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Preface
So this is my TvP build thread. It is a WIP so I was tempted to label it discussion instead of guide. However, for all intents and purposes this is a guide to for how to conduct a very specific opening and the gameplan that goes with it. It is designed for putting out a ton of units to match Protoss early-mid unit counts and also sneak in an Expo while denying Toss's Expo until Toss puts out Robo units.
Background Info
TvP. I don't like playing it because it feels like I keep playing behind like TvZ before Mass Marine FE. So I decided to try to turn the tables around for another match up. If we can get rid of tech based pressure in TvZ, can we do the same in TvP?
Apparently all signs point to yes. But let me get to that in a second. The main issue with Protoss is that in most cases, P can get up a faster Expo if Terran goes for a tech build. Terran FEs can sometimes work but you always have to account for the 4 Gate so they are not as stable as something like iEchoic or 3-1-2. I've heard of Reaper FE but a backstab threat does not actually have the ability to apply force so Toss can expo with you. Mass Rax pressure is okay but often P will be able to defend quite while getting a Nexus up even if it is a ridiculous amount MM Rax pressure due to warpgate timing coming in right when T can push.
![[image loading]](http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/4343/4warpgate.jpg) The venerable 4 gate.
While Terran armies are generally stronger early game, a good Protoss can usually defend well enough to even it out ala the kcdc 1 Gate FE. Then once P's tech comes out. Your Terran life becomes hard because all P's tech is good at killing your Rax units in pitched battle, especially Templar. Ideally, T needs to secure some economic advantage to really be able to deal with later game toss without having to resort heavy ghost play or mass drops.
The build that I'm refining seeks to do just while taking advantage of our favorite Terran misfit who is secretly our early game superhero. :D
The Reaper
Who is the Reaper? He shows up in our beloved sequel without a resume but he's our boss's nephew so we have to hire him and give him unimportant odd-jobs until we figure out what he can actually do.
Terran armies versus Protoss are almost all mineral bound. Gas for a early/mid-game barrack heavy build is virtually useless except for ghosts and upgrades. Some people still try to save up gas for mech but like I said in my whine post, that's not really viable anymore. Gas is not precious anymore and most people don't even take geyser #2.
In contrast, minerals are extremely valuable in early game for Terran and we can quickly max out our 1 base mineral production with the help of one gas with mass marauder and marine off 3/4 add-on Rax. Minerals are also used for constructing production structure and saturating our bases with SCVs so there is a very real tension there. Unlike BW TvP, minerals not gas is the order of the day.
Back to the Reaper. The Reaper is basically a 50 gas marine when fighting not light but a 50 mineral 2 marine equiv when fighting vs light (he even builds faster than 2 marines back to back). Some level of Reaper production allows you to spend your minerals otherwise so that means more Marine and Marauders off more Rax, along with more minerals for everything else, if you are building reapers.
Now, people say that the Reaper sucks, period. However, I point to the fact that the number 1 threat to barracks armies are light units. Zealots can rip apart bio so easily and tank for stalkers, it is not even funny. Sure you can kite, but I'm sure many of you Terrans out there have had times where a Zealot mob chases you across half the map into your natural. With Sentries, you lose the ability to kite entirely.
Not with the Reaper as part of your main army. Once you get 3 + some Marauders, you begin 2 shoting Zealots. Once you get up to a critical mass, of 5+, you can 1 shot zealots and reapers fire quite quickly and are hard to catch. Even with charge and FF, if you have meat shields in front of your reapers, you should still melt through lots like a microwave through a stack of CD-Rs. Like I said before, the Terran early army is effectively mineral bound so being more efficient with your minerals is key.
Now you might say, doesn't this leave you open to Stalkers? Well the thing is pure stalker against marine/marauder is kinda tragic to watch. It is not even close if you are anywhere close to even numbers. Because the Marauder is an imbalanced, highly front loaded, Bustin Drowder troll unit, he takes Stalkers for cost... In fact my first attempts in making my own TvP style were based around trying to mass 7 reapers to deny Protoss any sort of early game efficiency by removing Zealots form the equation.
The main reason I made a new build was to combat the biggest problem with reapers, their huge build time.
