Hi! Are you tired of losing to Broodlord infestor? Are you tired of trying gimmicky openers that are supposed to snipe 3rd base of opponent and failing due to new queens? Are you tired of creep in your base at 13 min mark? Do you want to have 200/200 army capable of fighting head to head with 200/200 BL+Infestor zerg?
If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, this thread is definitely for you!
Ministry of Win, Matiz (MoW’s Coach) and AT Song present: 4 CC into Skyterran
Here we bring you over 3000 word guide made by GM players.
Matiz: Hey, I’m GM Zerg player from Poland, I’m currently coach of Ministry of Win. I’m 20 years old and E-sport is my passion and job. I’m currently member of Team Replika. I come from Supreme Commander and Red Alert 3 community. I've created a guide about using Broodlords in ZvP before they were commonly used; http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=224438
Song: Hello all, SonG here Terran player from France, I play in the gaming house ministry of win. I’am in the french team ALTTAB Gaming. I’am 22 years old, Student and also ‘pro’ gamer. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/SonG Made in the past: -The marauder, ghost timing push TvT (1year ago)
-The Hellion reactor during the beta in 2vs2 -Worked on what is known as Echoic build
Marine tank medivac is proven to be not effective against zerg deathball. Right now terrans add vikings to their unit composition and hope it will be enough. Sometimes they add Thors too and if it doesn’t work there is huge QQ on forums and everywhere that terran is underpowered. Some people try drops and it works not that bad, but it requires a lot of apm and multitasking and still it sometimes is not enough. We wanted to find a composition that would be able to deal with Infestors and Broodlords straightforward. We finally figured out that the answer is Skyterran. The goal of the build is to survive early and mid game while maintaining good economy, in order to create Terran deathball that will be able to fight on even foot with Zerg deathball and win the game in late game. The battle occurs; RUN BROODLORDS RUN
This will be very long part. If you want to learn about thought process behind developing build, if you want to know what happens in minds of players and coaches when they work on strategies then read it, if not, then skip this part.
So at the beginning, Song arrived to our prohouse. He cried a bit about TvZ being imbalanced and this matchup being terrible after patch etc. So I analyzed and prepared Sculp’s build for him: http://www.gomtv.net/2012gstls2/vod/67576/?set=7&lang= It improved his macro play, the build revolves about getting fast 4 CC’s. It sounds crazy and greedy, but apparently it works. Song edited this to make it safe vs roach baneling bust. He makes 2 hellions and then straight tanks(or just straight tanks). Because of 4 CC he can afford to be not aggressive early on. So this build was really good because it was safe and very economy focused. But some problems arised. Despite good economy, song was still having problems vs good zergs. You need to drop at 3 places at once, multitask like madman, and still you can loose to just deathball. Song was really fed up of this, he wanted a game style that doesn’t require to be 4 times better than opponent to actually win. We had to figure something out.
So me and song went outside of house to garden and talked for 1 hour about possibilities. We were discussing mech, heavy ghost usage, skyterran, marine raven and some other stuff. After some time we agreed that Skyterran is the option to go. There are several reasons for it: - It’s able to fight with Zerg deathball on even foot, I would even say it’s better than zerg deathball. - It’s not affected by creep. Nowadays creep really gets out of control with mass queen builds - Does not revolve around doing damage. Terran’s plans nowadays require dealing damage with aggressive play. Either early on or a timing before hive, or mass drop during hive phase. I’ve faced it once, maybe a year ago from Satiini, I remembered that it is very strong if it’s done correctly. So we started. The question was, how to get there.
I took experience from my zerg knowledge. Transitioning out of Ling Bane Muta into infestor broodlord is a bit problematic, you have to make the deathball at once. Ling Infestor, on the other hand, already involves a part of deathball, so you make it step by step. First you make infestors, then BL, not both at once. The same rule can be applied to transitioning to terran deathball. Transitioning into skyterran out of medivac tank marine is kinda hard. No upgrades, necessity to make everything at once etc. On the other hand Marine raven looks just like infestor ling, you make heavy gas and heavy mineral units and you already make first step in constructing deathball. We both agreed that it’s something that we have to try out. The goal for first days was: - Finding a viable marine raven build. - Surviving till deathball is operational
We were wondering how to open. Then I reminded that Dutch player Servyoa uses quite a lot of marine raven. I immediately approached him and asked for a replay.
http://drop.sc/224302 We decided to start from someone’s experience. He knows about this style more than we do. He transitions into marine tank medivac out of this, we decided to edit his style but the opening still remained his. So the build revolved around 1 rax CC into 2 starports. Servy made 4 banshees and then he transitions into ravens. It felt promising, we gave it a try. We just edited it a bit, instead of going back to marine tank medivac we chose to camp a lot behind planetaries/bunkers and then going into skyterran.
At the beginning it was not bad. Banshees were able to deal some damage usually, it delayed zerg so Song was able to establish decent sized army that was able to deal with infestor ling pressure and hold 3rd and transition into bc viking out of marine raven. But some problems arised. The build was very vulnerable to few things, 3 base symbol style mutas(3 bases with 6 queens into 2x evo and mutas afterwards), 2 base fast mutas, even ultrabaneling timing attack. We tried a lot of things with this build, Bunker upgrades with 2 more slots, planetary upgrades for 2 more armor, mass bunkers, mass turrets vs mutas etc. We decided the build was not good enough. Securing 3rd base in current patch with this style was not possible. Good player will defend banshee harrass without much losses and then he can make so much stuff that Terran will simply not be able to handle it. We had to abandon this style.
We decided to try out this 4 CC macro build into skyterran. CC farms :> It appeared to be much better than banshee opening because of very good economy. We decided to exchange banshees for a couple of tanks. This would allow us to deal with inevitable timings easier. So instead of marine banshee into marine raven, we decided to pick marine tank into marine raven (once you finish tank production you begin Raven production). The timing of Raven is pretty similiar, yet the build is much more safe. We laughed that we outgoodied Goody since it’s basically 25 minutes of camping. Yes it’s quite boring i guess. Well, at least effective. So now our problems vs 3 base muta aggression or 3 base ling bane have decreased though they still existed. We had first successes too!. Song has beaten TSL_Hyun. Imagine our happiness, after a week of miserable losses Song felt really upset before sometimes, was about to abandon development of this build but i had faith in it.
Then we have read the interview of ByunPrime when he said: “Is Terran okay against Zerg now?
I think we’re over it. In late game, battlecruisers supported by ravens can beat Zerg. The solution has been found.”
That also built up our hopes. It told us that we are going in correct direction. It seemed that koreans were developing independently something similiar to this. Few days later we’ve seen MKP using skyterran on Metropolis in GSL. He did it the different way than us though. (standard play and at 25 min mark massive skyterran switch, not like creating skyterran since 10 min mark).
So we basically figured out timings. The key was to make unprecedented amount of bunkers and planetaries. Zerg has limited potential of making banelings. He can blow up 4 bunkers and 1 planetary, but there’s no way that he can destroy 10 and 2-3 planetaries. Song also started to make some more marines and barrackses, it was necessary to secure 3rd base. So now we were finally able to survive safely to late game. This was the moment when stuff got exciting. We found out very funny and interesting thing; so called “pro” players were worse at thinking and inventing counters to it than average high master Zergs. We kept making small modifications. Versus Ultrabane ~17 min timing attack you need just 4-5 Ravens and earlier BC’s, on the other hand versus Broodlords you can and should go into 8-10 raven before launching serious BC production. I was reminding song all the time to make insane amount of bunkers, he usually made too little of them. Also the concept that Song had some troubles with understanding was sacrificing low Tier units in order to be able to create powerful T3 army. What I mean is that he very often had 30-40 marines with his skyterran that were totally useless. It’s waaaay more effective to have 20 vikings instead of 40 marines in this situation. After you are close to 200/200 It’s time to exchange low tier units into high ones, Terran don’t do it too often, it’s more like zerg mind :D
3.6 Dealing with micro and positioning mistakes + Show Spoiler +
Skyterran isn’t marine tank. It might sound obvious but it requires totally different set of skills and micro. 1 thing is similar though - you need to split. If you have all your ravens fungaled you can type GG already. We figured out that the best way to micro is to make a line of units and then a-move click in opponent’s main base so units will not clump together. Terrans aren’t used to spellcasting though. This composition is very spellcast heavy and positioning heavy instead of micro intensive. So it took Song quite a long time to get used to it and not make positional mistakes. We are still trying to figure out perfect way of casting spells in the battles. I think it’s best to throw 3 PDD’s and while ravens are getting close to cast HSM, cast few yamatos on infestors/corruptors then cast all HSM’s on corruptors/infestors then once you are out of HSM use all remaining yamato cannons. There is also another interesting thing: BC’s (due to their HP) should be in front and vikings as a DPS dealers(and range) should be behind. This way fungaling vikings will also be harder.
- Constructing Terran deathball. The idea has been copied from Zerg and Protoss playstyle. It’s the same how ling infestor into BL or old school collosus stalker works. You make powerful 200/200 army that is so cost effective that it doesnt really bother with anything else than just constructing good composition and sitting in base. - Managing gas and minerals in specific way. Marine, bunker have perfect synergy with raven and air heavy gas expensive units. - Utilizing unknown upgrades (HA, do you know how the armor upgrade for planetaries is called ?) in a way that is actually extremely useful. - Relying on defence instead of offence. Rare thing in Terran play. - Fastest operational Skyterran. Skyterran has been used before but it has always been in 30+ minute games, here it’s around 20 minute mark when you can do something good with it, and 22-25 when it’s totally ready. - Understanding the fact that tank marine planetary bunker raven is a composition that is enough to hold 4 bases on most of maps and allows to transition into skyterran.
The role of the opening is to set up as good economy as possible while being safe. The early game BO is basically edited Sculp’s opening with a tank for safety and earlier gas. It’s only used in case opponent goes for gasless FE. If he goes gas, then you have to cut 1 CC to be safe. The only thing that can be scary right there is some kind of roach baneling aggression. That’s the purpose of early tank. Because you get 4 CC’s, you are not really forced to make any damage to opponent. The biggest threats are roach baneling pressures/allins, ling baneling busts and some roach moveouts. Early tank solves all of these.
Do the normal scv scout - you want to see if he takes gas or not. In case he took gas you need to delay 4th CC and play safer. 1 rax CC 4:00 2x gas (It’s rather unsafe to make it later, you can get greedy if you want though. 5:00 3rd CC 5:15 Factory 5:30 Reactor 5:40 Bunker 6:20 4th CC 6:35 Starport, Techlab Around this time it’s good to scout whether he has 3rd base or not. (you need to prepare in case of some 2 base play, 2 base muta requires special reaction - send few marines, make a hellion or in worst case drop a scan) 7:00 Tank 7:15 Siege tech
Hello, you survived early game. Let’s do the same what we did in early game but 3 times harder - develop our economy and camp on tanks. There are more threats in this part; ass ling baneling, fast 2 base muta, muta ling baneling, mass ling infested terrans etc etc. That’s the reason we have to go into serious bunker mode. It’s really map dependant here, but on most maps you have to crawl your way to expansions. It’s fine. You spend most of your gas on tech/first ravens so you will have mineral surplus that you should spend on bunkers/marines/economy/planetaries. Securing 4 bases is the key in this part. 8 Gases will allow us to run serious Air production.
