[G] 4 CC into Skyterran TvZ

So at the beginning, Song arrived to our prohouse. He cried a bit about TvZ being imbalanced and this matchup being terrible after patch etc. So I analyzed and prepared Sculp’s build for him:
http://www.gomtv.net/2012gstls2/vod/67576/?set=7&lang=
It improved his macro play, the build revolves about getting fast 4 CC’s. It sounds crazy and greedy, but apparently it works. Song edited this to make it safe vs roach baneling bust. He makes 2 hellions and then straight tanks(or just straight tanks). Because of 4 CC he can afford to be not aggressive early on. So this build was really good because it was safe and very economy focused. But some problems arised. Despite good economy, song was still having problems vs good zergs. You need to drop at 3 places at once, multitask like madman, and still you can loose to just deathball. Song was really fed up of this, he wanted a game style that doesn’t require to be 4 times better than opponent to actually win. We had to figure something out.

So me and song went outside of house to garden and talked for 1 hour about possibilities. We were discussing mech, heavy ghost usage, skyterran, marine raven and some other stuff. After some time we agreed that Skyterran is the option to go. There are several reasons for it:
- It’s able to fight with Zerg deathball on even foot, I would even say it’s better than zerg deathball.
- It’s not affected by creep. Nowadays creep really gets out of control with mass queen builds
- Does not revolve around doing damage. Terran’s plans nowadays require dealing damage with aggressive play. Either early on or a timing before hive, or mass drop during hive phase.
I’ve faced it once, maybe a year ago from Satiini, I remembered that it is very strong if it’s done correctly.
So we started. The question was, how to get there.

I took experience from my zerg knowledge.
Transitioning out of Ling Bane Muta into infestor broodlord is a bit problematic, you have to make the deathball at once.
Ling Infestor, on the other hand, already involves a part of deathball, so you make it step by step. First you make infestors, then BL, not both at once. The same rule can be applied to transitioning to terran deathball. Transitioning into skyterran out of medivac tank marine is kinda hard. No upgrades, necessity to make everything at once etc. On the other hand Marine raven looks just like infestor ling, you make heavy gas and heavy mineral units and you already make first step in constructing deathball. We both agreed that it’s something that we have to try out. The goal for first days was:
- Finding a viable marine raven build.
- Surviving till deathball is operational

We were wondering how to open. Then I reminded that Dutch player Servyoa uses quite a lot of marine raven. I immediately approached him and asked for a replay.

http://drop.sc/224302
We decided to start from someone’s experience. He knows about this style more than we do. He transitions into marine tank medivac out of this, we decided to edit his style but the opening still remained his. So the build revolved around 1 rax CC into 2 starports. Servy made 4 banshees and then he transitions into ravens. It felt promising, we gave it a try. We just edited it a bit, instead of going back to marine tank medivac we chose to camp a lot behind planetaries/bunkers and then going into skyterran.

http://drop.sc/236228

At the beginning it was not bad. Banshees were able to deal some damage usually, it delayed zerg so Song was able to establish decent sized army that was able to deal with infestor ling pressure and hold 3rd and transition into bc viking out of marine raven.
But some problems arised.
The build was very vulnerable to few things, 3 base symbol style mutas(3 bases with 6 queens into 2x evo and mutas afterwards), 2 base fast mutas, even ultrabaneling timing attack. We tried a lot of things with this build, Bunker upgrades with 2 more slots, planetary upgrades for 2 more armor, mass bunkers, mass turrets vs mutas etc. We decided the build was not good enough. Securing 3rd base in current patch with this style was not possible. Good player will defend banshee harrass without much losses and then he can make so much stuff that Terran will simply not be able to handle it.
We had to abandon this style.

We decided to try out this 4 CC macro build into skyterran.
CC farms :>

It appeared to be much better than banshee opening because of very good economy. We decided to exchange banshees for a couple of tanks. This would allow us to deal with inevitable timings easier. So instead of marine banshee into marine raven, we decided to pick marine tank into marine raven (once you finish tank production you begin Raven production). The timing of Raven is pretty similiar, yet the build is much more safe. We laughed that we outgoodied Goody since it’s basically 25 minutes of camping. Yes it’s quite boring i guess. Well, at least effective. So now our problems vs 3 base muta aggression or 3 base ling bane have decreased though they still existed. We had first successes too!. Song has beaten TSL_Hyun. Imagine our happiness, after a week of miserable losses Song felt really upset before sometimes, was about to abandon development of this build but i had faith in it.

http://www.speedyshare.com/QWpw5/Vs-Hyun-SKYTerran.SC2Replay

Then we have read the interview of ByunPrime when he said:
“Is Terran okay against Zerg now?

