[G] Blazinghand's Thorship TvZ

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Blazinghand

United States25551 Posts

January 10 2012 10:17 GMT

Guide: Blazinghand's Thorship TvZ

For those special occasions in TvZ when you want to

get all up in his grill

Table of Contents
>Introduction
      Background
      General Theory I: Larvae Harassment
      General Theory II: Distinctive Traits and Thor Preservation
>Build Order
>Execution
      Phase 1: Viking
      Phase 2: Thorship
      Phase 3: All In
>Map-Specific Information and Vetoes
>Q&A
>Replays & VoDs
>Acknowledgements

Introduction [Top]
So, gentlemen, it's finally come to that point. I've decided to rid myself of this demon. At first it was nice, but after a long time, this build has begun to hold me back. I've decided that it's time to share it-- the secret behind my 85% TvZ win rate. Anyone who's watched my stream has seen me execute this build countless times, and effortlessly crush Zerg players who are substantially better than me. It is the Thorship into Thor all-in TvZ. It is a brutal 1 base all-in, and probably the most successful of its kind. It will only work once against a good player, and it requires a lot of apm. Properly executed without failures of drop micro or marine splitting, I have never lost with it. That being said, I'm bad and will occasionally derp up a split, but even so, it wins 85% of the time in low-mid Master League, according to sc2gears. This build does not function in high master league, as your typical skilled zerg opponent will react appropriately to a slow 1 base all-in. Do not use this build for high level play-- it relies on your opponent being bad (mid master or lower) for it to win.

This guide is long. It contains within it all my knowledge from the 100+ TvZ games I've played with this build, 96 of them in Master League. If you read this and understand it, and you have the mechanics, you will be able to execute the build as well as I can. You will achieve the winrate I have. You will become a god.

Without any further ado, I present Blazinghand's Thorship into Thor-allin TvZ.

Background [Top]
My Thorship build began, as so many builds, as an adaptation of something I saw a better player do. It must have been over a year ago that I was watching sPsDEBO's stream as he Thor dropped on maps like Blistering Sands, Lost Temple, pre-fix Delta Quadrant and Jungle Basin, making use of some unfortunate map topography to really abuse the mobility of the Medivac and the strength of the Thor. Although queens were appreciably faster off of creep, the Thorship was still pretty effective-- you could 1-shot drones and crap all over queens.

It's always been pretty easy to slip a Thorship harass in before lair tech, and assuming you microed carefully, you could preserve the Thor, deal some damage, cover for your expo, and on certain maps (DQ and LT) dance all over his head. Zerg players had to specifically make Spine Crawlers and float overlords to deal with the Thorship cliff drop threat. This was overall pretty bad.

With time, maps became more balanced, and Thorship became a riskier and smaller-windowed harass. You still needed to get out of there before lair tech, but with Zerg players getting 3rd (and in the case of Ice Fisher, 4th) queens quickly coupled with a sudden dearth of truly abusable cliffs, even flying near the Zerg base at all meant putting yourself in great danger.

I'd finally gotten enough effective APM (you need ~80) to perform Thorship harass, but the window in the Sc2 metagame in which Thorship was effective had closed. It's pretty obvious if you're Thorshipping; fast double gas, tech lab Factory with nothing researching, fast Medivac (even an armory if you can find that) all together mean it must be Thorship. Although there's a possibility in these scenarios of tank drop or red flame hellion drop, the response to any of these is to get an extra queen and some crawlers or roaches to kill the dropped unit.

I realized that Thorship would need to acquire a new flavor and set of goals to remain relevant in the new TvZ meta. Thorship traditionally targeted down stray lings, and drones in the mineral line. I had begun using a Thor/marine all-in against Zerg, and I realized that although it was unrealistic to deal severe income damage with Thorship, careful control might let me deal larvae damage.

Rarely would a Zerg player be able to hold the follow-up attack.

General Theory I: Larvae Harassment [Top]
A fundamental difference between Zerg and Terran (and there are many, no doubt) is that of production facilities. How many marines, marauders, tanks etc a Terran player can make is determined mostly by his production facilities. Except insofar as it affects his ability to afford SCVs, Terran can produce as much as he wants and still economically develop optimally. Expansion timing plays into this, as an earlier CC means you'll have less minerals to dump into, say, more Rax and marines, but note Zerg's choice is still harder than Terran's.

