EPTFor quite a while now, there has been a shortage on how to play mech TvZ, most mech players know how to play the matchup by head, and explainations often only cover particular situations.
This guide will mostly cover the Mvp style of mech, where the goal is to obtain a superior and more efficient AV than your opponent, and constantly crush them over and over in a game of starvation.
Concept and strategy behind mech
Well executed mech is quite different from anything in starcraft, where as most strategys rely on outright killing the opponent, or pulling them apart throughout excesive harrasment, mech plays the game of starvation.
A reoccuring concept in this guide will be AV, short for Army Value, this is a very mathematical style of being ahead in values and what these values represent.
A lead in AV, and the right AV at that will be the deciding factor in most engagements, and what allows you to survive any stage of the starvation game.
Another concept is the counter flowchart, different units are made in different stages of the game, anticipation and countering these makes your AV more efficient.
While you can play mech when, and wherever you want to, this style has a few conditions to maps for it to function properly.
- Being able to secure your own expands in time against those of your oponent
- Being able to use timings windows/punish greedy opponents.
- Being able to cover the defensive arc required to protect your expands
if the first condition is not met, you will likely be behind in AV at some stage and lose to overwhelming numbers.
typical maps for the first condition would be maps like merry go round, where the third is extremely open and hard to defend for mech, in which case it's likely you take it much later than a zerg would.
if the second condition is not met, again you're going to be behind in AV as it allows the zerg economy to spiral out of control.
typical maps for the second condition would be maps like whirlwind.
the size and open-ness of it gives zergs plenty of time to react, or to catch you in the open with strong concaves, make any expedition a huge risk.
the third condition is one mostly vital to the lategame, if it's not met you are likely to be slowly picked apart in areas which you can not defend, which loses you the starvation game.
typical maps for this would be catallena, where you are required to be spread widely to defend later expands.
keep in mind, these conditions can be ignored or played around if you employ a different mech build that does so, however, these are not always effective against a perfect opponent, which is something unique about this style of mech, where the game is favorable in your way if both players make the right decisions every time and have proper execution.
Gameplan
As most strategy's, it is segmented by the early, mid and lategame stages of a game of starcraft, and each will be covered in its fullest here.
1. Openers
there is a lot of freedom about your options here, and while many prefer reaper hellion openers, here is a compilation of possible openers
Reaper expand in to reactor hellions
- 10 depot
- 12 barracks
- 12/13 refinery (12refinery allows to start a reaper at barracks finish, 13 allows constant SCV production and is a bit more economical)
@100 barracks
- orbital command
- 2nd depot
@50gas
- reaper
@400minerals
- 2nd command center
@150mineral 100gas
- factory
@50minerals 50gas
- reactor on barracks
@factory completion
- swap the factory on the reactor and begin reactor hellion production.
by far the most popular of modern day mech openers as it excells in the areas modern day mech demands the most, the early reaper gives you good information on what your opponent is doing and the hellion follow up allows you begin the counter flowchart.
variations on this depend on the player and what he wants to accomplish, some opt for multiple reapers for stronger harass with hellions, others may opt for a reactor before factory and building a few marines to defend, or simply include marines to deny scouting.
Command center first
- 10 depot
- 14 command center
- 15 barracks
- take both geysers
- bunker at natural
@100gas factory
A bit more uncommon, but still strong as an early lead in economy is never bad.
reasons for it's lack in popularity are the lack of early scouting, and the inability to deal with zergs going fast 3 hatch, making your early lead in economy, not so much of a lead.
12Barracks 13Gas - reactor hellion expand
- 10 depot
- 12 barracks
- 13 refinery
@barracks completion
- orbital
- 2nd depot
- begin producing marines
@100gas
- factory
@50gas
- reactor on barracks
@400minerals, begin 2nd command center
@factory completion
- swap the factory on the reactor and begin reactor hellion production.
this is probably the oldest opener out there, and by far the least popular option out there since patch1.5 WoL, as queens are exceptional in defending and you have little options to keep the zerg economy in check while your own is hindered by opting for hellions this early, resulting in an AV loss.
the reason for including this however, is because it is extremely strong against hyper aggresive zerg play, the early reactor hellions shut down even the earliest of speedling aggresion, and this build is very capable of switching to a fast tank and some bunkers+marines for any variety of busts/all-ins on 1base.
