Starcraft – How to get to the air quickly in SC2

You don't need much base defense. Try getting by without building any bunkers, and just defending early with the marines that you build, and later with tanks. You'll definitely need a good wall-off and units correctly positioned on the cliff to do damage to the zerg as the come around the corner. You can afford to expand pretty late (you only need it for the gas), once you have the majority of your tanks sieged on your cliff. Expanding late will allow you to not have to spend any extra money on base defense.

You should not stop producing SCVs for a very long time. It should be at least 10 minutes where your command center is NEVER idle. Get an orbital command as soon as your first barracks finishes, and use MULEs every time its up. Pump marines non-stop from your first barracks (no add-on). As gas allows, get your factory up and pump tanks until you hit 8. Get siege when you have enough gas to research it without stopping tank production. As your 1-base economy starts to peak, you will have enough extra minerals that you can't spend with your limited number of production buildings. At this point, build a second barracks and you'll soon be at 30 marines. Once at 30, put tech labs on your barracks and get ghosts as gas allows. You should also have extra minerals, since 2-rax marine, SCVs, and a factory should not be spending it all. When you have 400, build a command center inside your base (you'll float it down when its done). Move SCVs down from your main, and prioritize gas. You should be close to 8 tanks by now, so put all your gas into ghosts. If you can't spend all your gas on 2 rax ghosts, get more.

I got gold on this challenge on my first try. It shouldn't be too difficult if you follow good macro fundamentals (constant production, don't supply block yourself, correctly prioritize your resources).

I realize some of my answers are a little long, so I made a TL;DR version

I'm going to ask you a few rhetorical questions and I don't want you to be offended, but they are things you need to be thinking about.

1. What was your plan going in to this game?
2. When did you plan your timing push?
3. Why did you build 3 Barracks?
4. What did you think when you scanned a Factory with a tech lab and a Starport building?

In my opinion these were the three major mistakes you made. By 7:30 it had become your opponents game to lose before a single shot was fired.

Looking at your BO I saw:

• 3 Rax (1 tech 1 reactor)
• 1 Factory, all before the 7 minute mark.

If you can cut the produce of the factory, and done an MM timing push at 6:30 (which is the usualy MM timing push) you would have easily won the game. At that time your opponent had 5 marines and 1 tank (no siege mode). The normal MM push there is 4-5 of each Marauders and Marines. You would have steam rolled him.

If you had done so your answers would have been:

3 Rax timing push, heavy on Marauders at 6:30

Instead, you chose to go 4 unit producing structures off 1 based (which you can't really afford as Terran). This meant that your Barracks sat idle, you didn't produce Marauders and you didn't have a good timing push. Its because of this I asked my first 3 questions.

You don't really seem to have a plan.

Strangely this wasn't what lost you the game. Not having a plan, while hard to over come, is not crucial, especially since your opponent didn't really have one either (there is no good reason he builds that second Barracks). The problem became your response to what your opponent was doing.

At 6:30 you saw a Factory with a tech lab, two Barracks and a Starport being built. The second Barracks is really the red herring here, so let's ignore it for 5 seconds. What does: 1 Barracks, 1 Factory, 1 Starport mean? In TvT this means Marine/Siege/Viking.

In response you throw down an Engineer Bay (for Turrets, which you build) and a Starport for Vikings, and continue to build Marines (and a single Marauder). Which of these things is supposed to counter Siege tanks using Vikings for sight? Well Viking vs Viking is key, but what about the Siege tanks?

By 11 Minutes you'll have built 2 Vikings and 3 Marauders with another one of each on the way. Ultimately there is nothing you can do about the Siege Tanks and they roll your Marine heavy force. They box you in and that's game.

In theory you probably could have done something clever with Dropships around 9-10 Minutes and caught him with his pants down, but really you don't do anything to stop him.

Before you play your next game (before you even load up Starcraft) I want you to have an answer to the first three questions I asked. And next time you scan Factory/Starport I want you to think "Great! My timing push should arrive right before he gets Siege Tanks!"

A plan is like a story, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. Turtling and finding the right moment to attack isn't a story, its like a blurb you'd find on the cover. Let me tell you the story of Bio into Biomech:

I'm going to open up three Barracks into Marine/Marauder. Marauders will work well as a meat shield and the Marines will provide the real fire power. I'll push just before stim finishes so that I arrive with it. The goal of my push is to stop early expansions and punish heavy teching strategies. I know that I can support 3 Barracks on 1 base and still have a little extra income to plan for expanding.

Mid-game I'm going to transition into MMM and Medivac drops. This will keep my opponent contained and force him to build a lot of defenses he won't be able to use to attack me. Additionally, Medivacs will let me really take advantage of Stim and keep me mobile. I know I can support Medivacs on top of my three Barracks, but nothing else, so I will make sure to have a Command Center up first. My goal is to gain map control and keep my opponent boxed in.

Late game I'm going to start adding in factory units like Siege Tanks or (more recently) Thors to break my opponent's defenses. I should be comfortably on 2 or 3 bases by now so resources won't be an issue. I will crack my opponent like an egg

My strongest weapon is my mobility and I will abuse it. I can end the game at any point: early, middle or late. I will restrain myself from over committing and starve my opponent to death. I will end the game when I choose. I am Terran BioMech.

It sounds scary doesn't it?