The Build
While I'm still trying variants, my core build has stabilized to this:
12 Rax
13 Gas
@150 2nd Rax + Tech Lab -> Constant Marauders
@ 1st Rax Done - Tech Lab or Marine -> Tech Lab(depending on timing push) -> Constant Reapers
@150 Orbital
18/19 Depot
2nd Gas if you didn't go Marine first?
@1 Reaper 1 Marine/2 Reaper, get Conc
Barracks + Reactor
~30 food CC because you minerals will go out of control
4/5th Rax + Whatever add-ons - Be careful with getting add-ons if they are 4 Gating though.
Transition
So it is kinda a ridiculous build at first glance: 2 Rax before OC into 3 Rax into FE with a Rax dedicated to constant reaper production. Nothing else like it because people haven't questioned delayed OC openings since End of Beta.
The 2 Rax before OC seems kinda weird until you realize that you don't actually need a huge amount of minerals to power 1 Marauder/1 Reaper. Additionally The amount of add-ons you are building really limit how fast you can spend your money. The advantage of this build is that you basically max out your production off one base a little after a 4 Gate kicks in except you have a CC.
You can also transition out of this because a later OC isn't completely game breaking for a non-mineral intensive build. You can also go All-In and get 4/5 Barracks Marine Marauder Reaper without the CC which was the first thing I explored as a transition before I figured out that a CC is better use of the money.
I still haven't figured out the timings with this build but your first marauder pops out right as the first stalker starts poking at your ramp and you get a Marauder + Reaper vs Stalker + Zealot.
Pressure off 2 Rax before OC
There are a variety of early pokes/rushes you can do with your abnormally high unit count (by that I mean an extra Marauder). Micro gosus should find these entertaining since marauders and reapers are specialized for taking out one time of unit and suck vs the other. The main thing to keep in mind:
DO NO BE OVERLY AGGRESSIVE
A Warpgate counter will kill you if you over commit. Also don't lose your reapers needlessly. You need the snowball.
2 Reaper + 1 Marauder
The goal of this push is to cripple his army so he can't 1-gate expand and doesn't have the meatshield for a Robo build.
2 Reapers should be out of the first barracks if you went tech lab before marine. Your first Marauder pops almost at the same time.
This seems to be the most successful rush that you can pull off with this. See Replay 1. If you see only zealots, then kill them all and go for the probes. If he has a stalker, kite the zealots and kill the stalker if you can. The main thing is that even if you kill all the units, it may not be a good idea to stick around for more units to show up even if there are exposed probes, killing 2/3 units early is a good enough advantage. On the flip side, you can win the game right there by rallying reinforcements. Only do this if you can kill his units.
Bonus: Can work against a 1/1/1 Terran, tank with the marauder and his +1 armor, one shot each marine, Profit.
3 Reaper + 2 Marauder + Conc @ 5:15
Only do this on close positions.
To pull this off, you need really good execution. Otherwise your timing will screw up because this has to precisely hit before he gets an extra round of units off his gates for about 6/7 units total. It is pretty much like the 2 + 1 harass but bigger. Once again, don't over commit. Kill his zealots then his stalkers and sentries. Kite like there is no tomorrow and don't go after probes until all his army is dead. Once again, it may not be a good idea to stick around. If you have enough units left, it can be better to kill pylons instead of probes. A 1 gate FE can be destroyed by this push.
Other
You can do a Marine + 2 Reaper + 2 Marauder poke as well.
A Marine + Reaper + Marauder poke but you can't be hyper aggressive.
You can also go for a Marauder rush and get a stupid amount + conc pretty quickly off this build (4 under 5 minutes since 2 reapers take 3 marauders build times to produce).
Experiment and report back.
Gameplay Considerations
DO NO BE OVERLY AGGRESSIVE
It is EXTREMELY tempting to be overly aggressive but don't. You get a quick advantage before Warpgates come out but you are weaker until you get on 4/5 rax and get your unit count up. You are especially vulnerable to a 4-Gate counter attack so don't be retardedly aggressive. About 50% of the games I've played with this build ended up with me losing because I suicided my first 5 units and then they counter pushed with their WarpGate tech. Took me a long time to figure out that this doesn't play exactly like normal bio until you have your 3rd/4th Rax up because you don't have the same production.
You won't usually be able to break a 1 basing player so don't try too hard.
