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TLAF Liquid’TLO v TLAF Liquid’Tyler Analysis!
Due to the amount of terrans that seem to be having problems with TvP I’m doing an analysis of the unbroadcasted games between teammates TLO and Tyler. TLO offers some creative ways to play the matchup that are nice for those who want to mix up their styles. Tyler has a very distinct robotics with forge style that is very popular, and since TLO 2-0’s him, I was hoping to get some insight into how to demolish your protoss opponent as terran. For that purpose this analysis will be focused on what TLO did right, but may venture into what Tyler did wrong. The replays can be found here: http://s3.majorleaguegaming.com/140-22341.html
Game One: Liquid’TLO vs. Liquid’Tyler
+ Show Spoiler +The match starts off on scrap station; right away this makes me assume some two bases vs. two bases play, possibly heavy drop harassment by TLO or early attacks due to the large ramp size. Tyler goes for his characteristic zealot sentry zealot out of his first gateway over zealot stalker sentry as is more common. Meanwhile TLO is doing a 1-1-1, but with one gas! He is building a hellion out of the factory and just keeps adding on hellions, still on one base. Tyler is doing his normal 3 gate robo expand, which if you watched his stream tends to be his standard vs. Terran.
TLO begins a medevac, abusing the fact the tyler’s early game relies on “cutsie defense” that is sentry heavy. Marines are dropped in Tyler's mineral line as hellions drive up the ramp and get a perfect angle on Tyler’s sentries. TLO also brought in an SCV to begin a bunker in Tyler’s base and Tyler simply doesn’t have enough to hold the pressure without forcefields. The medevac heals the SCV repairing the bunker allowing just two marines to survive a ridiculously long time. TLO is now up nearly 10 probes and is preparing for another push. In the meantime TLO has added on 3 more barracks, expanded, and grabbed his second gas. TLO gets two reactors – interestingly preparing to go marine heavy as Tyler feels too far behind and begins a poke at the front. But in the meantime TLO hits with a huge counter hellion drop roasting nearly all of Tyler’s probes! Now that TLO has killed his opponents entire economy, he can pull all of his SCVs to easily crush Tyler’s counter push and force the gg from Tyler.
Analysis:
+ Show Spoiler +Tyler’s cyber core positioning seems dubious and I wouldn’t generally recommend it due to how easily it can be picked off by drops. I’m really surprised that Tyler puts it there, he is the kind of player that analyzes where every building will be put, and I can’t see the benefit of putting it there. Maybe it is to make it less vulnerable to early stim timings up the big ramp, but I am unsure. TLO’s hellion scout is becoming more and more popular in TvP because it generally allows you to see Protoss’ chosen tech path, If you open 1-1-1 against protoss you should get a hellion to scout, but TLO is doing something much more interesting.
I am not sure if this would have worked against a Protoss other than Tyler and seems to be a build order type of loss. Tyler cuts corners with his 3 gate robo expand, using sentries as his crutch. As experience from watching some of his stream shows me, his build is extremely calculated down to the last forcefield (down to the point where the lag to Korea was enough to make his build fail occasionally). This is the risk of pushing your build to the limit, that you can get hit with something unexpected at the tournament stage. TLO brilliantly abused that Tyler goes so sentry heavy early game and I wouldn’t be surprised if Tyler has to change his whole opening to get around this drop that TLO has timed out.
Now I’m not entirely sure how TLO’s build does against non sentry heavy openings, as some protoss’ prefer going Zealot stalker heavy, but if you scout a fast double gas you might want to save energy on your orbital and scan at 6:10 to see if your opponent is focusing heavy sentry before you do the attack. Nonetheless, this is a convincing 1-1-1 opening against protoss that you might want to try out because of how much toss is loving sentries these days. What is so important to note is that he stays on one gas the whole time as 90% of 1-1-1 get a second gas.
