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
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...
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ^^.
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.
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
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
if you know you will lose 90% games and it will take 100+ games to practise the multitasking and control, then yes
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
if you know you will lose 90% games and it will take 100+ games to practise the multitasking and control, then yes
Still, even though it might take 100+ games and you will keep on losing, you will have improved in the long run. It's hard practicing multi task and unit control under normal circumstances, but this will let you practice that and that only. :p
Does this not rely quite heavily on the map? I'm assuming this build's quite a lot weaker on Tal Darim or Terminus RE than it is on XNC or Shattered close position?
I've faced this a few times but never executed with the micro of a high masters player, managed to hold with queen transfuses, spines and ling / baneling. It was a lot more powerful than I'd have expected pure marines to be though.
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
if you know you will lose 90% games and it will take 100+ games to practise the multitasking and control, then yes
Still, even though it might take 100+ games and you will keep on losing, you will have improved in the long run. It's hard practicing multi task and unit control under normal circumstances, but this will let you practice that and that only. :p
go for it.
get practice partners or abuse the hell out of random customs to learn it.
Multitasking is what separates most tiers of players in general, if you can baby sit this army whilst managing everything else, chances are your going to be very good in general. This style forces you to become good, and since you know exactly what your macro is going to look like, there's no variables to worry about so you can 100% focus on improved speed/multi task.
I think it's a great idea to break the game down like this and work on separate ideas, and this has the bonus of being viable :O
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
if you know you will lose 90% games and it will take 100+ games to practise the multitasking and control, then yes
Still, even though it might take 100+ games and you will keep on losing, you will have improved in the long run. It's hard practicing multi task and unit control under normal circumstances, but this will let you practice that and that only. :p
yeah thats what i meant, gotta know what you're going for, if you have enough willpower and you gonna work hard, it's a good way to play
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
if you know you will lose 90% games and it will take 100+ games to practise the multitasking and control, then yes
Well, most zergs that people on the forum play suck quite a bit and you can literally just a-move marines at them until you win. So there's not actually that much of a problem. You can beat them with mass marines but you can practice micro too so you can win better. A herd of blings rolling at you from a platinum scrub isn't much different than a herd of blings rolling at you from high diamond/masters.
Not totally sure this is good info for a terran player vs. an evenly matched zerg player, sling bling muta cleans this up soooo fast its not even funny, and multi-prong attacks would be easy to stop considering slings move so fast on creep(insta-cleanup of groups of rines) and the mutas would snipe the medivacs from the drops, boom, zerg instantly can return aggression with constant bling drops/sling pushes/muta harrass
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.
Yeah I feel like when I'm doing mass marine then it comes down to who makes the first big mistake. In that sense, it can be harder to play for the zerg side because they can overdrone, underdrone, overextend (fight off creep), lose his core unit mix (infestors or mutas), etc. and all terran has to really focus on is splitting up his units and hitting multiple locations.
On April 22 2011 16:24 Moja wrote: Isn't this basically how marine king got his name? Am I missing something here? This style is several months old...
Yes this is the mass marine guide, not infinity's innovative TvZ style.
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 ^^.
I find this style fun to play because the strength of it is a direct result of my mechanics which reminds me of BW
I haven't messed around with the late game composition much but I think tankless TvZ can still work ok if I have enough marauders and ghost/raven support. Being on pure marine late game is actually pretty damn risky and you can't mix in ghost/raven because of how fragile & expensive these units are in small numbers and you really want to keep those alive unlike the marines. Marauders give your army more chances of survival.
On April 22 2011 19:18 PopoChampion wrote: 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.
To be honest, I've lost games where I don't preemtively split my units and lose 80% of my army in 1 FG because I wasn't aware that infestors were out. But once marauders are out, it is actually not a big deal to play against infestors because you can split up a small mm force (mostly marauder) and position them slightly in front of your army. If the infestors fg that small force, it literally does 0 dmg as medivacs will heal the marauders instantly and if the infestors go for your main marine army, then he will have to pass through your forward-positioned marauders at which point you can stim and snipe them since you have a lot of dps vs armoured units in that group.
On April 22 2011 20:01 x89 wrote: Does this not rely quite heavily on the map? I'm assuming this build's quite a lot weaker on Tal Darim or Terminus RE than it is on XNC or Shattered close position?
I've faced this a few times but never executed with the micro of a high masters player, managed to hold with queen transfuses, spines and ling / baneling. It was a lot more powerful than I'd have expected pure marines to be though.
This build is actually really strong on Tal'darim in late game because it is wide open and allows terran to abuse the mobility of mmm and use multi-pronged attacks.
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 ^^.
Thats why NaDa will be the first to do it in the GSL. Some would say MKP, but MKP does't need Ghosts, just Marines.
This is how i've been playing my TvZ. You are basically zerging the zerg. I love it.
One thing, you don't stress enough the importance of dropping. With your sheer number of marines, doing a x16 drop in the main while doing a x30 march on the natural will be devastating. Unless they are amazing at decision making/apm,they will send their baneling ball at one of your armies, most likely the x30 at the natural which allows you to spend 100% of your energy on that ball of marines microing and allows your drop to just A-move attack and deal a lot of damage.
This build is so good especially since a lot of pros in recent tournaments have just let zerg macro up without any harassment and lost to broodlords / infestors. if you keep trading armies, the zerg cannot drone up meanwhile you are still pumping scvs and allows you to take a 3rd super easily with a PF. the zerg will never have enough units to take it out.
