TvZ; Part 2

Part 2: The essentials Part 1

Before you begin learning anything, I have a list of micro exercises for you to begin practicing. The point of this is to not only improve your TvZ matchup, but to also improve your mechanics. Practicing at least 20 minutes of Marine Split Challenge in the Knalle Micro Trainer will improve your spreading and splitting mechanics which are crucial to engaging vs a Zerg. Another useful challenge in the Micro trainer is the Focus Fire stutter step. This has actually helped my drop play because I just focus down all the banes before they do damage and let my 2-2 stimmed marines take care of the melee lings.

• Utilizing the Ling/Hellion roast challenge is crucial to perfecting your hellion micro. With Hellions, target the furthest Zergling in a straight line for maximum damage; in other words, stop the hellions for a split second, right click the furthest Zergling that is in range of all the Hellions, then drive off the moment the hellions fire because Hellions use hitscan, not projectile weapons.

• Keeping your hellions and reapers alive throughout the early game is so important that I cannot stress it enough. I will further explain why later on.

• The stutter step challenge is also extremely useful for perfecting your stutter step and kiting. This will not only help you get better in TvZ but also in TvP in which kiting is a key to winning vs zealots.

• The marine waltz challenge is a Terran v Protoss challenge but I find it very good at training my mouse accuracy as you dance 2 marines against a really good zealot AI; practicing all of this for at least 30 minutes before you begin laddering will cause you to play better and be warmed up. And after a period of time, your mechanics in all of these areas will improve exponentially.

Scouting With Reaper:

The reaper is a really good scouting unit up until 6 minutes when zergs speed usually finishes if they open up gas. I’ve seen people make 2 reapers but leave 1 at home in case of a ling runby to deny the expo. I used to do this too until I realized that pro players could tell whether they needed to leave a reaper at home or not. With 2 reapers at the enemy base, you can damage lings, potentially kill workers and lings, damage queens a lot, and deny a greedy 3rd. They can also snipe the first 2 creep tumors that go down.

When you send your first reaper to the enemy base on a 2 player map, the first thing you must do is check if their hatch is finishing on time. Hatch first starts at 2:10 and finishes 100 seconds later at 3:50. If the hatch finishes later than that, they probably went pool first.

The second thing to do with the initial reaper is to counter larva as soon as your reaper gets there. The hatch will spawn with a larva and then spawn another larva some time later. Zergs react to reaper scouts with 6 lings usually. Most of the time it is 4 lings from the main and 2 from the nat. If your reaper doesn't see 6 lings or sees 6 lings but no drones at the nat, it is likely that there is a pair of lings on the way to your base. In that case you just leave 1 reaper at home, otherwise do not be passive with your reapers.

Another important thing is to check the gas count and see if ling speed is being researched. If you see they have 100 gas mined, check the pool to see if its wobbling to confirm ling speed is being researched. If they mine more than 100 gas, check to see if ling speed is researching and if it isn’t, Roaches are probably what's coming. If they mine 100 gas and start speed but keep mining gas, it could still be roaches or it could be ling bling bust. In this case, sacrifice 1 reaper around 5:30 to see if he has a banelings nest on the way or a roach warren. If it is a banelings nest, you must finish your wall off immediately and keep producing hellions. Also build 3 bunkers. 1 to finish your wall, and 2 behind it. The key to holding off a baneling bust is to control your hellions right and never let them be surrounded. Also to have scvs ready to repair the bunkers. Focus down the banelings with your hellions as well.

If you see a roach warren, immediately build a marauder out of your tech lab barracks and build up to 3 or 4. Finish your wall off because they might transition into a ling roach all in. Also, if you want to be safe, building a turret near your bunker will help incase they go burrow. It isn’t likely that they will do that but when they do, it can kill you instantly.

Another thing you might see is a flood of lings. This is designed to hit before your wall off is finished. To hold this, you don’t need to finish the wall asap, just get all your scvs at your nat and surround your hellions so that they lings can’t attack the hellions. Also position your hellions at your main ramp so that lings can’t get a surround. It’s recommended that you build up to 8 hellions if you see a big ling flood because they might follow up with a big ling bling bust.

