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Hi everyone 
I need help with TvZ. I'm a Grandmaster Terran, and I really feel hopeless with this matchup. I know there are many lower level players than me on the board, and I welcome EVERYONE to help me out, but please note what level you play on
So lets get to the point. I will attach two replays, both on big maps and cross positions which I find the hardest. My general plan is marine tank medivac with quite fast bio upgrades. I open with a reaper FE on maps like these, because it is so far, and naturals are so easily defendable i concluded any harass based style puts me behind if the zerg responds correctly. I prefer the reaper to the a 1 rax FE because its gets me a scout of 1 and 2 base all ins, as well as allows me to put zerg in the dark for a while. I noticed zergs need to put down a spine or two, and get an extra queen if I deny their scout with the reaper. I need the techlab anyway, and the expand is equally fast.
So my first push is around the ~9 min mark, as thats when I'm able to get stim+siege+1 medivac for vision. I put down more production facilities after that, depending on what I see I either get 2 factories or more rax. I also put down a 3rd depending on the timing of his third.
In both of the games I posted and in most of my TvZs i feel ahead most of the game. After my initial push I'm usually able to kill the third and put down my own, or trade armies and kill some drones. The graphs after the games support this, as almost always I am ahead in the resource collection rate graph, and definitely the army value graph.
I'm a grandmaster level Terran, and macro is one of my stronger sides, so hopefully poor macro isn't causing me to lose. I also worked a bit on my army control and splitting, and while I know it is not perfect, I'm often able to trade marines vs banelings efficiently.
I feel like whatever I do - no matter how much faster my expansions are, how much bigger my army is, or how much greater my income stays, the zerg is producing shit at a higher rate than me. There is always another wave of units, and minute by minute I feel like the end is nearer, even thou my army remains bigger and income greater. At some point they get infestors, ultras, broodlords etc. And I get rolled. I felt like that in both of the games and I feel hopeless - please help me!:D
Just as a final note, I don't want to change my style completely - I know things like mech exist, and I played them, but for now I wanna learn marine tank.
Replay 1 - Gomas vs MeYera on Shakuras Plateau
Replay 2 - Gomas vs Sky on Metalopolis
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Hey, I'm kinda strapped for time but managed to I watch that first game on Shakuras most of the way through to the point where Zerg started gaining an advantage.
I think you main problem is that you are direct pushing too hard with medium sized marine/tank blobs.
You can get away with that early on quite well (and you did) but as zerg transitioned in the mid-game you kept doing these straight line pushes with marine/tank. You just can't do that because you keep sacrificing your whole army again and again so that you never get a large push. I think I pretty much stopped watching after you threw away your 3rd or 4th army this way.
So I have a few recommendations to fix this:
1) Take a lesson from other Terrans who take it is slower. Just because you know Zerg is droning up doesn't mean you have to stop it immediately which is a mistake a lot of Terrans do. Many Terrans in the backs of their head go "Oh zerg is droning up, I HAVE to stop it now or I'm behind." And then they become over aggressive and throw their advantage away like you did. You can let Zerg drone up a little bit if you are ahead and let up the pressure from time to time. Instead of pressuring heavily, you build a push that zerg cannot stop if they drone up.
2) Building on the above, take it slower, you were doing straight line pushes. Straight line pushes are not ideal because you expose your army on the move and get caught in bad positions. They are predictable and easy to stop. Set up outside of creep and then slow push into the natural with leap frogging tanks and force zerg to get rid of your army by having to attack into multiple layers of sieged tanks with marine support. Push forward with each wave of reinforcements. In the Shakuras game, you went straight into the third several times only to get caught at the ramp unsieged. On many games I've seen on Shakuras, many Terrans will set up a forward position with tanks and marines and then slowly push in to the natural which cuts off the third so you can send a small group of marines to kill it while shelling the natural ramp.
3) You seem to like an aggressive style. If you do want to push zerg that hard, you should invest in getting rid of creep. In fact, you should probably refuse to push onto creep after the earlier game. Slings and banelings just move too fast if they are on creep and it reduces the amount of shots you can put on their units with your tanks. Like I said above, set up at edge of creep, take out the tumors, leap frog your next wave of tanks to the ends of creep etc repeat.
You might want to get a tech lab on your port to get 1 raven for this since you play with an unreactored port. You can also get medivac energy if you do that.