TL;DR:
+ Show Spoiler +Terran: A creative 1-1-1 variation to punish Protoss relying on sentries
Protoss: if this becomes more popular why not to rely on sentry heavy openings v T
Theorycraft on how Tyler could have won:
+ Show Spoiler +This one is very difficult to decipher in terms of how Tyler could have won as his whole build relies on getting the most for his money and holding with as few units (read sentries) as possible. With better forcefields, it is possible that Tyler may have held this, but it is very difficult to be sure, it was just a very smart build by TLO.
Game Two: Liquid’TLO vs. Liquid’Tyler
+ Show Spoiler +Tyler again grabs both of his gases while TLO again 1-1-1’s with one gas. At this point both players seem to be doing the same builds as last game, but due to the map (xel'naga caverns) it will be much harder for TLO to drop successfully. TLO opts for fast siege tanks and a reactor barracks. Tyler opts for an immortal before colossus, indicating either possible aggression or a reaction to the siege tanks of TLO. TLO is getting a good mix of hellions and tanks, constantly making marines, a raven, and a fast 3rd. TLO adds on two starports and begins banshee production. Tyler takes some huge damage from blue flame hellions, but is not too far behind in probes. The hellion drop combined with spotting TLO's 3rd prompts Tyler to attack. TLO is going for 4 port banshee, using tanks to turtle. The stalker try to blink on the tanks but end up taking huge damage, as the banshees continue to rain down on the immortals, forcing a gg from Tyler.
Analysis:
+ Show Spoiler +Both of these games are absolutely insane because TLO straight up kills Tyler, not using any gimmicks, and with Tyler only doing standard build responses. The raven forces Tyler not to be able to scout the 4 port banshees or the fast 3rd base, and I can’t help but feel like this build from TLO crushes Protoss robo play easily. Maybe the secret that was missing from TvP mech style was the banshee. This is another great build for you to try out from TLO. I have no idea how it works on other builds besides Tyler's, but Tyler was doing the typical response to mech and got rolled by it.
TL;DR
+ Show Spoiler +Terran – another creative build that seems to crush robo play from Tyler
Protoss – the danger of robo builds against a potential meching terran style.
Theorycraft on how Tyler could have won:
+ Show Spoiler +I’m thinking that stargate might be the best possible response to terran mech play rather than immortal stalker zealot. Phoenixes would have been fantastic in the battle, but it is completely understandable that this would not be Tyler’s normal reaction just to give him credit. Tyler also didn’t spot the fast third and so was kind of forced to all in, the raven does such a nice job denying scouting that it puts Tyler in a weird position, as you generally want to use mobility to out expand the mech player, but that is difficult when scouting is denied..
Links to my other write ups:
Idra vs. Cruncher TSL: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=206173
GSTL finals http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=205969
IMLosira http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=204274
GSL finals http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=203120
All responses are welcomed, even if you only have feedback as simple as "I liked it" or "I didn't." Please don't preface responses with useless flames as well ^_^ thank you for reading!
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I love your write ups! Keep up the good work 
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The sky terran build/strat isn't new or innovative, it's just highly underused and still very strong. It transitions into BCS very good, especially this patch. People still refuse to do it much though or go back to it.
The hellion drop...nothing out of the norm either I would say. TLO is a good player, but people over-hype him up way too much (imo). What he does do really good though imo, is find builds that other people randomly decided were "obsolete" and then crushes people with them because they don't expect it and he knows the execution and follow-up unit compositions that the opponent is unfamiliar with.
Lots of protoss have entirely forgotten or discarded early hellion drops + sky terran out of their minds, so i'm sure he took liquid`tyler a little bit by surprise.
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On April 04 2011 12:37 avilo wrote:
The sky terran build/strat isn't new or innovative, it's just highly underused and still very strong. It transitions into BCS very good, especially this patch. People still refuse to do it much though or go back to it.
The hellion drop...nothing out of the norm either I would say. TLO is a good player, but people over-hype him up way too much (imo). What he does do really good though imo, is find builds that other people randomly decided were "obsolete" and then crushes people with them because they don't expect it and he knows the execution and follow-up unit compositions that the opponent is unfamiliar with.
