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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
Introduction
I’ve been messing around with this style for a while on ladder and found it fairly effective. My opening of choice is a standard reaper opening as it is safe and can give you decent scouting intel while allowing for a very fast stim. This style requires good multitasking and marine split micro to be successful. I'm currently sitting at 850 points in masters league and have played TvZ against other high ranked master and GM zergs.
General Build order
12 rax 13 gas reaper opening
CC while reaper is building
Stim when you get the gas
Add 4 rax before CC completes (don't get a 3rd supply depot as your cc finishes as soon as you get supply blocked.
Make marines and scvs nonstop and add barracks if your mineral count starts to go up. (Add marauders if you see roaches or infestors at any point)
I won't go too far into the build as it's fairly flexible. The main goal is to make a lot of marines 
Key Components
Fast 3-3 upgrades – It is unlikely that you will finish the game with the first attack. If zerg skips out on upgrades, marines become much stronger against lings and you will win battles that you would normally lose.
Optimized mineral vs gas income – By staying on a low number of refineries for a long time, you get ahead of the zerg in mineral income.
Nonstop scv production – in order to maximize your mineral advantage, you need to stay even with the zerg in worker count.
A lot of barracks – Add rax when you start to float money. You should have at least 10 rax (or equivalent with reactor or tech lab) with a reactor port and double ebay if you're on 2 base 2 base.
Denying creep spread – Since your aggression starts quite early, zerg often does not have much creep spread going when your first attack hits. Try to save up a scan so that you will be able to clear any tumors. It might not be helpful immediately but your next wave will enjoy the reduced speed of the zerg army. Wherever possible, engage off creep.
Flexible transitions – Because you power on economy especially if you grab a fast 3rd, you have the resources to transition into any gas-heavy builds such as tanks, ghosts, bcs, etc.
Mindset
Relentless aggression - The idea is to constantly put on pressure and force zerg to make zerglings and banelings nonstop which means no more drones while you are building scvs one by one. If zerg overdrones, he can end up losing a lot of drones and is put into an unwinnable position. Thus, you are forcing zerg to either walk a tight rope or play safe and inevitably fall behind in economy.
Macro and micro - You need to push your multitasking to the limit so that you have the most number of marines to attack while getting the most out of each and every marine.
Advantages
Compared to a more traditional marine/tank/medivac army, mass marine’s aggression scale is off the charts. It gives a huge tempo advantage and forces z to be on his toes the entire game. With the huge mobility of your marine/medivac army, you can do multi-pronged attacks, hitting several locations at once. With good micro and multitasking, you can pull yourself way ahead of the zerg.
Disadvantages
It’s not just zerg that is under high pressure. One misclick can cost you the game, especially in your earlier attacks as it gives zerg ample opportunity to drone up before the next attack if your entire army dies to a few banelings and zerglings. Later on, infestors can pose a huge threat to your army if you’re not careful as 2 FGs can kill a good chunk of your army in about 5 seconds with no way for you to micro out of it.
Responses to specific openers
Roach rush: You should be able to see this with your reaper. Bunker at your ramp and start marauder production asap. Start concussive shell so you can put on a huge amount of pressure when zerg starts to retreat.
2 base bling bust: This is one of the biggest threats to the mass marine build as it hits before Terran has a big production going. If you got stim asap, you should be able to micro and take out all the banelings. If you catch wind of this rush coming, double bunker at your nat and push out. You want to trade as cost efficiently as possible with the banelings and use your reinforcing marines to defend with bunkers. If you don’t have stim, you need to split all your marines into groups of 3 at most and stand your ground by the bunkers.
Fast infestor: There are several responses to this. The simplest is to start adding marauders. You can go for banshee into BC to make zerg spend all of the infestor energy on killing those instead of the mmm ball. Preemptively split your army before moving anywhere so you don’t get caught by surprise with one nasty fungal (into infinite FG -__-).
Possible Transitions
Ghost: Ghosts get the infantry upgrade bonus which means you don't need to get other upgrades and you should already have some tech lab barracks to make ghosts and once you grab all your gas geysers, you will have plenty of gas to produce ghosts even with double ebay and reactor port.
Raven: This style can be good if you have enough advantage to buy you some time until you build a sufficient fleet of ravens. However, the huge amount of resources that you end up spending means your army will take a pretty big hit and you are left rather vulnerable for some period. Assuming that minerals are worth the same as gas, ravens are essentially 6 marines that can’t attack for a long time and requires a ton of upgrades to be useful.
