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I just realized what it feels like to play standard tank or bio against this build. It must be what zergs felt back in the day when terran early game was still horribly imbalanced. It is not that you can't win it just takes so much more skill on the part of the player defending this than it does on the player performing it. If you misplace ONE building or unit in the early game for a second you lose the game instantly.
I can beat this with various plays it just feels like I constantly lose to 25 apm players who I would had destroyed if I did the same build or if we were doing tank/bio play.
Seems that the key is to deny the early hellion harass, if you do you will be ahead in expansions and you just need to be very careful to turret and block off with buildings until you got 3 running bases. If you get that far without losing all your workers you can wrangle air control from the other player with bio and good marine control or with going marauder viking and just massing more vikings or by going thor viking and microing the thors to hit the vikings while you kite backwards with your vikings. Its just, very very unforgiving.
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i feel like old school beta pure viking tanks would win against this
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With regards to using it in other MUs, I open 2 fact 1 SP against TvZ for the blue flame hellions, then transition into tanks afterwards. Stole it directly from this build, just don't need more then 1 SP for medis.
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Very well thought out opening. While it has its risks its almost ensured to do some dammage so long as you don't completely butcher your drop or lose a costly hellion for no reason early on. Someone used this against me on ladder a few games ago but made the mind numbing mistake of rallying his drop to a spot where I had had a pylon spotting the back of my main. If he had picked a less overused drop position it could have done some real dammage. But once again, very nice opening man.
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On February 17 2011 13:05 FODDER~ wrote:
Very well thought out opening. While it has its risks its almost ensured to do some dammage so long as you don't completely butcher your drop or lose a costly hellion for no reason early on. Someone used this against me on ladder a few games ago but made the mind numbing mistake of rallying his drop to a spot where I had had a pylon spotting the back of my main. If he had picked a less overused drop position it could have done some real dammage. But once again, very nice opening man.
pylon
isn't this a tvt build?
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Ok, I just tried this. Not the exact build, but something similar (2 fact preignitor hellion drop into 2 starport banshee/viking)
Oh man is it fun to do.
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On February 17 2011 11:23 gogatorsfoster wrote:
i feel like old school beta pure viking tanks would win against this
Yes.
People who say this build is borderline broken are wrong. It's not a bad build at all but it has plenty of weaknesses.
I played vs pokebunny the other night in a tournament and lost when he did the build vs me (first time I played vs the build, I know he's been one of the pioneers at testing this build out at top levels) I ended up overproducing tanks because I was so worried about blueflame. I watched the rep and worked out a counter I thought would be best which I tried tonight when I ran into him on ladder and it worked fairly easily.
I opened a variation of a build qxc uses alot, 10depot, 11gas opening really fast reactor hellions into 2port banshee/viking, the only real hard part is defending blueflame drop without any tanks. isn't that bad if you wall front with a bunker and keep units near or in the mineral line, since you make one less gas production building and typically should have a much faster reactor you should be able to outproduce vikings rather easily even if you lose scvs to blueflame drop. Also you will have 2-3 vikings pretty quick typically might be even to pickoff or intercept incoming medivac.
I don't really execute too crisply here (lose units carelessly, late cloak) but generally this should counter the build pretty hard in my opinion:
rep: http://replayfu.com/r/GdpnWr
there really is no good answer to pure viking with this build other than relying that you will have more vikings. Unless you push out a tank somewhere.
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i lost today useing this build, definatly bad play on my part. But he got 2 pretty quick thors out. and had a bunch of marines/rauder mix with repair scvs for the thors.
me noticing the thors a bit late, i was only able to get out 1 BC.... thors definatly make this build difficult.
mind u im a silver player, but as of late i have not lost with this build yet. prolly like 10-1. With this one loss.
at the end of the battle he had maybe 2 rauders and 1 thor left, I was trying my best to get his scvs with the hellions. But those thors made quick work of them. I think if i would have had maybe a couple more banshees i woulda won. I hate repair scvs hha damn
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"This is not the type of build you read about, try, and immediately win all your games with."
For me it has been pretty close to that haha  . Thank you so much iEchoic. TvT was my worst matchup by far and was one of the reasons I played random. Now im terran all the way and I don't dread TvT like I used to.