The main goal with this build is denying a fast expo for Toss until he has Robo tech or at least until your FE is up. You have a unit advantage if he has puts down his expo early so it can be easy to shut it down with one of the above pokes. After your CC is up, you can really start pumping out of your Rax and can kill a Toss who has expo before you if you mass up enough.
With 3/4 Rax with tech lab and 1 Rax with Reactor. You should be able to pretty flexibly pump out what you want. Build reapers or marines when you are low on minerals and build as many Marauders as you can. You should possibly take guys off 1 gas if you find your reaper numbers too high or mass stalker. Be wary of Toss getting void rays and don't be afraid to build a few rounds of mariners. Incidentally you will usually be floating either gas or minerals depending on if you are building lots of Marauders or lots of reapers. It is hard to get used to.
As for Reaper control: Give all your reapers a hotkey so you can focus zealots. Ideally stick them behind your Marauders in the middle of your blob or behind your arc since Zealots have to close with your units anyway. If you start getting massive numbers of them, you can hop them solo into Toss mineral lines on certain maps like Jungle Basin(since the natural is really far away). Also don't forget to keep building some reapers to keep your reaper numbers about the critical mass to kill zealots.
With that many reapers, sniping pylons and tech structures becomes ridiculously easy.
Adaptation
One base Fast Colossus build? Mass up. You should be able to take out zealot fodder extremely quickly. Don't try to suicide Colossus before your production kicks in. I tried to snipe a Colossus with a 3+2 poke and it just doesn't work. If he has sentries, make him waste his FFs in the middle of the map.
1 Base Chargelot? I'm not sure. You can really kill Protoss with a Marine/Marauder/Reaper comp before he gets storm. See Replay 2.
Transitions...
In Replay 4, I got a really nice advantage early and was 1 base and 20-50 food above Protoss all game. I went All-In mass barracks off 3/4 bases into killed by storm and hidden 3rd due to poor scouting. So don't do that vs Storm.
I have no idea how to transition. You should stop building reapers after the early game and definitely when you see storm. I think the natural transition is into MMMG.
However because this build can grab you an economic advantage, you might be able to pull off a sort of 2 base Ghost/Mech. The main issue with Mech is that Toss can out expo you if you do it off the bat and it is hard to replace but if you can get a faster expo. You might be able to do a timing on the Toss's third and take a third yourself.
Reps
These aren't very clean but show the general idea since it is a WIP. I'm only a 1.6K Terran so don't expect super duper gosu perfection in execution. Lots of room for improvement.
1) A custom on Steppes that is some sort of 3 Gate Robo. He tries a Zealot + Sentry defense and it completely fails because I have reapers and his sentry isn't out yet. I should have won right there but I was greedy and nearly die to the Warpgate counter attack.
http://www.mediafire.com/?lcnd9dtrlrpvehc
2) Metalopolis vs a 1 Base Stormlot build. Notice how the Zealots just completely fall to conc + reapers. I think I all-in because I didn't know a good transition out.
http://www.mediafire.com/?5110g08wbff1as3
3) A custom on Steppes where I get overly greedy. Exact reason why you should not be overly aggressive. I could have probably kill all his zealots and probably one Stalker as well.
http://www.mediafire.com/?u1swlrhk11ktacp
4) The most recent game: A 40 minute TvP on XelNaga that goes down hill after I attack his main rather than his 2nd nexus after a 2 Gate Robo expand. Protoss played quite well. :D A T that was better at TvP would have won this. This also demos the Expand version that I'm now using. I also get overly greedy.
http://www.mediafire.com/?lyne15n2b3qt6a4
In my defense, I usually do a 3-1-2 or BC rush so my bio experience is minimal.
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Thanks for this! 
Sounds really interesting and will definitely be checking out the replays and feedback! I hope it works as well as the Ravens!
Out of curiousity, are you the same Antisocialmunky from Realms Beyond?
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Yes.
I'm sorry you had to find out this way.
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Ah awesome! Do enjoy your stuff there too! I did wonder whether anyone else would spell their name that way...
Had a random question. Can't check the replays yet as I'm away from my SC PC:
Do you incorporate nitro boost at any point? Have you experimented with getting them in early?
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No. I mean you could if there were mass lots without storm but I don't see it being worht it since reapers stay with your army.
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I like your idea, everyone acts like reapers blow if you can't Gimp z/p with them super early...they still put out a ton of damage vs light and buildings.
