Expert: Denny Lin - 2/24/2009

Question
Hi! I've started playing starcraft recently. It's been a month, and I understand the game a lot now, but can't seem to win any 1v1 matches. Well... let me explain.

My friend told me that he would teach me starcraft. He isn't a very good player, but he taught me some basic strategies like dropping on strategic places, disrupting the enemy's economy, etc. I play terran, on a side note.

I play about 8 games a week. Some weeks I skipped playing games. Long story short, I have lost to him 35 times. I have never played anyone else, because of pride/feeling of challenge. I want to conquer my friend before moving on to anything else. He's a terran player too. Recently the games have gotten more interesting, and I have grown closer to him in skill. However, I can't seem to beat him.

We ALWAYS play on lost temple, 1v1. What usually happens is, none of us does land assaults on each other. We both usually get a couple turrets near the cc, and a bunker near the eco lines, and put about three siege tanks, a bit spread out from each other, in siege mode. We do that in case the enemy drops. However, it is traditional for me, in every game, to sneak past all those defenses and do a suicide attack on the scvs with 7 marines and a med in one dropship. I do this drop asap as the game goes. I usually kill more than 6 scvs before I die.

Now what happens after 1 rax or 2 rax is different for both of us.

I go wraiths, and make about 8, and annoy him with it, by atatcking undefended scvs, hitting lone units and buildings, and annoying him in every way possible. I start churning out goliaths til i have about 6 or 8, and I slowly tech to other stuff, such as sci vessels and ghosts with lockdown. The reason for such a defensive strat? My friend always does the same strat that always kills me.

My friend, as soon as mid game starts, starts teching at breakneck speed to battlecruisers. Meanwhile, his main base is neraly immune to all kinds of attacks, cuz he has around his cc, and bunkers and turrets. He starts churning out battlecruisers at an amazing speed, and pretty soon, gets a dozen battlecruiers that, despite my lockdowns and goliath/wraith/medic defenses, conquer me with about one or two losses of his battlecruisers. Once, I got really close to beating him, because I very very VERY cleverly microed my wraith fleet (I earned decent micro skills from playing Warcraft 3), and killed about 7 battlecruisers. However, I couldn't go offensive, because I was too occupied with defending my base from battlecruisers, and pretty soon, a fleet of valkyries came from his base, and laid waste to my wraiths.

Other tactics that he uses is... spraying the route to his base with mines so that my feeble attempts at land assaulting die quickly.

I am having extreme difficulty improving/defeating him. I have decent APM, about 100 per minute (which i think is pretty good for a newbie). However, I can't seem to be very offensive in an efficient way, and when I do get offensive and getting even with him for a bit, I can't seem to do the final killing blow that will wipe out his tank/bunker/turret guarded base. My friend taunts me and says that maybe terran isn't right for me, and that in a tvt, its "all about speed," and that I will never catch up to him in speed. He basically told me to go zerg or toss against him. My response? NEVER. I told him I wasn't gonna give up just because he beat me 30 times in a tvt. Yet even after I said those words, I was constantly thinking how to beat him.

I'm very sorry if I typed too much by the way.

I'll wrap it up with what happened 15 minutes ago. I finally decided to be aggresive to the xtreme. As soon as the game started, I teched very very VERY fast to tanks, and pumped 4 out, with about 6 marines. I sent the tanks and 6 marines to his base, climbed up the ramp, set the siege tanks to siege mode near the top of the ramp, and started attacking. I thought victory was mine, because he usually only has one tank in his base. However, he stimmed his marines at the RIGHT TIME and charged in at the perfect time (right after my tanks fired at a buliding, so that the rines could gain in asap during the delay), and wiped out two of my tanks. Even with my marine support, it wasn't enough. Meanwhile, while I was busy killing his marines with my marines, his Tank got established at firing range at my marines, and destoryed them. meanwhile, about a dozen scvs came out of nowhere, rushed up to my tanks (again, with perfect timing), and started attacking them. I went tank mode, but it was too late. I started rebuiding for another attack force, but as soon as my forces were about to go into his base, HIS forces dropped on my base, and despite some casualties via my tanks, they overwhelmed my base.

