Yes

Eventually, you're going to not want to build vikings in response to mutas- they are basically more expensive and can't be produced en masse like mutas can. Thors are your friend, as are well positioned marines/turrets.

No, but you have scans. Use those 7k minerals to build some extra orbitals

Does that mean that if my opponent builds mutas, I just stop banshee harassing his base? Banshees are so slow that if they don't have an escort, going anywhere near his base would be suicidal.

Played practice game #2 last night, opponent was just awful awful awful. The postgame build order screen was hilarious, he didn't build an SCV until two minutes in (after his first refinery). I went for orbital asap and laughed a little when I scanned his base (as I'm sure my bronze opponents will when I graduate to the real world).

yes banshees should be off the field if mutas are there

dont build vikings to counter mutas. marines, thors and well placed turrets are the counter to mutas. mainly marines w/ thors for support unless you are meching.

Went 1-2 tonight. In practice league.

Loss #1: I tried to rush reapers, was surprised when I got to my opponents base and discovered they were actually competent at the game; they'd walled off their ramp (immaterial for reapers, ofc, but shows some level of skill) and had reapers of their own, my 3 reapers died, he came at my base with like 8 reapers and I had like 5 marines and 1 reaper to counter at that point. Yuck. He destroys my base.

Loss #2: I resolve to build lots of units and not slack off. I build lots of marines. He builds mutalisks. I expand but am not really sure how to split my forces between two different bases, he harasses me at whichever base my marines are not at. We fight battles of attrition where he takes out most of my SCVs, I come in with my marines and the mutas/marines pretty much take each other out. I can't get my economy back on track enough to build air defenses and eventually he just overwhelms me with mutas and I lose. Watching the replay, his first muta attack left me at a significant food disadvantage so I guess I just need to be better prepared against that sort of thing and not let myself get hit in the first place. Build turrets, I guess?

Win #1: Opponent is zerg again, says "oops didn't mean to pick them" when the game starts. I assumed I was building up much faster than him, but when I sent in my big attack I just went with 35 marines (1/1 upgrades maybe? and stim), 6 banshees, and 3 medivacs (I had more stuff back at my base, but my main goal was to take out his expo and anything on top of that would be gravy) and looking at the replay it turns out food was only 142-122 me at that time. My stimpacked marines tore him up pretty good though and I got his whole base.

orange sweated me against the computer a bit before these games and taught me how to 3rax. Not applicable yet in practice league though (****ing rocks), maybe I should skip the rest of them?

I feel most out of place right now when I get to the midgame and I'm not sure what units to build. Like, in my last game, I had a bunch of marines and some banshees, and I was ready to go in and did a final scan of his base and saw he had a bunch of mutas and was like "well ****, now what." Went in with my banshees anyway and just kept them behind the marines, but yeah I'm not sure what to be doing with my army. Should I be doing something like hellions in TvZ, siege tanks in TvT/P? My factory def isn't getting a lot of use in these games.

I guess I feel like I'm improving from the standpoint of getting deeper and deeper into games before my standard "wait how the **** do I have 6k minerals?" moment hits.

(edit: actually, was 2-2 tonight - forgot my first game before I hit up orange, where I took 27 minutes to beat a guy cause I didn't scout well enough to realize how ridiculously far ahead of him I was at the end; I was up 99-66 when he launched a decent attack with marines and medivacs, which I tried (and failed) to counter with only marines which obv got massacred while his got healed, so then I wised up and sent in cloaked banshees which obv destroyed all his marines...dude should have loaded them back into the medivacs clearly. he didn't recover after that)

fear the reaper man...

IMO you need to just learn to scan your opponent a bit more often. if you see he has like 20 units, you can just go a-move. i know scanning isn't going to help you like...a TON (since you don't really know any build orders), but you can at least see his composition (he's building all blink stalkers--> you build some more marauders, etc) and adapt from there. my recommendation would be to just go in the unit tester or look up some guides on counters.

