Flametrooper
09-28-2006, 8:56 PM
Raiding...a very interesting topic. Well, anyways, I made a strat for SC.org and not many people have responded so here is the strat on Warboards.
Before I begin, let me address a few things about this. One, this is my last strategy, and then I am done, so take it easy. Two, this is a combination of Raiding Tactics against Zerg for the Terran and Perfecting the Art of Raiding. It includes both, but has its own form to it. Now, sit back and read, hope you enjoy!
Mastering the Art of Raiding
Infiltration
This is a tactic that calls for ghosts, marines, firebats and medics. If you do not have Brood War, obviously no medics, so make do without them. Along with these, you must have dropships, and siege tanks are good but not required.
Your first objective in this tactic is to cut out the stream of resources that are coming into the enemies Hatcheries or Nexus. For this, ghosts are all but useless, so use a combination of marines, firebats (although they are practically suicidal in this case), and medics. Siege tanks help here, because they can lay waste to drones and probes within seconds, but they are not required.
Either maneuver a dropship to behind your opponent’s resources or drop your troops off and maneuver them. When you are out of sight and ready to strike, come just within range of the enemy workers and open fire. Repeat for as long as you can. If you destroy the whole base with such a small force, than you are definitely not playing a veteran.
Now most of you experienced players out there right now are probably rolling your eyes. Well here, a bit of an improvement.
Possible Counters and how to defend against them: This should be done early in the game, which means you have to make a tech rush while still defending. Good luck on that. Anyways, if it is early in the game, you will be facing hydralisks, dragoons, Zerglings, and Zealots most likely. This can be countered with the units you have. The more dangerous alternative is that your opponent will place a photon cannon or a sunken colony near their resources. Most of the time, players put it in the path between their resources and their base, which is not a big deal, but if they put it outside and behind their resources, you will need a good way to defend against it. Suppose they put a sunken colony there, what do you do? Cloak your ghosts and go kill their workers. What if they put a photon cannon? Get a siege tank, blow it up, drive into their base, and distract them while you kill the workers. What if there is a sunken colony and a spore colony? Destroy the spore colony with a siege tank, do suicide run for distraction, ghosts attack. The Firebats are also a great distracter because they can make dangerous suicide runs, killing many.
Now, if you are mid-game or end-game, there will be air units, so beware. Mutalisks (at least a few) can be sent away from marines and ghosts with medics, but guardians and the likes of that will be a problem. If you can and want to, build a small camp where you can retreat. All there needs to be there are bunkers and missile turrets. Keep air units at standby and Goliaths ready also. Lurkers and cloaked units will also probably be there in a jiffy, so keep science vessels handy. Distractions are key in this strategy, so sending a dropship you just used on a suicide run, making them think you were going to do an attack is good. Lure as many units away from your current position as possible before striking. If carriers or reavers come, use ghosts to do lockdown then finish them off. If a Ultralisk comes, use your siege tank/s and ghosts under cloaking.
Okay. That was just your first objective, now for your second objective.
Your second objective is to spread your opponent’s army thin, and then land troops in different spots, taking advantage of weaknesses.
So, we will pick up where we left off. Your opponent’s economy is all but gone, and your ghosts are constantly making sure he gets none or very little minerals through constantly killing workers.
Now, your opponent’s army should be in some kind of defensive formation right now, and you need to spread them out. To do this, send or drop your troops all over their base. Make them large enough groups to cause damage and focus their army, but small enough so you are not losing a whole chunk of your army.
If you are successful, your opponents army should be spread out by now. Now, find five (more or less) weaknesses in your opponents spread out defensive structure. Build five attack forces, large enough to do quite a bit of damage, but small enough to not lose enough, and march on the weaknesses. Have some back-up forces ready, and when your forces die, most likely, send in your back-up forces into the spots they abandoned to defend other places. Continue this till, one, you run out of minerals, two you don’t want to spend more on this, three, you destroy your opponent, four, you get attacked, and any other reason you can think of.
