Saturday, May 12 3:35am GMT (GMT+00:00)
Why go 4 Barracks MMM?:
This build opens with a fast reaper, and with basic knowledge of scouting Protoss in tandem with the reaper you can be safe in the early game. But the main reason I use the 4 barracks timing attack was to punish greedy Protoss players who did not get fast AoE or ridiculous amounts of gateways early on. In my experience, this build demolishes:
- Late Collosus,
- Low Gateway Archons,
- Aggressive 2 base mass Gates,
- Double Forge ≤ 6 Gates,
- Fast third base off of a middling or low amount of gateways and any sort of tech.
- Too fast of a techer, I.E. double forge, collosus, blink + charge.
This build is also not incredibly all-in. It plays in to the style of denying the third at all costs, should you not be able to kill the enemy outright.
Weaknesses of the 4 Barracks MMM:
The build, like all others has weaknesses to it. In another section I will outline how to work your way around them. Here is a few that I have encountered:
- Squirtle (I think?) Collosus All-ins are difficult to deal with.
- Mass defensive gates.
- PartinG style, fast expansions, fast High Templar, mass gate followup.
- Ninja fast thirds. The build itself has an easy way to account for it, but if you don't see it you will be too far behind in all aspects because you can't attack.
- 3/4 Gates.
The Build Order:
This section follows my personal style of writing game-plan notes, sorry if it is confusing to some.
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10 Depot
12 Barracks
- Marine, then Techlab
13 Refinery
16 Orbital Command
16 Depot
- Reaper
-- Command Center
- High Ground
- Stim, Constant Marauder production
-- Depot
-- 2 More Barracks
CC Finishes, get Engineering Bay
Reactors
-- +1 Attack
-- 4th Barracks, naked.
-- Gas, Factory
-- Combat Shields
-- Starport, Factory -> Reactor
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/d1.png)
Playing it Out:
I'll cover this in 3 sections; the early game, the mid-game, and setting up for the late-game.
The Early Game:
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Early game I will keep it simple. You scout with the 13th SCV being produced, that is, the SCV that finishes after you start constructing the barracks. This is to give ample time to scout a nexus first, or a forge expand and react to it. Otherwise you scout normally.
If you see two gases before 4:00, your cheese alarm should go off. Stick around with your SCV in this case to see if he puts down a Robotics Facility, otherwise leave and try to hide at the natural or in a corner of his base. In the case of a nexus first, you can choose to make the reactor on the Barracks and enter into a 2 rax play with concussive shells, or in the case of the stupid expand as I like to call it, I recommend staying on 1 base and doing a marine drop of some sort.
We all know the queues for a 3 or 4 gate, high nexus energy, being used on both the core and the gate. In this case, put your Reaper at a tower because he won't be able to do any harass due to warp-ins and he won't give you any information you don't already have. 2 Bunkers is a good number for it.
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/4gate.jpg)
The horror!
Now we're past 5:45, reaching 6:00. If you scouted 2 gas before 4:00 and you see that his nexus is halfway done at 6:30, IT IS A DT RUSH. Don't panic! The build has an engineering bay. Make 3 turrets, at both mineral lines and in the production facility area. Anecdotal, but keep your buildings compressed for this reason. Your reaper is great for scouting proxy void rays and DT's.
That is everything Protoss can be scary with early on, now lets talk about our role in the early game. The reaper is meant to scout for expo timing, cheese placement, and tech routes. You're paying 50/50 for a scout, not a harassment unit. Then, when you have 4 marauders and 1 Marine, you can move out as stim finishes. This attack has multiple facets to it. First off, you want to focus down sentries and retreat, do not commit to an attack. Secondly, the reaper is entering his main to scout and to kill workers while his APM is focused elsewhere. Thirdly, you can see if he took a ninja fast third.
If you see two gases before 4:00, your cheese alarm should go off. Stick around with your SCV in this case to see if he puts down a Robotics Facility, otherwise leave and try to hide at the natural or in a corner of his base. In the case of a nexus first, you can choose to make the reactor on the Barracks and enter into a 2 rax play with concussive shells, or in the case of the stupid expand as I like to call it, I recommend staying on 1 base and doing a marine drop of some sort.
