[H] Ultimate Guide Project. - Page 5

Hautamaki's Guides:
[ Hautamaki was the formost protoss strategy writer. His website died along with isgsa, so I'm hosting the lost information here. This section will show his introduction and more general guidelines. There are two others sections for his PvT and PvZ guides. I included his units counters for PvP inside of my PvP guide. His scouting guide: http://sc.gosugamers.net/features.php?i=a&id=2070&query_id=53
His art of war article: http://sc.gosugamers.net/features.php?i=a&id=2067
His introductory article: http://sc.gosugamers.net/features.php?i=a&id=2070
His micro article: http://sc.gosugamers.net/features.php?i=a&id=2235 — Knickknack]


Contents:
- Old Intro Ending
- Basic Strategy
- Advanced Strategy
- Appendices
- Battle Reports



Old Intro Ending:

As I said, I would classify myself as a very good player. I know several people who I would consider True Gosus that I occasionally play with but rarely beat, some other people in my own level, and several others a level or two below me. In Starcraft, as in any competitive endeavour, playing with the best competition is the best way to improve. If you want to get anywhere in this game, learn these ground rules:

1: Good manners do go a long way: Many players, once reaching the good player or very good player level get cocky and start trash talking people. Because they can defeat most of the people they come up against they begin to get an inflated idea of their skills. Bad manners have derailed several people on their path to the top, as they get stuck in a rut caused by their own cockiness. If you can beat most of the people you come up against, it's not because your an awesome starcraft player, it's because you aren't finding good enough competition. If you can steamroll through pubbies, start playing in x17. If you steamroll through x17, start playing wgtour. Or find someone that can beat you and make friends with them. You'll soon notice that it's easier to make friends with good manners, and making friends with more skilled players then yourself is one way to get the competition you need to develop your skills. I myself am friends with several less skilled players then myself and play with them regularly. Why? Because they are good mannered to me and fun to be around. So I play with them and give them a chance to play with superiour competition. In the same way as I have friends that are far superiour to me but give me a chance to play with them even though I can't beat them often, because I am good mannered to them.

2: Losing is GOOD! The defining trademark of a player who will never be anybody in the world of starcraft compared to a player on his way up is how well they take losing. Even though it's often frustrating at the time, I cherish every game that I lose. In fact, if I was to win 6 games in a row in a given night of gaming, I'd be bored to tears. I sometimes experiment with trick strats just so that I get beaten. You must pursue competition that is higher then your own level if you wish to get anywhere in Starcraft. As I said above, x17 is ok for ok, or decent players, wgtour for the good, very good, and even gosus (if you have a lot of time to kill to get to the higher ranks). Also there are often times free third party bnet ladders running. While most are disorganised, poorly run, and plagued by abusers, they are occasionally a good way to find good competition. I never thought of cloud ladder, cybercraft ladder, wgtour, gamei, or anything like those as something that I wanted to win. I thought of them as excellent places to find people that could beat me.

3: The proper mindset to improvement is humility. You must accept that you have room to improve if you ever want to. You must accept that a game you lost is not because the other guy is a hacker, or because you were just fooling around, or whatever. When you lose a game, it's because you were outplayed, plain and simple. The only time an excuse is valid is if you would still have lost even if you were the best player alive. If you would have won if you were the best player alive, then when you lost it's only because you were not good enough. You'll improve fastest if you learn from every single loss, not just the couple that you feel were 'legitimate'. Every last game is winnable if you play it right, so if you lose, it's because you played it wrong, and that's all there is to it.

Realistically, there's hope for most people, wherever they are now, to become great players within 9 months, given the right competition and enough time put in every day. There are rumours of people becoming truly great in as little as two months under the intense tutelage of a starcraft great, but such a thing probably never happens anymore, because the level of competition is such that if any starcraft progamer were to take a month off to train a newbie, their own skills would drop significantly. How much time is enough? It depends on how you use it, of course. If you are just playing the game, or studying the game (as in watching replays with the intent of learning from them, not for entertainment value, analysing your play with bwchart, and discussing strategy with a superiour player) then you can probably do it with only 4 or 5 hours per day. Unfortunately I know that personally a lot of my time spent on Starcraft is wasted time, chatting with people, reading sc fan sites, and watching replays just for entertainment. If you want to improve quickly, you need to use your time wisely only on playing and studying starcraft.



Basic Strategy:

-Basic Concepts:
b: Scouting/Countering
c: Micro
d: Macro

Starcraft Theory

Scouting and Countering

Scouting and Countering are of utmost importance to a Protoss player. If you want to have any hope at all of surviving the first threat from a terran or zerg player, you must know what it is. Here is why, situation by situation.

Say your terran opponent is going early dropships on you. A similar move by protoss is a reaver drop build. If both of you go through the standard build orders, here is what will happen. Your reaver will be somewhere between mostly completed to just completed when the terran lands two tanks behind your mineral line. He fires a volley (or maybe 2) into your probes as you are scrambling to drop your own reaver on him. He unsieges the tanks and picks them up again. He leaves the scene, secure in the knowledge of two things: one, that he has severely damaged your economy by blowing away as many as 10 probes and by probably making you run the others away losing mining time, and two, he knows what your strat is and is going to be ready at his own base with tanks and turrets protecting his mineral line. Essentially the game is over already. His attack succeeded and your own is doomed to failure. He can expand before you and overpower you shortly after that.

Say your terran opponent is doing a fast expand build while you are doing a standard 2 gateway dragoon build and expanding with a shuttle. His expansion will be online even as you are beginning to warp in your nexus. He will be producing tanks out of 6 or 7 factories for several seconds before you will be producing goons and later on speed zealots out of 7 or 8 gateways. He will attack you with maybe 18 tanks and you'll have in the neighbourhood of 12 goons. He'll decimate you and win easily.

Say your terran opponent is doing an early push build and you're doing a dt drop build. He'll be knocking on your door (defended by maybe 3 dragoons) before your dt even pops out. He'll probably climb your ramp, force you to waste your 1 or 2 dt's defending yourself, and keep on the pressure while expanding himself and winning easily. See Nada vs Reach kpga finals.

Say your zerg opponent is going for 1 base mutalisks and you're going for a reaver drop. Right as you land in his minerals 5 mutas come out while 2 scourge take out your shuttle. The reaver will be lucky to kill 3 drones before it's smeared by glaive wurms. The muta counter attack will find you scrambling to throw up cannons while he focus fires on your goons, taking them out one by one and expanding himself. Soon his economy fires up 40 or 50 hydras to keep you out of your natural while you're struggling to make enough goons to fend off the mutas.

Say your zerg opponent is going for a 9 pool and you a forge first expand. His 6 lings cancel your cannons for you then get into your mineral line and start taking out probes. Its over already.

Say your zerg opponent is going for a 2 hatch hydra build while you 1 gate tech to sairs. 10 lings and 8 hydras are at your ramp tangling with 4 or 5 slow zealots.

Say your zerg opponent is going for a lurker rush build and you quick tech to templars. 4 lurkers force their way up your ramp as 2 temps with 50 mana and maybe psi storm researched, maybe not, pop out. The lurkers make their way to your mineral line and its over.

There are many other situations to discuss, but take my word on it: the other races are faster to start then protoss. You MUST counter what they do. I know there are a few of you who say things like 'my reaver rush bo will attack the terran before his tanks attack me' but, unfortunately, you're just wrong. This is what actually happens at high levels of play using the most efficient build orders. You cannot drop a reaver on your enemy faster then he can drop 2 tanks on you. You cannot drop a reaver on the enemy before he can hatch muta/scourge and take it out. You cannot dt drop before terran has adequate detection doing a standard build order. While there is always the chance that you'll get lucky and accidentally counter the enemy's strat, in most cases there is really only one effective counter to an enemy build order, a few that might let you stay in the game if you're lucky, and a few others that will lose you the game in a hurry.

It does not necessarily work the same way for the other races. They are much safer not scouting then protoss is. Because of the simple fact that they can usually attack first, or switch in time. Even if a zerg goes mutalisks without having a clue what toss is up to, it's almost always a safe play for zerg. Unless toss is really strange and built 5 cannons and rushed to archons, the mutalisks are guaranteed to do at least some damage, scout the toss a little bit, and deter him from attacking the zerg long enough for the zerg to switch to something else. Going hydra or lurker is basically always safe because it's nearly impossible for toss to counter that in such a way as zerg is going to be in bad shape before he can do something about it. It's a little bit riskier for terran, if he goes early dropships and fails to do any damage at all while losing both tanks and the drop ship he's in pretty bad trouble, but for the most part terrans can micro well enough to keep that from happening, and they combine it with an early expansion in any case so that they are ahead, or at least even, even failing to deal a blow to toss. Terran can do an early push without knowing what toss is up to because most times the early push is cost effective enough at least to cover a terran expansion and keep the terran on even footing. Terran can fast expand without scouting because it's quite difficult for toss to stop an early expansion unless he's totally sure of it, and even if he is terran can delay the expansion a little bit, keep making scvs with the second cc, and land it safely a little later to stay in the game in decent shape.

Your first scout should always be your 7th probe, (8/9 supply), who should, after building a pylon, head to the other mains. If your opponent is zerg, go the second closest main first, because you will know if he's in the closest main by his scouting overlord coming into your base by the time your probe gets to the second closest main. At which point you can easily redirect your hot keyed probe to his base to scout. If he's terran, always go to the closest main first. (note that if you are at 9 or 6, the closest mains would actually be 12 and 3, respectively) Now if you know for a fact your terran opponent always walls in, you're in good scouting shape because it means you only have to climb the ramp of a main to know whether he is there or not. That can save you 3 or 4 seconds for every main that you have to scout. Otherwise make sure your probe goes all the way to the enemy mineral line, because rather then wallin, many terran players build 3 or 4 marines to block their ramp instead. This is less popular then walling in though, because it makes a drop ship build rather worse by wasting the minerals spent on those four marines will be wasted (though they can still be used in a bunker to early push or fast expand). Plus it gives you the added bonus of being fairly confident that your opponent will not drop you right then and there.

Microing that first probe is something that takes some practice, but it's certainly very necessary. Against terran players, tell it to attack an scv that's building something. Soon enough another scv will come along to chase your probe away. Lead it on its merry way throughout the terrans base, never letting the enemy scv touch it at all. Some people think they can kill scvs with probes by hitting and running, then hitting again after the shields regenerate. While this is technically possible, don't count on it. scv's are far more efficient attackers and almost always get the best of a probe, meaning you will likely be hurt in hp as well as shields before being able to run away again. Also any decent terran will simply replace his scv with a fresh one if it looks like your probe is actually going to have a chance at killing it. You want that probe to stay alive, staying alive to see what the terran does is infinately more valuable then killing an scv. At any rate, most terrans will probably build a marine or 2 to finish off your probe. Evading marines is more difficult then evading scvs, but definately possible. Just keep in mind 2 things about their movement: First off, marines have perfect acceleration but slower top speed. So the more you can keep your probe moving in a straight line, the more it will outpace the enemy marine. Do this by running around in the widest possible circles. Also, probes can move through units easily with its mining ai, while marines do not mine minerals. Since the minerals are always at one end of a base its possible for the marine to trap your probe there, but by clicking on a mineral at the far end of the patch, your probe effortlessly moves through the mining scvs, while the marine, trying to chase, gets stuck behind the scvs and goes much slower. If he has not built a refinery you can do this trick by clicking the geyser, but once his refinery has started construction, it no longer works. That can buy you enough time to get away easily. It's guaranteed that the marine will be able to fire the odd shot at your probe, but if you did not let it engage an scv it will probably have enough hit points to survive for a long time. Long enough to sometimes get some idea of the terran strategy, or at least slow him down for a while by preventing him from commiting to either a command center, starport, or second factory. Beware of the possibility of the terran showing you something, then cancelling after your probe is dead. For example he could make a second factory, showing you an early push build, then cancel it and make a starport and drop you while your forces are waiting at his choke for the early push. You basically just have to get a sense of the terran's timing and know that if he hasn't left his base after a certain point to push you, he probably isn't planning an early push at all.

Against zerg players, once you find the base, first make sure as to whether he fast expanded or not. A second hatch morphing in the main would indicate not. A hatch morphing at his natural would obviously indicate the inverse. Most zergs these days do a second hatch in main third hatch in nat strategy, though some do a first hatch expansion and some do a one base lair tech game, or even more rarely a 1 base 2 hatch hydra or three hatch ling build. After your probe has determined zerg's opening build order (either pool first, hatch at nat first, or hatch in main first) it's time to harass some drones. Unlike terran, probes can and occasionally do kill drones, and it is worth your effort to try. The best way to do it is to station a probe at the edge of the mineral patch (either the top, bottom, leftmost or rightmost mineral patch) and wait for a drone to come mine it. The probe automatically attacks the drone. Some zerg players ignore the probe, giving you a chance to severely damage the drone and maybe later on finish it off. Others counter attack with the drone, but since your probe got the first hit it will win the fight. Beware though, the second it looks like he is bringing in a second drone run away immediately. It may be that he is fighting a fight he knows he will lose just to weaken your probe, only at the last second to attack with several other drones killing your own weakened probe before it can get away while retreating his own injured drone to safety. Most often the zerg will simply redirect his drone to another patch. This is good, because it means you're taking a whole patch away from him and making him play the first few minutes of the game as if his base has only 7 mineral patches, while your own has 8. Eventually his lings will pop out and chase after your probe. Lings are harder to evade then a single marine because they can block your avenues of escape, but if you pay attention you can get your probe to safety or stick around to scout a little longer (which you want to do if he hasn't gotten an extractor yet, you want to know for as long as possible if he's doing without). If you lose that probe (and you probably will) try to select another probe (or 2 if he has a lot of lings) at home and click on the minerals inside the zerg's base while your probe is revealing them. Because of the mining ai, that second probe will be able to pass through any enemy units on its way to that patch, but it only works if you click on the minerals inside the zerg base while they are revealed by the first probe. This will give your second probe a chance to maybe see if the zerg has expanded with a third hatch (in case it did a second hatch in it's main) and maybe even see whether the zerg is upgrading to a lair, massing sunkens, massing zerglings, or building a hydra den or evolution chamber (an evo chamber would be a strong indication that he is not going mutas, since you can't upgrade mutas at an evo chamber, there's no need to get one until later).

Against a fellow protoss user scouting is perhaps the most important of all three races. For this reason, I rarely risk my probe at all trying to kill one his probes. Even though it's just as possible as it is against zerg, the info you glean is just too critical to risk. For that reason I leave it sitting within sight of the enemy's geyser, to see when he will build an assimilator. Once he does, put it within site of his pylon(s), waiting to see what he will build beside it(them). You can't evade a dragoon for long because it's faster and does more damage then an enemy marine, so I try to run home with my probe when the enemy dragoon completes.

Its tougher with zerg then with terran to tell what he is planning, and zerg is far more forgiving (to the zerg player) even if you do guess, so consequently zerg is a lot harder on you then terran to beat, but still fun all the same.

