[G] TvX: Small Changes Make a Big Difference

Small Changes Make a Big Difference - Please upvote!

A lot of players underestimate the importance of supply depots: they serve additional purposes than just giving supply. In the first screenshot on Shattered Temple, My first two supply depots are placed at the very top for TvP and TvT instead of walling off. Its incredibly useful to see incoming drops from the terran or protoss player, allowing you to get a head start in reaction. If you look at the minimap, it gives you additional vision in the fog of war. Its good in TvT as well because if your opponent does banshee play, it's better to let them attack depots rather than SCVs. It gives you an extra few seconds to see the banshee ahead of time, and avoids losing critical units that you need.

Another situation in TvT would be a marine hellion medivac elevator play. The best way to stop this is to prevent the elevation from setting up. But to achieve this, you have to see when and where the elevation is occurring. The best way to see that incoming is to spread out those depots for vision. Its also important to note that if you are placing depots near the cliffs with low grounds, you should space them out a bit further to avoid getting picked off by units on the low ground. It is ok to build depots right at the edge of cliffs with dead air space, except against Zerg players who go mutalisks.



The same applies for TvP if warp prisms come. You generally do not have to worry about protoss units picking them off because the supply depots are located at the dead air space. The only unit that can attack it from the air would be a Void Ray. However, it’s good to just let them hit the depot rather than letting them begin aggressively attacking your front or letting them warp from low ground. If you do place depots to wall off against a void ray play, the depots are generally going to be in range of the Voidray. They'll get destroyed and you can’t fight back most of the time. With these depots located elsewhere, you won’t suddenly get supply blocked during a Void Ray timing attack. Typically, protoss isn't going to randomly patrol dead air space to pick off depots

Another important aspect is if you do 2 rax vs protoss. A LOT of protoss do not realize that if they do scout gas from the terran, they can sometimes determine if the terran is going 1-1-1 or 2 rax by looking at the depots alone. In the build order for 2 rax, terran players generally use the 100 minerals after orbital NOT to make a 2nd depot, but a faster 2nd rax. If Protoss does scout the 2nd depot instead of the 2nd rax, they can determine that its either the “really slow” 2 rax or a 1-1-1. They do not have to worry about the faster version of the 2 rax. So it's always good to hide depots in this situation so they cannot determine the depot count to determine what build you are going for. Finally, spreading the depots for vision is also good in the off-chance you spot hidden probes that can just randomly proxy pylon for an attack or even cannon rush you.

A lot of players have the habit to pause their SCV production for some other spending and then resume SCV production again. This leaves a second or two in between SCV production which doesn’t allow the maximum possible mineral income a terran can acquire. Unlike other races where they can get use larva or chronoboost for rapid harvester production, Terran SCV production must be consistent.



By queuing up to 2 SCVs, we will never forget to skip worker production even for a moment. Even pro gamers such as EG.PuMa do this to achieve maximum income. The idea is to reach the 3 base saturation of SCVs (so about 65 SCVs) as fast as possible, and to do this you cannot afford to waste any time.


Here's what it should look like with three bases

It’s debatable if your 3rd base should be an orbital command or a Planetary Fortress (PF). However if your 3rd is a orbital, it will be harder to defend compared to a PF. Often players lose workers at their 3rd due to ling run bys or zealot warp-ins, and all of a sudden they're behind in a game where they should be way ahead. For just 100 minerals, you can easily shut down smaller run bys and stall for time against bigger ones.

If you place the bunker between the orbital and the gas geyser (without interrupting the SCV gas mining), it’s hard for the zerg to get a ling surround and easily destroy the bunker. With just a few SCVs to repair, you will have cost effective kills with simply 1 bunker to defend. To enhance the defense of bunkers, you can also place supply depots around the front of the bunkers to have a much stronger static defense.



If zerg players try to bust with banelings, they will have to invest more banelings to achieve this goal. Also note that bunkers with 4 marines actually do a lot better job than 1 turret to defend a specific point from air. Not only does bunker have more hp, but a bit more DPS (Yes you stim marines while they are in the bunkers). When fortified with turrets AND a well-placed bunker, your 3rd is no longer dependent on your main army for defense – allowing you to be more aggressive with drops and pressuring your opponent.


We are not going to lose that easily to ling runbys!

The fact is, a lot of Terrans are struggling late game. A lot of their success comes from the early to mid game. This gives a lot of Terrans the mentality “I have to kill them before 15 minutes or I am in trouble”. A lot of Terrans don’t exactly prepare for the late game of TvZ and simply die to superior unit compositions. The pictures following before should describe how to prepare for late game TvZ A LOT easier.

