[G] TvP Pure Air

Yoshi Kirishima

United States10290 Posts

November 09 2011 03:58 GMT

UPDATE: 11/16/2011
I'll probably not update this guide until maybe... after Christmas break is over. Expect it to be more accurate, more helpful, more polished, etc. Currently I have a lot of ideas I want to try out and things still need to be figured out so it'll take a while to be sure, and I'm still getting rapidly better so I'll just update it once I'm a lot better. If anyone wants to practice against this style or help me out with some ideas hit me up Yoshi.855 Thinking about things like carrying support Ghosts in Medivacs with your air fleets to EMP HTs or Stalkers or even the usually-clumped up air units. Maybe even Nukes since you can deny Observers (omg this sounds so fun :D).

Contemplating whether to share this guide yet or not... before it was moved to SC2 Strat Forum

+ Show Spoiler +

Hey guys well I just like 7 hours today making a guide [G] TvP Pure Air

And I'm debating whether or not to share it now or later. I'm thinking I would share it now, but if it means everyone on ladder knowing about it and it not working anymore, then I would be sad panda for ending the lifetime of my own build order

Unless, you guys think that not that many players on ladder (talking about Masters) actually read TL? I'm guessing maybe 75% of them know about TL, 50% visit TL, 25% of them actually post occasionally, 15% actually come often and read, and 5-10% of them will see my guide.

Does that sound about right? If it's only 5-10% I think I'll go ahead and post it.

Here's my guide, if you wanna read it now and maybe give me suggestions that would be cool

. You may want to copy save it or don't refresh the page cus I might remove it after a while...

Look forward to a TvT Mech and TvZ Mech Air or TvZ Nuke Opening into Mech/Ghost guide in the future

Alt-Tab Guide
+ Show Spoiler +

12 Refinery
13 Barracks
16 OC
16 Factory
16 Marine
Depot
Marine
Bunker
Starport + Hellion
Tech Lab on Barracks, switch to Starport
Banshee
Cloak
Banshee
Starport (2nd)
Raven
Viking
Command Center
Engineering Bay

Just check out 17:42 if you want to see lots of explosions.

Any typical ladder game...
with any typically confused opponent
Apparently I have to clarify the purpose of this video. The opponent is CONFUSED and CLUELESS and plays HORRIBLY against my strategy. In no way am I providing this video as a way to "prove" that this kind of Pure Air strategy works. It is simply to demonstrate what a typical ladder game looks like.
If you want a good game, look at the GM/Top Masters section of the Replay section at the bottom of this guide.
+ Show Spoiler +

Sigh there are still people who are still saying the video was a bad example? Is this disclaimer not good enough? It's right next to the video, italicized, and bolded... =/

QXC vs WhiteRa, Air vs Stalker/HT/Archon, doing a similar opening

Neither player played that well, showing how underdeveloped this style is. WhiteRa did pretty good at defending, but QXC kept stacking up his army and losing them to just a couple storms... but either way, this shows that this "works" at the pro level

Also, note that KA isn't in the game no more
Thanks sleepingdog for finding this

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Introduction
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Hi everyone! I’m glad to finally share my first guide. Please bear with me, I’m new to this ^-^; First off I will say that I am a mid masters Terran on the NA server with a ~ 95% winrate vs Protoss on the ladder or in tournaments against Mid-Masters Protoss (The 21 replays at the end of this guide are almost literally the last 21 games I’ve played against Protoss, though I may have forgot a couple, with me only losing in 1 of them), so I’m in no way a progamer. I’ve been able to beat top masters players and even one GM (see Replays) with this strategy too, who would otherwise own me (or maybe it’s just because before using Air strategies, I used to Mech, which is pretty weak against Protoss and something I haven’t practiced in a while), including one who was able to beat ST Rainbow two times (or more?) on the NA ladder. Whether or not this build or air strategies in general are "viable" or "good ideas" at the highest level of play (like GSL), it is a great build for ladder or a surprise strategy in a tournament or such.

I wanted to show make some videos to show things like engagements, harass, micro, unit composition vs unit composition, but right now, as of Patch 1.4, SC2 has been requiring a significantly larger amount of processing power. I used to be able to stream at maybe a 360p youtube quality on low 1920x1080, but now I can’t even play on low settings without lagging. I know it’s a shader problem because whenever something new happens, or is about to happen, such as a SCV being created, encountering the first Stalker attack animation, creating my first Marine, etc., etc., it freezes up for a couple seconds. Really annoying.

So, I can’t make any videos atm but I will definitely be continually updating this guide. I’ll be adding more Important Timings and more specifics and variety to the Adaptations section, Scouting section, and Build Orders section. For now, this guide is mainly for sharing my 2 Port PF Expand build, but aims to cover all topics regarding the strategy (and therefore covering Air play in general). The video you see above was created from Mintograde's stream here on TL.

Any feedback, comments, suggests, replays, etc., will be wonderful! Just please be manner cus it’s TL

If you have a BO (general or not) you want to share, if you type it up I can add it under "Build Orders" (with your name of course)

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Overview
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Though strong multitasking is needed generally, this build utilizes the ability to deny Protoss detection with Vikings and Ravens to protect your Banshees while constantly harassing Protoss simultaneously in multiple locations, takes map control and allows you to expand greedily as a mineral sink to secure higher gas income, capitalizes on the strength and advantage of only having to upgrade Air Attack and Air Armor to reach your Starport units' maximum power compared to the 3-5 upgrades a Protoss needs to match, and leads Protoss to either attempt to defend and max out a 200 food army before you do or trade bases at an extreme disadvantage due to not only your more numerous, scattered bases, the lategame power of spell-casters like Battlecruisers and Ravens, or the Terran's ability to lift off buildings, but because Planetary Fortresses require a large army to take down, forcing Protoss to move his army in one predictable-moving, large group.
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Goal
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You must harass and acquire more intel with your first and second Banshees to be prepared against any 1 base plays, and follow it with a Viking and Raven to kill Observers in order to safety secure your natural and guarantee you a lead in the midgame. Though rushing to air tech early on may make you vulnerable to 1 base strategies, you can transition into a different build with proper scouting before you commit to anything beyond a standard 1-1-1 build.

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Knowing your Units, Abilities, Upgrades, and Counters
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Air Units (in chronological order)

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Banshees will be your main unit for most of the game. This unit does a ton of DPS and rips Stalkers apart. Use it to harass, force base trades, snipe important structures such as Nexus, Robotics Facility, Forge, Cybernetics Core, Stargate, Robotics Bay (if they’re researching Observer Speed or Thermal Lance!).

Vikings will be your anti-air unit to cover the Banshees. But more importantly, its job is to snipe Observers to keep your Banshees Cloaked. These do well against Void Rays and Carriers and are about even against Phoenixes. There will be times when you can land these to help in a base trade, harass, or as an army.

Ravens are your support units, but in the lategame, you will ideally want to have these en masse. These detect Observers so that your Vikings can kill them off, throw down PDD to cover your air fleet (this can buy you time to snipe those Observers), or use Seeker Missiles to just blow everything up. Oh you can mass Auto Turrets too to harass or kill buildings (they have quite a lot of DPS!). If you’re really pro, you can surround your opponent with your air fleet, blocking off or obscuring escape paths so that he has no where to possibly outrun Seeker Missiles. Late game, when you are rich, you can remax on Ravens during a big battle just like when a Zerg masses drones. The drones’ mining helps later, similar to Ravens stacking up an enormous pool of energy.

Battle Cruisers are your late game unit, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get them earlier. You don’t want to have to spend your resources on a Fusion Core, but against early Phoenixes, you can opt to go for Battle Cruisers (basically, 1 or if he has a lot, 2) so they draw fire from Phoenixes, instead of making a bunch of Vikings. Generally though, Vikings cover the anti-air role better throughout the game, but Battle Cruisers do a lot of damage and, like Banshees, rape Stalkers. When you are rich, you can max out on these (and/or Ravens) because, at least regarding raw, head-on attacking power, BCs are the most supply efficient attacking unit in the game.

Other Units

Hellions are your map control and scouting unit early game. You can use it to hold Watch Towers, scout for proxy buildings, pylons, etc., kill Probes going out to make expansions, etc. If you have enough minerals you can use them to harass, too. Early on, when you’re harassing your opponent with your first couple banshees, you can run in with 1-4 Hellions to cause even more chaos in his base and kill probes and/or Sentries if he has them. Making more than your 1 scout may delay your natural or your third though (depending if you’ve already made your expansion CC or not).

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Marines are your early game unit. Sit 2 of these into your Bunker at the ramp to stop pokes. You will need to pump these out for early defense if you find out your opponent is going 1 base play (AKA rush or early-game timing). You fill up two bunkers at your natural too, to keep it well defended.

Abilities

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Cloak is obvious. You want this early to punish Protoss who don’t get detection or who don’t get more than 1 Observer. This also allows your Banshees to be invincible once you snipe down his Observers.

PDD is for both defense and offense, but usually for offense. Use these with your Banshees (and possibly even landed Vikings) to saftely snipe Photon Cannons (which will die really quickly to Banshees anyways but still) or in engagements. If you’re caught off guard with Phoenixes and don’t have enough Vikings, throw down some PDDs on the way home to try to survive.