7:40 Viking(to clear overlords around map, to scout 3rd base) 7:40 2x gas 8:00 Engineering bay 8:20 Techlab on starport and then banshee. (Banshee is really cool thing here - it adds some dps in battles but more importantly allows for easier securing bases and puts slight pressure on zerg’s creep. It’s really important to keep it alive. 8:35 +1 infantry attack 8:35 Corvid reactor, then banshee 8:50 2x turrets ~9:30 grab 3rd base - Interesting thing - don’t make 4th CC an orbital - this way you can morph it into planetary and securing 3rd will be easier. Triple mule is enough in this style. 9:35 Start raven production - Raven will come out with already corvid reactor upgrade. 10:00 2x Barracks(1 techlabbed and then stim), 1x Starport (techlabbed) 10:20 Hunter Seeker Missile upgrade 10:15 Armory - start Air Carapace upgrades (ravens don’t gain anything from air attack and at the begining you will have only ravens. Also BC’s with carapace deal with infested terrans way better) Bunkers 11:00 Command Center - fly to 4th base and morph to planetary Bunkers 11:20 +2 atk for infantry, 2x Barracks Bunkers 13:00 1x Starport(techlabbed) Bunkers 13:20 Fusion Core Bunkers (a lot of them) ~14:00 4 CC then Planetaries 14:20 Structure Armor (upgrade in engibay that gives +2 armor - very helpful vs lings and ultras)
Yes. Let the fun begin. The Goal for this part is to finish assemblying skyterran army and to finally lean out of our bunkers.Skyterran is a bit like mech. It gets insanely cost effective once it’s maxed out. Guess who won. Yes, a Terran hehe. (picture taken from a game vs gm zerg)
Never ever move out before you are 200/200. And even then I advice to wait. Terran has really cool ability that is called mules. Why not make 5 more OC’s and sacrifice 20 scv’s? or. Why not make 10 OC’s and sacrifice 50? That’s already 8 more BC’s. The other thing is to sacrifice all marines. At 15 minute mark it’s necessity to stop all Marine production. I had good laughs at Song when he ended up with 80 marines in late game and whined that skyterran is bullshit. No. You cannot dump 80 supply into useless units (yes, vs competent fungal user in direct fight marines usually don’t do anything in lategame) and then expect your army composition to work.
So in lategame: - Drop a scan to determine whether zerg is going for BL or Ultra. They require different reaction. (5-6 ravens vs ultras, 8-10 vs BL) - Add bunkers, planetaries, depots and barrackses (u gonna have overmins anyway) - Defend potential Ultralisk timing around 17 min mark. - Secure 5th around 18 min mark. - Mass Orbitals around 20 min mark. - Move out with 150 army supply skyterran (around 22 min mark) - Keep Air unit production off of 5-6 starports. - Slowly research infantry upgrades. - At around 35-40 min mark if the game is not finished yet, resume marine production and add some medivacs. Gas income will be slowly depleting and you will have probably around 5-10k mineral overmins which means u can easily make 10 rax and spam rines and finish game this way.
I guess that’s all. :>
5. Replays top/good players (Haypro, Hyun, other gm) + Show Spoiler +
Matiz: Make sure to check out my stream http://www.twitch.tv/ministryofwin_matiz I stream mostly in polish but if there will be some english-speaking guys I can switch to english if you ask ^^ I also do private coaching, if you want the access to the mind of creator of Ministry of Win’s huge strategy database(about 40 strats) etc approach me on bnet Matiz.759 or somewhere else :> Song: Check out his stream www.Twitch.tv/songsc He also does some coaching, contact him Atsongsc2@gmail.com
That would be it I put all of these in spoilers so it's much more comprehensible. The build has still a lot of room for development. We started our journey almost month ago and Song had also other tourneys and matchup to play/train so I couldn't spend on this as much time as i would love to. Credits to gif to some guy on reddit.
What if the Zerg in the GIF did the obvious thing which is spam IT's and keep fungalling your army down? He won't really have to engage with the Corrupters at all, and fungal has longer range than both BC's normal attacks and all of raven's spells. Since fungal and Yamato cannon has the same range, I figure your entire fleet would be shut down by simply letting infestors take anything thats not BC's out of the game.
Assuming you split your army, Zerg also gets to split his, and HSM won't be even half as effective as showcased.
On August 10 2012 23:49 Xana wrote: What if the Zerg in the GIF did the obvious thing which is spam IT's and keep fungalling your army down? He won't really have to engage with the Corrupters at all, and fungal has longer range than both BC's and raven's spells.
BC's with armor upgrades are very good vs IT's. HSM is very good vs both infestors and IT's. Especially the armor upgrade is the key because zergs don't upgrade missile attack usually so if you have 2 armor for BC then IT's deal funny damage. And gif you know is just to show how cool skyterran can be
Not bad, nice to see sky terran around the 22 minute mark, not those super long games. I have only seen sky terran in tvz when its already 30+ minutes. This should be interesting. So until you reach the full army, you just turtle?
BTW, those replays....where is the download buton -.-
At which point did you miss the part where Fungal has +3 more range? You'll never get the Ravens going anywhere with that HSM. Also, any decent Zerg will upgrade missile attacks and +3/3 on air units the minute he realises its a SkyTerran build.
(At least I do, and I'm not even decent.)
EDIT: If I land a fungal on your ravens, what stops me from THEN neuraling and HSM'ing your own army?
At which point did you miss the part where Fungal has +3 more range? You'll never get the Ravens going anywhere with that HSM. Also, any decent Zerg will upgrade missile attacks and +3/3 on air units the minute he realises its a SkyTerran build.
(At least I do, and I'm not even decent.)
EDIT: If I land a fungal on your ravens, what stops me from THEN neuraling and HSM'ing your own army?
At which point did you decide to be a total prick ? -.- If you don't think ravens can get close enough to HSM infestors, you obviously don't play at a high enough level. The gif was just an example as to the raw power in a good engagement, if you're arguing "split the zerg" then simply put the Terran can do that as well. In fact, if you can get simply 2 HSM's off you'll take down 4-5 infestor's so it isn't unrealistic at all that the ravens could split and get close enough to launch the first key HSM's.
At which point did you miss the part where Fungal has +3 more range? You'll never get the Ravens going anywhere with that HSM. Also, any decent Zerg will upgrade missile attacks and +3/3 on air units the minute he realises its a SkyTerran build.
(At least I do, and I'm not even decent.)
EDIT: If I land a fungal on your ravens, what stops me from THEN neuraling and HSM'ing your own army?
Yeah well the key is to split army, in this gif neither Terran nor Zerg did it. It's very positional battle. You obviously can't let all your ravens fungaled. You are describing absolutely the worst scenario in which yes, getting very close might be sometimes hard if Zerg does everything perfectly but then it means there is less energy for IT's and PDD's (that can be casted beforehand or after fungal expires ofc) still make insane difference in battle as corruptors get very influenced by it. Also 10 BC + 15-20 viking is still pretty decent vs corruptors.
On August 11 2012 01:08 Sated wrote: I wish that guide writers would get someone to proof read their guides for them when English isn't their first language. I suppose it's a harsh criticism to level at someone who has obviously put a lot of effort into their guide, but parts of this are really hard to read...
... but this is still an awesome guide. I'm glad that Terran players are looking at Sky Terran as a possible answer to Broodlord/Infestor compositions because it might inspire more Protoss players to take a harder look at Carriers! :D
I don't know... It gives each guide its own specific flair and I got through this guide without much trouble.
In any case, Sky Terran is something that has actually terrified me in PvT because of how cost efficient it is in comparison to MMM. Glad to finally see this strat being done in TvZ, and I just love BCs and ravens!
if he splits his corrupters in that gif you have 0 chance. also spores and spines. you need tanks tvz. thats just the way it is. or build hydra spores and counter attack with ling bling.
I am trying to learn it but the timings seem way off, I coulnd afford to make tanks so fast and the guide doesn't says anything about what to do with my addons and when to get stim. (you get infrantry attack upgrades so I asume you make plenty of bio?) Granted I haven't watched the replays but if that's neccesary to learn the build I think that the build order section needs an update.
If you haven't got all the timings written down I'll watch the replays later tonight and make a build order section tonight if you want? I am a little short on time currently.
Edit: so I just watched 2 replays and saw SonG get just chsield and +2 once on Shakuras and now this game on Daybreak he gets stim at like 13:00, I am a bit confused what to do with the combat shield and stim upgrade, the rest of the build order note seems fine aside from some minor things. So if you could just explain the deal about stim and c shield ^^
I for one am hugely excited about the raven becoming much better. Once people actually start playing like this, they will easily win. Zerg has the worst anti-air in the game combined with the problem of having absolutely nothing that deals with energy based units. Really, really excited to see what change to Zerg they will make to make it possible to actually deal with this. I've played around against a friend for a few hours in a unit tester and there literally wasn't an army in the game I could make that could kill even half of mass raven / BC at any cost.
On August 10 2012 23:49 Xana wrote: What if the Zerg in the GIF did the obvious thing which is spam IT's and keep fungalling your army down? He won't really have to engage with the Corrupters at all, and fungal has longer range than both BC's normal attacks and all of raven's spells. Since fungal and Yamato cannon has the same range, I figure your entire fleet would be shut down by simply letting infestors take anything thats not BC's out of the game.
Assuming you split your army, Zerg also gets to split his, and HSM won't be even half as effective as showcased.
You can also lay down turret fields to prevent the Infestors from trying to approach you without dying. Since his army would be mostly corruptor/infestor, there isn't much to kill the turrets with except ITs.
Also, i was really skeptical at first but hurray for a legit air guide! thanks!
Instead of turtling up really hard and making the game come down to one huge engagement, could it be possible to do something like 3OC 2 or 3port banshee with quick double air upgrades -> sky terran? I feel like you'd have a lot more power that way as you can stay aggressive to make sure the Zerg isn't getting way too greedy, like expanding to every single unoccupied base on Condemned.
You could even skip the infantry upgrades and maybe even tanks - I think two bunkers at your natural and three at your third + a PF at every expansion past your third should provide enough time for your banshees to clean up any form of attack that is attempted in the early/midgame, and after you've gotten six geysers and started Raven production you should be able to take your fourth/fifth with relative ease.