After these opening scouting procedures there's a lot to be done. First is confirmation, one way or another. You should start your build conservatively countering what your opening scout saw, but never forgetting that the enemy could be decieving you and changing strats after your scout is gone. Therefore it is necessary to send another scout later on to attempt to confirm your suspicions. This should be done not less then 2 minutes from when your first scout died, or immediately when your first scout is dying in the case of zerg. This second scout will probably be limited to a view of the enemy's natural, but by partly climbing the ramp you can get an idea of his troop count and makeup (though don't forget he could be hiding other troops out of sight). If it's a zerg player and he has no sunkens, there is a chance that you can lure his zerglings down the ramp to chase your probe and then sneak up it for a look at his tech, though its quite unlikely against a good player. Your main goal will be to see how many sunkens, drones, and zerglings he has at his natural. If he has nothing and hydras aren't leaving his base then you know for sure that he's doing a 1 base muta or hydra build. A terran will either have marines or a wall blocking your view, but if he's doing an early push you'll certainly find out with this probe, and it can also detect an early expansion by seeing a floating cc, which by process of elimination means that if you find neither of these things dropships are quite likely. This probe will not very likely find out anything useful against a protoss player and for that reason I often scout quite a bit later on with it compared to against the other races. Basically you want to find out if he's early expanded, or if he has only 1 zealot and 1 dragoon on his ramp, which would be a big hint to move your dragoons back to your own mineral line and tech observers quickly, since a dt rush or reaver drop are highly likely, or if you have a lot of goons but no tech, to attack right away to try to slow him down while you catch up tech wise.

A couple good tips for scouting a zerg player with early ling dominance (for example if he 9 pooled or you did a fast teching build). You don't want to let the lings into your base because that would be a definate disaster. Slow zealots are not equipped to defend against speedlings in the open. But if you want to scout him you would have to move your zealot wall aside to let your probe through. That could risk his lings running up your ramp at the wrong time getting into your base. To avoid that, take your probe and run it up to the edge of your highground so that either your natural or mineral only natural minerals are in view of the probe. Then you can simply right click on those minerals and your probe will obligingly run right through your blocking zealots without them having to move at all. Good zerg players going for a build with early ling dominance will not allow your probe to get to his base easily. With a well positioned overlord or zergling he will know when your probe heads down the ramp and use his zerglings to try to cut it off as best he can. If they have speed, your probe will almost certainly not make it to the enemy base. In that case you have a couple options. First, you can try sending out your zealots to protect your probe part of the way and maybe give it enough cover to get to the enemy base unmolested. But that is extremely risky, because the zerg player could run past your zealots and into your main (unless you have it blocked by more zealots, which can be a good ploy) or more dangerously, he might have enough lings to simply surround and annihilate your whole zealot army, which is far weaker in the open then it would be holding your ramp. That is a first rate catastrophe to be sure. So a better ploy is to send a second probe a little after the first one. The first one can lead the zerglings on a merry chase while the second, undetected, gets through. While certainly there are zerg's clever and aware enough to spot the second probe and attempt to stop it too, he will still be forced to split his forces in two which gives one of your probes better odds of getting through. Whatever you do, don't give up on scouting zerg. If he is going to a lot of trouble to keep you from scouting, it's almost definately because he has something to hide. I doubt that I have ever won a game where zerg successfully prevented me from scouting with my probe at all.

Throughout the game you want to have a probe sitting in your enemy's natural until he expands there. You want to be aware the minute he expands and the minute he's leaving his base with an attack force. If you lose the probe, quickly look at what's there. It's vision will remain for a second after it's dead, and that second can tell you a lot. If you see a single drone, probe, or floating cc, it almost certainly means expansion. If you see a large number of troops that keep moving towards your base without stopping or turning around, send another probe right away to see if he really is attacking. I often like to fake attacks by killing the enemy scout and moving all the way out of my natural before going home and expanding, especially against zerg, but by the same token the enemy can do that to you just as easily.

At some point you're going to have observers. No high level protoss user goes through to the mid game without them, no matter what the situation. Against enemy protoss and terran users your build order is going to call for observers quite early on as a necessity. Against zerg they are not necessarily needed right away, but no protoss would seriously consider expanding to their natural without getting observers quite shortly after. The thing is, observers serve 2 roles. Their primary purpose is so that you can survive the enemy mid game threats. IE dts from Protoss, mines from terran, and lurkers from zerg. Their secondary purpose is at least as obvious, but for some reason often ignored. Observers make pretty decent scouts. Once I get an observatory up I usually build non stop observers out of it unless I have pressing need for a shuttle or reaver. The point is that in no game where you expand to your natural should you go with fewer then 4 total observers. You need at least 2 for your armies (since it's too easy to lose track of one or have one killed -- against zerg I'd keep at least 3 since a favourite ploy of lurker users is to kill observers in the area preventing the detection of lurkers) and several more to scout. One over top of the enemy's natural to monitor troop movements and defense. 2 more, 1 patrolling each main (you can patrol in such a way as to cover a main, it's natural, and an island with 1 observer). If you can, get one or two into the enemy base to look at troop numbers and tech. Also keep at least one and ideally 3 or 4 in the middle of the map to watch the mineral only expansions and monitor his troop movement through the center. All of those observers will provide you with essential information that more then makes up for their cost. Also, if you are facing a terran user fond of dropships, place observers along likely lanes of travel to the back of your base and your natural cliff so that you can spot the attacks and intercept them before they happen.

Counterintelligence is another often underrated part of Starcraft (but not among the top players!). Just as your scouts are providing you with invaluable information, so are his scouts providing him. Therefore, killing them is worth your time and effort. When I build my first observer in pvp, my goal with it is always to kill the enemy observer right away. I scout his base with my second observer. In addition that means that if he's dt rushing me my observer will be handy to stop him. When playing a zerg player and you have some kind of secret tech like a stargate, build a dragoon and place it in a spot where it can intercept an ovie that might be heading towards your stargate looking to uncover your scheme. Against terran there is little you can do about comsats except spreading your different tech buildings around in unlikely spots. But don't spread out buildings in the same tech path! If your going for a dt rush, for gods sake don't put your citadel on opposite ends of your base as your templar archives, put them right beside each other. If he scans either he'll know your game right away, so you might as well not double the chances of either being scanned. Same for if your going for a surprise carrier fork, put your fleet beacon right with your stargates, hiding the whole kit and kaboodle well away from any minerals and gas that are likely to be scanned in the terran's routine sweeps.

Ultimately, those are all rote things that anyone can do. The really good players are separated by their ability to interpret the enemy strat from surprisingly little information. They can get a half a second glance at an enemy drone line and instantly know if the zerg powered too much or too little. They can tell by enemy unit count how much tech they have. That's something that you can get only with experience because every game is different in that respect.

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Starcraft Theory

Micro

Micromanagement, or Micro to Starcraft players, is the act of controlling units in battle to make them more effective. On one level, Micro is essential to all levels of starcraft. On one level, there are certain things that all players simply MUST do if they don't want to get massacred. That includes patrolling or using attack move when entering into a battle, rather then force moving, keeping your forces together rather then sending them in one at a time, and retreating when the battle is going poorly. Those basic things can be accomplished by all but the most newbie of players. After that, things start to get a little more in depth. I'll go situation by situation with certain micro techniques I developed over the years to help me in battle. The situations I cover are the toughest situations a toss player has to micro. Everyone knows how to micro 2 dragoons against a zealot, so I'll only cover the sort of things that I think some people would benefit from some tips.

Microing the infamous reaver drop: This is something that takes very low hand speed yet is still regarded by many as a defining skill of protoss players. For a long time in my newbie days I disliked templar immensly and so became very proficient with reavers as an alternative. In fact I bet that my newbie self of 3 years ago could kick my today self's ass in a reaver fight. Luckily most of it has stayed with me even today.

There are a few things you must do in a reaver drop.

1st, the preparation: scout with an observer for likely targets wherever possible. Never send in a reaver without prescouting the drop zone unless you babysit on the way in so you can turn back before getting hurt if he is defending the location. Hotkey the shuttle for sure. Try to never bring a lone reaver. 1 goon is better then nothing, 2 zealots is far far better then 1 goon, and a second reaver is a little better then 2 zealots.

2nd, be careful: Never drop onto a spot that is defended. A reaver and a shuttle are a major investment. Never risk losing one. If the enemy has 4 goons on your drop zone there is a good chance you can drop and even get a scarab into his mineral line, but no way will that one scarab be worth the cost of your reaver and shuttle and whatever else was in it. Remember this too, if you drop beside a turret or spore the shuttle is guaranteed dead so the reaver and its cargo are too (though they can be landed before the turret kills the shuttle, with their escape route gone it's only a matter of time for them). Only drop onto a turret or spore if you are 100% sure that you will do enough damage to be worth losing all that, or if you have to make a desperate move to rescue the game. Dropping onto a cannon is different because it will switch to attack your land units after you drop them, so if you kill the cannon you can safely escape.

3rd, be persistant: Just because you're careful doesn't mean you should give up if he's blocking a drop on his mineral line. A reaver and a shuttle are a major investment and not using them is almost as bad as losing them. Therefore try a few things. One thing is to fein an attack on his front to try to lure his defenses away from his mineral line. Drop your reaver into his mineral line as he moves to the front of his base and then run your frontal army the hell away before it gets massacred. Another thing is drop an undefended part of his base. So what if its just an outlying pylon? If you have a speedy shuttle as you should, it will be worth it anyways, because of reaver range it will fire first at the defenders, and you can pick up and run away before they fire back. Repeat that a few times and your reaver will have enough kills to be worth your while--and may even kill a building or two. Third, if one shuttle just won't do the trick, try two. A decoy shuttle is good for luring away defenses, and in addition if he kills it and assumes he got your reaver he may not bother to defend his mineral line anymore. Or two full shuttles, with you dropping one reaver on the outskirts of his base as above and then sneaking in another reaver to his mineral line works excellent if he assumes you have only 1 reaver and shuttle. Once you start to play around with multiple shuttles though, make sure you have good handspeed and hotkeying.

4th, the actual drop: left click the unit picture in the shuttle bay to drop wherever possible, its a lot more reliable. Drop your decoy cargo (zealots or goon) first to draw fire, then your reaver, if there is defenses near. If you are hitting a naked mineral line, drop your reaver first to allow the enemy the least amount of reaction time possible before your reaver starts shooting. It's safe to drop on a single cannon in this way, or a single goon or even 2 goons. 3 is pushing it unless you have 2 zealots or 2 reavers. Make sure your reaver focuses on a probe. You want to right click a probe that has the following attributes: is within reaver range (so that it doesn't need to move to fire) is heading towards the mineral line (ie is not currently mining or returning a mineral) and is close to the middle of the mineral line. By the time the scarab gets to the probe, it will be mining or close enough that you'll get maximum effect. However if the enemy is quick and moves away all his probes your scarab might screw up and do nothing. Thats luck. Once his probes move away its time to get the hell out of there. I usually forget about the decoy cargo and just save the reaver but sometimes you can save the zealots or goon too. Your drop was worth it if you kill at least 8 probes early in the game. If it's later in the game he probably has more probes mining then he needs so you need to kill more like 12 to have much impact. But his probes are more tightly compacted so thats more possible. Thats if you lose the reaver and shuttle. As long as you save the reaver and shuttle though, even killing 3 probes is worth it when you count the lost mining time and psychological edge of him having to play more defensively for the rest of the game. If you do lose the reaver, build another one and another shuttle. A lot of times players think that you'll give up after one drop and are therefore more open to a second one. Remember that even if you can't take out a probe line, you can still harass like hell and reavers make effective enough warriors.

Microing a Psi Raid: This is something a lot more difficult then a reaver drop, but potentially a lot more explosive. You'll load a shutttle generally with at least 2 templar and some combination of dts and zealots (dts if you scouted a lack of detection, otherwise zealots). In general the same rules apply to psi raids as to reaver drops. Except that you can't psi storm buildings, so unless you scout a mineral line that you can hit, don't bother.

Dropping the templar and storming with them takes a lot more control then doing the same with a reaver, but here is the technique that I use. Force move the shuttle to a destination past the point where you want to drop your units, and then left click on their portraits as you go over the drop zone. The shuttle keeps moving as the guys unload. This will get the shuttle out of the way so that you can select the templar more easily. Also it doesn't matter much what units you drop first because the enemy ai will switch focus to your decoy zealots anyways (whereas if it were a reaver, their ai focus would stay on the reaver). If you're dropping onto sunkens with dts and no ovies are around, the sunkens will stay attacking your temps, not being able to see the dts, so act fast. I wouldn't bother dropping dts and templar only near tanks with no detection as the tanks need only 2 shots to kill a templar, so 2-3 tanks means instant death for your temps without a zealot to draw fire. Anyways, with the shuttle out of the way, you can select the temps and storm the bejesus out of the mineral line a little easier, then pick them up and run for it. Either that or simply have the templar hotkeyed as well.

Microing vs Hydras(and possibly lings too) with zealot/temp: I did a lot of experimenting with this and found that for someone of my mouse speed and lack of hotkeying, its most efficient to ignore zealots and just concentrate on storming once the battle starts when your talking about large numbers. Obviously if you can see him first and storm him first while his guys are standing still thats a big plus (obs help there). If it's a really massive battle and you have in the neighbourhood of 8 templar, just focus on finding one's with mana and keep storming clumps of zerg units. He won't be able to move his guys out of the way every time so it will work out great for you. With smaller numbers of your own temps and zealots (if the numbers are something like 3-4 templar and 12ish zealots vs 20-30 hydra), you want to make sure that you don't storm your own zealots since you need to have some around after your storms are used up to mop up the remaining hydras. Also he will be able to dance his units a little bit so you want to be more precise in your storming. In that case, focus your psi storms on hydras closer to the back of the group and move zealots back in case you're about to storm yourself. A good hydra dancer will have you doing more damage to yourself then he does to you so be careful. When storming hydras always click on an actual hydra, never the ground. This will take away a lot of the effectiveness of his dancing.

Microing goon/reaver armies: goon/reaver armies are relatively cost efficiently weak compared to many other toss ground combinations against the enemy. Pure goons flanking can be your bane for sure, so can pure hydras flanking. Tanks obviously massacre that so I won't even bother talking about it. The real key to that setup is formation. You want your goons in a line facing the enemy with your reavers about 1 square behind them (about equal to the size of a goon). If the enemy tries to focus on your reavers by all means pick them up in a shuttle if you have one. If not, there's not much you can do as running away won't get your reavers anywhere fast. Most of the micro in that sort of fight is in the preparation. Making sure that he isn't flanking you and making sure that your reavers aren't too close to the front to be focussed on, yet aren't too far away that the enemy will be out of their range. It's difficult to get them to move in concert with goons in good formation but practice will help you more then anything. At any rate I'd almost never advocate getting reavers against zerg, and definately never going for a reaver/goon ground force against terran, so the only way you usually see it is pvp, where one or both guys go reaver drop at first and then try to attack the other guy's expansion with goons. A reaver on defense with damage upgrade and proper goon support can be a real boost in pvp though. Only thing is it's difficult to attack an all goon user because of the danger of getting flanked. So you'll often see reaver droppers get overpowered if their drop fails.

Microing goon vs goon: In small numbers (12 or less apiece), focusing fire and dancing is the key to victory. Tell all your goons to attack the closest enemy goon, meanwhile pulling back the goon which he is focusing on. If his goon gets out of range, don't chase it but switch targets to another one that's close to you. If you have really good handspeed, let only one of your goons to chase his wounded one, otherwise you'll have to let it go until it comes back into range. Chasing after it with every unit while getting shot at is definately not cost effective. In larger battles focus firing becomes less important because your goons will be wasting shots (it takes less then 12 shots for a goon to kill a goon so having more then 12 guys focusing on one enemy is pointless) and because it's very difficult to get 12+ goons in range to attack the same enemy goon (meaning that several goons will just be milling about in confusion not shooting at anything). It's still worth your while to periodically pull back injured goons that are getting fired upon by multiple units though, so keep your eyes peeled on that score. Most important of all is your starting formation. You want your guys to form an arc around his guys, which are ideally in a filled box or circle. That way all or most of your own goons will be in range to fire, while many of his will not. I'd say that with an ideal formation against a bad formation, 16 goons could easily take on 20 or even more, depending on the enemy's reaction. So for goodness sakes don't attack move into an enemy line formation with a clump of your own units. Spread them out as much as the terrain allows into your own line formation and try to break up his formation with hit and run attacks into the center of his line, drawing them towards you. Obviously any time you can set up a flank on him you certainly should. Many many pvp games come down to a big goon vs goon battle and many people get decimated even when the numbers are relatively close, without even knowing why. Chances are it's their formation.

