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Make sure you read the OP before asking a question. Asking a question already addressed in the OP will result in moderation action. Also, please put some effort into your questions. |
On June 30 2012 14:22 Efficient wrote:
Hi Fellow Terrans
In TvZ I frequently die to roach-bane-ling attacks off of a two base zerg. I'm in gold and they usually hit around 8-10 minutes.
Simple Question:Is there a typical time for zerg to take a third (or not take a third!) that should be setting off alarm bells in my head? Or are there other simple ways to scout these sorts of attacks?
I know there's been a lot of whining in this thread about the TvZ match up, but I'm a gold league player so I don't want to hear about that.
You wanna patrol an SCV at their third. Sometimes they don't check to see if you're checking up on their third. If you are going 1rax FE into reactor hellions your first 2 hellions should check for a 3rd, and then continually check up on it if you don't see one.
If you notice no 3rd and it's gone a fair amount of time (basically anything over 6-7 minutes) then it's either 2base tech (muta or infestor) or a 2base all-in. Leaving your hellions close to his nat or close to his xelnaga tower should act as a tripwire as best it can. If you see a ton of roaches heading your way, you know what's up.
Try to snipe lings with your hellions while you add a 2nd bunker (assuming you made a first one) and completing your wall if it isn't already complete, and making marauders. Once your banshee is out (assuming you went for banshee follow-up) you should be able to snipe some banes as they morph and/or as they are approaching your nat. Make sure you don't lose any SCVs to banelings and repair your bunkers as best you can and just try to hold out.
It's a really difficult all-in to hold, and often times it does enough damage to just lose you the game, but those basic steps are a good start to holding it as efficiently as possible.
Also, if it happens to catch you completely off-guard, as in you don't notice it until it's already happening, then you want to instantly send all your SCVs to your main and run your SCVs around as banshee(s) slooowly kill his army. But if this situation occurs you've most likely lost the game.
Good luck =)
Edit: I don't actually know how build-order savvy people are in gold, so this might not apply too rigidly.
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United States4883 Posts
On June 30 2012 10:34 MrTwiggy wrote:Alright, thanks a bunch to the replies I got, I'll definitely have to take those things into consideration  Here's another dilemma I've run into. In pretty much all my builds, I do 1 Rax FE and then put up a bunker + SD right after. Now, when I'm playing against protoss, sometimes they go for this really early pressure, whether it be a straight up 4-gate, or sometimes they will expand but then send like 4-6 stalkers to my base, and they will poke up the ramp, sometimes just straight out destroying the bunker before I can see it/react/repair it with SCV's. I realise that the answer to this is station some marines/SCV's at watch tower, look for a push, etc, but what about when he proxies a pylon and warps them in? I usually only have 5-8 marines, 4 of which are in my bunker, and without the bunker I pretty much lose because stalkers just wreck marines with relatively low-micro (just stutter step). On top of that, even when I do see the pressure coming, they will often poke up the ramp, I'll have some SCV's ready to repair, and back off, then here's where it gets hard. I know they are probably still near my ramp, so what do I do? Do I leave 4-5 SCVs idle by the bunker ready to repair? Because then I'm wasting upwards of 200 minerals every single minute, but if I don't leave them there and they go back to mining, if he pushes up when I'm doing something else and I don't have 100% perfect awareness, he can often destroy the bunker before I react and get the SCV's over. So, any tips/tricks/insight on what I can do to sort of squash this? Because usually if he can take out my bunker, I'm pretty much done. I often lose marines, SCV's, I need to retreat and lift my expo CC, and now I'm not mining for 3+ minutes, and a good protoss player will realise this and then just send in a ton of reinforcements with his 2 base economy and inevitably destroy me.
I agree and support everything Fencer said. In addition, I'd like to add that you actually shouldn't need to stutter step with marines unless the stalkers are backed into a corner. Otherwise, you should just a-move and save yourself some APM; stalkers should be the ones having to kite. Also, if your bunker falls, consider just pulling back the marines and using 4-5 SCVs to buffer some damage while you wait for additional marines to pop out.
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TvZ theory:
Okay, there's some obvious issues in modern TvZ vs 15h/15p 4-6 queens build.
