The build came about because of FakeBoxer (now MarineKing) used SCVs and marines together to kill Nestea. When people saw this it intrigued them and they decided to work on it and optimize it, what they came up with has been called “Mega Rax.”
The idea behind this push is you build 5 barracks, of which 3-4 are proxyed and you push with an insane number of marines and SCVs. The SCVs act as soakers with auto-repair on repairing themselves while your marines clean everything up. Basically the power of this tactic comes in that it’s generally unexpected and your opponents can’t make the appropriate preparations for it. It works primarily against Terrans and Zergs since Protoss can just force field the ramp.
It’s kind of addicting to not do this because of it’s high success rate. It’s an easy 200 boost on your rating.
I’ve been spending my time trying to figure out builds that do pretty good against it. All I’ve gotten so far against it are the 1-thor 9 marine all in and the 5-marine hellion push. Without early aggression though this build is simply too powerful.
It seems the meta game for protoss now has shifted from holding off pushes wand expanding into huge rushes. The protoss have re-realized the power of the zealot and are doing a lot of zealot heavy rushes. This has once again made 3-rax push and 2-rax expand both very weak options in the current meta game. So what’s left?
Oh, a reworked raven build.
It’s another build that is becoming insanely popular on the Korean ladder. Unlike the old raven build this one is insanely unit heavy and is deployed as the protoss gets his first colossus. To that extent the units that are built are tailored specifically to kill a single colossus and then finish off the remainder of his army. The two power units in this build are banshees and siege tanks.
I should also note that this is a lot more micro heavier than the old raven build because of the added siege tanks.
Basically the goal of this build is two fold:
Make the protoss player think you’re just turtling
Make the protoss player think you’re banshee harassing and it’s failing
If you can do these two things the protoss player will generally grow confident enough to expand. I should note that if he doesn’t expand you’re not suddenly out it just means this push requires more talent to pull off. However it does mean he won’t have colossus out.
So the build is going to seem kind of funky, you build two marines and a bunker and just keep pumping ou SCVs. You want double gas and an early reactor on your rax. While doing everything you just constantly make marines.
Factory goes down and you build a tech lab on it. Pump out siege tanks (but don’t get siege mode). When you have the gas get down a starport and get a tech lab on that as well. Remember, constant production of SCVs and marines on all of this.
So you get your starport down and in the old build you’d get out a raven. In this build you get out a banshee first. You send the banshee off to do a little bit of harassment. Kill a couple of probes. Maybe pound at a pylon. It’s very important that you play ultra careful with this one banshee, it cannot die.
Raven is the second unit that comes out. As you’re building the raven you research siege tech and continue to make siege tanks, banshees and marines. You push out as siege tech is finishing.
The setup for this push is a little odd. You need to bring 5-6 SCVs with you. Initially they are soakers but don’t attack with them, just move them in to take opening hits while your siege tanks are sieging up. You want to siege within range of the expansion.
You’re microing marines, banshees, siege tanks and the raven together. Once you get down the first wave of his units you want to build bunkers in a position that will contain his main base. You move your siege tanks up there and use the raven to give vision.
A lot of this push’s success comes in not getting over-zealous. You need to constantly stream more marines, banshees and siege tanks to his base and just slowly siege into his base with more and more bunkers.
Deflecting this push is insanely hard specifically because you are bringing three super high DPS units to the fray.
I would practice this in a custom game before you bring it to the ladder. If you execute this poorly then you will just get torn up.
Edits:
April 1, 2012: Added in instructional video showing how this build is pulled off.
This week at the GSL GuineaPig tried out a build that was so insanely good that it made a pretty big hit on the meta game. It is seemingly an unbeatable build considering how zergs generally play against protoss. A standard PvZ is protoss going four gateways and expanding while the zerg fast expands and gets roaches.
But then a Korean player named GuineaPig came along and showed us something new. You can watch one of the two matches here at GomTV:
In this build he does something really funky with a fast expand without a forge or gateway. But he does the exact same strategy quite effectively on Shakuras Plateau (biggest map in the map pack).
It starts off as I said as a fast expansion. Usually a forge fast expand. The common zerg response to this is to get out roaches and try to bust it down because another protoss build focuses on expanding and getting out a pretty unbeatable stalker/sentry/colossus ball of doom.
From here the protoss player throws up two stargates. From one you build only void rays and from the other you build only phoenixes.
The typical response to void rays is hydralisks. Phoenixes actually counter hydralisks as they do bonus damage against light units. As well they counter the other option, mutalisks. So when the zerg player sends in hydralisks or mutalisks they die to phoenixes while the void ray can knock off buildings.
