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First of all, let me say that I think iEchoic's build is great and I'm glad that people are developing such innovative and effective strategies. However, it seems like since his 2fact/2port build was featured on the Day9 daily, TvT on the North American ladder has transformed overnight from a positional marine/tank/viking game into a hellion-banshee elimination race with both players having free reign over their opponent's mineral line.
What can I do to combat this build effectively? I have tried going straight up marauder/viking and it actually didn't work: the hellions and banshees killed my marauders with incredible ease and my opponent could make more vikings than me because not only was I wasting 25 gas a pop on marauders, but he was periodically killing off a large amount of my scvs.
iEchoic himself said that a thor rush can be dicey to defend with this build, but do I really need to all-in to win vs this? Has anyone found a solid way to play vs this build that can safely go into the mid and late game?
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i havent seen this build effectively but would it be possible if you just wall in and put up some turrets?
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IMO walling with tanks and just taking over the sky with vikings (aka viking tank) can win this. Sensor towers + vikings will nullify pretty much any pressure this build can do since you will spot every drop and every banshee regardless of cloak.
Basically the terran of the beta. And use the oh so underused sensor towers.
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I've faced it long before it was featured on Day9 and I don't think it's broken or will change TvT that much. It's gimmicky at best and as long as you learn how to react to it you should be able to win. That is, it is a viable strategy but it's far from too strong and won't change TvT as we know it. I'm sure any high amount of usage is just a phase where everyone wants to try what they saw on Day9. Though, I assume this mostly affects the lower leagues.
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It's gimmicky at best and as long as you learn how to react to it you should be able to win.
How would I do that exactly?
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now that tons of people will try to copy this build, then its weaknesses will shine out, like a marauder push followed by turrets to stop banshee play and then so on and so forth to correctly counter the build.
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iEchoic's build expands ridiculously late. You invest SO much into production and units before expanding.
I've seen players at the 15 minute mark continuing to throw banshees at their opponent without expanding.
I've seen it beat by a simple rax expand with good defense.
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Air superiority seems to be key in all terran fights basically. So why not open 2 port vikings and never stop making them. If you have air superiority iEchoic's build is no longer as effective. No dropping hellions. Wall-ins are fine. Mass viking marauder w/ a raven or two should be perfect vs 2fact2port.
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In my humble opinion marine / marauder + tank is superior to it. I'm 3500+ masters on EU.
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I agree, iEchoic is an amazing player and strategical genious and the build is great, well thought out and seems to be very solid. But I still hate it because TvT had developed into an amazing macro matchup involving all kinds of units, positioning and expanding and now the TvT metagame has essentially been dumbed down to what PvP is at the moment, two players having to do the same build because the person who do not do the build dies. Metagame has also gone from fast expand into being infinitely stuck on one base when both players are doing this build, just trading all of each others workers and then trying to win by getting one more viking.
But I am actually confident that it is solveable in much the same way that marine kings all rax shenanigans proved to be.
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As excited I was to see iEchoic's build on Day9's daily (the thread I've been reading for the last few days all of a sudden featured on the exclusive Day9's dailies?!?!), I'm somewhat leery of the influx of Hellion/Banshee/Viking builds on the ladder. It would have been nice to have gotten a handle on things before they exploded into the mainstream, but I suppose that's solely my fault for being "late" on the TL thread.
As for "breaking" TvT, I haven't played quite enough TvTs on the ladder for me to comment. Of the maybe 5 I've played since being knowledgeable of this strategy, I don't think any have tried this build, whereas I've done it every time with varying success.
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In my humble opinion marine / marauder + tank is superior to it. I'm 3500+ masters on EU.
In that case, if you could give a little bit more insight I would greatly appreciate it. When do you expand, how do you defend both hellion/banshee harass, and how do you use your starports? Do you even bother trying to get air control, or is it too hard against this build?
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On February 12 2011 12:53 Leaky wrote:Show nested quote +In my humble opinion marine / marauder + tank is superior to it. I'm 3500+ masters on EU. In that case, if you could give a little bit more insight I would greatly appreciate it. When do you expand, how do you defend both hellion/banshee harass, and how do you use your starports? Do you even bother trying to get air control, or is it too hard against this build?
