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I mostly 2v2, but I am mid plat in 1v1 and am sure I would go higher if I played more 1v1s. Often times in TvT (I play exclusively terran right now) I will start off something like 10 rax, followed up by two more raxes (I skip gas for the start). I try hiding my other two raxes in my base and hopefully blocking out or scaring away the scout before he sees them (with building a rine right when 10 rax finshes I can normally get it out of their pretty quick). If the scout did get into my base I know they must think something is up when they don’t see gas yet, but I hope that they are trying to figure out if I am quick expanding or not.
I try to time my first attack right before I believe they will have siege. I normally will send two or three rines before my attack force goes out to clear any scvs at the watch towers so he hopefully will not know I am attacking with a big force of rines until shortly before the attack. I find that normally one of two things happens on this first attack: I can end it right there, or they have a decent sized force but I can use range to my advantage and normally stand back and kill two of the depots blocking the choke.
If I kill the depots and feel that I have the bigger force I will engage and try taking down their troops. If I do this, I normally decide at some point that with their new troops coming that it is advantageous to pull out. Whether I decided to attack or not, I pull the marines back and have them sitting slightly in front of the terran base. I always keep what I call a “suicide rine” in front of my pack so I know when they are trying to push out. My main goal is to try to make them have to micro to tank push me all the way to my base. Each time they unsiege and try pushing I will try engaging his force.
In the mean time, somewhere around 20 to 26 supply I will lay down two gas at the same time (until this point I don’t have any gas). As soon as I have 100 gas I will make a factory and when that is done I will make two starports and go right for banshee. As soon as I can I research cloak I get it. I have always been able to stall the push enough until banshees come out. If I am in immediate danger of their attack I will play a game of sniping a tank with the banshees and then retreating to my rines as he scans and follows with his Vikings. If I am not in immediate danger I will either push myself or harass (it normally depends whether they scouted the banshee and put turret(s) in their base).
If I push myself I will send one rine ahead of the others so I know where the tanks are and as soon I as I get close to the area I will try sniping the tanks with the banshees and retreating to my rines. A lot of times I find that at this time I can send one or two banshee to his mineral line while trying to harass him from the front with marines banshee and damage his economy). If I harass, I know I will lose some banshees to scan + Vikings but I can normally do some very good damage to his economy. I normally put my banshees in two or three control groups so I can send each in a separate direction when the Vikings come and he has to choose which to chase and kill if he has scan (but atleast he won’t get all of them and the damage I cause will more than be worth it).
From this point in the game if it is still pretty even I branch out depending on map and which units the opponent is relying on most. But I find I can almost always come out even with my opponent to this point. I find the secret to starting off a build like this is to abuse their lack of mobility, force them to use all of their scans, and try to make them build static defense.
With this start I give up air control, but I find if I am aggressive taking out their tanks and retreating my banshees to my marines that I can actually push my opponent. You just have to be really careful you never push your marines into an area where tanks are sieged and also try watching out for any drops they will try to execute.
I hope this helps you with trying something different to combat other terrans.
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Well obviously it shouldn't be only Vikings - that's just silly. With Port/reactors pumping, you can quickly switch to marauder/tank force by building several medivacs at once. So while you are getting air control, you can quickly switch to medivacs (i.e. get 6 or 8 quickly) and use these along with Vikings to stop his expansions. If he's covered his entire base that there's nowhere to dro, then you should be expanding and using ghosts to poke at anything not covered by his tanks.
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Just invest into a fast maurder push...vikings get own by it...if your too slow he will have few banshee out then your up shit creek unless you get thor.
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Do the above three posters understand, that posted with a question with regards to dealing with tank/viking blobs,
KacherMB replied with a TvT breakdown without really touching upon how to deal with "the blob" (which is great but not really relevant, because this sort of thing tends to happen as an effect of countering tank/banshee - I know I end up with big viking/tank blobs because the other player tries to mass banshees).
mav451 tried to argue you can run Marauder/Medivac vs Tank/Viking (what?)
-StrifeX- tried to argue you can just rush down a tank/viking blob (what?)
