Hey everyone I am StimmedProbe! I am an upper level master league Terran player on the SEA server. I have had tremendous success on ladder, in tournaments and custom games with this build I am about to tell you guys about. It was inspired by day9 daily #264 in which he analyzed a game between a Protoss and a Terran on Xel-naga caverns. The Terran player in that game made only marines, expanded aggressively and was constantly in his opponent’s face. After tweaking the build a bit and testing it over 100 times I was able to optimize it and test it against every possible Protoss opening. I have never lost on ladder with this build and my practice partners, even though they know it is coming, rarely can ever stop it. It is so simple, so sweet and often invokes funny reactions from my opponents. I believe this build can be effective at any level, so long as your mechanics and game sense are decent; this build does not require ‘godlike multitasking or apm’ and is relatively easy to execute.
Marines are strong, very strong. Marines are cheap, very cheap. Marines rip apart every Protoss unit and only run into problems against Colossus and High Templars. The main idea is that you always keep the Colossus count low (low as in 1 or none) and you never give them enough time to tech to High Templars. A fast expansion allows you to support 10+ Barracks and the map will soon look like a river of dots traveling across the screen. After a few back and forth fights you will eventually overpower your opponent’s army with your million man marine army and force him to GG. Below is a video which shows the power of marines.
Below is a game I played in the sc2sea community open. This was the closest I ever came to losing with this build. My opponent was a mid-level master league player with a good win percentage. The game itself is very intense and back and forth and showcases the general feel, execution and tactics of the build.
*Constant SCV Production Assumed* 10 – Supply Depot 12 – Barracks 15 – Orbital Command @100% Barracks, que 2 marines @250 minerals, move SCV to expo 18 – Command Center @ Natural 18 – Supply Depot
*Food count discontinued from here, constant scv/marine production* @150 Minerals, Barracks @150 Minerals, Barracks @100 Minerals, Bunker @75 Minerals, Refinery @ 100% Refinery, 3 SCVs on gas @ 64 gas, Tech lab on rax @ 100 gas, pull two SCVs off gas @ 100 gas, Research Stim pack @100% Command Center, Transfer 6-8 SCVs to your natural
*Pump marines, SCVs, barracks, and supply depots constantly, build bunkers if necessary* @Stim research 120/140 -> Push with your marines and salvage all but one or two of your bunkers.
You should have roughly 10 rax and 30 marines when stim is at 120/140 if you do this right.
Move out with your army and put two more SCVs back on gas, get an engineering bay and combat shields as you move out.
After stimpack finishes constantly pressure the Protoss with your marine army. If your marine count drops below 10 or 15, pull back. Once it hits 30-35 go in again. Marines operate best at around 20-30 marines. Once the pressure starts, it should never stop for more than 20 or 30 seconds. You may need some marauders if you haven’t broken your opponent after 5 or 6 waves. Also make sure you are upgrading and getting attack/armor upgrades for your infantry. Don’t forget to get combat shield as well ASAP. If your opponent gets too many Colossus or HTs for your marines to handle, transition into Vikings or ghosts. Expand aggressively and add on reactors and additional barracks as the game carries on as well. The game should end in 12 to 18 minutes.
This will be a fairly tough match. You might initially have to play defensive because your opponent will have a large number of gateway units and sentries with full energy. Focus on killing the sentries and make sure you keep your army size at least 20. Fall back to bunkers if things go wrong to build back up to 30-35 marines.
This has potential to be tough. The timing window is very slim. If you hit him at the right time, you should be able to just straight up win. However if he has multiple storms ready you will need to split your army well and start to get ghosts. You cannot continue to build pure marine as HTs destroy marine balls and archons do considerable damage to marines as well.
If you don’t spot this in time and you don’t have scans available you will probably lose. Throw down an engineering bay as soon as you notice dts. You need to tech up to ravens quickly and push once you got one. Your opponent shouldn’t have enough time to get out multiple Colossus or HTs by the time you have a raven.
You need supply depots around your base to spot this, if your opponent can get multiple warps into your main, you will have problems. If you spot it quickly this should be easy to handle. Make sure you snipe the probe/pylon/warp prism quickly.
This is a really rare build, but your marines should have stim by the time 2 Colossus come out. Simply stim forward and snipe the range less Colossus as fast as you can.
The most standard Protoss opening, and one of the easiest to beat. By the time you hit your opponent simply won’t have enough stuff to counter your marine ball because he went for the safe opening. By the time he figures out what you are doing with his observer it will be too late.
Extremely common opening at the diamond level. Your opponent will most likely have 2 or 3 immortals; you will need multiple bunkers and SCVs ready to repair. Marines do well against immortals, but your bunkers will evaporate quite quickly leaving you potentially vulnerable.
A well executed 4-gate will hit when you have 1 or 2 bunkers. You will need to turtle and throw down multiple bunkers to defend. Try to slow down his 4 gate as much as possible by controlling the watch towers and denying the probe/pylon. If you have less than 3 bunkers you might have trouble with this. However, marines destroy gateway units fast when they have stim, so just turtle till you get stim out.
You will probably get raped in the very first battle. The Protoss will forcefield and guardian shield and their army will probably roflstomp yours so hard you will probably think its gg, however as those sentries die off your army gets exponentially strong.
Stim and dart forward and snipe any Colossus ASAP, you need to keep their numbers low. They won’t have the range upgrade by the time you hit them.
Put supply depots at the edge of your base, you need time to react to drops. If you aren’t in position and the Protoss gets multiple warps or can elevator into your base you might be in trouble.
Constantly update your rally points to where you think you will be in 40 seconds if all goes well. It’s better for your rally points to be too far forward than too far back because you can grab units as you retreat, where as in the heat of battle you might have trouble grabbing units a screen and a half in the back to reinforce the front lines.
Make sure your control groups are setup properly. You need your command center, barracks and engineering bays at minimum hotkeyed. Preferably an SCV as well near your main to make supply depots if need be.
Flanking with marines help, it helps you get that deadly concave quicker. It also prevents you from getting stormed and laser beamed to death while in ‘ball formation’
Micro your marines constantly once the push starts. You shouldn’t have to look at your base ever. Your supply will go up and down constantly, meaning no supply depots are needed normally.
Trade your army constantly with his. Your marines operate best when they are in small to medium sizes. If your opponent gets out multiple Colossus you may need to swap into Vikings. If he has multiple HTs you may need ghosts.
Throw your brood war mentality away. I used to play Terran in BW and any BW Terran player knows that marines get raped by everything in the Protoss army. In StarCraft 2 things are totally different. Don’t let your brood war experience of zealots, dragoons and reavers ripping apart anything not made of steel effect your judgment in game.
Do not make reactors until you have at least 12 barracks, this will cause too much of a production spike in marines and can cost you the game. When you do start to make reactors, do them one or two at a time.
Expand aggressively; your opponent won’t have a chance to move out a screen width from his natural if you do this right.
Poke the front constantly early game, if you don’t see an expansion build another 2 or 3 bunkers just in case. Control the watchtower(s) if possible at all times.
After 6:30 make sure you have a scan or two available for DTs until you can confirm he isn’t going DTs.
Do not get supply blocked ever. You need to build two or three supply depots at a time mid game. If you get supply blocked for even a bit, your army size will be substantially smaller when you push out.
Hotkey 6-7 SCVs at your natural so you can pull them off and repair if you need to quickly. If you need to pull SCVs and haven’t hotkeyed them, double click a SCV, do not box your whole mineral line. By doing this, you ensure your mules continue to mine.
Many Protoss respond to your 1rax FE by 4 gating you, make sure you have multiple bunkers up and are constantly checking your opponent’s front. Controlling the watchtowers and slowing down the probe/pylon is important.
Have fun abusing your “A” key on your keyboard and making Protoss’ around the world rage with this build! GL HF Terran commanders and remember A is for MARINES NOT APPLE! Comments and questions are welcome and I will constantly update and view this thread.
Replay #1: My opponent goes for a 6gate with heavy focus on zealots and stalkers. The game is really close and back and forth. This is the game in the VOD at the top of the page.
Replay #2: My opponent goes for a 6 gate with heavy focus on sentries (MC style). My opponent can only withstand two waves of marines before rage quitting.
Replay #3: This is a ‘grudge match’ after calling this guy a ‘bronze league noob’ in a 2v2, I promptly own his 3400-masters’ ass with only marines. His reaction is pretty hilarious.
Replay #4: On my alternative account I meet an opponent who goes 1gate FE into 2 base colo + gateway units. He puts up a decent fight but in the end gets overwhelmed with marines.
Replay #5 On my alternative account again I meet up with a 3400 masters guy who goes 5 gate and abuses back rocks to circumvent my bunkers, my marines easily hold it off without much difficulty.
I will try to respond to as many of your forum posts as possible here. I decided to make a section for this as opposed to replying directly in the thread as this will make it easier to see discussions, since this thread might get extremely large and therefore it would be hard to see any real discussions if the responses were pages apart.
“I think dealing with a style like this requires Toss players to play in a way they're not really used to, and so this ends up being really effective.”
Exactly, this type of style catches many Protoss off guard. This probably will never become ‘standard’ play, but rather something that you have in your best of 3 or best of 5 toolbox. Another thing is that when you are under constant pressure you are more likely to make mistakes, which is why many Protoss do not respond in the proper manner.
”As a way of fighting this build, what do you think about 1 gate expand into 6 gate blink stalkers with double forge ups, but instead of the normal double ups you get armor and shield instead of weapons and armor, and THEN after the first set finishes get weapons and the next armor at the same time?”
Not 100% sure about the gas constraints that a build like that would pose for the Protoss. However if it is possible to get double forge + blink + 6 gate mass stalkers I still believe that it wouldn’t pose much problems. Stalkers only gain +1 dmg from each attack, and in terms of armor the +1 attack from the marines should negate that. In addition marines can instantly kill a stalker if they focus fire it, meaning blink micro is impossible.
“This looks ridiculously effective, and I cant wait to try it tonight! Do you ever tech up to medivacs? I think once your third is up, they would be a great think to have, since your income will be much higher than the protoss'. You have to get a factory to get an armory for your upgrades anyways, so you're already halfway up the tech tree.”
Normally I do not, but it is possible. You are right, your income will be much higher. Normally I just spend the money on getting more units and upgrades and just swarm them directly. Using healing units and mobility don’t really fit with the ‘constantly in your face’ style that this strategy is best at.
“There’s just one huge flaw in your build. A lot of your reaction to collosus is "Snipe the rangeless collosus". But what happens if the protoss waits for range, or actually bothers to micro them? One of my builds (and quite usual one) for close position vs terran is simply 1gate robotics collosus, and attack with 2 collosus with range. You wont be able to just "snipe" them with pure marines. Ever encountered this?”
If the Protoss gets 2+ colossus out, or has range you need to get mauds or Vikings to help your marines. Normally you constantly trade armies and put pressure on him so his Colossus count is really low.
“I tried this a couple times today. It just simply doesn't work in mid masters or higher. You simply cannot engage a protoss who doesn't FE up a ramp. When he sees this build he just sits in his base until he has enough sentries/army to move out and your marines simply don't do any cost effective damage. Unless the protoss blindly fast expos it's a BO loss against anything else, and even then you will have issues anyways. That's also not taking into account that early stalker harass really shuts you down early game against decent players simply because they can kite marines and take no hp damage.”
If the Protoss is still on one base at 9-10 minutes, you probably have already won the game as you are taking your 3rd about this time and you can just overwhelm him due to the income disparity with Marines/Mauds + Vikings/Ghosts/Medivacs. In addition this build is not the easiest thing in the word to scout early. 1 rax FE has many transitions. Stalkers harassment can cause a slight problem early game, but that is what bunkers are for.
“If you can pull this off, fighting marines vs x-unit puts Terran at advantage. Similar to TvZ scenarios, sacrificing any type of gas-requiring unit to kill marines is NOT cost effective. You're using gas to kill something that doesn't require gas to make (although the upgrades to require gas)”
This is the core concept of the build. You get to spend your gas on other things like upgrades or just more scvs on minerals. Day9 called this a ‘lean army composition’. Basically less variety = more numbers. More variety = less numbers. The strategy revolves around overwhelming the Protoss with the ‘leanest’ of ‘lean strategies’ available to the Terrans.
“I think the best way to destroy this build is keeping the Colossi from being sniped by playing carefully with them until range comes out. It always seems stupid to me when a Protoss engages Terran infantry with rangeless Colossi on open ground, even somewhat when they have a bunch of forcefields to control the ground.”
Colossus have a range of 6 without the upgrade. If you go colossus you get hit right when you have 1 or 2. If you just sit at the back, the colossus won’t do any damage. If they come forward the range 5 marines just kill it in two volleys. Normally you just get 1 or 2 laser sweeps across the marine ball.
"once a toss sees your simply massing marines, cant he just expand defend and mass colossus+sentry?"
No, both are way too gas intensive. The push hits when you have 1-2 colossus as well. In addition, if the Protoss expands too late, like after his observer scouts your base, you will roll him really easily.
"Have you tried medivacs with the mass marines? They make marines even more effective in the small numbers, let you stim a little more freely, and most importantly guarantee that you can force multiple small battles at once with multi-pronged drops while attacking the front. The downside of course is that they'll eat into your marine count and you wouldn't be able to skip all those refineries. Maybe it's not worth it. Retention of those medivacs would have to be a priority, I was just wondering if you have tried it yet."
Medivacs are a possible transition, but I prefer Vikings or ghosts and overwhelming them with units. You should be up on expansions by the time you need to transition anyways, which should allow you to just “Sauron Terran” them.
“How do you plan on holding off a simple Zealot/Stalker poke to your front at the very beginning of the game? Your early game is dangerously vulnerable to this it would appear.”
Normally the distances are more than enough for you to be alright. Even on close positions Meta or Slag Pits I have two marines ready to fight. You may need to pull SCVs and micro a bit. But it shouldn’t be too difficult.
“Bigger question. How do you planning on taking on stalkers before you have stim? Mass bunkers?”
You need to focus fire with the marines, if you let your marines spread their fire on the stalkers you will get owned pretty hard. Bunkers do help, normally you play defensively till you have stim but you might be able to snipe a sentry or two before your push, which will help a ton.
I had a busy day yesterday and I am overwhelmed with all of the responses from you guys. I will read them all later today and respond to as many as I can. In the meantime, if you would like to practice against this strategy I would love to play a few games with any of you. If you can beat me with your strategy, It will help me create a 'counters' section above. I have a NA and SEA account, PM me to arrange a game!
I've been doing mass marine vs Protoss for a while now and I agree it's pretty effective. My style's different and does involve reactors but is done in a such a way to avoid any mineral surplus. My way allows me to get a 3rd up much faster than your build would simply because I'm not having to spend 150minerals on extra rax constantly. Plus, since both of our builds involve being aggressive almost non-stop, I find it extremely beneficial to take an extremely fast third as there's just no way they can attack it (you make a similar point in the OP).
Either way, nice to see someone else try this. Although now every Protoss on the ladder is going to start preparing for this and I was enjoying being the only mass marine Terran .
On March 12 2011 09:48 PhiliBiRD wrote: once a toss sees your simply massing marines, cant he just expand defend and mass colussus/sentry?
Colossus and sentry are both extremely gas heavy units so there is literally no way he can mass both. Further more, due to how long it takes to get colossus (not too long but long enough), you can simply over whelm them either before colossus are out or before they're in too great a number to actually do much damage.
It would be awesome for Protoss and Zerg if the general gameplan of mass Marine is so effective it results in a Marine nerf. Other than that, I think the best way to destroy this build is keeping the Colossi from being sniped by playing carefully with them until range comes out. It always seems stupid to me when a Protoss engages Terran infantry with rangeless Colossi on open ground, even somewhat when they have a bunch of forcefields to control the ground. I also think that a 3-gate sentry expand might cause this build problems on maps that aren't metalopolis or shattered temple, and the Protoss can build a bunch of stalkers to support the sentries and combine splitting the marines with forcefield and good use of guardian shield to kill a good part of your initial army without taking much permanent damage.
On March 12 2011 10:00 justindab0mb wrote: Yay now Terrans can mass pure marines against Zerg and Protoss!
And Terran.
I don't get why people complain about pure marines. Yes, I can kind of see the argument on how it's stupid that a Terran can stay on T1 all game. But the thing is going mass marine vs any race is probably the hardest style in the game. Once the opponent has got a unit with any form of splash damage (hellions, tanks, banelings, infestors, colossus, high templar) it becomes stupidly hard to stick with pure marines. You have to have amazing control and, often, the slightest mistake means you lose straight away. Often it's better to just go other styles because it's so much easier than pure marine. I'd love to see any Zerg/Protoss player who complains about mass marine ITT try it and see how well they do.
I also think that a 3-gate sentry expand might cause this build problems on maps that aren't metalopolis or shattered temple, and the Protoss can build a bunch of stalkers to support the sentries and combine splitting the marines with forcefield and good use of guardian shield to kill a good part of your initial army without taking much permanent damage.
As mentioned in the OP (which I'm guessing you didn't read fully), the build relies on being constantly aggressive. You expect to lose your first wave of marines but, by attacking, you make them use up all their sentry energy. By the time your next wave comes, they'll only have enough energy for a couple forcefields at most so you can at least snipe the sentries. Then, once their sentries are gone, the constant pressure means they just fold after a while.
On March 12 2011 10:00 justindab0mb wrote: Yay now Terrans can mass pure marines against Zerg and Protoss!
And Terran.
I don't get why people complain about pure marines. Yes, I can kind of see the argument on how it's stupid that a Terran can stay on T1 all game. But the thing is going mass marine vs any race is probably the hardest style in the game. Once the opponent has got a unit with any form of splash damage (hellions, tanks, banelings, infestors, colossus, high templar) it becomes stupidly hard to stick with pure marines. You have to have amazing control and, often, the slightest mistake means you lose straight away. Often it's better to just go other styles because it's so much easier than pure marine. I'd love to see any Zerg/Protoss player who complains about mass marine ITT try it and see how well they do.
I never complained about pure marines.
But OT: I offrace as terran in teamgames and I always just mass marine medivac every game with really quick upgrades. The only problems I have are colossi, high templars and infestors. You can split against banelings, and marines will tear apart pretty much everything else... I always found marines to be the most effective vs protoss so I never understood why everyone makes so many marauders. I think a few marauders for conc shells is good, but the majority of your army should be marines.. idk, just my opinion
On March 12 2011 10:00 justindab0mb wrote: Yay now Terrans can mass pure marines against Zerg and Protoss!
And Terran.
I don't get why people complain about pure marines. Yes, I can kind of see the argument on how it's stupid that a Terran can stay on T1 all game. But the thing is going mass marine vs any race is probably the hardest style in the game. Once the opponent has got a unit with any form of splash damage (hellions, tanks, banelings, infestors, colossus, high templar) it becomes stupidly hard to stick with pure marines. You have to have amazing control and, often, the slightest mistake means you lose straight away. Often it's better to just go other styles because it's so much easier than pure marine. I'd love to see any Zerg/Protoss player who complains about mass marine ITT try it and see how well they do.
I never complained about pure marines.
But OT: I offrace as terran in teamgames and I always just mass marine medivac every game with really quick upgrades. The only problems I have are colossi, high templars and infestors. You can split against banelings, and marines will tear apart pretty much everything else... I always found marines to be the most effective vs protoss so I never understood why everyone makes so many marauders. I think a few marauders for conc shells is good, but the majority of your army should be marines.. idk, just my opinion
Sorry, I read your post as being really sarcastic. Every Protoss I've gone pure marine against has said something like "lol terran", "rofl terran so retarded", "look t1 beats everything" etc. I kinda just assumed that, by you saying "look now Terran can go mass marines vs everything!" you were trolling.
