EPT[G] Playing Mech in TvZ - No more banelings. - Page 3
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FGMagic
United States4 Posts
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phzbox
Cape Verde38 Posts
1. I 10 drone scout a T so I can get in before both supply are built. 2. And if I see reactor hellion opening, I get *really* fast 3-4 roaches. The point here is to help spreading creep, kill early hellions and most importantly, force the T to stay on 1 base OR force him to build marauder and bunker (while I get my third). I also upgrade +1 attacks really fast. 3. Once I've got my third roughly saturated, I build a good amount of speed roach +1/+1 to control the middle of the map, but also to force the T to play extremely defensive. Following the guide, this is somewhat where the T's got 4 thors and start to get tanks as they see I'm going mass roaches. 4. At this point, I like to make my fourth (even fifth) as it's only for the gaz, but most importantly, to attack the T. Obviously, it's not an efficient attack. BUT, you will kill a couple of thors and tanks. In that scenario, a T can't go out and attack you as they know you can instant remax in roaches/lings and dominate you in the center of the map. Plus, if the T correctly spreaded his tanks, it's risky to unsiege all of them for an attack as they the z can start to drop, etc. 5. For these reasons, while I attack/suicide the roaches, I get infestors, spire and mass sunken in the middle of the map. At this point, I need to see how the T handle the situation. If he chose to go all-in because I've attacked with roaches, I just get 200/200 of roaches (which are 2/2)/infestors/lings and sunken and crush him. If he switches to lots of tanks, I delay t3/infestors and opt for a big muta switch, but not too much. The goal here is to make him get thors again and mass turret. Sometime versus weaker players you'll win right there. Lastly, if after your roach attack he continued to mass thors, I like to get a mid-size roach army with infestors and fast tech to broodlord. Also, this would be the only time I'd consider to drop as siege tank really demolished roach drop. But if he's only massing hellion/thors, you want to drop roaches and suicide a bit everywhere to delay their "big push". 6. So, while delaying the big push, I tech to roaches/infestors/broodlord/sunken. It's important to keep the T on three bases. At this point, it's really about waiting and playing safe. I really get a lot of sunken (as I have too much $ and drones anyway). As pointed earlier, you want to keep roach in your army. Those are useful to fungal ghosts and kill them, or tank while broodlord kills everything. Vs a high count of thors/vicking, I like to switch back to mass roaches / infestors. TL;DR: My way of dealing with mech: early roach, drone like a madman and delay his big push by attacking/suiciding roaches. If they decide to hit sooner, mass roaches/infestors. If they get mass tank, switch to muta is great (but not too much muta, just enough to force them to remake thors/turrets). And if mass thors, mid roaches army / drops while teching to brood and getting lots of sunken. Lastly, I'd say that borrow is incredibly useful vs hellions harass as *spore*.. A couple of spores near expansion often kill hellion drop or force them to take a longer route which give you time to bring 1-2 infestor and roaches. I'd love to know the weakness of this build. Here's what I mostly lost to: Getting early roaches to counter the mech, but somewhat losing to a marauder/hellion/scv all-in. (Bad scout from me). Really fast banshee. Fast hellion drop in main while other hellion get in expansion. And.. stupid mistakes letting mass hellion killing drones. | ||
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Azera
3800 Posts
![[image loading]](http://t.imgbox.com/aaqpAxQ8.jpg) | ||
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kAelle_sc
287 Posts
Mech in TvP would also be great, although from what I know this hasn't been figured out yet | ||
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Bap181
France13 Posts
On February 05 2012 10:02 c_kAelle wrote: this guide is great! although i offrace as terran. can you also please write a TvT Mech guide? It's awesome watching Mvp play mech in TvT. Mech in TvP would also be great, although from what I know this hasn't been figured out yet Day9 did a daily on TvP mech recently, go look it up. The gist of it is banshee opening into expand into thor/marine and transition into full mech with ghosts. I tried it a few times, it seems like you either crush or get crushed, Its not easy, chargelots, immortals and high templar comps are so powerfull vs this. EMP'ing your own units and splitting banshees against storms are pretty usefull. | ||
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NewbieOne
Poland560 Posts
