Terran Strategys for beginner players!

[Luminance]

I must admit that not all builds I will give you are mine. They are however, builds I use or have used.
They are widespread on the net, but nonetheless I'll collect them here, for your pleasure and information, use them well.
It helped me a lot to get started, but if you want to become better, go spar with the computer on mirror matches, untill you can outplay them on insane, in the mean time read the following tactics, try them out on hard or very hard bots, make changes yourself, so that they suit your playstyle more and finally against human players


First of the standard terran build order.

This "standard" build order is what you will use when you have no particular strategy in mind, or are still scouting around for your enemy:

- Start of with building 10 SCV's
- As soon as your 10th is in progress, go for the Supply depot
- While your12th SCV is in progress build a Barracks
- After the 15th SCV finishes build a Orbital Command
- While the Orbital Command is building train a Marine (or build a Tech Lab)
- Build a Supply Depot while the Marine is training and the Orbital Command is finishing up.

For sake of easy reading, I'll use the standard denotations from here on, so the same story again:
10/11: Supply Depot
12/19: Barracks
15/19: Orbital Command
16/19: Supply Depot

Getting Zealot or Zergling Rushed

If you scout the enemy and determine he is going to Zealot or zergling rush, your build order might look something like this:

10/11: Supply Depot
11/11: Barracks (hint: 2 SCVs are building at once)
12/19: Marine
12/19: Supply Depot

..and progress from there. The reason you would grab a second Supply Depot so early is because you generally will need a Barracks and 2 Supply Depots to wall off the entrance to your base. A single Marine and SCVs repairing your wall can easily fend off a Zergling or Zealot rush.

However, not all build orders need to be reactive so I'll give you some specific builds.
Most commonly and most hated to play against as a beginner or even more advanced players:

Marine and Marauder attack, or M&M:
10/11: Supply Depot
10/11: Refinery
12/19: Barracks (add Tech Lab when finished)
15/19: Barracks (add Reactor when finished)
15/19: Refinery
16/19: Orbital Command
17/19: Supply Depot

Trick is to have, ofc, 1 Barracks constantly pump out Marauders and the Reactor Barracks constantly pump out Marines (in that order). Also increase your SCV count to about 22 harvesters (thats 2 per mineral node and 3 per vespene gas) and build Supply Depots as needed (its easy to forget them, so keep your eye out towards your max unit count).

You can quickly turn out 8-10 Marauders and 24 Marines with this strategy which work wonders in a 2vs2 semi rush. It is also great as an early attack versus Zerg and Protoss players, or if you want to play defensive, a pretty sollid defence, givin  that your buildings are almost blocking of the ramps and your units are behind them.

As others I recommend this build if you spot the Zerg going for an early expansion. It will be very hard for him to counter this attack if he goes for the early expansion. This build however isn't that suitable against other Terran players, there you would want to go for siege tanks or better so you will get a build similar to this:

Terran Mech Build:
10/11: Supply Depot
12/19: Barracks
13/19: Refinery
15/19: Marine*
16/19: Factory
16/19: Orbital Command
17/19: Refinery
18/19: Supply Depot
22/27: Factory

*Optional, you can fit in this marine anywhere during the build as long as supply allows for it. If you make this marine, be sure to keep it behind the wall.

You can build your factory sooner or later, depending on your scouting results, but I like it like this.
Against zerg you might want another factory after this, while against the other 2, it wouldn't hurt to get an extra starport.

General pointers:
Its more likely that in small maps, you'll be rushed, then in the bigger maps, so you should build an army faster and slow down on building your 2nd or 3rd factory/starport. This also applies when you find out that your enemy is going for a 2nd base or is expanding fast(er), or ofcoarse if he is going for the Tech Build, and has no units.

But what is this:

Marine Tech Build

Well, to be honest, its a pretty open strategy so there isn't really a decisive build order, its basically get upgrades asap and then start your army, so the first building should be of course the barracks and start scouting!. After Barracks, you should upgrade according too your players race. But to be honest, this strategy works best versus Protoss. The negative side to this strategy is that you are quite vulnerable against an early rush, since you are busy building Technology instead of an army.

