I’ve been watching MorroW’s stream for some time, and he’s been doing a variety of things. Yet most of his play in TvP that I’d seen so far was centered more around the early game (perhaps it’s just been bad luck). I’ve seen a lot of him opening with Widow mines and pressing them to his opponent’s base early. Last night I saw something new – something which got me excited.

He was playing against NShoSeo (better known as “San”), who opened up with a 3-gate pressure/contain build with the Mothership Core. MorroW opened with a pretty early in-base CC (after taking gas) and somewhere in there built a factory or two. With two early bunkers, he held until tanks – and once tanks were out, that allowed him to be increasingly more aggressive with his Widow mine placement. Most notably, though, is that he built his third CC before he cleared out his natural (his second OC was still in base when he started his third! Can he get away with that?)

San, whose natural was blocked during the 3-gate pressure, had a Nexus building before Morrow was able to drive off San’s forces, and the game kicked into macro mode. Morrow was ahead economically, of that there is little doubt – but he didn’t rush his advantage. He went almost entirely tank/hellion with a handful of Vikings and a smattering of ghosts (and no thors), and therefore any reasonable approach he could make needed to be wary of being caught out of position. So instead, he built up OCs, killed off some of his SCVs and remaxed (much like bio does).

When he finally pushed San’s fourth, I’m fairly confident they were both maxed (or close) – and San’s army was one that would likely have crushed WoL mech. It was a small number of Stalkers, a ton of Immortals (8? 10?) a good number of archons and the rest zealots. In short, he had exactly the ground army a protoss would want to have against mech. I didn’t see more than a couple EMPs (though maybe I missed them) and therefore a lot of Immortal shields could be heard during the fighting, and San was able to warp in right at the point of engagement. I was sure that he’d push MorroW back. But MorroW cleaned it up. He still had maybe half his tanks remaining when San was forced to take his half dozen remaining units back to his natural to regroup.

The game ended shortly thereafter.

Obviously, I don’t have a video to link of this (it was something I saw on his stream), but here is another mech game to watch: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=370725&currentpage=16#313).
Unfortunately, White-Ra takes this one. But the reason had little to do with MorroW’s army strength, and more to do with the fact that he did less good of a job forcing the direct engagement, White-Ra was able to engage favorably a couple of times, and the map itself was more open (and therefore, direct engagements are harder to force). White-Ra’s composition was a lot less countery than San’s was. (Try not to listen to Husky, he misses a few key points about the game, and therefore reaches some odd conclusions about mech in HotS)

So – how is this different than WoL?

In WoL, there is one main problem with mech: zealots. They’re useful for runbys/drops, of course (and that will likely not change), but the main problem with zealots is that nothing Terran has can withstand a zealot’s dps without kiting. As a result, prior to HotS, the marines and hellions which shielded tanks from fire were left with an awful choice – either take the full effect of zealot dps without kiting, or let protoss’s ranged units back to your tanks.

In HotS, this choice is no more, thanks to the Hellbat. The zealot wants its target to stay close and fight, but so does the hellbat – and at least in big engagements, the hellbat is better at it. The hellbat has 10% less health than the zealot and deals about 30% less damage to single targets (with the blue flame upgrade), but in exchange for that, it deals damage in a cone instead of to a single target. Essentially, this means that in a battle of BF Hellbats vs. chargelots, if the Hellbats are allowed to hit two targets (which is practically guaranteed in large-scale engagements), Hellbats trade favorably with zealots.

There is a secondary problem with Mech as well. In general, it’s not enough to have a ton of tanks to win engagements. You need to have things in front of the tanks to hinder their approach to the tank lines. And yet, everything terran has which is not also gas-heavy (and therefore is difficult to have and also have a ton of tanks) is weak to AE damage.

Hellbats have an advantage here, too. A hellbat is the size of a marauder, costs less, and has 8% more health. If your marauders are stimmed, a hellbat will have 29% more health. Hellbats are a bit undetermined here. On one hand, I look at roaches, and think to myself “Colossi and Templar feel ineffective against roaches (which are actually more expensive than hellbats and have only 10 more health).

Whether Colossi/Templar will “feel like” the best response to the need to cut through Hellbats or not remains to be seen.

What about the new units being added to Protoss?

Obviously nothing can be certain at this point, but at least lately, the Tempest has seemed less than stellar (and of course, they’ve said they’re completely redesigning the Oracle sometime soon). I feel like the tradeoff positionally between Tanks < Tempests < Vikings < Stalkers < Tanks seems quite well-designed, and quite intentional. A Tempest which is able to shoot at a Tank is just barely in range for a Viking to shoot at it without being in range of stalkers which are out of range of the tanks.

In short, if a Tempest is 15 range from the tank and a Viking is between tank and Tempest (9 range from Tempest, 6 from Tank), the Stalker must be within 6 of the Viking to fire on it, and so within 12 of the tank. And yet if the Tempest is 17 range away from the Tank, the Vikings cannot engage without being within stalker range (without the stalkers taking tank fire).

Other than the Tempest, you have MsC rushes (which have been shown to be deflected by early mines) and Oracle harassment (which is a big question mark, but which previously has been fairly ineffectual when the opponent is paying attention).

Conclusion

I wish I could conclude at this point that mech will be a new playstyle with 100% certainty. I can’t exactly do that yet, but one thing I can say certainly is that from the bits I have seen of Hellbat/Tank (Ghost/Viking, if need be), I think it looks much better in TvP than the comparable experience in WoL. I think hellbats will make great tanky-type units (similar in function to the roach or zealot) which will give mech the edge it needs to go from unconventional oddity to full-blown alternative playstyle. The positional play of tanks is a much more enjoyable way to play the game (and it’s more fun to watch, too). I’m not sure if Morrow’s Macro Mech (also “MMM”) style will hold a candle to Marine-Marauder-Medevac in HotS, but I’m sure it’ll be the “MMM” style I much prefer to play and watch.

It may not be BW mech, but compared to WoL, I’m much looking forward to it.