EPTGuide is still slightly WiP so please notify me of any errors and feedback or questions are welcome.
Short introduction, I'm Meavis, a master random player and TvP is my best MU with a win rate of nearly 70%, all thanks to mech and not willing to play meta.
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So you like to play mech, but are tired of turtle variants?
Or maybe you're just tired of losing all your bio to masses of storms, colossus and zealots?
so why should you play mech?
- interactive unit composition
- lower apm ceiling
- remember this?
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8bkQ7eu.jpg)
- the feeling of beating toss at their own game
- + Show Spoiler +
On July 10 2014 21:51 SatedSC2 wrote:
I don't even know how to play against this sort of stuff. At some point you make one small mistake and a whole mineral line disappears. A 100 mineral unit that can be built very early in the game, deals splash damage, is faster than Probes and Stalkers, can essentially ignore Photon Overcharge or a single Cannon, and needs 4+ Cannons to be dealt with is just T_T
I don't even know how to play against this sort of stuff. At some point you make one small mistake and a whole mineral line disappears. A 100 mineral unit that can be built very early in the game, deals splash damage, is faster than Probes and Stalkers, can essentially ignore Photon Overcharge or a single Cannon, and needs 4+ Cannons to be dealt with is just T_T
- artosis is watching you
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/y5NKLEm.png)
concept and general rules of aggressive mech
The concept is quite simple, you make hellions, lots of them, hellions will actually be your key unit, not tanks.
Anything that hellions can't trade against will be taken down by strategical gameplay described in this guide.
Because hellions lack a few things such as flight and their inability to deal with air, we get a starport fairly early to counter out most if not all weaknesses that come with early hellion openers.
Tanks are added later on, while hellions are a nice unit, tanks definitely do better against stalkers and are needed for colossus.
In response to seeing mech, protoss will usually either make immortals or voidrays, which both can be countered by starport tech, vikings can deal with air and banshees burn through immortals fast.
In general you play very much like bio in terms of aggression but differently in macro, defense and general engagements as well as dealing with heavy tech switches bio doesn't make.
Just like bio and terran play in general, you need to do economic damage to slow down the accelerated economy of protoss and you no longer have to rely on a far superior engagement like defensive mech variants.
As for upgrades, it really depends on how long you want to drag the game on, if you see plenty of windows early on you can decide to skip on upgrades and hit fast, especially because against immortals the amount of hits matters more than how much you hit for.
If you decide to drag the game on, I'd recommend to get upgrades somewhat latter than you would normally get for mech for previous reasons.
If you don't see direct options to attack but still want to hit soon, consider fast +1 along with blue flame to make hellions take 2 instead of 3 shots to kill probes, and reduce the amount of hellions to kill probes in a single volley from 3 to 2 as well.
The counter to anything mech can't deal with is countered by being over aggressive with hellions.
Build order
9 rally next scv to ramp
10 build depot at ramp
11 refinery (fill instantly with 3/3 when done)
13 barracks at ramp
If there's a probe being annoying, and you assume hes gonna try to pylon block your reactor swap, get a marine out
17factory
17orbital
Reactor on barracks at 50gas
Depot at 100mins
Another depot at 100mins
Get 2hellions from reactor
Add starport
Continue adding hellions and depots whilst making scvs
Get a medivac from your starport and get a tech lab on it afterwards
Stop making depots when your max supply is 43 (you should have 8hellions a medivac at this point)
Start building a CC at the natural
Add depots and resume production
Add 2 factory's and a 2nd gas (add-ons will be reactionary)
from here on there are to many variables to put into a build order so here are all steps and checks from early to lategame.
Early Game (and the survival of rushes/all-in)
2gate
This one can be troublesome or easy, with a gas first your barracks is slower and you have less time to react but it's far from impossible.
It's very much preferred to use your depots to wall early on, and you should scout your main and common proxy areas at around 2minutes.
In case of a proxy 2gate outside of your base, complete the wall of and get a marine out whilst building your factory so you can transition fast after the hold.
VS an in base variant you want to simcity a bunker near your mineral line where its easy for scvs to hug it but difficult for zealots to get surface area.
2gate stalker
A tough one since its usualy harder to find as this proxy usualy builds further away but still relatively close to you, the best response is an scv pull whilst trying to get a bunker and wall at the ramp up, they may snipe your wall but it should buy enough time to get more of a defense out
cannonrush
Much easier to hold with a gas first than you would expect but the difficulty depends on where the cannonrush is coming from and how close it was, if it starts at your ramp you should have no problem delaying it with scvs/marines until you get your very early tank out thanks to gas first.
