vs light units (try killing 10 hellions with 6 stalkers, about equal cost) so all in all it is just hard to deal with the raw HP of the hellions with no units that are good vs light, splash damage is always nice on them of course, but they act as a buffer for siege tank shots, and atleast pre-patch, it wasnt too hard to just surround a few immortals and hold position or something while the low damage hellion flames ate hardened shield and the tanks shelled away at the protoss army, it is deceptively hard to hold off a hellion heavy push after 1gate expand into 3gate robo, so i think it is worth your time to look into. I would offer to play a ton of pvt's with you, but im on EU The point isn't to use absolute pure mech, it is to not use standard marine/marauder/medivac compositions. At least, that is what I think. So marine/thor/banshee seems like it is worth mention, especially since I consider starport tech also a part of mech.
I always considered them widely seperate, aside from probably vikings, and i think i still hold the same view with marine/thor/banshee. The last word that comes to mind to describe that composition is mech, and it is countered with a style that is horrible vs "standard" mech ie hellion siege tank core with a few other units around
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just copy what goody does, hellion tank every game every matchup
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On December 07 2011 19:58 rauk wrote:
just copy what goody does, hellion tank every game every matchup
He switched to Bio in TvP cause he says Mech isnt playable after the last few patches.
I also dont consider your Thor Banshee Marine as Mech. And the more problem with this is:
Once he has Colossus or High Templar you die. Colossus outrange Thors and wreck Marines.
And HT counters every unit of that composition. Add some Archons and Zealots and its just over.
I was adjusting my TvP Mech play to a 2 Base Timingpush with Ghosts Marine Tank and Hellions. Aslong as the Toss aint stupid you will never win in the lategame
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Was playing mech only TvP at high/mid masters level last season (EU ladder).
I had some very good success with one fac marines/tanks expo into double armory upgraded tanks/hellions/vikings plus ghosts for EMP.
No idea if this is viable at GM/high GM level though as I'm not exactly super talented nor have enough time to practice a lot, but it's fun and lots of P have no idea how to deal with it.
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Good luck man! I always chose Terran(BW/SC2) because of the Siege Tank.
Or maybe we just have to wait for HOTS for Battle Hellions and especially the Warhounds which I heard were good vs mech(protoss has some mech right?).
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I think it will be interesting to see how successful mech can be in T v P. I feel like it has been a LONG time since I have seen
T v P mech in any pro games. It needs to be done again since there has been buffs and nerfs that have happened over the past few months. If your lucky you might run into TT1, he likes to a-click into a full siege line and lose his entire army=)
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On December 07 2011 20:21 Levistus wrote:
Good luck man! I always chose Terran(BW/SC2) because of the Siege Tank.
Or maybe we just have to wait for HOTS for Battle Hellions and especially the Warhounds which I heard were good vs mech(protoss has some mech right?).
stalker, sentry, colossus, immortal, warp prism, phoenix, void ray, carrier, interceptor, mothership, probe, observer
so everything but zealot and the templar tech (dt, ht, archon).
i chose terran cause of tanks too ^.^
@guy with that awesome icon from france:
after the season change some balance changes happened:
+ Show Spoiler +
1.4.0
Immortal
Attack range increased from 5 to 6.
Warp Prism
Shields increased from 40 to 100.
Hellion
Infernal Pre-Igniter damage upgrade decreased from 10 to 5.
