7 Steps To Victory Tora Tora Tora
Welcome back to the “7 Steps to Victory”! I hope you enjoyed the first step and found it to be useful. This step is titled “Tora Tora Tora” and the topic is defensive tactics that are essential to defending the rush in SC2. The reason I used the name “Tora Tora Tora” to title this step is because of the hit movie back from 1970 about the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The Americans were caught off guard by the attack and did not defend very well, leaving the base in ruins. And so they say the rest is history. Now in Starcraft 2 you have an advantage the US did not in the Pearl Harbor attack. That advantage is that you know for a 100% fact that there is someone that will be trying to destroy your base. So with that understanding, you must take action to defend your base, at least to some degree. Defense alone will not win you the game; it can however keep you from losing it. I would like to bring up some core defensive strategies to defending the rush for each race. These strategies are used to counter any rush that your opponent may be trying very early in game. Perhaps the most important time of the game to have a good defense is in the beginning when you will not have a large army yet. Once you start massing up an army, then at that point your army can serve as your defense too. But for this article I want to focus on defensive strategies that will help you survive a rush. Let us first look at the Terran. Terrans have the strongest defense in the game. In SC2 a crucial improvement took place from SC1; that improvement is that now the Terran can drop their supply depots. This allows a Terran player to use these supply depots at the choke point of their base to create a wall. Not to go off topic, but I want to make sure everyone understands the importance of the choke point; especially for Protoss and Terran players. Every base has a choke point, some are more narrow than others but every base has one. The choke point is always at the ramp of the base. This is where the first part of your defense should be set up. With a few well placed buildings a wall can be built for either a Terran or Protoss player; and with Terran the wall in only penetrable when the buildings get toppled. Back to the Terran defense, the choke point is where the wall will be put up. On most maps you will see that a Terran player can wall off their base with a few supply depots and one or two Barracks. It’s crucial to get this wall sealed off ASAP. The Terran wall is amazing at stopping Protoss and Zerg rushes. Even just 4 Marines standing behind the wall can hold off 8-10 Zerglings or 6-7 Zealots. The reason is because these units must first destroy the buildings before they can invade the base and attack. Another good thing to do is have an SCV or two near the wall to repair the buildings as they are getting attacked. At this early stage in the game with your wall freshly built you may be thinking you’re doing alright. But you are still vulnerable. And you are the most vulnerable at this point to other Terran players using the dreaded Reaper rush. The Reaper can just completely avoid the wall; seeing that the Reaper has the ability to jump over cliffs and get right back to your workers. To avoid this you will want to have some marines back there ready to fight off those Reapers. As you begin to approach mid game there is a good chance that your Zerg or Protoss opponent may already have air units; especially the Protoss. The Void Ray rush is extremely common and players who are good at it can have VR’s out in less than 7 minutes. If you are not ready for this it can spell disaster really quickly. The way to defend against this early rush is to have lots of Marines on hand to counter or have Marines with a few nicely placed Missile Turrets in the back of the mineral line. The Zerg may have Mutalisk out; the same advice applies here have Marines ready and some Turrets up. Now let’s discuss the Protoss defense. The Protoss only have one defensive building, the Photon Cannon, however Photon Cannons are very versatile; they can attack both ground and air in addition to them being detectors. The Protoss like the Terran do have a pretty decent defensive strategy that can use the choke point to its advantage against an early game rush. The Protoss can’t use the wall quite like a Terran, because they do not have a building like the Supply Depot that can go up and down to let ground troops out. But you are able to use buildings to make your choke point even narrower. Most Protoss walls use a couple of Gateways to make the choke point even more narrow; and then at that little crack in between the Gateways you will place a few Zealots and make them “hold position”. By making the Zealots hold position they will just stand and wait to be attacked keeping the wall intact. At this point you will want to place a couple of Photon Cannons right behind your wall. Doing this will now enable you to very successfully hold off another Protoss or Zerg player rushing. When the Zerglings come rushing into your base they will have to fight your Zealot first; since they are at a choke point it will be a straight up fight Zergling vs Zealot. This matchup does not bode well for the Zergling as just one Zealot can tear through 3-4 Lings. If you did not have the Zealot holding its position in the middle of the choke point than all of the Zerglings could surround and attack that one Zealot at the same time, killing the Zealot much quicker. On top of this great positioning you will also have your Photon Cannons hammering away at the Zerglings as well. If it is a Protoss rushing you with his Zealots they will run into the same dilemma. It will be Zealot vs Zealot, if of course you have them positioned right, in the narrow point of your wall. You will now have the advantage, seeing that your Photon Cannons will also be hammering away at the enemy Zealot. A Terran Marine rush will be just slightly different to defend. You will want to take your Zealots back a bit so the Cannons can do most of the work. A good player will know how to micro Marines so that they can attack Zealots without getting attacked (since Marines are ranged fighters and Zealots are melee fighters). Now you must not forget to also put some Photon Cannons in the back of your base too; especially in early game situations vs Terran when there is the chance of a Reaper rush. If you get rushed by Reapers and only have Zealots to defend your as good as dead; Reapers can run circles around Zealots all day and still hammer away at your probes. However just two well placed Photon Cannons can cover your entire mineral line and protect you from the Reaper rush, or conversely having a few early Stalkers can also help you to defend the Reapers. The Zerg have a slightly different defensive strategy. This is because they cannot utilize the choke point like a Terran or Protoss player can. The creep is not going to get out that far early in the game. So this limits the early game Zerg defense to keeping everything very tight and close to your mineral line, because that is no doubt where the rush attack will take place. You should already know by now of the Queens overall importance to playing as Zerg, she spawns larvae, she spreads creep and she can even heal. However it must also be noted that she is a very good early game defensive unit. She for one can attack both air and ground. Against another Zerg the early game rush will either be Roaches or Zerglings. If the opponent has a very similar number of Zerglings as you do, then you will prevail because your Queen can help. If you get rushed by Roaches you will either need Roaches yourself or large numbers of Zerglings. In addition to the Zerglings and Queen you will want to place a few Spine Crawlers close to both each other and the base. This allows them to protect your mineral line and both attack at the same time. Many Zerg players will just overlook getting any Spine Crawlers at all and instead will just pump out as many either Zerglings or Roaches as they can, and use that for defense. But it must be noted that having a few Spine Crawlers can really make a big difference in holding off the early game rush. Once you start getting mid to late game your best defense then turns into your offense. By this point you should be well on your way to amassing your army and that is what you will use in the event your opponent is bringing in their army to your base. But never forget to take the proper steps to build a solid early game defense. The “rush” takes place quite often on BNEt for SC2. I hope this step helped you and I advise you to implement it into your game next time you play; especially if you are having problems stopping the rush.
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