Lots of protoss have entirely forgotten or discarded early hellion drops + sky terran out of their minds, so i'm sure he took liquid`tyler a little bit by surprise.
I'm sorry I sounded too excited about it, it's just so rare to see it in tournament play. People tend to get angry when i get excited about a player and what they're doing, I'll keep that in mind in the future, thank you for your response
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Nice write up
Hellion drops into banshee play is def underused (and im glad for it), which is a mystery as it is ridiculously strong).
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The first game was pretty standard. I've seen that exactly build with marine drop + hellions at entrance used a few times in GSL on that map even, against both T and P. The SCV was a nice tough, and that game ended up being super-close. Those two marines could have easily died before the bunker finished and it would have been very different.
The second game did intrigue me quite a bit. I mean I watched the main battle 5 times on the replay and Tyler's army simply disappeared. It was obviously a mistake to engage there and the blink was disastrous, but I simply did not expect tyler's army to evaporate so quickly. Those 5 banshees + the marines + the tanks did ridiculous damage.
I've done 2 port banshee builds with marine hellion but this seemed more versatile. I'm sure it's vulnerable to some early pushes, so I'll have to play around with it a bit to know for sure, but I really like banshees against portoss. I feel like it's the saving grace of terran at the moment in that matchup, and it transitions well to BCs.
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great writeups! keep up the good work.
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TLO read Synystyr's thread and decided to make it more famous 
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Awesome write up. TLO is one of the best players in the world. He is so dynamic.
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1-1-1 is just very vulnerable to toss 1 base timing pushes. ie 3 gate voidray, 3 gate imortal, 4 gate if not scouted, or 3 gate collosus if no tanks. It works in tournament play because not many protoss does theses strat. But in ladder, even in high masters, I always encounter them and u just lose with nothing to defend (playing as T)
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I think in the second game, tyler killed the expo, but I think he could have stopped attacking there and I don't know why he stopped making probes. He didn't really lose any units and TLO had a very nice tank setup with all those banshees. Granted Tyler probably didn't know about all those banshees and might have thought he could just go and kill him but I think that he certainly made some mistakes in his attack (no forward plyon, getting real immortals stuck behind the fake ones, army really clumped up).
I think if Tyler stopped his attack and scouted the banshees he could have easily thrown up a star port and make phoenix to win.
I think banshees are risky. They can do a ton of damage, but if he gets even a small number of phoenix then they are going to be in trouble.
[Tyler is really good and this was just an off tournament I think for him, and my criticism here is in all due respect]
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Thank you all so much for all of your feedback ^_^
In response to nat, You notice in game one, TLO gets a viking right after the medevac, I have a feeling that this was due to the possible weakness of Void ray all ins.
And @Basileus, I think that was part of the genius of TLO's build, the raven makes it damn hard for protoss to scout. And in fairness to Tyler I love his style and think it is amazing, he seems like the kind of player that "checks things off" that his build loses to, which it makes TLO a very difficult opponent.
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I do a similar style, doing a 1/1/1 hellion drop into banshees expand and i really like it. It's surprisingly safe vs early protoss pressure (if you bunker your front - which you should). I always get a quick tank after the hellions to help with 4gates which can be a bit tricky sometimes.
However i find that most protoss are surprisingly unprepared for hellion drops/harass and you can almost always do terrible damage AND escape with your hellions. Good FF micro can be a problem though (if he traps your hellions in the mineral patches).
Phoenix openings, however, are quite a problem. They pretty much shut down drop play and banshees completely and you have to get vikings instead. The good thing is that you can get a lot of marines if he gets phoenix as it will take considerable time until he gets collossi out.
4port banshee is incredible risky though, as 2stargate phoenix will slaughter you if he manages to scout you.
