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StimmedProbe's 5 Factory Mech TvP
Last Update: October 26th, 2012
Marines and Marauders are gone!
![[image loading]](http://starcraft-2-strategy.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/siege-tank.jpg) "Not quite like it's brood war predecessor, but still quite potent if used right!"
Basic Idea:
Hey everyone StimmedProbe here again with another build that I have been having a lot of success with. Bio is frustrating to use vs protoss. You have to make sure your engagement is exactly correct. If you are out of position, miss a few emps or get behind in upgrades you can lose easily, not to mention your army control has to be crisp. Mech is a little bit more forgiving in terms of control, but requires equal or perhaps more decision making and you need good multi-tasking to execute the build below. Players of all levels can find success with the build, but it will be most effective in the hands of a masters or grand-masters player. This build starts out with a fast expansion and then is followed up with banshee harass while building up a strong hellion/tank army off 5 factories. This is a 2 base timing attack, but it is not all-in.
Build Order:
10 Depot
12 Rax
15 Marine + Orbital
16 CC on low ground
Large Maps/No Pressure coming -> Cut Marines at 1, double gas, depot, bunker
Small Maps/Pressure coming -> Constant Marines, Depot, double gas, bunker
You can watch the replays to see the slightly different openings I do on Ohana and Antiga.
@100 gas -> Factory (4:30 if you got double gas before depot, 5:00 if you got a depot before double gas)
2nd bunker (Make sure you have at least 8 marines, or you will lose to a sentry bust, spread the bunkers out a bit if possible)
3rd gas
@100% Factory -> Starport + 4th gas
Tech lab on factory -> Swap starport onto tech lab
Banshee + Cloak + 3rd bunker if needed
Tech lab on factory -> siege tank/siege mode (this helps you survive counter-attacks, make sure your tanks are setup in nice positions)
Finally, 4 more factories (3 tech labs, 1 reactor, ~8:30)
Follow-up:
If you do everything right at 10 minutes you should have the following (assuming no real pressure):
- 2 banshees with cloak done (1 harassing, the other on the way)
- 70-80 supply
- 2-3 bunkers full of marines
- 5 factories (4 tech labs, 1 reactor) , 1 starport (tech lab)
- 45-50 scvs, 4 refineries
Other things to note:
- After making two banshees, make a raven. This will allow your raven to store up 150-200 energy for your push. Resume banshee pumping.
- Pump tanks/hellions out of your factories. Prioritize tanks, but you will have to make hellions sometimes.
- Harass with your banshees -> use them to scout a possible stargate.
- When you have 400 minerals, make a 3rd cc (around 12 mins)
- Get blue flame a minute before you move out.
- Move out at around 13-14 mins and bring some scvs along for repairs.
The attack:
Bigger Picture: http://i.imgur.com/AaWyB.jpg
Notice how I killed only 3 workers, but i am 40 supply ahead. And this is not weaksauce 40 army supply like roaches or marines/mauds this is 40 supply in MECH up! This is not because of macro skill differences either, my opponent is a top 16 grandmaster!
Your goal now is to get into a nice position and use your banshees and hellions like your octopus arms and the seige tanks as the core home base. Leap frog your tanks if you need to. Make sure you cloak your banshees, and use the pdd when the battle begins. Try not to get caught un-sieged by scanning ahead. You can put your banshees with your main army, or you can send them off to harass a weak position. Very few protoss know how to split their army against a mech push + 4 banshees harassing I found. 4 banshees are much stronger than a 1 medivac drop, and have insane mobility.
Conclusion:
This is my go to tvp mech build, and I found it very potent against most of my opponents. As long as I don't die early game because I didn't scout or skipped a bunker or two, I often straight up kill my opponent at the 14 minute mark. My mech army overpowers the protoss army with sheer strength, something that reminds me of the brood war days. The rumble of the seige tanks blasts are music to my terran ears =] Go out there and try it! If you have any questions feel free to ask them, I'd be happy to answer them!
Replays:
Notice how little damage I do with my banshees because my opponents played very safe/standard/properly. My push still comes out over 30 food ahead. Now imagine if I got more than 2-3 probes, how strong it would be =] All opponents are GMs.
Rank 70 GM, Antiga -> http://drop.sc/267927
Opponent's Build: 1gate expansion -> 3gate -> robo -> 3rd/4th gas -> twlight/forge -> colo + charge + upgrades -> 5 gate
Description: Very standard play from my opponent. My harass does hardly any damage (3-4 probes). I push out at around 13 minutes and get into a nice position outside of the natural. My opponent has a nice arc, but I simply have too many units, and his colossus are nearly useless against the lines and lines of sieged up tanks. His army melts to mine in the final engagement and he taps out.