As a follow-up to my earlier post about how BC switch epic fails (the moment your viking production stops and I just crunch your viking army, or get fabulous map control),
A handful of Thors are great at messing with Vikings. I think the question needs to deal with the originating matter, which is, how the heck do you end up with Tank/Viking blobs? Personally I end up with such a blob because the other player massed Banshees - as someone before pointed out, the matchup is about balancing counter units. If you're sitting on an army of Tank/Banshee/Viking and you're struggling against a Tank/Viking blob, I think honestly the only thing you can do is stop making viking and make a crapton of Thors. I'm not sure about how much damage Thors now do to Vikings, but when I'm in the reverse position (having a Banshee/Tank army and seeing Vikings) I've always, always just made a tank/Thor army. You then just dance your banshees back and forth. The Thors also work as a great vanguard (especially with the recent change to splash targeting), so you can push in with Thors absorbing hits/damaging Vikings, while your tanks make short work of their tanks. What you'll end up with is a Tank/Thor/Banshee army (the armies hardly have to actually engage) vs mass Vikings, which goes really badly for the player with Tank/Vikings.
Again, this is at relatively low Plat level, though.
On the other hand if I'm reacting to Banshees with Tank/Viking I tend to just expand like crazy, and try to outmacro the other player. So there with the Banshee side you literally have to make Thors earlier and apply pressure to prevent critical mass + economy.
Hope that helps.
Edit:
Don't forget if you trade your ground army for his, but you have tanks etc. alive, you've got the upperhand, because Vikings aren't very good GvG, and if they remain in air-form they're screwed.
Making a bunch of Thors messes with the mass Viking army because they have to ground some of their vikings to stop your Thors from busting down their tanks, but if they ground too many target-fire from Thors and whatever remnant of a Viking force they have will make short work of their air force, which opens them up to dying to Banshee/Thor. And if they react too slow and leave all their Vikings in the air, you'll crush the Tanks with hardly any loss and then they really can't do anything.
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@Southlight – The original poster had two questions. I realize I did not explicitly give an answer to the tank/Viking blob question, but I believe I provided the basis for the second question which was a viable alternative to massing your own Vikings and tanks. I probably was not clear enough, but what I was trying to get across is that for me I found the solution is keeping the pressure on the opponent and keeping his tank numbers down. I can normally force them into a tech switch at which point the game becomes really interesting. I provided the TVT breakdown because I found if I start with tanks myself I get stuck in the tank/Viking rut. I found for me not to mass Viking/tanks mid/late game that I have to take a different approach early game or else I can not make the switch easily (hence the reason I gave the breakdown, but now I realize I did not explain it well).
Also, with your Thor/Tank/Banshee counter to Tank/viking, do you ever find that your opponenet adds BCs with his Viking? I had tried what you were detailing before and what I found is that good terrans seem to add a couple of BCs which will absolutely own Thors. Without any other AA you could then be in trouble.
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On May 08 2010 05:05 KacherMB wrote:
@Southlight – The original poster had two questions. I realize I did not explicitly give an answer to the tank/Viking blob question, but I believe I provided the basis for the second question which was a viable alternative to massing your own Vikings and tanks. I probably was not clear enough, but what I was trying to get across is that for me I found the solution is keeping the pressure on the opponent and keeping his tank numbers down. I can normally force them into a tech switch at which point the game becomes really interesting. I provided the TVT breakdown because I found if I start with tanks myself I get stuck in the tank/Viking rut. I found for me not to mass Viking/tanks mid/late game that I have to take a different approach early game or else I can not make the switch easily (hence the reason I gave the breakdown, but now I realize I did not explain it well).
Also, with your Thor/Tank/Banshee counter to Tank/viking, do you ever find that your opponenet adds BCs with his Viking? I had tried what you were detailing before and what I found is that good terrans seem to add a couple of BCs which will absolutely own Thors. Without any other AA you could then be in trouble.
BCs get thrashed by thor + offensive turret, though.
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try airmech, mass viking+banshee+terran dark swarm (PDD)  it is 10x more mobile then tanks are, and then pour all the rest of your minerals into 2 reactored rax / 1 tech rax marines.
