Hello everyone, I am SC2Samuel of Team SCA. I am an amateur caster and analyst. My first post on TL is a build order that I have not tested much and would appreciate your feedback/testing on. Keep in mind, if you actually try out this build, you'll probably have a better idea of the build than just reading about it.
Abuse the TvP metagame of marine heavy 10 minute medivac pushes and push out with a marauder heavy force w/ combat shields and shells at 7 minutes to force gateway units, bait forcefields, and cause economic damage.
Most PvT builds rely on preparing for the 10 minute push by having 1-2 collosi, storm, or chargelots. These builds usually open 3 gate -> AOE tech, and usually only barely have the sufficient research/units finished right before the Terran attacks. Fact is, maruaders with shells are amazing, able to destory any gateway unit, and as well as collosi with stim and tanking storms.
Clearing watchtowers with the first marauder is a good idea Try not to get FF'ed and army split Try to retain units for followup push You have concussive shells. Use it.
Start stim when you leave Start factory for medivacs at around 10 minutes Get 3rd gas/4th gas Double engineering bay when affordable Don't forget third base
Once again, thank you for reading my first post on TL. As always, feedback, testing appreciated. I hope to make this into a real guide one day.
First time executing build in Yabot, messed up early due to lack of Terran practice http://drop.sc/290804 Second time executing build in Yabot, more refined, testing timings http://drop.sc/290803
The reason why there are only just enough units to hold the 10 minute medivac timing is because medivacs heal.
Without the medivacs, your force is much less powerful than you imagine it would be and zealot/sentry which Protoss should have will just rip it apart.
I just tried it for the first time on ladder, and the win it gave me got me promoted from gold to platinum for the first time ever. I know its not particularly useful feedback, and i executed the build pretty poorly because microing and macroing at the same time is not something i can actually do at all, but for what its worth thanks
edit for feedback:
It obviously works pretty well against a protoss going for some sort of early expand into fast templar build, which is what my opponent was doing. It still took until after i actually had stim to finish him off, but templar has always been my vulnerability because of my poor micro. The marauders help alot so anyone in lower leagues who struggles with fast templar, this build is perfect.
On the negative side i found the build to be slightly off in places. At some points i couldn't afford to make marauders, and things didn't seem to align every well, but i've only tried it a few times. I also had to halt SCV production at one point to get the combat shield (i think).
One more thing, those replays you included are not helpful, as the execution of the build was pretty bad (i know it sounds a bit rich coming from a lower level player than you). In the one i watched - the second build - you didn't have enough units to move out near 7:00.
once the P sees marauder, chronos out an immortal (assuming 1g fe 3g robo) and makes zealots/uses force field you are extremely behind, not to mention this build sounds horribly inefficient.
I tried it vs the ai have and have some general things:
i think would work if:
toss goes for >2 stalkers, and skimps on sentries
and/or you only send the marines to clear the towers so the toss doesn't see the marauders, however this delays the push
toss was greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedy
More specific things:
double gas at 19 is too much, i can't spend the gas nor can i make a bunker,2 rax and an orbital from my nat without halting scv production. If i only made 1 marine this might be possible.
The gas has to be staggered
the reactor is not really gonna help out for the push, you can't produce from 3 rax with addons while making scvs anyways
my sheer number of units doesn't seem that much, though with impeccable micro + scouting denial it could be effective
If remotely scouted just sentries and zealots would hold this off as long as the toss isn't retarded with FF
would die to two base gateway timing
at worse toss can run their probes up and FF the ramp till they got enough stuff and you can't reinforce
you must do significant damage or lose since your follow up push with medivacs are so delayed.
The problem with these pushes without stim and medivac is that if you do do damage its not crippling because you can never kill the nexus in time and the probes will run.
If you dont do any damage you are too behind and almost autolose the game.
I really don't understand, before warp gate the T is upper P when finnished, the P can put pressure on T untill stim and medival, and you want to attack when the P is strongest? Don' t really understand the only case will be if you can catch out you opponent other way you might not succed. But i do like the fact you want to change standard play. Some player can't adapt well.
On January 04 2013 13:08 KawaiiRice wrote: once the P sees marauder, chronos out an immortal (assuming 1g fe 3g robo) and makes zealots/uses force field you are extremely behind, not to mention this build sounds horribly inefficient.
Pretty much this. Plus, bio without stim hitting that late isn't scary at all.
