Jon's New Reaper Rush Build

So for a long time I figured that Reapers would be a better unit to make early than Marines since you can use them to harass...

Well... I've unleashed a monster.

Players have been doing a 7 rax Reaper rush for a while but it's not that effective because it can be countered with a rush or by sending units against the player.

This build is immune to that.

So basically here's how it goes.

1. Queue SCVs until you have up to 11 supply queued. As soon as your minerals hit 100 after you've queued all your SCVs, send that 8th SCV that's out to build a Barracks at your choke as if you're going to wall (because you are). You'll hit 150 minerals right when your SCV gets in position.

2. Use your next 100 minerals to build a refinery.

3. Use your next 100 minerals to build a supply depot to further block the choke.

4. As soon as the Refinery finishes send two additional SCVs to mine it.

5. As soon as the Barracks finishes upgrade your Command Center to an Orbital Command.

6. Immediately following this upgrade add a tech lab to your Barracks, further blocking the ramp.

7. As your first supply depot finishes, send this SCV to scout.

8. Once the tech lab finishes begin producing Reapers and rally point them to your opponent's base (use your SCV to narrow down what base they're in).

9. When the Orbital Command finishes continue building SCVs, using MULEs, and using 100 minerals to build a second supply depot to finish blocking your choke.

10. Start harassing with Reapers, when you hit 150 excess minerals start building two additional Barracks and return to a standard Terran Infantry build.

This strategy requires a lot of micro. Don't try it unless you're an expert with micro. But it will also make you pretty good with move-hold, move-hold, move-hold.

Also, if the opponent techs to Stalkers or Roaches or Marauders, don't cry. You want them to do this. Now you just forced them to tech while you're switching to MMM. More than likely they will panic and you have a very good chance of rocking their world with your first push.

Keep your Reapers alive as long as possible and use them for hit and runs. Force them to run their units around their base. There's a good chance they will make a mistake. I've ever had players accidentally A-click their own workers or blow up necessary buildings. It's pretty funny.

Have fun out there!

P.S. - Here's an example replay!

 

for some reason, i cant get the replay to work, it wont download the files ingame.

 

How is this different to the 7 rax or the 9 supply rax build?'
replay doesn't work by the way.. I am really curious now xD

 

just tried this. i had 3 reapers with your build. enemy had 8 zealots took out my gate and then my engineers = game over.

also a half decent player only needs a couple of ranged attackers by there mineral line to deal with ur reapers and if it fails your on the back foot massively.

 

I fixed the replay, I had grabbed a really old one instead of a really new one. The replay should settle your doubts. It's a 2v2 but it works just as well in 1v1, 3v3, and 4v4.

@ fish,

If you let zealots break your wall you're doing it wrong.

 

ok ill watcgh your replay now it works

 

ok just watched ur replay. i dont wana sink ur ship mate but that wernt great.... the terran was a deffo noob. 1 of them was building depots behind his mineral line instead of as a gate?

and there were points in that game, at 4 mins wen u had 1 reaper in his base he had 4 zealots.

If he attacked u with them 4 zealots he wud of knocked ur wall down. and then at 7 mins u lost a couple of reapers and he had about 7 zealots. again you had absolutely no base defense bar 1 reaper.
and the terran went for ur base. but cos he was a noob all his marines run down the side of your base and ur reapers got loads of free hits and took them down.

if they had attacked u efficiently with the marines / zealots u deffo wud of had everything in ur base destroyed.

fair enuff it worked... and it does work occasionly .. but as i said half decent players dont put up with reapers. thoughts?

 

Cannon towers/Stalkers/Rines/spine crawlers... Reapers down.

However, 3 reapers can take out 10 zealots without a problem... I'd actually just dance aronud them and kill the pylons, then pick off the units. I'm curious as to what league this is working in. Just to establish a sort of understanding of the different play levels/styles.
________
vaporite solo

 

Works in all leagues. That was just a randomly picked replay to show the build order. The idea is that the build isn't easily countered. You can't just build a certain unit to counter the Reapers because the Reapers aren't what kills you.

What I'm trying to do is force the opponent to go a certain route. Because of this build the enemy player is forced to tech a ranged, armored unit which I can then easily counter with an early push of MMM.