1.5. The early game
The early game consists mostly out of defending aggresion, and keeping zerg in check, as well as scouting.
what earlier build orders have provided you, and is your starting point for the early game past build orders:
- 2 bases
- Factory tech
- Hellions
At this point, the counter flowchart is in full action.
after you countered the common early zerg unit, the zergling, it is now in the hand of the zerg to employ a counter towards hellions.
the natural responses from zerg in this stage of the game are limited, and consist of roach oriented builds and busts, or more commonly, economy focused.
the unit most suited to deal with either of these for the terran would be the banshee, as any early zerg aggresion lacks anti air, banshee's shut down most of these, as well as force defense on the zerg side if they are to take the option of macro play, keep in mind, banshees win 1:1 against queens, and your already existing hellions only help with this.
the hellion banshee composition is very agile, explosive against drones with hellion light damage, and allows for easy pressure on macro zergs.
to keep your economy in check with macro zergs, you will be expanding behind the hellion/banshee poking, and will have to take precaution against the next steps in the flowchart coming from zerg, which are going to be either mutalisks or roaches, and maybe roach/hydra.
for this, the following steps are vital:
- adding two more factorys
- adding one or two more armorys
- adding an engineering bay
prioritize the factorys over armorys, as roach timings can hit much earlier than mutalisks.
2. The midgame
what you should be having:
- three command centers
- three factorys, 2x tech lab 1x reactor
- a starport
- one or two armorys
- an engineering bay
At the start of the midgame, having 3 bases you should work towards having production fitted to deal with zerg production in the midgame, adding the 4th and 5th factory.
As mentioned towards the end of the early game, the midgame starts in the next step in the zerg flowchart, lair tech.
with zergs having to respond to your hellion/banshee composition, they have a couple of answers available:
- speedroaches
already a counter to hellions, and with speed make banshees largely neglectable, allows for a lot of counter pressure.
- mutalisk
neither hellions nor banshees can hit up, mutalisks however can hit both units, and force you back to your side of the map.
these two tech paths split the game in two distinct directions, which will each have to be adressed seperately, and it is very vital that you scout this, through either hellions or scans, making the wrong call can, and will often be, game ending.
2a. Roach midgame
the next step in the flowchart is your best option against roaches, siege tanks.
having added two factorys earlier, you will be building a lot of tanks to shut down roaches, it is also recommended to start attack upgrades to kill roaches faster.
now with roaches deflected, the zerg has to take the next step in the flowchart.
most options will be focused around negating tanks, this can be done through air units, as tanks don't shoot up, or busts including blinding cloud.
the following responses are to be likely.
- adding drop tech, making roaches negate tank shots
in this case, you will have to be add missile turrets to cut short the freedom zerg has of dropping on top of you, recommended is to have a wide spread position for your siege tanks, to minimize to effects of friendly fire, and increase the distance zerg has to travel between tanks.
- mutalisk switch
zergs may choose to switch to the other style of midgame, mutalisks, after roaches, as just like before, your composition still doesn't shoot up, fully negating the effects of your current AV.
respones would be adding more turrets on dead air space flanks and in tank lines, and adding thors to deal with clumps, any further discusion towards mutalisks will be in 2b.
- roach hydra viper busts
seems to be a common answer from zergs that don't want to play lategame, but despite that one of the weaker options, as it can be easily negated with a proper spread of siege tanks, if the blinding clouds can never cover more than one tank, the bust is doomed to fail.
- Swarmhost
another common option for zergs that do want to play the lategame, is to cut the flowchart short, and rush towards swarmhosts.
with the introduction of swarmhosts, you can choose to bust depending on current AV's, or take the safe route to fortify your position, add 4 startports and transition to the lategame(3), where swarmhosts will be discussed further.
2b. Mutalisk midgame
thors are the obvious hard counter to mutalisks in straight up engagements, however, you will have to be adding turrets early and later.
first to give you time to get the thors out initially, and prevent magic boxes.
later to cover the immobility thors suffer vs mutalisks.
it is recommended, to research both attack and armour upgrades, as armour helps thors a lot when dealing with mutalisks bounce attacks.
now it's up to zerg again to take the next step, with air largely neglected, they are likely to resort to ground units again and/or transition to the late game including hive tech.
options are:
- mass roach switch
easy to shut down, but in combination with mutalisks its hard to weigh of having enough anti ground and anti air at the same time, you should look towards a mostly tank army, with the inclusion of about 4 thors, and as many turrets as you may need against the mutalisks.