A rather obvious observation is that every larvae becomes either an Overlord, a Drone, or a combat unit. Which combat unit it becomes varies from Zerglings to expensive units like Ultralisks. Still, in the early game, the larva’s flexibility is sharply limited; before Lair tech, common Larvae uses are:

Drone: 50 Minerals
Drone -> Spine Crawler: 150 Minerals
Drone -> Spore Crawler: 125 Minerals
Zergling Pair: 50 Minerals
1 Baneling, 1 Zergling: 75 Minerals, 25 Gas
1 Roach: 75 Minerals, 25 Gas

Now granted, the Roach costs effectively 25 more minerals due to supply costs, and the Zergling Pair or 1 Bane 1 Zergling costs 12.5 more minerals due to supply costs, but we still note that units are resource-cheap and larvae-expensive, whereas statics are larvae-cheap but resource-expensive.

Ultimately, the flexibility and strength of Zerg comes from efficient and effective allocation of Larvae. Any harass seeks ultimately not to control the Zerg income economy, but rather, the Zerg Larva economy, since a Zerg can drone very quickly to replace his mineral line.

Example: You harass a Zerg player who has the optimal saturation of 22 drones on each base (16 minerals, 6 vespene) with some hellions. You kill a total of 8 drones, and bleed 3 hellions before you extract the last one, pulling it out and flying it away from his nasty roaches. You've traded 300 minerals of hellions for 400 minerals of drones. Not bad. The Zerg player's 2 larvae injects pop (or maybe just popped) and he either slaps down 8 drones to recover from the harassment, or, having scouted that you're all-inning him, slaps down a bunch of roaches or ling/bane instead of rebuilding his economy.

As you can see there is a certain amount of flexibility from the Zerg player, but it is a Sophie's Choice situation if his larvae are limited. Let's imagine another situation.

Example: You harass a Zerg player who has the optimal saturation of 22 drones on each base (16 minerals, 6 vespene) with 2 banshees. You kill a total of 6 drones and a queen, and lose 1 banshee on the way out. You've traded 150/100 for 450 minerals. Not bad. The Zerg player's 1 larvae inject pops (he only has 1 because he lost a queen) and he either slaps down 4 drones to partially recover from the harassment, or, having scouted that you're all-inning him, uses his larvae to make roaches or ling/bane instead of rebuilding his economy.
You can see that, deprived of larvae, the Zerg player is in a much tighter corner. It takes 17 seconds to make a round of drones, and so a Zerg player would gladly trade 100 minerals of drones for 100 minerals of hellions (plus 17 seconds mining time for 2 drones), since making economy and army are the same thing for him. He'd much rather trade Zerglings, but only because they'd trade more efficiently; a larva is a larva.

It's for this reason that any sort of larvae-based harass struggles against the influences of Spanishiwa's legendary Ice Fisher ZvX opening (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=207017).

Spanishiwa is part of a small and elite group of people who wrote build orders on TL that demonstrated or revealed great insight into the game. For Spanishiwa, this meant realizing the chief limitation on Zerg production early on is larvae-- and that overcoming this meant using larvae-efficient crawlers and queens. For this reason, any sort of larvae-targeted harass (sniping queens, etc) is ineffective against Spanishiwa's build, and I'd consider his build to be build order win against any sort of Thor harass, simply due to the fact that killing queens with a Thor will not slow down his larva production, and his AA damage output will usually drop the Medivac

General Theory II: Distinctive Traits & Thor Preservation [Top]
When we talk about Thor harass and the "Thorship" concept, we must first begin by asking what it is that distinguishes a Thor harass from other forms of harass (eg. banshees, hellions, reaper). Chiefly, what distinguishes these harasses from each other are the level of commitment required, the transitions available, and the potential damage output. That is to say, what does it cost you, and what can it give you?