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Ahh, I get your point now, the other two posts definitely puzzled me, though :D
Well, let's turn the question around, actually. I end up in the tank/viking rut when the opponent chooses to make Banshees, and then tries to stick at it. The more Banshees the opponent makes, the more Vikings I am capable of producing (and to an extent must), because Vikings are cheap, thus becoming cost effective for maintaining air superiority, which prevents the Banshees from taking potshots at my tanks. Because of the lopsided costs of Vikings (150/50) this helps covers up the heavy gas costs of tanks (150/150).
Enter the question of the OP, who pondered how to deal with this sort of eminent Viking/Tank army.
My response happened to deal with the "how does this army come about in the first place," as obviously you can re-route the game earlier (via pressure etc.) to prevent the army from looking like that. Flip side is, I would ask the OP (or anyone else, really) to give me examples of a setup where a terran ends up with tank/viking and doesn't die to mundane things like mass marauder (which tear through a simple tank army, of course).
If my assumption is right, and the first player initiated this sort of army by massing Banshees, thus forcing the Vikings (and then the Viking player takes advantage of his air control by expanding aggressively), then the question becomes rephrased to "what can the Banshee/Tank player do to re-gain initiative" instead of being grinded to death.
I tried to answer that question by posing the suggestion of bringing Thors along, instead of trying to fight Viking vs Viking. After all, you've already invested so much into air that if the Viking/Tank player were to invest even slightly into Thors your (generally) smaller Viking force ends up being no match, anyways. Usually I find that if I egg on the opponent to over-produce Vikings (thus leading to a Viking/Tank) force, a handful of Thors, no joke, are enough to let me regain map control, as the Vikings tend to get shot down pretty quickly. This allows me to overrun a section of the map, etc. The added extra is that Thors are even more lopsided (200/200) freeing you up to create large amounts of turrets - this gives you added map control as it deters the opponent from using the Vikings to walk to an area, land, and force you to run around. At that point the superior straight-up force of Viking/Banshee/Thor/Tank, even if you have less numbers of Tanks and Vikings, seems to usually let me kill them or contain them or split the map.
If the Viking/Tank player ends up trying to transfer to BCs, at this point I've found that I've not minded it too much, because Thors rip up BCs too, and they're much more cost-effective. Not to mention, it takes so much money and time to make a serviceable fleet of relatively-non-mobile BCs that the V/B/Th/T player can actually use their map control to expand further - what happens is one player might end up with 6 BCs but he's staring at a clump of 16 Thors.
My guess would also be that at higher levels of play, it's even harder to mass BCs because the players will be spot-on with aggression and map control. Usually the Viking/Tank player will be forced to add Thors of their own, to deal with Thor/Tank pushes and to deal with the heavy number of air units (Banshees and Thors).
And in the end the armies kinda look similar to each other, so whoever was better at macroing and better at maintaining zone control would win out, barring some crazy BC switch that manages to catch the other player off-guard, etc. But that's a different topic.
Again, I'm just at low-plat, though, so some people might want to correct me. But so far that's how I've seen the tank-viking army dealt with.
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Um...did they suddenly change the costs of units? Vikings are 150/75, Tanks are 150/125, and Thors are 300/200. Also, after yesterday's patch they are doing only 6-3 = 3dmg per missile to the BC. I don't know how you're concluding that Thors "rip up BCs".
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omg, no wonder I was messing up my gas calc early on, I always thought Tanks were 150/150 and Valks were 150/50, because I kept having 300/200 taken when I made one of each.
*facepalm* Fail.
I think I mentioned I don't know how Thors fair against BCs after the patch. Before the patch they tore up BCs, though, or at least I found I had enough Thors produced considering BC build time (again, pre-patch) that I had no issues with BCs whatsoever. I haven't had someone switch to BCs against me while maintaining decent air superiority since the patch (only like, yesterday), as I've only seen it as a desperate (and stupid) attempt to come back against a hoard of Vikings :x I'm also never on the Banshee/Tank/Viking side anymore, so at this point all I can say is what I used to do pre-patch and what sucks to play against when I do Tank/Viking.