Phase two of this build involves taking a third base once the zerg player reaches a huge mass of hydralisks. From here the protoss player gets colossus and zealots out. So once two colossus are out you have a protoss player sitting on around 19-20 void rays, two colossus and about 20 zealots.
This build is not a cheese it is an insanely good pressure build with so many options for expanding. In the second game (that GomTV makes you pay for) GuineaPig actually expands 4 times total.
Right now this is appearing pretty unbeatable for a zerg player. It might take a couple of weeks before someone comes up with a way to beat this.
A month ago zerg was dominating the ladder. They were roughly 60% win rate against terran and 55% win rate against protoss. After a month the meta game has set in ad TvZ is back to 50% and PvZ is back to 65% (in favor of protoss).
So what changed?
Well… Terrans re-realized the bunker… and zerg cheese stopped working.
After the patch came live two things happened:
Zerg roach rushed with no resistance but a hand full of marines.
Zerg fast expanded with no resistance.
Basically if Terrans could find a way to deny that fast expand or defend themselves against twice as many units they can get back in the game. The answer was quite simple: the bunker.
As said previously a bunker will protect you against any one-base play. You throw down a bunker, get double gas, keep pumping out of two rax (without addons) and try and get a siege tank out. Repair the bunker to kill off as many roaches as possible and push out with marines and two siege tanks. This allows you to get an expansion up and stay ahead. I say stay ahead because a zerg will be roughly 11 workers behind if he 7RR. With every single roach he makes after the initial push he falls another worker behind. It takes 5 rounds of spawn larvae for him to even catch up at that point. With your expansion going down he literally has no way of catching up without triple expanding (which is too risky).
Stop the fast expand is too risky… but it follows the exact same 2-rax FE build. The tactic has been around for quite some time but it was popularized by Slayer’s Boxer at Blizzcon against Fruit Seller. Ironically this tactic failed to win him the match, however the fundamentals were sound. The basic premise of this tactic is to wall off his ramp with bunkers so that he cannot reinforce his hatchery. From here you stream marines into the bunkers until the hatch is dead. If he’s foolish and is making drones you just kill the drones with your marines. Once the hatch goes down you simply return to your base and salvage the bunkers.
If you’re looking for a build order for this it’d go something like this:
If you haven’t gotten it so far you will be stopping SCV production temporarily in this play… also no orbital command. The orbital command gets delayed quite a bit. If you can salvage the bunkers after the hatch is dead you can afford an expansion. If you can’t salvage the bunkers you have to wait a little longer for that expansion.
You can still get out siege tanks and lay down more rax (getting stim is pretty good as well) and just keep following up with constant pressure. Suddenly the zerg player is far less of a threat.
The goal of the bunker in both of these scenarios isn’t to out-right win the match, it’s to put yourself at an advantage. You’re still forced to deal with the normal stuff.
His name is KyrixZenith and he is a legend killer. He took out oGsEnsnare and StAce in GSL tournament, both of which are two very powerful and established pros. oGsEnsnare was a top 8 last season.
The focus of Kyrix’ strategy was originally considered all-in because of how hyper aggressive the play was. It starts off rather normal. The zerg does a 15-hatch 14 pool. It starts getting odd when a large sum of zerglings start getting produced and double gas gets erected. A baneling’s nest goes down and that’s when all hell breaks loose.
A typical baneling bust is 5 banelings and 12 zerglings. Once you defeat the initial baneling bust it takes about 2 minutes for the zerg player to be able to do it again (if he even chooses to do so). However with a 2-hatch approach the bust can be replicated over and over and over.
It’s insanely hyper aggressive and it’s indefensible if you don’t have an early tank out or don’t successfully bunker rush the zerg. I think Kyrix showed zerg what everyone else already knew… zerg out produce everyone else by leaps and bounds.
The build came about because of FakeBoxer (now MarineKing) used SCVs and marines together to kill Nestea. When people saw this it intrigued them and they decided to work on it and optimize it, what they came up with has been called “Mega Rax.”
It seems the meta game for protoss now has shifted from holding off pushes wand expanding into huge rushes. The protoss have re-realized the power of the zealot and are doing a lot of zealot heavy rushes. This has once again made 3-rax push and 2-rax expand both very weak options in the current meta game. So what’s left?
It looks like roach rushing is mostly over as a trend. The new way to go is like this guy:
TheGameGuru.Me 