Can You Beat Starcraft With Only Marines?

marines only in starcraft 2 was a lot of fun forcing my way through the strongest enemies in the galaxy using only man with gun was a unique experience but the run had a problem starcraft 2 marines are good if i want a real marines only challenge we're going to have to warp back to 1998. where marines have 40 hp and can only be selected in groups of 12. all to see if i can beat both starcraft 1 and the brood war terran campaigns with marines only the rules are mostly the same as before if i can build in the mission i can only use marines and workers and of course i can only fight with marines if it's a no-build mission i have to do my best with marines only but there aren't always marines so in that case i'll have to do my best to make it count on top of that i'm adding an extra rule no dropships which is always exciting in a campaign with multiple island missions wasteland is first and it is easy starcraft 1 was designed assuming the player had never played an rts before so the first few missions are going to be free wins after meeting up with a one-off character named jim raynor i get my first objective of the run build 5 marines well this run is easy after doing so the mission ends incredible stuff next up is backwater station which is the tutorial on how to attack with units i build up a ball of marines move to the second base dismiss the rescued firebats from duty and effortlessly clear my way to the infested command center after that is desperate alliance in my opinion the worst mission in starcraft 1 or 2. it's a 30 minute time defense mission where the enemy attacks like four times instead i build up a giant army clear through the entire map and idle around for 15 minutes waiting for a dramatic rescue from renowned good guy arcturus manx the jacob's installation is next and it is the first no-build mission of the run i start with seven marines and a gym rainer to keep things as pure as possible i opt to not treat jim as a marine and won't use them to fight the mission is pretty simple starcraft 1 installation missions are built around exploring through facilities the problem is that this was the first one they made and it's pretty barren as long as i walk straight to the end of the mission i can avoid most of the encounters after falling the hallway to the teleporter the difficulty starts to ramp up i get ambushed by a missile turret trap and lose a majority of my marines in the final room is a ghost who deals 20 damage per hit to my marines and i can't beat them instead i resort to using them as bait while jim sprints past and reaches the objective marker revolution is where things start to get interesting the beginning consists of a no build segment where i get to meet some ghost whose name isn't important and move her to a nearby base i try to clear to the base with marines but the bunkers are pretty tough and i have to walk kerrigan past instead once i have my base is where things start to get funky the enemy is on an island and surprisingly drop ships are not marines so i'm gonna have to get creative after scanning around for a decent landing zone i float a pair of barracks towards the enemy to secure a foothold the air perimeter is secured by raids who deal some serious anti-air damage but once the barracks land their missiles are exchanged for tickle beams and i'm free to produce after popping the rays out of the sky i bring in the fleet the plan is that i absolutely will be detected here but my production can overwhelm the defenders an enemy goliath does spot me but my marine uses the hidden spider-mind ability to remove the threat and from then on the enemy absolutely knows about me and the main base doesn't care stark off 1ai can be a bit funky at times this allows me to create a big enough army that i can crush through the defenses without any issues norad 2 is next duke is crash's battle cruiser and he needs rescue after restarting the mission because i forgot to give paid leave to duke's goliath defenders i get to building my army the defenses between myself and duke are actually pretty decent sunken colonies have two armor and kill marines and two hits zerg's static defense is absolutely absurd in starcraft 1. on the flip side zerg has a huge weakness in the game the ai just isn't given very many hatcheries on most missions as soon as my forces get on top of the main production building the zerg is unable to fight back at all once the blue zerg is a nerd i get to complain about the mission's design you can walk over to duke it's a ground path so why does the mission's objective require me to make two dropships after clearing all of the defenders and burning through the orange base for fun i resigned myself to making those two drop ships and floating them over to dookie boy the trump card is really easy i have to bring a psi emitter carried by an suv into the enemy base the mission's design is really weird there are winding canyons strewn across the map which is supposed to make a ground assault really difficult but for some reason the beacon point just isn't on the other side of those canyons instead there's a giant open area on the right where the enemy base