I suppose the Tank/Viking player switching to BCs to deal with Thors might work now, but having been playing T/V a lot lately I don't think I have a timing window to actually swap to BCs without being overwhelmed (until like, really really late game). I have to strike before the Thors hit the field, anyways, because they start to render the tank/viking army obsolete... which is what the OP was asking 
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thor and point defense drone ground control marauder
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I always wanted to try thor drops on tanks with PDDs...
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On May 08 2010 11:43 Southlight wrote:omg, no wonder I was messing up my gas calc early on, I always thought Tanks were 150/150 and Valks were 150/50, because I kept having 300/200 taken when I made one of each. *facepalm* Fail. I think I mentioned I don't know how Thors fair against BCs after the patch. Before the patch they tore up BCs, though, or at least I found I had enough Thors produced considering BC build time (again, pre-patch) that I had no issues with BCs whatsoever. I haven't had someone switch to BCs against me while maintaining decent air superiority since the patch (only like, yesterday), as I've only seen it as a desperate (and stupid) attempt to come back against a hoard of Vikings :x I'm also never on the Banshee/Tank/Viking side anymore, so at this point all I can say is what I used to do pre-patch and what sucks to play against when I do Tank/Viking. I suppose the Tank/Viking player switching to BCs to deal with Thors might work now, but having been playing T/V a lot lately I don't think I have a timing window to actually swap to BCs without being overwhelmed (until like, really really late game). I have to strike before the Thors hit the field, anyways, because they start to render the tank/viking army obsolete... which is what the OP was asking
Thors have always sucked vs BCs and suck even harder now. I dont' see a viable option vs BCs aside from vikings or more BCs. Thors might work if you got like 20 of them, but nobody is stupid enough to make 20 thors because 8 tanks would kill them all before they got in range.
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That's fine, but that's also a different question from the OP ;p
All I'm saying is that if someone goes Viking/Tank and you have no chance of catching up with Viking production (to gain air superiority via quantity) the only thing I've seen working (and what I hate having done to me) is to make some Thors, and then push out, because the Thors force bad decisions on the Vikings, and Thors eat up tank shots to let your tanks move into position, breaking what should be an inferior ground army.
If the guy goes BCs in response to Thors, that's a different question altogether - all I was saying with regards to that is I've not seen someone, in a close game, transition from Vikings to BCs fast enough to deal with Thors, particularly as BCs built so slowly pre-latest patch. They'd move out with like 2 BCs and I'd have like 6 Thors, and they'd sit there pew pew pewing each other as my tanks clear out their lack of a ground army. I'm sure Thors are terrible now considering they do like, what was it, 3 damage someone mentioned?
If someone goes viking/tank, and tries to go from vikings to cruisers (you can see this because they'll switch from reactors to tech labs on starports), then you have a giant opportunity to take air superiority with a thor/viking combination and a timing push. Then you end up with vikings vs BCs. Which is a matchup I'll happily take.
Edit:
Again, a lot of it is theorycrafting and low plat exp. So if someone better chimes in that'd be great. I'm playing way the hell too much TvT with ~90% win rate of late so I'm feeling slightly more confident in the mu than I probably should be. :p
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Few things.
1) Attack their vikings with your vikings plus raven (dropping down point defense drone). You win air superiority, you can snipe their tanks with your tanks.
2) As someone already mentioned nuke his static defense. If he is silly enough not to move, problem solved. If he moves take his position. Continue pushing back to your hearts desire and then take the map.
3) Attack his vikings with your vikings and at the same tiem drop a few
a) Marauders ON the tanks (even if marauders die, so will his tanks from the massive splash).
b) Hellions on his mineral line (watch how fast he retreats)
4) Last but not least, ignore his tanks and go around to his main.
P.S. Banshee + raven + viking is also win.
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Banshees cost 150/100/3 compared to a Tank's 150/125/3 - if your opponent is going Viking/Tank on equal bases you'd be able to outproduce him with Viking/Banshee. Just make sure your superior # of Vikings eat his up, then your Banshees have free reign.
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EPT
