So, as most of you know I play mostly random and mostly 2v2... but here is a replay (my last game, just finished about 5 minutes ago) of myself playing 1v1 random and getting Terran Vs Protoss.

Cardinal (random-T) Vs snoOX (P)

The bits I want to show off are the encounters at 13 Minutes and the final push from 15m20s onwards.

Enjoy.

Orbital Command on 39 supply == AWFUL.

Your first attack, you were lucky he didn't really have anything. Your second attack you were lucky he was too stupid to snipe your medivacs

This might be hard to take: STOP MICROING. When you're dancing your marines and mauraders your resources are climbing 1000+. They'll do nearly as much damage simply a-moving. Get into a decent position and go back to macroing - keep an eye on your troops, but don't overmicro when your APM is better spent elsewhere.

Your build wasn't tight, but I guess that's acceptable as a random player... What league/rank are you?

Also what was with the weird expansion choice? Take your nat, plain and simple. You're better off having a position you can defend than a position you *might* not have to.

Thanks for the reply and feedback.

I am 1v1 Gold/ranked ~50s. There are some matchups where I am totally weak or I play without concentrating, so my rank suffers.

2v2 Platinum - ranked 4th. I slipped down to Gold a few weeks ago, but climbed back into Platinum. A lot less cheese going on in Gold (almost no 6 pools and only 1 cannon rush). Yet in Platinum, there seems to be a lot more 6-pool and cannon/reapers. But, it is 2v2... so lets just forget about it ...

As for my expo choice... I am not used to the 1v1 maps. For some reason, everytime I end up playing on this map I think there are destructible rocks at that Natural. It just seems too cosy. And besides, I took my Expo when I knew the game was in my hands.

I really don't like the Orbital Command. I prefer pumping SCVs and putting that 150 minerals onto Supply/Barracks. Also, Terran are my weakest race (unless I random Zerg and cant be arsed paying attention). Around what supply is an Orbital Command considered 'standard'? I suppose the earlier the better.

As for the APM... I don't know, that really is something I need to focus on. I guess it is psychological. I find that when I am in a fight and giving it my +150 to 200 APM, it feels like I am winning. I don't know. It just psyches me, and I get faster and faster. Whether or not it pays off, and a simple Attack+Move would be 95% as effective, as you say... I don't know.

Again, cheers for the feedback. I'll post more replays in the future

MULEs are worth it. That's what it comes down to. I get mine on 14 as soon as my first rax finishes.

Thought so.

I was going for an early marine push in this game. Which turned out to be not so early. It paid off though I would say - since he wasn't really expecting it.. getting his 4-gates before warp-tech was complete and only having a couple stalks n sents.

one mule = 400 minerals = a whole new command center, one mule every... 25 seconds? Plus, with masses of that, you can drain a rich mineral field in no time and leave it behind without having to defend for too long.

I believe one mule is 270 minerals.

I suggest going to sc2-replays.net and finding some good Terran players there, and copy their play. Copy how they open to the game (their build to about 25 food). If you copy their macro and macro alone you will be able to get into diamond with ease.

15 is standard, your last SCV should just be finishing as your Barracks does. Getting an Orbital pays for itself a minute after it finishes, there is absolutely no excuse for not getting one unless you're hitting an SCV marine all-in within that next minute.

Going through the game:

2:00 - No Orbital, already pointed out.
2:45 - Second Depot to finish your wall is super early. Just use the second barracks that you make anyway.
6:00 - You haven't left your base yet. Scouting is massive in PvT, he could literally have DT's or Void Rays at your door and the game would be over.
---- For the next 120 seconds, you don't macro. ----
7:00 - You're leaving your base with just marines that don't even have Stim yet. I'm not even going to list how many things he could have that would absolutely crush this, there's too many.
7:15 - You a-move your marines and they split into two equal sized groups en route to the enemy base... again, you could have lost simply because of this.
7:45 - You see sentries and walk up his ramp anyway, getting split off. Thankfully he's bad and has pretty much no units. I'm not even sure how it's possible that he doesn't have units yet, he has 4 fucking gateways.
8:15 - I'm not really sure how you don't win the game in the next 30 seconds. He has one half dead pylon supporting all of his gateways and literally no army. You have a dozen marines.
8:30 - Oh, you don't kill the pylon and lose your stimmed marines to probes.
---- You resume building units. ----
8:45 - You killed 15 probes. Despite this you only have 3 more than him and did not place an expansion while attacking despite not rallying the units that you didn't build to reinforce your attack. One or the other needs to happen EVERY TIME you attack unless there's a very good reason for some units to defend (DT's, Mutalisks, etc.)
10:00 - The Factory that you're not using could have built a Reactor instead of a Tech Lab so that the Starport doesn't have to do that now.
11:30 - Poor Marauder.
12:00 - Oh cool an e-bay. Good thing he decided not to get Air or Cloaked units in 12 minutes, or you would've essentially auto-lost.
13:00 - Good decision to drop your units with the rest of your army. You never want to send half of your army in a drop, either send a very small part of it or all of it.
13:15 - Fighting from down low was good too, there's no reason to walk up a Protoss's ramp if you can do damage without doing so.
13:30 - Just noticed this, how the hell is your army not hotkeyed?
15:00 - You drop your army in his natural expansion after showing him this is what you're going to do. This allows you to walk up a second ramp which is equally sized but does not have a retreat path.
15:30 - You walk by a 6 unit army that you could have killed in +/- 5 seconds.
15:35 - You walk by a 5 unit army that you could have killed in +/- 5 seconds.
16:10 - He has like 4 units, you have 3 Medivacs full. Why are you running?
17:20 - You BM.

