EPTIf you let your opponent dictate the pace of the game then you need to play reactively.
[D] Prae.ThorZaIN vs. TLAF Liquid'Tyler (Analysis) - Page 2
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Sami`
89 Posts
If you let your opponent dictate the pace of the game then you need to play reactively. | ||
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trNimitz
204 Posts
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Antisocialmunky
United States5913 Posts
Afterall 30*2*3 = 180 which is more HP than all gateway units as long as you get some basic weapon upgrades. However, there's a reason why you can't go that sort of Thor-mech straight off and that's because its quite hard to defend early immortal pushes and void rays. Predy has a mech thread which he experiments with different comps and transitions: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=194401 Tyler played kinda disappointingly - almost seems like he expected Thorzain to be a cookie cutter Terran - and Thorzain played very well. | ||
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baeric
Germany649 Posts
On April 10 2011 21:53 Spekulatius wrote: Please put a spoiler in the thread title. Are you kidding? Why do you open such threads like [D] Prae.ThorZaIN vs. TLAF Liquid'Tyler (Analysis) ? Just to bother the OP? | ||
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Spekulatius
Germany2413 Posts
On April 10 2011 22:26 baeric wrote: Are you kidding? Why do you open such threads like ? Just to bother the OP? I am not kidding. Why so angry? And I don't know how big your side bar is, but all it said for me was "[D] Prae.ThorZaIN vs. TLAF...". Not having seen the TSL matches this weekend, not knowing who's playing except for MC and not seeing a spoiler in the title, I clicked it, curious at to what expected me. Could have been Jinro, TLO, Haypro or, yeah, Tyler. And I guess I'm not the only one who hasn't seen the matches yet, so a careful spoiler is never out of place, is it? | ||
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Kreb
4834 Posts
The battle started like normal with Thorzain stim-kiting until FFs were thrown. Since Thorzain couldnt kite the zealots his army became static and just kept shooting, and the zealots were starting to get a good amount of surface area to hit Thorzains MM/Vikings on. And just when things started to look good..... Tyler pulled back (!!!). Stopping the VOD the exact second of the zealots turning around shows a 174-171 food advantage in Thorzains favor. Eventually the zealots run back, but some stalkers actually run in front and continue to shoot, which further fucks up Tylers positioning where you want zealots if front, sentries in the middle and stalkers in the back. Then the zealots turn around again, but as they turn around they're not very well lined up and theres a lot of stalkers in the way so the zealots kinda get funneled in a small line towards the MM army. I paused the VOD again as the first zealot reaches the first MM unit. Food count? 180-151. So in that pullback, Tyler lost 20 worth of food while possibly killing nothing (Thorzain gaining 6food obviously from newly started units in his base which didnt contribute to the battle) and furthermore it fucked up his unit positioning where you want zealots/sentries/stalkers in that order. So the pullback was probably worth more than 20 food. Wouldve liked to see the result of that battle without the pulling back. I think it would at least become an army trade, possibly even a victory for Tyler. Pics: As he starts to pull back, you can see all zealots turned the wrong way (why???) http://i52.tinypic.com/142zn5w.jpg After zealots reaching the army again. Look at the terrible zealot positioning and how even a few zealots are stuck in the back. http://i56.tinypic.com/29c3orm.jpg | ||
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hugman
Sweden4644 Posts
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Dommk
Australia4865 Posts
Pics: As he starts to pull back, you can see all zealots turned the wrong way (why???) http://i52.tinypic.com/142zn5w.jpg You pull them back so they can live, when you force field like that and engage with all your zealots, it kind of defeats the purpose of forcefielding to cut his army in half, everything that would be unable to attack normally would be attacking all the Zealots, so you pull your Zealots back and let your Stalkers do the DPS whilst they tank damage. The amount of Stalkers he had in that concave were sufficient to take out the Viking, you don't need to needlessly throw away zealots there. | ||
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Valefort
France228 Posts
