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I've been doing something similar that has just kind of evolved from my cloaked banshee play. Here are two replays from the recent MIT closed tournament of me doing Thor/banshee/raven/marine with a large degree of success.
In both of these games my opponent loses 2-3 times the amount of resources in army and units that I do, which just goes to show you how cost efficient this combination can be.
By no means did I execute this well at all, and my opponents were nothing spectacular. I am only a 1k plat player, but I don't really ladder a lot. One of the opponents was a 2k diamond player, and the other a silver player. Feel free to comment on how bad my macro/micro/decision making was in these games. All criticism helps me improve.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-194337.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-194338.jpg)
The one big thing is that it can be very hard to defend. I held on just by the skin of my teeth in both games, mostly thanks to mass repair on bunkers and a thor. Normally I get the raven first with the thor to deny observers, and to play mind games. The banshees follow soon after.
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Only ran the strat once but it was super easy to pull off against an unsuspecting toss.
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yeah,,, im finding this strat actually work well and even better against zerg,,, especially a zerg that FE.... its basically GG when they do that,,,, well at least for me at platinum leval.... Ive only lost when I was not paying attention,,, roach rush and 4 gate,,,, not scouting the proxy pylons , or bunkering up etc. just stupid noob mistakes,,, other than that,,, im having a killer success rate with this, if I push out at 11 mins,,, its pretty much GG,,,
for zerg i skip out on the Raven,,, and produce an extra banshee.... im really loving this build a lot! very powerfull.... again its sorta all-in ish.... one base,,, not really my style,,,, but its nice to change things up...
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It has worked great for me and I have met very different openings from toss. My micro slips greatly but that doesnt really matter unless I would go up against a master player.
There are some key factors to this tactic. The raven will most likely make the toss blind to what the terran is building, unless he sacrifises zealots or probes.
It's possible there is a good unit combination for a toss player to hold their defenses against this but I have yet to seen it. If the toss goes for 2-3 colossos he will have so few stalkers that the PDDs will defend the banshees when they are hunting down the colossos. And the few stalkers will be walked over by the thors and marines so quickly.
It's also common to have centrys early for toss and they are basically just a complete waste of resources against this composition of units. Some toss players have scouted me when i only have marines and 1 banshee and centry is a good unit to produce when he only knows about that.
I would assume that some sort of stalker/void-ray build is the best way to go for a toss. Maybe throw in some zealots to take cheap damage as well.
As others have said, this is not a one base-all-in. I sometimes throw a CC down at my natural when I move out. It will delay the reinforcements a bit, but you have something to fall back on if something goes wrong.
But I'm only a Platinum player atm, so what do I know? 
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U dont have to,,, but I always bring 10 or so SCVs with me for the ride...... i have yet to lose a single thor this way. and u still have enough mins and gas witht he mules and left over scvs to continue marine and thor production.
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@Whoever said this works even better against zerg.
I haven't tried this yet, but I need a decent TvZ build. How does this fare against baneling play?
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I just tried this and got completely owned. Void/Collosus just kills this
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ya, if you see void/colosus, you should switch it up a bit. I would recommend doing some kind of harass (w/hellions - you can use hellions instead of marines), and use 1 scan to try and get a sense of what they are up to. If they are going VR/Colossus, its better to go vikings, which are hard/soft counters for those two units. The fact that they can attack the vrs make a huge difference, and the extra range vs colossi helps too. If they are doing VR/Colossi, then they won't have as many stalkers.
As well, when done killing the VR/Colossi, just put your vikings on the ground. 1 Viking == 1 Stalker.
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Seems Protoss could get a lot of mileage out of abusing mobility vs this build instead of simply smashing into it head on at their base. The same way Z deals with tank marine rolling across the map. Hit it before it arrives. Consider:
-Thors are slow as hell.
-PDD doesn't move.
-No Stim means Collossi and Stalkers have good hit and run potential vs Marines.
If you can see them moving out, then engage them with Stalkers enough to make them drop a PDD or two in the middle of the map, you can then just run away.
Even further, with some mass Blink stalkers you might be able to just send half the army to blink into the base and smash stuff while the other half plays scrappy and tries to delay the Thor push. Get a head start on the base trade.
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Well against Bang play,,, thats mostly what i see these days anyhow.... WHen I first started this build last week,,,, it would just hardly win,,,, but If u can snipe the bangs with your banshees, and micro your 30 rines or so to avoid bang attacks,, u shjould be golden,,, dont forget to rally more banshees, marines and thors.... but 4-5 banshees have an easy time with the bangs I find....
Usually after they lose the first set of bangs to the banshees,,, they basically give up on that strat, i have yet to see a persistant zerg constantly going bangs after he gets his first batch just annhilated.
I always fly my banshees in first if i know they are going speedling/bang play.... obvi micro away from queens..... if they have mutas and bangs,,,i always just take my thors up with the banshees,,, once the bangs are done,,, then bring in your whole fleet of marines, its GG from there...