is and the beacon so i make a bunch of marines push through the base and walk my suv over easy the big push is the first super macro mission of the run the enemy forces are massive and i'm gonna need to macro out a large force quickly i start out with two command centers some suvs and a solid army on this tiny island with some drop ships to fit oh drop ships are banned huh as i float my starting buildings over and dispatch my suvs i wonder if i might be taking these challenges a little bit too literally the mission assumes i have both workers and edmund duke's elite battlecruiser early on meaning the enemy starts attacking at the two minute mark i don't have any options other than microwaving my buildings as i wait for my first initial marines to finish up once the base is secured i move up to the high ground build up some barracks and prepare for the first assault the first defensive line on this map is kind of crazy six well-placed bunkers with a large column of support means it will take a ton of marines to bust meanwhile on the starting island i kept one single suv around and a marine to build depots depot dave does a fantastic job keeping my supply up until wraith finds my construction projects and starts bullying it one marine cannot beat a wraith thankfully the starcraft 1ai is really stupid as a wraith pelts my depot dave builds a bunker under him i load a marine in and supply island is saved after about 10 minutes my starting bases are running low on minerals i have to push into the brown fortifications and take their base for my own the initial bust hurts over 20 marines die in 30 seconds but the enemy acts a bit dumb and sends a few of their siege tanks right into the meat grinder greatly reducing their damage after securing my new base i'm feeling good there are a ton of minerals here to feed my push against the orange player which is good because i am terrified of orange i know he loves to make siege tanks and a well-designed tank line is not something that i can bust easily into after feeling safe i attempt to breach orange and he just move commands his tank army into me i don't understand the starcraft 1ai at all with orange defenseless i waltz through his production clear the map and move on with new gettysburg i finally get to test the boys against the protoss this mission is a weird one i have to defend against attacks from an adjacent zerg player but if any of their buildings die i lose the rest of the map is controlled by the protoss who has to be taken out i have a kerrigan hero here and i'm a bit afraid she's gonna accidentally kill some zerg so i end up putting her behind my mirror line and hoping nobody finds her after getting an expansion and complaining about how absurdly far away this gas geyser is i get my macro going one thing i find fun about starcoff1 runs is that i have no idea when or where the enemy attacks or how much they send i set a couple bunkers facing the zerg and set my sights on the protoss tassadar's forces have two bases one up a ramp in the east and one farther away in the south i remember the eastern base being harder so i decided i'd try to crack it first to relieve some of the big sources of pressure my initial marines do a great job of getting up the ramp two control groups of reinforcements join up and then the protoss gets an insane 360 degree surround and annihilates me so i decide that maybe fighting the other base is a better idea at this point my upgrades are done and my macro engine is in full swing the southern base has a decent defense but not nearly as much as the primary nexus i almost get cleaned up but they buckle under the pressure and the base is cleared out my now fully upgraded marines are more than enough to bust the final base and i stake my claim at the end of the mission there's a giant zerg attack wave that hits my main base i make sure to retreat kerrigan to the bottom of the mission and then finish the protoss off the hammer falls is the end of the first terran campaign and boy is it a doozy there's an ion cannon on the top left of the map and it is defended by an absurd defense force and is on an island the island hop is going to be a slaughter meaning i have to take down both of mexica's fortified bases so i can slowly whittle down the final defense on my own time i know there's a base to the north of my starting position so i rush out of command center early float it over and get my economy rolling well i would but a single goliath has decided to tell me no i also can't move my army over there to take the goliath out because i'm pinned by cloaked ghosts who kill my marines in two shots after getting detection i move to secure the expansion slot i find a battle cruiser and engage it and then i'm flanked by an opposing infantry force and cleaned up i have to muster another force to reach the goliath and my base that i started at the one minute mark is finally mining at almost nine minutes angry at red for his insolence i strike back his ally was not a big fan of that though and launches a nuke somewhere so my base that i started building at the one minute mark starts mining with its first scv at almost 14 minutes fortunately at the same time red kicked