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About Me
I know I have not posted on Team Liquid before, so I thought it would be appropriate to tell you who I am. I'm only a Diamond level Terran from Australia, playing on NA and SEA servers. Because I'm a bit lower level I know I'll probably get a lot of flame, but hear me out because I think I've caught onto something here. Also, I'm a very active member of d2dgamer.com, who hold low level tournaments and a lot of fun for the every day gamer. Definitely check them out 
Reasoning
In current metagame of TvT, the Blueflame Hellion / Banshee (iEchoic) build has cropped up as a powerful harassment build that allows a player to not only tech quite fast and expand relatively safely, but also deliver massive economic damage to their opponent with decent micro. It is not uncommon for this build to take out over 10 SCVs for the opponent, even if the build is spotted.
The problem with trying to defend against this build is that the majority of players want to go for marine builds to kill banshees, but marines are cleaned up easily by the hellions. Also, even if you hold it off, you're likely to lose a lot of your army / workers and the other player is very capable of easily transitioning due to the fact they already have a factory and starport out.
As I have been seeing this build a lot in diamond ladder TvT, I've been searching for a decent build that can counter the harassment of this build and then allow you to turn around and hurt your opponent. The best counter to this build, that I have found, is in fact Ghosts.
Theory
The reason Ghosts are so powerful is the fact that they are not technically classified as light armored units. Hellions deal massive damage to marines because of their armor class, but ghosts are actually Psyonic units, not light, and as a result the bonus damage does not apply. Ghosts are also useful because they themselves have bonus damage to light, which both the banshee and hellion are. From my experience, it appears that 1 ghost is able to take on 3 hellions by themselves because of these factors and the high health of ghosts.
Another benefit of the ghost is the EMP ability. By EMPing a banshee, it loses all its energy, removing the need for missile turrets and orbital scans. This effectively makes banshee cloak a wasted 200/200 investment from your opponent.
Ghosts also have the snipe ability, which deals 45 damage to biological units. Marines without combat shields and SCVs die from one snipe, and a ghost sniper round only costs 25 energy. It is also an instant cast ability with no cooldown. This means that with good micro one ghost is able to snipe 8 workers or marines before they even get in range, making the ghost an exceptional unit against marine builds as well, and particularly in the early game where neither player has a large army yet ghosts can be extremely economical and lead to a huge advantage.
The Build
I realize that a lot of people prefer to see specific build orders, so I'll share the one I have been using. I'm by no means a pro, and this is probably a suboptimal build, but I've been using it quite effectively. If anyone from TeamLiquid decides to post a better build order, go ahead.
+ Show Spoiler +
9 Supply Depot
12 Barracks
13 Refinery #1 --> 3 workers when finished
15 Orbital
16 Marine --> Chase off scouting worker
17 Marine --> Tech lab after marine
17 Supply Depot
17 Ghost Academy --> Ghost when finished.
18 Refinery #2 --> 3 workers when finished. Once you have 6 workers you'll have just enough gas income to continuously produce ghosts from one rax.
20 Barracks
22 Barracks
~30-40 Factory/Starport --> Medvac ghost drops.
I've kind of made up the last few, basically the key point is you'll want 2 fairly early geysers to continuously produce ghosts, and you'll want a very fast ghost academy. Usually you can get out 2-3 marines before you have the gas for a ghost. As a result of using heavy gas units, you'll have excess minerals, meaning you can choose to either fast expand behind the push, or add a few more barracks to pump out extra marines and make your push stronger.
I usually push out with my first 2 marines, 2 ghosts, and 3-4 scvs to make a decent timing push on their base. Keep making ghosts and rally them near your mineral lines - your opponent is going to be attacking your SCV line so you want to be prepared. If this fails to kill the enemy, you can make another push when you have a dropship and cloak up. If you EMP the orbital command centres they cannot scan your ghosts, and this can be a very good harassment strategy.
On a side note, when blue flame hellions enter your mineral line, you're probably better off just continuing mining and letting your ghosts clean up. By trying to move your workers, you're very susceptible to getting them all lined up together and blasted down by one hellion round.
