First off I would like to say, this build idea actually comes from a student of mine's idea. While his build needed much altering to get it (effective) the core idea behind it was all him. So thank you student
Ok so lets talk about the build for a minute.
Early game it focuses alot on a stable opening where you can get a fast second base up and running while still not dying to any all-in's. There is probably quite a few of these opening that can achieve such desired results. I'm a fan of 1 rax expand into 2 rax or even 2 rax pressure into expand. (nothing new under the sun with this stuff)
Mid game! Here's where the build becomes unique while we have our 2 rax pumping marines nonstop we teched really fast to Ravens not from 1 starport but 2 starports! We also get 2 fast ebay's, this is very important not for just getting bio weapon upgrade+1 but to also get the structure building armor upgrade which not only gives us beefy turrets PF's bunkers etc. but also gives our Ravens auto turrets +2 armor, which the A-turret starts off with +1 armor already.. So this means that a non melee upgraded zergling would do 2 damage a attack vs. a Auto-turret!! Thats a pretty big deal. Plus throw in some seeker missile's and point defence when the time calls for it!!
While ravens are not really used for support (helping your main army attack) they are infact used to harass with in the early stages of the game. While these gas heavy units are harassing what is our army composition going to be?? You guessed it Marines and Medivacs!!
Also I would like to **note** I do not think this build will replace the Marine Tank Medivac style of TvZ. Maybe this will shine some light out there for some terrans who feel there is just not enough creative ways to play our amazing, /dancing, heroic race.
Here are some replays from the 3200+ ladder / friendly games this week while I have been messing around with this build.
On January 09 2011 16:32 Griffith` wrote: pretty sure antisocial munky has a 20 page thread on this exact same build, probably best to merge threads and contribute the replays there?
Well if he did.. then my mistake haha.. its rare for me to read the strat section on tl.net :p
atlest you get some high level replays out of the thread haha
Maka did this build recently on Gisado's KOTH against a TSL zerg. Same opener with Raven + engi upgrades for imba turret harass and seeker muta fending. And then transition into mass BC with Raven protection. The only Z counter is mass infestor.
yep - be extremely careful against infestors, esp if you're getting SM. NP'ed Raven + HSM = epic fail.
The counter to marine raven is essentially roach infestor mixed with some hydras at the back. PDD gets burnt out by hydras so quickly. Of course the counter to the counter would be add in tanks, which is again, countered by blords .... zzz starcraft 2 is like a never ending string of counters .....
I use Ravens throughout mid-game and late-game, mid-game for clearing out creeps, late-game for support vikings, (PDDs are EPIC against mutas and corruptors since they fire so slowly) when zerg inevitably goes blords.
It seems like with so much gas going to ravens and medivacs, you'd have nothing for tanks or marauders - and an autoturret dies to two banelings. Yeah spending mins+gas to destroy just energy sucks, but it seems like ravens +marines couldn't do much about banelings+infestors.
What is nuts though is seeing the starports with tech labs and any zerg will start responding to the threat of banshees - which is certainly not banelings.
He was basically inspired by the old SK Terran style of play and wanted to create an equivalent for SC2.
It looks like he hasn't updated the OP in about a month, so maybe you could collaborate with him to revitalize the ideas and the guide. If anything, you could work with him to provide high level replays to seriously test the strategy in the best possible environment: high-level ladder or even maybe tournament play.
On January 09 2011 17:00 fdsdfg wrote: It seems like with so much gas going to ravens and medivacs, you'd have nothing for tanks or marauders - and an autoturret dies to two banelings. Yeah spending mins+gas to destroy just energy sucks, but it seems like ravens +marines couldn't do much about banelings+infestors.
What is nuts though is seeing the starports with tech labs and any zerg will start responding to the threat of banshees - which is certainly not banelings.
I've never fought against this, it seems rough
It's actually good vs. blings becasue they waste there army (Blings) on turrets that are harassing them while my actual army marine/medivac can take map control (or so it seems..)
He was basically inspired by the old SK Terran style of play and wanted to create an equivalent for SC2.