If the cannon rush started in your base you should still aim to get a factory out and mine for as long as possible, a lift will probably necessary before the tank is done building, after a tank you can start hellions and bring back the aggression to the protoss as he has little to no tech to deal with this.
How to scout further 1 base aggression
You should always be aggressive with your first 8 hellions to see what the protoss is up to and hurt them accordingly.
The way in which you want to commit is often different, rarely do you want to start roasting workers straight away as 2hellions die fast, 4should be enough but I personally recommend just poking with the initial 2-4 and then wait for your medivac and other 4 hellions to do a pincer drop.
The pincer drop is simply dropping 4hellions in the back whilst 4 others await the fleeing probes at the ramp, if the protoss is not paying attention they could lose everything in a single line of fire.
Elevatoring all 8 hellions is also an option if the protoss is not paying attention to corners of his base, depending on what the protoss is doing you may even just want to back off completely and focus on defending whats coming up next.
proxy stargate
This can easily be scouted through the mobility of your first 2 hellions, the proper response is to get either a viking, turret or mines out, some prefer mines, but not me, it just cuts into hellions.
When the oracle hits, mineral walk to your natural or 3rd as the oracle has problems with continued fire against moving targets, this will reduce SCV losses untill your turret is up.
Keep pumping hellions and go for more probe kills than his oracle could hope for.
3 or 4gate
This one can be surprisingly easy sometimes or game ending depending on your control, your initial hellions should be able to identify it and do serious damage to the protoss economy before warpgate finishes, if you did enough damage you can easily trade with hellions and an scv pull when the eventual push hits, if not you may need to rely on delaying it until your additional production is ready.
since many seem to be struggling against this here are some additional tips.
Make use of a force contain, if he leaves, kill the economy, reducing warp ins to a minimum, or delay him til you have units ready at home.
Make sure you engage them with an scv pull when they're in a choke and can't reach your tech units.
Make use of your ramp or chokes to LINE EM UP.
If possible a few mines on your ramp can be game ending, they build slowly though so don't start what you can't finish.
3gate robo all in
By the time this hits you should have added your 2 factory's, the key is to produce as many banshees and only dump excess gas into tanks as they're easy targets for immortals, any money left should go into mass hellions, when they eventually hit SCV pulls can provide additional protection for your tank and banshees
3gate stargate
Less banshee more viking other than that its pretty much the same as defending a robotics all-in, you do need to kite correctly with your vikings, try not to take any damage as void rays locking on is certain death for a viking
blink all-in
Possibly the toughest of early game aggression, but just like 4gate you should make use of your hellions to indirectly reduce their stalker count by hurting their economy with your hellions, get as many tanks and hellions out at home as you can before they hit.
Make sure to engage in areas where there is not much of an area for blink stalkers to flee too and are easy pick offs for focus fire.
Planetary nexus rush
Pull SCV's, kill the probe, and kill the nexus ASAP, rush starport out for a viking behind this as MScore will be incoming.
after this you can continue on with your meching life.
As an additional comment, you will often come across protoss that are fully unprepared for super early hellion aggression and will flat out die to it, this can result into some hilarious moments and something terrans can very much relate to (hint oracle hint)
Midgame
Huray you got into the midgame with mech, here are some basic pointers for the midgame.
At all times you should have hellions near the protoss base as well as a loaded medivac waiting to jump in the moment protoss leaves or doesn't pay attention, this will force contain protoss as when they push they are forced to leave something behind or take severe economical damage and will have to do without reinforcements.
At this point you should be having 2 bases and a developed tech tree, your job is now to identify what protoss is doing through hellion pokes and scans and react accordingly.
The majority of your games should end in the midgame, to do so you need to properly identify opportunity windows, they can be something as simple as being a step ahead in countering their composition, or having done critical damage to economy, successfully deflecting an attack, or your opponent simply being out of position.
Identifying these windows and knowing when you're ahead can be difficult, but don't feel afraid to go out there and poke, at worst you will lose your tank count as the majority of your composition (hellion/banshee) out speeds the protoss deathball.
Immortal heavy play
This is an easy one, whilst you still want to include some tanks for severe splash damage vs armoured targets, the majority of your units should be hellions and banshees, hellions deal extremely well with zealots and take reduced damage from stalkers and immortals thanks to their light tag, which will help banshees and tanks survive.
Against immortal heavy play aggression is an option and you can try to kill them when a window arises such as a tech transition, the protoss expanding, or having done damage through a runby or drops.
