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Howdy TL, there was a TvP Terran point of view thread that became 32 pages of constant brainstorming that turned into whining about HTs Warp-ins and other things and I suggested going Mech and a lot of people demanded replays of me going Mech so here I have 10 games of me Meching and winning against Toss.
Things to note:
I am NOT a good player by any means. I don't play very often and I'm only 1600-1700ish Diamond but everyone I play against is 1600-2400 for some reason because the matchmaking system is messed. That being said I am bad and still won against some pretty decent players so that defends the strategy and any criticisms you can note for the toss player i probably played worse so don't just be like well he didn't do this at this time because, I didn't do anything right by any good player's point of view lol.
Also the replay against jade a 2200 toss made me giggle.
Raiznevil vs ANgelCC
Raiznevil vs jade
Raiznevil vs JoGo
Raiznevil vs OrangeApples
Raiznevil vs panic
Raiznevil vs Reptile
Raiznevil vs RushSecond
Raiznevil vs Sayam
Raiznevil vs Stratos
Raiznevil vs TylerLarson
In all these replays I do a 1 Rax reactor expand because I had this gut feeling for a long time that it defended against the 4 gate strategy. Turns out if done properly there is a key timing at roughly the 6:30 to 7 minute mark where even just a chronoed 3 gate pressure can bust you before you expand and get up the bunkers.
SO putting a bunker down at the 6 minute mark will keep you safe from the 4 gate. Had to find that out the hard way myself. You will unfortunately be contained until you get 1 or 2 tanks with siege out but Meh he 4 gated so expanding a lil late won't hurt anyways.
Also this is just the opening I do there's probably numerous ways to go about opening like a Siege expand or 2 fact i just prefer the really fast expo. This is just for anyone of you players who feel bold enough to attempt this kind of strategy.
Usually when I'd lose during this strat it would either be because I just did something terrible or I didn't scout VR tech switch in time or that key 6 min timing before i realized i should put down a bunker (which is the openings fault not Mech). Most of the time the trade off in the battles in all these games were extremely cost effective in my favor.
Key things I aim for (but don't always achieve cuz I screwed up or something):
+2 weapons upgrades on the vehicles. Tanks demolish anything armored as soon as they are in range meaning Stalkers and Collossi in particular. Immortals last a bit long but with the bunker marines and the hellions their shields don't last too long to be troublesome usually unless it's a very good Immortal/Zlot timing. Also this upgrade makes it easier to snipe HTs.
Harassment with Hellions. I don't make use of this often cuz I'm not amazing but keep harassment on your mind. Also they make for the best type of scouting as well as being used for HT or Zlot hunting parties. Often I'll find a troop of Zlots away from the main army and i can just pick them off for free.
Also don't start getting super super aggressive until you get you're third (unless you can find a timing I'm too dense to discover) and before being aggressive have like 7 factories, 3 barracks reactored and 3 starports reactored. Bewilders them how fast you re-mass.
I know 98% of you won't ever do this kind of play even after seeing these reps cuz this is not how the pros play but this is just my kind of proof that no strategy should be completely undo-able unless maybe you're pro level because Starcraft 2 is just so much more flavorful that the basically solved BW was. There's just so many more factors to think about and use.
Unfortunately I'm gunna have to go back to doin MMM now so people won't blind counter me or something on Bnet :/. lol
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you split your tanks up a lot against good players they need to be consolidated. thats nothing to do with the idea if mech is viable or not though
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Loved these replays. Can't wait to try this.
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On December 30 2010 16:55 ElJaron wrote:
Loved these replays. Can't wait to try this.
Really? wow appreciate it. Was expecting the first few posts to flame me.
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Holy crap, this is awesome. Looks a whole lot like BW. Now we need someone to win GSL with this and we're golden. Any takers?
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I find the biggest strength about mech is that tanks allow you to get up a huge economy safely.
The minute you decide to mech, your tank count is what the game revolves around, and you only have enough gas off of 2 bases to produce so many tanks, so it is very easy to spend the excess minerals on a quick third base while still producing tanks constantly.
