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I am really enjoying this strategy.
A sample:
I roll into the zerg ramp with about 40 marines and 7 ravens. I scout ahead w/ comsat and see a huge ball of lings / banelings w/ some roach inc some muta. I rush in with marines and see the ball rush towards me.
I let fly w/ 4 Seeker Missiles, making sure to target so I spread my dmg out, and the entire ball goes red.
I think Seeker Missiles are underused and are very, very powerful.
The range is short for a reason.
Anyways thank you very much for the strat, I enjoy it and it is now my main zerg strat!
glhf!
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On November 03 2010 09:23 Antisocialmunky wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2010 23:22 Darpa wrote:
Im going to give it a shot, seems ok, but I fail to see how you are going to avoid banelings. Inevitably you are going to be pushing on creep, and I just dont see how 1 raven and 20 marines is going to beat 15 lings and 5-6 banelings, even with micro. It seems like this is essentially a tank marine opening with delayed tanks and a raven instead. That opening always seems to get demolished by muta ling/bling. But ill give it a shot, thanks for the write up. The key to this build is to really keep ontop of your macro. As long as you're doing enough damage with your army and not losing your whole army outside your nat, you should be fine. Remember that ever baneling dead is another baneling that will have to be rebuilt. Not only did Zerg need to build the initial banelings instead of drones but zerg has to get something to replace it. If you are doing this build well, you should be able to maintain worker parity or better with zerg. The first Raven push is closer to 30 marines if you keep your macro up. You need to push out with the raven to combat the creep spread. One or two turrets isn't that useful in direct combat but I find that they are good in constricting space, increase the vision around your army, or for setting up the beginnings of a contain. You should have already have had a force of 20 marines go out and kill the whole zerg army in the name of the God-Emperor or kill most of his nat because he had too little of an army - of course you can retreat and there are times it is better to retreat. Perhaps the key to banelings is getting a 2nd tech lab for stim. You usually have a idiotic amount of gas and minerals piling up by that time anyway. Show nested quote +On November 03 2010 02:38 Senorcuidado wrote:
At about 1700 diamond I'm really finding that my success hinges on how well I can dodge banelings early on. Roach openings are really easy to beat of course. I'm still losing most of the games but usually just when I let them get their third. Ultralisks are a nightmare, I don't know what to do when they come out.
Even though I win more games with the Drewbie build I'm not giving up on marine raven! The games are so much more fun. I need to be more willing to get tanks, though. Infestors and banelings are very cost effective at killing marines. Also, is it just me or is xelnaga caverns just impossible? I don't remember the last game I won there against z or p. Yes it is fun  . This build is so fun to pull off. As for Ultras... well it depends on if zerg has been sitting on two or three base. Two base ultra is kinda pathetic but 3 base ultra is hard to deal with unless you are even or ahead in bases. My instinct says you are massing up your marines and letting zerg get his third up too often since you are talking about ultras and such. The best way to combat ultras and infestors is to kill the third or force him to pour so many resources into defending it that he can't effectively transition into a late game. I hope you have better luck with it. What is the Drewbie build anyway?
yeah you're pretty correct in that instinct. I need to keep throwing marines at his third more aggressively, and probably use drops more.
The drewbie build is a reactor hellion FE into fast thors. It's very macro oriented and you get a good 140 food force of thors, marines, hellions, and banshees with +2 mech weapons at 14 minutes. While there is very little harrassment in the build you can hold off muta harrass easily and the death ball is very strong with several scvs to repair. It's a little difficult on maps with wide open naturals and most zergs try to bust when they see the reactor hellions. If they are too aggressive though, they get outmacroed pretty bad.
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I am practicing this strategy a lot, it is very fun to play, but there are some limitations...
Firstly, it is very difficult if your opponent goes Ling/Bane after the fast expo instead of mutas. I guess this is countered by bunkers, but it completely shuts down your initial marine attack. I don't have a replay for this.
Also, it also gets difficult when they make lots of roaches+banelings+mutas, your army just gets rolled over. I had lots of accumulated resources, I kinda get why I lost, but our armies were close in food count, and I still got pwned.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/99434-1v1-terran-zerg-blistering-sands
Its also highly difficult to deal with when they get infestors roaches and banelings. I know it is gas heavy but they don't need a lot to obliterate your marines. Even so, I managed to handle that unit combination and lots of others, but it became impossibly difficult when he got upgraded ultras in a fair amount. Please look carefully at the replay, this is one of my better games and yet at the end, even with food advantage, I got stomped.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/99437-1v1-terran-zerg-lost-temple
I know there are lots of things such as supply block, spending resources, etc. etc., but you have to be MUCH better than your opponent at microing in order to even have a chance at not losing everything. My opponent didn't even need to dodge heat seeking missiles, I wonder how badly I would have lost if he did.
