Brilliant Terran Fast Expand Strategy To Dominate Your Enemies
One way to do it is to build one barracks then save up for your next command center right away. But this pretty much only works against other players (mostly Zerg) who are fast expanding as well. Just a few early units to your base will defeat you because you have practically nothing to defend with.Here"s a strategy from TheLittleOne that is a great way to secure that second base without fear of losing flat out to early aggression. It focuses on getting a couple barracks right away and getting some early marines out to help secure your expansion and bunker up defense to prevent losing all those fragile infantry units.
You"ll want to use a relatively normal starting build to implement this strategy, the only thing different is that you won"t be getting a refinery for awhile plus another trick I"ll share in a second. You need a LOT of minerals to get this done efficiently so you"ll focus on defense that doesn"t require any gas to produce: marines & bunkers.
Build your first supply depot as normal, then your barracks, but instead of a refinery next, save up your minerals to get your second Command Center. It"s a good idea to build these buildings at your choke so you can wall off and prevent any extremely early rushes that you might run into.
Obviously you should scout your opponent and if you see that he"s doing some sort of early cheese then I would recommend you don"t do the early expand, just build up a defense and win the macro battle. Assuming everything is normal though, you"ve already got your early second CC building, so now keep pumping SCV"s (as usual) and train one marine.
You won"t be building any addons to your barracks, so just save those resources. When you can, add on two more barracks to your base so you can get some good unit production going. Now start training marines and get your first refinery to start building up your gas supply.
One crazy thing that you should do with this strategy is use the first energy you have on your Orbital Command (main base) to call down extra supply onto your first depot ASAP. This will save you an immediate 100 minerals plus the build time of a supply depot and will allow you to keep producing units right away without pulling an SCV from mining.
When your CC is done upgrade it to an Orbital Command immediately. Once that is finished it"s time to move out, so grab two SCV"s and build two bunkers at your expansion"s choke point. Fill them with marines and you should be fairly safe from any first push that your opponent will throw at you.
At this point you"ll have 3 barracks producing marines so your army will grow quite fast. Since marines are so vulnerable though, if you get some early pressure it"s a good idea to pull a couple SCV"s off the line to help absorb damage. Sure you may lose them, but since you"ll have your second base up so fast you"ll quickly regain the economic advantage.
Using this strategy will allow you to get your second base extremely fast, usually within the first 6 minutes of the game. Plus if you do get delayed and can"t quite put your CC down right away, you can start casting MULE"s on your current mineral line to give your income a nice boost.
Remember, just two MULEs will pay for your new Orbital Command (which costs 550 minerals total), so it"s not a huge deal if you can"t land it at your expo immediately. When you do get the chance to expand, don"t forget to transfer half your workers to the expansion.
Once you"re up and running it"s time to continue with the strategy appropriate for the matchup you"re in. Since you already have 3 barracks, you can transition very well into a marine & marauder infantry ball.
If you"re into early expanding, this build order should give you a good framework to start from. If you find a weakness in it against a certain matchup, try to figure out a way to tweak it a little to survive. Since this is such an early second base, you"ll be in great shape if you can survive the first few minutes of the game.