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Hi guys Im a 1100 point masters terran and Im sure youve heard of a GSL player who goes by the name oGsNaDa. Recently vs Virus he used a gas first build that went for a fast banshee into a hellion tank midgame. This was extremely effective and ive been using this build pretty much exclusively on ladder with great success from the outset (it didnt take much practice at all before it started yielding results).
Hellion openings into hellion siege tank viking builds are extremely strong currently. The harass and counter attack potential of hellions and the speed with which they kill marines when you catch the tanks unsieged is insane. Its a really fun style where you are constantly doing stuff with your army and playing ecomically as well.
early BO
1. 10 depot (use the scv to scout when its done)
2. 12 refinery (when you have you have enough minerals when your 11th worker is queued)
3. 13 rax
4. 16 factory (BEFORE YOUR ORBITAL)
5. 16 orbital (before the marine) - theres a gap between the factory and starting the orbital cause you dont have enough money but this is ok.
6. 17 marine
7. 17 depot
8. when fact is done -> starport -> tech lab on factory -> 3rd depot
9. switch when the starport is done and start a banshee
10. Cut marines (but not scvs) so you can get a CC when the banshee is building at around 5:30.
11. 4th depot second gas and resume marine production.
12. When banshee finishes switch the factory and starport again and start blue flame and hellion production. At this point if you are unsure if he is going banshee start a viking from the starport.
13. when you have 150 gas build a second factory next to the rax and start a reactor on the rax - switch them when they are done.
14. medivac from the starport (reactor on the starport once this finishes then pump vikings)
15. drop 4 blue hellions.
16. Put your cc at your natural and immediately take all the gas and when you have enough gas get 2 more tech lab factories and go from there with your composition.
This is of course completely not set in stone but it is a fairly optimal way of doing it.
Once you get your macro rolling you can take a 3rd very quickly (its a gas intensive build so alot of spare minerals) start getting mech upgrades.
Using the hellions:
If you keep up your hellion production throughout the game you will have huge amounts of blue flame hellions at your disposable. Because of the excess minerals you get with this build these are almost completely disposable units that you should use to do as much economic dmg as possible THROUGHOUT the game. You can mix in a few medivacs into your viking production to continue dropping them or you can just use their superior speed to run around armies and ninja them into mineral lines. They are great at taking watch towers so as long as your opponent hasnt got alot of his army at one of them you should ALWAYS have all of them. This way when you see your opponent moving out you can run 10+ hellions into his natural and main or whatever and slaughter his scvs. Once he gets wise to this he will have to significantly weaken his army to protect his mineral lines so its a win win situation.
In engagements hellions serve 3 purposes: to melt marines, to absorb marauder fire (marauders actually do pretty weak dmg to hellions but they take almost no dmg in return ofc) and to absorb tank volleys. The nice thing is that this actually takes very little micro. When a moved they will perform these roles very well. It is in the scv killing that hellion micro will go a long way. If your opponent has a high marine count and you have the watchtowers (which you should) then you will have many opportunities to catch him unsieged and completely destroy a large number of marines and escape with alot of hellions (you need about 10 hellions to do this).
Weaknesses:
This build will just die to a 2 rax pressure build if you didnt scout and build a bunker.
Reactor hellions is hard for this build as well. If you suspect it make a wall with 2 depots and a bunker ASAP.
If they go for sky terran and get air superiority, you need thors, but once he gets bcs you just cant kill them with thors. At this point you need to turtle and spam missile turrets around your base and army. Hellions are what will save you here cause you can abuse their speed to put the bcs out of position. You need to throw down as many starports as you can and make huge numbers of vikings to combat this but hellions should keep him in his base for long enough for you to start your viking production properly.
Replays:
http://replayfu.com/r/pt10hp
http://replayfu.com/r/dZ26Nn
http://replayfu.com/r/FdH0Ls (this one i didnt gas first for some reason but the build is almost completely the same)
http://replayfu.com/r/tRVHKg (a good example of harass just straight up winning the game)
My banshee control is terrible in all of these and its some thing im working on  )
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Awesome strat and nice write up, thanks.
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Ive been thinking about the same strat, also inspired by the NaDa game. Thanks for sharing this.
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I've noticed a heavier lean to mech-ish style in the GSL lately and NaDa of course does it very well.
