[G] TvZ FE with BF Transition to Tank/Marine/Med

--1 Rax Pressure Expand Variation--
10 Supply
12 Rax (Constant Marines)
14 Supply (Complete wall-in)
15 Orbital Command
20 Command Center
*Poke with 1-2 SCVs and 4 marines when 4th marine done, try to keep them alive and pull back after making the pressure felt
Gas
Gas
Bunker in natural during Pressure
Factory (hellions after tech lab)
Gas
Factory (hellions)
Tech Lab on Rax (Stim)
Tech Lab on Factory #1(Blue Flame)
2x Barracks (at 50% blueflame)
2x Reactors on Barracks
Tech Lab 2nd Factory when Blue Flame done
Starport
Engineering Bay
Gas
Command Center
Armory
2nd Engineering Bay

--2 Rax Pressure Expand Variation--
10 Supply
12 Rax
14 Rax
*Be aggressive. I am not going to go into a long discussion of 2 Rax aggression here. It is not the point of this guide.
Command Center @ 400 minerals
Gas
Gas
Bunker in natural during Pressure
Factory (hellions after tech lab)
Gas
Factory (hellions)
Tech Lab on Rax (Stim)
Tech Lab on Factory #1(Blue Flame)
Barracks (at 50% blueflame)
2x Reactors on Barracks
Tech Lab 2nd Factory when Blue Flame done
Starport
Engineering Bay
Gas
Command Center
Armory
2nd Engineering Bay

These builds are just examples. There is many ways to play out the opening. You can vary the number of marines before expand with both 1 rax and 2 rax versions, you can play play with cutting a few SCVs or not cutting a few SCVs in order to get the rax(s) faster, or you could get the Command Center before any marines or barracks. A set build order is not really required to define this style of play, you should of course work one up, but there is no single way to play this out.

The key ideas are to expand, have some marines, and place down two gas right after starting the command center. You will make Factory #1 and #2 as soon as you have the gas. You will make a tech lab on the first factory as soon as it is done and start blue flame when that is done. As blue flame is researching you will round out your production base by adding enough rax to support your 2 factory mid game (usually a total of 3 to 4 barracks) When you have 6 to 8 Hellions with blue flame (6 being the most common seen) you will use the hellions to go take map control. Add a tech lab to the 2nd factory as blue flame finishes and go into two factory tanks with Medivaks and marines. As you take a 3rd base add the armory and 2nd Engineering bay for upgrades, reactor the Starport, add a few more barracks and another factory, and then start another Command Center. This style favors aggressive expanding as the game progresses. Don’t ask is it safe to expand right now and then expand. Instead, ask is there any reason I know of right now NOT to expand and if you have none then expand.

Early game marine (1 Rax) micro: When going 1 rax the goal of any aggression is to simply kill any free targets and make your presence on the map known. The Zerg will respond by making units. Ideally, you retreat very quickly after killing 1 or 2 free targets so that you can avoid a fight that you will lose.

-Early game marine (2 Rax) micro: Someone told me a long time ago (I wish I could recall who) that a key idea in 2 rax is that when you have 1 or 2 marines you are just poking and not committing. Once you have 3 marines you are attacking. Stutter step micro is very important and should be done. Your aggression can continue until speed is done. Once speed is done, most marines not in bunkers will die quickly and it will become impossible to keep bunkers up forever. If you decide to bunker, consider abusing walls/cliffs and tucking marines into corners to minimize space, placing bunkers far away and leap frogging forward so that you can cover your approach safely, and/or getting a bunker up in range of his ramp/hatchery as these are the locations that cause the most damage to the Zerg's game plan. The micro requirements and multitasking requirements of 2 rax openings are much greater than 1 rax openings (do not forget to macro [depots, scvs, marines, and make that Command center!!!] while doing all the micro that is needed.

-Blue Flame hellion map control: Clear out towers with the blue flamers. Check bases for his 3rd. If, AND ONLY IF, you see an opening that screams YOU CAN KILL 20 DRONES RIGHT NOW should you run into his base to kill drones. Losing the hellions is a huge blow to your ability to apply a passive threat to the Zerg. Losing the hellions weakens your first push. Once he has mutalisk or roaches out, your map control will begin to weaken and will likely be shifted back to the Zerg (more so with mutas as you can out run roaches and stay on the map to keep scouting / denying ling spotters). Do note that if you do see an opening that looks like you can roast 20+ drones you actually should take him up on it as it means he is countering your map control hellions by just powering as if they are not a threat. This is just as dangerous as if you let them all die for nothing.

