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Introduction
I've played terran a lot lately. It's been very fun. It seems like I get to play more TvTs now compared to when I played terran before. Maybe some of the aversion some players have had to the matchup has disappeared. Personally I enjoy the matchup a lot. I often use this nice strategy that seems to always give me an advantage in the early game. I don't know if there is a trend of TvT play that it happens to be strong against or if all the opponents I've been playing have been weaklings.
3 marine + vult
I start off with a standard 3 marine vult attack, so I make the fac before making the marines. Possibly I make one marine before the fac to deny his scv scout. Send your marines out towards his base when you have 3. I either have them wait in the middle of the map of just send them straight in to attack depending on what I scout. The vult will catch up just as the first battle ensues. The result is often that he loses his first vult/marine(s)/tank and some scvs. If not, it's no big deal.
4 goliath + dropship
The followup is a 4 gol drop. So I get up another factory, an armoury and a starport with addon so the 3rd and 4th gol come out together with the dropship. If possible I use the 1st and 2nd gol to deny his secondary scv scout.
Midgame advantage
The damage of these two attacks seem sufficient to secure a long macro win. After dropship is out, you expo and tech to tanks so you have all the tech to need for the longer game.
Counters?
If I were to think of a counter to this strategy, it would be some sort of 8 rax rush from the middle of the map or an attack that arrives at the opponent's base just as the dropship flies off to attack or just a mirror opening with battles happening on your side of the map. But the strength of this strategy, I think, is how the opponent has a hard time scouting you.
Strengths:
- Safe vs a lot of early attacks because you have 3 marines.
- 3 marine vult attack can fork into a lot of different things, so you are not completely commited to your game plan.
- A one-two punch that mysteriously catches a lot of terrans off guard. (Were they expecting an expo after the 2 gols?)
- A lot of different ways to pull it off. You can hide your 2nd marine until the 3rd one pops out. You can feign a frontal attack with your 4 gols while having the dropship follow to pick them up. You can use rax to draw forces away from where you want to attack.
- You get a lot of "free" scouting because you are in your opponent's face the early game.
- Relatively safe expansion.
- Sets you up with the most useful tech for mid game.
- Fun opening that makes you feel like you are taking charge of the game.
Weaknesses:
- Somewhat vulnerable to unscouted 8 rax.
- Very weak to timed attack as dropship leaves base.
- No early detection.
- Because of the very sharp weakness as the dropship leaves, it demands good scouting/intuition to detect such an attack so you can deal with it appropriately.
Overall:
Strength - Weakness = 8 - 4 = 4
 
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personally i love tvt and it's probably my favorite matchup. this sounds like a good strat to me i will definitely try it out.
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it's possible that the players you have been playing have been mostly weak, like you said. do you have a win% for this strat? in my opinion it seems like it depends on what you can do with that initial 3rine+vult. It seems a little far out that you are able to kill his initial rine(s)/vult/tank with so little. to me it seems like this would be strong against 14cc, especially when there are cliffs above the nat.
that all being said, any early game opening into a somewhat quick 4gol drop has been a popular strat in the past in TvT, but I don't really know of the trends now.
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Well What i do is 3 rine+vult into starport + tank then expo. This seems to do well against this drop style because i can scout you quite easily (not to mention by rax is all in your shit too). By the time you have 4 gols i have a tank and 3 rines and a vult..possibly 2 tanks. The drop is good for agrssive play though and not bad at all keep using it,
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Canada7170 Posts
Haven't we already discussed why the strength calculation doesn't work at all?
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Win rate wouldn't really matter since the sample size is small and I admit that many of the wins were against people I would have won against no matter what I had done. That being said, the games I lose are mostly due to their superior gameplay mid and lategame.
I don't always kill a lot with the first attack. The strategy does not rely on doing damage with the first attack as much as it does with the gol drop. The standard makeup of a defense that you can expect is 3 marines, 2/3 marines + vult, a wall or a bunker with one or two marines in it. The gap in the defense that the opening aims to exploit is if they don't make a vult first when they finish their factory. Many times, you'll end up just killing his marines and losing your own marines. If he has no vult when you attack, you almost always break into his base and get some shots at his scvs and a lot of free scouting. Actually killing his first tank is rare, so I shouldn't have recklessly put in the word "often".
