What to focus on when learning Terran by WolFix

This guide aims to help newer players lean towards proper methods of practicing and is my personal take on what is actually important when playing Starcraft as Terran.

Nobody ever talks about unit control or widely understood "micro" (let's just call it "control" over the rest of this monologue). When I started coaching, I was totally on the side of "macro is the most important," then build, and then as a consequence of good macro, I was going along with the philosophy that it doesn't really matter if you can control your units well enough, because with proper macro you will eventually take over by sheer numbers. After years of coaching and advising people, I actually came to the conclusion that this is a completely wrong approach. That is also something that I focus on in my own gameplay currently the most.

I actually daily see players approaching their analysis like, "I didn't have enough workers at xxx time" or "If only I spent my money here, I would win.". It is weirdly so rare that someone actually looks and focuses on their engagements or thinks about why the fight actually went so poorly.

This brings us to the problem of playing ladder in general. Ladder is quite good for practicing builds but is actually bad for training your control. Usually as a Terran, especially vs Protoss, you can completely avoid fighting and only have like 2-3 actual unit engagements in a game that you will most likely lose and whine right after about how hard Terran and how easy Protoss are.

When you watch 2 players play SC, you can quite quickly judge who is a better player and who has more chances of winning just by observing how they are moving their units. Do they utilize magic boxes correctly (goons vs fd push), do they know that they should delay push from behind (mutas vs mms), do they know to target goons with tanks in the majority of the engagements, etc.?

One of the most common losses for Terran in all MUs is the moment when you "briefly" go and macro while your army is moving (great time to macro because there is nothing going on... right?). and suddenly your army gets ambushed, you lose everything, and the game is over, but yay, at least you have "good macro". People are missing the fact that not losing units because of good control is actually a far, far better version of making new units.

I will also add (and I'm probably biased, but oh well...) that Terran is the most affected race by this kind of approach. Loses are frustrating, and wins are hard and long to achieve. On top of that, your units will usually just die if not controlled properly. They trade very poorly on their own. Try to send 4 tanks to defend your 12 o'clock expo on FS without any control where 3 goons are already standing on a high ground, and you will quickly realize how bad your units do on their own. It's a little bit ironic, but the lack of melee units actually makes most defenses very attention demanding. Your army will also get ambushed a lot of the time because Terran is a race that decides the timing window of the fight, but P and Z have the advantage of choosing the place and exact moment of a fight.

So with the above in mind, I'll tell you my current opinion (which I'm sure many people will disagree with) on what exactly you should work on during your practice sessions to get better at this game. It is important that you pair this up with actually creating scenarios where you train fighting with your units as well. These skills will get you on another level once mastered.

Unit micro-related skills every Terran should learn to understand how they work. This is not in any particular order, but you should learn:
- How to properly bind your army and make moving around with it as comfortable as possible.
- What magic box is and how to use it. It's usually much better to move your army in formation during small skirmishes.
- How to micro with your vultures (patrol, move command, and hold position are all very useful; shift hold after placing mines as well).
- How to play out certain critical scenarios like 3 marines vs goon, medium-sized tanks/vultures vs goons/zealots, mms vs mutas, mms vs lurker ling, moving out vs reaver contain, attacking siege lines, low numbers of marines vs zealot etc.
- How to micro wraiths (wraiths can pretty much do the same things that mutas can, but actually better due to longer range; they are just not as durable).
- How to properly load/unload dropships.
- There are many more skills worth learning. This is just a draft, but it should give you an idea of what is important and what you should ask for and what to look for when analyzing your games.

Some universal skills that help with all the above because you will be able to actually focus on your army:
- Produce units from hotkeys while looking at your army - this is one of the most important skills so few people have. You should really put quite a lot of effort into learning this. It's also very useful to be able to set your rallies in a second when you can literally do 4click 5click 6click etc. - This will allow you to constantly look at your army and be ready to fight whenever needed.
- Produce workers from hotkeys and/or learn to queue them up every time engage is about to start. Many hotkey setups dont allow you to produce workers from hotkeys, and in this case, you should make them using screen hotkeys, but then it is extremely useful to be able to consciously queue them up right before you vulture drop your opponent or right before your 2 fact hits protoss natural, etc. Games are often won by this factor: you put pressure on your opponent, you kill only 2-3 workers, but in the meantime he forgets to make another 2-3, then you produce 2-3 in the same time, and bam, suddenly you are at a 4-6 worker advantage. A good example of this is 2gate vs 1 gate tech in PvP. Very common scenario.
- Learn to 1a2a3a4a5a properly. Don't be lazy. Don't just move your army, A move your army. This way you will never get totally destroyed when ambushed.
- When watching replays, try to find this single critical moment in the game that caused you to lose it. Was your turret a little bit misplaced, which allowed Shuttle to get in? There you go, don't fuck it up next time. You forgot to target goons with your tanks in a fight? Remember to do it next time. You lost a fight that should have been won? (Like pretty much every 200 vs 200 fight in TvP.) Why? What happened? Watch it and try to understand why it went so bad. In my opinion, it is actually not that often that you lose because of build order errors, but at the same time, players put so much attention into that.
- As you can see, these are more macro-related tips, but they are actually focused on macroing while optimizing time to control your units properly.

You can learn all of the above in any game mode. Not only 1v1. If you are a complete beginner, please don't even consider a ladder as proper training. In my opinion, such a person should spend a lot of time in modes like 3v3, hunters, bgh, fastest, some UMS related to control, etc. The idea is that you need to actually learn how units work. In the end, this game is all about unit interaction. You have to learn things like tank + 4 marines beat 2 goons, but lose to properly controlled 3 goons. To target fire in certain situations and many, many more examples of crucial control nuances nobody will teach you. You need to experiment and feel it by yourself. It's very naive to think that you can get better fast just by learning a build (you will fuck up its execution anyway). The more advanced you get, the more useful the ladder becomes, or rather, playing 1v1 in general becomes more useful. The weaker you are, the more confrontational openings you should try. Try 2 facts, FDs, 5facts, 3 tank pushes vs Protoss. Try 2 ports, 2rax acad, 8 rax vs Zerg. The higher the level, the more people lean towards macro openings because it's becoming hard to win tactically; it's more reliable to play for bigger economies, but when you see a pro facing some scrub on the ladder, they will very often "cheese" and just destroy them with far superior control.