[OxygeN]

The humblest offensive unit the terran army boasts, yet the most versatile, and destructive if used to its optimum capacity. What do I mean by optimum capacity? Everybody knows that marines are a VERY effective mineral dump, and they works wonder in pockets, or in big numbers, isn’t that already optimum? Not really, the optimum way to use marines, is with support, and with support they are various scenarios, where they can be utilized to maximum capacity.

Most of the marine play that I know of has been inspired by two geniuses, oGs.TheStc, and TLO. They are the two most spectacular players so far in SC2, and nobody else(biased view here, :X), imo, does not even comes close to them. Before I start, let me recommend a few replays, which is so easily accessible on youtube, but I cannot embed it here because I’m at work, in any case, do go look them up. In particular STC vs Cool, TheWind Tester, ArgosZenith.

Before I start, let me get the basic dynamics of Marines to one side,

HP : 45/55
Damage : 6/7/8/9 (AND THE LEVEL 3 WEAPON UPGRADE ICON LOOKS BAD-ASS!)
Armor : 0/1/2/3
MS : 2.25(+1.12)
AS : 0.83(0.42)
Cost : 50 Minerals
Prerequisite : Barracks

Abilities :

Stim Pack. The most bad-ass skill for any terran user, 1.5 times the movement speed, 1.33 times the attack speed, is there anything else you want? Yeah, actually I am looking for a 2 times damage buff too! LOL. Minus 10 HP per use.

Drawbacks is that without medivacs, you cannot engage in hit and run skirmishes, u cannot stim to attempt to kill a lone stalker, neither can you stim to run around your base to catch the most annoying unit in the game, mutalisks.

You know I always crack a stupid joke with my friends, drinking red bull is like stim pack. Gives you lots of powerrr, but makes you damn tired later! And of course, sleeping is medivac!

Combat Shields. +10 HP. Needless to say, when is more HP not welcomed?

Drawbacks of either, you need the tech lab, and GAS.

Before you go wtf, which noob doesn’t get a tech lab? Well, there are some cases which you won’t have ANY gas at all to spare! Jump over to the last section on timing pushes, and you will understand where all the gas went to.

Counters to poor marines : Zerglings, Roaches, Collossus, Psi Storms, Siege Tanks, BANELINGS, chargelots with a few FFs behind your marines.

Well, that’s fine, because we as Terrans are proud to mix MANY units in our army! A typical army of mine will consist of about 5-6 units? Ghosts, Marines, Maruaders, Hellions, Medivacs, Ravens, Banshees?

Well, those are my favorite units, and to be very honest, I HATE the siege tank. :/ hate hate hate! I’ll rather a stimmed immortal! Or if ever possible, nothing would excite me more than something like a double barrel, fast shooting single target mobile tank!(like C&C style!)

Okay, so enough of the small talk, here comes the stuff. When do you mass marines, why, and how do you control them in battle?

When : almost ALL the time. They are too good for 50 minerals, and the only time you should stop massing them is when the opponent gets insane amounts of colossus(something that has no hard counter), HTs and banelings are fine to continue massing, as with all the other counters stated above, because they CAN die. Collosus CAN’T, unless you have like 5-6 vikings already, which is very unlikely you would mass out so many as you still need medivacs. So in such a case, tech lab switch! Mass marauders and you should be fine!

Why : they attack both air and ground, occupy little space, and is very very mobile. Deters sudden outburst of 3 VRs owning your whole Maruader Medivac Ghost army if you so choose to go that, and is also a soft counter to annoying units like phoenixes and mutalisks!

How : The idea is that Marines are very fragile, in 10s, in 20s, in 30s, whichever it is. Think of them as glass cannons(I’m sure anyone who has played a decent amount of MMORPGs would know what this is), you have to PROTECT them. Also in MMORPGs, who doesn’t aim glass cannons in a guild war? Same thing, your opponents HATE your marines, so use them as bait!

This is utilized most commonly by siege tanks and marine usage, luring the opponent to commit to slaughter a “stray” 20 marines and you pull back and they walk directly into tank fire. Not the best way to start the morning huh. Witness TheStc does utter ownage micro using this against a zerg on scrap station, I believe it was thewind, watch his awesome marine lure siege tank settlement, and insane micro afterwards.

Beyond that, marines are very good for early game pushes! Be it an offensive bunker, insane SCVs all ins and the such, marines slot into any early game composition easily
Timing Pushes

In fact, I would like to add that A LOT of timing pushes revolves around the massive amounts of marines that you could get off pumping from 3-4 raxes…

Banshee timing pushes, around 60-70pop,
Thor timing pushes 40ish pop,
1 Tank timing push 35ish pop,
Hellion timing push 27ish pop,
Ghost timing push, 40ish pop

The list goes on, and on, and on!

Off-topic, I love to use marines vs mutalisks, it kinda excites me when a mutalisk dies, and it was from massive marine focus fire! LOL! :X

Okay, I know by now you’ll probably be half-asleep, as many of the utilizations here, are pretty obvious, still, for those that I may have given a fresh insight to, hope this was a decent read!

Cheers, and have a great day playing SC2, while I’m stuck in office. ):

PS: Sorry Team Singapore I couldn’t turn up yesterday!!!! Anddd cow, blame ice! Not me! :/