Good close position build, Im still to in love with my two rax gasless FE into double fact blue flame hellion into Mass tank marine medivac tho. If Z gets a good amount of mutas with this build you may be hurting, and im not to much a fan of tryign to play 100% marine because its quie frustrating when one mis click costs the whole game.
If you rushed ravens this could be interesting as HS missle would be really good vs bling balls. And turrets could put up a huge wall. To deal with lings. but the prob is one NP and a seeker on your rines and holy shit that sucks
I strongly suggest you check out kawaii rice's replays, since it's centered on a fast expand with mass marine aggression early, and KILLING CREEP to gain a midgame advantage.
in theory this style should work, with perfect control IN THEORY marines counter every tier 1 and 2 unit that zerg can make
in practice this isn't so, at higher levels this style just cant be pulled off
good zergs will scout your mass rax's ebays and lack of 4 gas geysers and go ling bling with a normal timed 3rd
you do your push with your mass marines, the zerglings come in, surround you blings come in from the flank, you're surrounded it's impossible to micro blings kill everything
from there they go infestor ling and you just lose
yea this style is great if you want to improve your micro and multitask but to be honest my tvz is by far my best MU and i go pure mech every game, I feel heavy mech styles are the future tvz and not this mass marine shit
On April 23 2011 03:35 FireBoltHero wrote: in theory this style should work, with perfect control IN THEORY marines counter every tier 1 and 2 unit that zerg can make
in practice this isn't so, at higher levels this style just cant be pulled off
good zergs will scout your mass rax's ebays and lack of 4 gas geysers and go ling bling with a normal timed 3rd
you do your push with your mass marines, the zerglings come in, surround you blings come in from the flank, you're surrounded it's impossible to micro blings kill everything
from there they go infestor ling and you just lose
yea this style is great if you want to improve your micro and multitask but to be honest my tvz is by far my best MU and i go pure mech every game, I feel heavy mech styles are the future tvz and not this mass marine shit
What's a high enough level for you? Grand master league? GSL? At least have the sense to be higher ranked than the person you're shitting on about skill level lol
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 ^^.
Thats why NaDa will be the first to do it in the GSL. Some would say MKP, but MKP does't need Ghosts, just Marines.
Sk Terran woot woot.
A lot of people were doing it in beta. Jinro was the first person I saw split against banelings but I'm sure there were others even before him.
Faced this build on the ladder from a masters opponent (I'm only high dia atm) and although there was a lot of back and forth he took the game in the end. I found myself at a loss that ling/bling/infestor was somehow being destroyed by marines. What was really going on was the constant pressure forcing me to forgo econ and skimp on upgrades while he used mules on 2 base to overwhelm me.
Important to note though that this was close positions. I feel longer rush distances would make this build much, much weaker.
You have to be extremely good at marine splitting to make this build work, because of this I feel that this build is only really effective for the upper half of masters players.
That said, the ease of macroing with this type of build might make it work at lower levels just from the macro advantage.
I am pretty sure that there is a level, I would say high diamond/low masters, where this build will have alot of trouble because of the level of macro skills without the same level of micro.
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
if you know you will lose 90% games and it will take 100+ games to practise the multitasking and control, then yes
Well, most zergs that people on the forum play suck quite a bit and you can literally just a-move marines at them until you win. So there's not actually that much of a problem. You can beat them with mass marines but you can practice micro too so you can win better. A herd of blings rolling at you from a platinum scrub isn't much different than a herd of blings rolling at you from high diamond/masters.
Uhhmmm ASM, I don't know bro. Master zergs seem to split and 'ff' so to speak with banes, and sling slipknot at the same time. I'm leveling a friends diamond account, and the zergs I'm facing in mid-high diamond are atrocious at any baneling micro.
The big difference is the TIMING of the bane speed of a masters, and a high diamond zerg, coupled with their subsuquent macro and pre-flank army control.
The mass marine style works VERY well if you have the tools to work it. You can't just A move mass marines and expect to win. As stated, you have to be all over the map with a infestation of marines. 16 marine drops, 8 marine drops, stim and runs, constant map presence. With that kind of on the ball play, you can force zergs into mistakes and corners to where they sac bases because you are at 2 at the same time.
I'd reccomend any terran learn how to control two armies at the same time DECENTLY well against defensive units or not. Learning how to control split groups ALONE get your TvZ into another level compared to your other matchups.
Hey Infinity, just wanted to say I've watched quite a few of your replays (an early replay where you were first discovering the power of constant marine aggression) and I admire your playstyle. I've been trying such pressure lately but getting owned by Infestors. How I long for the days when the Baneling was the only Zerg unit I feared! Great work though,
I just played a 45 min long game with this sort of build.... I had 3-4 bases, I kept the Zerg down to 2-3, constantly killing his expo and he'd constantly mop up those armies with FG. I was sure I would have won it. However, each time I was about to engage Ling+Infestor I would pre-emptively split my units to where one FG would only hit a couple. As I marched forward in attack formation my units would slowly converge on one point. I'd have to constantly reposition them. Replays show my APM reaching 300+ during these battles... but even with that high APM I was unable to adequately keep my bio army spread out -- it seems the AI insists on my bio being in a Fungalable ball!!! I lost the game inevitably because the trades were coming out in favor of my opponent who would take out large chunks with 1 FG after another. Quite frustrating.
How do you propose us bio based Terrans positioning our armies and KEEPING them positioned? Micro is no hard thing for me, and I excel and baneling micro, but FG is something else. It's highly improbable to micro against once it is instant-cast, and the chain FG can't be stopped. My APM was triple of my Zerg opponent's and still my army fell to a lesser food army
Sorry for the textwall. Any suggestions?
