Just finished dissecting the thorzain build against oGs.mc game 5 and wanted to share it with you guys. And its a pretty mean, does anyone have any inputs or thoughts of it?
General Idea of this build The sturdiness and the power of the +2 armored thor and the ability to use the 35mm cannon at such a large range is hard to stop. Especially if you have a raven denying scouting observers. Having such a large surface area so zealots cannot get the surround and blue flame helions doing double the damage to zealots, its a pretty mean ball of destruction. This build is unique and unseen and the only counter i can think is an abundance of immortals or/and carriers.
+2 armor Thor Build by Thorzain 10 supply 12 barrack 13 refinery 15 orbital 15 marine 16 supply 17 marine 18 factory 19 second refinery 20 marine 22 tech lab on barrack 22 bunker 22 marine 23 supply - Swap the tech lab on barrack with factory 24 siege tank 28 marine 32 supply 32 marine 33 Command center 36 starport 37 helion 38 marine 39 supply 41 armory - switch factory tech lab with starport 42 raven 43 tech lab 45 2nd orbital 46 marine 47 thor 53 banshee 58 Ground plate upgrade for thor - After you land your expansion, build 2 refineries right away and build 3 bunekrs 104 Ground plate upgrade #2 and get blue flame upgrade 117 Third CC 126 35mm strike cannon - you want 3 factories with 2 tech labs, 1 reactor, and 1 starports with reactors
and reactor when its done on that starport
Key Points
Use raven to deny scouting observer You want about 6-8 vikings,1 raven You want about 4-6 helions You want about 6-8 Thors and only attack when you have +2 amor Use your 35mm cannon on the collosi Put a couple of point defense drones down during the fight Bring a couple of scv's after the fight You want to attack around 160-170 supply Making sentries a liability of supply for the opponent, thors render forcefields useless Here is a replay of Thorzain using this strategy perfectly against oGs.MC
Why the +2 armor Upgrades on thors? Thorzain explained: + Show Spoiler +
"It's mostly to be able to fight heavy gateway units compositions, as they deal relatively low damage but shoot fast (zealots have 2 attacks for example). This lets me worry more about the actual "power units" so to say, the units that aren't gateway units. And as long as i can counter them properly (colossus/air = vikings, mass immortals = more Thor heavy) I feel comfortable in the big fight.
Another important factor to point out is that I tried in the unit test map, and attack upgrades doesn't change how many hits a Thor kills either a stalker or a zealot, nor how many hits a Hellion needs to kill a zealot. So even though it will affect somewhat, since I didn't test all the various X Thor hits X hellion hits on unit X with and without attack upgrades, it's fairly useless. Armor however, lets Hellions take 1 more zealot and stalker hits, and lets Thors take many more zealot/stalker hits."
There's no specific time to get cannons or blueflame, only make sure to have it when you move out. If you know the opponent is going with. I have almost the same build order every game with this until i build my 2nd factory, then it depends more on my opponent..
Weaknesses: Very aggressive 4 warpgate rush, carriers(because thors will automatically target air first when you want them to target ground
If you want more strategies like this dissected, come to www.TerranSC.blogspot.com , it includes other build orders/tips/guides and top tier strategy dissected
Well, this is very dumbed-down; you basically give instructions on how to repeat what Thorzain did in that particular game. Perhaps you should rewrite it as more of a strategy (logic as opposed to build order)?
Regarding your key points section, all of this is situational as well; will you really build vikings if there is nothing for them to shoot? You need way more hellions than that also as chargelots are the primary counter to thors. Waiting until 6-8 thors isn't correct either; critical mass for this unit is more like 3-5 due to their size and cost. Also, you would ideally send SCVs during a push, not after.
Also, you left out Thorzain's replay link. Perhaps you should include some of your own as well? And it would probably be wise to add a spoiler tag for people who have not watched the game.
It's a new style, so I'm definitely not used to playing against it, and that's partly why it's so effective. The hellions, +armor, and smaller surface area of multiple thors (as opposed to one thor) makes chargelots not a great response.
The best response I've found so far to thor-based play is carrier-based play, with blink stalkers to take out vikings.
Just curious what makes this build so unique compared to the standard Marine Raven Thor build? Also when is stim, conc shells and combat shield researched?
That kind of build order is pretty ridiculous, and not particularly useful. Perhaps you should generalize a bit more, rather than give detailed food lists up to 126 food -_-.
Up to around 20 food can be useful to see significant changes, after that, it has more to do with reading your opponent and making on the fly decisions.
So i'm thinking giving how long it too for the push to come during the actual match, some combination of dark templar colossus stalker or dark templar carrier stalker should of been able to handle this with very very good positioning and micro.
The problem with his push is, what do you kill first? Everything does so much damage.
Also, to all the boohoo i dont want a list of food, Thorzain almost didnt lose any units.