I don't really like to use the argument from authority but several good terrans (NaDa, MMA i think maybe MVP and some of the newish guys like Keen) have used this build as more than a suprise build so you can be sure that this build is very solid.
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This is basically a mech build and I would love to see it work.
Please check the recent game between MMA and Ryung on Crossfire, Ryung went for mass Tank /Hellion, but got crushed by Tank / Marauder.
Can you give some advice which addresses Ryung's issues in this game? Also please give some selling points to go for Hellions instead of Marine support. Thanks
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yeah, i saw the same NaDa game and tried this too, its pretty sweet but on the bigger maps it leaves you really vulnerable to mass marine if your opponent can scout you before you scout him. otherwise its awesome
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On June 11 2011 19:58 puissance wrote:
This is basically a mech build and I would love to see it work.
Please check the recent game between MMA and Ryung on Crossfire, Ryung went for mass Tank /Hellion, but got crushed by Tank / Marauder.
Can you give some advice which addresses Ryung's issues in this game? Also please give some selling points to go for Hellions instead of Marine support. Thanks
With my experience against heavy marauder play you have to super careful with your tank positioning. If this means turtling up and only really attacking with hellions then so be it. Ive had games where I never even needed to actually deal the killing attack because his economy was so badly damaged. A major advantage of a high tank count is that you can spare multiple tanks for each base to defend drops etc. This coupled with sensor towers leaves you in a very strong defensive position. For this reason ninja expands are a bad idea cause you have no way to kill marauders that attack them. But if you spot him ninja expanding its extremely easy for you to punish.
If it does go to the late game and you are on an equal economic footing with your opponent (somehow  ) then i would start leaning toward more of a thor hellion emphasis and sacrifice a few tanks for this against marauders. Marauders only do 10 dmg to hellions so they take 9 marauder shots to do if you have equal ups. So, if you have enough hellions then your thors have time to use their very high dps and your tanks have a chance to siege if they werent already. But It wouldnt be wise to make this engagement in the first place. Just let the hellions do the damage.
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trying this as we speak, thanks for the write up
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Running hellions in to counter attack mineral lines will only work for so long. People will start walling in with depots eventually or depots in combination with other structures.
Otherwise, cool strategy. Been seeing this starting to get used a lot since MLG and some before that.
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As you mentioned, sky terran gives this trouble, so I'd assume that flat out and out Iechoic would give this LOTS of trouble?
Otherwise, I might try it out =)
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In the GSL, everyone seems to be going gas first in TvT, and nearly considering all trends have come from the GSL, it looks like we might have another.
Only time will tell whether this is better than Bio
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On June 11 2011 21:31 Selkie wrote:
As you mentioned, sky terran gives this trouble, so I'd assume that flat out and out Iechoic would give this LOTS of trouble?
Otherwise, I might try it out =)
actually iechoic gives this almost no trouble at all because its hellions and tanks vs just hellions on the ground and you will clean up. If you turtle well enough with turrets and 2 starport viking then your hellions should have no trouble vs his with tank support. Once his hellions die then you just walk into his base and kill all the scvs. This has happened multiple times for me on ladder.
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I assume that you use your Vikings to target the Banshees first, right?
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I'm quite surprised at this: you have almost nothing to defend against a hellion drop (your viking comes a little bit late and you only have one marine and perhaps a hellion, he'll have blue flame and you won't), so how do you do against the opening?
Against the composition itself, I'd say the Echoic-ing player doesn't actually need to engage you: as you don't have anti-air, he can run his banshees to kill some of your troops. If you get vikings... theorycrafting it becomes tricky. He has the infrastructure to out-viking you, and banshees cost less gas than tanks, so if he is good enough not to over-produce vikings he should be able to threaten you with enough banshees. Of course positioning also matters a lot should a fight occur with such compositions.
Seems you get a faster expand though, which means faster 3rd and 4th gas if done correctly, the limiting ressource here. But you don't tell when you get your 2nd one in the OP, is it at the same time as your natural's geysers?
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On June 11 2011 22:24 Alaric wrote:
Seems you get a faster expand though, which means faster 3rd and 4th gas if done correctly, the limiting ressource here. But you don't tell when you get your 2nd one in the OP, is it at the same time as your natural's geysers?
I did say you need to get the second geyser directly after the expo goes down at around 30 supply.