I feel like banshees are too good not to use when going sky terran - Zerg really has no way to stop you from denying any base past their third until they get muta, which would probably be a typical response to mass banshee in the early game. As long as you can snipe hatches before they finish, they just can't get spores down so you're forcing a) hydra, b) muta, or c) corruptor along with infestor. After you've forced a response and scouted his tech choice, you can easily just sit back on 4/5 bases and get out your raven/BC while continually harassing with banshee until you've forced spores on every inch of creep.
Quit theorycrafting out of your ass on why this build won't work if you've never played it or against it before. You don't think haypro, hyun, stephano, etc thought about move-commanding their corruptors into BCs to make HSM useless, or using FG?
FG is great against pure raven, but it is shit when there are siege tanks or BC's around, not to mention it takes quite a few FG to kill ravens or BCs. Air terran can reach a critical mass where any sort of air army will get destroy, HSM is just ridiculously strong. Mass hydras get raped by BC's too, just like they get raped by carriers, because they don't do enough damage and have too little health.
Only way I see beating sky terran is going ultras. We've seen in Code S some zergs get slain by sky terran (usually on atlantis too). What do you think OP (as in what beat this).
On August 11 2012 01:48 R3m3mb3rM3 wrote: if he splits his corrupters in that gif you have 0 chance. also spores and spines. you need tanks tvz. thats just the way it is. or build hydra spores and counter attack with ling bling.
Need tanks TvZ? That's not true given that a lot of high level players play the MU tankless. They tend to get 1-2 volleys off before being swarmed and they're a pretty expensive meat shield. MarineKing styled Bio/Thor is a perfect example of a successful tankless style.
On August 11 2012 03:59 Belial88 wrote: Quit theorycrafting out of your ass on why this build won't work if you've never played it or against it before. You don't think haypro, hyun, stephano, etc thought about move-commanding their corruptors into BCs to make HSM useless, or using FG?
FG is great against pure raven, but it is shit when there are siege tanks or BC's around, not to mention it takes quite a few FG to kill ravens or BCs. Air terran can reach a critical mass where any sort of air army will get destroy, HSM is just ridiculously strong. Mass hydras get raped by BC's too, just like they get raped by carriers, because they don't do enough damage and have too little health.
Only way I see beating sky terran is going ultras. We've seen in Code S some zergs get slain by sky terran (usually on atlantis too). What do you think OP (as in what beat this).
Thanks for the smart words. I have quite a lot of experience as a zerg fighting vs this because i was also the training partner of song for like month vs this style. I'd say the timing attack with MASS like 50-60 infested terrans and pure corruptors (2-3 BL at max) before terran constructs the whole composition is pretty good, it's not auto-win though, its very micro/split dependant and also terran can nullify it with good amounts planetaries and turrets
Yea, please check out reps first before commenting
I think a sky style like this is the future of TvZ and should become a used strategy soon at the highest level. Battlecruisers are very powerful because they are resistant to fungal. their weakness to corrupters is a secondary problem
I think the perfect army is actually about 10vikings, 2ravens, 3tanks, everything else battlecruisers. when moving across the map you leapfrog your 3 tanks (takes alot of micro i know) and the tanks outrange fungal/NP. keep your BC's fairly spread, and keep the vikings/ravens over the tanks in area protected by tanks. Then you constantly scan and yamato ultralisks/broodlords when you see them. then when corrupters come in, you actually trade pretty well against them with 10viking/bc and some PDD's
I believe HSM is very weak in a sky build. Instead HSM seems to be more designed as a power play to use when going full BIO+medivac/raven. Its a strategy thats popping up at the high level that seems to work well. You have like 40 marauders, 30 marines, some 7 medivacs, and like 13 ravens to HSM the broodlords. you dont even bother stimming your bio, just spread them and a-move and keep the marines behind the marauders, a-move your entire army and let the medivacs heal fungal and with a couple HSM's the entire zergs army will melt
instead of HSM, those 2ravens are a very powerful asset against corrupters. 4 PDD's are so strong when they block corrupter attacks. you can almost kill 200food of pure corrupter with mass BC+10viking+2ravens if the zerg maxes out to 230food of corrupters (spine tricks) then you want 4-5ravens for 10PDD's
I will say however I think the build in the OP is probably not the most optimal way to perform this plan. I think you could find a more cost effective way to do this like get marine/tank and save money by not needing bunkers, and leapfrog siege tanks to take a fourth base then become hyper defensive and you should get the 4bases faster putting more stress on the zerg. and with leaprogged tanks your marines become protected from fungal. Then if the zerg is going mass muta, you match his muta count with vikings and sensor towers to be safe from muta. spread vikings with tank support should slaughter mutas+infestors. Then you just skip bio upgrades and start saccing marines for BC's and slowly reach the supreme sky army with defensive planetarys protecting your 4bases
Reads legit and considering the opponents you beat with it it's no wonder. I just want to see one thing, the replay where zerg gets off two NP's and uses your own ravens against you and every single raven you own blows up at once leaving you with no ravens and a bunch of half health battlecruisers. Which was easily possible in the gif you gave, zerg just NP'ed the wrong targets.
I think the only way to beat properly played Sky Terran is to continuously go Ultra/Crackling w/ Nydus and destroy all their production facilities and econ, then continue to split/trade/remax with Corruptor/Infestor as best as possible until his army eventually dies.
You gotta love it when random low level noobs come into a guide thread saying "IT WONT WORK, X Y or Z WILL HAPPEN AND YOU WILL LOSE" I'm 100% certain that if it can work vs grand master and pro level players, it can fucking work. There are examples of sky terran being used AT the pro level with 40+ minute games, this guide just shows a different way to get there/ how to play it all game long.
Anyway, guide looks very interesting will definitely be trying it out, thanks for the info, I'm sure a lot of us appreciate the effort, ignore the other ungrateful fucktards.
Edit: My biggest concern is the typical concern in tvz late game, zergs production. When zerg has a ton of bases and tons of larva, his eco and production can get insane, and virtually last forever (until you do something to stop it, or he wins the game). Assuming that zerg doesn't blunder his army control and lose everything while killing nothing (allowing you to just rampage through some of his eco while he rebuilds) how are you going to secure more bases and keep your deathball rolling. If zerg constantly attacks/contests/denies your 5th/6th bases you will eventually get outproduced. Going to check out the replays to see if this is addressed, but would love some feedback if it isn't
On August 10 2012 23:37 Matiz_pl wrote: 4.2 Mid game Hello, you survived early game. Let’s do the same what we did in early game but 3 times harder - develop our economy and camp on tanks. There are more threats in this part; ass ling baneling, fast 2 base muta, muta ling baneling, mass ling infested terrans etc etc.
I'd be terrified of facing ass ling baneling
What a wonderful guide! I've been looking for inspiration in TvZ lately, and this is exactly the kind of idea that I wanted. I'm scared of trying this as the lowly diamond that I am (afraid I won't be able to utilize the strong econ well enough), but I'll try to just keep spamming bunkers and planetaries. The guide might be a bit overspecific as far as timings go, but maybe the build just requires that much precision. I liked the write up about exploring the build - rather than every XX:XX time where you build something, talking about the idea of what to build (and when) gives it a nice anchor that makes it easy to remember in game.
I mess around with a similar idea, but I use a heavy helion/marine with some tanks build to get my my bases up and running and just go straight into sky terran and send my marines and helions to be as annoying as terranly possible. I also follow the mentality of PF walls split the map and hold my bases. A couple of turrets help with pesky burrowed units trying to hit far away expansions. Then just camp over the PF and let the zerg run into a hellish scene of blood(hint: skyterran has no blood to spill ). Personally I think you should have a section about which air upgrades are better to prioritize, which will depend on the compositions of the Zerg. As if they are going infestor heavey for a mass IT break then armour is the better upgrade. Then again this is only if you have trouble getting your gas going.
On August 11 2012 06:18 Flonomenalz wrote: I think the only way to beat properly played Sky Terran is to continuously go Ultra/Crackling w/ Nydus and destroy all their production facilities and econ, then continue to split/trade/remax with Corruptor/Infestor as best as possible until his army eventually dies.
Not really, no.
You just keep 2 marauders on patrol in your main to deny Nydus. After your main is mined out (by that point, you got all the shop upgrades), even if he does a mass-drop of Zerglings+Ultras, you can go clean that up with the fleet while lifting up and moving all your production facilities (4/5 starports) to the closest place that has 3+ PF's at it, and remaking the core there.
The rest of the bases have 2+ PF's with turrets/bunkers/supply around them, and repairing SCV's, and some of them got tanks. Oh, and the fleet can usually cover quite a lot of bases. So if you don't have around 8+ ultras, you wont kill of the expansion, and if you do, you've thrown a ton of gas to kill maby 2 PFs (300 gas) while usually losing at least 6 ultras once the fleet has arived and cleaned up everything, which is worth way more than 300 gas. Meanwhile the Terran lifts one of the many fresh CC's and puts it in place again, turning it anto a PF while not disturbing the gas mining. You can argue that you had nydus and most of your units could escape, but if you did, he should've had 2 patrol marauders there to deny it (with soem turret wall ,in case you went late-game mutas).
If any composition can beat Raven/BC, that's Corruptor/Infestor, but with similar levels of micro you'd still win.
On August 11 2012 03:59 Belial88 wrote: Quit theorycrafting out of your ass on why this build won't work if you've never played it or against it before. You don't think haypro, hyun, stephano, etc thought about move-commanding their corruptors into BCs to make HSM useless, or using FG?
FG is great against pure raven, but it is shit when there are siege tanks or BC's around, not to mention it takes quite a few FG to kill ravens or BCs. Air terran can reach a critical mass where any sort of air army will get destroy, HSM is just ridiculously strong. Mass hydras get raped by BC's too, just like they get raped by carriers, because they don't do enough damage and have too little health.
Only way I see beating sky terran is going ultras. We've seen in Code S some zergs get slain by sky terran (usually on atlantis too). What do you think OP (as in what beat this).
I wouldn't say FG is shit, but yeah, it doesn't "counter" sky terran.
The best counter is to counter with ling/bling/ultra, that's the only style I've actually had trouble with once I got bc/raven/ghost up and running. Ultras just do not die and cracklings are basically free and can be really annoying.It basically just flips the match-up towards Z having to abuse the Terran's immobility, rather than the other way around. But even then it can be really hard the later the game goes; nydus worms are pretty easy to deny if you don't build 4-5 in his main and PFs are pretty good.
You can still win with just corruptor/raven, but it becomes more of a "am I going to NP a raven and blow his shit up before he blows my shit up?" or "will he stack all his ravens into 1fg range?" which sucks.
What do you think is the best way to deal with mass lings? I tried something somewhat similar on metropolis, the zerg counterattacked with huge amounts of lings and it was really annoying to deal with. It's not a counter to this build at all, just very frustrating to deal with. Maybe dump some of the minerals into hellions?
I have some experience with yoshis pure air build and I've found that hanging around, harassing expansions, and expanding/placing PF/turret everywhere works quite well once you get rolling. Upgraded of pretty good against long counters, also if you can force the big engagemt im range of your defense, well then, bitchin'
On August 11 2012 07:41 4Servy wrote: This style actualy gets shut down prety hard when zerg players stop making 20+ broodlords vs pure air.