And I agree that it's always good to get at least 4 marauders late mid-game, simply to soak any initial splash damage. Run marauders in, then marines and everything the enemy has will evaporate if you micro correctly.
If you can pull this off, fighting marines vs x-unit puts Terran at advantage. Similar to TvZ scenarios, sacrificing any type of gas-requiring unit to kill marines is NOT cost effective. You're using gas to kill something that doesn't require gas to make (although the upgrades to require gas)
One of my partners used a similar build: just lots and lots of marines. I went chargelot-colosus to counter it. He hard-transitioned into hellion thor (he had expanded aggressively) and I couldn't get out enough cost-effective units to stop mass hellion/thor. (Hellions are really good fodder units btw, much like vultures)
How do you plan on holding off a simple Zealot/Stalker poke to your front at the very beginning of the game? Your early game is dangerously vulnerable to this it would appear.
As a way of fighting this build, what do you think about 1 gate expand into 6 gate blink stalkers with double forge ups, but instead of the normal double ups you get armor and shield instead of weapons and armor, and THEN after the first set finishes get weapons and the next armor at the same time?
On March 12 2011 11:24 Carbonthief wrote: Ok, theorycraft:
As a way of fighting this build, what do you think about 1 gate expand into 6 gate blink stalkers with double forge ups, but instead of the normal double ups you get armor and shield instead of weapons and armor, and THEN after the first set finishes get weapons and the next armor at the same time?
I'm pretty sure this would kill you before you could get 1-2-1.
On March 12 2011 11:24 Carbonthief wrote: Ok, theorycraft:
As a way of fighting this build, what do you think about 1 gate expand into 6 gate blink stalkers with double forge ups, but instead of the normal double ups you get armor and shield instead of weapons and armor, and THEN after the first set finishes get weapons and the next armor at the same time?
I'm pretty sure this would kill you before you could get 1-2-1.
Could you not use other tactics to keep you alive during this time? Standard zealot sentry stalker play, and then you finally get your mass blink stalkers going, and blink micro your way to victory?
I love this style even though I'm protoss. Once you get stim you can be so aggressive it's not even funny. Just decimating the mineral line with 4-8 stimmed marines while building up a middle-sized force of marines to get ready to attack is freaking strong,
Have you tried medivacs with the mass marines? They make marines even more effective in the small numbers, let you stim a little more freely, and most importantly guarantee that you can force multiple small battles at once with multi-pronged drops while attacking the front.
The downside of course is that they'll eat into your marine count and you wouldn't be able to skip all those refineries. Maybe it's not worth it. Retention of those medivacs would have to be a priority, I was just wondering if you have tried it yet.
On March 12 2011 11:38 Senorcuidado wrote: Have you tried medivacs with the mass marines? They make marines even more effective in the small numbers, let you stim a little more freely, and most importantly guarantee that you can force multiple small battles at once with multi-pronged drops while attacking the front.
The downside of course is that they'll eat into your marine count and you wouldn't be able to skip all those refineries. Maybe it's not worth it. Retention of those medivacs would have to be a priority, I was just wondering if you have tried it yet.
I think part of the point is keeping armies as low cost as possible. The armies are kinda meant to die, so every attack would need medivacs, and then you'd be losing 1-2 every time. By constantly nailing the high tech units and keeping up nonstop aggression, a Protoss player can't rally, and the terran player replenishes supply incredibly fast, while keeping the gas cost low.
On March 12 2011 10:02 Jimmeh wrote:As mentioned in the OP (which I'm guessing you didn't read fully), the build relies on being constantly aggressive. You expect to lose your first wave of marines but, by attacking, you make them use up all their sentry energy. By the time your next wave comes, they'll only have enough energy for a couple forcefields at most so you can at least snipe the sentries. Then, once their sentries are gone, the constant pressure means they just fold after a while.
My thinking wasn't that the Protoss would continue to hold with Sentries, but rather would hold the first wave with no casualties, and then be able to engage the second wave simply by having superior numbers. Also, on maps that aren't Metalopolis or Shattered Temple, those 6 or 7 sentries can block the choke the marines are coming through 5 or 6 times in a row. Done right, the by the time the Protoss player is getting low on sentry energy, he should be able to have an outright superior army because he shouldn't have been losing anything. I'm not sure if that army would be able to hold up against the incredible cost effectiveness of Marines, though.
Also, just occurred to me. How does well microed blink Stalkers fair against Marines with stim when both are in large numbers?
Since you said you never lose, even if you tell people it is coming, perhaps you should go to Korea and win the gsl or win every other tournament. A 100% win rate in PvT is truly quite impressive and would guarantee you many wins just think wgat you could do if you had a TvZ and TvT build we could stop playing the game. Thank you for showing me the unbeatable TvP strategy, Starcraft 2 has been partially solved; no reason to play PvT now onto other great problems of our age!
Theres just one huge flaw in your build. A lot of your reaction to collosus is "Snipe the rangeless collosus". But what happens if the protoss waits for range, or actually bothers to micro them? One of my builds (and quite usual one) for close position vs terran is simply 1gate robotics collosus, and attack with 2 collosus with range. You wont be able to just "snipe" them with pure marines. Ever encountered this?
This looks ridiculously effective, and I cant wait to try it tonight!
Do you ever tech up to medivacs? I think once your third is up, they would be a great think to have, since your income will be much higher than the protoss'. You have to get a factory to get an armory for your upgrades anyways, so you're already halfway up the tech tree
On March 12 2011 09:48 PhiliBiRD wrote: once a toss sees your simply massing marines, cant he just expand defend and mass colussus/sentry?
The point of this build is mobility and keeping both armies small. The stalker/collosus/sentry ball isn't very effective in small numbers and is extremely immobile, that's why this build works.
I really like this build. Builds that are attacking constantly and very mobile interest me a lot. I'll definitely be trying this out soon.
Marines DPS is indeed insanely strong and I'm saying there are Marine builds which could work very well, but I'm not exactly sure on what level. Would need to try this out but I'm calling most Protoss on a decent - high level can hold it off.
So what would you say is a good defense vs this type of play? Would getting tons of stalkers and sprinkle in sentries for gardian shields work? Also maybe upgrading armor at a forge?
Perhaps adding cannons so that you can trade minerals for minerals to defend, instead of gas for minerals?
I think dealing with a style like this requires Toss players to play in a way they're not really used to, and so this ends up being really effective.
Overall, I'd imagine that as the game moves on into the later stages, you'd need to have observers all over the place so you could anticipate small marine groups poking around at your bases and deal with them without leaving other areas exposed. In a sense, the observers would be the Toss player's way of challenging the Terran's map control from insane aggression and harassment.
Anyway, that's just my theorycraft. As for getting into a later game scenario, I'm not sure what type of openings would be best or how to adjust current popular openings to deal with this.
I can pretty much guarantee 100% it wont work vs a good player, you can do double forge mass gates as P and crush only marines, or simply make 1 collosus and protect it..
On March 12 2011 13:06 Xingke wrote: Day9 did a recent daily on a pure Marine style as well. It was Rainbow vs someone I can't remember. Was very cool to watch it in action.
I tried this a couple times today. It just simply doesn't work in mid masters or higher. You simply cannot engage a protoss who doesn't FE up a ramp. When he sees this build he just sits in his base until he has enough sentries/army to move out and your marines simply don't do any cost effective damage. Unless the protoss blindly fast expos it's a BO loss against anything else, and even then you will have issues anyways.
That's also not taking into account that early stalker harass really shuts you down early game against decent players simply because they can kite marines and take no hp damage.
You seem really defensive so I dont expect to get a nice reply with this comment but IMO this build is terriable along with the overall idea of it. Personally I dont like marines at all to begin with (im a T player yes) but they are a good unit
I dont know what your rank is in masters but I got to 3000 point masters and I must say if I tried somthing like this it would have to be really cheesy and still have a bad chance at winning. YES I SAW THE VIDEOS but FF's own marines microed stalkers early on when you dont have stim ruins this, a zealot stalker poke or 4 gate would beat this unless you just layed down a million bunkers but that's no agressive and still I dont think would really hold well.
I don't like the way the protoss played in the demo video. If the protoss played slightly better with more sentries and zealots, the marines wouldn't have done as much damage. Stalkers aren't particularly great against marines. He needed Guardian Shield and Zealots to tank and Force Fields to prevent kiting.
Just tried this. It seems to work pretty well. Solid transitions as well, ghost or medivac or both for that matter. Constantly drop with marine harass, ghosts to emp. However, executing this build I seem to have a fear that my marine numbers are insufficient to defeat the enemy. However, I look back at the rally and feel reassured. My opponent which I told the build to, went mass sentry. He had a lot of forcefields, but when his sentries died, his stalkers melted.
On March 12 2011 13:43 KevinIX wrote: I don't like the way the protoss played in the demo video. If the protoss played slightly better with more sentries and zealots, the marines wouldn't have done as much damage. Stalkers aren't particularly great against marines. He needed Guardian Shield and Zealots to tank and Force Fields to prevent kiting.
From watching the replays and from personal playing experience, imho mixing in zealots to tank are not really the way to go against someone who masses marines, especially at the timing the OP hits, because zealots actually melt much faster. Zealots tank well against marines marauder because marauders do horrible dps against zealots, but marines actually melt zealots hardcore. GS + FFs make it very hard or impossible for the marines to focus fire individual stalkers/sentries. On the other hand, a-move AI makes the marines autotarget and focus fire zealots that close in and man do they die fast.
Sentry and stalker is the way to go until you can hold out for your higher tech to kick in imho, and most of the players lost in the replay because they failed their pushes, or countered too aggressively after killing a substantial number of marines, then lost the remaining sentries in their push and gets overwhelmed
Nonetheless, OP's build looks really impressive and brutal. I wonder how Tyler's 2 forge heavy gateway style of play does against this since upgrades are extremely crucial against marines
I did this for the first time, it's so fun. I fucked it up but still kept running marines into him. Transitioned into marine medic to drop main to snipe HT tech as I pushed his front again.
Filthy opening protects against a LOT of protoss openings with good scout.
On March 12 2011 13:09 bLuR wrote: I can pretty much guarantee 100% it wont work vs a good player, you can do double forge mass gates as P and crush only marines, or simply make 1 collosus and protect it..
You would think that, but it works out much better than you think as long as you double engi bay to counter
I really enjoy using marines but. I do build 1 factory with seige tanks to back up this army and if anything, when i decide to retreat the chasing army is met with a couple seige tanks and I turn the fight back around. up to 10-15 times a game , still very early. I appreciate the idea of using straight marines but building 1 factory with the steady flow of 1 seige tank coming out is very very effective on offence and defence due to micro management with probe pulling on their natural. all in all really nice to watch. terrans rushing thors and banshees give us a bad name!! stay in their face and let the world know.. terrans mean bizznazzzz.
Interesting strat.. I think it can get shut down by good sentry play into colo. You basically need to conserve sentry energy as much as possible. Also probably map dependent. Wouldn't work on xel'naga for instance but could work well close position metal.
Strong build that really depends on your opponent making mistakes. The thing is, mistakes are soo easy to make under this kind of pressure. Some wrong moves with the sentries and bam, this game is going to be over soon.
On March 12 2011 17:36 dave333 wrote: Strong build that really depends on your opponent making mistakes. The thing is, mistakes are soo easy to make under this kind of pressure. Some wrong moves with the sentries and bam, this game is going to be over soon.
I agree, the build exploits the fact that sentries require alot more micro then marines. The higher the level of the players, the weaker such build becomes.
Dunno if im a noob for sayin this but wouldn't a 4 gate all in absolutly dominate this. Watched the replay with beethoven, warpgate finishes and you have 2 marines on patrol and was it 4 rax pumping? and you just dumped ur money on a orbital. Wouldnt decent enough zealot sentry micro FF your ramp and force a lift on the CC
On March 12 2011 18:36 PlagueRat wrote: Dunno if im a noob for sayin this but wouldn't a 4 gate all in absolutly dominate this. Watched the replay with beethoven, warpgate finishes and you have 2 marines on patrol and was it 4 rax pumping? and you just dumped ur money on a orbital. Wouldnt decent enough zealot sentry micro FF your ramp and force a lift on the CC
In the start the build is pretty much your standart 1 rax FE, if played correctly it has good a chance of holding a 4 wg.
I use a somewhat similar build once in a while when I just want to see mass carnage. It's definitely not the end-all win-all build, but it puts the hurt on if it survives to the 7:30 mark. From my experience it has a large weakness to any sort of 4:00 pressure. And I don't know about SEA's metagame, but it's seems pretty standard (again from my experience) in NA that protoss will push out with their first stalker-zealot, which could ultimately screw up the tempo.
And I completely disagree with your solution to fourgate. If you do react perfectly on a map like xel'naga, meta, backwater, or anything others with an open natural and erect two-three bunkers by 5:20 (when the fourgate hits), he's going to try to snipe your command center- forcing a lift/you to one base. If my calculations are correct, at 5:20 you will have 4 marines with 1 nearly completing, 1 barracks, and two halfway done.
But yea, this is just me trying to pick apart the weaknesses. The game becomes really intense if it survives early aggression. It's much more about strategic decisions than countering specific builds, which I find fun.
Just read most of the comments, not sure if people are trolling or didn't read the OP.
If anyone thinks they can beat the build then PM the OP for a game, I've lost every single match against OP with this build and I would like to see someone kick his ass. So if you're one of the people who talks big then have a replay or something to show it.
On March 12 2011 19:20 lalapo wrote: If anyone thinks they can beat the build then PM the OP for a game, I've lost every single match against OP with this build and I would like to see someone kick his ass. So if you're one of the people who talks big then have a replay or something to show it.
Which server is he from? I don't want to look pretentious when I talk about it, but I do believe this strategy has it's weaknesses.
Not sure why you guys are so confused about what to do when protoss stay at 1 base and techs up or cannons up. You mass expand and transition into something that will kill colossus/HT. What's he going to do, get Starport units?
Basically do what a zerg player would do. This is a zerg build for Terrans except marines are better than lings in any way.
On March 12 2011 19:58 epoc wrote: Couldn't protoss just cannon up and tech to colossus and/or high templar?
Generaly, 1 base tech protoss will loose to a FE terran. If you look carefuly, this build starts very similar to the standard 1 rax no gas FE, that means you can play it as a standard 1 rax FE if you have to, i.e. 1 base tech protoss.
I haven't seen a single guardian shield, wich would take out one third of your dps. combined with standart zealot 1 armor, you do 3 dmg per hit vs a zealot's health. you might realize that over 30 shots for a single unit isn't that great, so I reccomend going for mass gateway units (mainly zealots and sentrys) and mass upgrades against this style.
Should win easily, thanks to forcefields trapping you against my melee zealots that take o so many hits.
I have not tested this, since I do not face this kind of playstyle on the european ladder but I believe gateway units+upgrades and slow tech to colossi should be more than enough to deal with this. (Also, If terran decides to tech switch just wait a little for 2 or so colossi, he should be so far behind in tech you will just roflstomp him.)
Again: Theory crafting here, but I think this is a simple way to kill mass Marines.
Edit: Did not realize there were 2 videos. Your opponent in that tourney lost 4 sentries and never made any more... I think Sentrys really destroy this. (seeing as it was pretty close even without them.) He could have saved his colossus, wait for a second one with range -> gg
On March 12 2011 21:12 rEalGuapo wrote: I haven't seen a single guardian shield, wich would take out one third of your dps. combined with standart zealot 1 armor, you do 3 dmg per hit vs a zealot's health. you might realize that over 30 shots for a single unit isn't that great, so I reccomend going for mass gateway units (mainly zealots and sentrys) and mass upgrades against this style.
Should win easily, thanks to forcefields trapping you against my melee zealots that take o so many hits.
I have not tested this, since I do not face this kind of playstyle on the european ladder but I believe gateway units+upgrades and slow tech to colossi should be more than enough to deal with this. (Also, If terran decides to tech switch just wait a little for 2 or so colossi, he should be so far behind in tech you will just roflstomp him.)
Again: Theory crafting here, but I think this is a simple way to kill mass Marines.
That whould indeed beat mass marine, but as it has been pointed out, mass marines are so very easy to use compared to sentry and that gives a huge advantage at the lower levels.
On March 12 2011 21:12 rEalGuapo wrote: I haven't seen a single guardian shield, wich would take out one third of your dps. combined with standart zealot 1 armor, you do 3 dmg per hit vs a zealot's health. you might realize that over 30 shots for a single unit isn't that great, so I reccomend going for mass gateway units (mainly zealots and sentrys) and mass upgrades against this style.
Should win easily, thanks to forcefields trapping you against my melee zealots that take o so many hits.
I have not tested this, since I do not face this kind of playstyle on the european ladder but I believe gateway units+upgrades and slow tech to colossi should be more than enough to deal with this. (Also, If terran decides to tech switch just wait a little for 2 or so colossi, he should be so far behind in tech you will just roflstomp him.)
Again: Theory crafting here, but I think this is a simple way to kill mass Marines.
That whould indeed beat mass marine, but as it has been pointed out, mass marines are so very easy to use compared to sentry and that gives a huge advantage at the lower levels.
Well, I don't really care about the low levels of skills, regarding strategies. I'm pretty sure a silver league player with this build will mess it up and then forget to build marines for 3 minutes while fighting, have 4k overmins and lose. This is not meant to be offensive, this is just what I see from friends that play at this skill level.
I don't main race Terran, but I tried this on ladder.
This dies to the 3gateway Sentry/Stalker pressure...like straight up dies. The push hits around 6:30mins with 6 Stalkers and 3 Sentries and crush everything, but to be fair it crushes all 1rax expands (well forces them back into the base), if they micro they only lose at most 1 Stalker, then with 3 more stalkers warped in to reinforce they just push into your base and you can't do anything, then when they realize you have nothing they just skip the expand and keep warping in units, once that Sentry/Stalker ball gets momentum it is almost impossible to stop without marauders.
Your stim hasn't even started when he hits, so when he breaks that ramp hes going to kill your tech lab that has stim before it can ever complete and it is gg from there..
More bunkers would help, but you die with only one bunker
EDIT:
I think this build relies on momentum, small victories end up leading to bigger advantages later on, if Protoss can ever snatch it away from you it goes down hill fast
Played against it once on metalo close ground. I went for 1 gate FE, he 4raxed expanded and pushed With ~30 rins, i dragged the game past the 10mn mark with almost only stalkers just to die to 9rax pure marauders thereafter. Imo mass marauders is quite better than mass marines in tvp because they're less fragile vs. Colossi. 3k master
This strat is awesome at the point its almost slightly op. As a protoss a played some +3500 T guy from TL channel who does indeed this strat in tvp (or something really similar; we played like 10 games). I never felt like in those games, in any sc2 match. For the first time i feel like im being beated by a guy with less skill than I but with no cheese involved! I feel totally owned just by the build.
This strat allows FE, but great defence aganist a scouted 4 gates (3 bunkers is enough). A solid pressure push (about 25 marines) at about 7-8 minute. And also a chance to make a 3rd at lightspeed (aka better eco than the P). And the amazing of this is that if you "lose" a battle, the loses money-wise almost always favors the T! The T only need decent marine control to avoid any zealot contact. Remember than 1 stalker cost almost the same than 4 marines (this guy makes refineries only about minute 8-7), so in the early battle you just can´t kite 24 marines with like 4-5 stalkers (you prolly have a pair of sentries and a pair of zealots too, but useless in those numbers), so if you don´t scout the build, AND make a good amount of units, you are kinda fucked. I'm not saying the build is the unbeatable or something, i just say that it rewards a lot with not that much skill, and imo that makes it anoying.