-If he goes for a muta timing, your hellions should scout it as he will probably be forced to use them to clear you away from the 3rd base he wants. If you see he is going for some kind of lair tech muta timing you will want to put turrets up. As the turrets go up, position your marines into 2 different groups. One should cover the obvious entry path into your main (entry by AIR) and the other should cover your rally point/natural. Once turrets are up he will be forced to go for a mass muta style or find holes in your turret placement in order to harass effectively. This will free your marines up to spot cover holes that he finds as you place up additional turrets and to join your main army

-Marine/Tank/Medivak push and positioning: You will want to begin being aggressive, usually, when you have 4 to 6 tanks and he has taken or is trying to take a 3rd base. If you do not have turrets up by the time you are almost ready to move out and you do not know 100% that he doesn't have some kind of late muta timing coming, it might be time to put up some blind turrets. The goal of this first push is to gain a position that allows you to threaten his 3rd base. You want to have tanks covering small groups of bio that run out to attack a base in way that forces the Zerg to attack your position. Use the Terran to limit his approaches. It is hard to define with words what a good position is so pay extremely close attention in replays/vods to where pro Terrans set them selves up. Its one of the best things you can pick up in a replay/vod of this style. As a general rule, if he went for muta play you want your marines to cover the tanks by being spread out and tanks in the middle (also spread). As the banelings approach you run your marines away from the banes towards/past the tanks and then spread the marines out. While the marines run you target fire the tanks at groups of banelings. The marines will then help to clean up zerglings and mutas. If he went for infestor play, you will want your tanks to be more bunched up and to be more on the leading side of the force. It can sometimes be good to even allow the tanks, if positioning allows, to be the threating element that forces the fight. If you let marines become bunched up and ahead of tanks they will get fungaled and they will die. In the fights, target fire the tanks onto infestors first and banelings 2nd. In all cases, no matter what he went for, try to have your marines pre spread as you take positions and be prepared to run marines, target fire tanks, and split marines on a moments notice.

-Drops: Try to drop far from his ability to stop a drop and try to drop while establishing a position for your push. The drop will occuply his focus and allow you more time to set that position up. The only import things to actually doing the drop is getting the drop ship there, stiming the unloaded marines, and retreating. If he went for muta play or has a large army, try to drop a base far from the mutas (you see the mutas at one side of the map then drop the other side). If he went for infestor play then you can actually drop pretty much any base. Its a good idea to establish a position that "cuts" into the enemy's expansion pattern (if he has 3 bases push in a way that threatens the middle base) and then drop the base farthest from his main. If he went infestor it can be good to do a drop like that and then drop any remaining hellions into his main and roast drones. As the late game begins to come closer it becomes more and more important to push and drop at the same time. Drops can also be used to deny far bases that he tries to get. The key with drops is not to over focus on them, choose your drop targets wisely, and to abuse the fact that he will have to use alot more apm/focus to deal with the drop than you have to use to accomplish it. Use drops as cover for gaining the position that your push needs or to cover a timing where you feel weak or to cover taking an aggressively positioned expansion.

Terran bio units are effective in small numbers by themselves and Terran factory units increase in effectiveness the more you have. With that in mind we can be aggressive while expanding because a small bio force is cost effective and provides scouting information to ensure safety. The quick expansion makes it easy to support two factories very quickly which allows us to reach those critical numbers of factory units needed in order to be powerful in the mid game. Beyond the early mid game we will be adding upgrades and production and aggressively expanding which places direct pressure onto the Zerg. The blue flame hellion transition allows us to cheaply and effecivly threaten the Zerg while gaining map control. This allows us to scout out his 3rd base timing and choice of mid game tech. It nicely covers the gap from bio expand into tank/marine/medivak.

Something I did not understand at a level of “feeling it” until I played a lot ZvT was how blind playing Zerg feels. Everything they do is based off of some specific scouting times and map control. I am pretty sure every Terran of any reasonable caliber understands that a Zerg will react to scouting and most understand, at least intellectually, that the Zerg will react to anything he sees via his map control.

What most Terran players don’t appreciate is that playing Zerg can often times feel like you are about to be attacked around every corner at any time. The simplest way to see this is to play a TvZ and save up marines until you have around 8 or so and then just go clear out every watchtower on the map and come back home. Watch the replay from the Zerg point of view and watch what he does. If one did this a couple times he would inevitably run into a game where the Zerg player reacts by killing this group of marines before it returns home. A key aspect of Zerg play and this idea of threat can now be gleamed. In a game where a force uses its power to contest map control, harass, or attack, and survives and goes back into the fog of war, the Zerg player will be scared. He will make units. He doesn’t know if another attack is coming from a new direction or if an even larger push is about to emerge. His reaction time to the next attack, push, or harass will be slower because he will most likely have less vision. If he kills whatever was on the map or in his face, he will feel safe and know that he has solved the near future problems he might face. He will not feel threatened.

A well played Terran vs Zerg should leave the Zerg feeling like he could be attacked from any point at any point in time with no warning. He should be living in the dark and scared shitless of it. He should never know where the next attack is coming from and he should not your army is moving to next.

Keep in mind this idea of threat at all times. When you have power you should be moving your army out and it should keep mobile. An army camping in one known spot is not a threat, it is a target. Part of the nature of Zerg is that they can actually do well when they know where and how big an enemy is. They do awful when they lack either piece of information and they tend to fold when they know neither. If you clear his scouts keep your units alive and retreat. If you do a push don’t let your attention wander and the push camp a spot. If your push kills something get out and leave or move farther in. Simple ideas but they are oh so crucial for this matchup!

