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Im having a lot of trouble with hellion harass -> expo -> hellion marauder push on Xelnaga Caverns
A lot of the top terrans have been doing this push recently, and here's why I think this build is hard to deal with.
1) Early hellions = complete map dominance and forces defenses from z
2) Deny Scouting: a good t will not let you know whether he expoed or not for a while
3) Marauder hellion(reactor or blue flame) is so cost efficient such that you need a large army to crush his attack. Making units that early for z puts z very far behind since t already has a base up.
Spines can't cover all the open space on Xelnaga and taking an early third on Xelnaga is also very difficult to defend.
I feel that after this push, i'm always far behind the terran's economy
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you needed to scout earlier... either sac an overlord (100m and supply) or just sac a ling up the ramp. Sending a 25m ling up the ramp won't give you that much vision of his base, but 99% of terrans keep their defensive force at the ramp. Knowing his army comp would have encouraged you to get roaches much sooner. (Obviously, replace the ling at his natural with another.)
You supply capped yourself @52 and then made FIVE overlords. (I don't play zerg much, so I could be out of line, but) that's at least 300 minerals that never got put to use! Your ling at the natural got roasted quick so all you could have seen of his army was hellions. You didn't throw up your first (and only) spine until you saw his army at the XNtower. You had almost 300 minerals banked; probably would have helped to throw down at least 2 more spines (again, don't forget the wasted minerals spent on overlords).
Finally, when he engaged you attacked with your lings before your spine completed AND out of range. Try to hold off enemy forces until your D finishes (either spines or whatever units you're producing). Your slings might have been toast to his army, but when you saw his army move out you could have at least had a small force of them try to run up his ramp (when he was at the XNtower) and delay his attack by a few more seconds (or longer).
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The key here is to hold off the first push with spines and as many speedlings as possible. Wait for the Terran to come into the creep and if possible try to flank with speedlings. Meanwhile you should be teching to mutas. If you don't take too much damage from the push the game is yours
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Definitely go roach warren, sure roaches are bad vs marauders but not that bad vs marauders without medivacs, and the hellions are almost useless vs roach. Some lings can be good aswell, the more marauders the more lings, the more hellions the more roaches. Focus down the marauders with the lings/roaches and then its usually blue hellions vs roaches in the end
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What i do is go lings heavy and surround hellions at all cost. Use all the remaining gas to fast tech into mutas. Just minimize damage done to your drone while delaying with your zerglings. Once mutas are out, you will have tons of zerglings left + mutas to gain map control for you to power drone back.
If you have too many zerglings left, you could do ling/bling aggression on their natural once your mutas scouted that they are vulnerable to it.
I don't know if roach lings are viable against hellions marauders, since if terran has proper micro he will be the 1 taking initiative to aim the targets that they are cost efficient to (maruders to roaches, hellions in the backline just covering for any lings that surround marauders). Its similar to how roach ling has an advantage in taking out a zlot stalker 4 gate.
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Lots and lots of speedlings. spread creep, spine crawlers and queens, survive until you can get out mutas.
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Ok, I just watched the replay. Tbh, I believe that your title is a little bit misleading. This is because it wasn't the terran unit composition that killed you, rather that you failed to stop a 1-base all-in.
The terran's strat had a major tell - the lack of a fast expansion. At that time, you could've guessed that he was 1-basing. Coupled with the fact that you stole his gas meant that it was very unlikely to be 2-port banshee. Or if it was banshee, 3-4 queens could've dealt with it since it'll be late.
I would've built lots of spinecrawlers (minimum 2-3), lings, queens, and stall for mutas. Once they pop, you should win from there. I don't believe roaches was the right response, rather it would've been better if the money were invested elsewhere.
A game you may like to watch is Idra vs Clide, GSL4 in Xel'naga Caverns. Clide went a 2-base helion/marauder push (incidentally, I believe that is stronger). Idra held with heavy losses and a counter attack by mutas won the day.
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On February 24 2011 00:49 Meff wrote:
Specifically on this replay: I think that the leading problem is that at 6:47 you have a third extractor up and running, but you won't be able to gain benefits from that gas for a long time. If you go mutas that's another 60 seconds (lair at 20/80), plus 100 of spire, plus 33 of build time: 193 seconds. Infestors are, similarly, 190 seconds (60 lair + 50 pit + 30 glands + 50 build). You can only do that if you're sure that a timing push won't hit you, otherwise you're several hundreds resources down (700 unspent gas when the push hits you, to give a specific example). Fixing this, either by not getting the third gas as quickly or by refining your scouting, should probably be enough on its own.
