[Rythos]

Hi all, attached is a replay of a really frustrating game I played last night where a terran got a couple of cloaked banshees into my mineral lines in the early game and just wrecked me. I got observers out, tried to set up a couple of separate sets of stalkers so I had the main and natural defended and ended up dropping cannons, but I just couldn't get the banshees dead and ended up losing a heap of probes.

Now, I'm well aware that I played awfully this game. The harassment threw me off completely and I made some really basic mistakes like not sorting out my gas income for ages. I'm not too concerned about what happened for the rest of the game because I'm quite confident the start of the game was where I lost. I would really love to hear how better players react to this kind of opening so I can hope to respond better in future.

I have also been having trouble with hellion drops, hence the attempt to do some simcity around my mineral line. The pylon positioning I ended up with seemed to make it difficult to get effective cannon placement though. Could I do my building placement better, or is it all just unit composition/positioning/micro?

[Daboo]

Hey,
I think the banshees werent that big a problem here, you'll be fine after you put down a cannon in your mineral line and maybe leave a stalker if your feeling scared. the problem as you got pinned into your base while he expanded a lot.

You did not use chronoboost at all after the first two chronoboosts on the nexus. It would be useful to chrono your warpgate, or probes...getting stuff faster=winning faster

You might want to do a poke once your stalker and zealot come out, because after your probe found his base, you saw no second gas so you might have thought banshees were probably out, but you didnt know anything about what he did after your probe left..did he add like 6 raxes, or did he go for a techlab expand? So to get that info you might want to just do a small poke and see what his army comp is like..if you see marines/bunker, then he's investing his gas elsewhere..like tech. In this case you would've only seen a marine cause thats the only unit he had for a long time, while he got his banshees. You could've even killed him off at that point, his banshees were pretty late (11 minutes?) .

And one more thing...double forge when even your second base is not fully saturated is not very good. The second forge is good when you've got lots of cash that you can sink into upgrades, but at that stage is , you might want to get one forge for upgrades and then tech up a bit. and you never used the second forge anyway..so could've spend that cash elsewhere.

The terran was trying a ridiculous strategy( ghost banshee, ninja expos?), and you let him get away with it.

[Next_rim]

You just have to be ready for it. You need to better read with scouting.

I open with 2-gate and poke several times with 2nd stalker (I've been punished so many times by early reaper, so now I keep my 1st stalker at base ) to count his marines and marauders.

-Low marauders is 1-rax tech expo - proceed with 2-gate-DT-Expo.
-If unit count is high, it is a 3-rax - add 3rd gate and add sentries.
-If low numbers of marines only - it's either gasless FE (very greedy terran play, therefore very rare), or factory/starport shenanigans. Throw down robo after 2nd gate, get observer. Based on scouting, you will either have to rush colossus, or build stalkers for banshees.

If I read wrong, and nothing happens, it usually means he expanded, or tech switched. I then proceed with 1-base DT with warp prisms and chargelot harass, while expanding behind it. Usually I am able to even out econ position, but have lower army. If terran is smart and aggressive, he will push immediately, and I lose, otherwise I get colossi, and stomp any bio.

Sometimes I feel like doing blink all-in too