Strat Corner #3: Goody's mech in TvP

Now that we’re starting to see everyone develop their own styles in Heart of the Swarm, there’s one player whose style everybody knew. However, due to the game design in Wings of Liberty, it never became a 100% viable style in TvP. Well, it’s starting to look like that might all change.

The panzergeneral ESC’s Goody, has been fine-tuning his mech play in HoTS, and I’m very excited to bring it to you in this week’s Strategy Corner.

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Initial style breakdown

At the core of this style, it's still the good old, classic Goody mech: very methodical, insanely strong late-game compositions and production. Yet, it does differentiates from Wings of Liberty mech in the following three ways:

• Early-game: Usage of Widow Mines
• Mid-game: Hellbats mixed in
• Late-game: Mass Thors in High-Impact Payload (HIP) mode

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Fun times with the Widow Mines



The Panzergeneral has found good use for this little bugger in the early-game. First, he gets out on the map with his initial hellions and runs straight into the main base. There are two big benefits here, as it usually gains great scouting information and keeps the protoss on the backfoot. You may even kill a probe or two you son of a gun.

If the protoss player is still bold and moves out on the map with a zealot/stalker/MSC, you can use your two widow mines and marines to defend at home pretty easily. If the protoss stays on the backfoot, you can actually utilize your two widow mines offensively and just park them at his natural.

Defensive Widow Mine inside main

Offensive Widow Mine at protoss' natural

Note the probes coming off the line in the screencap on the right, mining is at the very least disrupted at the natural until detection can put an end to the widow mine shenanigans.

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Tanks, Tanks, Tanks – and then “The Trade”


Use this benchmark as a way to know you’re on the right path. The unit composition depends on what your protoss opponent is going, and in this case he opened Stargate and transitioned into Robotics units. This is pretty common, so it’s not a bad benchmark to set for yourself typically.

Now here comes one of the most interesting parts of the entire style. Goody gets a strong economy, he gets the army, and he pushes out when he’s nearly maxed out. It sounds like standard mech, so he wins from here right? Wrong. This is the point where Goody does what I like to call “The Trade”, and in this case, the trade is getting rid of excess tanks in order to replenish that supply with well-upgraded Thors. The picture below shows something that probably happens to Goody pretty commonly when he plays this style.




That’s not even close to efficient, and traditionally with a mech army, you have to trade effectively. However, Goody has established himself a strong economy, and continues to pump out units. Brace yourselves, Thor is coming…



THOR IS HERE, NOW IN HIGH-IMPACT PAYLOAD MODE. Once again, when it gets this late in the game it depends purely on the protoss’s unit composition. However, the production benchmark is still very strong regardless, as you’ll want to be flexible with what you reinforce with.

In these screencaps, Goody is up against someone who is still using a mostly ground-based force with immortals, colossus, and a few tempests in the sky. In response, he mixes in additional tanks and of course some ghosts to deal with this, and the results are crushing.



In that huge cluster are 9 Thors, 10 Tanks, 6 Vikings, 6 (deceased) Ghosts, and a handful of Hellbats. In other games where skytoss is a larger emphasis, there are no tanks at all by the end of the game. And if you were wondering, he crushes this mostly protoss ground army consisting of a ton of immortals and colossi brutally without losing much at all.

The common backbone of his army in the late-game regardless of the protoss unit composition is the presence of a lot of bulky Thors, almost always in the new High-Impact Payload mode. They actually shred units up on the ground and of course deal with units like the tempest immensely well. I actually thought the new HIP mode was not that strong, but after seeing Goody utilize this composition numerous times, I am a believer.

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Potential counters

Since I haven’t seen much of this style, I can’t say anything concrete on the matter, but here are my two top guesses right off the bat:

1) A very strong skytoss composition that mixes in Carriers. Strong utilization of interceptors could disrupt the AI of the Thors, causing them to not do as well. Throw in 15 to 20 Void Rays, and you might have a win.
2) A very heavy harass style while continually taking bases. Goody didn’t utilize hellbat drops or widow mine harass much throughout his games, he prefers to stay tightly packed while he takes his bases. Delaying them or his production for any period of time while strengthening your economy could put you in a strong position to overwhelm him with pure numbers at some point.

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Video Goodyness

So there you have it, with a few minor tweaks in his play thanks to HoTS, Goody is making mech work for him in HoTS. If you’re interested in seeing more nuances of the build, the engagements, and more, check out a cast I did of this style against CreatorPrime(named SKTRain in this game) where Creator actually utilizes mostly air. Goody in response gets almost no tanks in his "ultimate" late-game composition and does very well.

P.S. – His APM is still pretty damn low, averaging between 80 and 130. Deal with it.

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