EDIT: Change "impossible" to "highly improbable" for statistical reliability
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
if you know you will lose 90% games and it will take 100+ games to practise the multitasking and control, then yes
Well, most zergs that people on the forum play suck quite a bit and you can literally just a-move marines at them until you win. So there's not actually that much of a problem. You can beat them with mass marines but you can practice micro too so you can win better. A herd of blings rolling at you from a platinum scrub isn't much different than a herd of blings rolling at you from high diamond/masters.
Uhhmmm ASM, I don't know bro. Master zergs seem to split and 'ff' so to speak with banes, and sling slipknot at the same time. I'm leveling a friends diamond account, and the zergs I'm facing in mid-high diamond are atrocious at any baneling micro.
The big difference is the TIMING of the bane speed of a masters, and a high diamond zerg, coupled with their subsuquent macro and pre-flank army control.
The mass marine style works VERY well if you have the tools to work it. You can't just A move mass marines and expect to win. As stated, you have to be all over the map with a infestation of marines. 16 marine drops, 8 marine drops, stim and runs, constant map presence. With that kind of on the ball play, you can force zergs into mistakes and corners to where they sac bases because you are at 2 at the same time.
I'd reccomend any terran learn how to control two armies at the same time DECENTLY well against defensive units or not. Learning how to control split groups ALONE get your TvZ into another level compared to your other matchups.
Fair enough.
Actually, someone (the OP) should link Griffith's baneling map. Not sure if he ever made an infestor version but its pretty good practice.
On April 23 2011 08:01 RukKus wrote: I do have a question about combatting FG.
I just played a 45 min long game with this sort of build.... I had 3-4 bases, I kept the Zerg down to 2-3, constantly killing his expo and he'd constantly mop up those armies with FG. I was sure I would have won it. However, each time I was about to engage Ling+Infestor I would pre-emptively split my units to where one FG would only hit a couple. As I marched forward in attack formation my units would slowly converge on one point. I'd have to constantly reposition them. Replays show my APM reaching 300+ during these battles... but even with that high APM I was unable to adequately keep my bio army spread out -- it seems the AI insists on my bio being in a Fungalable ball!!! I lost the game inevitably because the trades were coming out in favor of my opponent who would take out large chunks with 1 FG after another. Quite frustrating.
How do you propose us bio based Terrans positioning our armies and KEEPING them positioned? Micro is no hard thing for me, and I excel and baneling micro, but FG is something else. It's highly improbable to micro against once it is instant-cast, and the chain FG can't be stopped. My APM was triple of my Zerg opponent's and still my army fell to a lesser food army
Sorry for the textwall. Any suggestions?
EDIT: Change "impossible" to "highly improbable" for statistical reliability
Thanks for your kind words
Make sure you are always sending a small marauder-heavy group of units ahead of your main army. I split my army manually as it moves and continues to converge. You need to be aware of where his infestors are and split before you engage and do stim run-ins and snipe as many infestors as you can. If he's on ling/bling/infestor, there's no way he can kill your marauders in time if the infestors are already well within range of the marauders.
roach ling infestor can rape this. keep fungaling and then charge in mass roaches and expert burrow play.
thing is anything works in NA server because 100% zergs there miss out billion injections, and they have poor macro.
as in your replays, your unit efficiency is poor with this. you basically brute forced it. if you have a careful look at the units lost tab, your one is even with his and but you spent 1000+ more on technology aka infrastructure cost of raxes etc. because you have mule + oversaturation you were able to always make army larger than zerg while keeping him on same number of bases.
quite possibly the best brute force all inish type of build, but against a good zerg that doesn't miss out injection too much, your army will be fungalled and then have so many roaches then your marauders can handle.
On April 23 2011 17:31 getpicture wrote: roach ling infestor can rape this. keep fungaling and then charge in mass roaches and expert burrow play.
thing is anything works in NA server because 100% zergs there miss out billion injections, and they have poor macro.
as in your replays, your unit efficiency is poor with this. you basically brute forced it. if you have a careful look at the units lost tab, your one is even with his and but you spent 1000+ more on technology aka infrastructure cost of raxes etc. because you have mule + oversaturation you were able to always make army larger than zerg while keeping him on same number of bases.
quite possibly the best brute force all inish type of build, but against a good zerg that doesn't miss out injection too much, your army will be fungalled and then have so many roaches then your marauders can handle.
Tbh my experience: First it isn't allin, since you don't really *need* to deal dmg at any point, that is to say, even trades, heck a bit poor trades are fine. If the opponent goes roaches, you will have a huge advantage early game(since you don't have to worry to much about blings and roaches don't do *that* well against rines after stim before medivacs). Furthermore it's a challenge for your opponent to take bases, while you can take a 3rd and 4th pretty much free(dependant a bit on map, but roaches can't really pressure esp. when he needs them to defend).
Then it just comes down to splitting up your army to make 1 fungal(well 2, since if it does there will be a 2nd one) not hit 20 rines. The biggest thing is: make sure to be hitting 2 places at once. A handful of rines cleans a mineral line/hatch soooo fast, which has been the main reason for me, why I could overrun my opponent.
The best counter I've had done to me was muta ball cross position meta, where he was able to snipe engi bays, reactors and loads of scvs and get home and reinforce his army before mine arrived. Roaches did very bad(I supposed 7RR would've done better but that's allin so yer...), infestors did rather bad(well I was able to pre-split most of the time and it didn't end up doing as much dmg as one would expect).