Not only that, but your timing of weakness while expanding can be shored up quite easily by the fact that it's damn hard to bust 2 bases worth of tanks in a head on assault (helms deep anyone?). The filler units like marines and hellions can be pumped out relatively quickly to support the tank numbers, making tank expanding really strong in my eyes.
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One problem with mech. Its very immobile. Blink stalkers abuses these builds so easily
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On December 30 2010 17:09 ReachTheSky wrote:
One problem with mech. Its very immobile. Blink stalkers abuses these builds so easily
I hope you're not suggesting blink stalkers going head-to-head against the siege tanks, because they can blink in and out all they want, but they'll still get eaten alive by tank fire.
Blink stalkers as harass would be a big problem against the immobility of siege tanks, but you could probably swap out 1 or 2 of the factories for some rax to deal with any of that.
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On December 30 2010 17:09 ReachTheSky wrote:
One problem with mech. Its very immobile. Blink stalkers abuses these builds so easily
In the early game when you're just building up tank numbers blink stalkers/warp prisms can make the terran very fragile but later on in the game when the mech wall is turtling hard with good positioning I don't see how blink stalkers would be any better than normal stalkers. When the terran decides to move out I don't see why blink would abuse the build so easily since the protoss has to pull all his units together to have a chance at killing the tank line? Even if he blinks a bunch of stalkers into your tank line they will take out a few tanks from splash but if they are spread even reasonably well the stalkers will just take more damage from splash since when they blink they get balled up.
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On December 30 2010 17:09 ReachTheSky wrote:
One problem with mech. Its very immobile. Blink stalkers abuses these builds so easily
I dunno about during the early game but notice in most of the games i surround my base with turrets as well as upgrade the turret range so he can't blink in cuz he needs an obs to see over the cliff. if im not mistaken the observer can't get in range of seeing the turret for the stalkers to shoot after the turret range. i could be wrong on that tho so don't quote me on it.
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On December 30 2010 17:18 Raiznhell wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2010 17:09 ReachTheSky wrote:
One problem with mech. Its very immobile. Blink stalkers abuses these builds so easily I dunno about during the early game but notice in most of the games i surround my base with turrets as well as upgrade the turret range so he can't blink in cuz he needs an obs to see over the cliff. if im not mistaken the observer can't get in range of seeing the turret for the stalkers to shoot after the turret range. i could be wrong on that tho so don't quote me on it.
if the protoss blinks fast he can get up the shelf with an observer spotting through a turret. If he does this he's committing a chunk of troops to your base though, just trap them with siege tanks and minimize your losses then your push will be that much stronger.
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I'm trying to think of all the things that would give this trouble as a strategy. I'm going to ignore any early rush/all-in strategies, because the early game can be changed to accommodate those, but the end goal of tank+hellion+marine is the same.
Chargelots - these only become a big problem when they get all up in your tanks' face, but honestly, I don't think they're that big of a threat if you can block them with your hellions. A big ball of 10+ blue flame hellions with marines and tanks behind it is going to kill infinity zealots.
Void rays - anything more than a smattering of void rays would give this trouble, so it would need to be scouted. Once scouted, extra marines and/or vikings would be enough to shut this down.
Carriers - pretty much the same as vrs.
High templar - Hellion snipes! Also ghosts if you feel you really need it.
Immortals: These guys actually kinda suck once the tank count starts hitting the double digits. Without impeccable micro, the immortals are all going to lose their shields at once to splash, and then get rolled.
I'd guess the optimal protoss composition to deal with this would be chargelots, templar, and void rays, maybe a few colossi if the tech already existed. But does this actually have a hard counter? If it does, I can't think of one.
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Immortal prism drops on tanks could end this.
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On December 30 2010 17:38 MUirbeqU wrote:
Immortal prism drops on tanks could end this.
marines,bunkers and turrets around your tanks stop this. warp prisms are like feathers that's why nobody was using them until recently with Nony mentioning them on SotG and MC Caving Rain's face in with them.
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On December 30 2010 17:38 MUirbeqU wrote:
Immortal prism drops on tanks could end this.
I haven't even seen the replays yet but can't you just mix few marines in here to avoid this? At least meching terrans have started to use few marines in their mech play just to shutdown the magic boxing over thors.