Seeker Missiles are for blowing up Stalkers... and even Phoenixes, Void Rays, Carriers, etc., or may be even Immortals that are trying to snipe down your PFs. When in large numbers, it is almost always slightly better to use Seeker Missiles instead of Point Defense Drones, given that you only have enough energy for the same amount of Seeker Missiles as PDDs (It is rare that you will have Ravens with 200 energy, able to make 2 PDDs). You can also use these on Observers. You may say, it’s a waste to use it on Observers! But you know what, when you have a huge battle and Protoss actually has air units and a few Observers that may or may not be in the immediate area, ready to snipe with your Vikings, your Vikings will target the Protoss Air units. It is too hard to try to snipe all the Observers just by right clicking them. Anyways, even if you right click them all, it will take too much work because you need to kill ALL of them, meaning you will have to make a few Vikings attack one observer, a few Vikings attacking another observer, etc. It takes too much time. Keep in mind that the Seeker Missiles will probably splash a lot of Protoss units too, especially since the Observer is an air unit.
Auto Turrets are for harassment or even defense early game if you really need it from your first Raven. You can spam these all over your opponent’s base too to kill buildings, or just drop a couple at a building Nexus to distract him and possibly even kill or cancel it.

Yamato Cannon everything you see! Usually when you get BCs out the game is long done. But let’s say your opponent is not getting rofl stomped. Yamato Cannon does well against Void Rays, Carriers (duh!), but it works well even against Observers just like Seeker Missiles.

Viking Ground Tranformation. Use this to harass or help you in a base trade if the situation occurs. If you have a ton of Vikings and are sure there is no chance he will have a surprise army of air units, you can land them. They do quite well vs Stalkers with upgrades.

Scan allows you to see Observers in case you don’t have any Ravens ready to detect. You can also check for Starports to see if you need to start pumping Vikings. You won’t have many Scans until the late game though, not that you need any, since all your expansions will be PFs. Late game though, you will have lots of OCs with your extra minerals and have lots of Scans available to do what you want.

Lift Off lets you win base trades... easily! If you’re trading 1 base for 1 base, it’s OK to lift off your buildings at the base that is being killed and land them somewhere else. Chances are you’ll be able to save some of them.

Repair obviously keeps your PFs and Bunkers alive. When you can, try to repair your air fleet as it builds slowly and repairing units is 4 times more efficient than rebuilding them (cost wise) anyways. Repair your Hellions too. Especially with BCs, you want to repair them. It takes so long to rebuild!

Upgrades (in somewhat chronological order: Missing are Ghost upgrades)

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Bet you don't see these often

Cloak first is to harass.

Corvid Reactor. Get this early on sometime after Cloak, but not until you begin making more than your first Detector Raven. You want to try not to have to make Ravens until you can have them finish with Corvid Reactor ready.

Seeker Missile will be very expendable once you have Corvid Reactor and have pumped out a wave(s) of Ravens, but you don’t really want to halt Starport production just for it. Usually you get this late game, but you may find it useful mid game too. These help kill HTs, large bulks of Stalkers, Immortals that are dangerous to your PFs, and Observers. In some situations you might get this before Corvid Reactor, like if you happen to have [too many] Ravens that happen to have enough energy to Seeker Missile and need to prepare for defending an attack.

Durable Materials really isn’t that important for Auto Turrets, but it helps Seeker Missile a lot. If he actually tries to outrun your Seeker Missiles, like with Stalkers, he might escape but you will force him to run around MUCH longer, giving you time to just jump into his base or such and cause havoc.

Behemoth Reactor – get this before you start making BCs and before Yamato. You want it to be as efficient as possible, and it will take a long time for your BCs to have enough energy for Yamato which is bad especially considering how long it takes to even make a BC.

Yamato Cannon is really only useful against Void Rays or Carriers; if your anti air will be able to kill his anti air very quickly, don’t worry about having to use it on Observers.

Armory/Ebay Upgrades

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Nor these

Building Armor should be the first upgrade you need, especially if you feel you didn’t harass Protoss well enough and his counter attack might kill your PF/Bunkers at your natural. Better to be safe than sorry, you can easily repair your PF at home to defend while he loses everything at home.

Hi-Sec Auto Track helps Auto Turrets and PFs but is mainly useful just for PFs on maps where your 6 range PF might not be able to cover the ramp leading to your main. For example on The Shattered Temple, the natural bases are farther away from the ramps at the 9 and 12 o clock positions, so you will definitely want to upgrade this, even before Building Armor.

Ship Weapons and Plating aren’t that important, especially if you wish to use your gas on more Ravens instead for Seeker Missiles. Banshees already do insane damage, and though your upgrades might be 0/0 throughout the game, it means that you will have had more Banshees, meaning you will have forced your opponent to deal with harassment in even more locations. It depends on what you’ve done throughout the game though.

Usually it is easy to snipe your opponents Forges sometime in the game, delaying their upgrades for up to 2.5 minutes each time you kill them. You can either capitalize on this by making more Banshees to harass, more Ravens to stack up on energy for Seeker Missile, or just go Double Armory upgrades so that your Banshees and BCs, both of which have multiple shot attacks, will be able to gain a significant power boost. A BC with +3 attack does 50% more damage than normal. You can always get these later like when you already have a huge econ, gas is no problem, and/or are almost maxed out.

Dealing with Protoss Units and How to Micro

Working on it...

vs HTs

If there are a lot of HTs, (enough to feedback almost all of your banshees or storm a few times), then simply, do NOT engage. You don't need to engage. Just back off. HTs are super slow and can't blink like Stalkers. They can't even kill PFs, though they can waste 2-3 storms killing repairing SCVs which would have been better used against your Banshees. His lower Stalker count will suffer significantly (even if it is just a few kills) from the PF and this will hurt him a lot when you engage or pump up the harassment. So, proceed to harass him even harder. Just remember, every HT they make could have been 3 Stalkers... 3 friggin Stalkers!

If you must engage, then drain all of your Banshee energy by quickly Cloak and Decloaking. Spam "C" and "D" hotkeys really fast for this until you have no mana left (or save 25-30 if you want to be able to cloak just in case).

If he Storms, just magic box like Zerg. Never just right click into battle, even if you haven't seen HTs yet. You don't want to risk it.

Even if your Banshees are pretty stacked up, each one should not take more than 20 damage as long as you're paying attention. A cool micro trick is to go over his army so that if he tries to Storm, he will probably miss the first couple, not expecting you to keep flying towards his army, and if he does try to storm, he'll be storming his own units as well.

Another cool micro trick is to send forward only 1 Banshee or 1 Raven, ideally tricking him into thinking your entire fleet is coming (sometimes they'll panic and just spam Feedback on the minimap...), and if they do spam Feedback, it will feedback the same unit over and over due to regeneration. Sort of funny. You can see this around the middle of the replay vs the "Air vs Air" on Antiga Shipyards in the Replay section.

You can sort of play around by sending 1 Raven in and out of range of his army, seeing if he pays attention. If he Feedbacks your Raven, oh well. But you might be able to get off a sneaky Seeker Missile and possibly kill a couple clumped HTs. Reminds me of Ghost vs HT.

vs Phoenix

Just keep making Vikings (hopefully you still have your first Raven just for 1-2 PDDs, if not you can make a couple) until you have air superiority. Ship Weapons/Armor helps a lot too. Be very aggressive about expanding if his Phoenix numbers are really high (he is taking the fight to the air, and hence won't have nearly enough Stalkers to kill any of your PFs).

You can even send 1 Seeker Missile at them 1 at a time. They will be able to out run it but if they are not careful, they might be hit. Slim chance. But the important part is that they will have to dive in to attack your 9 range Vikings, have to run away from the Seeker Missile, giving you time to run away if needed, and, if they re-engage, they will have to get hit by your 9 range vikings again. Phoenixes attack really fast so PDD isn't as useful unless it's just a few phoenixes vs a few vikings.

You can also put a 2nd or 3rd Turret at your expansion to help cover your SCVs, and even a couple guarding Starports if you have a lot of them clumped together.

In the lategame, Battle Cruisers should be prioritized over Vikings, but not unless you can get a lot of them. If you get a few but not a lot of them and you lose a fight, you'll be in a pretty bad position. It's like trying to max out 200/200 Thors vs Roaches. It's only really strong once you actually max out since the unit is so supply efficient. 1 Thor rapes 3 Roaches and 1 BC rapes 3 Stalkers. Phoenix obviously suck against Battle Cruisers.

vs Stalkers

Lol! Yeah, don't get these unless you're going to max out on 200/200 to capitalize on the fact that Stalkers are 2 food while Banshees are 3. They're not horrible, but pretty bad. It's like getting Stalkers vs upgraded Roaches. If you micro really well and harass and abuse mobility etc., it's fine, but ideally you want to avoid them.

vs Archons

Probably better if Protoss keeps HTs unmorphed. You can easily kite Archons with 6 range Banshees. Just make sure you don't get hit/splashed while kiting and right-click on them, they have larger splash than Thors!

vs Lots of Nexus and Cannons, then Air + Stalker/HT support

So far, this seems to be the proper way to play vs this style of Air Terran, but most players will not recognize or know that you will be massing air units and playing completely unstandard. Not necessarily a counter, but you won't be able to stay on pure air much longer, just like how you can't mass Marines lategame TvZ unless you're Automaton 2000 and you can't rely on just Tank Hellion TvP since without Ghosts, Immortals will rape you. You'll have to get Marines and/or Marauders and/or Hellions to kill HTs and maybe even Stalkers if they have some of them. With your minerals, you can make turrets to fortify or stop air pathways; Turrets are REALLY strong even against Void Rays. Just make sure you're not wasting minerals on Turrets instead of bases, you do not want to be behind Protoss in bases. Remember, you don't have more than 1 MULE!