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On February 17 2011 13:29 LuckyFool wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2011 11:23 gogatorsfoster wrote:
i feel like old school beta pure viking tanks would win against this Yes. People who say this build is borderline broken are wrong. It's not a bad build at all but it has plenty of weaknesses. I played vs pokebunny the other night in a tournament and lost when he did the build vs me (first time I played vs the build, I know he's been one of the pioneers at testing this build out at top levels) I ended up overproducing tanks because I was so worried about blueflame. I watched the rep and worked out a counter I thought would be best which I tried tonight when I ran into him on ladder and it worked fairly easily. I opened a variation of a build qxc uses alot, 10depot, 11gas opening really fast reactor hellions into 2port banshee/viking, the only real hard part is defending blueflame drop without any tanks. isn't that bad if you wall front with a bunker and keep units near or in the mineral line, since you make one less gas production building and typically should have a much faster reactor you should be able to outproduce vikings rather easily even if you lose scvs to blueflame drop. Also you will have 2-3 vikings pretty quick typically might be even to pickoff or intercept incoming medivac. I don't really execute too crisply here (lose units carelessly, late cloak) but generally this should counter the build pretty hard in my opinion: rep: http://replayfu.com/r/GdpnWrthere really is no good answer to pure viking with this build other than relying that you will have more vikings. Unless you push out a tank somewhere.
this is all correct. pure viking is the first thing ive seen where i literally feel like theres nothing i can do, even if ahead in economy.
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On February 18 2011 06:15 Pokebunny wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2011 13:29 LuckyFool wrote:On February 17 2011 11:23 gogatorsfoster wrote:
i feel like old school beta pure viking tanks would win against this Yes. People who say this build is borderline broken are wrong. It's not a bad build at all but it has plenty of weaknesses. I played vs pokebunny the other night in a tournament and lost when he did the build vs me (first time I played vs the build, I know he's been one of the pioneers at testing this build out at top levels) I ended up overproducing tanks because I was so worried about blueflame. I watched the rep and worked out a counter I thought would be best which I tried tonight when I ran into him on ladder and it worked fairly easily. I opened a variation of a build qxc uses alot, 10depot, 11gas opening really fast reactor hellions into 2port banshee/viking, the only real hard part is defending blueflame drop without any tanks. isn't that bad if you wall front with a bunker and keep units near or in the mineral line, since you make one less gas production building and typically should have a much faster reactor you should be able to outproduce vikings rather easily even if you lose scvs to blueflame drop. Also you will have 2-3 vikings pretty quick typically might be even to pickoff or intercept incoming medivac. I don't really execute too crisply here (lose units carelessly, late cloak) but generally this should counter the build pretty hard in my opinion: rep: http://replayfu.com/r/GdpnWrthere really is no good answer to pure viking with this build other than relying that you will have more vikings. Unless you push out a tank somewhere. this is all correct. pure viking is the first thing ive seen where i literally feel like theres nothing i can do, even if ahead in economy.
It makes sense too, you definitely need to keep air control to work this build properly.
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Isn't the early raven (or a 3rd starport, if you're ahead in economy) supposed to help you make his fight for air dominance harder? I only get a raven if I suspect banshee play, though.
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If they go pure viking nothing is stopping you from switching to tanks (you already have two factories, spend extra mins taking an expansion, and denying theirs. The only way they can match viking production is if they 1base very hard, so they shouldn't have an economic advantage on you.
I haven't addressed 2-port mass viking that much because it's such an absolutely shitty general build and loses to every other strategy in the game. But in this case, it might be necessary to adapt - although I haven't run into it enough to really know. Last time someone tried it on me I just landed my vikings, made tanks, expoed, denied theirs, and won. If they switch production, you can just as easily resume it and re-lift your vikings.
The bigger problem seems to be them making a ton of vikings before you scout it. Usually if people go 3x viking immediately my defender's advantage allows me to defend fine (by time they move across the map, my extra production time gives me the edge on viking count). However, if you're not aware that they're doing vikings and they surprise you with them you can most definitely lose quickly.
