get me past top ten

[JAGeFamine]

I just got my void ray icon! woot. toss is easily my best race. i could use advice on terran and zerg late game techniques. I can M&M, and mass roach/ling. I find myself going favoring hydras, my nydus attacks never go as planned though. Anyone find the ultralisk capable of anything or got a good banshee strat?

[JAGeSoc]

Is that the random one? I haven't really used random (or the other races besides protoss, for that matter) yet so I'm less familiar with their strategies. MM is incredibly effective early on in sufficient numbers, marauders plow through zealots, stalkers and roaches alike, especially once they have concussive grenades. certainly lings are a bit more of an issue for them but with a few marines mixed in you should do fine. This becomes even more true once you get starports and add medivacs to the mix, dubbed "MMM" and its an extremely effecitve terran mid-game strategy. I don't have a banshee build order off hand, but getting them early can be quite effective, considering many players will not get turrets on their mineral line leaving them without detectors to stop you from killing their probes. Later on, they're also quite good at anti-ground in large numbers, I played one game where me and my partner had ground-heavy armies, expecting our bit of air to handle the few banshees we saw with little issue. What they ended up doing was going mass banshees with a good deal of vikings thrown in, so unless you have heavy anti air (preferably air-to-air) then there was little you could do about it and we got steamrolled.

Hydras are quite good, as well as mutas for a versatile "mass-this-to-win" unit. To nydus you need to hit the enemy in an unprotected part of their base, oftentimes this is in a far corner off to the side in the mid game before they turtle with turrets or, as before, at their mineral line. You want to have the worm ready to go so that when you get your overlord in to generate creep you can have it up and running as fast as possible. then you simply load everything you have into it. If you hit their mineral line, a handful of units will do, otherwise i'd have a fairly substantial army. Scout it out, and be mindful of the people who will stack their units in their base. The last time somebody tried to nydus me I stayed behind my nexus so they couldn't see me, then rushed them with my army as my partner flew in from the side after we let them get all their units into my base. Ultralisks are powerful to be sure, but I'm not sure how viable they are in the end game especially since their hitbox is so large that it blocks many of your troops. The most common zerg units i see are speedlings (early metabolic boost harrassing), hydras, mutas, mixed air mutas/corruptors/broodlords. Sol can definitely give you a better idea of what's good to be using with zerg though.

[JAGeScimitar]

Seems to me the game has changed far more than the previous starcraft, this seems more strategy and unit knowledge than the first one where a larger force was going to most likely win unless someone was very wise

[JAGeFamine]

i had a nydus full of roaches come in some guys mineral line. thanks for the advice, also getting more comfortable getting air with protoss, void rays and such. hopefully it will help get more comfortable the other air units. battlecruisers got crazy buffed?

[JAGeScimitar]

From what I saw it didnt seem extra buffed than what it use to be, It was always the strongest unit, Carrier for Toss got really dumbed down though from what I saw

Add: Quess they figured since they added the Toss Mother Ship they should weaken the Toss Other main Air Unit

[JAGeSoc]

Toss have an incredibly weak air game right now. The other two races are much more suited to it. Mass Carriers can win you the game but can be focus fired really easily, void rays are good early on or in large number with a lot of ground support but you cant use them strictly by themselves. Phoenixes were horrible until the patch, we'll have to see how they are now but I'm doubtful they're super powerful now.

[JAGeSol]

battlecruisers got crazy buffed?

Not really, heres an example from a 2v2 earlier I did with soc I had about 45 or so corrupters with a handful of mutas and a swarm of lings and I managed to take out about 24 battlecruisers with corruption while losing only 1/2 my lings, 2 mutas and 3 corrupters. Never EVER mass just one unit in this game, you are asking for a beating. Soc can tell you how that I game I just described ended. I parked my swarm over that guys 8 starports and dared him into training more air (which he did) while Soc's colossi were doing a merry jig in his partners base. If he didn't quit I would have turned some of them into broodlords and taught him the error of his ways.

If he had vikings (which corruptors dont do bonus damage too) escorting his BCs then things would have been different.

[JAGeFamine]

i was just going by what i read in the patch notes, i am getting mean with banshee rush. still struggling with zerg, t2 aa is a pain. also got my banshee icon, but thats a gay icon so i'm sticking with the void ray.

[JAGeSoc]

The mothership isn't that great, it's a glass cannon. It moves really slow, and therefore can get decimated by a handful of quick units if caught without backup. vortex is an amazing spell, but its difficult to use properly. The best use of it i've seen is vortexing the enemys army in 2v2, having your buddy call in a nuke so that just as vortex wears off the nuke hits the enemy before they can move. Bam, free reign of the map.

[JAGeScimitar]

Shame they removed the other original ability Planet Cracker..... Quess they decided that would make it far to powerful....