! [G]The art of TvZ Han Bang-1 Vessel 3 Tank Timing

I got quite a few PMs to put the guide back up, and I reformatted it from a doc that a friend of mine had saved(I fucking love you bro, you know who you are). I'd like to keep this a respectable thread now.

I'm reposting it myself again just because part of what I wanted to do was constantly update it to keep it recent.
Yeah and me quitting the game was a joke. Anyone who had me added knows I was just on yesterday and I beat 2 protosses on medusa(KTF offered me a contract for this) as well as got slaughtered by two A rank koreans.

Yes this was included in the original version and that is why I was so shocked about the negative feedback about my play.

Since I have to re-correct all of this guide, I've added some tips after some of the items in the build. This is stuff thrown in by me -- so take it for what its worth. Most of the stuff is generally agreed upon though as it is just shortcuts and ways to optimize your play -- generally for lower level players.

I have removed maximum supply from the next few steps because depending on when you placed your cc you may not have this supply.

When I struggled with TvZ one of my issues was this attack, I knew it was almost always safe to move out here and it was a good thing to do but sometimes opponent would run in with 500 hidden zerglings or surround my army with them when I was macroing. You do not always make this push and sometimes you just have to use your gamesense and let the zerg sit with 1 sunken. Watch for suspicious actions such as:
Low drone count
Abnormally early zergling speed
Saving larve when you are near hatchery
2nd hatchery in natural expansion
No gas in natural expansion in time for mutal
Suspicious scout denial(early sunkens or drone ramp block)

Although these things may not mean he is making zerglings 100%, most of the time he is either sacrificing econ to do suspicious things(or hes bad) or he will do massive ling attack and you will win the game because you are prepared for it.

You don't want to go all the way to his nat, since there is no way for you to tell whether he has 12 speedlings ready to counter. Push out 1/3 distance is enough to force sunkens. If you really want to push, push out with first bat and medic but hang close to your nat until you have an additional bat and medic to block the ramp.

Best way to tell how good Z is at this point is to see whether his lings are keeping track of your army. Good Z will run lings close by to see exactly where you are, this is difficult for lower level or just slower Z players cuz they have to multitask while keeping contant check on his lings so they don't run into marines and die.

Coming from a zerg player who wants to know the terran wont attack so he doesnt have to make sunkens. =) Just kidding though, as its usually a good idea not to run around the map without good scouting. I think there are many instances when it is good to push to the natural though so I'm gonna leave both sides into it. This guy is a good B~ level zerg player so what he says coming from a zerg perspective is more then I can offer though.

+1 first isnt necessary either, although it can be better in some situations. +1 is a big help vs mutas, so if theyre doing extended muta harass the faster you have +1 the better, but its hard to know how much theyre gonna dedicate to mutas before you have to decide. that ones more of a judgement call, but always fac before range.

vs muta micro just mirror what they do exactly. if the mutas are running away from your marines then run away from the mutas. when he turns around you stim and turn around. make sure you TARGET mutas. if you just attack move into them you will get destroyed. you must thin the muta numbers. make sure to refill your medic supply. you have to stim so much vs mutas that you will run out of energy. just make some more medics instead of marines every now and then.

From here on out you will be dealing with muta harass, so not only will your timing not be flawless but you're most likely going to start losing units and supply so it makes it a difficult gauge to go by. I'm just going to loosely describe the last few things you need to do before the push.

TvZ pushing should be done whenever the zerg is trying to force you to stay in the map. That is a clear indicator that they do not want you roaming around the map because they are either powering drones, teching, or expoing. The entire purpose of mid game ZvT is for the Z to contain the terran until they have hive tech, and it's the Terran's job to hinder his tech. There are at least 3 exploitable timings that zergs have
1. Before pool is finished - The zerg is vulnerable to their overlord being sniped if they are too careless about their scouting path. The zerg will also be forced to waste 2-4 larvae on lings to deter 4-5 marine harassment at their natural.
2. Muta/Lurk tech transition
This is when the Zerg is still researching lurk tech. If his muta harass is subpar, he will have no choice but to defend ur push. 16-20 marines will easily rip apart through anything he can throw against you with ease, provided you have a couple firebats and don't walk into a trap. Be cautious though, some zergs like to bait you with a seemingly vulnerable position, only to completely wipe out ur force with a muta/ling force the size of the screen.
3. Hive tech
Obviously this is the most critical timing there is. You really don't want him to have map control and hive tech, so at the very least move out and proceed to kill his 3rd gas. This is also the most ideal time so far to start an expansion while you are still competing for map control.