Mass infestors and some ling/ultra to destroy shit and harras absolutly wrecks the living shit out of this except for mb 1-2 maps.
What if the terran camps at his PF's and gets some ghosts to emp/snipe or even positional nuke so the Zerg can't force an engagment with IT. Also not going Bl or corrupter just allows the Terran to ignore vikings and hence they will have enough supply to get extra Bc's and ghost.
There have been numerous posts about harassing and how difficult it is for Zerg to do against a careful Terran.
On August 11 2012 07:35 kranten wrote: What do you think is the best way to deal with mass lings? I tried something somewhat similar on metropolis, the zerg counterattacked with huge amounts of lings and it was really annoying to deal with. It's not a counter to this build at all, just very frustrating to deal with. Maybe dump some of the minerals into hellions?
Hey guys, In fact u have a LOT of money because of ur high gaz army. Thats why, like a late game zerg can do u can put some PF & some bunker & turret on every open space. That's also why the build order / mix is better on some map ! Thanks for all ur feedback !
I like how the early siege mode keeps this relatively safe against baneling busts and especially roach/baneling all-ins. I'll give this a try, thanks for the build.
You sir just made my day, just won against a zerg with this tactic, i haven't won against a zerg without doing some king of all-inish attacks before late game. But thanks to you I won against a zerg in a late game. I may only be in gold but this helped me alot. Thanks (: Also Raven is one of my favorite units. :D
On August 11 2012 01:08 Sated wrote: I wish that guide writers would get someone to proof read their guides for them when English isn't their first language. I suppose it's a harsh criticism to level at someone who has obviously put a lot of effort into their guide, but parts of this are really hard to read...
... but this is still an awesome guide. I'm glad that Terran players are looking at Sky Terran as a possible answer to Broodlord/Infestor compositions because it might inspire more Protoss players to take a harder look at Carriers! :D
Really? English may not be their first language but I was able to understand this whole guide perfectly fine.
You have to tolerate, not everyone speaks english. Surely their engilsh is at least good enough so people will understand the guide. It seems that you are the only one who cannot udnerstand parts of this guide too.
Couldnt make it work. Every time Zerg just take all map and send waves of blings, lings, roaches to your expos. They just do so much pressure. Im just getting tired from running from 3rd to 4th and back to natural -.-. For me its 20times easier to pressure zerg with drops.
1 time I actually managed to make that 200 limit deathball, however all i had left after baneling rolls was 1 crappy expo and half base :D
Going back to 2 base MMM 3rd base kill, while taking own 3rd.
On August 11 2012 06:18 Flonomenalz wrote: I think the only way to beat properly played Sky Terran is to continuously go Ultra/Crackling w/ Nydus and destroy all their production facilities and econ, then continue to split/trade/remax with Corruptor/Infestor as best as possible until his army eventually dies.
Not really, no.
You just keep 2 marauders on patrol in your main to deny Nydus. After your main is mined out (by that point, you got all the shop upgrades), even if he does a mass-drop of Zerglings+Ultras, you can go clean that up with the fleet while lifting up and moving all your production facilities (4/5 starports) to the closest place that has 3+ PF's at it, and remaking the core there.
The rest of the bases have 2+ PF's with turrets/bunkers/supply around them, and repairing SCV's, and some of them got tanks. Oh, and the fleet can usually cover quite a lot of bases. So if you don't have around 8+ ultras, you wont kill of the expansion, and if you do, you've thrown a ton of gas to kill maby 2 PFs (300 gas) while usually losing at least 6 ultras once the fleet has arived and cleaned up everything, which is worth way more than 300 gas. Meanwhile the Terran lifts one of the many fresh CC's and puts it in place again, turning it anto a PF while not disturbing the gas mining. You can argue that you had nydus and most of your units could escape, but if you did, he should've had 2 patrol marauders there to deny it (with soem turret wall ,in case you went late-game mutas).
If any composition can beat Raven/BC, that's Corruptor/Infestor, but with similar levels of micro you'd still win.
can't the zerg drop 8-16 clings onto your patrol and then nydus as your patrol is dying?
Another question= how does BC raven deal with the zerg covering the map with over a hundred spores so you have to slowpush with a few tanks to clear out the spores, and what if he has just a couple bl queen to dance around the spores to keep the tanks/vikings away?
On August 11 2012 06:18 Flonomenalz wrote: I think the only way to beat properly played Sky Terran is to continuously go Ultra/Crackling w/ Nydus and destroy all their production facilities and econ, then continue to split/trade/remax with Corruptor/Infestor as best as possible until his army eventually dies.
Not really, no.
You just keep 2 marauders on patrol in your main to deny Nydus. After your main is mined out (by that point, you got all the shop upgrades), even if he does a mass-drop of Zerglings+Ultras, you can go clean that up with the fleet while lifting up and moving all your production facilities (4/5 starports) to the closest place that has 3+ PF's at it, and remaking the core there.
The rest of the bases have 2+ PF's with turrets/bunkers/supply around them, and repairing SCV's, and some of them got tanks. Oh, and the fleet can usually cover quite a lot of bases. So if you don't have around 8+ ultras, you wont kill of the expansion, and if you do, you've thrown a ton of gas to kill maby 2 PFs (300 gas) while usually losing at least 6 ultras once the fleet has arived and cleaned up everything, which is worth way more than 300 gas. Meanwhile the Terran lifts one of the many fresh CC's and puts it in place again, turning it anto a PF while not disturbing the gas mining. You can argue that you had nydus and most of your units could escape, but if you did, he should've had 2 patrol marauders there to deny it (with soem turret wall ,in case you went late-game mutas).
If any composition can beat Raven/BC, that's Corruptor/Infestor, but with similar levels of micro you'd still win.
can't the zerg drop 8-16 clings onto your patrol and then nydus as your patrol is dying?
Another question= how does BC raven deal with the zerg covering the map with over a hundred spores so you have to slowpush with a few tanks to clear out the spores, and what if he has just a couple bl queen to dance around the spores to keep the tanks/vikings away?
On August 10 2012 23:49 Xana wrote: What if the Zerg in the GIF did the obvious thing which is spam IT's and keep fungalling your army down? He won't really have to engage with the Corrupters at all, and fungal has longer range than both BC's normal attacks and all of raven's spells. Since fungal and Yamato cannon has the same range, I figure your entire fleet would be shut down by simply letting infestors take anything thats not BC's out of the game.
Assuming you split your army, Zerg also gets to split his, and HSM won't be even half as effective as showcased.
Yup.
The video shown in the beginning actually is a fairly terrible engagement, almost the worst possible. If the zerg simply held back and stun locked with fungals it would almost be enough to kill all of that air alone. If the zerg microed his corruptors into the units he would have lost everything while the infestors remained. FFS the infestors even neural parasite the BCs which are nearly useless, if he neuraled the ravens serious damage could have occured as well.
Although the strategy may be good overall that video certainly does not accurately represent it, i'm thoroughly skeptical since i have played a similar style myself before, in my experience and in the experience of many pro games sky terran against zerg is pretty terrible. For the same reasons that skytoss is not very good against zerg sky terran is pretty bad against zerg, even moreso given the very short range of the BC, the low range of HSM and the lack of a mothership like unit to vortex infestors/corruptors.
The only reason it works is because it's wierd. Sure enough, good control of sky terran allows more cost-efficient way of dealing with Zerg deathball, although with the strat as it is zerg can go 4 hatch before pool and be fine with it(I'm being sarcastic here)
Another question= how does BC raven deal with the zerg covering the map with over a hundred spores so you have to slowpush with a few tanks to clear out the spores, and what if he has just a couple bl queen to dance around the spores to keep the tanks/vikings away?
If you have BC/Raven, then you don't need tanks to deal with mass Spores. PDD shuts down Spores/Queens cold and if Zerg wants to play the transfuse game you just Yamato the Queens or whatever he's trying to heal (e.g "Transfuse This!"). Plus this means that Zerg is dumping larva into making drones instead of more dangerous units, and large amounts of minerals are being spent on Spores instead of Zergling counterattacks. This probably works out better for the Terran.
My question is about the 150 ling remax (with banes/or ultras included) that is the bane of all sky terran builds. Even with sim city the zerg will get in and demolish all of the terrans production and mining, effectively killing the terran off.
The reason this doesnt work against mech/ or bio is that marines and hellions are always around, with sky terran willnot have a unit to deal with these counters unless they invest in muiltiple bunkers. In which case the main terran army gets smaller because the amount of bunkers that need to be placed. The terran could use tanks but they will soak up alot of gas and still wont hold back 150 lings unless there is amazing sim city.
I have no doubt that sky terran can beat lategame sky zerg, the problem lies in what the zerg does after they remax. Its amazing stupid how long it takes a bc to kill an ultra (even with yamato), plus sky terran isnt fast enough to deal with large counter attacks as bc so it down.
I am not saying that sky terran wont work, it can, but it simply isnt as effective as people make it out. Just my 2 cents
can't the zerg drop 8-16 clings onto your patrol and then nydus as your patrol is dying?
Another question= how does BC raven deal with the zerg covering the map with over a hundred spores so you have to slowpush with a few tanks to clear out the spores, and what if he has just a couple bl queen to dance around the spores to keep the tanks/vikings away?
In the earlier game, you'd usually have some tank/marine to defend it, no matter what strat you're using. you saw him going for drops, just build 2/3 bunkers there and put marines in them. With building armour, that'd be enough to defend versus a lot of drops. In the mid-game, he wont be able to continuously do big drops. If he does one, go and clean it up with the fleet, knowing that he doesn't have enough supply to break your front PF/Tank defenses since much of his supply is in the drop. By the time he does have the income and production for such continues drops, your main and natural would be mined out, so you just lift the Starports and go place them at one of the locations with 2~3 PF's you should have by that time. Also rebuild the core there.
As for when he fills the map with spores.... don't waste gas on tanks, he can trade them for lings. There are a few repeatable things you can do at the edge of the spore-crawler wall (assuming you got pure Raven/BC, never had vikings so I don't know): 1. Use 2 Yomatos for 1 Spore, and retreat to a safe spot to recharge energy. Takes a year, but still the most safe thing you can do. (You still save at least half the yomatos for gas units, like infestors). 2. Place a PDD, dart in with the BC's, since a spore or 2 and move back. Relatively safe if there is a ground choke, and you can Yomato any infestor that tries to come through the spires and NP/Fungle, as well as use PDDs at the back if he tries to fight with curruptors. 3. Fly 1/2 Ravens and place a few Auto-Turrets at around 6/7 range from the spores. Target the spores, even if he uses Infested Terrans - by the time they hatch, the spore you targeted should be dead if you placed 4/5 turrets. This all asumes he placed those ITs at least 3 squeres far from your buildings, else he'd either have the infestors at Yomato range or the IT's at the BC fire range. Auto Turrets win vs Infested Terrans 1:1 by the way, especially in larger numbers as AT's have higher range. However IT's are only 25 energy, so don't expect this to be more than a trade of some raven energy for the spore instead of BC energy. Repeat either of those things, take the ground with Auto Turrets (and normal ones), and eventually you'll push him back to a corner and kill him.