I cant really find a good reason to make the raven, maybe if u see heavy muta play, but at this point in time,, u rarely see to many of them..... 95% of the time (mind u this is in platinum low/diamond leval). once they see your walled off and not expanding,, they will go for the FE,,,,, when u hit,,, all they usually have is a bunch of speedlings/bangs/roaches or like 4-6 mutas... I have an easy time winning when they FE. I have yet to come upto a roach rush,, but obvi if u see any of this cheese about to happen just throw down some bunkers,,,, taht should but u enough time until your first banshee comes out to play.....
I have only played maybe 10 or so zergs with this strat, so take my advice with a grain of salt as of right now,,,, but the out come has been the same. I have an easier time with zerg than I do protoss with this strat.
Im loving it though.... the only time I lost was when i first started playing with the strat and messing it up, and when I was not paying attention and got 4 gate, warp rushed on a crappy close distance map. Again my mistake........
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I donno, against zerg and toss i always prefer thors,,, prolly just due to their versatility. and thors are really good against mutas
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I disagree. I watched the replay too, the main reason you won was macro - you were up 1000 minerals in army size when you fought, which means you could have almost anything in your army and still win.
2 thors are stronger than the 4 tanks you had, 2 thors would do more damage, and cost slightly less. Chargelots aren't as much of a problem, they can't be lifted up by phoenix, they break through force fields, can fire at flying stuff, don't damage your own army with splash and don't require any micro really. You can't be surprised and caught unsieged and lose because of it, and they can be more easily repaired, if you bring along scvs (tanks don't have as many HP, so will off die to focus fire without repair doing much, but not so for thors).
I'm not saying that tanks aren't good, but in smaller numbers I prefer Thors. If you had 10+ tanks, well, thats a different story.
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On March 11 2011 06:49 Tynan wrote:
Seems Protoss could get a lot of mileage out of abusing mobility vs this build instead of simply smashing into it head on at their base. The same way Z deals with tank marine rolling across the map. Hit it before it arrives. Consider:
-Thors are slow as hell.
-PDD doesn't move.
-No Stim means Collossi and Stalkers have good hit and run potential vs Marines.
If you can see them moving out, then engage them with Stalkers enough to make them drop a PDD or two in the middle of the map, you can then just run away.
Even further, with some mass Blink stalkers you might be able to just send half the army to blink into the base and smash stuff while the other half plays scrappy and tries to delay the Thor push. Get a head start on the base trade.
I don't think that would work all that well. You can't abuse the mobility while the terran is holed up in his base. Your only window is while the terran army is moving to your base...and your game plan is to split your army up? So what if you are attacking my base? I'm planning on winning with this one single push (and it is nasty to hold...there is no way you will hold it if you split your army up). And besides, terran...floating buildings...usually not a good idea to go for a base race unless you have a significant advantage. I mean the whole point of this build is to go in with the one push and wreck shit. You can't delay it. I'm going to push on to your base regardless of what you do to try and stop it. A far more sound tactic would be to manage to hold the push after an FE. Then you are lightyears ahead. But I have yet to run into a protoss who has managed it successfully. The only thing that gives me trouble is a 4 gate.
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Couldn't this build be crippled by an early gas steal?
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Not really,,,, u can get by off one gas, by the time u even need the second gyzer u have enough rines to take it out.... toss try to do it to me all the time,,, useless, and just sets them back 70 mins
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When i see a 4 gate, i swap up the build order slightly,,,, it will add on some time to your build,, but it will save your butt.... I have had to do it a couple of time,, because once I just got my asss beat when a guy went 4 gate on me,,, and i wasent quick enough with the bunkers.... my fault for shitty scouting.
Anyways,, in the past, i always found 2 thor pushs, always held off 4 gates very well. So i found, if I saw a 4 gate happening, id get my armoury right after the fact and get out one thor.... then continue on witht he build.... One thor plus the marines, will hold off the 4 gate rush welll... of course with some repair scvs,, if u feel more comfortable get some bunks.
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I've since slightly altered the build. Since such a build is vulnerable to a well executed 4 gate, I've started using a scan rather than dropping a second mule. The scan hits about 30 seconds before the last three gates finish. If you see a 4 gate, drop a second bunker and add barracks rather than tech. The nice thing is, if you don't scout a 4 gate or some other form of early aggression, you can go ahead and salvage the first bunker and make back a lot of the money you lose from the mule. The end result is that you can scout an incoming 4 gate much more easily without slowing down the build at all.
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On March 16 2011 08:17 Co-lol-sus wrote:
Couldn't this build be crippled by an early gas steal?
Not unless you double gas steal. You don't need the second gas until after you start the factory. A gas steal will slow it down somewhat, but it certainly won't cripple it.
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EPT
