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On February 02 2011 17:32 Kreb wrote:Seems neat. How often does it get to the point where you get BCs out to combat thors? I could see this beating heavy bio play easily, as well as standard tank/viking. But what if a tank/viking player switches to thor/viking instead (shouldnt be hard, he should have the correct buildings for it out already...)? Thor/viking is pretty much anti any kind of air build and trying to beat that with air just seems suicide. And it seems much easier for him to get the 2-4 thors needed to combat viking/banshee than it seems for you to get the tech labs and fusion core + the BCs built (BC build time is  ) to actually counter his thors. But even with BCs out, viking/thors should do a good job vs viking/BC because it should be pretty much impossible to keep viking superiority vs thor/viking.
Multiple ravens with PDD. Vikings are kinda slow firing but dual shot so they drain PDD at average rate Thors however have an attack rate the same as a seiged tank. So slow as shit (albeit quad shot) so you are going to block a TON of shots with multiple PDDs enough for you to win the engagement.
Btw does anyone know if a landed viking will draw the thor's fire so it doesn't attack air? (you can target fire but the idea may be useful.
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Sounds interesting. Gonna have to give this a try. It sounds like it gets very messy if your opponent is opening Thor, though. Also if anyone actually used a ghost opening that would be trouble.
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On February 02 2011 16:02 iEchoic wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2011 15:53 avilo wrote:
I copied it from playing "maker" though on NA server, whoever that is. He just literally massed hellions, banshees, and a couple of marines here and there.
I don't think it is an optimal build to do though. And standard marine/tank/medivac with upgrades will just straight out beat it with solid play imo. Heh, I played maker with it, almost posted the replay of it but didn't. Kind of like a game of telephone but with starcraft builds instead of sentences. I've played a lot of good terrans and played vs a lot of marine/tank/medivac and still win a great majority of games. So I'd just have to disagree on the other part.
Well, if there's one thing this strategy is really good against it's FE builds that go for mass bio with no tanks, or late tanks.
I think I lost to maker when I was playing around with 3-4 rax all bio builds, and this mass hellion/banshee pretty much rapes that hard...unless they manage to block every single banshee and every single hellion with no damage taken, then they'll have already built up enough marine/marauders to out DPS you.
I don't agree that "all" compositions can be beaten with this though.
It's a good build regardless. Nice guide 
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This might be a good surprise build but i cannot see it being solid. I have never lost against mass air in TvT. A mix of Marine, Thor and Viking just stomp mass air play so hard. The build kinda relies on the opponent loosing a lot of SCVs and having a semi-bad composition, no?
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Oh god, please not another TvT opening i need to account for :O
On another note, it seems quite interesting and well thought out. I guess i'll give it a try the next time i'm really frustrated about TvT.
One thing i noticed about the comparison to muta/ling/baneling. It's actually more powerful than that. Against m/l/b i can siege up the zerg and not worry much about harassment as long as i got a couple turrets for the mutas. Against this TvT strat i can't do that as hellions will rape my base if i don't dedicate actual units to battle them.
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On February 02 2011 19:09 Zaixer wrote:
This might be a good surprise build but i cannot see it being solid. I have never lost against mass air in TvT. A mix of Marine, Thor and Viking just stomp mass air play so hard. The build kinda relies on the opponent loosing a lot of SCVs and having a semi-bad composition, no?
yea, you are right... this build is good at getting 1 win on the ladder and then never playing vs the guy again, its not solid, its super gimmicky/cheesy and it just loses if they get 1 marauder + 1 viking ? or 1 tank + 1 viking? -_-;
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On February 02 2011 19:09 Zaixer wrote:
This might be a good surprise build but i cannot see it being solid. I have never lost against mass air in TvT. A mix of Marine, Thor and Viking just stomp mass air play so hard. The build kinda relies on the opponent loosing a lot of SCVs and having a semi-bad composition, no?
It is a very solid and well thought out build that requires a ton of unit control to work properly, but it is very effective. Watch the game against perplexity to get an idea of what ends up happening as the game progresses. The execution and unit control from both players is not the most optimal and tip top level, but it is still executed pretty well. Vikings are nullified by the fact that he will have point defense drones and more vikings than you (this is always the number one focus of his build is to have more vikings than you). The amount of hellions that he has towards the end is mind boggling (3 reactor factory), so marines get roasted almost instantly, even though his control led them to being a-clicked and only hitting the marines in front, rather than manually running them up to the rines for full splash damage. This gets rid of the only real DPS terran has. The replay shows the potential this build has.