I think you should watch some higher level streams or VODs to get a general sense of positioning (how you set up a forward positiong and slow push) and pacing(when to throw units at zerg and when to build up for a big push). I think Boxer, BratOk, and LzGamer use similarly highly aggressive styles for TvZ but don't quote me on the last two.
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Reply without watching reaplys... ( I am at the office)
I am a relatively high Master Terran... I also like to reaper opener.
Drops are Really important in marine tank play... As I said I can't watch replays just now but is that something you abuse to the max? If you are fast to pick up you can do what is essentially free damage all game (until mutas)
User was warned for this post
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I watched both the games and it seems like you're rushing the engagements a bit. Mostly you don't even have time too siege before you get destroyed.
At the end of the first game, right when Zerg got ultras and broodlords you had a nice position though, slowpushing you're way forward. I think you should use this technique throughout the game, even in the early stages. Just siege up, sit on your ass and deny expansions with drops and smal groups of marines. Reinforce and build bunkers/turrets, drop when you are about too unsiege and push forward a bit too draw the attention of the Zerg and so on.
I think some more early aggression might help you out as well, in both games the Z was droning heavily in till your first push, perhaps a bunker play or just shark mode might force some more lings?
I'm a master Zerg so what I find hard too deal with might not work at all for you though...
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I'm only mid masters but I'd say it really depends on the tech pattern the Zerg chooses. With 90% of Zerg opponents going spling/bling, the main question is the muta or infestor one. Muta is easier to beat with your comp by straight pushing IMHO and for infestor you want more marines loaded into medivacs.
Personally I'm always adding a raven to my push and produce 1 raven and then 3 medivacs from a starport. Against infestor I have been experimenting with banshees lately. Group in trios and with cloak and go snipe those infestors, plus their DPS in ground battles is nice. They do eat into your tank or medivac count though...
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Please take mine with a grain of salt (gold league and I only watched your 1st game once) but there are some thoughts that came to my mind that I saw the first reply said.
1) You said you use your reaper to scout but I didn't see much scouting past the xel'naga towers. At the time you built it if you were able to push into his base you could of seen exactually what he was going for and could of built accordingly (didn't matter this game as you had a good build against him).
2) I really didn't see much harass. There were some drops here or there but it was all frontal pushes. You did trade armies but there was little drone count loss. I do remember 2 harass drops where he lost a fair amount but it only brought him down to your count. Which by the way I didn't see a scv being built for some time. Not sure if this was purposeful or forgotten. I'm not going to pretend to know where the max SCV amount should be at but you hovered around 60 for some time and I thought it should be between 70-75 (80?) but as I said I am unsure.
3) Some of the frontal pushes seemed a bit questionable to me in regards to the siege tanks. There were many times were you could of siege 1 or 2 of your tanks as you went on but instead all the tanks went in with the marines and sieged a bit late. Your siege spread and slower creeping was a pretty good example of good siege tank mechanics at the ~20:04 second mark but it was a bit little to late. I felt that you could of had a strong foot hold during your first few pushes with a better siege and then reinforce with more tanks and marines that were trickling in. Also, as mentioned earlier by the first replyer, kill the creep tumors. He can see when you siege, unsiege, move up, etc. Also killing the creep tumors gets rid of creep, slowing the zerg down, allowing better time to shoot them down!!!
4) One blaring thing was the amount of gas you had at the end! Over 2000!!! That could be a whole lot of higher tech. However your minerals were really low (and sometimes you couldn't build out of all of your production buildings). Might I suggest having 2 less geysers running and, with the increase scv production (read #2), expand more? I felt you could of easily had a 5th or even a 6th base since your frontal attacks distracted the zerg enough to not harass you in return. Extra minerals for extra units and the chance to use that gas.
Like I said I'm just in gold but at least if my 2 cents are incorrect you can reassure yourself on my points. I wish you luck! I hate and have problems against the swarm too .
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Hey man game 1:
Build Order Refinements:
+ Show Spoiler +Don't take your second gas so fast. You can manage to get 2 siege tanks nicely on only 1 gas. You will have more minerals doing this, and in turn can make your second baracks faster. During the initial push you ideally want only ~4 tanks and a bazillion marines. Don't get siege mode so fast. Use the reaper to scout for a lair at the appropriate time. If there's no lair you know a bling bust is coming so get siege mode quickly, but otherwise you can delay it.
