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Hello, high platinum here.
In my last 20 TvZ games against 2 different people, I couldn't win or even get close to killing either one of them, even if I know perfectly what build they're gonna do. In this game, basically what I did was scouting the 14hatch, so I tried to apply early pressure, but failed. Then I tried to transition into mech while expanding while trying to apply pressure, and losing to a single Z attack.
I tried to apply pressure, but failed miserably (I dont see a way to harass zerg as T :/), then tried to take my expo, got attacked, and died. Also misplaced a siege tank in the push, which couldve been a deciding factor as well.
Anyone could help me? Getting really frustrated from this MU..
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-169741.jpg)
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without watching the replay, blue flame hellions/tank drops/overlord sniper vikings/banshees are good to harrass zerg. if youre doing mech you need to keep map control with blue flame hellions and a sniper viking for as long as possible, until your giant push rolls around. you need a big economy to mech vs zerg so plan for the late game, 3 bases at least.
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Shouldve watched the replay.. I made quite a few hellions actually, but I cant get into Z's base/min line anyhow..
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harrassing zerg comes in multiple forms
killing units
killing drones
killing overlords
forcing units
denying expos
they all revolve around messing with his larvae management, or production capability
just because he isnt letting you kill drones (were you microing your hellions as actively as you could have been? did you try dropping?)
did you deny expansions, and map control with hellions? did you kill creep tumours? did you snipe overlords?
by playing a very expansion oriented style you can put the onus on the zerg to be aggressive, at which point you have an advantage because a) youve been killing creep tumours, and b) hellions can sneak around to kill drones/larvae when his army isnt sitting in his base and c) siege tanks/thors/bunkers/ hellions are great at defending, especially chokes
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Seriously, please, watch the rep :/
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While it is good and actually required to put pressure on Zerg early and you claim to have done that, what you actually did was sacrificing 7 marines and 3 hellions for one drone. That is a game ending mistake. The Zerg invested in 3 spineC, there was no need to push there, just sit outside of its base while you take your expansion.
Expand while you push. After your small army died horribly you had more then 1k minerals and 400 gas. That is very, very bad for this stage in the early game. After your second attack, again, you had more then 1k mineral and about 800gas.
Very bad macro cost you the game. Try to build units while in battle, through hot keys. Some times, more so in the early game, you can apply pressure on Zerg by just threatening to attack because they are forced to make units (just in case you attack) and thus not building drones.
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On November 29 2010 05:57 Argoneus wrote:
Seriously, please, watch the rep :/
Seriously, read his reply because he said it all.
Did you try blue flame drops -> No you didn't.
Viking? -> No
Banshee? ...
STARPORT?
- When you move out: go. Don't wait for him to make units and spine crawlers. You gave him time to make them. Kill scouts.
- Don't fight his drone with your SCV (hp regenerates on drones).
- Don't attack with 1 or 2 tanks. Attack when you have like... at least 5 or something.
- Don't attack 3 spinecrawlers with a handful of marines (no stim, medivac support) and hellions.
- Build a better wall
and like previous poster said: expo.
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When you got to his natural and saw three spine crawlers you should have just chilled out there for a bit, made a starport and dropped his main. Theres literally nothing there to stop you, and he'd have been creamed.
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When you saw he was going for a fast expansion at those close positions you should've gone for a two rax marine all in. He had no units to defend for quite a while, and if you just started pumping marines from 2-4 raxes and used your scvs as buffers you would've crushed him. If you don't want to go all in you should've sent over two marines and an scv to put fake pressure and force him to start ling production instead of drones then you should've fast expanded and bunkered up. You waited too long to be able to pressure him. Then yeah like others have said, get a starport, and either get a viking and force his overlords back into his base so he loses vision, or get a medivac and drop a tank and marines on his ledge.With siege mode you could've seriously hurt his expansion.
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On November 29 2010 05:13 Argoneus wrote:Hello, high platinum here. In my last 20 TvZ games against 2 different people, I couldn't win or even get close to killing either one of them, even if I know perfectly what build they're gonna do. In this game, basically what I did was scouting the 14hatch, so I tried to apply early pressure, but failed. Then I tried to transition into mech while expanding while trying to apply pressure, and losing to a single Z attack. I tried to apply pressure, but failed miserably (I dont see a way to harass zerg as T :/), then tried to take my expo, got attacked, and died. Also misplaced a siege tank in the push, which couldve been a deciding factor as well. Anyone could help me? Getting really frustrated from this MU..
