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I read this post yesterday but didn't really have anything to say, except that it looked awesome. Now I've given it a shot, and he's not kidding that this is quite a bit harder to do than either mass bio play, or the more typical tank/viking junk. I've tried it, and I didn't do so well.
I am a believer, however. I find this style of play has a lot more potential than either of those currently being used. It has even more mobility than bio without being as vulnerable to tanks, and it has only slightly less straight up firepower than a big ball of tanks would without sharing tanks' weaknesses.
The only thing that occurs to me that might be used to improve this build is very gradually incorporating an increasingly large raven fleet before you start making BC's. You only need one, maybe two ravens for detection. I propose getting several ravens as you have gas to spare at times when you do not need more vikings or more banshees, but don't want to start making BC's just yet. It seems that against an intelligent opponent you are going to be forced to bring out the BC's since they will get thors, which fare very well against every unit you are fielding before the BC's pop. Trying to fight you for viking superiority is a terrible idea, you will win. Going mass marine against mass hellion is also a terrible idea. So the enemy will get thors, and you don't want to start making a lot of BC's until he does since this composition handles pretty much everything else very effectively. So if you have enough vikings to win the air battle, enough hellions to toast his marines, and sufficient banshees, it seems the best choice is to start spending gas on ravens to magnify the effectiveness of your existing units, until he starts getting thors.
When the thors start coming, you start making BC's. This is the point when the ravens start becoming showstoppers. Auto turrets give you land zoning without land units, or just harass if you can't commit yet. Point defense drone temporarily blocks ALL anti air in the entire game, except marines. And you also have seeker missile, which while not effective against many unit types, works very well against marines which would otherwise give a pure air force quite a hard time. Having the ravens lets your air units move about independently, whereas without them you would be constrained by where your hellions can move, and also drastically increases the survivability of your air units with PDD.
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I was about to say iechoic you shoulda had him man =(
not going to lie though I woulda expected you to have more add-ons early and to make ALOT more hellions then you did
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Great thread, really love the challenging mechanics that push my noobness to the test. I almost feel like a real SC2 player I will continue to follow your posts for more strats. thanks again.
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Been trying this build most of the day, I think what would help a little would be to hide the Factories out of usual scan range?
Hellions are fast so it's not like it matters where you place them in the base. But generally a lot of vets check the TL strategy area and they're going to know it's "this" specific build if they see Barracks Tech Lab with 2 Factories right next to each other.
Other than that, superb build, it works awesome.
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We get it you like pre-ignitor hellions >.<.
I've watched the replays and to be honest it's hard to judge the validity of a build when you incinerate at least half of someone's workers. The game is almost already won provided you don't forget to expand and keep pressure on.
I think if anything the ThisIsJimmy is probably the replay that exemplifies best what you are trying to do. In that replay I wouldn't call your hellion drop a success, you killed off a few workers but his cc already up helped him replenish. The damage done in the other two put the game entirely in your hands and let you do anything you wanted, to say that banshees/vikings were key to the victory I think is a bit of a misnomer.
You had a game against HasHe (was watching his stream) not too long ago in which you won because of the banshee after a serious base trade and your hellion drop. I don't know if this build was the brainchild of that match but that was a game in which you DID win due to hellions and banshees, but again, it was after significant damage done to his economy and constant pressure on your end.
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Just to throw this out there: magic-boxed banshees actually do decently against thors. Two banshees (each of which are exactly half the mineral and gas cost of a thor) will take a thor down to 26/400 health before getting taken down. With +1 to air armor, one banshee survives with 52/140 health. With +1 to air weapons, the thor and second banshee take each other out.
Not as efficient as a battlecruiser, but not horrible by any means.
Also, very much looking forward to trying this - loved the iEchoic TvP build.
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I just spent about 3 hours doing this (from scratch) with about 4 TvT in that time, all with this.
Set aside that I can't macro worth a damn (and get blood-drunk with the first blue flame hellion drop/banshee harass), it was as advertised: an really fun diversion from the standard race to tank-viking supremacy. I went 3-1 vs. low plat/high gold which is where I live now and probably forever.
I disagree with the notion that this is "hard mode". The mobility of your army is so great, as you said this is what slingblingmuta must feel like, except I get mules. Maybe it's because I came in as a Sky Terran afficionado, but zooming all over the map with total control, constantly poking at the edges of his base was a nice change from worrying if my tank line was optimal.
I lost to what seemed to me was s 2-Thor marine timing attack around 10 min on Steppes. I just didn't have quite enough "stuff" to hold it off, but it was probably just my inability to produce efficiently.
I'm curious to see if this really does anything to the metagame. Wouldn't that be something if siege tanks were the new reapers, outmoded and neglected?
Thanks iEchoic...you're a solid strategist!
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On February 02 2011 16:56 iEchoic wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2011 16:23 Arkless wrote:
Any traditional 1,1,1 build would destroy this. Both Baz and Poke went 1/1/1, watch the replays in the replay pack. Show nested quote +On February 02 2011 16:25 Duldonkulus wrote:
How well do upgrades play a part in this build? It seemed to me from the replays you float a good bit of resources, could you not just dump it into 1-2 armories? Yeah, I would like to get more upgrades, and have been trying to work that in more.
These games are horrible examples. I wanna see it vs tank viking, or more competetive matches where you winning isn't hugely determines on ur opponents mistake.
