[G] Reactor Barracks Expand TvT

       I scout with the 13th SCV being produced, unless the map is gargantuan, in which case I will scout after depot. You want your first marine to be scouting your natural area for proxy barracks, then move him forward to take the tower. Your SCV is looking for gas first, 13 gas, or no gas at all.

• If he goes Command Centre first, feel free to pull a few SCVs and attack with 5 or so marines, when I do this build I like to have fun an experiment with many weird attacks, this one seems to work
  
  
• If he has a 13 gas, send your scouting SCV to his Xel'Naga Tower to scout for potential reapers. You will always blindly make 1 marauder, just in case. Proceed as normal.
  In this case, proceed as normally as possible, but delay the gas until you have 1 tank out. With this tank you will take all of your marines and 2 SCVs for repairs and bunkers in tandem with combat shield to go kill him.
  If he has combat shields on his marines, you will trade evenly, making it harder for him to defend the followup attack from you, and if he has stim you have just won the game.
  
  
• If you're getting ultra early game cheesed (Proxy Barracks), do not make the stupid time dump reactor, pull out of gas, get a bunker up, you'll be fine. Afterwards you can kind of do whatever you want, I often like to go for a banshee with cloak and sometimes transition in to mech.
  
  
• Against a 1-1-1 Hellion Elevator, you want to be making marauders and getting the tank out as soon as possible, skip siege mode, delay the third gas a significant amount, and get a starport for a potential banshee followup. After your first tank you want to swap the factory and the starport and get a raven if you have any suspicion of the banshee followup.
  
  
• Against a tank based 1-1-1 (be it the marine, tank, viking attack, or the banshee rush into tank contain) Do your build completely normally, swap your starport and your factory for a raven against a banshee, and when you see his tank push coming take your entire army and all of the SCVs from the natural with a good concave and crush his attack. You will either outright win, or be fairly ahead due to double mule advantage.
  DO NOT LET BUNKERS OF HIS FINISH.
  
  
• Against a Thor rush, get marauders in to bunkers and repair them. I think it is even worth pulling out of the second gas to maximize mineral income.
  

Some simple things to keep in mind when he is scouting YOU.

- If he sees your gas, make the Command Centre on the lowground, and try to keep your additional production facilities out of a typical scan area, you want your build to look as ambiguous and confusing as possible to the opponent.
- If his scout is going up your ramp and you have 1 marine, please do not make the reactor. Queue up another marine to make your barracks have the light animation on, then when the SCV is dead cancel that marine and make the reactor.

      Congratulations, you seem to have survived the early game, let's enter the midgame, either crippled, hobbling on a lame foot with one eye and no feeling in the left side of your body, or with the skill, speed, and deadliness of a sledgehammer wielding Altair Ibn-La'Ahad.

      There are two scenarios you are possibly in right now. You have either taken damage, or you have not. Quite obvious and simple, but should be stated nonetheless.

      Taken damage. You just lost X SCVs to attack Y. You likely cannot quite afford the third gas for a while, it is prudent to pull out of that. Skip a tank to make a medivac, and try to lightly pressure his front while expanding and upgrading. Your advantage is going to be in your extreme mobility of small armies with medivacs but still the strong staying power of the tanks. I often make a second factory and get a fourth gas when I feel I have the mineral income to support it, instead of additional barracks. You are now either forced to play it safe in a game of chess, or bank everything on one frontal attack. You won't have the money for the medivacs for the strategy of the situation where you have taken no damage.



      You have done your opening brilliantly. Time to crack skulls, bring the noise, and let the opponent know that you are not happy with his existence and that you will do something about it.

      Its elevating time. I like to attack with 2-3 SCVs 3-4 tanks, a handful of marines with stim and combat shield, and a single medivac. With this you will need to perform the quickest blitzkrieg pushes you have ever performed. Each millisecond your opponent has to prepare a defence reduces your chances of doing damage by tenfold.

       If your elevator is secret for now, meaning that he has no spotting units or depots, lift 2 tanks up, then come back down for the marines and SCVs, set up bunkers and then BAM he'll be in panic mode. It is even better if your low ground tanks get to shell his units as they stumble and trip over themselves to get at the aggression on the high ground.
      However, this is often not the case, so you will need careful positioning of your low ground tanks and you can only lift 1 tank and 4 marines up at a time. Your micro will be taxed getting units into strong positions, but you can still pull off favourable army trades the vast majority of the time.
       In the event he has turrets everywhere, he is covered on all fronts with tanks, and is impenetrable. Go expand to the gold or something. He will be holed up hard. But always keep scouts out for potential move outs and try to smash into his flank if he moves out without sieging.



Consider these possibilites to judge whether or not you are ahead:

• You provoked an SCV pull. You are ahead.
  
• You have held atleast 2 waves of his units. You are ahead.
  
• You were caught before you could set up a position on the high ground. You are behind.
  
• You traded evenly but have more tanks. You are just ever so slightly ahead, you can still carve out stronger offensive positions than him to gain an advantage.
  
• You traded evenly but have more marines. You are slightly behind, it is unlikely that you will be able to attack him or take an aggressive stance.
  

      In the event of being ahead, keep drilling the elevator, extend your front, because he has less units to cover the same surface area as you, he will eventually spread himself too thin and lose.

      If you are behind, you need to play uber-defensively. Do not take big risks, rely on your constant tank production and always remember TARSON HOLDS!

       On the slightly unclear situations, where you are slightly ahead or behind, use your discretion, you can obviously cut more corners if you choose defensive strategies.

       I never like giving a guide to the actual lategame, because it is impossibly difficult to describe every single possible situation that can arise. In the lategame, just remember army movement in relation to expansions and you will be fine. This meaning that, if you want to attack with north east, it is good to expand in the east (from the south) because your army will be both defending your expansion and pressuring the opponents.

       Often you'll find yourself in a situation where you are taking 15+ minute thirds, this obviously means that your main will probably be mining out and that you should take a fourth very quickly after the third.

      When the game stabilizes past the midgame elevator aggression, a lot of the game will be based on pressuring or defending third bases. Killing a third base for little to no cost is a winning move. It is essentially taking away every single piece of your opponents chessboard but his king, queen, and pawns. He is still in it, but can only win if you mess up very badly. However, trading an army for a third puts the game in to an inverted pendulum situation, where you may have had a commanding lead but the pendulum swung in the opposite direction after this move and he will be prompted to instantly counter attack. And so the pendulum will keeping swinging and battering you until you or your opponent have nothing left. This is the most exciting and difficult possibility that can come from this style.

      Your upgrades probably started with your fourth gas, meaning they are quite likely to be very late in comparison to your opponent. Make sure that you always maintain a tank advantage to make compensation for this and always have more factories than him. This is a game of chess, you win or you die.

Will come as they come, don't rush me!

Pack: http://drop.sc/packs/1064

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