the bucket and now there's only one base left this should be easy after taking red's former minerals i have a great economy to overwhelm white with and the first push shows that off i bust through the tanks with ease breach the front and start targeting the production down but this base has a deep defensive line as the units stream in i'm overwhelmed and pushed back wave number two is the same story vultures firebats and goliaths all do massive damage to marines it is not pretty but i want to keep the pressure up i'm trading every time that i fight and i have more production this should be a numbers game the third push is a larger force manages to take down a factory and a barracks but once again i'm cleaned up manx has been brutal here his defense is incredible the fourth wave is his breaking point he can't produce quickly enough and i managed to take him out all that remains is the fortress island objective the goal is simple float a massive barracks over make marines and chip the enemy's hp down lose them all rebuild and repeat the enemy has no production here so all damage dealt is permanent eventually all the defenders will be dead with that as my strategy i send my first flotilla of barracks over to find an empty island a single missile turret blocks my path every time that i had pushed into white's base he had taken a few dropships to grab reinforcements from the islands to help out because i spent so long bashing my head against him he ended up pulling every defender away that's why he was so hard i inadvertently avoided the hardest part of the mission because i failed my attack so many times in a row as i shoot the defenseless ion cannon i can only think one thing task failed successfully with the original taren campaign out of the way we're into the united earth directorate campaign in the brood war the ai is smarter minerals are placed better and my marines still kind of suck one of my favorite things about burger is that it doesn't waste time with tutorial stuff instead jumping straight into the action as i start first strike i get my first problem my base has no gas to fix this i build a batch of boys and head over to find my new friend phd candidate duron in addition to a second base he gives me the route to get around the mega death fortress and instead attack from the undefended backside but i never do starcraft 1 challenge runs and busting the front has always been a thing on my bucket list so let's kill two birds with one stone after maxing out i send my army in sorry did i say two birds i meant 100 marines with one stone but i did take down a bunker and a few siege tanks the brood war ai is significantly better than the base game and i don't want the enemy to be able to reinforce i get back up to about 130 supply the limit of what i can quickly send in and go the army hits the fortress chips the paint a bit and dies again and then i do it again and again and again eventually the enemy cracks the high ground siege tanks die and the reinforcements are easier to clean up the dominion command center dies and it only took the lives of 327 marines good work boys welcome to the ued the dailerian sheep yards is one of my favorite missions in starcraft but it's a no-build mission so it's going to be a bit funky for challenge runs there are four stages where i'm given a group of pilots and predetermined forces the goal is to escort as many pilots to steal battle cruisers and then win a giant battle cruiser brawl at the end i'm gonna give it a go with marines only but multiple sections don't have any so it might not be possible the first section isn't bad i get eight marines and three pilots without medics i don't have the ability to beat the enemy bunkers but they do sponge enough hits for the pilots to slip through netting me three easy bc's in part two i have three ghosts three medics and four pilots after trying a few times i found that with good pathing i can get some pilots up to the top right where two ships are docked but a second siege tank stops me from grabbing more than one after a few attempts twitch chat noticed something interesting admiral dugal gets angry at me when i lose pilots and sends me two more i thought this was after i lost two but it's actually after the first one dies with this knowledge my pilot straw straws albert loses and gets obliterated with his passing comes two new pilots with the extra target or expertise on my side i can grab both of the remaining ships bringing me up to a total of 5. this is good because part 3 has 4 battle cruisers and i cannot get any of them each has a massive defensive emplacement in front of it and is supposed to be nuked in the end i was able to get 8 out of 18 potential battle cruisers and now i have to use 8 battle cruisers to beat 12. after trying this a few times i realize that this is not gonna work in a straight up fight no matter how good my micro is i need to get creative the problem is i don't really understand how the starcraft 1ai works so it's time to learn after a bit of messing around i think i figured it out duke sends his boys on an attack move to my location if the fight is drawn out long enough the ai assumes that i'm hiding and issues