Actually, Playing through following this list a few times would probably get the basics of the build down, and an easy guide could be created after doing that. Please do this op otherwise "discussing" this build would be incredibly difficult.
It's great to look at this to use it as a reference so that you can know general timings and stuff for the build, but it'd only be wrong to strictly memorize and replicate this religiously.
I've been working with a friends Mech style which is rather similar to this. It relies on heavy ghost/mech play with a lot of hellions and transitions into viking/thor/tank/ghost with marine/hellion mineral sinks. Also, i've been trying to lessen the amount of vikings with a slow push using missile turrets as colossus defense and obs denier.
On April 26 2011 06:37 Shaithis wrote: Well, this is very dumbed-down; you basically give instructions on how to repeat what Thorzain did in that particular game. Perhaps you should rewrite it as more of a strategy (logic as opposed to build order)?
Regarding your key points section, all of this is situational as well; will you really build vikings if there is nothing for them to shoot? You need way more hellions than that also as chargelots are the primary counter to thors. Waiting until 6-8 thors isn't correct either; critical mass for this unit is more like 3-5 due to their size and cost. Also, you would ideally send SCVs during a push, not after.
Also, you left out Thorzain's replay link. Perhaps you should include some of your own as well? And it would probably be wise to add a spoiler tag for people who have not watched the game.
On April 26 2011 06:37 Rubix314 wrote: It's a new style, so I'm definitely not used to playing against it, and that's partly why it's so effective. The hellions, +armor, and smaller surface area of multiple thors (as opposed to one thor) makes chargelots not a great response.
The best response I've found so far to thor-based play is carrier-based play, with blink stalkers to take out vikings.
Immortals will beat Thors for supply, despite EMPs and or strike cannons. This happens, at least in bigger fights, but immortals still do well in smaller fights.
On April 26 2011 06:43 SungMingCho wrote: Wow guys... back off him...
He never claimed this was "Thorzain Strategy" ... he simply said it was the build. This is great for anyone wondering the basics of the build.
This. He has gone over the build order. Anyone wanting to discuss the strategy should do so if they want but this guy has done everything right.
Not. A build order to 126 supply is pretty useless. What the OP has done is horrible for anyone wondering the basics of the build. Can we get a generalization of the build?
EDIT: And not only is this "build order" useless, it's not even accurate...
On April 26 2011 06:37 Rubix314 wrote: It's a new style, so I'm definitely not used to playing against it, and that's partly why it's so effective. The hellions, +armor, and smaller surface area of multiple thors (as opposed to one thor) makes chargelots not a great response.
The best response I've found so far to thor-based play is carrier-based play, with blink stalkers to take out vikings.
Immortals will beat Thors for supply, despite EMPs and or strike cannons. This happens, at least in bigger fights, but immortals still do well in smaller fights.
Uh...show me a replay? EMP and strike cannon both make immortals useless.
I personally think this build is very sustainable in high masters game, considering i tried this myself and had some success with it. People unfamiliar with this build dont know how to react and transitioning to carriers would be ridiculous and they would consider to get sentries, atleast from my experience.
On April 26 2011 07:14 CosmicSpiral wrote: I don't see much of an analysis here.
He said in the other thread that he builds viking only as a reaction to Colossus, otherwise he focuses more on ground.
He just seems to wing it after the expansion, there is no real consistency when he attacks i.e Against Tyler he was about to hit max then Tyler engaged and then against MC he hits sooner, probably a mix of game sense and knowing when your composition is at its strongest
I run a very similar build, and it's weakness is tbh a great concave/catching the opponent while he doesn't have one. Even if chargelots do better against a not tightly fit ball, scvs get a better surface area behind, but most importantly, if you are immo heavy, it's brutal if all the thors can't start the fight off with 350mm. Basically if the thors can't 350mm at the same time(And the toss has decent concave/micro) the thors just keep dieing before they can take their respective immo out, and it snowballs very fast until you have no thors left and since it's so slow reinforcing, you have lost.
Edit: And imo carriers are a bad decision. They won't be upgraded and thors do pretty well against interceptors. In general the standard PvT deathball does well, aslong as you get better positioning.
I never built a marauder! And I don't know exactly when to build my third. I have almost the same build order every game with this until i build my 2nd factory, then it depends more on my opponent.
There's no specific time to get cannons or blueflame, only make sure to have it when you move out. If you know the opponent is going with
On April 26 2011 07:48 Thorzain wrote: I never built a marauder! And I don't know exactly when to build my third. I have almost the same build order every game with this until i build my 2nd factory, then it depends more on my opponent.
There's no specific time to get cannons or blueflame, only make sure to have it when you move out. If you know the opponent is going with
Thanks for taking your time to post here Thorzain! Your comments (as well as other top gamers) are very much appreciated :D
My question to you would be, how do you beat it? Besides any kind of early game all in, what do you normally lose to, if at all?
EPT