Normally by around 16-18 minutes, you should scan to see if they have hive or not. When you do confirm they have hive, you have to prepare for late game tech. Many of you will have reactor barracks (If going marine tank) so one of the best responses is to lift 2 of those reactor barracks and turn into 2 tech lab barracks. This gives you 2 reactors to use for viking production while the tech lab barracks are for marauder or ghost production (Plus you should normally still have the very first barracks with tech lab when you started stim/combat shield, so that gives us total of 3 barracks with tech labs). From there we are going to add 2 starports onto the unused reactors for a total of 3 reactor starports (since we usually should have had 1 earlier. With 3 tech lab barracks and 3 reactor starports, we can now have the production capabilities to deal with late game zerg. Never again can you say “Dam I lost to broodlords because I cant pump out enough Vikings in time”.


3 Reactor starports will get you A LOT of Vikings in a short time.

A lot of players totally stop researching armory upgrades after a certain point. I don’t understand why they usually remembering engineering bay upgrades but not armory upgrades. Against Zerg, we want to get at least +1 mech attack so tanks can continue to 1 shot 1/1 Zerglings. After mech attack, we NEED to get air upgrades. Why air upgrades? Because this way we are not dependent on such a large viking count to deal with corrupters and Broodlords. You have to remember that zergs are often not really persistent with air upgrades. Maybe they might get +1 attack, or +1 armor… but how often do you see them ever reaching +3? As long as you have better air upgrades, your Vikings will trade well with corruptors and the minimum requirement of Vikings needed to deal with the air units will reduce.

In TvP, this is even more important. Many players fail to achieve to get up to +3 air attack for the Vikings. A lot of players simply die to Colossus for many reasons… but one of those reasons is because the Vikings cannot kill fast enough. Protoss will almost always get +3 armor at some point, which applies to colossus. If Vikings with no air upgrades go against colossus with +3 armor, you basically do -6 damage for every volley per Viking. The overall damage output gets crapped on so hard that the Vikings will die to stalkers before the colossus ever fall. By having air upgrades, you can negate that, which means you are not forced to make MORE Vikings to deal with the same amount of colossus with armor upgrades.


If your armory isn’t doing ANYTHING, get air attack upgrades. Just do it.


+1 air attack researched
+2 air attack researching

As a terran, you probably know how easy it is for you to engage unfavorably and lose your whole army. You can be 20-40 supplies ahead of the game and STILL lose the game due to one engagement. That's why it's always better to be safe than sorry. You can either scan to see ahead, or you can stim a marine forward. Scans costs a lot more than 1 marine, so marines are usually the ideal choice (even tho they have less vision). So whenever you move out, ALWAYS send something ahead so you don’t get caught off guard. This applies for all matchups from running into tanks, into a zerg army, into protoss deathball.


See how much vision covered over fog of war just by sending one marine?

This is a fundamental basic idea a lot of Terrans should have. Any supply depots being constructed should be used productively (either it’s used for sight for vision or depot wall off). Having a supply wall off can make the ultimately difference to surviving an attack or losing.


Seems pretty straightforward

Yes, you might as well get the building armor upgrade and the turret range upgrade if you do have the money for it. Every small thing makes a difference between winning and losing. Building armor will be very useful especially when mutas knock turrets so hard or when lings with +3 attack start killing buildings at a ridiculously fast rate. If you are going mech, you should upgrade the engineering upgrade unless you are extremely strict on gas.


Turret range upgrade


Terran building armor

You are floating like 2k resource, not maxed out, and still queueing only 1 unit per production facility when you are on a lot of bases… why you still queueing 1 unit?
When your money is high and you're not using it for anything immediately, you might as well queue as many units are you can afford. This way you never forget to requeue the next unit so you have the units out fastest possible without any time lost. This generally applies late game when Terrans are multiple bases, maxed out ,and have all production facilities. If the terran just got into an engagement and lost units, he might as well start requeue to get those units out asap, it is not like you will make more scv (If anything, you should lose SCV and gain more orbitals) or more production facilities after a certain amount. A lot of lower level players I see float their resource and always forget to requeue additional unit even in the mid game. If that was the case, the advice is just queue up at LEAST 2 so you don’t forget.

So these are the 9 smaller plays that Terrans should do in increase the effectiveness of how the race is played. Every small play makes a big difference in play, and you want to make sure everything you do is worth its money.

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