On August 12 2012 07:15 TheMadTecha wrote: My question is about the 150 ling remax (with banes/or ultras included) that is the bane of all sky terran builds. Even with sim city the zerg will get in and demolish all of the terrans production and mining, effectively killing the terran off.
In this situation it will probably devolve into a base race.
Because none (or very few) of his remax units can shoot air, you should lift all of your buildings, completely ignore his army, and march straight to his base. Kill his Hive. Kill his Greater Spire. Kill his Infestation Pit. He now cannot make anything that can damage your army or kill your buildings and he can't remake the Spire or Infestation Pit to open up the tech tree. Even if he did have his tech tree open, he has to slowly kill off his ground army himself (including those 150+ lings...) unit by unit in order to free up supply in order to even make Corruptors/Infestors. Hunt down every single Hatch that he tries to morph into Lair and kill any Spires/Infestation Pits that he made before the Hive died if he realized the danger he was in. If he tries to mass Queens/Spores, PDD shuts down damage from those while Yamato takes care of Transfuse attempts.
Never ever ever attack his army (even if you fly over him...) so that his supply remains locked into units that can't shoot up and forcing him into a micro nightmare of having to individually kill 150+ Zerglings (and other things) in order to free up supply to build Infestors/Corruptors. If you encounter a few units that can shoot air here and there, just specifically target those while ignoring his ground army. Even if he manages to squeeze out a few anti-air units in this manner, it takes a massive amount of these units to realisitically take on a BC/Raven force. Any small amounts will die almost immediately to HSM/Yamato.
Now obviously this is a great simplification, but I think you get the general idea. The biggest mistake against the full Ling/Ultra/Bling remax is trying to defend. A full ground mobilty force remax should mean a base race if you have a BC/Raven army. You are too slow to defend with your units. So just hope your Planetaries can delay him a bit and go wipe out the Zerg's tech tree while you fly your buildings around. Keep his supply locked into his ground force by completely ignoring his army. All your stuff flies anyway, so why bother killing his ground units? Once he can't make stuff that can shoot air there's no way he can win.
Given that after the intial battle the terran's army should be about 1/2-2/3 its maxed size, a zerg will win a base race with the terran unless he lifts his buildings. A base race scenario should never be part of a strategy, it should be a last resort when things go pear shaped. Furthermore, if the zerg goes mass spore (they should have the money because of sky terrans inability to harras with the exception of banshees) the terrans base race scenario becomes even more of a grey area. The only solution i see that can completely solve the problem would be to drop pfs in highley defensable positions to slow down and/or prevent a full on base race. Combining this with well placed supply depot(around the pf) and the armor upgrade. A full sky terran play is possiable, unitl zerg learns how to split and hug the terran ball with curropters.
On August 12 2012 09:25 TheMadTecha wrote: Given that after the intial battle the terran's army should be about 1/2-2/3 its maxed size, a zerg will win a base race with the terran unless he lifts his buildings. A base race scenario should never be part of a strategy, it should be a last resort when things go pear shaped.
Strongly disagree with you here. Given that the Terran will have been saccing most of his SCV's for OC/Mules, his initial army will be immensely larger than the Zerg who has 80 food in drones. Thus a remax for Zerg would be ~120 food army that cannot shoot air (according to your original post). Because the Terran would have around 160-180 food army from saccing SCV's, even 1/2-2/3 of max for the Terran is going to be around ~100 food worth of BC/Raven which would be more than enough to easily win a base race with the Zerg.
And a base race should ABSOLUTELY be part of a strategy if a situation arises in which it is the best possible option. You yourself say in your original post that Ultras take too long to kill and the ling/ultra/bling composition is too mobile to track down. In such a situation a base race is probably the best choice available to you considering you can lift your buildings to make them invulnerable to his pure ground army.
Furthermore, if the zerg goes mass spore (they should have the money because of sky terrans inability to harras with the exception of banshees) the terrans base race scenario becomes even more of a grey area.
Mass Spores are a joke. Not only is the Zerg blowing larva and minerals on Drones/Spores which will severely reduce his Zergling count, but Spores are easily stopped by PDD's and Yamato.
The only solution i see that can completely solve the problem would be to drop pfs in highley defensable positions to slow down and/or prevent a full on base race. Combining this with well placed supply depot(around the pf) and the armor upgrade. A full sky terran play is possiable, unitl zerg learns how to split and hug the terran ball with curropters.
Did you even read the original guide and watch the replays? Massing PF's is exactly what the guide tells you to do. Splitting Corruptors and hugging doesn't do much to stop this because PDD's shut down Corruptors cold due to their extremely slow attack speed. You think Hyun and Haypro don't know how to split/hug? They try and get killed anyway. The only way to beat this is to catch his Ravens with Infestors before he can get in range to use his PDD/HSM effectively. In essence, whoever controls better wins.
On August 12 2012 07:15 TheMadTecha wrote: My question is about the 150 ling remax (with banes/or ultras included) that is the bane of all sky terran builds. Even with sim city the zerg will get in and demolish all of the terrans production and mining, effectively killing the terran off.
The reason this doesnt work against mech/ or bio is that marines and hellions are always around, with sky terran willnot have a unit to deal with these counters unless they invest in muiltiple bunkers. In which case the main terran army gets smaller because the amount of bunkers that need to be placed. The terran could use tanks but they will soak up alot of gas and still wont hold back 150 lings unless there is amazing sim city.
I have no doubt that sky terran can beat lategame sky zerg, the problem lies in what the zerg does after they remax. Its amazing stupid how long it takes a bc to kill an ultra (even with yamato), plus sky terran isnt fast enough to deal with large counter attacks as bc so it down.
I am not saying that sky terran wont work, it can, but it simply isnt as effective as people make it out. Just my 2 cents
you would defend in the case of a pure ling ultra remax?... why not just go kill his overlords and base trade? L is a good command
I think you misunderstood me, so i will re-iliterate for you. I said a player should never aim for a base race scenario (meaning its shouldn't be their main plan). Whether or not a base race is the best option, is another case which is dependent on the game at hand (which no amount of theory crafting can predict the right response).
Furthermore, sacking workers to the degree you stated (20-40 left) i strongly disagree. 40 workers plus additional mules is ok to have but anything below 30 is virtual suicide even with 8cc of mules. Reducing the terrans income to this amount effectively makes his army an all-in has he can at best produce 1 more similar sized army and is then out of resourses. Also, with such a low scv count small groups of ling counter attacks can devastate what is left of the economy, and yes before you say anything i know the terran is on a 5k bank with 8cc's, dropping down below 30 scv is always gonna be a mistake no matter what stage of the game they are in.
Yes i did read the guide, all of it in fact, i was agreeing with you.
Now, curropters are an extremely supply and cost effiecient unit. Despite be labelled as lost dps, i find that they are very useful when dealing with all air units(including ravens and vikings). The sky terran arny in this case will be a ball, and if we ignore infestors for the moment and foocas on curropters vs terran air we can see some interesting micro battles. Magix boxed curropters are fast enough to get within the ball without taking to many SM at which point the terran must drop significant amounts of point defense drones to prevent his army dieing. Now, even though the terrans army should still win with about 1/2 it left, all the ravens and bc will be drained of energy, letting zerg do what zerg do best which is remax on a air army (as welll as 20 lings for harras), and go and finish the terran (who is weakened and low on energy).
Curropters has a shortish build time of around 40 seconds which helps, as well as the majority of the inf still being alive. This remax air army will be possible for the zerg since has maintained a worker count and lots of bases.
Finally, i never disagreed with you that sky terran is a bad strategy, i believe that it will work against zerg in most stituations where its blob vs blob in late game. However, i still maintain that zerg if playing correctly should still be able to defeat the terran unless they entered the late game on a bad economy.
P.S. (your last post you seemed angry and frustrated, it doesnt add to your cause by doing so, if you weren't pls disregard this statement)
I rocked his corruptor/broodlord army and won game 1.
In game 2, ultras,blings, infestors rocked me up. My econ got ravaged and he defended with tons of queens, spores and infested terrans when I went for a base-trade after it took me a moment to realize that my air wasn't killing the ground fast enough ( with lift and all ).
Next time, I'll try using PF + seige tanks to hold (I was using PFs before too, btw, but not really placing tanks behind a PF to take out banes), while adding banshees into my air to take out the ground faster. But yeah, that won't be happening soon enough.
Btw: the person complaining about making spores has me scratching my head. Is it any different than a spine crawler forest that we see all the time?
Themadtecha Why again is it bad to have base race as a plan? If it wins, it wins. Are you against all ins as well? If the Zerg base races, you win. They made the mistake of trying to base race a Terran and pay the price
@ 9-bit I only ever use base races as a last resort after the zerg in this case as broken my walls and into my production, only then will i think of base racing. I also try to avoid planning to base race if he does "x", which to me is a sign of a bad or ill-prepared strategy.
Similar to base racing i never all-in unless then have broken into my base in which case it is a base race anyways, but even in this case i still send scvs to build buildings around the map. I do not plan all-ins into my strategies i do not use them if an oppertunity arises, I will simply attack at a timing which is advantangeous to me.
The closest i get to all-ining is bringing scv to build bunkers (about 5) when i am doing early pressure.
I do this because (and i am trying to be modest here) i like to macro and am pretty good at it and all-ining with all my scvs doesnt help that. Also i like to always have a fallback plan
If winning is all you want, then go ahead and do what you will think will win the most. It completely up to you to do what you want, and i wont tell you otherwise.
On August 12 2012 07:15 TheMadTecha wrote: My question is about the 150 ling remax (with banes/or ultras included) that is the bane of all sky terran builds. Even with sim city the zerg will get in and demolish all of the terrans production and mining, effectively killing the terran off.
The reason this doesnt work against mech/ or bio is that marines and hellions are always around, with sky terran willnot have a unit to deal with these counters unless they invest in muiltiple bunkers. In which case the main terran army gets smaller because the amount of bunkers that need to be placed. The terran could use tanks but they will soak up alot of gas and still wont hold back 150 lings unless there is amazing sim city.
I have no doubt that sky terran can beat lategame sky zerg, the problem lies in what the zerg does after they remax. Its amazing stupid how long it takes a bc to kill an ultra (even with yamato), plus sky terran isnt fast enough to deal with large counter attacks as bc so it down.
I am not saying that sky terran wont work, it can, but it simply isnt as effective as people make it out. Just my 2 cents
The build specifically says to get an insane number of bunkers, and they don't reduce the size of your army when you're running on gas.