On March 12 2011 21:12 rEalGuapo wrote: I haven't seen a single guardian shield, wich would take out one third of your dps. combined with standart zealot 1 armor, you do 3 dmg per hit vs a zealot's health. you might realize that over 30 shots for a single unit isn't that great, so I reccomend going for mass gateway units (mainly zealots and sentrys) and mass upgrades against this style.
Should win easily, thanks to forcefields trapping you against my melee zealots that take o so many hits.
I have not tested this, since I do not face this kind of playstyle on the european ladder but I believe gateway units+upgrades and slow tech to colossi should be more than enough to deal with this. (Also, If terran decides to tech switch just wait a little for 2 or so colossi, he should be so far behind in tech you will just roflstomp him.)
Again: Theory crafting here, but I think this is a simple way to kill mass Marines.
That whould indeed beat mass marine, but as it has been pointed out, mass marines are so very easy to use compared to sentry and that gives a huge advantage at the lower levels.
Well, I don't really care about the low levels of skills, regarding strategies. I'm pretty sure a silver league player with this build will mess it up and then forget to build marines for 3 minutes while fighting, have 4k overmins and lose. This is not meant to be offensive, this is just what I see from friends that play at this skill level.
Sorry but obviosly this is a lower level strategy that will never work twice in masters league. Why whold you even consider this for high level play ? And by lower level I mean anything below masters.
In fact, masters in itself is lower level play. Lower then pro anyhow =)
On March 12 2011 21:34 Belha wrote: This strat is awesome at the point its almost slightly op. As a protoss a played some +3500 T guy from TL channel who does indeed this strat in tvp (or something really similar; we played like 10 games). I never felt like in those games, in any sc2 match. For the first time i feel like im being beated by a guy with less skill than I but with no cheese involved! I feel totally owned just by the build.
This strat allows FE, but great defence aganist a scouted 4 gates (3 bunkers is enough). A solid pressure push (about 25 marines) at about 7-8 minute. And also a chance to make a 3rd at lightspeed (aka better eco than the P). And the amazing of this is that if you "lose" a battle, the loses money-wise almost always favors the T! The T only need decent marine control to avoid any zealot contact. Remember than 1 stalker cost almost the same than 4 marines (this guy makes refineries only about minute 8-7), so in the early battle you just can´t kite 24 marines with like 4-5 stalkers (you prolly have a pair of sentries and a pair of zealots too, but useless in those numbers), so if you don´t scout the build, AND make a good amount of units, you are kinda fucked. I'm not saying the build is the unbeatable or something, i just say that it rewards a lot with not that much skill, and imo that makes it anoying.
Now you know how we Terrand feel everytime we end up laddering you Protoss guys and mainly outplaying them, but still we lose to some kind of ht tech, or any kind of 4gate......
Time to abuuse, althou i think it loses to blink stalkers and sentry/ zlot and then upgrading charge
On March 12 2011 21:12 rEalGuapo wrote: I haven't seen a single guardian shield, wich would take out one third of your dps. combined with standart zealot 1 armor, you do 3 dmg per hit vs a zealot's health. you might realize that over 30 shots for a single unit isn't that great, so I reccomend going for mass gateway units (mainly zealots and sentrys) and mass upgrades against this style.
Should win easily, thanks to forcefields trapping you against my melee zealots that take o so many hits.
I have not tested this, since I do not face this kind of playstyle on the european ladder but I believe gateway units+upgrades and slow tech to colossi should be more than enough to deal with this. (Also, If terran decides to tech switch just wait a little for 2 or so colossi, he should be so far behind in tech you will just roflstomp him.)
Again: Theory crafting here, but I think this is a simple way to kill mass Marines.
That whould indeed beat mass marine, but as it has been pointed out, mass marines are so very easy to use compared to sentry and that gives a huge advantage at the lower levels.
Well, I don't really care about the low levels of skills, regarding strategies. I'm pretty sure a silver league player with this build will mess it up and then forget to build marines for 3 minutes while fighting, have 4k overmins and lose. This is not meant to be offensive, this is just what I see from friends that play at this skill level.
Sorry but obviosly this is a lower level strategy that will never work twice in masters league. Why whold you even consider this for high level play ? And by lower level I mean anything below masters\high diamond.
You would be surprised how effective this is, I beat a few masters league protoss, maybe they were caught off guard?
Either way, people say Cannon rushes and Six pools only ever work in low level leagues, but you would be surprised how many people still get caught by that in high masters. I think most people have lost to more Cannon rushes than they have defended (at least in PvP)
On March 12 2011 21:12 rEalGuapo wrote: I haven't seen a single guardian shield, wich would take out one third of your dps. combined with standart zealot 1 armor, you do 3 dmg per hit vs a zealot's health. you might realize that over 30 shots for a single unit isn't that great, so I reccomend going for mass gateway units (mainly zealots and sentrys) and mass upgrades against this style.
Should win easily, thanks to forcefields trapping you against my melee zealots that take o so many hits.
I have not tested this, since I do not face this kind of playstyle on the european ladder but I believe gateway units+upgrades and slow tech to colossi should be more than enough to deal with this. (Also, If terran decides to tech switch just wait a little for 2 or so colossi, he should be so far behind in tech you will just roflstomp him.)
Again: Theory crafting here, but I think this is a simple way to kill mass Marines.
That whould indeed beat mass marine, but as it has been pointed out, mass marines are so very easy to use compared to sentry and that gives a huge advantage at the lower levels.
Well, I don't really care about the low levels of skills, regarding strategies. I'm pretty sure a silver league player with this build will mess it up and then forget to build marines for 3 minutes while fighting, have 4k overmins and lose. This is not meant to be offensive, this is just what I see from friends that play at this skill level.
Sorry but obviosly this is a lower level strategy that will never work twice in masters league. Why whold you even consider this for high level play ? And by lower level I mean anything below masters\high diamond.
You would be surprised how effective this is, I beat a few masters league protoss, maybe they were caught off guard?
Either way, people say Cannon rushes and Six pools only ever work in low level leagues, but you would be surprised how many people still get caught by that in high masters. I think most people have lost to more Cannon rushes than they have defended (at least in PvP)
Thats why I sayed never work twice. =) Can't be caught off guard twice.
Well, cheese is kinda diffrent from this. Cheese can work if it is not scouted, that gives it a desent chance to work. This will allways be scouted in high level play. Ofc, even in a pro game one can miss a FF and loose to this strat. But he will do that once in 20 games. And win the rest. I prefer to call that "never" because clearly noone wants to win only 1/20 games.
Well, if it is that easy to beat, why are there still no replays of people beating the OP using this strat in this thread? Is he not available for games?
Because realistically, here are a lot of people claiming it is easy to beat, and a lot of people claiming that it is very strong, even if the opponent knows it is coming. So why don't people of both fractions pair up and play it out? That would at least be a lot more effective than shouting at each other.
I mean I watched the tournament game and I cant help but think the only reason he won was because he caught his opponent totally out of position, and his opponent lost his sentries early with poor micro and never replenished them.
This is a fun build but I think beatable
Zealot sentry with collosus behind it would do very well here, even one collosus, and with the forcefields I dont see how you could snipe it off, once 3 collosi are out its all over.
I don't think that people are giving the build enough credit in the sense that it is basically the same opening as a 1 rax FE. From what you can scout as a toss you have no idea what he is doing behind the bunkers.
So yes it might not work twice if all you were doing was this build, but I think its a great aggressive build to come off of the FE at a timing a toss might not expect, just like how chesses can be used in top tier play to keep people honest this build does the same thing, just at a different timing window.
Haha, I'm kinda bummed everyone's catching on to how great marines are! Anyways, on the top of my head, some things that might give mass marine troubles.
-Mass upgrades; marines rely on their quick firerate to deal the damage and stim takes that concept to the next level. Gateway units already have 1 armor and further armor upgrades will severely cut into marine damage.
-Mass cannons; marines just suck pretty hard versus cannons.
- Sentry/ zealot as core army; zealots to tank and deal the damage whilst sentries use their guardian shield and forcefields to assist zealots in their role. (Building stalkers seems like a waste of money after stim is done).
Edit: I see others mentioning sentry/ stalker, do you mean before stim?
- Fast Charge; with the Stim research probably going up to 170 ingame seconds, I wonder if you can keep up marine agression against fast chargelots. Might give Protoss a timing to get HT's out.
On March 12 2011 22:01 link0 wrote: This build is ridiculously bad at higher levels. Sentries/Stalkers completely decimate even combat shield+stimmed marines with minimal/zero losses.
Have you actually tried this?
Has ANYONE who is saying this is bad actually tried this? As dumb as mass marines sound, it actually works quite well
-Mass upgrades; marines rely on their quick firerate to deal the damage and stim takes that concept to the next level. Gateway units already have 1 armor and further armor upgrades will severely cut into marine damage.p.
I think this is something people will have to do. Also note that armor only effects health, not shield.
-Mass cannons; marines just suck pretty hard versus cannons.
Having played around with this build, if Toss puts up Cannons, I think it gives Terran too much room to just switch out into maybe Marauders or just mass expand you lose the ability to be offensive if you invest too much into static defense and it is hard to punish people for being greedy. Maybe 2-3 Cannons to help defend whilst your teching but that should probably be it really
- Sentry/ zealot as core army; zealots to tank and deal the damage whilst sentries use their guardian shield and forcefields to assist zealots in their role. Building stalkers seems like a waste of money after stim is done.
- Fast Charge; with the Stim research probably going up to 170 ingame seconds, I wonder if you can keep up marine agression
Sentry Zealot works quite well early but when the Marine ball gets too high they are too inefficient, stimmed marines can kill a wave of Zealots before they even get a single hit in, even with Charge.
I think a better idea is to go early Sentry/Stalker and tech to Colossus with maybe 2 Cannons at your natural (tops) as well as double forge. If you can keep your Colossus alive, Terran is forced to switch into Vikings, when that count gets to 3+, it really hurts.
I think Nonys double forge with 3 Colossus at 12mins will work very well against this, but it isn't easy though
Why does everyone feel compelled to stick their name onto the title of their build? You can give yourself credit IN the thread, and in the case of this StimmedProbe technically didn't even come up with anything new, he just ripped it from ST_Rainbow without giving him specific credit, so if you want to get technical he doesn't even deserve to put his name anywhere as it is just plagiarizing Rainbow's build.
It's nice to see contributions to TL, but it's annoying when people get a hard on for self promotion. I might as well just go ahead, spend 10 looking for a replay, make a thread titled "Geovu's 5 gate Masterclass Ub0r Build", link to a white-ra game in the corner of the thread hidden within 5 spoiler tags and not give him any direct credit. It's just being pretentious.
I've been screwing around with this tonight (gold). It really has to be executed precisely to deal with 4 gate and earlier pressure. Very precarious until the econ kicks in- I had a couple games where 5 seconds were the difference between crushing and getting crushed. Colossi were the least of my problems honestly.
On March 12 2011 22:01 link0 wrote: This build is ridiculously bad at higher levels. Sentries/Stalkers completely decimate even combat shield+stimmed marines with minimal/zero losses.
This. I'm 3300 Terran, tried this 3 times on ladder now and just got raped with no chance of recovery. This build takes huge early pressure from the 1 zealot 1 sentry poke, because you simply have no way to keep your expo alive without sacrificing some marines. When you finally do your push, Protoss can just forcefield half your marines and take pretty much no damage even when there are 30 of them.
On March 12 2011 22:01 link0 wrote: This build is ridiculously bad at higher levels. Sentries/Stalkers completely decimate even combat shield+stimmed marines with minimal/zero losses.
This. I'm 3300 Terran, tried this 3 times on ladder now and just got raped with no chance of recovery. This build takes huge early pressure from the 1 zealot 1 sentry poke, because you simply have no way to keep your expo alive without sacrificing some marines. When you finally do your push, Protoss can just forcefield half your marines and take pretty much no damage even when there are 30 of them.
Early game it is exactly the same as a 1rax expand, up until it is just past the 4gate timing..
And there is no way you can do "no damage" with 30 stimmed marines, not a chance, even if your army is cut, you just focus sentries with the most energy with whatever doesn't get cut and they melt like butter. Only way they actually can take "no damage" is if they do the 9-11 sentry 6gate that MC does, then you have enough sentries to cage marines into small groups
I would just mass stalker and sentry while i tech to colossi, 6 sentries should provide enough forcefields to stop every push you got coming until i have colossi, and from there its over :D.
On March 12 2011 23:39 PaPoolee wrote: I would just mass stalker and sentry while i tech to colossi, 6 sentries should provide enough forcefields to stop every push you got coming until i have colossi, and from there its over :D.
6 sentries? You're gonna lose all your energy so when the time to push does come, you have no energy to do so. The point of this opening is to never stop attacking, and give you no time to really afford to go straight to collsai with sentries. If you do, you're on 1 base, I'm on 2. I can easily transition, throw 4 tech labs down, and just marine marauder over run you.
Yes the 3 gate stalker/sentry, which rapes most reactor marine opens, does hurt badly.
Honestly theres not much a protoss has to deal with mass marines until Collosus or HT. Zealots get eaten, stalkers DPS can not match Marines + sentries are just needed to GS. So really this is about the Terran equivalent of the 4 gate?
i think someone did this to me, but in a zvt? o.o My terran opponent ended up with 22 barracks haha, and it was kinda annoying to deal with it as a zerg.
As Protoss i can telll you that mass marines is strong. The only opening i see as protoss is that you have to pressure very fast with stalkers, so you can trade armies very cost efficients in that initial stake, that gives you enough breathing room to tech up safely.
If Terran gets stim you are already on the losing end. he doesn't care about loses cause he can constantly trade costefficient everytime, while you do not.
Best bet as Protoss should be early aggression, but the problem is realizing it is mass marine style.
I think the reason you keep winning is that the Toss you play don't go pure gateway.
I wonder if a double forge -> 6 gate would beat you. these builds/reps demonstrate you being cost ineffective until you go ahead in upgrades and the toss get too tired of managing sentries.
On March 13 2011 02:48 familyguy123 wrote: I think the reason you keep winning is that the Toss you play don't go pure gateway.
I wonder if a double forge -> 6 gate would beat you. these builds/reps demonstrate you being cost ineffective until you go ahead in upgrades and the toss get too tired of managing sentries.
will people watch the videos before commenting? the 2nd video shows the toss going 6 gate allin and loses, completely contradicting your point.
On March 13 2011 02:48 familyguy123 wrote: I think the reason you keep winning is that the Toss you play don't go pure gateway.
I wonder if a double forge -> 6 gate would beat you. these builds/reps demonstrate you being cost ineffective until you go ahead in upgrades and the toss get too tired of managing sentries.
will people watch the videos before commenting? the 2nd video shows the toss going 6 gate allin and loses, completely contradicting your point.
a) i actually watched all of them b) the "2nd" video with Aconite? yeah he goes 6 gate into colossi, no forge. all im trying to say is, if you GO AHEAD in upgrades i would hope you could beat this. otherwise i'd contend this was pretty broken
I've tested it with a friend (4100+ Protoss) and I got pretty much destroyed. It was my first attempt and I guess something went wrong so.. its VIABLE as a build in a bo3/5 but I don't think its viable as standard play.
Superfast armor upgrades + Guardianshield is really a big problem for it.
I have no experience fighting against this but my intuition is telling me that if the protoss goes HEAVY (read: 80%) chargelot with sentry support and just pumps upgrades with chrono the whole game, you lose. Protoss can outdo you in upgrades, so by the time you have 1 attack upgrade, protoss should almost have atleast 2. Add guardian shield and the fact that zealots rape marines (especially with ups) and you have a very inefficient army.
On March 13 2011 02:48 familyguy123 wrote: I think the reason you keep winning is that the Toss you play don't go pure gateway.
I wonder if a double forge -> 6 gate would beat you. these builds/reps demonstrate you being cost ineffective until you go ahead in upgrades and the toss get too tired of managing sentries.
will people watch the videos before commenting? the 2nd video shows the toss going 6 gate allin and loses, completely contradicting your point.
That wasn't the double forge 6 gate so I wouldn't call them the same, but that was kind of a nightmare scenario with a ton of stalkers pounding at the natural with very few marines to defend. It seemed like both sides could have played better, more sentries would have been good but gas was limiting and more bunkers would have been good but he probably didn't know it was a 6 gate. (edit: actually that was game 1 but still a good example). Personally I'm not crazy about salvaging the bunkers so early, it's much easier to survive the counterattack with 2 or 3 of them up. The eng bay seemed late in all those replays, but the BO calls for it when you start CS so he probably knows that already, just an execution thing.
For the people saying pure gateway beats this, it probably CAN. Everything probably can. But most of the replays were 4-5-6 gate builds and for the most part they were beat pretty handily. Could they have played better and won? Of course. So could the OP. Prince could have played better against Rainbow, but he made good use of force fields and psi storm throughout the game and he's far from a silver league noob. In fact, Rainbow made lots of mistakes in that game and his build was not that refined. It was even on Xelnaga Caverns, where my bio play usually disintegrates to good force fields.
A build doesn't have to be either invincible or garbage. Gateways can beat it, robo can beat it, templar can beat it, stargate probably isn't a good idea. That doesn't make the build bad, it just means you both have to play good Starcraft. I rarely believe in such a thing as a BO loss and I think it stifles you significantly to think like that. I really like a style of TvP that constantly trades armies and applies pressure in multiple places, large battles that involve aoe don't tend to go that well for the Terran but we do better in smaller fights with stim. That doesn't have to mean mass marines but I like that we can explore that style rather than continue to lose dramatic 200/200 fights.
On March 12 2011 22:01 link0 wrote: This build is ridiculously bad at higher levels. Sentries/Stalkers completely decimate even combat shield+stimmed marines with minimal/zero losses.
This. I'm 3300 Terran, tried this 3 times on ladder now and just got raped with no chance of recovery. This build takes huge early pressure from the 1 zealot 1 sentry poke, because you simply have no way to keep your expo alive without sacrificing some marines. When you finally do your push, Protoss can just forcefield half your marines and take pretty much no damage even when there are 30 of them.
Million man march was a BW strategy exactly like this and it was tons of fun Esspecially once you had dropships and starting doing drops EVERYWHERE while stomping across the ground
Im not sure why some people see this "strategy" as if it was a good thing. If this is really viable, which i'm not sure, but if it is, i can't understand why shouldn't this be viewed as a show of imbalance. One unit to kill every combo or strategy that your opponent throws at you is a good "strategy"? I call it something else. Only spoiled terrans that are so used to being imbalancedly in favor that call this a strategy now.
On March 13 2011 08:54 Apolo wrote: Im not sure why some people see this "strategy" as if it was a good thing. If this is really viable, which i'm not sure, but if it is, i can't understand why shouldn't this be viewed as a show of imbalance. One unit to kill every combo or strategy that your opponent throws at you is a good "strategy"? I call it something else. Only spoiled terrans that are so used to being imbalancedly in favor that call this a strategy now.
Wether or not it's imba has nothing to do with it. Until it's nerfed, it is a legitimate strategy.
I have updated the thread with a challenges section. If you would like to play a few games against me you can PM me and we can organize it! Don't hesitate I am curious to try it against a variety of new builds!
On March 13 2011 08:54 Apolo wrote: Im not sure why some people see this "strategy" as if it was a good thing. If this is really viable, which i'm not sure, but if it is, i can't understand why shouldn't this be viewed as a show of imbalance. One unit to kill every combo or strategy that your opponent throws at you is a good "strategy"? I call it something else. Only spoiled terrans that are so used to being imbalancedly in favor that call this a strategy now.
I don't know why people have this sort of attitude. How come strategy is only about the units that you make. This strategy is about using the advantages of the marine (mobile, good in medium numbers) and controlling engagements so they always happen when you can use those advantages.
You can't really say if it's imbalanced or not right now. There may be a good way to deal with this from protoss, but it might not be the "If he's building unit x, I build unit y" logic that people on TL use.
