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Below the the build order I am currently testing.
The basic strategy is: 1 rax expo - rush to banshees, tech cloak, snipe observers, take 3rd while harassing and switch to bcs if the game isnt already over.
Notes: Micro your banshees. It is fairly easy to keep them from dieing, send them back to a repair scv and get back into battle. Harass priority. Probes, Robotics Facility, Stargate, Cybernetics, Nexus/Pylons/Forge. Once cloak is finished, snipe obs with scan/viking.
+ Show Spoiler +
9 depot
12 rax
13 refinery
16 oc
16 marine
17 cc (in base close to natural)
18 ebay - building armor as soon as its up
23 factory
23 2nd refinery (leave 1 scv)
26 second OC
26 bunker @ nat
Mule on CD.
after this add another bunker and fill it with marines, place depots in front of bunkers.
when fact is finished add two ports and two turrets protecting the port macro area from obs followed by an other 2 ports, use fact to build tech labs faster.
3 techlabs, 1 reactor. (reactor last)
after after purchasing the 4th banshee, add fusion core, research cloak begin saving energy for scans
Any suggestions would be appreciated. I will post any changes I make. Also I may need to change the timing so the turrets come slightly sooner I'm not sure.
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It seems like you would get rushed very easily doing this build.
The good toss players that always crush me do this:
1) Zealot / Stalker enough to keep me from attacking, but not enough to kill me.
2) Double Robotics
3) Observers, see what my army is
4) 2 colossus or 4 immortals depending on what I have
5) Attack and destroy me, or at least cripple me, then hit again with more soon after
I don't know how to beat this... If I go
heavier mauraders, he'll go immortals,
heavier marines, he'll go colossus,
tech to ghost, not enough units
tech to vikings, not enough units / he goes heavier zealot stalker
use comsat, sacrifice mule money plus he's hitting as soon as the colossus / immortals pop out, so I'll likely only see the 2 robotics and still not know which he's getting, waste of 50 energy.
In the build here, you'd get hit with zealot / stalker pretty early and die, probably as soon as he got an observer and saw you only had 8 marines.
Good Terran have a tip for this Protoss black box build?
Note: I'd put this in a new thread but I just signed up so I can't make a new thread.  It's sort of appropriate in a TvP build thread.
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Someone I play with has started using this on me and I find it troublesome. You can hold your expo with a fortress and a few tanks pretty well against zealots/stalkers. Immortals do alright, but you need a fair share of them. An early couple of towers makes it difficult to catch the ports going down too.
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It seems like you would get rushed very easily doing this build.
not really. if hes really trying to stalker rush which doesn't happen much because most terrans are getting early marauders, then just put a bunker behind your wall till your cc is done and then salvage and move it.
tbh the only hard counter to this is stalker/blink rush.
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Zurich15365 Posts
Can you please post a couple of replays? I have been trying FE strategies but found it impossible to hold against all the 1 base aggression builds.
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On February 27 2010 03:57 Stimmmed wrote:not really. if hes really trying to stalker rush which doesn't happen much because most terrans are getting early marauders, then just put a bunker behind your wall till your cc is done and then salvage and move it.
The tosses I'm playing against are building up units the whole time to protect against a bio push, they'd have maybe 8 zealots and 4 stalkers or more when you try to float out to your expansion, they could just camp it, or potentially attack you.
You're the one testing it, I'm at work. You tell me, how many times have you used it and how successful has it been?
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Excuse the unfamiliarity, but if you're saving money by only going 1 rax why not transition into tanks when you expand? If you're working on lasting through the early game and obtaining an economic advantage in the mid game, I don't see why you'd try to undermine your turtling efforts with an offensive approach.
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I have been considering using an FE build on some maps vs Toss, I am just scared to do it for the following reasons:
Immortals rape bunkers =(
9 Range Colossus are a problem.
DT Drop is a problem.
Those are the 3 things I am most worried about. Going EMP helps a lot vs DTs and Immortals but 9 Range Colossus are still a problem if you have EMP.
I think most of the maps are just not very FE friendly. If there was a map similar to Blistering that did not have a backdoor this would be much more viable.
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Here's my concern with Fast Expand/Turtling/Teching vs Protoss -
It seems like we're still going to have to make the same troop mix against them because of their hard counters, and the fast expand/turtle/tech just puts us behind in that.
Let's say you decide to fast expand and bunker up into heavy production out of 5+ Rax. Now you have this new production capability to pump out marines and marauders - since it took you longer to get them out, Protoss has more time to build in plenty of immortals or colossus to deal with whatever mix you make. Their first attack will probably still break you.
