Strategy Forum Highlight Nomination Thread - Page 2

This build incorporates a fast hellion drop, and a marine/bunker defense into 2-starport play which allows counters to be easily produced. The build is very lean, holding off on the second refinery until after the first starport begins construction, creating mineral-only units, and forgoing any addons until two starports are produced.

The focus of the build is on efficiency, creating an economic advantage through hellion harass, and creating an army while spending the least possible amount of resources and worker time on unnecessary structures and tech.

(build orders can only go so far - watch the replays)

The intro build order is as follows:
10 supply
12 rax
>> make marines nonstop
>> oc when rax finishes
13 refinery

(pop counts skipped from here out to account for scouts dying, other oddities, etc)
Factory
>> Make 3 hellions
Bunker
Supply Depot
Starport
Refinery
>> Make medivac when starport complete
>> medivac should pop out about at the same time that you have 3 hellions - go drop
>> As soon as medivac completes, build tech lab on starport and factory
Starport
>> Swap second starport onto factory's tech lab
>> Use excess minerals to expand and add more barracks
>> Push at 2-4 banshees - this is timed such that it will come before psi storm.

Until this point, you should be following the build order strictly. The 1/1/2 with hellion drop is stable and you do not need to branch out until you have two tech-labbed starports.

You are now in what I call the 'triple threat' position. It is called 'triple threat' because it sounds kick-ass and makes the strategy sound like it's prepared for anything. But seriously, this is where your 2port allows you to be versatile.

- 3 Hellion drop is incredibly powerful. Basically an insta-win if your opponent is not defending, and even if prepared, you will get at least 4-5 probes if you micro well. The hellion drop is incredibly strong even if you know it's coming ahead of time.
- Hellion drop gives great scouting info and allows you to adapt with your 2starports
- 1/1/2 play allows you to account for all protoss openings
- Standard opening prevents protoss from gathering any info about build before initial scout is forced out by marine
- Very efficient use of minerals - rax and factory produce mineral-only units with no addons non-stop.
- Timings are optimized to spend all minerals at all points throughout the build order - high efficiency

Your default units on your starports should be 2x banshees. The 2x banshee+marine build is incredibly powerful, and can beat any composition that does not include storms. The hellion drop provides a well-timed opportunity to scout your opponent and adapt, if necessary:

Protoss Fast Expand builds (New!)
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Robo-based builds (Updated!)
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Void ray harass
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Dark Templar builds
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Phoenix openings
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High Templar openings
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Any twilight council opening
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4gate pushes
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The marine/banshee composition has only one weakness - high templar. While the first 2-4 banshee push is timed such that you should not have to deal with high templar, if your push is held off, it will begin to be a concern. Your lategame composition is dependant on your opponent's composition:

High templar compositions
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Compositions with no pheonix or templar
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Pheonix + colossus compositions
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(new!)

A lot of people are having trouble with the toss FE still, so I thought I'd give another replay to demonstrate the proper response. Agh (17xx rated protoss) does a FE build, but cannot sustain a robo, a stargate, and a large army (all of which are necessary to prevent harassment or death). I find the weakpoint (no stargate allowing me to exploit banshees) and harass relentlessly.

A big problem with the toss FE for most players is the illusion that they are falling behind in macro. The effectiveness you gain from the protoss' limited options should even you out economically - in this game, my economy was on par or greater than my opponent's for the vast majority of the time.



(new!)

This replay demonstrates the proper response to the situation where you achieve a strong economic advantage due to hellion harass and/or expanding before your opponent. My hellion harass dealt significant damage and my spotting of the robo bay cued me in that my opponent was not expanding (which was verified by later scouting).

I decided not to push, but to bunker up and capitalize on my economic advantage, confident that my superior econ would allow me to win the game.



(new!)

This replay is a demonstration of the 1/1/2 Hellion Drop against a protoss FE. Behind in economy due to the fast expansion, I equalize the economic difference and exploit my opponent's unit composition to punish his greedy build.

My drop allowed me to determine his composition and exploit the gap left by my opponent's economic-based build - in this situation, lack of stargate and templar archives, allowing me to abuse mass-banshees for the win.



Note that the hellion drop prevents aggression. Time does an aggressive gateway push, but that leaves him open to hellion annihilation.



Although I could not get any replays of people holding off the initial push to show my lategame transition, note that two battlecruisers were in production in preparation for the lategame transition.



This player was well prepared for my hellion drop. He still lost 5 probes, giving me the economic lead. Note how obnoxiously fast the 6x banshees drop the colossus, leaving my marines free to rip apart the fragile gateway-based army.