The understanding is that: queens are a generic counter to marines, hellions, reapers, and banshees and thus Zerg can blindly counter non-early allins with one unit.
The current theory Terrans follow is the same one Zergs use in ZvP
e.g. Zerg's pay 300-600 minerals for 2-4 extra queens and essentially pay for your third OC since Queen's are a relatively immobile defense unit.
This is the way I have approached TvZ currently: Super aggressive constant marine pressure with greedy expos off bunkered rines with fast upgrades and medivacs.
Here's something I want to see explored:
A strength of queens is that they do not take larvae. But, their weakness is that their production is limited to one at a time from a building that costs 300 minerals.
Additionally, to gather 400-600 minerals for queens, one must necessarily delay gas which means later speed, slower lair, slower spire/blings/sblings/lower mutas/less infestors
Queens being effective versus banshee/hellion means necessarily they are saving energy for transfuse rather than tumors.
Queens are not the most mobile units, even on creep. Hellions, reapers, and banshees compare favorably with Queen mobility.
Therefore, I propose Terrans revise their approach to modern TvZ, use the old pre-nerf BFH approach: e.g. critical threshold approach, for ex: 2-6 BFH is easily handled, but 8-16BFH means that a few survive to cleanse drone lines
I would imagine there are timings to explore where we mass hellion, banshee, rauder, or reapers into mass marine/medivac followup.
Basically, my idea is: make units that Queens "counter" but make more than expected to force either a strong reaction, diversion of Queen energy, or death/strong advantage for T.
Hellion/banshee
Hellion/rauder
Hellion/reaper
Rauder/reaper
Banshee/reaper
Those are the most obvious. The second I would actually consider the worst support for this theory but rauders obviously have their own intrinsic strengths
Strengths: forces lings/roaches since queen production simply won't be able to keep up with it.
Weaknesses: all high micro units, gas heavy and thus VERY delayed weapon/armor upgrades
Sorry that this is very generic, it's just something that's been on my mind as I reach a apm threshold for my marine splitting aggro style vs sling/bling/infestor into ultra/infestor/bling/bling.
Why am I posting it rather than finding the timings myself:
My strength is game theory. I don't use refined build orders and just play by feel. Therefore I am not best suited to provided empirical support in the form of clean build order games. Besides, more minds > fewer.
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
If your concept is to just bum rush him with a huge number of harass units right in the face (marauder/hellion all-in comes to mind), that's always worked and always been a part of the metagame. You'll notice that most terrans who "give up" on dealing with quick zerg thirds just all-in every game and win half of them. Although all-inning off 2 base with a huge force definitely works, I think people are looking for a solution that launches them into a normal macro game.
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Here's something stupid. I just played the same Protoss (diamond NA) who did the same blink stalker with observer build twice in a row. First time I scouted that an all-in of some sort was coming (was assuming DTs or 4gate), but I didn't expect stalkers to just blink into my main, and promptly died because stim and medivacs weren't done yet (he actually sniped the tech lab literally a second before stim finished too).
Second game I wondered whether he would do the same thing again- I saw that once again he was going to do an all in, and this time made turrets at my cliffs. There was a chance where I could've tried to taken out the warp-in pylon outside my third, but I was afraid he would have stalkers patrolling and would just out micro the marines. Anyway, turns out that observer sight outranges turrets, and so that was completely botched. I managed to get stim finished but blink micro is pretty good I hear.
http://drop.sc/210137
http://drop.sc/210136
Anything I can do to avoid this happening again?;
Also a second question: Is it pretty standard to follow-up a Hellion/Marine/Medivac elevator with cloaked banshees? Got killed by that too, probably could've avoided it if I just made a blind turret.
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On June 30 2012 17:40 Blazinghand wrote:
If your concept is to just bum rush him with a huge number of harass units right in the face (marauder/hellion all-in comes to mind), that's always worked and always been a part of the metagame. You'll notice that most terrans who "give up" on dealing with quick zerg thirds just all-in every game and win half of them. Although all-inning off 2 base with a huge force definitely works, I think people are looking for a solution that launches them into a normal macro game.