an attack command to my nearest battle cruiser hunting it down they repeat this process until i have nothing left so what i do is i kite the dominion around until they go into terminator mode have one bait bc behind so i know who the target is and then run the bait away the enemy is now laser focused on the bait and will walk through my forces trying to reach the target after repeating the bait tactic twice i dealt enough damage that i can barely win the straight up fight somehow the biggest abuse of game mechanics so far in marines only has come from the only fight that i have to do without marines but i still like this strategy so it counts now we can get back to marines with one of my favorite missions in starcraft 1 the ruins of tarconus there are four zerg hives around the map each is guarded by a completely different set of enemies whenever a base's hive is destroyed that player becomes dormant there are two early game enemies a generalist brownserg who makes a bit of everything and a purple zerg on a plateau who focuses on air units and drops in the back there are two more players who take a while to get going the orange zerg who focuses on guardians and mutualists and the red zerg who likes ultralisks and defilers the mission lets you pick your own clear order based on what threatens your playstyle and that's something that i love unfortunately all of these bases threaten me if i leave them unchecked so i need to deal with them quickly on the left hand side i do a little trick that i taught artosis when i taught him to speedrun starcraft 1. marines in a bunker with a range upgrade on the low ground here can barely hit the hive a floating building can provide spotting while a few suvs repair the hive takes a long time to die bunkers in starcraft 1 cannot selectively target enemies so the marines inside get very distracted shooting every egg overlord or migrating bird that they see the bunker strout worked really well on the left side so i thought i'd give it a go on the ride as well i didn't actually know this worked it turns out both of these initial players can be knocked out by a single bunker with the pressure from the early game bases relieved i can power up and prepare to strike orange before he's ready i'm hitting him first instead of red not because of any tactical reason but because i'm immensely scared of ultralists and want to save them for last the guardians have the ability to kill marines in two shots which is pretty scary but without any terrain or army to defend they're easy to pick off once they're gone orange goes down finally is red who has ultralisks and the defiler's dark swarm ability which makes units inside of it immune to all ranged damage after pulling back and waiting for the dark swarms to expire i can engage red for real i lose a lot of marines but because there's no other threats on the map i can keep the pressure up once the army thins out i dive the hive as fast as possible to prevent reinforcements disable the final zerg base and waltz during to the objective the assault on core hall is not a tough mission but acts more as a preamble for the next mission i must either destroy the nuclear silos or physics lab on the map doing so will either remove mexico's ability to nuke me or battle cruise me on the next mission it's an interesting choice that's fun to make but in marines only i don't actually get to make it the initial battle cruiser attack is supposed to be beaten back by a bunch of ghosts and goliaths which i can't do so i have to get nuked instead i start off in the middle of the map surrounded on all sides by taryn after almost losing to two firebats right off the bat i start to reinforce my flanks and grab the first two expansions having a defensive line that stretches across the entire map makes moving about to defend a bit awkward but the enemy is pretty passive here so it doesn't get too bad after building up i prepared to strike the top right where the physics labs are the enemy base has a single chokepoint entrance and i have to make this awkward 90 degree turn to push in this means my units have a rough time with pathing and my army isn't enough i managed to take a majority of the units out but am cleaned up wave 2 fares much better breaching the compound and allowing reinforcements to finish everything off i benefited heavily from there being two different opponents here the much more competent southern player didn't make any attempts to reinforce the north giving an easy victory it's time to take core hall and it is not going to be pretty because i opted to disable battlecruisers a volley of nukes fire off early normally this sucks but for me it's a quick way to get rid of all my starting forces after the initial volley things quiet down for a bit i get to expand grab some comsat stations to detect ghosts and learn that i suck at spotting the nuke dot in starcraft 1 losing half of my economy right as i get saturated but it's fine what i lack in brains i can make up for in brawn and bodies lots of bodies after grabbing a third base my upgrades are going and i start to take the aggression to manx i cross the bridge of infinity mines and take the center outpost this position