EPTWhere I got the concept:
The idea for this build was truthfully from the games ThorZaIN had against MC, where he went for strike cannon and a bunch of thors. At this time My TvP was pretty garbage and I decided to give it a shot. However, with the strike cannon change and increasing map sizes this build kind of faded out and I never even considered it- until now. Recently I’ve been struggling against protoss once more; late game TvPs are ridiculously hard. Anyhow, after seeing a thread on TvP mech I have decided to formulate my own build.
The build order:
Constant SCVs till around 150 supply (should be slightly oversaturated on each base)
10 depot
12 rax
15 orbital
16 cc at natural (you can go supply depot first, I just like cc before supply depot better)
17 second depot
From here we’ll just list
Double gas around 3:50/ 4:00 mins,
When SCV finishes second depot make it build bunker.
After 4th marine is done cut marine production.
Get factory and reactor and rax.
Scout around 4:00 min
If you scout all in make tech lab on factory, keep reactor on rax and go siege tank marine, turret
if you scout nexus switch reactor and go hellions and get starport as soon a fac is done
Poke with 2 hellions
Get banshees and cloak and double gas at your nat.
Also, get reactor on you rax at around this time
A good poke to make is when you have 12/14 hellions take 2 banshees to main mineral line then run in hellions to the natural to pick of any sentries/zealots.
While doing this when you have 200 gas (while keeping up constant banshees) get 2 factories
The next 100 gas on an armory
Now you have all the buildings you need it should be 2 Techlabbed facs 1 reactor fac 1 reactored rax and 1 techlab starport.
At around 70% of your 5th and 6th thor are making get blue flame and strike cannon.
Reinforce with hellion tank or transition during push.
What you army should be comprised of
http://imageshack.us/f/201/10775441.png/
It should be 6 thors a bunch of blue flame hellions 20 ish marines 6 banshees and a raven.
The upgrades for all the unit cant quite be afforded with your gas income but I have found the most important upgrades are cloak, blue flame, +1 armor and strike cannon. Make sure not to have too few banshees or thors, you need 6 of both of them as there the main DPS in your army. (Also, when you push out grab 20 SCVs for auto repair
How to engage:
There are many different armies Protoss might go for so I’ll try to address all of them.
Standard colossus immortal stalker zealot: This surprisingly is very weak vs thors and hellions. When you engage, you want hellions in front then thors and marine in back banshees near the front as well. Make sure to take 2 thors to snipe any observers so he can’t see cloak banshees. In addition, throw down 2 PDD to make all of his stalkers useless. Now that he has nothing to kill banshees, they will tear down everything else down quite quickly. If he has like 6 colossi/immortals in his army just strike cannon them and enjoy his rage when your hellions clean everything else up. If the engagement is going very well for you can pump 4 hellions at a time to quickly reinforce your army in order to go for the kill.
Any Air plus immortal: This is the easiest to engage as the investment on air and immortals will make it hard for him to have a lot of gateway units making your hellion and marines deadly. Almost the same engage tactics as the colossi/immortal death ball except this time put marines in the front then hellions then thors. Simply strike cannon immortals and your marines and thors wills easily clean up the rest of the air. (Also as a side note if he has a bunch of clumped void rays you can use seeker missile on them to kill all their shields right away.
Templar archon immortal blink stalker: This is the hardest to engage and in my opinion the best response from the protoss for this you want some hellion in front (not all of them, these hellion in front are for KILLING templar there only job is to kill temps and keep them out of range of thors/banshees if you kill temps you will crush the rest of his army) then thors then rest of hellion and marines in back. Banshees in back until obs are sniped. For this engagement it is key you pick of any detection the protoss has obs/cannons when these are dead bring in the banshees the reason this is so important is because you don't want your banshees to be stormed or feed backed before they get into the battle. The thors want to use all there strike cannon on immortals before they get feed backed but if they can’t it’s not end of the world. The reason being is all the banshees in the air killing everything super quick. What makes the push so potent is the banshees. If they die, so will you.