Any thoughts on how to handle these situations??
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I watched the first game on sands, Bozon. You had 3K minerals and 2K gas at the end. Even with 11 single barracks worth of production and 2 SP. You actually were ahead the whole game until the semi-botched engagement at the zerg expo. Even then, if you had macroed, you would have been fine and won in two or three pushes.
There were points in the game where you had 10+ harvasters on the zerg. :-\ You have to have a second army waiting to go after your previous one dies and you stop macroing everytime you look away. Other issues were that you were quite passive despite getting two queens and a few roaches at the very beginning. You also may have teched slightly too quickly because you had a ton of gas but that is hard to avoid.
This is really one of those builds that lends it self to the macro/a-move/ignore army and go back to macroing training method until around mid-diamond. I kid you not. You can even sit at home with your ravens and get a giant ball of them while you keep macroing 50 food armies and a-moving them. Then just move out and paint the map with turrets.
I'll look at the other one tomorrow. :D Glad you have fun atleast.
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On November 03 2010 13:26 Antisocialmunky wrote:
I watched the first game on sands, Bozon. You had 3K minerals and 2K gas at the end. Even with 11 single barracks worth of production and 2 SP. You actually were ahead the whole game until the semi-botched engagement at the zerg expo. Even then, if you had macroed, you would have been fine and won in two or three pushes.
There were points in the game where you had 10+ harvasters on the zerg. :-\ You have to have a second army waiting to go after your previous one dies and you stop macroing everytime you look away. Other issues were that you were quite passive despite getting two queens and a few roaches at the very beginning. You also may have teched slightly too quickly because you had a ton of gas but that is hard to avoid.
This is really one of those builds that lends it self to the macro/a-move/ignore army and go back to macroing training method until around mid-diamond. I kid you not. You can even sit at home with your ravens and get a giant ball of them while you keep macroing 50 food armies and a-moving them. Then just move out and paint the map with turrets.
I'll look at the other one tomorrow. :D Glad you have fun atleast.
Okay, I'll look forward to it, that second game should be very entertaining (47 min long, but the part I'm worried about is up to 30 something) =]
Also, the first problem I mentioned (Ling/Bane) is EXACTLY what Gerbil did against pokebunny dude, it is waaay difficult to stop when they have so many, I think its one of the greatest flaws in this strat, if you don't bunker up.
Anyways, appreciate the help :D
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@Z-BosoN
Saw that second game—you must not be afraid to apply early pressure to Zerg. In this game, you let him tech alot. If you catch him off-guard, then usually you can just constantly reinforce and do alot of damage. Make sure you are constantly making marines also. You could have easily had an army twice his size. You had a bunch of reactored raxs but only queued one marine in each sometimes...
As for the banelings, he didn't have that many to begin with in the early stage of the game. You could have also limited the creep spread with occasional pressure. What I usually do is stim a small group of marines, run them into banelings, then bring in my main army.
If he still has more banelings, make sure to spread out your marines to minimize damage. If he has infestors, again, spread out a group or two of marines that will focus fire the infestors.
In short, don't be afraid to lose your marines because you can remake them quite quickly as long as you macro effectively.
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On November 03 2010 12:56 Z-BosoN wrote:I am practicing this strategy a lot, it is very fun to play, but there are some limitations... Firstly, it is very difficult if your opponent goes Ling/Bane after the fast expo instead of mutas. I guess this is countered by bunkers, but it completely shuts down your initial marine attack. I don't have a replay for this. Also, it also gets difficult when they make lots of roaches+banelings+mutas, your army just gets rolled over. I had lots of accumulated resources, I kinda get why I lost, but our armies were close in food count, and I still got pwned. http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/99434-1v1-terran-zerg-blistering-sandsIts also highly difficult to deal with when they get infestors roaches and banelings. I know it is gas heavy but they don't need a lot to obliterate your marines. Even so, I managed to handle that unit combination and lots of others, but it became impossibly difficult when he got upgraded ultras in a fair amount. Please look carefully at the replay, this is one of my better games and yet at the end, even with food advantage, I got stomped. http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/99437-1v1-terran-zerg-lost-templeI know there are lots of things such as supply block, spending resources, etc. etc., but you have to be MUCH better than your opponent at microing in order to even have a chance at not losing everything. My opponent didn't even need to dodge heat seeking missiles, I wonder how badly I would have lost if he did. Any thoughts on how to handle these situations??
okay i watched the second replay and the biggest thing i noticed was that you weren't doing what the whole build is based on - constant aggression and trading. His third and fourth went up uncontested and you never attacked until he was already at hive tech (other than the first suicide attack with ~10 marines). You cannot be that passive with any build as terran or you will usually get outmacroed by zerg. You also built a lot of bunkers early on and that hindered your ability to develop infrastructure.
