Get Your Build Played by Liquipedia

On February 23 2010 22:54 Thereisnosaurus wrote:
Not going to post this in SBN as I do not have the beta and am unsure of the timing. If someone would like to study and try it I would be much gratified :D


Hello all, I've been watching the scene for a while and I'm intending to become active in SC2 as a content developer as well as working on my place. I was captured by another poster's interesting ideas about TvZ and thought I'd try a bit of theorycraft myself.

This is based off the neo-flash idea of a high tech defensive turtle, with a very strong midgame aerial harass and subsequent push. It takes advantage of several new mechanics terran can use- notably the new versatility of bunkers, hotswitching tech addons and the (I think) underappreciated viking and raven

Start up with a pretty standard opening, get your first depot at your ramp and a rax in your main followed by a single gas quite early. Then get a quick E-bay and a bunker while your first marines are building, completing the wall. The moment the ebay finishes go for neosteel frames and get your second depot at the bottom of your ramp, in range of your bunker, starting a wall in front of your natural. You should be pumping marines during this time, adding a reactor to keep the count up. A second Ebay should also go up ASAP and get started on building armor. Around the neosteel frames finishing you should push out into your natural, salvaging your first bunker and building 2 more to add to the 2 depots that should be down there, finishing your wall by floating the first ebay over once it's finished frames. This will give you a front wall with 2 fully upgraded bunkers packed with marines.

The aim from here is to tech switch now your front is secure against pretty much any early zerg aggression, with SCVs repairing if necessary, there's not much even mass roaches I think will be able to do against a wall like that if your sim is decent and you get repairs going if they try and bust through the ebay or supply deps. Aim to get your second CC down and expand cleanly. If the zerg is pushing hard and you've taken a few hits go with a PF on your expansion, if not go OC and get the mules going.

From the point where you secure your natural wall, you want to get a factory out followed by dual starports. Your first port should go straight onto the first reactor and the second and your rax should
both get tech labs. Both ports should be pumping a stream of vikings till you have 6 or 7, while your raxx should be putting out marines and your ebays should be getting infantry upgrades. Upgrade raven seeker missiles at your starport techlab.

Once your vikings are out, switch back to full bio macro, going up to 3reactor raxxes and one techlab one. Turn your starports over to dedicated raven creation. Use the vikings to alternately go after drones as your first priority and overlords second. Use the slow speed of hydras and roaches against them and force your opponent to keep forces in his bases rather than committing to a full scale breach which at this point you will probably be vulnerable against.

Vikings seem to be very strong units without any upgrades- fast 14 damage cannons mean 3 can oneshot a drone and with decent micro you can cut down five or six in a few seconds and then just pop off the moment anything comes close. Their missiles are weaker against zerg, but they massively outrange mutas (9-3) so you may be able to use this to your advantage, I haven't really seen it play out. Against a ling/roach heavy build they will excel, but be somewhat weaker against mass hydras, only succeeding in keeping them back from the front- which is exactly what you want

You should be aiming to push out with some 2/2 marines (2 armor is critical with shields as it is the point where hydras go from 5 to 6 hits to kill a marine if at 0 upgrades, which they seem to be most of the time) supported by dropship/raven forces as soon as you hit a critical mass. Support this force with SCV's and build bunkers as you move up, use that tech advantage to pressure chokes, bunkering them up to prevent getting munched by a crackling/lisk army. When you do engage mass hydras, unleash those seeker missiles, which seem to basically be the terran storm. This will really punish shonky micro, and from what I've seen can do some serious damage to massed hydra.

In summary this build
-pushes out with a very secure early game expansion that zerg will have massive trouble breaking with T1 tech, forcing them to go to T2.
-focuses on switching into a heavy aerial harass to make up for the early game lack of pressure, aimed at forcing the zerg to pull back to prevent the hydra timing push that seems so typical in current play, taking advantage of their new lack of manoeuvrability and the versatility of the viking
-uses the early game tech choices (double Ebay, quick starports, no money wasted on factory units) to produce a fairly fast and very powerful combo timing push which is capable of crushing mass hydra and securing further expansions so you can lock the zerg down and take advantage of their lack of late game power.

Things to remember:
- I think this build is solid against most zerg strats at this stage. Once people learn it, it is going to be reasonably easy to counter by mass expanding early and using defensive nyduses. At this stage however it's very, very strong against the strats I've seen so far. It's also very balanced, not requiring oodles of gas for anything other than the ravens since almost all your ground forces are going to be marines with comparably few, if any, marauders. Terran also get the best (and now only) mineral mining speed increase with the mule, and since this is a fairly safe expand you will probably be calling down two all the time, meaning the mineral heavy aspects of the build are catered for.
-making sure you get upgrades pronto is a major part of this, those two early bunker upgrades are critical to shutting down early zerg harass and then transitioning to double infantry upgrades early takes advantage of that double investment in ebays.
-you need to do at least a decent amount of econ damage with your vikings. Tap a few drones here and there and force defences back into the zerg base. Do try not to lose your vikings as they can be very useful to stop nydus attacks once they become imminent.
-Getting ravens with decent energy up to stop the mass hydra bust is also critical. It's a bonus that they provide detection, countering any burrow tricks and banelings with ease. If the game begins to stalemate, you can use them late game to drop a bunch of auto turrets on zerg resource lines perhaps.

Potential issues:
-resource starvation during the period where you're walling your expansion, expanding there and teching to starports. This is pretty resource intensive, but you won't need much of an army, on the plus side.
-issues with vikings. I honestly haven't seen them that much. On paper they seem amazing for the job I have for them here, but responsiveness to micro and speed of their switch out might cause problems
-Nydus busts: This seems pretty difficult to counter with anything but siege tanks atm, I'm hoping turrets+ turtle mentality + viking patrols will make it very tricky to pull off on this build
-ultra ling: with their cleave, mass marine is quite vulnerable to this, so offensive use of bunkers I think will be critical to soak ultra hits while the rest of your army pounds them. Luckily you should probably be 3/3 upgraded with stim and shields by the time your opponent is 2/1, so your marines should be surprisingly durable, especially if you have a few medivacs as well as ravens.
-Upgraded Hydras outrange marines, so someone who goes ahead with a push while you are harassing could feasibly be a pain. If this looks like it may happen, a PF on the CC will probably save you, as will getting some clutch marauders into the bunkers.