If you actually look at the game state, you'd have one player with a few more vikings (which can often be mitigated by time they move across the map) and one player with blue-flame tech (which is the best mineral dump you can get as it kills all other mineral dumps), and an additional factory. It doesn't seem like an effective counter to me.
P.S. nice quote Alaric :D
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2 port viking sounds like you're going back to the beta style of 50 vikings and 3 tanks, which then gets countered by every modern build that utilizes marines. Funny how it's all full-circle now.
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What happens when they turret up there main & nat ?
Do i push and take gold as my nat?
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I think experimenting with bunkers could be an interesting solution to both defend and attack against this build. Think about it: well placed bunkers and supply depots can protect against hellions drop. They are also great against banshees and vikings. So the three main units used in iEchoic build can be "countered" by marines in a bunker. Remember there is an upgrade to be able to get more units in a bunker that could be useful here.
This is theory for now, but if you could somehow enclose your opponent in his own base, with bunkers/marines and a few thors for support, you should be able to get an economic edge.
I'll experiment with this next time I encounter this build. Right now I only used bunkers for defensive purpose against it(check out my replay on page 28) and it worked great, next step is offensive bunkering.
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On February 18 2011 06:19 Alaric wrote:
Isn't the early raven (or a 3rd starport, if you're ahead in economy) supposed to help you make his fight for air dominance harder? I only get a raven if I suspect banshee play, though.
Yeah, why can't you just pop a raven if you see mass vikings?
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I practised this strategy quite a bit, but I have to say I simply find it too "exhausting". I don't feel like a typical barracks-tank-viking build is significantly inferior if played well – that means good positioning, not being too vulnerable to banshees and more focussed on marauders than on marines. And sometimes it's simply not that easy to scout your opponents exact build, and then you're in a really bad position. It's nice for variety's sake, but it seems that using tanks is generally safer.
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On February 18 2011 07:42 KaveX wrote:
I practised this strategy quite a bit, but I have to say I simply find it too "exhausting". I don't feel like a typical barracks-tank-viking build is significantly inferior if played well – that means good positioning, not being too vulnerable to banshees and more focussed on marauders than on marines. And sometimes it's simply not that easy to scout your opponents exact build, and then you're in a really bad position. It's nice for variety's sake, but it seems that using tanks is generally safer.
This is my take on it:
There seems to be some scary points when your enemy pushes at you if they went mainly bio or tank/bio, where your banshees are too weak to fight them off, and the hellions aren't enough to kill off any marines which threaten the banshees.
This is where the micro comes in - if you can manage to sack all of your hellions and take out all of his marines, your banshees will clean up the rest eventually - you just need to make sure that not too much damage is done to you in the process of cleaning the rest up.
When you've survived his push, his army is completely decimated, and you have complete air control..... It'll take a while for him to make a new army, giving you time to get an economic advantage (if you didn't get a lot of scv kills already) and start adding BCs for their tankability. And once a few BCs are on the field, Yamato can become a useful ability.
Your opponent should never be able to take a 3rd easily (even taking his nat should be a struggle). You can force him to split his army by harassing any opening that presents itself, either with hellion drops or banshees, or force a shit-ton of defenses, which takes away from his army count anyways. At that point, you can use Yamato and sacking hellions to kill his ground forces at a specific area that threaten banshees, and use the banshees to clean the rest up or at least force him back.
And viking/bc is pretty much the ultimate TvT unit combination imo. You're well on your way to it, rather than trying to figure out when you should transition into it, or stick with the same strat longer.
I really like this style - it's a lot like the standard ZvT in BW. It's incredibly dependent on harassing, and it's very difficult to execute to even a moderate degree, but when you have the mechanics for executing it at a very basic level, it is very powerful. And a lot of fun.
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Just been beaten by a 2 ports cloaked banshees. In fact he didn't attack me, but rather used the banshee to try and defend himself against the harass (I probably shouldn't have tried to get him). Since he had two starports earlier than me and I was forced to get a raven out, he used a small timing window where he could outviking me before I got a reactor and took out my vikings and the raven. It was basically gg from here. But I think I would have won, had his banshees not been right here when I dropped (I couldn't contain him once his vikings were out, so using the threat to prevent the banshees from coming out was pointless as he just had to prevent runby from his ramp then).
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EPT
