NewYearsAnnapolis.org

There are a lot of great build orders Terran players can use, but most players never venture beyond a standard opener of a 9 Supply Depot and a 12 Barracks. There are actually a lot of good Starcraft 2 Terran build orders that you can use which do not follow this standard layout, and can be very confusing for your opponent if they are used correctly.

One of these builds is the refinery first build. This involves getting a Refinery as your second additional building rather than getting a Barracks. The reason you might do this would be to get out very fast Siege Tanks or play for an expansion build. This allows you to get out a Factory as soon as your Barracks finished. You could even get a Tech Lab on your Barracks right away too in order to swap your Factory for the Barracks as soon as it is done to start adding Siege Tanks to your army right away.

A lot of players use that particular build order not only for Siege Tanks but also to get out a very quick Reaper. This Reaper is then used for scouting information and to establish map control. You can defend your entire base very easily for example versus a Zerg player with a single Reaper until they get access to the speed upgrade for their Zerglings. Reapers can kite Zerglings otherwise and a well-controlled single Reaper can both wreck havoc on a Zerg base and defend the Teran main while you tech up.

Additionally, you can use this build order in order to move into fast hellions. The only downside with this is that the new patch is making Hellions a lot less effective, so you should consider not learning this build or spending the time it takes to master this aspect of the build simply because fast Hellions are getting a lot weaker.

By using the Refinery-First Terran build order, you are open to a world of fast technology and not limited by just the simple 2-Rax openers that define most Terran Starcraft 2 player’s games.