Tanks: Tanks are the counter to the two biggest threats to marines – banelings and infestors. Although your mobility will take a hit, 3 fac tanks can work wonders if zerg is still on pure ling/bling.
Banshee into BC: As mentioned in the above section, this unit transition is great for zergs that skipped mutas for infestors. Two FGs on your banshee means 10 less dead marines on your side. BCs are a huge pain to deal with for a spireless zerg as their only real anti-air would be queens and infested terrans (which costs even more precious energy).
Replays
Most of these replays should be the opening described in this post but don't hate me if there's some odd replays here and there since I tried to pick them from memory!
[url blocked]
http://www.mediafire.com/?pd68zhpnl9g6b7k
I know this build still needs a lot of refinement so please let me know if you have any suggestions to changing up this build and I'd be happy to try and incorporate it into my play 
Edit:
Marine splitting trick by Mjoa
Marine split challenge map by Griffith
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That's... a lot more fun playstyle than rine/tank. 1 win atleast, heck I won while my opponent went pretty fast infestor and I couldn't do *that* much econ dmg early on. Felt a lot more in control too, compared to rine/tank, where you are always a bit skeptical of your position, if mutas are coming, if you are walking into a trap/bling mines.
I suppose it's to early to comment to much about it, but yer atleast 1 game up from this.
Edit: Ofcourse this does seem quite... well fubar, to be able to count on the rine so incredibly much, but what else we got I suppose...
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Awesomest, funnest, super strong build ever. I use this style all the time and its very strong.
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United Kingdom2940 Posts
This is a pretty good composition I think, marines should really be a part of almost all TvZ unit comps.It is a bit tough to pull off though as you can lose your entire advantage through one misclick, even if you were just about to win with that one push.
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Hmm? I must be stupid or something, because this seems to be basically the same sort of marine play that was popular a while back. However, this is a reputable poster..so I must be missing something. Can someone elaborate on the difference please?
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On April 22 2011 10:27 Xanbatou wrote:
Hmm? I must be stupid or something, because this seems to be basically the same sort of marine play that was popular a while back. However, this is a reputable poster..so I must be missing something. Can someone elaborate on the difference please?
All in the replay.
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I've been playing against this a lot and find that if you stay even with upgrades as Zerg, this build becomes extremely easier to deal with. Relentless creep spread throughout the map also helps a ton.
Even though it sounds counter intuitive, massing mutalisks to harass is actually a really good way to contest this style that I play against friends (All high masters/grandmaster). Mass muta forces a terran to stay in his base or build tons of turrets that lowers the marine count.
So there are really two ways to handle this affectively as Zerg. Infestors to deny that constant aggression or mutalisks to counter pressure until infestors. You have to try to stay even or ahead on upgrades against Terran and force it into late game.
Burrow Banelings at xel nagas/outside terran base/outside your base/ in the attack paths can completely destroy this build with one lucky explosion or forcing him to scan across the map to attack which completely nullifies his ability to create out of all of his barracks.
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I am not liking this as a Zerg player. 
Good build though, I think it would work fairly well. Either we would need to get a lot of Roaches or several Spine Crawlers which become less useful as the game progresses.
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This is great. I've been using this for sometime now, I used the variant of that pure marine vP build that was posted here on TL, just 10~ rax constant attacks with 25-35 marines with one refinery.
Basically, if he goes banelings, the first few attacks will get completely crushed, but then he will either keep on trading marines for banelings and that will eventually kill him, or he does get his mutas and dies in the next push because of not having a lot of banelings.
Perfect strat to collect Zerg tears and practice marine micro. If you're bad, you will keep on losing, but don't get discouraged, after losing tons of battles (you're reinforcing really fast - you actually are supposed to lose battles at the start), you will develop a sense of when/where to engage/not to engage, how to split, etc.
A great, fun build overall (both this marine pressure > medivac + upgrades or the pure marine constant aggression)
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
On April 22 2011 10:32 zJayy962 wrote:
I've been playing against this a lot and find that if you stay even with upgrades as Zerg, this build becomes extremely easier to deal with. Relentless creep spread throughout the map also helps a ton.
