Partial shameless self-promotion for which I do apologise, but mainly this post is about the strategy used in this fantastic featured vod on my channel that I just put up this morning.
I'm going to try and not spoil to much of the game, so please watch it before you read further - but I'll do my best to not spoil the game. If you do comment, please either use the spoiler tags OR just keep your post spoilerfree to the best of your ability.
Vod: (It's probably best to watch it on youtube with full HD/full screen FYI, I haven't really optimised the video for this small size... you've been warned)
Part 2 is contained in a video response in the comments.
Actually you know what, I'm going to spoiler tag because it's too hard to anti-spoiler. Brace for wall of text/pics. + Show Spoiler +
This was an absolutely fantastic match with some great tactics from both sides, however my main concern was with the Terran lack of adaptation here.
Terran started off with a fast CC/3rax build which is becoming pretty popular which is fine with me.
He does a great job of harassing at the start of the match, with some poking marauders/reapers seeing what's happening at the Protoss main, even getting a great snipe in on the Nexus.
However as the game progresses, the harass is constantly getting stopped in its tracks and not too much seems to be working in the Terrans favour - apart from the great macro capacity and income he's got going.
Now to my main question for Terran players (I'm random, and to be honest my Terran is quite dismal) - why would you not tech switch in this situation? As we can see from the below picture, the Protoss has a massive massive army with a lot of stalkers and (in the end) 9 collossi. I really didn't get why there was no switch, purely a mistake?
Is there a facet to MMM I missed that lets it easily counter how this Protoss responded? My only assumption/guess was that MMM is generally quite mobile, and you can harass quite well.
Please let me know your wisdom O mighty TL community.
Hopefully I did that replay justice with my casting, as it was a fantastic game. If you have comments relating to my casting please feel free to post here or on the channel/vods. Otherwise hopefully someone can help with the questions about the strategy used in-game!
I have a second replay with these two which I'm about to upload which is another amazing game too.
Don't be afraid to express your opinions or predictions while casting instead of just commenting on what's happening right now or what just happened. For example right before the MMM engage the colossi/stalkers at the protoss' second expansion maybe say "I don't think that's a great idea to do that, those colossi will chew through the marine/marauders with the extended thermal lance upgrade, perhaps it may turn out welll for the terran in that the protoss will be focused on this ball of units and not the harass in his main" or looking at the terran base, and saying how there is a massive hole in the back if you were to engage from the 10/11 oclock (the base is basically undefended) since he has built bunker/turret and camped his forces there and saying that possibly it would be wise to exploit this. Express what you think they should or shouldn't do within reason and without sounding know-it-all I guess. The Medivac drop was also done before the MMM engaged the colossi so just keep an eye on that minimap, I know it's better to follow that massive ball of units but if two things aren't happening at once then hopefully you can observe both. The VOD blacks out for 40 seconds from 5:20-6:00 in the second part btw, see if you can get that fixed. I hope I haven't been too much of a nazi in comments about your casting since I'm not really good at it myself but just from watching other commentary the casters are really not afraid to express their opinions about strategies and movement of units and what group of units should or shouldn't engage other units. The game was pretty good, perhaps the vision of the terran player was a bit short sighted, he just went straight for the MMM ball and didn't pay much attention or scout/scan enough in regards to the tech/units/expansions that the protoss was getting and so it was just a matter of protoss macroing his colossi/stalker army up to victory while holding off any harassment. It would have been nice to see some ghosts with some EMPs at least in that MMM army early on, perhaps he could have sniped the collosi if he had built some vikings in support or just with aggressive stim play, possibly costly for his army but stalkers w/o blink vs stimmed MMM would go down pretty fast.
Here is how I would have played Terran differently in this match -
1) When the nexus at the natural gets sniped, instead of taking a third put down more production and kill protoss with a timing push. There is nothing much he can do because of the econ disadvantage.
2) After taking the third and scouting colossus, terran should have got air. Four+ colossi is really hard to deal with and from the ground nothing short of heavy mech support can stop it. You are right in saying that the terran should have adapted.
I think he went for a different playstyle where he would abuse the colossi immobility. BratOK used to do this but even he eventually techs to viking raven if the colossi crosses critical numbers. Its pretty hard to pull off and APM intensive. As you could see his drops getting shut down easily by zealot warp in. I guess he just stuck with the strat and eventually the toss shut down his harass and killed him with superior tech. Pure bio 200/200 gets decimated by 200/200 toss gateway with tech.
Either way, IMO option 1 seems to be the best way to go about it.
Edit: Nice casting, your voice is easy on the ears although I think you need to be a little more vigilant about the mini-map.
Fun game to watch, i think the protoss was really showcasing the macro oriented style that is popular in Korea and is catching on elsewhere. From a gameplay perspective terran could of had more vikings, but, the protoss was very good about using blink to kill them.
yea as much as i like bio's mobility, i agree with babytoss about using mech.
tanks/helions/thors/vikings/emp. he had the resources to make it happen, but he placed them into the wrong units. with the tnaks/helions/emp, it should make cake of most ground forces for protoss, then you get vikings to chase the colossus. once they fall, the rest of the protoss army will fall.
Thank you for the feedback on the vods - much appreciated.
As for the strat though - I agree there really should have been vikings or even a ghost or two coming out because without them the MMMball was getting smashed. Do you guys think it's quite possible to do this strat but use a heavy amount of medivacs for multiple-drop harass? That's the only way I think you can pull something like this off without any collosi hard-counters.
In the second game the Terran player does the same sort of build, and the outcome of the game is a little different, however I think this may have been because of the way the second map is designed?
It seems as if the harass was a lot more effective, but I also thought that because of the "sometimes" difficult third on the map it was a bit harder for the toss.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a294/teknetium111/Screenshot2010-09-1216_52_46.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a294/teknetium111/Screenshot2010-09-1216_54_05.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a294/teknetium111/Screenshot2010-09-1216_56_14.jpg)