Depending on the opening you use and the opening he uses you will enter the mid game with no certainty of an advantage. A 2 rax vs a speedling expand will not be favorable for you while an extremely aggressive 2 rax (double rax on 11 food for instance) will favor you heavily. This is not something you can gather from anything inside the game and you will have to guess or metagame (educated guessing) a decision and just go with it and react. Take into account the map, starting locations, anything you might know about the player (a read on the enemy) or roll a handy die. If one style seems to favor your strengths then you can make that your go-to style that you don’t deviate from unless some kind of metagame (It’s a bo7 and he went pool first every game so far so maybe I won’t 2 rax him) reason not too. This guide can’t really help you to figure out the best way to open into this style.

-Losing all of your marines while pressuring if you do not cause serious damage and/or he has a large Zergling/speedling count can spell disaster.
-Losing all of your blue flame hellions shortly after sending them onto the map can mean that the zerg is free to power extremely hard and have an insanely powerful lair tech mid game vs you.
-This build transitions best into a Tank/Marine/Medivak style of play. This style is very macro heavy (marines make pretty quickly), requires you to multitask in the later game (drops + push + defending etc) and will have intense game deciding battles that are over in less than 5 seconds and require sometimes difficult and precise micro. [Note: This is why I teach this build in lessons currently, it helps you to become a better player by simply doing what the build means to do!] [If you macro correctly in the later stages of the game, you will be making something like 30 marines, 3-4 Tanks, and 2-3 Medivaks every 60 seconds ; that’s a lot of macro! You will also be mutli prong dropping, pushing, and defending. Excited yet?]

Vs Mass Muta - Focus on upgrades and get thors into the mix asap.
[More To Come as Thread Progresses]

-Marine Pressure is valid until Zergling speed is done. Zergling speed will be done 3 minutes (or so) after his gas is done.
-You will have to deviate from any set build you have in mind if you scout extremely heavy 1 base play (need this be said even?)
-Blue Flame hellions are used to deny him map control and MAYBE deny him an easy 3rd. It is more important to not lose the hellions than it is to kill a single unit with them.
-Be flexible with the timing of an engineering bay if you feel like he will have faster mutas. Keep in mind that a pool first opening will actually have the potential to tech faster than a hatch first opening.
-Broodlord Tech switches can be brutal and game ending if not scouted or anticipated. Infestor play means a hive isn’t that hard to the zerg to reach so you should be looking for Hive tech (scans or fly by scouting etc) and if the game has reached even 15 minutes and he has not gone for some kind of extremely vested lair tech level play (massive Mutalisk count or extremely large roach/bling count) then you should EXPECT some kind hive tech and search it out. Vikings or ghosts are the best answers.
-Keep your end game goal in mind of 3/3 bio and 3/0 tanks with the power of either ghosts or Vikings vs Broodlords and the power of drops to attack his focus. Always be working in some way towards that endgame.
-DROPS: Dont stare at unloading drop ships, its a waste of time. When dropping the minimap is your only tool. Use it to know when a drop arrives so you can zoom there shortly after and stim and target fire (if needed) and use it to known when to retreat.
-The lynch pin of this entire build/style is the blue flame hellions. They are fast, dangerous, and cheap. They allow us to transition from the early game into tank/marine/medivak and enter that stage of the game on even footing.

http://replayfu.com/r/M6z65p 1 Rax FE (Maker vs RoyalFlush ; from makers most recent replay pack)
http://sc2rep.com/replays/download?id=7521 1 Rax FE (Jinro [according to sc2rep at least])
http://sc2rep.com/replays/download?id=7522 2 Rax FE(Jinro [according to sc2rep at least])
http://sc2rep.com/replays/download?id=7523 1 Rax FE (Jinro [according to sc2rep at least])
http://sc2rep.com/replays/download?id=8195 2 Rax (short game, good 2 rax example) (Jinro in Star Wars)
http://sc2rep.com/replays/download?id=8196 2 Rax FE (LONG game, good examples of drops to gain time to position and mutiltasking macro oriented play) (Jinro in StarWars)
http://sc2rep.com/replays/download?id=8303 (Drewbie doing a standard 2 rax into a cute adaptation for typoon peaks vertical positions | features a hellion marine attack instead of map control style hellion usage, a good viable variation to know about)
http://sc2rep.com/replays/download?id=8205 (QXC doing a super agro 2 rax into a 3 base "turtle push")

http://mrbitter.blip.tv/file/5134573/ (Mr Bitter's next 12 Weeks with the pros Staring QXC, QXC uses this style and talks about his decision making in many of these games)
http://www.gomtv.net/2011gslsponsors3/vod/65246 (GSL May sCfou vs Nestea games 1 and 2 though game 1 is very short so you don't really see the style)
http://www.gomtv.net/2011gslsponsors3/vod/65021 (Nada vs Zenio)

(I will list any other replays or vods that might come up in the thread but these are good starts!)

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=202592 This is infinity's guide on how to "design" a build order and you can apply the ideas in it to refine this build into something that you can really use.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=195389 This is Plexa's guide on how to learn from your replays. A combination of the ideas in that thread and the build in this thread can lead you to become a much better player very quickly. It will become a matter of time and hard work. Watch every lose you experience playing this build with these concepts and you will surely become a better player.