Now, here is the situation, your opponent’s army is spread out, a large chunk of it is gone, and they most likely do not have the money to buy more troops. Odd how such a small group of infantry did so much damage, huh?
Possible Counters and how to defend against them: Lurkers and cloaked units: if there are lurkers or cloaked units and you need a detector, a science vessel is obviously a first choice. But what if you can’t get a science vessel there? Then you are in trouble. There is not much you can do except the siege tank trick where you put a marine, SCV, or other cheap unit on the approximate location of the lurker and attack your unit with a siege tank. Quite effective. I am sure that this would work with cloaked units too, especially dark templars. Air units: If you are attacked by air units, it is useful to have a goliath, marine, or ghost if you are fighting the protoss. Use your ghost to lockdown the enemy unit, and then destroy it. If it is Zerg, do your best to fight it off.
Now, the final objective. The killing blow. Get a force together of moderate size. You need something that can ward off troops attacking you in a ground assault and you need something that can easily attack air units. It is safer to not take wraiths in because they are practically useless against ground units and hydralisks could quite easily take them down. So, I would suggest taking Goliaths, Siege Tanks, and Marines. All useful for this stage. Siege Tanks will keep them back on the ground, Goliaths will keep them back in the air, and Marines will just be an all around helper. Do not forget to take Science Vessels to detect cloaked units or lurkers.
Now, move in, through dropships preferably, and drop your troops around the enemy base, which should now be greatly reduced. From here, it is easy…open fire. Use your men still behind the resources and your back-ups from Phase 2 and charge, being careful with some units to make sure they do not build more workers. With their resources cut off, most of their units dead, and you constantly attacking, they do not stand much of a chance.
If your first attack fails, retreat some units behind their resources and rebuild. Continue till they are dead. You have just completed (hopefully) the Infiltration tactic. A quick review: Stage 1: Cut off resources, Stage 2: Destroy most of army, Stage three: Finish them off
Possible counters and how to defend against them: By now, you should be well enough off to fend off anything but…Lurkers/Cloaked units: The usual stuff. Science Vessels help. Air units: The Goliaths are there for a reason… Ally’s support: Watch out for this. Finish them off quickly before they can ask for help from allies.
Good luck.
Perfecting the Art of Raiding
The art of raiding is something that many people know, but few people have ever mastered. I haven’t even mastered it, but I love doing it never-the-less. Before you go around raiding people, make sure you have a good Plan B and a Plan C. Also, make sure you have allies who are willing to help guard your base and attack with big armies.
Before you go any further, know that all raiding does is annoy your enemy. It is not necessarily a path to ensure victory.
First of all, for raids you should have a comstat station and units you can use for scouting. Scout around the edges of the enemy base and find a good entry point. If it means making a huge detour around them then coming down, then do it. If you move down the edge of the map and come up from behind, then you can most likely find a weak point.
After you have found a weak spot, position a drop ship with a very small force near there. One siege tank in that force helps. Then in about three other random spots away from the base, drop one siege tank. Destroy as much as you can before the defender’s force comes and kill the siege tank. Repeat a few times if possible then drop troops into the weak spot. This will keep the defender on the tip of his toes and always rebuilding. Therefore, it will be hard for him to send massive forces out.
It also helps if you drop in a few vultures (especially if you are fighting a Zerg or Protoss player) and lay mines in or around the enemy base, limiting their ground movement.
I know, this sounds stupid, but by doing this you either stop the defender from sending out his army, spread his army out, destroy detectors, or all.
True, the defender would regroup soon, so this is where your allies come in. They then bring in a huge air force and many dropships and position it at the weakest spot, while you take lightly loaded dropships and unload in every other spot. Check to see if the weak spot isn’t guarded. If it still is, repeat.
