IA (difficile) v Nshake - Éphémèrion EC

Nshake - Winner!

• Race: Terran 
• Spawn Location: 11:00

IA (difficile)

• Race: Zerg 
• Spawn Location: 5:00

Most basic build for banshee harass while expanding and transitioning into either Mech or Bio with upgrades and third.

Cloak banshee does delay hitting 200pop for 20 seconds but if your harass is good (more than 12 workers killed), it's worth it.

They are two ways of harassing with banshees : either you take risks and try to kill more workers, or you make more banshees to be more agressive on the map. For the latter, the key is to keep them alive at any cost, in order to have 6-7 of them and upgrade into speed banshees for more advanced harass (killing bases, killing tumors, etc). Speed banshees are useless in TvP and TvT, but great in TvZ if your plan is to go mech. DON'T LOSE ANY OF THEM.

TvT

• Your banshee is worth if your opponent scans twice to kill it
• Current meta is to go Raven/Cyclone in early : don't take risks and wait for the 6:30 mark for your opponent to push. Build tanks and bunkers at your natural and defend while your banshees go in enemy's mineral lines. If they are turrets, you can either get far from the turret and still harass the workers, or go for the production buildings and kill the lab researching stim for example
• Experience will help you being efficient in harassing. Even if your opponent has Raven/Cyclone, you can have good banshee harass (look for third being planted)

TvP

• Banshees have great value at killing Immortals and zealots in early game
• Protoss players often put observers near your bases and expect ravens. I swear, even at 5k MMR you will find massive worker kills against Protoss because they just don't put observers in their mineral lines. Don't bring banshees into obvious paths to prevent getting scouted too soon
• If you see stargate, stop banshees and make one or two ravens, then transition into medivacs if you go bio
• If you go into mech against Protoss, Banshees can be extremely powerful against Immo/Zealot. You have to focus stalkers with tanks and focus Immos with the banshees

TvZ

• Banshees are not only very good against Zergs that don't expect them, meaning that they don't have spores soon enough (happens 1/3 of the time at 5k MMR), but they are also great at killing tumors
• Try to see workers transfers between bases. There are no spores between the bases and you can basically get 5-6 workers when they are going for another base
• Spores are the worst AA building after Photon cannon, so you can kill a few workers and still prevent your banshee dying
• Your first banshee will most of the time hit before any Overseer : keep in mind that you are therefore in control of any part of the map as long as it's a few meters away from a spore (easy to prevent 4th for example)
• Speed banshees can be a nightmare if played properly. Also, it will force your opponent into going either into hydras or mutas/corruptors, which gives you more control to balance your army between Cyclone/Thors and Tanks

To conclude, banshees can be an effective way to surprise your opponent and get massive worker kills while having a proper transition. Sometimes, you will be lucky and you'll be able to punish any player that doesn't have the proper detection nor anti-air, and sometimes you will get easily countered : keep in mind that banshees are not a huge investment and that they are often worth the cost if your opponent has to scan/build more detection and anti-air.