Colossi were a good choice, however once the zealots went down Thorzain could moved his Thors and use strike canons (range 7) versus these 9 range colossi. Zealots, colossi, void rays is a good composition against the mech army of Thorzain, you can try use the higher mobility of this composition to fight in a better position (the position in which Tyler fought was one of the worst, all of the Thors could shot from the beginning of the fight). However this strategy on Xel Naga is quite smart because of the gold expansion position, you can't exploit the low mobility of Thors easily. I guess you have to take one of the side expansions (preferably the right one in this game, to abuse mobility) and wait for the gold to run down while counter attacking every time the terran moves. Ultimately this should wear him down or you should be able to pick some fights in an advantageous position (when all thors all lined up) to slowly reduce the Thors number. I suspect the armor upgrades for Thors were more to protect him from reactionary void rays than to counter gateway units damage (though it was useful). | ||
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Kreb
4834 Posts
On April 10 2011 23:37 Dommk wrote: You pull them back so they can live, when you force field like that and engage with all your zealots, it kind of defeats the purpose of forcefielding to cut his army in half, everything that would be unable to attack normally would be attacking all the Zealots, so you pull your Zealots back and let your Stalkers do the DPS whilst they tank damage. The amount of Stalkers he had in that concave were sufficient to take out the Viking, you don't need to needlessly throw away zealots there. Did you read what I said? Are you actually trying to argue that a pullback which cost him 20food + a good zealot/sentry/stalker lineup (look at how they were lined up in the 1st screenshot comapred to 2nd) actually was a good thing? The stalkers pulleed back too and were barely attacking (hence thorzain going up in food and not down). How can you argue it was enough dps if the other player doesnt lose anything? | ||
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Kreb
4834 Posts
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Sami`
89 Posts
On April 10 2011 22:33 Kreb wrote: Wouldve liked to see the result of that battle without the pulling back. I think it would at least become an army trade, possibly even a victory for Tyler. You must be joking... the only thing that the zealots would have killed if not pulled back were a few landed vikings and they would have taken additional fire from a clump of marines behind the FF not to mention the marauders on the right. It didn't change the outcome at all, if he had attacked the vikings the only difference in the end result would be zealots dieing quicker and a few vikings dead. | ||
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azarat
Australia155 Posts
I'm not sure how viable it would be at a pro level since we haven't seen many Mech plays, but mass Robotics plays don't seem very strong against Viking + Thor w/Strike Cannon and Gateway + Immortal is vulnerable to Hellion + Thor + Raven for PDD. | ||
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Dommk
Australia4865 Posts
On April 10 2011 23:48 Kreb wrote: Did you read what I said? Are you actually trying to argue that a pullback which cost him 20food + a good zealot/sentry/stalker lineup (look at how they were lined up in the 1st screenshot comapred to 2nd) actually was a good thing? God... I'm not saying his execution was perfect, but that was most likely what he was trying to do, he was probably frustrated with himself because of it, like how JP mentioned in STOG, how you are not doing what you want to do and you realize it but you can't do anything about it. If you look at the forcefields in your Picture, Thorzaines MMM army got pushed back,his sentries still have a lot of energy left on them, and everything outside the forcefields cannot attack the Sentry/Stalker, but the Stalker/Sentry that is left un-attackable by the majority of the MMM army has more than enough DPS to quickly take out what is separated by the forcefields before they run out. In that situation, you want your Zealots to get a few hits in, but just before the MMM army starts to run around the sides of the forcefields you want to pull them back ASAP, before they get a chance to hit the Zealots, even without the Zealots you have the DPS to get a good trade on whatever is in the forcefields. Sure if he left them he would have gotten all the viking and marines, but that isn't a good trade. It was just a poor engagement overall--his execution wasn't the best, but what he did was perfectly fine, his Zealots didn't have charge and if you left them to keep attacking then as soon as the forcefields wore off, he would have been a sitting duck in such open space. | ||
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Kammalleri
Canada613 Posts