Throughout the game you had a lot of idle barracks and a whole lot of money, just hotkey all those together and hold down 'a'. You were also pretty liberal with stim, even using it to destroy the rocks at the gold, but you only had 2 medivacs. After you both played defensively and massed up close to 200/200 and finally clashed with evenish results (the ravens should have been more involved in that fight) he immediately started popping more larvae. He had 3/3 upgrades for his ultras at that point, i'm not sure what he was waiting for. Your barracks were sitting still. The beautiful thing is that you can keep trading armies, you'll retain the ravens and have another huge mass of marines to throw at him while the raven flock gets bigger and more dangerous. All those auto turrets at his fourth was perfect, they are great for that and he can't do much to stop it.
29:00 aaaahh all your ravens! you can't afford to leave them so vulnerable directly over all those hydras and mutas. Now the ultras come out but you split pretty well with the marines, it's a tough fight once they start coming though. Your barracks are idle, there's no shame in queuing them up all the way when you have 5k minerals. I like to see that you're going for a drop...
33:00 awesome drop! now he has no income, but a lot of ultralisks...i was worried about your dropships but he didn't get a fungal on them, it's okay to lose the marines, just make sure you keep your dropships and ravens alive.
34:30 here comes the counter attack, he's dead broke and all you have to do is hold it off...
35:00 ouch, the marines were really bunched up and got fungal growthed pretty bad. You lost all your ravens trying to get off those seeker missiles, honestly auto turrets probably would have been better.
Those ultralisks sure are tough when they're fully upgraded. The marauder transition was great, and you held him off very well despite losing your PF. You really should have taken the island expo a while ago, I know it's easy to forget but that could be making a huge difference. Your late game decisions weren't all that bad though, I'm not sure I would have done better, but you could have been in a better position with a more aggressive early and mid game. That many ultralisks is a nightmare, and most terrans will lose at that point. Just try to be more aggressive with those marines and dropships, force his larva! And keep those ravens alive, a good raven cloud will win the game. Luckily he didn't make that many banelings so you didn't have to worry that much about splitting the marines, although better splitting would have helped against some of those brutal FGs.
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Hey cool strat, being using it with moderate success and just wanted to ask you a few qs about it.
1. Is the trading really that important? In BW, it was important for T not to lose his mnm ball early or he would have a tough time facing the impending mutalisk harras and therefore delaying his midgame push, allowing z an easier time to grab 3rd and faster tech or hive.
2. Have you considered marine push --> marine, medivac, tank --> late game transition into marine/mar, med, tank, raven. The reason for this is that ravens don't seem to be as strong composition against mid game z army (sorta like what avilo said earlier). i.e. you can get much more out of a couple of tanks or medivacs in the midgame than in a couple of ravens. The other reason seems to be that while marines are cheap and replaceable, they seem way to fragile to (blings/infestor combo) without the support of medivacs or tanks.
The other reason why i tihnk late game ravens are stronger is that, typical mid game z unit compositions tend deal well ravens, however late game z compositions (ultras/BL) dont seem to be able to match the mobility and versatility of ravens, where the z may have 4+ expos and you easily go around pop down turrets at each base and fly away and there is very little z can do about that.
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@Z-BosoN
You were somewhat afraid of Z for no good reason in the second game. You also didn't scale your production to fit the number of bases you were up to. Zerg's last push was rather amazing that it managed to take your main out so kudos to him. You had pretty good raven use too.
@Beith
#1 - Yes it is important but with the caveat that you shouldn't be suicidal. There are times when your 20 marine poke shouldn't engage such as when zerg is massing tons of units. I always make it a point to save a scan for it. The timing for muta seems to come right before your big mid-game push. Muta harass isn't the same as BW muta harass and is somewhat less dangerous to deal with. That and the short rush distances on many maps makes it viable to counter vs muta harass and win the game right there.
