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I know that we have all recently been less than satisfied with the mundane tank viking play that seems to dominate the TvT match up. I am no exception to this, so out of the goodness of my heart I have decided to share the build I have been using in TvT lately with the community. This build revolves mainly around the use of ghosts to support mass marauders, which may seem frail at first, but read on my fellow starcrafters.
There are many reasons why this build is so versatile and works so well. Marauders are not very gas heavy which leaves it open for the ghosts. Both units are made out of the same structure with the same add-on, so it lets you get a good sized army out early, and all your upgrades will affect both units. These are the obvious pluses, but here is where the huge benefits of the build come out:
The main problem in TvT with going straight mass marauder is that you obviously have no AA. The viking is not a problem, but the banshee is a huge danger. Ghosts take care of the banshee perfectly, they have bonus damage to light armored units and they have EMP to take care of cloak (so you don't have to waste scans instead of mules). They also match them at 6 range so you don't lose 50 marines to 1 well micro'd banshee. Yes ghosts do cost slightly more gas than the banshee (100 vs. 150), but they build in 40 seconds compared to 60 seconds and the structure they are produced from is far cheaper as well.
Your second main concern is fast marines early. Now aside from the point that marauders actually do deal quite well with marines, ghosts again are a perfect fit for dealing with this danger to just plain mass marauder. The reason in this case is not the bonus to light armored units (though that doesn't hurt), but instead the snipe ability. For early game the opponent will most likely not have combat shield, leaving each marine with 45 hit points, which just happens to be the exact amount of damage that the snipe ability does. With a few ghosts you can literally mow down enemy marines before they can even come close to getting a dangerous concave on your marauder force. Now late game the player will probably get the combat shield, but he will also get stim, which after being used again leaves the marine with 45 hp. Now you would think yes, but of course the player will have medivacs to heal the marines so stim and combat shield seems dangerous, but again ghosts have the emp ability which quite easily renders the enemy medivacs as simple drop-ships and makes your infantry that much stronger against his.
The last (and probably scariest) danger if you were to go straight mass marauder would be the raven with its wildly imba Point Defense Drone. But again the ghost unit handles this remarkably well. The obvious solution to the raven is to use a ghost to EMP it so that it cannot cast the PDD, but other solutions are also available. The raven is again a light armored unit, meaning that the ghosts can kill it extremely quickly, but the other thing to consider is that the Point Defense Drone itself is a light armored unit, and ghosts shots are not affected by it, leaving it particularly vulnerable to a simple ghost target fire (it dies in 2-3 shots from a ghost depending on upgrades).
Using this build correctly should effectively leave you with a large stim marauder force that can very easily (if controlled and positioned correctly) deal with tanks and any ground army the other player can throw at you. The build itself is a simple 3 rax build with the ghost academy coming after the third rax, unless you scout a fast factory in which case building it after the second rax is required to deal with very fast banshees. Obvious transitions into the later game include supporting your bio with medivacs and vikings if BCs make an appearance. I personally feel a 4 or 5 to 1 marauder to ghost ratio works well, depending on the opponent of course.
In short (for the lazy): Ghosts are a wildly versatile and underused unit that deal with pretty much everything that the marauder can't in TvT and i plan to see the TvT match up move towards this more mobile and deadly style.
- noooob
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Thanks for the interesting ideas. Just a question.
How do you deal with tanks/massed tanks. Do you just stim up and run in and focus fire, this seems risky to me. A counter to this in my mind is to launch a nuke at the ideal seige tanks, have them un-siege, cancel the nuke and run in stimed mauraders.
Which leads me to my next question. Having the tech available for nukes, do you employ them, and how in terms of this build.
Thx.
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Seems cool. I am no terran player tough
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Very innovative thinking with the marauder ghost combination, but i agree with BadStigma, what about the nukes? Also can you show some replays of your build. I would love to see it in action
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On September 15 2010 23:35 Halcyon.nico wrote:
Very innovative thinking with the marauder ghost combination, but i agree with BadStigma, what about the nukes? Also can you show some replays of your build. I would love to see it in action
Agreed, a replay would be awesome. Sounds like an interesting build though.
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This is an interesting build, it still feels weak compared to other fast push build + expanding. How would this build hold up against the current 4 marine/1 hellion/1 banshee + expansion build?
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What rating are you? So we know what bracket this build will work in.
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United Kingdom2950 Posts
Wow, very interesting. The only I see that can prove to be a problem is getting the ghost upgrades as energy will be your main issue. If you miss one emp, you're done, and you'd probably have to get out cloak as soon as they do to counter the banshee as the banshees can probably wreck your ghosts pretty badly.
