EPTIntroduction
The idea of this build is to provide you with the know how to avoid the early pitfalls of the matchup and go into a macro TvP feeling that you actually know whats going on.
Openings
In the current metagame protoss either 1 base or open pretty greedy, and you don't want to fall too far behind, but you don't want to die easily either. This means if you are going to open for macro, you CAN'T afford to get supply blocked or miss your production cycles so really concentrate hard in the early game.
The 1Rax naked FE
The best economical opening favoured by pros. It is best on maps with good chokes on your natural such as shak plat and tal darim alter. You need to be able to hold your natural with just a bunker early in the game since otherwise you may die to 2gate stalker pressure. Many pros do this even on riskier maps and keep the second CC in their base longer until they get a large enough force that they are able to move out more safely. If your marine micro is not good, I would discourage you from doing this build on maps such as XC and metal. This build makes for the strongest 10minute timing attacks since your 2nd CC has the most time to increase your economy and your future raxes get up the fastest. After you have your chosen number of raxes you immediately want to get 2 gas so you can get stim started ASAP.
The 1Rax tech lab FE
Good for economy and generally safe except will result in loss to voidray all in. You open standard 12rax 13 refinery, make one marine, make mauarder, conc, another mauarder and then you can make a poke. The goal of this poke is to kill any stalkers/zealots/probes in the field. If you build your barracks and 2 depots at the wall and make the probe run away with your marine, you can often trick protoss into thinking your doing only marines and catch a free scouting stalker with this poke. Once you reach his base you want to kill anything on the low ground, and poke up with the marine going first becuase if he has sentries up there he will FF and you will lose everything. If you see only a zealot/stalker up there, run up, snipe the stalker first with stutter steping away from the zealot and then kill the zealot after. If its anything more then that just go back to base. If he is doing a FE, kill a pylon if you can, but don't bother trying to kill the nexus because you can't, just try to get a pylon or 1 unit and go home. If you like you can take a scv with this poke and send it up instead of the marine. Keep in mind that this build is weak to voidray all in since you have few marines early in the game.
The 2Rax Opening
I see this opening done wrong all the time. You open 12rax 13 refinery, get a marine then a reactor and a second rax can go up before depot because you will not be building marines while the reactor is building. You can actually also do it 12rax 14refinery as long as you build the refinery exactly as 14pops. Then you build marines from the reactor and you get a tech lab on the second rax right away, get conc and a maurader and do a small push with one or two mauraders. This is pretty good against fast expand, you might be able to kill a FE if protoss is greedy. You can take 1 scv off gas after you build the reactor to get a slightly faster expansion. Its often better to try to micro so mauarders are in front taking the damage, but if you lose all your mauraders you will be in trouble without slow. In very low unit count situations, it is best to stutter step around zealots in a circle and pick off the stalkers and then kill the zealots when they have no support (2 or less zealots) otherwise, you should stutter step backwards picking off the zealots and then rush forwards to get the other units. Pulling a few scvs with this push if your sure its an early expansion will help deny and you might even want to build bunkers if the nexus finishes. You can actually use these bunkers to set up a contain if you see the protoss has very few units. However protoss can bust you very easily with an immortal so don't expect to hold this position long and don't sacrifice a ton of units trying to do so.
The important thing to take away from these openings is that you don't want to lose your units, your trying to do small damage where you can, but its important not to lose your units cheaply since the protoss has very strong early game timings that you will need all your units to defend.
What to do after your CC goes down
The 3Rax Teching Build
You have probably seen alot of pros favour this build. After your CC you want to immediately go up to 3 barracks. You want to get your second gas shorty after you put down the 3rd rax. Then you want to get your factory immediately and put down a starport and a reactor on the factory for the switch and 2 fast medivacs. You also want to get +1 atk and possible +1 armor started quickly in this build since you have more gas. Later on once you know its not a 1base all-in I like to build 2 reactors but most pros prefer 2 tech labs as mauarders stand up to colossus alot better. I think more marines really helps defend against any sort of 6gate or immortal pressure that protoss might be applying to you. You don't want to get the reactors early if you scout 2 gas because they take too long to build and you won't have enough units to hold a void ray all in.