When the weak spot is a bit less guarded then before, send the huge army in. While the big fight goes on, make sure your best raiding parties are at the back with siege tanks and all the other stuff and are just being plain annoying. You will either annihilate the enemy, lose lots and lots of troops and annihilate the enemy, or get annihilated but still do a whole lot of damage.
Now this wasn’t anything. To really do raids and perfect the art of raiding, you have to practice.
By the way some things not to do while raiding are.
Send in Firebats, Wraiths, or other close quarters or weak units.
Send in massive armies
Land in the center of the enemy base
Lure your enemies allies to their base
So, if you want, get out there and start raiding.
Raiding Tactics
Five ghosts sit in a dark corner waiting for reinforcements. One orders a nuke and aims his gun towards his target. As the nuke lands, siege tanks surround the base and destroy it inch by inch…
I, personally, have found two tactics for the Terran that work really well against the Zerg if you do them right. They work well if you are constantly under attack but still want to fight at the enemy base. But you must have a good defense first. There is the Frontal Assault Raiding Tactic and the Surround ‘N Blast Raiding Tactic.
Frontal Assault Raiding Tactic
Requirements: About 6 Siege Tanks, 12 Marines, 2/3/4 Wraiths, about 5 dropships
Optional: 3 Ghosts, Battlecruisers
To do this, land your troops either behind or directly in front of the base. Behind works better for smaller forces, but in front will give you a chance to take out Spore/Sunken Colonies.
Use your Siege Tanks and sit on the outskirts of the base in Siege Mode. DO NOT attack with your marines because if air units attack your tanks, and you do not have air support, you are busted. Destroy enemy units first, then Spore Colonies. When you clear the Spore Colonies, send in air units to help destroy the Sunken colonies. Move your tanks further in till you have destroyed the enemy base. Remember, Siege Tanks are the Zerg’s weakness!
Possible counters and how to stop them: The Zerg could send in their massed army of Mutalisks and Guardians. If you are not inside the Zerg creep, keep an SCV nearby and build up missle turrents. Also, make sure that you have plenty of wraiths and other stuff that can easily defend long range against the guardians especially. Guardians are deadly because they can be right outside a missle turrents range and still hit you. Make sure you have an air force for support against this deadly counter.
Next, the Zerg, with their deadly burrowing junk, could send Lurkers against you. Once again, here you should have detectors nearby and it will be a snap. Science vessels will certainly do. Also, this comes from another strat, but you could place an SCV or another not so important unit on top of the where you think the lurker is, then have your siege tanks shoot your unit, killing the lurker in the process.
If you think of any other life-threatening counters against this attack, please PM me or post a comment.
Surround ‘N Blast Raiding Tactic
Requirements: About 12 Ghosts, 5 Tanks, 10-12 Marines, 2 or more Wraiths, a bunch of Dropships
Optional: More ghosts, Battlecruisers, Science Vessels
For this one, take three dropships and land four ghosts on ever side of the base except the front. Make sure you have three Nukes also. Use the Nukes and cloaking to destroy quite a bit of the base. If this fails, just continue with the frontal assault tactic. Make sure you destroy the Spore Colonies.
When you are done, send the ghosts in and do commando-like raids till they die. While they are fighting send your main force of siege tanks, marines, etc. in front of the base. Make a raid the same way you do in the Frontal Assault. Once again, keep the Marines near the tanks. Destroy units, then Spore Colonies, then Sunken Colonies.
What helps in this is if you attack with the main force right after the Nukes land. By then, there will be total confusion and it will be a good chance for you to attack.
Possible counters and how to prevent them: Air attack: Have goliaths, wraiths, Battlecruisers (if you have the money for it), and if you can build them missile turrets. Lurkers: Get a detector, if not, use the trick mentioned in many other strategies about placing a SCV on where you think the lurker is then shooting the SCV with a siege tank.
These tactics work quite well if you use them correctly. If you don’t, well, you just lost a whole bunch of Minerals and Vespene Gas. Good luck and fight well!