- swarmhosts
the bane of modern day mech, but can be dealt with reasonably.
after fortifying your position and securing 4base economy, you should look to switch to 4starports worth of raven production after having your tank count in place.
blue flame may also be recommended against locusts.
further swarmhost discussion will be covered in lategame.
3. The late game.
what you should be having at this point:
- 4bases
- at least 5, recommended 7 factory's
- a minimum of 1 starport, or a total of 5 of which 4 with tech lab against swarmhosts.
- around 20 siege tanks
- about 4-6 thors
- turrets covering dead air flanks and the frontline.
two small thing that might be seen in the lategame, and will be covered shortly as they have a short time span of effectiveness.
ultralisks
these can be shut down by obstructing their pathing with high HP PF's, dragged in well spread siege lines, or be actualy kited to death slowly with hellions.
Brood lords
masses of vikings deal with these easily enough, addition of ravens also helps since in HotS seeker missiles are cheaper and can not be avoided by brood lords.
with that, we continue to the more common lategame, that being a combination of swarmhosts and mutalisks with viper support.
swarmhosts lock you in position while mutalisks with vipers chisel away parts of your army and bases.
to deal with this you want to have large barriers of turrets with 1 or 2 thors per area covering dead air flanks, and a bunch of thors and turrets at your frontal flank.
while this is going on you should be producing about 4 ravens at a time to start a full lockdown on swarmhosts with point defense drones.
after you reach a decent number of ravens, ghosts may be added to snipe vipers.
3.5 Ultra lategame
with both players maxed out and probably banking too, it's time to seal the game out and take the victory, this can take a long ammount of time with swarmhosts locking you in position, resulting in the occurence of what most call the boring 1hour long swarm host games.
here we discus how to starve out the zerg.
- Orbitals
a bunch of these can help a lot, they alow you to sacrefice your SCV's for more army supply and thus more AV, aside from that you can also scan zerg bases and start muling them to take away minerals from the zerg and starve them.
- Killing zerg units
an obvious answer but sometimes hard to accomplish behind swarmhosts, you can slowly push forward tanks accompanied by thors, turrets, ravens and ghosts to get closer to the swarmhost position and alow your ravens to seeker away at swarmhosts without being likely to get grabbed by vipers.
to deal with static defense there are multiple options.
- Yamato is highly effective at chiseling away at just about anything that comes in range with it, aside from that BC's add to your current AV.
- Nukes are very good at forcing zerg to abandon their current position, be aware this may come at the loss of resources without killing anything.
- Siege tanks, sometimes risky to get close with due to swarmhosts and viper abducts, but they can slowly push forward, just don't unsiege all at once or you're in big trouble.
- killing zerg structures
with advancing your position you can sometimes push straight for their production and tech buildings, forcing the zerg to rebuild them, adding to the starvation game.
- Trading units
as has been done throughout the entire game, you want your composition to counter that of your opponents, to trade resources at the highest effectiveness.
Micro related tips
- always have your tank lines split, this forces zerg units to walk more and be exposed to shots for a longer ammount of time whenever pushing in to tanklines, having 1 or 2 tanks ahead of the rest can also bait zergs to take excessive ammount of tankfire.
- 5 is the magic number of banshees in early stage, more than that makes it worthwhile to commit to AA tech.
VoD's/Replays
- jaedong vs gumiho @IEM San Jose
+ Show Spoiler +
part 1:
part 2:
some of these games seem to be missing in vods, overal excellent example of reaper openings in to mech transitions, sadly enough little display of lategame scenario's
part 2:
some of these games seem to be missing in vods, overal excellent example of reaper openings in to mech transitions, sadly enough little display of lategame scenario's
- forGG vs life @dreamhack open winter
+ Show Spoiler +
game 4:
- MorroW vs Gosuuser 32boys 1cup
+ Show Spoiler +
- Flash vs ByuL SPL2014
+ Show Spoiler +
- Mvp vs FireCake WCS EU 2014 s1
+ Show Spoiler +
Feedback, pointers, and grammar correction is appreciated.