First game I feel like Tyler just completely lacked scouting. I don't remember him scouting after expanding and it's like he never knew he was going against Thors. If he did know then going mass colossus vs mass thors with 250 mm cannon(which you have to expect vs mass thors) is just a terrible decision. I don't really remember the second game. Third game, not much to say about it, he expanded really late, his build wasn't as top notch as I expect from Tyler and he just never was into that game. Overall expo timings cost Tyler the most, in every games Thorzain expanded faster and Tyler never really contained him so he could get his expo up faster. 3 gate robo isn't a build to FE at all. If the Terran FE you have to either contain him so he can't get his CC to the expo or just punish him for being greedy and in game 1 and 3 Tyler did neither. Tyler is one of my 3 favorite players so it sucks to say it straight up, but he just played terrible the whole series... Hopefully we get to see the real Tyler soon and I can't wait to hear what he has to say in SOTG. | ||
EG.Thorzain
Sweden164 Posts
It's mostly to be able to fight heavy gateway units compositions, as they deal relatively low damage but shoot fast (zealots have 2 attacks for example). This lets me worry more about the actual "power units" so to say, the units that aren't gateway units. And as long as i can counter them properly (colossus/air = vikings, mass immortals = more Thor heavy) I feel comfortable in the big fight. Another important factor to point out is that I tried in the unit test map, and attack upgrades doesn't change how many hits a Thor kills either a stalker or a zealot, nor how many hits a Hellion needs to kill a zealot. So even though it will affect somewhat, since I didn't test all the various X Thor hits X hellion hits on unit X with and without attack upgrades, it's fairly useless. Armor however, lets Hellions take 1 more zealot and stalker hits, and lets Thors take many more zealot/stalker hits. | ||
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azarat
Australia155 Posts
On April 11 2011 00:19 Thorzain wrote: I can explain the armor upgrades in the first game: It's mostly to be able to fight heavy gateway units compositions, as they deal relatively low damage but shoot fast (zealots have 2 attacks for example). This lets me worry more about the actual "power units" so to say, the units that aren't gateway units. And as long as i can counter them properly (colossus/air = vikings, mass immortals = more Thor heavy) I feel comfortable in the big fight. Another important factor to point out is that I tried in the unit test map, and attack upgrades doesn't change how many hits a Thor kills either a stalker or a zealot, nor how many hits a Hellion needs to kill a zealot. So even though it will affect somewhat, since I didn't test all the various X Thor hits X hellion hits on unit X with and without attack upgrades, it's fairly useless. Armor however, lets Hellions take 1 more zealot and stalker hits, and lets Thors take many more zealot/stalker hits. Hi Thorzain, Did you have a plan for a mass Stargate play like the one I mentioned a few posts up? Mech in TvP intrigues me, and I'll like to know if Stargate is a viable counter to it in the eyes of someone who employs it at a pro level. | ||
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peeeky
Canada631 Posts
On April 11 2011 00:23 azarat wrote: Hi Thorzain, Did you have a plan for a mass Stargate play like the one I mentioned a few posts up? Mech in TvP intrigues me, and I'll like to know if Stargate is a viable counter to it in the eyes of someone who employs it at a pro level. He says in his post that if he saw colossus/air = vikings. I'm more interested if we can get a replay pack especially of mech play. Go Thorzain! Rooting for you to take out MC. | ||
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azarat
Australia155 Posts
On April 11 2011 00:26 peeeky wrote: He says in his post that if he saw colossus/air = vikings. I'm more interested if we can get a replay pack especially of mech play. Go Thorzain! Rooting for you to take out MC. Oh, I see that now. Still, seems like a dedicated air play maybe with an upgrade or two would be pretty difficult to stop with just Vikings and the Thor AA. Phoenix do well against Vikings and VRs massacre Thors. Obviously it would need good micro to not splash the Thor AA, especially on the Phoenix, but still... | ||
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Sami`
89 Posts
On April 11 2011 00:34 azarat wrote: Oh, I see that now. Still, seems like a dedicated air play maybe with an upgrade or two would be pretty difficult to stop with just Vikings and the Thor AA. Phoenix do well against Vikings and VRs massacre Thors. Obviously it would need good micro to not splash the Thor AA, especially on the Phoenix, but still... Well VR are good against Thor no doubt but Thor AA + Viking is a little too much for VR to handle. Besides, getting a critical mass of Thors vs MC is a bit different than against a passive player like Tyler - MC will be knocking down your door with Immortals before you've even researched strike cannon. | ||
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