I have read a lot of different starcraft reviews strategies, ect. but, in almost all of them, they all dislike the firebat . Well i don't and i will add why, but i will compare them to the beloved marines, and i'll mention vultures, the more favored one to use 2 workers for.

cost- the marines are dirt cheap for their strength, 1 mineral, while the bats are also 1 mineral, but also a gas too. well their are some who claim that they would rather place the 2 scv's in minerals for a vulture, while i do slightly agree with this, to get them is also 2 minerals, but bats need only a 1 mineral buliding. if you keep going vultures, you need to by spider mines also, to get more splash than a bat (later in cards section) and you will be poor mineral wise going vultures, while bats give minerals to spare.

cards/technology- the bats and marines share all of the same cards and technology, but the pyro's get an extra splash card than the rines. they also have 1 more than the vulture, who needs spider mines to get 2 more splash cards that don't share with the bat, who STARTS with 2 cards, not 1. Also, bats are better than protecting a base than a vulture cause of bunkers, although the marines are better than the bats for protection.

random- sure, marines can hit BOTH air and ground, but it has easy to find weaknesses that the bat doesn't have. first one is, lets say you have all 6 marines about to assault those 2 ultralisks and a defiler at the base, but you know you'll win with those stims, and they play a dark swarm. well, guess what, you basiclly wasted 2 stims, and 2 marines for what? if they were accompanied by fire bats, then they would have at least killed an ultralisk or even 2 if you got lucky. and the rines have one more weakness that their close ranged brethren don't have, they dread the words on a card saying "GROUND SPLASH DAMAGE-this splash damage can only destroy a MARINE, zealot, or zergling" if they pull that off, than the marines will go from a 1-2 casualties, to a 2-4, that doubles your death rate. but the firebats are immune to all of this, they don't get hit by that splash, and you should have used them and their splash cards instead.

tips- okay, you hopefully got the point, use fire bats, i am not telling you to max them out, just have 1, if facing a zergling, zealot, marine army then yes, max them. here are some good example (that have happened to me in a terran v.s zerg match today)

example 1- lets say you use 2 marines against 4 zerglings, the lings will have a good chance at being killed, sure, but the max you can have dead is 2, and you must retreat while your enemy builds more alien dogs or whatever in that space, if you switched out 2 marines for the pyros' they would have had an good chance to die altogether.

example-2 lets say that you invade that zerg again, but didn't realize that you only had 1 infantry card, and the opponent has a mutalisk and 2 hydralisk's, you have all marines, and you use some random card to attack the mutalisk, cause you know that the infantry card won't kill the flying worm with wings and 2 mouths, so you have a good chance at killing the hydralisk, and after casualties, you take 3 hits( hydra kill and muta splash) but, if you had the fire bat, put the bbq lovin guy in front and the splash won't have effect, leaving you with more units to kill them in a counter attack.


Conclusion- use firebats to their maximum potential, and they will be one of your favorite units, just make sure that you have at LEAST 1, who wouldn't want a cheap, 2 spalsh card, splash resistant unit? thanks for reading

Oh and before any body says that i stole this off of Angra_mainyu from boardgamegeek.com I am HIM!!!!!!! Seriously.

If your opponent doesn't have Dark Swarm, then one of their primary uses has just left. I still think that the Firebats aren't a very good unit (unless your opponents have the swarm).

But nice comments anyway.

Joram said:

Some nice tips and a well written post...will have to look at my strategy again!

Thx Grimm, I'll be sure to try those firebats out.

Chaos85 said:

Lol if you never commented on them being "useless" than i would have never reposted my tips to FFG, they would have stayed in BGG lol.

Okay - they still are use-impaired. For terrans, I found teching the barracks rather unsatisfactory. The Science Vessel can counter Dark Swarm and all the naughty protoss spells, plus irradiate too. Vultures can benefit from repair on the offense, while bunkers work only in bases.

I haven't built ONE fire bat so far.

Ghost with nuke and lockdown sure is cool, but you have only SO many build orders, and those could go towards improving your starport and factory.

I think the splash argument isn't a good one - both splash cards can be used if you have Vultures and Marines, so you don't need Firebats, just combine marines and Vultures. A main reason for Firebats is Dark Swarm, but upgrading the Barracks means upgrading towards Ghosts, which aren't the best units vs Zerg (not mechanical and good detection), while Science Vessels (Irradiation / EMP) and Battle Cruisers are great vs Zerg (and not only vs Zerg).

However, Terrans usually need lots of minerals in the beginning, so paying 1/1 (Firebats) is better than 2/0 (Vultures), and as said before the 1st barracks upgrade is pretty cheap.

HëllRÆZØR said:

The bunker card is only great on defense and on def the attacker chooses the skirmishes so you will prefer marines (who also benefit from bunker and stim packs) ; so why waste one gas more to have a unit that cant attack air and benefits from the same tech cards. Bats good on def... I don't think so...

kk for immune to mutalisk splash, dark swarm and mineral savings etc... That's fine, but Vulturs are immune to mutalisk splash too and they should be tough enough to sustain dark swarm. Personally in all games I've played, I have never seen dark swarm, even when I really tried to get to it! lol. The vulture has better tech cards : spider mines and the repair card.

I know bats are not useless, it's just that vulturs seems like a better deal. With vulturs and marines you cover pretty much all the basic cards of your deck.

The main problem I see with vultures is that I favor the Starport track, because of Science Vessels, so I'd rather finish that track if I can rather than perusing the Factory track too (which sadly, means Siege Tanks are rarely built, which is a shame because I can't sing the Valkyries).

I like Ghosts, but I agree that they're very fragile and Nuke is hard to get off (Maybe defending home base inside a Bunker, otherwise you gotta attack and pair the Ghost with the small units), though I don't always go for Ghosts, when I do it's clear than Firebats are on the way. It's a shame that Ghosts require that many actions to function properly.

I don't find any Terran unit (Go... TERRAN! Go... TERRAN!) useless, but some are harder to use. And I guess Firebats (and especially Ghosts) fall into that category, which makes people stay happy with their initial Barracks. Now I'd be interested in some insights about the Factory units.