It looks like he hasn't updated the OP in about a month, so maybe you could collaborate with him to revitalize the ideas and the guide. If anything, you could work with him to provide high level replays to seriously test the strategy in the best possible environment: high-level ladder or even maybe tournament play.
ahh i see~ well I have been doing the high level ladder/customs testing~ work's alot better on some maps then others. I found out haha
On January 09 2011 17:00 fdsdfg wrote: It seems like with so much gas going to ravens and medivacs, you'd have nothing for tanks or marauders - and an autoturret dies to two banelings. Yeah spending mins+gas to destroy just energy sucks, but it seems like ravens +marines couldn't do much about banelings+infestors.
What is nuts though is seeing the starports with tech labs and any zerg will start responding to the threat of banshees - which is certainly not banelings.
I've never fought against this, it seems rough
From my understanding though, this build has a few key features that actually aid against infestors and/or banelings.
Firstly, with the ravens, you can easily limit creep spread, which will help magnitudes against banelings if you micro.
Then you have to keep in mind that this build allows for the hunter seeker missile. The HSM one-shots infestors, so it can be used to easily snipe them. As well, I believe it is very effective against bunched banelings, which is how they normally seem to come. A well placed HSM can seriously thin the baneling numbers.
In addition, marines here are a mineral dump. You will be limited by gas with your ravens, and all other minerals go into marines for the most part. This means you are trading minerals for gas, when fighting most zerg units, so long as you can keep your ravens alive. You can afford to lose marines to zerg gas units, so long as you trade them for those units. This works well with the MULE macro mechanic, allowing you to support many raxes pumping marines.
Against infestors though, it also comes down to your control. You'll probably just have to control your marines well to keep them from all getting hit with one FG. Infestors are very gas heavy units though, so if you can trade a group of marines to take out some infestors, it will still probably be well worth it as far as the trade-off goes. I think a major point of this build is to be very resource effective when trading units with zerg, to limit the amount of scary gas units he can field.
On January 09 2011 17:00 fdsdfg wrote: It seems like with so much gas going to ravens and medivacs, you'd have nothing for tanks or marauders - and an autoturret dies to two banelings. Yeah spending mins+gas to destroy just energy sucks, but it seems like ravens +marines couldn't do much about banelings+infestors.
What is nuts though is seeing the starports with tech labs and any zerg will start responding to the threat of banshees - which is certainly not banelings.
I've never fought against this, it seems rough
From my understanding though, this build has a few key features that actually aid against infestors and/or banelings.
Firstly, with the ravens, you can easily limit creep spread, which will help magnitudes against banelings if you micro.
Then you have to keep in mind that this build allows for the hunter seeker missile. The HSM one-shots infestors, so it can be used to easily snipe them. As well, I believe it is very effective against bunched banelings, which is how they normally seem to come. A well placed HSM can seriously thin the baneling numbers.
In addition, marines here are a mineral dump. You will be limited by gas with your ravens, and all other minerals go into marines for the most part. This means you are trading minerals for gas, when fighting most zerg units, so long as you can keep your ravens alive. You can afford to lose marines to zerg gas units, so long as you trade them for those units. This works well with the MULE macro mechanic, allowing you to support many raxes pumping marines.
Against infestors though, it also comes down to your control. You'll probably just have to control your marines well to keep them from all getting hit with one FG. Infestors are very gas heavy units though, so if you can trade a group of marines to take out some infestors, it will still probably be well worth it as far as the trade-off goes. I think a major point of this build is to be very resource effective when trading units with zerg, to limit the amount of scary gas units he can field.
You really gotta think... FG has range 9, HSM has range 6, NP also has range 9, a raven thats NPed will use HSM on other ravens, infestors are a "hard counter" to ravens in every way imaginable. Getting HSM on ravens in TvZ is extremely dangerous because NP will wreck you. A good zerg will always be able to snag the raven (by FG/NP) before it can use HSM.
getting a small number of ravens and then pure banshee seems like being just pure better in every way...