Microing zealot/templar against goons: this is obviously extremely similar to microing against hydras but a little bit harder (to micro, not to win) for two reasons: 1, goons are large, and thus you can't storm as many at one time, 2, goons are a lot tougher, meaning that storm alone rarely kills them. Zealot/Templar is definately a cost effective unit choice against all goons provided the zealots are speedy, but it does have to be microed well. First off, never send in the zealots before you storm, you want to storm first so that the goons are running around dancing it instead of attacking the zealots on the way in. Second off, remember that storm is not necessarily your primary weapon. Unless you have like 8 temps and 8 zealots, the majority of your damage will be dealt by zealots. Storm's purpose is to soften up the goons and give the zealots some cover so they can get in close. That means take care not to storm your own zealots. Unlike battles against hydras, it's not ok to indiscrimately storm everything in site. Once your zealots are engaging goons in close combat, your job is basically done. Storm only if you can be sure that goons backing away from it won't lure your zealots into the after effects of the storm. Assuming equal numbers of zealots as goons and close to equal upgrades, once your zealots get in close the goons are sunk. The goon's big hope is in being able to kill off some zealots on the way in. Make them dodge storms and they won't get their chance. After that let the zealots do their work.

Microing drops onto well defended islands: The truth is even speedy shuttles make crappy transports if you have to drop onto a decent amount of turrets or spores (cannons are less dangerous to shuttles since they switch focus to your attack units once their dropped) and they are just deplorable against goliaths or microed hydralisks. However there are 2 tricks to get your loads off safely. If it is your natural cliff being dropped by a large terran drop force you can be in real trouble (especially at 9, where terran takes away 2 expansions) and probably don't have the resources on hand to save yourself, nor can you spare to go without 2 expansions while you make them. Generally the terran drops some absurd amount of goliaths on the cliff (like maybe 12) with only 1 or 2 tanks. Those goliaths are more then capable of blasting the 1 or 2 shuttles you have out of the sky. However, you probably have another choice. Force move some zealots and all your templar to right below the cliff. With only 1 or 2 tanks it will be a while before they focus on your templar. Use a shuttle or observer to vision the high ground (or let his goliaths give it to you by firing down on your zealots) and storm them. The terran user will be forced to pull back his goliaths as you storm them. That may give you a chance to unload 4 zealots onto his cliff safely. Although 4 zealots won't do much to that many goliaths, while hes dancing around fighting them you can unload 4 more and repeat as necessary. As long as his goliaths don't get a chance to shoot down your shuttle, you still have a chance to end the threat to your cliff. While that may sound pretty reasonable and logical, many is the time when a toss player well ahead in the game suddenly finds his cliff occupied, promptly throws away a loaded shuttle or two to the goliaths, and basically has the whole game turn against him in an instant. Keep your head, as long as you have some temps with mana you have a chance to stay in the game.

Later in a game you may find yourself wondering how you're going to get terran off an island which he has errected 15 or more turrets onto. You'd need at least 5 dropships to have a hope at unloading anything, obviously all the dropships would be forfeit, many wouldn't get to unload at all, and there's no guarantee whatsoever that what does land will be able to even defeat the mining scvs in combat. Not a very happy situation. But there is 1 thing you can try. Rather then making 8 dropships, take advantage of the turret ai. They always attack fighting units first. Load up 2 dropships with zealots, archons, or dts, and maybe a templar or two, and make an escort of 4 or 5 sairs. I don't mean dweb, because if you just discovered this island and you have no stargate it will take you too long to get the mana and wait for the research to bother (unless you plan to use dweb later for some reason). Dweb is one way to take care of turrets (although its duration is pretty abysmal right now, should cost 75 for that amount of time), but just decoying them works just as well. Force move your sairs to the middle of the island and then shift click a few rally points for them to move around to to make sure they don't run away. Right behind the sairs (and I do mean right behind, because turrets can kill sairs surprisingly quickly and then turn on your shuttles) send in the shuttles and unload. If all goes well you should have unloaded your full cargo. You might even be able to save your shuttles by running them away right away. Your sairs will probably be forfeit, but its well worth it to take out an island expansion, especially that heavily fortified. The mineral cost of 15-20 turrets could very well be more then what he actually mined from it before you took the island back, which would really be a blow to him. Or suppose you're going carriers and the guy has all those turrets. It will take 2 or 3 carriers forever to wipe out that defense, especially if hes repairing and rebuilding turrets. Just bring a shuttle or two along with the carriers. While the turrets (and possibly goliaths too) are happily blasting interceptors out of the sky your shuttles can safely unload zealots, dts, or templars to give your carriers a lot of extra punch. Once you've got yourself an extra gas expansion you can start mixing in arbiters as well, which are almost always worth their absurdly high cost.

The same trick of using sairs/inters to decoy anti air units works in many circumstances. You can use it to help you drop onto goliaths assualting your cliff, same with hydras/lurkers doing the same (though carriers vs zerg is almost always asking for trouble).

Microing vs terran metal: A lot of mediocre toss players have real trouble with this one. I know I did. I used to try all kinds of things like dropping reavers onto tanks, mind controlling with dark archons, rushing to dweb tech. Silly things that protoss players will try when they don't know what to do. Well the bottom line is that it's actually simple. When protoss players get smashed by a metal army, its 90% for one of two reasons: either the terran just has a much bigger army (doesn't matter how you micro, 12 zealots and 6 goons cannot defeat 12 vultures and 24 tanks) or terran has a much better upgraded army (3-3 metal vs 0-0-0 toss is dismal). It's not because he's outmicroing you. Basically all you really have to do is stay even in production and throw stuff at him at the right time. The right time is pretty subjective and nothing but experience can help you there. As for the throwing, well, here's a few tips.

1: send in the obs/goons first to clear mines as far as you can before getting shot by tanks. If his vultures come out to play, shoot them too, just don't get lured into tank range. If there's lower numbers of units at play, like maybe 12-20 toss ground vs maybe 6-10 vults and 6 or so tanks then it may be worth your while to suicide some zealots to clear mines. Send them in in groups of 2 or 3 (since 1 will die to tanks too soon to do anything) and force attack into the tanks. With luck you'll pull mines with you damaging the tanks. Also if you happen to notice a bunch of vultures laying mines in a tight area, sending in 1 zealot might be very fortuitous. At the very least you'll take out all or most of the mines, and at the best you might get a pile of vultures with it. After you've done as much mine clearing as you can, send in everything at once. goons/ temps/zealots/dts/archons, the whole smack of guys at the same time.

2: flanking helps a bit. While it won't hurt his army much, since tank range pretty much takes out the notion that you'll engage him without some of his guys being able to reach you and fire back, it does help you get your guys in on him at the same time better, and naturally spreads you out a bit more, decreasing the effectiveness of mines and tank splash.

3: storm only tanks that you think won't otherwise die before firing. Theres no sense in storming a tank surrounded by 4 zealots and a dt. If you notice 2 tanks right beside each other its tempting to storm them both, but if there's 6 zealots running towards them you'll probably do more harm then good unless you aim it perfectly. Storm a tank further back instead, or storm a clump of vultures laying mines. If you notice more then 2 vults laying mines at the same time in a small area, go ahead and storm it, it's worth it for eliminating the mines and doing some damage to all the vults. Also a vulture laying a mine is a stationary target and thus totally vulnerable to storm. Storm clumps of goliaths at every opportunity of course.

4: if you're not using temps in the battle, you can sometimes get away without microing once you've sent the guys in. So take advantage of the time to do other things that require your attention, such as producing your next army. Or better yet, take advantage of the fact that he probably IS microing his guys. Coordinating a psi raid with a major attack is a great way to deal 2 heavy blows to terran at once. Since his attention is on the battle, he won't be able to move his scvs out of the way of your psi storms, ensuring almost total success.

Microing goons vs psi storm: Psi Storm can do a lot of damage to you real quick, no doubt about it. The best thing to do when hit by a psi storm is pull straight back, not to the sides, and definately not forward. Going side to side or forward allows the enemy troops to easily get several free shots on you. Pulling back at least makes it harder for him to hit you. Don't bother trying to focus fire on the temps too much, they'll almost always get off all their storms before you can kill them with goons. Better to try to minimise the damage the storms do then sacrifice 12 goons to kill an 18 mana high templar.

Microing vs Lurkers without detection: This is a very difficult situation for toss. Doing hit and run with goons is one possibility for sure. You want to delay him as much as possible with your zealots too by forcing him to burrow and unburrow all the way to your base. Be careful though as you don't want to sacrifice 12 zealots for the sake of a few seconds. If the zerg has his lurkers where he wants them hit and run obviously no longer works well. Say he is burrowed near your robo trying to kill it before an observer can be made. What to do? If you have an archon, force move a zealot over top of the burrowed lurker and tell him to hold position. Then have the archon attack the zealot; the archon's splash damage will hurt the lurker. If he has many lurkers firing at the zealot it may take a few zealots but lurkers are a good deal more expensive so don't worry about it. No archons? I have tried this trick with reavers as well and for some reason or another they just didn't work. Maybe it was because my zealot wasn't exactly over top of the lurker so the splash wasn't hurting it. Maybe it was a bug. I'm not sure. If you're desperate you may as well try it anyways. At any rate if a reaver fires at a clump of burrowed zerglings, all of them die, not just the one you targetted, so I'm pretty sure the reaver should work against the lurker too, so long as the zealot is positioned right. If you have no reavers or archons, then move a zealot in range of the lurkers firing such that the lurker misses the observatory. The zerg player will have to force the lurker to fire upon the observatory since it's ai will tell it to hit the zealot instead. The zerg player may not notice that his lurker isn't shooting at the observatory for a few seconds, buying you valuable time. The same can be true if he wants to hit a mineral line. Don't send in your troops in a blind rush to kill the lurkers, send them to a spot where the lurker's spines will not be hitting your mineral line when the lurker is shooting at your probes. That gives you a few valuable instants to get your probes away before they are massacred. Also one thing many people do is have their zealots hold position over their ramp to keep the lurker from climbing. Thats fine but only use 1 or 2 zealots at a time. You don't want the lurkers shooting up the cliff hurting all of your zealots at once or you'll lose a whole army in seconds.

Microing a break out attack against lurker contain zerg: This is a very difficult situation, and often unavoidable as well. I'd say that as much as 40% of my pvz games where I get an expansion he will attempt to lurker contain me. The important thing is to keep your head and not panic. Just because you are contained does not mean the zerg secured 6 expansions and is creating 20 5-3 ultralisks while you're sitting in your base. It can take me as long as 5-6 minutes to break out, but I still win a lot more then I lose. Here are the steps to go through in your break out attempts.

1) Psi storm harass constantly. Using your obs, storm whatever offers itself, even if its a lone lurker. If it is a lone lurker, send in a ranged goon with the templar. After storming the lurker, let the ranged goon take a shot at it, which will kill it. That's if the enemy hydras let you. They may very well swarm in, especially if he had advance warning of your templar coming in by using an ovie.

2) Build multiple observers. Hydras almost always kill observers every time one gets close enough to spot a lurker for you. Upgrade the sight range of your observers to help out in that respect. Storm the hydras when they come out to kill the observer, and make sure you always have another one ready. That means almost constant obs production out of your robotics, since you have to be very proactive in taking the fight to his containment force with psi storm.

3) Back off his ovies as much as possible. You will of course have several ranged goons, use them to back his ovies off into his own ranks as much as you can without sacrificing anything. If you have a stargate, building a sair for this purpose alone is worthwhile. It will be useful to see what his power is like as well. I wouldn't advise building a stargate in order to do this if you don't have one already however, since you need to spend money on massing only when you need to break out of a containment.

4) Take no risks. Don't lose any material (except for the inevitable loss of observers). The point is that you are wearing away at his forces while constantly building up your own.

5) When you go to actually attack, here is what you do. Have at least 4 observers with your army so that he will not be able to kill them all during the fight, leaving you in trouble against his lurkers. You don't want to go to break out, lose both your observers, and then have your zealots and goons milling about stupidly while getting killed by 8 lurkers, forcing you to run away and build up your strength for another 2 minutes while he continues to power. If he is more hydra then lurker, (thus making you a lot more zealot then goon) send in 3 or 4 (or whatever, depending on the army size) zealots first by force moving them behind his containing lurkers. That should draw their fire away from the bulk of your forces. If he is more lurker then hydra (a lurker roughly equals 3 hydras assuming he has only 2 geysers) then you should have maybe equal numbers of goons as zealots. In that case send in the goons and temps first, holding back the zealots. With insane micro skills you can focus on the lurkers with the goons, but I mostly just let the goons do their own thing and concentrate on storming the lurkers with my temps. They usually naturally die to a random goon shot after being stormed anyways. You'll likely get your goons pretty raped by the lurker/hydra fire, but once you get most of the lurkers out of the way you can safely send in your zealots to clean up. It's important to keep the zealots in good shape because he's not likely to have many more lurkers from the ones containing you. Most likely he'll have mostly hydras, lings, and sunkens that he's hastily constructing in panic as you break out. For that kind of stuff you want zealots a lot more.

Additional tips for offensive hatchery contain: I've had this done to me a lot less then a simple lurker/hydra contain and so have a lot less experience with dealing with it. Basically, rather then hydras supporting his lurkers, he has sunkens supporting his lurkers. For that here is the differences I would make.

1. Be a little more desperate, because sunkens are cheap and cost effective once they're in place. As time goes on you'll probably only get more in the hole.

2. Forget about large scale templar production. Against a hydra/lurk contain I'd go hog wild with the temps, you just can't storm too much in that situation. Against sunkens, storm does nothing. I'd stop making temps after 3 or 4.

3. You'll have a lot of extra gas. Here is what you do with it: reavers and dts. Reavers are obviously your friend for 3 reasons: they outrange sunks and lurkers, you don't need a shuttle to carry them to the battle, since the battle is on your doorstep, and they will draw out the enemy forces (that being hydras most likely) giving your templars a chance to storm them. Dts are also good because they are effective against sunkens with their massive damage, and aren't necessarily higher on attack priority then zealots and dragoons, meaning their low hps won't be too badly abused. Furthermore dt drops are almost always very effective because for some reason zerg doesn't seem to defend his expansions properly when he is lurker containing. That mistake is not limited to newbies either as Grrrr... himself has won games by dt dropping zerg progamers that have him sunken contained more then once.

The times that Ive been offensive hatcheried I've almost always broken out successfully (by successfully I mean that I went on to win the game, since breaking out and then facing 5 mining bases doesn't mean anything). Zealots, dragoons, and dark templars working together make a decent enough fighting force against sunkens. The lurker backup are what really hurt you, maiming your zealots and dt, but with a reaver or two backing you up you should be fine shape to win the battle. However, I have seen games where zerg successfully contained toss with sunkens, and Ive seen progamers forced to resort to shuttling around the map expanding to islands and teching arbiters, so be warned that this is a serious problem if you find that you cannot stop him from setting up the contain.