is important as it can act as a staging point for my pressure against both the northern red and eastern blue terran once i'm ready to attack i prod the northern players defense finding a corridor with a bunch of siege tanks behind barricades and a rally of factory units to defend it is a slaughter and not in the good way i drop 60 supply without killing anything and decide to check out the eastern base instead attacking blue goes much better i only lose 30 supply against tanks before retreating without killing anything while i push menks drops another nuke but i find the ghost kill it and lose the base anyway luckily i was banking minerals at this point because i couldn't remax quickly enough on the 11 barracks i had so i recover after maxing out again and then taking the middle base i send my full army into blue another 60 marines drop but i managed to get in on top of each tank and take possession of the base only red is left and then i get nuked again this time from a ghost hiding behind my central mineral line he dropped the bomb on his own head what dedication the corridor to red is brutal i'm forced to walk in a single file line against five tanks to make things worse mensk is great at using the defensive matrix ability to protect his damaged tanks i lose another 50 supply for minor gains but i do take a couple tanks down wave number 10 is the best one yet marines blitz the remaining tanks and get into cleanup duty or not menks has tanks staggered back i'm pushed away again and end up running my bank dry but next up is lucky wave 11 and it died too i repeat this process for a while each wave sends 40 to 50 marines to try to take down a single siege tank or an important piece of infrastructure eventually minx can't keep up with the production and i can finally crack him with the main red base dead the top right of the map is bound to follow i hit from all angles make my way to the yellow command center and finish off the dominion i was honestly very impressed with meng's care his ai was bounds better than the stock starcraft 1ai his siege positions were good he used spells to protect his tanks and continuously produce the units to counter me this felt like a true duel with an opposing general and it was a slaughter i loved every minute of it almost enough to ignore the fact that i sent 782 marines to their doom for this emperor's flight is my first fight against the protoss in a while and i'm excited after a brief cinematic section where my ally oh so rudely uses not marine to clear out the zerg base i get building normally the beginning of this mission is really annoying because you start with over 40 supply and no depots but i conveniently only start with a few suvs and marines making my life much easier i have to reach the top right of the protoss base to destroy a command center the map is covered in protoss and zerg who both fight each other and me i'm pretty intimidated by the protoss after my last encounter so i decide my first major target will be the zerg base in the bottom right that base drops pretty easily and i decide the left hand side is next this zerg has lurkers though and their subterranean spines deal almost as much damage as stepping on legos which is not pretty but the power of the marine is enough and brown falls as well and finally i fight the protoss alone and they just sort of die i was absolutely wrong to be afraid of them their base is actually really sad archons and scouts have a really hard time against infantry and fold with little resistance i should have just gone here first the penultimate mission is patriot's blood a no-build mission split into two parts first i must escort duron to stukov and then i have to reach the central core without him my opponent is taran and i have eight marines they have way more than that no it's impossible to fight my way through this first section with marines there are a couple orders of magnitude too many enemies to do it but duron does have the ability to walk through the entire thing without damaging anybody until the very end where there are these three floor turrets they fully block pathing when popped up and they can detect her on i'm gonna have to do something i end up deciding that the closest non-hostile thing i can do is pop them up use a lockdown ability on one turret and then pull back so they fold under the ground get stunned without taking damage and then duron walks over i'm not happy that it has to be done but no build missions are always a little bit of a mess in these runs after a short cutscene i'm given four marines and have the ability to move forward rescuing allied marines while zerg breached the facility i have 15 minutes to reach the end so i have to move fast in the other direction because i didn't have the ability to fight the enemies in the last segment they're all still alive now they can be rescued and turned into friends so it really did work out in a way after backtracking my army is significantly larger than it normally would be in this position i roll through with an enormous deathball recruiting more and more marines on the way my army gets so large it ends up pretty unwieldy and it takes a while to get from place to