Yes, everyone goes mass air, or reapers. They are dumb. Skip.

decided today that i'd pay money to watch narwhal stream himself playing a hardcore d3 character

pay?

It's a figure of speech

Yeah, IDK why you would pay for it. It wouldn't be very interesting.

Placement match #1: Get annihilated by a bronze Protoss who basically built up a huge army and didn't **** up at all while I was clumsily getting supply blocked etc in my base and waited way too long to expand. I think it was like 170-120 in food when he brought his army to my base, and my marines/marauders/medivacs got crussssshed by mostly stalkers/colossi with a few sentries. He also did some major damage with dark templar harassment and I didn't know that scans would reveal them so I was just sitting around like a tard while they raped my tech labs.

Placement match #2: I get raped by banshee harassment early on, recover a little and fight off a couple small attacks before getting destroyed by a huge fleet of........ravens. My big error here was not building enough marines early; this time I did a scan to reveal the banshees, but even with them visible I didn't have enough troops in my base to take them out until I finally got a viking out.

Placement match #3: I win vs. a terrible Zerg, but it still took 45 minutes of ugly ugly gameplay. He sends a couple roach+zergling attacks to my base after awhile which my stimpacked marines/marauders/medivacs easily crush; then after awhile he comes back with brood lords and corruptors. Lesson: brood lords are tough. I always fight them off but not before taking a ton of losses from those ****ing broodlings. I expand twice, and also try to take out his expos which he wasn't guarding well at all when I can, but eventually my attempts to furiously rebuild my army after brood lord attacks are outstripping my economy and I finally go for an all-in attack with nothing but stimed marines + medivacs. Fortunately it works and he ggs.

Lessons I'm learning with Terran:
- I have nfi how to combat air units (see: mutas raping me yesterday, trouble with brood lords vs an awful player today)
- I have nfi how to effectively combat detection (banshees and dark templars both giving me lots of problems today)

Are you ****ing kidding? It put me in Silver after my last game, in which I just chilled at my base vs a protoss, even won a couple battles when he sent some immortals/stalkers/zealots to my walled off entrance, and then got raped by about 10 colossi. **** you, SC2, for making me lose a ****load of games until I get demoted back to bronze like the ****ty little player I am.

you should have 2 orbital CCs by the time anything cloaked comes to your base, which means it shouldnt take too long before you have enough energy for a scan. You should also be scanning your opponents base around the 6-8 minute mark to see what your opponent is doing.

When Im doing my macro build vP, i scan his main at about 630, and if i see he's mined 1000+ gas and only has 2 or 3 gateways, i know there's going to be DTs coming to kill me in about 15 seconds. So I dont waste any more energy on mules. Same with vT, if you see he's mined alot of gas, but cant tell where any of it has gone, theres probably going to be banshees in your base v soon.

I'm seriously annoyed with this ****. Played 3-4 silver games; first one I got crushed, the last few I tried to 3rax and...

game #1: he already had siege tanks when I showed up at his base, lol me. I get destroyed
game #2: it works and I win, opponent was prob terrible
game #3: he 4-gate rushed me with stalkers at the same time I showed up at his base with marines/marauders; he did more damage to my base than I did to his, 10 minutes later he shows up with colossi and gg me.

The more drawn out the game is, the more laughably behind I get due to ****ty macro. I'm not having a lot of fun right now.

Here's a replay of the last game: http://db.tt/zKuze6SO

Curious what pointers you'd give about my play up through the first skirmish. The build is something orange showed me last night - 3 rax, 2 tech labs/1 reactor, research concussive shells/stim/combat shield, build some ****, go forth and attack. I think it's like 4 stalkers for him v my 12 marines/4 marauders, but of course his ****ing warpgates let him reinforce pretty quickly.

I def have no idea what the exact moment I'm supposed to get my first/second gas is, when I build my 2nd/3rd/4th supply depots, or any **** like that.