Is there absolutely no hope for me in a tvt? Or should I ignore my friend's taunting and defeat him? If so, HOW? What do I do if I suspect a battlecruiser tech, or a drop? How should I play offensively? Thanks for any kind of help. I really mean it.  

Answer
Hi Raymond,

TvT is traditionally called Tank wars for a reason. Comsat kills off wraiths too fast to really make them effective... I'll suggest 1 way, and you can try it out.


(1) Go for map control

By doing this, means to grab and early expansion, basically, since your friend turtles and tech to battle cruisers, you may forgo building any defenses altogether. Try this out..


Start by building your barrack/supply depot near the ramp, so to prevent and to delay any rushes that he might attempt.
Scout with an scv early to make sure he is not attempting a rush. Seeing 2 barracks or more, usually mean a rush, if you see that, build up a bunker at the ramp.

Then grab the expansion DIRECTLY in front of your base if you can. If not you may build elsewhere also, but then you'll find yourself having to defend 2 very distant places. (However since your friend turtles, this shouldn't be much of a problem)

Expansions basically give you more Minerals and gas to build tons more than your friend, and that should win you the game generally.


(2) Use tanks to your advantage

Tank push him before he can even get a single battlecruiser up. This shouild be quite possible.
You should have probably 2-5 factories, or even more, depending how many expansions you have. If you have quite a few then you can build more factories to pump out tanks/goliaths even faster.

Don't even bother about vultures. Comsats are more than enough to clear out those wraiths. SVs are quite useless, unless you intend to EMP wraiths. A few goliaths will tank out wraiths very quickly.


Seige up your tanks and push in. This is the technique of doing a tank push...

(1) Seige up all your tanks directly outside his base.
(2) Unseige half your tanks, and move them in closer. Then seige them
(3) Unseige the other half which is now behind then move them in close again.

By doing this, you will be able to prevent any marines from running in. And with some of your tanks in mobile mode, they can still shoot the marines too.

Next up, tanks can shoot further than they can see.
Thus, i will usually fly a dropship, or lift off an engineering bay, and fly it in front of my tanks to increase the SIGHT of my tanks. This enables my tanks to shoot further than the opponent's tanks and thus giving me an advantage in tank battles.

Usually after this, you'll see goliaths appear to shoot down those engineering bays.

In tank battles, you may also bring 2-3 scvs to repair your tanks out in the heat of battle.

THese will be the same scvs you use to fast build up an engineering bay to lift off and scout.



If you intend to tank rush, try going for 2 factories, and getting early gas (gas is usually the issue here).
Get up about 6 tanks then you can start pushing with the 6 tanks and 2-3 scvs. Continue pumping out tanks and sending them to your battle zone.

You should win the battle at this point, should your friend have turtleed and tech without much defences.

After a while, you may feel you have extra minerals. This is when you expand. Send an scv and build a command centre at the expansion outside your base. And start harvesting minerals and gas there.



P/S In long drawn out battles. Goliaths usually will win battle cruisers head on. THe trick is not to rush your goliaths into the battle, but try this..


(1) Select all your goliaths
(2) right click on 1 of the battle cruisers
(3) Hold down shift, and right click on another cruiser
(4) Still holding down shift, right click another cruiser.

Do this and queue the attack on a few cruisers, then let the battle fight it out.

Basically you want to take out 1 cruiser at a time, and thin out his army. You don't want to shoot different cruisers. A group of 12 goliaths, can basically take out 1 cruiser in 1 hit, when all of them fire together.

Cruisers have a problem in that they are not as effective to target each goliath, 1by1, as you can have probably 4x as many cruisers as him.

Goliaths OWN Air... so try it out.


Lastly, remember to build as many scvs as you can. Don't camp with 10 or something like that. BUild more, and send 3-4 on gas once your refinary is up. If you need more gas, and have tons of minerals, means it's time to expand and build another base to up that gas intake.

Let me know if this improves your gameplay. Takes some practice..


Yours,
Denny