I think a 1 rax fast expansion is a very well counter all around to the harass early on. You can defend against banshee, be it with cloak or without amazingly well if your timings are good. As well as a 1 rax fast expansion is the counter to a blue flame hellion drop as ridiculous as it might sound, because you have so much units.
If you defend early on you have an expansion with superior economy but a very marine heavy build, you should now work on your tech and maraudercount. I don't think you can pressure a lot with a marine heavy style since its vulnerable against well positioned banshee hellion play, but in the defence you definately are ahead.
As soon as you have a good amount of marauder and combat shields with a few medivacs you should be fine against the AoE of hellions. The AoE tanks deal is a lot worse and kind of hits in circles while the hellion AoE is a straight line which can be reduced a lot by a good split, even more than the tank AoE.
Obviously the hellion player can re-counter it with positioning the hellions, but that is hard to do against marauders with concussive shells.
If you do not lose all of your marines, the banshees should be no problem at all, because they don't really stack up and marines do and are a lot cheaper. So overall your combo is cheaper and easier to get and is as mobile as his army.
For defence you can use tanks, turrets, planetaries.
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I would think that Thor Viking might work pretty well. Make sure to wall off your mineral lines. If you can gain air control then you can do thor drops. If you can't then you can try to do small 4 marauder harass groups and kill as many SCVs as possible. You will have more of an army than him but it would be hard to push out... maybe just wall off EVERYTHING, get a bunch of turrets and push out at about 80 supply when he's getting his third?
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Here's some of my random thoughts:
1) I don't think this is or will be the only viable build in TvT. If you outplay your opponent, you can win the game with marine/tank or MMM (although I think MMM is at a disadvantage personally). Kind of like how in ZvZ you can go lings, or mutas, or you can go roaches, and you can win with different styles.
2) I don't think the build will be 'solved'. I've tried as hard as possible to keep the build from relying on gimmicks, only relying on hellion economic damage when hellion economic damage is guaranteed (i.e. if you rush thor and attack with it, you WILL lose SCVs to a hellion drop - this is a fact of the game and a vulnerability of the thor build), not when it's just lucky. I've played against a lot of the same people at the top 100 US level many times and nobody has yet solved it. If an adaptation does come, I think a counter-adaptation can be made just as easily.
To imply that the build will be solved is to say that there's no value in the hellion/air composition. There's no way that can be true, in my opinion:
3) I do think hellion/air is going to remain a viable composition and will actually get stronger as skill levels increase. A player higher level than me that could be doing multiple drops while expanding and keeping map presence is truly going to be a damn scary sight. The incredible mobility, harassment potential, and oftentimes raw strength of the composition is too much to simply disappear from the metagame.
4) One problem is that people try to 'hard counter' the build. If you're trying to run a marine/tank build and you see someone running my build, resist the temptation to go "OMG! I NEED TO MAKE 2X THORS ASAP" or "OMG I NEED TO SWITCH INTO MASS VIKING PRODUCTION!". Terran isn't suited to make quick tech switches. You will definitely lose.
5) We're going to have to wait and see until some pro-level players run the build many times. Most of our experiences are going to be limited by our opponent's skill (for example, one person above said their opponents are sitting on one base 15 minutes into the game, which clearly is not the way the build is supposed to function). I've gotten some messages telling me TLO ran the build or something similar and won in the Assembly Winter, but I haven't been able to verify this yet as I can't find vods or replays.
6) I'd have to disagree with mTwNaruto's statement that 1rax FE is a counter to it... I actually think the opposite - I think the 1rax FE is one of the easier openings to beat. We saw MarineKingPrime try a 1rax FE and fall way behind against a weaker version of the build by Jinro (whereas Jinro just blueflame/banshee but made less hellions and less banshees). MKP is about the best in the business at defending a 1rax FE opening so I have a hard time believing people on ladder will be able to do better. I've played 1rax FE many times and it is probably the easiest thing to beat in my experience. As I said in (6), if you're 1rax FEing and he's failing to do damage I think you may just be way way better than your opponent.
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It didnt break it but it was a well thought out idea that im glad he managed to make work and congratz to him for getting it featured but this is defeintly a mid game kinda strategy, early game IMo you can only do so much and late game you have no meat so you could easily get chewed to bits, mid game it seems to really shine.
