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On February 05 2011 09:08 Antisocialmunky wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2011 03:34 iEchoic wrote:On February 04 2011 20:52 Alaric wrote:On February 04 2011 13:48 Antisocialmunky wrote:
It really seems like Hellions get worse at larger food against marines + tanks which is kinda odd... It's not at all : combat shield is extremely good for marines against blue flame hellions and banshees, since the number of hits needed to kill one goes up from 2 to 3, Keep in mind that stim reduces HP from 55 to 45, returning them into two-shot territory from hellions - and unstimmed marines just aren't that scary. That is true I suppose. I'm more curious what you think about ghosts with this?
Ghosts may be good against it, honestly I've never played a ghost build. Unfortunately all ghost builds I've seen are pretty bad so they're pretty rare, I'd imagine once you see the ghost academy you could just try to play normally and win.
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On February 05 2011 10:42 iEchoic wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2011 09:08 Antisocialmunky wrote:On February 05 2011 03:34 iEchoic wrote:On February 04 2011 20:52 Alaric wrote:On February 04 2011 13:48 Antisocialmunky wrote:
It really seems like Hellions get worse at larger food against marines + tanks which is kinda odd... It's not at all : combat shield is extremely good for marines against blue flame hellions and banshees, since the number of hits needed to kill one goes up from 2 to 3, Keep in mind that stim reduces HP from 55 to 45, returning them into two-shot territory from hellions - and unstimmed marines just aren't that scary. That is true I suppose. I'm more curious what you think about ghosts with this? Ghosts may be good against it, honestly I've never played a ghost build. Unfortunately all ghost builds I've seen are pretty bad so they're pretty rare, I'd imagine once you see the ghost academy you could just try to play normally and win.
I mean, going ghosts instead of BC mid/late game while doing this build.
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Thank you IEchoic, this build is very strong. Its also a very safe way to transition to Tank Viking with a dab of hellions (Which is my favourite TvT composition) against biomech since you have the tech ready, map control, air dominance and positional advantage.
You have cloaked banshees which forces ravens, turrets or scans. This eats into their economy and psychology. It bolsters your mobile firepower and harassment capability as well.
You have hellions with preignitor which is strong against mass marines and can scout easily
You have Vikings which control air space and thus vision
IF you get tanks, you get a positional lockdown. You hold his tanks back while you mass expand to get a big advantage. (Sensor tower in this case is very strong addition too ). My opinion wise is to get a few tanks at least so that you have a tough foothold and won't die as easily should you lose your air dominance by mistake.
PS: IEchoic I liked your TvP build back then too :D. Will be making this build my permanent TvT opening xD
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Wow, thanks for sharing this with us, sounds like an amazing build.
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Late game wouldn't it be better to always make BCs instead of Banshees anyway? I mean, banshees still get decimated by stimmed marines, while BCs are pewpewing forever.
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You do get BCs in this build. Its just you only start getting bcs when he starts to get Thors.
Both Banshees and BCs do get decimated by stimmed marines albeit BCs are easier to get to critical mass. Anyhow banshees are mobile and you have hellions to deal with mass marines. The build is very dependent on mobility like how bio abuses mobility against mech.
If he gets really mass marines, maybe Thors as tankers would help? All you need is 2 seconds to get close with hellions. Flame away and watch 50% of those marines die in one salvo. Just a thought.
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On February 05 2011 11:03 debasers wrote: Late game wouldn't it be better to always make BCs instead of Banshees anyway? I mean, banshees still get decimated by stimmed marines, while BCs are pewpewing forever. In a straight fight yes, but banshees are highly mobile so they can go and snipe off outlying structures such as add-ons and be generally fucking annoying. If you were to go to the lategame with this I think the late game mix would be hellions, viking, BC, raven and a few banshees to harass.
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i can't imagine this being effective against tanks + turrets
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On February 05 2011 11:26 Blyadischa wrote: i can't imagine this being effective against tanks + turrets
It is effective, indirectly that is. Tanks are strong but stiff. Turrets are not movable. If he gets tanks and turrets, you expand and get economic advantage. With that advantage you can get BCs or other units such as marauders or tanks to counter. Or you can force him back with banshees attacking his main (Since he turret at his tanks, he cant turret at his base without severe consequences)
Banshees as you add more, turrets become less effective when you can like 2 shot them etc and thus thats when the enemy must get Thors or vikings. Vikings again do not make a strong choice since your already having air dominance in the first place. IEchoic plan to counter Thor is BCs which is sound. Again, your economic advantage translates into faster upgraded BCs.
If he attempts base trade, your banshees have cloak which can return and defend easily. He will have either no anti air or no scans against your banshees.
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After some more games, it seems a lot of people know the build (or at least acknowledge its existence), and I saw several of them transition very rapidly into thors (they have some tanks from before they identified what was going on and during the armory's building time), which would force a very quick transition to BCs. I have yet to encounter this more often to get a better insight at the consequences for their army and mobility, though (and XNC and metal close positions really don't help me, I guess I should try more 1/1/1ish play if I scout these).