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Thanks for the summaries, but for the sake of the community, i'd like to bring up the improper use of "gimmick" again, as is used here...
a gimmick is something that is NOT (quite) useful; if it is useful, then it's not a gimmick
aka, you basically said TLO won straight up (standard) without using gimmicks (being flashy), but I'm sure what you mean is that TLO played standard and didn't rely on surprises
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In game two Tyler just did something really stupid. He broke the Artosis rule: When you get ahead you should just get more ahead! He killed a command centre and fucked up his economy plans. So what does he do? Does he try and solidify his lead, or at least try and get one by taking some expansions of his own? No! He just attacks into a really thick defensive line in a tight choke, his unit control is all fumbled and he gets massacred.
Really, Tyler just did a bad play in a situation he was unsure about what to do, partly because TLO denied scouting really hard and also because TLO is just an unusual player who can do shit which can easily exploit a player who you know plays really standard and solid and conservative.
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Great analysis. I think Tyler got majorly metagamed by TLO. As nat stated, his build was very vulnerable to 1 base timings, but TLO took a calculated risk, and counted on Tyler sticking to his standard play.
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Game 2 is just has the weirdest ending. Tyler seems to decide that he wants to throw the game, I can't think of a different explanation for stockpiling that many resources and attacking the way he did. When tyler blinked his stalker in front of the immortals I goddamn near facepalmed irl.
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On April 04 2011 12:58 FinestHour wrote:TLO read Synystyr's thread and decided to make it more famous
!!!!!!
This makes me so happy. Words can't describe =]
His style of course was much different, but the end goal was the same. I've been trying to figure out how to open with hellions, and this seems amazing. Can't wait to get my hands on these replays!
Sky Terran is so powerful. Definitely something Terrans need to take a look at for their arsenal against Protoss.
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Phoenix openings hardcounter those builds pretty hard. I think that doing a 1-1-1 build a large percentage of the time is dangerous because of this.
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On April 04 2011 20:26 PJA wrote:Phoenix openings hardcounter those builds pretty hard. I think that doing a 1-1-1 build a large percentage of the time is dangerous because of this.
There are a lot of transitions from 1/1/1 and not all of those are bad vs phoenix. You just can't transition straight into mass banshee when your protoss opponent builds phoenix.
Viking/Tank/Marine is a pretty potent counter to phoenix/gateway for example (also to voidray/gateway).
You just need to make sure to adept to what your opponent is doing, expand in time and punish him for doing a fast expand (if he did) with a timing attack.
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On April 04 2011 20:26 PJA wrote:
Phoenix openings hardcounter those builds pretty hard. I think that doing a 1-1-1 build a large percentage of the time is dangerous because of this.
If you're talking about the 4 port, not necessarily. You end up with huge amounts of marines and can respond by pausing at 2 ports and throwing out a few Thors before going for BC (which isn't even necessary). I mean, if you're building obs and phoenix, that's going to cut your Col or WG unit count.
The main issue is that Ports are not as flexible as factory or barracks so you're kinda playing on rails and can't respond or adapt if the game goes away from the game you think you are going to play. I think that's ultimately why you don't see it in high level play as much. People like to try and control flow too much to just FE, sit in your base, and build mass air for a mech like timing push...
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After theorycrafting over night and reading some replies, do you think TLO's game 2 is solid enough to induce stargate openings from Protoss? Imagine how that could change the entire matchup.
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I love how you have a spoiler tag, when the title of the thread in itself is a spoiler
hahaah
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On April 05 2011 02:17 Hambone636 wrote:
I love how you have a spoiler tag, when the title of the thread in itself is a spoiler
hahaah
Because obviously TLO only played one TvP at the whole tournament and people know who I'm talking about. -_-
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TLO did the 1-1-1 against socke on Shattered Temple, starting with a very fast non-BF hellion drop. Socke put pressure on TLO at the start, and saw it coming, but lost his units in TLO's base in exchange for 1 medivac and 1 hellion (not that great of a trade to start). Another medivac popped out, thought, and got the hellions into socke's base and kill about 6-7 probes. Socke's expansion just came up, though, so he wasn't too far out of it. What did the real damage was a banshee follow up, keeping socke in his base for even longer. Eventually an obs got into TLO's base and saw a raven and eventually a small clump of banshees and vikings. Socke quickly threw down 2 stargate to start getting phoenixes out fast. Right when he got about 12 of them out, and had just put down his 3rd nexus, TLO showed up at his front door, while a small pack of reapers were trying to deny the 3rd, pulling the stalkers and 2 collosi away from the natural. To Socke's surprise, 3 seeker missiles popped out and killed off all 12 phoenix. A small pack of bio followed up the poke from the air units and socke was forced to GG.