I think as a transition you could easily add a factory, you get nitropacks (increase survivability of reaper) and a mineral dump target (Hellion) that can counter z if you're gas light/lost too many reaper. And it gives you the ability to get tank or go starport for Viking/medi.
Seems like your biggest issue is gonna be vs colossi (tank/Viking cover you there) or Templar (medi tank could help with thst)
If youve got a unit advantage, add tanks and push into his base. If yousee colossi, get Vikings and crush him. If you got the resources to dump... Medi that bioball to invulnerability!
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I'm a bit sceptical. Past the first 7 minutes, I often find gas to be the limiting factor, and I still think 2 stimmed marines would be superior to reapers in any situation I could think of (especially considering the absurd building time of reapers.) Perhaps it could be justified if you were certain that your opponent always did a heavy chargelot-sentry into HTs build, but considering that many protoss players already get way more stalkers than they should, I think it's quite a gamble - especially considering how easy 1/1/2->3/1/2 is to pull off.
Also, you're playing with your life every time you try to snipe a protoss building. If he lands one or two forcefields blocking the ledge, they'll die in the blink of an eye.
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Hrmm...
I think Marine/Marauder is already effective enough vs Protoss. Taking the time to make Reapers, IMO, is what costs you the game as it's such a big investment to make any kind of formidable army. You need enough Barracks with Tech Labs, and a considerable amount of time making Reapers. By the time the attack hits, you're probably better off with standard 3 Rax minus Reapers.
I think it could work in the early-game, but losses effectiveness drastically as time goes on (less so in some maps, like Scrap Station or Delta Quadrant), but still counter-productive in the long-run. It pretty much becomes a timing attack that's pretty risky.
It would be nice to see the Reaper being used effectively again though. I'm not sure what Protoss players will start to think if this becomes a decent mainstream build. Maybe they'll be afraid to move out, and Terran can expo easier, which would be nice for me. I guess we'll see if you keep trying this build.
Edit: And yes, I agree with the poster above me. I rarely see any Zealot heavy Protoss these days. And as far as sniping buildings, I'd take stimmed Marauders any day. They can tank damage are pretty fast.
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How does this build deal with early void rays (or phoenixes, i suppose)? It seems that by making reapers with your barracks, you reduce the number of marines you can produce, and if you produce too many marines and not enough marauders, stalkers can roll your marines/reapers. Just a thought.
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Ok I watched all the replays.
1) Your opponent makes 3 zealots and an observer on Steppes of War. You could've rolled him way easier and faster with normal bio. Terrible game.
2) Wow your opponent makes a stalker. And then goes 1 base chargelot HT. Come on..... Any build crushes that.. Even mass marine, or double FE. You go for 5 barracks on 1 base and then attack at 9:00 with 60 food. lol. A 2 rax FE can have 90 food by the time. I don't see any benefits of this build so far.
3) You get rolled by a +1 chargelot all in that hits at 8:00. Probably the only build I could image this would be good against.
4) Jesus christ. Your opponent rushes for 1 colossus while expanding. He then lets you snipe his nexus for free, and then instead of macroing up colossi and killing you, he sits in his main with his entire army while you are 20 food ahead and techs to templar still off 1 base income.
This is cute but it isn't better than what current TvP encompasses. Against standard play this opening has no advantages what so ever and I imagine it struggles a lot against 1 gate FE play.
Also don't name builds after yourself.
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Interesting approach, I'll be trying it out today.
I watched the XNC replay. Of course it proved blizzard correct in their assertion of TvP...templar. Let me first say that I am in the camp that says blizzard completely ruined the reaper. As you pointed out the build time for that unit, is almost prohibitive. However this build wasn't entirely about getting a reaper out early so it sort of doesn't apply.
A couple of things I took away from this:
Building an absurd amount of barracks is the only way to do this. In that replay you had 13 on 2 bases, which you can certainly do, with nothing else, which you did. Saying that it's all in, isn't really the correct word, but I find it's a little bit restrictive as far as making that transition to factory units, switching to mech renders half those buildings unused at least.
As your opponent said, a multipronged attack. You had reapers in his main but the main bio ball sat once you started trying to dodge his forces. I think even if you A-moved into the natural you probably could have won the game.
