[ToRPandarine]

My past few TvT games have made me wonder if its possible to read what your opponent is about to do.

From my games I normally guess the following:-
1) Opponent opens with Banshees. They will immediately transition to BC once Banshees are shot from the sky by turrets/marines.

2) Opponent opens with Reaper. I don't see it of course but react accordingly to it. I leave a few Marines in my mineral line. A second Reaper comes knocking. Will transition to mech/banshee

3) Opponent opens with Hellions. Either Hellion drops or Marine-Tank-Viking are the follow up.

4) A few too many marines at the front door when scouting. Mass Marine-Marauder/All-in SCV Marine army follows pretty soon.

This is just me and my predictions tend to be 45-55 correct.

[Makra]

Originally Posted by ThePandarine

1) Opponent opens with Banshees. They will immediately transition to BC once Banshees are shot from the sky by turrets/marines.

LOL! Shenanigans!

[ke_ivan]

1) Wut? Isn't that so gas heavy that a straight MM push can end the game? Only experienced that once in mech.
2) in my limited experience, i've only seen reaper openings transition to a) FE b) blue flame hellions c) MMM. if opponent goes blue flame, it's prolly mech. if other usually bio.
3) opening with blue flame hellions are usually followed up by cloaked banshee, then mech. for me anyway.
4) yeah it's the bio army that can be hard to deal with. then tech to battlecruisers to deal with your bio after expanding a bunch. but mass vikings make short work of BCs.

I working on how to balance siege tank/viking expenditure though. that's giving me a few problems.

[NvRossi]

Originally Posted by ThePandarine

My past few TvT games have made me wonder if its possible to read what your opponent is about to do.

From my games I normally guess the following:-
1) Opponent opens with Banshees. They will immediately transition to BC once Banshees are shot from the sky by turrets/marines.

2) Opponent opens with Reaper. I don't see it of course but react accordingly to it. I leave a few Marines in my mineral line. A second Reaper comes knocking. Will transition to mech/banshee

3) Opponent opens with Hellions. Either Hellion drops or Marine-Tank-Viking are the follow up.

4) A few too many marines at the front door when scouting. Mass Marine-Marauder/All-in SCV Marine army follows pretty soon.

This is just me and my predictions tend to be 45-55 correct.

It's good to see you're making judgements based on what you have seen/scouted and are attempting to make a decision based off it. However you need to think a bit more logically about the production the opponent has built, the damage he has done and the common followups.

1) Simply seeing a banshee cannot lead to the conclusion that they will continue with this tech. As you said it is simply guesswork and you need to use a scan or a reaper/drop/viking to correctly identify his tech.

here are some ideas regarding what to think about when you see a banshee opening

- You need to consider whether he got cloak or not and how many banshees he has built
- is he expanding behind it?
- has he made a raven?
- is he making helions? he may follow up with a blue flame drop or may be transitioning into mech
- Has he thrown down more factories or is he transitioning into marine tank?
- How much damage did his banshees do?


From my current experience a cloak banshee opening has weakened recently as your ground army may not be sufficient to stop the increase in blue flame drops/ run bys.

Originally a tank marine followup was most prevalent, however mech is currently the most common followup to both a cloak banshee or standard banshee opening.(if the terran has expanded)

other scenarios could include a 1 base marine tank banshee push.

2) Reaper openings can literally transition to a huge variety of builds.

try and see if you can scout whether a factory is being built on the tech lab as this may limit the possibilities to a tank or blue flame expand.

The other tell is if you scout/scan and see if tech is being researched on the baracks tech lab, if this is the case it will most likely be bio.

Another thing to consider is the more reapers built the less chance that your opponent will be doing a mech or tech heavy build in my opinion. I would assume a bio followup.


3) Based on how many helions you see you should be able to determine whether he is going mech or marine tank. Try and use a scan to determine this if you are unsure.

4) This would be very common at lower levels, try and keep the watchtowers and/or a scv in his natural to scout when he pushes out or if he is actually expanding.