Alright so starport instead of a second factory. To make that worthwhile in the initial tank push you need dropship micro! I personally prefer to get my expo up, 2 factories on 2 gas, then 3rd rax, tech lab, 3rd gas, stim, siege when halfway done, clear the towers, psych out the zerg with marines, then go push with tanks when siege/stim finishes. So stim and siege mode finished super early for you because of the way you worked it.I would go for it at 8:40. Send out your hellion and like 5 marines to take the towers, then the zerg wont know if your actually pushing or not, and he will face a tough decision to drone or not. You waited for the dropship, I support that, but its gonna take skill to make it better than a second factory.
The First Push
+ Show Spoiler +The first push is the most important. First thing you can change is to move out with only a handful of marines first to clear out zerglings and take the towers. Send enough to be confident you can kill any lings he has, but send a small amount so Zerg doesn't know if your pushing for real or not.
Hotkey a bunch of marines and the dropship, and use them as the forward "scouting party", when they get in trouble, just pick them up and bring them to the tanks. Use them as the forward party all the way to his base, and then use them to lure units into siege tank range when you get in position. One really awesome thing you can do, as soon as you get the dropship, go take the towers and put marines on one of those pillars in the center of the map, then taunt him with a hellion and lure zerglings over to the marines. This also works well on Xel Naga Caverns. Just keep picking up/droping the hellion at the towers when you have marines on the highground. You got the dropship, you need to do something cute with it to make it worthwhile, otherwise you should've gotten a second factory.
I dont like that place to siege. It's too greedy for damage. First thing when pushing is kill his units, then you move forward and kill buildings. You need to start killing units ASAP because he's trying to build up the "critical mass" to break your entrenchment. Do this by spreading your tanks and luring him in. If you take the towers with a handful of marines like you should first, you can often catch zergs trying to take them back with too few units. When you first siege, I like to spread my tanks about 3 tank widths apart from each other. Also, split your marines towards the zerg. Then you just select the small groups and run them back when its go time. Also, the hellion could be more active as a scout, send him all the way up the ramp and to the north flank first to make sure you dont get caught unsieged.
Excellent marine split.
This zergs unit composition was literally perfect. The reason for this is because you showed him your hand by not taking the towers before you move out. If you do that more often, you will catch more zergs with there pants down. I would also recommend not pressing the issue too much against roaches. Roaches are the zerg unit that you typically dont want to "trade" with. When they have roaches you want a huge tank push that just stomps the bastards, (bring a raven). When they have ling/baneling, you can definetly trade more successfully in the early game, but things get tough when the mutas come out. If you had seen his army with the hellion, I would have backed up and taken my third, while "pretending" to still be there by leaving 3 ish marines spread out on the edge of creep and running the hellion around for like 10-15 seconds. This would make sure he produces a million zerglings or roaches.
After losing the first push
+ Show Spoiler +You should have set up your third, gotten thors and defended the mutalisks. I dont mind a sensor tower, it's worth it because you can sometimes trap the mutalisks using it, killing a ton of them. You pushed with only 3 tanks. This is do-able only early and with a bazillion marines. Its too late for that, your next push needs like 10 tanks. Also your second push was brutally impatient. Have patience with your sieged tanks. You will be better on the other end of the spectrum: "super safe". Siege off creep and kill tumors while sending small packets of marines everywhere to force the zerg to run around (potentially along the outskirts of well placed tanks
How I Play TvZ
+ Show Spoiler +
The biggest difference between me and you is I am more patient with my tanks, and more focused on getting my third base. I suggest getting your third base then "aggresively turtling", by slowly moving tanks forward. Keep dancing "squads" of marines in front of him. Send 3 marines out in a HUGE radius around your central pushing location. I would siege all my tanks in a line on my side of the bushes on shakuras, then siege 2 - 4 in nice forward locations such that the forward tanks hit anything coming close the middle of the map, and for every tank they engage, they get shelled by at least 3 more tanks. Then use your marines as annoying pests.