Reapers are too fast for their own good. I don't think I've ever used them in a bio army, but now that I've seen how they are, I think treating them like hellions is a good idea. It's two fold, since they're faster than the rest, moving in puts them in front, in which they're the first to die. Additionally, they're range is shorter than both rines and marauders so they're going to be in the front to die anyway. I think keeping them in a second control group to cover the marauders from zealots might be the way to go. I still think the price of zealots > the price of reapers, and the damage that reapers do to zealots isn't worth their cost (and buildtime) later in the game.
Army Cost/Income. At one point I switched to the income tab and saw you essentially had a 30 worker lead, and the gold. By the end I also checked the units lost tab. You had effectively lost over 20000 more than the toss, though that was the final result, that margin was starting to grow around the 20' mark (hmmmm wonder what units started to show up then!). Your principle behind marine raven looks at basically an even exchange of units, because that means zerg is spending larva and not improving economy for later tech. Toss basically got you off 1 expansion while you had 1+the gold. XNC I feel is a midsized map, so I want to say that if this was meta cross position or shakuras, it would have been maybe a little uglier for you.
I'm not saying the strategy is bad, but I think it loses effectiveness once toss begins to build higher tier units. Mainly because I feel the gas you're spending on reapers needs to go towards something like vikings or ghosts to exchange for collossus. Unfortunately I don't think you can find a way to exchange army values more evenly with this comp. If anything I think this highlights the importance of ghosts in your comp.
Not to derail this into an OP templar thread, but they are a pretty powerful unit that really, as blizzard says, tips the scales considerably. If anything is done in this game for balance, I could see the +25 starting energy being swapped back to the old BW upgrades of +50 energy max for all the caster units.
I applaud you for trying to crack the TvP for late game, I don't know any terran who actually likes this matchup because as you said you're almost playing behind after the first 5 minutes of the game. Maybe the missing key was ghosts/meds, but if you do that, you're not really doing anything special, you're just making MMM, MMMR (sounds like a radio station). It's just that both colossus and templar, considerably overpower reapers.
Early game push and expansion securing, I think it works, but it NEEDS to go somewhere or be going to something else after that robobay/archives is down.
Not to mention that should they decide to go voidrays, you might be in trouble, though the reaper should be able to maybe scout that out
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On November 12 2010 01:56 jacosajh wrote:
Hrmm...
I think Marine/Marauder is already effective enough vs Protoss. Taking the time to make Reapers, IMO, is what costs you the game as it's such a big investment to make any kind of formidable army. You need enough Barracks with Tech Labs, and a considerable amount of time making Reapers. By the time the attack hits, you're probably better off with standard 3 Rax minus Reapers.
I think it could work in the early-game, but losses effectiveness drastically as time goes on (less so in some maps, like Scrap Station or Delta Quadrant), but still counter-productive in the long-run. It pretty much becomes a timing attack that's pretty risky.
It would be nice to see the Reaper being used effectively again though. I'm not sure what Protoss players will start to think if this becomes a decent mainstream build. Maybe they'll be afraid to move out, and Terran can expo easier, which would be nice for me. I guess we'll see if you keep trying this build.
Well the reaper is only good until storm and tech comes out. I believe the choice to go storm instead of more colossi was the right on in #4 because I can keep sniping Colossi. I think he was going 2 Gate Robo into expand originally. It not bad on Xelnaga and comes surprisingly fast.
Indeed. I have to agree with everyone saying that reapers are not good as the game progresses. They are still terrible later on and it is also correct taht MM is good by itself. But I ask you this, is it viable to have enough money to expand and 3 Rax at the same time while shutting down Toss's expo?
While it is true Reaper effectiveness drops off later, they still are quite good early game when Zealots tank for Stalkers. Otherwise stalker vs marauder marine favors the mm. I suppose the main idea of the early game/reaper MM composition is to snipe every zealot and force P to skew a stalker heavy production since Stalkers alone are not great vs MM and then go mass to take advantage of forcing a stalker skew. It is tricky to balance. You can overbuild reapers quite easily and end up hosed. The main issue is that it takes 14+shots to kill a Zealot with a marauder while it only takes 8 to kill a Stalker. If you can balance it, it will work out better.
I think looking at my reps including some of the ones I did not post, there are some modifications. One is not suiciding reapers(because that is our tendency) and not building as many. Instead keep them alive so can do a minimum production of them before swapping into MM almost exclusively. Another modification is using reapers to threaten backstab when Toss moves out to crush your Expo before you pull production comes in. KME's advice to me was to slowly build up to the crit mass to remove Zealots.