TvT is currently a very volatile matchup but it sounds like you need to improve your scouting and work from there. Always use a scan around the 6 minute mark and try and determine what your opponent is doing as playing blind in TvT is very difficult and requires well timed out build orders.

Not the most technical post but hope it helps you with your decisionmaking/ ideas about the matchup

Quick Comments

	Maynarde:	Knowledge is power
	ToRPandarine:	makes sense
	Nemo:	Same as Maynarde, "know your ennemy"

[|Erasmus|]

Originally Posted by Makra

LOL! Shenanigans!

It's beautiful strategy too... Imma go force you to get some anti-air so I can transition into BCs.

[Next_rim]

Sorry for offtopic, but I don't want to create a whole thread for this. And chat is dead atm.

What happened to Strelok-style early ghost harass in PvT? As far as I know, cloaked ghost comes earlier than banshee, which ensures no obs. Even if obs is out, you can scan+snipe or emp+snipe the obs, which gives a lot more time free probe kills. And ghosts are good in PvT in general, so tech doesn't go wasted.

[NvRossi]

never tried it but :

- expansion comes far too slow
- extremely all-in, massive coin flip
- doesnt provide you solid army to expand off

scan+snipe or emp+snipe the obs

easier said then done.

Just a weak build that i believe would have just fallen out of the meta game

[Next_rim]

I just remembered this build Strelok did vs Tyler and InControl some 3 months ago. Basically he opened 1-rax with tech lab (later added 2 more rax), did some marauder marine poke, then got a ghost with cloak at 5:30-ish, and decimated P mineral line. And when obs showed up, he microed like a boss. Did a scan, 1 shot, snipe, then 1 more shot to finish it. And in the other game, he did emp + snipe, which 1-shots obs.

Didn't look more all-in than 1-1-1, and harass-wise even more effective)

[ToRPandarine]

Originally Posted by TARossi

All that the mighty Rossi has said. If you haven'te read it, go read it now! :P

:O Didn't expect Rossi of all the people to post on my post :O LOL.

1) I normally scan 1-3 minutes after the last banshee is now fine dust. And i'm pretty decent with my scans (that or we BSG have poor building placement XD). I usually spot factories churning out mech units AND the fusion core. Maybe the occasional second expansion. I play like its a usual TvT Tank-Marine-Viking game :P If I see anything other than that, I play safe and see what happens. THEN, decide the best way to win it (winning is not guaranteed XD)

2) I agree that having the Reaper opening leads to so many things. An example was a TvT I had recently where I was able to switch the rax with the factory. Siege tanks and siege mode were pretty up pretty darn fast XD That aside, my opponents usually go for a more heavy mech style than banshees.

3) 4-6 are the usual numbers. I always assume worst case scenario which is very heavy mech or air tech. I get a mix of everything except Thors :P

4) Yea, its pretty common. I'm guilty of using it too but I use it when I'm really tired or had a losing streak (so bad I know :l ). If i'm on the receiving end, I usually try to get 1-2 reapers in bunkers with marines and a few marauders to hold the front. When I'm lucky, a tank. After I have what I presume is the best defence possible, its back to macro :P

TvT is definitely a volatile matchup. And yea, I need to work on my scouting among other things XD Some may argue that energy is best used for MULEs but I disagree cause if you get a great scan and you see a form of worker harassment/kill team coming, you save yourself a !@#$ load of grief and economic problems :P

I find playing a blind TvT not so bad but it might be because I'm still in Silver and things from GPD onwards is different. I usually try not to be so passive but its just so good to see your opponent impale everything on your defensive line and then you just push right to the production facilities :P

Sure they can build elsewhere but I find they do that once they realise their main ones are gone (I'm guilty of that too but I've being trying to get some facilities right in the frontlines. If the Protoss can have warpins why can't we have building in the middle of the map? :P)

On a side note, I have poor memory of build orders other than the 1/1/1 (not all-in version) XD

Cheers and glhf!