Microing an early push: Usually the early push comes in the form of some combination of 2-3 vultures, 3 or 4 marines, a tank or 2, and maybe as many as 4 scvs. This is something that is quite hard to micro against, but more important then microing skill is just having the right unit selection. For me, I almost always have an obs and 4 dragoons when his first units come knocking. If you're low on units for some reason but have excess minerals, make a shuttle. If you see the terran leaving his base with an early push, definately do make zealots, even though their slow. Also make more gateways (2 don't cut it) and get a citadel right away. You can't keep a natural unless you get very lucky with micro so don't bother getting one until you win a battle or at least get to a point where you know that you can go without 4 extra zealots for a few seconds. Try to meet him just outside his mineral only with your goons, and retreat to another main, not your own. Rely on reinforcements from your gates to stop his initial force and use your initial force to cut off reinforcements from his main after his initial force has engaged your reinforcements at your mineral only natural. Rally your gates to the battle. When microing the battle in front of your main: when he lays mines with his vults, fire at them with the goons as best you can then run away as the mines burrow. Don't let your goons get massacred by a mine hitting them under any circumstance. Keep running away with your goons while shooting at him. Pretty soon he'll be out of mines or vultures. The tanks will have bothered you some but shouldn't have done too much damage since siege mode is probably a little while from finishing researching. After he's done trying to mine you, clear away the mines safely with your goons. By now your goons are probably almost dead to the tank fire, but your zealots can easily chase off the 1 or 2 tanks. More reinforcements, in the form of an even mix of zealots and dragoons, should be on the way, and you can start mining from your nat. Using a shuttle to drop zealots onto his tanks works well of course.

Microing Probe/Zealot rush on zerg: This is something you just have to practice to get good at. Here's a few rules of thumb:

1) Keep your units in a tight bunch

2) Don't get surrounded

3) Don't chase zerglings, attack the hatchery or morphing sunkens if the lings run away. Attack the lings if they come back. Attack the hatchery or morphing sunken again if they run away again. Repeat.

4) Know when to run away. That's something that comes mainly with experience, it's very hard to give a formula for when your rush will no longer do anything but waste zealots.

5) When you do run away, and if his lings are following you, make a judgement call. If you can beat up just his lings, then do so of course. If his lings will kick your ass, get your probes out of there and hide the zealots in a good spot. Behind the min only minerals is one good spot. There is a crack between in the 6 cliff and the water above it at the top of the 6 natural that your zealots can hide in which is also a good spot. The point is to put your zealots in a spot where it's impossible for him to surround them. Ideally he'll have to attack the zealots with 1 ling at a time. Make sure you block your ramp with other zealots so that he can't run into your main. Later on you can go back and rescue those zealots. For the time being they make a great deterrent to him, and may be used as scouts as well.



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Starcraft Theory

Macro

Macromanagement, or Macro to Starcraft players, is the act of producing units and managing your economy. For a toss player it's extremely simple. For a zerg player it's incredibly complex. Luckily we're toss players. However, unluckily for us, if you want to know how to beat a zerg player, it's good to know how their macro works.

Macro is one of the foundations of Starcraft's depth, and an extremely underrated aspect of the game. It is dismissed by critics as 'mindlessly pumping units' but its so much more than that that those critics are clearly newbies. Anyone who thinks a game of starcraft can be won on macro alone, which consists of 'mindlessly pumping units' is someone who never took the time to learn the game, probably because somebody attacked them with an army 5 times as big and they never lived it down.

Macro involves three primary aspects: managing probes, producing units, and expansion timing

Managing probes is a simple matter of efficiency. It takes 18-24 probes to mine 8 mineral patches at peak capacity (depending on how close they are to your nexus) and 3-4 probes to mine a vespene geyser (again depending on its distance to the nexus). It is always in your best interest as protoss to achieve this peak capacity as soon as possible, so keep building probes until you can saturate all of your mining bases. Also, if you plan to expand again before a current base runs out of minerals, keep producing probes anyways, so you can transfer them to the new base. In the late game you should have at least enough probes to mine 3 bases simultaneously at peak capacity. I often have as many as 100 or 120 probes in a long pvt. Many newbies don't realise this, but for most of the game, the majority of your supply should be used up by probes, not fighting units, even though probes are only 1 supply and fighting units are 2 or more.

When you expand, transfer half of your probes to your new expansion (if it's your first. For second and third expansions obviously, don't send half of all your probes. Just send some probes from each mining base so that every base you have has close to the same amount of probes mining). This is known as maynarding, for Maynard, the first person to make famous the move. We do this because of the principle of diminishing returns. If you have 20 probes at your main base, adding another probe will barely increase their mining speed. If you send 10 probes to your natural so you have 10 at each, then each new probe you add will more significantly increase mining. In addition, 20 probes mining at 2 different bases (10 each) can mine much faster then 20 probes at the same base, for the same reason. This is obviously because the probes have to share the minerals less, so each individual probe spends more time mining and less time looking around for a free patch to mine.

Throughout the game keep checking your mineral patches, and as you start to mine out bases transfer probes mining there to fresher bases. Once you only have 3 patches left in your main you don't need 28 probes to mine them. 8 will do admirably. And at all costs avoid mining out a base and then forgetting about its probes. You don't want 28 probes sitting around doing nothing for even a few seconds, that's loads of lost mining time.


Producing Units: This is also just a matter of efficiency, so here is some tips to help you out at it.

1) building placement: This is important but pretty easy. Plan ahead how your base will look even when you're building your first pylon. Since you know the 4 starting spots at temple you should know pretty well how to build your base at each spot, so do it the same way or similar every time. Keep all your gateways close together and in a line so that you can easily click from one to the next rapidly while using z, d, t, and k keys to produce units. Remember to keep the exits of the gates clear to avoid trapping your goons in between buildings. Keep forges close together to organise your upgrading efforts easily and keep track of them.

2) pylons: At the start of the game it's important not to overspend on pylons because every little mineral is so important. Later on in the game having too few pylons is a far bigger problem then having too many, so don't worry about building pylons way in advance of what you need supply wise. Spending that 100 minerals is always a good investement because chances are you'll need that supply eventually, and you definately don't want to need it at a very inconvenient time, such as terran leaving his base with a huge army and you being unable to produce out of your 15 gates because your reached your supply limit. Sometimes you'll find yourself with a whole bunch of money or time (like maybe over a second!) on your hands and not a clue what to do with it. Building a pylon is a decent expenditure of both after the early/mid game.

3) gateways: People very often underestimate how many gateways they need. I'll tell you right now that unless your hand speed is progamerish you need at least 4 gates for every saturated mining base. I often build 4 gates in a pvz or pvp before expanding even to my nat. If you have your main, nat, and min only all mining at once you need 12 gates. While a progamer might need only 9, he has the handspeed to micro every task that he has to micro while also constantly producing a unit at his gateways. For me, my gateways sometimes fall idle if I'm too busy elsewhere. That means my money rapidly builds up. Obviously you want to be as close to 0 as possible but if I had only 3 gateways going, I'll only be able to hold my minerals steady. I need a 4th gateway to get back to 0. Here is a hypothetical situation that has happened to every toss player many times. You have 6 gateways for your main and natural and are spending all your money quite nicely while teching and upgrading. Zerg lurker drops your cliff. You have to storm and micro a shuttle for all your worth to repel the invasion. Eventually its over. But now you have 1200 minerals in the bank and climbing. Going back to your gates you again buy units and upgrade, holding you at 1200 minerals steady. Then zerg lurker contains you with hydra harassment. You storm and micro your observers furiously to break out. But now your up to 2000 in the bank and climbing. After you break out your able to go back to macroing more regularly and hold your minerals steady. Then you have a center fight. Zerg has 70+ hydras, you have 30 zealots, 10 goons, and 8 temps. You lose the battle but barely. Zerg counters your main and with greater power soon defeats you. That 2000 in the bank could have been 20 more zealots. With that you win the center fight and the game easily. It could have been 20 more zealots easily if you had 8 or 9 gateways instead of 6. Sure you would have spent 300 or 450 more, but those 450 minerals would translate to 16 extra zealots when you needed them. Thats definately worth it. Just because you saw [Oops]Reach micro every situation that I brought up and keep his money below 500 with 6 gates doesn't mean you should even try to.

4) defenses: While this has nothing to do with macro, I'll include it here just because it seems convenient. Lay out your base so that it will be easy for you to defend from a variety of situations. For one, make sure your cannons are placed so that they can cover all of your tech buildings and mineral line and geyser, as well as each other. Wall in cannons with tech buildings, since pylons are easy to run through. Also a common misconception is to bunch your buildings in together as close as possible. Against mutalisks, yes, otherwise never. Build your buildings in such a way that your forces can quickly and easily move through your base. Otherwise if he drops your rear, your buildings are walling off your own reinforcements, working against you.

Expansion Timing: I'll cover this in the timing section (g).




Advanced Strategy:

Advanced Concepts:
e: Time Management
f: Deception
g: Timing
h: Strategy
i: Sun-Tzu's Art of Starcraft [ Old version -- Knickknack]


Starcraft Theory

Deception

Deception is a funny part of starcraft because for the newbies it's the most totally useless thing to even bother with, but it rises in importance with the skill of players until by the professional level deception is a regular and essential part of every game. The bottom line is that everything one race can try in Starcraft, any other race can counter it. Once you know how to counter any attack the enemy can make (which by the time you're a good player you should know what to do to counter at least 90% of the enemy's attacks, and by the time you're very good there probably does not exist a situation that can stump you for more then a few seconds, at least on temple anyways) the strategy focus shifts almost entirely to figuring out what hes doing while keeping him from figuring out what your doing. The best way to accomplish the second is of course deception.

Deception is always most evident at the beginning of the game with the opening scouting, and certainly most important there. I'll go into specific detail about steps to take to decieve the enemy in several sections throughout the guide. To avoid rambling any further about the importance of deception or putting down something that I'll only end up repeating in other sections I won't say anything more about deception until then.

________________________________________


Starcraft Theory

Timing

This is one of the great principles of starcraft. Well, here's how it goes. Imagine, if you will, a line graph. The verticle measurement is power. The horizontal measurement is mass. Here is their relationship: At the beginning of the game, you must choose how much you will power and mass. Massing means you produce armies (the player with more mass indicates the player with an army that can defeat the enemy's army in an open fight. Also known as map control). Powering means you skimp on or ignore army production to improve economy (more power indicates you have a greater income then the enemy, and the ability to spend that money. In other words, you aren't overpowering an enemy if you have 5 expansions to his 2 if you are only producing units out of 3 gateways compared to him producing out of 7 gateways. You'll be richer then Fort Knox but minerals can't fight battles, only the units you buy with them can). The more you power early on, the more you can mass later on, but the more you risk an enemy who is massing attacking and killing you. The more you mass, the more you can attack and pressure your enemy with a superiour army, but the more you risk getting overpowered if he survives your attacks.

Throughout the whole game, you are balancing your massing and your powering. Powering is essentially playing for the future, while massing is essentially playing for the present. Great differences in style exist here because every player has their own natural tendency towards either massing or powering. In general, if at any time your mass exceeds the enemy's mass but your power is less, you should try to lever it to your advantage by either powering harder or attacking him. If your power exceeds his power but your mass is less, you should play defensively and protect yourself from any kind of harassment until your power pays off into an ability to outmass. In a good game power and mass comparisons between the two sides switch back and forth several times. One player will power harder and get damaged by the enemies mass, who then powers harder himself, and so on.

At no time in any game should a player allow himself to get behind in both mass and power at the same time without losing a major engagement. The only way that can happen is if one player powers signifcantly harder then the other, and the other player fails to attack him or pressure him at all. Keep that in mind for several reasons.

One, if you are being contained by a superiour enemy force but you still haven't lost a major battle (which could include a successful raid on your probes) then you know he is massing very hard. Meaning that you are almost certainly ahead in power. Therefore don't panic and feel obligated to attack his superiour force. Gradually two things will happen: your greater power will turn into greater mass for you, and he will be forced to power himself to match your power(thus slowing down his own massing). Both things will mean that soon enough your army will be a lot tougher then his. Keep an eye on him and be ready to attack him at that time.

Two, if you don't attack him when you get the chance, then eventually his own power will kick in and allow him to outmass you once again, putting him ahead in both mass and power at the same time. At that point there's little you can do, so make sure you use your greater mass when you get the chance to, either using it to shield a bigger grab for power of your own, or to hurt him and slow down his own power in some way, or some combination thereof.

Expanding is the main form of powering for protoss. As a protoss, your armies will not be affected in any significant way by probe production so there is almost never a need, especially once you're past the early game, to stop probe production. It's just a given. Therefore when a toss powers, he does so in one great big leap. When you expand you must take a dip in massing (how big a dip depends a lot on what part of the game your in. Your first expansion is huge, if you already have 3 a 4th is not a very big deal). The dip comes while you construct an expensive nexus, increase your probe production (since your new nexus is now adding its probe production to your expenses, usually only matters with the first and second expansions) transfer probes (which dramatically decreases income for the few seconds that they are enroute), and dramatically increase your construction (probably the biggest expense). With the new income about to roll in you want to be ready for it, so making extra pylons and gateways (and tech if it's your first expansion, since you want both templar and robotics once you have your nat in most games, against any race) is a definate must. All told, for your first expansion it will probably be a minute to two minutes after your nexus completes before it pays for itself and you're back caught up to the enemy. That means that on our graph your power has gone way up, but your mass has probably barely increased at all. This leaves you vulnerable until your mass catches up a minute or two later, depending on the enemy. If he's expanding at the same time or close to it, probably neither of you are in any danger.

Once you've had some battles, it gets tough to get an accurate notion of your comparative mass and power graphs, so you have to keep on scouting to make sure you're working with the right assumptions. Throughout the whole game you want to know which of you has the most power and which has the most mass. That way you always know whether you are obligated to attack (if you have more mass and less power) and when you can afford not to. If you get behind in both mass and power, the game is probably close to over. You probably need to do something desperate like expand somewhere the enemy isn't scouting even though you can't defend it and hope that he doesn't scout it. Or provoke a major battle with him and hope to win it through superior micro, even though your army is weaker.

Keep the mass/power equation in mind at all times during the game and always use it when deciding whether or not to attack or expand.

________________________________________


Starcraft Theory

Sun-Tzu's Art of Starcraft


This section is intended for it's interest value as well as it's pure strategical value. I am including it only because I am quite impressed with the level of strategic thought that the Art of War was written with given how old it is. While I do not think that the Art of War was written in a way that newbies can really appreciate (I owned it when I was a newbie and I did not truly appreciate it until I learned it's lessons the hard way myself), but for those of you who have not read the Art of War, I have interpreted and summarized each of the relevant sections of the Art of War to Starcraft.

Section 1 (Initial Estimations), verse 6:

"Warfare is the Way (Tao) of deception. Thus although you are capable, display incapability to the enemy. When commited to employing your forces, feign inactivity. When your objective is near, make it appear distant, when it is far away, make it appear near."

Sun Tzu was perhaps the first great general to grasp the importance of deception. You already know my own opinions of it. Sun Tzu lays out in general terms the most important ways to decieve your enemy. Namely in your capabilities and your intentions. Those are the two pieces of information your enemy most greatly desires. So, in practical terms, if you are planning to tech up one tree, show him you are teching up another. If you plan to tech up slowly, show him you are teching quickly. If you plan to tech up quickly, show him a slow tech.