Rank 6 GM, Ohana -> http://drop.sc/267928
Opponent's Build: 1gate expansion -> robo -> 3gate -> 3rd/4th gas -> forge -> colo -> 5 gate
Description: Again, very standard play from my opponent. My harass gets like 1 probe because my opponent got a fast obs into my base and scouted it. The push was a bit slow to get into the sweet spot between the natural/3rd, but eventually I was able to push there, and force an engagement. Notice when my opponents army attempts to hit from a different angle I dart into his main with 6 hellions. Also, if you are able to kill all his obs, your banshees can eat up his colossus.
Rank 34 GM, Cloud Kingdom -> http://drop.sc/267940
Opponent's Build: 1gate expansion-> 3gate -> robo -> 3rd/4th gas -> colo (2 base stalker/colo timing attack)
Description: My opponent opened up fairly standard and did one of the best builds on this map, the stalker/colo 2 base timing attack. Notice how even though with only 4 factories and rallying my raven like a nublet my army is still much stronger than his. His army attempts to engage mine, but his front line evaporates in a second. He pulls back to his natural, but my tanks get a vice grip on his natural and he is forced to engage into my fortified position. He taps out after seeing his army disappear for a second time.
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Nice, yet another guide. StimmedProbe, you're like the only person who still makes terran guides. I really appreciate it! =)
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Some more StimmedProbe guide?
To think that yesterday, I was praticing your builds (4 thors, hellion all-in, 1/1/1 contain) all day, and you provide me some more good stuff =)
I am surprised by your supply advantage, but you're GM and I'm not, so I'll believe you again!
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I have been struggling so much vs protoss lately, and I'll defiantly try this out.
Thanks a lot! :D
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How do you lose when you play this build? I don't mean when you die to an allin or something, I mean, how do you lose in the lategame?
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Nice guide! and it's about mech, hurray. Hopefully many people will find this useful and try out mech (or try again).
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On October 26 2012 14:26 theLiminator wrote:
How do you lose when you play this build? I don't mean when you die to an allin or something, I mean, how do you lose in the lategame?
If i lose late game it is normally because of an early attack from the protoss which damaged me, but didn't kill me. If I get to mid-game on even footing, I rarely lose. I have lost a base trade once, that's the only one I remember out of like 20+ games. Ultra late game you need to be careful about motherships, when you get vortexed your tanks come out in tank mode.
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On October 26 2012 14:26 theLiminator wrote:
How do you lose when you play this build? I don't mean when you die to an allin or something, I mean, how do you lose in the lategame?
You lose with terran mech when you make positional or compositional mistakes.
Other than that if the push didnt fully work ghosts will have to be added after to combat archon/air/mothership builds. (or maybe vikings. I dont like vikings.)
I dont actually know how protosses can counter terran mech with traditional PvT builds if its not a heavy pressure/all in builds.
Stimmedprobe will probably answer your question better
On another hand, Stimmed, since the opener is pretty much the TvZ hellion banshee into mech, whats your opinion on super heavy hellion compositions into quick 3rd base for extreme map control? to my knowledge the protoss army cant really do much against heavy hellions unless he opened blink stalkers, in which even then the aoe damage is too hard and risks his gas for collosi production
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On October 26 2012 14:37 padfoota wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 14:26 theLiminator wrote:
How do you lose when you play this build? I don't mean when you die to an allin or something, I mean, how do you lose in the lategame? You lose with terran mech when you make positional or compositional mistakes. Other than that if the push didnt fully work ghosts will have to be added after to combat archon/air/mothership builds. (or maybe vikings. I dont like vikings.) I dont actually know how protosses can counter terran mech with traditional PvT builds if its not a heavy pressure/all in builds. Stimmedprobe will probably answer your question better On another hand, Stimmed, since the opener is pretty much the TvZ hellion banshee into mech, whats your opinion on super heavy hellion compositions into quick 3rd base for extreme map control? to my knowledge the protoss army cant really do much against heavy hellions unless he opened blink stalkers, in which even then the aoe damage is too hard and risks his gas for collosi production
Nicely put, most of mech losses are because of composition mistakes (no ghosts late game, lack of anti-air, not enough hellions/buffer units) ect. You can also lose if you are out of position or not in siege mode.
This is a little bit different than the hellion/banshee opening. You don't get hellions out, and your banshee is much faster. There are also no double armories and the 3rd base is later. The factories are also much faster (8:30 vs 10:30). The TvZ mech build is a heavy 3-4 base macro build generally. This build is a sharp 2 base -> do damage -> continue if needed type of build. I prefer to open banshees because I can use them to scout. Hellions can't really scout.
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Thanks Stimmedprobe, at least where there is a huge deficit of terran guides, you are like a drop of water in the desert..