I always went mech against zerg until I've started doing Bomber's build to improve on my macro and finally learn the proper handling of MM(M)T(V). Very early after buying the game, I experimented with marines into hellions into thors, then cutting it to two stages, either marine thor or marine hellion. I finally decided to go hellion thors and since that point I stuck with the two units, just varying the build. I was able to get fast BF with a decent number of hellions out of two facts (reactor + TL) but I figured the addon switching with the rax on wall-in was telling to the zerg, so I decided to do the switching behind the door. That meant a later timing but I could generally live with it. Later, and especially after the BF nerf, I decided to skip BF. So I was skipping BF and also skipping reactor or any form of getting the hellions early—at the same time. So it basically came down to having a decent number of hellions by around 7:00 or even 8:00, after which I'd switch to thor production and basically try to mass them, actually not even counting on the hellions to survive before the thors came in (judging on the situation either just after the hellion action or after making 4 or 6) with +1 armour upgrade. But I got beaten a couple of times and learnt it the hard way that you just couldn't have only thors and win much. Especially if he kept making mass zerglings anyway. But even against stuff like infestors or even roaches, it turned out having a hellion/thor composition was better than just thors. So I had to modify the build. From that, I arrived at starting with bare factories, getting hellions from them and getting an armoury as well as tech labs and depots after leaving the base to harass the zerg. And getting upgrades. After I incorporated solid expanding into the build, I could afford getting a second armoury to start the upgrading process and finish it as soon as possible. I also kept making hellions alongside thors, which wasn't a bad idea with all the minerals over gas surplus anyway. So it was the same lean build I did in silver and bronze but refined. I also experimented with e-bays in order to incorporate turrets and PFs (PF in nat sounds noobish but saved my hide a number of times vs roaches, while on the other hand delaying my max army supply moment, so it was a tough decision and a temptation to skimp). The whole point of it was basically only having very few production structures (3-4 factories), only two different units and both using the same upgrades, said upgrades being pursued aggressively. I found out that you can actually do a lot of things with just hellions and thors, no tanks, if you learn to adapt and respond, and especially respond since there isn't much stuff to adapt in the first place. So instead of build-changing decisions, there were decisions like do I get more hellions or more thors; do I make units or upgrades as a priority when cash is low, do I get hellios or thors if minerals low; do I ever cut SCVs or not ever; at what timings or otherwise defined moments do I attack between the obvious early game harass and the 200/200; during which push do I take SCVs along for repairs and how many do I take? (Mule dropping is very helpful because you often end up with all your thors alive but badly damage and a moment of respite when your zerg is rebuilding stuff... and you're still on the same big supply, you just need to repair the HP on it). Do I leave a thor or two in base for mutas (and a ready thor or two or one just starting in factory as I move out to push)? Do I get turrets to take all thors with me? Do I take a third (delays maxing out, gets you tangled up in defence but gives you more gas and overall more econ). And so on and so forth. And learning micro, point being to minimise unnecessary movement while under fire (thors walking around), to know when to focus fire and when not to, learning to pull hellions to escape banelings but put them right back to deal with zerglings surrounding the hellions (haha! armour upgrades paying off!  ). Managing the SCVs (they're plenty stupid, they basically need manual micromanagement even on auto-repair). Getting better concaves. Scan shooting from low ground. Mules. Splitting the repair SCVs/mules when opponent is not focusing or is focusing 2-3 targets. Methods for dealing with banelings (ultimately: focus if cluster, leave alone if not, pull hellions behind thors but close so they can fry broodlings, and get SCVs near if you have any, and drop mules, this is slow and against the rules of the art but actually works fine). It's all the merrier when the zerg gets a number of corruptors to counter vikings except he doesn't know you've never built a single port. And, obviously, if this does develop into a macro game (it shouldn't), then while you're being nasty to him somewhere with all your mech, you get like 3 PFs in various places. You don't mind the high SCV count because you can always use 30 repairing SCVs after the baneling hit when your hellions are (almost) all dead and thors at half life. (Not to mention that a crowd of SCVs hovering around your thors is so cool for zerglings...) And if there are any ultras, well, you can research striking canon if you really need to. This was basically the kind of simplicity I needed to succeed against zerg. Sure, I didn't have a dedicated fleet or a superb counter to broodlords or a particularly effective force against roaches (unless repaired during combat) or a way to blow banes up from afar but in exchange for lacking all those fine details, I gained a lot of solidity. And I could focus on precise details of managing these two unit types and responding appropriately to situations. TvZ ended up being my best match-up and I could generally beat platinum zergs easily while it was a close call with a gold Terran and a likely loss against gold Protoss, at least until I got better builds for those matchups. | ||
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emc