I uploaded this replay to help people with void ray openings. Notice that there are several ways to watch for void ray openings:

1) Scout all pylon locations. Pylon locations in out-of-position spots should be scouted later - the starport is uncovered with my hellion drop
2) Close air positions should put you on high alert. Be very ready to make a viking and move additional marines to the back
3) Note that I had a ctrl group of scvs (3) on auto-repair so I could quickly pull onto the bunker in case of a two-pronged attack

Nova follows with a strong defense, but ultimately he was only able to muster this defense because he neglected his robo bay, which I am able to punish with cloak.

Should the opponent stick to robo-based builds or gateway-based builds, you can stick with bio + banshees. Banshees focus-fire colossus incredibly fast.

Q: Isn't the hellion drop cheesy? If the opponent knows you're going to do it, it clearly won't work.
A: Anyone who has tried the hellion drop knows how ridiculously strong it is, even when defended. Provided you can drop your hellions before your medivac dies (which is incredibly easy as early in the game as early as this hits) you should get at least 4-5 probe kills even if your opponent is prepared for it. In addition, this forces your opponent into passivity, as if their forces are not defending, you can kill their entire probe line.

Q: Isn't this build weaker on maps like blistering sands where destructible rocks allows protoss to avoid your bunker?
A: Yep. This is the case with a lot of Terran builds on blistering sands. I would recommend pre-emptively placing a second bunker at your destructible rocks after your factory, and moving to defend whatever side is necessary.

Q: I died to void rays, wtf
A: Void rays are counterable with this build, but the two vikings are very important. It is also very important that you never stop building marines. You absolutely need the 8-9 marines you should have by time void rays hit. I've fought off many good void ray rushes with this build. If the void rays approach from an awkward angle and charge up on your wall, bring SCVs to repair both the bunker and the wall as long as possible until your vikings come out. Once your two vikings come out, you will be fine with a little micro.

This build utilizes two fast factories and then two fast starports. Infernal pre-igniter is researched as soon as possible. Fast 2 factories gives you a powerful early aggression-stopper (vs marines and hellions), and gives you map control.

A fast medivac is created to give a counter-attack and economic damage threat. This is a hard-counter to rushed cloaked banshees + bunker at front.

The 2 starports give you tremendous flexibility in countering terran openings. Banshees can be countered by simultaneously creating a raven and a viking, while dropping hellions. Reactored starport openings can be countered by actually creating 3 vikings at once instead of two. Marine/tank openings can be countered by creating vikings and banshees simultaneously.

The composition basically works the same as muta/ling/bling, and has a similar playstyle.

- Blue flame hellions act as the banelings (they kill marines, and are disposable)
- Banshees act as the muta air-to-ground attack (cleaning up ground units after banelings hit)
- Vikings act as the muta air-to-air attack (holding air superiority).
- Should it get to that point, battlecruisers can act as broodlords, countering thors (although BCs are much easier to get and are also quite good vs marines)

This build works for the same reasons muta/ling/bling does, and as a result, it has the same properties as typical ZvT. This means that:

- This build is more powerful on longer rush distances due to the mobility advantage
- Keeping map awareness and map control is very important
- Losing air control is bad (similar to how losing all your mutas results in you being vulnerable to drops and banshees)

TL;DR: Play like a zerg player. Keep that mentality in mind.

NOTE: this build order is very weird. You must watch the replays in order to understand how it functions correctly.

10 supply
12 rax
13 ref
15 OC
15 make one marine, then queue another (only make 2 marines)
16 supply
17 ref
(supply counts discontinued from here - keep making scvs nonstop)
factory
factory
tech lab on rax
swap first factory onto rax
make 1 hellion & get preigniter
make 1 hellion on second factory
>> clear xelnagas with hellion
starport
starport
supply drop (see faq)
medivac
>> poke up ramp with a hellion, try to scout composition
>> build order discontinued here, starport production is dependent on opponent's composition

1) Map control
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2) Terran Symmetry
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3) Economic Damage
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4) Forcing responses
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This is a reactive build. You must counter your opponent's openings. Your reaction to your opponent's style will take place in the form of changing the output of your two starports. Your factories will always produce hellions.

Think of your factories as your 'core buildings' and your starports as your 'reaction buildings'.