Also, some zergs will also have exploitable timings due to their slower scout/reaction time, so other timings appear such as sunk break timings, run-by, or pushes when they start their 3rd gas.

Pushing is simple enough with pure marine; you just run when they attack you. Most zergs aren't dumbasses and will attack you with a respectable flank. All you gotta do is run back and allow them to funnel, and then proceed to shoot everything. If you get completely surrounded, you didn't scout enough and walked into a freakin trap. If u have tanks, it's almost like a TvP timing push except with MnM.

dont continue tanks (vs 3 gas hive). it is good to switch back into tanks once youve secured a 3rd gas for a while, but you need all your gas for 2 port vessels and mines are more useful against lurk/defiler anyway, so you should cut tanks for mines for a while before you both get better econ established.

I hope anyone who read the guide enjoyed it and it benefited your game play. I just rewrote some of it by request for some people that like it. Thanks to echo_O (terran in opening story), 404.nintu(building placement), imBLIND(push strat), IdrA(gas and factory timing), and Artosis(awesome muta micro strat that I ripped from his thread)

if he makes more than 2 lings get a bunker at your natural, and keep scouting. if he keeps making lings or you see speed before his mutas are out hes 99% gonna attack so have have some scvs blocking.

generally you have to cut an scv or 2 (never stop marine production) in order to get up turrets to stop the first wave, generally youll want 2-3 at each minline and 1-2 above your ramp (and by your barracks, assuming theyre in that same general area). your marine range shouldnt be done at that point, so just keep your mm in among the turrets hes nearest. once you have marine range you just try to mirror him, when he trys to engage your mm stim, pull back a bit, and then charge forward and focus on a single muta. you also want to make sure hes coming in perpendicular to your marines, ie your marines are in a line with the mutas coming in like this l<-, so all your rines fire at once.

other than that, just make sure you keep adding turrets to your min lines and try to get to vessels as fast as possible, if you know you arent gonna have 2(preferably more) vessels with irad by the time his guards are out go 3 port wraith instead.

- scout better. you should have an scv or marine at each main, ideally patrolling the nat. every zerg knows that having an scv bitch their drone out of an expo is annoying as hell, and you're really paying 50 minerals to delay his expo by minutes. at the very least you will know of their existence and can stop them before they become profitable or well defended.

- if he is going faster hive (like immediately after his first group of lurkers), it becomes much easier to go for his expoes. bunker up a bit at home, keep tabs on his main army and go around aiming to stop him at 2 gas. he won't be able to do much this way once his hive tech comes about. if he is delaying for more lair units, you can oftentimes just roll over his nat since higher upgraded terran armies become stronger and stronger compared to lair tech armies as upgrades, tank concentrations and vessel counts go up.

- upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. this helps you spend a bit of money, but this really makes or breaks you if his hive stuff is out. you REALLY want those damage upgrades marines against his 850932581 armor ultras, and armor upgrades to render his lurkers basically useless without swarm.

- start using 2 dropships full of mm during hive tech, matrixed if he has lots of scourge flying around. drop his main, kill his ultra den, defiler mound, and tech buildings. this buys you a lot of time and gives you the opportunity to kill a lot of his stuff. if you can handle it, do two at once. a lot of zergs especially at low levels will simply have only enough attention to focus on one, giving you a free base to kill.

- mines and tanks and vessels and other imba shit - if it's getting to late game and you feel your mobility is restricted by the threat of a swarm counter or whatever, get mines and lay them at possible counter routes. send your army the other way to other bases, and smile at him suiciding into mines. be careful though, you often need a lot more mines than you think and you still have to have mm + tanks behind the mines to kill his units after they've been softened up. finally, if you manage to have a third or fourth gas definitely start spending all your excess gas in vessels. after a critical count you have an irradiate basically every 30 seconds, allowing you great mobility and a lot of free kills.

1. Attack only one muta at a time. If your opponent is truly a patron of "sick mutaing", he will turn his mutas away instantly after the spikes come out, giving your marines virtually no time to attack the muta clump. But given that 8 mutas and 10 mutas differ by a lot, 10 mutas can kill two marines almost always with one good hold, 8 rarely can, you should always try to deal the most damage in the shortest time span possible, which would mean to attack one muta at a time.