On April 23 2011 17:31 getpicture wrote: roach ling infestor can rape this. keep fungaling and then charge in mass roaches and expert burrow play.
thing is anything works in NA server because 100% zergs there miss out billion injections, and they have poor macro.
as in your replays, your unit efficiency is poor with this. you basically brute forced it. if you have a careful look at the units lost tab, your one is even with his and but you spent 1000+ more on technology aka infrastructure cost of raxes etc. because you have mule + oversaturation you were able to always make army larger than zerg while keeping him on same number of bases.
quite possibly the best brute force all inish type of build, but against a good zerg that doesn't miss out injection too much, your army will be fungalled and then have so many roaches then your marauders can handle.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about?
Forcing army trades is what this strategy is supposed to do, force units, the enemy doesn't make drones, while you make scv's. Things turn out in terrans favor.
and "roach ling infestor can rape this. keep fungaling and then charge in mass roaches and expert burrow play" is complete and utter bull/theorycraft. You've obviously never played this before, and you're just throwing in words. Question is, how the hell are you supposed to get to the point where you have roach with burrow, infestors and enough lings to hold this off? There's constant pressure, and without early game banelings, there's no way you're living through this.
In response to that, I can just counter your composition with mass battlecruiser and ghosts with expert emp play.
Rose tempest are you are zerg player pretending to be a terran player whining falsely about how op is this strat? It's not effective
infinity show some respect by challenging me or other decent zergs and i'll show you why this doesn't work. same goes all others out there. if u lose bo9 then delete this thread, Tl.net does not need noob strats.
In the end there's a reason why all top terran get marine tank. tanks > infestors/banelings.
marines barely break even against roaches with upgrades. all it takes it just one engagement. there's an easy way to zerg to solidify a push if terran isn't going marine tank.
ling muta gets owned but, when you have roach infestor baneling, hell don't even need roach speed go straight for burrow + tunneling.
the moment terran doesn't have tanks zerg can go heavy on roaches banelings/ infestor. all it takes is just one fungal at X point in time and then clash huge roach baneling army + 1 fungal and reinforcements won't even save you. the instantaneous burst of banelings is enough to take out 5 minutes of accumulated marine production.
On April 23 2011 21:02 getpicture wrote: Rose tempest are you are zerg player pretending to be a terran player whining falsely about how op is this strat? It's not effective
infinity show some respect by challenging me or other decent zergs and i'll show you why this doesn't work. same goes all others out there. if u lose bo9 then delete this thread, Tl.net does not need noob strats.
In the end there's a reason why all top terran get marine tank. tanks > infestors/banelings.
marines barely break even against roaches with upgrades. all it takes it just one engagement. there's an easy way to zerg to solidify a push if terran isn't going marine tank.
ling muta gets owned but, when you have roach infestor baneling, hell don't even need roach speed go straight for burrow + tunneling.
the moment terran doesn't have tanks zerg can go heavy on roaches banelings/ infestor. all it takes is just one fungal at X point in time and then clash huge roach baneling army + 1 fungal and reinforcements won't even save you. the instantaneous burst of banelings is enough to take out 5 minutes of accumulated marine production.
Putting this build aside, if you beat me in a bo9 where I proxy gate every single game means that proxy gate isn't a valid strategy? Your posts are wrong on so many levels because you assume way too much without actually thinking through your arguments, to me it looks like you just want to hate something and this build just happened to go by your radar -.- All you really do is theorycraft, you deny a ''new'' strategy because your insufficient knowledge of the game makes you think that there's no way this could work
On April 23 2011 21:02 getpicture wrote: Rose tempest are you are zerg player pretending to be a terran player whining falsely about how op is this strat? It's not effective
infinity show some respect by challenging me or other decent zergs and i'll show you why this doesn't work. same goes all others out there. if u lose bo9 then delete this thread, Tl.net does not need noob strats.
In the end there's a reason why all top terran get marine tank. tanks > infestors/banelings.
marines barely break even against roaches with upgrades. all it takes it just one engagement. there's an easy way to zerg to solidify a push if terran isn't going marine tank.
ling muta gets owned but, when you have roach infestor baneling, hell don't even need roach speed go straight for burrow + tunneling.
the moment terran doesn't have tanks zerg can go heavy on roaches banelings/ infestor. all it takes is just one fungal at X point in time and then clash huge roach baneling army + 1 fungal and reinforcements won't even save you. the instantaneous burst of banelings is enough to take out 5 minutes of accumulated marine production.
First of all, learn to use the quote button.
Second, false accusations/general bad manner, TL doesn't need trash like you etc etc. (yes I do know it's probably a troll)
Third, you don't make any sense at all, in a bo9, if you tell your opponent what you're doing in every, single, fucking, match, then eventually they'll pick up on things and do things to blindly counter your build. Lets say zerg tells you he's going to 2 base baneling bust every game, what do you do? Prepare for it. Zerg loses 9/10 times, but does it somehow make the strategy invalid? Absolutely not, it's still good when the Terran is too greedy etc.
This build wasn't meant to be the end-all of all TvZ builds. It's fun, and its effective, and against someone with a similar skill level, playing random matches, this will perform very well.
Show some respect to people with more experience than you, and I bet my ass infinity can wipe the floor with you in a bo9 or whatever you choose to do, don't go around calling yourself a "top zerg".