Counters
This can be a very powerful build if used right, but like any build there are counters to it. Generally marauders can be killed with snipe, but they take a lot more energy to kill due to their high HP, so I'd advise against using ghosts against marauders. Also, tank openings are very good against ghost rushes. Early marine cheese can usually be held off with 1-2 bunkers while you're waiting to get ghosts out.
Replays
Replays of me using this build can be found at the original post on D2DGamer.
http://www.d2dgamer.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=113&func=view&catid=57&id=2725
Thanks guys, hope this helps out a bit.
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You should check out the Ghost First TvT build by qxc on Liquipedia. It is very similar, though slightly faster, and is accompanied by a lot of followup strategy.
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wow this seems real powerful. i mean the blue terran didint micro very well on his first drop but he didint expect to see ghoats. i was amazed at how easily u took down marines banshee and hellions. looks like 4 or 5 ghoasts with a medivac is serious trouble and then that cloacked kicked in. nice play dood definitly going to give this a try. I was prayin for a nuke lol
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Its definitely worth trying out on the ladder if you're looking for a counter to the iEchoic hellion/banshee build hope it helps out.
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Interesting, though it seems a bit boned vs anything else. That is a bit horrible, since at the time you need to commit to the build, you won't have any clear hints that you are facing iEchoic and I'd assume it's basically a BO loss vs mech/1 rax FE with bunkers?
(note: I watched only first replay)I'm also not totally convinced that the ghosts could truly deal with well controlled hellions/banshees for harass. In a straight up fight though, those combos seem pretty damn deadly vs the iEchoic build.
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Regarding your point on blue flame hellions, a possible way to mitigate the damage as much as possible would be to just stop all your scvs and use the idle workers hotkey (or button) to individually spread them out across your base, as I beleive they would spread out going to different locations, both saving SCVs and splitting the workers relatively quick. For semi-quick recall after the hellions are killed, the process could go like this
1. Double click/box scvs
2. Hotkey to an obscure/unused key
3. Hold down the idle worker key and spam click all over your base.
4. Profit
5. Return scvs to mining after hellions are dead.
Hopefully this will help someone.
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To make this better id like to point out 2 things. Medicavs to heal the ghost, and to drop with cloacked ghost to snipe lika e mofo. Also this build sucks because everything exepct helion / banshee owns ghost pretty much 
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Can you scout properly whether he is or not going for the iEchoic 1/2/2? Does it work against other builds?. I mean, iEchoics TvT is by no means the current metagame of TvT, but rather a new idea for avoiding tanks/marines
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This is obviously a pretty specific counter to the banshee/hellion build, and is by no means a standard build order. However, because you can get ghosts out, its not a terrible opener, and by opener I mean that it will not be your whole game plan but the early ghosts do allow for some nice pressure using snipe to give you an advantage. Its definitely worth a try though,
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The replay you posted wasn't really the iEchoic build, but the build seems like it would be a direct counter to iEchoic's new build since the main damage dealers in 2fact 2 port are light. It would seem to be as effective as a thor opening(against 2fact 2 port) except you can get ghosts way faster, they're more mobile, and they instantly kill scv's with snipe. It would pretty much die to any other build.
A few questions about the build. Can you scout somebody going IEchoic 2fact 2port with enough time to change the build if they aren't? And something needs to be done with all that excess minerals.
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On February 24 2011 09:20 Zarahtra wrote:
Interesting, though it seems a bit boned vs anything else. That is a bit horrible, since at the time you need to commit to the build, you won't have any clear hints that you are facing iEchoic and I'd assume it's basically a BO loss vs mech/1 rax FE with bunkers?
Vs tanks you are in a fair bit of trouble, but if they fast expand with bunkers you can drop into their base and catch them offguard from time to time. Also, you can FE yourself behind this build so you're really not that far behind in my opinion.
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On February 24 2011 10:09 Sar wrote:
The replay you posted wasn't really the iEchoic build, but the build seems like it would be a direct counter to iEchoic's new build since the main damage dealers in 2fact 2 port are light. It would seem to be as effective as a thor opening(against 2fact 2 port) except you can get ghosts way faster, they're more mobile, and they instantly kill scv's with snipe. It would pretty much die to any other build.