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On October 26 2012 14:42 StimmedProbe wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 14:37 padfoota wrote:On October 26 2012 14:26 theLiminator wrote:
How do you lose when you play this build? I don't mean when you die to an allin or something, I mean, how do you lose in the lategame? You lose with terran mech when you make positional or compositional mistakes. Other than that if the push didnt fully work ghosts will have to be added after to combat archon/air/mothership builds. (or maybe vikings. I dont like vikings.) I dont actually know how protosses can counter terran mech with traditional PvT builds if its not a heavy pressure/all in builds. Stimmedprobe will probably answer your question better On another hand, Stimmed, since the opener is pretty much the TvZ hellion banshee into mech, whats your opinion on super heavy hellion compositions into quick 3rd base for extreme map control? to my knowledge the protoss army cant really do much against heavy hellions unless he opened blink stalkers, in which even then the aoe damage is too hard and risks his gas for collosi production Nicely put, most of mech losses are because of composition mistakes (no ghosts late game, lack of anti-air, not enough hellions/buffer units) ect. You can also lose if you are out of position or not in siege mode. This is a little bit different than the hellion/banshee opening. You don't get hellions out, and your banshee is much faster. There are also no double armories and the 3rd base is later. The factories are also much faster (8:30 vs 10:30). The TvZ mech build is a heavy 3-4 base macro build generally. This build is a sharp 2 base -> do damage -> continue if needed type of build. I prefer to open banshees because I can use them to scout. Hellions can't really scout.
Hellions cant scout -> Personally when i open heavy hellions in TvP I feel if the protoss is doing something greedy/weird hes going to die/take a ton of damage when my hellions go right up his face, which signals to me hes doing something weird, and if he does something safe its going to show up to defend against my hellions, thereby allowing me to "scout" simply by forcing him to show his hand, no?
I havent met a guy who sim cities until later on when the composition is set tho
However, I do love all kinds of hellion/banshee openers simply because of how aggressive and mobile they are 
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Interesting. it looks a lot like my own 1 rax-3/4fact - 1 port push. that's a really nice attack
isnt 4 tl fact a bit overkill on 2 bases btw?
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I can see this being super strong, I guess the main thing is not dying to some sort of 2 base/3 base timing. Or maybe heavy warp prism play? (But i'm sure you'll have tons of turrets from extra min.)
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Is anybody else having trouble accesing the replays? After my client starts up after saving it and opening it once i enter my password and such and get into b.net it dosen't play the replay right away like it used to? Am i missing something?
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After watching the Antiga game my only question is why do you need 4 tech lab facts? At no point during that game did you produce 4 tanks at a time, generally you stuck with 3 at a time and just produced a hellion out of the 4th tech lab fact. Could you not get the same production with 3 tech facts, and 1 reactor? And maybe get an amory for +1 instead of that other factory??
My reasoning is because I feel like you are going all-in because if you don't do damage the Toss will be up in tech (He was about 3 min from Storm, and if the push fails he will have his 3rd which means multiple Robo's.
Where has you have 0 upgrades, you do have a 3rd, but not in the positon to get out vikings if he pumps out massive amounts of coli after your failed push
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I think getting 4 tl is for flexibility.
Remember a tl can also produce hellions. And when he has gas, it can be used for tanks. I am not sure but I think its just for flexibility.
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This build seems to have potential. But is it possible to win againts equall oponent that goes immortal/archon ? Tanks bearly do any damage to both the units. Do you incorporate some ghost or more banshes when you see alot of immortal and templar ? Do you kite them with helions to lower their shields ?
I always struggle with mech againts immortals.
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This seems similar to the TvP Mech build shown in the Day9 Daily, although this goes for tanks instead of Thors and a bit more Marines.
I'm curious to see how this would against a Stargate opening, as tanks cannot shoot up.
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United Kingdom20345 Posts
On October 26 2012 17:24 Thezzy wrote:
This seems similar to the TvP Mech build shown in the Day9 Daily, although this goes for tanks instead of Thors and a bit more Marines.
I'm curious to see how this would against a Stargate opening, as tanks cannot shoot up.
You have some marines and a starport, as well as already building up to 4techlab factories. You could probably make a round of thors, and if he commits heavily to stargate, kill him with an scv pull, if he doesnt, be fine with a few marines, turrets, maybe a thor on patrol or something.
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prefer a 111 with reactor hellion plus medivac drop into expand before going mech in tvp. with a dual prong hellion harass you can get a lot of probes taht allows you to play mech nicely.
in these cases it seems ur opponents arent used to dealing with mech (all going herp derp colossus as if expecting mmm all the time), with correct scouting chargelots/immortals/archons/templar shld stop this push.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bleCb.jpg)