On April 23 2011 17:31 getpicture wrote: roach ling infestor can rape this. keep fungaling and then charge in mass roaches and expert burrow play.
thing is anything works in NA server because 100% zergs there miss out billion injections, and they have poor macro.
as in your replays, your unit efficiency is poor with this. you basically brute forced it. if you have a careful look at the units lost tab, your one is even with his and but you spent 1000+ more on technology aka infrastructure cost of raxes etc. because you have mule + oversaturation you were able to always make army larger than zerg while keeping him on same number of bases.
quite possibly the best brute force all inish type of build, but against a good zerg that doesn't miss out injection too much, your army will be fungalled and then have so many roaches then your marauders can handle.
watch his replays/learn to play before you talk please. OP beat a GM zerg who used the exact unit composition you suggested...and no the zerg didn't play awfully
anyways, thanks infinity for sharing your replay pack. your playstyle is really entertaining to watch and i look forward to trying it out on the ladder.
I've had this exact strat (pure marines, fast double upgrades, more marines) done to me on Xel Naga a while ago. It was one of the most frustrating things to deal with. He'd drop 2 medivacs worth of marines in my main, and when I sent my army back to deal with it he would send like 30 marines to kill my gold or my 4th and kept doing that over and over. I won just about every battle with banes but still lost cause he just had so many dam marines over and over and he wouldn't let me secure my 3rd and 4th,
I watched the replay though and concluded I could have gone infestors, which I did the next time I ran in to this style. I have to say, infestors absolutely murdered this strat. Just infestor ling with about 8 mutas for air control, and this was before the DPS buff. Key difference is he never used ghosts, which do pretty well at limiting infestor play, and with just lings banelings and infestors its actually pretty hard to snipe ghosts if theres a marine army behind it. I can see this being a lot like TvP where you have EMP vs storm / feedback micro wars
Its these kinds of builds that make marines feel so strong :D. I cant wait to go home today to watch theses replays because this seems like a really fun build... very MKP stylish (MKP Fighting!). Great post and with lots of detail!
My average APM is 80 and peaks at about 130-150 in battle. I can make it to level 16 in the Marine splitting map (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=206136 -- very fun map, cant believe record is lvl 26 O_O). I think this build will help me with my multitasking skills and hopefully I will get good enough to micro everything.
On April 25 2011 00:03 mGMUSE wrote: infestors just stops this bar none
Please just post a replay of you getting stomped vs Infestors and we'll tell you what you did wrong. To a point infestors own this build if used exactly correctly with great FG's. You have to shut down the infestors by a great spread on units, also if a zerg is going infestors you can transition.....
Is there a guide for standard marine splitting? >.< I'm having some trouble getting it down. My record is level 8(I think) in the marine splitting ums(with stim+shields). I would rather learn standard than the patrol method. Can someone link a guide/give me some tips? I'm having fun using this strat in platinum, and I'm doing well except when I commit some egregious micro fail v. blings.
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
Yes it is. For a while I went mass marine with medivacs and ghosts/nukes in the team games. It really increased my multitasking, micro and game sense. Dropping like 6 nukes at once is so much fun. Eventually you hit there whole army and lol your way to +12 points.
On April 25 2011 03:25 VEReHrT wrote: Is there a guide for standard marine splitting? >.< I'm having some trouble getting it down. My record is level 8(I think) in the marine splitting ums(with stim+shields). I would rather learn standard than the patrol method. Can someone link a guide/give me some tips? I'm having fun using this strat in platinum, and I'm doing well except when I commit some egregious micro fail v. blings.
this is a pretty general guide on marine splitting that i found
altho it highlights using the patrol method, the start of the video goes thru the general idea behind marine splitting using standard methods. in the end i believe it just comes down to high apm and lots of practice
This reminds me of the aggressive no add-on mass marine play that used to be somewhat popular. That only really worked well against hatch first with very late gas/ling speed, but it turns out that style is gaining popularity again.
With mass barracks constantly producing large waves of marines, only infestors are really good enough to hold it off. Spines don't help once the marine count gets high enough. Upgraded speedlings are definitely problematic if the zerg waits to get a critical number before engaging.
It's interesting to see that this approach takes a slight delay in pressure to start the expansion earlier than the old builds. This actually gives a huge advantage in comparison by allowing for better transitions should problems arise.
I used the marine raven build ( http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=163605 that branched to marine tank and to what is the standard TvZ nowadays) and I can testimony that the mass marine style requires a lot more micro/macro and multitasking that one could think at first glance. Once you have like 10 reactored raxes, that alone is an insane apm sink. And babysitting marines against infestors/banes is not an easy task by itself =) One beauty of this build is that even if you lose 50 marines in 2 seconds, you have at least 50 more waiting, so you can overpower and bruteforce your way, this is a very satisfying style toi have and play. And if the zerg doesn't keep up with upgrades, you'll experience intense joy as you'll se 10 marines killing hordes and hordes of stuff. And when you backup to a more standard play, everything seems slow and easy, so that's a very good build to improve.
Anyway, this strat is nearly the same as the one I linked above for the marine part, and most of the counters/theory and discussion that I read in this thread have often been already addressed there, you should check it out.
Sorry for a bi of a necropost but I don't post often and feel this strategy merits more discussion.
I've been matching against top dia/low-mid masters Zerg for a while and been losing quite consistently to strong macrozerg on big maps. This strategy has totally turned around the matchup for me and I'd highly suggest any struggling t players to open with it if you can micro reasonably well.
I find it's biggest strength is it is difficult for the Z to judge when he is ahead. After trading armies, overselling and getting dropped or a heavy tech switch can actually lose them the game instead of win it for them.