Instead of marines/marauders/hellions, you can actually just try to bring a couple Medivacs around with some EMP. This way you can stack and EMP all your units if you're not banshee heavy enough, but again, ONLY IF YOU NEED TO ENGAGE. Stalker/HT/Phoenix does quite well. If he gets WP with his HT in it, you will need Medivac + Ghost so it's probably better to skip a hellion support transition and same with MM.

vs Colossi

These guys are actually annoying since they can kill your PFs safetly while out of range. However, if you have a couple Turrets (3 is really good) surrounding your PF, you can just repair the PF from the other side. If he comes to try to kill your SCVs he will either have to run all the way around (if you only have 2 turrets on 1 side) or he will have to get hit by the 8 range turrets. So they're not actually that annoying. They can't attack air, after all. If they get Colossi then during your Banshee Harassment, try to kill the Robotics Bay if they have one. You don't want them to get Observer Speed either!

vs Immortals/Zealots

Pretty good at taking down PFs as well. Banshees can't actually kill them that fast. Use Seeker Missile since it goes through Hardened Shields and Zealots are pretty clumped up. Make sure you don't lose an expansion because you were afraid to use some Raven energy. Make sure you already have your SCVs manually surrounding your PF and then auto repair and make sure you keep spamming right click on the PF or they might stupidly repair each other or other structures. If you don't surround it, the Zealots will, and that will be trouble. Mineral walking to repair isn't going to do much. As long as you don't lose an expansion, you will be way ahead cus he just wasted an army that can't even shoot up, so absolutely do NOT be afraid to have to use Raven energy.

Metagaming

So let's talk about the current state of TvP. The immortal +1 range buff has really helped a lot against 1-1-1 all-ins, but according to pros, the 1-1-1 all-in is still too strong of an all-in, and is too hard to differentiate/scout from other builds, leaving little time to react and therefore forcing Protoss to pick a build that will be ready against a possible 1-1-1 all-in.

Now, what does a 1-1-1 all-in open with? Banshees, possibly with Cloak, even a Raven for PDD. This is exactly the same way that this build opens up with. Throw in a Viking and they might just think it's a new variation. Just try not to let them scout you have an expansion. Your Hellion should kill any scouting Probes.

Since so many Protoss are doing 1 Gate Expand or 1 Gate Robo Expand since those two builds can deal with 1-1-1 all-in, it will be very easy to scout him. Once you see the 1 Gate Expand, you know for sure you can continue with your build, knowing that he cannot attack you early on because of the Nexus. The 1 Gate Robo Expand is a little harder to find since the Nexus comes later and thus requires a Scan in the main, so keep that in mind. But so far, the only build that will kill this strategy is 3 Gate Stargate. Otherwise, if you see a 1 Gate Expand, you can continue 100% safely with this build. If you don't, you can choose to continue with Banshee harass and, if you see he did a 1 Gate Robo Expand, transition into something else or, if he did not do a 1 Gate Robo Expand neither, transition into a 1-1-1 all-in to punish him.

Each Build Order has its own strengths and weaknesses; in this case, you're a bit in the dark if he doesn't 1 Gate Expand. You'll have to Scan at 5:00 if you want to be safe, or you can opt to scan later if you want to take a risk. But if he doesn't 1 Gate Expand, you can transition into something else. By no means am I trying to say that this build or strategy in general will be able to deal with all kinds of builds with proper scouting and adaptation. This is a tech heavy build so if your opponent abuses that, you will lose ( 3 Gate Stargate ). If you make a variation where you will be able to deal with 3 Gate Stargate or such, you might sacrifice your Cloak or delay your tech but be safer. So far though, I'm only covering the 2 variations shown below in the Build Order section.

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Build Orders
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Banshee Opening into 2 Port PF Expo
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We can split this BO into two sections; Banshee Opening and 2 Starport PF Expand. The second section gets you into the midgame; since the first section begins with a simple 111, you can easily transition into other builds in case you need to adapt before getting a Banshee or even after getting your Banshee, you can transition into a 111 all-in or any other kind of build; the 111 BO is very flexible.

Banshee Opening

Do a 1-1-1 into Banshee harass with Cloak.

Variations

1) Gas First

Allows you to build a Factory once the Barracks finishes, but cannot start 2nd Refinery until Starport is put down.
Earlier Banshee, Later Cloak

First Banshee will finish at 6:15, Cloak will finish at 7:45

10 Depot (can build at your CC)
12 Gas (build with SCV that finishes the Supply Depot)
13 Rax
16 OC
16 Factory
16 Marine
Supply Depot (at ramp wall)
Marine
(stop Marines)
Bunker
Starport + Hellion + 2nd Refinery
Tech Lab on Barracks and swap to Starport
Banshee
Cloak

2) Rax First

Delays Factory a little but the Barracks is slightly faster and allows more minerals to get a 2nd Refinery earlier.
Later Banshee, Earlier Cloak

First Banshee will finish at about 6:35, Cloak will finish at about 7:25-30

10 Depot
12 Rax
13 Gas
15 OC
15 Marine
17 Factory
2nd Refinery
Supply Depot (at ramp wall)
Marine
(stop Marines)
Bunker
Starport + Hellion
Tech Lab on Barracks and swap to Starport
Banshee + Cloak

2Port into PF Expo

2nd Banshee
2nd Starport
Raven (Starport production may need to be cut a few seconds)
Viking (Should finish at about same time as Raven depending on the map)
Command Center (when minerals allow)
Engineering Bay (Should finish at same time as CC lands at natural so that you can turn it into a PF)

NOTE: You can also just take your first expansion (2nd base) far side of map with an OC, and your third can remain as a CC for a while if he decides to counter attack on 2 base. In which case you should win because he only has 2 Nexus and you will be camping his base to kill them easily. If he counterattacks, you can make the 2nd expansion a PF (for obvious reasons). If not, you can make it an OC. Minerals are not a limiting factor HOWEVER more minerals = more CCs faster = more gas faster. Ideally you never want PFs and that's why even with Mech you see pros get OCs cus they're trying to cut corners (defense).

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Mindset
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This style of air play is almost completely different than playing Bio or Mech. You don’t worry about your army size or cost being the same or higher than your opponents; you don’t’ need to engage! With this in mind, try to force your opponent to come kill your bases. How do you do this? Basically take the whole map like a Zerg. If he moves out, your forces should be sitting right behind his base(s), ready to kill them. You’ll have more bases than him (and they’re PFs too with mass Repair) and you’ll be ready to attack whereas he will have to walk a bit before finding or killing a base.

Remember, if you’re harassing, you don’t necessarily need to kill things. You just need to present the threat of killing things. If you have several harassment groups throughout the map but you lose all of them, he’ll feel safe and you can’t harass him as much. However, if you simply let Protoss know “Hey, I’m sitting right here, waiting for you to move out so I can kill you,” he will have to stay home to defend.
Think of this style as ZvP. Your air force is a huge flock of Mutalisks, and you’re delaying his deathball attack. Only your Hatcheries can attack back. And are a lot stronger. And your Mutalisks can cast spells... and be invincible as long as energy doesn’t run out.

He’s almost on 4 base and has 63 workers

I’m on 6 bases with 2 more CCs coming and have 93 workers

From My View

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Scouting
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IMPORTANT TIMINGS TO KNOW

Basically, you want to see your opponent's base at either 5:00 or 6:30 (that's when you have energy to Scan) unless he has an expansion. Whether you SCV scout or SCV and Hellion scout or just Hellion scout, check out these timings. At 5:00 and 6:30 you will be able to know what your opponent is up to, or at least know how to counter the possible strategies. At 5:00 you may not know exactly but you will have a good idea.

First Zealot comes at 3:55-4:00
Stalker or Zealot/Stalker comes at 4:40

Favorable Strategies:

1 Gate Expand, Nexus will be built at 4:20. When you arrive, it should be at about 10% HP with 180 Shield/HP. If it has a little more HP, then he fast expanded.
IF HE DOES THIS BUILD, YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SAFE TO GO AHEAD because there is no way he will be able to attack you while he's focusing on a defensive, economic build. If you want to play completely safe like the 1 Rax Expanders, then go ahead and transition into something else if you see there is no expansion and you don't want to have to scan his main just to see if he's not going to all-in you which would counter your tech greedy Air build. Keep in mind though, if you play 1 style only, you will be much better at it (though if you learn more than 1 style that's useful too of course).
1 Gate Core Expand, Nexus will be built at 4:50. If you don't see a Nexus, you may want to hide your Hellion so he isn't afraid to expand (try to pick off his probe), or you can immediately poke at his ramp to see his units. If you see a Stalker and Zealot, that's normal. If you see something else, then it may not be a 1 Gate Core Expand. If you see 2 Stalkers, his Nexus will go down a couple seconds later, around 4:52.
1 Gate Robo Expand. Nexus will be built at 5:15 with 1 Stalker. 2 Gas.
2 Gate Core Expand. Nexus down at 5:50. He will have 5 Stalkers and 1 Zealot.
6 Gate. PF will be up in time, and he has no detection.

