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On February 11 2011 15:58 VanGarde wrote:
...unless you do significant damage in the early game you will lose inevitably to someone who understands this build.
...
But this build can't as day9 pointed out actually not go in and kill you, and if you know this then you won't give the player a chance to do so.
The build designed specifically to make early economic damage looses if it doesn't make damage in early game.... Isn't it kind of obvious and normal unless there is a huge imbalance problem ?
He can't kill you if you doesn't leave your base ? And you deduced that the solution is not leaving your base ? You sure didn't watch the full Day9 dailly, if you turtle he just expand and outmacro which gives him a fair chance to eventually win by "playing like a zerg".
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Just wanted to say big props to you sir!
I'm a plat / low diamond player and while I enjoy tank viking in TvT I had been trying to learn to use bio for that 'mobile' force but its just too hard against tank play for someone of my skill level and has too many risks involved.
This is excellent though!
I've tried the build twice so far, I imagine there were bumps but the second time things went smoothly, I was dubious about it holding off a marine tank push but when I was pushed with tank / marine and 2 vikings whilst I was doing the drop (it was probably late but that was my bad) I killed the marines with the hellions then killed the tanks / vikings with scvs / hellions without suffering heavy loses, from there it was just a matter of 'playing like a zerg' which is great seeing as I used to play random, containing him and expanding was a piece of cake, hellions are just about robust enough to take a few tank shots if he tries to slowly break the contain and he has to get turrets or banshees will wtfpwn his tanks. One wrong move allowing you to pick off key tanks and you can sack 10 or so hellions to roast an entire mineral line, with 3 reactor factories pumping them out though it just doesnt matter, they are scarier than banelings!!
Im sure I've just not experienced any players who actually know how to defeat the build but even when I faced someone else doing it I won very convincingly.
You are a genius and you've changed TvT for the better!
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I have a really good rep of my early hellion harass failing vs an opponent going marine tank expo into mass vikings with marine tank support. You aren't as weak in a head to head battle as people seem to think.
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One thing I will say is that I do want to find a viable way to use this composition in midgame with less onebase aggression/reliance. I feel like midgame hellion drops/air harass can really screw up your opponent, and the composition is sick good when you have an economic advantage.
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I faced this build playing on the ladder, knew what it was and still lost. He expanded before me, despite the fact that I built my expo first simply because I did not want to risk so many scv's to blueflame hellions on such a map with an open natural like xel'naga.
To be honest, I went thor + bio and got countered by BC's. Man he got quite a few out so that attack failed although I cleaned up his ground forces easy. I then proceeded to drop 3x reactored starports and win the air superiority battle for a small while. I then went purely thor + viking and still got owned, probably because I did not micro my thors well andt ell them to shoot the grouped vikings.
Anyway, I don't even see why banshees are necessary. It seems like if you've got air superiority you might as well just go BC's anyway. They beat everything on the ground pretty easily.
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I decided to try this out on the ladder. Here is the result.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/KjvIt.jpg)
I laughed. 
But seriously, I think this approach to the matchup has a lot of potential. At times it seems like there are windows where you are very fragile, but if you can reach Battlecruisers while maintaining air dominance, it should be a win nearly every time. One thing that concerns me is that there's no real way to end the game quickly; pretty much every game is going to be long and drawn out because Hellions can't really... kill anything that isn't light. Still, I am looking forward to seeing how this style of play progresses and evolves.
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United States7483 Posts
But seriously, I think this approach to the matchup has a lot of potential. At times it seems like there are windows where you are very fragile, but if you can reach Battlecruisers while maintaining air dominance, it should be a win nearly every time. One thing that concerns me is that there's no real way to end the game quickly; pretty much every game is going to be long and drawn out because Hellions can't really... kill anything that isn't light. Still, I am looking forward to seeing how this style of play progresses and evolves.
That's why I would suggest trying to mix in some reapers after you're on 2 bases to snipe buildings, because of how absurdly fast they destroy them. With banshee/hellion harass, the only targets are targets not protected by turrets and the worker line, but reapers can go straight for those turrets for example, and let your banshees walk right on in. Man, that'd be a sick combo if you got cloak.
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On February 12 2011 02:42 Pooka wrote:I decided to try this out on the ladder. Here is the result. I laughed. But seriously, I think this approach to the matchup has a lot of potential. At times it seems like there are windows where you are very fragile, but if you can reach Battlecruisers while maintaining air dominance, it should be a win nearly every time. One thing that concerns me is that there's no real way to end the game quickly; pretty much every game is going to be long and drawn out because Hellions can't really... kill anything that isn't light. Still, I am looking forward to seeing how this style of play progresses and evolves.