Like ChickenLips said, a 2 Rax FE gets higher (90 food is an exaggeration though the combination of 1 rood reaper to 2 food marine pairs is showing) but I believe you end up with lower production. Also, what do you want me to call this thing? The alternative was 2 Rax before OC TvP with Marine Marauder Reapers?
The idea for this is higher production faster rather than higher unit count faster. You should be able to storm out with an advantage if you do it right if you deny Protoss expo until he has tech units(the shelf life a a reaper opening).
You get more units out faster to deny a Toss expo, reapers remove Zealot tanks, the threat of backstab keep Toss from rolling you over like Reaper FE so you end up with enough time to max out your production capacities and get an army when Toss moves out. So while it is weaker than a straight up 2 Rax FE, it is better later.
As for chargelots storm builds. I keep running into it on NA servers and don't know why and no one is straight up 4 gating me anymore. :-\
As for one base void ray. That's a tough one. I don't think the timing on the reactor is great for it. You're going to scout the SP.
I suppose if you don't like it doing reapers, you can use the 2 Rax before OC to get an extra marauder and get Conc for a 4 Marauder push + Conc + 1 Marine @ around 4:30.
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Kudos for helping to expand Terrans unit utilities. Well written guide as well. Will be trying this out today.
For previous poster, I love TvP Ghost's my fav unit now (was tank)
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It is very viable to expand and run off 3 Rax. That is the build I use everytime vs Protoss now, and I think I have a pretty good winrate vs Protoss. Which is probably why I'm heavily biased towards it. 3 Rax, pressure early if you can, if not, timing attack while CC building, transition into expo, more production buildings, Medivacs, pressure/attack again, Vikings, expo, etc.
IMO, adding Reapers into the mix severely slows the amount of firepower you can get to pressure Protoss since a few Stalkers will negate any amount of Reapers you have. Plus, the long build-time and needed gas will delay Stim, Shields, Concussive Shells, Weapons/Armor Upgrade, Factory, and Starport. And I dunno why people are so concerned about Zealots in TvP. IMO, they are only useful once Protoss has Colossi and Templars to help keep distance. Anytime before that, whenever I see Zealots, I just think feeding time. So to build Reapers just for that is pretty wasteful since Marines/Marauders can already kite them so well.
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I think as a transition you could easily add a factory, you get nitropacks (increase survivability of reaper) and a mineral dump target (Hellion) that can counter z if you're gas light/lost too many reaper. And it gives you the ability to get tank or go starport for Viking/medi.
Had to ask, not done reading whole thread yet but, what happens when he goes roaches...? As neither unit TOUCHES roaches, they're not quite enmassable sans marauders at least. What stops reapers? Roaches. What stops hellions? Roaches. As he said though, you GOTTA get marauders in the mix vs zerg if you're going reapers (in my opinion at least, slow em down and reapers pick off)
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Just curious, what level are these replays? Haven't gotten a chance to watch, will when I get home.
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Like I said 1.6K so not great. The last one is the best tbh. Been trying to get better ones but all my practice partners are Zergs or Terrans.
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Its interesting to note that the reaper has 5 less health than a combat shielded marine and does considerably more than double the dps against light targets, of course it cant stim, but it can threaten harass, it can cliff walk it moves faster (almost as fast as stimmed marine), it also scales better with upgrades. and DEMOLISHES buildings,
It can flank very effectively and 9 of them will one shot a high templar,
for cost its probably a better unit to mix with maurauders against any army, unfortunately it has a much longer build time than the marine which contains light units
I do think that the use of reapers as an offensive unit as a part of an army may definitely see some reconsideration in the future.
The other weakness of the reaper is that the hellion is also insanely effective against light units, it can be reactored out and costs no gas however it cannot be healed by medivacs and it doesnt have the element of map control that having a sizable reaper force provides
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I read your guide, but I think you're actually making TvP more difficult for yourself. There's no reason to try making something that it isn't. Reapers are not viable, except for the sole purpose of getting 1 to jump into their base.
And all of this gas you're putting into reapers...a P is just gonna wait for 2-3 collosus and even off of one base they'll roll you because you have no vikings, or medivacs, you just have a bunch of dead weight reapers that are gonna be vaporized.
