At some point, I will go back and discuss my very early learnings as a noob Starcraft player, but in the last 24 hours, I played successfully against a few cheesy openings and wanted to relay some learnings.

One of my first games on ladder was TvP (Terran vs Protoss, for the absolute beginner). When you first start playing ranked games, Blizzard doesn't know where to place you, so they set you up against players of various skill levels and, if you're like me, those games are blowout losses. DO NOT GET DISCOURAGED! Most of these defeats are really quick because the players you're facing are so much better. This is just to get you to the point where they can place you provisionally in a league, where you'll start facing players closer to your skill level.

I don't remember if this TvP was a provisional game or an early ladder game, but I do remember seeing the Protoss probe (a worker unit that can collect resources and build buildings) stroll into my main base. Now I'd heard of a cannon rush before, and I'd seen replays, but hearing and seeing them in the past doesn't mean you'll react in the right way when you first see it for real in a multi-player game. At first, it looks like a probe scouting you, but a probe in a cannon rush has other pressing priorities, namely dropping pylons and cannons. Ignore this at your own peril. I did, and within minutes I was being crushed by a wave a cannons in my main and troops overrunning my expansions.

Fast forward to today. I played and won three ladder games, and in two of them, I faced what you'd call cheese. These are builds that deviate from a standard timing or macro build–they are an all-in of sorts in that they force the cheeser to deviate from a pure economic expansion, delaying the point at which they an max out. But in bringing the cheese, they also force you off your game. The rush is designed to overwhelm you or, at the very least, keep from expanding. If they succeed, you're toast. If they fail, in the long run, you should have an advantage because the player spurned long-term development for immedate gain.

Cannon Rush

My first cheese opponent was the Protoss Cannon Rush. Two things were more in my favor this time. One, I had faced a cannon rush before, so I knew that when i saw the probe, I had to deal with it. Second, this player had a very strange follow up and did not really press for the win when he or she had the chance.

Given my previous cannon rush experience, I immediately tried to slow down the rush. I “pulled the boys,” my SCVs, off of mining and tried to take out the pylon and developing cannons. I also had a couple of marines to help. I think i took out a cannon, but in the end, my opponenent was able to build cannons on my mineral line and re-establish two other cannons, and I knew that my main base was toast.

The one thing I did right was kill the probe. That's lesson one. If you do get cannon rushed, kill that probe! That probe could build additional cannons and pylons, or worse, a Nexus or other production facilities.

At this point, it is very easy to feel overwhelmed, to feel like you've lost. But I was able to save my Command Center and some of my SCVs, and I was able to transer production to my natural and a third base location. I made lots of mistakes in the next 5 to 10 minutes, and was really low on minerals while I did the transfer, but i survived. I built barracks, and eventually other production. Protoss evenutally followed up with some stalkers, but I was able to get out one tank that seiged and stopped him. More waves followed that hampered my production and killed SCVs, but I started building again and had enough to hold on.

Good Things:

• I immediately built 3 barracks. These were critical to building an an army to hold up against the next wave
• Tanks easily beat cannons–they outrange them, and I cleared my main with a single seige tank and eventually re-expanded to my main.

Mistakes:

• I forgot my upgrades for far too long. Forgot stim, and lost and forgot to rebuild engineering bays.
• Didn't get medivacs out soon enough to protect marines. I lost more marines despite having the ability to produce a medivac.

In the end, I won because my opponent went turtle and Skytoss (carrier, void rays and disruptors), while i slowly expanded with marines, medivacs, tanks, vikings and upgrades. Cannons are no match for sieged tanks, and the rest of my army eventually defeated the Protoss air units.

Battlecruisers in the Main, Oh My

The second “cheese” was a battlecruiser rush.

In lower level games, keep in mind that your opponets may cheese, but often they are not as good at it, so you have some leeway that you'd never have a higher Matchmaking Rating (MMR). My opponent dropped a battlecruiser into my main and wiped out my primary mineral line and was able to port in a second BC before i was able to clean that up. My opponent stayed on BCs and ghosts (but stopped porting in), but was never able to take me out, and I eventually overwhelmed my opponent.

Did Well

• I was able to save my command centers
• Avoided getting wiped out by multiple nukes, because…
• I build multiple orbitals and was able to avoid nukes and kill some ghosts in the followup.

Mistakes

• Did not pull my SCVs early enough–lost a lot of economy
• Had no static defense to counter the early BC
• Stim was behind because I forgot to start it

In both these builds, my situation was tenuous and a better player would have taken me out. But as the adage goes, “more s— beats less s—,” and in the end, I built more s— than my opponent, despite the disruption from the early battlecruiser arrivals.

Happy Gaming, and don't forget to build more supply depots.