HSM and mass raven will be good for a few weeks, but when zergs practice against it and figure it out it will turn out to be a very weak build. HSM is easy to dodge, costs a tonne of energy and can easily backfire on your marines.
turrets and PDD are good, but not really effective en masse. banshee pure dps, cloak and scaling with upgrades seem like a much better option.
He was basically inspired by the old SK Terran style of play and wanted to create an equivalent for SC2.
It looks like he hasn't updated the OP in about a month, so maybe you could collaborate with him to revitalize the ideas and the guide. If anything, you could work with him to provide high level replays to seriously test the strategy in the best possible environment: high-level ladder or even maybe tournament play.
ahh i see~ well I have been doing the high level ladder/customs testing~ work's alot better on some maps then others. I found out haha
Hey man, glad you've discovered the utilities of ravens on your own. I've been waiting for a while until someone good did this in TvZ. I think BratOK did this a few times as well.
My style is somewhat different from this because its marine-tank-raven with a somewhat limited production of tanks and a few medivacs put in when you do build tanks. I find that medivacs while good for healing up after a stim and dropping are dead weight vs the high burst damage of zerg. Its also less harass and more contain and map control contesting based. HSM to deal with banelings and ward off mutas. Tanks will take care of roaches and allow you better control at edge of creep and they will nail infestors quite well. That or banshee, you can quite feasibly go 3 port Raven-Med-Banshee but that requires a huge amount of map awareness and APM.
At anyrate, I'm totally excited to watch some high level reps of this *GLEEEEEEEE*.
Oh yeah, you should try Reactor Rax expand from my thread that KME created. It feels much faster on the tech and makes you slightly less helpless vs speedlings. Just watched the Zelniq game. You should check out KME's reps anyway as they show what you can get away with.
@Wiggles I haven't updated my guide because I haven't laddered in 2.5 months and I didn't think people at a high level were still interested. I think almost everything that needed to be said has been said about the main strategy EXCEPT for the marine/tank/raven positioning and the working in of marauders, hellions(hellions actually like hard counter banelings if you have 6 or so and zone better at edge of siege range better than stim marines). I dunno, if there is enough demand, I'll update it.
Hahahaha. I couldn't stop laughing that game. Like when you called down about 20 mules on one patch, and had 18 barracks just built all around the map. Hilarious :D.
This build though, yea, been around for a bit, but it is a good one.
Yup, there was quite a lot of discussion about using SM, or EMP/snipe, or banshees to snipe infestors. Thing is you'll probably have more gas to put into ravens than your opponent have for infestors (that, or you let him get away with a 3rd base un-harassed/contested, which is bad), since pure infestors-speedlings won't cut it.
I think that in antisocialmunky's playstyle it's not such a problem if FG get off (if you're able to spread your marines a minimum, that is). On the contrary, since you can't cast fungal then NP, better get ~10 marines stopped and an infestor powerless. As you want your opponent to spend gas, the most important is to kill the infestors as long as it doesn't cost you too much to do so. Also, I'm not personally trying to kill mutalisks when I SM them. It's pretty potent if they don't move, but my marine ball doesn't really fear them, they're only a threat to the ravens, and if they try to outrun the SM that's 6 seconds to come back to shelter (one of the reasons why I think corruptors are better than mutas when fighting ravens). But against an incoming army, a well-placed SM will force him to cancel his attack, giving you time to reposition or claim ground, or explode before his army reaches yours.
I've found SM flanks to be quite good against clumped roaches, which marines don't fare that well against, and particularly hydras (they'll need either infestors, mutalisks or hydras to shoot air). Either he's spending quite a lot of gas, either he'll need quite a lot of energy from his infestors to kill just one raven at a time (of course it's not that much if he masses infestors, but then again he's going to spend a lot of gas). But I think ravens can be used well even with infestors on the field if you micro them carefuly (of course you won't send 6 at once if you only want to snipe an infestor with hydras or mutas nearby).