Not the best I know, but there it is. The last two or three tactics aren't all that great, but how about the first one?
Before I begin, let me address a few things about this. One, this is my last strategy, and then I am done, so take it easy. Two, this is a combination of Raiding Tactics against Zerg for the Terran and Perfecting the Art of Raiding. It includes both, but has its own form to it. Now, sit back and read, hope you enjoy!
Mastering the Art of Raiding
Infiltration
This is a tactic that calls for ghosts, marines, firebats and medics. If you do not have Brood War, obviously no medics, so make do without them. Along with these, you must have dropships, and siege tanks are good but not required.
Your first objective in this tactic is to cut out the stream of resources that are coming into the enemies Hatcheries or Nexus. For this, ghosts are all but useless, so use a combination of marines, firebats (although they are practically suicidal in this case), and medics. Siege tanks help here, because they can lay waste to drones and probes within seconds, but they are not required.
Either maneuver a dropship to behind your opponent’s resources or drop your troops off and maneuver them. When you are out of sight and ready to strike, come just within range of the enemy workers and open fire. Repeat for as long as you can. If you destroy the whole base with such a small force, than you are definitely not playing a veteran.
Now most of you experienced players out there right now are probably rolling your eyes. Well here, a bit of an improvement.
Possible Counters and how to defend against them: This should be done early in the game, which means you have to make a tech rush while still defending. Good luck on that. Anyways, if it is early in the game, you will be facing hydralisks, dragoons, Zerglings, and Zealots most likely. This can be countered with the units you have. The more dangerous alternative is that your opponent will place a photon cannon or a sunken colony near their resources. Most of the time, players put it in the path between their resources and their base, which is not a big deal, but if they put it outside and behind their resources, you will need a good way to defend against it. Suppose they put a sunken colony there, what do you do? Cloak your ghosts and go kill their workers. What if they put a photon cannon? Get a siege tank, blow it up, drive into their base, and distract them while you kill the workers. What if there is a sunken colony and a spore colony? Destroy the spore colony with a siege tank, do suicide run for distraction, ghosts attack. The Firebats are also a great distracter because they can make dangerous suicide runs, killing many.
Now, if you are mid-game or end-game, there will be air units, so beware. Mutalisks (at least a few) can be sent away from marines and ghosts with medics, but guardians and the likes of that will be a problem. If you can and want to, build a small camp where you can retreat. All there needs to be there are bunkers and missile turrets. Keep air units at standby and Goliaths ready also. Lurkers and cloaked units will also probably be there in a jiffy, so keep science vessels handy. Distractions are key in this strategy, so sending a dropship you just used on a suicide run, making them think you were going to do an attack is good. Lure as many units away from your current position as possible before striking. If carriers or reavers come, use ghosts to do lockdown then finish them off. If a Ultralisk comes, use your siege tank/s and ghosts under cloaking.
Okay. That was just your first objective, now for your second objective.
Your second objective is to spread your opponent’s army thin, and then land troops in different spots, taking advantage of weaknesses.
So, we will pick up where we left off. Your opponent’s economy is all but gone, and your ghosts are constantly making sure he gets none or very little minerals through constantly killing workers.
Now, your opponent’s army should be in some kind of defensive formation right now, and you need to spread them out. To do this, send or drop your troops all over their base. Make them large enough groups to cause damage and focus their army, but small enough so you are not losing a whole chunk of your army.
If you are successful, your opponents army should be spread out by now. Now, find five (more or less) weaknesses in your opponents spread out defensive structure. Build five attack forces, large enough to do quite a bit of damage, but small enough to not lose enough, and march on the weaknesses. Have some back-up forces ready, and when your forces die, most likely, send in your back-up forces into the spots they abandoned to defend other places. Continue this till, one, you run out of minerals, two you don’t want to spend more on this, three, you destroy your opponent, four, you get attacked, and any other reason you can think of.