Yes this is correct.
Terrans are not looking for more "all-ins" off 1-2 or even 3 bases (most mech play). They are looking for a way to play a straight up game in which their micro/macro/decision making can be honed and fine-tuned in order to produce a win rate equal to their skill level and see their games in TvZ being decided on whom the better player was most of the time. Currently nobody has a strategy based around this as before it was about your early game harassment coupled with micro/macro vs the zergs ability to hold it off and catch you with a potential timing or ride out their macro advantage into the late game.
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On June 30 2012 18:41 deeshoo wrote:Here's something stupid. I just played the same Protoss (diamond NA) who did the same blink stalker with observer build twice in a row. First time I scouted that an all-in of some sort was coming (was assuming DTs or 4gate), but I didn't expect stalkers to just blink into my main, and promptly died because stim and medivacs weren't done yet (he actually sniped the tech lab literally a second before stim finished too). Second game I wondered whether he would do the same thing again- I saw that once again he was going to do an all in, and this time made turrets at my cliffs. There was a chance where I could've tried to taken out the warp-in pylon outside my third, but I was afraid he would have stalkers patrolling and would just out micro the marines. Anyway, turns out that observer sight outranges turrets, and so that was completely botched. I managed to get stim finished but blink micro is pretty good I hear. http://drop.sc/210137http://drop.sc/210136Anything I can do to avoid this happening again?; Also a second question: Is it pretty standard to follow-up a Hellion/Marine/Medivac elevator with cloaked banshees? Got killed by that too, probably could've avoided it if I just made a blind turret.
bunker in your main
pull scvs when the stalkers get in your main. they can micro forever against marines so you need to actually do damage somehow, and remember he's all in
also, since he's all in you want to pull your scvs from nat to main. in my experience you can't hold 2 places at once against blink.
I put a bunker at the ramp and one around where I expect them to blink it. try to get medivacs and marauders asap (if stim is finishing medivacs should be out or close if you're doing regular tvp)... marauders are obviously good against stalkers and medivacs mean blinking away to regen shields offers toss less of an advantage.
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On June 30 2012 18:41 deeshoo wrote:Here's something stupid. I just played the same Protoss (diamond NA) who did the same blink stalker with observer build twice in a row. First time I scouted that an all-in of some sort was coming (was assuming DTs or 4gate), but I didn't expect stalkers to just blink into my main, and promptly died because stim and medivacs weren't done yet (he actually sniped the tech lab literally a second before stim finished too). Second game I wondered whether he would do the same thing again- I saw that once again he was going to do an all in, and this time made turrets at my cliffs. There was a chance where I could've tried to taken out the warp-in pylon outside my third, but I was afraid he would have stalkers patrolling and would just out micro the marines. Anyway, turns out that observer sight outranges turrets, and so that was completely botched. I managed to get stim finished but blink micro is pretty good I hear. http://drop.sc/210137http://drop.sc/210136Anything I can do to avoid this happening again?; Also a second question: Is it pretty standard to follow-up a Hellion/Marine/Medivac elevator with cloaked banshees? Got killed by that too, probably could've avoided it if I just made a blind turret.
I´m watching game 2 and will post my thoughts on it:
4:00: You have a huge SCV gap. When you are doing the 16 CC you constantly build SCVs and cut marines instead. You continue building marines after you have build your 2nd depot. If you have scv cut´s with the 16 CC it you don´t use the real "strength" of the build in comparison to the 20 CC. You also didn´t wait to see whether he builds a 2nd gas or not. This is information you allways get and you should react to it in a different way than you normally do. ~ 4 minutes is when the first stalker is finished and until that time he needs to build his 2nd gas, when he wants to do a gas heavy build. My reaction to a 2nd gas is a 4th rax before my gas. The reason is all the allins (Stargate, Blink Stalker, Immortal) needs a lot of units to defend, so you can either go for the 4 rax build i mentioned or you go for the standard 3 rax with addons and ebay before factory. This is much safer and will reduce your loss ratio aggainst allins. Bomber´s build is kind of weak aggainst those allins because you get your addons and additional rax too late. You also need some marrauder´s to kill the stalker more easy and bomber´s build don´t allow you to build marrauders early because of the less gas, so it´s just a build i only play aggainst 1 gate fe.