Well, one notable thing is that the Thorship requires you have a Starport. It will necessarily put on the pressure more slowly than, say, a hellion or reaper opening. However, with a sufficiently early second gas, the Thor and the Medivac can both be produced and moving across the map in a timely fashion, not later than a cloak banshee attack. In terms of timing, this is comparable to any sort of Starport-based 1 base harass play, be it vikings, drop rush, or cloak rush.

The other thing the Thorship requires you to do is, well, build a quick Thor. This large investiture of minerals and vespene gas delays any potential expansion a great deal, and represents a significant early-game investment into tech. The armory itself provides little value, basically adding to the cost of the Thor. Unlike reaper and hellion harasses, this sort of opening will necessarily delay any expansions significantly. Unlike 2 Rax, and drop rushes, this sort of opening also produces units that are not part of the standard TvZ composition, further hindering transitions into a standard midgame. Although a Thor is indeed a common element of a late Terran army, it is traditionally not incorporated into the marine/tank/Medivac composition unless there are a large number of Mutalisks being brought to bear.

We have therefore established that the Thorship is essentially the most costly harasses a Terran player can execute against a Zerg Although it's conceivable a Terran may rush for Battlecruiser and attempt to harass with that (a more costly harass, indeed), it would be enormously unlikely to succeed and profoundly unwise to attempt. Given these costs, we must certainly anticipate a strong benefit for such a build to be worthwhile.

The benefit of the Thor harass is twofold, and both are contingent on strength of the Thor. Whereas reapers, hellions, and banshees each suffer numerous drawbacks and counters from the hatch-tech Zerg's arsenal (speedlings, crawlers, roaches, and queens), the Thorship harass is largely immune to or able to circumvent traditional Zerg anti-harass tools. The first of these tools is the noble crawler. Spine Crawlers are effective against marines and hellions, and due to the fact that these harasses attack by ground, there is little else to say about it-- spine crawlers are good. Banshees, Reapers, and Thorship all posses to tools needed to mitigate crawlers and simcities. Although spore crawlers are nominally able to beat Banshees, banshees are mobile and choose not to engage them. Thors don't care about crawlers and can beat them in direct fights relatively easily. The next tool is the Queen. Thors crap all over queens. The final tools, which I will lump together in the case of the Thor, are lings and roaches. A good number of lings and roaches can take down an unsupported Thor with minimal losses. However, no number of lings and roaches can take down a Medivac, and that is where the Thorship shines-- there is no set of Zerg defenses against which a Thorship cannot deal some damage. It is only against a large number of queens (3 with quick reactions and connected creep) on conjunction with a strong land army that the Thorship is forced to back off without engaging inside the Zerg base-- the mobile AA of the queens prevents the sort of drop micro necessary to mitigate the ground damage output of lings and roaches. The Thor drop is, therefore, capable of enormous damage output even against a relatively prepared opponent.

The other benefit of a Thor drop rush is that it provides you with a Thor. Assuming your micro is careful, there's no reason you should lose the Thor in the Thor drop build. Zerg will not have mutalisks or fungal, and with the mobility of the Medivac and the quick loading and unloading of the Thor, you will be able to disengage at will. Although an early-game Thor is of sharply limited use in regular situations, it's still a valuable tool fighting against roaches and banelings in the event of an early attack from either player following the harassment. Whereas reapers, banshees, and hellions all are not represented in standard TvZ (though hellions have a place in Mech), the Thor, if preserved, can eventually become a seamless part of a standard army, and is an invaluable asset in all-in situations.

The Thorship is thus distinguished from other harasses. It is costly in the extreme, but is capable of overwhelming common defenses and if handled properly provides you a powerful unit during early all-in situations and standard unit later on. Due to the high cost of this harass, however, the follow-up is most effective as an all-in as opposed to an expansion. Taking two gasses, making a Starport, an armory, and a Thor, all before expanding, will obviate the ability of the Terran to enter into a macro game in a reasonable fashion. The high early-game effectiveness of the Thor, however, will make him strong.

The Build Order [Top]

      10 Supply Depot
      12 Barracks
      13 Refinery
      17 Orbital Command (16 food of scvs)
      17 Supply depot

at this point you should be walled in. from this point forwards, don't build anything else at your wall unless you anticipate baneling aggression.