Now, here is the situation, your opponent’s army is spread out, a large chunk of it is gone, and they most likely do not have the money to buy more troops. Odd how such a small group of infantry did so much damage, huh?
Possible Counters and how to defend against them: Lurkers and cloaked units: if there are lurkers or cloaked units and you need a detector, a science vessel is obviously a first choice. But what if you can’t get a science vessel there? Then you are in trouble. There is not much you can do except the siege tank trick where you put a marine, SCV, or other cheap unit on the approximate location of the lurker and attack your unit with a siege tank. Quite effective. I am sure that this would work with cloaked units too, especially dark templars. Air units: If you are attacked by air units, it is useful to have a goliath, marine, or ghost if you are fighting the protoss. Use your ghost to lockdown the enemy unit, and then destroy it. If it is Zerg, do your best to fight it off.
Now, the final objective. The killing blow. Get a force together of moderate size. You need something that can ward off troops attacking you in a ground assault and you need something that can easily attack air units. It is safer to not take wraiths in because they are practically useless against ground units and hydralisks could quite easily take them down. So, I would suggest taking Goliaths, Siege Tanks, and Marines. All useful for this stage. Siege Tanks will keep them back on the ground, Goliaths will keep them back in the air, and Marines will just be an all around helper. Do not forget to take Science Vessels to detect cloaked units or lurkers.
Now, move in, through dropships preferably, and drop your troops around the enemy base, which should now be greatly reduced. From here, it is easy…open fire. Use your men still behind the resources and your back-ups from Phase 2 and charge, being careful with some units to make sure they do not build more workers. With their resources cut off, most of their units dead, and you constantly attacking, they do not stand much of a chance.
If your first attack fails, retreat some units behind their resources and rebuild. Continue till they are dead. You have just completed (hopefully) the Infiltration tactic. A quick review: Stage 1: Cut off resources, Stage 2: Destroy most of army, Stage three: Finish them off
Possible counters and how to defend against them: By now, you should be well enough off to fend off anything but…Lurkers/Cloaked units: The usual stuff. Science Vessels help. Air units: The Goliaths are there for a reason… Ally’s support: Watch out for this. Finish them off quickly before they can ask for help from allies.
Good luck.
Perfecting the Art of Raiding
The art of raiding is something that many people know, but few people have ever mastered. I haven’t even mastered it, but I love doing it never-the-less. Before you go around raiding people, make sure you have a good Plan B and a Plan C. Also, make sure you have allies who are willing to help guard your base and attack with big armies.
Before you go any further, know that all raiding does is annoy your enemy. It is not necessarily a path to ensure victory.
First of all, for raids you should have a comstat station and units you can use for scouting. Scout around the edges of the enemy base and find a good entry point. If it means making a huge detour around them then coming down, then do it. If you move down the edge of the map and come up from behind, then you can most likely find a weak point.
After you have found a weak spot, position a drop ship with a very small force near there. One siege tank in that force helps. Then in about three other random spots away from the base, drop one siege tank. Destroy as much as you can before the defender’s force comes and kill the siege tank. Repeat a few times if possible then drop troops into the weak spot. This will keep the defender on the tip of his toes and always rebuilding. Therefore, it will be hard for him to send massive forces out.
It also helps if you drop in a few vultures (especially if you are fighting a Zerg or Protoss player) and lay mines in or around the enemy base, limiting their ground movement.
I know, this sounds stupid, but by doing this you either stop the defender from sending out his army, spread his army out, destroy detectors, or all.
True, the defender would regroup soon, so this is where your allies come in. They then bring in a huge air force and many dropships and position it at the weakest spot, while you take lightly loaded dropships and unload in every other spot. Check to see if the weak spot isn’t guarded. If it still is, repeat.
When the weak spot is a bit less guarded then before, send the huge army in. While the big fight goes on, make sure your best raiding parties are at the back with siege tanks and all the other stuff and are just being plain annoying. You will either annihilate the enemy, lose lots and lots of troops and annihilate the enemy, or get annihilated but still do a whole lot of damage.