While there are more specific instructions below, here's some basic principles:
1) You must always have more vikings than your opponent at all times. This is priority #1.
2) All ground units except thors can be combated with banshees. If your opponent gets thors, you must get battlecruisers.
3) Do not build engineering bays or turrets, ever. You don't need them for air control, and you have a raven for detection.
4) Because your composition is reactive and your composition more mobile, you need to hold map control until your opponent pushes out at all times. As soon as your hellions pop, you need to control the xel'naga towers. This is crucial in fighting off certain pushes.

Marine/Tank opening
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Banshee opening
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Bio or possible FE
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Thor opening
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Viking-heavy (reactored port) opening
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I'll just use a flowchart here:

Link to high-res

- Your barracks, even though not producing, can be incredibly useful. Use it to create reactors and techlabs nonstop, continually lifting to produce more for your factories and starports.
- Your barracks can also be used to lift and scout your opponent's base on scrap and close-air metal/LT.
- Air armor is your #1 priority for upgrades

Q: Why the supply drop?
A: The supply drop gives you an instant benefit of 100 minerals, and a benefit of 50 additional minerals from the opportunity cost of not building a supply depot over the course of a supply depot build time. A MULE gives you 270 minerals over the course of 90 seconds. The supply drop is placed in the build at a key point where minerals are very tight. Saving 100 immediate minerals allows you to produce a second starport while continuing hellions - something not possible using a MULE.

Q: What are the expo timings?
A: I play this by ear. If your opponent is turtling, it's generally safe to keep expanding. If your opponent is being aggressive, keep producing. Think of it like a zerg player would. See replay vs ThisIsJimmy to see a quick 3rd base vs a turtling opponent or my game vs Sixto to see a more 1-base play.

Q: Why 2facts? Why not just make a reactor?
A: 2facts allows you to create 2x hellions while researching preigniter. It removes the inherent danger that comes with using only one factory to produce hellions. 2factories makes you much safer vs 2rax openings and early cheese, and gives you infrastructure for later down the road.

Q: Do you get cloak?
A: I only get cloak if I know my opponent will not have mobile detection soon (FE, bio), and sometimes not even then. Banshees are more of a combat unit than a stealth unit for me, although you can play around with this.

More will be added here as questions come in.

One thing that I think is important to learn is the difference between guaranteed hellion drops and gambled hellion drops. We'll define these as:

Guaranteed Drops: these are drops that you can expect to do economic damage with because, from scouting, you know the opponent has a vulnerability. It is reasonable to expect damage to be done, and if it is not, you may or may not be behind.

Gambled drops: these are drops that you do to force your opponent to keep troops in his base or exploit his weaknesses in defense. These builds are a gamble because they may or may not work, and you should never use them if they will put you significantly behind if they fail.

It is important to note that the build never relies on gambled drops to win. That is not to say that you shouldn't use them - they can be very powerful, and have other tangible benefits, such as forcing your opponent to build turrets, sensor towers, and keep units in his base. But your strategy should never rely on these to win, as they can be stopped without doing damage.

Situations where you can expect a guaranteed drop:
- If your opponent opens fast thor and moves his thor out of his base
- If your opponent opens quick cloaked banshee
- If your opponent FEs (the amount of units produced by a FE by drop time is not sufficient to kill your hellions before they do damage, especially considering they need to be spread over two bases)
- If your opponent is moving out of his base to attack you. Note that there are two situations here: your opponent leaves no units in his base, or he leaves units in his base to defend. Either one is considered damage, because leaving units in your base to defend reduces the size of his attacking force, and having no units forces guaranteed damage.

Situations where you have a gambled drop:
- Any situation where an opponent's army is sitting in his base
- Any 1base-vs-1base situation where your opponent has not moved out to attack

At the bottom of this section is the option to download a small replay pack of 7 replays. I've picked out a couple choice replays though, below.



This demonstrates a response to a heavy bio/FE play. Note how much my macro slips, going 1k/1k resources at one point. Also notice the quick 3rd base in response to his heavy turtling. Still a relatively easy win, despite getting minimal damage with the initial hellion drop.



This replay demonstrates a game vs an aggressive marine + hellion attack. Blue flame does a very easy job repelling enemy drops and punishing aggressive openers by killing SCVs.



The first question I always get is 'don't you just die to a tank/marine push'? This demonstrates the proper response. It is cleaned up with ease, and an easy win ensues.

Download entire replay pack (7 replays): link
Also see: vileDeathRow vs Drewbie (by PsyStarcraft): link

Edit: VTPokebunny has posted some reps of him executing it well, worth watching:





Edit: MatronStarcraft has casted a game: