Listen up recruit. You are entering boot camp training today. Some of you may think you already know everything there is to know to succeed as a Terran. Well, you maggots know nothing, so, the first and last words out of your filthy hole will be "SIR", DO YOU MAGGOT'S UNDERSTAND?!?!?!?!?!?!

Philosophies

The first thing a Terran (you) must learn are the general principles and philosophies that are needed in order to achieve victory ( gung ho ). You can have all the talent in the world, but if you do not know how to use it, a knowledgeable person will beat you every time due to little tricks and siege tank's.

The number one, all-time, most important principle is to be Offensive and Aggressive. Sure the Terrans have arguably the best Defense in Starcraft, but what good does that do if you do not attack your enemy? By being Aggressive, you keep you opponents on their toes and in their graves. You force them to react to your attacks, and it keeps them mentally occupied.

By keeping on the Offensive, you keep all the options in your court. It can allow you to expand with ease, "box" your opponent in, control the map and just about limitless ideas. Your C-14 Gauss Rifle was not designed to sit at your side while you snooze in your base; it was made to tear apart the flesh of Zergs, Protoss, and other Terran traitors. So move those Marines out and take the fighting to their base and area.

Now, there are obvious exceptions to this principle. The most noticeable is when dealing with the Protoss. Their Zealots are far more advanced then Marines, therefore it is advisable to setup an early bunker defense to prepare for the Zealot rush, get an academy very quickly, produce many Firebats to counter the Zealots, and then counter attack with all your forces once you hold off his first rush. But they key here is to stay Aggressive. Yes you have to play defensively against Protoss to handle their early Zealots, but once you get to Firebats, tanks and vultures, turn the tides and bring the fighting to his base. I will cover this in greater detail later.

Another exception is against bunkered in Terrans. If your initial scouting shows you they are going defensive, then setup up camp just outside his base. Station you marines there, and then bring in the tank support. Chances are he may have tanks before you, but if you can keep him boxed in, you can eventually overwhelm him with numbers. One thing you must watch out for is a Terran that bunkers in, and then goes for mass Battle Cruisers. The really only way to counter this is to make sure and get Ghosts with Lockdown and or kill them first.

Against Zerg, you can afford to be VERY Offensive. The Zerg have no good way to deal with large amounts of Marines until they get Defilers or Ultralisks, so keep up the Marine attacks and I suggest getting a couple Barracks to keep the attacks constant.

Expansions

After the rushing stage of the game, almost every single victory is determined by expansions. If you run out of resources, then you will run out of units, and then you lose. Plus, Starcraft puts much more emphasis on expansions then any other Real Time Strategy games before, because all resources can only support a limited number of workers on it at a time. Its is for these reasons that learning how and when to expand might be the most important thing you ever learn in Starcraft.

The first thing to learn is when is the proper time to expand. The problem is, that time changes in almost every game you play. In general, I try to expand about the time I have a few siege tanks (if I am going for them) or I have a few Barracks. If you expand to early, your forces will be spread to thin to protect either base, and if you expand to late, you will be severely behind in resources if you are even able to expand.

In Warcraft 2, there was a tactic of making a second town very early, before you even have a barracks, and walling both towns in with towers to ward of attackers. This allowed you to very quickly move up the tech tree and get ogres/bloodlust faster then any other way possible. This tactic does NOT work in Starcraft. The main reason is that you cannot fully wall-in any bases, and
the "towers" (bunkers/sunken colonies/photon cannons) are not near as powerful as they were in Warcraft 2. If you try to do any kind of early expansion in Starcraft, you will most likely lose your main town and your expansion before you can even benefit from the expansion.

If you buckle down and play defense for too long, you are going to have a very hard time expanding. Sure your main base is well protected, but if you cannot secure an expansion, your main base will run dry on resources, and the enemy can just wait you out. In fact the best thing to do against a defensive player is just "box" them in. Put all your forces outside their main town, just out of range of his defense. Expand to two or three other spots, and put a scout of some kind at all other resource locations. Once he runs out of resources at his main base, and you have stopped all his attempts to expand, he will soon fall to your vastly superior numbers.

One of the most important things in expanding is to setup up and protect your expansion before making a Command Center there. What good does it do to go to an expansions spot, and make a Command Center first thing? You will have no protection if the enemy finds it, and will just lose valuable time. The best way to start an expansion is send a squad of marines with your SCV. Have the SCV make a bunker there, then put some of the marines in the bunker. If you can afford the Command Center now, the go ahead and start building it, but if you can not afford it at the time, I suggest making a Barracks there. Now, of course a small platoon of marines is not going to stop a large force coming at your expansion, and that is why it is important to keep up an attack while you expand. If you can keep your enemy busy worrying about your attacks, then he cannot spend the time to worry about your expansion.

Once you have your expansion going, don't neglect it. Keep up a decent defense there and make sure its keeps the SCV's producing. You can afford to defend you expansions better because you will have more resources at this time in the game, and the expansions are important to keeping your army growing.