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I'm a low diamond (1k range) terran, because I haven't played that many ladder 1v1s, but I too dislike the tediousness of siege tank positioning in TvT. Decided to give this a shot a bit tonight, so far I'm 2-0 with this build. The first game I had no idea what I was doing but managed to pull out a win with 3/3 bc's and vikings after about 30 minutes. The second game was on Xel'naga vs a 2500 master league terran, and I got a huuuuge lead with the first hellion drop, but my macro slipped far too much and ended up winning a 40-minute long drawn out game where the whole map was mined out.
I gotta say, fully upgraded BC's with yamato, ravens and viking support is extremely good late game. The disadvantage is immobility, but by the end my last two mining bases were planetaries which held out until the BC's showed up. He went tank/viking/marauder primarily with turret support everywhere and all his expansions were planetaries. Hellions are basically useless against that army and banshees are mediocre but bc's with yamato and vikings along with ravens pretty much clean it up.
I love this build. I feel like right now it catches a lot of people off guard which is awesome. The potential economic damage from hellions is massive and persistent, and pretty much forces planetaries instead of orbitals. Now I'm starting to actually look forward to tvt on the ladder
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On February 05 2011 11:26 Blyadischa wrote: i can't imagine this being effective against tanks + turrets
The strength of this opening is that you're not actually engaging, you are taking map control so you can expand while delaying his push and expansions. Its like when Toss goes DTs in SCII and BW so they can do a contain to take a third or Protoss Shuttle + Reaver in BW.
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On February 05 2011 12:24 Alaric wrote: After some more games, it seems a lot of people know the build (or at least acknowledge its existence), and I saw several of them transition very rapidly into thors (they have some tanks from before they identified what was going on and during the armory's building time), which would force a very quick transition to BCs. I have yet to encounter this more often to get a better insight at the consequences for their army and mobility, though (and XNC and metal close positions really don't help me, I guess I should try more 1/1/1ish play if I scout these).
I think thats only going to increase so this build will need to rely on a transition into standard tank viking instead of into bcs. The transition into BCs requires too many bases to reliably be able to get onto once opponents start recognizing and reacting appropriately to the build. Luckily with 2 factories and 2 starports you are well positioned to transition into tank viking, tech lab starport -> reactor and 2nd factory -> empty tech lab.
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Wow, this strategy really sounds amazing. As I really do not like using Tanks in TvT myself, I am very much looking forward to trying it out for a while.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
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Hi iEchoic I have started using your TvP strategy and had a lot of sucess. This TvT strat. seems to be very exciting (I'm a bit tired of the classic Tank-viking mix) and effective as well. So my question is: do you have some crazy strat against zerg which is by the most difficult match up for T according to me. I know I'm a bit out of topic but I'm sure a lot of people are waiting for it! Thanks for the great job!
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what do you do if they do some kind of thor rush? theres no way to scout it and get battlecruisers out in time.
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Nice, executed perfectly, except with some flaws in the lategame vs ClouD IMO. I'm going to add it to the replays in the OP if you don't mind.
Edit: I think the following things hurt you in the lategame vs cloud:
1) Not holding the xelnagas. Had you seen him coming across the map, you could have attacked the marines at a better angle while the tanks weren't sieged. You had map control but just forgot to use it. You had to attack down a ramp into sieged tanks with the marines behind them. Ouch. 2) Too many vikings. If you had made ~4 vikings and seen he wasn't contesting your air, and then done more hellions and banshees, you'd be solid. 3) Floating resources - you had 800 minerals when he hit - if you had 5-8 more hellions that would have been good.
The opening was really clean though, and you played it really well for only running it 3 times.
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In the last game, right after he killed the tanks in his base, it seems to me that if pokebunny had transitioned into standard terran play, he would have been at an advantage. Instead continuing to use hellion/banshee proved why its a risky choice when he was unable to kill enough marines to defend. Its possible that if he came at them from a differnt angle/waited for unseige, it could have worked out, but why play a risky strategy if you don't have to? Its not a high risk high reward case as this moves into the mid-late game.
Instead of attempting continue harass perhaps a safer course would have been to just cut banshee production, start producing tanks out of the 2 factory and take the gold. Then clouds turrets would have been wasted money and he would have been ~10scvs ahead, having blue flame, only need to watch out for drops. But with air superiority already secured, hopefully drops would not be a major problem.
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On February 06 2011 07:24 statikg wrote: In the last game, right after he killed the tanks in his base, it seems to me that if pokebunny had transitioned into standard terran play, he would have been at an advantage. Instead continuing to use hellion/banshee proved why its a risky choice when he was unable to kill enough marines to defend. Its possible that if he came at them from a differnt angle/waited for unseige, it could have worked out, but why play a risky strategy if you don't have to? Its not a high risk high reward case as this moves into the mid-late game.
Instead of attempting continue harass perhaps a safer course would have been to just cut banshee production, start producing tanks out of the 2 factory and take the gold. Then clouds turrets would have been wasted money and he would have been ~10scvs ahead, having blue flame, only need to watch out for drops. But with air superiority already secured, hopefully drops would not be a major problem.
I edited above with a note about why I think he lost this in the lategame. The composition was (almost - few too many vikings) fine, he just got caught out of position because he forgot the xelnagas.
It's really inefficient to make 2starports and then switch techs, and bio is basically out the window because you need to make a ton of raxes and get stim and CS. You'd need to do tank/viking which can be risky vs tank/bio.
A tank/viking transition is possible, and people can play around with it. I'm going to keep looking at a hellion/air composition, though.
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