Can't watch the replay atm, but when I go mech, I always have enough marines to back it, Just straight mech can get abused by mass lings unless u get enough hellions+blueflame, so, You should have like atleast 3 rax's constantly pumping rines(1 tech to get stim+shields 2 reactors)
Then after that adapt get tanks thors or w/e to counter what he is doing
So if he goes mutas get thors, If hes going like roach/hydra or something get tanks.
But i would almost always suggest opening marines and not rushing mech tech...
Bunker rush's rock :-)
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Can't watch replay but if he made 3 spine crawlers to defend, that's almost 2 hatcheries he could have built. Or 12 drones. Or 4 Queens. Which is pretty big when you look at it like that. When he invests money into 3 spines, you should just pull back, take an expo, reinforce your army slowly and sort of contain him / scare him into possibly investing into even more immobile defense or wasting his larvae on lings/roaches (both are relatively non-meaty and eat through larvae).
Key to mech vs Zerg is patience. Slowly siege/unsiege while moving over to his base, even building a couple turrets/bunkers here and there if you want (a tank/mech heavy army will allow you excess minerals), making sure the tanks are spread apart (spread so much that they may require one full screen to look at all or most of them). Scout around if you have hellions/marines/rauders, denying scouts and checking to see if he might be preparing to surround or swarm in from the back, or try to counterattack, etc.
But moving too slowly is bad too of course, if you give him enough time to build a large enough army. One of the hard parts is determining whether or not he is pumping out army units to the max and whether or not your current army is large enough. But if you know you have enough, that's when you have map control and can expand freely. If he tries to counterattack then advance faster and just kill him off, negating the usefulness of any mobility any of the counterattacking units may possess (like Mutas!!!).
But another option is just to go Bio of course xD
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Looking at the replay, two things stuck out to me:
1. In the early game I think you should have either expanded or applied pressure. You said your intention was to apply pressure in response to the expansion but that's not what you did. Instead you made a reactor, built a factory, and made an add-on with the factory and then attacked way after the window of vulnerability had come and gone. Your other option is to fast expand, which would have fit better with what you were doing. What you did didn't give you enough army to pressure him and set you behind economically.
2. When you approached his base with that attack and saw the 3 spines, you should not have moved in. You could have set up a contain with bunkers and such while expanding and waiting for tank support since the spines aren't too useful for stopping that.
On a side note, he could have used roaches to do a similar attack earlier and it would have been harder to stop. It's also fairly safe to expect zerg to fast expand; if they don't that's a dead giveaway for an all-in of some sort. That expansion doesn't make zerg all that vulnerable so if you're going to try to punish them for it, you need something potent and planned.
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If you're going to play mech the first thing you should consider is how you can take advantage of terran mech on the map you are playing. You've shown a replay of Lost Temple, so the FIRST thing you should consider against a fast expand zerg is a tank or thor cliff drop (thor probably the better bet because it sometimes deters zerg from going muta). You tried a hellion push which will almost never work on maps like Lost Temple or Metalopolis, but will work beautifully on a map like Xel'Naga Caverns due to the many access/escape routes.
If you were to play a map with island starting locations, you (hopefully) wouldn't stick to the same build as you would on Lost Temple. Point is, EVERY map is exploited differently by terran mech; it's up to you to figure out how to use each map to your advantage.
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Lately I've been using mass marines with 1 ghost when doing an early rush/push, for the simple of reasons:
a) if I manage to kill all current combat units, I don't have to worry about 16 lings popping out to wipe the weakened marine bio-ball.
b) Force drones to stop mining.
c) accelerate the destruction of the hatch
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The strategy you choose or your execution or anything else doesn't really matter if you are gonna have 1100 mins and 800 gas like 9 minutes into the game... You lost cuz your macro was absolutely terrible (not saying ur bad) but this game you didn't produce well at all.
Your build should have you broke at all times (especially if you are trying to be aggressive), getting over 500 mins before 15 minutes is pretty in-excusable for high level players.
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(I dont see a way to harass zerg as T :/),
Whaaaaaaaa?
Anyway, if you're going to move out, go as fast as you can. EXCEPT WITH TANKS. The few seconds before a set of zerglings or spinecrawlers can morph to completion can be critical. especially true for hellions.
