I discussed about INnoVation’s approach to the new Hellbat buff in the last post and now I will discuss about MarineKing’s in this post.

He used it against Curious yesterday on Proleague.

Build order

10 – Supply Depot
12 – Barracks
13 – Refinery
16 – Orbital
@50 gas – Reaper
@400 mineral – Command Centre (@100% – Orbital)
@100 mineral – Supply Depot
@100% Reaper – Reactor
@75 mineral – Refinery
@100 gas – Factory
@100% Reactor – 2x Marines
@100% Factory – Swap Factory onto Reactor. Tech Lab with Barracks and Starport next to the Barracks. Hellions production (Don’t stop at 6).
31 – Supply Depot
@100% Tech Lab – Reactor on Barracks
@100% Starport – Swap on Tech Lab and produce Banshee. Research Cloak.
40 – Supply Depot (Build Supply Depot accordingly from here)
@100% Reactor – Marines production and Armory

Hellions and Reaper do their usual task. Move out with Marines when the Armory is 50% done. Pressure with Banshee and Hellions.

Cloak and Armory should complete at approximately the same time. Transform to Hellbats when these two are ready, and cloak the Banshee. Attack with 8 Hellbats (2 Hellions on the way), 1 Banshee (1 on the way) and 6 Marines.

 

Explanation

This build is designed specifically to utilise the transformation early on.

I did not make a typo, it is 13 gas not 12. Typically, you take gas at 12 for Reaper opening. With 13 gas, the Reaper is delayed, but you get slightly earlier Command Centre. The early second Refinery is needed for Cloak Banshee. The key of this build is to have that early Armory for transformation. It lines up nicely with the Cloak research. To be fair, MarineKing did not execute it as well as he could. Oh yes, I’m saying MarineKing did not micro well. Still the damage is obvious.

After the initial attack, just converge back to a standard convergent point for a standard macro game. Control the map with the Banshees while you macro up. Constant Marine and Hellbat production. Start Marauder production when stim is about to complete. Attack again with everything when you have stim, +1/+1 and Medivac.

This is a rather easy build to execute, and extremely effective too.