Also, this will not deny a P's expo in any sense at all. Ok, maybe plat leaguers that have one control group syndrome, but P is just gonna sim city and have a stalker or two or a sentry near their mineral line...and then roll you 3 min later with collosus.
Money 10x better spent in marines or marauders because you need the gas for vikings/medivacs, or basically any unit that actually works. Reapers do not work.
I know it sucks, but you gotta move on before you hold back your own mindset. Within the past 2-3 weeks only has my TvP gone from trash to very good again because I had to admit to myself that ghostmech/mech was not a viable way to play anymore against high level players. It sucks when reality hits, but you'll become a better player by removing those restrictions from yourself.
So just let the reaper go...he had his day 3-4 patches ago, now he's waiting for blizzard to do something to him, or leave him as is into nothingness.
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PLEASE change all the places where you use the word "Colossi" as singular.
Latin student painn...
Fine, it was only twice >_>. Whatever. Interesting build, doesn't seem all that useful unless your opponent has bad micro.
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this won't hold against against 3gate void rays and the VRs don't even need to be proxied. hell, 4 gate would probably work too. reapers take way too long to make and if they ever decide to mass stalkers instead, you'll die. 50/50 per reaper isn't cheap at all.
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On November 12 2010 05:38 iAmJeffReY wrote:Show nested quote +
I think as a transition you could easily add a factory, you get nitropacks (increase survivability of reaper) and a mineral dump target (Hellion) that can counter z if you're gas light/lost too many reaper. And it gives you the ability to get tank or go starport for Viking/medi.
Had to ask, not done reading whole thread yet but, what happens when he goes roaches...? As neither unit TOUCHES roaches, they're not quite enmassable sans marauders at least. What stops reapers? Roaches. What stops hellions? Roaches. As he said though, you GOTTA get marauders in the mix vs zerg if you're going reapers (in my opinion at least, slow em down and reapers pick off)
I think he is talking about TvP...
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Cute strategy, but unfortunately, it's not for competitive play. Reapers build much too slowly and cannot be reactored. They'll never have a place in an army composition.
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I dunno, the main advantage is that I this gives a fairly strong opening but once the robo units come out, you need to transition to something like ghosts instead of reapers.
You should be fine if it is gateway vs gateway. You have roughly ~7 minute window where Toss cannot push you due to reapers and marauders.
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My friend tried this against my 1gate FE and it did not do so well. He had 2 reapers and 1 marauder when i had 1 zealot and 2 stalkers with a 3rd stalker about halfway done. I just killed the reapers and pulled a couple probes to for the maruader. This does not really work against a 1gate FE when stalkers are chrono boosted. After that i sort of just shot ahead in macro and killed him with a 2base colossus+range push.
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What does a reaper do that two marines cannot (actually a reactor rax will build 4 marines in the time it takes for 1 reaper to build)? What is theory behind this build?
You are spending more gas instead of more minerals, so what? You are using 3 scvs to mine gas that could have been used to mine minerals.
Marines >>> reapers for what you are trying to go for.
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Well popping out 2/3 reapers with a marauder push works out pretty well for me. I can take out all the early zealots and most of the early stalkers and hopefully retreat. Then Protoss can't effectively take an expo with so few units. The thing that the reapers also do quite well is threaten backstab is Protoss moves out.
Marines cannot do that.
Maybe I need to rethink the mid game but I think the early game dynamics with reapers work quite well. Use reaper + marauder to get up 5 rax and expo while denying protoss's and then switch to pure MM off 5 Rax at about 7 minutes and then get your mid game tech up.
Like I said in the OP, switch off Reapers when Protoss stops relying on only gateway units.
On November 12 2010 06:22 Pokebunny wrote:
PLEASE change all the places where you use the word "Colossi" as singular.
Latin student painn...
Fine, it was only twice >_>. Whatever. Interesting build, doesn't seem all that useful unless your opponent has bad micro.
3 Times. Fixed because I like you so much Not sure what you mean by bad micro. I could see bad macro being a problem.
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Russian Federation266 Posts
I wish more T would go for openings like this, so I dont have to deal with 2 Rax Stim pushes and PDD pushes.
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3gate void would rape this
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On November 12 2010 08:50 Raiju wrote:
3gate void would rape this
Pretty much any standard toss build would beat this. I'm 100% sure than even a 1 gate FE would beat this.