Depends on your Build:

4 Gate WP Proxy. 3 Gates will finish at about 6:15 and the fourth finishes at 6:35. WP comes out at about 6:30, waiting.
3 Gate Void Ray. Void Finishes 6:10. On close close air positions like Shattered, Void arrives with Warp Ins ready at 6:35.
4 Gate WP Drop. 2 Gas. At 5:45 he will put down a Robotics Facility. At 6:40 he will put down his third and fourth gates; he will have made 3 Stalkers and have just warped in 4 Sentries.
3 Gate Blink Stalker. Blink @ 30%, 1 Stalker, and 3 Gates at 6:00. Blink finishes at about 7:55.
And other builds. If there is no Nexus at 6:00, prepare for a 1 base rush.
Note: Keep in mind that due to errors or variations (possibly being sub-optimal) may screw up your scouting a bit.

Usually dead:

3 Gate Void Proxy All-in

How to Scout

Gas First, Hellion Scout

1) With your Hellion, check the natural for any proxy pylons.

If you see a proxy pylon, pull your Marines off your Bunker and kill it. He is likely going to 4gate you or put on some 3 gate pressure. Just in case, put down two more Bunkers and make more Marines. Bring 5-10 SCVs to the first Bunker to be ready to repair it. You can have 1 SCV repair on the outside if you wish.
2) Send your Hellion to find his base to see what he's up to.

If you don't see a Nexus, it is likely he may be doing a 1 base play.
3) Check his natural, then his ramp. Your Hellion should arrive at around 4:30.

If there is an expansion, you're fine.
If he doesn't have an expo, you can check his ramp; the units you see at the ramp can help you decide if he's going to expand or if he's saving his gas for some Tech oriented rush. If you see [lots] of Sentries, it could mean he's going to do a 4Gate WP Drop. However, it could also mean he's saving minerals to expand. You can also just send your Hellion into the base if there isn't a Sentry; you save a Scan, but there won't be much to scout this early in the game besides looking for a second gas.
Note: Try to make him waste a Forcefield to make him feel more afraid even if you see an expo by poking up the ramp. You might be able to see some buildings too.

4) If he doesn't have an expansion, you may scan him at 5:00 or 6:30 (see IMPORTANT TIMINGS to know what to look for).

If you figure out he's proxying, it is most likely Void Rays unless he is 4 gating (which would be a 4 Gate WP Drop). Stick with your build but pump out Vikings instead of Banshees. With micro and repair, you should be fine. Put two more Bunkers at your ramp, mineral line, cliff, etc., because he'll likely Warp In Gateway units. Have SCVs ready to repair Viking and the Bunkers. Make marines, and pull guys off gas if necessary.

SCV Scout(s), no Hellion.
Scan at 5:00 or 6:30.

1)Scout enemy position
2)Check for 2nd Gas (wait for a bit)
3)Keep scouting around the map or return to base
4)Scan at 5:00 or 6:30 if there is a 2nd gas. If there is an expansion, no further Scouting is needed.

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Execution
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Banshee Harass

The idea is to harass him in as many unexpected ways as possible. Ways to achieve this are to distract him and/or attack in multiple locations, drawing his forces to one side and attacking in the other, etc. Be creative!

Let’s take a look at a pretty easy and simple way to harass him using your first Hellion and two Banshees.
First I distract his main forces with my Hellion. All of his army except for 1 Stalker in his main’s mineral line come down the ramp and chase my Hellion for a bit while my Hellion safely gets away.

My first Banshee is ready to go in and begin harassing. Please keep in mind that I fucked out my Build Order in this game so my first Banshee is very late and I don’t have Cloak done either (note that it is 8:22 instead of like 6:30).
Try to kill Probes in a way so that if his forces come, you can escape through his natural, possibly getting a couple more kills. (There isn’t too much air space behind the natural on this map so a prepared player will have Stalkers waiting there, but you get the idea).

Meanwhile, your second Banshee will be coming out, shown by the Red dot and the Red arrow on the minimap in the picture below.
Cloak should finish sometime around now, so Cloak the second Banshee that is now in his main to kill some Probes, then Cloak the first original Banshee and go attack his natural a bit afterwards. You may want to wait just a few seconds before killing Probes with the first Banshee so that he might not realize he should split up his units yet.
If he doesn’t have more than 1 observer, you can get a lot of kills and easily secure a victory.

Note: At this point he’s probably thinking you’re doing a 1-1-1 all-in, so usually players won’t come attack you, not expecting you to have an expansion. And if they do come and run into your natural, they will be confused about the PF + Bunkers + Turrets.

The turquoise shows the path the first Hellion takes, starting from the first Xel’Naga Tower (indicated by the Green circle)where it is watching for any kind of push, probe, scout, etc. It goes to poke the natural to distract and draw his forces down the ramp as explained before.

The Pink dot and Pink arrows shows the path the first Banshee should take, eventually escaping the main to stop quickly at the natural (the first Pink circle) before escaping into the safe, vast air space behind his third. Later on you can easily harass his third and natural with this air space.

The Red dot shows the second Banshee that is about to come out of the Starport. After attacking both the natural and main with your two Banshees at the same time, you can either escape with your second Banshee through the natural just like the first one did the first time, or you can just back off the main. It will depend on the map and his army position, etc.

Meanwhile, your Hellion should be checking possible proxy-lon placements, such as the edge of the empty main on his side (where the pink circle is) or the main on your side where my third is in this game. Also try to check any Watch Towers while you scout around the map. You can look for proxy buildings as well, or even hidden Probes. Finally, I bring my Hellion back to the starting spot, the first Xel’Naga Tower. Don’t forget to A-Click instead of Move-Commanding, and it is a lot easier to set this scouting path via the minimap instead of manually scrolling your screen around the map to Queue up a lot of commands.

Keep in mind that it is more valuable to kill Probes mining Gas than Minerals. In the picture, you should go for the Probe circled since you will be able to shoot it 2 times before it goes back into the Geyser. From there you should either Shift Queue the Banshee to kill the 2 Probes boxed in Blue, which will be somewhere in the pink box by the time you kill the Gas mining Probe while escaping through the natural, or you can do it manually. When you enter a base try to analyze the situation. You don't want to, for example, target a Probe that is going back to mine which may force you to turn around or stop moving in order to kill before escaping. Also notice how I have not attacked yet; he most likely does not notice my Banshee yet. Try to maneuver in ways where you can get to the Probes stealthily without triggering an Alert for the Protoss.

Setting up your Natural

You want to follow these steps generally but this order is pretty much the best way to do it.

It should look like this

The entire area is covered

And here’s an example of doing this build on a map where the natural is a bit far from the main’s ramp. Even with Hi-Sec Auto Track, the PF can’t really cover the ramp.

Without Hi-Sec Auto Track

1)Transfer SCVs to natural and build 2 Refineries
-The idea is that once your CC lands, your SCVs will be ready to return minerals.
-Remember that if the SCVs already mine minerals but the CC has not landed before they got minerals, they will still go to your main CC. Only do this on maps where you built your CC close to the natural, otherwise do this step after Step #2
-If you know you are safe (you are still harassing and know there are units at Protoss’ home defending), you can build the 2 Refineries to finish at the same time you land your CC there

2) Land your CC into your natural
-You may want to scout the area for Pylons or Probes first
-You may command 2 more SCVs to go to each of your natural’s Refineries so that when the CC lands, you can mine as early as possible
3) Build 2 Bunkers + Turret
-Ideally, block or slowing down access to the mineral line or gas.
4) Lift and land Barracks into natural.
-If it is a map where you can block off the ramp, have the Barracks fulfil that job since it is harder to kill than a Depot.
5) Make a Depot (optional)
-Allows movement around mineral/gas area and/or exit out of the natural area.
6) Turn CC into PF
-Make sure it’s safe!
-Unload your ramp Bunker and send Marines into new Bunkers
7) Put a turret at the old Bunker’s position, hence re-walling off your ramp
-This is preference and depends on the map, but usually a turret in this position is good. Players tend to fly their observers in this area to scout for Barracks and their add ons, etc. If you put a turret here, make sure the turret at your natural isn’t overlapping too much with the range of this one (put it on the far side!)
8) Rally Barracks into Empty Bunker
-Unless you’ll remember, it is better to put all 4 Marines into one Bunker so you don’t have to worry about rallying 2 into one and 2 into the other
9) Select your mineral-mining SCVs and turn on auto-repair
-Again preference, but why not? You’ll probably need to do it later anyways.
10) Load up Bunkers
-With Marines, of course

Hurray! You're good to go ^0^

Expanding

Try to take expansions that are far away from Protoss and/or you. Maximizing the time it takes for him to walk between one of his bases or one of your bases will grant you time to harass his bases, in which you will likely be able to snipe a Nexus.
Also, especially when you are taking your third, it is usually a good idea to float and land multiple CCs at once. If he kills one, you know you’ll have the other and know it will have time to be set up. After you take your natural, you can make 2 CCs instead of 1 for this purpose, instead getting Ravens a bit earlier than usual to free up minerals.
Put 1 or 2 turrets at each expansion to help kill Observers and give you detection against DTs.
Notice how I only put 1 Turret in this picture on the side where the ramp is.