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On February 02 2011 09:12 Antisocialmunky wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2011 09:11 iEchoic wrote:On February 02 2011 09:09 Antisocialmunky wrote:
Random question:
What happens if you play against this strategy with this strategy? Imagine a nuclear holocaust where all people on both sides die, and you have to continually rebuild from scratch. Basically that. It's the only scenario where having more hellions is better than more vikings because hellions kill other hellions better than banshees do, and even if you have banshees you're not going to stop hellions from killing all your SCVs. Although you can go for air control and do banshees. You basically have to decide to control one or the other and see how it pans out. I've only played against it once or twice (vs teammates) so I don't know for sure. This sounds like Broodwar ZvZ. What have you done? PS. Also, why does ThisIsJimmy appear so often on the losing side of replays? I feel bad for him sometimes. :-\
Haha I must defend myself. That loss was the 1st time I had seen the build. It is actually pretty good and you can definitely make it work. I'm not sure if it is really strong or weak against any build but the advantage of it is that you can do a lot of worker harass throughout the game with very little units.
I play a lot of ladder and lose a lot which is why you see me losing so much lol. Here is another replay of me NOT losing against this build even when getting behind early...
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-186039.jpg)
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On February 03 2011 16:46 Vezex wrote:Tried this build/style tonight. Its ok, but you really need to get on 3 bases to be able to afford BCs and there is a a big timing where he can just run you over. Not saying it isn't good, but once people catch on this style its only going to work on certain maps in certain postions. Def a good build/style to learn to play though and I appreciate you posting this. BTW like i said earlier, you lose to a thor repair rush, I played against some friends and none of us can figure out how to stop it with this builds opening 
i think as long as you scout the armory you should just cancel your ports and build 3 bunkers at your ramp and resume marine production. the hellions chew through the repairing scvs, and the rest is easy. i've beaten proxy repaired thor even without the hellions to kill the scvs. you could probably add siege tanks for extra dps vs the thor. i'm not really sure you're supposed to stop the thor drop variation with this opening though because you just don't have enough marines to do anything.
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Very nice read and strategy. Had a look at the replays and they seem quite solid to hold off any early aggression and do decent amounts of economic damage. Personally, I hate hellion drops especially if they're blue flame and I have to run my scvs while my army is about to push out! I think I could use the blue flame drop as an opener in to tanks and vikings (I just prefer tanks & vikings) and open in to an expansion.
I just have a few comments. Later in the first game against Thisisjimmy, in battles you barely came up on top with just 2 banshees & 4 vikings alive to the MMM ball. I think Thisisjimmy commited to staying MMM for too long while you are free to tech. In my opinion, the success of this build heavily relies on doing a lot of economic damage early on to freely expand and turn it in to a macro game. Otherwise I think tank viking play will come on top (simply because tanks are armored and hellions can't do any dps against them and a few vikings will give you air superiority). I would like to test this strategy out so if anyone would like to vs my standard opening please pm me.
VTEC.896 (NA)
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United States7483 Posts
Day9 featured a game with oGsTheSTC vs. Select where TheSTC opened with hellion viking and won the game. He didn't stay pure hellion air like you are advocating, but it turned out to be an extremely strong opener.
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Very interesting build! Kudos to you.
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As a possible improvement to this build (possible, read that word god-dammit).
Remember that awesome Jinro v MC game (go Jinro!) where Jinro went his simian mech style? He didn't go pure mech at the begining he had a reactor rax, since opening with pure mech kinda dies rather often.
Since alot of people have been asking about early marauder pressure I think the reactor rax would fix that problem.
The repercussions would be a slightly later blue flame drop (sucks mins and reactor costs 50 gas) and banshees and the flow-on affects of such (also not sure if you can support it all but you can later gift the reactor away later).
It would be better if you could use the reactor rax thing as a response to early pressure, but early pressure (non-cheese) is often difficult to scout and reactors take an age to build, so the response idea isn't that great. Maybe if you just want to play it safe get the reactor.
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I dont see why this cant be used against other races, example Toss. Both marines and toss have a ranged unit who will hit ur helions when u drop anyways. Plus the raven u get out will be useful for obs hunting also with ur wriath!
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I use a non-standard opening in TvT that i came up with to stop myself getting run over early game, basically i'd have three reapers in your base at around the time your first helion was pushing out, and i just dont see how you could possibly hold it off with this build. I usually manage to kill a good number of workers and scout the entire base before the reapers die, and they only usually die to a tank/marauder. I cant see 2 marines and a helion holding it off.
(the build also gets a tank / marauder combo to my mineral line in time to stop any sort of blue flame drop so counter attacking is out)
edit: i should clarify that I love the unit composition of your build, and it would be awesome to see it more widely used. I'm just not very fond of the opening
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The key to beating this type of composition is marauders with concussive shells. These, plus marines, kill helions and stop them from toasting your marine force, which then lets you kill the air force.
I played iEchoic while he was doing this build and beat it with Marine/Marauder/Thor/Viking.
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Hello guys,
I tested it yesturday and i found a big problem (cloacked banshees) the raven comes to late and you have to wait the first viking to kill it (because we just have two marines) and i think that give an opponent's window for like 30 secondes (especially on air clospos like LT, scrap, metalo) to kill all your csv... I tested it like 10 times and lost against all the banshees opening... What about that?
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would this strat not work well against zerg?
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EPT
