Finally Masters with Carriers (VERY Pic Heavy)

wongfeihung

United States763 Posts

February 22 2012 08:03 GMT

First blog ever; and for good reason, I think.

Getting to Masters had never been a particular goal of mine. I just play the game for fun. I was content with being in Diamond league. It provided a good balance between the fun factor that casuals aim for in Starcraft 2 with enough of a challenge for someone at my level. Anyway, I'd like to share with you all, the game that got me into Masters. But first, a little background on how I'd stumbled onto this PvZ strat.

I'd been playing with Carrier-based strategies ever since I saw HongUn use them on his stream a couple of months ago; it was around October or November. I've got one down that gets me wins about 75% of the time; mostly due to the fact that Zergs at this level don't expect you to go all-out Carriers. Typically, Protoss would get a Gateway-based army (Stalkers/Zealots) that is accented with a support-damage unit (Colossi/Templar/Archon). With the build that I use, it uses Carriers as the base of the army, with support from Gateway units. Allow me to demonstrate.

First, I start out with a FFE. This one is particularly ugly, as I had misplaced my first pylon, but it worked out for the better.
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Denied!

After the typical PvZ opening, I put on some pressure off of 4 Gateways. During said pressure, I produced 2 Stargates. Usually, I expect the Zerg to get a fast third base, which I can usually kill, or just force a cancel. But Shattered Temple is not a very fast-third-friendly map. The 4gate pressure typically induces Roach production, which is good, since we certainly don't want the opponent's macro to get out of hand.
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Let's reward him for doing exactly what we wanted him to do... with Void Rays!
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45 Harvesters to 36 is no good!

After producing 4 Void rays and pressuring the opponent even further, I threw down my Fleet Beacon. As expected, my Zerg opponent tried to attack me with a Roach-Hydra army. Unluckily for him, it was at about the time when my first 2 Carriers came out.
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Not nearly enough Hydralisks to kill both Carriers.

Unfortunately, I miscalculated. I hadn't choked him at my natural with my now-dead Sentries, due to improper control. Now, he was allowed to attack my probes with his damned Roaches, while my Carriers could only peck at them softly with their 6x2x8 Interceptors. T_T
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GET TO THE THIRD!
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Fuck! They're already here! GET BACK TO THE NATURAL!
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Such is the expense of bad Diamond-Micro

Fortunately for me, I was left with a large air army that he could not readily counter. So what did I do with it? I attacked him, of course!
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I call your probe kills, and raise you your main base!
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I'll take your natural expansion while I'm at it.

All of a sudden... ZERGLINGS!
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Not this shit again! Get back to the natural... again!

He had not properly evacuated his drones while I attacked his main and natural, so there was now a large deficit in his drone count. I used this downtime to produce more Probes and an army; the likes of which had never been imagined by the enemy Zerg player. When I scouted his army, I was actually surprised at how small it was.
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That is not nearly enough Corruptors, my friend.
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Carriers have arrived, motherfucker and so has Mothership!

Also, just because somebody made a thread about "Mutalisks vs Carriers" does not mean you should make Mutalisks against Carriers.
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Now, you see me...
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Now, you don't!

I brought a Vortex to the party; he brought a ragequit.
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So, there you have it; the game that got me to Masters. I've been through several other PvZ's that played out similarly before this one. Unfortunately, I don't have a specific build order down. I only have a outline that goes along the lines of "build this, then this, then this." Hopefully, I'll eventually be able to refine this strategy and create an efficient build order.

I don't expect people to try and copy the build, as it was created by a Diamond-level player. I do hope though, that people use this as inspiration for creating their own Carrier-centric builds so that Blizzard doesn't remove Carriers in HoTS. It is a decent unit, but it's just not very cost-effective; basically the opposite of the Marine.

Hope y'all enjoyed it. I apologize for it being a bit pic-heavy. I really should have resized them.

Edit: Resized! I hope the pics are about the right size.

Froadac

United States6733 Posts

February 22 2012 08:07 GMT

Well done. I am truly sad that I cannot obtain masters with motherships and carriers :|

Aelonius

Netherlands432 Posts

February 22 2012 08:10 GMT

I hate to play Entombed Valley as for some reason almost every Protoss I meet is trying to FFE->6gate into carrier/voidray. And unless I am at a loss what to do, my hydra's melt, my corruptors melt, I need a whole new techpath done just to deal with it and then pray the followup doesn't rape me in the face

askTeivospy

1525 Posts

February 22 2012 08:19 GMT

rofl all those carriers, nice one ^>^ and grats!

ReketSomething

United States6012 Posts

February 22 2012 09:06 GMT

Im in masters and I go carriers VS. z/t all the time. The thing that I realized is that vortex SUCKS because it sucks in the interceptors =/

edit: u shud still make moship cuz
1) its baller
2) invis => they get detection and if they are dumb u can snipe the 1 overseer they make
3) great tank that they try to focus fire, so u can micro moship while carriers are attacking becuz microing carriers is suicide
4) vortex behind you so that when carrier is injured you move into vortex (otherwise they can easily chase your injured carrier down with corruptors + hydra)
5) so u can recall ur probes as a BM strat+ Show Spoiler +

or to save them from a zergling runby and in the process doing an invisble cannon rush