EPTNot being a fan of siege tanks TvT myself, ever since iEchoic posted his build I have adopted the hellion / air composition against Terran. Many people criticized iEchoic’s build for being too cheesy (“so basicly it’s a double factory blue flame hellion cheese into 2 starport banshee cheese huh”) and having obvious early game flaws, which I will detail later on. For these reasons I tried to make a build that would be able to transition into the same style while being less “cheesy” early in the game. With the patch and the fact that iEchoic went sort of inactive lately, I think this unit composition deserves a new thread. I also have my personal views on when the unit mix is the most effective, which isn’t explained in the original thread.
Flaws of the original build:
-Because of all the infrastructure you get, the build is REALLY easily scouted, and your opponent immediately knows what he will face not only in the next 5 minutes, but basically what your game plan for the whole game will be, and assuming he isn’t stupid he will react much better to everything you throw at him. The build is too obvious, you are basically showing your cards pre-flop and you still expect to beat experienced players? No way.
- It spends more resources on production facilities than you can really afford at this stage of the game : you don’t really need 2 factories and 2 starports at this moment, and you do not even use a reactor instead of making a second factory/starport early. Hell, the build even uses a supply drop because it’s so short on resources, and the facilities are barely all producing at the same time. The fact that you build the starports after 2 factories and blueflame makes them really late. We can do better.
-Cloak banshees. Whatever iEchoic says, with perfect execution of the build, cloak banshees were a PAIN to deal with. We have to be safer.
My build:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=189624¤tpage=42#829
I posted it on the actual thread long ago, but got no attention for it, which is sad. Check the replays, it is worth a thousand words.
I'm going to rewrite it :
12 rax 13 refinery standard opening, 1 marine OC constant scv production
at about 75% of the marine, get 2nd refinery
factory
supply depot
techlab on baracks
fly the factory on the techlab, get hellion + blueflame
get starport asap
get reactor on barracks asap
supply depot
hellion
hellion
starport on reactor, get viking + medivac
get a depot at the same time
make a 2nd starport if you don't have the clear read "he will go cloak banshees" otherwise get a raven before the 2nd starport
factory on reactor , starport on techlab
produce hellions, banshees, vikings, raven (reactionary)
get a command center sometime around 50 supply (you should have an excess of ressources)
Why is it better?
As I said, it gets units and production facilities out in a much more natural way, and it’s almost impossible to scout really early that you will transition into hellions / air, because if he spends a scan (you have to run the hellions out of scan range before he does, unless you expect a reaper opening, ie if you saw techlab on barracks with your scv), he will only see reactor going up on the barracks, a starport, and an upgrading techlab@factory, which looks more like a siege tank push or siege expand than any hellions shenanigans. I do not say it’s ‘unscoutable’, it’s just way less obvious that you are going for a hellion drop into the so called “iechoic” composition.
Unit mix ?
Please read :
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/IEchoic's_2fac_2port_TvT , it explains the composition quite well.
My thoughts on it: banshees are bad, I prefer battlecruisers in most situations. What I do is when I am floating my expand, I get a third starport near my barracks while getting a reactor, and I get a fusion core, taking the 2 gases and I start getting BCs off 2 starports and vikings off the reactored one. I rely mostly on hellions early in the game, and BCs later, banshees are there to end the game if I made a lot of damage or to defend while I transition into BCs. BCs are now very good units since they move a lot faster, and they can clean up marines (banshees can't). Getting armor upgrades is really important (in these replays I do not do it, but I started to do it now, it's really a must to beat marines).
When are you strong?