The easiest way to accomplish those things are with the opening scout. When the enemy is scouting you near the beginning of the game, always use that to your advantage. The first thing you should do is build a hidden pylon somewhere where his scout is not going to be, such as the bottom of the 6 oclock natural or the far right side of the 3 oclock natural on gamei temple. Build up your true intentions there, while building your fake intentions in plain sight. Do this just as you are about to kill the enemy scout, then cancel them right after you have killed their scout. That level of deception works to some degree about 90% of the time at most levels of play.

A practical mid game application? Hide your army or some part of it somewhere. Move out a containment force to the enemy's natural that you know to be inferiour to his army. Make him think that you are overconfident. Allow him to break your containment, then flee, then use your backup force to encircle his pursuing troops. How to ensure that his troops do pursue you? Again it's all about the deception. Allow him to scout you expanding, so that he must come out to stop the expansion. As soon as his forces are committed to the fight though, you can cancel the expansion and focus on troop production to press your advantage.

Masking your intentions is just as simple. If the main thrust of your plan is some kind of mineral line drop, be it a reaver drop, dt drop, ht drop, then always attack him in the front of his base. Force his attention to the battle for his natural or his ramp, force him to think that you have committed to a frontal assault build order, thus pulling away his defenses or at the very least his attention to the back of his base. Then drop your reavers or templars.

The inverse is true for frontal assaults. If you want to knock out his mineral only, force him to move his troops away from it. This is surprisingly easy to do with 3 or more shuttles. Load them up and drop them very close to edge of his main cliff. The forces should mostly consist of zealots and dragoons, or reavers if you happen to have any. He will pull back most of his frontal defenses to defeat this drop. You know this, so after a couple of seconds, load your troops back up and drop them on the low ground right beside the cliff, and proceed on foot with the rest of your army with a frontal assault. The reason this works is that his troops have to travel much further then yours. Your troops are getting picked up and carried a distance of a couple of matrices, and then have to travel only a few steps to get to his mineral only. His troops, however, have to travel around cliffs and up and down a ramp. It takes about 5 seconds less to move 6 dragoons from a main to a min only with shuttles then it takes them to move that far overland. By then your forces are already perfectly positioned and his forces have to attack-move into your forces, which is to your advantage.

verse 7:

"Display profits to entice them. Create disorder to take them. If they are substantial, prepare for them. If they are strong, avoid them. If they are angry, perturb them, if they are arrogant, be deferential. If they are rested, force them to exert themselves. If they are united, separate them. Attack where they are not prepared. Go forth where they do not expect it. These are the ways military strategists are victorious. They cannot be spoken of in advance."

Verse 7 is connected to verse 6 in that it shows some more concrete ways to decieve the enemy. I have already gone over that in some detail. The sentence, "If they are strong, avoid them" is an important lesson that ties into the mass/power equation. Do not be forced into a direct confrontation with the enemy if they have more mass, because you may have more power, and in that case you should wait for your power to translate to mass before fighting him.

Verse 7 also comments on psychological warfare somewhat. This advice can be somewhat useful in tournament play, though manners-wise many players frown on attempting to use psychology to influence the game. Basically it says that if your enemy is someone prone to be angry, fuel the fires a little and make him angry. If your enemy is cocky and arrogant, pretend to be overrawed. I must admit a little guilty of this myself, because going into a tournament I almost always attempt to portray myself as the underdog, and if I have any pre-tourney practice games with someone who I am playing against or against a friend of a person I am playing against, or if a person I am playing against is watching, I will certainly throw those games using strategies that I would never use in a real game. I call that process 'prepping the competition'. I portray myself in a way that I hope will influence them to play against me differently--and worse--then they normally would. For example against one opponent, I portrayed myself as a hopeless techer. I gassed after 1 gate against his zerg for 3 games in a row. In one game I allowed myself to be defeated by a zergling rush. In the other games I did a dt/sair attack that hopelessly failed and a reaver drop that was killed by a handful of hydras. In the actual game I showed his ovie tech once again, but I did a hidden zealot rush and barged into his expansion with 12 zealots at a time when he thought I should have had only 4, and those in my main. His defenses of 6 lings and a morphing sunken were totally inadequate. Naturally my opponent called me a lucky rushing newbie. If he had been a better player, or a player that has much chance of improving, he would have realised how badly he had been duped.

Section 4 (Military Disposition) verse 2:

"One who cannot be victorious assumes a defensive posture; one who can be victorious attacks. By assuming a defensive posture, the strength will be adequate, whereas in offensive actions it would be inadequate."

Sun-Tzu refers again to the mass/power equation. When the enemy has more mass, play defensively and allow your power to play out. When the enemy has less mass, attack right away, before his power plays out, or use your mass to shield a big rush for power. This verse also leads right into an important strategic concept in the next verse, which I will discuss below.

verse 4:

"Thus one who excels at warfare first establishes himself in a position where he cannot be defeated while not losing any opportunity to defeat the enemy. For this reason, the victorious army first realizes the conditions for victory, and then seeks to engage in battle. The vanquished army fights first, and seeks victory after."

This verse is a little more difficult to understand but it captures one of the more subtle aspects of Starcraft. I went over this in the basic strategy section. Basically, you start out conservatively, always scouting the enemy first without committing to anything. Once you have sufficient information, you make your move, switching to an aggressive strategy and going for victory. If you play aggressively without first scouting, you vanquish yourself.

Section 5 (Strategic Military Power) verse 1:

"In general, commanding a large number is like commanding a few. It is a question of dividing up the numbers. Fighting with a large number is like fighting with a few. It is a question of configuration and designation."

This verse pertains a lot more to real life warfare then starcraft, but it does provide a little insight on the use of both good hotkeying and good organisation. Why is it easier to control 12 units then 60? Because it's easy to keep track of the role of each individual unit in the group of 12. When you are forming your hotkeys, remember that. Form your hotkeys so that each number represents a group of units with a specific role. Suppose you want to do the lure and encircling maneuvre discussed above. One set of hotkeys should consist of the luring forces, and another the encircling forces. That is how you can control large numbers as if they were few.

Section 6 (Vacuity and Substance)

"Thus if I determine the enemy's disposition of forces while I have no perceptible form, I can concentrate my forces while the enemy is fragmented. If we are concentrated into a single force while he is fragmented into 10, then we attack him with ten times the strength. Thus we are many and the enemy is few, If we can attack his few with our many, those who we engage in battle will be severely constrained."

That verse represents perhaps the pinnacle of tactical and strategic thought in the Art of War. It describes in detail how to successfully attack and defeat a defensively postured force of equal strength, the strategic holy grail.

In order to defeat a defensive enemy of equal strength, there are two phases to carry out. The first is probing, in which you scout the enemy's disposition. Locate the areas where the enemy will be vulnerable to attack. These include his tech centers, his mining bases, and his production. Those areas will be your objectives. Next determine where his defenses are located. Ultimately you want to be able to lauch a main assault on one target. So in your probing assaults, you will manipulate the enemy into leaving one area of his defenses lacking. If your intention is to launch a doom drop on his main, then you will continually attack his front lines or outlying expansions in order to draw away defenses. If your intention is to attack one expansion, you will continually attack his main base or other expansions. In these little attacks, you will never risk losing many troops. You will simply pretend that you are intending to attack but did not have adequate scouting information, and decided to pull back at the last second. You will try this more then once, and with each successful defense, your enemy will be more confident that he is winning. Finally you will continually move your force around, and never allow him to see it. You will make sure that he has no observers, burrowed troops, or overlords watching what you are doing. If he scans you, you will move to a new spot and wait until he can no longer trust that information. Only when you are ready to make your true assault should your army form up into a single battle ready force. The second phase is the execution. No major battle should be undertaken without all proper preparation. You should know what you are attacking, you should know how your enemy can respond, and you should be ready for it. Hotkey your attacking troops appropriately and keep them as tightly compact as possible. Concentrate your maximum amount of force on one area, and try to make that area an area the enemy will try to defend. When you attack the area, you know his forces will respond immediately, so assume a defensive posture once you have moved to the objective. If you are attacking an expansion, once you have moved your forces to the expansion and defeated the defenses there, align them into a defense posture. Protect your templars and have them ready to psi storm all approaching forces. Spread your dragoons into an arc and ready your zealots to flank. You will force the enemy to come to you, and there you will have the advantage. That is the essence of Vacuity and Substance. Create a vacuity in the enemy, then replace it with your substance. That is how to secure an objective against an equally powerful force.

Chapter 7 (Military Combat) verse 8:

"In order await the disordered; in tranquility await the clamorous. This is the way to control the mind."

verse 9:

"With the near await the distant; with the rested await the fatigued; with the sated await the hungry. This is the way to control strength"

Both verses speak to different aspects of real life warfare, but to the same aspect of Starcraft. Whenever possible, engage in combat only in terms favourable to yourself. If the enemy has set up an ambush of your forces, retreat instantly before major damage is done. If you are setting up an ambush on the enemy, prevent retreat if possible or set up the ambush in a way that major damage will be done before retreat can be effected. Setting up an ambush requires two things: you must know first of all what is to your advantage, and you must know second of all how to accomplish this.

Whenever attempting to ambush the zerg, remember that your forces gain advantage by awaiting the zerg and forcing them to advance into you. In this way your templar will have an easy time storming the enemy. It is easy to storm an enemy approaching a templar standing still. It is hard to move a templar forward to storm an enemy. It is easy for enemy lurkers to defend a position. It is hard for them to attack one. Therefore your forces will always be better off if they await an attack from the zerg. So if you wish to engage the zerg in favourable combat, set up your strategy in a way that forces the zerg to attack you, and not the opposite. Wherever possible, attack a lightly defended zerg outpost and ambush the reinforcements. Wherever possible, set up containment outside the zerg main and power harder. Wherever possible, lure the zerg forces into your templar. Do not allow your zealots to be lured into his lurkers and hydras. Be proactive in a standoff. Do not allow his hydras to move forward and pick your troops off; instead await his hydras with your templar and storm them before they can fire on you. Do not attack move your forces into a harassing hydra force backed up by lurkers unless forced to by the mass power equation. Instead use the longer range of psi storm to entice him into attack moving into you. Usually the zerg will simply give ground rather then be pressed into combat. In that way you can safely pressure a zerg containment force. In that way you can gain cost efficiency in a situation that you should not.

Whenever attempting to ambush terran, remember the opposite is true. Terran always desires to force you to attack him when he is in a strong position. This is because his tanks outrange you when in siege mode, and his mines are stationary and less effective when laid in the middle of a fight. Terran's goal will always be to use his range to force you to engage him on his own terms. If your force is standing still awaiting the terran, this is exactly what will happen; since tanks outrange psi storm, this will always be easy for him in normal circumstances. So your goal is to create circumstances in which you can engage the enemy in favourable positions. A position favourable to protoss is one that is wide open and flat, so that nothing impedes your zealots and dragoons from advancing into firing range of the longer ranged siege tank. Also your forces should be as spread out as possible while still reaching the enemy positions more or less at the same time, which means attacking from multiple directions at once. In that way splash damage from tanks and mines will be mitigated as much as possible. Finally, and most favourably of all, you should always attack the enemy when he is moving wherever possible. Abandon all other circumstances and advantages immediately if you see the opportunity to attack a large terran army on the move with a large army of your own. Tanks unsieged and moving forward are weaker then dragoons. Vultures fighting you without the benefit of their mines do not have the capacity to deal significant damage. Whenever terran is moving, his troops necessarily have less range, therefore it is far easier to effectively employ psi storm. And perhaps best of all, dt's almost always get in close and get several free shots before they are scanned because in all the commotion and confusion the terran almost always fails to notice the dts and forgets to scan. Usually by the time he does scan, his forces are already dead. Therefore it is to your advantage to attack the terran--only in these circumstances of course--rather then allowing the terran to attack you, thus forcing upon you negative circumstances. The difference in attacking a well prepared, stationary terran force in terrain of his choosing, and attacking an unprepared and unsuspecting terran in the open is like night and day. The exact same forces in these different circumstances will have the exact opposite results: the protoss will be completely vanquished in the former, and the terran will be completely vanquished in the latter, and the victorious forces will suffer almost no losses in both cases. That is the art of tactics in starcraft.

In order to force these circumstances upon the terran, you must remember several key rules. Rule 1: unless terran uses mass dropships, he must move overland throughout the game, often through terrain that is unfavourable. The opportunities do exist. Rule 2: in order to locate these opportunities, use observers to scout them out. Place observers as I have said previously. Rule 3: In order to be ready to capitalise on these opportunites, keep forces in places that terran does not know. Move forces around frequently, and seemingly to no real purpose. A smart terran will always scan your army before moving his own in order to establish what is safe for him. Therefore, make his scanner information obsolete. Anytime you notice that your army has been scanned, move it somewhere else, break it up or form it up differently then before. Do this occasionally even if you don't see that you have been scanned for the enemy is always scanning you and you will not know every time it happens. Also you may be moving into a position that he previously scanned and now assumes is empty and safe, when really your forces are now awaiting him there. By changing strategic conditions constantly, you take away terran's greatest advantage, namely his ability to easily force you to engage him on his own terms. By moving around often and making his scanner information obsolete, you force him to waste mana locating your army far more then he would like, and take mana away from scanning that could be used to detect your tech or expansions. Rule 4: proactively create favourable circumstances whenever possible. How? If he has forces moving across vulnerable terrain into a safe position, intercept those forces before they arrive. If he is launching an attack on your mineral only with a well emplaced siege, find a way to move an army out of the threatened area and into the middle of the map where you can safely cut off reinforcements. This can be done by retreating towards another main when he first approaches, rather then your own main. It can also be done by using shuttles to ferry troops. You can then use these 'sprung' troops to occupy the center of the map (unexpectedly if at all possible). He will be unable to reinforce his position since your troops in the center of the map have every tactical advantage. You can then flank the terran containment force with superiour numbers, creating advantage where before there was an untenable position. Another way to force circumstances on the terran is to attack a target that he must defend. Whenever the terran attempts to sieze another main, you must attack that attempt right away. This will create a disadvantageous situation for the terran, for he now must fight you in several places at once. That means that his forces cannot remain stationary but must move around to defend seperate areas. Therefore his forces will be moving around in the middle of the map in a predictable path, which makes it very easy to ambush him. That is the art of strategy in Starcraft. Finally, by staying ahead in expansions at all times, you force the terran to attack you, and any time he attacks you, he must first open himself to vulnerability that you can exploit with a good ambush.

That is all I have to write about the Art of Starcraft. The remaining verses and chapters in the Art of War refer only to real life warfare, covering such subjects as terrain, spies, and psychology of manipulating real men, not game sprites. I do recommend the book to anyone, but in my view only a person very experienced with strategy and tactics will be able to truly appreciate the complexity of some of the passages.




Appendices:

Appendices:
a: Terms
b: Opening Strategies/Standard build orders
c: Upgrade Math
d: Battlereports
e: Replays and RWA's


Appendix A: Terms

Everyone by now knows the basic starcraft terminology, like gg, gl hf, manner, goon = dragoon, etc etc. So this terms section will focus only on those terms that I use that someone possibly might be unfamiliar with. I encourage anyone to notify me right away if I use a term in my guide anywhere that they are unfamiliar with, or in an unfamiliar way, and I will keep this Appendix updated to make sure it's comprehensive as relates to my guide.

Strategy: The broad and overall means to achieving victory. Put into Starcraft terms, a strategy involves a build order, a specific timing, a particular methodology, a set of time management priorities, and varying levels of commitment, aggressiveness, or conservativeness.