My Favourite TvZ Build And It's Not Even Close
Supply depot at the bottom of the ramp
Baracks wall off the bottom
Second rax at the top
Rally Marine Pressure
CC ~24 supply
Double Gas
Double Factory
Third Rax
Third Gas
Produce 3-4 tanks, swap 3rd baracks on to factory tech lab, get stim
Build 1 hellion out of factory (Use Hellion/5 marines to take towers)
Build 3rd tech lab on factory
Get seige Mode
Engineering bay -> +1 when you can easily afford it
Get 4th gas
Push
Get Starport -> 2-4 medivacs, 2-4 vikings no matter what he has
Get 3rd Base / ~8-12 rax
Max out, aggressively turtle, drop marines constantly while maxed, retreat the dropship immediatly, replenish with thors
Triple Starport Viking (Broodlords soon)
4th base
I am very good in TvZ relative to my other matchups. I have played 1 million TvZs against my masters Zerg friend. I've only won 3 times. I've lost in every possible way. Now when we play its really close, and it often goes beyond broodlords. Thus I feel like my gameplan in TvZ is quite strong, as I've played the exact same game 5+ times a night for months.
If you want to add me to bnet on NA server I'm Techno.720
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My Favourite TvZ Build And It's Not Even Close
Supply depot at the bottom of the ramp
Baracks wall off the bottom
Second rax at the top
Rally Marine Pressure
Double Gas
Double Factory
Third Rax
Third Gas
Produce 3-4 tanks, swap 3rd baracks on to factory tech lab, get stim
Build 1 hellion out of factory (Use Hellion/5 marines to take towers)
Build 3rd tech lab on factory
Get seige Mode
Engineering bay -> +1 when you can easily afford it
Get 4th gas
Push
Get Starport -> 2-4 medivacs, 2-4 vikings no matter what he has
Get 3rd Base / ~8-12 rax
Max out, aggressively turtle, drop marines constantly while maxed, retreat the dropship immediatly, replenish with thors
Triple Starport Viking (Broodlords soon)
4th base
Did you mean to put a CC after the 2 rax? I'm assuming this is what you meant. I use this very same build, except the Factories are churning Thor and not tank. I get blasted by Sling/bling/infestor..
In this specific build, what's the difference between Thor and Tank? How do the strengths/weaknesses change? I've been looking into tank play lately because mass amounts of Zerglings tear me to pieces ( as well as NP on the Thor). And I NEVER seem to siege at the proper times.
I've seen you post many, many times giving solid advice. I'd like to know what you think about this Oh I might have to add you, too. Looking for some good practice partners (I'm high diamond/low master)
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I watched both replays and see mostly the same as Antisocialmunky (post 2).
I'm a random 1v1, with a larger terran w/r, but I'm only high diamond.
Additionally, here are a few things:
- It feels to me like you're trying to use the Siege Tanks like they are Marauders, and not really using them as a "siege" weapon. As such, you rarely bring any SCVs to repair them or help out your siege line. If you can confine the game to a 2 base to 2 base, I'm sure you'd have no problem defeating the Zerg. This can be achieved by creating a stronghold off creep (so you can build there).
- Sling-Bling-Mutas (w/ or w/o Infesters) have been eating you alive. Once your base is semi-secured (turrets/bunkers), why not "secure" your foothold the same way? I see you doing this a little in the Shakuras replay, but the Zerg was already on 3, going on 4 base, and teching tier 3.
- If you're not going to use anything but Marines and Tanks, you have to make your foothold/attack before the Zerg gets out of control and can lay it down with BLs and Ultras. You can attack with Marines, Tanks, and SCVs, in the timing window before Lair tech goes up.....however, in order to do this, I believe you'll have to sacrifice your early expo timing to after the attack. It should be worth it though, if you can successfully keep the Zerg at 2 bases.
Only going Marines and Tanks means you have to sacrifice some of the luxuries that you get from having other unit mixes; however, it gives you other advantages, in this case, not having to wait for long upgrades, namely, Stim. Why wait for Stim to press the attack? It's not nearly as beneficial as it is when you have a MM composition. You should be using the Tanks to deal and soak up damage, which means you can already have your Marines semi-spread in defense. I'm not saying you don't need to get it for later, but not waiting is something that will allow your build to speed up, and be able to catch Zerg in the Lair timing window.
- Positioning....though I know you already know this---most of your attacks occurred in the middle of an area, and on creep. A simple siege off creep, and maybe near a wall (or at least doodad) and then slight advance will allow you to have less casualties.
- More aggressive 2nd or 3rd? Have you ever put down a forward PF on a Zerg? This helps to limit expansion as well as gives you a jump point to start your siege on the Zerg (not to mention is really fun).
If you're going to keep your expo timing and whatnot, then this might be a viable option for you. And then not attack until the PF is making. This will also be a good reason to bring SCVs to the fight. I mean, you had enough for it anyways when you did what appears to be your "standard" 10 min attack--this is the same for both replays.
tl;dr version:
I basically see two really viable alternative options for you: 1) change macro gameplay and do an aggressive Marine/Tank; or 2) keep macro gameplay, and do an aggressive 3rd, using it as a jump for your attack......either way, don't forget those SCVs!
