On May 29 2012 15:41 Blazinghand wrote: I've seen some people suggesting an all-in followup to this build. I don't deny that an all-in could be entirely adequate as a follow-up, but I wonder if it is the only possible solution-- Mvp, after all, slaps down his CC at 6:00 in his game with this. It seems to me that if you manage to deal some damage, you can counteract the fact that your CC is delayed, and transition into a pretty normal midgame. In fact, you'll already have out a lot of tech, so you can continue to maybe apply some pressure. One of the annoying things as a Terran player in the early game is that a couple stalkers can just freely roam the map until you have some way of catching them or mitigating their poking at your marines-- but with a Medivac you'll be solid.
You can go with an expo right after but I think that the all in followup is way better just because the amount of damage you ACTUALLY have to do with this to be ahead is prettyyy huge.
Not exactly like the Opening in the OP but pretty close.
Yep, same idea, marine drop and hellion harass. AKA a kind of 1-1-1 opening. And pretty much all 1-1-1s include/give: pressure, harass, safe opening, chance to kill greedy players, flexibility, though of course the expansion is much more delayed. But with openings such as banshee opening or this kind of marine/hellion opening, it is almost guaranteed you will kill at least a few probes and/or slow him down a bit so that if you expand right after you won't be too behind for there to be a significant advantage. You could expect to be slightly behind I think (though ofc this depends on map too) but then again there is the chance your opponent may outright die if he expected you to expand.
@Habitus
Perhaps you are just being humble but I hate when even Artosis say things like (paraphrasing when MKP did gorapadong mech build vs Genius and won) "It is important to remember the reason why he won was not because he went mech, but because he did so much damage with the hellions!"
He and other seem to completely forget... when do you see BFH harass in Bio play TvP??? The hellions are part of mech. By showing that even pros can lose probes to BFH harass, it pretty much shows that the style is "viable". Pros are capable of blocking every drop in bio PvT, but do they? Not always. Will they block every hellion harass? Not always!
If anything, the 2 replays you show do show that mech is viable (or at least, that specific style)
Unless, you are referring to the FIRST harass with the marine drop? That did quite a lot of damage, but I don't think it put Hack into that big of an advantage. It was either about equal or Hack with a slight advantage, at least in regards to him going mech instead of bio. Even if he was ahead, it shows again that mech is viable; the opener worked, and there are no major weaknesses in [that] mech TvP that cause it to be "not usable". It may be weak, it may be hard, it may be unforgivable, but those are all subjective things and depend on the individual.
On July 11 2012 16:27 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Yep, same idea, marine drop and hellion harass. AKA a kind of 1-1-1 opening. And pretty much all 1-1-1s include/give: pressure, harass, safe opening, chance to kill greedy players, flexibility, though of course the expansion is much more delayed. But with openings such as banshee opening or this kind of marine/hellion opening, it is almost guaranteed you will kill at least a few probes and/or slow him down a bit so that if you expand right after you won't be too behind for there to be a significant advantage. You could expect to be slightly behind I think (though ofc this depends on map too) but then again there is the chance your opponent may outright die if he expected you to expand.
@Habitus
Perhaps you are just being humble but I hate when even Artosis say things like (paraphrasing when MKP did gorapadong mech build vs Genius and won) "It is important to remember the reason why he won was not because he went mech, but because he did so much damage with the hellions!"
He and other seem to completely forget... when do you see BFH harass in Bio play TvP??? The hellions are part of mech. By showing that even pros can lose probes to BFH harass, it pretty much shows that the style is "viable". Pros are capable of blocking every drop in bio PvT, but do they? Not always. Will they block every hellion harass? Not always!
If anything, the 2 replays you show do show that mech is viable (or at least, that specific style)
Unless, you are referring to the FIRST harass with the marine drop? That did quite a lot of damage, but I don't think it put Hack into that big of an advantage. It was either about equal or Hack with a slight advantage, at least in regards to him going mech instead of bio. Even if he was ahead, it shows again that mech is viable; the opener worked, and there are no major weaknesses in [that] mech TvP that cause it to be "not usable". It may be weak, it may be hard, it may be unforgivable, but those are all subjective things and depend on the individual.
Don't get me wrong, i LOVE mech play and try to do it whenever i can. However, these two replays are prime examples of why it's usually not a good idea to do vs toss. In the first replay, well, he lost. And in the second one he did very good in the early harass and had a devastating supply lead in the midgame - so far so good. But as he dragged out the game long enough for the protoss to recover and build appropriate counters, he almost lost the last engagement, even though he was miles ahead. I feel like if he just went bio in the midgame (maybe with a couple of BHF thrown in for harass) he would have been so much better off and finished the game a lot earlier and safer.