Your medivac push isn't actually delayed because if you start your factory at 7 minutes, it takes 152 + a couple more seconds to get 2 medivacs out. And Stim only takes 170 seconds (approximately the same time), so it sounds perfectly possible to have the standard timing. Except you'd be behind in upgrades. But I see all your points. I'll be making adjustments soon.
well I'm afraid that any immortal completely destorys this build and if the toss scouts early marauders he is most likely going to chrono out one immortal just to be safe and without stim you are never going to be able to snipe an immortal as long as there are other protoss units around.
It seems to me that this build is pretty much only effective to punish very late robo (for example with some sort of fast storm build) but at least back when I played terran (idk about 5-6 months ago) that kind of builds were pretty rare and it's not like it's undefendable with a greedy storm build (obviously I haven't seen how it matches up just theory work here)
Do you guys think that this build would be good to fake pressure, take map control, force some chrono boosts, maybe even bait out some extra sentries/forcefields? I could adjust the build so it allows for the usual 10 minute push.
This is not an anti metagame timing or anything fancy like that lol. Its just a simple tech lab focused push before both races have T3. Its sort of a cheese because force fields can prevent u from entering the front door and u can't elevator since no T3. The toss could also just beat ur army by chronoing immortal and attacking u. If toss is passive, u can probably get Vikings out before a colossus push. Basically, this is just a less potent frontal attack and is why noone does it.
Going for 3cc 2ebay might also b a risky followup if protoss decides to abuse ur situation
You can just move out early with marines with a standard build to clear towers/force units, and still not get that much gas early for basically nothing.
It's possible to line this attack up with the same 2 Medivac stim timing at 10 minutes. But that timing is going to be severely weakened. Also having so much has early on as Terran won't line up nicely after that 10 minute mark if you're going bio and don't have a fast 3rd cc. I don't really know how to explain it but it just doesn't work
Sorry but this is quite a suicide timing. Terran's strong timing is when he has both stimpack and the first 2 medivacs, before that a bio army kind of sucks. It's true that the protoss can't have AOE at 7:45, but it's not needed at all. I don't even know if the protoss actually needs an immortal. Good forcefields + zealot/stalker should be enough.
As a protoss I can tell you I always get a 5-6 minute-ish robo for obs, so I don't straight die to cloaked banshees and get to confirm that you are doing the 10 minute push, Unless you are going heavy air I always get 2-3 immortals because they're just good units. A small force of immortals and stalkers with good focus fire+force field to split up half of the army will simply shut down this build hard.
Tried to do the build in-game and it just has too much gas, cant afford the second OC for a while (had to cut Marines). So Barracks before Gas man. By "Anti-Metagame", do you mean pre-Colossus timing? Marauders are okay but Marines are really what does the damage.
Whole reason for double Reactors after Factory is to trade armies before Colossus come out as well. Don't see how delaying the Starport helps this timing, and why Combat Shields if you want a big Marauder force, from the early double Gas I'm guessing.
I'd just go with mass Marine timing before Colossus and add two Rax for three Rax Marauders (two Reactors) as standard, may be try describing why your attacking at 7:30.
And Marauders aren't strong against Colossus or anything, they just tank hits for the Marines on 3 Rax builds.
On January 04 2013 20:51 samuelspark wrote: Thanks for feedback.
Your medivac push isn't actually delayed because if you start your factory at 7 minutes, it takes 152 + a couple more seconds to get 2 medivacs out. And Stim only takes 170 seconds (approximately the same time), so it sounds perfectly possible to have the standard timing. Except you'd be behind in upgrades. But I see all your points. I'll be making adjustments soon.
It doesnt seem solid enough (see previous posts) and the +1 attack is actually a very key part of medivac timing and transitioning into midgame because of how crucial it is for marines.
They do 6 damage, almost all toss units have 1 base armor (so 5), guardian shield lowers that to 3.
If toss gets 1 upgrade ahead he cuts the marines damage by 33%, 2 upgrades ahead (2 armor before 1 attack is finished) he cuts marine damage from 6 to 1 under guardian shield and the game is essentially over.