2. Try not to stay still when mutalisks are near your marines. When zerg players practice sick mutaing, most use only two methods, attack-move + left-click and hold. For both the player has to first right click within range of the object the player wants to attack and then perform the command he wants to do. The absolute key to sick mutaing is to turn away as soon as the command takes effect, which means when the spikes come out, and because of this, zerg players will only press the attacking command once and then right-click away immediately after; which means if the attacking command does not take effect, that is if the mutas do not attack, they have to turn away anyways because the right-click command has already taken effect. So in turn, the procedure for a muta raid is to right-click until mutas are within range of marines, hold or attack-move once, then right click away.

From the terran player's perspective, the logical reaction would be to make the mutalisks miss as often as possible that one attacking command the zerg player uses. To do that, terran has to move their marines away from the mutalisks' range when you're not in good formation and when your marines are too few to deal any damage. The most important aspect of this is that stimmed marines move faster than mutalisks. So by stimming and moving away suddenly in the direction parallel to how the mutas are coming at you, you can most of the time make the muta clump miss because when the zerg uses the attack command the marines are in range but when they actually attack your marines will be out of their range.

3. Attack in good formation. A good formation is when a lot of marines stand perpendicularly to mutalisks

Good formation:

xxx
xxx
xxx _________________ x <- mutas
xxx
xxx <- marines

When you're in this situation you should retreat when the mutas are coming at you and then move towards mutas when they are turning away and then aim at one muta. All while stimmed. Because of this formation, most of your marines will be in range of the muta cluster therefore able to deal a lot of damage in a short time, and because stimmed marines are faster than mutalisks you will be able to catch up to the mutas when they're turning away to attack, and then quickly turn back when the mutas attack you. It is much easier said than done. But this should be your basic philosophy to dealing with muta raids, retreat when being attacked, and attack when mutas retreat.

Bad formation:

xxxxxxx <- marines ______________ x <- mutas

In this formation, the marines that stick out in front are asking to be killed. They are far away from medics and when you attack, and only a few will be in range of the mutalisks when you attack. With one good hold, mutas can kill most of the ones that are sticking out, and the ones that don't die will have to catch up to attack, and then they will be killed too.

4. Don't stim too much. Don't stim when there are no medics nearby, don't stim twice in a short period. Obviously this is because clumped mutas will deal way more damage to stimmed marines and with splash, many will die.

5. Do not chase when your marines are stimmed and in bad formation. This goes along with 2 and 3. Especially when you're attack moving and not aiming for one muta and when you don't have a lot of marines.

6. Have lots of medics available, an extra medic or two will really cancel out the splash damage, saving your precious marines from otherwise certain deaths.

The idea of killing larvae based units is an idea i've mentioned to some regarding decision making during certain battles. Essentially, people think in terms of gas and minerals fairly easily. IE, don't build a hydra den in ZvZ to kill an overlord because it wastes about ~100gas which is 1 mutalisk. I find it useful also to think in terms of larvae.

Oftentimes, when fighting an opponent (of any race) one sometimes chooses to focus fire certain units. Typical examples are targeting templars in ZvP, tanks in ZvT, or lurkers in PvZ and TvZ.

What I argue is that, specifically in PvZ and TvZ, when faced w/ the common but oh-so-effective lurker/ling combo, when is it a good idea to target the lurkers and when is it not?

Despite the fact that MANY people will tell you to target the lurkers specifically (in fact almost everyone advocates lurker targeting in TvZ), I argue that oftentimes its more important to attack the zerglings because they are heavily "larvae based"

Lets take a very common example: ZvT. Its a mineral expo map (like korhal or nostalgia) and you have 8-10 marines, 2 bats, and 2 medics outside the zergs base. The zerg went 2 hatch fast lurker+ling and leaves his base w/ the standard 4 lurkers and 20-24 lings. What should terran attack?

Obviously a ling+lurker force is neutralized if either all the lurkers are killed OR all the lings are killed. Obviously 4 lurkers can't do shit to MnM since terran micro is so strong nowadays. And, 24 lings are going to do shit against a strong MMF force. Thus, I argue it is most important to try to kill all the lings off. For, 24 lings equates to 12 larvae. By killing off 24 lings, terran effectively delays the zerg much longer, as it will take longer to rebuild that many zerglings.