Tactics: The immediate battlefield maneuvres designed to achieve victory in a particular battle. Put into a Starcraft context, this term is rarely used because it has widely been replaced by the term 'Micro', and basically entails all of the same things to your average Starcraft player.

Aggressive: Aggressive is a term which describes a strategy. A strategy's level of aggression is determined basically by how quickly it intends to win the game for you, and how much commitment is placed upon choosing that strategy. A very aggressive strategy intends to rapidly win the game, but also entails a large amount of commitment, which correspondingly creates a large amount of risk.

Commitment: Commitment basically is the term describing the degree to which you are stuck with a particular strategy once you have chosen it. In other words, it is a measure how quickly/successfully you would be able to change strats if you discovered you had picked the wrong one. Obviously, the more committed you are to a strategy, the more risky it becomes, because if you find that you chose the wrong strategy and it necessitated a good degree of commitment, you may be unable to switch to the appropriate strat in time to prevent your defeat. Commitment is generally the necessary, if unwanted, side effect to an aggressive strategy.

Conservative: A conservative strategy is the opposite of an aggressive strategy. It is not exactly the same as a defensive strategy, a common misconception. A conservative strategy basically specifically aims to avoid commitment, thus allowing you to quickly adapt to your opponent as you continue to scout him and learn of his intentions.

Defensive: A defensive strategy is not necessarily the opposite of an aggressive strategy. A defensive strategy basically entails remaining in your base, only teching to those things which would be critical to survival, and avoiding overpowering. Most defensive strategies actually involve more massing than powering. Defensive strategies can entail a good degree of commitment to work, since it can be difficult to transition to an aggressive or attacking stance. Usually defensive strategies are also bad strategies, though in some cases, as vs 1 base zerg builds, they are also necessary strategies, or to put it another way, the 'least bad' of all strategies.

Mass: A holistic term that describes the fighting effectiveness of your current army. Used as a verb, it entails focussing primarily on immediately increasing your mass, or fighting power. Mass takes into consideration tech units you have which are hard counters. For example, if you have 2 DTs in your army and terran does not have any detection, but 8 tanks, you actually have more mass than him because in a fight your DTs would win. However, you have to keep in mind that as soon as terran does acquire detection, he will have way more mass than you, so your mass advantage, if based only on a hard counter tech unit, could be very short lived.

Power: A holistic term that describes your ability to mass over the long term. It includes economy, capacity to upgrade (example: building a forge is powering. Starting an upgrade in that forge is powering. Once that upgrade completes, it goes directly to your mass), tech level (for example rushing to carriers is a powering strategy, even if it means you are sacrificing economy to do so, because it will give you the ability to quickly outmass a terran who has no anti air units once you finish it. However, if you sacrifice too much economy to do so, you may be powering slower than terran, because, if, once you begin to produce carriers, he can produce wraiths, goliaths, and/or ghosts fast enough to kill your Carriers, you will obviously fail to outmass him), and ability to produce troops (ie, having 4 mining expansions is pointless if you only have 3 gates to buy units with).

Cost Efficiency/Effectiveness: Usually refers to a unit or unit choice. A unit that has cost efficiency has more than made up for its costs, in terms of time and money. For example, a reaver drop is cost effective once it's killed a tank and 3 vultures, or 2 tanks, or 7 scvs. After that it can die without killing anything more and still have been worth it in terms of money. In terms of strategy that may not necessarily be the case. After all, now your economy is geared to producing reaver drops, but if terran is now adequately prepared for reaver drops and you can no longer hurt him, than you are way behind him, because you now have to completely change your strategy in order to remain effective, ergo you have to factor in the cost of going for reavers (the time and money spent building the support bay and upgrades, for example) when determining whether your drop was worth it. Cost Efficiency for a unit is easy to measure. Cost Efficiency for a strategy is extremely difficult. It usually takes a lot of experience to develop a gut feeling towards whether or not a particular strat was cost effective, as it's very hard to create an accurate mathematical formula for all the variables involved. It is necessary to be able to judge the effectiveness of your strat though, otherwise you will not be able to form an accurate picture of the mass/power equation, which may lead you to make bad strategic decisions.

Mechanics: Refers to two things. Mechanic Terran or Mech Terran, is more commonly referred to by me with Heartcutter's term, Heavy Metal. Everyone knows what that is, a strategy based around producing the factory units; tanks, vultures, and goliaths. I also use the term Mechanics to refer to a level of play though. When I say mechanics, usually I am referring to the all the small things that you do when you play the game of starcraft. This is stuff like having good micro and macro, good building placement, good execution of strategies, good scouting, and so on. It's influenced most heavily by two things: good handspeed, and good habits. Handspeed can only be increased with practice, and with a conscious effort at improvement. Good habits also must be developed over time, but I can at least tell you what they are, which I do, throughout this guide. It's up to you to implement them.

Intelligence: Intelligence is sort of the other side of the coin as compared to Mechanics. Intelligent play is doing all the big things right, making brilliant moves, adapting on the fly, interpreting the enemies strategy correctly, accurately and rapidly determining the mass/power equation throughout the game, choosing the correct strategies, and so on. I know that I just made it seem like intelligence is more important than mechanics, but really the opposite is true. For one, without good mechanics it's almost impossible to play intelligently. Good mechanics will directly influence how smartly you play the game. A brilliant play will get you the glory for sure, but players like Nada prove that it's mechanics that get you the tournament wins. Until you get to the Very Good level anyways, intelligent play will decide very very few of your games. For about 95% of the games you play, mechanics will decide who wins and who loses. By the time you do get to the Very Good level good mechanics of course are still just as important, it's just that everyone there already has extremely good mechanics, and who plays more intelligently becomes the biggest distinguishing factor between the winner and the loser.


Opening Strategies and Standard Build Orders

I will break this down into the three games. I will give build orders only up until first contact with the enemy. After that, it's useless to put anything down in writing, everything you do from then on must be determined by the information you get and how you interpret it, in that particular game.


Protoss vs Zerg:

9/10 rush:
8-pylon
9-gateway
10-gateway
13-pylon

you will have to sacrifice probe production to properly execute this build. It's designed to produce 2 zealots before your second pylon, which greatly increases your capactity to rush zerg. It's normally accompanied by bringing a couple of probes off of minerals with your zealots in the attack. As everyone knows, 1 probe hit plus 2 zealot hits kills a zergling, so having a couple extra probes to soften up zerglings actually makes them die much more faster.

10/12 gate:
8-pylon
10-gateway
12-gateway

This build is the stereotypical ultra conservative build. It gives you the ability to make zealots fast enough to keep a zerg from going too hog wild on powering but also does not halt probe production, giving you the ability to keep up in teching and powering if zerg plays safely. Because this build was so universal in the 1.07 to 1.09 era every single zerg out there will have played against it a million times and know exactly how he best prefers to deal with it, making it weaker than it really should be.

Sair/dt expand:
8-pylon
10-gateway
12-assimilator
14-cybernetics core
15-pylon

at this point your supply may fluctuate depending on whether you lose the scouting probe, you have to bring probes off to hold a rush, you have to build extra zealots, etc, so I'll just give the buildings you need next and a loose order and leave it up to you how quickly they need to be produced.

-stargate
-citadel
-gateway
-forge
-archives

After light sair harassment and ensuring all overlords outside of zergs base are dead (especially around your base) you expand with cannons and dts, tech psi storm and make templars to hold a 3 gate hydra hit with ovie speed, and then tech robotics after natural is up to hold cliff lurkers. Gets you ahead economically, but puts you significantly behind in mass, which may allow zerg to power very hard while you try to break out.


Safer Sair/dt expand variant:

much better for close positions or for zergs that aren't afraid to go balls out with a 3 hatch ling, also good for reasons of deception, though mathematically it's much weaker than the above build.

8-pylon
10-gateway
12-assimilator
14-gateway
15-pylon
17-cybernetics core
-stargate
-citadel
-forge
-archives

Provides you with much more zealots though still relatively fast sairs and dts. Holds any 3 hatch ling hit easily and gives an opportunity to hit zerg with a decent ground force once sairs are out. Also catches many zergs off guard since sairs rarely come out of a 2 gate before core build. However a careful zerg will not lose any more than 1 ovie to the sair, mass enough to prevent your initial hit to do anything, and still power hard enough to knock you out of your expansion or cover a huge powering binge. Particularly vulnerable to many 2 base muta builds.

Archives rush:

8-pylon
10-gateway
12-assimilator
14-gateway
15-pylon
17-cybernetics core
-citadel
-forge
-archives
-robotics

Gives you a speedy zealot army very quickly, with an option to add high templars or dts as required. Intends to hit zerg early or cover an early expansion, depending on what opportunity is presented. Robotics is necessary sooner, because without a sair to look over your cliff it's literally impossible to stop cliff lurkers at your natural.

This build can also be done in a riskier variant with the single gate until after cybernetics core. It gets you fast zealots and dts sooner, and is more unexpected. However your mass will be less, making expanding or attacking based on the strength of your zealot army a riskier proposition.


Robotics:
8-pylon
10-gateway
12-assimilator
14-gateway
15-pylon
17-cybernetics core
-robotics
-forge
-support bay
-observatory

This build puts a heavy focus on goon over zealot production since goons will be your only anti air. Most zergs counter this with muta builds, which usually win, since it completely eliminates the option to reaver drop, giving zerg enough power to take out goons with mutas in a straight fight. Therefore deception is usually your best hope with this build. Another way to go with this build is to skip shuttles and use ground only reavers to hold an early expansion. It's both riskier and slower than a sair/dt expansion so it's essentially redundant to the protoss repetoire.


14 Nexus (aka Forge first expand)
8-pylon (positioning is critical, expect to lose a few times if you don't know for sure where to place the pylon)
14-nexus
15-forge
16-pylon
17-cannon

-cannon until you can safely hold a ling attack. This will wildly vary depending on how zerg reacts to your build. Add a gateway, gas, and etc as soon as you safely can. If zerg double expands try to ready a zealot force very quickly, you can very often catch a zerg overpowering here and win. This build is usually all kinds of risky, but on maps like The Bifrost or Legacy of Char it's actually the standard build. It can be pulled off extremely effectively on Guillotine too, by using a 2 gate wallin strategy in cooperation with the cannons to completely block off ling attacks.


Hidden Zealot Rush (aka Proxy gates)
8-pylon
10-gateway
12-assimilator
14-cybernetics core -hopefully zerg's overlord leaves the base as this is finishing so you don't have to build a goon. If he doesnt leave right away you do have to make a goon though. Stop gas mining as soon as the overlord is out of sight
15-pylon -hidden in close proximity to zerg base
-add 2 gateways at your hidden pylon and pump constant zealots from all three gates. Scout with your proxy probe when you have around 8 zealots to see when you should hit.

This build will die to 3 hatch lings and may also die to a muta build if the zerg gets enough mutas in time. It will also be in trouble against lurker rushes though lurkers take longer to get to your base so it might be possible to hold if you already have a forge up and can get ramp cannons up in time. At that point you should have an overwhelming economic edge and quickly overpower him.


Protoss vs Terran:

Gate/Robo/Gate:
8-pylon
10-gateway
12-assimilator
14-core
15-pylon
-dragoon production commences now, produce one after the other as you can
-robotics
-gateway
-observatory
-dragoon range

This build is very weak against any early push, especially the Bamboo rush, but always scouts drops and fast expansions in time to counter them. From far positions especially, I favour this build.


2 Gate Robo:
8-pylon
10-gateway
12-assimilator
14-core
15-pylon
17-gate
-range/robotics (range if you can damage terran's wallin, depends a lot on map and positions, otherwise robotics first)
-observatory

From here create a decent dragoon force and pressure terran. This build is very strong against any kind of early push build terran tries, but has the potential to be raped by dropships and will take away your option of attacking a fast expander, forcing you into a double expand strategy (and terran will know it, and play less defensively as a result). A good variant on this build, depending on the map, is to grab a far away expansion such as another main on Temple before getting your natural. This build is also godly on maps such as Gaema Gowon or Guillotine, where you don't need a shuttle to hold a cliff against dropships. Then you can power crazily free from fear, and actually safely overpower even a terran fast expansion. Terran is forced to badly outmicro you or outplay you to win in those situations, always a good thing.


Double Robo:
8-pylon
10-assimilator
11-gateway
14-core
15-pylon
17-dragoon
-robotics - build a shuttle out of this the second it's done
-support bay
-robotics -this should finish at the exact same time your support bay does. Accumulate 43 supply before you get here so you can build both reavers at once.
-observatory/shuttle speed -observatory if he is using mines or early pushing you, shuttle speed first otherwise

Go nuts dropping the hell out of terran with this build. Don't lose your shuttle period, and don't waste any reavers, and you should have no trouble winning provided you employed this strategy in the right start locations/maps.


Dt Rush:
8-pylon
10-gateway
12-assimilator
14-core
15-pylon
17-dragoon
-citadel
-archives

With your dts you can try to pressure him but most terrans will have turrets/mines and be able to hold. The biggest thing is to use your dts to cover an expansion. Without shuttles you'll have to expand to a place you can defend drops from with only ground forces. You'll also have to deal with mass vultures, usually by getting a forge and cannons right away, then getting observers later. You should get a nice, safe, economic edge with this build, but it runs a real risk of getting run right over by vulture builds. A variation is skip your expansion and go for robotics tech quickly instead, giving you a dt drop, which will usually damage terran equally as much as you damage yourself (by not expanding sooner).


Scout Rush:
8-pylon
10-gateway
12-assimilator
14-core
15-pylon
17-dragoon
-build 1, 2, or 3 stargates in a hidden area of the map, hopefully as close to terran's base as you can manage. The only thing terran should see is your goon blocking your ramp. The idea here is to hit terran with 2 or 3 scouts and follow up right away with more as you build them. Also be hitting terran's ramp with any goons you have. Using your first few scouts, prevent turrets from going up as best you can. With any spare scouts attack sieged tanks that are preventing your goons from doing damage. This build can be extremely devastating to the unprepared terran but requires a lot of guts and panache to pull off right. It's often followed up by the infamous Stove, a dt rush followed by an arbiter rush, all done off of 2 bases.


1 base carriers:
8-pylon
10-gateway
12-assimilator
14-core
15-pylon
17-dragoon
-stargate
-fleet beacon
-stargate
-upgrade air attack rather than goon range
-never go robotics, use cannons to hold vultures and carriers to hold drop ships
-expand as soon as the first carrier has interceptors

This build is completely without manners and exploits the greatest weakness of terrans in the tvp game. Terran just does not have a good hard counter to carriers. This build risks getting run over by an early push and may be in trouble against a very fast drop ship user (as your single carrier with few interceptors will take a long time to kill 2 tanks, slowing you down quite a lot), but the cost efficiency of carriers as a fighting force and it's sheer unexpectedness makes up for a lot of that. As cheesy as the build is, it works.


Crouching Dragoon Hidden Reaver (aka proxy robo):
8-pylon
10-gateway
12-assimilator
14-core
15-pylon
17-dragoon
-hidden pylon
-robotics (produced at hidden pylon)
-support bay (technically can be made anywhere, doesn't really matter if its at the proxy pylon or not)

Produce reavers and drop terran out of your proximity robotics. Designed to catch terran pushing or fast expanding by hitting him with reavers unexpectedly quickly. Since it's a proximity robotics your reaver will save a lot of travel time that would normally be wasted going from your base to his. This build will almost always lose to dropship terran though.


