Strategy by: Bold
Map: Medium-Sized Land
Race: Terran vs. Terran
Date: 2/1/00

This is a Terran vs. Terran strategy which can be best performed on a medium-sized land map (like Lost Temple) or with less effectiveness, on islands.  The title pretty much explains this strategy, it's simply a vulture drop and contrary to popular belief, can be very powerful.  The idea behind this strategy is to protect your choke point using an inexpensive, yet effective early defense while getting a quick Factory and Starport in order to catch your opponent off guard with your Vulture drop.  It may sound like this strategy wouldn't be effective at all; however, if you read on you may be surprised.  The key to this strategy is the element of suprise combined with micromanagement.  I will explain this strategy with a build order, incorporating a sample game that I played involving this strategy as well.  Let's get into the build order:

On your 8th SCV you want to build a Supply Depot at your choke point, you are going to construct a temporary wall-in.

The next part of your wall-in is your Barracks, which should be constructed with your 10th or 11th SCV.  Proceed to scout your enemy's base with the SCV that finished your first Supply Depot.  Also, you are going to want to build a Refinery with your 12th SCV.  *Important Note: Make sure you have 3 SCVs on gas as soon as the Refinery finishes.

As soon as your Barracks is done, take the SCV that built it and have him make a second Supply Depot as shown below.  Then, begin producing Marines until you have 4, and construct a bunker as your early rush defense.   Your completed wall-in should look something like the screenshot below.  2 Depots, 1 Barracks and a Bunker filled with 4 marines.  This wall-in prevents any medium sized unit from getting into your base (which is very useful vs. Protoss since Zealots and DT can't fit).  For this strategy, the purpose that the wall-in serves is to defend against any early marine rushes, buying you time to pull off your drop.

Now that you have your wall-in setup and you are constantly producing SCVs and putting them to work, as soon as you accumulate 200 minerals / 100 gas, build a Factory.  Build Supply Depots as needed, and remember: build SCVs nonstop!   As soon as the Factory finishes have that SCV build a Starport and immediately get the Machine Shop Add-on for your Factory.  When the Factory Add-on finishes research Spider Mines right away, and start producing Vultures.. you're going to need 4 as soon as you can get them.  At around your 2nd vulture or so your Starport will finish, get the Add-on and build a dropship as soon as possible.  Load up your dropship with your 4 vultures equip with Spider Mines.  *Important Note:  At this time you will begin to amass a lot of excess resources.   It is imperative that you find a way to start spending them on your NEXT attack.   One thing people do constantly is launch an attack and totally forget about producing more troops.  Your drop is going to be very micro-intensive, so it will be hard to get back to your base to build more troops, but it is important that you do so.   So, either queue up a bunch or find time to click back to your base.

Now, the key to properly executing this drop is that you drop your Vultures right near your enemy's mineral line, preferably so that you can't be flanked (attacked from behind).  This seems to work best when dropping on 6:00 on Lost Temple, it just so happened my opponent was at 9:00, which is harder to pull off but it can be done.  It is even harder against opponents at 12:00 and 3:00.. but try it with other maps too, I'm sure there are maps that favor this strategy a lot more than Lost Temple.

Ok.  Chances are, at this stage in the game, your opponent will at most have a group or so of Marines/Medics/Bats, maybe a bunker at their choke, and at best a just-finished Factory.  If you are severly unlucky, he'll have a seiged Tank with Marine support near his Command Center, but if he went 2 rax infantry then you should be fine.  Even if he does have a Tank chances are it will be guarding his choke which will be useless to him before the real damage of your drop has been done.  The reason why this drop is so effective is 1.) a lot people don't setup drop defense at all 2.) players that do setup drop defense usually don't do it soon enough to prevent this drop.. unless of course they know it's coming 3.) Spider Mines OWN infantry (especially 4 vultures worth) 4.) Vultures OWN SCVs.