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1700 Diamond Terran from Czech Republic here :-). Main problem of your mech army is that is easily countered by mass roach and I know it cuz I played mech in TvZ a long time like mass blue hellion + mass Thors. U usually dont have so many tanks as u would feel confortable and if u get a good amount of them, few mutas eliminate them cuz u dont have so many thor :-(. There fore I started play only marrine / medevec / siege tank (vs baneling) with few thors in mineral line against few mutas. Marrine are awesome with stim and fast upgrades (you still wanna have armory for thors). BTW on lower level and good maps I went something like 3Rax but without Marauders, made 70 POP of marrines + fast stim and easily overwhelm my opponent, but on higher level (dunno like 1400+ dia or so) it doesnt work so good. You can PM me, we can talk in czech about the game ;-)
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So basically I always try to put up some agression, and when I see he started pumping units / spine crawlers I can just pull back and expand while preparing for a final doom-push?
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You saw spinecrawlers: he was scared, so he wasn't going to move out soon. Take map control (Xel'Naga) and expand. Don't let your macro slip and keep pumping units.
You should have added a starport for drops (you already had the blue hellions), medivacs are awesome and a great addition to the Terran army.
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On November 29 2010 05:42 QQmonster wrote:
you need a big economy to mech vs zerg so plan for the late game, 3 bases at least.
If you wait for 3 bases your opponent will have brood lords and/or ultras, which will likely lose you the game. I would push as he's getting hive, earlier if he has roach/hydra (as you will want to tank hop). Expand as you push. Broodlords are just amazing vs mech, and seige tanks will hit your own units attacking the broodling.
If you want a 200/200 army and can handle broodlords, then go for 3 bases, otherwise only need 2 and push around 130/200.
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Hi Argoneus, I'm HardCorey and ive just started trying to do a video series of answering questions on various threads that provide replays. I took a look at your replay and I just uploaded the video. I didn't talk about how to do a Mech build as much as how to deal with Zerg chilling on 2 bases and Macroing up. I thought you had some good decision making but it didn't quite follow through. The video link is below.
http://hardcorey.blip.tv/file/4451049/
My Main Thread
Hope this helps,
-HardCorey
EDIT: I am a total idiot, I completely screwed that up haha. The sound got completely broken for this one. Most of what I was saying is that terran has lots of methods to harass zerg early on, and that the Zerg did a fantastic job of getting onto 2 bases and then just sitting on it and macroing up and building almost only drones for the longest time. I also talked about how you had too much gas for a long period of time that you weren't utilizing. I left the video up because its basically now just a video of your replay so anyone else who wants to help can look at it. Sorry about that.
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The amount of people who didn't watch the replay yet are commenting on his play is hilarious.
You made several mistakes in your gameplay:
-Controlling/passing by watchtowers is very important
-Reactor marines+hellions, wth are you spending your gas on? It racks up to 500 as you push out and only climbs higher as the game progresses. Later on you switch the barracks for a tech lab, have tons of resources, in particular gas, yet you make marines instead of marauders.
-You can scan before you attack, or at the very least poke with 1 hellion. Your first attack was disgustingly useless, really you should have pulled back when you saw the spines as marines + hellions do not work well vs them.
-In your second attack you lose a tank pointlessly because you did not scout the front beforehand and were too aggressive with your tanks. You probably should have sieged @ the creep, not on it, take out creep tumors, and be patient as you reinforce.
-You did not use your resources off 1 base at all. Work on your economy management. That is BY FAR your biggest problem.
If you lose to a hydra using zerg TvZ while going tank blue flame hellion something is up with your play; economy the biggest offender, judging if you can win a battle or not properly the 2nd, and tank placement the 3rd. They are called siege tanks instead of Blitzkreig tanks for a reason.
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I'm a 1500 diamond random player, so take my comments as you like.
Overall: Zerg have to compromise: drones vs combat units. If you keep the pressure on early , then he can't make drones. You will eventually win over the economic battle by forcing him to not make drones. Once a zerg has his economy rolling, good luck. Your primary goal should be to prevent that. To use an example: your opponent had 28 drones to your 20 scvs at 6 minutes. By 7 minutes, there was a 13 drone difference. A good zerg usually waits as long as he can before he stops making drones. When he's ready, he'll pop an army in a minute or 2. Keep in mind that you had close ground positions, making his fast expansion very vulnerable.