Let's say you get some factories up - Helions aren't really going to cost effectively deal with anything past a ton of zealots. Tanks are going to struggle against Immortals as well given that the Protoss will be engaging you, not you engaging them. Ghosts seem to work better on the offensive since protoss can't just run pull back without losing a base, etc.
Let's say you go to Starports - vikings help against Colossi, and medivacs are just making your infantry push stronger. Tech labs open up Banshees, which may be the right answer here. But that's going to take a lot of tech labs.
What do we do with the resources provided by a fast expo if our infantry is hard countered and the units from our factory/starport are too specialized (helions/tanks/vikings/medivacs) or slow (thors, banshees, battlecruisers).
Can you guys make bunkers and tanks work until you are rolling in thors or banshees/battlecruisers? Or are you making mid-late game infantry work against toss? Obviously ghosts help with infantry but still - there has to be some meat, too.
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Can't you put a planetary fortress at the expansion and tanks on the cliff?
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United States24768 Posts
A timing attack from protoss will crush any early expansion you do. The exact timing attack depends on what the protoss scouts you doing, but the earlier I can expand is after I've massed up a fair amount out of 2-3 rax and make sure to immediately get a planetary fortress. If you can get this to work vs good protosses such as those in that top 200 thread then definitely show us how you pulled it off.
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The only way to FE is with factory units. Siege tanks + turrets are safe vs every single unit protoss has, helions are the #1 best backstab unit cause 2 can kill a whole probeline in seconds, and thors are solid vs everything. If he gets immortals, bunker + repair + emp. There's no way he can have enough to overrun you early on so getting emp out should be perfectly viable. Also make sure to abuse siege range so that immortals can't hit your tanks without running into bunker fire. The best part of an FE strat is you actually have the gas to tech whatever you want and you have 2 orbital commands so you can get some serious mule action on, and I'm not talking horse porn.
It's the same problem 1 rax FE has in sc1. You get outranged by siege units early and raped by anti infantry units (reaver/dt). It's viable, but only if protoss lets you get away with it. You might not die if you do a 1 rax FE, and I believe it is much safer in this game because marauders are actually good, but you're going to be defending for a very long time and be majorly behind in tech.
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Floop - so let's say we survive and the fast expansion works, and protoss late expands after realizing they can't break our defense. How do we then convert that advantage into a win?
Do you try to harass down that expansion with drops and tanks, or build up a huge mixed army to overcome their ground game? What's the next step after securing the FE advantage?
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United States24768 Posts
On February 27 2010 04:55 Floophead_III wrote:
The only way to FE is with factory units. Siege tanks + turrets are safe vs every single unit protoss has, helions are the #1 best backstab unit cause 2 can kill a whole probeline in seconds, and thors are solid vs everything. If he gets immortals, bunker + repair + emp. There's no way he can have enough to overrun you early on so getting emp out should be perfectly viable. Also make sure to abuse siege range so that immortals can't hit your tanks without running into bunker fire. The best part of an FE strat is you actually have the gas to tech whatever you want and you have 2 orbital commands so you can get some serious mule action on, and I'm not talking horse porn.
It's the same problem 1 rax FE has in sc1. You get outranged by siege units early and raped by anti infantry units (reaver/dt). It's viable, but only if protoss lets you get away with it. You might not die if you do a 1 rax FE, and I believe it is much safer in this game because marauders are actually good, but you're going to be defending for a very long time and be majorly behind in tech.
It's map dependent, but by the time you have several siege tanks plus siege (without dying to zealot/stalker busting down your wall) you will be expanding at the same time or later than someone who went several raxes and moves out while expanding. If the map isn't conducive to expanding with sieged tanks then you have to wait until you have a LOT before you can rely on them for expanding... from what I've seen.
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its gonna be impossible vs the new Protoss cheese. Mass zelots/sentrys with 2 pretty fast gass and 4 warp gates off 1 base. You wont be able to hit run with ur infantry when they forcefield behind u. Only map this can work is lost temple if u make it impossible to do runby on ramp, and maby metropolis.
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On February 27 2010 05:00 RPGabe wrote:
Floop - so let's say we survive and the fast expansion works, and protoss late expands after realizing they can't break our defense. How do we then convert that advantage into a win?
Do you try to harass down that expansion with drops and tanks, or build up a huge mixed army to overcome their ground game? What's the next step after securing the FE advantage?
It's ok to be 2 base vs 2 base as mech, because your units scale into lategame really well. I found that helions with their splash obliterate zealots and even do ok vs stalkers and sentries. Tanks murder stalkers zealots sentries and nonshielded immortals and of course collosi. Thors kill basically everything and particle is great for taking down immortals fast (and it stuns =D)
On a lot of these maps tank drops are very effective/annoying. I mean cmon, lost temple. Helions are INSANE for harassment. If you get the damage up (which you should as soon as you start making them) they will murder workers and T1 units. I cleared out a whole main of probes with 2 helions. Try doing that with vultures 0.0
I just did a helion drop tvt and it killed every single one of my opponent's workers. The same thing can be effective in tvp or tvz, though tvz is a little bit harder just cause those stupid queens are always in your way. I don't know how helions fare vs them.