Even though it sounds counter intuitive, massing mutalisks to harass is actually a really good way to contest this style that I play against friends (All high masters/grandmaster). Mass muta forces a terran to stay in his base or build tons of turrets that lowers the marine count.
So there are really two ways to handle this affectively as Zerg. Infestors to deny that constant aggression or mutalisks to counter pressure until infestors. You have to try to stay even or ahead on upgrades against Terran and force it into late game.
Burrow Banelings at xel nagas/outside terran base/outside your base/ in the attack paths can completely destroy this build with one lucky explosion or forcing him to scan across the map to attack which completely nullifies his ability to create out of all of his barracks.
Upgrades are definitely a key for both sides. I've had games where I have this one engagement that ridiculously favours me because of upgrades and good micro from my side.
Burrowed banelings are definitely a bitch to deal with this style without a raven.
Both mass mutas and infestors can deal well with this style but both styles can just as easily overextend can lose the game instantly. For muta openings, staying engaged against just a few too many marines can result in a lot of mutas lost for zerg. For infestor openings, if Terran splits a little better than expected, you're suddenly left with no units and energyless infestors which means you will lose a couple of bases very quickly. I've had some very close games that go into late game and the game suddenly swings way in my favour over a span of 30 seconds or so.
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Wow, both surprised and glad someone higher level made a mass marine guide. I'll chime in with some of my experience on the subject since I did this every time when I used to ladder regularly.
One thing to note is that if you're wanting a build that will help you to get better at both micro/macro and in-game decision making, this is the build for you. It will tax everything so its good for getting your mechanics up to snuff.
Transition wise, I would recommend getting multiple support units based on what you encounter. One support unit will not cut the mustard.
On April 22 2011 09:17 infinity21 wrote:
Possible Transitions
Ghost: Ghosts get the infantry upgrade bonus which means you don't need to get other upgrades and you should already have some tech lab barracks to make ghosts and once you grab all your gas geysers, you will have plenty of gas to produce ghosts even with double ebay and reactor port.
I haven't messed with ghosts but if you do ghosts, you better be willing to have the most insane micro and awareness on top of the already insane micro and awareness needed for constant marine splits.
Raven: This style can be good if you have enough advantage to buy you some time until you build a sufficient fleet of ravens. However, the huge amount of resources that you end up spending means your army will take a pretty big hit and you are left rather vulnerable for some period. Assuming that minerals are worth the same as gas, ravens are essentially 6 marines that can’t attack for a long time and requires a ton of upgrades to be useful.
See guide. In brief, an auto turret when fully upgraded is about equal to 2 2/2 stimmed marines being healed by a medivac but like marines, you need a ton for it to be worth it. Upgrade Raven energy and +2 Armor. When you have a chance, go grab +1 range. Get HSM only if Zerg is 2 basing into a giant flock of muta or a giant heard of blings. Play offensively if zerg takes a third, defensively if zerg 2 bases. In case of 2 base, whoever can keep their third the longest (and it'll be you if you pfort) will win.
Tanks: Tanks are the counter to the two biggest threats to marines – banelings and infestors. Although your mobility will take a hit, 3 fac tanks can work wonders if zerg is still on pure ling/bling.
2 Fact Tank + Port. Either get the reactor or techlab and medivac energy. I prefer the latter because zerg units are front loaded so your medivacs are mostly useful for healing stim damage before/after battle. Alternatively, you can argue that the ability to pull all your marines into medivacs is good too. You'll want to split up your marines and always have a small group being annoying at edge of siege range to bait units into siege range. Also, you have to realize that the TANK ARE THERE TO MAKE YOUR MARINES LAST LONGER. Don't hesitate to use your tanks as a wall or decoy against blings and infestors. You're allowed to sacrifice tanks to save marines since your marines are what allows you to own the ground after a fight.
Banshee into BC: As mentioned in the above section, this unit transition is great for zergs that skipped mutas for infestors. Two FGs on your banshee means 10 less dead marines on your side. BCs are a huge pain to deal with for a spireless zerg as their only real anti-air would be queens and infested terrans (which costs even more precious energy).
One of the reasons I like the tech lab on the port is Banshee + Cloak. You don't need a whole lot, just like 3ish with cloak spread around the map. Use these to attack infestors and other high value targets. They also are great scouts. I never was good with this though since the micro requirements are equally insane as the ghosts.