Anyway, highly suggest to try the style for struggling high d / low m players
this sounds interesting and even fun. the only problem is see is that a good high level zerg with a good sized ling army could easily trap you for baneling bombs and if they could squeeze out infestor play then youd be having a field day trying to constantly split all those marines, leaving easier surrounds/kills from the lings
Been playing a lot against this. Especially on Taldarim Altar. It is the most annoying/fun thing to play against.
After the game you always have that feeling that you could have done better. But eventually you always make mistakes against this. And probably the same feeling rests with the Terran
But, I have won against it as well. The Terran needs to be at least be at the zerg his skill level to pull this off. At least that is the feeling I get from it.
There are better (read easier) ways to win as Terran against Zerg. But if you like to really play an action packed game, I suggest you try this build.
Tanks are a must in the mid game in my opinion. It really stops any form of banelingsbust/banelings-expansion-denie from the zerg.
The fact is that tanks are garbage without having a significant position on the Z. If you have a large map where it's not easy to get into position, then every minute after the critical pre Ztech timing you will be struggling to make something happen.
Any T army that can't mobilely engage with Z is going to lose against a better Z player.
-
What do you think of hellions? Is blueflame too important to pass up early?
That said, I have played against this once or twice. The game I won, the Terran spent the last five minutes saying I sucked because my upgrades were like 1/1. Very, very stressful.
It's a very frustrating style to play against if the Terran takes his third. To keep up with 14-reactor rax you need to be really good about injects while dealing with the endless onslaught of marines.
On April 29 2011 23:41 Falcon-sw wrote: I wish I could just mass zerglings and win.
That said, I have played against this once or twice. The game I won, the Terran spent the last five minutes saying I sucked because my upgrades were like 1/1. Very, very stressful.
...You can win with mass zerglings. You just need to add on support units as necessary if you don't want to play as a cheesy shit (EG some banelings (Not the mass "SO MANY BANELINGS LULZ" numbers that you usually see, that's quite unnecessary), get a few infesters, etc, some mutas, etc, but focus on zerglings and zergling upgrades).
"But that isn't mass zerglings! QQ"
Well I guess you can't call this strat mass marine considering you get marauders, medivacs, ghosts, tanks, etc. now can you? ;P
On April 30 2011 00:40 Exley wrote: It's a very frustrating style to play against if the Terran takes his third. To keep up with 14-reactor rax you need to be really good about injects while dealing with the endless onslaught of marines.
And behind the pressure it's pretty easy to get a planetary up while supporting constant pressure and 2 ebays pumping upgrades.
Vs mass ling you just need to play positionally like a Protoss, hugging corners and edges of ramps to reduce surface area.
It's honestly been such a complex turn around in controlling the matchup for me. I'm sure it's because it forces aggression and I must've been too passive or something.
I do it sometimes when I get like ahead early and midgame, like vs a succesfull stoped baneling bust or so. But tbh if you play a good zerg, zergs that know what they are doing it isnt going to work. Simply because defensive muta's stop every possible drop attempt if you have a good ovi spread wich eliminates the prime strenght of this build. It can be great at medium masters level, but on proffesional level it isnt going to cut it other than really situational.
This is awful to deal with I'm finding. Im a low masters zerg and I just do not have the APM to keep with terrans who can constantly throw armies of rines and drop at the same time. 2 dropships worth of rines takes like an entire army, but when theres a drop in my main AND an attack at my third at the same time on a map like meta, when he's killing me creep and all that shit, its just soo hard to keep up with everything.
It really abuses how strong rines are. The problem with fungal is that it means that i can't kill the medivacs, and so I still need banelings anyway.
It just makes it soo stressful, I'm not sure how to win against it.
Pros probably won't have any issues with it, but at lower levels this is really strong.
Watched the replays. I like this, and it's almost beyond me how people can win with other styles once Z's understand the game better.
The problem with any sort of mech oriented play (marine tank or pure mech) is that you become too reliant on gas mech units. You end up sitting in base for 3+ minute each wave waiting to get crit when Z can produce an equivalent army before you and just bank the rest. Plus you have a terrible time defending extra expansions because in many scenarios when Z is left alone for 3-4m, he can make 20mutas.
How do you prevent Z from making 20 mutas? By trading armies with him every fucking minute. If you can shove 9rax (27marines / m) down his throat, he will have to dedicate ALL his gas expenditure onto roach/bane. He can get 16 banes / minute off 2 base, so it all comes down to micro. As long as you can do this, then you won't have to worry about a significant, undefendable muta threat.
From the Z perspective, he really ought to make infestor instead of muta first. Because his gas expenditure is so locked up, he can only sneak a few big gas units. What would you rather have sitting around during 10-14minute window: 6 muta or 3 infestor?
In my mind, there's no other matchup in the game that punishes a player so hard for not being aggressive. Sure you can camp 2-3 base as T, roll out a 200 push and hope for the best. But given a competent Z, good luck finding _any_ way to deal with the 20-30 mutas flying around. There just isn't any response except for aggression.
I noticed that after 2-3 bases, there's a lot of gas sitting around. That's the perfect time to grab ravens I think, since that fully saturates your resource usage. A significant raven mass can take the place of marine drops (throw down 15-20 turrets in his main), help control mid [turret], fight mass muta [PDD], and fight broodlord [HSM].
Only minor point is that ghost will most likely be necessary against infestor late (15m+).
My only question is why do factory units even exist? They all seem ok in some early timing push before the other races unlock techs, but are so fragile and one dimensional for combat purposes.
