[G] 1 Thor Push Strategy

mrlie3

Canada350 Posts

April 10 2010 18:12 GMT

* This guide is in working right now, so please feel free to discuss about how to improve this build!

Hey there, recently I tried 1 Thor Push build against Zerg and it worked quite well in Platinum league, so I want to show you how to play this build and also want you guys to refine it to perfection! So enjoy this guide, try it out yourself, and discuss among players!

Table of Contents
1. Why This Build Works
2. When 1 Thor Push Works
3. How to Push
4. Demonstrations
5. Replays

1. Why This Build Works

First of all, this is not a 1 Thor "Rush" build. You don't start at the beginning thinking that 'Okay I'm going to follow this exact build order and pwn Zerg!' Because of complexity of Starcraft 2, you need to scout constantly to make this work, and that is why this build has no exact orders, but is more about situations and timings.

Let's look at Thor's stats;
Cost: 300/200
Time: 60 seconds
HP: 400
Armor: 1 (+1)
Damage: 45 (+5) x 2 / 8 (+1) x 4 (0.5 radius splash), +4 against light air units
Range: 7 (ground) /10 (air)
Sight: 11
* With 100 mana it can deal 500 damage over 6 seconds to a unit or a building. Targeted unit becomes stunned during the channeling.

Even though it costs same as Ultralisk, it has lower armor and HP, and moves slow as hell. Sounds useless isn't it? But here are 3 things that Thor beats away Ultralisk by far;
1. It can be repaired by a scv.
2. It deals monstrous damage of 90 against ground units, and good deal of splash damage against air units.
3. It comes out much faster than Ultralisk.

Due to these 3 reasons, Thor is an viable tool for Terran to successfully push toward Zerg's natural when they are most vulnerable; when they are pumping drones, when their supply line is disrupted, and when they are in transition of tech-switching.

Thor can one-shot following Zerg units;
- Drone
- Zergling
- Baneling
- Hydralisk
- Infestor

It can also 2-shot roaches and weakens mutalisks severely.

So you can see that Thor is very strong against most of Zerg units. I'd say they are at the most weakest when faced against mass zerglings, but again since my build isn't 1 Thor "Rush" build, players need to be flexible and use appropriate units to counter other units while Thor is fighting against its strongest foes.

2. When 1 Thor Push Works

We should first talk about when you shouldn't use Thor at all. This is pretty simple. DO NOT get Thor if Zerg is going for massive lings and roaches. This is when Terran needs to be defensive. Bunker up, tighten your chokes, and produce whatever it is to stop early Zerg rush. (hellions for lings, tanks for roaches, banshees for both)

Then when do you get Thor? Here are some of the points you need to consider during the game whether you should get Thor or not;
1. Am I comfortable with current unit compositions in which I think I can defend my base safely for 2 minutes? (It takes 125 seconds to build Armory and Thor)
2. Do I want to push Zerg in exactly 2 minutes from now?
3. Do I have a factory right now?

If you can answer yes to all questions, start build Armory and get Thor! But wait, how do I know whether I am 'comfortable' with defending the base? Here are some of the situation I've experienced and know that Zerg doesn't have enough power to destroy your base;
- His zerglings/baneling rush has failed.
- His Roaches failed to break my choke.
- He just started to build Spire. (It takes 133 seconds to pop mutas)
- He just started to build Hydralisk den, but he doesn't have an expansion. (He can only produce 7 hydralisks at a time)
- He started to expand at natural.

First two points are easy to detect since you and him just duked out a battle and you won. For last three points you need to constantly scout, either with scv or scan. You should use scout/scan when you built your factory or few seconds after the big fight so you can measure whether you have this 2 minutes to build Thor or not.

And even with what my units are and what his units are, I can deduce the situation that he cannot break my forces right now;
- I have an expansion and he failed to break it due to my bunkers
- I have hellions and he has lings and banelings
- I have marauders and he has roaches
- I have tanks and he has roaches
- I have banshees and he has no anti-air except Queens and maybe spore crawlers.

You can see that all of these situations occur in T1.5 and when T2 has just begun. In most of these situations, Zerg needs to get hydra fast to defend hellions or banshee harass, or get mutas to pressure marauders and tanks from getting out of Terran's base. And this leaves a gap for Terran to use 1 Thor Push, as it can deal both hydras and mutas!

3. How to Push

Purpose of Push
- When you are pushing with 1 Thor, Zerg usually cannot win against you without mass amount of lings, and it requires 64 seconds to pop 14 lings with larva injection from 1 hatchery. Your purpose is to severely hurt Zerg's economy by destroying his hatchery at natural, while you yourself expand. Of course, you can always end the game with this push if Zerg slips and makes some mistakes.

