[D] TvP Scouting / 1 Rax FE Bomber

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On August 19 2012 05:27 SC2John wrote:
In my experience, I feel like there are a few specific key times in TvP:

~6:00 - This is kind of the diversion point of 1-gate expand versus all-in. If you can scout an expansion without aggression behind it, you can easily do a marine shove with ~10 marines, pushing back the stalker and taking the nearest watch tower. If you do the Bomber optimization, you can just build a blind second bunker, then salvage and shove at ~6:30 after any particular pressure could be coming.

~7:00-7:30 - If your opponent went for an early expansion, this is the divergence point for protoss tech. At this point, you'll see either twilight/forge/gateway tech, colossus tech, or a fast 3rd. This will give you an idea of how to deal with the midgame correctly. You should probably use a scan here on the natural, looking in particular at the unit composition and geysers. In 4 or 5-rax aggressive variants, you can scout at this time with an attack, using an SCV or marine to poke up the ramp in front of your marines.

~10:00 - When you push out with your medivacs, it's important not only what your opponent is up to, but to see where units are positioned and if there's a potential weak spot. At this point you should have map control, 3 CC's, and be fairly close to full worker saturation, so spending scans at this time is perfectly warranted.

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On August 19 2012 05:34 Willzzz wrote:
You should be able to push back a stalker with a few marines, even if not there are multiple ways to scout.

Hide your scouting SCV out on the map
Build a hellion
Proxy scouting factory
On many maps you can take a long route round to avoid the stalker

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On August 19 2012 10:08 U_G_L_Y wrote:


If you wait until 6 mins and they 4 gated, you are already dead. Your second bunker cannot complete in 15 seconds. I run my scv back in their base between 5 and 5:15

7:30 Protoss could have gone for one gate expand into 4 gate. This is the hardest build to deal with for me. If I conclusively determine that there is no robo facility, the Protoss is bad or I got really lucky. They only indication you can have is if you keep poking out the front of your base and out to the sides to look for a probe or proxy pylon. To do this, you need a marauder to tank stalker fire or you need amazing control. Your other option is to build a blind second bunker, which really puts your timing attack behind if Protoss did something greedy like double forge or fast third base. I really don't think you have money for a scan if you want your timing push to be effective. I only scan if they didn't expand or are trying really really hard to keep me from scouting them by spreading stalkers out at all possible hiding locations. Its just suspicious.

10:00 is about 1:15-1:30 before Bomber actually attacks with his 2 medivacs. Personally, I think Bomber's build is not a good go-to build for people with less than 300 APM because you don't have enough gas/upgrades to deal with blink all-ins and it hits when Protoss should have 3 colossus or about 4 Templar and storm, so drops are hard to execute and you get face-rolled in a straight up fight.. You also have no Marauder for a LONG time so you cannot leave your base to see what is going on if there are 2-3 stalkers on the map without crippling your push

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On August 19 2012 05:34 Willzzz wrote:
You should be able to push back a stalker with a few marines, even if not there are multiple ways to scout.

Hide your scouting SCV out on the map
Build a hellion
Proxy scouting factory
On many maps you can take a long route round to avoid the stalker

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On August 19 2012 14:45 SC2John wrote:


You have some strange thought processes. I want to clarify what I said and maybe clarify some of the things you said:

1) 6:00 is a DIVERGENCE POINT. Honestly, with the Bomber optimization, there's no reason NOT to throw down a blind second bunker and scout at 6:00 and get a chance to look at the expansion, gases, and tech. If you knew how the build worked, you would know that it allows for an extra bunker early on with no delay on your 10:00 push.

2) Scans are perfectly fine after 7:30. A lot of pros will stop MULEing around this time because their economy will be nearing equality with the protoss 2-base economy and because it doesn't slow down or inhibit your 10:00 timing + expansion.

3) 10:00 is the time when the first 2 medivacs get out. Many pros who use this timing will push out IMMEDIATELY with these first 2 medivacs. Taking into account build time and travel time to your opponent's base, we come close to your estimate. Also, general TvP these days is to get 2 techlabs/1 reactor and push with a fairly equal ratio of marauders to marines. This makes blink all-ins that hit after 10:00 lolz. However, I definitely agree that the 3-rax builds that are popular...suck hahaha. I'd much rather 4 or 5-rax pressure.




BTW, this man ^ knows his shit. I like Mr. Willzzz, he's always right. This is super sound advice.

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On August 19 2012 10:21 U_G_L_Y wrote:

Good players will kite your marines indefinitely and they will all be dead before you get to the base.
Hellions would delay medivacs and would still not be out until 8 at the soonest unless you are using Demuslim's build (2 rax then factory instead of 3) but the OP was asking about Bomber's build, in which the factory doesn't even start until about 8:30-9 mins, I believe. The scouting factory can't scout until your medivacs are in production, which means they will get to Protoss' third base about the same time as your army would. If you're going to scout that late, do it with 16 marines loaded into two medivacs. That will get you all the info you need. But I think the OP was referring to early game.

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U_G_L_Y wrote:
I disagree about the scans. I feel like I need every single mineral to do some damage at 10 minutes because if you don't, you squandered your "midgame advanatage" and just lose...

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On August 19 2012 16:45 U_G_L_Y wrote:

WTF kind of blink all-in hits after 10 minutes?
Blink with observer hits about 7:15. Bomber's build fares poorly against this and is an auto loss on some maps.

I disagree about the scans. I feel like I need every single mineral to do some damage at 10 minutes because if you don't, you squandered your "midgame advanatage" and just lose...

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On August 19 2012 18:42 Willzzz wrote:


In theory stalkers can kite marines indefinitely, in reality usually not. In my games at master level I usually have little problem with early game stalkers. I often see similar stories at pro level, sometimes even top pros will lose their stalker to naked marines. When I say push the stalker back I don't mean all the way back to his base, just off the watchtower, this is especially easy on maps like daybreak and entombed where there are vision blockers.

In Bomber's build the factory starts at 7:00, but you can easily do a build that starts earlier, most pros get earlier gas than this. A hellion isn't going to delay medivac production at all, this isn't some medivac rush we are doing here.

Players shouldn't limit themselves to copying a specific "pro" build especially if they don't feel comfortable with it. It's not as Bomber is known as a particularly strong TvP player anyway.

More to the point I think the OP needs to make more of what he can see around the map without making it into the protoss base. At 7:30 there aren't that many things you need to be looking out for, some sort of 2 base all-in or perhaps an early third. Both of these can be scouted without seeing inside their base at all if you have units out on the map.



Did you read what he wrote, any scan after 7:30 won't hurt your 10 minutes push at all.

Let's say you MULE at 8:00 after say 35s you have enough for another rax, this then takes 65s to build, so at 9:40 you have an extra naked rax, so maybe you have 1 extra marine at 10:05, big deal. You push at 10 minutes is dependant on the production you built at around 6-7 minutes, anything you add after that won't make much difference.

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On August 19 2012 19:00 Tailss wrote:


There is a 2 base blink all in with warp prism that can be quite powerful sometimes.
And no Bomber's build isnt particularly bad against Blink all in. And its definetely not autoloss on any map as long as you play it out right. In fact, Bomber's build is pretty strong against most 1 base all ins. Its weak against some 2 base all ins though.
Scan is quite a waste indeed, you can just check for proxy pylons to be able to identify all ins. Also, why in hell would you have to do damage with at 10 minutes? you dont have to do damage at all with your midgame push, as long you dont lose your own units. Its not like TvP lategame is impossible as terran. Most of what you're saying makes no sense and is actually just complete bullshit tbh.

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