Given the fact that they were close air on shattered temple made this type of strategy amplified in usefulness. The large air focus makes the battlefield smaller for terran and easier to manage, while protoss is usually stuck parrying the terran for most of the early and mid game. Socke did a fairly decent job holding off most of the aggression and scouting it quite well. TLO had great execution with it, and the finishing touch of the seeker missile god rid of the major threat when the attack came. For those of you who will say "seeker missile should never kill phoenix, they are too fast"; he had to get close to the banshees to kill them, and had right clicked to get in range, causing them to clump quite badly. Given the fact that most terran use PDD to protect their air units, he was most likely not expecting the missiles to pop out. The phoenix being in such close proximity to the ravens provided little to no reaction time.
It was a great harassment strategy by TLO, and a great choice given the map and positions, which were the two major contributors to its success. This match was played in the 5th/6th place loser's quarterfinals on Sunday.
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On April 04 2011 20:26 PJA wrote:
Phoenix openings hardcounter those builds pretty hard. I think that doing a 1-1-1 build a large percentage of the time is dangerous because of this.
The thing is, beyond a few void ray timings there really aren't a lot of stargate openers that work well against terran. Hellion drops, especially when followed up by banshees, are scary as hell against most standard protoss openings. Not having seen the replay myself it sounds like there needed to be more stalkers if Tyler was going to keep pace with all the incoming harass. Scrap is also a fantastic map for hellions in general, between the huge open space behind the mineral line, the doublewide ramp, and short air distance for drops. Coupled with the fact that void openings really only work well against a terran that walls off the main, which rarely happens especially on a map like this, stargate isn't the obvious choice for Scrap Station at all.
I think it's possible to deal with this playing standard, but it's significantly harder given the map. A one gas 1-1-1 opening sounds pretty indicative of a hellion drop, at least initially, so I'm left wondering when it got scouted.
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On April 05 2011 03:43 Offhand wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2011 20:26 PJA wrote:
Phoenix openings hardcounter those builds pretty hard. I think that doing a 1-1-1 build a large percentage of the time is dangerous because of this. The thing is, beyond a few void ray timings there really aren't a lot of stargate openers that work well against terran. Hellion drops, especially when followed up by banshees, are scary as hell against most standard protoss openings. Not having seen the replay myself it sounds like there needed to be more stalkers if Tyler was going to keep pace with all the incoming harass. Scrap is also a fantastic map for hellions in general, between the huge open space behind the mineral line, the doublewide ramp, and short air distance for drops. Coupled with the fact that void openings really only work well against a terran that walls off the main, which rarely happens especially on a map like this, stargate isn't the obvious choice for Scrap Station at all. I think it's possible to deal with this playing standard, but it's significantly harder given the map. A one gas 1-1-1 opening sounds pretty indicative of a hellion drop, at least initially, so I'm left wondering when it got scouted.
jinro lost last GSL to a proxy phoenix opener that looks super effective. one of the few times i've seen a player completely fall apart due to harass. IIRC, idle scvs and half completed buildings everywhere. it was hard to watch. i think jinro simply didn't have enough marines to shoo them away.