Building Placement

Spread out your Starports and depots. Put them not just all in your main because if he comes to attack your main, it will be a liability. You want it so that ideally, all your bases have equal importance. This way you are only affected minimally if he kills a few depots instead of killing 30 and killing 10 Starports AND Armories, etc. Put the Starports and depots and Armories and etc in safe places guarded by your PFs, AKA behind the mineral line where it's harder to get to. You might want to split up hotkeys for groups of Starports in vastly different locations so that you can optimize everything. It takes a lot of effort but with practice, it shouldn't be too hard. The more work you put into it, the better your harassment will be.

Also try to build Starports in areas where you can lift them off and retreat somewhere, whether it be in space or to another base.

Try not to lose your Barracks/Factory, make sure you lift them off or else you'll need to remake them to make more Starports. To prepare for a Stalemate situation you can just lift off your barracks and/or Factory into good positions in the corner of the map or such so you don't have to worry about it later. You do not want any of your bases to become too much of a liability. If he kills or is about to kill one base, begin building depots elsewhere so you won't get supply blocked. You can also cancel your Armory/Ebay upgrades and get them somewhere else to save some time.

Also, make sure all your Starports have Tech Labs or nothing at all. You don't need Reactors.

Defending

When he comes to attack any base that is a PF, be sure that your SCVs are on auto-repair and to be really safe, just select as many SCVs as you can and right click the PF to get a good surround before the battle even begins. You don't want chargelots to rush in and surround your PF. If you have time you should always have your SCVs on auto-repair anyways though.

Be sure that you continue to right click the PF. The faster you spam, the better. When SCVs or other buildings besides the PF gets hurt, the SCVs will sometimes repair other things even though you right clicked the PF once already. Spamming right click on the PF will ensure it won't die too fast.

Let's say you don't have your air fleet that will be coming by to defend. Since you don't need to worry about killing the Stalkers to get rid of aa, just target the Zealots where they are clumped the most (probably won't be too much of a difference. If you do have an air fleet coming by, you can target the Stalkers instead with both the PF and your army.

If he has very few Zealots but mainly Stalkers and some Immortals, target the Stalkers that are next to the Immortals. This way the Immortals receive the splash damage, and Hardened Shields won't do much if at all to it. If you target the Immortals directly you are wasting damage.

If he will break you, it is OK to lose your SCVs. It is more important that you can be sure your PF kills a few Stalkers or so before dying instead of getting them down to 0 shield and 50% hp only to regenerate their shields later. Be sure you manually control your PF or else it will start attacking random, different units. Target the most concentrated part of the Stalkers. You don't want to target the Zealots because you don't want the Stalkers to be able to overpower your air army. Sometimes he'll have HTs come to storm SCVs, make sure to target the HTs if he is sloppy and brings them too close.

If he comes with so many units that you may lose an expansion, remember to always counterattack instead with your main force. It is more mobile and you have more bases that also cover a larger spread than his bases. If you have 6 base vs 4 base and you both lose 2, then it's 4 base vs 2 base. Pretty bad for Protoss. But if you stay home and defend, you give up the chance to take a very favorable base trade (1 for 1).
Setting up Fortifications

In the lategame where you are rich, you can set up fortifications like this.

One of the two main paths is blocked. A Sensor Tower provides extra vision.

The blocked path provides safety to not only my bases but also the Protoss’ High Yield, which I was planning on taking.

Harassment
Working on it...

When to Harass

If your Banshee Harassment doesn't net too many Probe kills, that's OK. You don't need to necessarily constantly harass. You just need to be ready to do damage once he moves out to try to attack you. If you're lazy or need to focus APM on other things like expanding and transferring SCVs, etc., that's fine. Sit your air units somewhere safe until you get a few more vital units before you start harassing again. (Maybe you want a 2nd Viking to make Observer Sniping a lot easier, or just a couple more Banshees so you can snipe buildings instead of just Probes, etc., or maybe you just want to surprise him with a significantly larger force).

Managing Raiding Forces

There are 2 major differences between how to micro your harassment. I use 4 hotkeys for my army, 1 2 3 4. You can have each one of these be a different "raiding force", or have 3 "raiding forces" and maybe have all your units grouped in the last one for convenience. This way you can easily go to each raiding force's position to harass efficiently.

The other way is to keep your army split up into kinds of units. Banshees on 3, Vikings on 2, Ravens on 4, Hellions (or if you get them, BCs) on 1. The reason why Banshees are on 3 instead of 2 is because early game, you have a few Marines, a couple Hellions, and your first 2 Banshees. So Marines would be 1, Hellions 2, Banshees 3. I keep Banshees on 3 just to avoid confusion. There are other ways, do what works for you. For example you could group your Vikings and Ravens together since they are support and snipe observers together, keep Banshees on another, and maybe use the remaining 2 for individual raiding forces or other banshees like the two you might have in the random corner poking at Protoss' mineral line.

The next part applies to both these 2 kinds of ways to manage your harass, but it is more necessary with the 2nd kind of method. Use your camera hotkeys by saving locations of areas of harassment or the area you are rallying Starport units to get ready to harass. This way, while you're harassing, you can easily tap F1 F2 F3 F4 and manually select and micro each group of units in each situation without having to double tap 1 2 3 4 like the first method in order to get to their location. This is really hard, but practice this! If you get really good at this you will be an absolute monster. Micro and multitasking both shine through these air strategies, so take full advantage of that!

Other Ways to Harass

Ravens can drop down a couple Auto Turrets and maybe even a PDD behind each mineral line to mess and delay probe mining. Try to do this at bases where his army is far away from or where there are less defenses. You can also put more Auto Turrets to kill Cannons if they want. They are pretty good at doing that -- they're free after all. Just make sure to put some PDD, they'll help a lot.

Vikings can land but probably shouldn't, it's a bit risky. But when you absolutely know where his army is, go for it. Just don't be too greedy. Remember you want to mainly scare him into moving out; you don't need to cause direct damage.

Other Crazy Fun Ways to "Harass"

Burn your minerals on offensive PFs (land them into opponent's bases). Why force him to defend just for you to wait for that moment when he moves out to attack when you can instead force him to attack to defend, leaving vulnerable bases for you to kill?

Burn minerals on and land 1-4 Barracks to block an otherwise easy to take expansion (thus giving you time to go kill one of their bases as they try to clear the Barracks up to make another one). You can just float these off if a big army is coming so you can use them again later instead of having them die.

You can also, in the lategame when you begin to replace SCVs with MULEs, lift off 1-2 OCs to land in one of your opponent's bases to mine their minerals. It's a bit lulzy but hey it can be worth it. It's fun too. Take advantage of what Terran has

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Engagements
Working on it...

Base Trading
Working on it...

Basically, trade 1 mining base vs 1 mining base. If he comes out to kill 1 of your base, you'll probably have already killed two bases; 1 base as he was moving out, and a 2nd as he is killing yours. It's most efficient to trade 1 base for 2 base in this fashion, but if Protoss goes all-in and doesn't come back home to defend, that's fine too. Just don't lose any units stupidly to defensive Cannons.

Kill Robotics Facilities first so he can't make any more Observers. Then kill his Cybernetics Core or Forges, whichever is closer, unless if the Forges aren't researching anything. Then proceed to kill Nexus. Don't worry too much about the Probes, you need to mainly kill the Nexuses so you can get vision of all his buildings. If instead you are playing a Protoss that isn't playing standard but instead has mainly Air units, you can go for his Stargates instead. If his Cyber Core is researching, kill that before the Stargates, then the Nexuses.

“Stalemate”
Working on it...

Adaptations

VS 1 Base Blind Phoenix Opening

WTF why would they do this. But I have encountered it a couple times. Once you find out he is doing this, put down an Ebay immediately. You may want to build this close to your mineral line so that if the SCV is picked off you can quickly resume production. You need 1-2 Turrets to cover your CC/Starports or else he'll pick off every viking that comes out and just regenerate his shields. You can make Marines too, though it will slow down your build, but that's OK since Phoenixes means he won't have as many Stalkers that can actually come and kill buildings. After your Turrets are up, get Vikings until you have air superiority and Scan or scout him to see if he's still making lots of Phoenixes or if it's a Phoenix expand where he only gets like 4-6 for harass/map-control.

VS Early Phoenixes

Some people, after seeing 1-2 Banshees, will already have Phoenixes coming out either as a reaction or because of their build (some people go Phoenix against 1-1-1 all-in). Anyways you don't need turrets at your main, but stay home and turtle until you have air superiority with Vikings and maybe a PDD or two. Then take even more expansions faster than usual. Phoenixes can't attack buildings so he will have even less of a ground army. Take 2 or even 3 bases at the same time once you have air superiority (you probably won't be done turtling until after your natural is set up, so that means you'll be going from 2 to 5 base if he doesn't kill any of them). You can make a turret or two at your main/nat/starports, but you don't need to make your Ebay earlier than the normal timing.