United States3088 Posts
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iLithiuM
Australia31 Posts
 I see that you sent your first two marines to scout/potentially do some damage. Seeing as you are trying to deny scouting as much as possible, Do you keep them in base if its air spawn on meta or shattered in case of an ovie sac? | ||
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biocause
Canada6 Posts
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perser84
Germany399 Posts
On February 05 2012 10:36 iLithiuM wrote: Cool Guide, I'm a Master on SEA and I constantly switch back and forth between mech and marine/tank. Hive tech for zerg is just so annoying I see that you sent your first two marines to scout/potentially do some damage. Seeing as you are trying to deny scouting as much as possible, Do you keep them in base if its air spawn on meta or shattered in case of an ovie sac? from the timing you can do a fake bunker rush presure and when he scout your base you have already reactor hellion | ||
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Angel_
United States1617 Posts
On February 05 2012 08:54 phzbox wrote: As a zerg, here's my way to counter the mech build. 1. I 10 drone scout a T so I can get in before both supply are built. 2. And if I see reactor hellion opening, I get *really* fast 3-4 roaches. The point here is to help spreading creep, kill early hellions and most importantly, force the T to stay on 1 base OR force him to build marauder and bunker (while I get my third). I also upgrade +1 attacks really fast. 3. Once I've got my third roughly saturated, I build a good amount of speed roach +1/+1 to control the middle of the map, but also to force the T to play extremely defensive. Following the guide, this is somewhat where the T's got 4 thors and start to get tanks as they see I'm going mass roaches. 4. At this point, I like to make my fourth (even fifth) as it's only for the gaz, but most importantly, to attack the T. Obviously, it's not an efficient attack. BUT, you will kill a couple of thors and tanks. In that scenario, a T can't go out and attack you as they know you can instant remax in roaches/lings and dominate you in the center of the map. Plus, if the T correctly spreaded his tanks, it's risky to unsiege all of them for an attack as they the z can start to drop, etc. 5. For these reasons, while I attack/suicide the roaches, I get infestors, spire and mass sunken in the middle of the map. At this point, I need to see how the T handle the situation. If he chose to go all-in because I've attacked with roaches, I just get 200/200 of roaches (which are 2/2)/infestors/lings and sunken and crush him. If he switches to lots of tanks, I delay t3/infestors and opt for a big muta switch, but not too much. The goal here is to make him get thors again and mass turret. Sometime versus weaker players you'll win right there. Lastly, if after your roach attack he continued to mass thors, I like to get a mid-size roach army with infestors and fast tech to broodlord. Also, this would be the only time I'd consider to drop as siege tank really demolished roach drop. But if he's only massing hellion/thors, you want to drop roaches and suicide a bit everywhere to delay their "big push". 6. So, while delaying the big push, I tech to roaches/infestors/broodlord/sunken. It's important to keep the T on three bases. At this point, it's really about waiting and playing safe. I really get a lot of sunken (as I have too much $ and drones anyway). As pointed earlier, you want to keep roach in your army. Those are useful to fungal ghosts and kill them, or tank while broodlord kills everything. Vs a high count of thors/vicking, I like to switch back to mass roaches / infestors. TL;DR: My way of dealing with mech: early roach, drone like a madman and delay his big push by attacking/suiciding roaches. If they decide to hit sooner, mass roaches/infestors. If they get mass tank, switch to muta is great (but not too much muta, just enough to force them to remake thors/turrets). And if mass thors, mid roaches army / drops while teching to brood and getting lots of sunken. Lastly, I'd say that borrow is incredibly useful vs hellions harass as *spore*.. A couple of spores near expansion often kill hellion drop or force them to take a longer route which give you time to bring 1-2 infestor and roaches. I'd love to know the weakness of this build. Here's what I mostly lost to: Getting early roaches to counter the mech, but somewhat losing to a marauder/hellion/scv all-in. (Bad scout from me). Really fast banshee. Fast hellion drop in main while other hellion get in expansion. And.. stupid mistakes letting mass hellion killing drones. I'm not an expert by any means, but two things stick out immediately to me: If the terran is actively scouting and catches you starting roach production and you plan to attack when he'd normally start his thros, he can simply skip the thors and have a few tanks out and your attack will go nowhere. If you attack earlier with 3-4 roaches, unless you commit and just stream more and more and more...you're probably not going to really kill him, and it's going to set you behind, especially if he's intelligent enough to throw down a bunker and make a maurader. The second thing to me is that, while a terran committing to mech gives you a few options, if the terran scouts and just straight abandons mech in favor of a quick seige tank hellion marine push or something of that nature (banshee, w/e), you very well might just die. A third thing, i guess, is that if you try for a very fast fourth, the terran would have to be completely unattentive to not punish you for it, regardless of meching or doing any other strat. Gambling on someone's inattentiveness is fine I guess, but just saying, "I'll be able to do this and just get away with it" isn't realistic. | ||