Now, it is very important that as soon as you drop your vultures you plant your Spider Mines in the path that your enemy's troops would have to take in order to get to your Vultures, while still being able to pick off SCVs.   It just so happened that my opponent had kept his Marines near his CC (which was smart) causing my Vultures to take some damage before they got all their mines layed down, but remember Marines are no match for Spider Mines.  *Important Note: again, this drop here requires quite a bit micromanagement, I would recomend selecting all 4 Vultures, hitting the hotkey "i" and then select the area in which you want to mine.  This enables all 4 vultures to lay 1 mine each at once.   Repeat this 2 more times.  Also, remember how I said you would accumulate a lot of resources back home during your drop?  Well, considering I was expecting his troops to be at his choke I had to micro a bit more than usual (and was concerned about getting screenshots) so this what I accumulated:

What you see above is money that I should've been spending on troops for my second attack wave.  Don't let this much money accumulate.  Once I got my attack underway I immediately clicked back home and started amassing multiple Tanks with seige mode, more Marines and another Dropship.   I had also begun the +1 attack for vehicles at the armory I had built while my Dropship was in transit from my base to his.

Below is a picture of my opponent's base after I have planted my mines and begun picking off mass SCVs.  Most of the enemy's Marines that were by his CC had been destroyed by mines.. I think 1 mine took out 5-6 Marines.   Also, notice how my Vultures are in a relatively safe area while they attack the SCV's.  They can only be attacked from one direction, they can't be flanked.  If my opponent sent more Marines from the north, I'd just lure them into the mine field.. and if they refuse to follow, they just wind up losing more and more SCVs and mining time.  

Here's what it looked like when most of the smoke cleared.  Mission accomplished: peon line destroyed and a fair amount of infantry killed, all with the same 4 vultures. 

If you're lucky (and your opponent is really bad) you can basically secure victory right now by running through the enemy base and start destroying his structures.  However, usually it won't work that way.  What will normally happen is by the time all his SCVs are dead and he's lost a good amount of infantry trying to stop you, you will run out of mines and he will be able to thwart your attack.  But the damage has been done, and unless you are playing a supreme SC God, it's going to be extremely hard for your opponent to recover.  The reason for this is:  The second drop.  Remember that second drop you were preparing while your Vultures were with enemy SCVs?  Nows the time to use it.

You can really use any combination you'd like for your second drop.  Your opponent should be severly crippled at this point and will be succeptible to many things.  In this particular instance I chose to load up 3 Tanks, 3 Marines and an SCV in 2 Dropships and drop them off undetected in a different part of his base.  I then chose to bunker and Tank push while pumping mass Marines for a 3rd drop, got a Science Facility up, and built an expansion CC at my natural.   Another option would be to just go all out Marines for your second drop, or mix in Marines & Medics, but you might want to do this a bit faster than you would a Tank/Bunker push. 

After the third drop the game was most definately decided.

The Build Order:

1. Depot at choke 8/10
2. Barracks at choke 11/18
3. Scout with the SCV that built the Depot
4. Refinery 12/18
5. As soon as Refinery is done put 3 SCV's on gas
6. Make Depots as needed
7. Make 4 marines and a bunker at choke without stopping SCV production
8. Factory as soon as you have 200 minerals 100 gas
9. Starport as soon as Factory finishes
10. Add-on for Factory
11. Still making non-stop SCV's right?
12. Research Spider Mines
13. Produce 4 vultures
14. Make 1 Dropship
15. Good Luck.

This strategy is somewhat effective against Protoss and Zerg, but too a much lesser extent.  It would probably be best if you used this exclusively in Terran vs. Terran matches.  I hope this strategy works for you.. remember it is extremely hard to pull off if you are up against someone with really good micro and they don't concentrate their troops at their choke point, but if it fails you aren't too far behind, so try to regroup and try the strategy again on someone else.  The reason I like this strategy is because it is very uncommon and usually unexpected. 

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