I have used it to successfully but only on big maps so that I can manage to expand and such, I go 1 factory 1 starport expand and use hellions to hold towers and kill marines with a banshee to "contain". then expand and add the other two on later and from there use my micro and macro to try and make it work it's magic, I add on more starports and factorys as the game goes on but I really think just a maurder heavy build could beat this. It they relize this is the kinda thing your going for it could be even worse because they will make sure they have the viking count over you. (hopefully, if they dont it could go downhill quickly for the mauder heavy army)
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On February 12 2011 13:10 iEchoic wrote:
Here's some of my random thoughts:
1) I don't think this is or will be the only viable build in TvT. If you outplay your opponent, you can win the game with marine/tank or MMM (although I think MMM is at a disadvantage personally). Kind of like how in ZvZ you can go lings, or mutas, or you can go roaches, and you can win with different styles.
2) I don't think the build will be 'solved'. I've tried as hard as possible to keep the build from relying on gimmicks, only relying on hellion economic damage when hellion economic damage is guaranteed (i.e. if you rush thor and attack with it, you WILL lose SCVs to a hellion drop - this is a fact of the game and a vulnerability of the thor build), not when it's just lucky. I've played against a lot of the same people at the top 100 US level many times and nobody has yet solved it. If an adaptation does come, I think a counter-adaptation can be made just as easily.
To imply that the build will be solved is to say that there's no value in the hellion/air composition. There's no way that can be true, in my opinion:
3) I do think hellion/air is going to remain a viable composition and will actually get stronger as skill levels increase. A player higher level than me that could be doing multiple drops while expanding and keeping map presence is truly going to be a damn scary sight. The incredible mobility, harassment potential, and oftentimes raw strength of the composition is too much to simply disappear from the metagame.
4) One problem is that people try to 'hard counter' the build. If you're trying to run a marine/tank build and you see someone running my build, resist the temptation to go "OMG! I NEED TO MAKE 2X THORS ASAP" or "OMG I NEED TO SWITCH INTO MASS VIKING PRODUCTION!". Terran isn't suited to make quick tech switches. You will definitely lose.
5) We're going to have to wait and see until some pro-level players run the build many times. Most of our experiences are going to be limited by our opponent's skill (for example, one person above said their opponents are sitting on one base 15 minutes into the game, which clearly is not the way the build is supposed to function - you can actually expand whenever you want and as much as you want as long as your gamesense is good). I've gotten some messages telling me TLO ran the build or something similar and won in the Assembly Winter, but I haven't been able to verify this yet as I can't find vods or replays.
6) I'd have to disagree with mTwNaruto's statement that 1rax FE is a counter to it... I actually think the opposite - I think the 1rax FE is possibly the worst thing you can do against it. We saw MarineKingPrime try a 1rax FE and fall way behind against a weaker version of the build by Jinro (whereas Jinro just blueflame/banshee but made less hellions and less banshees). MKP is about the best in the business at defending a 1rax FE opening so I have a hard time believing people on ladder will be able to do better. I've played 1rax FE many times and it is probably the easiest thing to beat in my experience. As I said in (6), if you're 1rax FEing and he's failing to do damage I think you may just be way way better than your opponent.
If you are up for games, we can play. Should benefit both of us to refine our gameplay. I can't tell if the opponents were lesser skilled or just didn't use your build correctly, but since you are the creator (lets just state it like that) you should be able to execute it very well.
So PM me if you are interested :-)
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wouldn't marine, marauder, viking and a single raven do pretty damn well against this? concussive shells will stop the run by of hellions, assuming good building and unit positioning, and then just expanding and turtling up a bit before pushing out and rolling over him with a well timed stim/good medivac count push. Should be pretty easy to keep your marines fairly spread out behind your marauders.
I don't really have experience with it just yet but in theory I think it'd work just fine and to answer your question I definitely don't think it breaks the match up, it's just a style (didn't seem OP on day9's daily)
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I think if you play carefully with Siege Tanks, wall-ins and turrets you should be able to protect an FE on most maps (cliff maps and mains with lots of air exposure would be harder of course) and get a gas advantage to start going tank/viking. Just think of it like a Brood War Siege Expand.
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I'm having a tough time seeing how this would win versus a walling tank+viking player.
He can match your viking count, while having a strong ground force. Of course, blue flame hellions can do ridiculous damage to mineral lines, but wouldn't one or two sieged tanks in the base completely shut it down? Not to mention the stop+F1 trick to spread workers.
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EPT