1.4.2
Forge
The cost of Upgrade Shields Level 1 has been decreased to 150/150, down from 200/200
The cost of Upgrade Shields Level 2 has been decreased to 225/225, down from 300/300
The cost of Upgrade Shields Level 3 has been decreased to 300/300, down from 400/400
The cost of Upgrade Ground Weapons Level 2 has been decreased to 150/150, down from 175/175
The cost of Upgrade Ground Weapons Level 3 has been decreased to 200/200, down from 250/250
The cost of Upgrade Ground Armor Level 2 has been decreased to 150/150, down from 175/175
The cost of Upgrade Ground Armor Level 3 has been decreased to 200/200, down from 250/250
Ghost
EMP radius has been decreased from 2 to 1.5
I think every of those was a huge nerf to mech in tvp. especially emp and hellion nerf. (the warpprism just made them use it)
maybe i can find an interview of the only successful mech player at pro level (goody) where he states why mech aint useful anymore. i saw one last week but it was in german where he stated, that you cant trade efficiently after the last patches which makes it impossible. sure if the protoss player doesnt know how to react he will loose anyways.
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I already have a conclusion for you : it doesn't work :D
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I switched back to bio as soon as thors had energy again, and the recent immortal buff makes random games on XC even painful to mech with. I didn't see the SOTG episode yet but I'm interested now.
You need to rely on hellions shitting on workers, which is not too much of a challenge but there are a lot of very powerful immortal timings before the T is able to fit ghosts in that just straight up win in most circumstances. Regardless of what Artosis says, there's a reason why Korean T don't mech against P aside from 1 in every 50 series: because it's difficult, not cost effective, and there aren't any benefits over bio. We won't see much experimentation until HOTS probably =(
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Should be interesting, but I feel any successful games will be due to the protoss not handling it correctly. Sometimes you don't even need to use the power of being a mobile army and can just straight up kill them once you get the correct tech paths. I'm pretty much sold that mech (at least in the form of helions and tanks) will just never work as it is right now. Thors have shown potential, but only for timing attacks rather than solid mid game and late game play. When even goody says he's practicing bio, then you know it's pretty bad.
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You should veto all the small maps before you start. It will definitely give you a higher win % as well as giving a better reflection on what the playstyle would be like in a tournament (most of the big ones use macro maps exclusively).
But yeah I think mech is really strong, particularly if you sprinkle a few banshees in there to take care of imms and lots.
Interesting bit of trivia: If you a-move 200 supply of imms into sieged up siegetanks with line of sight and the same upps, the siege tanks win. I think 90 supply was the break even pt for siege tanks and immortals, although a few lots sprinkled in forces it much higher.
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Always make sure sure sure sure that you have banshees mixed in. Without banshees, immortal collosus absolutely wrecks mech T_T I've had tosses break 32 tanks+hellion/thors mixed in, made me a sad panda. Anyways, Protoss has no true answer to terran air because vikings are so strong and stalkers take full dmg from tanks. However feedback is really good vs thor/banshee/raven and it's hard to get ghost out as well as the proper unit composition+upgrades off 6-8 gas. Right now I feel protoss has a pretty strong upper hand against mech builds because of how much gas is needed to support a true terran mechball(tank thor viking banshee raven ghost upgrades). The biggest advantage with mech is the fact that if the game goes late enough you can mineral dump into orbitals and turrets and have only like 30-40 scvs, giving you an extreme army advantage.
Oh yeah biggest piece of advice, if you are moving more than 5 tanks at once, you are doing it wrong. Getting caught out of position for even a second will lose you the game. If you ever have to panic siege, you lost the game, zealots are on top of your tanks, and you can't replace a mech army.
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On December 07 2011 21:08 superbabosheki wrote:
The biggest advantage with mech is the fact that if the game goes late enough you can mineral dump into orbitals and turrets and have only like 12 scvs, giving you an extreme army advantage.
Fixed it for you
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Didn't fxoasd do a mech build which beat hero recently in the GSL? Game 2 on Bel Shir beach if I'm not misremembering.
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On December 07 2011 21:16 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2011 21:08 superbabosheki wrote:
The biggest advantage with mech is the fact that if the game goes late enough you can mineral dump into orbitals and turrets and have only like 12 scvs, giving you an extreme army advantage. Fixed it for you
That's only 4 gas T_T 8-10 gas would be normal late game(24-30 workers) + some to build shit.
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EPT
