ZvT Tactics and The Patch

With the range of roaches being increased my factory play has been hit relatively hard.  Before I used to go double factory hellion/thor and one rax for marauder.  I made a post calling this an unbeatable strat for zerg players… and indeed it was.  Every single unit they could throw at it would die.  But with roach range being what it is now, roaches actual;y do some damage to this build.

What I’ve been doing more often now is one factory/one rax expand with thor/hellion/marauder defending.  Luckily this build still can defend any sort of push.  I usually throw up a rax once my expansion is up and pump out marines.  I mean I seriously need more minerals.  This of course makes me vulnerable to banelings.

So I get siege tech and pump out some tanks.  Once I get 4x gas I get out a second factory with constant thor/tank production.  Sometime I’ll make a pre-igniter hellion if my gas is low.

So my composition looks like: marine/marauder/hellion/tank/thor.  Also possible that I’ll get a raven or two out for seeker missiles if the game goes on long enough.  This build doesn’t ‘win’ games for me but it does make roaches far less of a pain.

Zerg have REALLY been trying a lot of new stuff as of late.  One tactic that ‘got me’ was one-base infestor.  It’s kind of weird and you’re really sitting here massing thors thinking he’s one-basing mutalisks.  But then the infested terrans show up and you go…. odd.

The most common thing and most destructive to my old build is mass economy bulids.  Mass economy was pretty uncommon before because barracks-first builds forced zerg to always put up spawning pools first so they can protect their expansions.  But now that they early expand first every time mass economy is far more common.  Basically if you put no pressure on a zerg player can get out his second expansion by the time you lay down a factory.  The mass economy build’s main focus is getting out ultralisks or brood lords.  So they’re just stalling for time until they can get them out.  Once they insta-hatch stupid amounts of either of these units you go, OH…. crap.

Ultralisks are far deadlier than the broodlord option simply because the ultralisks are going to cleave through your mech.  Having more tanks, marauders and marines around definitely helps with the ultralisks.  Thors just crumble.  Drop ships as well are huge in any thor vs. ultralisk scenario.  A lot of times I”ll have thors up front and just load them into medivacs when they’re health is orange.  I’ll fly them away drop them off and repair them.  It gives thors a fighting chance against an army so heavily ultralisk.

The shitty thing is you need thors.  If you build too many marauders/tanks he’ll just hatch some mutalisks out.  So until you can stim marauder drop his spire you need them around to deal with the threat.

It’s a very uneven battle.  You have to have units available to deal with every possible threat he can throw at you and he can mass any single unit to wipe out any single type of unit.  Good news is most zerg still haven’t seemed to figure out that they can fast expand so most TvZ is still pretty imbalanced towards terrans.

The Raven Build: How to Always Beat Protoss

This is a diamond level build that was designed to beat all the current standard protoss builds and although it focuses around the raven it’s true strength lies in the flexibility of 1 rax/1 factory/1 starport build.  I should note that this is ONLY an anti-protoss build so don’t use it against terrans or zerg

Step 1- Surviving

Getting a raven out is costly and expensive.  It takes time.  This means that you have to survive a lot of protoss cheese.  The cheese I’m referring to is the 2-gate push, the 4-gate push and the 2 stalker one void ray push.  Each is designed to exploit common terran build models… but we’re not doing anything common.

The first step is going to be getting an early gas before rax and then rax.  Once you have your rax up just continue to pump out marines.  No need for a reactor just keep pumping out marines.  You’ll also want to get your orbital command asap.  You are going to be walling so 2-gate doesn’t happen.  Get a bunker down after your orbital command and throw it in.  You will need your bunker up by the 5 minute mark because this is about the timing of the 4-gate push.  If there is a 4-gate push coming you simply send 4-5 SCVs off to repair your bunker and you should hold.  The longer he 4-gates you the more resources he is wasting.

Once you have enough minerals for a factory you get it down.  Get a tech lab on the factory and get out one tank with siege tech as soon as possible.  You need this out before the 7 minute mark since this is the timing for the 2 stalker 1 void ray push.

This is a lesser known tactic but happens EXTREMELY often in diamond league.  What happens is the void ray picks at a supply depot while the stalkers are on the ground. The stalkers pick off marines but of course due to how your structures are setup you can never get your big baller marauders to attack the stalker.  The siege tank will deal with this.  Your marines will take out the void ray and your siege tank will beat up the stalkers.

The Unit Composition

Okay get your starport down and throw a reactor on your rax.  You’ll need a lot of marines.    From here on out save your scans for your opponent.  You will scan him and check out his unit composition.  You have to develop an army that will pound his without using marauders.  If he is zealot heavy get out hellions with pre-igniter.  If he is stalker heavy get out more tanks.  If he has a robo down get some banshees out.

You have roughly 1 minute to build up units that will counter his.  You will not want to build any more unit producing structures other than the three simply because you will want to expand as you’re pushing in.

The Push

When I tried this out the first push wiped out my opponent 75% of the time.  As I said when you’re pushing you are laying down a command center and taking half your workers from your main to your new command center.  As well you are constantly producing out of your three unit producing structures and constantly producing SCVs.  Rally the new units to the raven in your army.

On the push it is important to get one good point defense drone down.  You will be timing your push for just having one point defense drone.  Standard protoss play is stalkers so this will completely nullify them.  Your marines will tear into them and beat them up.  You preferably want to engage him near his base so that he doesn’t just retreat and waste your point defense drone.

Siege your tanks as the battle starts if he’s heavy stalker.

Send your banshees in to pick off colossus if he has robo units down.

Have your hellions placed behind your marines if he’s heavy zealots.  Make sure you have pre-igniter it’ll wreck them.

All In?

This is often confused as an all-in push.  If the tactic fails the match isn’t over.  This is simply a very successful and very powerful opener that protoss cannot deal with because they do not know how to react to a point defense drone.  If this attack were to fail you’d simply build bunkers are your expansion, load them with marines, bring your raven hope and start doing some standard play.  The initial attack you do whether it succeeds or fails will do excessive amounts of damage so he’ll be behind regardless.