Oh, and BCs become insanely powerful with this mix, even when he forgot to upgrade the armor on them. Marines were at +2 weapons, which is still only a measly 5 damage. It looks like if he had gotten his armory and upgrades started earlier (why not, you are going mass air!), then he could have been taking even less damage. It sounds like a wacky build, but when you see it in action, you can only sit back and appreciate the though process of why it works.
Once again, I recommend the replay against Perplexity from the replay pack.
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I'll be sure to try this vs all my Terran mates who complain that my tank/marine/banshee build is "FFS Thats so bullshit", I hope it works and they stop complaining that if you dont use tanks in TvT you lose >.< (btw were all scrubs). It's probably beyond my skill level, seems very micro intensive, and scouting is definitly a weakness for me, thanks for the post! <3 £>
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Man, this build really tests my ability to multitask. The problem I tend to have is I'm not sure how to make hellions cost effective. The double port and heavy hellion production allow me to drop a lot, and it's not that easy to defend against unless you turtle very hard. The problem is engagement on some open battlefield. I might have 10-11 hellions, but when I run them into the enemy to try and reduce the marine count hellions just die so quickly that I'm not sure if they were that effective. I actually feel that I could just 1-a this army and do alright because the hellions pretty much die instantly anyway.
They barely get 2 shots off. I try to micro but I go in, all my most of them fire out of like 9 of them, I move back and have already lost like 3-4, then go again and that's that. I still win, but I feel like it's mainly because I just continuously blue-flame drop all over and take out so many scv's.
Also, what is really nice is that even though I mass banshees many players don't build that many vikings because they see my double port and realize they are already behind in the viking count so they just give up.
So, any way to make hellions more effective? Send them in in small groups from multiple sides? <= kinda obvious but the hellions range isn't great so they will take a lot of damage. Also, should I manually target groups of marines or what? I often will take my hellions and just attack queue a bunch of marines in the center so that they should all die.
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Thanks for this build I actually dreamt about it yeasterday, never managed to get it work in the dream though, we'll see how it goes today
/Morris
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Very nice build.
Got any replays where you lose to a certain composition mid/lategame? I find losing replays are sometimes more telling what comes to weaknesses in a build. I cant really think of anything that would demolish this offhand, besides maybe some thor-play.
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Have been trying out a very similar opening. I stopped using it though, since banshees and hellions feel like such fragile units against standard playstyle, or rather against rines with tank support. I might not be dropping enough though, dunno will try your BO out, it's prob more refined than mine was.
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Tried the build a few times, so far it seems very nice if rather risky in some aspects (same as Muta Ling i guess).
Lost one game to a standard marine/tank push through the scrap station corridor. couldn't find any angle to decimate his marines before he pushed up to my base, so my banshees were too exposed when i tried to mop him up.
Also lost another game on LT due to a "surprise" Thor.
Be very carefull if you reach 6+ banshees. Nothing screams out: "Build thors" more than such a flock of air units. Magic box sadly doesn't work as well as it does for mutas, so his 2 Thors destroyed my air force.
After that he was in my base before i could get BCs out.
So facit: if the game goes long enough and you reach the point where he has turtled full mode on 2 base (a pretty common "stage" in my experience) start building BCs and work heavily on updating them.
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Thanks a lot for the build order! Gonna practice this and then try it out i reckon. Love when people try to come up with different build orders than the norm
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Solid it may not be but it certainly counters alot of builds being used right now.
First Sky Mech build that works well enough to be a build imo.
Thor is a problem though but remember the thor just spearheads the push the damage will always come from marines i say you should be able to roast the bio units with hellions and then run away while cloaked banshees get their shots in.
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Finished watching all the replays, and I have to say that I loved the way you harassed Baz, retreating if you didn't feel you could do damage, dropping al game through with a single medivac. Also, how you used banshees as DTs to delay a thor-marines-marauders attack until your opponent got enough scans (then none, luckily for him you were then short on banshees), or to bait the marines in the main to roast them with a hellion drop.
Do you have replays on metalopolis cross positions or maps like Shakuras Plateau? It looks like you decided to go for this build anyway before knowing you were in close air positions, but I'd like to know how it fares when drop routes aren't as easy (and short).
