3 things:
Build and composition:
tank marine medivac is the ideal composition for dealing with T1.5 and T2 ranged units. so your focus should be on getting 2 rax, then tech lab, then factory, then stim or combat shield depending on how early you are expecting to get med, then another rax and a reactor on it when done, then tech lab when your fact is done, then tank and siege, and starport with no addon when you have enough time. Add a tech lab to the starport once you have 3 medivac incase he gets burrow. But, remeber that the hydras cannot escape once burrowed like the roaches, so it is good for you if he tries to burrow. Try to get an ebay for +1 attack, then expo . Scout, and if you see him expo, and lots of drones are popping/there are sunkens coming up, delay the 3rd rax and ebay and get started on a 2nd CC right away. the tank or 2 and rines on the ramp will defend if he suddenly gets aggressive, and you can always make a PF if you are afraid of his army. getting to 4 gas is more important than a 2nd OC, but you'll need to be extra disciplined about building workers since you won't be geting 2x mule. once your minerals start to go out of control, make like 3 fact with reactor and 3 more rax with tech lab, a 2nd ebay and an armory for + vehicle attacks and to enable lvl 2 infantry ups.
econ:
never stop making workers. I know you've heard this before, but you will start to see if you pay attention to the stats that the winner/winning team ALWAYS has the most workers. be sure to get OC at 14 or 15, and keep up with mules. make one gas as OC is producing, and the second just as it finishes. remember that you won't need to start an extra depot when OC is building, because your supply production will be reduced, 'cause you can't make SCVs.
micro:
Siege up first, stim second. Take advantage of high ground when possible. Try to create situations where you entice him to walk by high ground that is covered with tanks, effectively widdling his army down before any real clash (e.g. - expo somewhere where he has an ovi, then put some tanks on a cliff along the attack path, then cancel the expo once his army goes by—with some losses). Because his strat relies on his overwhelming numbers, and because hydras are slow to retreat once they blunder into siege range, this sort of play is huge. Remeber that because of medivacs you can set up tanks on a cliff below his main, then lift rines and a few tanks up the cliff to push his main. the tanks below will be unhittable by lings, and roach hydra too if you keep them back. try to body-block his advance with toward tanks with your marines. the thing about it is, if he tries to focus on rines or tanks, tanks will chew him up while you run your shielded, buff, superfast stimrines around him in circles, or else the insane dps of rines will ruin him if he tries to blitz the tanks. for extra pointz, try grabbing 4 rines in a quick selection box and FFing on a hydra instead of a roach/rinse/repeat. If you are fast you can kill off the damage dealers early and leave the damage-absorbers behind to die a slow but ultimately vain death.
rationale:
I only play terran when I'm randoming in team games, but i certainly have a lot of experience fighting them 1v1 as zerg. To understand why tankrine medivac is the best choice, we must look at the strenghts and weaknesses of hydra roach, and of tankrine.
HR:
Strengths:
1) critical mass. Zerg is going hydraroach not because it is the strongest unit mix in the game. its just not. it has bad range, its slow, and the hydras have crap health. What makes hydraroach nice is that you can open roach with early +1, then start making hydras to cover yourself from air, spend gas, and add a damage-dealer to your mix. Also, unlike most zerg tech compositions, this one is relatively mineral-heavy, and can therefore be executed from 2 bases, and benefit quite a bit from higher saturation, especially in roach count, which is what you want anyway. This allows the zerg to rush to high drone-count while your army is small and you are afraid to pressure because you could be overwhelmed by lings. Then he will push hard with a much bigger army and hope to overwhelm you with sheer quantity of hp/dps on the field, never mind counters and micro. The only way you can stop this is by *not* letting him outmacro you so badly. Scout more, try to say even or 1 base behind him, taking an expo each time he does. drop 1-2 loaded medivacs on isolated bases, then draw back before his slow-ass army arrives. Then, push his while he is out of position. And disciple about making SCVs, and depots: can't say it enough. People on this site will chide me, but I say that SCV and depot are the one thing it's ok to queue. late game I will have as many as 15 SCVs queued on my various command centers, especially if i have suffered SCV losses, just to MAKE SURE that i don't forget. also, whenever you make a depot, if you have like 600+ mins, press B, S, shift-click, to queue another, which the SCV will build immediately after.