3rd base scouting:

This is also very important. Any 3rd base that is past 7 minutes is a clear indicator to some aggression coming. Whether it’s an all in or 2 base muta, you have to sacrifice a reaper to see what it is. If you fail with that, don’t be afraid to scan his main and his nat. Even though a zerg might get a 3rd base, that doesn’t mean you are safe, there are really strong 3 bae all ins that can still kill you. Some of these being 3 base roach baneling bust, Roach max out, roach hydra max out, Low Tech 1-1 speed baneling ling bust. If you see a 3rd with no drones at it and no drones coming, you should build some safety bunkers.

All ins after 10 minutes are the hardest to see coming. Usually the best tell is to see a mass of units at their front. You have to be active on the map with your hellions, poking at their bases and checking their unit count. If you see they have a lot more units than usual.

In part 3 I will cover how to hold off a lot Zerg pressures and All ins.

Goals

When I was getting coached by one of my friends who is a grandmaster player on the Korea server, he told me that the most important thing going into a game was to "have a plan." Now this might sound dumb because it is so obvious, but often times we get so immersed that we forget basic things and these things lead to failures that can cause multiple losses. It is important that you get in the habit of creating a plan, and sticking to the plan. You may adapt and react to certain things but the core principle is that you maintain a clear goal throughout the entire game. These goals will differ with every matchup.

In Terran vs Zerg, these are goals that you must aspire to complete.

1. Do as much damage as you can with your first 2 reapers without committing them. Do not be afraid of having low hp reapers, if the zerg opened with speed, you have a window in which you can damage the creep queens so that your follow up hellion reaper force can actually kill the creep queens. It is so important that you damage the lings and queens for the follow up attack.

2. Keep your reaper hellion force alive at all costs. This force is your anchor, you do not step on creep unless you are going to kill a tumor that is being set down, (you would be surprised how many people go on creep with hellions and are still surprised that they lost them) you stay on the outer edges of creep where you can kite Zerglings all day long.

3. Actually kill creep with the 11 minute timing that you should be going for in every tvz. Mutas will not be out that early provided that they didnt go 2 base muta. You have the air control. You have the power here. You can lift up in your medivacs and drop him anywhere. Don’t be afraid to be aggressive but don’t overcommit because if you lose the initial 2 medivacs and the units with them, you are almost guaranteed to lose the game from there. What you should be doing is getting to his creep and scanning, killing as much as you can, wait for him to surround your marines, then lift off. That maximises your damage done to his lings and his creep. Like i have said earlier, the early damage is the most important because both you and him are very fragile at around 11 minutes.

4. When you drop, queue the drop to go around the edges of the map. never go over creep or near overlord spots, always queue the medivacs to hug the edges of the map, it is harder for the zerg to see it and it gives you more time to set up a multi prong maneuver.

5. When engaging with widow mines, always send 1 or 2 marauders in front of your widow mines to tank for the inevitable little force that the zerg will send to try and get rid of your widow mines or to prematurely detonate them. 2 marauders and 2 medivacs escorting your widow mines will always provide adequate defense vs their ground army for your widow mines.

6. Build a bunker at your 3rd base ALWAYS. Having a bunker behind your mineral line will deter ling runbys and will also scare away mutas from your 3rd. Now this wont hold off a Baneling runby but to prevent that from doing damage, you have to have fast reactions and good minimap awareness. Building supply depot sim city will slow down the baneling so you can do that to try and minimize the damage that might come.

7. Keep marines posted around the map to alert you of runbys and help you get in position. Positioning a couple of marines in the attack paths will give you very good map awareness that will help you position your units accordingly to his movements. This also helps in TvT and TvP.

These goals may seem like a lot to remember but the the bulk of it is just specifics. If you remember the bolded parts and actually try to put them into practice, You will see your gameplay improve because you will be using this knowledge against him. It is up to you to execute it well.

Part 3 Will be released shortly

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