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-ReD-
Canada167 Posts
i watched all your replays and i still think mutas are an effective counter though. Thors are just too immobile to handle harass. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10375 Posts
On February 05 2012 08:54 phzbox wrote: As a zerg, here's my way to counter the mech build. 1. I 10 drone scout a T so I can get in before both supply are built. 2. And if I see reactor hellion opening, I get *really* fast 3-4 roaches. The point here is to help spreading creep, kill early hellions and most importantly, force the T to stay on 1 base OR force him to build marauder and bunker (while I get my third). I also upgrade +1 attacks really fast. 3. Once I've got my third roughly saturated, I build a good amount of speed roach +1/+1 to control the middle of the map, but also to force the T to play extremely defensive. Following the guide, this is somewhat where the T's got 4 thors and start to get tanks as they see I'm going mass roaches. 4. At this point, I like to make my fourth (even fifth) as it's only for the gaz, but most importantly, to attack the T. Obviously, it's not an efficient attack. BUT, you will kill a couple of thors and tanks. In that scenario, a T can't go out and attack you as they know you can instant remax in roaches/lings and dominate you in the center of the map. Plus, if the T correctly spreaded his tanks, it's risky to unsiege all of them for an attack as they the z can start to drop, etc. 5. For these reasons, while I attack/suicide the roaches, I get infestors, spire and mass sunken in the middle of the map. At this point, I need to see how the T handle the situation. If he chose to go all-in because I've attacked with roaches, I just get 200/200 of roaches (which are 2/2)/infestors/lings and sunken and crush him. If he switches to lots of tanks, I delay t3/infestors and opt for a big muta switch, but not too much. The goal here is to make him get thors again and mass turret. Sometime versus weaker players you'll win right there. Lastly, if after your roach attack he continued to mass thors, I like to get a mid-size roach army with infestors and fast tech to broodlord. Also, this would be the only time I'd consider to drop as siege tank really demolished roach drop. But if he's only massing hellion/thors, you want to drop roaches and suicide a bit everywhere to delay their "big push". 6. So, while delaying the big push, I tech to roaches/infestors/broodlord/sunken. It's important to keep the T on three bases. At this point, it's really about waiting and playing safe. I really get a lot of sunken (as I have too much $ and drones anyway). As pointed earlier, you want to keep roach in your army. Those are useful to fungal ghosts and kill them, or tank while broodlord kills everything. Vs a high count of thors/vicking, I like to switch back to mass roaches / infestors. TL;DR: My way of dealing with mech: early roach, drone like a madman and delay his big push by attacking/suiciding roaches. If they decide to hit sooner, mass roaches/infestors. If they get mass tank, switch to muta is great (but not too much muta, just enough to force them to remake thors/turrets). And if mass thors, mid roaches army / drops while teching to brood and getting lots of sunken. Lastly, I'd say that borrow is incredibly useful vs hellions harass as *spore*.. A couple of spores near expansion often kill hellion drop or force them to take a longer route which give you time to bring 1-2 infestor and roaches. I'd love to know the weakness of this build. Here's what I mostly lost to: Getting early roaches to counter the mech, but somewhat losing to a marauder/hellion/scv all-in. (Bad scout from me). Really fast banshee. Fast hellion drop in main while other hellion get in expansion. And.. stupid mistakes letting mass hellion killing drones. I really don't like how you say counter "the mech build". It's like you're saying you're countering bio. There's an enormous amount of builds for each style. Your steps, for example don't address a reactor hellion expand into cloak banshee opener at all, in which case your entire strategy negated. Terran will have 2 bases and possibly a third before you can even start your third, and your roaches won't force marauders, but instead be defended against by just 1-2 banshees. Also, unless if you already know this, each of your steps are only possible in a very specific scenario; that is, the terran was hurt by the previous step and responded in the same way all the time. On February 05 2012 15:00 -ReD- wrote: Good guide, i'm using mech now :D i watched all your replays and i still think mutas are an effective counter though. Thors are just too immobile to handle harass. Unless the map is unfavorable, you should have turret rings surrounding your bases to stop zerg's mutas from getting into your side of the map without flying over a ring and losing a lot of mutas or flying over your army. You should have a few vikings later in the game anyways, to help with mutas, and perhaps even a Raven to PDD. Since Muta's dps is so low, they are easily stopped by viking/turret/repair | ||