Also, banshees are pretty decent against Ultras. Banshees plus Auto Turrets to slow them down.
Someone did this against me in high masters a couple of weeks ago (was it you?) and I creamed him pretty badly... roaches are a hard counter to this build early/mid-game because they just sit them behind mineral lines and whatnot (out of range of PFs) and prevent you from mining, it's not hard at all....
On August 12 2012 15:37 FairForever wrote: Someone did this against me in high masters a couple of weeks ago (was it you?) and I creamed him pretty badly... roaches are a hard counter to this build early/mid-game because they just sit them behind mineral lines and whatnot (out of range of PFs) and prevent you from mining, it's not hard at all....
How do you get past mass bunkers and well positioned tanks to sit behind mineral lines? Read the first line of the post above yours.
On August 12 2012 15:37 FairForever wrote: Someone did this against me in high masters a couple of weeks ago (was it you?) and I creamed him pretty badly... roaches are a hard counter to this build early/mid-game because they just sit them behind mineral lines and whatnot (out of range of PFs) and prevent you from mining, it's not hard at all....
How do you get past mass bunkers and well positioned tanks to sit behind mineral lines? Read the first line of the post above yours.
On August 12 2012 15:37 FairForever wrote: Someone did this against me in high masters a couple of weeks ago (was it you?) and I creamed him pretty badly... roaches are a hard counter to this build early/mid-game because they just sit them behind mineral lines and whatnot (out of range of PFs) and prevent you from mining, it's not hard at all....
How do you get past mass bunkers and well positioned tanks to sit behind mineral lines? Read the first line of the post above yours.
Download links broken, or is it me? It says a) "Windows cannot access the specified device, path or file..." or b) It starts up, but after the game launches, the replay does not launch.
On August 12 2012 15:37 FairForever wrote: Someone did this against me in high masters a couple of weeks ago (was it you?) and I creamed him pretty badly... roaches are a hard counter to this build early/mid-game because they just sit them behind mineral lines and whatnot (out of range of PFs) and prevent you from mining, it's not hard at all....
On August 12 2012 15:37 FairForever wrote: Someone did this against me in high masters a couple of weeks ago (was it you?) and I creamed him pretty badly... roaches are a hard counter to this build early/mid-game because they just sit them behind mineral lines and whatnot (out of range of PFs) and prevent you from mining, it's not hard at all....
In the early mid game we use marines and tanks to hold pressure, the guy you played should have just went and killed the roaches at his mineral line. I don't know how they got there because he should be bunkering up at his front and tanks in behind so unless you dropped roaches he did something wrong.
On August 12 2012 12:18 TheMadTecha wrote: I think you misunderstood me, so i will re-iliterate for you. I said a player should never aim for a base race scenario (meaning its shouldn't be their main plan). Whether or not a base race is the best option, is another case which is dependent on the game at hand (which no amount of theory crafting can predict the right response).
Actually I understood what you said perfectly. Your first post in this thread asked about what to do about the 150+ ling remax, usually with Ultras/Banes. I'm telling you that in that SPECIFIC situation, the best course of action is to base race him. You cannot defend because BC/Raven isn't mobile enough. It's better to just go kill his base while you lift your buildings. Terran will win this situation 9 times out of 10.
Now if he remaxes with air again, then of course you won't go base race him because it's a different situation entirely.
Furthermore, sacking workers to the degree you stated (20-40 left) i strongly disagree. 40 workers plus additional mules is ok to have but anything below 30 is virtual suicide even with 8cc of mules. Reducing the terrans income to this amount effectively makes his army an all-in has he can at best produce 1 more similar sized army and is then out of resourses. Also, with such a low scv count small groups of ling counter attacks can devastate what is left of the economy, and yes before you say anything i know the terran is on a 5k bank with 8cc's, dropping down below 30 scv is always gonna be a mistake no matter what stage of the game they are in.
Saccing that many SCV's late game is used constantly in all types of pro games. Terran cannot replenish their army as quickly as Zerg/Toss and they have the power of MULES behind them. Thus it's better to rely heavily on MULES for mining minerals while keeping only your gas SCV's and some for making buildings. This allows you to get a larger max army to compensate for the fact that Terran cannot rebuild their army as fast as the other races.
Now, curropters are an extremely supply and cost effiecient unit. Despite be labelled as lost dps, i find that they are very useful when dealing with all air units(including ravens and vikings). The sky terran arny in this case will be a ball, and if we ignore infestors for the moment and foocas on curropters vs terran air we can see some interesting micro battles. Magix boxed curropters are fast enough to get within the ball without taking to many SM at which point the terran must drop significant amounts of point defense drones to prevent his army dieing. Now, even though the terrans army should still win with about 1/2 it left, all the ravens and bc will be drained of energy, letting zerg do what zerg do best which is remax on a air army (as welll as 20 lings for harras), and go and finish the terran (who is weakened and low on energy).
Curropters has a shortish build time of around 40 seconds which helps, as well as the majority of the inf still being alive. This remax air army will be possible for the zerg since has maintained a worker count and lots of bases.
No offense, but this is flat out wrong. Pure Corruptor against BC/Raven will result in a HUGE victory for the Terran with almost no losses. If you magic box and hug PDD will shut you down. If you don't magic box and hug HSM will destroy you. If you try and run away you eat a bunch of Yamatos and donate units to the Terran. Without the Infestors around, the Terran would win that fight with 80-90% (being conservative here. It very well could be 100%...) of his army intact. The only way Corruptors work is if you bring your Infestors along for the fight also. This exposes the Infestors to risk of HSM/Yamato which then becomes the "interesting micro war" that you are talking about. Pure Corruptors alone is just gifting stuff to the Terran.
And counterattacks with 20 lings? Are you sure you read the guide? Because it specifically says you mass PF's everywhere and all the replays show this as well. 20 lings to counterattack is just making the Zerg Corr/Infestor army 10 food smaller. A total gift to the Terran.
Finally, i never disagreed with you that sky terran is a bad strategy, i believe that it will work against zerg in most stituations where its blob vs blob in late game. However, i still maintain that zerg if playing correctly should still be able to defeat the terran unless they entered the late game on a bad economy.
Yes, as other people in the thread have mentioned already. You need Corruptor/Infestor and it becomes a matter of who controls his units better in the fight.
What I was trying to tell you in the original post is that you don't need to worry about the 150+ ling + ground army remax. It doesn't beat this strat, and actually would result in an fairly easy Terran win 9 times out of 10.
i think the smartest way to beat the 150 ling remax is to just get 4bases then reduce yourself to like 20 SCV's, 180food army. 18 on gas 2 for making buildings. get 180food of BC, a couple ravens, about 10 vikings
8 ravens 13vikings 23 battlecruisers
thats 180food
make a command center before the fight
have your BC's as group1 vikings/ravens as group2 spread your BC's and a-move across the map. keep vikings/ravens behind your battlecruisers so they are protected as the BC's march across the map
a-move across the map with your BC's. spread your BC's and attack, its hard for zerg to fungal properly because the BC's are spread and dont move that slow and you will be spamming yamato on infestors
as you are attacking, liftoff all your orbitals and production and have them follow your army. Also liftoff the CC and load it with 5 SCV's and that follows your army too. let zerg try to baserace you and your flying buildings come with you as you destroy all the zergs tech+hive.
after destroying all the zergs stuff, land your buildings and unload 5 SCV's and build 8 depots and calldown 8 supplies BOOM your back to 200food again
even though fungal outranges BC's, it doesnt matter because when magic boxed pre-spread BC's are a-moving across the map and you have pure infestors and your trying to fungal them you only hit a few BC's and then the rest are moving past you and some are launching yamato
if the zerg has 100food in lings during this attack of the terran, the zerg will lose all his tech, his hive, and the game
HOLY CRAP I JUST THOUGHT OF SOMETHING.....
you can FLOAT all your buildings over your battlecruisers, thus making it almost impossible for the zerg to target NP onto your BC's
The problem i get when playing this build is hard to take third, the zergs won't go easy on me ;( maybe i was doing sth wrong or too bad. I think this build is hard to use but master it, u have a trump card
edit: Oh and this build is getting buff in the next patch... can't wait
No offense, but this is flat out wrong. Pure Corruptor against BC/Raven will result in a HUGE victory for the Terran with almost no losses. If you magic box and hug PDD will shut you down. If you don't magic box and hug HSM will destroy you. If you try and run away you eat a bunch of Yamatos and donate units to the Terran. Without the Infestors around, the Terran would win that fight with 80-90% (being conservative here. It very well could be 100%...) of his army intact. The only way Corruptors work is if you bring your Infestors along for the fight also. This exposes the Infestors to risk of HSM/Yamato which then becomes the "interesting micro war" that you are talking about. Pure Corruptors alone is just gifting stuff to the Terran.
And counterattacks with 20 lings? Are you sure you read the guide? Because it specifically says you mass PF's everywhere and all the replays show this as well. 20 lings to counterattack is just making the Zerg Corr/Infestor army 10 food smaller. A total gift to the Terran.
If you go back and read what i said, i was ignoring the micro done by the infestors, i was not saying they weren't there. The point I was getting at with the curropters is that at this point in the late late game they are fairly expandable, while the terran army isnt.
Even with mass pf everywhere, there is always gonna be a spot that lings can attack and even gain access to the main where they can start killing production. The terran cannot base race in this situation as there are only 10-20 lings in the main. The terran will be forced to pull back some units to deal with.
Saccing that many SCV's late game is used constantly in all types of pro games. Terran cannot replenish their army as quickly as Zerg/Toss and they have the power of MULES behind them. Thus it's better to rely heavily on MULES for mining minerals while keeping only your gas SCV's and some for making buildings. This allows you to get a larger max army to compensate for the fact that Terran cannot rebuild their army as fast as the other races.
I am well aware of this and its advanatages and disasvanatges. For me dropping below 30 scv puts my scv count much lower than i would want. If u read my other post on the previous page you would understand my particular play style and why i like playing 2hr games (also why i dont like base races).
On August 13 2012 05:39 TheMadTecha wrote: If you go back and read what i said, i was ignoring the micro done by the infestors, i was not saying they weren't there. The point I was getting at with the curropters is that at this point in the late late game they are fairly expandable, while the terran army isnt.
If that's the case, you cannot simply assume that the Terran loses half their army while the Zerg somehow keeps all their Infestors alive. If the Terran lost half his army the Zerg probably lost a good portion of their Infestors in the fight along with all those Corruptors, with the remaining Infestors at low energy. The degree of losses in essence, would be determined by who controls better.
Even with mass pf everywhere, there is always gonna be a spot that lings can attack and even gain access to the main where they can start killing production. The terran cannot base race in this situation as there are only 10-20 lings in the main. The terran will be forced to pull back some units to deal with.
Unlikely. All of the replays in the OP show PFs/Bunkers/Depot blocks among all possible attack lanes. 10-20 lings wouldn't have a chance of making it past that. Even if somehow they did get in, you can simply lift your production buildings and land them next to some PF's (or vice versa). If it's 100+ lings, stuff might die. 10-20 is just gifting to the Terran.