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On April 05 2011 03:54 underdawg wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2011 03:43 Offhand wrote:On April 04 2011 20:26 PJA wrote:
Phoenix openings hardcounter those builds pretty hard. I think that doing a 1-1-1 build a large percentage of the time is dangerous because of this. The thing is, beyond a few void ray timings there really aren't a lot of stargate openers that work well against terran. Hellion drops, especially when followed up by banshees, are scary as hell against most standard protoss openings. Not having seen the replay myself it sounds like there needed to be more stalkers if Tyler was going to keep pace with all the incoming harass. Scrap is also a fantastic map for hellions in general, between the huge open space behind the mineral line, the doublewide ramp, and short air distance for drops. Coupled with the fact that void openings really only work well against a terran that walls off the main, which rarely happens especially on a map like this, stargate isn't the obvious choice for Scrap Station at all. I think it's possible to deal with this playing standard, but it's significantly harder given the map. A one gas 1-1-1 opening sounds pretty indicative of a hellion drop, at least initially, so I'm left wondering when it got scouted. jinro lost last GSL to a proxy phoenix opener that looks super effective. one of the few times i've seen a player completely fall apart due to harass. IIRC, idle scvs and half completed buildings everywhere. it was hard to watch. i think jinro simply didn't have enough marines to shoo them away.
I feel like this is relevant, as this was a game where someone did a Proxy Stargate Phoenix opener against me and I beat it all the while going 4 starports for mass Airplay.
http://www.mediafire.com/?t6waq1w2y860gpl
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All my thoughts about the two games have already been stated by others, but I'd just like to say THANK YOU to the OP for making these sorts of threads. It's these kinds of strategical analysis discussions that I wish would dominate the SC2 community, rather than balance discussions.
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ok i just rewatched the jinro game, my mind greatly exaggerated how effective those phoenixes were. but no denying that they were indeed still effective. phoenixes are so cool lol, constant scouting, supremely annoying, and they attack automatically!
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On April 04 2011 20:26 PJA wrote:
Phoenix openings hardcounter those builds pretty hard. I think that doing a 1-1-1 build a large percentage of the time is dangerous because of this.
I desperately want to know though, does this build work against all robo builds? Because 90% of players open robo if they're aiming for a macro game.
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Not to knock Tyler or anything but I think he should have spent a little time to micro down that SCV in the first game before it completed the bunker. Sure, it would give the marines free shots for a couple seconds but its better than having that bunker in his base for a solid minute or two. I understand he had to deal with everything at once so it is hard to think clearly as to what to target first, marines, hellions or medivac?
Game 2 I think he definitely played that last part terribad. It was a bad engagement spot and a bad idea to blink all of his stalkers straight into the small little choke instead of going around while the immortals soaked up all those tank shells. It seemed unnecessary to try and win at that point. I like Tyler and I think he has a very cerebral approach to the game but I think that the harasses threw him off his stride and game plan which (especially after playing so many games in such high pressure situations for 3 days) caused bad decision making.
I'm not saying that TLO's plan wasn't brilliant or well executed, I just think that it can be held.
And does anybody else think that Templar play would work fairly well against heavy air play? HTs can feedback Raven, Banshees, Medivacs and BCs and not to mention since you aren't going air yourself, he wouldn't even both with Vikings so you basically have rendered most of his army useless and you don't even need storm or the amulet to do it. Then the Archons that come afterward can do terrible damage to whatever bio army his has left....
Hmm, I think I've thought of a counter haha.
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Yeah, I'm not convinced that what TLO did here is really that great...
The drop + hellion in g1 was cute, but if tyler either thwarts the drop or blocks the hellions, it fails. He tried to half stop both and got caught totally off guard. Additionally, he lost a ton of probes to the entirely preventable bunker. I also think that cancelling the expo might have been a bit premature (would have to test) -- if you hold a marine/hellion push, you're way ahead; being ahead without the expo up would be kinda lame.
In g2, he was honestly perfectly fine. He lost a few probes to hellions, but killing TLO's third was big. Tyler could have easily just contained + expanded at that point and been at least even; instead he did a terrible push where he hallucinated immortals but then suicided his stalkers.
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it was beautiful play imo... he knew Tyler thought he was going siege tech... so he just went banshees. i think he scanned for a stargate in Tyler's base before the fight.... so even if Tyler didn't attack and lose, i'm sure TLO would have acted fast, before he gets countered and needs to tech to BC. But the risky expanding and stuff were all pretty important lead-up to a mass BC strat. which recently is so much hotter with the chatup by Synystyr and the BC speed upgrade.
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EPT