Man I recently started playing on the SEA ladder again after doing the US ladder for a while and this build is everywhere!
But I have a question, what do you do if the protoss drops 2-3 cannons at his expo then just waits till 3-4 colossi and pushes out. I just don't see marines doing anything against cannons when the protoss has ff and guardian shield. You could argue for a contain and mass expand but the way I see it you the colossus timing push will still rape you anyway as you are so low tech it will take too long to get a decent number of vikings.
The thing is, they won't have the time or the money to get 3 cannons. Off 10 rax, its every minute you got 20 marines with stim, and soon CS and +1 stim running in and sniping. That's 600 minerals not going to zeal/stalker/sentry.
I did it again. I love it. It's so fun to play too. Transition is just throw on a few tech labs and marauder mass until you can get tech up.
Lovin this. Won't use it all the time, but will definitly use it.
I'm kinda lost on whats the rule on when to start adding barracks after the 3rd one. Is it just build when u have the money and get it up to 10 on ur first push?
On March 12 2011 23:14 Geovu wrote: Why does everyone feel compelled to stick their name onto the title of their build? You can give yourself credit IN the thread, and in the case of this StimmedProbe technically didn't even come up with anything new, he just ripped it from ST_Rainbow without giving him specific credit, so if you want to get technical he doesn't even deserve to put his name anywhere as it is just plagiarizing Rainbow's build.
It's nice to see contributions to TL, but it's annoying when people get a hard on for self promotion. I might as well just go ahead, spend 10 looking for a replay, make a thread titled "Geovu's 5 gate Masterclass Ub0r Build", link to a white-ra game in the corner of the thread hidden within 5 spoiler tags and not give him any direct credit. It's just being pretentious.
I don't think stimmed probe is trying to claim any more credit than he deserves, he simply refined a build than he seen someone else did, (which he very openly states) and wanted to share his version of it in great detail.
I don't think people are going to go around calling it the stimmed probe build or anything, it's pretty much going to just be known as "mass marine." What we give stimmed probe credit for will be breaking it down for us to be able to understand it and do it ourselves.
Ive been trying to get my buddies to watch the daily with this style. Its really strong, but its not for everyone. I wanna say mid-skill players will have the most trouble with it. Really high skill players will have the multi-tasking and really low skill players will have opponents that just cant deal with defending it.
I think colossus and heavy and early upgrades for your ground army is the best approach to beating this.
On March 13 2011 11:43 Carbonthief wrote:I don't think people are going to go around calling it the stimmed probe build or anything, it's pretty much going to just be known as "mass marine." What we give stimmed probe credit for will be breaking it down for us to be able to understand it and do it ourselves.
Lack of Stim Research for Protosss will lead to "Stimmed Probe" induced confusion.
On March 13 2011 11:43 Carbonthief wrote:I don't think people are going to go around calling it the stimmed probe build or anything, it's pretty much going to just be known as "mass marine." What we give stimmed probe credit for will be breaking it down for us to be able to understand it and do it ourselves.
Lack of Stim Research for Protosss will lead to "Stimmed Probe" induced confusion.
Dude, he made a build, he named it after himself. Get over it. It's honestly not that big of a freaking deal.
This is definatly an interesting build. I will be interested to try it and assuming I can pull it off I would love to try it. It's good to have a numerous amount of builds at one's disposal. This would definatly be a good build to catch the protoss off gaurd and make short work of them. Hopefully this build will work for me and thank you for posting it.
A few things I think would work fine, it's pretty easy to scout mass marine, I mean... You scout and it's mass marine. I think a fast 3 gate sentry stalker ramp contain with FF works very well vs mass rine as it's a lot harder to try and bust. 1 gate fe into mass zealot sentry with +1 armor. It's a build I used to do a lot (not so much anymore) but basically as toss you get armor ups asap and mass sentry zealot. If all your gas is going into sentries there is always enough energy to FF and GS and keep you from ever doing dmg as I take a quick 3rd and get HT's. The HT's can be used very early to mass feedback medivacs as chargelot sentry with +2 armor still takes out the marines. It's a very interesting strategy and if any toss over-makes stalkers they will likely lose to it. I wouldn't mind playing a few practice games sometime to practice it a bit.
tl;dr fast sentry ff contains on ramp, 1 base 5 gate +1 armor timing attack (kinda all in), fe into mass zeal sentry upgrade play- into fast 3rd more upgrades ht play... All seem quite viable.
Stimmed Probe, I am unfortunate. I saw this and was thrilled to try it a new style for TvP. It's very powerful and empowering. But...
The only two times I tried it, I lost. The first was against a 4 gate, I defended and pushed into his natural, killing many probes. However, When his first Colossus came out, I tried to snipe it, losing my Marines and when his second, third and fourth Colossus came out, I lost. However, I knew that I didn't need to suicide my Marines in for the Colossus snipe. Whittling down Warpgate units serves just as great a purpose. So, being hopeful, I tried again. I opened and defended against 1 base pressure. However, when I pushed out, he had finished Blink. I lost every single Marine while doing very little damage to his army of Stalkers. He then proceeded to get Colossi, and I lost. I asked him afterward why he went for Blink so quickly. He responded that he saw me getting lots of Marines and so, logically he got Blink Stalkers as the quickest counter to mass Marine.
So, that game got me thinking about ways to combat Blink Stalker, and it occurs to me that you cannot engage with small, medium sized groups of Marines, since Blink Stalkers chew right through them. Or perhaps a transition into Marauders would have been wiser. It could create an opening for a return to mass Marine.
What do you think? Or better yet, why don't you ask for someone to try this against you? I will try as well. Thanks for the build!
On March 12 2011 23:58 DreamChaser wrote: Honestly theres not much a protoss has to deal with mass marines until Collosus or HT. Zealots get eaten, stalkers DPS can not match Marines + sentries are just needed to GS. So really this is about the Terran equivalent of the 4 gate?
I did it like 4 times at master around 3.2k and it worked 3 out of 4 times but it's not like i know exactly how to adapt it corectly to their builds + 4 gates if you just make barracks like crazy and not tech to even stim you rape it , the most important thing is DON'T be passive the moment you have more then 15 marines move out and kill anything you can , even if you get 2 sentrys now ... then you get something else ... and expo like crazy when have the pressure up.
lol@ everyone trying this strategy. it takes pretty good micro, game sense, and scouting to take down collosi and templar if the protoss techs up. you will probably need medivacs for positioning, if not - map control and a little luck might help you keep the numbers down.
i didn't read all the thread, but how are sentries faring? gotta snipe them if they gs i guess?
not gonna lie this seems kinda bad, a good protoss should be able to beat out mass rine with a good gate army use FF to spilt and zealots and stalkers to slowly pick you apart when you try to push in at him. I guess in essence it would come down to the micro ability of your opponent being able to FF properly. and with that being said the question the pops into my head is "Is this strategy good if it relies on my opponent making mistakes?" and that my friend is for you to answer.
P.s. I agree with the people saying that an early aggresive P can keep you up in main for a long time while they get ahead if you only go rine, and by the time you bust out you gonna be so far behind.
On March 12 2011 23:14 Geovu wrote: Why does everyone feel compelled to stick their name onto the title of their build? You can give yourself credit IN the thread, and in the case of this StimmedProbe technically didn't even come up with anything new, he just ripped it from ST_Rainbow without giving him specific credit, so if you want to get technical he doesn't even deserve to put his name anywhere as it is just plagiarizing Rainbow's build.
It's nice to see contributions to TL, but it's annoying when people get a hard on for self promotion. I might as well just go ahead, spend 10 looking for a replay, make a thread titled "Geovu's 5 gate Masterclass Ub0r Build", link to a white-ra game in the corner of the thread hidden within 5 spoiler tags and not give him any direct credit. It's just being pretentious.
I don't think stimmed probe is trying to claim any more credit than he deserves, he simply refined a build than he seen someone else did, (which he very openly states) and wanted to share his version of it in great detail.
I don't think people are going to go around calling it the stimmed probe build or anything, it's pretty much going to just be known as "mass marine." What we give stimmed probe credit for will be breaking it down for us to be able to understand it and do it ourselves.
Call it a day9 bulid, he casted a game with this bulid first.
that replay you saw was RainBOw vs SGPrince. it worked because he opened HTs and rainbow was nice with marine splits and the toss couldn't keep up with the constant HT warping. i still think collosi would completely rape this. once the toss finds out you are massing marines, very hard sentry/collsi turtle play while slowly taking a 3rd would decimate this build.
I really like the style you've developed. I myself play Protoss, and I quite enjoyed the demonstration video that you provided. It seems like a 5/6 gate is the way to go as Protoss if you encounter a Terran employing this strategy, and then it becomes a micro battle, and a game more fun to watch and to play then the standard TvP massive army clashes I reckon.
Furthermore, I agree with your statement that marines are more cost effective than a basic gateway army of stalkers and zealots. You also pointed out that the initial marine push often loses dramatically:
You will probably get raped in the very first battle. The Protoss will forcefield and guardian shield and their army will probably roflstomp yours so hard you will probably think its gg, however as those sentries die off your army gets exponentially strong.
And this is where I think one of the weaknesses of this build lie:
The cost-effectiveness of Marines drops dramatically if Guardian Shield is employed, their DPS drops with approx. 33%. As you stated this is only a problem during the first battle, because the Sentries tend to die during that battle, but how well does this style fare if the Protoss keeps the sentries behind his army and uses them exclusively for guardian shield, and the occasional Force Field to prevent a flank? This is something I'm rather curious about and would've loved to find out in a match against you, sadly I have a EU account, so you're going to have to test that with someone else.
Hey I can't check out the replays at the moment (my computer is acting up), but it appears that you only get 2 marines before fast expanding and making marines/ powering barracks. At what time in the game do you start your true stream of marine production?
I'm asking this because I'm curious about how it fairs against a Korean 4-gate (or any variation of a 4-gate that would finish around 6:30 or earlier). You'd probably have a good 10-15 Protoss units knocking at your door by around the 7 minute mark, not to mention a proxy pylon that would allow constant insane pressure, possibly before you'd have a big enough ball of marines to take it down. A couple of good forcefields (on your ramp to stop reinforcements or during the battle to cut your army in half), one guardian shield, and then stalker/sentry mix, and you may run into trouble early on, no?
I don't know what you guys think, but this is obsession with marines. I play in a different way, and I think it can work ... :
Hurry up, go right after two portals. Hurry for 4 zealots and attack. (Always pumping probes). If your enemy has a wall, don't worry, he sacrificed a few SCV's in order to get the 350 cost structure right away. He lost some time and some resources that you already got. Then, the game is balanced, and you should do what you think is best ( you can't see behind the wall ! ).
Otherwise, go inside. I noticed that the best players have a problem with rushes, so they don't rush each other. He must be building something, and with a little bit of your brain you can micro his few marines to a spot where he can't escape from the zealots.
Ok man, this is just what I think. If you don't like, feel free to talk.
Once this build starts hitting ladder i'll be trying out mass cannons and expand as a strat. I figure this allows me to trade minerals for minerals rather than gas for minerals which sucks. Then use gas for tech to collossus or templar. Cannons will work great even on wide open naturals provided you place them well.
I've had this done to me when I 2gate FE'd. It was Jungle Basin, so it's definitely easier to hold on that map. But once you get a colossus up, mass marine pressure becomes pretty much ineffective. Since this is a 1rax FE, it will obviously be very vulnerable to 4gates, but it certainly is a build that will give people trouble.
Mass stimmed marines will destroy any protoss unit cost for cost except for high templars and colossus. Also, I think there was a Day9 daily about this exact unit comp/build. You just have to abuse the fact that marines are so mobile and deadly in mid-sized numbers and never let the protoss build/tech up his deathball.
if the toss could hold off the push with forcefields, could that buy time for colossus on the toss' part?
colossus eat marines for breakfast, just saying. I don't understand too much about protoss early game, but if the protoss can just get through a few "stalemates" where they both lose their army...?
The problem is that if in the first couple of fights those stalemates=lots of sentries dying, then the next couple of fights become "LOL" in terrans favor.
I've lost to this style before. Or variations of it with a one base push that involve +1, stim, and combat shields. It's hard to hold an FE against this style if your opponent is near you and has good timings.
On March 15 2011 04:48 exploding.godhand wrote: if the toss could hold off the push with forcefields, could that buy time for colossus on the toss' part?
colossus eat marines for breakfast, just saying. I don't understand too much about protoss early game, but if the protoss can just get through a few "stalemates" where they both lose their army...?
Marines ridiculously good before you have colossus, and by that time teran has medivac and stim, so its ridiculously hard to stop, even with storms, colossus, or stalker/sentries or all because teran just keeps throwing highly upgraded units in your face, and so that pretty much wrecks your army T.T
great job with the build mate, i used it against friend ad it worked =DDDDDD
I think the key (for p) is to engage the terran away from your expansion. It is alot easier for stalkers to beat marines out in the open, so you have space to retreat.
i think an early enough contain with sentries would obviously be the most eeffective way to stop the build. On another note i would love to play you, however i have no way of contacting you, no i.d. #......
On March 15 2011 04:48 exploding.godhand wrote: if the toss could hold off the push with forcefields, could that buy time for colossus on the toss' part?
colossus eat marines for breakfast, just saying. I don't understand too much about protoss early game, but if the protoss can just get through a few "stalemates" where they both lose their army...?
Colossus are not necessarily that effective vs mass stimmed marines, as illogical as that sounds. I've been shut down at the ramp before by sentries while Toss got his Colossus, but in that case I just expo and leave a super small window for the Toss to get out colossus and get aggressive- if he misses the window, he is stuck trying to defend his natural while I take one or even two more bases, and build a million rax and get upgrades. And even if he hits that timing window, he will have to micro very well against a perfect marine surround (since terran has all the map control and vision), and he will definitely lose the colossi the minute he pokes his head out into open ground. That leaves him racing to finish me off with gateway units before I can pump out enough marines.
I think to stop this (assuming 2 players of equal skill), the Protoss needs to shut it down very early and decisively- either with very early pressure, or by winning the first battle with better micro.
Another thing I've noticed that makes this build just LOL sometimes, is that the Toss will scout the fast expo, and take a fast expo of his own, without scouting again for a few minutes. Many "oh shit" moments happen shortly thereafter
I will have to watch the replay closely, but I have a hard time believing that pure marine will break a 3 gate expand that then techs up to colossi or goes the double forge 6 gate route.
Guardian shield and the base armor of toss units brings the marine damage down to 3 a shot. So you need 42 hits per stalker. If he stays passive and just throws up 2-3 cannons at his natural entrance and defends it with the 5-6 sentries he got while saving minerals for the expand and the stalker he warped in afterwards, you have a hard time attacking cost efficiently. Then he either gets colossi from 2 robos (without range.. they don't need range against pure marine) or double forge and TC.
Looks really fun but a bit lame... its very strong in team games. Never thought that it would actually work in 1v1... (in the live streams every Terran is trying this right now
I loose all the time to FF contain into Phoenix/Void rays/Collossi or whatever. Its payback time
What would you do against a protoss that scouts this and goes straight to HT's? I feel like that could cause problems. Say he is openning DT's and scouts the mass mass marines. And starts with ht's quickly. I feel like that could stop this pretty easily.
On March 16 2011 02:34 OverZero wrote: What would you do against a protoss that scouts this and goes straight to HT's? I feel like that could cause problems. Say he is openning DT's and scouts the mass mass marines. And starts with ht's quickly. I feel like that could stop this pretty easily.
There is no such thing as "quick HTs" when you open DT. DT consumes virtually all your gas, up until you warp in your 3/4 DT's... If he actually tries to tech to Templar while expanding then just go kill him with a Raven. He is probably going to have like 3 Zealots and a few Stalkers against 30+ Marines..
One word, DT. If the toss goes for DT you won't have enough scans, DTs 1 shoot marines and 2 shoot shield marines and if you just stay in your base and w8 for a raven then the toss will have time to get storm or colossus.
Coming from a Brood War perspective, the reason why no terran does bio play against protoss is because of storms. I noticed that most people are suggesting standard builds, but quite honestly storms do counter marine balls. This is mostly theorycrafting, but if protoss can survive against mass marine pushes until he has storms, then protoss should win as the storms would kill more marines than what one could build. I have not tested this out yet, but I believe that high templar play would be correct response to this.
On March 16 2011 03:02 amazingxkcd wrote: Coming from a Brood War perspective, the reason why no terran does bio play against protoss is because of storms. I noticed that most people are suggesting standard builds, but quite honestly storms do counter marine balls. This is mostly theorycrafting, but if protoss can survive against mass marine pushes until he has storms, then protoss should win as the storms would kill more marines than what one could build. I have not tested this out yet, but I believe that high templar play would be correct response to this.
it could work, but it doesn't work really good. Because Terran doesn't care about his marines as long as he can trade cost efficiently and that is still possible even with storms or colossus.
I can tell that you as protoss have to play very aggressiv and prevent expansions. Fast 2-3 Stalkers could finish such a build right at the beginning.
after that and assuming he goes mass marines, i think turteling and getting decent number and of army and AoE will beat this, but of course terran won't let you get away with this, and that is why mass marines work, you never get a decent army cause your always under pressure trading units with an opponent who is cost efficent by design. (trading gas units against minerals never is good!)
he will always have minerals, while you starve gas.
I think the correct response for this method would be quick pressure with stalkers. This involves kiting the marines indefinitely, and without stim, a stalker, not to mention multiple stalkers, could easily whittle the marine count down while taking little damage. If one were to use stim to catch up to the stalkers, this severely weakens the marines without medivacs, If forcefields are simply used to keep the marines out of your base after a stim, the stim alone causes massive damage to the army.
what would you do on a map like Delta Quadrant where the Toss can take his backdoor expo, block his ramp with FF and just mass colossi? I played vs this strategy yesterday and there was nothing I could do.
On March 16 2011 20:11 freetgy wrote: Tank drops? Delta is by far one of the most terran favored maps
Yeah, but I'm a gold noob and don't know much about the right transition timing and the OP suggests that you can beat most strategies with marines only. Even if you scout him going for 2base colossi with your first rine wave isn't it too late to tech up to tanks and dropships? I mean, you have to throw down a factory and starport, get a techlab, research siege, which also requires more refineries etc.
I just wanted to toss in this thread and say that yesterday some 3600 master's terran tried this on me (i had no idea about this build until now) and it was pretty much a massacre. Not only did i expand at what should have been a disadvantageous time against this build (finished 30 seconds before his first push), but i was totally blind because my obs was dead His first push i won handily, and then proceeded to roll him over with like 2 colossi
He referenced my Formations & Tactics Guide in the resource section. The guide is useful for all unit compositions, but is specifically useful for mass unit strats.
RE: The build - I love mass unit builds worked into a nice tempo based game. It pressures your opponent and compounds minor errors over time because of the fast tempo.
Suggestion: Instead of teching to marauders in response to Colossus, just tech straight to Ghost off two base. Colossus obviously counter Ghosts pretty hard (high health) but the EMP will allow you to do AoE DPS to the gateway ball, nullify Sentries, and is useful if your opponent manages to tech to HTs (which I think is a more competent response to this strat than Colossus).
The more I read this thread the more it becomes the flagship for the garbage that plagues the sc2 strategy forum. So many of these responses make it abundantly clear that the poster did not watch the games posted in the op.
"this dies to stalkers" "this dies to sentries" "4 gate" "fast colossus" "high temps beats this" "I played a guy that tried this and kicked his ass so the build sucks" "I tried this once and lost so this build sucks"
This shit is not useful to anybody. It reminds me of iechoic's tvt thread: "lol this loses to thor rush." You might as well stand on your head and count to 100, it's about as useful and you look just as stupid.