I think we’re over it. In late game, battlecruisers supported by ravens can beat Zerg. The solution has been found.”

That also built up our hopes. It told us that we are going in correct direction. It seemed that koreans were developing independently something similiar to this. Few days later we’ve seen MKP using skyterran on Metropolis in GSL. He did it the different way than us though. (standard play and at 25 min mark massive skyterran switch, not like creating skyterran since 10 min mark).

So we basically figured out timings. The key was to make unprecedented amount of bunkers and planetaries. Zerg has limited potential of making banelings. He can blow up 4 bunkers and 1 planetary, but there’s no way that he can destroy 10 and 2-3 planetaries. Song also started to make some more marines and barrackses, it was necessary to secure 3rd base. So now we were finally able to survive safely to late game. This was the moment when stuff got exciting. We found out very funny and interesting thing; so called “pro” players were worse at thinking and inventing counters to it than average high master Zergs. We kept making small modifications. Versus Ultrabane ~17 min timing attack you need just 4-5 Ravens and earlier BC’s, on the other hand versus Broodlords you can and should go into 8-10 raven before launching serious BC production. I was reminding song all the time to make insane amount of bunkers, he usually made too little of them. Also the concept that Song had some troubles with understanding was sacrificing low Tier units in order to be able to create powerful T3 army. What I mean is that he very often had 30-40 marines with his skyterran that were totally useless. It’s waaaay more effective to have 20 vikings instead of 40 marines in this situation. After you are close to 200/200 It’s time to exchange low tier units into high ones, Terran don’t do it too often, it’s more like zerg mind :D

Skyterran isn’t marine tank. It might sound obvious but it requires totally different set of skills and micro. 1 thing is similar though - you need to split. If you have all your ravens fungaled you can type GG already. We figured out that the best way to micro is to make a line of units and then a-move click in opponent’s main base so units will not clump together. Terrans aren’t used to spellcasting though. This composition is very spellcast heavy and positioning heavy instead of micro intensive. So it took Song quite a long time to get used to it and not make positional mistakes. We are still trying to figure out perfect way of casting spells in the battles. I think it’s best to throw 3 PDD’s and while ravens are getting close to cast HSM, cast few yamatos on infestors/corruptors then cast all HSM’s on corruptors/infestors then once you are out of HSM use all remaining yamato cannons. There is also another interesting thing: BC’s (due to their HP) should be in front and vikings as a DPS dealers(and range) should be behind. This way fungaling vikings will also be harder.

So, what are core ideas of this build?

- Constructing Terran deathball. The idea has been copied from Zerg and Protoss playstyle. It’s the same how ling infestor into BL or old school collosus stalker works. You make powerful 200/200 army that is so cost effective that it doesnt really bother with anything else than just constructing good composition and sitting in base.

- Managing gas and minerals in specific way. Marine, bunker have perfect synergy with raven and air heavy gas expensive units.
- Utilizing unknown upgrades (HA, do you know how the armor upgrade for planetaries is called ?) in a way that is actually extremely useful.
- Relying on defence instead of offence. Rare thing in Terran play.
- Fastest operational Skyterran. Skyterran has been used before but it has always been in 30+ minute games, here it’s around 20 minute mark when you can do something good with it, and 22-25 when it’s totally ready.
- Understanding the fact that tank marine planetary bunker raven is a composition that is enough to hold 4 bases on most of maps and allows to transition into skyterran.

The role of the opening is to set up as good economy as possible while being safe. The early game BO is basically edited Sculp’s opening with a tank for safety and earlier gas. It’s only used in case opponent goes for gasless FE. If he goes gas, then you have to cut 1 CC to be safe. The only thing that can be scary right there is some kind of roach baneling aggression. That’s the purpose of early tank. Because you get 4 CC’s, you are not really forced to make any damage to opponent. The biggest threats are roach baneling pressures/allins, ling baneling busts and some roach moveouts. Early tank solves all of these.