Protoss vs Protoss:

9/10 gate:

Same order as vs zerg:

8-pylon
9-gateway
10-gateway
13-pylon

If a toss does not get his second gate fast enough, this build will kill him


10/12 gate:

Also the same as vs zerg

8-pylon
10-gateway
12-gateway

This will also kill a protoss player who techs too quickly, though it requires better micro to do so. The most likely outcome of this build will be slight probe damage and ability to transition to teching in time to keep up.




Battle Reports:


Napoleic (Hautamaki) vs The.Confessor
(Direct link to my battlereport at www.battlereports.com)
Sync vs ForU
Zeus vs Nada
Nal Ra vs GoodFriend


RWA's:


For information about viewing RWA's, and the program required to do it, check out www.bwchart.com


IntoTheRain vs Nada
A strong 3/12 pvt game in which IntoTheRain uses excellent strategic choices to wear down a very strongly positioned Nada

Mumyung vs Chino
A 3/9 pvz game in which a game Chino takes on a korean pro gamer. Chino plays smartly up until around the half way point when he gradually allows a winnable game to slip away.

Grrrr vs Nada
An old school 9-3 pvt between two out of the three greatest players ever. Judged against todays game it's interesting to note how sloppy they were. Unquestionably the best players of their time, and still among the best now, they nevertheless made quite a few little mistakes in comparison to a game played nowadays. However, don't let that overshadow a tense and well played game. Even if they looked a little loose in comparison to how crisp they, and the other greats of our era, look today, it's still a very high level match showcasing many of the nuances of the pvt meta game.


Replays:

1) A 12-3 pvt dual robotics opening against an opponent who is reasonably well prepared for it. Notice that by being careful I can still cause a great deal of damage even though he has turrets and tanks with siege mode and vultures with mines. I can then get myself into a good mid game position. Notice also near the end I use dt/reaver to delay his expansion for a long time.
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2) Another 12-3 pvt against an opponent who intended to early push me. This game is not nearly as long.
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3) A pretty interesting 6-9 pvt where my dual shuttle build tangles with a gully push attempt.
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4) A 9-6 pvt. This game was funny because I was playing very poorly and wasted a lot of units. He was about to finish me off, but I had 1 more trick up my sleeve.
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5) A 9-6 pvz demonstrating my standard slow sair tech build. The climax is interesting, if not the denoument.
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6) A Nostalgia opposite corners pvt demonstrating the crouching dragoon hidden robo opening quite effectively.
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7) By request of CLAMP! via the forums, I have 2 3-6 pvt's in which toss successfully counters terran's 2 fac build with a gate robo gate opening. Note the usage of the center terrain to defeat terran's push several times in both games.
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8) By request of csjunkie via the forums, I have some pvz's here. He was pretty unspecific, so these pvz's are going to be of a trick strat I first witnessed executed by Magic..User[6] which I have adapted for tourney play when you have no choice but to play against zerg on temple. My first victim is a guy who, despite his dubious play, is actually on the Polish national team for wcg, so it goes to show you how much this strat can throw off even good players. It's definately not fool proof though, it just helps to even the odds a little to have it in your arsenal when you don't really have a good shot to win a straight fight anyways.
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Battle Reports:

Zeus vs Nada on Guillotine:

This is an Ongamenet professional match, played on the 13th of February. This is in the opening group play. For more information on the ongament tournament format, please check out www.teamliquid.net.

The players are Nada, terran, vs Zeus, protoss. Nada is probably the favourite, as he has more tourney wins, and in fact is widely regarded as the best player in Brood War today, and among the best ever. Zeus has been around forever though, has loads of tourney experience, and the map favours protoss, so it should be a very good game.

I watched this game in first person point of view from Nada's view point. This means that I can only see what Nada does. It has a big advantage in terms of me being able to see every click that Nada makes, alllowing me to get right inside his head. It also makes it more exciting, not knowing what the opponent is up to. It does make it a little harder to battlereport though. I'll do my best.

The game was played on Guillotine, a flat desert map. It tends to favour toss because of the lack of significant ramps and levels. It greatly enhances toss's mobility advantage and allows toss to fight on favourable terrain quite easily.

The game opens with Nada at 7 (bottom left) going for a standard depot/rax wallin with gas. Zeus is at the 2 oclock position (top right) and elects to start with 1 zealot first before going goons. On this map that's not such an unusual choice because of the low travel time between mains and the possibility that Nada might not wall in.

Zeus arrives with his first zealot and goon while Nada is just beginning to build his tank. This gives Zeus a good 40 seconds to try to get through the wall.

Nada sends 3 scvs to hold the wallin, repairing the depot and each other as Zeus's zealot attacks the wall and his goon attacks the scvs. After losing 1 scv, Nada's tank finishes and chases away the goons. Zeus had researched range while this was going on, hoping to snag some more free kills, but Nada had researched siege mode and forced Zeus to flee. Because Zeus saw that Nada had gone siege mode he knows that Vultures are out of the question. This opens up 2 big opportunities to Zeus: He can expand very quickly, or he can dt drop without worrying about mines and vultures. Zeus knows that Nada cannot early push him, so he knows that Nada will probably be either doing fac cc or fac port.

Nada suspects a drop of some kind and makes an ebay. He had also elected to go fact port and try a 2 tank drop. Now that Guillotines walls are wide enough to land tanks on, this is a viable opening in tvp. Unfortunately since he revealed his siege mode to Zeus it won't be completely unsuspected.

Nada goes straight east with his first drop ship, intending to hit Zeus's main first. However, Zeus had made a pylon over top of Nada's natural to the east, and the ship flew right over it. Knowing Nada's options, Zeus countered both of them with one excellent move. The pylon not only scouted the drop ship, but had Nada elected to CC first, the pylon would have blocked it from landing, delaying Nada significantly. Excellent play by Zeus.

Now that Zeus sees the ship, Nada obviously cannot drop him, so he just kills the pylon.

I can't see what Zeus is doing but I suspect he is expanding right now.

So does Nada, because he sends his ship around the other way to try to drop Zeus's expansion. I believe that Zeus knows this drop is coming, due to the timing and the fact that it's the obvious play at this point.

Zeus didn't expand right away though. It turned out that he had teched to a DT drop before making his nexus. As Nada's ship heads out north of his main, Zeus unloads a couple of DT's into Nada's main. The first thing they do is attack Nada's under construction expansion cc, delaying him very badly. They try to kill some other stuff, but Nada was fairly well defended with turrets since he had made his ebay so quickly. Zeus is probably expanding now. That will put him a full minute ahead of Nada.

By the time Nada gets to Zeus's natural, the nexus is just finishing. Nada seems to have some indecision and isn't sure what he wants to do. He was probably hoping there would be probes to kill, but Zeus wisely kept them back at his main until after removing the drop ship threat. Nada eventually drops on the wall overlooking Zeus's natural minerals, but Zeus's goons quickly surround and kill both tanks and the drop ship with no losses. Zeus is now astronomically ahead. He is ahead in both Mass and Power, which means that mistake free play from here ensures his victory.

Nada knows he's getting badly raped, and is forced to continue to turtle to stay alive. He walls off the mutual entrance to his main and natural with his barracks and ebay and lands his cc at his nat. Zeus cannot possibly attack such a well defended base, but I'm sure it doesn't really bother him. I presume he's expanding again at this point, possibly twice, since he is so far ahead.

Nada leaves his base with vultures to try to harass Zeus, but Zeus has walled off his mutual entrance to his main and natural with a gateway and cybernetics core. There's no way the vultures can get through.

Nada meanwhile tried another 2 tank drop on Zeus's natural, coming in from the east. Knowing how far behind he is, Nada is using everything he can to try to get back in it. Zeus calmly backs off with his goons though and drops on the tanks with zealots. Nada loses his 2 tanks without doing any damage. Zeus only pulls further ahead as time goes by.

In a routine scanner sweep, Nada uncovers Zeus's big plan. Zeus had only expanded 1 more time, but has also made 3 stargates and a Fleet Beacon. It's a midgame Carrier fork, and Nada has barely any anti air!

Nada definately needs to go on the offensive now, particularly with his vultures, which are eating up supply. Normally vultures are great, but Zeus is almost exclusively goons and carriers. Vultures are weak against goons and useless against Carriers, so Nada needs to get rid of them to clear up supply for goliaths. He of course wants to do as much damage as possible with the one's he's made though.

Nada can't get in the front door so he tries dropping Zeus's main with 4 vultures. Zeus's main is well defended by a cannon though, and Nada's drop ship abandoned the vultures. They are quickly hunted down and destroyed by dragoons without doing damage.

Nada looks like he wants to try a frontal assault. Since Zeus teched to carriers and expanded at the same time, his ground army is probably at it's weakest right now. Nada is still really far behind though, so it's certainly not certain he can win a center fight even though now would be best time so far to try to.

Nada rolls out with about 10 tanks and 12 vultures. Nada is known as a macro king, so this is a very small force by his standards. After moving a short distance, Nada lost his nerve and sieged up just above his main. He is still sending in his vultures though.

Nada has about 18 vultures in total, and is looking for a way to try to do some damage. First he hits Zeus's newest expansion at 3 oclock. Zeus got up some cannons though and sent his goons down there. Rushing around the goons, Nada now takes this opportunity to try to hit Zeus's natural again.

Nada gets about 15 vultures into Zeus's natural while his goons were out of his base. This is a very good play by Nada. Zeus only has his carriers and 2 cannons to kill the vultures, and the carriers don't have many interceptors yet. Nada kills the cannons with about 8 vultures to spare and then kills all of the probes still there. I'm not sure that Zeus was able to save any of them. Nada's vultures weren't going to do him any good in a fight anyways, so trading those 18 in for about 20 probe kills was a huge plus for him. That's the best he could have hoped for given that Zeus's unit choice made his vultures irrelevant.

While that was going on, Nada expanded to the southern 9 oclock base. Now that his vultures are all dead, Nada has a big supply surplus that he quickly fills with Goliaths. He also makes another starport and begins pumping wraiths to help counter the carriers.

From Nada's periodic scanning of Zeus's army, it looks as though Zeus has an active force of 3-6 carriers and 20 or more dragoons, with a handful of high templar in support. Zeus's army is not too strong right now, compared to Nada's, but still more than enough to win a straight center fight and maintain map control.

Zeus lost an observer to a turret at 9, so he now knows about that base. He moves in from the north. Nada scans this movement and tries to ambush Zeus by moving in around him to cut off escape. His plan is to trap the dragoons with his superiour tank force while ambushing the carriers with cloaked wraiths. As the battle begins, Nada scans repeatedly around the battlefield and picks off observers with goliaths and cloaked wraiths. Zeus retreats right away after forcing Nada to lift off and run away his CC. Zeus doesn't want to risk losing his army in a big fight right now when he's so far ahead in power. However Nada did get his tanks around behind and into Zeus's escape route successfully. The goons ignore the tank fire and run around to an alternate escape route, but many of them are killed before they can escape. Meanwhile observers are dropping left and right, and Nada sends in the cloaked wraiths. Zeus had made very many observers though, and Nada was not able to kill them all fast enough. After getting out of tank range, the goons turn and fire on the wraiths. Zeus also gets off a nice psi storm on them. The wraiths drop like flies without being able to kill any carriers, and Nada runs away with the 3 he has left.

Many dragoons died and Nada did get to keep his expansion, but Zeus was so far ahead that that battle counts as a victory. He more than maintained his power edge and didn't lose any carriers. Carrier's get exponentially more powerful as their numbers grow, so Nada failing to get any of them while he had a chance is a major defeat.

At this point I'm sure Zeus expanded again, probably to the other 12 oclock base, the natural to the top left base. He has at least 6 carriers now, and Nada lost almost all of his wraiths. He isn't bothering to replace them either. If he had made a science facility it would be easy to start producing ghosts, but by now it's probably too late and too expensive.

Zeus begins to harass Nada's natural expansion with his carriers, and it looks like he has 7 of them. Nada has only goliaths to stop this force, and he only has about 20 of them. I can't make out the upgrades, but unless Nada is way ahead in upgrades that won't be enough.

Zeus is winning the fight, killing goliaths without losing any carriers. He can't make any headway though, and Nada keeps replacing the goliaths. Zeus pulls back for a while, probably to replace lost interceptors. A scan by Nada confirms that Zeus has expanded to the other 12 base as I suspected.

Rather than head back into combat with Nada at his natural, Zeus has brought his carriers back up and around to 9 again for another hit. Zeus attacks 9 with a bigger army this time, consisting of around 20-25 goons, a couple of archons, back up high templars, and his 7 odd carriers. Nada wasn't able to get a chance to prepare for this attack as before and his tanks and goliaths are now poorly positioned.

The fight is joined but this time Zeus has the better positioning. His high templars get off a lot of really nice storms to break through Nada's tank and goliath defenses, and chase away the reinforcements. 9 crumbles under the onslaught with few losses other than the archons to Zeus.

Nada fights on for a little while longer but the game is over. An excellent start by Zeus with the offensive pylon and dt drop, which enabled him to get a huge edge in power.



Nal Ra vs GoodFriend

This series of games is the semi-finals of the MBC Hanafos Cengame MSL. For more info on this league format, please visit www.teamliquid.net.

First an introduction for our players. GoodFriend is a relatively new school terran player that has recently made a name for himself primarily based on his stellar performance in this league. He only recently broke into the pro leagues and so does not have a heck of a lot of history to speak of. Nal Ra has been around for a while now, and is best known for his unorthodox and original starting build orders. He'll play with proximity hidden tech as the rule rather than the exception, and is well known for perfectly captilalising on his opponent's weaknesses in unexpected and unforseen ways. He also has the potential to break out with truly awesome micromanagement at any time. Nal Ra's biggest achievement is winning the most recent ongamenet starleague, and is also the only protoss player who even managed to qualify for this league. His victory in the OGN is seen as perhaps more a product of maps such as Paradoxxx than for any unusual amount of skill on Nal Ra's part, so another victory in a league with maps less favourable to protoss, such as this one, is needed for him to legitimise his victory and cement his place among the all-time Starcraft greats.

The first game is going to be taking place on MSL's U-Boat, a hybrid map that situations 4 corners island starting locations on a flat, interconnected mainland. Because of the strength of goliaths and the inherant advantage of floating buildings, this map slightly favours terran in the terran vs protoss game.

Nal Ra gets the 7 oclock position, while GoodFriend lands at 2. Both players initially start off with safe builds, Nal Ra going robotics first and Goodfriend floating his rax to scout. Goodfriend capitalises on Toss's need to tech a little before being able to mount an offensive by following up his factory with a CC first before beginning his starport. He also grabs an Ebay and puts up a fair number of turrets.

Nal Ra techs up to a support bay and begins working on reavers, hoping to capitalise on any openings that Goodfriend may have left if he had gone with an early expansion build order. To be safe he also gets a forge, primarily to defend against vulture drops.

Nal Ra scouts GoodFriend and discovers that he was right about the fast cc build, but GoodFriend had been fairly safe and put up 3 turrets around his main and 2 more at his natural, which, along with 3 tanks, covered him fairly well against reaver harassment.

Nal Ra has a shuttle now loaded with 2 reavers, and expands himself to his own natural, but he knows that economically he is significantly behind and needs to do damage to catch up. He first tries to hit Goodfriends main, but with the 2 tanks and 3 turrets it is too heavily defended. Nal Ra goes up and around behind the main to GoodFriend's natural, coming at it from the top. He sees that Goodfriend has only 1 tank there and makes the decision to drop, though because of turrets he cannot drop on top of the tank. His reavers are able to destroy the tank in a single salvo, but GoodFriend is already sieging more tanks on his island within range of the reavers, and he drops another tank off on the mainland. One reaver falls in the tanks counter salvo, and because of the still alive turret, Nal Ra would not be able to pick up his reaver without his shuttle dying. So he fires on some nearby scvs, killing 3 or 4, and runs the shuttle away. The second reaver falls without doing any more damage.