Nonetheless, a very intriguing post and if supplied with replays, I can definitely see this shaking up the TvT scene.
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Wait, in what world does marauders deal quite well with marines? Stimmed marines makes marauders go away in a split second.
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i really dont know how viable this is tvt imo although i like the idea and i will test it. im a 1200+ ranked diamond terran. Looking at what it takes to get this going, this is a gas intensive build and I fear a timing push with (tanks sieged)/rauders and marines will pretty much wreck it. What do u plan to do if your opponent goes tank/rauders? and do you have a special build order? or are you playing mostly standard. But i do see how it can work with really good micro but i dont think u can go all game with this build i almost think this is an all in type of build because of how much ur putting into your ghosts and if you fail with them then its gg. But i still like this innovative way of thinking it brings another build to my arsenal and if people arnt expecting it then it might be worth doing once or twice in a tounament as a surprise.
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United Kingdom2950 Posts
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/81019-1v1-terran-blistering-sands
This is a quick match I just did against my Terran partner in a custom. I just asked him to play his Standard TvT and I tried to do a Ghost/Marauder build. Obviously this is a only a platinum level game so don't expect amazing things, and with no established BO, I just winged it and got supply blocked a lot. 
But you can see how a higher level player can utilize a lot of the ghost's skills.
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On September 15 2010 23:20 BadStigma wrote:
Thanks for the interesting ideas. Just a question.
How do you deal with tanks/massed tanks. Do you just stim up and run in and focus fire, this seems risky to me. A counter to this in my mind is to launch a nuke at the ideal seige tanks, have them un-siege, cancel the nuke and run in stimed mauraders.
Which leads me to my next question. Having the tech available for nukes, do you employ them, and how in terms of this build.
Thx.
yeah, exactly that. watch..i think it was TLO vs nada in the second game? drop a nuke, and as soon as the tanks unsiege, sprint forwards with stim marauders. you'll either push back the tank line or kill it outright. you do need a few tanks of your own to maintain position though, so that they can't just walk up and kill your nuking ghosts.
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sounds fun makes me want to try it.
i think we've seen TLO get ghosts against banshees, and fail a few times, but even if you miss an EMP you can still scan. I hate managing ghost cloak energy though.
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QXC was experimenting with ghost plays in TvT. He tried one thing where he made an early push with ghosts before their first tank came out, and he tried using ghosts as an efficient answer to cloaked banshees later on. These things both kinda sorta worked against good competition.
There is probably a replay pack that has this stuff, and I know there was a teamliquid strategy session on it.
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On September 15 2010 23:20 BadStigma wrote:
Thanks for the interesting ideas. Just a question.
How do you deal with tanks/massed tanks. Do you just stim up and run in and focus fire, this seems risky to me. A counter to this in my mind is to launch a nuke at the ideal seige tanks, have them un-siege, cancel the nuke and run in stimed mauraders.
Which leads me to my next question. Having the tech available for nukes, do you employ them, and how in terms of this build.
Thx.
If you spread your marauders correctly each tank hit will only hit 2-3 marauders, and considering you are mostly massing Marauaders your numbers will far exceed his, letting you stim in and focus fire them. Another plus is that the oponent's bio will also take splash damage from the tanks when you stim in towards them. Now if the opponent reaches a critical mass of tanks or has great positioning in the late game then yes nukes are an option, as well as using the medivacs for drops wherever. Nukes fit into the build just fine in the late game because you need a factory for nukes, and you need a factory to get your medivacs anyway so the tech is already there.
As to the stim marines, yes i find that marauders do handle them alright (i always get a fast +1 armor if i see a lot of marines, which does wonders). And as i said before you can decimate large amounts of marines very quickly with your ghost force, as well as disable his healing capabilities when he stims.
I also see some concern about ghost energy, but in my experience it is really not a problem. Once you have 4 or more ghosts (which normally happens before 50 food depending on your exact build) energy becomes somewhat of a non-issue. I never get either upgrade from the Ghost Academy early game as energy has never been a problem and i always have my ghosts on auto-follow to one of my marauders which leaves them in the back and tanks auto target units in the front. The Marauders will ALWAYS die before the ghosts, and with the tank nerf to light units coming this will be reinforced even further. You need to think of the ghost as more of a part of your core unit composition and less as a single infiltration / harass unit. If you have 5+ ghosts missing 1 emp is not going to cost you the game or really anything except a few seconds before you get the next one off.