That is a little bit of an extreme example, but the early ebay, +1 attack and then second ebay and armory ready to immediately start 2-2 after 1-1 is done is key to an extent that the majority of players dont even begin to realize. "Behind on upgrades" in modern TvP/TvZ is an extremely scary thing.
the only time having marauders pre medivacs is useful is when protoss actually comes out to push you. yes you can take mapcontrol with a couple of marauders but that doesnt really get you anywhere because you will not be able to attack into the protoss (at his natural) due to forcefields. that said, having a bunch of mm hanging outside of tosses natural does force him to make units and equilizes your early investment if he overreacts. yet i still dont think the rewards justifies the risk you take ( getting forcefielded off loosing half your army).
One problem is that, it gives up a normal strength of mid game bio, which is the ability to easily retreat. TVP very quickly becomes a war of attrition, in which players try to maximize their retention of army units by dodging storms, splitting well, placing good ffs, etc. In the first few minutes of the game, toss units can shake down marines with their speed (stalker) and high hit points, then tables turn when mauraders comes out, and concussive shells majorly influence the game, but around a minute or two later, the amount of sentry energy your opponent has (I.E. right before your timing comes) allows the toss to choose whether or not he wants to engage, by making a wall.
The next switch, comes when stim pack readies, and terran is able to engage smartly, and retreat away if the situation calls for it, dodging ffs, etc.
TVP is very much so controlled by the tempo of not just macro, but tech. As each new tech comes out, the other side gains more map control, and the ability to retreat, while the opponent sometimes loses it. In my opinion, mauraders without stim only gain you that retreat priviledge for a short period of time, because usually toss has a comparable sized army, but eventually has 4+ force fields (I.E. enough to control 1 battle, stop one retreat, or gain one for themselves). Since you are attacking the opponent at his base, and not in the open, the effectiveness of ff's goes up dramatically, and you have no stim to attempt to run away if he has sufficient immortals.
The second reason this push is ill advised, is that it comes basically right when toss is making their tech choice, and right after the Observer gets a eye full. This means the toss will be able to prepare perfectly (in choices, not necessarily time wise).
I open up MKP style 3 rax double reactor, and I like to poke when stim finishes, i scan when im at the ramp and i only engage if protoss is skimping. I also use it to deny a fast third nexus, but otherwise, as others have said, the real power comes with the first 2 medivacs. And in all honesty i'm not a fan of super early marauders because you need to get a faster third gas, whereas with a more marine-heavy style i can support an engi bay and 2 medivacs + all bio ups on just the 2 refineries until 10ish minutes.
reactor, techlab, concussive shells. Move out with 1 marauder, 4 marines.
Or you can wait for a few rounds and you'll basically have what you just described. Any safe opener with immortal or good forcefields will shut it down - again why the medivacs are a necessity.
On January 07 2013 20:15 HEYALEX wrote: 11gas 13rax 16rax
reactor, techlab, concussive shells. Move out with 1 marauder, 4 marines.
Or you can wait for a few rounds and you'll basically have what you just described. Any safe opener with immortal or good forcefields will shut it down - again why the medivacs are a necessity.
On January 07 2013 20:15 HEYALEX wrote: 11gas 13rax 16rax
reactor, techlab, concussive shells. Move out with 1 marauder, 4 marines.
Or you can wait for a few rounds and you'll basically have what you just described. Any safe opener with immortal or good forcefields will shut it down - again why the medivacs are a necessity.
At a low masters level I have a lot of success with 2Rax Reactor First, just exploiting the fact that Protoss players at this level don't have to micro like me during the game anyways, so they're not as good at fighting it off.
If you deny scouting it's an incredibly powerful push nowadays because nobody in their right mind should be doing it. If a Protoss player scouts Rax-Gas he usually assumes 1-1-1, and if I can deny scouting with the first marine (common on 4 player maps) I get to scoot down to their base and kill a fuckton of probes.
You can also do a 3 Barracks (1 TL two naked) timing before CC using the excess gas for reactor to do the same level of damage, but it's not as efficient due to the timings.
Expanding before Barracks pressure without teching is just asking to get smacked down unless you do a solid 5 Rax with addons and, again, deny scouting. Very hard to catch all observers and probes, though.
Not sure if this build can work at all against anyone decent, but if I were to do a build like this I think Concussive Shells expo would work better than 1raxFE for easier transition. It opens both marauders and concussive shells and you don't have to completely overkill with gas like your build does now.
Push wont work. dispite it being 3 minutes earlier than the medivac timing, you have no stim, no hp regen and no high ground vision without burning scans. i would imagine that even a phoenix opening would shut this down. its a nice idea in principle to stop the protoss from teching too quickly and getting up unit producing infrastructure, but there's no a lot you'll be able to do with it. I guess the only chance you'd have of it working is the protoss trying to play really greedy and taking a fast 3rd base upon seeing your fast expand.