A few questions about the build. Can you scout somebody going IEchoic 2fact 2port with enough time to change the build if they aren't? And something needs to be done with all that excess minerals.
Like I said I'm not a pro player and I know I'm a bit scrappy, but the build itself is pretty useful against the hellion/banshee play. Because you've got 3 barracks up, if your initial push doesn't work you can transition into MM fairly easily, and the ghosts can be useful later game for harassment / EMPing orbitals/ravens/medvacs later on.
As I said I'm happy for someone with better replays/build order to repost this, I just feel like noone has really tried using ghosts against the iEchoic build yet so I thought I'd put it out there. And yes, my macro slips from time to time =D
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On February 24 2011 08:18 Mysterion wrote:
wow this seems real powerful. i mean the blue terran didint micro very well on his first drop but he didint expect to see ghoats. i was amazed at how easily u took down marines banshee and hellions. looks like 4 or 5 ghoasts with a medivac is serious trouble and then that cloacked kicked in. nice play dood definitly going to give this a try. I was prayin for a nuke lol
Shoulda nuked him haha  he left too early.
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I did a little bit of testing with this build. Theoretically it seems like a good idea till you figure out that banshees cost less gas than ghosts and do more damage. Using all this gas on ghosts leaves you with the mineral dumps of either Marines or helions which iEchoic's 2fact 2Port counters pretty hard. Helions take care of the marines and Banshee's take care of the ghosts and helions.
The Ghosts spells aren't very useful because 1 the opponent isn't making bio, and 2 they aren't going cloaked banshees.
If the Ghosts could snipe the helion drops, then they would be worth getting in my opinion. Otherwise it's basically the same as muta/ling/bling with ghost cept you can't snipe anything.
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Ghost opening aren't really as terrible against tanks as you might think. Sure, you don't want to run into tank lines but nukes are always an option. If he goes turtle or contains you with tanks, you can still pressure and drive him back with a couple of well placed nukes.
While i have never gotten a ghost opening to work, it was something i always wanted to do. I have faced it a couple times on ladder and always lost - maybe because it's so rare and i wasn't prepared. However, it's a solid build and a good counter to many of the common openers (cloakshees, early bio allin, hellion/air).
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True, and when you have cloak as well there is potential for a lot of harassment / scouting opportunities around the map as well.
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I do feel like ghosts are underused in the pro scene... I mean you can EMP orbitals! No moar mules / scans is pretty leet, and sniper rounds make for guaranteed worker damage which is always great.
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Old build.
I've already played that build in beta.
Vs bio fast exp instant lose ;P
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On February 24 2011 08:17 Jadoreoov wrote:
You should check out the Ghost First TvT build by qxc on Liquipedia. It is very similar, though slightly faster, and is accompanied by a lot of followup strategy.
God, why does everybody think qxc's ghost first build is similair to all ghost builds? It is NOT similair to ANY ghost builds i've seen on TL gosh.
Anyways, I've been playing with this myself aswell, the only problem IMO at lower levels is that you need alot of APM to keep up with everything, especially if you go for a marauder heavy transition. How do you usually transition out of it?
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"Counters
This can be a very powerful build if used right, but like any build there are counters to it. Generally marauders can be killed with snipe, but they take a lot more energy to kill due to their high HP, so I'd advise against using ghosts against marauders. Also, tank openings are very good against ghost rushes. Early marine cheese can usually be held off with 1-2 bunkers while you're waiting to get ghosts out."
So you mean like exactly 99% of every Terran opening beats this straight up?
Like even if you masses marines you'd still win, you'd eventually get enough to go mass raven marine..? against the ghosts...?
... Sure it "barely" counters iEchoic's build which isn't even an issue, if you want to beat his build... Don't go marine tank >.>
The direct counter for iEchoic is going pure viking tank, because all your minerals + (150 + 50 + 50) gas is spent on hellion production (two reactors and pre-ignitor) your already behind almost 3 vikings worth of units, or 1 tank and 1 viking. Once he has that air control he can just sim-city and shut-down the drop.
Anyways I've seen mass marines beat iEchoic's build, its a great build, but it isn't "Perfectly unorthodox" Just play well and don't mass marine tank or marine marauder or marine viking or anything really light without a huge army of it.
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EPT