      18 Factory (can be 19 or 17 depending on losing scouting scv, how well you xferred workers to geyser)
      20 Refinery
      22 Supply Depot
      23 Starport (basically whenever your Factory finishes)

At this point you have 4 marines. Unless you scouted an all-in from the Zerg, you now cut marines to afford your viking, thor, and medivac.

      25 Armory

Use your first 100 gas after beginning Starport. hide this, it's the biggest tell of a thor drop. I patrol my marines to keep an eye open for scoutverlords.

      26 Supply depot
      ~26 Viking when Starport completes
      ~30 Thor when Armory completes
      ~38 Medivac when you can afford it.

Start producing marines again. Constantly produce Thors out of your Factory. When the Medivac finishes, add a tech lab to the Starport and constantly produce banshees. Add 2 more barracks as you bank up minerals and constantly produce marines.

Your thor should pop at about 7:20, with your medivac popping a few seconds later.
[image loading]

Execution [Top]
The execution of this build is broken into three portions. First, you begin by harassing with your viking-- you clear away overlords, stray zerglings, and try to make the zerg player very sad. Secondly, you execute the thorship harass itself-- killing queens, drones, whatever you can afford to. Lastly, you all-in with your thor-based army, and hopefully crush the puny zerg beneath your heel. I'm now going to describe how exactly you should go about doing this.

Phase 1: Viking Harass [Top]
So let's talk for a moment about decision-making. The goals of your viking harassment, in order of importance, are:
A) Clear an Overlord- and Zergling- free path for the thorship to travel
B) Kill Overlords
C) Be a dick
So here's how the average zerg player responds to the viking poking around-- he retracts his overlords, makes an extra queen (if he's not supply blocked), and sometimes makes a spore crawler if he's anticipating banshees. He pulls his overlords back from the map, abdicating the ability to see the thorship coming.

Your viking has enough time to make a couple of diversions to kill lone lings or ovies, but then will have to fly the flight path your thorship will take, to clear out any ovies in that area so that you can get into his base without him knowing.

You will almost always get 1 overlord kill this way, but on some maps you can get upwards of 3.

VoD of Viking Harass: http://www.twitch.tv/blazinghand/b/305024074

Phase 2: Thorship [Top]
This is the fun part. This is why you're here. A little after your viking pops, your thor does, then your medivac pops a few seconds later. Load the thor into the medivac and fly along the route your viking has cleared. Your goal is to not let the zerg see your thorship until you are basically in his base. Remember that the thor is visible beneath the medivac, so he will know exactly what's coming if he sees it.

Phase 2 Subsection 1: Target Priority and Thor AI
The targets for your thor, in order of importance, are
A) Queens
B) Drones
C) Army
E) Overlords

Your thor's target priority AI works like this:
A) Enemy ground units attacking the thor within 7 range.
B) Overlords, any overlords, anywhere within like a screen length.
C) Stuff you actually want to kill.

Phase 2 Subsection 2: Decisionmaking
As you enter the enemy base you need to quickly determine how many roaches he has nearby, and the presence/absence of spine crawlers, queens, and speedlings. Your goal is to drop your thor basically on top of his Queen, then focus it down. Putting the thor in melee with the queen will reduce the surface area for lings. However, avoid entering the AA envelope of a spore crawler or several queens, as you will be unable to fly in and pick up your Thor. The only time it is ok to do so is if his ground forces are weak enough the Thor can fight its way to the edge of the AA envelope for extraction, or kill the AA units itself.

One trick to attack an overlord with a viking to pull the queens off creep to get killed. Remember, the Thor will gladly disengage from major ground battles to fire at overlords within 10 range, putting its attack on cooldown for several crucial seconds. Also, a thor near a mineral line and an overlord will spend several years killing the overlord unless you manually tell him to kill drones. You can also sometimes find lone queens at the edge of the creep planting tumors. Remember, engage only when you're sure you can win.

It's okay to drop the thor into zerglings to snipe a queen, and if you can drop him in melee with the queen or up against a hatchery (or both), you can vastly reduce the damage he takes from the lings. It's less okay to drop a thor into roaches or roach/ling, but if it's a small number of roaches, the thor can afford to tank it to kill the queen.