I am well aware of this and its advanatages and disasvanatges. For me dropping below 30 scv puts my scv count much lower than i would want. If u read my other post on the previous page you would understand my particular play style and why i like playing 2hr games (also why i dont like base races).
No offense, but your personal playstyle preferences are not really of anyone's concern here. The only things we are really concerned about are if someone already chose to use this strat, how would they best handle certain situations. If the responses required are not something you are comfortable with, then you can either find a more palatable solution, or just not use this strat at all.
Hi. I am a completely new terran player (switching from high master protoss to terran) trying to learn this build as my main build. However I have had quite a few problems practicing vs a diamond friend of mine.
If it's not too inconvenient, it would be lovely if someone could check them out and see what I'm doing wrong in my execution of this build and just typical terran play.
As I said, I begun playing terran literally yesterday evening and would therefore appreciate all (even basic simple advice)!
On August 14 2012 04:33 Daimai wrote: Hi. I am a completely new terran player (switching from high master protoss to terran) trying to learn this build as my main build. However I have had quite a few problems practicing vs a diamond friend of mine.
If it's not too inconvenient, it would be lovely if someone could check them out and see what I'm doing wrong in my execution of this build and just typical terran play.
As I said, I begun playing terran literally yesterday evening and would therefore appreciate all (even basic simple advice)!
Honestly, your just being outplayed and aren't doing the build quite right. You rarely get to skymech and have trouble just holding your third base.
On a good note, each of your games is played better than the last.
1.Compare your build to the build order. Just try getting the timings down before personalizing it to your own style.
Try to take your third earlier, and don't be afraid to make it a planetary if your afraid to move out. This build needs the gas.
Build a viking first, then a banshee. Use the viking to kill overlords and scout out those early ling/bane pushes. Use the banshee to harrass. You could hold off the pushes a lot better if you had anticipated them. upgrade hsm earlier. you need it vs. infestors and muta.
You make too many rax. The goal of this build is to ween off the rine. Try to stick to 3 or 4
2.Some things I noticed with your basic play.
You tend to supply block around the 90 food mark.
Your natural is oversaturated and your main is undersaturated in all 3 games.
You don't like to build full walls, leaving just a big enough gap for speedling runs. Simcity wins.
There are a lot of things wrong with your play if your going to do this build. I suggest lots and lots of practice.
For the people theorycrafting this build please post replays of the build losing to said counter. Without solid evidence your theorycrafting is just conjecture and can be countered with similiar conjecture. If your losing with this or winning with this build, replays are also appreciated.
I tried this build 5 times in a row against Zerg. 5 straight losses. It just feels very awkward. What is the point of going for 4 fast CCs, the boost in minerals is not necessary since gas is the deciding factor when you play mech or air.
I think opening 1 rax FE into 4 rax pressure into defensive tanks while taking 3rd and 4th flows more natural. You can then transition into sky terran when you have the gas to do so.
The BC/Raven/Viking composition is without a doubt extremely strong and cost efficient against Z. The problem is obviously getting it safe.
The build from the OP doesn't seem so. Look at the replays, in all of them Z played very passively making a ton of drones and basically let T get his 3rd and 4th for free. A committed 3 base attack happening from 10-16 minutes would crush this style. Imagine if Z played like Stephano style vs P and attacked with 200 supply roach ling at 12 mins. He would either kill the third and prevent T from expanding even again or go directly for the natural and main. Overlord drop or nydus would probably be even harder to hold :/ .
nice build but i feel like all the zerg has to do is mass 3/3 corruptors and drop lings from time to time in different locations. I dont see how corruptors can be dealt with since they counter BCs, are even with vikings and if he doesnt clump them up ravens are not effective.
On August 13 2012 05:05 foxj wrote: The problem i get when playing this build is hard to take third, the zergs won't go easy on me ;( maybe i was doing sth wrong or too bad. I think this build is hard to use but master it, u have a trump card
edit: Oh and this build is getting buff in the next patch... can't wait
So after watching the replays I noticed two things. One in Hyuns and Haypros games the unit composition (skyT) got scouted when the Z was allready maxed on BLs. With the eco they both had they should been able to react accordingly if they would know what was coming.
In the other games I noticed that you kinda bank everything on building placement and that no zerg destroys your ravens. It almost every time starts with ~20ish marines 3-4 tanks and then you go all out on ravens. So if a Z would react intelligent he should start to pressure you heavly on all bases at around 10-11 minutes. (~11ish minutes maxxed on lings off of 3bases)
Do you really only hope to defend this by building placement or are their some deeper thoughts I didn't noticed yet? (the game vs White is a good showcase to what could happen if a full-out ling bling multi pronge would hit you)
Btw: i am a zergie but I always thought of skyT as one of the most dangerous and strongest unit comp ingame
The build order only works if your opponent doesn't attack you for 20 minutes -.-
did u see song replays? He got attacked before 20 min a lot of time
ofc a build order is delayed somehow by attacks. It's true for every build order
I love the idea, that was exposed in some response before, to build a lot of bases and lift off those to accompany ur BC it should confuse so much zerg opponent ! If you see song replays, he has more than 3k mineral before first attack in every game. if u spend this mineral in mass orbital/barrack it could be awesome to float those with ur army ! The zerg will BM/WTF you 80% of time because it's really look like you are trolling him ! Fun experience to make!
The build order only works if your opponent doesn't attack you for 20 minutes -.-
did u see song replays? He got attacked before 20 min a lot of time
ofc a build order is delayed somehow by attacks. It's true for every build order
I love the idea, that was exposed in some response before, to build a lot of bases and lift off those to accompany ur BC it should confuse so much zerg opponent ! If you see song replays, he has more than 3k mineral before first attack in every game. if u spend this mineral in mass orbital/barrack it could be awesome to float those with ur army ! The zerg will BM/WTF you 80% of time because it's really look like you are trolling him ! Fun experience to make!
Yet all those attacks were never meant to blow the Terran up. They were mostly poke attacks to fake pressure to tech to BLs. Fullon out attacks by Zerg can happen from 10-18minute with almost every unit in game.
I'm a high gold player, I have never won a game with this strategy. Mutas always kill me. Latest game I played, I scouted and saw what looked like 100 lings and thought baneling bust, realized after it didn't happen that the player was going mutas, or changed his mind, and even with my whole base turrented and constant production of marines, I couldn't get out of my base to get a 3rd, and he just flew his mutas in, took out my turrents and 20 packs of marines guarding them, then flew out to kill other stuff in my base.
On August 15 2012 02:02 Tarrot wrote: I'm a high gold player, I have never won a game with this strategy. Mutas always kill me. Latest game I played, I scouted and saw what looked like 100 lings and thought baneling bust, realized after it didn't happen that the player was going mutas, or changed his mind, and even with my whole base turrented and constant production of marines, I couldn't get out of my base to get a 3rd, and he just flew his mutas in, took out my turrents and 20 packs of marines guarding them, then flew out to kill other stuff in my base.
Short version: How do you deal with Mutas?
Marines, turrets, PDD's, bunkers. a lot of turrets. Also mutas delay his tech tree so you can delay yours a little bit too and invest more into marines
I'm just not sure if this can really work. It seems like all of the games you played against pro players, they didn't see it coming and had no way of dealing with it. It seems like if they knew how to deal with it, it would be an easy win for them. I hope it gains some traction and we can see it put to the test.
On August 15 2012 05:12 9-BiT wrote: I'm just not sure if this can really work. It seems like all of the games you played against pro players, they didn't see it coming and had no way of dealing with it. It seems like if they knew how to deal with it, it would be an easy win for them. I hope it gains some traction and we can see it put to the test.
How would they have known it was coming? The build doesn't have that many tells because it opens fairly standard with Marines/Tank with the scouting Hellions. Making Viking(s) to clear out Overlords and deny scouting is fairly common and doesn't really give anything away. Even a lone Banshee isn't uncommon and doesn't give anything away either.
The first thing that might give away this build is the fact that the Terran will seem to have quite a few Ravens earlier than usual. However, since Ravens are being used more and more lately, this is somewhat inconclusive. Usually it's some sort of MMM/Tank/Vikings + Ravens against the Zerg BL/Infestor deathball. He would probably conclude that you are cutting Medivacs in favor of getting Ravens earlier to build energy for HSM.
The only thing that would definitively reveal BC's would be him scouting your Fusion Core directly. You can deny all scouting into your main with natural walloff + Vikings to clear out nearby Overlords. Thus the only way he could reasonably scout your Fusion Core would be if he went Mass Mutas. But since you will have a massive amount of minerals with this build, you can dump them into Marines, Bunkers, Turrets to hold on until you get your army built up.
As for what they could have done to deal with it... what would you propose then? You can't win with a ground army because then it turns into a base race which the Terran will win. There are only so many Zerg units that can attack air. Hyun and Haypro both tried Infestor/Corruptor which is probably the best solution assuming you control well. Would mass mutas work? Maybe. Hydras? Terrible. Mass Queens? Mass Spores? Both are stopped by PDD/Yamato. Seems like the only other option would be mass mutas. They don't stand a chance in a direct fight, but it might be mobile enough to win a base race.
On August 15 2012 05:12 9-BiT wrote: I'm just not sure if this can really work. It seems like all of the games you played against pro players, they didn't see it coming and had no way of dealing with it. It seems like if they knew how to deal with it, it would be an easy win for them. I hope it gains some traction and we can see it put to the test.
How would they have known it was coming? The build doesn't have that many tells because it opens fairly standard with Marines/Tank with the scouting Hellions. Making Viking(s) to clear out Overlords and deny scouting is fairly common and doesn't really give anything away. Even a lone Banshee isn't uncommon and doesn't give anything away either.
The first thing that might give away this build is the fact that the Terran will seem to have quite a few Ravens earlier than usual. However, since Ravens are being used more and more lately, this is somewhat inconclusive. Usually it's some sort of MMM/Tank/Vikings + Ravens against the Zerg BL/Infestor deathball. He would probably conclude that you are cutting Medivacs in favor of getting Ravens earlier to build energy for HSM.
The only thing that would definitively reveal BC's would be him scouting your Fusion Core directly. You can deny all scouting into your main with natural walloff + Vikings to clear out nearby Overlords. Thus the only way he could reasonably scout your Fusion Core would be if he went Mass Mutas. But since you will have a massive amount of minerals with this build, you can dump them into Marines, Bunkers, Turrets to hold on until you get your army built up.
As for what they could have done to deal with it... what would you propose then? You can't win with a ground army because then it turns into a base race which the Terran will win. There are only so many Zerg units that can attack air. Hyun and Haypro both tried Infestor/Corruptor which is probably the best solution assuming you control well. Would mass mutas work? Maybe. Hydras? Terrible. Mass Queens? Mass Spores? Both are stopped by PDD/Yamato. Seems like the only other option would be mass mutas. They don't stand a chance in a direct fight, but it might be mobile enough to win a base race.