We all know the queues for a 3 or 4 gate, high nexus energy, being used on both the core and the gate. In this case, put your Reaper at a tower because he won't be able to do any harass due to warp-ins and he won't give you any information you don't already have. 2 Bunkers is a good number for it.
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/4gate.jpg)
The horror!
Now we're past 5:45, reaching 6:00. If you scouted 2 gas before 4:00 and you see that his nexus is halfway done at 6:30, IT IS A DT RUSH. Don't panic! The build has an engineering bay. Make 3 turrets, at both mineral lines and in the production facility area. Anecdotal, but keep your buildings compressed for this reason. Your reaper is great for scouting proxy void rays and DT's.
That is everything Protoss can be scary with early on, now lets talk about our role in the early game. The reaper is meant to scout for expo timing, cheese placement, and tech routes. You're paying 50/50 for a scout, not a harassment unit. Then, when you have 4 marauders and 1 Marine, you can move out as stim finishes. This attack has multiple facets to it. First off, you want to focus down sentries and retreat, do not commit to an attack. Secondly, the reaper is entering his main to scout and to kill workers while his APM is focused elsewhere. Thirdly, you can see if he took a ninja fast third.
The Mid-Game:
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Then, the build order continues on and you move out with several dozen MM and 2 medivacs. My favourite technique is to ferry two medivac loads on the top of his ramp entering his natural, just to pull units, and then stim the rest from the bottom.
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/shak.jpg)
Red is Protoss, Green is Terran.
There are conditions to be met before you make this push. Did he take a third? Did your early game scouting with the marauders and reaper determine that he will have many units to defend your push? I.E. Lower gas count, many units already produced, no third. Simple logic such as that. If none of them are met, knock yourself out and murder this kid.
[*]Otherwise, you need to counter whatever he is going for. If it is a Squirtle collosus all-in, you need to halt marine production from one reactor rax, and the naked rax, get a second starport for more vikings, and then resume unit production when you have many vikings. Get the techlab on the naked rax so that you can make more marauders.
These 3 strategies change your mindset to 'go fucking kill him' to 'starve him.' As a rule of thumb, 95% of the time in TvP if you get 2-2 before they have a third base, you will win.
block that shit!
Following up, you are getting your 3rd CC, armoury and second engineering bay, ghost academy and going up to 6 rax with appropriate add-ons to the situation. 3 gas is for upgrades. 4 Gas is for ghosts.
Going to 6 rax before CC is abhorrent because you basically need to kill the Protoss to justify getting such a late CC.
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/medivac.jpg)
Usually all you need to kill him, hehehe.
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/shak.jpg)
Red is Protoss, Green is Terran.
There are conditions to be met before you make this push. Did he take a third? Did your early game scouting with the marauders and reaper determine that he will have many units to defend your push? I.E. Lower gas count, many units already produced, no third. Simple logic such as that. If none of them are met, knock yourself out and murder this kid.
[*]Otherwise, you need to counter whatever he is going for. If it is a Squirtle collosus all-in, you need to halt marine production from one reactor rax, and the naked rax, get a second starport for more vikings, and then resume unit production when you have many vikings. Get the techlab on the naked rax so that you can make more marauders.
- The reason this build is weak to Templar, is that it doesn't account for them at all. There is no money for a ghost academy, so you will have to have very good bio splits, or just attack where the Templar are not.
- Against mass defensive gateways, they usually don't have many stalkers. So you can reconvene later for a 4-6 medivac push which will quite literally out-heal the DPS of the Zealots. You also STOP marauder production, make marines and medivacs.
These 3 strategies change your mindset to 'go fucking kill him' to 'starve him.' As a rule of thumb, 95% of the time in TvP if you get 2-2 before they have a third base, you will win.
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/d2.png)
Following up, you are getting your 3rd CC, armoury and second engineering bay, ghost academy and going up to 6 rax with appropriate add-ons to the situation. 3 gas is for upgrades. 4 Gas is for ghosts.
Going to 6 rax before CC is abhorrent because you basically need to kill the Protoss to justify getting such a late CC.
