Post replays!!

It's all a product of my horrible scouting.

then it shouldnt be hard to improve

TBH as a scrug zerg, get someone who is good suggest a good opening for you which will win say 75%. Then just grind that **** into the ground like its preflop hands. Then you just do that, end of story, blind do that ****, when you execute it flawlessly you will beastmode people up to like plat/diamond in a way you wont even understand

schu, you could probably 8-8-8-8 every Zerg and as long as your proxy raxes don't get scouted you'll win about 70% of the time.

iirc the build order is...

6: SCV
7: SCV
8: supply depot in main
8: at same time you start depot, send out SCV for proxy rax
8: @ 150 minerals, proxy rax
8: @ 75 minerals, refinery

You want 200 minerals and 50 gas when your first rax finishes - 150 minerals for another proxy rax right next to your first one, then 50/50 for an initial reaper. You should be able to crank out 2 reapers at a time on that economy. Squeeze in extra SCVs + orbital when you have mineral surplus just in case the game (somehow) normalizes.

This build is good practice for microing (you can't let reapers die) and macroing (keep those raxes making reapers!) at the same time. It will also get the haterzzz furious.

God I hate cheese and hate doing cheese. May try that though, and probably shut my hands in the oven door as self-punishment afterwards.

Hahaha.

wrt scouting, I will give you THE GUIDE TO SCOUTING ZERG

Typical Zerg opening against Terran is to go hatch first, then take a pool, and take gas at some point later. The important thing to keep in mind is that until they take gas, the ONLY units Zerg can make are slow lings, which aren't good for much. You can tell a ton about what Zerg is planning based simply on when they take gas - until they do, they can't attack you.

If they do take gas, there's still a question of what they're spending it on. You should be able to tell with your scouts if you...
a.) click on the extractors and see how much gas has been mined from them, and notice how many drones (if any) are still mining from them
b.) are aware of what buildings the Zerg has in their base

Zergling speed is usually the first thing a Zerg spends their gas on; it costs 100 gas. Zergs will sometimes (probably not in silver, but good Zergs do this) pull all their drones out of gas after they get 100 if they don't intend to rush to further tech/upgrades, since continuing to mine gas is just costing them minerals if they don't plan to use the gas right away. The spawning pool will appear to shake somewhat rapidly while it's upgrading, to help you confirm if it's being upgraded.

The next thing you'll see is a baneling nest, which costs 50 gas; and of course, to actually make banelings they have to continue mining gas (a baneling costs 25 gas). Remember these will be slow banes.

The last thing a Zerg might spend gas on early on is roaches, but that's only if it's pretty much an all-in attack if they have no lair. The roach warren costs 150 minerals (no gas), but each roach costs 25 gas.

The very important thing you should try to keep track of is when the Zerg starts their lair.

The lair costs 100 gas and signals that the Zerg wants to go in to the midgame. A typical lair timing is around maybe 7 minutes or so (I'm really bad at knowing timings like that, just a guess). If you ever see something like a 5:30 lair, it's super early and the Z will likely be very vulnerable for spending so much on tech early on and having very few units. Remember that while on hatchery tech, these are the only units the Zerg can build:

Lings (fast or slow, depending on whether ling speed is upgrade)
Slow banelings (bane speed requires lair)
Slow roaches (roach speed requires lair)

This is something that took me awhile to realize as a Terran - based simply on knowing whether or not the Zerg has their lair, you have a ton of information about the types of attacks that can come at you in the early game.

Lair tech enables...
- spire (200 gas, plus 100 gas per mutalisk; a Zerg going mutas will usually have all their extractors taken pretty quickly, I think, cause they need a lot of gas to make them)
- baneling speed
- roach speed
- hydralisk den
- infestation pit

The infestation pit is something you should look out for, not just because it might mean the Zerg is making infestors, but because it's required for the Zerg to get a hive. Hive is necessary for...
- ultralisks (popular)
- greater spire (not so popular these days)
- 3/3 upgrades
- adrenal glands (faster ling attack)

So, a Zerg getting a hive wants to transition to the late game.