Do the normal scv scout - you want to see if he takes gas or not. In case he took gas you need to delay 4th CC and play safer.
1 rax CC
4:00 2x gas (It’s rather unsafe to make it later, you can get greedy if you want though.
5:00 3rd CC
5:15 Factory
5:30 Reactor
5:40 Bunker
6:20 4th CC
6:35 Starport, Techlab
Around this time it’s good to scout whether he has 3rd base or not. (you need to prepare in case of some 2 base play, 2 base muta requires special reaction - send few marines, make a hellion or in worst case drop a scan)
7:00 Tank
7:15 Siege tech

Hello, you survived early game. Let’s do the same what we did in early game but 3 times harder - develop our economy and camp on tanks. There are more threats in this part; ass ling baneling, fast 2 base muta, muta ling baneling, mass ling infested terrans etc etc. That’s the reason we have to go into serious bunker mode. It’s really map dependant here, but on most maps you have to crawl your way to expansions. It’s fine. You spend most of your gas on tech/first ravens so you will have mineral surplus that you should spend on bunkers/marines/economy/planetaries. Securing 4 bases is the key in this part. 8 Gases will allow us to run serious Air production.

7:40 Viking(to clear overlords around map, to scout 3rd base)
7:40 2x gas
8:00 Engineering bay
8:20 Techlab on starport and then banshee. (Banshee is really cool thing here - it adds some dps in battles but more importantly allows for easier securing bases and puts slight pressure on zerg’s creep. It’s really important to keep it alive.
8:35 +1 infantry attack
8:35 Corvid reactor, then banshee
8:50 2x turrets
~9:30 grab 3rd base - Interesting thing - don’t make 4th CC an orbital - this way you can morph it into planetary and securing 3rd will be easier. Triple mule is enough in this style.
9:35 Start raven production - Raven will come out with already corvid reactor upgrade.
10:00 2x Barracks(1 techlabbed and then stim), 1x Starport (techlabbed)
10:20 Hunter Seeker Missile upgrade
10:15 Armory - start Air Carapace upgrades (ravens don’t gain anything from air attack and at the begining you will have only ravens. Also BC’s with carapace deal with infested terrans way better)
Bunkers
11:00 Command Center - fly to 4th base and morph to planetary
Bunkers
11:20 +2 atk for infantry, 2x Barracks
Bunkers
13:00 1x Starport(techlabbed)
Bunkers
13:20 Fusion Core
Bunkers (a lot of them)
~14:00 4 CC then Planetaries
14:20 Structure Armor (upgrade in engibay that gives +2 armor - very helpful vs lings and ultras)

Yes. Let the fun begin. The Goal for this part is to finish assemblying skyterran army and to finally lean out of our bunkers.Skyterran is a bit like mech.
It gets insanely cost effective once it’s maxed out.

Guess who won.
Yes, a Terran hehe. (picture taken from a game vs gm zerg)

Never ever move out before you are 200/200. And even then I advice to wait. Terran has really cool ability that is called mules. Why not make 5 more OC’s and sacrifice 20 scv’s? or. Why not make 10 OC’s and sacrifice 50? That’s already 8 more BC’s. The other thing is to sacrifice all marines. At 15 minute mark it’s necessity to stop all Marine production. I had good laughs at Song when he ended up with 80 marines in late game and whined that skyterran is bullshit. No. You cannot dump 80 supply into useless units (yes, vs competent fungal user in direct fight marines usually don’t do anything in lategame) and then expect your army composition to work.

So in lategame:
- Drop a scan to determine whether zerg is going for BL or Ultra. They require different reaction. (5-6 ravens vs ultras, 8-10 vs BL)
- Add bunkers, planetaries, depots and barrackses (u gonna have overmins anyway)
- Defend potential Ultralisk timing around 17 min mark.
- Secure 5th around 18 min mark.
- Mass Orbitals around 20 min mark.
- Move out with 150 army supply skyterran (around 22 min mark)
- Keep Air unit production off of 5-6 starports.
- Slowly research infantry upgrades.
- At around 35-40 min mark if the game is not finished yet, resume marine production and add some medivacs. Gas income will be slowly depleting and you will have probably around 5-10k mineral overmins which means u can easily make 10 rax and spam rines and finish game this way.

http://drop.sc/236227

http://drop.sc/236222

http://drop.sc/236221

http://drop.sc/236220

http://drop.sc/236226