Isn't the stim timing push not that good of a build? If you're learning build orders, do this one:

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft...ge_Tech_All-in

Top Koreans still win in GSL with this game vs Protosses that know it's coming.

(I play Zerg so this may not be 100% accurate)

How long are you waiting to expand? The standard build vs P if you're not rushing is a 1 barracks gassless expand. General idea of the build is you get your barracks, OC, a marine or two, then throw down your command center immediately to get your economy up. Then you can either add on 2 gas, 2rax, or more rax if you want to put on some early pressure.

Here's that build order:

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/1_Rax_FE

You need to periodically be checking Protoss to figure out what his unit composition is. Protoss has two main tech choices for the midgame: Robotics tech (colossi) and Twilight tech (High Templar/Archons). Each requires a different counter. At your level you're going to see a lot more people getting colossi, which require vikings. Lots of them. If you can afford it, throw down a second reactored starport at some point. I *think* 3-4 vikings per colossi is the general rule. Don't be scared to scan his natural/third to figure out how many units he has- most people keep their armies right outside their bases. If you see HT/archons, you need ghosts- but we'll let you experience the rapeage that is storm firsthand.

Yeah, you basically need to have stim/vikings/really well positioned marines before you scan to take out a banshee.

Need vikings to take out broods. Nice little tip- if all he has are broodlords/corruptors (without infestor/baneling/ling support), you can actually stim all your marines and run up right underneath the broods without fear. If he has support, it becomes a positional battle where you need a lot of stuff and good micro. Broodlord/infestor/corruptor is probably the best unit comp any race can have in the game (lol motherships), so don't feel bad if you struggle vs it.

Well, hopefully there are forced cross spawns...

Looks crappy to me. The third base has rocks, then a high ground area that screams "Tank drop me!". Hopefully this map goes the way of how Entombed was handled by MLG, and prevent horizontal spawns for a little more balance. Right now it feels like a slightly cramped TDA with a more contended center.

Also, blizz is removing Metal and Korhal, thank god. Blizz says Metro LE will see use in the future (dunno what season) as an improved replacement for metal. Also, I'm glad they're finally freshening up the 2v2 map pool a bit.

http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/505...8_06_2012#blog

goofy, don't worry about your league at all. It makes no difference.

Also keep 3 raxing. If you try to 1/1/1, you will have a much harder time with early pressure. The same goes for gasless expand.

3 rax is good because you won't fall behind macro wise, you're safe against basically any pressure and you can almost always just end the game if you execute properly. Just keep practicing the build and try to shave more and more time off your build.

As for air:
-Counter mutas with marines/thors/turrets
-Counter bls with vikings
-Ideally you don't want to get to that point though. If the game has lasted that long you could have probably won by that point or you were never going to win.

I just had a revelation. Korhal IS daybreak just turned 90 degrees, almost.

disclaimer: don't play terran but I did 3rax my protoss friend a bunch of times so he could practice holding it.

BIG thing: you didn't get an orbital. After rax is done, convert your command center to an orbital (hotkey is b and you can't make scvs during the conversion). That lets you drop mules which are like super scvs. That's why you were broke at times because you had no mules.

Build order is a bit off:
12 rax
13 gas
15 orbital command, make a marine and a depot
tech lab when marine is done
drop mule when you can and start making scvs again
then add 2 more rax, get upgrades, don't get supply blocked etc.

The engagement: you could have won the game easily. He has 2 pylons near his gates, if you kill those the gates lose power and he can't use them anymore. You killed his stalkers then started attacking a gate. If you killed the 2 pylons instead it's gg.

Also, make sure you constantly produce from your rax. You did a decent job of this once all 3 were up but the 1st one was doing nothing for much of the early game.

edit: if you practice with someone again, have them play terran and 3rax as well. Compare what you have at 7:30, then you have the replay and can watch both sides to see where you're messing up. (you had 4 marauders, 12 marines at 7:30 this game)