VS Surprise Proxies

Void Proxy
**Cancel Banshees and pump Vikings out of both Starports. Pump Marines, bring SCVs to Bunker to repair vs Voids and/or Gateway units while also building two more Bunkers. If minerals allow, make an Engineering Bay so you can make Turrets

2 Gate Proxy
**Kill Zealot with SCVs/Marine while walling off your ramp with 1 Bunker. Build Marines and if your Factory finishes, build Hellions. Rush to get Cloak Banshees to kill him. If it takes a long time to stop it, then it may be necessary to run your SCVs around the map while your Banshee kills his base, possibly even making another CC somewhere.

2 Gate In-Base Proxy
**You're sort of screwed

**Try to get Bunkers up and save your Marines, run SCVs around, but the odds are heavily against you.

VS 1 Base Pushes

4 Gate
**Make 2 more Bunkers at your ramp. If it is a Stalker 4 Gate, put them right at your wall. If it is a Sentry 4 Gate, leave some space between the wall and the Bunkers so he can't easily Forcefield them all.
**Pull SCVs off to repair (5-10, even more if you want to be safe). You can have 1 SCV repair from the outside.
**Keep making Marines and also Hellions.

4 Gate WP Drop, Proxy or no Proxy
**Cancel first Banshee, make Viking.
**Make marines
**Make bunkers about 6-9 Range away from the cliffs of your main where he will elevator in. These Bunkers will cover your Viking, allowing it to hit his WP. If he attacks your Viking(s) with Stalkers, they will be hit by the Marines in the Bunkers. Ideally you want to keep these Bunkers as close to the cliff as possible, but if there's too much area to cover the cliffs at 6 range, cover them at 9 range.
**Pull SCVs. You will have minerals to make a CC later to catch up on workers if you even need to.

VS 2 Base Pushes

6 Gate
There's nothing to adapt to really xD
He has no detection, kill him off, make sure your PF is ready when he comes to counter attack! (not like you even need to survive, you have Cloak and can slowly kill him that way as long as he doesn't sneak a Forge/Cannon/Robotics Facility somewhere on the map and gain detection). You just need to keep your PF alive to survive, so throw as many SCVs at him as you need, or just mass repair the PF until it finishes and force him to manually right click your SCVs.

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Maps
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Pro Features

*Natural close to main's ramp (PF needs to be able to defend ramp to main)
*Large map
*Many bases
*Rocks blocking bases or paths to bases
*Lots of air space
*Long, twisting, winding paths
*Lots of cliffs or other obstructions
*Mains close by air

Examples:

Tal'Darm Altar LE
**-Large ground distances
**-Can take bases all over the map
**-Can easily jump banshees between the main and third
**-Decent air space in between bases
**-Rocks blocking third

The Shattered Temple
**-Close natural at 6 and 3 o'clock spawns (9 and 12 are unwanted but not impossible; just research [[Hi-Sec Auto Track]], but in higher levels of play 9 and 12 will not work)
**-Decent bases
**-Rocked off third
**-Lots of air space
**-Can easily jump banshees between the main and natural, between the third and fourth, etc.
**-Mains close by air when spawning in close air positions

Antiga Shipyard
**-Close natural
**-Large ground distances
**-Can take bases all over the map
**-Can easily jump banshees between main and nat and nat and third
**-Decent air space (hide banshees in corners of the map behind the natural mineral lines)
**-Large
**-Rotational symmetry allows Terran to harass bases easily

Metalopolis
**-Close natural
**-Can take bases all over the map (empty mains, etc.)
**-Can easily jump banshees between main and nat
**-Lots of air space behind third and main
**-Mains close by air when spawning in close air positions

Shakuras Plateau
**-Close natural
**-Tight choke to natural
**-Can take bases all over the map
**-Rocked off bases
**-TONS of air space around the map, can fly around the map to get where you want safetly
**-Can easily jump banshees between main and nat and main and forward third
**-Large ground distances
**-Mains close by air when spawning in close air positions

GSL Terminus SE/RE
**-Close natural
**-Tight choke to natural
**-Can take bases all over the map
**-TONS of air space around the map, can fly around the map to get where you want safely
**-Can easily jump Banshees between main and fourth and between main, nat, and third
**-Large ground distances
**-Rotational Symmetry allows chance of spawning in a position that helps air harassment

GSL Daybreak
-Close natural
-Tight choke to natural
-Can take bases all over the map
-Lots of air space around the map, can fly around the map to get where you want safely
-Can easily jump Banshees between some of the bases, like along the left and right sides of the map
-Large ground distances and winding paths

Decent Maps

Xel'Naga Caverns
GSL Bel'Shir Beach
GSL Dual Site
Xel'Naga Fortress

Bad Maps

Abyssal Caverns
**-Natural cannot cover the main

GSL Crevasse
**-Neither natural nor third can cover the main

GSL Crossfire SE
**-Natural cannot cover the main -- Really a shame, since air play is so strong on this map

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Replays!
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Sorry if the descriptions are long, unfocused, wordy, unhelpful, etc. I typed them up quickly after each game I played so that I wouldn’t forget what happened in them. I might revise these later and reorganize this section but for now I hope you find these useful, and perhaps fun ^0^

I tried to label each replay to show why it was even remotely unique from the others, but I thought it would be good for now just to include them now since I’m not even in GM+ level. This way you can see how I evolved my strategies (all these replays are in order, I strangely had to fight a lot of one base rushes, and after that I played on Xel’Naga to see if the strategy worked on a small map) and perhaps get a little understand of my thought process or what areas this strategy can improve on.

Criticism is welcome, of course. Most of these replays I will probably replace as I improve or if I find progamers’ replays (I know that GM players have done air strategies before, I can’t find any replays right now though).

I have some replays vs specific strategies, but may be the Protoss fucked up so it’s not very helpful. If you could let me know that would be great!

2 Port PF Expand

Gas First (Please keep in mind that the version I’ve been doing may not be the most optimal variation)

vs GM/Top Masters (Recommended)

1) Grand Masters - Does not quite know how to fight Air
Banshee vs Storm/Feedback

Example of expanding towards Protoss as a forward base to safely repair Banshees for harassment
Close by air. Abuse air space behind his main to move between his nat and main.
He tries to drop play me with Warp Prism , my 2 marines + raven (later on , ravens) and later 1 viking help to scare him off. He’s just dropping stalkers to pick off boundary supply depots in my main and such.
I take my third at the neutral main on my side.
I keep harassing and attacking him in several spots.
My upgrades are a bit delayed this game, I don’t put down 2 armories until my third is up and running for a minute roughly?
I attack him in 3 spots at a time at varying times. 1 banshee at his third on the left side of the map killed 16 probes, maybe 17 or 18.
Again, I pump ravens when I can and make lots of CC with leftover mineral. Even if my banshee army dies I have lots of ravens ready. Even if my ravens die, I have a bunch of new bases and even more production.
I end up pumping out of about 12 starports, and in the last few minutes I up that to 16 or something since I’m at 200/200 and with good SCV transferring have 4.5 bases running (1 gas runs out at my main towards end, have a few almost dead patches left).
After the big battle in front of my fifth base (the one on the right, the natural of the main where no one spawned), I have many forces left over.
As can be seen, storm isn’t very strong vs banshee even stacked and with slow reaction time. I easily move banshees out of the way. Lots of units are low HP but I still win by a lot. Seeing his HT I actually tried to cloak/decloak to burn energy but stopped after seeing no feedbacks. He later told me the reason why I didn’t see feedbacks is because he forgot, but even so all I had to do was drain my energy and the effectiveness of those HTs without storm is almost nonexistent. 1 HT means 3 less stalkers.
I’m so ahead, I just cancel the few units producing and make a wave of BCs.
He has one base left, so I just rally all my starports and mass produce like a zerg.
What this air strategy looks like as the Protoss (looks like the Terran sucks, fooling around, is behind in economy, has no army or offensive power, dragging the game on, etc.)

2) Top Masters - Seems to be able to fight Air really well
Long macro game Air vs Air and Protoss has enough bases to match Terran's economy
Raven/Cloak Micro vs HT Feedback
Antiga Shipyard

A bunch of stalkers show up at my ramp, that scared me. Was that a 4 gate or something? Anyways, I defended it easily, and he did pretty poorly (didn’t focus the bunker). Lucky me.

I take my third at the 1 of the other mains, and the 4th at its natural later on. He’s doing OK against my build this time. Either he adapted from the last game (I don’t think he realized I was going pure air the first game). Anyways, I snipe three of his HTs, and keep harassing him. The next time I poke in, I send 1 raven in only, knowing that I was going to win, and pushed my luck; I got a seeker missile off on his HT before he feedback’d my Raven... 3 times. Apparently you can feedback a unit 3 times in quick succession due to energy regeneration? Cool micro trick I guess. Then I just drained all my cloak energy for lulz (which may or may not have been a good idea), and kill his HT.

I get a couple hellions after seeing he expanded to the bottom left natural, killing almost all his probes there. From here on out I try to keep 1 banshee in the air space behind that natural, which does good damage but later he gets an obs there. If I had pro micro I could have taken that obs out. Apparently he gets a lot of bases up and a bunch of phoenix (20?) surprises me, and kills my 10 or so Vikings and 5 Ravens. From here on out I just pump pure Vikings, and eventually own his phoenix and soon after his carriers and voids. This was a difficult match.