That's gold right there.
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On February 12 2011 02:42 Pooka wrote:I decided to try this out on the ladder. Here is the result. I laughed. But seriously, I think this approach to the matchup has a lot of potential. At times it seems like there are windows where you are very fragile, but if you can reach Battlecruisers while maintaining air dominance, it should be a win nearly every time. One thing that concerns me is that there's no real way to end the game quickly; pretty much every game is going to be long and drawn out because Hellions can't really... kill anything that isn't light. Still, I am looking forward to seeing how this style of play progresses and evolves.
Rage tears are delicious aren't they 
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So I was doing some shower theorycrafting this morning after losing to this build on the ladder yesterday. I knew what was going on, but couldn't stop it.
How do you think Hellion/Marine would fair against the build? Devote almost all your gas to upgrades and mass expand. If you engage with equal or more hellions to try and kill off most of his then move in a giant ball of marines to try and kill off the sky.
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Hi; I tried this out yesterday, and it was working OK for me, but was difficult to execute. It was certainly more fun than tank pushing. I had a question about hotkey mechanics and unit control.
My main is zerg (gold), so I'm used to muta/ling/bling control, where the harassing units (muta) are just in one big control group and are easy to fly around and do damage with. (The hard part for me of controlling muta/ling/bling is on the defense when trying to get banelings to marines while dodging tank fire, thors, and marauders.)
iEchoic said to think of this 2fact2port build as a zerg muta/ling/bling, but I'm having a hard time executing the scout+harass when my mobile, harassing units (muta) is now a very diverse combo of units (banshee/viking/medivac/helliondrop), where I have to manage sniping with banshees, while protecting the banshees with vikings (but not overextending the vikings), as well as dropping hellions. How are other people managing these units? Putting all air in a big control group, or making viking flowers behind the banshees, move-commanding vikings on banshees, just manually boxing stuff, or something else?
Thanks.
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United States7483 Posts
RibsNGibs, this is a pretty high level build that's very technical, meaning it requires very good multitasking and mechanics to execute it well. As a gold league player, you very likely don't have that, so you might want to consider working on your mechanics before attempting to use this particular build.
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On February 12 2011 02:42 Pooka wrote:
Glorious.
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On February 12 2011 00:35 Elean wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2011 15:58 VanGarde wrote:
...unless you do significant damage in the early game you will lose inevitably to someone who understands this build.
...
But this build can't as day9 pointed out actually not go in and kill you, and if you know this then you won't give the player a chance to do so. The build designed specifically to make early economic damage looses if it doesn't make damage in early game.... Isn't it kind of obvious and normal unless there is a huge imbalance problem ? He can't kill you if you doesn't leave your base ? And you deduced that the solution is not leaving your base ? You sure didn't watch the full Day9 dailly, if you turtle he just expand and outmacro which gives him a fair chance to eventually win by "playing like a zerg".
Sometimes I don't know on this forum if people are being sarcastic or just pretending to be dumber than they are just to question stuff.
Yes, the build is designed with the intent of doing early damage, as I said, and that is the weakness as all builds that rely on harass damage early on kind of leaves the game in the hands of the opponent.
But anyway to the point. I obviously did not say that lol stay in your one base the whole game because he can't kill you with hellion + air. I mean, if you play defensively against a build that can't kill you then you are just as safe at the player with map control. If you open marine tank, you expand and play defensively rather than sending your marine tank across the map to attack which has been the case in most of the replays of this build.
Yes, if you play defensively in theory the player with map control can expand everywhere, but if it was that simple then zerg would win every tvz. You do the same thing as you would against zerg, you play defensively and aim for that third base. Then when you have enough thors you can move out again. If the hellion player gets too greedy with expansions then you can punish that even if you don't have map control.
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I tried the build in a bronze game TvT scrap station against a not very good player. I executed it imperfectly to say the least and got greedy about the results abandoning my macro for micro (it needs more APM than I have skills for).
I killed all his main scvs with a drop and half his expansion scvs (the helions move so fast they just run past a bunker and sieged tank) and he gave up when two banshees started attacking his tanks even though he hadn't lost a single building and still had more tanks. Since my macro was in tatters he could have regrouped but in bronze it is demoralizing to lose your scvs.
