I usually clump the spines and have em as far as possible from their minerals; so the max surface area the drones can have on the spines is minimal and the time they have to spend not mining to attack them is maximized.

That's all. With no lings or queen coming they should not be able to win just by pulling the drones and attacking the spines. Your lings will do too good at killing the drones by themselves, if the drones refuse to stop attacking the spines (which you can cancel and remake if its about to die). If they stop attacking the spines to engage the lings you just run away a little bit and then they aren't mining or attacking your spines.

Well, tell me your thoughts on this game: http://drop.sc/248881 While I probably made some minor mistakes, I think I was generally doing what you mentioned (except for the cancel/remake part when my first spine goes down, that's tough to maneuver though) and I don't think I was even close to holding. I've found that the other guy pulling their drones has worked pretty well for them in general if they really commit to it and don't waffle. :/

People know how to defend against 4gating alot better now, so.....

Your extractor tricking is a non sanctioned addition to the build that I'm not qualified to comment on.

He ends up having lings pop while your spines are still coming in and as I said if they have a queen or lings on the way you're basically done for. Damn he even got a queen out too.

And the spine on the right isnt touching the spines to it's left, allowing a full surround on it.

You're also going to allow less surface area with an equilateral spine crawler triangle than a spine crawler line segment, Im pretty sure.

I posted about that a week or two ago - I think 8pool + drone to 9 + extractor trick 6 lings out is intriguing. You have a more solid economy at home to apply followup pressure if necessary, or transition into a normal game if you damage him enough but don't hold, instead of being COMPLETELY all-in, at the expense of your lings popping 10 seconds later than they normally would.

But, in any case, lings/queen popping about that time is pretty standard for most players right? I didn't look at his timing in the replay but I imagine he did a 14 pool.

I'll try the spine triangle, that does sound better.

The blah blah blah preceding the bolded is 100% not worth the bolded that you are giving up to get it. You're lying to yourself saying it makes it not completely all-in (because it still is), it just makes it a worse all-in.

In your replay after the rush failed (largely because you're making it 10 seconds later on purpose) how helpful did you really find those extra 2 drones?

How much more helpful would it have been if his lings and queen were out (relative to when we arrived in his base) 10 seconds later? A lot more than those 2 extra drones helped.

I think if you went 10 seconds earlier, and had your spines in a triangle instead of the morse code N you would have either won or at least got the spines up for a little while and done some damage.

10 seconds is so huge doing something cheesy and fragile like this.

Lol

TvT is officially the worst matchup of all time. I just lost a game where I had like 7 bases to this drooler's 3 because he sits behind a ****ing siege tank line the whole game and bio is ****ING HOPELESS. Tech to battlecruisers but can't get a critical mass to kill his 20 vikings, ****ing bull**** game, Terran sucks

Ravens!

Vikings have better range and speed, and battlecruisers don't have stim, no such thing as a critical mass of battlecruisers to kill 20 vikings.

I guess siege tanks and vikings are unbreakable then

I'm getting worse at this game the more I play, played myself from 5th in my div to 25th in the last two days

im here to answer all sky terran questions....

usually by the time my opponent sees im going battlecruisers, im on my way to having 3/3 and getting viking support with them.

I guess it's not quite as bad as I thought, I'm 19-29 in the last couple days. Sadly I imagine it's much worse if you remove 4gates which seems to be the only kind of game I can win these days (and they aren't even that fun, herp derp warp in stalkers and win).

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/co...ow_you_how_to/

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/co...how_to/c65zc4f

Thanks, we'll see how this goes.

Wow, he already responded!

Have you not read The Art of War?

Stick 'em with the pointy end?

nukes can be effective.

flanking can work well depending on their set up.

dropping other areas.

if you have 7 bases to their 3, you can usually make bad trades of bio for siege tanks and eventually overwhelm them.

can we talk about timing attacks?

i feel like i dont exactly know what a timing attack is.
i prolly use them and fall victim to them, but can someone give me a solid example?

like only one i can think of is TvP when u head out with ur first 2 medivacs, and i guess thats a timing cuz its right when u get ur medivacs right?

I think it's, like, a time when you're in a position of strength relative to your opponent and you have a small window of time to exploit it. A more frequent example would prob be when upgrades finish, like if you do some kind of build to try to hit a +1/stim timing where you attack right as they finish and before your opponent has necessarily teched to whatever he needs to effectively counter you. They can also arise in the middle of a game, like if you do some kind of tech transition that your opponent is late in preparing for, you have a window of opportunity to exploit that.

also, saw TLO cancel a hatch to get creep so he could creep spread faster, no way its worth the 75 mins lost right?

Theres no way in hell he canceled a hatch for creep spread. Im not even sure what that means really, you can creep spread around a hatchery.

It means you build a hatchery somewhere in the middle of the map, cancel it, and you can place a creep tumor there for a second. Same principle as evo chamber blocking with a cancelled hatchery.

oic