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Lately I've been having a lot of successes and near-successes by opening with 2 gates, pressuring then making a nexus. The matchup is of course PvZ. The purpose of writing this down is mostly to figure out its strengths and weaknesses and hopefully get some interesting comments. This is perhaps to many a well-known opening, but for me it is fresh and untested. So if anyone has tried something similar or faced something like this, perhaps you could leave a little hello in the comments.
Here is how it goes:- Open 10/12 gate
- Apply pressure with 2 probes + 5 zealots
- Keep zealots alive (don't trade them for drones), disengage attack if zealots are taking more damage than they are dealing
- If he is still making zerglings, keep making zealots
- Make nexus as soon as you can afford it
- Add a 3rd gate and take both gases immediately after
- Tech to core while making another round of zealots
- Add 3 more gates and make dragoons
This gives you 6 gates, a decent amount of dragoons, and a small band of zealots. From here you can start playing more adaptively. It should be said that the opening is not set in stone. There has to be a certain amount of adapting involved. If you see a couple hydras and a lair when you scout, you might want a robo before the 5th and 6th gate for observers. If you see a spire morphing, you might want to put down a forge and a citadel and not make the 5th and 6th gate for a while.
Strengths:- Keeps zerg against the ropes in the early game, only to give him the shock that you've taken your natural.
- Gives you the power to steal map control away from the zerg as his expos besides his first have yet to pay off for him.
- Handles mutaharass pretty well.
- Forces the zerg to sunken up a lot earlier than he would want to.
- Provides enough of a crisis for zerg to overlook the fact that you may be expoing further.
- If he decides to lurker contain you, you already have the dragoon mass to deal with it.
- Provides gas for additional tech.
- Pretty robust against tech deception.
- You have a not completely insignificant standing army to challenge zerg if he goes expo crazy.
Weaknesses:- I've noticed that it works poorly against 3 hatch lings because no matter how many zealots you squeeze out of those 2 or 3 first gateways the zerglings can overwhelm you.
- Mutaharass might not be as well covered from bases with short air distance.
- Lack of early detection makes the threat of lurkers supported by lings very real.
- Lurkerdrop might mean instant death.
- An overlord will be able to see your 6 gate goon plan.
- Might toss away the early advantage you secured.
Overall:
Strength - Weakness = 9 - 6 = 3
  
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is awesome32274 Posts
Some of the Strengths are repeated.
Weakness: sucks on closed positions or in maps that have a natural not covered by the ramp.
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is awesome32274 Posts
BTW, i like to add a forge as soon as i know that im not going to preassure anymore. Then i fake attack with zealots or move around till i can cannon properly. You need cannons for anything thats coming:
- mass ling
- lurkers
- mutas
- mas hydra
And the also keep the possible harras on your expo off. It also leaves you with more macro tranquility.
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GrandInquisitor
New York City13113 Posts
lol you can't just count the weaknesses and strengths and add them up =D
else.....
The GrandInquisitor (TM) Style of ZvP:
4 hatchery
3 hatchery
2 hatchery
1 pool
0 lings
Weaknesses:
1. You will lose.
Strengths:
1. Gets you hatchery
2. Gets you a second hatchery
3. Gets you a third hatchery
4. Gets you a spawning pool
5. Will not lose to carrier (will lose to zealots instead)
6. Does not allow Protoss to mind control one of your drones and build Zerg units
clearly 6 - 1 = 5 = this strategy is 167% better than yours =P
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I might have been playing the wrong zergs. Because it has been working too well. It might be cheating, but getting those 6 gateways up before canoning makes your army a lot stronger in the early midgame. Although you're not the first one to point out the need for a forge. So you might be right that it is not only preferable but required.
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My rating system is perfect. It just doesn't work because you're abusing it, Grand Inquisitor.
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I find that when i try to do this build I often times lose to really good muta harassment. Especially if they sunken hard and then tech straight to muta, 2 goons + 3 cannons will not defeat a strong muta harass.
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United States24670 Posts
On May 29 2007 17:17 stenole wrote:
My rating system is perfect. It just doesn't work because you're abusing it, Grand Inquisitor.
I'm not sure if you are half joking or entirely joking. The system is laughable haha.
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One idea I have to further improve this is to make a partial pylon wall to reduce the danger of mass lings or ling supported mutas. This will sort of make an artificial chokepoint to protect from ground forces. Or at the very least, stall.
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Korea (South)17174 Posts
Your strat is an easy and viable build to do newbie vs newbie. Thats about it though :D
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Your weaknesses are mostly distinct ways in which the build like instantly dies, while the strengths are just small advantages, some of which overlap. 
What map(s) were you playing this build on, anyway?
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maps were LT and luna and equivalent... sometimes with 10/12 gate proxied by natural
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The build works against me, but I'm noob.
Stenole, I think the reason why the choice of a nexus -> 6 gate works vs noobs like me is because the zealot rush succeeds in delaying your opponent's tech and takes the focus off of your base, so you're free to do basically anything to improve your advantage, and boosting your advantage with an expansion and many fast gates happens to be a good choice for overwhelming a mostly ling army (the nexus -> 4 robo thing you did vs me also works well for that ;p). If the lot rush fails miserably (say the zerg has some multitask and gets some sunkens to stick and runs 6 lings into your base to kill probes and pylons), then the game is pretty much normal, only you opted to go 6 gate lot/goon instead of cannons/HT/archons, and mutaling has a mobility/air advantage against that unit mix.
'Course you kicked my nooby ass with this build, so I should probably keep my mouth shut.
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I don't disagree with you Tadzio. When I started writing I wrote a long thing about how to micro zealots, when to make more zealots, what to do vs counter-attacks, what to do with the zealots once zerg can't be damaged anymore. One of the things I wrote is the conditions where you would not build the nexus. If you fail to make any significant damage and he manages to ravage your base, you are not really in a position to take the nexus. Basically it forks into a game where mass zeal/goon isn't an option anymore.
To make it more reader friendly and to the point, I cut out most the unnecesary stuff and tried to make lists. Because people like lists. They like colours too, but I was too lazy for that.
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This is actually a very very good build except i often prefer, as mentionned above, go for forge instead of your 3rd gate. It's vastly underrated, and if executed nicely, can lead you to a HUGE eco advantage over the zerg, much better than a normal fast expand.
The zerg wont have so many drones cause if you keep pumping zlots in the beginning, he will have to pump lings instead and making sunks. But the main point is that he wont have this 3rd expand he always gets when you FE.
You preserve your zlots for mid game if they cant do enough damage with them, as explained. When your natural is ready, you ve already a nice amount of probes to make it directly efficient.
I'd say the real bad point of this build is the lack of knowledge on what the zerg is teching for. You have no way to know it for a long time if you dont manage to obs with a zlot, which is often impossible given the good number of lings. Actually the period your eco starts to kick in matches with the one his tech is fully operational. Even if his eco is not so huge it can be very troublesome for you if you dont react well enough, which is not always easy.
If i dont have much problem with the tech (and the zerg is not much better) i almost always end up winning though. It also depends a lot on the quality of the harass you did at the beginning and how much his eco is slowed down thanks to this. Ive seen some PJ games where he does this very efficiently, the game basically turns into a 2 bases Z 20 drones vs 2 bases P full of workers.
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EPT