Bottom line: if you're going to stay Marine/Tanks for the whole game, you have to cut down the Zerg's expansions, else he'll out-mass, and out-tech you every time.
*edited for clarity
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EDIT: I misread the OP and didn't see that you wanted to stick to mostly marine/tank....really any transition is open to play with off a double expand. I guess you can take this opener for what it is and work it out with what fits your style best. Cheers!
Mid-High Masters~
I'm a big fan of double expands. Open 12/14 Rax and scout after depot. First CC inbase at 23 or so and another CC at your natural at 27 or so. You want to try and deny scouting so that this second CC isn't scouted. Once the inbase CC is finished, load up 5 SCVs and take an expansion that is out of the scouting path of the Zerg. A good example is cross position Shakuras where you fly to the blocked off expansion or on Shattered where you would normally take a third.
A solid, solid walloff is really needed at your natural, I like to put three bunkers spread out 1-2 spaces apart and land the 2 barracks in front to cover the gaps for a full walloff. I then tech towards a Thor/Hellion composition with heavy upgrades. The benefit of the fast double expand kicks in quite quickly once you drop a couple MULEs. Even when scouted, you can still manage to eke out enough extra income to justify the expansion before Zerg has a chance to deal with it.
This is a very turtly build where you push out at maxed 200/200 and take a 4th in the process. I max around ~13-14 minutes and crush most Zerg compositions with ease. You need to keep your hellions behind your Thors to defend them from banes and lings. Infestor play can be very tricky. Magic box mutas hurt as well, but if you prioritize armor upgrades along with marine support, you should be in good shape.
I end up with 5 factories with tech labs and 2 barracks with tech labs. The barracks will either make constant marines or marauders depending on what Zerg does (Roach or Muta).
I'll post replays when I get out of work. I have about 10 or so I could share that hopefully could be useful.
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I was also curious about the timing of your CC. I looked at your 2nd push and when I looked back in your base, I expected to see a nearly finished CC but saw a CC only getting started with 2 1/2 way finished rax. You should really consider reordering that if you have a build that stretches out that far.
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On May 14 2011 02:58 Synystyr wrote:
EDIT: I misread the OP and didn't see that you wanted to stick to mostly marine/tank....really any transition is open to play with off a double expand. I guess you can take this opener for what it is and work it out with what fits your style best. Cheers!
Mid-High Masters~
I'm a big fan of double expands. Open 12/14 Rax and scout after depot. First CC inbase at 23 or so and another CC at your natural at 27 or so. You want to try and deny scouting so that this second CC isn't scouted. Once the inbase CC is finished, load up 5 SCVs and take an expansion that is out of the scouting path of the Zerg. A good example is cross position Shakuras where you fly to the blocked off expansion or on Shattered where you would normally take a third.
A solid, solid walloff is really needed at your natural, I like to put three bunkers spread out 1-2 spaces apart and land the 2 barracks in front to cover the gaps for a full walloff. I then tech towards a Thor/Hellion composition with heavy upgrades. The benefit of the fast double expand kicks in quite quickly once you drop a couple MULEs. Even when scouted, you can still manage to eke out enough extra income to justify the expansion before Zerg has a chance to deal with it.
This is a very turtly build where you push out at maxed 200/200 and take a 4th in the process. I max around ~13-14 minutes and crush most Zerg compositions with ease. You need to keep your hellions behind your Thors to defend them from banes and lings. Infestor play can be very tricky. Magic box mutas hurt as well, but if you prioritize armor upgrades along with marine support, you should be in good shape.
I end up with 5 factories with tech labs and 2 barracks with tech labs. The barracks will either make constant marines or marauders depending on what Zerg does (Roach or Muta).
I'll post replays when I get out of work. I have about 10 or so I could share that hopefully could be useful.
Synystyr, as a huge fan of your TvP build, I've always wondered, "What would Synystyr do TvZ?" I like the sound of this high economics build. Sounds a little like the 3 or 4OC build (except the third OC is functionally mining instead of inside base.) I'm a macro oriented player and TvZ always gets the best of me because I tend to focus on building a big army rather than timing pushes. If there was a way to rival the macro strengths of a Zerg, I'd take up that style of play in a heartbeat.