Also, if terran is not absolutely forced to, i think it's good to hide ravens for most of the time behind the bunkers etc so that zerg will not see them.
thanks for the excellent guide Matiz. Also i remember you from ra3 community with your awesome t2 soviet pushes and sick terror drone micro hopefully you can work your build making magic in this game like you did back than.
Also i had one issue in masters with this build were my opponent was playing aggressive so he had a fair amount of lings and he used them to camp my third before i could land it and make it into a pf any advice? I felt like it was hard to take third vs some one who is going for a very agro stlye.
On August 15 2012 14:26 washikie wrote: Also i had one issue in masters with this build were my opponent was playing aggressive so he had a fair amount of lings and he used them to camp my third before i could land it and make it into a pf any advice? I felt like it was hard to take third vs some one who is going for a very agro stlye.
That's also the purpose of the 1 banshee that u make, he can't just camp outside if u have it or he will suffer heavy losses. Also the crawl of the bunkers and also if he plays aggressive then it's fine. The timings of the build are set up if opponent is playing passive. If he is aggressive then it means he delays his construction of deathball so a terran can do it as well and invest more in marine tank phase and delay the bc/raven
Have been trying it, when everything works out as intended it's a good build and zergs can't really kill your army anymore, but getting there you're much too fragile if the zerg has a feeling for your weakness. I've felt better when combining it with stim+hellion 9 minute pressure to be both safe early game and to punish zerg greed, and going into 4 bases and airplay as a follow up.
On August 16 2012 01:58 FayZe wrote: I have problems engaging when they neural my ravens and use HSM against me, since air units stack up, it usually gets screwed.
Thats a mirco issue right there, Spreading your ravens and not just a-moving them into the battle helps out. Then begins a dance of death with your ravens, the only problem is infestors outrange them. Use your Bc's to yamato those infestors while you bring your ravens forward (unclumped).
On August 16 2012 23:46 DemigodcelpH wrote: So pretty much everyone in this thread has said it doesn't work for them except one or two people.
Matiz_pl why aren't you defending your build? With such an in depth writeup and being GM I'm sure you have things to say.
I don't care, it works for us. Most of complains are about things that solutions for them are stated in guide or replays. The only thing that we didn't put enough emphasis on was defending mutalisks but I answered it in some posts i think. The build still could require some polishing, but right now Song is back to France and we can't really work on it and other terrans in house want to use other styles.
This barely worked when I tried it. You definitely will need a lot of defensive planetaries to deal with that ultra/ling timing the OP describes. It's somewhat flimsy in that you can never let infestors get off a fungal on your ravens, so it's important to either put small groups of them on different hotkeys or to just manually spread them out very well. The biggest weakness this strategy has is when someone denies your third for a long time with mutas or infestors.
Kas vs Nestea game 1, Kas was transitioning into raven/viking and thor to deal with the ultra switch. He won the game when in a position from behind. He also showed us how to engage with ravens and vikings to limit the power of infestors in the fight.
I think MVP vs Nestea showed how you can transition into that skyterran, but still being so aggressive with 3 double drops at a time at the peak of aggression. So you can certainly turtle up like this build does, but I think being hyper aggressive with expendable mineral units. Then have your gas going into defense (tanks, pfs) and teching to your ravens. It certainly is much harder to tech to this unit composition than infestor broodlord, but its strength in engagements is so much stronger that it is fair. This aggression gives you a much easier time to get to that point than letting the Zerg have his way with you and drone and tech untouched.
I'd imagine that you can afford to have some Ghosts in your army with Skyterran since you've got map control and have forced the Z to back off by the time you have BCs. Then you'd have Ghost/BC/Raven which would be practically impossible to beat with proper Ghost/Yamato control. With EMP/Snipe to deal with Infestors and a few less BCs, you could probably walk all over a Z pretty easy late game if you manage to get to 3/3 BCs, fully upgraded Ravens, and upgraded Ghosts with cloak.
Nice guide btw; I've been doing something abit similar in TvP but having to defend vs Archon/HT timings is abit difficult.
YEAH ! I use to play mech all the time, in every match up ! I love your guide, it brings another original way to play, so I'll try it for sure. I saw IMMVP play some sky terran at last IEM and it looked pretty effective Looks a bit like PhX)Lyyna's playstyle (camping on mass 4 bases with tanks thors and sensor turrets to go mass raven HSM/BC) TvZ needs some fresh ideas before HOTS, i'm fed up to see all those people going rines tanks medivacs...
On August 21 2012 03:23 LloydPGM wrote: YEAH ! I use to play mech all the time, in every match up ! I love your guide, it brings another original way to play, so I'll try it for sure. I saw IMMVP play some sky terran at last IEM and it looked pretty effective Looks a bit like PhX)Lyyna's playstyle (camping on mass 4 bases with tanks thors and sensor turrets to go mass raven HSM/BC) TvZ needs some fresh ideas before HOTS, i'm fed up to see all those people going rines tanks medivacs...
Currently people play marine medivac tank into skyterran which can be compared to muta ling baneling into infestor BL. It's viable, it's very good but the transition isn't too smooth. Here we suggest something else, something that looks more similiar to ling infestor, it took around a year to develop ling infestor style in zvt, we believe such marine raven(with some tanks) style is also viable and it feels promising.
I like how people theorycraft to the max . Like most things for ladder players its generally how well you execute your build, continue to macro and control your army which will see you winning. I hate when people think you can only play the game one way, and yet these people are generally the first to moan how boring the game is..
I am only Diamond, so not near high level play, but I have a lot of fun playing sc2, I can play more solid standard games but most of builds I have somewhat devised myself, or had ideas from others I have watched. I do crazy shit like marine raven TvZ, mass BC transitions in TvP, marine only TvT and so on. It can work for me and what I noticed is that its not the builds or strats that causes me loses me games a lot of the time, its my mechanics and lack of focus to control army. I know players higher level than me in mid masters + who play way non standard and do ok.
My point is that a lot of strats/builds are viable even to the highest level of sc2, code s players even bust out crazy unit comps, so for your average ladder player there is so much you can play if you get the build down, have a plan and macro well. Sure I can understand people when they want to get their standard game more solid, sure, but people should not be so quick to narrow their horizons. It can be fun to experiment with different playstyles to find one that fits your style and more importantly find a style you enjoy playing.
I'm only gold, so what do I know, but a couple things occurred to me, let me know if/why these may not be feasible.
Once you're max, near/max, why not get 3-4 Ghosts with 3-4 Nukes:
-Zone out attacks/counter attacks. With PDDs and high-hp units like BCs, they have to stick around for quite a while to actually "finish the job". If they only really have 10-15 seconds to actually engage before they need to bug out, that's more than enough time to retreat/repair low HP units and/or finish off a couple buildings. -Defend major ground attacks. Even with Ultras and Cracklings, it takes a bit to chew through armor-upgraded buildings and PFs Keep a ghost a bit back from the front line and make them choose between retreating or eating a nuke. With 3 academies you can continuously nuke as long as you keep building right away. -Clear Spore/Spine fields. You'd eat more than 100/100 repairing most anything that attacked into them and keep the threat of mass Yamatos for Infestors and corruptors. -The threat of EMP alone should make them more careful with their Infestors -FG can't kill a Ghost under a medivac, any ground army that goes under the medivac is going to be a gift, and you can just pick the Ghost up anyway. If the Ghost gets NPed they can be killed off in a half-second by the BCs.
Oh, and I love the idea of floating Raxes in with your army to Tank, especially with the armor upgrade. 3 armor, 1000 HP repairable, mineral only flying damage sponge that costs a measely 150 minerals when you have thousands in the bank? Yes please. Yes, they can target-fire, but then they can't magic box and will likely have a ton of "overkill" with corruptor shots. It's a win-win with either clumped-target-firing units or a-moved units shooting nearly "free" units while getting killed off. Not to mention it would take a whole 4-5 APM to use them while taking a lot more APM from the opponent.
Yes i've been thinking about adding ghosts to this army, i think it would be a great idea. ive been mostly thinking about emping infestors but yeah all the ideas you gave are actually very smart
Would you mind uploading more replays? I'm working on a similar build but with less air and more bio after marine+tank and I'm having trouble smoothing out the transition. Thanks in advance!
Hey, development of this build stopped so far. The only terran that is under my wings (fuzer) right now refused to use it and does his 2x proxy raxes and other stuff
main challenges are securing 4th base, and its pretty hard(for me) to split units good enough to minimize fungal damage. The build itself is pretty hard to follow, with constant scv production and marine production, i find it impossible to build the buildings at the correct time. And when I looked at the replays Song didn't even follow the build exactly most of the time. For example in the game vs hyun his build was completely different.
Anyways I would appreciate it a lot if you can just dig up a few more replays and upload them.
On August 11 2012 01:23 MockHamill wrote: This is a very very interesting strategy. How do you deal with a switch to mass hydras given that the tank count seems to be quite low?
Rank 1 Diamond EU in T Z and P, Use this build in TvZ almost every game. I use this build with GREAT success. My question is regarding Hots, I haven't been able to get access to the beta, so I'm wondering whether you have tried using this build and if it is any good? I was watching Snutes stream and he was saying that Zerg mostly goes pool before hatch in hots, so I'm guessing the 4th cc is defo out of the question until we defo know what the Zerg is up to. The new Hydras should not be a problem because of Ravens. Against a Swarm Host Zerg I feel this build would faceroll. I feel that the weaknesses would be Locusts and tier 1 zerg. If the zerg scouts and reacts well they should be able to do some nice +1+1 burrow roach allin, or even a standard bust but I feel that wouldn't leave enough time for the zerg to react. Also Locusts is probably the most dangerous zerg unit against sky terran, though a good terran would only engage when approapriate and would split his army good enough against their binding cloud. Though this is all mere theorycraft as I haven't played BETA. I'd appreciate your experienced input as I'd love to continue using this build in HOTS.
On March 03 2013 07:07 TaeTae wrote: Also Locusts is probably the most dangerous zerg unit against sky terran, though a good terran would only engage when approapriate and would split his army good enough against their binding cloud. Tae
On March 03 2013 07:07 TaeTae wrote: Also Locusts is probably the most dangerous zerg unit against sky terran, though a good terran would only engage when approapriate and would split his army good enough against their binding cloud. Tae
You mean Vipers? Locusts can't hit air.
Honestly I took a guess at the name, I haven't paid much attention to Hots, I'm guessing it's vipers.
EPT![[image loading]](http://imgon.net/di-XGBZ.gif)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2nSwz.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/RQvOT.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tudnm.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Kp1IZ.jpg)
Song felt really upset before sometimes, was about to abandon development of this build but i had faith in it. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QFSyt.jpg)
?) in a way that is actually extremely useful. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5n2KA.png)