Your medivac should under no circumstances be shot by a spore crawler. Any situation where you're thinking about flying into the AA envelope of a spore crawler, ask yourself if it's really worth losing your medivac, because spore crawlers hit like trucks. I can count on my two hands the number of times I've flown into a spore crawler's AA envelope when thorshipping. I can count on my right hand the number of times it turned out to actually be a good idea in my hundred games.

Never fly near 3 queens. Be careful flying up to 2 queens-- don't drop the thor in melee, your Medivac will take too much damage going in and out. Flying up to 1 queen is acceptable.

If you fly into a base and see 3 queens and connected creep, probe for areas where his queens can't reach easily and you can shoot the mineral line, buildings, etc. If there's no opportunities, just bail. The chief goal of Thorship is to preserve the Thor and the medivac during the thor drop. If your opponent has like 4 queens and a pile of roaches, that's damage done already to his economy. Bail.

Always clear Xel'Naga Towers on your way home. If your thor and medivac are relatively high-health, have them camp there and keep them cleared, or rove around denying creep tumors.

Phase 2 Subsection 3: Micro

How to unload a Thor
Setup: Medivac is in motion, and you have it selected. A Thor is loaded inside.
1) Right-click to move the Medivac PAST the target landing zone.
2) As the Medivac flies the landing zone, click on the wireframe of the Thor to unload it.
3) Right-click to turn the Medivac around and send it to safety without losing momentum. During this time, the thor is going through it's abominably slow “unload” animation.
4) Select the Thor and order it to attack the target.

How to pick up a Thor
Setup: Medivac is in motion, and your Thor is on the ground.
1) Right-click to move the Medivac PAST the target loading zone.
2) [2 methods]
A) Just as the Thor is about to be under the medivac, select the thor and right-click the medivac. The medivac will not change course or lose acceleration and will continue on its original course, giving you plenty of time to alter the course without losing momentum.
B) Just as the Thor is about to be under the Medivac, select the medivac and right-click the thor. The Medivac will immediately start deceleration, so you must proceed to step 3 ASAP.
3) Right-click to turn the Medivac around and send it to safety without losing momentum.

What to do with your Medivac
While your thor is on the ground, your medivac should constantly be in motion at full speed near the Thor. Ideally, out of range of any queens, or constantly turning just above the thor if there are no queens about, for maximim speed extraction.

What to do with your Viking
If your viking took significant damage during the initial harass phase, look for easy overlords or scout around the map for unprotected overlords. If your viking took little damage, or his queens are all dead, kill overlords in his base.

Extracting Surrounded Thors from inside AA Envelopes
This is only to be used in the direst of circumstances-- if, for example, your opponent surprises you after your Thor is on the ground with several queens or mobile spore crawlers, grounding it, and also surrounds it with enough lings that an escape by walking out of the AA envelope is unlikely. If your Thor can't kill his AA, is trapped, and your Medivac won't survive an extraction, the final act of desperation is to extract anyways, but lead with the viking to tank the queen and spore crawlers shots on the way in.

Against a slow opponent you can lead a fair amount with the viking, but a canny adversary will focus down the medivac.IT may make all the difference though to have the viking tank a few shots.

When the Medivac is over the thor, pick it up and get out of there as soon as you can. Your viking will die. I have tried this 3-4 times and it has never really worked, but it COULD.

What to do if he rushed mutalisk really really hard.
If your opponent has mutalisks before 8:30 (which is possible, mind you), you probably should have been able to scout the lair with your scv scout. In the event you are being chased by a small pack of mutas, pick up your thor. Every 3 in-game seconds, drop the thor to fire its rockets. Keep on doing this until you're outside the zerg base and only have to worry about the mutalisks. Fly the Medivac far enough away it won't get splashed by glaives, and hurt the mutalisks until the thor is at about 1/3rd hp. Then pick it up while its shots are on cooldown to give it a little extra tanking in the form of the Medivac's hull. If you can fend off the mutalisks you can make it home and win with the marine/thor all-in-- he won't have roaches or banelings.