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/marine.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/marauder.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/medivac.jpg)
Usually all you need to kill him, hehehe.
Setting Up The Lategame:
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- Get a fairly fast fourth base because, by nature of going 4 barracks in the early game instead of 3 barracks, your third is slowed down and your main is getting mined out.
- Get a lot of barracks, with a 1.5:1 or 2:1 ratio of reactors to techlabs. Marauders do not have the DPS to approach a lategame zealot army, so you will need to use the much high damage output, but much weaker defence of marines.
- Bomber told me on his stream that 6-8 Ghosts is a good number.
- Your armoury is idle anyway, get ship weapons.
- Having 3-4 Vikings per Collosus is a good number.
![[image loading]](http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc47/warrockdot/d3.png)
Terran in the lategame benefits more from DENYING bases than TAKING bases. This is because Protoss DPS is directly derived from how much gas they have. To throw out some examples, 6 gas allows for collosus, double forge, many gates, and the beginnings of templar tech. 8 Gas allows for all of that and full templar tech. 10 Gas means they can have instant mass reproduction of all of that.
Compare that to Terran, at 3 Base, you have all the gas you need for every tech. So essentially you can stay on 3 base constantly as long as you make sure his DPS is lower than 8 gas.
However, do not think that this is your only ticket to winning. The Terran army is actually stronger than the Protoss army in the perfect composition vs the perfect composition. The problem is that the micro is fucking hard. So if you feel comfortable, the forward defensive stance (choking out further expansions) is going to win you games. But for all the noobs like me, is a good rule of thumb to try to deny bases.
Unfortunately, I will not go in to PLAYING the lategame. As that is where I personally fall short so I do not want to give people incomplete information.
Here is a placeholder video:
Some Cheese, or Stupid Build Reactions:
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- If you scout double gas before 4 minutes, delay the second gas and go up to 5 barracks. Get addons as you see fit, this will set you up to defend cheese with mass marine, the unit you want versus cheese, and then be able to do a POWERFUL counter-timing.
- Against DT's, move out with +1 and combat shield, pull 5 SCV's for turrets. Save scans. Win the game. He will not have High Templar tech yet, and very few units to hold your timing. Rally all units at home in case of back stabs with DT's.
- Most Sentry drop builds are blocked pretty easily with no deviation. Same with collosus and immortal drop builds.
- 3/4 gate. Get 2 bunkers before 5:30 and you should be fine. You need to pull many SCV's because you are relying on just a couple of marauders rather than many marines, meaning that your DPS is minimal.
- Against forge expand, stay on one base, it will likely be too late to get a reactor instead of a techlab on the first barracks. Get stim, 2 more rax, a factory and do a marine drop of some sort. This build is so bad that I don't even have a planned out reaction to it I just make something up that gets the core structures of 3 barracks, factory, starport.
Replays:
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- http://drop.sc/178600
Immortal 6 gate I think. - http://drop.sc/178601
Some sort of late collosus play/ - http://drop.sc/178602
Mass gate all-in. - drop.sc/178294
Build demonstration. - drop.sc/178293
Build demonstration. - drop.sc/178293
Held the DT rush as prescribed. however didn't jump the gun on my marine attack and allowed him to get Templar tech. Stupid me - http://drop.sc/178795
Goes into very lategame where I worry that I will lose. However miraculously I win.
Someone please help me with linking these 3, the BBC Code doesn't seem to be working.
About Me:
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I am currently a Mid Master ranked Terran on the NA Server. I am on the edge of masters league in Korea (I got 10 masters in a row a few days ago, sucks that I lost 9 of them ^^) My Highest MMR rating had me regularly going against high masters and GM's. I have also taken out the likes of Goswser, Masa, Everize, Xenocider, and a few other Grandmasters in online events such as the now defunct LANified! Weekly KoTH.
I am currently playing for a very unknown team called exioN
That'll end my 'hello, here is my E-PENIS'
I am currently playing for a very unknown team called exioN
That'll end my 'hello, here is my E-PENIS'
Changelog: + Show Spoiler +
- Some pictures take long to upload so adding them now.
- Adding replays slowly.