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On February 03 2011 05:54 iEchoic wrote:Show nested quote +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.
It is true they are slow but against Thors, you can Yamato them and then focus them down with banshees or ground vikings quite easily.
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I like it. I do have two questions:
How would you respond if someone opened with a 1 Marine 3 Marauder poke at 5:00?
In your game against Jimmy, after your second drop he has about twenty infantry units and you have basically zero military. Is that just a lesson that you have to be careful about your drop play? How would you react if he counterattacked?
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I watched the three replays in the OP and i have to ask: What is the point of building more hellions and transition into banshees after you killed a ton of SCV's with the first hellion drop (or possibly the second)?
For example the replay against dayvie. You killed so many of his SCV's that it wouldn't have mattered what strategy or units you used after that point, you're ahead and you should win. The banshees were only used in the very last battle and at that point the game was already won. Since you have the economic advantage, why not transition into a more conventional build and outproduce him?
As for the ThisIsJimmy replay, there wasn't that much economic damage, you were reasonably behind in army and only barely ahead in worker count after the 2nd hellion drop. But ThisIsJimmy built 40 marines and 3 marauders and obviously got roasted by the hellions. Isnt that just an army composition 'error' on his part?
I dont want to criticize the build since i'm nowhere near the skill level of the OP, but aren't there less risky ways to win after a successful blue flame drop? And if the drop isnt that successful, why not just build a "normal army" and make use of the blue flame hellion as a drop/harass option instead of using it as the main army component?
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United States17042 Posts
I think that iEchoic is one of the major reasons why T is imba.
Very nice guide and thread ^^
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Argh, thanks so much Echoic! loved your hellion aswell, defintely gonna spam this build aswell. I can easily beat masters Toss en Zerg, but i get roflstomped by plat T lol
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On February 03 2011 06:03 noD wrote: 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 ....
I think it's kind of shown in the replay vs ThisIsJimmy: several times when he attacks, Echoic focuses on his marines to give room to his banshees (and because well, they suck against marauders), and the remaining marauders, although killed in the end, do have time to kill stuff every time. It's not that much since they attack scvs, against which (who? whom?) their dps isn't stellar, but I guess it could be problematic with larger forces in range of your tech buildings/supplies.
I don't really think that mass hellions do fare that well against large bio armies. While playing that build, I'd rather force skirmishes frequently, in order to prevent the opponent from getting large numbers of vikings or tanks, and if both players have lesser armies, then it's harder to attack with a sizable force and have some defense home.
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Cool. I really hate the stalemates that occur in TvT with Tank / Marine / Viking mirror matches. Going to watch all the replays and try it out tomorrow 
Thanks for putting it together!
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On February 03 2011 04:38 Alaric wrote: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. 
APM is probably the most overrated stat in the game. I regularly play people with 150+ apm that are not microing a single unit in battle or make horrible macro screwups. I'm not saying that i don't but i'm pretty sure my measly 80 apm are actually used efficiently. It's not about the amount but rather about pressing the right button at the right time.
Back to topic: After trying out the build a couple of times i'm really intrigued. It "feels" really unstable at times - i constantly think "if he pushes now i'm dead" - but it works regardless. Good job, iEchoic !
But gave me serious trouble though was this one guy who played bio all game long. Even though i always moped up his marines and got to work with the banshees, he still killed a lot of scvs with each push as my banshees slowly gnawed on the marauders. So wave after wave of suicide infantry finally ran me over. Might just be my poor execution though.
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Thanks man ur awesome I've had lots of success with your TvP build and now im gonna try this one because i hate tank/viking wars in tvt
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Awsome guide iEchoic! It's really nice of you to share the awsome builds with the community instead of abusing them on the ladder like I would have done ^_^
I'm very curious about how the build would fare against marauder heavy bio with viking support? I know you will have more vikings since you double port but if he places the vikings behind the bio your banshees will get shot down right? And to kill his vikings with yours you'd have to engage them near his marines?
It's all about micro I know, but I don't feel the ThisIsJimmy replay showed proper bio play against this build (not that i could do it better)...
cheers mate and thanks again for sharing!!
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This build is very well designed, and works flawlessly. That is why I hate it No offense to iEchoic you created and amazing build. Unfortunately it has also completely ruined TvT.
While the build works it plays very gimmicky, and at this point I can not figure out any viable way to fight this that does not set you back. So basically in the current TvT metagame you HAVE to do this build now or you will lose to the other guy doing this build. My last five games have been absolutely retarded TvT's where both players kill each others workers then it turns into a base race for the first person to get a viking advantage and plant the vikings over his opponents starports.
There is just no way to defend against the mass hellions you pretty much have to lose all your workers, and you have to counter by making the opponent lose all his workers. Hopefully this build will be solved down the road and disappear but right now TvT just got dumbed down from being a long matchup of precise positioning to a who can get one more viking faster and win before getting a second base.
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Haven't seen this before but how do you deal with thor expand? Your expansion is stupid late in this build, you don't have tanks or marauders (the only counters to thors before BC) and you'll be significantly behind in economy if you try to transition to 1 base BC.
I assume you rely on hellion drop/banshee/hellion runby into natural to deal damage to any type of expand build. That being said, thors will beat any early attack so your only option is going to be to expand yourself while harassing.
Other than that it looks pretty solid for a 1 base opening. Seems strong enough to stop any allin and punish most FEs.
I don't play terran anymore but in my experience even in a straight banshee build you can have a thor about the time the banshee hits your base. Same with hellion drop. I think perhaps it might come down to micro/base layout.
In any case, when I get the time I might watch some reps, but I don't have a big investment into learning a MU I don't play anymore =/
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Tried it out, beat a tank marine push, it definitely feels like playing on a knifes edge. Opponent responded with turtling and I expanded like crazy and transitioned into traditional tank/viking rather then into BCs. I think its probably a situational decision. (if your comfortable with traditional TvT)
The hilarious part is judging when its the right time to run like 10 hellions straight into their base ignore all their units and just kill all the scvs. Reminds me of a funny all-in I used to use occasionally where you just go for fast preignite and a second factory with reactor, pump out 6-10 hellions then run into their main and kill all the scvs.
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You're a fucking clown
User was warned for this post
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Actually the best defence against blue flame hellions are blue flame hellions. If i see him go for a blue flame drop i rally my hellions to a point inside my base. Once i see him land i go over and kill his dropped force, before i move out.
Since hellions are light units they kill each other absurdly fast, but the defender should have 2 more (or 4 depending on flight time).
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Hey iechoic im the guy ealier in the thread saying I wouldnt be able to pull it off but I tried it out and dang nice build and concept man. won 3 outta my 4 tvt games with it and seeing as before I never really won tvt I was super impressed with myself, helping me with my control and I feel so cool doing this instead of the standard build, I dont use on all maps though but the maps i do it works really well.
seems like when I play it has alot of power but it also is kinda fragile....I love it!
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Wow. I just tried it, and it's really mechanically demanding. I wasn't really on spot with my hotkeys and I let him siege contain me for a short while (didn't have a banshee yet, and since he was random I put my first supply at my ramp in case I'd have to wall off). The unit control is really important in order not to let your banshees get hit before you have some. He went pure marines/tanks after he saw I'd have air superiority, and I carelessly lost most of my hellions before I could kill all of his marines leaving my banshees vulnerable.
One thing that really threw me off was my group setup. I'm so unused to such a weird army composition, I think I sent the wrong group in one or two times, but damn, that was fun!
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That was a funny game, unfortunately I had no idea it was Drewbie so I was fucking around and trying to get a million BCs. Pretty obvious it would have worked, though.
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