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Hey all
I've been having some difficulty recently verse zerg doing bling bust, followed up with heavy muta harrass and millions of lings and blings.
My standard BO is 2 rax fe, with lots of early marine pressure, followed by a tank push with 4-5 tanks, 1-2 medivacs and a heap of upgraded marines.
I've been winning about 50/50, but I'm getting really bored of it, plus I'm going up against Diamond leaguers who execute the zerg build very well, and I find it exremely difficult to win at all.
I usually find that once my FE is finished, i can' place it down straight away as there are a bunch of blings and lings outside my door. That my early marine harrass is pretty well useless after the 6 min mark, because 1 bling can take out 5million marines. Then they just out expand and do 300 food push.
What alternatives are there. I've heard about the helion thor build. Is it effective?
I really need to figure this out as I seem to be playing against zerg 8 out of 10 games at the moment. I think Blizzard is playing with me 
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Apart from the usual "we want replays" ... if you play 2rax fe, your expo should be ready, landing, and defended when zerg has banes anyway. You don´t want to overcommit with your first marines... if you see zerg building a ton of lings/early banes/spines, sing a joyful song, be happy that he has less drones than he could have, retreat, and secure your expo. You are now at least even, if not ahead in eco.
After that its mostly dependend on what zerg is doing...is he going for heavy aggression with low eco ? bunker up, get as much tanks as possible, and postpone a third for a moment. Is he harassing with mutas ? secure your bases with good turret placement, get a few thors (not too many), and leap yourself to a save 3rd yourself. With your 3rd secured, dropping often works well even with mutas on the map, as long as you are a) dropping 2-3 positions at once and b) do so when the mutas are near your base, trying to find an opening.
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You want to Siege your tanks out of their vision. Then STIM and run at them with your marines, when the Bligs roll toward your Marine ball run back to your tank line and the blings should all but die. I like to throw down a 2nd and even a 3rd factory after I expand and Add some Hellions and a Thor or 2 to my Marine/Tank/Medivac army.
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Thors. Tanks. Marines > Ling, Baneling, Mutalisk.
It's the most frustrating thing to have to run through tanks, and Thors to kill the Marines with your ground units because the insane DPS on Marines.
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Marine/Tank/Thor. Proper unit placement and seiging. Snipe creep tumours, try to kill his army off of creep. Make sure you're not just attacking into banelings with marines, and hoping the tanks will finish them off before they connect with you ball of marines. You're going to have to stim and run behind tanks/thors so that either the zerg player loses most/all of his banelings to your tank fire, or a+moves them into your thor/tank, leaving little banelings left for the marines to finish up.
You should put up a replay, since you'll get more specific advice.
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Seriously, read the Laws, and then post a replay.
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Wait...so you're winning 50% of the time? Doesn't that mean the system is working and you're placed where you should be?
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with Thors. Getting a few to defend your base while you push, or to add to your pushing army are always a great idea against Zerg. Contrary to popular Terran belief, magic boxing is not easy, and it greatly reduces the mobility of the mutalisks. If you surround your Thors with marines, and have them stand in the field of sieged tanks, then you have quite a nasty composition. If you're that afraid of banelings, and your tanks/thors aren't enough to shield your marines, get some marauders to act as meat shields.
Two rax FE with good bunker/marine pushing at the beginning is quite difficult for a Zerg to defend, and forces the Zerg to get a third much earlier than they'd like, leaving them extremely vulnerable.
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Here is how to solve your problem but you'll need a decent micro.
===>First, Reactor for barrack. Second, the building that make hellion. Third, switch the hellion building with barrack. Just spam as much Hellions as you can. Move out and kill all speedling. While killing speedling, add starport and use barrack to make a techlab. Switch those building to make banshee because decently good zerg will add roach warren asap when they see your hellions.
===> When see roaches, pull the hellions back. Move banshee out to kill roaches. Harass as much as you can but keep the banshee alive. Just use the hellions to kill speedling now on the map. Roaches will stay pretty much inside zerg base with queen.
====> Expand. Make about 4 banshees,4-5 hellions with blue flame tech, 3-4 marauder, 5-6 marines with stim. Now attack the zerg natural with all your SCV. This push is pretty much impossible for a zerg to stop.
Only do this build when you see zerg that doesn't go for roaches right away but instead go for bannelings and speedling. Bunker is recommend when you see zerg make roaches
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On February 11 2011 01:10 whomybuddy wrote:
Here is how to solve your problem but you'll need a decent micro.
===>First, Reactor for barrack. Second, the building that make hellion. Third, switch the hellion building with barrack. Just spam as much Hellions as you can. Move out and kill all speedling. While killing speedling, add starport and use barrack to make a techlab. Switch those building to make banshee because decently good zerg will add roach warren asap when they see your hellions.