I'm very interested in seeing your replays. Oh, and if you're looking for a loyal apprentice, I'm your man =P
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WTH MAN
You can't just donate your army like that, time after time u just went in there and he just surrounded you with zerglings. Your tanks werent even sieged! Of course the zerg will get ahead in eco and then just run you over. What you need to do is the push at around 10 min (pretty much the one u did) and expo behind it. AND DONT TRY TO KILL HIM SO HARD. Your positioning was just terrible in almost all of the engangements, you really need to abuse your siegetanks more. Spread them out and siege, sure u wanna make the zerg feel their presense while you're pushing, but don't just run them up 1 cm outside of his base and then siege them in one big clump. It's tough to keep them this way if your opponent can use his mutas, but u have to do it.
I play tvz pretty much like u do it. FE -> push at 10 min with around 3-4 tanks and 20 marines -> take my third expo. The way i treat it is that i wan't to either kill his third( if he has it up yet), or just make him build units and maybe drop him and kill afew drones if his mutas are late, but you can't really kill him with it. If you want to kill him, you should just add more rax earlier and maybe wait a minute or so and then push out(kinda allin though).
The mainthing u need to do while pushing is to NOT just park your tanks in an open area, cause lings WILL own that, but try to make it so that he can only attack from 1 angle(or as few as possible), maybe creep next to a cliff or something, like in that metalopolis game where u went down and positioned your tanks inbetween his third and nat, where you instead just should have placed your tanks north of his third. On metalopolis you usually wanna get your natural third and then push towards the gold and take it as your fourth and then continue pushing on that side of the map to kill his fourth.
Usually a terran wanna make a few big pushes in timings where the zerg expoes or techs, cause then he'll be a bit weaker. Examples of this are when he gets his mutas/take his third (around 10 minute) and when he gets hive (varies, but often around 15 min)
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I know where your coming from TvZ im also really struggling and im only in Gold atm so take what you will from my comments. Also my computer is being wierd atm so only seen the shakuras game.
You threw away sooooooo much for a long period in that game as has already been stated you would walk up to the creep then onto the creep let him engage on creep then siege up which is plain bad. I did like how you set things up around the 20 min mark with bunkers and such if you had done that on your first push, set up your tanks farther back and entrench slowly push in with reinforcements you could have won the game their perhaps. I have been trying lately to do a Boxer style push in one direction whilst dropping somewhere far away and you did that to a degree but it never seemd coordinated with any other preasure.
Like i say im only a gold player and any critisism and advice from me is kind of laughable but i do think your early pushes were wastefull and if you had kept them all alive longer so your 2nd and third pushes were reinforcements rather than a seperate attack youd be in a much better spot.
Just been able to watch the metal game and you really do sacrifice your stuff alot its like your saying right i need to be sieged up here near his 3rd and then you walk all the way their and then siege up rather than take your time siege up 3/4 of the way their then slowly inch your way forward and keeping him occupied
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Hey there, probably wont state anything you havent heard, but I will try to justify my "criticism" based on your play off of both replays. Let me just say there for 1 second that posting here asking for advice even though you are already a GM, shows true intelligence- because the fact that ur style got u where you are, at such a high spot, might have made it difficult for you to discern your mistakes-but you want to be even better. Off to my points:
-I think the first push is supposed to give you an advantageous position, you rarely win the game with it, but you kind of need it to establish a forward base. At both games your first push looked like you wanted to charge inside as much as you can, but tanks need to be sieged to be effective, and at times I thought you dont like sieging at all, especially at the metalopolis game. You could just cut supply from his natural to his third, protect siege tanks, and either stream army down to ur establised position or reinforce in groups. Most top players reinforce in groups to avoid harrasment from mutas.
- Albeit sometimes you were just unlucky, most of the times I caught you unsieging tanks on creep and rushing forward. It looks to me as if you have faith in your micro ability too much, yeah you were probably cost effective(meaning that you and zerg player didnt have that much of a difference after every battle) but almost every single time that meant you gave up your forward tactical position. You sieged and defended a big point at shak plat, but very late in the game, when your opponent could easily trade armies and turn them to his favor.
-Like previous poster stated, you attempted drops that hurt a lot(in shak plat game, that is) but they were meaningless at times. I think that when you establish a forward position, you want drops to commit a lot of zerglings and banelings, not to mention ur opponents attention, while you slowly unsiege-siege to an even better position, probably cutting supply from natural to 3rd.