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On November 12 2010 08:53 link0 wrote:Pretty much any standard toss build would beat this. I'm 100% sure than even a 1 gate FE would beat this.
Do you want to play this out a few times? I notice your ID in your sig. I don't think I'm at your level but I don't this this dies to a 1 Gate FE.
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On November 12 2010 09:00 Antisocialmunky wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2010 08:53 link0 wrote:On November 12 2010 08:50 Raiju wrote:
3gate void would rape this Pretty much any standard toss build would beat this. I'm 100% sure than even a 1 gate FE would beat this. Do you want to play this out a few times? I notice your ID in your sig. I don't think I'm at your level but I don't this this dies to a 1 Gate FE.
Sure, add me: linko.266. I'll be on later tonight after work.
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Probably have to be tomorrow then. Going to class :-[ Thanks for agreeing through :D
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Yeah, I pretty much open 3gate stargate against all Terran players and rarely lose to high level T's (1900+) because the void ray is so powerful against anything but mass marine. Even then the gateway army smashes marines if they are out of position, like if they are baited even just a little down the ramp. You cannot, as a Terran, afford any reapers early game vs P, so I would scrap the reapers entirely. In PvT, macro isn't as much a factor until about 8-9 minutes in, so FE is not really necessary. Both races, when fighting the other, have several windows if they remain on 1 base to utterly destroy the other, ESPECIALLY if the other fast expanded. Keep up the research though, this is an interesting idea
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Its pretty cool that a lot of experienced players are in this thread. Thanks for the feed back everyone. I see issues with 3 gate stargate. I haven't encountered that at all really and it sounds like just a BO loss. :-\ TvP is just so freaking strange right now.
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On November 12 2010 09:40 Antisocialmunky wrote:
Its pretty cool that a lot of experienced players are in this thread. Thanks for the feed back everyone. I see issues with 3 gate stargate. I haven't encountered that at all really and it sounds like just a BO loss. :-\ TvP is just so freaking strange right now.
I blame that on the immortal and Void Ray. You pretty much need marines in this match up unless you want to get EMP and Vikings.
The more i play SC2 the more it feels that terran i strictly restricted to Mass Bio in TvZ and TvP. And although we have alot of cute units Their hard countered to the point that their worthless to use in an actual composition.
The only reason Bio works is because of the massive DPS and how friggin' cheap it is.
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I agree that reapers are useful for the first push to kill buildings and light units.
But honestly your replays show exactly the opposite of what you trying to sell here. Your opponents are not aggresive nor very good and still able to beat your army with less bases, less army, poor micro. I could have done better with mass Viking in ground mode.
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On November 12 2010 09:14 link0 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2010 09:00 Antisocialmunky wrote:On November 12 2010 08:53 link0 wrote:On November 12 2010 08:50 Raiju wrote:
3gate void would rape this Pretty much any standard toss build would beat this. I'm 100% sure than even a 1 gate FE would beat this. Do you want to play this out a few times? I notice your ID in your sig. I don't think I'm at your level but I don't this this dies to a 1 Gate FE. Sure, add me: linko.266. I'll be on later tonight after work.
On November 12 2010 09:18 Antisocialmunky wrote:
Probably have to be tomorrow then. Going to class :-[ Thanks for agreeing through :D
You guys don't even have to play, if you just pull 4 probes per marauder in addition to the zealot + stalkers you have the game won, since an explosion in gateway units swiftly follows the early Nexus.
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Well since no one likes it, I guess I'll just go and work on my more conventional plan B. :-\
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Would you say this is more reliable than iEchoics 1/1/2 build?
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Doubtful. This was a WIP and no one seems to think refining this will work so I would just go use iEchoic or the 2 Rax Expo since I'm not going work on this further beyond using it for the early pushes.
I'd say the normal 3-1-2 is slightly more reliable since you can do 1 Raven/Banshee pushes and not spend money on the hellions. I think this is especially if you can't multi-task as well as him. That's just my opinion - it is up to you and how well you can execute each.
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Sorry ASM, I love your TvZ build but I don't think this one is quite up to that standard  . I can't seem to win consistently against good 2000+ protoss at all though so who knows...
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EPT![[image loading]](http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/066/f/6/Quick_Reaper_Painting_by_Kanaru92.jpg)