#2 - Marine/Medivac tank is certainly viable and you are right that there are problems with going straight to Raven KME was trying to figure out a way to work in fast tanks and I don't mind making a few rounds of medivacs when I'm low on gas needed for fast upgrades.
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So I finally lost with the build to a guy who after my initial attack, dropped a 3rd hatch, completely stopped making drones and just made toooons of lings and sufficient banes. Totally rolled over me even though my economy was getting way ahead. I tried to get medvacs to compensate instead of my first raven but they werent enough, I think an adjustment of 2 banshees out first to help deal with this kind of response would really help. This would only apply if they are going banes first, otherwise medvacs or straight to ravens is appropriate. Massing banshees is not appropriate in this strategy because of their high vulnerability to muta/bling and relatively high mineral cost.
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Been messing with this build a few days and while I beat bad ladder zergs with it, it's hard-countered by any smart enough to just make infestors (although I admit zergs smart enough to do this are few and far between). There is no way to counter well-controlled infestors with a pure marine/raven combination. They can just run a few infestors up, fungal, run back, repeat. Couldn't they also NP your raven from long-range and HSM your marines? Never had anyone do that to me, but it sounds awesome.
There needs to be some adaptation to counter infestors for this build to be viable. Ghosts are possibly the best bet, but the huge gas cost conflicts with your ravens. The OP basically tells you that you're relying on your opponent to let his infestors die to your marines and you'll be ok. Well, it's not ok if my opponent knows how to micro his infestors. Even if you turret push the infestors can still run up solo and fungal. They'll probably live, and even if they die, fungaling a bunch of marines and then dying is incredibly cost effective still.
The fact that you're fast-expanding gives the zerg plenty of time to run off 4 gas and get whatever he wants.
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ghost come out able to cast 2 snipes and enough to kill a infestor. Making 2-3 ghost to snipe infestors wont cut to much into your ravens if they are producing infestors.
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Mass marines are of course fine.
I still don't see the point of mass ravens at all here. If you want a gas-dump, get upgrades or tanks/thors/banshees. 1 Raven to clear creep and spot burrowed movement is of course great.
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On November 04 2010 06:55 link0 wrote:
Mass marines are of course fine.
I still don't see the point of mass ravens at all here. If you want a gas-dump, get upgrades or tanks/thors/banshees. 1 Raven to clear creep and spot burrowed movement is of course great.
I think the idea behind the ravens is survivability. When raven/marines fight, you lose marines and energy in an exchange. With thor/marines, for example, you lose everything if you exchange.
That said, I'm not sold on the ravens yet, but I'm still open to them.
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On November 04 2010 06:49 iEchoic wrote:
Been messing with this build a few days and while I beat bad ladder zergs with it, it's hard-countered by any smart enough to just make infestors (although I admit zergs smart enough to do this are few and far between). There is no way to counter well-controlled infestors with a pure marine/raven combination. They can just run a few infestors up, fungal, run back, repeat. Couldn't they also NP your raven from long-range and HSM your marines? Never had anyone do that to me, but it sounds awesome.
There needs to be some adaptation to counter infestors for this build to be viable. Ghosts are possibly the best bet, but the huge gas cost conflicts with your ravens. The OP basically tells you that you're relying on your opponent to let his infestors die to your marines and you'll be ok. Well, it's not ok if my opponent knows how to micro his infestors. Even if you turret push the infestors can still run up solo and fungal. They'll probably live, and even if they die, fungaling a bunch of marines and then dying is incredibly cost effective still.
The fact that you're fast-expanding gives the zerg plenty of time to run off 4 gas and get whatever he wants.
That's quite a bit of constructive feedback you have there. Most of the zergs I've run into that get infestors, get a later infestor and die because I have the infinite marine pump and raven cloud up. I'm not sure how to counter a relatively fast infestor which is what you seem to be describing. I ran into that strategy a total of once but he only used it to stop the first attack. I'd be very interested in some reps(keeping it private through PMs is fine by me) if you'd be willing as most ladder zergs are kinda bleh.
I think you are right about ghosts being a good bet. You will have 1/2 tech labs anyway and the raven cloud doesn't kick in immediately. Another thought though, what do you think about taking a page from your book and getting a 2-4 banshees and cloak instead of 2 ravens for the first push? Have the banshees attack the mineral line and hunt down the infestors and force multiple overseers since each overseer can only be at once place. I suppose Tanks work as well.