Other factors/suggestions:
- the composition could have been spotted a lot earlier. Running a zergling up the ramp can give you a lot of information, for only 25 minerals and half a larva (assuming you do lose the zergling, that is. If not, all the better). Of course, this is not failproof as T could deny scouting by not holding all of his troops at the choke, but in this particular case it would have worked.
- pay attention to the minimap. At 8:10, you can clearly see that you have an incoming push (and not just some hellion harass to cover an expo), but you do not look and check the composition. In fact, I suspect that you were thinking that all that was arriving was hellion harass and that T was going mech. The placement of the spine crawler and the fact that you spent 150 minerals on tech (roach warren) is why I'm saying that. A more correct reply for that specific situation would have been to morph banelings with that
- you could improve the distribution of mineral-digging drones between your natural and the main. It wasn't an enormous problem, but I think that you would have been able to scrounge up an extra 100 mins or so (drones after the 16th give much less income, as the difference between 2 and 3 workers per patch is not as big as that between 1 and 2).
- creep spread. Consider altering your BO to get a third queen, or if you don't do that then you could babysit the one tumors you lay at the start more closely. One of the factors that went against you in the fight was being blindsided by the hellions on the left side of your natural. Having creep to cover the left side of the hole in front of it would have warned you of their approach.
- micro. You ran your troops into enemy fire, then withdrew them after no or minimal engagement. This sort of potshots cost you a significant fraction of your army (6 zerglings out of 22 at the very start of the engagement, to cite one moment). This probably ties in with the lack of creep spread and of minimap attention, as you might have done that in reaction to seeing a larger army than what you expected.
Hope it helps.
Thank you, and you're spot on with the assumption that I assumed some kind of early helion harass into mech because I didn't notice the marauders in the comp until they were Almost in my face. I guess it was just a matter of being caught to early, I took my third gas in hopes of being able to pump out mutas once my spire was completed and it was much earlier then I normally do take one. I think the way to have properly handled the situation requires 2 things
1) I needed to scout with an overlord near his base around 5 minutes after I had seen no aggression or expansion. The ling up the ramp would've also allowed me to get the spine crawler earlier but I still wouldn't have made more than one due to the fact that he's blocking his ramp with helions and I wouldn't have seen the marauders.
2) Build more spine crawlers and dedicate all of my larva to slings and try to hold off the initial rush and continue my transition into mutas.
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The answer to this is probably going to involve adding banelings and more Queens to whatever composition you chose.
Banelings because they are not "armored" or "light" units, meaning blue flame hellions and mauraders do no bonus damage to them, plus they are decently fast on creep, even without baneling speed. Meanwhile they do bonus damage to hellions.
Queens for the same reason, hellions and Mauraders do no bonus damage to them.
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Your main problem was your scouting, you saw that the Terran was on 1 base so you should know there was some sort of all in coming. You have to bee poking up that ramp with a ling to see what kind of units and tech building he has. If you would of gone up that ramp you would of seen 2 rax with tech labs, a hellion from a factory with a tech lab, with an upgrade on the way. At this point you can throw down a couple spines and a roach warden.
I had a practice partener that always did this to me and i defended fine with a roach ling army. There may be more than one way of dealing with this, but that is what i found most effective. The main problem is scouting it in time to get the roach warden down. But his tech was right by the ramp it would of been easily scoutable, hope this helps.
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in response to the "build roaches, hold out and make mutas,"
from a terran perspective, i would normally plop down a semilate OC expo and an armory, get +1 vehicle upgrade and once i start to see the roach numbers increasing beyond my hellion/marauder numbers, i will swap to marine/thor and continue my harass from there. there's about a 30 delay from stopping the hellion/marauder and switching to thor/marine when the zerg feels like its safe to drone up a bit but they really arent. if you really wanta end it with a strong two base push, build a reactored starport for medivacs and bring scvs (healbus ftw). note: it WILL require some micro.
i've had solid results, but since i dont have a solid build order for this or much practice with it, i feel like it could be better...just dont have the time to fix it up. =(
this strat like all XvZ strats works (generally) because you're forcing the zerg to not drone up.
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can anyone show me a perfect execution of this Marauder/Hellion strat?
The player in the replay had a lot of extra minerals, supply capped himself etc.
thanks
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Honestly, all it requires is:
* You fight on Creep
* You have 1-2 Spine Crawlers
* You have Ling/Bling
Send in the lings first to draw the Concussive Shells, blings tear into Hellions and Lings clean them up. Get Queens to block your ramp to make sure the Hellions dont get into your main.