Phase 3: All In [Top]
This is the easy part. When your first banshee pops, send it to clear out the xel naga towers (if your thorship isn't doing so already). When your 3rd thor pops, grab your thors, all your air units, all your marines, and 10-15 auto-repairing scvs, and move out. You will have a scanner sweep come up as you arrive at the zerg player's natural.

Your goal is to destroy his army, crush his spirit, and devour his soul with your unstoppable allin. Thors tank and get repaired, and destroy high-hp units with their ranged shots. Marines provide filler dps. Banshees target down high priority units and provide damage against roaches. Scvs repair, and coupled with the medivac forces the zerg to engage you basically all in one go, or else you'll heal up in between fights. Your viking here will be important for picking off overlords, providing a little range and "finishing power" (after 2 thor shots, to avoid overkilling) on mutas.

Even if zerg has a natural expansion, unless it's directly along your attack route, go for his natural then head into his main.

Zerg has a small number of options for defense at this point in the game. Here are the defenses I've seen:

Countering Zerg Defenses to the Thor All-in

Lair/Mutalisk Rush:
Mutalisk Rush off 2 base is build order loss. Even with perfect baneling hits, you can't stop 3 thors from crushing the ~5 magic-boxed mutalisks a zerg will have at this time. He simply won't have the roaches and banes to pose a credible threat:

http://www.twitch.tv/blazinghand/b/305031558

Ling/Bane Defense
This defense forgoes roaches for ling/bane, and is one of the deadliest ways a zerg can defend the all-in. You need to split well, and not lose too many marines. Ideally you want to keep all your scvs alive to repair your units after the fight. His goal is to clear out your light units the clean up your thors with lings or his second wave.

1) split
2) focus fire units onto banelings
3) in the final defense of your vital repairing scvs, jump them into your medivac just at the moment of impact
4) use drop micro and repair micro to clean up afterwards

How to micro shittily and win: http://www.twitch.tv/blazinghand/b/305032013
How to micro well and win: http://www.twitch.tv/blazinghand/b/305032650

Roach or Ling/Roach Defense:
This is the most common kind of defense. Usually supplemented with a few extra queens. The zerg player, knowing you are making thors, makes roaches. The important elements of micro in these engagement are repair micro, pulling back targetted marines, and pulling back focused-down thors using your medivac. Gradually cycle your way backwards, picking up weak thors and pulling them a few squares back to be safely healed while continuing to fight. This drop micro vastly increases the damage output of your thors and their overall survivability. It also looks sweet and demoralizes your opponent.

Drop Micro In Action: http://www.twitch.tv/blazinghand/b/305026328

Hybrid (Roach/Bane) Defense:
This is the most technical defense. It combines the ability fight thors of a Roach defense with the ability to clear out scvs of a ling/bane defense. It's also the most gas-intensive, and it's what a smart Zerg will do if he realizes ano all-in of this kind is coming. You need to split, and you also need to drop micro, and you also need to repair micro and pull scvs into medivacs as necessary. This is the only kind of defense that has ever successfully defended a Thor all-in in which I didn't derp the thor harass. It's what a zerg player uses if you play him twice in a row with this build.

It is the best defense. To fight this, you have to use every trick in the book. He will have the burst damage of banelings plus the staying power of roaches. There will be queens. Brace yourself. Split your marines, pull back your scvs, and do your best to weather the baneling storm. If there are too many banelings, save 8 scvs in the medivac, then drop them back down to repair the thors in the ensuing fight with the roaches. Afterwards, focus on drop micro the save your thors. Remember that thors 3-shot roaches, so 3 thors, properly coordinated, will 1-shot a roach so he can't micro it back.

Roach/Bane Defense: http://www.twitch.tv/blazinghand/b/305030217
Clip: Thorship vs Roach/Bane
+ Show Spoiler +

Following this execution, the thor allin should crumble the zergs before you, and the ground shall be stained with their tiny, tiny zerg tears.

Map-specific Information and Vetoes [Top]
An illustrated guide to the S7 Map Pool!
Daybreak
+ Show Spoiler +