I did like the replay against ThisIsJimmy, which demonstrates the importance of putting the opponent on his backfoot. At one point shortly after your first hellion drop and your double expand, he had a vastly superior army that would have been able to destroy yours with ease (something like 15+ marines and 3 marauders to 1 medivac, 3 banshees and 3-4 vikings) but he never tried to attack.
I guess that because he feared you might hellion drop again, since he had turrets against banshees, and would only need to skip 2 MULEs to get some precious scans in case you upgraded cloak. Considering how you didn't have any hellion at that moment, it feels like what allowed you not to be killed is the threat of harassment rather than actuel poking and prodding.
I also liked how he took advantage of the necessary sacrifice of your vikings to try to put pressure back on you with drops (though a bad positioning on the last one allowed you to roast all his marines in one go, between 2 structures).
I noticed you rely a lot on supply drops, too. Is it a trend in your play in general (one would said a defect to work on), or do you feel like you just don't need as much mineral as in bio builds and it allows you to concentrate more on unit control, specifically in this build?
Last funny thing was the amount of multitask and reactivity you showed while only having 80 apm. I have about as much myself but it clearly tells me there's a little too much spam since Im' not sure if I have the multitask to pull it off properly yet.
On February 02 2011 16:57 valheru wrote:
I know this is off topic but when I saw this post I had to comment.
Alaric (is that a HoMM 5 reference?) is what we call fucking awesome because he is admitting that he was wrong, thank you good sir for doing so.
Na, main username already taken, it's my alternate. Found it some 10 years ago in a spanish manual 10 years old itself, giving French-Spanish equivalents for first names (dunno why it was here, Alaric's written and pronounced the same in both languages ).
Anyway, it's more the strategy forum being polluted than myself being awesome. ^^'
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Really nice guide, it almost makes me want to play as terran. Now we just need to figure out a way to play zerg like terran!
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![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-185891.jpg)
Putting this here just because I was going to post anyway, so I figured why not.
First time trying it out was up against IGy 3100 Masters T ( in avilos division I think ). Just got back from class and read the thread, so I just winged it instead of following the build order (should have memorized the build order >_>) but its the same concept. Mistake list is huge, such as losing banshees trying to be cute, horrible macro, and of course, not doing the BO on point.
My question (and original intent from posting) is that if they do not try to contest your air or you at least have a firm grasp on it, why would you not just switch into BCS over banshees after like 3 bases anyway? Only thing that will stop the BCS is vikings and assuming you have air control, which apparently should be happening, then they would at the very least have to play catchup, which cannot be good for them. Was that the idea from the start, a gradual transition into BCS, or is that just the response for thors?
Edit: Also, petitioning for the renaming of the build to: "that iEchoic shit".
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On February 03 2011 05:44 PaleBlueDot wrote:
My question (and original intent from posting) is that if they do not try to contest your air or you at least have a firm grasp on it, why would you not just switch into BCS over banshees after like 3 bases anyway? Only thing that will stop the BCS is vikings and assuming you have air control, which apparently should be happening, then they would at the very least have to play catchup, which cannot be good for them. Was that the idea from the start, a gradual transition into BCS, or is that just the response for thors?
The only thing I don't like about BCs is their poor mobility. You lose a lot of your mobility advantage once you switch to BCs, which is fine if they're similarly limited (thors are slow) but can suck if they're going bio. It's debatable though, and I'm still unsure if battlecruisers are something I always want to transition into or not.
On February 03 2011 04:38 Alaric wrote:I noticed you rely a lot on supply drops, too. Is it a trend in your play in general (one would said a defect to work on), or do you feel like you just don't need as much mineral as in bio builds and it allows you to concentrate more on unit control, specifically in this build? Last funny thing was the amount of multitask and reactivity you showed while only having 80 apm. I have about as much myself but it clearly tells me there's a little too much spam since Im' not sure if I have the multitask to pull it off properly yet.
Just bad macro, some of these replays are from earlier when I was developing it and didn't have it really refined yet so I floated a lot and got supply blocked more. And the build takes a lot of micro so that diverted a lot of attention. Supply drop is generally not good.
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I will certainly test this later but for now 1 opening that i some time see in TvT (getting kind rare too) how do u deal with more marauders than marines ... tho banshees kill them they wreak kind some havok before dying ....
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EPT