What to take from this game: I took the last 3 bases (the third of the bottom left spawn, and the 2 golds; I killed all 3 of his bases at those spots then landed CCs). I could safetly hold these cus just previously he was making a shit ton of phoenix, which can’t attack ground. Air Terran + PFs + a couple hellions (literally) works together really really well.

3) Top Masters - Seems to know how to fight Air a little - Stalemate situation
Completely fail Bansheee Harass, I don't have enough economy/bases
The Power of Base Trading allows me to reset the playing field
Stalemate situation

Horrible job harassing (laggy),but shows the power of base trading
Example of forcing Stalemate, with slight advantage due to spellcaster ravens

Macro and/or Long or Other Games

+ Show Spoiler +

No income Protoss left with a deathball

Abusing a good harass path and delaying deathball
Didn’t kill many probes, but successfully spread out expansions, forcing him to move all over the map while I eventually moved in along the top of the map, sniping his third, his natural, and his main. He has a deathball left, but I keep re-expanding, and it is too much for him. My army is weak at some points, but as long as I sit around in the air behind his base, he cannot leave or else he will lose his base again. I had floated a building, so because I have spell casters, I would eventually win even in a “stalemate” situation, and eventually land my CC/OC again, continuing to sit behind any nexus he tries to make and kill it when he moves out.

Nerazim Crypt:

Abuse air advantage of opponent spawning counter clockwise (easy to get into main)
Took the whole map vs 3 base

The Shattered Temple - Battle Cruisers, Mass Ravens, Mass Auto Turrets, Decent amount of Seeker Missiles:

Successful banshee harass
Midgame transition into mass raven – mass seeker missile and PDD and turrets everywhere (vs archon/HT/stalker/zealot)
Add BCs late, ~16 Starports running, 6 vs 4 base (6 mining vs 3 mining)

Winning even when Protoss’s Army Cost/Supply is double

Laggy
Lose both banshees harassing, but kill about five probes
Catch up by spilling minerals into 2 CC (mineral excess due to bad macro, didn’t take enough gas, forgot some scvs to put in gas etc.)
Quickly double expand, but 1 gets caught. The other one is landed onto the main on his side, far from my nat and main ground wise. (We spawned cross positions).
I try to take my normal third again but it is denied, meanwhile I defend my nat with cloaked banshees and attack his main/nat/third with banshees spread out in multiple places. I land Viking and throw down turrets to make sure I kill his nexus(s), I know his army is away attacking my natural so the Viking landing is safe. If he comes I can just run into the air space behind his third. He will have to leave later eventually or keep units/canons stationed there. Lots of air space behind his main too.

I keep denying his third and he has no more income, even though I lose about 8 banshees to 16 stalkers, tho I kill about 5, I am still way ahead. During this time of pressure I make a wave of Ravens to stock up on energy. This is like when a zerg makes a huge wave of drones to help later on. I research HSM so I can use it so it will be ready with this wave.

I mass expand and run CC/SCVs all over the map and he has no way to stop me. I HSM his army and he gg’s.

You can watch the game here from my opponent’s view.
+ Show Spoiler +

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdtMONObf2Y

My platinum friend (watched Protoss' stream) noted that it looked like I was losing really badly and was just messing around to stay in longer. Well, I guess that’s what one may think when they play vs this unexpected strategy!

I do an OK job harassing. No one is really ahead. I take the empty main on my side as my third. I use hellions at the towers for vision. He sticks with stalkers and also adds in zealot/immortal some reason. Either he doesn’t realize I’m going to keep making just air, or he wants those to kill PFs. Well basically I take the whole map and in the end it is 7 base vs 3 base, him only having seen 3 base (and a “random” PF I put on his side of the map that blocked off a pathway to his gold (which I planned to take!) and to my main.

If you want to see seeker missiles in action (although micro’d a bit poorly, due to blink I get a lot of the splash back on my ravens, and my banshees aren’t attacking until most of the SMs go down already).

GSL Crevasse:

This one is even weirder. I scout him and only see one base... wtf? Well anyways he tells me later that he took his third at the top right area (the main?). Point is his expansion was later than mine. I also got a third at one of the empty mains. When he starts killing my main, I’m assuming he didn’t know about my third (and thus, he probably didn’t know about this air strategy either). My banshees go to kill the Nexus at his main. Meanwhile, I rally building Banshees to stay at home, cloak and kill all his stalkers. There’s a lot of zealots left which kill almost all my workers there, but thanks to my third and 3 OC + MULEs vs his 2 Nexus production, I’m way ahead. He reaches my third but I’ve already relanded my natural back at the high base area (the area behind your mains) and land the starport(s) that I floated off earlier there too. I kill his last observer sometime towards the end and my Cloak wins. He mentions he still has one base left at the end, but that he’d tap out (guessing cus he had to play in another tourney too at the same time and didn’t want to drag it on). I’m pretty sure I would have won anyways.

VS 1 Base Plays

+ Show Spoiler +

Xel’Naga

Tal’Darim LE

Tal’Darim LE - 3 Gate Stargate Proxy*

(Same replay in previous section)

I scout he is 1 base with TC and 3 gate.
Banshee harassing around cannon in mineral line.
Cloak defends blink push.
My economy is ahead so it’s ok for me to trade Banshees even inefficiently.
He stays mobile with his stalker army, killing my bases.
No defense due to focusing on Stalker force -- Protoss cannot expand
I go full base trade, kill his 2 bases and I still have 4 bases left (I lost 2).

On smaller but not necessarily bad maps

+ Show Spoiler +

Gas First with SCV Scout, possible Hellion Scout, cutting a little gas to get 2nd Refinery up quicker

None available yet

Rax First

General

+ Show Spoiler +

Antiga Shipyard - When you can’t scout him

Lag, lose 1 marine almost 2nd marine and a hellion. I remake hellion, kill his probe so he can’t proxy, run back in and defend. First banshee goes to look for him, I find him in the last spot, but my 2nd banshee is going there too. I hit him from both sides with Cloak done, he suffers heavy damage from not having more than 1 obs.

VS 1 Base Play

+ Show Spoiler +

VS Unscouted 3 Gate Void Push, Loss

I scout he has no expansion but I forgot I could poke up the ramp, seeing only 2 Zealots. I get caught up in killing the zealots and forget that 2 zealots means he is saving up gas for something. I should have scanned but I lose. Charged Void Rays kill Vikings too easily.

VS 4 Gate WP Drop

My hellion scouts no expansion, and kills a sentry moving out – odd-- and also 3 probes. I should have scanned him at 5:00 or 6:30 (at 6:30 I see he has a 2nd gas but don’t see all his buildings). At 5 I would see he only has 2 pylons and no tech but 2 gas, so I would know he is 1 basing. At 6:30 I would see his 4th gate is not yet done, so that he must have built something before and also be planning on 4gating (aka a WP 4 gate). My banshee sees that he is 4 gating, but I didn’t scout the proxied Robotics Facility. Anyways, I cripple his economy a bit and distract him at home with my Banshee. I spot his WP, but his timing is a bit messed up due to him losing probes so he is not ready to drop. I set up 3 more bunkers; 1 more at the ramp, one at the cliff, and 1 at my mineral line. I pump marines and fill them up. I kill his WP with my Viking and use Auto Turret + Marines + SCVs to defend vs the Stalkers.

I continue to harass his base and I get a lot of banshees out and kill his last push easily even with an observer.

VS Aggression with Mobile [Blink] Stalker forces

+ Show Spoiler +

Rax First
3/3 Battle Cruisers

This guy was a challenge, rank 3 Masters but same points as me. But it was still pretty easy to win.
He is aggressive with his army, and has some map control with his phoenix. He also has a lot of bases.
(My air fleet positioning is bad, didn't camp well, so I give him too much control, also I forget to keep making hellions for watch towers)
I get 3/3 and start massing BCs to slowly replace my air fleet and I just roll over anything he makes.

Gas First
Stalkers come kill natural/main
Taking a far third as a base + Early Base Race

I take the far empty main on my side of the map as a third again. This game is a bit different since we base trade a bit. Once again you can see how strong this strategy is when in a base trade situation. I keep my far base alive, which is a PF, lifting my buildings away from my main and rebuilding at my third. I expand to the low ground next to the third (the one surrounded by rocks). I snipe his third, so he really has just 2 dried out bases. At this point I know it’s GG. Once he leaves his base, he will lose all his buildings. If he stays, I’ll just take the whole map like usual.
Hanging on with PF and safe Cloaked Banshees after base trading early

Rax First
3 Gate Blink Stalker into 2 Base Aggression with Mobile Blink Stalkers

Diamond Replays

Rax First

+ Show Spoiler +

Geovu

Estonia1344 Posts

November 09 2011 04:03 GMT

Was expecting this to be 7 port banshee...

Why is this in blogs, that is a massively detailed guide.

d3_crescentia

United States4053 Posts

November 09 2011 04:16 GMT

you should share your music in mumuchat instead lolol

FinestHour

United States18466 Posts

November 09 2011 04:25 GMT

Have you seen synystyrs anti colossus thread? Its a very well done air terran guide. Will also check this one out

MikeG

Canada128 Posts

November 09 2011 04:26 GMT

Wowowow this is AMAZING.

THANK YOU.

Great guide, can't explain how grateful I am

mizU

United States12125 Posts

November 09 2011 04:34 GMT

Essentially this is one of those weird builds that people don't really know how to react to, so you'll have a high winrate against it for now?