Also, you missed probably the hardest style to deal with. Mass upgrade, mass speedling. When you watch MKP or someone rape with marines, usually its due to lopsided upgrades (3/2 vs 2/1 usually). However, lings with high upgrades are cost efficient vs slightly less than medium sized marine balls so you will have a hard time putting on pressure early/mid game. Then they'll throw out infestors and bling spam when they can afford it and finally ultras which will wreck your day. Your best bet is to probably use your mid-game map control to Pfort something and then just start spamming 15 build queues of marines at zerg and see who runs out of steam first.
PS. I like the build. Its much more flexible than the standard gasless 2 Rax. While you don't NEED gas in TvZ, its nice to have it early. For that reason I prefer Reactor Rax expand into a 2nd rax + tech lab and ebay over gasless 2 rax FE. The stim nerf basically destroyed the 7 minute pre-muta timing attack but you can still do combat shield and +1 timing attack.
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youtube.com/lzgamertv has a fpview of a similar strategy.
Warning: marine micro is REALLY REALLY required.
I have shitty marine micro, and I have a 0% win ratio
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I think this can work if you have really good micro and constanly trade armies cost efficiently or at least even.
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This is SO annoying to play against as zerg. I had a Terran throw this against me when I was randoming.
It's so hard to defend multiple bases with just bane, ling, and muta against constant streams of marines in all of your bases. Eventually your micro slips and you can't effectively kill marines.
Really strong strategy especially on bigger maps like Tal Darim.
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On April 22 2011 16:01 mizU wrote:
This is SO annoying to play against as zerg. I had a Terran throw this against me when I was randoming.
It's so hard to defend multiple bases with just bane, ling, and muta against constant streams of marines in all of your bases. Eventually your micro slips and you can't effectively kill marines.
Really strong strategy especially on bigger maps like Tal Darim.
Except it's much harder to micro from the Terran side. Zerg's only concern is choosing where/when to engage.
Pure marine vs ling/bling/roach is one of the most difficult micro feats in sc2.
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Isn't this basically how marine king got his name? Am I missing something here? This style is several months old...
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On April 22 2011 16:16 link0 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2011 16:01 mizU wrote:
This is SO annoying to play against as zerg. I had a Terran throw this against me when I was randoming.
It's so hard to defend multiple bases with just bane, ling, and muta against constant streams of marines in all of your bases. Eventually your micro slips and you can't effectively kill marines.
Really strong strategy especially on bigger maps like Tal Darim. Except it's much harder to micro from the Terran side. Zerg's only concern is choosing where/when to engage. Pure marine vs ling/bling/roach is one of the most difficult micro feats in sc2.
In a constant aggression situation though, it doesn't really matter if Terran is losing a lot of marines, since his economy is strong and still pumping SCVs. It's hard once you start falling behind in drone count and have to constantly make banes/lings.
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you gotta realize that when you produce 20 marines per cycle or w/e you gotta have INSANEEEE multitasking abilities and without tanks a sick good marine control. Cuz if you send your 60 marines to attack and can't multitask your new marines it's pointless to play like that.
I'd be worried about mass infestors rather than banes but that can be countered by ghosts which you should get every time zerg goes infestors.
I think it's very hard without tanks unless you got 300 apm to babysit your army all the time and do other stuff as well. Raven followup is pretty cool tho. I start to get ravens almost every tvz now if i get into late game, i love how it completely owns broodlords ^^.
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With infestors becoming a lot more popular (because they're imbalanced vs terran, and that's coming from me, a zerg player ), I'm not sure about how effective it would be in the mid-game, but it is definitely hard to beat in the early game.
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On April 22 2011 16:59 PredY wrote:
you gotta realize that when you produce 20 marines per cycle or w/e you gotta have INSANEEEE multitasking abilities and without tanks a sick good marine control. Cuz if you send your 60 marines to attack and can't multitask your new marines it's pointless to play like that.
I'd be worried about mass infestors rather than banes but that can be countered by ghosts which you should get every time zerg goes infestors.
I think it's very hard without tanks unless you got 300 apm to babysit your army all the time and do other stuff as well. Raven followup is pretty cool tho. I start to get ravens almost every tvz now if i get into late game, i love how it completely owns broodlords ^^.
Wouldn't that be an awesome way to practice multitasking and increasing your apm then? Definitely something people should toy around with
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EPT
