{"id":3814,"date":"2014-09-17T09:30:08","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T16:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cpgaming.gg\/?p=3814"},"modified":"2014-09-15T17:03:34","modified_gmt":"2014-09-16T00:03:34","slug":"cc-first-in-terran-vs-protoss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/cc-first-in-terran-vs-protoss\/","title":{"rendered":"CC First in Terran vs Protoss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Joshua &#8220;TriMaster&#8221; Niven of Complexity Gaming<\/em><\/p>\n<h2>Introduction<\/h2>\n<p>Nowadays Protoss players have managed to maximize their efficiency in hitting certain mid-game timings by solely relying on as little units as possible thanks to the Mothership Core&#8217;s abilities. Going command center first in TvP is a great way to gain an early economic edge that can help a lot when going into the mid game. At the same time a Protoss player has quite a few options of all-ins and cheeses that any Terran going CC first have to be on point to deal with.<\/p>\n<h2>The Early Game<\/h2>\n<p>The standard CC first opening for Terran is as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>10 \u2013 Supply Depot<\/li>\n<li>14 \u2013 CC<\/li>\n<li>15 \u2013 Rax(1)<\/li>\n<li>16 \u2013 Rax(2)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Use the SCV that&#8217;s building the supply depot to scout, since continuing on your build order will be based with what opening you find your opponent doing. You should also rally the SCV building the first barracks to the front of your natural so you can rapidly throw down a bunker if necessary.<\/p>\n<h2>Scouting to stay safe<\/h2>\n<p>When your scout first arrives to the Protoss base there are a few things you want to make sure you check:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Is the Gateway being chrono&#8217;d?<\/li>\n<li>What are his gas timing?\n<ul>\n<li>Did he take both of his geysers or just one?<\/li>\n<li>How much gas did he mine?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>How much energy does the Nexus have?<\/li>\n<li>How is he spending the chrono after his cybercore completes?<\/li>\n<li>Check for an expansion<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>1. If you see the gateway being chrono&#8217;d you want to make sure you are prepared in case he goes for early aggression. This is a situation where you want to throw down a bunker at your natural ASAP and try to get some marines into the bunker if possible. You should be able to get at least the first wave of marines in but after that you might want to consider moving the barracks rally above your ramp in case the Protoss try&#8217;s to run past your bunker with a zealot\/stalker\/MSC combination. If the Protoss does run by into your natural you should wait until you have enough units to push him out, or if he runs straight to your main you will want move your marines into the mineral line and pull workers when he gets in close to engage.<\/p>\n<p>2. Checking the gas timings gives you an idea on what the Protoss player&#8217;s plan are for the game. 2A gives you an idea on how gas dependent of a build they will use, while 2B gives you a feel for the timing of when the gas was taken, either a 12\/13 gas or a 15 gas.<\/p>\n<p>3+4. Checking Nexus energy is important, since if he has a lot saved up it could indicate early aggression. Watching to see if chrono is spent evenly between the gateway and nexus which can lead to early aggression, or more rarely if the chrono energy is being dumped on the cybercore which would usually lead on to early warpgate play.<\/p>\n<p>5. Its hard for a protoss player to cheese when expanding at the same time.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">-A note about bunker timing, if you really would like to play it safe you can instead automatically throw down a bunker before actually scouting or starting both orbitals, and just scout at a later supply so your orbitals won&#8217;t be very delayed. Regardless you should throw down a bunker since it is needed to handle most Protoss builds, the comments I&#8217;ve made above are just there to help give you an idea on the time window you will need it.<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h2>Moving onto the Mid Game<\/h2>\n<p>So you&#8217;ve got an idea on what your opponent is doing but now the question is what now? You&#8217;ve got this sweet economy going and you&#8217;re going to use it to macro your opponent into oblivion. Lets start with the bread and butter build of TvP, the 3rax into reactor starport:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>After getting both orbitals and your bunker up, throw down your depot around ~24 supply<\/li>\n<li>Start 3rd barracks with next 150 minerals while keeping non-stop marine and scv production.<\/li>\n<li>Take two gases<\/li>\n<li>Get another depot, should be around ~33 supply<\/li>\n<li>Get a tech lab ASAP and start either combat shields or stim<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>From here there&#8217;s a slight variation that has become quite popular for Terran players, and thats the bio timing right when stim or combat shield finishes. Usually though I would only consider it if I&#8217;ve scouted 4 gas from the Protoss player, or if you see he has late gateways. If going for a bio timing then continue on the build order otherwise skip this part:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>After starting techlab research, begin marauder production as well as non-stop marine production<\/li>\n<li>If going out with combat shield, push out when the 2nd marauder finishes otherwise push out with 3 if going for stim timing.<\/li>\n<li>While pushing out you want to start a factory and throw down add-ons for your barracks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The difference between stim and combat shields is a slight timing window where you can either hit with stim+2 extra marauders, or hit sooner with a slightly beefier army thats nice for dealing with the planetary nexus.<\/p>\n<p>If you choose not to go for the bio timing you can instead opt for a faster +1 and starport by following this order:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>After starting techlab research, keep up constant marine production<\/li>\n<li>Start a factory, engineering bay, and 3rd gas as minerals permit<\/li>\n<li>Another depot if you haven&#8217;t already<\/li>\n<li>Start your +1 when ebay finishes, then starport + reactor<\/li>\n<li>Get barracks addons after starport is started<\/li>\n<li>Put starport on a reactor and build 2 medivacs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>During all this you want to try and send another scv scout out to peak by his 3rd and then try and sneak into his natural usually around 6-6:30 mark, or before you start stim\/combat shields.<\/p>\n<h2>Concluding The Mid Game and Moving on<\/h2>\n<p>After your first two medivacs are out, you should scout to see whether or not the toss player already has colossi, in which case you should start viking production asap while throwing down a 2nd starport. If the opponent is still teching up, you can instead opt in for a 3rd CC before you get your 4th and 5th barracks unless you see that they have a sizable army or more warpgates being built. After getting your 3rd CC and additional production buildings started if you&#8217;re planning on going for a long game you definitely have to make sure you continue your upgrades by adding an armory and a 2nd engineering bay to work on getting +2 upgrades.<\/p>\n<h2>Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n<p>I think that CC first is an excellent build to know because, at the same time it manages to give an early economic edge, its also quite easy to transition with added possibilities for aggression or a late game strategy in mind.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand the riskiest part of going CC first I feel, is the early game when you&#8217;re most vulnerable to proxy&#8217;s and other cheeses that you haven&#8217;t scouted. I think a big factor in helping to reduce this risk is mostly by limiting this build to maps that are 2 or 3 player maps, since 4 player maps are to large and you run the chance of scouting the Protoss opponent last. Other then that though, trying to stay flexible and actually reacting to what you scout from the Protoss player is very important in making sure you don&#8217;t lose to a blind all-in.<\/p>\n<p>Follow Joshua on twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/coL_TriMaster\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@coL_TriMaster<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Theorycrafters rejoice! coL.Trimaster goes into detail about the common Command Center First build in the TvP matchup<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":3817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2258],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3814"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3819,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3814\/revisions\/3819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}