A lot of this was stuff that I didn't understand very well when I played T, so hopefully it gives you an idea of what to look for and how to tell what's coming at you before 10 mutas show up at your natural when you don't even have an engineering bay.

Also, one timing that's very useful for you to know:

- Lair takes 80 seconds to morph
- When lair finishes, spire takes 100 seconds to build
- When spire finishes, mutalisks take 33 seconds to build

So, from the moment the lair is started, it takes at least 3 minutes and 33 seconds before the first mutalisks can pop, if that's what the Zerg is rushing for.

Wow that is a great breakdown. That's the exact type of useful stuff I've been looking for, all in one simple synthesis. Thanks a ton!

This. It doesn't have to be cheese. Just 2-base all-in. When I was silver and gold, the hardest thing for me was a Terran showing up at my base unexpectedly.

Everything goofy said is really good. If I might add a single more thing, always always always always do two things:

-keep a zergling right outside their natural
-keep zerglings on the watchtowers.

These are basically free maphacks that alert you to where his army is. If he sends units out to kill it, send another. It is of paramount importance as you move up and get more experienced that you know where the terran (or protoss, or zerg, tbh) army is at all times.

I think goofy posted that for a terran wanting to learn to scout zerg.

The most important thing you can do in my opinion as Terran vs zerg is to scout the 3rd base. Zergs are going to want to grab a 3rd on or before 44 supply, so if you go reaper do your best to keep it alive and keep it at his 3rd. If you go 1rax expand or CC first, keep an scv at his 3rd base so you know when he's taking it. I don't know what 44 supply equates to game time, but if he doesn't look to expand by then, expect some sort of roach/ling roach/baneling all in, and make bunkers, and try to get a siege tank out. Definitely don't land your 3rd CC before zerg takes his 3rd base unless the guy is just absurdly bad and you've done significant damage. Terran is much more resilient than zerg due to their ability to lift buildings, and calldown mules.

If he doesn't take a 3rd, and he doesn't attack you, burn a scan and check for a spire or nydus network.

A couple of things worth mentioning:

You neglect to mention evo chambers, upgrades and timings which are crucial in ZvT.

Generally in a standard macro style game 1/1 will start before baneling nest OR lair.

Roaches can also come before lair without it meaning all in, roaches are a common safety unit to deal with things like hellbat drops etc, and are also powerful in the midgame.

A completely standard macro zerg style in the current meta the gas spending will go zergling speed>1/1 upgrades>lair>baneling nest>roach warren (optional)>2/2>spire>baneling speed>infestation pit>hive>3/3 and adrenal glands>ultralisk cavern.

So from this you can notice variations which can give clues as to the build.

Two all ins you might fear are the roach, baneling, ling bust which hits at around 8:30, and a 1/1 or 2/2 roach baneling ling speed timing. Obviously in lower leagues the timings are not as important.

However you can spot a roach baneling ling bust by spotting the lack of lair, lack of taking more than 2 gases, lack of evo chambers (probably the biggest clue) and an early roach warren. One tank and some rudimentary micro and you win if you know its coming.

To spot a later speed bane roach timing with 1/1 or 2/2 you need to scout the lack of spire or infestation pit after lair, that's the biggest clue. That means they are not teching so their entire econ is going to roach, ling bling, must be a bust or super aggressive midgame coming.

Dropping is the best form of scouting, so thats another tip, when dropping don't just focus on doing max damage, try to use it to pick up information.

3rd base at 44 comes around 5:50.

Also two base muta is not uncommon, so don't always assume 2 base zerg is busting. Conversely don't assume 3 base zerg isn't.

In fact the most common form of roach, bane, ling bust you take a third at 5:50 and don't drone to it (like soulkey vs innovation GSL finals).