I watch the reps. Yes, turrets are totally imba like that :D. However, I think its kinda miopic to suicide Ravens like that. I like the splitting of attention though. That was great. I wonder what would happen if you decided to reverse that by double dropping in the main and then leading the charge into the Zerg expos with your ravens. You can use turrets to cut off reinforcements and funnel zerg units.
My favorite technique is marines in the middle of turrets. The marines fall back out of the turrets and the lings have to run through the turrets to get the marines. The whole zerg blob gets broken apart and it becomes a shooting gallery. Likewise, if they kill all the marines, then you'll have a turret field to start your next push with your reinforcements with.
It would also be interesting to split your raven cloud in half and take out two expos. The real power is the loss mining time from having to take down +2 armor turrets.
people also forget that you can literally FILL a space with turrets and cut off a retreat. If you fill a zerg's base with turrets, he's going to lose it.
On January 10 2011 05:44 Honeybadger wrote: people also forget that you can literally FILL a space with turrets and cut off a retreat. If you fill a zerg's base with turrets, he's going to lose it.
Yeah, you can also do cool things like block the zergs ramp with turrets. If he doesn't have anything but zerglings nearby, it's gonna take a while to get through :p.
I play Z, but I really want to see this play style developed. I'm not a masochist, it's just the Raven is one of my favourite units in the game, and I watch a lot of SC2 too, so it'll be really fun to watch.
The youtuber ''Ketroc21'' actually loves going Mass Raven vs Zerg. He usually floats minerals, so he could use those to create marines (like what you said, Marines + Ravens) instead of 3 CC in the hope one gets up safely on an expansion.
here is one of his video. He keeps on trying to get this build working for himself so... yeah xD.
He has a lot of other videos where he goes mass Raven (I actually know him as ''the youtuber who masses Ravens vs Zerg''...yeah 8D).
Maybe you can learn something from his build opening or not...
Moon would have won the game on scrap had he just been able to macro. Though I am very dissapointed that LZ was not able to macro as well on just 2 bases. Sure he was doing some harass and trying a new build, but you gotta do better than that.
HOORAY!!! MY FAV UNIT!!! I actually like this type of build, though you might die to roaches, since you have nothing that does extra vs armor... so maybe throw in a tank or 2.
The ravens are great early on to put down auto turrets at the mineral line, then watch it take down the hatch or cc or nex.
Just tried this on ladder, it's pretty good, a lot of the damage comes from those attacks where the ravens hit the mineral line, then you kill an expansion with marines. (while he pulls back to kill the turrets)
Some things I want to emphasize: - 3/3 on the marines is very important, as well as the +2 building armour - A few clutch seeker missiles can win you the game (vs banelings)
I'm juggling around how to balance medivacs with this, I found just producing them while I had a nice amount of ravens to be nice, then if I lost those stop making medivacs and build up ravens, because it was rare that I'd lose any medivacs anyway.
On January 10 2011 06:31 Hider wrote: Moon would have won the game on scrap had he just been able to macro. Though I am very dissapointed that LZ was not able to macro as well on just 2 bases. Sure he was doing some harass and trying a new build, but you gotta do better than that.
Mass raven is so annoying, especially if you don't respond to it right. I think you need roaches for the turrets, no other zerg unit can kill those effectively.
Well the openings don't matter that much in regards to the objective of massing ravens, but since you'll be primarily going marines to save up gas, it can be tricky to set up two bases and avoid being contained by roaches and/or banelings before your econ or your starports kick in. That's why antisocialmunky's plan is to get some tanks before ravens (which I shamelessly grabbed for my own play).
I looked at your replays, and I'm curious to know about how you adapt to early roach play (one base roach, FE roach, etc.) since you'll lack marines in the early game, don't have upgrades, and really rush to ravens. Do you intend to survive that window using only bunkers at your front? What if the Z contains you before you can bunker up your natural?
Raven is going to become the standard mid game transition in TvZ (either from 2 Rax Fe, 1-1-1, or 4OC) for two reasons:
1. Zerg players have started to abuse the insane imbalance that is burrowed banelings. It will literally force you to scan every 10 units of movements. It is downright impossible to be aggressive mid-game once borrowed banelings are out unless you have raven support. 2. High-level play usually encompasses a very aggressive creep spread. Ravens are an absolute must to ensure the creep spread does not cover more than half the map.