Pros:
Drops and earlier tech. This build is for people with good multitasking. If you arent using your early medivacs for aggression you probably don't want to be using this build. It also helps you get more vikigns to defend from collosus timings but its not required to defend them.
Cons:
Less bio. This build is hard to defend 6gate with. If you get hit by a 6gate and you havnt been really on top of your macro and stims not finished yet, you are probably gonna die. You are also more vunerable to later immortal all-ins.
4rax - slower tech
This is my current build of choice. after CC you immediately go up to 4 rax and then I get 1gas and immediate tech lab and stim and then another tech lab but that may vary depending on your opening - dont get a 3rd or 4th addon for a little while until you can afford full unit production and are adequately protected from 1base all-ins (build units not addons). Get the second gas and factory when you can and the first reactor and then go to starport - this tech is delayed by a little while due to more unit production. I sometimes start +1 before I start my factory but if they go for fast collosus this can be risky. If you did a gas before CC opening you can delay your second gas even further for a really powerful timing. It is essential to remember to put your factory down as soon as you have the gas or you won't have enough vikings
Pros:
This build allows for a pretty sweet 10minute timing attacking (at the protoss base at 10minutes). If your macro is on and the toss is going for collosus tech (standard play) then you can often do a good trade or even kill the nexus if they have bad macro ESPECIALLY on maps with big open naturals. Be cautious doing this timing attack on maps like antiga or shak plat and pull back right before you get trapped at the choke by forcefields becuase even though you have a bigger force, you will still die to the zealot grinder if your opponents macro is good and you get cut in half by FFs. You should be able to transition into standard play just fine in this build and you don't HAVE to do damage. On this smaller choke maps this build may not be worth it because it sets you back a bit tech wise, but it makes you safer to 6gate and heavy immortal agression which is something I die to alot doing the 3rax. What I am trying to say here is if you have perfect mechanics, 3rax is better on these maps, but almost everyone reading this guide probably does not.
Cons:
Slower tech, if your opponent goes for really fast collosus and he holds off your timing attack, then you may have to hold off a collosus timing attack with only a couple vikings. This means you absolutely have to get your vikings out asap and get a good concave. Its doable but you need to know when to get your starport going. You might even want to consider skipping your medivacs in some cases. If your timing attack did damage then thats great because he probably won't be able to attack in this moment of weakness for you.
5 Rax - tech extremely delayed
You can't afford 5rax immediatley after CC so you go up to 4 and then add on a 5th in a bit, basically this is just a giant stim timing attack so if you fail to do any damage at the 10minute timing attack you will be in trouble. You will have to hold collosus timing attack without afterwards without any vikigns so you will need a sick concave and hopefully meet the protoss in an open field. If you make a small group of mauarders to try to stutterstep forward toward collosus (4-6) then you might be able to make this work but its hard.
Pros: Very strong timing attack.
Cons: Way behind on tech, hard to defend and transition into standard if you don't do damage. On maps with small natural chokes, almost gauranteed loss.
The Ghost Timing attack
I never do this timing attack, you have probably seen pros do it a few times though. Basically you go up to 3rax and you get ghosts and go for the 10minute timing attack. Try to emp the sentries so they cant FF your army in half and you should win. If you don't win, you are in the same position as the 5rax pretty much except even further behind because all your gas went into ghosts. I have actually been informed that this is not all-in and people can transition out and defend collosus attacks, but its my opinion that you need stellar micro to do so.
Transitioning into the late game.
After any of these builds once you have your starport churning out units you want to do a few things, generally in this order but obviously at this point in the game it may vary.
1) get up to 5-6rax immediately. I usually get 2 reactors but some people might prefer more. I like tech labs because later on you need lots of tech labs to make ghosts and mauraders. Typically you want to adjust to make more marines vs archon zealot and more mauarders vs heavy collosus.
2) start a 3rd
3) Get either a ghost academy when you have the gas OR IMMEDIATELY if you see him transitioning into HT. Alternatively you may need a second reactor starport if he is continuing collosus production past 3. The reason for this is you need medivacs and if he is doing constant collosus production you also need a reactor starport dedicated to viking production or even more if you are behind on viking count.