===> When see roaches, pull the hellions back. Move banshee out to kill roaches. Harass as much as you can but keep the banshee alive. Just use the hellions to kill speedling now on the map. Roaches will stay pretty much inside zerg base with queen.
====> Expand. Make about 4 banshees,4-5 hellions with blue flame tech, 3-4 marauder, 5-6 marines with stim. Now attack the zerg natural with all your SCV. This push is pretty much impossible for a zerg to stop.
Only do this build when you see zerg that doesn't go for roaches right away but instead go for bannelings and speedling. Bunker is recommend when you see zerg make roaches
"The building that make[sic] hellion"? You mean a factory?
This sounds like the reactor hellion rush that transitions into fast banshee. This is easily scouted by a decent Zerg player. Hellions are easily countered by queens and roaches. A zerg typically does not tech to roaches in ZvT unless they either have some sort of early aggression planned, or if they scout reactor hellions. The extra queens produced will be used to fend off the banshees until the Zerg's spire pops. Once mutas are in play, that unit composition you just listed will be easy fodder to muta/bling.
Terrible advice. You also did not read the OP.
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thanks for the advice guys.
I know the basics of positioning you units for zerg battles, but trying to not engage them on creep can be tricky. First you have to get them to come off creep. That involves leap frogging your tanks, which will mean your marines need to be spread out to defend the extended tanks against mutas. Then I have no marines in my base, and I have difficulty knowing how many mutas they have until 20 pop out and destroy the 3 turrets i have in my main mineral line, followed by the scv's with it. All the while I've inched a few metres closer to his base and he max's a 200/200 army of banelings mutas.
If they go just muta bling, i have to run my marines well away from my tanks, then the mutas pick them off. If I don't, with 40 blings its pretty much garaunteed hits on my marines.
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I love just going 2 rax FE into medivacs, thors, and lots of bio.
Just keep thors in front to stop banes from rolling everything you have xD
I actually dislike tanks because it makes your army immobile, and you're very suceptible at times to ling flanks.
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On a lot of maps you can wall off with your first few barracks at your natural so you can build it down straight away. Shakuras and Scrap are both safe and I've been testing doing it on Lost temple.
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I just did a ZvT against a high Diamond Zerg, and this is what I did to win -
2 Rax pressure FE.
I went into a 3 rax 2 fact 1 port
I got Blue flame hellions, but had 2 tech labs (for later transition. I didn't mass helions or anything.
I had 2 tech lab 1 reactor on my rax
My port had a tech lab (love running my ravens into a ball of mutas and seeker missle'ing)
I then got a bunch more rax, with addons that just fit the situations (lots of lings, few blings) and transitioned from helions to 2 fact thors, and then later got another starport with reactor for medivacs.
I just macroe'd up, kept killing off creep, stalled expansions, and made sure I had the same amount or more bases than him. I just stayed outside of his base, always constantly pressuring when possible, and just macroe'd better
This is just something I love to do against Zergs who think they can macro!
xD
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Quibla, you should watch this cast of the GSL - Final match - STARTALE vs Incredible Miracle
http://www.gomtv.net/2011gstl1/vod/60831
The timing push with Marines and Siege Tanks, as well as the tank placement and marine micro, allowed the Terran to successfully execute the Zerg, who droned up. It is a great show of how to deal with Speedlings, Banelings, and potential Mutalisks.
Zergs love to drone up, so this should work for awhile until the Zerg community changes strategies.
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you dont have to 2 rax FE, depending on the map some things are better. like on shakuras and meta use hellion harrass with gas first no marines and try mech or just go marines with hellinons and only use hellions to try and contain (you dont have to stick with hellions I jist mean at the start). or like on scrap station with close air positions go 1-1-1 and when your factory is up get a reactor and switch it with your starport to get vikings an kill off overlords (you can just choose when to stop making the vikings and then just go for marine tank style he will go for hydras and tanks own hydras (hopefully this happens).
there are alot of different things you can do. But as for the problem you are facing is after a 2 rax they will either really macro up or go for banlings. After you pull all your troops back, wait about 30 seconds and just scan if there is no banlings nest then just get maybe one bunker and place barracks in a helpful way, if you see a banlings nest do the same thing with more bunkers, try and sue your tanks as a blockade against banes as well.
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On February 11 2011 06:30 Qibla wrote:
thanks for the advice guys.