I think the ideal terran late game will mainly revolve around nudging the ratios of tanks/ravens/thors/vikings
Core: marine/tank/raven Luxuries: thor/viking
If lots of mutas, less tanks, more thors, use pdd If lots of roaches, more tanks, less ravens If lots of blords, less tanks, less ravens, more vikings If lots of infestors, more tanks, (ghosts are not a suitable counter) If lots of blords + corruptors, less tanks, some ravens, more vikings (pdd>>corruptors) If lots of ultras, less ravens, more planetary fortresses
Again, HSM is extremely dangerous for a Terran player to get mainly due to the threat of NP (range 9) and casting HSM on your own units.
I don't agree with this strat. I haven't had a chance to watch the replays yet but the problems that I already foresee are:
1) Weak defense on your expansion - You have nothing that is capable of holding off a heavy 2base ling/bling 8-10min attack (3 bunkers might do it on small choke expansions)
2) Only harass is a 2rax opening attack which 95% of zergs can handle with very minimal damage afterwards you basically leave the zerg to drone his face off until you get a few ravens up which takes a long time
3) Even once you had a ball of ravens you are super vulnerable to ling/bling/muta, zergs bread and butter AND you still have to micro much better then the zerg or all your marines will die horribly and then your ravens will get cleaned up by mutas. Infestors are not even required but make it even harder on you.
I will check out the replays but based on when I ran ASM's version of this strat quite a bit (probably about 2months ago) it only works on high level zergs who get surprised by it.
On January 14 2011 01:23 Griffith` wrote: Raven is going to become the standard mid game transition in TvZ (either from 2 Rax Fe, 1-1-1, or 4OC) for two reasons:
1. Zerg players have started to abuse the insane imbalance that is burrowed banelings. It will literally force you to scan every 10 units of movements. It is downright impossible to be aggressive mid-game once borrowed banelings are out unless you have raven support. 2. High-level play usually encompasses a very aggressive creep spread. Ravens are an absolute must to ensure the creep spread does not cover more than half the map.
I think the ideal terran late game will mainly revolve around nudging the ratios of tanks/ravens/thors/vikings
Core: marine/tank/raven Luxuries: thor/viking
If lots of mutas, less tanks, more thors, use pdd If lots of roaches, more tanks, less ravens If lots of blords, less tanks, less ravens, more vikings If lots of infestors, more tanks, (ghosts are not a suitable counter) If lots of blords + corruptors, less tanks, some ravens, more vikings (pdd>>corruptors) If lots of ultras, less ravens, more planetary fortresses
Again, HSM is extremely dangerous for a Terran player to get mainly due to the threat of NP (range 9) and casting HSM on your own units.
It's not going to be standard because it's somewhat flimsy of a strat that is time/nrg based. Maybe you meant it can be developed to something more solid? I don't think using "burrowed banelings are godly" is much back-up for the argument of this becoming standard. You can make other arguments though. Mainly because burrowed banelings are virtually never a problem to deal with.
I think the standard will stay marine/tank/medivac/thor with vikings for brood lords, and mass marauder later for ultras.
How far up on the ladder are you Lz? I'm just 2700 masters and not sure if I can pull this off. I've watched a few of the replays and I'm really loving it. Every single game you were down 50 in supply before the first big engagement and still you end up rocking the boat.
1. Is this build mostly suitable for specific maps? I could imagine the drop-turret-marine push type strat would be best for maps where the expansions are far apart? I coulnd't help but wonder if moonsh would have done better if he had actually tried to spread any kind of creep.
2. Does the initial BO rule out the choice of going marine-scv all in if you scout a 15 hatch before pool on a close spawn? 3. Lol at people giving Lz tips 4. You skip the energy upgrade for ravens, better to just get +1 raven? 5. Tried this build against a player going heavy on the infestors?
EPT