On July 11 2012 16:27 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Yep, same idea, marine drop and hellion harass. AKA a kind of 1-1-1 opening. And pretty much all 1-1-1s include/give: pressure, harass, safe opening, chance to kill greedy players, flexibility, though of course the expansion is much more delayed. But with openings such as banshee opening or this kind of marine/hellion opening, it is almost guaranteed you will kill at least a few probes and/or slow him down a bit so that if you expand right after you won't be too behind for there to be a significant advantage. You could expect to be slightly behind I think (though ofc this depends on map too) but then again there is the chance your opponent may outright die if he expected you to expand.
@Habitus
Perhaps you are just being humble but I hate when even Artosis say things like (paraphrasing when MKP did gorapadong mech build vs Genius and won) "It is important to remember the reason why he won was not because he went mech, but because he did so much damage with the hellions!"
He and other seem to completely forget... when do you see BFH harass in Bio play TvP??? The hellions are part of mech. By showing that even pros can lose probes to BFH harass, it pretty much shows that the style is "viable". Pros are capable of blocking every drop in bio PvT, but do they? Not always. Will they block every hellion harass? Not always!
If anything, the 2 replays you show do show that mech is viable (or at least, that specific style)
Unless, you are referring to the FIRST harass with the marine drop? That did quite a lot of damage, but I don't think it put Hack into that big of an advantage. It was either about equal or Hack with a slight advantage, at least in regards to him going mech instead of bio. Even if he was ahead, it shows again that mech is viable; the opener worked, and there are no major weaknesses in [that] mech TvP that cause it to be "not usable". It may be weak, it may be hard, it may be unforgivable, but those are all subjective things and depend on the individual.
Don't get me wrong, i LOVE mech play and try to do it whenever i can. However, these two replays are prime examples of why it's usually not a good idea to do vs toss. In the first replay, well, he lost. And in the second one he did very good in the early harass and had a devastating supply lead in the midgame - so far so good. But as he dragged out the game long enough for the protoss to recover and build appropriate counters, he almost lost the last engagement, even though he was miles ahead. I feel like if he just went bio in the midgame (maybe with a couple of BHF thrown in for harass) he would have been so much better off and finished the game a lot earlier and safer.
Well, I'd like to discuss it in slightly more detail.
The first one he lost, but in the good engagements, he beat the protoss army, even if only slightly. The major turning point was a result of 2 things: 1) Hack not handling the DT harass enough by being sloppy, for example he didn't make sure his turrets finished so he waste lots of time/resources/APM and 2) getting many tanks caught off guard towards the end when he was pulling back. And we must take notice of how the game was still either one of theirs to take before those 2 "mistakes" of Hack even though Hack didn't do as much damage as he should nor could have with his first marine drop, as well as his hellions harass in the midgame. If we ignore Hack not handing the DT harass properly and giving away the rest of his tanks, this game is an example of Mech still working even without killing many probes, which is a very common similarity between many of the few mech games we see in high level play where the mecher succeeds and wins. According to this game, heavy economic damage is not, as many have believed, a strict requirement for mech to work. Another thing to look at pointing to mech's individual style, that is, a style that is not gimmicky for the sake of not using Bio units but a style with its own strengths and weaknesses -- is the fact that Creator took his third without much economic damage nor pressure from Hack. In Bio TvP, if you were to let Protoss get away with 3 base like that and not kill more probes than Hack nor kill buildings nor pressure Protoss from safety turtling without fear on 3 base, you would probably be in trouble. But in this game, Hack shows that with mech, you can play passively, and take your own third and sit back, unlike in Bio.
The first point I think he could have handled much better; I think most will agree that Creator is at least slightly better, anyways. The second point, though, supports the idea that mech is unforgiving. Being caught off guard like that doesn't happen as easily with bio armies, and bio armies can at least do some damage before dying, but tanks will most likely be shooting at chargelots and not kill anything without being able to siege up.
Now on to the second game. His supply wasn't that far ahead. Here are a few times I documented. Hack's supply 45 to 40, 120 to 105, 180 to 140. Before the last battle, 200 to 140.
His supply certainly slightly higher, but remember that this style of hellion tank was really heavy on the hellions, which are food inefficient units. So the supply difference isn't very significant. I would consider hellions to be more like a 1.5 supply unit (you don't need that many hellions to be able to fry all the chargelots, so at that point excess hellions are used just for harass or tanking, the latter of which is accomplished much better by Thors: if hellions were 1.5 supply, 4 hellions would still be 360 HP which is still less than 1 thor, which also has 1 more armor).