The idea here is that I have committed absolutely nothing to my rush (I'm going to build the Barracks anyway) while my opponent is forced to tech and waste resources battling my rush. Whether the rush is effective or not isn't important. In order to beat it they have to make themselves vulnerable while I transition into a powerful MMM build.

Also, these games are played at all levels because the placement situation of Battle.net isn't working well. But I have used this successfully on Platinum and Diamond players.

I might like to also point out that prior to watching the replay the comment was that "this would never work too easy to counter" and then afterward it changed to "it only works sometimes."

It's not a matter of working. It's a matter of an easy rush that when used properly can win the game at mid-game decisively.

 

I prefer 10 SCVs: Supply depot
Supply finished: Rax.
While rax builds: 1 refinery.
Soon as you hit 150 minerals, another rax.
Build one reaper, get another refinery, upgrade nitro boast.
Pump reapers to 4-6. Scan enemy base right before you go in to find weakest point.
They don't have any counter to your reapers? You win!
They do? Use them to harrass, distract, and prevent expansion while you go into a MnM build or a Maru/Tank build.

 

IMO the 10 rax reaper without the wall comes too late to be effective at higher levels of play. That first surprise reaper at like 3:30 kills at least 3-4 probes and makes it worth it. :\ 10 Rax Leaves you open to Z rush as well. Not good in 2v2.

Essentially there's no reason to go for the 10 supply depot because you don't need that much supply to build Reapers until after your Barracks finishes, so build the supply while the tech lab is going and it comes to the same difference but your Reapers get out faster.

 

Oh, then yeah, a reaper harass can be very effective. You get to scout and see what he's doing, while wasting a lot of his time/resources and hopefully killing a few probes.
________
Mazda 737C

 

any chance of a replay of your harassment against a semi decent player who has protected there mineral line with something other than supply depots pls

would realy like to see how you change things then as when the mineral line is slightly protected my reapers wud just die and id be on the back foot.

eg id reaper them take out 4 probes theyd then they wud protect there line. meanwhile they wud have double the MM i have and possibly early siege tanks as theyve avoided goin reapers and finish me off.

 

I'm going to test all of these builds and see. The problem with the rush is that you skip SCV's and even if you do make him go a certain tech-route, you'll have to kill some workers to stay even in economy.

 

hes not realy skipping scvs as against a zerg or protoss he has the advantage of calling in the mule and then continueing to build constant scvs i think.

ive tried the buiild order and just cant make it work personally.

 

Here's a couple more reps. These were both Diamond players according to b.net

 

thanks jon for the replays. just won 3/3 so far with your tactic. first game i won even tho i made mistakes and didnt have the 2nd com centre up till quite late as i was too busy micro'ing the reapers and mm army.

this was only in silver league tho and the opponents were not great based on the points i received.
will carry on testing it.

So far i think i have underestimated how much a few reapers bobbing up and down effects the enemy. they lose there barings on the game and become stressed.

last game i played was against terran. eventually they managed to get a siege tank up and a mm army but by this time i had an expo (also wiped there premature expo out).
His base/army was stretched from the reapers on 1 side(just 1-3) and mm on the other and after i got his siege tank down he gave up.
he was franticly rushing round his base and didnt have a clue where the next attack was gona come in from.


however i still feel if someone done it to me i could easily cope with just a couple of ranged attackers by my mineral line. will carry on testing this tactic.

 

I'm a zerg player and love when terran players decide to go w/ reaper harass. One spine crawler, queen, and speedlings on creep easily take care of the reaper rush. I also know that even if I lose some drones, my opponent spent tons of gas on the harassment and is going to be late with his real army. Against zerg at least, marines/tanks/vikings are much more of a pain to deal with.

I'd guess that this works better against terran and toss as their armies are a bit less mobile and they can't rebuild drones nearly as fast as zerg.

 

yea i argee on closer inspection the tactic seems to fail against half decent zerg players. ultimate fail tbh it works on occasions but overall i think its better to build an army straight away than go reapers.

u catch people out occasionly.. but its just a cheese tactic and i dont believe any diamond plat or half decent players will lose out to this.

 

Yeah, doesn't work as well against a 1v1 Zerg. I will still usually build one to keep up the illusion and to scout (SCV is worthless for scouting). Sometimes it makes them go Roach which makes my Marauders all the more effective.