This build should be called the Neutron Bomb build - you can win by taking out all the people but leaving all the structures standing. In that way it is a bit like the cloaked banshee/viking/raven against protoss.
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On February 12 2011 07:55 Whitewing wrote:
RibsNGibs, this is a pretty high level build that's very technical, meaning it requires very good multitasking and mechanics to execute it well. As a gold league player, you very likely don't have that, so you might want to consider working on your mechanics before attempting to use this particular build.
Oh, I don't expect to execute it well, but with practice I can probably execute it just as crappily as I execute my zerg muta/ling/bling or my awful terran viking flower/tank push.
I guess what I mean is, my fundamentals and macro (always build scvs, depots, keep money low) are just as terrible whether I am building MMM or hellions+air. And I'm vaguely used to playing a map-control harass game from muta/ling/bling. Just wondering how people are managing the banshee/viking/medivac/hellion harass.
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When playing sc1 my Terran play involved getting double factory and gained map control through vulture harass. However, due to the need for doublegas, the timings for the sc1 BO are not compatible for sc2.
I've used this build 3 times so far (I'm an 1800 plat) and it reminds me of my old style of sc1 gameplay. Fast hellions give me map control while a tech unit punishes what few units attempt to poke out. It was spider mines instead of blue flames and seige tanks instead of banshees, but the premise was the same. Counteract the opponents mobility while a high dps unit fights them safely.
When they ignore the hellions, you kill their workers. When they don't ignore your hellions, they allow you to expand a bunch. The banshees are good because they allow you to maintain mobility; which I love.
I also love how the barracks allows me to skip a scan while I float it to ther base.
The main weakness of the build is that it depends a lot on heavy heav HEAVY scouting and map awareness. Much like muta play, one mistake and you lose your army (and then soonafterwards, the game) even though you've been "winning" the previous 20 minutes of the game. It's fragile. But it's also what I wanted for a long time. I switched to Terran from Zerg because I found a lot of the Zerg mechanics too clunky and off-putting (the fact that I HATED ZvZ was just icing on the cake). But I do miss Zerg tactics. High mobility, heavy harassment, dependancy of map awareness, etc...
This build (as well as a Reaper FE build I'm working on) give me that same feelings I loved the most about Zerg when I played them. Thanks.
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Really nice and comprehensive guide, this kind of stuff makes me love TL.net!
Will try this out right after the last assembly games!
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I've went up against this build several times on ladder and it is nearly impossible to beat if he does damage to your eco. I recently have had success with a counter, where I scout with reaper to identify the build and timing (if ready to drop, starport up, etc), then pump marauders from 2 rax and rines from reactor. I also throw down two turrets at edge of base, supply depot surround my mineral line, and throw down a sensor tower. I think I panicked a little, but it worked this game at least....its better than nothing  Replay is below
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-188312.jpg)
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On February 12 2011 07:48 RibsNGibs wrote:
Hi; I tried this out yesterday, and it was working OK for me, but was difficult to execute. It was certainly more fun than tank pushing. I had a question about hotkey mechanics and unit control.
My main is zerg (gold), so I'm used to muta/ling/bling control, where the harassing units (muta) are just in one big control group and are easy to fly around and do damage with. (The hard part for me of controlling muta/ling/bling is on the defense when trying to get banelings to marines while dodging tank fire, thors, and marauders.)
iEchoic said to think of this 2fact2port build as a zerg muta/ling/bling, but I'm having a hard time executing the scout+harass when my mobile, harassing units (muta) is now a very diverse combo of units (banshee/viking/medivac/helliondrop), where I have to manage sniping with banshees, while protecting the banshees with vikings (but not overextending the vikings), as well as dropping hellions. How are other people managing these units? Putting all air in a big control group, or making viking flowers behind the banshees, move-commanding vikings on banshees, just manually boxing stuff, or something else?
Thanks.
I put the entire army in one control group (I use 3) and then the units of the main army I wish to micro I put in other control groups. (banshees 4, Vikings 5,heavens/battlecruisers 6, etc...)
I use the main army hotkey to manuever my hellions. I normally do this by focus firing the second/third marine behind the front marine.
As my army moves foreward I hit 4 for banshees and hit cloak while focus firing on one tank. I then press 6 and cast a spell with my raven, followed by pressing 5 to focus fire/retreat with Vikings. If my army needs to reposition I hit 3 again to move them as one army, then go back to microing my other units.
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EPT