8:00: You have a lot of gaps in your scv production. Your current count is 30. The benchmark for 10 minutes is ~ 50 scvs. focus more on constantly building scvs before you build additional buildings.
10:00: In the end you loose because of 1) bad scouting and reacting 2) overreacting (too many bunkers + turrets) and 3) bad macro. It seems to me, that you are too afraid of those allins that you make mistakes in the simple things. Every allin can be beat with good macro and a good reaction after your scouting. You are doing a 1 rax fe aggainst a heavy unit oriented allin. So when you are teching too fast after a 1 rax fe it´s obvious that you die to that. That´s why scouting and adapting is important. Try to scout the 2nd gas in the next games and then go for either the 4 rax build or the standard 3 rax w 2 gas with addons and ebay before factory and you will be fine.
PS: Cloak Banshee is not a typical foolow after a marine hellion drop, but possible because they already have a starport. In TvT in general try to include a ebay ~ 6 minutes into your build for fast upgrades and for possible banshees.
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On June 30 2012 10:48 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2012 10:34 MrTwiggy wrote:Alright, thanks a bunch to the replies I got, I'll definitely have to take those things into consideration Here's another dilemma I've run into. In pretty much all my builds, I do 1 Rax FE and then put up a bunker + SD right after. Now, when I'm playing against protoss, sometimes they go for this really early pressure, whether it be a straight up 4-gate, or sometimes they will expand but then send like 4-6 stalkers to my base, and they will poke up the ramp, sometimes just straight out destroying the bunker before I can see it/react/repair it with SCV's. I realise that the answer to this is station some marines/SCV's at watch tower, look for a push, etc, but what about when he proxies a pylon and warps them in? I usually only have 5-8 marines, 4 of which are in my bunker, and without the bunker I pretty much lose because stalkers just wreck marines with relatively low-micro (just stutter step). On top of that, even when I do see the pressure coming, they will often poke up the ramp, I'll have some SCV's ready to repair, and back off, then here's where it gets hard. I know they are probably still near my ramp, so what do I do? Do I leave 4-5 SCVs idle by the bunker ready to repair? Because then I'm wasting upwards of 200 minerals every single minute, but if I don't leave them there and they go back to mining, if he pushes up when I'm doing something else and I don't have 100% perfect awareness, he can often destroy the bunker before I react and get the SCV's over. So, any tips/tricks/insight on what I can do to sort of squash this? Because usually if he can take out my bunker, I'm pretty much done. I often lose marines, SCV's, I need to retreat and lift my expo CC, and now I'm not mining for 3+ minutes, and a good protoss player will realise this and then just send in a ton of reinforcements with his 2 base economy and inevitably destroy me. A replay would help a lot. But anyway~ If he's on one base or otherwise behind in economy, it's OK to keep four or five SCV's at your bunker in case he pushes up the ramp and your bunker is far away. Actually, if you're having a tough time holding, it's OK to just always do that until Stim finishes and you can hold without pulling SCV's to repair, and just eventually learning when it's okay to leave SCV's there and when it's okay to pull them back to mine. If he pokes and immediately kills your bunker, consider pulling back your bunker closer to your CC so you can repair it more easily, or comparing the replays of someone who does this strategy and someone who doesn't and looking for tells as to the build that the Protoss goes for. Alternatively, you can delay gas/SCVs/Marines to build a second bunker early on. If he's going for heavy gateway pressure, build more bunkers and perhaps build your depots in a wall to prevent Zealots from getting a surround on your bunkers. Make sure that the depots are not in front of the bunkers, though.
I noticed you said a replay would help a lot, so here it is: http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=266346
You can probably skip forward to around 7ish mins, which is when the pressure begins. It looks like it was a 3 Gate Fast Expand from protoss, which I THINK is normal? He started pressuring me with a stalker and zealot, which my bunker held, however he came back with some stalkers, which is when I made the dumb mistake to just attack, rather than repair it, because it looked like I had a lot more units than he did, however he eventually picked off my bunker, I couldn't rebuild, and he just kept pressuring me.