The problem you're always going to encounter with this type of thinking is that you're trying to take advantage of the protoss fast expanding and teching with an early pressure build where you're investing a lot of your early game resources into the push. the reason the +1 marine medivac timing is used is because the infrastructure you're getting sets YOU up well for the midgame, staying on barracks tech may force some additional units out from the protoss, but he's going to have his robo, and probably his robo bay starting. leaving you with no way to deal with his colossi.
If you want to exploit and early timing like this (that im not even sure exists) then i would just try and make it an all in and proxy raxes, otherwise i see no way for this to work.
On January 07 2013 23:44 CapnAmerica wrote: At a low masters level I have a lot of success with 2Rax Reactor First, just exploiting the fact that Protoss players at this level don't have to micro like me during the game anyways, so they're not as good at fighting it off.
If you deny scouting it's an incredibly powerful push nowadays because nobody in their right mind should be doing it. If a Protoss player scouts Rax-Gas he usually assumes 1-1-1, and if I can deny scouting with the first marine (common on 4 player maps) I get to scoot down to their base and kill a fuckton of probes.
You can also do a 3 Barracks (1 TL two naked) timing before CC using the excess gas for reactor to do the same level of damage, but it's not as efficient due to the timings.
Expanding before Barracks pressure without teching is just asking to get smacked down unless you do a solid 5 Rax with addons and, again, deny scouting. Very hard to catch all observers and probes, though.
If he scouts gas and a rax, he should always have zealot + 2 stalkers before expand. He'll follow up with 2 more gates, 2nd gas, then more units. The reason the push died out was because its not that hard to hold is that as long as you're smart its really not that hard to hold. But i guess if people are just blindly following build orders then it'll probably work. o.O
Polt has been doing similar things with maurader expand builds. You get a 13 gas, tech lab, shells, a few mauraders and expand about 45 seconds later than normal. You add on more rax and push at about 7:00 minutes with a force very similar to a standard two rax. A protoss that goes three gate robo often forgoes several warp in cycles in order to rush collosus, the gateways are for insurance. With a few chrono boosts and some nice forecefields toss can definitely hold any oddly timed pressure. They are all strong builds though and very powerful ways to play, and with good micro you can force nice trades. I think if you can manage a 7 minute timing and still get out medivacs by 10 minutes, it might be ok to go double engineering bay and a third base there after without being to far behind on upgrades or economy. I wouldn't be to discouraged from playing with it because harrassing protoss early is just a really powerful way to play TvP.
Something that would give me some pause though, it might be rather difficult to hold some immortal pushes and 7 gate all ins if you are delaying your rax and going lighter on the marines. Depending on your follow up, fast collossus pushes or two base colossus all ins might be tricky to hold, because you will pay a price in the mid game two afford to be so aggressive in the early game. Every build has counter though, it shouldn't discourage you from playing around with it. Let use know if you come up with anything really cool.
EDIT: Something I want to point out to some of the people with the harsher criticisms, this isn't an all in he is talking about. Its ok to kills a couple zealots and go home. If you can manage even than, burn some force feilds, and force chronos on the gateways, its a worthwhile push. If protoss prepares perfectly, ideally you just go home.
On January 08 2013 16:04 mothergoose729 wrote:EDIT: Something I want to point out to some of the people with the harsher criticisms, this isn't an all in he is talking about. Its ok to kills a couple zealots and go home. If you can manage even than, burn some force feilds, and force chronos on the gateways, its a worthwhile push. If protoss prepares perfectly, ideally you just go home.
I would gladly pay 3 zealots and a couple force fields to delay the medivac timing as much as this terran build does.
I am borrowed your idea some and tweaked it. Working on it a little now but I would like to share it. Managed to get out 4 mauraders by 7ish minutes, if you pull scvs its still a nice push, and you end up at 10 minutes with 2 medivacs, stem, and two barracks with reactors and 1 with tech lab just like with a standard 1 rax expand build.