Watch the games. You can see most of these strategies in action. You can see Rainbow playing quite well against a good Protoss with plenty of sentries and high temps. I saw plenty of opportunities for improvement in the op's games, while of course realizing that his opponents could have reacted better as well. StimmedProbe wasn't exceptionaly better than them, and he isn't looking for a BO win. You have to work for it and adopt a different style than what you're used to.
Been using this strategy for a few weeks since mid feb. Kinda sad that people gunna be copying en masse as typically what happens after someone posts exact details ie. supply. Build works extremely well on most maps and benefits from the (new) maps with multiple paths. Only probability of losing occurs when other side masses splash units, and you do not micro/respond well. Works extremely well against Z and T, especially Zs typically try to drone up after defending once and after the attack u can just attack 20-30 secs later again with a shytton of marines. Works well against T as well, as you can gain map control with a shytton of marines after your 2nd command. Only problem occurs if you let T gain a position with siege tanks in front of your base. If he has Siege tanks near his own base, that typically means you can expand yourself and transition if needed. Even if he pushes out, marines at the numbers you should have can rape any units since tanks won't be sieged in motion. With the numbers of marines you should have, your army wouldn't suffer from playing tag with the opponents and sending a small group of marines to do their own thing, sniping probes, tech, pylons. With those points made, the main benefits of this build are the numbers with which u can make marines, as well as the mobility they provide. Basically, your z with a 14 hatch. Main weakness lies early on if you do not have enough bunkers(spines) to d. Also got to remember to expand if he is defending well. Keep up the pressure, but REMEMBER TO EXPAND AGAIN if game won't end soon.
REPEATED USE OF THIS BUILD WILL cause you to rise, especially in RANK, but you WILL GET BORED.
On March 17 2011 06:16 Senorcuidado wrote: The more I read this thread the more it becomes the flagship for the garbage that plagues the sc2 strategy forum. So many of these responses make it abundantly clear that the poster did not watch the games posted in the op.
"this dies to stalkers" "this dies to sentries" "4 gate" "fast colossus" "high temps beats this" "I played a guy that tried this and kicked his ass so the build sucks" "I tried this once and lost so this build sucks"
This shit is not useful to anybody. It reminds me of iechoic's tvt thread: "lol this loses to thor rush." You might as well stand on your head and count to 100, it's about as useful and you look just as stupid.
Watch the games. You can see most of these strategies in action. You can see Rainbow playing quite well against a good Protoss with plenty of sentries and high temps. I saw plenty of opportunities for improvement in the op's games, while of course realizing that his opponents could have reacted better as well. StimmedProbe wasn't exceptionaly better than them, and he isn't looking for a BO win. You have to work for it and adopt a different style than what you're used to.
Yes, people are skeptical and they judge the book by its cover as soon as they see it.
On March 16 2011 03:31 DamnCats wrote: Think you're a little late with this post. I think every single Terran on ladder has you beat by... umm... at least a month or two.
edit: Sorry they sometimes toss in a medivac or a seige tank or two also. Obviously much different.
And is there any known posts of this build order? If not, we really don't care if this was "used months ago".
Just gotta say that even if this does have it's flaws, I've found it hella fun to execute. Even going and trying it on TvT and TvZ too for the hell of it, why not? Thanks for the build/strat, man!
On March 17 2011 07:25 GrooveOverdose wrote: Works extremely well against Z and T, especially Zs typically try to drone up after defending once and after the attack u can just attack 20-30 secs later again with a shytton of marines.
Works extremely well against Z? I would think this would fail miserably to speedlings &/or banelings though, no?
Although I haven't tried this in 1v1, I know it's definitely a decent build to use in team games, as I've done something similar with a fair amount of success. It's great for both rushing & defending against rushes, as well as defending against most types of cheese strategies.
I've been playing this build in 4v4's exclusively and have gotten into diamond league from bronze in a week. With full saturation i found you can support 11 rax going pure marine off two bases. If you play with the mindset that the marines are banelings you will go far. Try and deal as much damage to their production and economy as you can before engaging their army. Rushing tanks, collosus, requires the most micro. Marine micro is my favorite thing to do in SC2 however so i don't really mind.
This strategy is ridiculously strong. I haven't found anything that works against this. If you find a way to survive the 10-12 minutes to tech to collosus/templar, please enlighten me how this is possible. I've tried 4 gate to no avail. Even if you max the number of units possible, it's still not enough. If you mop up their first 20 or 30 marines, guess what? 20 more marines are in your face in a few seconds, and your army is almost depleted. There's no way that I've seen to keep up with the sheer production.
I have been using this strategy lately. If it goes lategame I spend my gas on mass nukes, they compliment the marines well.
It is not overpowered. It is extremely hard to play. In almost every game, you have to outplay your opponent to win. The thing is: It's so easy to outplay them because they are typically so bewildered.
The constant aggressive style is really exciting to play and my APM shoots through the roof when I play with this style.
Mass stalker is effective against this. Yes, you typically lose the first attack completely, I also like to expand behind that attack, most players have a huge opportunity for damage at this point, and most of my opponents have squandered this window.
I tried this today and it was super effective. Don't think it counts though, because my first attack killed all the probes at his natural and after that, I could have literally won with anything.
In theory, I'm thinking 3 gate blink stalkers with armor upgrades would be the best way to stay alive against it and that would transition nicely into HTs.
I watched all the replays and played 3 matches against 2 protoss and 1 master zerg. The first protoss whas caught offguard and got obliterated, the second protoss (who whas platinum!) had a collossus at the time my army of marines reached his base. To make a long story short he eventually won after a 24min. long game where I almost exclusively made marines (plus upgrades) and later added 2 reactored starports and spammed medivacs to help out and drop the crap out of protoss.
I really dont know if this strat is viable. Its easy to scout and protoss can respond by FE himself or do early pressure. This kind of feels like the 3RR (I know this strat is not a rush but its hard to switch to something else when it fails) which whas fun untill people realised how to beat it.
Surprisingly enough I won against the zerg player but he did a 1base baneling all-in which I managed to survive and handed his ass to him. Also mass marines is nothing new against zerg.
Tylers double forge works wonders against this, especially with a relatively fast charge and a heavy zealot mix and low stalker count (like 60% zealot, 30% sentry, 10% stalker is usually what i go for). Sentries can prevent marines from running, zealots tear through everything, and stalkers can medivac snipe. you don't even really need colossi or templar but you can sprinkle them in when you have time ^.^
It is a good strat, the trick is to constantly pressure your opponent with marines, it will be an even fight at first if they are constantly pumping gateway units, but if you are non-stop attacking then when they try to start teching you should be able to break the protoss, you don't want to let them get colossus or templars, and if you do then obviously you have to switch out of marines because they just arent viable vs zealot + 1 sentry for guardian shield + colossus. This build isn't meant for tvz, a good zerg will make only zergling baneling and then you are doomed.
On March 19 2011 03:47 misaTO wrote: What's the difference between Reactors and Extra raxes. Perhaps with the money saved you can get a starport so you can MM.
Tempo. Reactors take a long time to build and you want to be putting on nonstop pressure
On March 19 2011 04:04 drewbie.root wrote: It is a good strat, the trick is to constantly pressure your opponent with marines, it will be an even fight at first if they are constantly pumping gateway units, but if you are non-stop attacking then when they try to start teching you should be able to break the protoss, you don't want to let them get colossus or templars, and if you do then obviously you have to switch out of marines because they just arent viable vs zealot + 1 sentry for guardian shield + colossus. This build isn't meant for tvz, a good zerg will make only zergling baneling and then you are doomed.
Not exactly. It's the same principle in MarineKing's scv/marine presure vs Z.
On March 19 2011 03:47 misaTO wrote: What's the difference between Reactors and Extra raxes. Perhaps with the money saved you can get a starport so you can MM.
Partially answered by someone else in that you want to constantly be producing marines and a racks building a reactor can't also be training a marine, but additionally, it gives you the option to add on a techlab at a later time to make marauders. Makes it far less all in, whereas building reactors means you're stuck making just marines out of that barracks.
On March 19 2011 03:47 misaTO wrote: What's the difference between Reactors and Extra raxes. Perhaps with the money saved you can get a starport so you can MM.
it's a lot of down time where you aren't making marines. There are probably timings where it would be beneficial to add reactors I would think that's later in the game and you would want to stagger them. The extra money won't be going to medivacs if you are using the mineral heavy build laid out in the op, you don't have much gas and it all goes into upgrades. That's the edge you get with this build, lots of minerals which translates to lots of marines. I would love to add medivacs in, as I mentioned at first in this thread, but all that teching and the gas required seriously eats into the marine count. Early on that matters a ton, although maybe you can get away with it later in the game with 3+ bases. At that point you have more economy, they're more spread out, and you need to split up their ball and abuse how slow their aoe units are.
On March 17 2011 07:25 GrooveOverdose wrote: Works extremely well against Z and T, especially Zs typically try to drone up after defending once and after the attack u can just attack 20-30 secs later again with a shytton of marines.
Works extremely well against Z? I would think this would fail miserably to speedlings &/or banelings though, no?
Although I haven't tried this in 1v1, I know it's definitely a decent build to use in team games, as I've done something similar with a fair amount of success. It's great for both rushing & defending against rushes, as well as defending against most types of cheese strategies.
People have been using mass marine against Zerg for months. Antisocialmunky had a thread about marine/raven that got a lot of people trying the marines, and MKP really popularized the style in the GSL with his insane micro. It's really difficult but since zerg's aoe unit kills itself you can make very cost effective trades with good splitting. Zergs have adapted and it's harder now than it used to be, more of them have learned the dangerous timings and learned to stay on low tech and get faster upgrades, and rely more on speedlings. I still think it's fine against Zerg though, upgraded marines with medivacs are very good all game. For me I just ended up skipping ravens so often and winning without them, although I'll admit it's much more fun with them. It's funny, in that thread people would ask if mass marines could be viable against P and T as well, and everybody would say "no, their aoe is too good". I was guilty of it too, being close-minded does not good innovation make. I even thought that marine tank was kind of bad when I first started seeing it - "banelings kill marines and mutas kill tanks" - now I find it's actually decent in every matchup. So I've stopped using theory to write off strategies, it just makes me worse at Starcraft.
I agree with Drewbie that having no tech is hard against a mass upgraded ling/bling Zerg. I feel like you need medivacs there, which means a lot more gas, plus really fast upgrades. It's definitely different from this build but I don't think mass marines against Zerg is a dead strategy.
remember zealots/stalkers take 3 damage from marines with guardian shield, and if toss goes for +1 armor like a lot have been doing lately that damage goes to 2
People have been using mass marine against Zerg for months. Antisocialmunky had a thread about marine/raven that got a lot of people trying the marines, and MKP really popularized the style in the GSL with his insane micro. It's really difficult but since zerg's aoe unit kills itself you can make very cost effective trades with good splitting. Zergs have adapted and it's harder now than it used to be, more of them have learned the dangerous timings and learned to stay on low tech and get faster upgrades, and rely more on speedlings. I still think it's fine against Zerg though, upgraded marines with medivacs are very good all game. For me I just ended up skipping ravens so often and winning without them, although I'll admit it's much more fun with them. It's funny, in that thread people would ask if mass marines could be viable against P and T as well, and everybody would say "no, their aoe is too good". I was guilty of it too, being close-minded does not good innovation make. I even thought that marine tank was kind of bad when I first started seeing it - "banelings kill marines and mutas kill tanks" - now I find it's actually decent in every matchup. So I've stopped using theory to write off strategies, it just makes me worse at Starcraft.
I agree with Drewbie that having no tech is hard against a mass upgraded ling/bling Zerg. I feel like you need medivacs there, which means a lot more gas, plus really fast upgrades. It's definitely different from this build but I don't think mass marines against Zerg is a dead strategy.
SCVs as meatshields ftw. Although this is an earlygame sugestion, this type of marine agression leaves room to a transition into whatever you feel like. I mean, you will always have a gas surplus because you commit to marines only so you can build a single factory or starport and start pumping additional units. Let's put it this way : A thor = 6 marines. If you stop pumping marines for only 35 seconds, you can build 1 thor too. This is what I would do as a "transition". Mass Marine Army into a Mass Marine Army plus 1 or 2 thors.
You basically switch a Techlabbed Rax with the Brand new Starport OR Factory (you only build ONE) and you start building a Thor, a Raven or a Medivac as a "lategame" option.
On March 19 2011 05:14 chonkyfire wrote: remember zealots/stalkers take 3 damage from marines with guardian shield, and if toss goes for +1 armor like a lot have been doing lately that damage goes to 2
I believe it was mentioned in the guide that you need to snipe off the sentries early. It is not as easy as it seems to try and keep a decent sentry count while still having gas to get upgrades or higher tech against someone doing this.
ROOTPrincess (now* ROOTKitty) uses a similar style, though his unit comp varies (often including Blue Flame Hellions, and later, tank/thor). The constant expansion play is amazingly powerful for terran when couples with lots of aggression. It requires amazing multitask of your opponent to counter properly because it's more or less a "mechanics game."
After Patch 1.3 where it seems the Stim Pack will take 30 seconds longer, how do you think it will impact this build? Would you, for example, consider getting +1 attack instead of Stim?
It is a good strat, the trick is to constantly pressure your opponent with marines, it will be an even fight at first if they are constantly pumping gateway units, but if you are non-stop attacking then when they try to start teching you should be able to break the protoss, you don't want to let them get colossus or templars, and if you do then obviously you have to switch out of marines because they just arent viable vs zealot + 1 sentry for guardian shield + colossus. This build isn't meant for tvz, a good zerg will make only zergling baneling and then you are doomed.
In a recent Day9Daily, a match was shown with HopeTorture (IntoTheRainbow) vs some protoss. The Protoss eventually got HTs, but even then it wasn't enough. You said in your post you don't want them to get higher tech, which is obvious, but you only specify that you have to switch tech if they have Colossi and don't address whether or not you need to switch of they get Templar. If they get HTs, can't you and shouldn't you be able to keep pumping marines so hard it doesn't matter?
On March 20 2011 00:28 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: After Patch 1.3 where it seems the Stim Pack will take 30 seconds longer, how do you think it will impact this build? Would you, for example, consider getting +1 attack instead of Stim?
Stim is essential, cause it gives you the ability to pick of Protoss Units, (they can't retreat) Stimmed Marines beat Stalkers, outrun zealots, you can only hope to gave enough FF + GS to not die instantly.
30s will most likely delay the push alittle but it will still stay effective.
On March 21 2011 02:53 Digamma wrote: Everyone has the same reaction when they lose to this. "i cant believe that works"
haha, Marine is one of the effective and cheap units in the game with huge micro potential. If you fight with marines your opponent has to do something to not fight cost inefficient, cause one bad fight means your going to die when the next marine ball comes.
i don't even play protoss and yesterday i offraced and faced this strat from a 3300 masters terran... he went 1rax FE into million marines and i just punished his FE with a 4gate before his stim with FFs around the bunker and gg.
Then i faced this again but against someone that was even more greedy and went CC first, voidray +3gate = win
Played against this, really think Colossus is the answer. I had to pull SO many probes to save my colo from getting sniped. Built into a nice timing attack as my colossus count grew (Keeping marines "manageable" numbers and building enough gateway to be punishing him as him stim chases to kill the colossus). Really, if stim marines are forced to run around a zealot-gateway army I get free kills that way that help ensure my colossus's survival.
Note: He's totally right if you can snipe colossus, you can win with this strategy. If the count can't grow, your opponent is doomed.
On March 21 2011 05:13 Danglars wrote: Played against this, really think Colossus is the answer. I had to pull SO many probes to save my colo from getting sniped. Built into a nice timing attack as my colossus count grew (Keeping marines "manageable" numbers and building enough gateway to be punishing him as him stim chases to kill the colossus). Really, if stim marines are forced to run around a zealot-gateway army I get free kills that way that help ensure my colossus's survival.
Note: He's totally right if you can snipe colossus, you can win with this strategy. If the count can't grow, your opponent is doomed.
Nicely played sir. I certainly agree with you style of play in this game, I'm not saying early aggression isn't an option if well executed, but alot of protoss players seems to think that a 4gate or gateway play will always break this which just isn't the case. Anywho, your opponents anti-micro in that first engagement aside, I think this goes to show that you have to get a reactored starport(s) ASAP and transition into a somewhat more normal game if the colossus count gets higher than 1.
In my limited expercience using this build vs P I've also found DT:s to be very annoying. Not that you will instantly win, but it basically forces the T player to invest in turrets and get a raven out or save up alot of scans, all of which will slows him down considerably. This will force a more normal game since the MMM build really relies on gaining momentum from those first engagements. I don't even think you really have to invest alot of money into actual DTs besides the tech, just the threat of them should be enough, meanwhile, you can expand, get higher tech etc.
This build has been around since beta, even on the SEA server, with people like KJH 1 rax expanding into pure marine (though he would usually gradually transition into pure marauders if the first few waves were parried).
Two things that counter this build in my opinion (I play Terran) 3/4gate-voidray all in is very effective against 1 rax expand, even with several bunkers. 14 Nexus into 6+ gates with/without double ups & charge. Chargelots with attack upgrades rape marines.
After reading this, I followed a rough version of the BO in SEA Gold, 2 games. Went 3 rax FE in both of them. If I had went 1 rax FE I would have been busted because my opponent was aggressive with early stalkers off 4 gates.
Even with marines pumping out of 3 rax, I had to pull scv off the lines twice to defend. Eventually I went to 12 rax and manage to prevent him from expanding. I managed to win after hard fought 20 minutes or so, and my opponent was not pleased. "Looks like marines is all it takes now" before GG-ing out.
I am not convinced that this build is as sound as 2 rax early ghost which I usually prefer, but this build is definitely hard to counter. Basically the spam of marines and constant battles will unsettle any opponent who is not mentally prepared, causing him to make mistakes in macro/micro and prevent a good transition.
Important points: -Snipe any colossi -Sometimes it is better to run stimmed marines past a protoss ball into their mineral lines because probes are so fragile against stimmed marines -In the midst of the chaos it is important to slowly take a 3rd and 4th, and then transition into vikings and ghosts.
I've never thought of trying to refine a mass marine build for 1v1 ladder matches though, so good work on that (Y).
I'm still skeptical at how it would fair against a 1-basing protoss player that denies entry up the ramp and makes a big force and pushes out. Even with 3 bases, if they get enough colosus it might be possible to just roll you.
Have you tested this build against 1 base colosus? And what do you think the best response to this would be? I know it's a very rare build, but you'd be surprised at how many noob players do it in the lower leagues .
I'm guessing against a protoss just turtling on 1 base you could just tech for ghosts, scan, emp the sentries, run up and suicide marines in, reinforce and win?
At any rate I'm going to try this out when I get time and see how it goes, because I'm pretty lost in TvP atm. And I HATE Protoss death balls, which this doesn't allow for
This is much better as a 2v2 strat vs non-terrans. If u can get a 2-rax expand while ur ally masses and defends for 8 min, u can literally flood wih marines. This relies on ally supporting marines.
Tonem: I think it has to be stressed that this build is not as sound as 3-rax or other ghost openings, but really comes down to mechanics and multitasking ability.
About 1-base protoss: With constant pressure, you will be able to force him to forcefield repeatedly (although the battles will favour the toss in terms of losses, the terran FEs mean more production and economy), and the Toss would be forced between sentries (pretty gas heavy early game) and gas-heavy tech like HTs/Colossi/DTs.
From experience, the bulk of the protoss ball would be stalkers or zealots if he chooses to favour Colossi then there will be much less sentries, then we can force our way up the ramp and snipe the colossi.
On March 21 2011 18:30 Istvan wrote: Tonem: I think it has to be stressed that this build is not as sound as 3-rax or other ghost openings, but really comes down to mechanics and multitasking ability.
About 1-base protoss: With constant pressure, you will be able to force him to forcefield repeatedly (although the battles will favour the toss in terms of losses, the terran FEs mean more production and economy), and the Toss would be forced between sentries (pretty gas heavy early game) and gas-heavy tech like HTs/Colossi/DTs.
From experience, the bulk of the protoss ball would be stalkers or zealots if he chooses to favour Colossi then there will be much less sentries, then we can force our way up the ramp and snipe the colossi.
Yeah this is a good point, thanks
I've tried so many things in TvP it's kind of ridiculous, I'd be glad to play with this build exclusively and see how it works out, even if it isn't as "sound" as others (which I've tried pretty much any you can name T__T).
So I will attest to this: it works way too extremely well. Now the question is:
How do we stop it? We could play defensively unless we tech to collosus. Or we could try mass sentry guardian shield + gateway units =/ However, I still have way too much of a hard time against mass marines.
Sorry, didn't read any of the posts before me besides the main post. Basically the way you stomp the shit out of this, is to just not have any stalkers... Zealot/Sentry will rape it. Get colossus or get upgrades, or get charge, or get anything that will accent Zealot/Sentry and you will rape this blind.
On March 21 2011 21:21 ScythedBlade wrote: So I will attest to this: it works way too extremely well. Now the question is:
How do we stop it? We could play defensively unless we tech to collosus. Or we could try mass sentry guardian shield + gateway units =/ However, I still have way too much of a hard time against mass marines.
the best bet is to realize fast that mass marines is coming. if that the case get a decent gateway army with a couple sentrys (also expanding is very important, cause these repeated attacks can keep you in the defense pretty good and if you don't establish a good economy early this will fire back pretty fast) then tech to colossus but still playing defensive getting a couple canons i think is worth to buy some time.
still it comes down to FF and Colossus micro, if you micro poorly even collosus won't help you and then transitioning into Storm to seal the deal.
it is incredible how much a Terran can produce thanks to those mules.
So for the terrans trying this i think incorporating a couple ghosts (midgame) might be worth a shot.
This strat is totally not viable by any means. *wink* *nudge nudge*
Aside from the silly antics:
What makes this strategy efficient is the use of timing pushes. Marines don't take any gas, this makes gas very easy to harvest for things such as abilities and upgrades! In the replays StimmedProbe is doing timing pushes constantly. First a stimpack timing push then a combat shield timing push. These two pushes, even if held off, should take a pretty chunk out of your opponent, therefore, winning just by a flow of marines. However, I have had more success pressing with further timing pushes, infantry weapons plus 1 push, then armor plus 1 push. I have played this strategy several times now and my protoss foes are often vanquished at my infantry weapons plus 1 push.
Looking for a counter to this? I suggest watching some of those replays again and looking at timings :D
goddamnit terrans. first the 2rax bunker rush and now this? do you want all the other races to hate you guys?
seriously tho, really cool build. if your opponent reacts poorly, this looks like an easy win with proper execution. not so stable it seems if they do a nice 4gate, but if you hold that you win because toss needs tech to kill bio. even tho the only race i don't play is terran, i love this build because it forces toss to play defensively and reactively the way zerg always has to (unless your fucking MorroW).
I randomed Protoss on the NA ladder a few days ago and someone actually did this to me. I scouted it and thought "lol, what is this guy thinking" and started warping in sentries to ff spam my ramp until I got some Colossus out. But they just kept coming and coming O_O!
Start off with the build order, and the first engagement i get all his sentries and I see he's going zealot heavy.
In my second push with stim I'm a little worried because his COL are on the high ground and I can't really get to them, but I do enough dmg, I pump out more, expand to my third and go again.
At this point I'm not killing his COL so I'm a bit worried that I'm going to screw this up. I go north and kill his third, so I know he's pretty much fucked because he has 3-5 COL and two base, plus he's lost a lot of zealots.
He goes for my third and I kill all his other gateway units and almost nail one more COL.
I see DTs but I always throw down some turrets for OBS so I'm not that vulnerable to them.
Last engagement is a zillion marines and tons of vikings vs damaged COL and some Zealot.
Totally luzly. At the 15 min mark the units lost tab starts to equal out, but I'm always way ahead on resources.
Very very fun build. I use to use the mass banshee build from synystyr which had a 50/50 win ratio for me from early rushes, but this seems pretty unbeatable. So sick of losing to protoss cheese too.
I think the main thing about this build that works, is that you're keeping him from getting a death ball by killing in waves, and eventually you win because you have one more wave coming.
think this will die with patch 1.3, zealots with charge and upgraded defense will last you long enough to get a death ball with collosus and once you have critical mass there is nothing the T can do.
if everything this strategy got even better with 1.3 sure delayed stim timing is bad, but you can instead go for other timing pushes +1, combat shield stim would still kick in soon after.
For 1.3, what do you think about adjusting the BO to get stim finished at around the same time? E.g. start building the refinery before the 2nd and 3rd rax. That should shave off the extra 30 seconds for stim (though it might open a timing window for your opponent).
On March 23 2011 21:44 freetgy wrote: if everything this strategy got even better with 1.3 sure delayed stim timing is bad, but you can instead go for other timing pushes +1, combat shield stim would still kick in soon after.
better? stim got nerfed and zealots got some kind of charge buff. i guess P not being able to warp in storms anymore does benefit this build.
I like this guide a lot, very comprehensive. I feel like a way to battle this build as Protoss would be to narrow down how fast you can get Charge (haven't seen the 1.3 patch in action but getting at least 1 hit from a charge sounds like it'll be pretty dope vs marines), and to make sure you can get some sentries for force fields and guardian shields. I think I might DL your replays tonight, see when the push is, and try to work out some charge/sentry timings.
On March 23 2011 21:44 freetgy wrote: if everything this strategy got even better with 1.3 sure delayed stim timing is bad, but you can instead go for other timing pushes +1, combat shield stim would still kick in soon after.
better? stim got nerfed and zealots got some kind of charge buff. i guess P not being able to warp in storms anymore does benefit this build.
you can't get charge defending this build. if you go twilight for charge you will lose, cause you need AoE desperatly to combat the high marine numbers. straight HT already loses to this with Warp-In Storms now without those HTs are as viable as Carriers, take to long to build.
Charge Buff is a joke anyway (see the other thread) and with HT especially useless postpatch against this type of play obviously we are left with only Colossus, so the only thing that needs to be tweaked by terrans, do they manage to kill the colossus and keep the numbers low or not. If you can, you can still expand alot, while i am always pressured and open to harass, it is incredible hard to set up a 3rd against mass marines.
Sure Stim delay seems huge, but isn't it just means the timing comes alittle later, you still won't have range, you still won't have a second colossus and the attacking force will most likely be bigger.
why wouldn't you be able to get charge?..... zealots are much stronger against stim marines than stalkers, what the korean from the day9 did was only make zealot sentry and then add HT and archons
EDIT: the P should be able to hold on long enough with the stim delay. attacking as soon as possible is an important part of this build, if you wait too long the P has so many units your marines are not as effective.
Try going fast Colossus and get bum rushed by 30 marines when only a single Colossus is out and die, try going mass gateway and i'm unable to transition, ever...
Tried making Cannons but the waves of marines just stim and pick it off :/
why wouldn't you be able to get charge?..... zealots are much stronger against stim marines than stalkers, what the korean from the day9 did was only make zealot sentry and then add HT and archons
Because it isn't efficient. You hold off the first few waves but eventually you lose steam because your investing soo much resources into units that barely ever survive. HT tech isn't the way, if you watched that Daily Vod, in the end he had to waste storms on marine packs that were only worth around 300-400 minerals, 50minerals 150 gas for 300-400 minerals isn't a good trade when the Terran is on 3+ bases, especially since the High Templar dies straight after to the next wave of reinforcements who stim and pick it off.
You need a much more persistent AOE unit like the Colossus which you can keep alive and eventually build up to a critical mass. The problem is, that Terran isn't restricted to marines, they can easily tech switch to tech lab Marauder or reactor Viking.
On March 23 2011 23:08 Dommk wrote: Still no idea how to beat this (Masters).
Try going fast Colossus and get bum rushed by 30 marines when only a single Colossus is out and die, try going mass gateway and i'm unable to transition, ever...
Tried making Cannons but the waves of marines just stim and pick it off :/
why wouldn't you be able to get charge?..... zealots are much stronger against stim marines than stalkers, what the korean from the day9 did was only make zealot sentry and then add HT and archons
Because it isn't efficient. You hold off the first few waves but eventually you lose steam because your investing soo much resources into units that barely ever survive. HT tech isn't the way, if you watched that Daily Vod, in the end he had to waste storms on marine packs that were only worth around 300-400 minerals, 50minerals 150 gas for 300-400 minerals isn't a good trade when the Terran is on 3+ bases, especially since the High Templar dies straight after to the next wave of reinforcements who stim and pick it off.
You need a much more persistent AOE unit like the Colossus which you can keep alive and eventually build up to a critical mass. The problem is, that Terran isn't restricted to marines, they can easily tech switch to tech lab Marauder or reactor Viking.
thanks for your explanation. what happens when you scout him doing this build (or is that hard? i main T), mass up units and attack with all your probes? the early game definitly seems like the weakest part of this marine marine marine build
On March 23 2011 23:18 FoFo wrote: thanks for your explanation. what happens when you scout him doing this build (or is that hard? i main T), mass up units and attack with all your probes? the early game definitly seems like the weakest part of this marine marine marine build
it is true it is weakest in the early phase that is where you have to exploit it. No Gas is a huge tell in that Part for either FE or Mass Marines, immediatly press out 2-3 Stalkers pressure, this is very important to weaken the pushes he will do.
This snowballs into making his first push weaker/come later, which gives you enough time to Expo and tech to colossus, but still i would recommend getting more colossus and Macro instead of getting aggressiv. as long as you can assure a good fighting position you can prevent heavy losses and keep expanding and transition into storm.
obviously Storm/Colossus rapes marines. (straight storm tech won't) i can post a replay of me holding it when i am at home.
On March 23 2011 23:29 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: I've used this style with transition to shielded Marine/Ghost +1/0
It is insane! There is nothing in Bronze that can beat this. I've went up against Voids, mass stalkers, 4gate and colossi rush.
this build will get you easily into Diamond _(that sad actually, cause it is so easy to execute)
as a terran who took on this strategy recently with 3-0 record in SEA gold, I agree with you that the weakest point of the build is the early game. Upon seeing no gas, the P should chronoboost 2 stalkers and move out with the first zealot.
However, I disagree with you that this build is worth diamond level. Most P are simply not prepared for this T strategy. If they come to TL forums to seek help, for example, then they are on the way to finding a counter.
On March 23 2011 23:18 FoFo wrote: thanks for your explanation. what happens when you scout him doing this build (or is that hard? i main T), mass up units and attack with all your probes? the early game definitly seems like the weakest part of this marine marine marine build
it is true it is weakest in the early phase that is where you have to exploit it. No Gas is a huge tell in that Part for either FE or Mass Marines, immediatly press out 2-3 Stalkers pressure, this is very important to weaken the pushes he will do.
This snowballs into making his first push weaker/come later, which gives you enough time to Expo and tech to colossus, but still i would recommend getting more colossus and Macro instead of getting aggressiv. as long as you can assure a good fighting position you can prevent heavy losses and keep expanding and transition into storm.
obviously Storm/Colossus rapes marines. (straight storm tech won't) i can post a replay of me holding it when i am at home.
On March 23 2011 23:29 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: I've used this style with transition to shielded Marine/Ghost +1/0
It is insane! There is nothing in Bronze that can beat this. I've went up against Voids, mass stalkers, 4gate and colossi rush.
this build will get you easily into Diamond _(that sad actually, cause it is so easy to execute)
aren't collosus a lot better in this situation? 2 collosus with some other units rape the small groups of marines this build uses. and i ment going completely all in when he's making scv's, i think with enough probes you can break it
here the replay of laddergame holding mass marines
My opponent (Terran) hadn't mastered the build yet so it might not be the best demonstration but i also was experimenting how to deal best with it. My macro slips alot during that game but i think you get the idea.
it is true it is weakest in the early phase that is where you have to exploit it. No Gas is a huge tell in that Part for either FE or Mass Marines, immediatly press out 2-3 Stalkers pressure, this is very important to weaken the pushes he will do.
This snowballs into making his first push weaker/come later, which gives you enough time to Expo and tech to colossus, but still i would recommend getting more colossus and Macro instead of getting aggressiv. as long as you can assure a good fighting position you can prevent heavy losses and keep expanding and transition into storm.
obviously Storm/Colossus rapes marines. (straight storm tech won't) i can post a replay of me holding it when i am at home.
On March 23 2011 23:29 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:
Couple of stalkers shouldn't slow it because you're going to make bunkers anyway, or I would.
The reason it works is that if the guy has a COL or two then you can thin out the rest of his units and damage them, until his push is slowed down or he has to turn around and wait on more units.
Meanwhile you're expanding again, sending another wave, and getting ready for vikings. If he's using zealots you're really good shape as the vikings will be unchallenged.
Also with the mobility nature of the waves you can deny his expansions and put him even further behind.
On March 24 2011 03:50 freetgy wrote: here the replay of laddergame holding mass marines
My opponent (Terran) hadn't mastered the build yet so it might not be the best demonstration but i also was experimenting how to deal best with it. My macro slips alot during that game but i think you get the idea.
PS: was around 3k dia back then.
Guy screwed up a lot. Shoulda walled off his front in the first place to keep you from scouting it and got his bunker down quicker.
If he'd had denied your 3rd he might have won, even though his biggest mistake was not killing your sentries early on.
well i think it delayed long enough too get enough units out while still having economic advantage. btw. you seem to have posting issues (tripple post)
Damn, I used to joke about the "Infinite Marine Attack" with my friends. I guess shit just got real now XD I'll need to try this once I get home, seems pretty solid. How much skill do you guys think this style needs? Do you think a silver/gold player could use it effectively?
On March 24 2011 06:52 ReNhoSoft wrote: Damn, I used to joke about the "Infinite Marine Attack" with my friends. I guess shit just got real now XD I'll need to try this once I get home, seems pretty solid. How much skill do you guys think this style needs? Do you think a silver/gold player could use it effectively?
of course, just make sure you get stim and focus fire sentrys. and be aware that your are vulerable early on.
On March 24 2011 06:52 ReNhoSoft wrote: Damn, I used to joke about the "Infinite Marine Attack" with my friends. I guess shit just got real now XD I'll need to try this once I get home, seems pretty solid. How much skill do you guys think this style needs? Do you think a silver/gold player could use it effectively?
of course, just make sure you get stim and focus fire sentrys. and be aware that your are vulerable early on.
this.
another thing I noticed is once I have my second fully saturated I can't miss ANY marine production at all or my minerals shoot up to 3 to 4 hundred..
I'd say the most important thing to remember in this build is ALWAYS produce marines, even when engaging.
don't get supply blocked either or its pretty much GG. other than that, it's an awesome build that i'll be practicing more often.
I love listening to mass marine strategies where the Terran player goes straight for stim marines, then more marines, then moar marines, then MOAR marines, and then, finally, more marines. Of course, the other races must come up with convoluted and complex strategies and timings to hold back such a potent force of pure marine, and yet we all know that the marine is not an over-powered unit (I'm serious).
It almost makes you wonder what kind of strategies and counter-strategies would develop around a unit that was over-powered.
On March 24 2011 09:18 Obsolescence wrote: I love listening to mass marine strategies where the Terran player goes straight for stim marines, then more marines, then moar marines, then MOAR marines, and then, finally, more marines. Of course, the other races must come up with convoluted and complex strategies and timings to hold back such a potent force of pure marine, and yet we all know that the marine is not an over-powered unit (I'm serious).
It almost makes you wonder what kind of strategies and counter-strategies would develop around a unit that was over-powered.
To actually make this strategy work, you need a very clean and precise execution, and also have incredible micro. I would say that masters can execute this enough for it to be optimal.
Does anyone have any new twists to the build now that stim takes longer to produce? It seems to me if the Toss is not expanding it is now almost mandatory to pop down a second bunker. Generally I will scout ahead around when my stim is starting and if I don't see an expansion coming then I immediately place a second bunker now. 4gate seems to hit with Stim only about 1/2 finished now it seems. I managed to hold off a Stalker focused 4gate earlier today but I think that is because I simply outplayed my opponent. A second bunker would have made my life a ton easier.
hrmmm. Been stomped past two games I tried this. I just couldn't keep collosi count down. Perhaps my stim came too late. But this patch is fucking killer to this build in my opinion.
Yea. I've actually been getting destroyed with this build. On the rare occasion I can pull out a win. It's fun, yes, but not as effective as I would hope.
Are there any alterations to this build anyone has come up with? I love the mobility and firepower of the marine.
Seriously how does P hold this off in the first 7-8 minutes? If anyone can throw me a bone I'm all ears. I am by no means a masters player or close to it and I'm completely baffled.
I think what people need to consider for this build, now that stim is 30 second longer : get double engy bay and 2 refinery earlier on, and get 3 bunker to defend any 1 base aggressive play. When you got your stim, push out. The double engy let you spend the 2 refinery gas, when you are 3/3, use the gas for medivacs or viking or ghost. (depending on what he goes for) keep constant aggression.
(after the first 10 rax, get double engy, add on 1 more refinery and get factory + armory)
What people doesn't understand often is that 3/3 ups is ULTRA powerfull. Stim makes your marines 33% more efficient. so a 3/3 rines is like a 4 dmg upgrade. plus, you give him more survivability. The 33% more dps + the bonus makes your 20-30 marine much more effective.
I tried this a couple times, but I kept on missing the timmings and my first push is slaughtered before it can do any damage, and the next wave comes so late that it's almost insta gg.
In all honesty, this build isn't noob friendly at all. You need to execute almost perfectly if you want to be on time to do damage, and that's not something you can do below platinum level, specially now that stim takes longer to research. Could I suggest to update OP to clarify that really solid macro is a must to use this style? And also, the BO should be tweaked a bit, because you need stim to do damage, and waiting those extra 30secs really hurts you.
Nice build man, I have been trying this, but what about the longer stim now, and esp. a early stalker? Only marines without a bunker means stalker can kill everything you have.
The funny thing about this build is that it LOOKs super newb but in reality it is the complete opposite and completely non-newb friendly. If you miss your timings, or mess up your macro at all, you will get stomped. You also have to transfer into mauraders as soon as collosus production begins because there is just no way to efficiently snipe them if the protoss is good at micro. I have trouble making this build work sometimes at 3200 masters simply because I still sometimes forget to make a supply depot and if you dont have a supply drop ready then BAM you lose. I definitely think the stim nerf is going to hurt the build a bit.
On March 25 2011 05:27 Cuchulainn wrote: I tried this build against the AI on very hard, Xel'Naga Caverns, and I just cannot beat it... Has anyone else tried beating the AI with this build?
It's actually a good way to learn this build imo. You should be able to hold the AI attacks with some practice.
On March 25 2011 13:28 Ransomvik wrote: Seriously how does P hold this off in the first 7-8 minutes? If anyone can throw me a bone I'm all ears. I am by no means a masters player or close to it and I'm completely baffled.
or this one
Those two games are very different builds by terran. The build in this thread is a 1 barracks fast expand getting stim, and the two things you faced were not expand, and didn't get stim. You could use a sentry or two
Great read. I do mass marine all the time in 4's but I mass OC's too (which surely isn't viable in 1v1 like it is in 8 player games).
Glad to see some ingenuity here. If it becomes standard it will be easily countered, but I just can't see that happening. There would be some kind of terran nerf (or protoss buff) before protoss players develop a reliable counter to this kind of play.
I'd like to see you include your own views/discussion on marine control.
if i see this I've decided I'm just going to 4 warp gate + warp prism and draw units into his main with 8 gateway units warped into his main and a delayed attack (by a few seconds) at the front of his base with the rest of my army when he empties his bunkers and runs up his ramp with the marines, and then just sandwich the marines inbetween the two forces. only thing i can think of after seeing this for the first time today (a friend dominated me a few times)
Kind of annoying that you can tech to marines and be prepared for the mid-late game, but i guess if you're going to go all in in the early game to set up for the late game I can just all in in the early game at least until i get better and can handle it ^>^
edit: or use an observer + a pylon on low ground, that would be decent as well
Tried this strategy now several times on Xelnaga Caverns and Shattered Temple, and i won all games(3.500 Masterleague). Really close game was against an one base Colossi player. Fast expand, Voirdray, 6-8 Gate openings are no problem for this style...
I tried this strat over the weekend and it worked 50% of the time. I partially think the 1.3 patch hurt this strat a bit but you can still execute it and get a decent result. It all depends on the protoss build. I find that if the Protoss FE straight after 1 gate and 1 cybercore with 1 zealot + 1 stalker and sentry building as he puts up the FE then he is in good shape for a long time. He can slowly tech to colossus and take control of the cliff on most maps and I find that the hard to keep pressuring if the colossus just sits on the cliff. Protoss can just macro up and take control of the choke point leaving him with a wider surface area to attack and marine gets all clutter up on the ramp I would move and attack but usually they warp zealot right next to my marine. In conclusion it works about 50% of the time.
edit: or use an observer + a pylon on low ground, that would be decent as well
For the record, you don't even need an observer. Just throw a pylon near his ramp, charge up said ramp when your warpgates are ready to go, and then warp 4 units right next to his ramp. I like zealots because they've got so much health and it's usually my third 4-gate warp cycle where I do this, which means I'm running low on gas for Stalkers (assuming a classic 4-gate, of course.)
This wins me PvPs all the time, including when they wall. Don't see why it wouldn't work in PvT, unless you have the misfortune to have no "warpable" ground on the high-ground at all because of his building placement.
Tried this against a 3400+ masters on Xel Naga Caverns.
I probably could've executed the build more smoothly, but he raged anyways which made me happy :D.
He eventually got Templar tech which prompted me to get Medivacs/Ghost tech. If he went Colossi I would've gotten two Reactored Starport and pew pewed it.
Patch definitely hurts the stim timing... but interesting build to counter the metagame nonetheless.
In alot of these replays, the game hangs on a razor's edge. Just a few less reinforcements and tempo is lost and with it very well the game. So the stim timing change seems to me to be really bad for this build. Also, perfect execution seems key, unless the protoss opponent makes mistakes, so this may not be a realistic build for the gold/platinum people.
This build's hilarious lol. This game has a lot less tempo since we basically base traded...I made a few mistakes in the base trade but ended up winning.
He attempted to cheese me fast voids, but I ended up being able to defend the push. I think if I clashed head on with my bunker I would've won anyways too.
I've been using this build a TON in TvP, since the patch I've moved my refinery from after 4 rax to after 3 rax are down, and the timing is still pretty similar (I guess you lose a marine or two in the initial push, but not a big deal IMO).
A fast collossus build or a protoss that throws up a cannon or two (or both) can be difficult to deal with, or some maps where you can block off your natural without many forcefields (I've given up trying this on Shakuras, for example).
This is also an incredible build vs ANY 1 base play. Simply send an SCV around 5 minutes to scout his expo, if you see it's not there throw down a few more bunkers and you'll be golden.
Replay vs a toss for my placement match (was 3400 Masters before reset). I forgot stim and didn't build enough bunkers even though I scouted his all-in. I lost my expo but once stim kicked in I came back and won the game.
Though now the Stim Timing is delayed by thirty seconds, either you would have to cut marine production originally (if Toss expos) and get the early refinery, or simply delay the attack. Each has its own merits.
I've seen a number of Terrans doing this to me, and honestly, it just doesn't work. Camping on a ramp while teching to Colossi and getting upgrades off 2 bases absolutely demolished this build. Doing a 3 gate counter attack after the initial wave of marines brings out the gg. Any decent Protoss scouting the expo through an obs/phoenix/probe will immediately drop down their own expo while teching up.
if you suspect that a terran is just going mass marines, I'd make 5 gateways and double forge and abuse guardian shield and +1 armor to makes marines do a joke damage. stay on 2 bases, get +2 +2 and get 2 or 3 collosus and move out. Leave 2 or 3 sentries behind to forcefield the ramp to your main if he tries to base trade.
This strat shouldn't be done on map where a toss can camp out at a second base easily(I.E Shakuras) and get Forges/Robo tech safely. You do it on maps with really open nats like Slag Pits, Metapolis, Shatered Temple etc... so you can pressure like a Mofo as the build suggest. I've been trying it out seriously and have been having pretty decent sucess. 2-1 so far and I'm 3.3K Masters Random Player.
It seems to me that this build's greatest weakness is sentry FF and guardian shield. An early ghost would be a great way to deal with that. You already have a barracks with a tech lab, and plenty of gas.
On March 31 2011 12:19 Jonas wrote: if you suspect that a terran is just going mass marines, I'd make 5 gateways and double forge and abuse guardian shield and +1 armor to makes marines do a joke damage. stay on 2 bases, get +2 +2 and get 2 or 3 collosus and move out. Leave 2 or 3 sentries behind to forcefield the ramp to your main if he tries to base trade.
@OP: don't act like you invented this build, lol
i'd think a single forge for +armor and a twilight for charge would be much more efficient and allow you to keep up with unit production +expanding all game long. The second forge (do you really need attack upgrades?) and the robo, support bay, and range upgrade could all be cut.
In the (2) replays I watched, the protoss was slow to upgrade and replaced very few sentries after early game. Presumably because he was spending too much gas on other tech that, IMO, was less effective. Chrono out +2 armor, get charge, and keep building sentries. Colossus, templar, etc can come after that.
also occurs to me that you probably don't want more than 2-3 sentries per engagement, as that's enough to GS + throw down 3-5 FFs without exposing your gas units to too much risk.
I played versus this build in 3k+ Master EU. I have yet to lost to it. Just go the standard 2gate robo into nexus. Add a third gateway when u scout it and pump out units. Hold his push and add a robo bay. Make some colossus, when u have 2 out its basicly a free win.
The thing is if u have 1 or 2 observers out u can see when hes going to push and prepare for it. Marines move slowly without stim and u can add the exact amont of units to defend the pushes.
The push however is rly hard to defend on maps that doesnt have some sort of choke to your nat.
I have done this build for 2 weeks now and it improved my TvP matchups dramatically. I used to hate protoss matchups and now I look forward to them.
I am a very casual player in High Silver rank, so I won't say my opponents are good, nor am I a good player myself. I have adapted this build slightly differently for this particular reason.
- Instead of expanding early, I take 100 minerals to build a bunker near expo before I through down the CC, that way I can fend off some early zealots
- At all possible, I do wall off my choke so I won't have issues having early zealots running through the early bunker straight to my main
- I do 2 to 3 bunkers around expo as I am not good microing marines against early set of gateway units. They delay my rax'es but gave me extra peace of mind.
- I have had problems with DT build so now I throw down an engineering bay at around 4/5 rax and a turret at choke where my marines are rallied to.
They are slowing down the build so there's a risk of your opponent building up more colo / HT, but hopefully this suits those lower ranked players who prefer security over aggressiveness.
THIS ONE IS EXTRA HILARIOUS. I tried to fake him out with an incomplete Gas refinery...but his probe just BARELY manages to sneak in and see my fast expo.
He even knew it was coming...and raged at the end hard core after a fail 4 gate. I guess he didn't expect my stim timing
You definitely need to have a open NAT otherwise the opponent can FF rape you.
3/3 Successfully raged decent Master's Protoss...this Season is too funny.
THIS ONE IS EXTRA HILARIOUS. I tried to fake him out with an incomplete Gas refinery...but his probe just BARELY manages to sneak in and see my fast expo.
He even knew it was coming...and raged at the end hard core after a fail 4 gate. I guess he didn't expect my stim timing
You definitely need to have a open NAT otherwise the opponent can FF rape you.
3/3 Successfully raged decent Master's Protoss...this Season is too funny.
THIS ONE IS EXTRA HILARIOUS. I tried to fake him out with an incomplete Gas refinery...but his probe just BARELY manages to sneak in and see my fast expo.
He even knew it was coming...and raged at the end hard core after a fail 4 gate. I guess he didn't expect my stim timing
You definitely need to have a open NAT otherwise the opponent can FF rape you.
3/3 Successfully raged decent Master's Protoss...this Season is too funny.
Just tried this a bunch on ladder (gold league) and went 4/5 against protoss only losing once to colossi because my vikings were about 1 production cycle too late. Extremely effective, I plan on continuing to use and refine this build :D.
THIS ONE IS EXTRA HILARIOUS. I tried to fake him out with an incomplete Gas refinery...but his probe just BARELY manages to sneak in and see my fast expo.
He even knew it was coming...and raged at the end hard core after a fail 4 gate. I guess he didn't expect my stim timing
You definitely need to have a open NAT otherwise the opponent can FF rape you.
3/3 Successfully raged decent Master's Protoss...this Season is too funny.
ok i'm not masters but he didn't make probes after he saw your expo, while having plenty of minerals to do so...
THIS ONE IS EXTRA HILARIOUS. I tried to fake him out with an incomplete Gas refinery...but his probe just BARELY manages to sneak in and see my fast expo.
He even knew it was coming...and raged at the end hard core after a fail 4 gate. I guess he didn't expect my stim timing
You definitely need to have a open NAT otherwise the opponent can FF rape you.
3/3 Successfully raged decent Master's Protoss...this Season is too funny.
ok i'm not masters but he didn't make probes after he saw your expo, while having plenty of minerals to do so...
Yeah.. I like how he said "You have like 10 scvs" after you fended off the 4 gate but you actually had 29 scv to 22 probes AND you had double mules.
this strategy is amazingly fun and effective. Im in gold league and i gave it 2-3 practice goes against people in the same league. Complete annihilation, often a one push victory. I decided to really put it to the test so i challenged a diamond player. He didnt stand a chance. thanks for the great work =D
The 4WG seems to be really weak against a Terran that can bunker micro. You just have to empty bunkers before it blows up so the zealots don't get the surround. You need all the marines you can get.
Seems like a zealot sentry push would be effective against, epecially since it come quickly and zealots eat marines before they get to the medium numbers. GS would also let them tank more damage and with a quick +1 armor your marines are going to be really ineffective. Just thinking how a protoss could try to be MORE aggressive and buy time to get a robo+collosus or a third with mass zeal. Just a thought anyway.
So, what happens when they have a zealot composition in their army? Tried this against a high dia/low masters Toss who went that, and had a pretty quick collosus. I didnt stand a chance.
I encountered a random player who plays just like this. Though he coupled his mass marines with around 20~ vikings and multiple medivacs. It was SO HARD because he one shots my colossi ball and even with my chargelots he manages to pick all them because of the medivac. My miss was I lacked upgrades and wasn't able to switch to templars but all in all I can say that this strategy really is good since you can immediately macro up marines even if you lose them easily. Protoss needs to react as soon as possible to templar tech and warp them in ASAP to charge their mana so that storms can deal with the marines.
I ran into this strategy the other day, granted I'm pretty low ranked so it wasn't executed the best. But damn this is stupid strong. My opponent had 4 marines moving up my ramp by the time I had my first zealot and stalker (12 gate + chrono on stalker) and had me on the ropes for a while. I lost about 5 stalkers trying while trying to kite those marines and had to switch up to a 4gate to just get him out of the base. Only reason I was able to win the match in all honesty is because my opponent made some huge mistakes. (Built a rax on his expo and didn't expand for a while, and in the end bunkered up and let me build up a force).
All I can really say is that I don't think there is any real way for toss to deal with someone with extremely good mechanics and exceptional micro. Grabbing the natural expansion alone is hell, but then comes the high water when you need a third because the main is running dry. I can only theorycraft at this point, but this is what I got.
Perhaps toss should delay teching in favor of some extra sentires (especially if the strategy is to snipe them at every possible turn) and throw down a couple cannons to help secure the natural expansion. Chronoboost out armor upgrades asap and rely heavily on sentries to keep zealots alive as long as possible. As the strategy is built around the terran mass expanding, by the point toss should have secured the natural terran's third should be going up. So I'd say a delayed tech switch to DTs might help a lot to keep the terran's expansions in check. If the toss kept his sentries alive, and if they have the energy, research Hallucination and fake some colossi. They'll tank damage while the zealots tear through the marines. DTs continue to keep map control by patrolling future expos and could be used to catch marines being rallied into battle (hopefully keeping up on upgrades they'll be able to one shot marines). Or if the main army is in need, morphing in some Archons to tank some additional damage and with some luck, deal some good splash to the marines.
Again, this is all theorycrafting. I have neither the skill nor the game sense to know if this is possible in the slightest.
Oh man, reading the OP has made me want to switch from P to T...looks really, really fun LOL
I just like having the idea of a "million marines" as the post suggests :3 would be awesome after getting shields, etc....also makes me fear this as a protoss :'(
Just got done trying it out for the first time with success! It was scary holding off his first attack but after that I was in complete control, which is something I never feel when playing against Protoss. He ended up teching to DTs by the time I had my 3rd up, but I had enough scans by then to shut that down quickly. Poor guy was so mad he raged on me telling me how much I suck lol.
I have been using thing in all my TvP games and so far I really love it. Not only is the relentless aggression extremely fun and keep me on the edge of my seat but its very effective, and I feel in complete control because I have total map control. The only thing I seem to really need to worry about is the tech to colossi/HT and with good scans I can see it coming and produce ghost/viking easily in time. Also it seems to be a very safe opening because even when they 4 warp gate rush me, with 2 bunkers I can hold it off with scvs repairing!
I was pitted against this yesterday as Protoss. It faired very poorly because I micro'd my colossus early on. I went double robo when I saw he was making absolutely nothing but marines (I was familiar with the original post and some of the thread).
Double robo ended up owning this strategy very badly. I ended up winning with a handful of chargelots (less than 16) and 6 collosii. Its a pretty sight to see 136 marines melt to 2/1 colossus.
But seriously, Toss players playing against this and losing shouldn't rage...stim has been heavily nerfed lol.
Held off his 4 warp gate, and countered. He got greedy and thought the attack was over so he expoed and teched.
Toss players shouldn't try this 4 warp gate bullshit and expect to win. I think he fell for my gas (which i cancelled). Most players don't notice that I pull the scv off building the Refinery
But seriously, Toss players playing against this and losing shouldn't rage...stim has been heavily nerfed lol.
Held off his 4 warp gate, and countered. He got greedy and thought the attack was over so he expoed and teched.
Toss players shouldn't try this 4 warp gate bullshit and expect to win. I think he fell for my gas (which i cancelled). Most players don't notice that I pull the scv off building the Refinery
Canceling gas is a good point, didn't think of it.
I don't have a chance to try it at the moment but with my 5 or so runs of the build it seems like you can definitely fit in the refinery at a standard timing, cancel, and not delay the expansion by much (maybe a few seconds).
But seriously, Toss players playing against this and losing shouldn't rage...stim has been heavily nerfed lol.
Held off his 4 warp gate, and countered. He got greedy and thought the attack was over so he expoed and teched.
Toss players shouldn't try this 4 warp gate bullshit and expect to win. I think he fell for my gas (which i cancelled). Most players don't notice that I pull the scv off building the Refinery
Canceling gas is a good point, didn't think of it.
I don't have a chance to try it at the moment but with my 5 or so runs of the build it seems like you can definitely fit in the refinery at a standard timing, cancel, and not delay the expansion by much (maybe a few seconds).
I'll definitely watch the replay later.
It actually doesn't hinder this build very much at all. Just have to remember to pull the scv off right before it finishes.
I usually cancel as soon as the probe leaves. Make sure it doesn't circle around to check again, I've been caught with my pants down like that before. 2 marines can take any scouting probes.
But ya I think what prompted him to do 4 warp gate was the fact that it looked like a standard build, but turning it into a timing attack worked very well.
Hey, I have a question for the OP. How would you play this build vs a Blink Stalker opening? The only trouble I've had with this build is going against a Protoss player who opens up making only stalkers for kiting marines without stim, harassing my natural and ramp before I can get bunkers up. When blink comes up, the Protoss constantly picks at my marines and uses blink micro to either bait stims or to just outmaneuver me. Do you have any replays of yourself going against this build?
On April 17 2011 15:22 dig wrote: Hey, I have a question for the OP. How would you play this build vs a Blink Stalker opening? The only trouble I've had with this build is going against a Protoss player who opens up making only stalkers for kiting marines without stim, harassing my natural and ramp before I can get bunkers up. When blink comes up, the Protoss constantly picks at my marines and uses blink micro to either bait stims or to just outmaneuver me. Do you have any replays of yourself going against this build?
Bunker up and make a single rax pump out Marauders. Get Concussive shell too. Similar to MC vs MKP, a single Marauder with Concussive shell leading the charge makes it impossible for Stalkers to kite Marines, if they try then you are almost guaranteed to get Stalker kills
My timing on this one was a little off, for some reason my bunker micro was whack, lost a few unnecessary SCVs and marines.
Shows what you can do offensively vs DTs, just save scans, but dont use it when only one DT is attacking your marine army. If you use one scan per DT you will run out, and your push will be held.
I haven't had time to read all of the replies, but I did watch all of the VOD's you put up. I think the counter to pure marines is pure sentry/zealot. Sentries are the T1.5 counter to light units from my understanding. FF, GS, hell even Hallucinate seem to be very effective.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'd like to see a replay where you go against 3gate sentry/zealot=> expo => collo with range.
I haven't seen anyone beside's stimmed probe use this in a tourney, however I can say myself from experience that this build makes it really easy to punish the standard "safe" protoss play, while remaining protected from the constant stream of all-in 4gate/3gaterobo/3gatestargate play that plagues ladder these days. With good micro (and solid macro ofc) you can easily defeat the 6gate play and transition smoothly into a masss marauder style mid game where your production is actually better than the protoss (a rarity). Most of the bio based builds I see don't have the required production mid game, where it doesn't give you the option to double expo and then slam out a crap ton of units.
While I think the marine style is viable, I'm confident it can be countered with good microing.
That game was a custom game in which I was configuring XSplit settings, so with <15 FPS I kinda A-Moved rather than FFing behind bunkers and winning right there. The counter to the build would definitely be getting colossi and getting some nice ForceFields off, if you're up for a rematch just message me! eXalt.554
That said, while I played quite horribly, good game!
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Thanks for this. Terran's my weakest race, but this gives me a good shot at basic macro improvement because it's fairly straightforward once you get the FE down. I need to work on the timing of barracks 7-10 and gas geyser management, though, that never seems to come out smoothly :/
this doesnt work against 1 base colossus, the stim upgrade nerf is a HUGE nerf to the build, ive had success against fast expand when i get in the game flow at the beginning, was around 3700 masters prereset so this work at a decent level too. however i came up with it before you posted the thread(after i saw some mass marine replay on xel naga casted by day9), so i dunno how this would go now that it has become a bit more popular.
I have met this build some times on high masters rating and have shut it down every time. There is a build that gives almost no chance to the terran player if he insists on keeping with just marines.
stalker pressure into 1 gate expand. You keep pressuring the terran. When you see many marines you pop a forge and get +1 armor chrono boosted. WHen forge is up you spend all your gas (after armor upgrade) on sentries and make 3-5 cannons (depending on how open the natural is). If he keeps going just marines then you keep spendingn gas on sentries and mienrals on cannons. After a while you will get to use gas for colo tech and then you will be far ahead on upgrades. You can push out with 2 armor and rape him with just about any composition.
You should keep in mind protoss won't blindly do a standard (safe) opening, especially not after scouting this kind of build.
On April 18 2011 21:59 StarBrift wrote:stalker pressure into 1 gate expand. You keep pressuring the terran. When you see many marines you pop a forge and get +1 armor chrono boosted. WHen forge is up you spend all your gas (after armor upgrade) on sentries and make 3-5 cannons (depending on how open the natural is). If he keeps going just marines then you keep spendingn gas on sentries and mienrals on cannons. After a while you will get to use gas for colo tech and then you will be far ahead on upgrades. You can push out with 2 armor and rape him with just about any composition.
I've beaten this build 100% of the time in a very similar way! I'm not saying this build isn't viable, but it certainly can be countered.
Pure gateway units just doesn't seem to be viable against this against better players because, given that both micro correctly, even though the initial waves will be killed off, protoss will have a hard time because sentry energy gets scarce. Protoss can't sustain this unit combo against mass marine on the long run because he will be overrun.
I think, key to going up against this build is by defending your natural with cannons, sentries and some stalkers, while teching to colossi and/or getting +1 armor. I don't see how terran can kill protoss that way and terran is forced to transition out of mass marine. Once colossi start to pop out, terran will die otherwise. If the situation demands it, colossi without range do quite well against pure marine when microed correctly. I haven't played enough games against this style yet to judge properly, but it seems protoss can hold this off when terran can't comfortably trade his medium sized marine ball all the time (because of the cannons), which is the strength of this style. When terran is stalled long enough, mass marine dies to almost everything. I don't know how DT/HT/blinkstalker/mass upg play works out but I'd like to see this, although the latter 2 probably fail as terran can easily transition into something that works against these.
I'm interested in terran's point of view/whether terran can beat this with mass marine against me anyway.
tl;dr: Stall terran till colossi+armor seems to be very potent.
I'll try this, looks interesting, hope it can get me better at the game ^^, been having trouble facing toss after they got enough colossus to overwhelm any army I make - -, sentry barriers are annoying too.
lol I never saw this thread before, I've been fucking around playing pure marines in all matchups when I don't feel like playing seriously and it seemed surprisingly viable, I wasn't doing it this way tho and was playing on counter attacks (in TvP it's the only way, you can't fight head on if you go pure marine/medivacs as I did). I think this style could be viable by abusing the huge production you can have early on to get map control and expand agressively, and setup counter attacks by keeping squads of marines ready to backstab while having bunkers at home to stall with repair and setting up the marines at home in good position. That way you can win even if protoss can get several colossus by abusing mobility and chipping at him
Btw for those of you who are looking for a more sensible way to implement the ideas that come about with this build, try to think about the standard TVP plays and understand why they are just so strong because they use the same kinds of ideas
The reason why 2 rax expo is strong is because you shove your first 12 units down the tosses throat and sacrafie 50 gas to kill 3 sentries or a couple of stalkers or something. Even though it costs you units overall, its technically a cost effective trade since your ultimate goal is to keep both army sizes small
Then many terrans like to open into 5 rax before factory with e-bay, with the similar idea of utilising the cost effectiveness of small numbered terran armies in order to trade units in what seems to be cost ineffecient, but advantagous for terran
Alternatively, the 2/3 rax medi build follows a similar plan - to attack with small groups of units to trade and keep armies small (which is obviously, very easy to do with medivacs!)
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I really think a lot of terrans need to take some lessons from this build though - it seems kind of silly, but it exactly emphasises exactly how you should play as a terran vs protoss with a bio composition. The fact this build works to a fair extent is just a proof of how powerful these kinds of strategies are
Also, i'm pretty sure all protoss players absolutely lament the idea of having to trade units, rebuild and thus delay their colossi or templars. Every protoss hates it, and a lot of terrans don't realise this - its OK to lose 10 marauders and only kill 2 sentries and 4 stalkers, because you're cutting down on his army and gas!
Its these kinds of strategies and mindset that differentiate a lot of the masters level terrans and protoss players that i play with. Its just just 2 raxFE into 5 rax into fact ebay etc.etc., its a mindset and a gameplan
On April 18 2011 07:15 Benjef wrote: Any pros used this in any tournaments yet? I love the idea surrounding the build and would love to see it used.
ROOTdrewbie used something similar at MLG several times. Check out his TvP replays from Dallas. It's not quite the same -- I think he gets tech other than stim/barracks/marine/attack+1 before 10 rax :D--but the centerpiece of the early game is definitely a stim with 20-25 marines push.
The key thing I remember from watching his replays is that if you see a fairly early colossus you have to go for double starport to catch back up in vikings.
Hot tip, get armour 1 asap against this build, try and combine it with guardian shield. Pretty sure it takes 50 marine shots to kill a zealot with that combo
As Protoss, a heavy chargelot-collossus build should theoretically crush this type of unit composition. Even if the Terran transitions to hellion/thor, protoss can just respond with chargelot-stalker-immortal. Forcefields early to separate the army. I can see this being an effective build if it's not anticipated, but I wouldn't be too worried about it on the ladder if I saw it coming.
On April 19 2011 16:36 ZUR1CH wrote: As Protoss, a heavy chargelot-collossus build should theoretically crush this type of unit composition. Even if the Terran transitions to hellion/thor, protoss can just respond with chargelot-stalker-immortal. Forcefields early to separate the army. I can see this being an effective build if it's not anticipated, but I wouldn't be too worried about it on the ladder if I saw it coming.
Tell me specifically how you're supposed to get to chargelot colossus? Have you actually played against this before?
I hate how all the ppl saying how to beat this never played against it lol. all theorycrafting on this post its so hard to beat u need to be a top player with amazing micro or something or hop the terran fucks up. i went against a terran that did this and then got a starport for 2 vikings and a medivac to do drops. very hard to beat when u go against it
Scouted 2 fast gases...so I had a feeling DTs were coming, looked for the dark shrine that's proxied. Saved like 6 scans to fight off DT's at his base lol
Imo this is a very fragile build, as soon as a Protoss has 2-3 collosus and pushes it's over. You can win if your enemy is caught off guard,if he scouts it though,he can just turtle up until 2-3collosus are out and push. I prefer going mass marines with either a lot vikings to 1shot collosus before engaging with marines or banshees.+1Raven if there are a lot of stalkers or DTs.
Lets get a grandmaster Terran to try it vs Minigun,so micro/macro is more or less on the same level. Looking forward to the results.
Oh good! Terran exploiting the best unit in the game, I waited until you guys realized that all you need is marines. Cheap as hell, unbelievable damage fast + stim, only T1 unit that can attack air (Stalkers are 1.5)...
Many of the responses in this thread lead me to think very few read the OP and even fewer have used the build.
The build acknowledges that Sentries kick marine ass and if there is more than 1 Colossus you're going to have problems. It is not like you mass a bunch of marines for 12 minutes then attack, die and GG out. You flood in some marines after stim finishes to either kill the sentries or deplete their energy. Moments later you come with another flood of units; this time killing actual attacking units. After that wave you come again and hopefully overwhelm them at this point.
With that said I've abandoned the build after the stim nerf a few patches back. The timing seems either absent or razor thin at the moment.
On May 20 2011 04:54 Tenks wrote: Many of the responses in this thread lead me to think very few read the OP and even fewer have used the build.
The build acknowledges that Sentries kick marine ass and if there is more than 1 Colossus you're going to have problems. It is not like you mass a bunch of marines for 12 minutes then attack, die and GG out. You flood in some marines after stim finishes to either kill the sentries or deplete their energy. Moments later you come with another flood of units; this time killing actual attacking units. After that wave you come again and hopefully overwhelm them at this point.
With that said I've abandoned the build after the stim nerf a few patches back. The timing seems either absent or razor thin at the moment.
I don't play Terran or Protoss (I offrace sometimes for the lulz), but don't you think the Warp Gate nerf makes this build viable again?
On May 20 2011 04:54 Tenks wrote: Many of the responses in this thread lead me to think very few read the OP and even fewer have used the build.
The build acknowledges that Sentries kick marine ass and if there is more than 1 Colossus you're going to have problems. It is not like you mass a bunch of marines for 12 minutes then attack, die and GG out. You flood in some marines after stim finishes to either kill the sentries or deplete their energy. Moments later you come with another flood of units; this time killing actual attacking units. After that wave you come again and hopefully overwhelm them at this point.
With that said I've abandoned the build after the stim nerf a few patches back. The timing seems either absent or razor thin at the moment.
I don't play Terran or Protoss (I offrace sometimes for the lulz), but don't you think the Warp Gate nerf makes this build viable again?
Good point. Possibly. I won't go back to this build because I felt like I was getting cheap wins in TvP and once the stim nerf occured and this build was not working for me anymore my TvP was abysmal. This is a good build to mix in for a bo3/bo5 but I won't be using it as my primary TvP.
Played against this build prepatch in high diamond league and this is what happened.
- Scouted with early zealot, spotted 1 rax fe w/ only 2 rines and harassed with 1 lot 2 stalker. - Forced multiple SCV pull to repair the wall/make bunker, while I went to standard 3 gate with 5 sentries. - Contained him until medivac timing because he hid most of his rines. - Scouted him shortly after with obs as my army leaves, and immediately canceled robo, and got double forge + twilight for blink - Was attacked before blink finishes but fully charged sentries + lots held off first wave no problems - 7 gate nonstop blink stalker matched his waves very economically while using excess gas for DT and denied his 3rd(he could not spare extra marines to hold it) - I expanded and finished game with archon-charge lot-blink stalker with 2-3 upgrades.
I saw the day9 episide prior to this match and had an inkling it was coming since map was xelnaga caverns and T loves to be aggressive on it, but this build is weak to:
> early ramp pressure > blink stalker transition (not rush)
--> Robo transition is a bad idea since this build is meant to trade protoss gas units with high efficiency while abusing any and all timings where P is weak (ie waiting for collo to build in numbers) and relies heavily on sentry energy which is going to be very low.
OP's response to blink stalker was highly unsatisfying:
"Not 100% sure about the gas constraints that a build like that would pose for the Protoss. However if it is possible to get double forge + blink + 6 gate mass stalkers I still believe that it wouldn’t pose much problems. Stalkers only gain +1 dmg from each attack, and in terms of armor the +1 attack from the marines should negate that. In addition marines can instantly kill a stalker if they focus fire it, meaning blink micro is impossible."
Blink stalker is not used to go toe to toe with full health marines. The idea is to bait stims the entire way back to your base then pick them off behind your cannons/extra zealots. If P sees stim, then mass blink back army and re engage. If T does not stim immediately, then blink back first row then mass blink back...nothing T can do about that.
Hey man, ive been using this build to a degree of sucess. However, im a bit nervous when a protoss goes for a fast +1 armor upgrade. Do you still attack forward even if they got a fast +1 armor?
On May 11 2011 10:32 perser84 wrote: the advantage of the built is overtime you have more worker mining minerals then the toss because he need to harvest gas
that means a 2 base terran vs 2 base toss toss is 12 worker behind when it comes to harvest minerals
because they need gas
I can't believe what I just read. So choosing to take gas in order to tech and form advanced units actually sets you behind, 'cause gas is some crap against unvaluable minerals ? Please, please comme to crush me with your marines/zealots/zerglings. Adding gas-intensive siege tanks to my forces will totally take me to a bad position.
What's more, I don't mean to be disrespectful at all, but if you (and every other person) could please think before posting, that would certainly improve everyone's experience. Because you see, on two bases and around the same number of workers, the guy who's not mining gas is actually the one behind, not only because of tech or army composition, but because he's depleting one of his ressources faster.
Thankfully, the objective of this build is NOT to be on the same number of bases, but to expand very agressively.
On May 11 2011 10:35 Tallbus wrote: Oh good! Terran exploiting the best unit in the game, I waited until you guys realized that all you need is marines. Cheap as hell, unbelievable damage fast + stim, only T1 unit that can attack air (Stalkers are 1.5)...
Oh good! All i see in your post is mimimi, QQ, i died to mass marine but wasnt my fault.
Btw. why all cry about marines T1 AA? Stalkers are 1.5, yes. T1.5 is so behind in time then T1? Lolol
I just started playing T more often, now in Diamond league. I have been trying this build on ladder, and the OP was absolutely correct: DTs wreck this build if you don't scout them. You need to scout effectively, and more importantly, TRANSITION effectively.
Would love to see Stimmed Probe perform this against Minigun!
I use this build A LOT if I see gateway units. Its easy to stay ahead in expansions because marines are so cheap and just getting a few ghosts n meds make this army super scary.
At least DTs can be easily stalled by bunker-walling the natural's ramp on maps that allow it (Shakuras, Antiga...). My current problem is that it seems like any diamond+ player who scouts early bunkers on b2 just manages to drop sentries in my main 15s before the stim timing push.
This entire build revolves around killing/maiming the protoss before colossus pops? What if I just prop up a bunch of cannons at my natural to live for the extra minute to get thermal lance and 2 colossus? Terran just dies?
And didn't Puma do this exact strategy 6 months ago but with ghosts added in? And that was vs. MC who went phoenix every game and still took 7 games to kill him...
I cant see this working against a protoss who either scouts it or blindly plays either really sentry heavy til 1-2 colossi pop, or throws up defensive cannons upon getting vision of that many marines.
I think its pretty worthless when people actuly know how to play, sadly that might not happen until mid masters or so NA/EU. It seems like such a stupid opening that just kinda dies if he plays standard but slightly more conservatively
To give some context to this build for all the new posters... This build was posted and used before stim got its research time significantly increased in the patch. This build was a lot more deadly because it would hit a lot earlier. I used to win games against players better than myself with this build consistently. At the time my main race was diamond Zerg, I used this build against my masters Protoss friend and won almost every game. He didn't need to scout because he knew it was the only build I learned for TvP. He did exactly what you are saying Cyro, sentries->colossus, but it didn't work. The whole point of the build was using your first few groups of marines as sacrifices to target down sentries. By the time he had a colossus out (no thermal lance) you were already winning and making your marauder transition. From my experiences with the build I usually could kill his first colossus with just my marines.
Even if the build didn't kill them it left the Terran at an advantage in most cases. Two bases for each player, but the Protoss army now lacked all of its sentries after the colossus transition. Replacing them would hurt colossus numbers. The Terran would have an upgrade advantage and the ability to start a third well before the Protoss in most cases.
I find this pure marine play style works much better in the TvZ and TvT matchups.
A slightly better style than this, but similiar TvP is... mass unsupported marines + marauders. I do like 14 cc into 5 barracks, 3 with tech lab, 2 with reactor. It gives you some insane production and a huge bulky army, but it's kind of all in because you delay tech for so long (upgrades, medivacs).
The trick is to hit the protoss as soon as all 5 of your barracks kick into full production. Send wave after wave of units and try to focus the sentries with your dying units (the initial army you had up to the moment you got full production). It's a lot like the pure marine TvZ playstyle, except just with... marauders lol.
with time players learn the importance of unit composition and what you can pull of at different phases of the game. for example STARTING OFF low tier.
IMHO stimmed marines are still able to counter zealots. But even if they weren't, the build is scouted too late to undo the early stalkers in favor of zealots (banshees being a strong option until the observer scouts no factory). Or at last was, pre-1.3.
Wow epic 3 month bump hahah.. anyways I think I am going to start playing around with this style again and see how it fares in the current metagame. I'll update the guide soon.
So glad you're taking a look at it again. I would love to take a couple months and just see how good I can get with mainly marines in each matchup. Halby's Uber Ups is still solid gold for TvZ, he just started doing heavy marine in TvT after watching some great marine micro from an MKP game and seeing that it doesn't take uber-Gosu micro, and now I have a marine-based TvP that I can really sink my teeth into.
Seems like if nothing else, you can keep them pinned with aggression and get a big eco advantage so you can tech to whatever behind it.
I've been playing around with this build a lot for a little while now, with extremely good TvP win rate (top-diamond & low masters MMR). I actually used it to good success at last year's MLG Anaheim, knocked out two different players in losers bracket by doing this build twice in each Bo3. It's not QUITE as potent with stim research time increase, but it's still really powerful to throw into your build arsenal. No one ever expects it, and I gets the funniest BM when I use it.
Your guide really does a good job of addressing different protoss builds and how to handle them. The only two that really jack me up are DTs if I don't get a good scout, or a four-gate with someone who throws really really good forcefields. Gotta have enough marines early enough, and a couple bunkers.
I find that the trick is to make sure you're in their base with the first batch of marines by around 9min, this way you'll pretty much always keep them down to 1 collosus.
I've also played around with keeping the 3 scvs, or just 2, on gas for a bit longer, and doing 2-3 reactors slowly. I figure it costs 50 less overall resources (50m 50g vs 150m), it builds faster (50s v 65s), and doesn't take an extra scv off the line to build it. The only trick with reactor is that you miss production of 2 marines during its build time, so you can't do multiple reactors at once early, or else you won't have enough marines for a 4-gate pressure. But if you get two cycles before you push, it's more worth it.
On May 12 2012 05:18 heheman3000 wrote: How effective is this build still after the stim nerf last year?
Diamond NA Protoss here.
Mass marine has never been great. Koreans have had success with it because they have excellent control, but the fact is that marines move relatively slowly without stim, and stalkers can whittle them down without taking too much damage themselves. Protoss players can kite marines all the way from the terran base to their own with stalkers without taking any hull damage (stalkers will always take some damage when kiting, not very much though).
stimmedprobe says that the build works because he can put on a lot of early pressure and delay colossus, but as you said, the stim nerf hurt early terran pressure significantly. I've seen marine heavy builds work decently in the mid game against gateway units, but as soon as 1 or 2 colossi pop out, marines get annihilated and don't have much of a chance at sniping colossi, even if the protoss doesn't have range. Gateway units and forcefields guard colossi very well against marines - it's very crucial that the 6 marauder range matches unupgraded, 6 range colossi. Marines have 5 range, and therefore have much more trouble than marauders in pushing back colossi and keeping them from firing (without being sniped).
Again, with excellent control, one can split marines pretty well to ward off AOE, but even that only works up to a certain point.
On May 12 2012 05:18 heheman3000 wrote: How effective is this build still after the stim nerf last year?
Diamond NA Protoss here.
Mass marine has never been great. Koreans have had success with it because they have excellent control, but the fact is that marines move relatively slowly without stim, and stalkers can whittle them down without taking too much damage themselves. Protoss players can kite marines all the way from the terran base to their own with stalkers without taking any hull damage (stalkers will always take some damage when kiting, not very much though).
stimmedprobe says that the build works because he can put on a lot of early pressure and delay colossus, but as you said, the stim nerf hurt early terran pressure significantly. I've seen marine heavy builds work decently in the mid game against gateway units, but as soon as 1 or 2 colossi pop out, marines get annihilated and don't have much of a chance at sniping colossi, even if the protoss doesn't have range. Gateway units and forcefields guard colossi very well against marines - it's very crucial that the 6 marauder range matches unupgraded, 6 range colossi. Marines have 5 range, and therefore have much more trouble than marauders in pushing back colossi and keeping them from firing (without being sniped).
Again, with excellent control, one can split marines pretty well to ward off AOE, but even that only works up to a certain point.
with the addition of more defensive maps and current metagame mass only marine is bad
I just tried this build on Ohana LE after my 1st read through. Kinda made it up on the fly after the fast expand bit because I kinda forgot haha. This build works really well against early protoss attacks such as 4 gate and 3 gate Robo but you do need to throw in ghosts/vikings in the midgame ASAP depending on what your opponents going for(HT/Collosus). Other than that, really good build. Was easily able to fend off a 3 gate Robo and grab a third and start 3-3 upgrades when attacking around the 15 min-ish or so mark. Will keep using in future. Thanks a bunch StimmedProbe.