PiG Daily Articles

Welcome to the PiG Daily strategy article! The PiG Daily is a show by Jared "PiG" Krensel that focuses on StarCraft 2 strategy and becoming a better player. We've joined forces to create an article series that summarizes his dailies into short, digestible articles that provide insight on builds, tactics and game sense. By combining with Spawning Tool, this series will bring you the most comprehensive learning experience for build orders and strategies.

How to use Spawning Tool

We highly recommend using Spawning Tool in order to follow the basics of these builds. The PiG Daily and our strategy articles will serve as supplementary guides to understand the subtleties behind each decision.

Today I’ll show you a strong opening for Terrans to use in all 3 matchups. It allows you to build economy and expand quickly. You can use this for the first few minutes of every game to give you a consistent start to practice. You can branch off into any bio style from this. For you mech lovers, stay tuned for a beginner's mech guide.

Link to the Spawning Tool Build

A Terran Build for Beginners

The first step to becoming a good player is learning about the mechanics of the game.

As a beginner, your main focus should be learning the fundamentals of macro: constantly building workers, spending your money and not getting supply blocked. I talked about this in detail in Daily #16:

This is a really basic opening that will still function well even if you make some mistakes



From here, you can transitioning to anything you want depending on what you scout. You can choose to take an early 3rd CC if your opponent is being conservative or greedy, or you could leap ahead on upgrades with double ebays. You can even get 2 more barracks if you plan on doing a mid-game attack. To supplement your marines, you can either get tanks, mines or hellbats from your factory. Based on your opponent's composition, you can get vikings for anti-air or liberators for sieging.

Building Priorities

1st Barracks

• Reactor
  
• Non-stop marine production

For beginners, spending money is one of the most important habits that you can develop. Most of the time, having too much money will lead to defeat more than having too little—as long as you've been producing SCVs consistently. The first barracks should get a reactor as soon as you can after the reaper.

2nd Barracks

• Tech lab and stim first
  
• Non-stop marine production

Stim is the most important upgrade for bio terran, so don't forget it!

3rd Barracks

• Reactor
  
• Non-stop marine production

Factory

• Builds reactor ASAP
  
• Swaps off reactor, builds units if necessary

The factory will provide you with your splash damage, whether it's tanks, hellbats or mines. If you expect armored units (like roach ravager) then tanks are your best choice. If you expect lots of light units (zerglings), then opt for mines. Hellbats are good for harassment and defending early pressure if you're unable to get the techlab.

Starport

• Swaps onto reactor from factory
  
• Medivac production

Vikings come into play against zerg to deny scouting. Once you have enough medivacs (the number is something you learn by feel), you can build liberators to help siege positions and for harassment.

Sometimes, it's better to keep your compositions simple so that you can get used to controlling your army efficiently. Once you get the hang of your basic units (marines and medivacs), you can branch out to more units that will require more micro and presence of mind. Don't be in a rush to build everything; practice simple unit comps before graduating to ones that require more mechanical prowess.

Scouting and Staying Safe

• If your opponent hasn’t expanded at all at 3:00 - Build some bunkers and be prepared to lift your natural base up to your high ground.
  
  
• Sacrifice a worker or basic unit at 4:00 through your opponent's base to try and see what they’re up to
  
  
• Unless you cannot get a grasp on what your opponent is doing, do not use a scan. Using scans this early can hurt your economy, as mules offer a very important mineral boost to get your production going. Scan only if you must know what he's up to, and only if you have the time to pay attention.
  
  
• You don’t have the game knowledge to have any large reactions to scouting at this point, so try not to focus on it much. Just get used to controlling the map and seeing what they’re up to once in awhile. It's a good habit to develop for later on.
  
  
• If you’re worried about invisible or flying units, just drop a few turrets at your bases around 4:30. Unless he's proxying, it's unlikely he will get to your base before this time. Don't panic and build turrets too early because it disrupts your economy. As you get better you'll learn when you can get away with skipping these safety turrets entirely.

Remember that there’s no absolute guide that will just make you win every game. Your opponents are also intelligent people using all of their brain power to overcome you. Maybe they even read these articles. Always look for areas to improve, always strive to understand and experiment with new units, styles or ideas in StarCraft. If you keep this critical and learning-focused mindset you’ll fall in love with StarCraft very fast. GL learning the best and hardest game in the world!