As for how they deal with banshees, i suggest you try it yourself before commenting too much. 1 Banshee will beat one ghost, but unless they start going mass banshee this shouldn't be a problem as most banshee harass consists of 1-2 banshees and you will obviously have more ghosts than that because they are part of your main composition.
You can fast expand out of this build very easily and i very often do. It is not all-in at all, it is simply a very good composition that is extremely versatile, and you can use it however you see fit. As i said in my first post, it really is not super gas intensive (most certainly no more than tank viking!) considering how cheap marauders are on the gas side of things.
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I've been thinking about exactly this for a while now, but never really put it into play on a large scale with marauders because it seemed too risky (my thought pattern was, if I can think of it, so can a pro, and they should have their reasons). Against bio, I do get a few ghosts to Snipe units in key positions / harass workers in battles at expansions / EMP medivacs. I consider myself to have pretty good micro, so it's worked out pretty well (although my crap macro is restraining me from actually being a good player and following up with large-scale game enders).
When I scout the beginnings (or am just supernaturally aware) of a 3rax or early reaper(s) I always follow a "Ghost First" (more accurately a "Marine first, then Ghost" because Snipe just owns so hard when the harass consists of a small number of units I can Snipe (Marine) or Snipe+hit (Reaper). It gives me map control and lets me do some pretty good harass to let me early expand or set up a contain. A small poke of 1 Ghost, 1 Marine, and a SCV to take some shots can do some serious damage without being too much a commitment.
They don't do so great against Mech though, unless you feel like it's worth it to use nukes to force out-of-position fights / withdrawals or drop one or two in the mineral lines. Nuking would require cloaking and some luck (bad scanning / positioning / lack of detectors). The second choice seems to be a pretty cool thing to do during a battle but as it would be infinitely more successful Sniping and you need your micro focused on the battle.. I'd rather just get a Banshee or two.
tl;dr I freaking love Ghosts.
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I've dabbled with it, and it's a fun build, but it's inferior to straight up tank/viking play because:
- Staggered tank lines stop you cold. Even if you nuke to force the front line back, your marauders get demolished by the second line. And with no tanks of your own to secure position, he can retake that ground easily.
- Pure air will dominate you. If you neglect air control, a smart terran player will get a few vikings then start massing up BCs. He's also free to expand across the map because he can stop any drop play. Once he's established air dominance, it's impossible for you to regain.
Both of these strategies also use either expos or marines as mineral sinks. Both work well against you.
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I'll echo the concern about mass tanks. The marauders do great in small numbers but they still die to a lot of tanks. Maybe nukes are a good solution though. Those Vikings giving sight can suck too and I'm not sure if ghosts will help with that. I like their utility against banshees, however I wonder how they do in a fight with equal cost...
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On September 16 2010 09:41 Moja wrote:
I've dabbled with it, and it's a fun build, but it's inferior to straight up tank/viking play because:
- Staggered tank lines stop you cold. Even if you nuke to force the front line back, your marauders get demolished by the second line. And with no tanks of your own to secure position, he can retake that ground easily.
- Pure air will dominate you. If you neglect air control, a smart terran player will get a few vikings then start massing up BCs. He's also free to expand across the map because he can stop any drop play. Once he's established air dominance, it's impossible for you to regain.
Both of these strategies also use either expos or marines as mineral sinks. Both work well against you.
I don't deny that reaching a critical mass of tanks will demolish your marauder force if you engage head on, but the main idea is to not let him get that critical mass, and use nukes as a last resort if you for some reason cannot stop it. You must understand that by the mid game you will have something like 20-30 marauders against a handful of tanks, which favors you substantially if you space them out correctly.
As for pure air, i disagree quite a bit. The point of this composition is basically to allow you to mass marauders without getting punished for it. If the guy is going pure air and you see this all you need to do is push at him and keep the pressure on him (possibly leave a few ghosts or marauders at home to deal with counter aggression). There is no way he will have a ground force that can even come close to being able to deal with your ground force, and the ghosts deal with the banshees very well. This basically means if he wants to defend at all he is going to need to land those vikings which will get torn apart by the marauders. And again when you have the ghosts marines really are not a problem.
One of the main ideas of this build is to force him to build ground units to be able to contend with your meaty ground force that still has decent AA, and if he does not then punish it. If he still has a large amount of vikings and is able to get BCs out then i think you might have done something wrong. Though i do agree that BCs pose a large threat to this if you allow them to maintain air control and turtle. This might be relieved slightly with the 1.1 patch, but the main point is the opponent should not be able to maintain both air and ground control when you have such a strong ground army that is easily upgradeable.
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Does anybody have more reps on the marauder / ghosts strat?
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EPT