The unit composition you get is, in my opinion, really strong early in the game or in low econ/unit count situations, which means that when you both do damage to each other early on, you will get ahead with the next drops / attacks you make. Late game, hellions are a great mineral dump, and when both armies just fought and you have 10+ hellions from your reproduction , you will be able to kill TONS of SCVs with a hellion run-by, it’s so strong. I personally think that banshees suck, I usually get them to survive counter pushes (after the drop, doesn’t matter if it went well or not) that bad players make (because (counter) early pushes get CRUSHED by hellions + scvs + a few air units) , once it’s crushed, the next hellion drop will make a ton of damage. To defend such pushes, you can also kite marines with hellions, then run at home and repair them if he decides to go for it. I personally crush thor all-ins with it, simply because hellions supported by SCVs and a Viking on ground and a banshee in the air (that’s what you have most of the time when he comes) will crush marines/scvs on ground, and the thor without repair will not kill everything you have (that’s just how it is…), and then the hellion drop will make huge damage. In mid game, this is where it gets dangerous for you, right when you are taking your expand (and just before you take the 3rd), a strong push can kill you during the transition into BCs, or a contain can get annoying. This is why you have to be active with hellions, sothat he is afraid to leave his base. So what you have to do is surviving the mid game (most of the time it’s not hard, but it can be problematic) and late game, when you have BCs, tons of bases and an awesome harassment tool, the hellions, you will be in good shape.
Counters?
Early game, the only counter is to have a strong defense of the hellion drop, but you should not do 0 damage at all (unless you are really bad :D) and 3 hellions killed (I only ever drop 3 hellions) does not mean a won game, the best thing for you is if your opponent actually thought so and goes for a counter attack : you will destroy him.
Turtling, contrary to what iEchoic says, is the strongest answer : while getting mass marines, some marauders, tanks (yes they are so annoying vs hellions), thors and starports (because after the first big fight, he can try to get air dominance), you can’t really harass in these situations, and fighting head-on can get risky because marines are really really good (did you know?). If your opponent invests too much in turrets and you have map control and a huge economy behind it, do not hesitate to transition into normal mech and use Vikings on the ground if he has mostly Vikings himself (this sounds very situational, watch the game vs nfteamBreach). Upgrade air armor against marines.
Mass thors : if I remember well, the games I lost in the replays here are against thors, do not hesitate to land Vikings if there are only thors left (no tanks around , that’s really important), they do well against Thors. Use the yamamoto cannons on thors that’s really important.
Against the now popular 3 reapers rush, you should be able to defend it with blue flame (you should have seen the techlab early, so the hellions must be in your base) unless it’s close air positions on metalopolis/shattered. What I do most of the time is pulling a few scvs near the cliff so I am sure that i can defend until I have blueflame, then you are fine (reapers are light).
Who am I ?
I come from warcraft 3 reign of chaos, which is like vanilla starcraft from what I know of starcraft 1, there still was a community after frozen throne was released, and I believe I was (and still am since I play in tournaments without laddering nowadays) the best player for the past 2 years, so I have a good RTS background and know what it is to compete with the best. I now play in the Spanish team Wizards, which is one of the best Spanish SC2 teams (with apsc2), and we are in SC2CL masters division (best European clan league). I was around 3700 masters before the reset I think, but I definitely improved a lot and will continue to do so next year, as I was a full time student this year ( same situation next year but with much less pressure in engineer school so I will have more time for myself). I am around 1800 masters nowadays, which is decent and allows me to play vs the best players in ladder (sase, beastyqt, etc).And yes, I already know that I am quite BM, no need to make posts about it.
Replays?
As I didn’t manage to upload the replays one by one on http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/ I posted the whole replay pack : [url blocked]
It includes replays against :
RunagroundBeastyqtcontrol
CupCake (ThomasG, former wc3 pro)DBSEmpires <-- grudge replay
FargoOurkHappyJinroBreachRmdxsdaConclusion
I do not claim that this strategy is flawless nor do I execute it perfectly, otherwise I'd be in korea fighting for 80k$ already. It doesn't have a direct counter, your opponent has to play better than you. As you can see, the 2 players that are much better than me in the replays, jinro and happy, beat me, but the build allowed me to give them a good fight even though the better player won in the end. I can also lose games against players of my skill level if I make mistakes. Please do not post if you don't know what you are talking about ("yo i just get marauders vikings i know what you do so you cant drop me and i win izpz"). If you have beat me in ladder when I used this build and I didn't make huge obvious mistakes, then I can say 100% sure that you are not a worse player than me, IE the build didn't make me lose, you were better.