Also I simply disagree on him almost losing the final engagement. Can you elaborate? When the Protoss first engages with the really spread out force, yes the fight was certainly close, especially since mech TvP is (at least for the hellion/tank phase) quite fragile in terms of composition when maxed. However, you have to also remember that many times, the Protoss will not be able to have his units spread out so much to mitigate splash (and EMP, of which we did not see in that battle). Although Hack sieged up in a pretty good position with the cliff helping his position, that didn't matter too much since Lure was able to make such a good engagement anyways, as if the cliff wasn't there, by attacking Hack's army from both the front and the back. In addition to the lack of EMP, he also could have had a few vikings to provide vision and chip away at the Colossi's HP before the fight.
Now, yes the supply was 200 to 140 before the fight. But it seems Hack has more workers than Protoss, judging by the units left on the field, his reinforcements, and the units in production (about 80), while it seems Protoss has about 60 workers. So the army supply was more like 120 to 80. This is still a lot, but considering the food inefficiency of Hellions, I would say it's more like 100 to 80 (there's about 40 hellions), if we are to look at supply as an indicator of army strength.
Of course, even looking at it as 100 to 80, that is still quite an army advantage. However, Hellion/Tank, as seen in the game vs Creator, does not stop evolving its composition there. Once you add BCs and have them upgraded to 3/3, your army becomes much much stronger and flexible. Then you can even start replacing worker supply with OCs, making your army even bigger. Now, this doesn't address the fact that before BCs are added, you may say Hack's 100 supply hellion/tank army didn't beat an 80 supply protoss army as much as it maybe should have, but to me the battle's result seemed to be about right. He was left with several tanks, which is critical so he can quickly get back up to a healthy ~15 tank count. Often times the Protoss can warpin chargelots and just force you back, but here he still had many hellions left, making any chargelots ineffective, and being able to tank immortals and keep them away from the tanks.
Another thing to consider is that, if you still disagree with me, that though it may seem that Lure is crawling his way back into the game because he was close to winning the last engagement, you must realize that Hack is on 5 base while Lure is on 4. Although Lure was possibly getting close to stabilizing and equally the army supply, Hack is already pumping a higher economy than Lure, with 1 more base and ~20 more workers, and that's not even taking into account the MULEs he has.
On July 11 2012 19:35 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:wall of text
You can sugar-coat it all you want, but 200 vs 140 supply is a DEVASTATING supply lead. If he had that supply in bio instead in mech he would have absolutely steamrolled the toss. He could have made 2 rines per hellion (which is the same mineral and supply cost) and marauders instead of tanks and used the excess gas for medivacs.
If mech was all that viable, it wouldn't be so difficult to find a couple of replays with mech crushing toss on equal footing. But instead we get one were the terran actually loses (but hey he ALMOST won !) and one where he had basically won due to the opening and dragged the game out to a point where he almost lost his advantage. I'm still hoping for the warhound to be the answer, but right now, there is little advantage of going mech in TvP, there are just too many hard counters the protoss can field.
Not exactly like the Opening in the OP but pretty close.
Yep, same idea, marine drop and hellion harass. AKA a kind of 1-1-1 opening. And pretty much all 1-1-1s include/give: pressure, harass, safe opening, chance to kill greedy players, flexibility, though of course the expansion is much more delayed. But with openings such as banshee opening or this kind of marine/hellion opening, it is almost guaranteed you will kill at least a few probes and/or slow him down a bit so that if you expand right after you won't be too behind for there to be a significant advantage. You could expect to be slightly behind I think (though ofc this depends on map too) but then again there is the chance your opponent may outright die if he expected you to expand.
@Habitus
Perhaps you are just being humble but I hate when even Artosis say things like (paraphrasing when MKP did gorapadong mech build vs Genius and won) "It is important to remember the reason why he won was not because he went mech, but because he did so much damage with the hellions!"
He and other seem to completely forget... when do you see BFH harass in Bio play TvP??? The hellions are part of mech. By showing that even pros can lose probes to BFH harass, it pretty much shows that the style is "viable". Pros are capable of blocking every drop in bio PvT, but do they? Not always. Will they block every hellion harass? Not always!