4) start a second engi bay and armory and go for constant upgrades at this point. This times out perfectly if you start it half way through +1 armor but sometimes you may want to do it earlier and just start +2 weapons earlier.
After your 3rd is up add on up to 7-8 barracks and even more when you take a 4th so that you can remax hopefully somewhat near as quick as the toss.
Scouting
Past the one base timing, terran is the reactive race in TvP so scouting is so important. So I'm gonna go into this in detail.
The scv scout
YOU MUST SCV SCOUT - you need to see if he has 2 gas before 4minutes. If he does, then he could still be doing basically anything, but if he doesn't then you know he is either doing a 4gate or a FE. Typically if he is doing a 4gate you will see alot of energy saved up on his nexus.
The 4gate. Just chill outside his base with your worker (by this I mean hide your worker somewhere don't just leave it in their expansion, hide it just outside their expansion somewhere they probably won't find him). after you scout 1 gas and if you don't see a nexus going down by 5.5minutes start building a bunker in your base right away, repair that bunker and you should hold the 4gate. It was mentioned to me that a 4gate can hit before this timing, but I think thats a very weak version of the 4gate cutting probes and with mostly zealots and you should be able to hold it off with a few scvs and stutter step micro. It is also very helpful to block off your ramp to defend this type of early zealot heavy pressure.
2 gas scenario - again you want to chill outside his base with your worker because although 2gas does imply tech, many protoss are expanding off 2 gas these days. If you see no expansion by 5.5minutes you should build a bunker at your expansion and another at 6minutes.
If no expand you may be facing sentry heavy 4 gate, dts, void rays, warp prisms, immortal allin or even blink stalkers. I'm not really going to go into most of these since there are other posts for this stuff.
Blink stalkers - is basically anti 1/1/1 cheese and should die hilariously to your standard play
DTs - Whenever you scout 2 gas you need to build a engi bay by around 6minutes and a turret at the front of your base. You really need to be actively scouting his unit composition and if you see very few units no sentires and an expansion, you are probably facing dts, in which case throw down another turret in your main near your cc. Some protoss do wonky dt timings with sentries and stuff so you really need the turret at the front of your base anytime you see 2gas. DTs can arrive as early as 7minutes but typically they arrive a bit later with warp prisms etc so thats why I say you need an engi bay at 6 even though that will make your turret a bit late. Also you could hold off the first 1-2 with scan. In a macro game you will probably face dts at some point since they are great for harassment so even with 1 gas openings once you have some minerals to spare put that turret down at your expansion.
immortal all-in aka 3gate robo - If your doing one of the heavy barracks play midgame transitions this should be no problem, you need lots of marines to beat it so you should be fine esp if u pull a few scvs, if your doing the 3rax build and you have scouted no expansion and your scan at 8minutes sees this, immediately cancel scvs and throw down as many bunkers are you can (no more then 5) (unless already using all barracks to make units and can afford bunkers).
Void rays - You basically need alot of marines to defend void rays, void ray vs expand in my experience is basically just a coin flip where you either have enough marines or you dont. Leave maruarders in bunkers at front defend void ray harass with marines. Pull scvs to repair bunkers as there WILL be a push at the front unless he is warping in over the side which will be immediately obvious. Don't try to focus down the voidray stutter step the units first, you may want to pull scvs if you feel like you don't have enough to deal with it. Don't forget, you are way ahead economically of any 1base.
Its helpful scouting this stuff if you hang around in his base and look for any wierd pylon positionings towards the outside of his base, this can imply hes going to build a stargate there. By the time he chases you out of his base around 4:30 you should have seen a 3rd pylon. If you don't see a 3rd pylon, you may be facing proxy void rays and I have even occasiaonlly run into proxy robo 3-4gate warp prism.