Hellion: shoots super slowly, shoots too early (the 6 range means first shot will hit few units) Tank: too immobile for mediocre mid/late game damage. Except for good position/timing, doesn't deal enough to pay for itself. Thor: Doesn't deal enough damage (shooting lings/boxed mutas).
These specialized units ought to be able to trade themselves against the other races, but the composition and flow of the game almost always means they can't, and die before dealing relevant damage.
There is a nice similar build by Halby(HalbyStarcraft) called "upper ups", you go primarily for a 2base mass marines/medivacs and double eng. bays for 2/2 upgrades. You can also go for a few banshees/helions to force the zerg to make mutalisks and roaches. Check it out on his channel at Upper ups Halby TvZ strategy
It seems like thus build would encourage multiple drops and insane aggression. Something at Terran lacks. Recently I've just been rolling terranes who go marine tank since all youneed to do is pick of tanks with mutas, or at least stop them advancing with them until you a good amount of lig bling to win.
Infestorling also counters the standard marinetank well since a fungals will kill virtually all his marines whil a few lings cam finish the tanks.
I'd love to see terranes use this more as a zerg. When I play the standard marine tank it just seems so weak.
Have you considered trying a variation of Thorzain's build vs fruitdealer? You can only safely CC first on large maps but you can still use the general ideas behind it. With the amount of map control you will have you can safely take the 3rd even with an orbital you float from inside your main on most maps. Essentially you make a 3rd cc after 2 rax, then go for a mass rax timing attack that hits before baneling speed while being able to afford a lot more stuff overall. From there you can branch out into a harass heavy bio approach or transition into 3-4 fact tank support. You don't really sacrifice much to get that fast 3rd cc, it's safe, and Zerg can't easily scout it.
To some degree it is personal preference but in general I don't feel the reaper gives enough oomph to warrant the much later command center compared to grabbing it on 16 supply in a normal rax cc.
On May 02 2011 17:15 Ver wrote: Have you considered trying a variation of Thorzain's build vs fruitdealer? You can only safely CC first on large maps but you can still use the general ideas behind it. With the amount of map control you will have you can safely take the 3rd even with an orbital you float from inside your main on most maps. Essentially you make a 3rd cc after 2 rax, then go for a mass rax timing attack that hits before baneling speed while being able to afford a lot more stuff overall. From there you can branch out into a harass heavy bio approach or transition into 3-4 fact tank support. You don't really sacrifice much to get that fast 3rd cc, it's safe, and Zerg can't easily scout it.
To some degree it is personal preference but in general I don't feel the reaper gives enough oomph to warrant the much later command center compared to grabbing it on 16 supply in a normal rax cc.
I've been playing around with various strats in TvZ like 2 rax into 3 cc or 1 rax into 3 cc even and zerg can't scout what I'm doing. The only problem with that I feel is it takes some time for my econ to really kick in and even more time for my production to ramp up so zerg can potentially drone up like crazy while in the dark =( It's not a bad idea by any means but I haven't had much success with it yet.
I like the fast reaper because it feels safe vs early shenanigans but I can see how good scouting can mitigate that a lot (mvp vs violet GSL code a comes to mind)
On May 02 2011 17:15 Ver wrote: Have you considered trying a variation of Thorzain's build vs fruitdealer? You can only safely CC first on large maps but you can still use the general ideas behind it. With the amount of map control you will have you can safely take the 3rd even with an orbital you float from inside your main on most maps. Essentially you make a 3rd cc after 2 rax, then go for a mass rax timing attack that hits before baneling speed while being able to afford a lot more stuff overall. From there you can branch out into a harass heavy bio approach or transition into 3-4 fact tank support. You don't really sacrifice much to get that fast 3rd cc, it's safe, and Zerg can't easily scout it.
To some degree it is personal preference but in general I don't feel the reaper gives enough oomph to warrant the much later command center compared to grabbing it on 16 supply in a normal rax cc.
I've been playing around with various strats in TvZ like 2 rax into 3 cc or 1 rax into 3 cc even and zerg can't scout what I'm doing. The only problem with that I feel is it takes some time for my econ to really kick in and even more time for my production to ramp up so zerg can potentially drone up like crazy while in the dark =( It's not a bad idea by any means but I haven't had much success with it yet.
I like the fast reaper because it feels safe vs early shenanigans but I can see how good scouting can mitigate that a lot (mvp vs violet GSL code a comes to mind)
Have you experimented with reaper openings? Basically build moderate to large amount of reapers so you can sink more minerals into CCs (instead of depots and marines) while putting on pressure.
On May 02 2011 17:15 Ver wrote: Have you considered trying a variation of Thorzain's build vs fruitdealer? You can only safely CC first on large maps but you can still use the general ideas behind it. With the amount of map control you will have you can safely take the 3rd even with an orbital you float from inside your main on most maps. Essentially you make a 3rd cc after 2 rax, then go for a mass rax timing attack that hits before baneling speed while being able to afford a lot more stuff overall. From there you can branch out into a harass heavy bio approach or transition into 3-4 fact tank support. You don't really sacrifice much to get that fast 3rd cc, it's safe, and Zerg can't easily scout it.
To some degree it is personal preference but in general I don't feel the reaper gives enough oomph to warrant the much later command center compared to grabbing it on 16 supply in a normal rax cc.