So basically you have 1 minute to kill off Zerg's main forces once he sees your Thor! If you stagnate, extra lings will swarm your army and perhaps destroy your entire army. Don't hesitate and push right away with your Thor. As long as you can destroy his main army or hatchery before these lings pop out, you are safe.

1 Thor + 4 scvs are BFF!!!!
- Thor is extremely fragile, and without scvs Zerg can just surround Thor with lings or even swarm it with mutalisks. This is why scvs are needed to repair constantly. Set your scvs in control group and activate auto-repair by right-clicking it, and have them position behind the Thor at all time.

Manually control your Thor!
- Most units attack what is closest to the unit. So often without micro your Thor will waste its 90 damage on zerglings. Let marines and marauders take care of them. Have it attack following units first in priority;
1. Infestor (this rarely happens in this timing though)
2. Mutalisk, unless you have vikings
3. Hydralisk
4. Roach, unless you have 3 or more sieged tanks to one-shot them
For banelings, simply move rest of your units behind Thor, and let Thor soak the damage.

Keep pumping anti-zergling units
- While in desperation, Zerg will usually spam zerglings as they are quickest to produce. Marines are great counter to zerglings and so are hellions. replenish your unit compositions with them by rally pointing buildings to Zerg base while pushing. Since you will have leftover gas, build more Thors whenever possible.

Build Turrets before you push, if Z is going for mutas
- This is for obvious reasons. You do not want to find out that all of your scvs are done for and you can't produce more rines to protect your Thor. Thor is too slow to go back and defend, so 1 or 2 turrets at your mineral line is necessary.

Use 250mm cannon on Hatchery
- Unlike protoss, Thor doesn't need to waste 6 seconds on one Zerg units. But you need to destroy Zerg's hatchery at his natural ASAP, so use 250mm on it!

Possible Upgrades
- Vehicle Plating 1 upgrade is best for Thor, due to this simple math;
Number of hits needed for lings to kill 1 Thor = 400 / (5 - 1) = 100
With Vehicle Plating 1 upgrade = 400 / (5 - 2) = 134
Number of hits needed for mutas to kill 1 Thor = 400 / (9 - 1) = 50
With Vehicle Plating 1 upgrade = 400 / (9 - 2) = 58

With scvs repairing, this effectiveness increase even more so.

Steampacks and Pre-Igniters are also good choice of upgrades because rines and hellions can clear zerglings much more quickly before they can surround your Thor.

4. Demonstrations

I did some matches using this push for demonstration. I will post more whenever I had a chance to use this strategy.

1. Lost Temple: FE - Marines + Tanks + 1 Thor Push vs. Zerglings -> Roaches -> Mutas

+ Show Spoiler +

9 Zerg went for very late 14 pool.

I (12 Terran) went for 12&13 rax, hoping to get FE.

After scouting I saw his late-pooling, and decided to punish him by forward bunkering.

Z tried to prevent the bunkering but was just a second late from my rines to getting in.

Z tried to bypass the bunker and attack my base but 3 rines took care of 3 lings.

Z tried to use Queen and lings to destroy my bunker...

And sacrificed his Queen after bunker was destroyed.

Z tried to retaliate by sending lings but stopped by the bunker and sees my CC at construction.

I scouted afterward to see his roaches killing my scvs.

I decided to go for 2 factories pumping tanks to defend.

But before I could produce my tanks, Z rushed in with roaches, but 2 bunkers and repairing scvs fend off roaches. This is when I realized I can do 1-Thor Push. I scanned the base about a minute later and found no T2 buildings, and started armory right away.

Z tried to attack scvs in mineral line at natural, but tanks and engineering bay blocked the roaches. I knew he only had roaches so I was confident about my defense at this point. I also started building turrets afterward with extra minerals in case Z built Spire on its natural. This is also to prepare for any muta backdoor harass while I push.

I pushed immediately with 1 Thor, 4 scvs, 4 tanks, and 10 rines.

In this fight I made a mistake of not putting Thor in front; but I microed my tanks to attack roaches only and I win the battle, as 3 tanks can one-shot roaches.

Z switched to mutalisks for last attempt to come back...

But lost 2 overlords carelessly, and it enables me to push Z...

And 3 Thors eat away mutas as he had supply disruption to pump them out properly. GG.

2. Steppes of War: Marines + Marauders + Vikings + 1 Thor Push vs. Zerglings/Banelings rush -> Mutas -> Hydras + Roaches

+ Show Spoiler +

I (7 Terran) went for 10 rax fast OC build

1 Zerg went for standard 13 pool

But here's the trick Z used; he purposely showed my scouting scvs Roach Warren in construction...

And switched to Baneling Nests after canceling Roach Warren!

I built one bunker for roach rush but met with zerglings/banelings, which caught me off surprise.

Zerglings managed to slip in and deals some damage on scvs and scouted my 2 rax 1 fact 1 port build.

