My opening is actually pretty good, and it’s one I’ve been using regularly lately in this matchup. I go barracks then factory, and as the factory’s building, I get a tech lab on the rax. When the factory finishes, I transfer it to the tech lab and build a second barracks. I immediately start producing a tank (I’ve been producing marines the whole time), and I usually have enough minerals/gas to start siege tech right around the same time as the first tank. Then I get my second tank and push. It usually goes fairly well, and considering my opponent went for a fast expand in this particular match, my reinforcements should have been able to win me the game.
From there I make a lot of dumb mistakes, including continually moving my tanks and rines too close to his wall, with his tanks blasting me in the face. Then I go medivac instead of viking, which could have worked if I had done some drops (the back of his base was wide open, by the way), but I did nothing but keep them with my containing units. So I can’t get any vision for my tanks because his vikings just destroy my medivacs. Everything goes downhill from there, and by the time he breaks my contain, that’s pretty much the end of me.
One overarching problem I noticed in this replay is that I had major tunnel vision. I actually had quite a few options I could have tried for attacking him aside from just going straight into his base, but I never considered any of these alternatives. That was a bad move. I sacrifice tons of units needlessly while I could have been causing him lots of difficulties through drops, flanks, etc.
Check out the replay with commentary:
Lessons learned:
1. To keep up a contain in TvT, get vikings.
2. If the opponent’s base’s entrance is heavily guarded, don’t keep trying to pound through the front door.
3. Be more careful about getting units too close to the other guy’s siege tanks. I lost so many units this way, and it’s suck an easily avoidable mistake.