[CagnacciKid]

Hey everyone.

So I've hit a roadblock with my 3 Rax MM Stim push strategy, that being the fact that if my push is fended off I always lose the match. Whilst perhaps good scouting could fix this (i.e. not pushing if I know my army can't beat my opponent's) I can't guarantee my judgement would be adequate to read army strength accurately.

I was thinking of trying a new strategy, that is MM, but expanding instead of pushing when Stim finishes. Then tech to Medivacs, mass MMM and start hitting opponent (drops, contains, pressure, etc).

Can anyone see any flaws or offer some advice as to how to pull off this strategy?

EDIT: Woah, that really didn't translate well from my head to the post. Oh well.
Cheers.

[Makra]

"(drops, contains, pressure, etc)."

I say don't worry about getting that tricky. You're bronze/silver right? Just macro and A move. If your macro is solid, you'll win as long as you dont run all your marines into 20 banelings or something stupid like that.

[Starcraftmazter]

Originally Posted by CagnacciKid

Can anyone see any flaws or offer some advice as to how to pull off this strategy?

Protoss rushes 2 colossi out, a moves into your natural and wins.

Just say'n.

[Jupiterstorm]

Some advice, watch your replays and figure out when your 3 rax push does well, and when it does not.

To help you out, Ill share my learnings.

3rax stim push is horrible against Z unless they go for a roach based opening. The zerglings and queen would be able to hold off your push more often than not, marauders are a liability here.

in the TvT it used to be quite good before the maps changed, shorter distances and the shorter stim timing made this push quite hard to stop if your opponent doesnt go tank straight. Even if he goes 2 rax expand and bunkers up, an all in with your stim push would be enough to kill. However with the new map changes, the only situations this would work in would be against early expands on a shorter distance. Siege tank openings create a problem for you but I shall elaborate more on this later.

I still use the 3 rax opening against protoss now. 3 gate expands are becoming rather popular. The 3 rax stim push will never kill the opposing protoss, unless he somehow misses his ff awfully. The only situation I see your MM getting into his main and wrecking heavoc is on tal darim altar, but the map is way too large for this push to be effective.

So why do I still use it? Like you said, using the MM 3 rax opening gives you a strong army, one that the toss army cant engage off 1 base (usually), this allows you to 1, stop them from expanding and 2, get your own expansion up. From here on it would simply be a tech transition in reaction to whatever your opponent is building, be it immortals, or simply turtling to collosi. (note: alot of toss go immortals)

Another important note to make is that I keep mentioning maps. The map on which you are doing this is important, know which parts of the map you want to be on when you engage your opponents army, you dont want to engage the toss army on XNC in the narrow corridoors, ffs are super effective there, you engage them on wide open spaces, like at his natural.

Now the question that you would be asking is, if I open out and expand instead of killing my opponent, whats the next step? Of course the best idea would be to simply play reactionarily, but you need to get a general game plan, on what you want to achieve on this map (you need to identify the situations in which you gain control of the game) and how you are going to get there. MMM would be my reccomendation, poking back and forth with your 2 pronged pokes while your opponent techs can deal alot of damage and it helps you get a 3rd up, or move towards your winning objective, whatever it would be. (getting the P fortress up at the gold on XNC, thor push, engaging with a superior force after whittling him down using drops etc.) explore around and have fun, but do keep im mind that replays are awesome, and watch and rewatch them, to take note of timings, engages, what you could have done, and then decide whether if it should be your choice of opening

[tfc]

I think 2 rax fe would be better, you get conc and stim quickly aswell as a fast expo. Can also be good for aggression if your opponent does something risky this is my standard for tvp, but i prefer 1 rax fe against zerg unless he is 1 basing.

[nytelynx]

In my opinion, 3Rax shouldnt be used for any matchup except for TvP. T opening Banshee or Tank can just destroy your build. If Z dont go roach openings then your also screwed. Expanding behind stim is perfectly fine, but try to poke or apply a bit of pressure to get your expo up a bit more safely. And if your judging army...well Terran with a bunch of tanks means you cant take it on unless you catch them all unsieged. Zerg with banelings is obviously..... and P with colossus will just be like "A move, rofl"