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DarKcS
Australia1237 Posts
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TerranMeApart
United States27 Posts
I find that 7 factories is far too many. I usually stay at 5 (1 reactor, 4 tech lab). I didn't see you ever producing out of all 7 at once. Siege tanks and thors are really expensive. I find that I need the extra gas to put into upgrades and starport tech vs. hive (vikings against brood lords, a few banshees against ultralisks). I also find that a good rule for unit composition is that ideally, you would want pure hellion thor. The purpose of tanks is to deal with banelings, roaches, and infestors. Thors are good against everything else. It's really horrible when you have a huge army and the zerg tech switches into a bunch of mutas and takes out your thors and everything else is left useless because it can't shoot up. With mech, since you're so gas limited, it's not bad to put a planetary at your 3rd. It's pretty useful on maps like Tal'darim and Metalopolis where you can get roach counterattacked easily. What usually beats me when I go mech is that my harass doesn't do much damage. Zerg protects his drones lines from hellion harass with roaches and spines. He techs quickly to hive off of 3-4 bases and then has a huge brood lord/roach army. I think that zergs have to drone pretty hard and get to hive quickly to beat mech. Every lair tech units dies to a mech army. | ||
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NoisyNinja
United States991 Posts
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Angel_
United States1617 Posts
On February 05 2012 16:18 TerranMeApart wrote: Great guide! I watched the replays. Your siege tank positioning and scouting are really nice. I play mech as well at the Masters level, so here's some things I've experienced. I find that 7 factories is far too many. I usually stay at 5 (1 reactor, 4 tech lab). I didn't see you ever producing out of all 7 at once. Siege tanks and thors are really expensive. I find that I need the extra gas to put into upgrades and starport tech vs. hive (vikings against brood lords, a few banshees against ultralisks). I also find that a good rule for unit composition is that ideally, you would want pure hellion thor. The purpose of tanks is to deal with banelings, roaches, and infestors. Thors are good against everything else. It's really horrible when you have a huge army and the zerg tech switches into a bunch of mutas and takes out your thors and everything else is left useless because it can't shoot up. With mech, since you're so gas limited, it's not bad to put a planetary at your 3rd. It's pretty useful on maps like Tal'darim and Metalopolis where you can get roach counterattacked easily. What usually beats me when I go mech is that my harass doesn't do much damage. Zerg protects his drones lines from hellion harass with roaches and spines. He techs quickly to hive off of 3-4 bases and then has a huge brood lord/roach army. I think that zergs have to drone pretty hard and get to hive quickly to beat mech. Every lair tech units dies to a mech army. When I stick on Thor/Hellion for too long with ZERO siege tanks, eventually the zerg makes a bunch of infestors and lings and just kills me. Maybe I'm just doing something horribly wrong though. | ||
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AcesAnoka
Belgium262 Posts
On February 05 2012 02:24 FluidKMC wrote: Do you use ghosts to counter t3? When I see broodlords I just pump massive amounts of thors and some vikings. I have like 13 thors when the fight begi s and the splash damage absolutely wrecks broods. Against ultras which I rarely see i go heavy on the tanks. I don't think ghosts are reaaallly needed in mech. | ||
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FakeDouble
Australia676 Posts
Have you ever experimented with getting building armour and hi-sec auto tracking with mech? Since you get the e-bay for turrets anyway, and won't be getting infantry upgrades. Due to the mentioned immobility of mech, i feel they could be worthwhile in base-trade scenarios and make your PF expansions harder to kill. Its probably not worth rushing these as factories and armory upgrades are important, but could you try getting them say a few minutes before you do your max food push (or maybe as you push)? | ||
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yoigen
Germany369 Posts
On February 05 2012 19:38 carbonaceous wrote: Hi, very nice guide. A question to OP, Have you ever experimented with getting building armour and hi-sec auto tracking with mech? Since you get the e-bay for turrets anyway, and won't be getting infantry upgrades. Due to the mentioned immobility of mech, i feel they could be worthwhile in base-trade scenarios and make your PF expansions harder to kill. Its probably not worth rushing these as factories and armory upgrades are important, but could you try getting them say a few minutes before you do your max food push (or maybe as you push)? you should always get hi-sec auto tracking if your enemy goes mass muta. | ||
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