I'm also not fond of your unit balance. Hellions are interesting units, but you had no indication for why you'd need lots of them (lots of zerglings). I would've had a thor or 2 with some marines with stim or tanks instead of the hellions. If your opponent goes mass roach, mass marauders deal with that nicely.
Useful things to do: harassment tactics.
These include: offensive bunkering. The bunker, if built far enough while the hatch is building, will be out of sight, unless an overlord is present. If you build a bunker with a couple marines or a reaper to support your scv, he won't be able to take out the bunker without pulling 3-4 drones. This is very costly and hurts his economy. Alternative, he has to make zerglings. Not optimal. Keep in mind that spine crawlers outrange bunkered marines. The reaper is useful for that.
Other harass: tanks / thors on the cliff above the expansion in lost temple. Bring in some scvs to build a turret and repair the mechs. It works nicely. Banshees and blue flame hellions are nice, but their usefulness is situational. Too many queens or too many sunkens will cancel those attacks respectively.
Specific comments:
I'm at 3:30 seconds, you built a 2nd gas geyser. That feels a little early to me, but it depends what you're going for. If you were to go gas on 12, you'd have your rax on 13 and by the time your rax is done, you should have nearly enough gas to make a factory. For your choice of units, you ended up having too much gas throughout your game, so those scvs would've been more useful elsewhere than in a 2nd geyser.
At 7:00: you're starting to build a trust fund. When you moved out, you should have been building an extra CC to expand.
Between the 7th and 8th minute you suicided your forces into the sunkens. Had the marines had stim, it may have gone better. You should've just pulled away at that moment and worked on containing your opponent. A scan prior to charging would've been helpful , you would've seen him retreat with his drones. If you really wanted to try, had you known, you could've rushed after them with your hellions and done heavy damage. as they were tightly packed above. Alternatively, the starport suggestion was good. A 3 hellion drop build can be pretty harsh.
At 11:30, your tank was exposed when you moved your hellions around, allowing him to pick it off with his hydras. Hydras are slow off creep , but fast on creep. This allowed him to outmaneuver you. This attack failed largely because of your positioning. Also, when you attacked, you weren't producing enough units, resulting in a trust fund.
The zerg won because you allowed him to build and defend his natural expansion and you didn't make one. Future endeavours should look to either developing a better economy / improving your macro to match his economy or altering your unit composition and timing to have a more effective push.
I hope this helped! Good luck!
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Thanks to all for your feedback! I've did some more practicing based on your suggestions and I think I'm getting the hang of it  Not that hard actually, just keep some USEFUL pressure and not suiciding units and take my nat quick, then its not that hard. Thanks again!
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2 rax is safest opening to me. I 2 rax open EVERY zerg. I'm 2400 terran, and I play TvZ for macro games, usually 20+ minute games and I'm doing at least 60% in them. 10 supply 12 rax 14 rax 16 OC 16 supply, 27 CC in base to either block your wall if they're busting, or just by your CC to oversat ur main before you float to expo. Double gas and double fac and crank out some tanks. If they muta, 2-3 thors and you're in good shape.
I feel that it's the easiest to transition out of. My mech is usually only tanks and hellions, but i mix in thors vs mutas or heavy bane users.
I see no flaws in 2 rax. If they roach, they late lair and STILL can't bust my wall. 1 bunker and repair and you're still ahead. Get 2-3 tanks and go engage with stim and FF banes with tanks.
I personally stay marines a LOT as you can bounce back after army trading easily. Keep pushing expansions of his with drops or pushes, and take your own with +2 armor PF's with simcity to block them.
Because people think thors are the end all game unit. And getting 5-6 thors behind a wall with 0-2 and pushing out will always win. Play a good zerg. I had a guy on shakuras that when I turtled up, he took 2 other bases, so I took my 3rd and 4th, and we just constantly traded armies.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-171096.jpg)
vs 2300 zerg.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-171097.jpg)
vs 2500 zerg close positions
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-171095.jpg)
vs good-record-1800 zerg
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-171099.jpg)
and a game I lost vs 2200 zerg
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-170012.jpg)
vs 2300 zerg on shakuras.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-168623.jpg)
vs 2150 zerg
You'll note I always block and mech on shakuras, as it's almost unstoppable lol Hope some of these help. I don't have high APM or anything, barely 100 if that. They're ALL 2 rax open, and not one set me back badly. Failed bunker rushes are never failed either. You made them waste queens or drones, or larva for zerglings that can't be used even.
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EPT
