Playing StarCraft Again

I’m not sure why, but I’ve been playing a lot of StarCraft lately.

the community isn’t what it used to be. Sure, when there’s a tournament going, there will be plenty of people watching on Twitch.tv. But nowadays, StarCraft often is so slow on the user count that you have to scroll to find it.

And here I am, still playing random. Only this time I seem to have learned how to play Terran better. It’s all about the stim timing.

It’s all about me watching a lot of Byun on stream. One of the biggest questions in playing StarCraft amounts to “What do I spent my vespine gas on?”

When you play Toss, you’re almost obliged to spend it on Wargate, a stalker and a MSC. With Zerg, it’s speed in nearly every matchup. But terran, the answer isn’t so set in stone.

But Byun would always spend that first 100 gas on two reapers. Traditionally, I had been buying only one reaper. But look at how he harasses! I saw him milk those reapers for all that they were worth. In every matchup, I realized, my reapers could be doing more.

So I started spending my first 100 gas on two reapers. Then I copied how the timing works out so that he spends his next 400 minerals on an early expo. Perfect. I love his openings.

Nearly every ZvT I play, I go for a baneling bust. One of the most difficult aspects of playing StarCraft is the reverse. It’s when you’re playing in a TvZ and you have to scout the baneling bust. Many players, at my level, don’t. They get angry and bm over you “Cheesing” them. But with two reapers, you can get an early initial scout. You can sometimes get a few drone kills. And  you can also heal up at a watch tower to come back in for the vital scout. That scout lets you know if you need to really bunker up on one base, or if you’re safe with two. It also gives info about whether you’ll want to build an early widow mine from your factory, or if it’s safe to skip it for more tech.

I notice a lot of 3rax play. I had been thinking it was more like four rax. But three seems to work better. Two rax with Tech labs, one with a reactor. Then you can factory and Starport into MMM. The trick is to give tech priority to Stim and Combat shield. You can get two drops going fairly early with this build.

The only drawback is that you really have to do damage. If you don’t, you’re likely to be behind. Zerg players can spot the drops coming with good OL placement. And against toss players, often a tech building snipe or a few drones are your best option, because you’ll always bait out the defence of the MSC and have to retreat.

The other way I like to play TvZ is to go full mech. Just double armory, double upgrades, mech. I prefer my army composition to start with 4 to 6 siege tanks. Then add on as many thors and hellbats as I can, while I expand to a third base. The idea is to sit on three or four base until you max out with mainly thors. The problem with this build is that it is susceptible to attacks, and pretty much cedes map control to the zerg player. Later on I’ll add on a stargate and raven and possibly battlecruisers.

I find the full mech army *with siege tank support* can demolish just about anything. It does poorly against swarm hosts, which is why I have been experimenting with adding on Banshees. But in the end, I know the build needs a little work. Least reason of which is because there really is no harass with this build. It’s all turtle. And all turtle can never win against a player with full map control and good game sense.

Still, even as I type it, I can see how we could add on more harass. Because the build still starts with the two reapers. If you can keep them alive, you’ve got a good followup attack with Reactored hellions. If you keep that count up high, you can deny the zerg expos. Which would make turtling a whole lot more playable. I’m definitely going to try it in later games.