How to transition: While you push/ get maxed build 2 cc in your main and get plus 2 armor and a second armory. What this allows you to transition if he found a way to barley hold this push. The next step is to take a PF, 3rd and to have 2 macro CC’s. GO onto ghost/mech with a heavy transition to siege tanks .after this keep taking expansions, I’m sure you can find mech guides for the next steps of TvP mech so I’ll stop here.
Holding 1 base all ins: This will probably you hardest hump to go over trying this build as holding 1 base all ins can be very difficult but IL give detailed instructions on all of them first off blink all in/dts/void ray all in's :those are all kind of a build order loss. However, I’ll explain how to hold it even within the circumstances. As soon as u identify it’s an all-in (can be hard scouting very important for this build. You change your game play right away. Let’s say the map is antiga the best blink all in map. You would start getting siege tanks and siege mode and keep reactor on rax to make straight marines. You get a eng bay at 6:30 then 3 turrets in good positions (this also kills dt play). 1 on the cliff (if its blink play/void) should have a bunker next to and a siege tank sieged behind it. this will block blink into the main.(also somewhere around 7:20 you can get a sensor tower to see where stalkers/voids are. if he tries to run to natural you should have 2 bunkers there and a 1 tank behind it. Although it’s kind of technical; this setup will deal very well vs all ins and as soon as your hold it you are way ahead. The four gate. This one is simple keep reactor on rax and start tanks and siege. Get 3 bunkers and just mass repair.
Thedreaded proxy immortal: This one is the hardest to stop but its same idea as the 4 gate 3 bunkers and tanks and keep some SCVs near for auto repair focus immortals with marines in bunker when shields are gone let siege tanks kill them (before immortal shields are down tanks should be focusing sentries and stalker).
Random Extra info: If protoss does any really greedy 3 base play (PartinG 3 nexus/7 gate style)
You can be Supper aggressive and kill a ton of probes. Split banshee harasses and hellions at 3rd is a very clean tactic to get a ton of probes. When protoss finally stabilizes and get back to fully saturation you go ramming him down with your maxed death ball when he will just have 100 supply enjoy steam rolling his army :D.
Vs 2 Base all in IE 3 colossi 7-gateway stuff just get a concave on the top of your ramp and it’s very hard for the protoss player to attack into it as soon as you clean up his push just go back to re-maxing and continue the game plan. I just want to add allot of people saying this build won’t work, before you say that go out and try it first. A lot of the time protoss players will not respond right and they will get crushed. I am sure I missed some stuff so if you have any questions please ask them :D
EDIT: ty to my great freind Austin for fixing my awful grammer, also go check out his youtube casts he's a up and coming caster and needs all the support he can have
http://www.youtube.com/user/aust77sc GO CHECK HIM OUT NOWREPLAYS More to be added soon! http://drop.sc/299215
http://drop.sc/299337
http://drop.sc/299338
http://drop.sc/300529 show how to hold 3 gate pressure and how to engage immortal ht (SNIPE HT WIT HELLION,so they can't get in range to feedback thors/banshees)
http://drop.sc/300531 a variation with 4 tanks and 2 thors that hits at 12:30 (this for everyone saying they want tanks, well here you go! :D
http://drop.sc/300533 a full tank build for you tanky, lovers hits hard with tanks and blue flame helions.
http://drop.sc/300618 goes for blink stalkers and immortals. (close battle but still victorious)
http://drop.sc/300620 How to hold 1 base immortal all in's.
http://drop.sc/300717 Goes for warp prism dts and get shut down pretty hard, I get caught out of position outside my base and HUGE storms and feed backs hit my thors marines and scvs/ Alas the 6 thors could not be stopped.
http://drop.sc/300972 Perfect demonstration of my ANTI 1 base build (holding of blink stalkers) and how to transition.
http://drop.sc/304903 Holding a 6 gate with ease just playing standard and counter attack with helions for the win. ( even got tricked into thinking it was standard play).