place due to starcraft 1 pathing eventually i remember that this is a timed segment and i need to get a move on i start pushing a bit more recklessly breach into the final chamber and get on to the point with under a minute left for a one-sided stomp this was far closer than it had any right to be and finally comes to chain the beast the mission that i have been dreading there's no getting around it this mission is going to be pure unfiltered pain the objective is to bring four medics to the overmind on the far side of the map but clearing to the overmind is no simple task he has three cerebrate bodyguards each with a unique twist first is red as long as the cerebrate survives all of his sunken colonies on the map are immortal they cannot be attacked in any way and there are a lot of them surrounding my bases second is brown starting at the 11 minute mark he will attack with an elite ultralisk named the terrasque this monster is fast hits hard and is the bulkiest unit in the game and of course he responds every two minutes after being killed rushing my base again and third is orange he uh spawns infested taran i guess they don't really come up the first problem is red i can't move around the map while surrounded by immortal sunken colonies the base with the cerebra is nestled in a valley with a long path to reach it the intended answer is to either drop siege tanks on this nearby plateau or use air units i'm gonna have to gather a large army and dive the cerevit taking it down in one strike before attacking red i opt to wait for the first of brown's tarosks to spawn and then the goal is to eliminate red before the second approaches fortunately the first tarask is significantly weaker than its later incarnations it goes down easily and my 150 supply army is ready to move out the path is thin and full of pain before i find a single enemy unit i've already dropped 40 supply only about 15 marines make it into the enemy base they put on what damage they can but in the end i'm down about half the supply that i started with this is going to be a lot worse than i had expected as i rebuilt the tarask respawns to ruin my day this time at full power ultralisks and starcraft 1 don't deal area damage and somehow despite that he chews through 13 of my marines in a few seconds he's going to continue to do this every two minutes until brown is defeated which i can't do until red is dead so i have to move out again this time with a bit of a better understanding of the path i managed to get about 30 marines to the cerebrant i stim and start to burn it down as it's 1500 hp is reduced to double digits i'm cleaned up again and this is not somewhere i can send a small task force to finish things off i need another giant army to deal under 100 damage attempt number three is the one that finally works red's base goes offline and the sunken colonies can be cleaned up two left next up is brown i need to stop this taurosk or it's going to eat through all of my minerals i've been pushing at about 150 supply because commanding more than 120 units at a time in starcraft 1 is just something i can't do once i run out of hotkeys everything becomes a jumbled mess and that gives virtually no benefit to added troops after reaching this magic number i make my move brown might not have invulnerable defenses but it sure feels like it lurkers guardians sunken colonies and a medley of other zerg make it too hard to progress i take so long that the tarask respawns and eats my entire strike force after preparing another i decide to apply what i learned from fighting red i ignore the hive and rush straight to the cerebrate targeting it down this works and now there's only the orange player remaining unlike red and brown the infested taren gimmick isn't really interesting or impactful to make up for it he's really really competent at defending he has two main positions a low ground outpost and a high ground defensive network near the overmind the outpost falls but the high ground is a frustrating bust the single ramp makes me vulnerable to area damage and once near the overmind there is a huge number of lurkers my only reprieve is knowing that the other two zerg players can't counter-attack as i commit forces to the assault after sending in an unjustifiably large number of marines to their deaths the area around the overmind is completely and totally secured i build the four medics required for the mission and bring them to the beacons it was not clean it was not pretty but it is possible to beat starcraft 1 with only marines thanks for watching if you want to see more daily giant grant games content check out my second channel giant grant games archives currently i'm running a series where i let the giant grand games community remake the legacy of the void campaign into a pile of meme units whirlwind zealots fly immortals are crabs and the mother ship is a beyblade if you think that sounds like fun come check it out in the description below i hope you enjoyed this video and i will talk to you again soon peace

Channel: GiantGrantGames

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Id: toG9dtCIit8

Length: 27min 38sec (1658 seconds)

Published: Thu May 26 2022