Looking back, there was probably a lot of things I could have changed. Gone for the SCV repair quicker, I probably should have started getting Marauders, not really sure what else.
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United States4883 Posts
On June 30 2012 23:02 MrTwiggy wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2012 10:48 Fencer710 wrote:On June 30 2012 10:34 MrTwiggy wrote:Alright, thanks a bunch to the replies I got, I'll definitely have to take those things into consideration Here's another dilemma I've run into. In pretty much all my builds, I do 1 Rax FE and then put up a bunker + SD right after. Now, when I'm playing against protoss, sometimes they go for this really early pressure, whether it be a straight up 4-gate, or sometimes they will expand but then send like 4-6 stalkers to my base, and they will poke up the ramp, sometimes just straight out destroying the bunker before I can see it/react/repair it with SCV's. I realise that the answer to this is station some marines/SCV's at watch tower, look for a push, etc, but what about when he proxies a pylon and warps them in? I usually only have 5-8 marines, 4 of which are in my bunker, and without the bunker I pretty much lose because stalkers just wreck marines with relatively low-micro (just stutter step). On top of that, even when I do see the pressure coming, they will often poke up the ramp, I'll have some SCV's ready to repair, and back off, then here's where it gets hard. I know they are probably still near my ramp, so what do I do? Do I leave 4-5 SCVs idle by the bunker ready to repair? Because then I'm wasting upwards of 200 minerals every single minute, but if I don't leave them there and they go back to mining, if he pushes up when I'm doing something else and I don't have 100% perfect awareness, he can often destroy the bunker before I react and get the SCV's over. So, any tips/tricks/insight on what I can do to sort of squash this? Because usually if he can take out my bunker, I'm pretty much done. I often lose marines, SCV's, I need to retreat and lift my expo CC, and now I'm not mining for 3+ minutes, and a good protoss player will realise this and then just send in a ton of reinforcements with his 2 base economy and inevitably destroy me. A replay would help a lot. But anyway~ If he's on one base or otherwise behind in economy, it's OK to keep four or five SCV's at your bunker in case he pushes up the ramp and your bunker is far away. Actually, if you're having a tough time holding, it's OK to just always do that until Stim finishes and you can hold without pulling SCV's to repair, and just eventually learning when it's okay to leave SCV's there and when it's okay to pull them back to mine. If he pokes and immediately kills your bunker, consider pulling back your bunker closer to your CC so you can repair it more easily, or comparing the replays of someone who does this strategy and someone who doesn't and looking for tells as to the build that the Protoss goes for. Alternatively, you can delay gas/SCVs/Marines to build a second bunker early on. If he's going for heavy gateway pressure, build more bunkers and perhaps build your depots in a wall to prevent Zealots from getting a surround on your bunkers. Make sure that the depots are not in front of the bunkers, though. I noticed you said a replay would help a lot, so here it is: http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=266346You can probably skip forward to around 7ish mins, which is when the pressure begins. It looks like it was a 3 Gate Fast Expand from protoss, which I THINK is normal? He started pressuring me with a stalker and zealot, which my bunker held, however he came back with some stalkers, which is when I made the dumb mistake to just attack, rather than repair it, because it looked like I had a lot more units than he did, however he eventually picked off my bunker, I couldn't rebuild, and he just kept pressuring me. Looking back, there was probably a lot of things I could have changed. Gone for the SCV repair quicker, I probably should have started getting Marauders, not really sure what else.
3-gate pressure is quite common as it reduces the number of units for the 10:00 medivac/stim/+1 attack. The best thing you can do is just make sure you have a bunker up and defend until medivacs and stim are out. Make sure you scout ~6:30-7:10 to see what he's doing...it's allowable to spend a scan if you can't get an SCV scout in. Scouting no units at home or a proxy pylon with a bunch of units in front of your base should be the cue to put up 1-2 bunkers. If you do the Bomber optimization of this build, you can just build a second bunker blindly.
And, of course, just pull those SCVs for repair faster .