FinestHour

United States18466 Posts

November 09 2011 04:38 GMT

On November 09 2011 13:34 mizU wrote:
Essentially this is one of those weird builds that people don't really know how to react to, so you'll have a high winrate against it for now?

Its not new, people have tried this before like i said with banshees makin up your army and then bcs. Its good, this is just a variation under a really detailed and extensive guide, I must say.

Gnial

Canada907 Posts

November 09 2011 04:44 GMT

I think you should refrain from posting it...

And possibly edit it out of your blog...

...

*evil Protoss grin*

edit. I can tell you right now, people started blind countering me when I posted my build...quite a lot of people knew about it on ladder in masters.

Yoshi Kirishima

United States10290 Posts

November 09 2011 04:44 GMT

On November 09 2011 13:38 FinestHour wrote:

Show nested quote +

Its not new, people have tried this before like i said with banshees makin up your army and then bcs. Its good, this is just a variation under a really detailed and extensive guide, I must say.

Yea pretty much ^0^. Though I'll be honest, if you do know how to react to it, I don't think this is a "cheese" build either. It seems like a totally viable strategy, given the right map (let alone other BOs, variations, etc.)

Thanks FinestHour for the compliment <3

Also yeah I have seen Synystyr's stuff, he is sweet

Though his build opens up with a lot of bio and so I don't prefer it, but I haven't tried it yet and am definitely interested in other ways to transition into Air (as pure as possible).

Empyrean

16938 Posts

November 09 2011 04:48 GMT

#10

Moved to SC2 Strategy.

Never thought I'd say that one.

Yoshi Kirishima

United States10290 Posts

November 09 2011 04:51 GMT

#11

On November 09 2011 13:48 Empyrean wrote:
Moved to SC2 Strategy.

Never thought I'd say that one.

haha xD
Anyways yep I'm fine with it being in the strategy forum now

can you rename it to [G] TvP Pure Air

please? thanks in advance!

m3rciless

United States1476 Posts

November 09 2011 04:59 GMT

#12

Wowowowowow, I do shit like this all the time, but you do it way better. TYTY, if i get some time to play, i'm going to crush ladder with your improvements on my shit.

shishy

United States115 Posts

November 09 2011 05:01 GMT

#13

How do you get a supply depot at 11?? Do you mean 9?

Whitewing

United States7483 Posts

November 09 2011 05:02 GMT

#14

I've fought a few terrans doing this to me, I'm usually able to win, although the games are pretty close. Basically, the moment I scout it I throw down a stargate and start chrono'ing phoenix and get speed observers at the same time to deal with cloak banshees. I don't stop at 1 or even 2 observers though, I usually make 5 or 6 to deal with the sniping, and get a ton of phoenix. Eventually the game gets really weird as he either has to build a few thors to deal with the phoenix (nothing terran has in the air other than BC's does well vs. phoenix), or switches to something else entirely. If he goes BC's I usually deal with it by getting some high templar for feedback and archons with a mothership (archon toilet is freaking amazing vs. air units since they don't spread out well after the vortex ends). The High templar shut down the ravens too, and I can warp in feedback then morph to archons.

Last thing you want to build against this is stalkers: banshees and BC's make mincemeat of them, and PDD shuts them down so hard.

This playstyle is really cool, and while I don't think it's particularly strong and that you're probably just winning a lot due to having better multi-tasking than your opponent or he simply has no idea how to respond. That said, even if the toss does know how to respond, you wind up with a really fun match with lots of tech switches and tons of new shenanigans.

Yoshi Kirishima

United States10290 Posts

November 09 2011 05:08 GMT

#15

On November 09 2011 14:01 shishy wrote:
How do you get a supply depot at 11?? Do you mean 9?

OOPS. Thanks haha. But 10 not 9.

On November 09 2011 14:02 Whitewing wrote:
I've fought a few terrans doing this to me, I'm usually able to win, although the games are pretty close. Basically, the moment I scout it I throw down a stargate and start chrono'ing phoenix and get speed observers at the same time to deal with cloak banshees. I don't stop at 1 or even 2 observers though, I usually make 5 or 6 to deal with the sniping, and get a ton of phoenix. Eventually the game gets really weird as he either has to build a few thors to deal with the phoenix (nothing terran has in the air other than BC's does well vs. phoenix), or switches to something else entirely. If he goes BC's I usually deal with it by getting some high templar for feedback and archons with a mothership (archon toilet is freaking amazing vs. air units since they don't spread out well after the vortex ends). The High templar shut down the ravens too, and I can warp in feedback then morph to archons.

Last thing you want to build against this is stalkers: banshees and BC's make mincemeat of them, and PDD shuts them down so hard.

This playstyle is really cool, and while I don't think it's particularly strong and that you're probably just winning a lot due to having better multi-tasking than your opponent or he simply has no idea how to respond. That said, even if the toss does know how to respond, you wind up with a really fun match with lots of tech switches and tons of new shenanigans.

Yep, most of my wins are just through surprise. It looks just like a 1-1-1 all-in anyways, or a 2 Port if they scout that. Everyone just masses Stalkers, lol. But some do make Phoenixes (early ones) or etc., those are a bit more challenging.

However the two top master Protoss that I've played against have played against this before, so they may not have been used to it but they most likely had a good idea of how to win... at least I'd think so =O One of them said that there used to be a Korean GM in his clan who did air styles, too bad I can't find any replays

If only we had more air maps like Desert Oasis, it would be epic to see a professional TvP with archon toilets vs mass air xD

Azzur

Australia6250 Posts

November 09 2011 05:09 GMT

#16

Great guide!

I also play pure air TvP and made a guide about it: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=175014. This has served me well at the masters level of play. Similarly (and unlike many other TvP sky-terran styles), I also play it in a defensive style.

Many people don't realise that banshees > stalkers and with pdd, it becomes a non-contest. In fact, if the protoss does some kind of 2-base stalker/colossus, it's an almost guarantee win.

For those that are wondering about the BCs, it is because the counter to mass banshees are HTs. BCs fare decently well against storm and is needed to deal with them.

The amount of vikings needed should roughly match the protoss phoenix count. Too little and the banshees can be toast. Too many and there will be a lack of banshees to deal with the stalkers.

Yoshi Kirishima

United States10290 Posts

November 09 2011 05:14 GMT

#17

On November 09 2011 14:09 Azzur wrote:
Great guide!

I also play pure air TvP and made a guide about it: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=175014. This has served me well at the masters level of play. Similarly (and unlike many other TvP sky-terran styles), I also play it in a defensive style.

Many people don't realise that banshees > stalkers and with pdd, it becomes a non-contest. In fact, if the protoss does some kind of 2-base stalker/colossus, it's an almost guarantee win.

For those that are wondering about the BCs, it is because the counter to mass banshees are HTs. BCs fare decently well against storm and is needed to deal with them.

The amount of vikings needed should roughly match the protoss phoenix count. Too little and the banshees can be toast. Too many and there will be a lack of banshees to deal with the stalkers.

Wow thanks for sharing, no wonder I couldn't find any other Air guides, yours is almost a year old!

Anyways I don't quite agree with HTs countering Banshees. I think they just counter Banshees Cloak. Like sometimes I'll just drain most of my cloak energy, so that what could be 3 Stalkers (gas) ends up being 1 HT doing 25 or less damage. Though if you're talking about Storm, I think with good micro (like marines vs banelings) neither unit will be too much of a counter to the other. For example you could magic box your Banshees and even fly over the Protoss army so that any storm would hit him too. Though if you have experienced this differently then it would be awesome if you can show some replays :D

Xenorawks

158 Posts

November 09 2011 05:28 GMT

#18

Would like it if you can explain in more detail how to adapt to:
1. Early pheonix because BCs do come out pretty late. If the protoss has 2 base he would have no problem supporting stalkers and quite a lot of pheonixes so wouldn't it be pretty hard for you to balance between right number of vikings and banshees?
2. Early High Templars. Storms and Feedback could be pretty devastating isn't it especially if your opponent gets cannons with the minerals and masses HTs with the gas. Air units tend to stack up easily which makes them very vulnerable to storms isn't it? Probably you should give some tips on how split your air army especially when you have lots of banshees, ravens and vikings.

KobyKat

United States111 Posts

November 09 2011 05:29 GMT

#19

This is really awesome. I looked through the whole thing but I'm sure I'll need to reference it again in the future and figure out the details of it. The only thing I'm skeptical about is getting a PF as your natural. I see that it's necessary to stay alive but playing the six base macro game like you talked about seems like the opposite of getting a PF early on. You probably do enough harrass to make up for the lack of a second set of MULEs though. I think I'll be trying this out. It seems like even if they try to counter it they will run in to problems because it's a freaking PF.

rebuffering

Canada2436 Posts

November 09 2011 05:31 GMT

#20

this is sick. Im so fucking tired of marauders all the time. Ive been going mech only against toss, and getting totally destroyed, theres also no guide anywhere i can find for Mech in TvP, at least not anything new. So looks like im going air vs toss!! thanks for the work here!

edit: also, ^^ i dont like the idea of a planetary at the natural, id rather just more bunkers and just sit real tight and safe, yes il probly have to get more rines to defend and go into the extra bunkers, but i think getting an OC outweighs the costs of more marines and bunkers.

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