Phalanx's Daily #75: Almost-perfect forcefields...

Johnson, the lovable 1-st scouting probe! Dream profession is Aiur Head Chef.


Mike the stalker. Hardest working of them all, and single-handedly preventing scouting and pressure, while receiving the least credit.


Emily, the mothership core. Has a secret love for education, but quickly gets out of hand and fires photons all over the place if pissed off.


Snowden, the sneaky observer, watching out for the protoss race. He checks your computer history too.


Clyde, the zealot. Often times forgotten about due to cutting corners in the early game, and is always brought around in clutch situations.

The game starts out nice and easy, neither of us go with anything crazy. I start off with a 1gate expo. The build that I've been starting to use is basically this build. It's a pretty fun alternative than what I'd been doing before and probably much more effective since I can safely 1gate expand. The big idea is to get out a warp prism, fast archons, and go for a drop in the main while pressuring an expo. Liking it and fitting me well.


Still can't get over how much I love zoom out.

Now my opponents build is exactly the kind of build that I've been wanting practice against... it's a 3gate pressure of sorts. Building up 3gates first and fast warp tech and then going for an expo, it's a very agressive build until the expo. I'm still pretty bad at defending a 1gate expo, and this puts me to the test.


Mmmm looking tastey.

The first mistake I make is to wiff my photon overcharge a bit too early. At that point in the game I'm very unsure of whether or not I'm able to straight up hold off 3 stalkers with 3 sentries and an MSC without losing much, and so I decide the safe option was to just throw down my overcharge and force him off. Saving it up for later would have benefitted me greatly.


Sigh, Emily and her premature-overchargations.

Now my hallucinated phoenix scout had actually gotten vision of his proxy pylon going down (seriously the worst proxy location ever)... but it wasn't until I saw the 3gates that I actually realized that he was going for 3gate pressure. i knew that it woudln't be an allin since my phoenix also did catch his expansion.


Ohhh, so that proxy pylon wasn't just to look pretty?

His pressure hits at 9 stalkers, after waiting for my photon overcharge to go away. I spot it with a hallucinated voidray (it was meant to be phoenix...) and basically just had to sit there and watch my nexus get a beating until I felt sure that i could win the fight. Maaaaybe 1immortal and 3 sentries could have done some serious work, but I didn't want to risk it when I had a 2nd immortal coming up as well as warpgate tech on the way.


Nooo the poor probes!!!

Now that I look back on it, at the point that i got 3 zealots warped in I probably should have gone in and stopped the stalkers. Zealots would have been able to melt those stalkers with forcefield usage, not to mention the Immortal dishing out damage from the back. Sadly, I decide to let the nexus fall in favor of getting out my 2nd immortal. As soon as it's out I move - and ALMOST catch every single one of his stalkers with my force fields. I had the energy for a 3rd one that could have sealed the deal, but I just didn't... :'( So sad. None the less they were very good force fields, catching me a nice deal of units killed.


I think I thought the immortals would kill the stalkers before they could snake out... sad mistake.

Now I decide that I'm going to be goign all-in once i get up my templar tech and warp prism. I was still ahead by a couple of probes but that advantage would soon dissapear, and so the best shot in my eyes was to allin... although it was a bit of an economic all-in.

I bother to rebuild my natural expansion, while I tech to templar and build up gateways I decide to just sit in front of his base. The units that I killed off with my force fields made it so that he didn't have near enough unit to actually fight my army.



Oh yeah, I also manage to bait out a photon overcharge by moving my units forward a bit. I might have been able to take that army straight on, but the main purpose was to bait the overcharge anyways so it was all good.


Yay, the mindgames.

My opponent's tech choice for the mid game was voidrays. If I weren't going for a semi-allin attack, the voidrays actually would have caused me some serious pain in the later stages of the game, especially since I already was a tiny bit behind in economy.


STARGATUUu

Now, to jump on over to the actual attack.

My attack was prepared right about 12 minutes, with 5zealots, 2 immos, 3 sentries, and 3 archons at the front of his base. My warp prism was quickly maneuvering over to the back of his base, to warp in using my 6 gateways. I stopped making probes for a bit to save up money, and also made some extra pylons to make sure I wouldn't get cockblocked by pylons.


Yes, yesss... all according to plan!

Now to look at a big factor in the coming fight, my enemy only had 3 gateways active. He had 2 stargates but there weren't even constantly producing, making his total voidray count go up to 2. The overcompensation of zealots that were made when he expected my counter attack now would come back to haunt him, as often times zealots don't do very well against archons.


Yessssssss!!! All according to plan part2!

And now for my attack! As the warp prism flies in my enemy doesn't notice it in time, warping in from his 3 gateways at his natural! My 6zealots run into his main mineral field, and meanwhile my main army moves forward... TO FORCEFIELD THE RAMP! YEAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! I didn't want to risk my main army in case i couldn't kill his, but I decided that keeping his units out of his main was going to be a great way to make my drop lethal.


Aw yiss, if 1 FF fails, try try again!

My zealots force away the probes, rendering his main worthless. I realize that his army isn't looking so hot, and think that I should indeed just go for the allin. I kill off a few more probes as they transfer over to the natural. It could have been a massacre if I had used my FF again and used the archon splash damage, but my army was overpowering his anyways so it wasn't much of a failure.


MOHR BLUDSHED! MOHR!

Now everything is going just where I want it to be going... as the nail in the coffin, I decide to just run up his ramp and go ravage his main. With very few production facilities capable of making units, I finish up the game with relative ease from that point.


GG!