I tried to send Banshee as fast as possible but met with spore crawlers and failed harassing. I also made a mistake of not seeing Spire constructing when my Banshee died.

I push with full power and managed to take out his hatchery at expansion, but had to retreat because of mutalisks. Thankfully Z also made mistake of not building 2nd extraction at his base early, limiting his mutalisk production.

I immediately built engineering bay and armory, and decided to do 1 Thor Push, this time to end the game. I didn't want to push with rines only as I didn't want to give him any chance to come back with banelings.

We fought a last battle at Z's base. Vikings took care of mutas, steamed rines cleared off lings, and I manually controlled my Thor to one-shot hydras. GG.

5. Replays

John vs. Doom
John vs. rrowland

Please try out this strategy and discuss for improvement! :D Also if you post a replay here I'll analyze it and post them on Demonstration section!

mrlie3

Canada350 Posts

April 10 2010 19:02 GMT

Anyone knows a good SC2 replay-posting website?

MassAirUnits

United States66 Posts

April 10 2010 19:24 GMT

What about gamereplays.org? It has a specific section for Starcraft 2.

mrlie3

Canada350 Posts

April 10 2010 19:36 GMT

On April 11 2010 04:24 MassAirUnits wrote:
What about gamereplays.org? It has a specific section for Starcraft 2.

Thank you. I'll post replays soon from this site.

ShaperofDreams

Canada2492 Posts

April 10 2010 19:43 GMT

I love how resourceful TL is and will be for SC2. I can't wait to own the damn game! I promise to try every bodies builds and do the craziest shit.

It makes me REALLY happy when somebody outlines a build nicely like this, thats for the effort. I can't stand threads that are like: "what if nukes?"

Chronopolis

Canada1484 Posts

April 10 2010 19:48 GMT

Wow this is a awesome tool in the terran arsenal. The mere possibility of it limits the zergs options.

Kiante

Australia7069 Posts

April 10 2010 19:51 GMT

it seems as tho your thor push only works to finish off already won games. Have you got a way to use this kind of build in a game where you're even when you start the thor?

mrlie3

Canada350 Posts

April 10 2010 20:16 GMT

On April 11 2010 04:51 Kiante wrote:
it seems as tho your thor push only works to finish off already won games. Have you got a way to use this kind of build in a game where you're even when you start the thor?

The situation where 1 Thor Push is used is when you want to safely sustain the pressure you already have against Zerg, by destroying his natural as soon as possible. From time to time even though I was at an advantage, simple marines+marauder push or tank push got stopped by mass lings that Zerg quickly produced with larva injection, which quickly changed the tides of the battle. You can see that example from 2nd game. From the replay, as soon as I destroyed his natural with rines+marauders+banshees, his mass lings come and kill off all of my ground troops, and surprise mutas pop out and forced me to retreat. So in a way, 2nd game was sort of evenly-matched game.

If you remember what I wrote on "When to use the push", You have to be comfortable at defending 2 minutes while producing Thor. If you are at even with Zerg, you might think sacrificing your production line for 2 minutes on Thor might not be the best idea, hence may not be a situation to do 1 Thor Push at all.

Nevertheless, I will post any replays if I encounter even-situation where I used Thor.

peckham33

United States267 Posts

April 10 2010 20:21 GMT

there is a comitary on husky starcraft's youtube chanel call thor is here which show it in use.

threehundred

Canada911 Posts

April 10 2010 20:44 GMT

#10

i've been working on similar guide (for my friends) here is what i wrote,

my push happens a little later then getting 1 thor up and most of the time it's either a decisive victory or loss lol.

but this build opens with siege tanks instead of bunkers to deter a few all-ins.

replays:

3 current patch replays and i think 3 older replays from 3 patches ago

http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=member_replays&member_id=149693

+ Show Spoiler +

thor timing push

block the ramp normally with 2 depots and a barracks to avoid early game cheese. double block it to avoid baneling busts as you build your other buildings.

10 supply depot
12 1st barracks
13 1st refinery
15 orbital command
15 marine
16 2nd refinery
16 supply depot (finish the wall)
build factory
build factory techlab
research siege
build 1st siege tank (blocks roach timings)
build command center
build 2nd siege tank
build engineering bay
build armory
build 3rd siege tank if needed
build thor (blocks mutalisk timings)

---- advanced section

- skip 2nd and 3rd tank and build a starport with a reactor from your 1st barracks.
- build 2 vikings and harrass overlords and force defense at unguarded expansions so he doesn't get economy greedy.
- after the 2 vikings continue with the build.