JESUS TRY THE HARD LIFE OF A ZERG. WE DONT HAVE FUCKING MAP CROSSING ARCLITE CANNONS, EVERYTHING CANNOT BE REPAIRS, WE DONT HAVE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION LIKE SPIDER MINES AND WE CERTAINLY AS FUCK DONT HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS CAUSE ANY GAME THAT HAS THAT SUCKS LIKE COMMAND AND CONQUER 3. ALSO, WE DONT HAVE FLYING BUILDINGS OR MOTHERFUCKING DEFENSIVE STRUCTURES THAT SHOOT AIR AND GROUND AND CAN BE REPAIRED AND COST 100$ FUCKING MINERALS. OUR WORKERS DIE WHEN THE WIND BLOWS TOO HARD AND SURE AS FUCK DONT HAVE FUSION CUTTERS. WAIT? YOU HAVE GOLIATHS THAT SHOOT ACROSS THE MAP AT AIR UNITS AND CAN BE REPAIRED AND ARE CHEAP? JESUS WHO MADE THIS GAME.
JESUS I WISH I HAD 5-6 of THE ALL TIME BEST PLAYERS TO MODEL MY GAME AFTER. WAIT? WERENT THEY ALL FUCKING TERRAN? WE HAVE NADA, BOXER, OOV, FLASH, MIDAS and XELLOS ALL KICKING ASS FOR YEARS AT A TIME WHILE WE GET FUCKING FAT ASS JULY WHO SUCKS NOW, YELLOW WHO ALWAYS FUCKING SUCKED BUT NOBODY KNEW FOR A BIT AND WE FINALLY GOT SAVIOR BUT THEN THEY DRESSED HIM LIKE HITLER SO HE SUCKED AND NOW WE HAVE JAEDONG BUT THAT KID CANT FIGURE OUT THE NEW KOREAN MAPS THAT DONT MATTER. JESUS FUCK IT MUST BE NICE TO HAVE PLAYERS THAT SPAN DECADES AND DOMINATE THE ENTIRE TIME. GIMME SOME OF THAT PLEASE.
HEY WHAT ABOUT BUILDINGS DO YOU LOSE A SCV EACH TIME YOU MAKE ONE? NO. WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN ACTUALLY TELL THEM TO RETURN TO MINING AFTER THEY ARE DONE BUILDING? I THOUGHT THAT AUTO MINING GARBAGE WAS FOR HACKERS OR BAD GAMES. TERRAN'S CAN DO IT? FUCK THAT SOUNDS LIKE A SWEET DEAL. EACH TIME WE (zerg) HAVE TO BUILD WE TELL ONE OF OUR SACRED MINERS "HEY FUCK YOU TIME TO DIE" AND THEY DO. THEN WE GET A FUCKING BUILDING. WHICH, HALF THE TIME ISNT ENOUGH: WE HAVE TO PAY MOREE FUCKING MONEY TO GET IT TO DO SOME SHIT LIKE DICK THE GROUND OR SPRAY PISS IN THE AIR.
WHEN YOU SELECT RANDOM, WHAT GAME SCREEN DO YOU GET IN BETWEEN? ANY GUESSERS? THAT'S RIGHT: TERRAN. EVEN THE FUCKING GAME KNOWS WHAT YOU SHOULD OBVIOUSLY HAVE CHOSEN WHEN YOU FORGOT TO SELECT TERRAN AND GOT RANDOM. FUCKING INSANE BIAS.

depends on how fast theyre going hive, how many drones/expos theyre taking, and how many hatches they have.

if they took another gas after their third and/or added alot of hatcheries and show no indication of going hive then you sit and wait and build up your tank/vessel count, if they seem really intent on just massing lair tech its good to add a 2nd factory. you dont need to attack until theyre going hive unless they over extend themselves economically like taking their 3rd and 4th gasses immediately upon lurkers finishing.

if they go normal 3 gas hive then yes you should push at your first vessel.

if they go really really fast hive, like off 2 gas, then you arent gonna push at all. in that situation go mines as fast as possible (no tanks at all) while going 2 port vessel, and get a dropship as soon as your first control tower completes. mix in a healthy amount of firebats with your army. drop his main while sitting behind mines and wait for your vessel count to kick in. continue drop harass until he gets scourge. not heavy drop harass, just 1 ship to keep his attention away from swarm pushing your choke. constant vultures for mines.

its not common, its an allin thats not very hard to stop as long as you see it in time.

in most situations you wont be able to push his lurkers back before defilers are out, though that depends on your opening build and the map, and how early you recognized he was opening lurker.