The difference with mech in this game is you really sacrifice map control with mines, so you have to be super aggressive with helions cause they're just so damn fast and so good at killing workers. If protoss overcommits his army to stop your harass you have a good window to push into one of his expos and kill it outright.
I think there exist the same timing windows as in SC1, but the style and way you push them will of course be different. The general idea doesn't change though. Push protoss when he's committed money into economy over military. Harass to gain an economic advantage so you can push. Push at upgrade timings that allow you to have an advantage over his units (+1/0 is great cause I think thors 2 shot stalkystalks)
All in all, it is 100% the only way to play TvP if you plan on making it past early/midgame. I know people have had success with banshee play, but I just can't see it becoming a standard line of play so much as a harassment strategy to gain map control to expand and power after which you transition into mech (maybe mech/BCs?). TvT and TvZ I haven't played much of, but I assume TvZ will remain a bio friendly matchup. TvT I feel will be completely mech if it already isn't.
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On February 27 2010 03:57 Stimmmed wrote:not really. if hes really trying to stalker rush which doesn't happen much because most terrans are getting early marauders, then just put a bunker behind your wall till your cc is done and then salvage and move it. tbh the only hard counter to this is stalker/blink rush.
You're going to be scouted early enough either with observer or a hallucination that if a good protoss player sees you using a pf to defend while you hard tech to something that isn't mass bio, they're probably going to do exactly that to you.
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I still fail to see why the only answer T has to P is bio. Why can't you just turtle with tanks? Tanks > Zealots and Stalkers, and range > slow immortals. Let alone that you can make Helions and bio to deal with Immortals.
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On February 27 2010 05:48 PredY wrote:just pulled of rax expand against horror. planetary fortress saved my ass  edit: replay is here http://www.mediafire.com/?0htd1wjcw14feedback appreciated
I already posted some comments in the replay thread but you really didn't pull off anything. Toss suicided his first Warp Prism (to a single turret) in the beginning and would've just dropped his Immortals in your main where you had no defenses whatsoever. He attempted to attack your PF again soon after killing off pretty much every unit you had but he lost his Warp Prism (single turret again) this time with two high/full HP Immortals! Like before, he would've just dropped his Immortals in your base if he didn't lose that Warp Prism.
In fact, I think Horror showed that Terran FE against Toss is very hard or maybe even inviable.
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On February 27 2010 07:11 Tomed wrote:I already posted some comments in the replay thread but you really didn't pull off anything. Toss suicided his first Warp Prism (to a single turret) in the beginning and would've just dropped his Immortals in your main where you had no defenses whatsoever. He attempted to attack your PF again soon after killing off pretty much every unit you had but he lost his Warp Prism (single turret again) this time with two high/full HP Immortals! Like before, he would've just dropped his Immortals in your base if he didn't lose that Warp Prism. In fact, I think Horror showed that Terran FE against Toss is very hard or maybe even inviable.
what would be a better strat then, 2rax (reactor, techlab) expand into mech? or perhaps building turrets on the edge to prevent drops, because if he doesn't go drops i'm in a good spot i think
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A build I've had some success with TvP was Rax-Fac-Expand
Basically its the siege expand of SC1 - Be sure to pump marines though, only 1-2 mauraders, because stalkers/zealots will be taken care of by the siege tanks + wall... the Immortal shields you really have to burn down quick. Target fire your tanks onto their stalk/zeal and target fire rines at their immortals and you should be able to hold (I haven't been broken yet, but I've also only done this build a few times). From here, you can tech to Vikings for Colossi + tanks + Mass Marines (maybe a medivac or 2). I'm not a 300apm player, so my macro isn't always the greatest even in SC2 (focus on too much micro) so I can usually get away with 3-4 Rax (All Reactor except 1 Tech for upgrades) 1 Fac Tanks and 1 Starport-Reactor Vikings. Depending on the map either attack when he takes his third, or take your 3rd and play the macro game -> BC's.
I really do feel BC's are the best way to go once on 3 bases - The toss advanced tech routes are just too strong against inf: Colos+Range or STORM STORM STORM, which is why I do feel a tech change from inf to BC's is necessary once the Toss has enough gas to get those nasty high templar
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So is anyone going to address the guy hyping hellions? TBH, people have ignored them, and their tech tree location could be the way to go against P.
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Hey Tomed, can you release or send me a replay pack of your terran games? I saw a couple and thought you were pretty good.
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EPT