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has anybody stumbled upon a way to get the tvz game rolling? I keep trying to go for super fast 3cc (start 3rd cc before second rax or gas) and then I put a planetary out front to help hold and bust attempt and get some more scvs to try to keep up. In my experience so far, I just can seem to keep up with the zerg economy when I do this, because he can scout it and then get hive up pretty much around 10 11 minutes. Any suggestions for this style of play? sorry its pretty vague, I dont have any time to get replays up right now but any advice from someone who plays a similar style would be much appreciated.
PS High Diamond Terran, NA
EDIT: Its actually a fast 4cc i suppose because the 4th one is the planetary
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How do you guys place your bunker in TvP? In like half my games protoss chronos his stalker/zealot and bypasses the bunker and runs straight to the main. I'm 1 rax expanding with a low ground cc.
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
On July 01 2012 04:29 kranten wrote:
How do you guys place your bunker in TvP? In like half my games protoss chronos his stalker/zealot and bypasses the bunker and runs straight to the main. I'm 1 rax expanding with a low ground cc.
Typically you'll have at least started your third depot by this point, and if you use all 3 depots to wall the main choke, it means he can't do this. Here's the layout I use:
![[image loading]](http://i50.tinypic.com/2zhr050.png)
This lets me prevent that sort of zeal/stalker walkby.
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Best TvZ build to go Hellions?
is this one + Show Spoiler +10 Supply Depot (At Wall In)
12 Refinery
13 Barracks (At Wall In)
13 2 SCVs to gas
16 Orbital Command
16 Marine
17 Factory
17 Supply Depot (At Wall In)
17 Scout with Marine
17 Reactor at Barracks
17 Mule
20 Command Center
20 Switch Barracks and Factory at Reactor
22 2 Hellions
26 Supply Depot
27 Factory
27 Mule
27 Reactor at Factory
27 Harass with 2 Hellions
32 2 Hellions
33 Supply Depot
34 Orbital Command
36 2 Hellions
38 Switch Factory and Barracks at Reactor
39 Harass with 4 Hellions
43 2 Hellions
44 Supply Depot
44 2 Mules
44 Lift Orbital Command and Land at Natural
44 Transfer 6 SCVs to Natural
46 2 Hellions
52 2 Hellions
52 Supply Depot
52 2 Hellions
56 2 Hellions
60 Barracks
62 Supply Depot
62 Attack with Hellions
66 2 Hellions
70 2 Hellions
70 Teach Lab at Barracks
72 2 Mules
76 2 Hellions
78 Tech Lab at Barracks
78 2 Hellions
78 Supply Depot
78 Refinery
78 Enginerring Bay
ok? or do you have one better?
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Rushing for hellions isn't good atm because queens will deny them and your investment will be worthless.
1 rax fe into double gas, factory + reactor, is better way to do it, but imo hellions are just plain terrible and they don't fill their old role at all anymore ( deny 3rd, creepspread), mapcontrol is still ok. In your bo you build really a lot of hellions, do you want to go mech ? Maybe some more experienced mech player can help you with the bo.
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So which build should i go in TvZ? M&M&M? tech + marines + medivac?
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Hmm. *shrug* personal preference I guess. bio, biomech, mech all work.
Couple good bio or biomech openers are:
Demuslim build :http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=251694¤tpage=274#5463
Polt does marine/marauder/hellion timing, haven't tried it, but it looks good
1 rax fe or CCfirst into 3-4 rax combat shields pressure
1 rax fe, reactor hellions, 3rd CC with banshees or siege tank
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Hey anyone has a decent all in for T v Z that works up to low masters level? My current maps vetoed are : Tal Darim, Condemned, Shakuras
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
My personal favorite TvZ allin is the 1-basing thorship build of my own design (link).
Other popular builds include the Marauder/Hellion attack (link).
Some classics that work in all matchups are the 3 rax marine/scv allin (link) and of course the 11/11.
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Maybe its personal preference, but how come not every single terran just simpyl wall off? You know, 2 depts and 1 rax.
I know for sure to wall off against zerg...learned this the hard way haha..
But vs protoss, or even terran, how come some terrans just simply do not wall off? Is it not always better to wall off? Can you give me examples of when it is bad to wall of?
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EPT