Against the iechoic build you actually get a huge advantage early on because your expo is so much earlier and you have the necessary tools to kill him with harass and defend his. If it goes to the mid game then turrets are you friend. He cant kill stuff with banshees when there are turrets everywhere and a thor viking mix will deal with the banshees very well when you need to engage.
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Ah, yes, it's your 11., I didn't see it.
Though you don't really answer my interrogations: what are your tools to "kill him with harass and defend his"?
I'm going to assume these:
- you scout/guess the build and build a bunker (a smart Echoic player will poke with the first hellion and know he can straight up walk into your base with 3-4 of them even before his medivac if he sees no bunker and tech)
- your super fast banshee should arrive a bit faster than the standard time, due to fac before OC, I guess?
- Seeing no pressure the Echoic player will cut hellions to get faster starports, meaning his BF drop will probably be at least on the way when your banshee gets in his base. Those kind of trades usually favor the hellions as they kill scvs faster than a banshee, which can be slowed by running around. How many marines do you usually have by now to deal with the drop?
At this point, both of you should have a CC completed/on the way, a medivac&viking (medivac on the way for you if you got a viking upon scouting his build), 2 fac, a banshee, and a handful of hellions.
It's possible that your banshee was killed, same with his medivac, by the viking, and your CC is substantially earlier than his. He may or may not have made up for it with more scv kills.
Pros:
- with good simcity you can reduce your losses, while he'll have to wait a while because of your banshee
- if you can force a raven before he scouts your lack of cloak, you'll have quite a gas advantage
- your expo is earlier
- you have the infrastructure to produce 3x hellions, allowing you to make up for the fact that he started his production and 2nd fac earlier than you
- Early midgame Echoic relies on a good balance in the mixing of units. I can get a rather fast reactor on a factory usually, but if vikings have to be made he may want it on his starport instead. Your build will make his decision-making harder and keep him on his toes with scouting.
Cons:
- He has 2 starports to your only one, securing air control
- He has an earlier BF and hellion count, which should be enough to deter your own drop along with his viking
- without good simcity you'll likely end up behind economically (for the moment) because hellions kill SCVs faster than your banshee
I guess the important points are the timing for his starports, if you prompted a raven from him, and the relative SCV losses. If they didn't go well for him, he'll have to outplay you to get an advantage while you'll only have to play safe.
Could you provide a replay against Echoic 2fac/2ports, or at least your number of marines by the time he hits?
I feel like even though your build isn't Echoic-proof like you seem to say, it does indeed get an advantage other it.
On an unrelated note, you say to get 2 more tech lab factories after the natural and its gases are taken. Doesn't that make it 3 tech-lab factories and a reactor'd one? You can't sustain triple tanks + viking production on 2 bases worth of gas. Is it that you usually plan on getting a fast 3rd?
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Every build is Echoic-proof as long as you have 3 orbital and 5, 6 Thors.
Anyway I've played against this strat before, and I countered it relatively easy by going BF hellions, marauders, viking and medivac.
The weakness of this strat if as long as you have air superior (which is very easy since you don't have to spend gas on tanks)and do a double marauders drop (or marauder hellion) in the main, it's verry hard for him to deny it. Hellions can't win against marauder + hellion, and reinforced tanks can be easily taken out with a scan and stimmed marauders. You can drop on top of the tanks too.
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I really hate hate tank hellion compositions like this. I like tvt except when my opponent uses this composition .
So if anyone knows some tips against this strategy i would love to hear them. Im around 1400 mastermasterleague
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I didn't understaand a thing, i watch the replays, but what i can't figure in your strategy is the main purpose of hellions.
You say:
-Harrass
-Tanking the damage of tanks and marauders/ melt marine (in short words, combat use)
But what's the main of 2? Do you win because you harrass good and using the hellions in combat gives the final shot? So if you don't harrass good you must switch? or the contrary?
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I'm pretty convinced that this sort of build will become the future of TvT. Hellions are incredibly cheap, fast, and strong, almost to the point of being overpowered. In large numbers, hellions will actually start killing marauders cost effectively, because of the huge amount of splash damage they deal when the marauders clump up in a ball.
Not to mention tanks & thors kick ass as well in this matchup, but I think the hellions are really what makes builds like this do so well.
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EPT
