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Now I am not a cheeser, my general philosophy in sc2 is if its not making me better then its probably not worth my time doing. I play to win of course, but alternately i also play to learn, to experience a myriad of situations again and again in the hopes that i will become intrinsically better at handling them. Truthfully i never quite understood people who cheesed for the wins, I was never sure what was fun about it, I always imagined it felt like such a hollow victory, you won sure, but you won in a way that required little skill and gained nothing from the experience. I thought quite the contrary actually, i thought it harmed them, boosting your mmr by not playing the long game seemed like a sure fire way to find yourself high up but getting your ass kicked repeatedly.
This being said some part of me thought it would be fun to actually try it out a few times to see what I could get out of it. For most people im sure you have cheesed before but this was literally my first time, so id like to list off a few things that i learned while doing it.
Firstly, it is extremely fun to cannon rush someone, it is pure guilty pleasure. Now I have been cannon rushed many a time and I have lost to it at all levels, from Bronze to Diamond, so i know how it is to have it done to you. That being said to inflict that misery on someone else is a unique feeling in sc2, its griefing almost, taking the rules and just deciding not to follow them, even if the only rule you are breaking is a sportsmanship faux pas.
Secondly it is extremely tense, now im not one to gripe about ladder points, you win some you lose some and eventually you even out somewhere. It is guaranteed that unless you are at the top of the ladder your w/l ration evens itself out pretty nicely to around 50%. So with that in mind I was very surprised at the level of tension involved in performing a cannon rush. Its a mixture of two competing feelings, one hoping they haven't seen you do it, and secondly hoping you can keep the probe alive just long enough. I cant figure any other area of sc2 where such a life or death moment takes place, at least not for protoss, it is for all intense and purposes, the whole game resting on the execution of this one build. This heightens the tension, heightens the senses and is a real euphoric thrill when its executed well.
Thirdly, contrary to my prior belief Zerg can be cannon rushed on certain maps. This I did not know, i was going up against a random and found out that in the midst of a rush it was possible to slip a pylon in behind their mineral line and win.
Fourth, savvy Terran's do not lose to cannon rushes. Now if you have performed the opening steps well and it is a 4 player map the chances are that you will be able to successfully catch a Terran unawares. I notice this provokes one of 2 reactions from Terran's, the first being complete shock, these people generally lose trying to fight the rush. The second is acceptance, Terran's can lift, so they lift, smart ones even let you commit to the build then lift, ensuring you are farther behind. Im not saying its impossible, but it is significantly harder.
Fifth, cannon rushing makes pvp a much more tolerable matchup. Why? Because pvp sucks and if i can win or lose it in the opening 5 minutes that beats 4 gate any day.
Sixth, all things considered my w/l was about 70% for the day. This includes 22 games cannon rushing z/t/p and random every game. The protoss cannon rushes were 100% effective, the zerg 25% if you count the initial rush working and closing on 50% if you take into account a longer macro game developing from the rush. Against Terran 50% success rate, give or take.
Drawing conclusions from these findings is hard personally because the data shows i would be more successful I i just continued to cannon rush. Add into this the fact that pvp is an abortion of a matchup to play and one could say there is a convincing argument to continue. But that being said my prior thoughts remain some, thought I haven't found a way to replicate the thrill a cannon rush presents, I don't find any merit it is execution and victory. In the end i think what this experiment showed me was that I can incorporate a little cheese into my play for pleasure and practical reasons, and not feel so bad about it.
  
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Interesting to see the other side of the cheese as I feel the exact same way as you did before you stated cheesing. I'll have to try out cheese a few times just to get that perspective.
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Id recommend it, as a trial at least, its an odd feeling just to play for the sheer thrill of it, for the tension and to be honest, for the comments when people realise you have cheesed them. I had always assumed, sometimes correctly, that the people doing these rushes to me were the worst scum sc2 has to offer, but really I can see the appeal beyond points.
That being said id like to reiterate that it isnt a long term strategy for someone who loves sc2, after a day it was still fun, but its not satisfying in the sense that winning a hard fought game is, it neuters the game.
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What is your ingame name? I think I might of played vs your cannon rush lol~
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My friends and I did massive 4v4 everyone-cannon-rush games for a day, that was hilarious (and we won most of the time too!).
I still hate cannon rushes at my nat (ZvP) on Scrap and Shakuras 
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On December 19 2010 04:25 eXigent. wrote:
What is your ingame name? I think I might of played vs your cannon rush lol~
Oslo :D
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On December 19 2010 04:27 synapse wrote:My friends and I did massive 4v4 everyone-cannon-rush games for a day, that was hilarious (and we won most of the time too!). I still hate cannon rushes at my nat (ZvP) on Scrap and Shakuras
To get used to the build i did it in a bunch of random 2v2's and a 3v3, amazingly effective
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I'd be curious to see a graph of some variety that measures the amount of complaints, bad manner or lack of GGs received, when cheesing against not cheesing, victory against defeat, etc, with a high amount of games to sample from. I bet it would be a pretty funny graph to read.