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2.9k diamond Zerg and I too have been seeing this build much more frequently and I have yet to find a way to beat it if the Terran player doesn't make a huge mistake. Scouting it isn't the problem at all, half the terran opponents don't even bother hiding it, it's just defending what I know is coming. I've tried everything from making 6 or more queens, spines, mass ling mass roach or a combination of it all. What seems to be the best from my experiments is roaches with crawler support. With that I can generally hold off the initial push but then they come back with thors and tanks so transitioning to mutas won't help with their second push. The reasoning is that I've spent so much larvae on units and don't have the economy to support more than 8 or so mutas to fight against there next push. I also tend to favor Infestors over mutas but I won't have the numbers needed to stop that next push which is fatally brutal if I haven't researched np. Maybe a baneling bust could stop this if scouted quickly enough before their hellion numbers increase to that critical mass, I'm not sure but I don't think it would have a good timing and I prefer macro games. I'm going to mass some ladder games tonight so hopefully I will be able to add a few replays for critique or maybe even a solid way to defend this. I miss two rax openings 
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Marauders arent THAT good against roaches without stim; they are only slightly more efficient. If he's 2-rax/1-fact then 100% roaches would win as helions will do nothing. If he only has a few helions then mass lings would win easy. Or build spines.
I use to do maraduer/helion rushes, but its mostly spines that detour me. They at least buy you time.
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Mass Ling is the answer you are looking for. Scout it early and stop drone production around 20ish, get a extra queen for creep spread and 1 spine all this while getting a quick lair and spire. If well executed you will have Mutas out approx 30 sec after the push hits, when it does use a good number of Lings to flank once he goes on creep and hits your natural. Proceed to clean up his mineral line with Mutas before he gets too many marines or turrets, you should still be on 2 base so catching up economically shouldn't be a issue with the map control Mutas provide.
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Hi vileHawk here, I'm a top NA player and will provide an analysis of your game and tell what I think is better possibilities.
Firstly, let me say that your opening build left you economically behind, you used a 11 pool which is safe, but is unnecessary. Using 14 gas 14 pool is just as safe as an 11 pool but is much more economically efficient, as an added bonus it gives you map control through a fast speed upgrade.
Secondly, your scouting was a bit lacking, he didn't hide the fact he was going 1 base helion maruader though most Terrans usually do in this case you should usually try and sack and overlord vs a 1 basing terran.
Now the proper response to a 1 base helion maruader build is to go lair with roach/speedling, NOT go mutalisks, those who say that that is the counter are mistaking it with the 2 base play. If Terran does not expand, a Zerg player will not be able to defend with just speedling/spine against helion maruader until mutalisks.
You have to be careful against this build and make sure not to drone too hard, just scout that he is going helion maruader then make a roach warren while getting lair and start making roach/speedling. The problem in your game was that first you had all zerglings, and then later, all roaches, ideally when he attacks you want your roaches and 1 spine crawler to tank then have your speedlings surround. A 2 base Zerg that focuses on roach speedling should be able to overpower this build in all cases.
As a followup after you beat his rush you will have a huge economic lead off of 2 bases and can play the game as you would have normally (i suggest transitioning into mutalisks for harrassment, scouting, and map control).
Now I will touch a bit on the 2 base variation of this that is more common at higher levels. The basis of this is to expand then later do the same attack helion maruader just later in the game, now if they are on 2 bases the counter is different, going roach speedling will cut your economy too much for very little compensation, the best response in this case is to spine/speedling defend until mutalisks, you should have ample time to get your mutalisks out against this 2 base build.
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I would think the best response from zerg is simply speedlings. With a surround they will kill the hellions, and the marauders will easily follow suit.
Spine crawlers should be standard in any Hatch first play as well.
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Hey,
When I get terran, that's one of my favorite oppenings vs zz and I can tell you that every time it fails, it's because the zz has 3-4 queens and 1-2 spine, depending on the map and the timing of my push. Basically 3 queens and one spine is a must-have and you can add 1 queen and 1 spine when you spot the push. You should also start a bunch of speedling to finish the left over of their attack and try to catch any reinforcement. This oppening also counter the banshee rush thanks to the queen, so that's quite safe as zz. In addition it's not gas intensive at all and can thus be followed by mutas. Going roach is, I think, a mistake because I usually follow this oppening with banshee if I see roaches.
But yeah, it's a tough one...
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listen i get to win terran who use this open alot as u know the most importent thing is to scout with lings over lords(according to the timing) now if u see fac with reactor and rax with tec lab 95% its heli murader next u got to options best is to get mutas if u can cus then he will lose seacond is ling bane not ling roach if u can get banes to heli(wich are light armor) they will be butchered and the maruders will be yours to slaughter now i think u need nither good creep or 2 spines for defense line in order to succed roach ling may seem good with the right focus but if he keeps maruder heli in ball u will lose so try to get mutas when u scout it and if u cant just try what i suggest
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EPT