What I know about scouting Protoss, although this is a little tilted towards Z since we get overlords and you have to use reapers/scans:

The first two buildings a Toss has to make is a gateway and a cybernetics core; as Tasteless likes to inform you in every single PvP, it's after the core finishes that the Protoss decides what tech choice to use.

Various Protoss openings/tech paths are...
- multiple gates before core - very rare, but if you scout this it means the Toss wants to put on significant zealot pressure. Build bunkers.
- nexus first, gate/nexus/core, gate/core/nexus - now that Toss has the mothership core these early expand builds are a lot more popular
- 4gate - probably not that popular anymore but still something you have to worry about. A good 4gate build will start warping in at about 6:00 (in silver, this will be delayed because people are bad), so knowing that gateways take 65 seconds to build, if a Toss hasn't expanded by around 5:10 then you should try to get a scout in or drop a scan since a 4gate will have just placed down the extra 3 gateways.
- Twilight - A twilight council is required for: upgrades past 1/1, dark shrine, templar archives, blink, and charge. When you see this building super early, it's not charge and it's not a templar archives (templar = mid/late-game tech), so they're either rushing blink or DTs. If the twilight is researching (it's a very subtle animation afaik, hard to tell, but you can see if they're dropping chronos on it at least), it's blink; otherwise, there's probably a dark shrine going down and you need detection.
- Robo - this is where immortals, colossi, warp prisms, and observers come from. Colossi require the robotics support bay, so be on the lookout for that at some point. The support bay also is where a Protoss researches the colossus range upgrade (takes them from 6 range to 9, HUGELY IMPORTANT for colossi to be effective), so if you spot it researching/being chronoed (the research animation on it is very obvious) it's a great target for drops since taking it out will not only keep them from building new colossi but also keep their existing colossi from being super effective before range finishes.
- Stargate: phoenix, void ray, oracles. idk how common Skytoss is against Terran but if you see multiple stargates then it means the Toss is going to be using a very air-heavy composition.

So yeah, around when the core finishes is when the above buildings will start to go down and you can start scouting for them. Reapers should be pretty good for scouting against Protoss early on since they need stalkers to stop them, and obviously they can't build those until the core finishes.

Over time you should also be able to develop a sense of how many buildings a Toss should have at various times so you can tell when a proxy is taking place. It's hard to come up with rules or anything, but as an example, if you hop into their main for a scout at around 4:45 and see nothing but a gate and a core, something is definitely afoot. They might be banking up minerals to put down 3 gateways any moment for a 4gate, or there might be proxy twilight/stargate somewhere out on the map. There's also pylon counting (like, at X time Protoss should have Y number of probes which requires Z number of pylons, so if you only see 2 pylons in the main when you know they need 3 at this point, one of them is proxied), but that's some pro **** that even I'm not really good at yet.

Nexus first dies vs reaper tho

Yeah thats my next question, like how can you reasonably scout (what units or strategies) and when should you scout... I'll send an SCV after I build my 12 rax or 16 depot just for the initial scout but after that I'm kinda just winging it. I hate using scans early but occasionally I'll throw down a scan like 6 or 7 mins in if I don't have any other info. If my scv doesn't get killed I'll put it in the natural or the 3rd so I can catch them expanding. should probably send it back and put a marine there instead

Ignore everyone. Just macro better.

Ignore ak13. Macroing better is something that you'll improve at slowly over time but it's important to develop other skills as well.

Trollface.jpg

The best terrans are dropping so often and stretching the multitasking so much that they know everythin the zerg is doing all the time basically. At low levels obviously this isn't possible. But if you are aware of lair timing, spire/infestation pit timings, their hive timing, how many bases zerg is on, double or single evo and when that will basically givee you all the info you need.

Lowko has a decent video on this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgcUilECTE8

0-4 all TvT today

rage quit, uninstall

5 rax time more like it

Just need to practice more thats all. I mean I've played 100 games total since i got sc2, including vs. AI and build practice games that ive surrendered and whatnot. I've been taking ladder seriously for ~2 weeks. Bo Pelini would tell me that "its a process"