EDIT1: So your battle micro is decent though your stutter step with infantry, especially while stimmed, needs work. Your macro and decision making on the other hand are pretty poor. You definitely need the latter if you want to play random.

EDIT2: Oh, apparently no one even uses this forum anymore. I clicked the 2nd most recent topic and it's a month old. Go figure.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Feb 3 2011, 9:11 am by FaZ-.

xD

The proper terran base build is 10 supply, 12 rack, 13 gas, 15~16 orbital.
Then you could either go marauders with triple rack, or get a 2nd gas and go hellion/banshee build which is a bit micro intensive and requires some skill.
Or, you could get a 2nd gas, turtle, and go mech build such as thor marine, tank marine, which requires some skill too.
(you'd have to dodge storm, spread 'BACKWARDS' not 'SIDEWAYS' if you see colossi.)

EDIT::
Also, marines themselves are worthless against protoss. I mean seriously, worthless.
Toss could double gate, constantly making sentries and zealots, while getting +1 armor upgrade and warp gate. You have a battalion of marines by then. Guess what, a dozen zealots with half a dozen sentries with +1 upgrade will crush that battalion of marines so bad, it's not even funny.
Toss could stall some time with base units while toss gets colossi. You get harassed and are forced to turtle until Toss takes all of the map and just spams colossi. You are owned.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 3 2011, 11:55 pm by BeDazed.

Well microed Marines are very strong against Protoss until Storm/Colossi tech, they just need to be controlled well so as not to be trapped by forcefields or Zealots.

A mix of Marauders is necessary to deal with Stalkers, but pure MM has won a lot of games. The Protoss is very limited and having a solid Marine core in addition to Marauders limits the effectiveness of Immortal or Void Ray tech.

The general way I play after that is Ghosts if he goes High Templar, Vikings if he goes Colossi. I don't like to handle Thors TvP except as a rare drop strategy, usually on LT, or against massive amounts of Sentries.

It's always 15 Orbital, the timing is literally perfect.

Well, depending on your opponent's strategy, your orbital can be stalled a bit for marines/bunkers- such as proxy gate, ling rush, proxy racks, such and such.

Wow this thread brings back memories (some painful, some embarrassing).

I have since moved on, and I play 100% protoss. I have recently considered getting back into random or maybe Terran, but I would like to say my Protoss game is pretty damn hot (without sounding too cocky). I find it a lot easier to macro as Protoss - chronoboosting probes and popping down pylons is preferable to me, than building scvs, dropping mules and making depots. Once you get 2 nexus (Nexi?), I hotkey them both to the same numero but give them their respective waypoints - then its just a case of boosting probes and tech and deciding which path to go (Stargate / Twilight / Robo). I have recently been favouring the early robo and double observer - especially since the latest patch when observers aren't so gas heavy.



Marines are devastating in large numbers against most gateway units. In the right hands of course - which I admittedly do not have. In my switch to Protoss - the stimmed marine push timing attack is pretty dangerous. You have to be pretty spot-on with your force fields / ramp blocking to remain in the game. But, charge-zealots, blink-stalkers, collosi and storm are all devastating against the early tier 1.5 Terran push. So, I find that it's a toss up between fast-teching (and stalling), or massing units for a defence and counter-push against Terran. Obviously observer scouting is mandatory since the Terran could literally be going anything from reapers to hellions to banshees to medivac drops.

This is not so. The toss has varieties of ways to determine what Terran is going. On the first probe scouting, you can spot 1 rack and 1 gas going up, and if you are able to micro till first marine comes out, you will be able to see if Terran is going 2 gas or not. If you spot T going 2 gas and a factory right after barrack, then you can expect reapers or hellions.
You have to keep harassing with units to determine if T is going banshees or not. You'll only need observers if you saw all that, if you saw hellions, its 100% likely that T will go banshees. If you saw reapers, it is unlikely, but still plausible. But if you saw all this, you could still go fast expansion with upgrade zealot/sentry. You'd still have enough minerals to have photons all over your base, and by the time he gets 3 or more banshees, you'll have an army so large and powerful, you could probably win even without observers.