If anything, the 2 replays you show do show that mech is viable (or at least, that specific style)
Unless, you are referring to the FIRST harass with the marine drop? That did quite a lot of damage, but I don't think it put Hack into that big of an advantage. It was either about equal or Hack with a slight advantage, at least in regards to him going mech instead of bio. Even if he was ahead, it shows again that mech is viable; the opener worked, and there are no major weaknesses in [that] mech TvP that cause it to be "not usable". It may be weak, it may be hard, it may be unforgivable, but those are all subjective things and depend on the individual.
I was referring to Marine in main + Hellion in Nat, followed up by Banshee, followed by BFH drop, all of them worked really well in the game against Lure (against Creator they didn't work as well or got shut down). Since they worked so well I was trying more to pre-emempt anyone saying it was the harass not the Mech that won the game.
I posted both of them to show that this style of Mech seems very viable, as even against Creator (a very good Protoss) where the early drops/harass weren't cost effective in general, plus afew times losing Hellions in the mid-map for little or no damage (ran into Creator's army by mistake) he still was able to play into a position he should of probably won from. The lack of detection at end (losing his Raven + no Turrets) let the DT harassment be too effective at the end, as he tried transitioning into BC+Raven/Ghost. BC+Raven/Ghost seems to be agreed as the best End Game Comp if fully upgraded but is very hard to safely transition into, this style is one of the better ones I've watch at possible being good at getting to that Comp.
On July 11 2012 19:35 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:wall of text
You can sugar-coat it all you want, but 200 vs 140 supply is a DEVASTATING supply lead. If he had that supply in bio instead in mech he would have absolutely steamrolled the toss. He could have made 2 rines per hellion (which is the same mineral and supply cost) and marauders instead of tanks and used the excess gas for medivacs.
If mech was all that viable, it wouldn't be so difficult to find a couple of replays with mech crushing toss on equal footing. But instead we get one were the terran actually loses (but hey he ALMOST won !) and one where he had basically won due to the opening and dragged the game out to a point where he almost lost his advantage. I'm still hoping for the warhound to be the answer, but right now, there is little advantage of going mech in TvP, there are just too many hard counters the protoss can field.
In the first replay (against Creator) you see Hack throw away aload of Hellions during an engagement as he doesn't pull them back as the Protoss pulls back abit, he loses that at near equal supply. Later he pulls them back and wins at near equal supply, I have a feeling that this is still a rather new style even to people such as Hack who are using it currently so knowing the right ratio of Hellions to Tanks, knowing when to add in Ghosts (make a big difference late game to the Comp) and how to not over commit to Vikings are all things that need refining. Bio by now has worked most of the kinks out of its varied playstyles, Mech is still rather un-explored, and this Hellion heavy style atleast looks somewhat viable as a Option to throw in on some games alongside the more standard Bio play (as Hack did in both those series of games)
Unfortunatly you are so much better of going bio as terran. As said before, there are so many units that toss has that counters mech that it becomes unviable as standard play.
You just cant thin out toss gateway units with mech like you can do with bio, forcing toss to warp-in new units and delaying his tech.
People play mech because its fun and can surprise a toss I guess but your time is better spend practicing your macro and MMMVG positioning.
Now to stay on topic, I think going for 1/1/1 as described by OP can be tricky to defend by toss but dont expect to win more than 50% of your games and it is ofcourse not a good build to do when playing against the same opponent more than once.
But if you are confident that you are a better terran player than the protoss you face on ladder but are losing because of deathball engagements this build can really pimp up your TVP winrate.
Even when the pros do it in tournaments I just dont think this build is viable at mid master level
On July 12 2012 02:11 derpinator wrote: Even when the pros do it in tournaments I just dont think this build is viable at mid master level
For what its worth, most pros seem to agree with you. Mvp only used it once out of all the TvPs he played Season 2 (and he played a lot of them). It seemed like something he just had in the back pocket, part of his infinite supply of crushingly strong builds.
It definitely seems more of a "I'm in a Bo5, I'll toss this in here" sort of build than the kind you'd want to practice with, or use a lot on the ladder. In a way, I'm kinda sad it was so successful because I didn't get to see Mvp's followup ;_;
On July 11 2012 19:35 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:wall of text
You can sugar-coat it all you want, but 200 vs 140 supply is a DEVASTATING supply lead. If he had that supply in bio instead in mech he would have absolutely steamrolled the toss. He could have made 2 rines per hellion (which is the same mineral and supply cost) and marauders instead of tanks and used the excess gas for medivacs.
If mech was all that viable, it wouldn't be so difficult to find a couple of replays with mech crushing toss on equal footing. But instead we get one were the terran actually loses (but hey he ALMOST won !) and one where he had basically won due to the opening and dragged the game out to a point where he almost lost his advantage. I'm still hoping for the warhound to be the answer, but right now, there is little advantage of going mech in TvP, there are just too many hard counters the protoss can field.