Weaknesses:
1) Hydras cost gas, but are not banelings. This means that your rines are not hard-countered. So, love your rines. one of the cheapest things about terran is the mule, which allows you to have outrageous mineral outcome off of fewer bases. your gas remains constant, so this basically only translates into; MORE RINES. So, if you are in a situation where rines are a key part of your play, go OC crazy! once you get an expo up, just drop new CCs all over the place. if they are in contended territory, make a PF, and if not, just make another OC. whenever you take a new base, start sending all the mules to that base so you don't deplete your older bases too fast. map all OCs to the same hotkey, so you can press E and then just shift-click on a row of minerals and drop like 6 mules at a time later in the game. this is especially cheez if you can expo to a golds. your income will go to like 3800. which means; more OCs and more rines! once you have like 6-8 gas, then you can make anything you want and get all the upgrades! (it used to be, in BW, that zerg was played like this, because lings were stronger, hats were needed anyway, and no other race could hope to equal zerg income off fewer bases, nor could they hope to overcome zerg map control enough to outexpo the zerg. Now, terran can do this, simply dumping excess minerals into expoing.)
2) hydras cannot escape. Stimmed rines run faster than them, and tanks outrange them really bad. and they are butt-slow. His gas is his more limited resource; make him waste it by never letting hydras escape.
3) tanks deal bonus to roach, and outrage them 3x. (assuming their range is still 12 as in BW?)... Brutal. upping the damage on tanks will REALL finish the job. forgetting to up damage on rines if he ups armor on roach is very bad, so watch for this.
Tank-rine-medivac
Strengths:
1) Everything can be healed. bring an SCV, or call down mules and put them on auto-repair if you think you have the upper-hand in army already.
2) Medihax are also dropships (wft? and ovis don't even detect anymore!). You can harass and deny new expansions with small rine drops. You can take islands. You can attack his islands. You can see/push up cliffs, spreading your tanks between two different terrain types (always good). you can lift your whole army to safety if you kill all/most of the hydra, and escape a big roach army. On maps like LT, you can even tank the opponent's nat, and he will have no recourse because all his gas will be going to hydras!
3) Tank defense is amazing. If you have even a ~8 rine force, with 1 med and 3 tanks at your main, you can hold your ramp against pretty much anything (if you macro a little just as you push out, you should have this stuff finished by the time he counters even if you took everything when you left. And even if he suicides enough to start to break through, you will definitely live until your army gets back and flanks him.
4) IF he switches to mutas, you are already covered. You have a huge rine army, and a bunch of facts that already have tech labs! and if he gets banes, you might want to start adding rauders but other than that you will be ok, as long as you stim and run near your tanks.
weaknesses: you're slightly less mobile because the tanks have to go into mode. But they are so powerful that it hardly matters, as long as you hit "o" as soon as you see him. either stim or combat shield will be slightly delayed, especially if you are forgetful like me.
Also, really cool trick: pretend to push out. go right up to the edge of the creep, siege up, wait a second, then pull right back. Hopefully, the zerg will make some panic lings, thereby weakening his economy. Later, when you do push, he won't be able to afford as much because he delayed some drones for those panic units!
Protoss variation:
I also use this strat v toss, because stalkers flail against it, and the marines handle immortals no problem. Colossi can catch tanks out of position later on, and vikings might be needed for support (in which case it might be good to get some hellions instead of rines, 'cause rines die so bad to colossi, but that's only an issue late-game. In a team game, it is not uncommon for me to beat 2 protoss armies at once when I push out with 4-5 tanks, 2-3 meds, and 18-24 rines. Pretty sure this is the hardest counter to stalkers in the game. Blink doesn't help: to get it in a timely fashion, he will need to sacrifice too much gas, and tanks usually get a volley or 2 before he's even in blink range. Then stimmed rines mop up shockingly fast. Call down repair-mules after a blink raid for sure: you will probably have a couple tanks on red life.
Since I don't use this for 1v1, I don't follow an exact build. I'm sure there are good exact rine tank openings written down somewhere on the site, feel free to check them for reference. I created mainly to repel big 3 player t1.5-2 pushes in 3v3, usually consisting of stalkers, roaches, and rine-rauder, and so base the number of early rines, expo timing, and the order of a few tech choices based on what they are doing. (the main question is this: many tanks ASAP with combat shield first? stim first and an early medivac with siege mode slightly delayed?)
|
EPT