---- end of advanced section

at this point land your command center at your expansion and build a few turrets at expected mutalisk harass areas.

research +1 infantry weapons
research +1 vehicle weapons
build 1st barracks techlab
research stim pack

don't forget to build supply depots (2 at a time from 75+ supply up).

build 2nd and 3rd barracks
build starport and reactor

if your opponent went for more roaches build marauders (techlabs) otherwise put reactors on them and build marines.

macro your units (build them continuously).

research +1 infantry armor
research +1 vehicle armor
research marine shields (if you went with more marines)

when you have about 3-4 thors, a lot of infantry and 4-5 medivacs push out and look to kill his expansions. if your execution throughout the build is good you should be at par with his 2 hatchery economy and have successfully blocked his roach, baneling bust and mutalisk timings. the actual fight itself though (usually around the 11 minute mark) will be the deciding clash. if you fail on the push skip thors and build more barracks for marauders/marines.

notes on the development of this build:

- primarily based on FE'ing (fast expanding) as safely and as soon as possible to secure stronger opportunities through a stronger early game economy
- built with siege to counter roaches and originally was used to produce tanks for MMM balls (marine/medivacs/marauders) but the precision required to get tanks to not kill your own infantry was terrible
- mutalisk nullification through quick thors was a fluke
- +1 weapons on thors 1-shot hydras
- workers brought along on auto-repair make thors semi-tank

nedsat

27 Posts

April 10 2010 22:54 GMT

#11

Would try this out right away if bnet wasn't so wierd atm

mrlie3

Canada350 Posts

April 11 2010 03:28 GMT

#12

On April 11 2010 05:21 peckham33 wrote:
there is a comitary on husky starcraft's youtube chanel call thor is here which show it in use.

That was fun play by husky, but it was for TvP, not TvZ.

On April 11 2010 05:44 threehundred wrote:
i've been working on similar guide (for my friends) here is what i wrote,

my push happens a little later then getting 1 thor up and most of the time it's either a decisive victory or loss lol.

but this build opens with siege tanks instead of bunkers to deter a few all-ins.

replays:

3 current patch replays and i think 3 older replays from 3 patches ago

http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=member_replays&member_id=149693

I've watched the replay, it seems like you used Thor to reinforce your army, rather than using it as a threshold to push the Zerg. Can you try this strat and see how it goes? You will be able to attack about 8 to 10 minutes faster with this push.

On April 11 2010 07:54 nedsat wrote:
Would try this out right away if bnet wasn't so wierd atm

Yes I know Bnet kept kicking me out after afking for few minutes right now. :S

Shield

Bulgaria4824 Posts

April 11 2010 04:30 GMT

#13

Some noobie did it to me last night. DTs saved me though.

jsp.aus

Australia2 Posts

April 11 2010 04:34 GMT

#14

this is quite strong as a proxy fac 1thor rush + some marines + scv's
i was rushed on steppes of war as a protoss immortals/stalkers/zealots didnt do much i got raped..

threehundred

Canada911 Posts

April 11 2010 04:57 GMT

#15

oh i've done it before but i still prefer holding my door / expo with a siege tank instead of bunkers, it still feels safer for my playstyle.

duartesito

Dominican Republic32 Posts

April 11 2010 05:47 GMT

#16

Awesome job!! Love this, it looks great... gonna definitely try it.

You have an error in here:

With Vehicle Plating 1 upgrade = 400 / (9 - 2) = 58

total isn't supposed to be 36?

keep it up, good look!

BigDatez

Canada434 Posts

April 11 2010 05:55 GMT

#17

Not to be a douche, But i like how in one of the photos there are drones sitting behind the mineralsa with the zerglings. I dont know if this was against a viable zerg player

SichuanPanda

Canada1542 Posts

April 11 2010 06:04 GMT

#18

Thor is a key unit to the Terran army in pretty much every match-up, the issue a lot of people are having seems to be they are still thinking of it as a Goliath and try to mass them. Thors are intended for support purposes, and when built at the right time that support can be devastating. The 0.5 raidus AOE added to their air attacks makes them very good against all-types of air, and couple with Marines and Vikings (and Ghosts vs Toss), can make Terran AA nearly impenetrable - with competent micro of course.

What I think most people should take away from what the OP has here is that Thors MUST be built versus Zerg, for both Muta defense and to utterly decimate mass Hydras. Don't discount it versus other races as its AA damage can really help against Void Rays as well as most Terran air (AKA all but BCs, or HSM Ravens). In TvT if someone tries to go MMM versus me a couple Thors will put a stop to their drops altogether, and if they are open to be attacked, will make short work of their Medevacs and (assuming) they do not make Thors, you're army will cut through theirs very quickly.

Tomnki

United States62 Posts

April 11 2010 06:14 GMT

#19

On April 11 2010 14:55 BigDates wrote:
Not to be a douche, But i like how in one of the photos there are drones sitting behind the mineralsa with the zerglings. I dont know if this was against a viable zerg player

I think he moved them when he saw the banshee coming.