You start out by adding some Barracks, Factories, and Starport (don't go for the double unit production first! as you need the upgrades).
This enables you to get a variety of different units that can counter many enemy builds.

As for an build order:
10/11: Supply Depot (when its finished, make it scout)
12/19: Barracks
(btw, you need to put those at the ramp of your base, so that you block of the entrance, just in case)
15/19: Refinery
16/19: 2nd Refinery
17/19: Supply Depot (+first marine)
19/19: Upgrade for Orbital Command (+2nd marine)
20/27: Factory
xx/27: Depending on your taste, or situation build an Starport, or get more workers/marines

You can swap the Barracks with the Factory and produce Hellions. If done well, this can delay your enemies push quite effectively.
Swap the Factory and the Barracks and get a Tech Lab for the Factory to swap with the Starport.
After that start to train a Raven and after that get yourself a Command Center.

Now you need to get some more production facilities. You should aim for either Factories or Barracks. Which one you choose will depend mainly on your enemyââ,¬â,,¢s game play. Against zerg, marauders/marines/helions work wonders, while you need metal against the other 2 races.

By now you should have a lot of marines, given that they aren't killed of yet .
You can now switch to a Tank heavy build at this point if you so wish, but thats up to you.

[Luminance]

Also, one thats quite fun to try out is the Reaper Push which is quite nice against zerg and is excellent, if you like to do some cat vs mouse games (because if you do it right, the zerg won't be able to get much larger, and you will take over the role of the evil cat, playing with his victims, without finishing them of right away):

Here is a typical build order:

10/11: Supply Depot
12/19: Barracks
13/19: Refinery
15/19: Tech Lab
16/19: Orbital Command  [+ first Reaper]

..and then from there, keep pumping out Reapers, finish off your SCVs at your main base, and building more Barracks as you have the minerals.

You want to build 5 or more Barracks in order to pump out massive Reapers (5 Barracks on 1 base, more after expansions).

You also should be very aggressive throughout the entire game and never stop pressuring the Zerg player with Reapers, as you need to delay it as much as you can.

Reapers are great versus Zerglings and also outrange and out-run Roaches and Queens    
so basically, there is no easy way for Zerg players to stop this tactic.

Don't go off picking on the drones, its not worth losing them over those. The delay won't be significant enough if you can't kill enough of them.

Your goal is trying to delay a Lair and keep the Zerg player contained within his base.
So that he can only make roaches, which you can kill off easily. This leaves you to be able to expand the map and move into Marauders and Marines. Marauders are excellent roaches killers and marines are needed if he did manage to get a few flyers, or if you have enough crystals left, for overall attack power.

It requires a bit of practice to stay out of range of Queens and Zerglings, but the effort is well worth it. Many Zerg players are getting quite good at countering the typical mech build and this Reaper build will give you a new, effective strategy go use against them.

You can also use your Reaper ball to pick off Spires and Baneling Nests in order to set the Zerg player back quite a bit. Remember that Reapers do 30 damage a swing to buildings; 12 Reapers will take out a building in 2-3 hits! You can easily come in, snipe a building, and run out with minimal damage. That tactic alone significantly slows down the Zerg player.

Reapers also make great expansion patrols. You can roll into a Zerg players' 3rd expansion, take out the Queen in 2-3 seconds, all the Drones in 4 more, kill the Hatchery and run off in literally 10-15 seconds total.

The Reaper Rush is nice if your 2vs2 or when you play lesser opponents or if you can micro/scout well, but if you want to rush, then use the following technique
"The Reaper Rush"
8/11: send a SCV close to enemy camp (stay away, like right above the crystals (down the cliff)
10/11: Barrack
10/11: Refinery
11/11: Supply deposit
13/19: Tech Lab (if you can then sooner, I now do it at 11/11)
13/19:  first Reaper go harass (keep building reapers)

You can easilly jump up the clif, kill off drones/scv's/probes from a safe distance (if they follow you thats great that means no income for him) and start killing of the rest of the buildings or army he might now have.

Keep trying to kill of everything, army first then drones, then buildings. If you find it hard to kill/destroy all, then you should now have enough resources to start building another barrack and swap over to M&M tacktic, or push yourself towards siegetanks (you should have time, if you did it correctly)