-I can get the "he charges me with my tank unsieged so theres no point in sieging now" mentality, but there were times you just wouldnt siege for no reason, even though ur spread was excellent, unless you were rushing in.
-Last but not least, from all the replays, streams, or personal games ive ever watched or played, I really think you were the one to commit the fewest scans to spy his main army movement, or deny creep spreading, you let them have it their way, giving away ur movement most of the times.
Im just mid diamond, hopefully because I dont play that much ladder(not even this style), but I have watched so many streams/replays/events etc that I could probably recognize a top player just by watching him play with name hidden... jinro and mvp play really solid tvz with previous points covered.
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Woah thnx guys, all really great suggestions. I know EXACTLY what to improve now. I knew I could count on you! :D
This is turning out to be a great thread, and probably useful for many people struggling with TvZ - so keep em comming!
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I'm a low level masters player myself, and I've recently been struggling in my TvZs on larger maps as well, I've found a few key tactics that help allow me to exploit the size of the maps:
1) I've found that you cannot just push directly towards their main/nat without abusing some sort of terrain, like the natural cliff on tal darim, instead I target areas where the creep spread is the weakest, this is usually their third.
2) On smaller maps you can usually drop pretty easily without really thinking about where (assuming mutas are otherwise occupied), on larger maps I find that you have to force your harass to work, by creating a massive threat at the closest base to you, while dropping the furthest base, most zergs won't have the attention to be able to split off the right number of mutas/lings/blings to deal with the drop, without either failing to clean it up and donating you some units, or over-compensating and losing a lot to the main push.
3) You have got to do all you can to deny/delay expansions, a single hellion/marine or even an SCV can deny an expansion, or at least force them to send something there, much liked burrowed lings denying your expos.
Hopefully this is of some help, I think the most useful thing I've learned is that you can easily control space on maps like Shakuras by using PFs and turrets in the middle (especially on cross spawns), this will allow you to 50/50 the map while harassing and teching up, it's very difficult to beat a terran max on that map (ghost/thor/marine/viking/hellion/tank/medivac), nydus worms are the only real threat, and hellions do a great job of dealing with them for the most part.
The marine tank style of play can work well, but you can't just drill the same location or do timing pushes, as they can get surrounded in the middle of the map as your walking over, and a counter attack or muta pin is a lot more effective the larger the map, so naturally you'll have to make some small modifications to your unit mixes (add some ghosts and marauders, don't try to supplement with thors as they slow you down too much), and the key is to force your harassment to work, and maintain control of the map, as the instant you're forced to turtle up with marine tank on a big map, is the instant that zerg will take every base and tech straight to brood lords, building a PF between your second natural and fourth on tal darim really helps, it gives you a very solid rally point, a safe place to build more production facilities, and allows you to push either to deny his 5th or directly towards his main to kill tech, controlling space is key on any large map, and terran has the tools to do so quite effectively with PFs, bunkers, and turrets, if you're maxed, or have a large enough income/bank, it's perfectly OK to throw down 5 PFs in the middle of the map, it seems a bit strange, but if you have map control even for a minute, (you can fake it by just dropping in 3 places at once), you'll be able to get the PFs up and then you'll be in a much better position, allowing you to easily treat it like a smaller map, just rally to the PFs, and push from there, if at any moment you are being harassed by mutas, use this opportunity to harass back, with marine tank, you have the liberty of being super efficient in battles, so it's okay to sac a drop here or there as long as you can pin their super mobile units.
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Something important to understand is the nature of the Siege Tank. Tanks are defensive units, that can grant the terran player domain over a certain position. As such, the goal when using them shouldn't be to attack the enemy with them. Rather, your goal should be to capture a strategic position and hold onto it.
I feel like there are a lot of Terrans out there trying to use tanks to straight up kill their opponents, when really they should be moving to advantageous locations and being patient. For instance, you want to move to a position that will allow your tanks to siege the mineral line/hatchery of an expansion. Sure, this wont kill your opponent, but it will force them to engage your strong defensive position.
Any time you're using tanks as a backbone of your army you need to always be thinking about how particular areas can be locked down with good tank placement. All you can really do with your tanks is to get them to the desired place, get em sieged up and keep them supported. It's up to your opponent to attack into you after that. If you've picked a solid position to siege, then your opponent will have no choice but to fight on your terms, and thats what tanks are all about.
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EPT