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On November 04 2010 08:33 Antisocialmunky wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2010 06:49 iEchoic wrote:
Been messing with this build a few days and while I beat bad ladder zergs with it, it's hard-countered by any smart enough to just make infestors (although I admit zergs smart enough to do this are few and far between). There is no way to counter well-controlled infestors with a pure marine/raven combination. They can just run a few infestors up, fungal, run back, repeat. Couldn't they also NP your raven from long-range and HSM your marines? Never had anyone do that to me, but it sounds awesome.
There needs to be some adaptation to counter infestors for this build to be viable. Ghosts are possibly the best bet, but the huge gas cost conflicts with your ravens. The OP basically tells you that you're relying on your opponent to let his infestors die to your marines and you'll be ok. Well, it's not ok if my opponent knows how to micro his infestors. Even if you turret push the infestors can still run up solo and fungal. They'll probably live, and even if they die, fungaling a bunch of marines and then dying is incredibly cost effective still.
The fact that you're fast-expanding gives the zerg plenty of time to run off 4 gas and get whatever he wants. That's quite a bit of constructive feedback you have there. Most of the zergs I've run into that get infestors, get a later infestor and die because I have the infinite marine pump and raven cloud up. I'm not sure how to counter a relatively fast infestor which is what you seem to be describing. I ran into that strategy a total of once but he only used it to stop the first attack. I'd be very interested in some reps(keeping it private through PMs is fine by me) if you'd be willing as most ladder zergs are kinda bleh. I think you are right about ghosts being a good bet. You will have 1/2 tech labs anyway and the raven cloud doesn't kick in immediately. Another thought though, what do you think about taking a page from your book and getting a 2-4 banshees and cloak instead of 2 ravens for the first push? Have the banshees attack the mineral line and hunt down the infestors and force multiple overseers since each overseer can only be at once place. I suppose Tanks work as well.
I think opening cloaked banshee (supply/ref/rax for faster cloaked banshee) followed by an immediate expo into the marine/raven may be a good idea. It gives you an aggressive opening while quickly giving you the infrastructure to create ravens. I'm kind of uncomfortable FEing against Zerg now because it feels like when I play good opponents they spot my expo and just drone like mad and I fall significantly behind.
In theorycraft world, a marine/ghost/raven army should rock. You can emp or snipe the infestors, you can split your marines up against banelings and snipe the banelings as well. The only practical problem I've found is that the micro here is nearly impossible. I played one game against a practice partner who actually went sling + bling + a few infestors. He a-moves at you, gets ready to fungal you, and there's just no way to emp the infestors while running and splitting the marines simultaneously. I kind of gave up on that.
I think the reason imMVP and players like him go tank/bio is not because of blings but because of infestors. I think that tanks may be necessary if they end up doing an infestor composition, because I have trouble seeing how you can counter infestors+blings early on.
As you said, a group of cloaked banshees later on may work. You could stim a group of marines to kill overseers and then keep infestors off you with the banshees. Might try some games later.
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I'm curious, how are they getting away with droning like mad? You can apply a lot of pressure at their front pretty quickly and sunks are only so good against a wall of marines without a decent amount of units to support. Are they pretty much rushing for mass ling->bling and then droning?
A Tank transition may be warranted either way as a response to the zerg sitting on two base. Zerg pretty much has to murder it to get a third up. I keep finding that zerg 2 base/3hatch macro is hard to counter with pure marines. They can make so many units that your can't control their gas as efficiently. Also the immobility of tanks won't hurt you as badly either.
I would love to see that sort of banshee play especially knowing how well you do against toss with them.
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I'm not sure Banshees are really the answer to infestors. They can reveal cloaked units with fungal, and then pop infested terrans underneath them to finish them off. No overseers needed. Infestors on creep should even have a speed advantage that would help them respond to banshee harass.
Serious infestor play seems like it steals many of the advantages that the Raven build has - Infestors can trade energy for units just like Ravens can, so there's not really an advantage building up from continuous army trading while preserving spell casters.
But this strategy is a lot of fun and effective.
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On November 04 2010 10:11 Victim wrote:
I'm not sure Banshees are really the answer to infestors. They can reveal cloaked units with fungal, and then pop infested terrans underneath them to finish them off. No overseers needed. Infestors on creep should even have a speed advantage that would help them respond to banshee harass.
Serious infestor play seems like it steals many of the advantages that the Raven build has - Infestors can trade energy for units just like Ravens can, so there's not really an advantage building up from continuous army trading while preserving spell casters.
But this strategy is a lot of fun and effective.
How are they going to fungal growth your units when they fungal growth and infested terran your banshees?
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EPT