Keep your buildings relatively spread out to help spot warp prism shenanigans
The 8 minute scan
This is an integral scan. You need to scan his main to find out if he is going for 6gate or some other 9-10minute pressure build. You scan and if you see 4+ gates and or a robo assume that you are going to be facing pressure soon. You should add on 2-3 bunkers IMMEDIATELY unless your using the 5rax or the ghost openers. Try to hold the scout tower or if you can't then keep a unit out a ways in front of your bunkers so that you will have a heads up and can get scvs in position to repair and preferably some in front and some behind the bunkers to make it harder to FF them away.
I usually scan where I saw the majority of the pylons in my scv scout, typically this gives you enough information, even if they hide a couple of gateways to decide if its going to be pressure or not. The protoss is taking a greater risk by spreading out their buildings then a terran because they are easier to unpower, but sometimes they do it. In that case its basically up to your experience to scout the protoss unit composition and try to figure out what is coming, for example if you scv scout at 7.5-8minutes and you see 5-6 sentries then you are most likely facing aggression since that gas otherwise would be tied up in tech buildings. In all matchups actually its useful to try to ask yourself, "where is the gas".
If you hold this pressure you can immediately take a 3rd and you will be ahead and if enough of your units survive you should counter attack his natural or at least make sure he is unable to take his own 3rd.
The 12 minute colossus timing attack
Somehow you need to scout if this is coming, if your 8minute scan reveals a robo bay and 3gates then you might suspect it but you still can't know. Try to use a timing attack or an scv scout or another scan to find out if its collosus and if it is you need to get vikings out, minimum 2 per collosus preferably 3. Sometimes around 9minutes I start a barracks if i can afford it next to toss base and fly that over and see what hes up too, you get to see alot more then a scan and you can also tell where his units are if your gonna try any drop stuff.
Once you find that this is not coming, or you survive it, congrats you have made it into a macro game! You now have to just scout periodically to find out when HTs come out and for army positioning when he takes a 3rd stuff like that. Add ghosts when you scout HTs.
Engaging the protoss Army
People will have told you that you can't beat the protoss death ball head to head. They are wrong! However, it involves excellent micro and alot of ghosts.
Step 1:Hotkeys are ghosts, vikings, bioball
Step 2: Send ghosts ahead of your army, preferably with cloak and scan his army. This allows you to see where the HT are, avoid getting feedbacked by forward HT(EMP if multiple, snipe if 1). If the HTs are not at the front, then just blanket emp the army, but keep in mind that you MUST still emp those HTs, you cant win with bio against storm so if he has more then a couple storms left after your emps are done, so you may want to try to engage later if you cant emp the hts. Scanning ahead of your army also allows you to spot any forward observers and your ghosts can quickly take them down making your ghosts invisible and reducing protoss ability to feedback you.
Step 3: Stim Engage, target fire with vikings
Step 4: Stutter Step
-if he is all archon zealot and doesnt have too many hts or collosus then you can just stutter step your whole ball back kiting everyting BUT
-if he is heavy in storm and collosus it is better to concave stutter step, what do I mean by this? Try to make a concave with your units and stutter step back small groups from the heaviest areas of aoe damage making an even better concave. Obviously any area under storm stutters back first, and then any area under attack from collosus and then any area with zealots, this is pretty hard advanced stuff so don't worry about it if your below masters
This is pretty hard right! So whats most important. Number 1 thing is try to emp with ghosts before the engagement so that you don't have to worry about it during. Next most important is to micro your bio out of storms. Least important is focus firing with your vikings, just A move your vikigns and forget about them most of the time. I don't have great apm so thats what I do. You can change the outcome of the fight the most by concentrating on microing your bio away from the aoe damage dealers and by making the emps count. Its also helpful to keep your medivacs seperate from your bio since you want them to sit there and heal not stutter step, try keeping them on the vikings tab.
Dropping
Its my opinion that dropping is not as integral as some make it out to be in the matchup. However, you do need to put the fear of drops in protoss. This means you should always try to do at least one drop, so that protoss has to leave some units around to defend, and they will be more afraid to move out early to bother you.