BO 10 depot 12 barracks 16 cc 16 refinery 18 depot 18 bunker 19 2nd rax first 25 gas tech lab constant maurader production when second rax finishes start reactor get second refinery start concussive shells 32 supply depot add a third rax when you can afford it start stem factory engineering bay and third gas push with 4 mauraders, pull 4 or so scvs when factory finishes start reactor and starport start reactor on third rax when finished constant marine production until 10 minute push. +1 won't be done in time nor combat sheilds, but you seem to have more units than normal. I had enough money to immediately throw down my third command center.
Could use some tweaking, but I think it might be a good start.
Im not sure how well this would work, but a couple things that I see as problems (dia protoss here) are:
1) I don't see the point of having a marauder centered push, people have said that a fast robo can easily get an immortal, but marauders are not cost efficient against zealots either without kiting, and a fast Templar build like kcdc's only gets one initial stalker then goes with 3 sentries and pure zealot. All a turtling protoss has to do is ff behind the marauders when they get up the ramp, and kill your push. Now your medivac push is weaker because you lost those initial units cost inefficiently.
2) The resources early on from a one rax fe are actually pretty tight that early on, I'm not sure you can actually maintain constant marauder and scv production without delaying tech.
3) Upgrades are delayed since you don't get the engineering bay with the factory.
I've played against one mid masters Terran who did something slightly similar, but he just had a very marine centered army, and I was to kill it so easily with zealot sentry that he actually completely stopped doing that poke in consequent games because it wasn't worth it to lose those initial units and only kill a few zealots, and if you're extremely lucky, a sentry.
On January 08 2013 16:04 mothergoose729 wrote: Polt has been doing similar things with maurader expand builds. You get a 13 gas, tech lab, shells, a few mauraders and expand about 45 seconds later than normal. You add on more rax and push at about 7:00 minutes with a force very similar to a standard two rax. A protoss that goes three gate robo often forgoes several warp in cycles in order to rush collosus, the gateways are for insurance. With a few chrono boosts and some nice forecefields toss can definitely hold any oddly timed pressure. They are all strong builds though and very powerful ways to play, and with good micro you can force nice trades. I think if you can manage a 7 minute timing and still get out medivacs by 10 minutes, it might be ok to go double engineering bay and a third base there after without being to far behind on upgrades or economy. I wouldn't be to discouraged from playing with it because harrassing protoss early is just a really powerful way to play TvP.
Something that would give me some pause though, it might be rather difficult to hold some immortal pushes and 7 gate all ins if you are delaying your rax and going lighter on the marines. Depending on your follow up, fast collossus pushes or two base colossus all ins might be tricky to hold, because you will pay a price in the mid game two afford to be so aggressive in the early game. Every build has counter though, it shouldn't discourage you from playing around with it. Let use know if you come up with anything really cool.
EDIT: Something I want to point out to some of the people with the harsher criticisms, this isn't an all in he is talking about. Its ok to kills a couple zealots and go home. If you can manage even than, burn some force feilds, and force chronos on the gateways, its a worthwhile push. If protoss prepares perfectly, ideally you just go home.
What Polt does is really different in that it is basically a macro oriented 2 rax that actually pays off the most when protons is overly defensive. This push is different in that we try to very macro oriented play while applying pressure with much fewer units, in this case, yes, it's completely fine for you to just as go home. But what if you waltz up the ramp, and bam, force fields and zealots. Suddenly your pressuring units die, and you're much weaker. This also opens up windows for blink play and gateway allies to do a lot more damage since you don't get stim early on and your pressure is very light so you don't actually have a big scary army at all.
haha to all the haters, Fantasy basically does this build to great effect vs Dear in proleague, and Boxer (no surprise) has been doing a variation of this as well in the early days.
The only way I could think that toss could scout this, is with an obs. An immortal and some good forcefields could definitely shut this down. This must be taking some tosses by surprise though because the old 2 rax reactor/ tech lab hits sooner. With only 1 marauder clearing the towers, not sure how else other than a sneaky probe, would see this coming across the map. I suggest not trying to push the ramp. Probably a bad idea... killing the nexus or making probes go in main is probably best, but if toss is onto your shenanigans and has been chrono-ing units, he may get ballsy and walk down ramp to wreck your world....and Terran at that point has no way to retreat if things go south and might as well gg. So the question is, how many immortals can you chrono out and on what maps after making the needed obs before 7 mins? I'm indifferent about this, gonna try it out. Diamond random so take it for what it's worth.
If I see a marauder, or anything other than a pack of marines, clearing a watchtower, I'm going to suspect weird aggression from the terran and prepare for it. That's a red flag.