Now this wasn’t anything. To really do raids and perfect the art of raiding, you have to practice.
By the way some things not to do while raiding are.
Send in Firebats, Wraiths, or other close quarters or weak units.
Send in massive armies
Land in the center of the enemy base
Lure your enemies allies to their base
So, if you want, get out there and start raiding.
Raiding Tactics
Five ghosts sit in a dark corner waiting for reinforcements. One orders a nuke and aims his gun towards his target. As the nuke lands, siege tanks surround the base and destroy it inch by inch…
I, personally, have found two tactics for the Terran that work really well against the Zerg if you do them right. They work well if you are constantly under attack but still want to fight at the enemy base. But you must have a good defense first. There is the Frontal Assault Raiding Tactic and the Surround ‘N Blast Raiding Tactic.
Frontal Assault Raiding Tactic
Requirements: About 6 Siege Tanks, 12 Marines, 2/3/4 Wraiths, about 5 dropships
Optional: 3 Ghosts, Battlecruisers
To do this, land your troops either behind or directly in front of the base. Behind works better for smaller forces, but in front will give you a chance to take out Spore/Sunken Colonies.
Use your Siege Tanks and sit on the outskirts of the base in Siege Mode. DO NOT attack with your marines because if air units attack your tanks, and you do not have air support, you are busted. Destroy enemy units first, then Spore Colonies. When you clear the Spore Colonies, send in air units to help destroy the Sunken colonies. Move your tanks further in till you have destroyed the enemy base. Remember, Siege Tanks are the Zerg’s weakness!
Possible counters and how to stop them: The Zerg could send in their massed army of Mutalisks and Guardians. If you are not inside the Zerg creep, keep an SCV nearby and build up missle turrents. Also, make sure that you have plenty of wraiths and other stuff that can easily defend long range against the guardians especially. Guardians are deadly because they can be right outside a missle turrents range and still hit you. Make sure you have an air force for support against this deadly counter.
Next, the Zerg, with their deadly burrowing junk, could send Lurkers against you. Once again, here you should have detectors nearby and it will be a snap. Science vessels will certainly do. Also, this comes from another strat, but you could place an SCV or another not so important unit on top of the where you think the lurker is, then have your siege tanks shoot your unit, killing the lurker in the process.
If you think of any other life-threatening counters against this attack, please PM me or post a comment.
Surround ‘N Blast Raiding Tactic
Requirements: About 12 Ghosts, 5 Tanks, 10-12 Marines, 2 or more Wraiths, a bunch of Dropships
Optional: More ghosts, Battlecruisers, Science Vessels
For this one, take three dropships and land four ghosts on ever side of the base except the front. Make sure you have three Nukes also. Use the Nukes and cloaking to destroy quite a bit of the base. If this fails, just continue with the frontal assault tactic. Make sure you destroy the Spore Colonies.
When you are done, send the ghosts in and do commando-like raids till they die. While they are fighting send your main force of siege tanks, marines, etc. in front of the base. Make a raid the same way you do in the Frontal Assault. Once again, keep the Marines near the tanks. Destroy units, then Spore Colonies, then Sunken Colonies.
What helps in this is if you attack with the main force right after the Nukes land. By then, there will be total confusion and it will be a good chance for you to attack.
Possible counters and how to prevent them: Air attack: Have goliaths, wraiths, Battlecruisers (if you have the money for it), and if you can build them missile turrets. Lurkers: Get a detector, if not, use the trick mentioned in many other strategies about placing a SCV on where you think the lurker is then shooting the SCV with a siege tank.
These tactics work quite well if you use them correctly. If you don’t, well, you just lost a whole bunch of Minerals and Vespene Gas. Good luck and fight well!
Not the best I know, but there it is. The last two or three tactics aren't all that great, but how about the first one?