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On December 30 2010 17:38 giuocob wrote:
I'm trying to think of all the things that would give this trouble as a strategy. I'm going to ignore any early rush/all-in strategies, because the early game can be changed to accommodate those, but the end goal of tank+hellion+marine is the same.
Chargelots - these only become a big problem when they get all up in your tanks' face, but honestly, I don't think they're that big of a threat if you can block them with your hellions. A big ball of 10+ blue flame hellions with marines and tanks behind it is going to kill infinity zealots.
Void rays - anything more than a smattering of void rays would give this trouble, so it would need to be scouted. Once scouted, extra marines and/or vikings would be enough to shut this down.
Carriers - pretty much the same as vrs.
High templar - Hellion snipes! Also ghosts if you feel you really need it.
Immortals: These guys actually kinda suck once the tank count starts hitting the double digits. Without impeccable micro, the immortals are all going to lose their shields at once to splash, and then get rolled.
I'd guess the optimal protoss composition to deal with this would be chargelots, templar, and void rays, maybe a few colossi if the tech already existed. But does this actually have a hard counter? If it does, I can't think of one.
Believe it or not DTs of all things were giving me loads of trouble despite building turrets and here's why. Protoss would push and lose a ton of units but realize in the battle the turrets around my tanks would sometimes get taken out and he'd warp in loads of dts and send them all over the place. got really frustrating to deal with. but 90% of the times i lost doing mech strats was being killed off early or the VR tech switch cuz i got lazy with my scouting which is nothing but a noob mistake.
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OK, first off, warp prisms cost 200 minerals, marines, bunkers, and turrets cost alot more, Second off, you should have lost when the immortals were dropped, not to mention warp prisms can warp stalkers in for the hellions or whatever you need. Third off, your immobile army is now not mobile at all with turrets and bunkers. It would be a good option to drop you mineral line with prisms.
Edit: you can't have stim on marines as well
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On December 30 2010 17:50 MUirbeqU wrote:
OK, first off, warp prisms cost 200 minerals, marines, bunkers, and turrets cost alot more, Second off, you should have lost when the immortals were dropped, not to mention warp prisms can warp stalkers in for the hellions or whatever you need. Third off, your immobile army is now not mobile at all with turrets and bunkers. It would be a good option to drop you mineral line with prisms.
I personally think of the bunkers as spider mines. they are basically free cuz as you slow push towards him you can salvage the ones you leave in your trail. also turrets are only 100 mins for super good AA and detection. Warp prisms also die EXTREMELY quickly so the second they fly over your stuff they basically die.
Dropping in the mineral line can be dealt with pretty simply. Either you have units there already in the early portion or after you leave your base is already surrounded with turrets and warp prisms as said are very fragile. I never lost a game due to Warp Prisms despite having them used against me. I did however lose a game where they were used against me but not because of them directly and it was at a key timing that it was used. Right as i was expanding. And it was one of them 4 gate robo stargate builds off one base which is INCREDIBLY all-in.
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On December 30 2010 17:50 MUirbeqU wrote:
OK, first off, warp prisms cost 200 minerals, marines, bunkers, and turrets cost alot more, Second off, you should have lost when the immortals were dropped, not to mention warp prisms can warp stalkers in for the hellions or whatever you need. Third off, your immobile army is now not mobile at all with turrets and bunkers. It would be a good option to drop you mineral line with prisms.
A warp prism with 2 immortals in it costs 700 minerals, 200 gas, quite a hefty sum. Any attempt to thin the tank numbers is going to certainly be a suicide mission for all three units involved. Obviously the drop is a miserable failure if the warp prism dies before it gets to the tanks; otherwise, it needs to kill at least 4 tanks for the drop to be considered a success, and I doubt it would get any more than that, probably fewer.
As far as expansion defense, just leave a siege tanks and a handful of marines anywhere especially vulnerable, a lot like tvt.
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There is no "counter" to mech, other than solid play. I feel that collosi with range upgrade are what protoss needs to fight a well played mech. Tank critical mass vs collosi critical mass is exciting to watch. High templar storm drops can get messy late game, but hellion harrass is just as deadly all game long.
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EPT