As far as I know 14CC isn't common on current maps. It sounds very risky and hard to defend even if it is scouted late no matter how the opponent responds. Seeing this, I would most likely get a tank asap because tanks outrange marines in bunkers which is the natural defense with such a bold opening. But that's another story.
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On May 24 2008 00:38 mikeymoo wrote:
Haven't we already discussed why the strength calculation doesn't work at all?
Do you have a better way of quantifying how good a build is? Until I find one, I'm sticking to this one.
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United States24803 Posts
On May 24 2008 01:33 stenole wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2008 00:38 mikeymoo wrote:
Haven't we already discussed why the strength calculation doesn't work at all? Do you have a better way of quantifying how good a build is? Until I find one, I'm sticking to this one.
What % of common builds/strategies this is effective against. My only problem with the overall calculation is that the number of strengths/weaknesses you have is fairly arbitrary, and some are more worthwhile or important than others.
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On May 24 2008 00:31 Hypnosis wrote:
Well What i do is 3 rine+vult into starport + tank then expo. This seems to do well against this drop style because i can scout you quite easily (not to mention by rax is all in your shit too). By the time you have 4 gols i have a tank and 3 rines and a vult..possibly 2 tanks. The drop is good for agrssive play though and not bad at all keep using it,
It sounds like it should normally deal with the drop and because your expo will be quicker than mine I will be behind. This has got me thinking though. Maybe I need to hide away my starport somewhere strange from time to time.
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On May 24 2008 02:00 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2008 01:33 stenole wrote:On May 24 2008 00:38 mikeymoo wrote:
Haven't we already discussed why the strength calculation doesn't work at all? Do you have a better way of quantifying how good a build is? Until I find one, I'm sticking to this one. What % of common builds/strategies this is effective against. My only problem with the overall calculation is that the number of strengths/weaknesses you have is fairly arbitrary, and some are more worthwhile or important than others.
I have to admit that I added the 8th strength because I thought this strat deserved more than 3 points.
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I just think the listing of strengths and weaknesses finishes up "the presentation" in a nice way. People like pictures, lists and charts. Of those, lists are the easiest to make. And the Overall calculation is more or less a reference to the poor calculation of a computer game's quality in some old gaming magazines:
Graphics 75%, Sound 65%, Playability 90%, Long term appeal 40%
---> (Advanced averaging calculation) --->
Overall: 67%
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United States24803 Posts
On May 24 2008 02:14 stenole wrote:
I just think the listing of strengths and weaknesses finishes up "the presentation" in a nice way. People like pictures, lists and charts. Of those, lists are the easiest to make. And the Overall calculation is more or less a reference to the poor calculation of a computer game's quality in some old gaming magazines:
Graphics 75%, Sound 65%, Playability 90%, Long term appeal 40%
---> (Advanced averaging calculation) --->
Overall: 67%
Consumer Reports often uses an arbitrary weighting system for combining several different ratings into an overall rating, which can be done so reasonably, I think. I also have no problem with your list of strengths and weaknesses stand alone... they are good.
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Wasn't there a big discussion on how a game like starcraft cannot resort to + / - ?
I agree, some things can, but this is quite general, as with rating a game based on different qualities, it's not AGAINST something else. There is no "opponent" to that, so you things will have a relative value. Unlike in starcraft, where how your opponent works determines the outcome as well.
The one I remember went something like this:
4 hatch
3 hatch
2 hatch
1 pool
0 lings
Advantages:
You get a second hatch
You get a third hatch
You get a fourth hatch
You get a spawning pool
You get zerglings
Disadvantages:
You lose the game
Overall:
5 - 1 = 4
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Calgary26004 Posts
doesnt this lose to just about every other tvt build?
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It does if you play it over and over again against the same person. But I'm sure that applies to most aggressive strategies. Its high successrate could be attributed to how easy it is to execute.
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EPT