I've been playing around with various strats in TvZ like 2 rax into 3 cc or 1 rax into 3 cc even and zerg can't scout what I'm doing. The only problem with that I feel is it takes some time for my econ to really kick in and even more time for my production to ramp up so zerg can potentially drone up like crazy while in the dark =( It's not a bad idea by any means but I haven't had much success with it yet.
I like the fast reaper because it feels safe vs early shenanigans but I can see how good scouting can mitigate that a lot (mvp vs violet GSL code a comes to mind)
Have you experimented with reaper openings? Basically build moderate to large amount of reapers so you can sink more minerals into CCs (instead of depots and marines) while putting on pressure.
Reapers are really too fragile especially without speed. Building a large army of reapers means I'll get my additional CCs slower due to having to add 2nd refinery, rax & tech labs. 2 rax into 3 cc is pretty safe and gets there faster than something like 5 rax reaper while providing a more flexible transition imo.
Do you have some reps of your quick 3CCing games? I'm kinda curious as to the timings but don't have ladder time these days. I have some of Griffith's 3OC builds lying around but those timings are a little whacky. Its okay if you don't want to but I'm trying to figure out how to do mass expanding vs zerg.
There is no way you can 1 rax > fe and then slam down another CC and be possibly save vs either
1) ling/bling high econ busting 2) roach/ling all in off 15 hatch 3) zergs instantly taking their 3th
What you do is flipping a weighted coin with the weight against you because you will mb get a slight lead vs zergs on auto pilot and basicly get insanely behind if zerg reads the situation properly.
For points 1 and 2 You can wall off using 2CCs. 3 is problematic but zerg opens himself up to a timing attack by being so greedy depending on some maps. I think this is what infinity is trying to solve in his last post.
On May 04 2011 07:59 Antisocialmunky wrote: For points 1 and 2 You can wall off using 2CCs. 3 is problematic but zerg opens himself up to a timing attack by being so greedy depending on some maps. I think this is what infinity is trying to solve in his last post.
points 1 and 2 you will still die to if done properly cause making another CC to block your nat isnt going to do anything lol. A high econ bling bust comes at 7.20, you show me how you can hold that after 1 rax > fe and then slamming down 2 cc's to block. You will have 8 marines and a bunker or so and zerg will just blow up your rax and its game over.
Zerg has 2 majour timing weaknesses, the first is before ling speed, the 2th is before muta's and bling speed arround 11 minuts in. If you want to go mass marines you want to use these 2 timings to delay zerg as much as possible. By forcing additional lings before speed, and denying then his 3th before he has enough bling/ling/muta to secure it. Making additional cc's arround these timings is going to completly screw you in the midgame.
Indeed, those are the main timings and you will want to use atleast the second one if possible.
I'm not sure if we are on the same page about the sim city. I'm saying 1-2 CCs at the top of ramp to block not building another CC for a total of 4CCs to wall. You can't wall really open naturals against bling busts anyway. You can only wall part of the natural off (like Xel Naga) near the ramp. If you 1 rax CC, you should have an extra CC as well as a ton of barracks lying around to wall due to your late gas. Really the lack of tanks is a bigger problem than walling off because you're so behind on infrastructure but you can hold if you have enough bunkers on the bigger maps which is what they were talking about. On small maps, 1 Rax CC is pretty risky as you know muchless 1 rax 2 CC.
How do you guys feel about this build after the queen buff? Mass bio while grabbing tanks after the third seems to be the new trend lately. I'm just wondering if this build is still viable.
Reaper expand has become worse because of the queen buff, not exactly sure why you would want to resurrect such a build.
The idea, however, is not bad. Several players are, nowadays, playing pure bio styles with multipronged attacks and good trading (keyword for such a build). However, this, I feel, would be difficult to pull off for a player below master level (no idea how good you are, just stating) since you will need to be very active and have good macro besides.
Look at Bomber's play at Red Bull LAN that was played the previous weekend (26-27 may, replays available at http://www.redbullusa.com/cs/Satellite/en_US/001243035003218) where he deployed a mass bio build into mass raven for lategame - very BW-esque.
On May 02 2011 23:46 infinity21 wrote: I've been playing around with various strats in TvZ like 2 rax into 3 cc or 1 rax into 3 cc even and zerg can't scout what I'm doing. The only problem with that I feel is it takes some time for my econ to really kick in and even more time for my production to ramp up so zerg can potentially drone up like crazy while in the dark =( It's not a bad idea by any means but I haven't had much success with it yet.
I like the fast reaper because it feels safe vs early shenanigans but I can see how good scouting can mitigate that a lot (mvp vs violet GSL code a comes to mind)
I personally find that 2rax > fast 3 Orbitals is a very VERY strong build, and I've also been playing pure bio in TvZ like 80% of the time (when I don't, I use DeMuslim's Marine Hellion timing, but the transition is bio again in most cases so...). Even after the Queen buff, 2rax is still good for some light pressure, and you more than offset your initial eco loss by getting an ultrafast 3rd CC/Orbital. This allows for some very nice Bio Stim/Shields/Engi Upgrades timing pushes > float 3rd as you saturate incredibly fast with 3 OCs pumping out SCVs on 2 base, not to mention the extra MULE/scan capabilities.
This build also has some potential in TvP, as the 12/14 Rax pressure is gaining more ground in the TvP metagame lately, and the principle behind it is basically the same - extra fast 3rd for SCVs/Mules, Bio/Medivac timing push, float out 3rd as you push. Just be sure to bring 2-3 SCVs so you can potentially bunker his FE and hide the 2nd Rax (like a Makarax or something, you don't have to necessarily proxy it) to maximize your push efficiency.
EPT