If the protoss continues to be immortal heavy and you see no opportunity to break them, a transition to mass battlecruiser is not out of place, they deal very well with just about anything protoss, just make sure to have a few tanks or ghosts nearby to prevent feedback on them.
Colossus play
Hellion banshee doesnt fare as well vs colossus as it does vs other options, this is definitly something you want to go heavier on tanks against, with their superior range you should be able to peel at colossus.
Keep your hellions nearby ready to tank damage from immortal shots and banshees to focus fire down immortal shields.
Zealot archon
Straight up dies against masses of hellions and tanklines, also very incapable of dealing with driveby's, if you lose to this you simply didn't build enough stuff.
Void ray heavy
Massing vikings is an easy solution with this, you can also abuse the fact that void rays do not that much damage against hellions, and runbys can often be really effective and hurt the void ray count indirectly.
Mines are also of great effect vs voidrays as they don't kill them all to fast before at least a few detonate.
Phoenix
This can be an absolute nightmare as you will have to be very precise in timings, you can no longer rely on small runbys as phoenix can easily lift them up or kill drops, if you want to take a risk and damage protoss anyway, you should always hit with multiple groups as one of them is not gonna do anything when phoenix picks them up.
you should always make a few turrets to guard your economy and production from getting instantly picked off, 1 or 2 thors may help but never overcommit as thors are not all to effective against other tech options such as immortals and void rays
after stabilizing and trying to get a 3rd base up you should start massing vikings, while they're ineffective directly against phoenix they're still your best shot, thors can help a lot against phoenix clouds.
while vikings may not to be to effective in fighting phoenix, an opportunity arises to win a different fight, the economical war, in any occasion where phoenix are busy there are windows for harass and setting the toss back a bit.
you can also include some widow mines and burrow them in areas phoenix are likely to fly past when the protoss isn't looking, this can do game ending damage but is very hit or miss, but also very stresfull for phoenix players.
lategame transition from phoenix
phoenix will often transition into skytoss against which you should consider adding a few thors according to their phoenix count, battlecruisers with yamato to make fast work of tempest and carriers (yes battlecruisers actualy do well against tempest despite their damage vs massive air, mostly thanks to their ability to yamato down single targets, the denial of shots by PDD, and the added reach of vikings)
again just like in the early game, some drops or runbys can do so much damage a protoss will leave out of frustration or the realization that coming back from this is going to be incredibly hard, yay for terran'ing.
lategame
lategame is quite rare but very exciting to play, mostly because you get to use units you would normally never use, your primary unit, and one you should be able to afford in a lategame scenario is the battlecruiser, complementary units are required to prevent them from being easy targets, you will need ravens and their point defense drone against tempests, tanks for high ammounts of blink stalkers and also against templar
hellions and banshees along with defensive tanks/PF's on maps where protoss will try to maneuver around you with stalkers, and a couple vikings to extend your reach against air units.
slowly crawl towards your opponent with tanks and PDD's and your fleet nearby, slowly pushing them back untill eventually you can destroy their base or force an engagement, yamatos should be used on any target as in the case of protoss units there is not a single unit excluding the observer that isn't worth the charge time of yamato, just remember to use it on the most important targets as yamato's are limited, seekers will in general perform well against any clump of units.
just make sure to focus fire down templars with tanks whilst all of this and you should be just fine.
List of newbie mistakes that you shouldn't make
-Making marines for no good reason
-Being inactive with hellions
-Being to heavy on X unit against Y composition, despite having scouted whats going on.
General unit counters
protoss makes - you make
probes - hellions
zealots - hellions
stalker - hellion/tank mix
sentry - hellions
HT - hellions/tanks + cloak/uncloak flickering to drain banshee energy
immortal - banshee
colossus - tanks
oracle - turret + hellions
phoenix - expand + turrets + thor/viking
void ray - viking/turrets
carrier - BC/viking
tempest - BC/raven/viking
wall off - medivac
basetrade - mines
VoD's
Gloob covering the build
+ Show Spoiler +
replays:
http://drop.sc/384197 vs stalker colo on overgrowth
http://drop.sc/384205 vs robo/phoenix on frost
http://drop.sc/384206 vs 2base blink allin that never happend because of a probe slaughter
http://drop.sc/384207 vs blink contain into immortal/templar
http://drop.sc/384208 vs immortal/void ray
http://drop.sc/384209 vs 1gate FE into DT
will add more replays later, GL on ladder.
i like the idea of being insanely aggressive with hellions when going mech, if the Protoss screws up defending them no amount of immortal op-ness can save you. 