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Most people i found simply leave when they think they are done, which surprisingly happens relatively early on, if you get a cannon in their base and one protecting down below theres very little they can do from that point on. In terms of BM, i think honestly i received around 3 verbal rants against me, which were fun. I received more gg's, maybe 5 or 6 i cant remember, the rest just left.
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How would you compare that to a normal days work, without cheese?
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what build you use exactly?
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man i never thought i'd find anybody else in the world who uses "abortion of a _____" or "man that was an abortion" as an idiom
we should be buddies
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it takes savvy to stop a good cannon rush in pvp :/
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I use to have people cannon rush me while I played Terran, how could you possibly lose to it ^^ ... ur first depot goes down at ur ramp (so you always see the probe) and when you see the shenanigans coming you just get 1 bunker and the game is automatically over. Even if the cannons are in range of the bunker you can just repair the bunker until the cannons have been cleared by the Marines in the bunker... Why would they lift? And I am in Diamond so it's not like it was Silver Protoss players cannoning me. For 100 (salvageable) minerals you can stop it so easily.
Or am I missing something?
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On December 19 2010 06:15 Pro]ChoSen- wrote:
I use to have people cannon rush me while I played Terran, how could you possibly lose to it ^^ ... ur first depot goes down at ur ramp (so you always see the probe) and when you see the shenanigans coming you just get 1 bunker and the game is automatically over. Even if the cannons are in range of the bunker you can just repair the bunker until the cannons have been cleared by the Marines in the bunker... Why would they lift? And I am in Diamond so it's not like it was Silver Protoss players cannoning me. For 100 (salvageable) minerals you can stop it so easily.
Or am I missing something?
On some map you can build pylon and a cannon below the ramp. then run up an build a cannon that is "protected" by the first cannon that is hard to get to.
I might add that I only dabbled with cannonrushes vs comp so I might be totally wrong.
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You do know that cannons outrange bunker marines, so yes you are missing something.
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51 Posts
On December 19 2010 06:26 Antiochus wrote:
You do know that cannons outrange bunker marines, so yes you are missing something.
As far as I know they're both range 6. cannons might be 7 though I'm not sure i've ever checked.
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On December 19 2010 09:14 krndandaman wrote:
edit: this was on bw iccup
Some kid did something cute when I tried to cannon rush on python at D level.
Guy kept mining until right when the cannon finished. He lifted cc and went towards my base with scv's/cc.
I actually did a gate/forge cheese so my zealot popped out from a proxy and started chasing the scv's. He made a wall with barrack supply supply to block the zealot(s) and started fighting the probes.
However, he ran out of money to continue repairing the supply depots and I broke through and killed all the scv's/forced cc to lift.
gg i won but that shocked me lol
lol that sounds hilarious!
But why would someone do barracks supply supply wall instead of just bunkering next to your nexus?
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The main issue with cheese isn't what the cheeser gets from the game, of course you can find the thrill enjoyable. The problem lies in the fact that it completely ruins the other person's enjoyment of the game. Some people think only of their own happiness in life, but they're usually called people with bad ethics, jerks you might say.
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Sigh this kind of depresses me XD. But I guess later on in the game where people learn to expect these things cannon rush/other cheese will be harder to pull off.
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I honestly consider opening with cannon rush in PvP now if it's a 2 player map.
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My build was this
9 pylon, send scout probe on 9,
Chrono to 12 and build forge at 12
Chrono to 14 then build first proxy pylon around his natural mineral line so he cant see it from his base
Chrono to 16 and by the time the pylon is done you have 150 and can build a cannon outside his base
if he hasnt scouted it usually a 2nd cannon down below then a pylon inside uptop to give vision
Once the pylon gets up its usually over as i can skirt around free and easy
Minerals usually pile up and all chronos go on making further probes, usually i dont really lose any probe production, structures are obviously far behind but if the rush fails but delays him my probe situation is better, but my tech is far behind (but this can be circumvented by killing his tech)
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On December 19 2010 13:08 bananaman533 wrote:
Sigh this kind of depresses me XD. But I guess later on in the game where people learn to expect these things cannon rush/other cheese will be harder to pull off.
I dont plan to become a mass cannon rusher at all, but id say out of 10 pvps now sure id consider doing it once or twice, especially if i meet the same people again and again. You cant buy the fear you put into someone pregame if they know its in your arsenal, even if you use it very very occasionally. Against z and t id say its more of a goofy way to lose, i had a 50% win rate from z and t but the games generally went long after the cannon rush, it seldom killed them unless they were really shocked and didnt know what to do.
The realisation i came to was that it was fun to do, but unsatisfying as a linchpin strategy for a protoss player looking to improve, so i decided a happy medium was just to put it into the list of builds and trot it out when i fancy a laugh or need something to surprise a particular player.
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EPT