I'm disappointed because first of all
you quite rudely dismiss my effort to elaborately and clearly describe my view and belittle it to a meaningless "sugar coating"
and
you don't address anything I say, really, so there is nothing for me to discuss with you.
Your saying that 200 vs 140 supply is a devestating lead only helps to further my point that mech works. The supply was not that great in the start: again, I note 45 to 40 supply. It snowballed into 200 vs 140 supply. Do you see now?
How about PvZ? When Zerg roach maxes at 12 min and protoss only has about 140/200 supply, is that a devestating lead? Supply is only a number that helps you look at the situation. It cannot be used as simple as you are using it.
Also, the second paragraph's concept has been proven wrong. Remember when people said Mech didn't work in TvZ? Then we saw MVP and other terrans using mech occasionally, especially on Dual Site. Remember when people said mech didn't work in TvT? How about when everyone started playing mech? Just because you don't see a strategy commonly, it doesn't mean that it doesn't work well. People have been proven wrong in both of these examples.
On July 12 2012 02:11 derpinator wrote: Even when the pros do it in tournaments I just dont think this build is viable at mid master level
I'm mid masters, and it works for me (without losing too much ofc), so I would say it's viable It's also been used in both lower and higher levels on ladder successfully.
Not exactly like the Opening in the OP but pretty close.
Yep, same idea, marine drop and hellion harass. AKA a kind of 1-1-1 opening. And pretty much all 1-1-1s include/give: pressure, harass, safe opening, chance to kill greedy players, flexibility, though of course the expansion is much more delayed. But with openings such as banshee opening or this kind of marine/hellion opening, it is almost guaranteed you will kill at least a few probes and/or slow him down a bit so that if you expand right after you won't be too behind for there to be a significant advantage. You could expect to be slightly behind I think (though ofc this depends on map too) but then again there is the chance your opponent may outright die if he expected you to expand.
@Habitus
Perhaps you are just being humble but I hate when even Artosis say things like (paraphrasing when MKP did gorapadong mech build vs Genius and won) "It is important to remember the reason why he won was not because he went mech, but because he did so much damage with the hellions!"
He and other seem to completely forget... when do you see BFH harass in Bio play TvP??? The hellions are part of mech. By showing that even pros can lose probes to BFH harass, it pretty much shows that the style is "viable". Pros are capable of blocking every drop in bio PvT, but do they? Not always. Will they block every hellion harass? Not always!
If anything, the 2 replays you show do show that mech is viable (or at least, that specific style)
Unless, you are referring to the FIRST harass with the marine drop? That did quite a lot of damage, but I don't think it put Hack into that big of an advantage. It was either about equal or Hack with a slight advantage, at least in regards to him going mech instead of bio. Even if he was ahead, it shows again that mech is viable; the opener worked, and there are no major weaknesses in [that] mech TvP that cause it to be "not usable". It may be weak, it may be hard, it may be unforgivable, but those are all subjective things and depend on the individual.
I was referring to Marine in main + Hellion in Nat, followed up by Banshee, followed by BFH drop, all of them worked really well in the game against Lure (against Creator they didn't work as well or got shut down). Since they worked so well I was trying more to pre-emempt anyone saying it was the harass not the Mech that won the game.
I posted both of them to show that this style of Mech seems very viable, as even against Creator (a very good Protoss) where the early drops/harass weren't cost effective in general, plus afew times losing Hellions in the mid-map for little or no damage (ran into Creator's army by mistake) he still was able to play into a position he should of probably won from. The lack of detection at end (losing his Raven + no Turrets) let the DT harassment be too effective at the end, as he tried transitioning into BC+Raven/Ghost. BC+Raven/Ghost seems to be agreed as the best End Game Comp if fully upgraded but is very hard to safely transition into, this style is one of the better ones I've watch at possible being good at getting to that Comp.
Ah, I see. I misunderstood the meaning of the reason as to why the harass let mech work (you were saying it was part of mech, right?)
I agree with you, he would have been able to win the game if he wasn't so sloppy with the defense against DT (which also led to him not watching his tanks). If he had those 5 bases running without being so hurt/delayed by the DT harass, his econ would have been much better. Instead he was only able to make 1-2 BC and not be able to reinforce quickly nor make the tech/upgrades for the BC really pay off (+3/+3 stalkers are pretty good against +1/0 BCs).
EPT
(or at least, that specific style)