I know the basics of positioning you units for zerg battles, but trying to not engage them on creep can be tricky. First you have to get them to come off creep. That involves leap frogging your tanks, which will mean your marines need to be spread out to defend the extended tanks against mutas. Then I have no marines in my base, and I have difficulty knowing how many mutas they have until 20 pop out and destroy the 3 turrets i have in my main mineral line, followed by the scv's with it. All the while I've inched a few metres closer to his base and he max's a 200/200 army of banelings mutas.
If they go just muta bling, i have to run my marines well away from my tanks, then the mutas pick them off. If I don't, with 40 blings its pretty much garaunteed hits on my marines.
You should post replays. Somehow, i have the feeling that they simply have a lot more stuff than you. But generally, Muta Ling Bling seems to be about equal to Tank Marine, where it comes down to controlling your stuff good, and making good decisions. What exactly you did wrong can not be deduced unless you provided replays of you actually having those problems you describe, otherwise everyone else can only guess what might be the problem.
Also, if you repair your turrets, you should be fine against a lot of mutas. 3 turrets can kill 20 mutas if you repair them. You will probably lose some scvs to bounces, but 20 mutas are not free either. And if he just lost a lot of mutas to the turrets in your base, you are probably in a fine position to push forward, and start sieging one of his expansions. But really, only guesswork. Replays.
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You could add more barracks and practice splitting your marines vs. banelings. Its quite easy actually.... If you like to turtle and wait for 3/3 upgrades then Hellion Thor is correct for you. Your expo should be down by the time he has pushed back your early aggression.
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Ok, first of, you shouldnt be hit by mutas by surprise against zerg, since about every single zerg gets them, so if you only see lings and blings, it is pretty safe to assume that mutas will be coming, even if you do not explicitly see the spire.
Secondly, get upgrades. They are good. In a 22 minute game, neither side had any upgrades at all. Usually attack is better then armor, except in some special cases.
Dont supplyblock yourself and be forced to use supply drop that early in the game.
Build more SCVs. You stopped building scvs for quite some time often. Don´t stop building them until your bases are saturated.
You can probably build your Expansion Command center right at your natural with this build, just throw up 1-2 bunkers if you feel your push is losing its grip, and maybe produce some kind of a wall with your additional production structures there, just for safety.
You have far too much money in the bank at many times in the game. Build stuff with it. Having stuff is better than having money in the bank. When you lost your final push at the end of the game, you had 1800/600 in the bank. Imagine that being stuff. That would be 4-5 Tanks and 20 Marines. This would nearly double your army at that point. And imagine if you had constantly build workers, and generally been more efficient with your mining. Try to not concentrate that much on what units you have, and what you do with them, and simply build a lot more.
And get upgrades for them. Upgrades are good. If you fight against unupgraded Zerglings, a 3/3 marine is more than double as durable, and does 50% more damage than an upgraded marine. If your enemy would get upgrades themselves, the damage percentage you gain from upgrades increases even further. This also means that you can blow up a whole lot more banelings before they reach your stuff.
Dont supplyblock yourself.
Use your third. Send SCVs there, mine stuff. It stood around for a long time without doing anything. Also, build more SCVs, so you can send some to your third.
Also, try to avoid queuing up too many units at the same time. This is money you could use otherwise. Instead, try to get used to constantly checking if your facilities are producing units. With some practices, you will know when you need to start the next unit right before the last one finished. If you get surplus money, build more unit producing structures.
These were the major points, the following are minor stuff, but they are not nearly as important as simply getting a lot of stuff by building workers, and using the money. The zerg was always at least a base, and about 10-20 harvesters ahead of you. Not a good situation to be in.
You missmicroed your first attack pretty hard, and lost a lot of stuff, while killing basically nothing at all. This attack should work out better.
On your second attack, you had stim ready, but did not use it. It would have probably ended better if you had. Also, splitting your marines against zerglings is not a very good idea. You only want to split them against banelings, because those do AoE. Just build a ball, ideally with your back to a wall, stim and let them fight.
You saw the first baneling mines blow up. That should be a sign that from now on, you should be extremely careful as to where you walk with your marines.
Repair your turrets if they are attacked by mutalisks. You will lose some SCVs to the bounces, but turrets kill mutas very quickly, and it takes an insane amount of mutas to kill a turret that is getting repaired. And mutas are not cheap.
Having 1-2 thors is not a bad idea, since they do their damage against mutas at a very long range, do splash, and are generally useful. Since you have the infrastructure to build them when you are building tanks, and you would want the armory anyways for further infantery + some upgrades for your tanks to still be able to oneshot lings with armor, you might as well build a few thors.
Edit: If you take a look at the end of the video, despite all those problems, you still lost about the same amount of ressources in units as the zerg. You only had a lot less because you were on 2 bases the whole game, while he was on 4, and a lot of your ressources are still lying around in your bankroll.
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EPT