That said, if the protoss is just chilling and macroign up and you have medivacs its foolish not to try to do some damage and throw off their macro. I prefer full medivacs of maruaders to try to kill buildings, and kite small unit groups but some people prefer mixed units. Your priority target are forges, and then other tech structures like templar archives. But remember that the goal of drops is to do damage for free so don't lose your entire drop in exchange for a building or 2 (except maybe for 2 upgrading forges). Your drop is still a success even if all you did was kill a pylon and make the protoss have to do stuff other then macro. Protoss macro is very easy to screw up since they have to pay such close attention to their warp in cycles so if you can delay them by 5-10 seconds 3-5 times a game that can add up to an entire production cycle. Sometimes protoss leave little groups of stalkers around to defend drops. This is a great opportunity to drop mauraders and kill stalkers, its ok to lose some units if you are make cost efficient trades in the drop.
Later in the game when you are dropping far expansions, it is more appropriate to drop marines cuz they kill probes better.
When you get to a higher level of play, rather then doing direct damage with your drops what you want to do is try to pull the protoss units out of position so that the rest of your force can do damage, divide and conquer.
Other notes:
Really try to prioritize your upgrades once you have your vikings up in sufficient numbers, protoss can crono upgrades and chargelot archon ahead in upgrades hurts so dam much so its important to try to stay up with them as best you can. I like to start +1 weapons early since u typically need a engi bay for detection anyway. Don't forget viking attack upgrades.
You can never have enough ghosts, but don't forget you need units too, you can't win with an army thats 50% ghosts, sometimes I get carried away.
Just because you beat a protoss army in the field, don't assume you can march in and win now. The protoss probably just created 40 supply of units instantly so if you try to charge into their base and win you will die with your injured units and lose your advantage. Instead, wait for some more medivac energy and heal up your units, and then once you have some more emps and all your units are healed and you are macroed up well just crush him even worse and then you can win.
If you know you are facing a 1base all-in and you have your expansion up and running DON"T MOVE OUT. Instead start building bunkers and turrets. You have no incentive to move out in this scenario and because you are so far ahead on econ you can afford to spend money on static D. If you are unable to scout a big immortal all-in coming (the only really delayed 1base all-in then check around the map for hidden expos.
Every timing hits the protoss base at 10:00, at 10:30 there is often a collosus out and then your push is dead. Do some damage, kill the nexus if hes sloppy and then get out.
Concluding Remarks
I know that I am not always super clear even though I think I am so if you need clarification or you think I missed something let me know as its hard for me to handle thinking about what I have missed looking at this giant wall of text and I will be making edits to it soon.
Replays
1rax FE into 4rax timing attack - http://topreplays.com/Replays/Details/11988/Lostcause_vs_Lopez
My opponent doesnt have the best game, he does a wonky build with some fail pressure and just dies to the timing but this replay is still valuable just so you can see the timings and how everything goes down. I don't build a bunker because I know he has expanded and I am fairly confident in my marine micro. With an early expansion he cant get too many stalkers too quickly because of lack of gas. Note how rapidly you need to be building supply depots. If he went 2 gas before expo a engi bay might also slow me down a bit but then my opponent would also be slowed.
Same build - http://topreplays.com/Replays/Details/11994/Lostcause_vs_Believersoul
Opponent goes for greedy upgrades while teching to collosus and doest have enough to hold off the timing attack, loses most of his units and sentries, tries to recover but I just macro up go back and crush him when he tries to take his 3rd. It was somewhat risky of me to push up the ramp in this situation, but I just had a feeling he was weak since my 8min scan revealed the early double forge and robo play.
Same opening - into full macro game http://topreplays.com/Replays/Details/11996/Believersoul_vs_Lostcause
Opponent 1gate FEs then does a 3gate poke into a 6gate which i defend and then he trys to secret expand while teching to hts and unfortunately for him I spot it while pressuring his fast tech. He tries to defend but he loses everything and I escape with 3medivacs full of units, macro up get alot of ghosts and he tries to go for double ups archon zealot ht but I just have too many ghosts.
More to come...
Edit: it has been brought to my attention by a couple high level players that all pros generally do 1rax FE since its best to transition into a variety of timings etc. In my guide I imply that you can make any of the transitions from any of the openings which may not be true at a pro level, but I think that most of us who arent playing at the GM level can still consider doing slightly sub-obtimal builds which turn out to be a little easier on micro/safer.