GoodFriend is now quite far ahead with his earlier expansion, and Nal Ra definately did not do 2 reavers worth of damage. GoodFriend puts up 3 barracks at his natural, looking like he wants to emulate Freshen vs Ggon of 2 weeks ago (in which Freshen humiliated and obliterated Ggon with an mm/tank attack on his natural).

Nal Ra also has some gateways up at his own natural and sends some goons up to investigate GoodFriends natural. They spot Goodfriend's rax right away, and then pull back, heavily outnumbered. At least now Nal Ra knows what GoodFriend's up to, but it may be too late to do anything about it.

Nal Ra's first step is to take the 10 oclock main, and cannon it up. It's lucky for him he got that forge. Upgrades are critical vs m&m and the cannons will prove extremely useful in fending off mm drops. To that end Nal Ra puts up 3 cannons at his main as well as adding a couple of gateways to produce templars out of.

GoodFriend now has a sizable mm/tank army and is ready to push out and attack. Nal Ra only has about 8 goons, and Goodfriend has about 18 troops and 7 tanks. Nal Ra clearly cannot defeat that army, but he has a few tricks up his sleeve. The first thing he does is send in dts to kill the troops, one at a time. GoodFriend is forced to use up his scans 1 at a time. Nal Ra can only hope GoodFriend runs out of energy before he runs out of dts. He frantically produces them out of his 3 mainland gateways. GoodFriend is a little slow to scan at first and loses some troops, but still has more than enough.

He does get to Nal Ra's natural with a big army finally, but Nal Ra isn't there. His 9 goons instead countered to GoodFriend's natural, hoping to distract him. GoodFriend has too many defenses left behind there however, and Nal Ra just does not have the material necessary to hold the mainland at this point. He is forced to retreat, heading down to 3. GoodFriend had been building a CC there, and the dragoons do succeed in forcing him to cancel it there.

Nal Ra's natural falls to the tank army, but Nal Ra is already scrambling to replace it with an expansion to the 4 oclock main. He adds cannons and gateways to this base as well. At this stage Nal Ra's best chance of victory is a carrier switch, which Goodfriend probably knows. It may be why he chose to go mm's in the first place. A decent mm army negates the effectiveness of carriers, because stimmed marines can go toe to toe with interceptors and often times kill them faster than they get killed. In addition, upgrades to marines are cheaper, usually allowing terran to stay ahead in the critical upgrade race. Going marines is a risky choice only when your dominance of the mainland is in question. They are weak to upgraded toss ground units, especially goons and high templars, but because GoodFriend had good reason to believe that he would have mainland dominance by holding his early expansion attempt and killing the reavers, it was a safe and smart choice for him. GoodFriend, so far, is one step ahead of Nal Ra.

While Nal Ra is starting to take 4, Goodfriend is already moving on 10. He is low on dropships at the moment, so his plan is to use 1 to elevator his forces up the cliff. He has more than enough army to take out 10, the question is whether he can do it with an elevator. GoodFriend makes a critical error in his execution though, and positions his army within site of Nal Ra's defenses. Had Nal Ra not been aware of the elevator attempt, GoodFriend could have gotten his whole army up safely. Instead he tried to siege within range of Nal Ra's assimilator, to have his cake and eat it to. What he got was 2 dt's falling upon his mm's instead, and Goodfriend's first shuttle load is obliterated. He did finally get the energy to scan and kill the dts, but Nal Ra bought his 2 newly produced high templar some more time to accumulate mana. When Goodfriend unloads his next 2 shuttle loads of troops and moves forward, Nal Ra's templars are ready with storm, and take the majority of them out. The cannons do for the rest of the infantry, but 3 tanks are left to fire upon the cannons unmolested. Nal Ra morphs a couple of archons to take care of the tanks while Goodfriend elevators up his last 2 tanks. The archons go to town on the tanks as soon as they are done, but after the dust settles 2 tanks still remain. 2 more Dt's pop out and finish them off before they can do any more damage, and, miraculously, Nal holds 10.

Meanwhile, Nal Ra tries a dt drop on Goodfriends main with 2 dt's. They succeed in taking out a depot and an academy before getting scanned and killed by defending tanks.

GoodFriend now decides to try his luck on the 4 oclock main expansion with his next army. Apparently he's sick of losing troops to dts, as he now has a science vessel with his army. Nal Ra had probably been hoping to hold 4 the same way he did 10, but with vessels it won't be so easy. Nal Ra does send a shuttle to reinforce while GoodFriend begins elevatoring up under the protection of his vessel and sieged tanks.

As Goodfriend's army moves in, the shuttle unloads its 2 dts and a high templar. Nal Ra also sends in his other dts, and they focus on the tanks while Nal Ra tries to use storm to keep the troops at bay. He succeeds in killing all of the lifted tanks, but a few troops still survive. Nal Ra had been waiting for mana with a second templar, and it comes and storms the remaining troops. GoodFriend had another dropship full of troops on the way, which unloads now, and tangles with 2 goons and a cannon of Nal Ra which just popped out his gateways. GoodFriend matrixes one marine and with his help manages to take out the goons and cannon. Nal Ra had been warping in another cannon, but Goodfriend takes out the pylon powering it, leaving the base helpless. Nal Ra starts to warp in another pylon to power it, but Goodfriend takes out the cannon before it's done. When it's all said and done, 1 marine and 1 medic are still alive, and he is slowly taking down the undefended nexus.

While that's going on, Nal Ra drops 12 with a pair of dts, which start slashing scvs right away, but Goodfriend is very alert and takes them out with mm before much damage is done.

GoodFriend's superiour macro is only widening the gap, and about 7 dropships hit 10. Nal Ra has no possible way to stop that kind of force. 2 templars get off a couple of decent storms, but are quickly overwhelmed. Goodfriend foolishly just stims and sends in his troops however, not counting on Nal Ra's cannons, which take out most of the troops. Some Dt's also take out the tanks, and amazingly 10 still stands. The nexus at 4 falls to the lone marine however.

Nal Ra has begun teching carriers with 2 stargates, but he is badly in trouble until they come. He is having the hardest time winning any fight and is only getting more behind as time goes on. GoodFriend had retaken 3 right after Nal Ra had gooned it earlier and was pretty far ahead in bases.

Goodfriend finally scans the dts at 10, and proceeds to raze that base with his many remaining forces. 2 carriers of Nal Ra's pop out and begin making interceptors. Nal Ra also expands to the 6 oclock low ground and the 9 oclock low ground to replace his high ground bases. He immediately dispatches carriers to try to hold them.

However, GoodFriend was not content to take out carriers with mere mm, and put up a physics lab on his science facility. He's now working on battlecruisers out of his 2 starports. 2 battlecruisers are completed soon after Nal Ra's carriers.

GoodFriend attacks 6 oclock with his large tank army, and Nal Ra only has cannons there to hold. Not the most sturdy of defenses, all things considered. Naturally 6 falls pretty quickly.

Goodfriend now has 4 bcs, the same number as Nal Ra has of carriers. In response to the razing of 6, Nal Ra successfully storm raids 12 with his carrier backup.

GoodFriend's tank army now heads towards 9, Nal Ra's only mining base, while Nal Ra looks to retake 4.

The tanks arrive at 9 unmolested and open fire. Nal Ra's carrier force arrive on the scene, and a couple of high templars arrive to help out. GoodFriend had brought his BC's along too though, and a tense air battle between battlecruiser and carrier ensued. Goodfriend got off a couple of yamato's, instantly killing 1 carrier, while Nal Ra stormed the battlecruisers in response, damaging all of them. Nal Ra's carriers are forced into retreat however, because of the superiour damage and armour of the battlecruisers. With some nice micro, Nal Ra kills a couple of the behemoths, but with only 1 remaining carrier vs 2 battlecruisers it doesn't look good.

The tanks razed 9 while this battle was ongoing, and now Nal Ra is only mining with a few probes at 4. Nal Ra attacks 3 with an archon, but it does little damage before getting killed by another tank army. Nal Ra also gets another carrier, and a few corsairs for backup. Meanwhile Goodfriend has 2 battlecruisers and 7 wraiths.

GoodFriend prepares his final assault on 4, while Nal Ra hopes to ambush it with his fleet and some templars. He does get off some nice storms on unloading dropships, but when Goodfriend's fleet shows up Nal Ra leaves the game with a GG, knowing it's over.


Game 2: Luna

The next game is taking place on Luna, another twilight tileset map. This map is a plain jane land map, with high ground mains, a first and second natural, and a huge wide open rocky terrain center. Almost everything about this map is tailor made for toss to own terran. Nal Ra has no excuse to lose on this map.

GoodFriend gets the 5 oclock base while Nal Ra warps in at 2, right above him. Nal Ra opens with a standard gate robotics build while Goodfriend is fac ccing. When Goodfriend's scv scouts Nal Ra's base, Nal Ra shows it an observatory, then cancels it after it dies, showing Goodfriend a standard goon/obs build. Nal Ra insteads starts his expansion Nexus right away however, and then adds his observatory after. Because Nal Ra expanded on 1 gate, he is actually ahead of Goodfriends fac cc. Nal Ra also made a hidden pylon at 12, but never puts anything there, possibly hoping to decieve Goodfriend into turtling harder against a hidden tech build. Goodfriend would know that Nal Ra hid a pylon by counting the pylons in his main, so it's a good play.

As the nexus goes up, Nal Ra adds a couple more gateways, bringing his total to 3. Nal Ra clearly guessed that Goodfriend would fac cc and countered it nicely with an even faster expansion. Goodfriend cautiously fortifies his own fast expansion, still looking out for whatever hidden tech Nal Ra never built. Meanwhile Nal Ra uses dragoons to block both of the exits to Goodfriends base and keep any scvs from scouting him. Under that cover he takes the 11 oclock main as well.

Goodfriend is now completely in the dark and playing confused and innefficient. He is unable to scout Nal Ra at all, and without a scanner it doesn't look like he'll be able to. While Nal Ra starts mining from 10 and is producing units out of 8 gates, GoodFriend is finally ready to try something. He uses tanks to move Nal Ra's goons back a bit from his exits and then springs out a vulture squad. Nal Ra had only just switched to zealot production, and at the worst possible time. GoodFriend shows up at his natural with 8 vultures and Nal Ra has only his 6 zealots to hold. Nal Ra had very cockily not produced any cannons to defend his miners, and the zealots prove useless against the upgraded vults.

The vultures go to town on the mining probes, utterly raping them while the useless zealots mill about getting blown up by mines. Nal Ra cannot send his goons home or he'll sacrifice the middle to Goodfriend's tank army, a mistake that would probably lose him the game. Instead he has to try to get rid of the vultures with his 0 cannons and gateway units popping out. After clearing out the natural, Goodfriends vultures chase fleeing probes into Nal Ra's main and kill still more probes.

Finally Nal Ra pops out another round of zealots and with the vultures out of mines he is able to kill them off, but not before losing 3 quarters of the probes at his main and natural. Luckily for him he still has 10. Goodfriend aims to end that lucky streak with another group of 12 vultures however. Nal Ra did not make the same mistake though, and had gateways, cannons, and goons blocking the 10 ramp. After losing some vultures, Goodfriend pulls back. A second group of goons caught the retreating vultures in crossfire, and they were destroyed to a man, getting only 1 goon for their troubles. After losing about 22 vultures in exchange for about 30 probes, 6 zealots, and a dragoon, Goodfriend has caught up a little bit to Nal Ra, but the map means that he still has a long way to go.

Goodfriend continues his main push, heading along the side of the center and over the bridge into Nal Ra's second natural, the safest possible location for his units. However Nal Ra still has a way larger army and should be able to win the fight there with little trouble. For some reason, Nal Ra elects not to fight that battle though, and instead runs past Goodfriend, and into his base.

GoodFriend still has a loaded bunker at his natural and several turrets, depots, and tanks barring his way though. Nal Ra does have a gigantic army, but Goodfriend has excellent defensive positions. He also sends his army back right away to flank Nal Ra from behind and cut off retreat. Nal Ra made a pretty big error here. He does kill some stuff, but he lost his entire army, which was way bigger.

Nal Ra did buy himself some more time though, and his astronomical power edge is only going to translate to more units as time goes by. GoodFriend, knowing this, is turning around and rushing back into battle. He has about 10 tanks and 12 vultures, and until a few more rounds of gateway units pop out Nal Ra only has a couple of zealots and goons. Nal Ra, unbelievably, takes 10s nat now, rather than produce more gateways to spend the huge amounts of money he is already making now.

Nal Ra uses zealots in a shuttle to take out 1 tank while Goodfriend heads north. GoodFriend gets right to Nal Ra's natural entrance before stopping and sieging up. Nal Ra's tiny army quickly gets owned, but with a good 12 gateways producing units non stop, he may be able to hold on the strength of reinforcements alone. Goodfriend moves forward more, taking out Nal Ra's defending cannons at his natural, while Nal Ra masses reinforcements and loads his shuttle again. Nal Ra drops the tanks with dt's and zealots then while the vults move up looking to get probe kills. Nal Ra had a couple more cannons there though, and zealots which just popped out of his main gateways help in holding off the vultures. Meanwhile the dts rape Goodfriend's defenseless tanks. Goodfriend made a couple of bad decisions there which may cost him the game.

Another round of reinforcements from 10 arrive and flank Goodfriends reinforcements, and at this point Nal Ra just has too much power. Nal Ra has lost his army 3 times, and Goodfriend only once, but by the virtue of Nal Ra's power edge, he is still way ahead. Despite his mistakes, there is no reason Nal Ra should lose the game now.

Goodfriend tries another vulture raid on both 10 and Nal Ra's natural, but there are now many cannons and the raids are useless. Nal Ra is holding the center of the map with a gigantic ground army and amusingly using the tiny patches of buildable terrain to put up single pylons and cannons while Goodfriend is trying once again to mass a ground army to do something about it.

I guess Nal Ra got bored or something because he elects to waste his army in another head on assault, doing almost nothing and losing a good 5,000 worth of perfectly good toss ground. While Goodfriend microes his ass frantically trying to stay alive, Nal Ra amuses himself by taking 9 as well.

Even though Nal Ra only lost his army about 20 seconds ago, when Goodfriend tries to push out with a 20 tank army, Nal Ra already has more than enough goons, high templars, and zealots to completely obliterate it as soon as it gets past his ramp entrance.

For whatever reason, Goodfriend still isn't giving up, in spite of Nal Ra's 5 mining bases and massive army, now backed up by arbiters.

Nal Ra decides his coffers may run dry and takes 7 and 7's natural, bringing his mining base total to 7. Goodfriend attacks that with some vultures and succeeds in mining some dragoons to death, but are quickly mopped up by reinforcements.

Nal Ra decides to head on attack Goodfriend again, hoping to win before he dies of boredom. This time he has the backup of an arbiter with stasis, but amazingly Goodfriend holds again with his copious turrets, high ground tanks, and narrow choke points.

Goodfriend moves out again with 8 tanks and about 15 vultures, laying about 30 mines everywhere. Nal Ra attacks right away with zealots and dragoons, but Goodfriend scans and with the help of his huge mine count does not instantly get raped. However Nal Ra now has 2 arbiters, and with constant reinforments from a good 15 gates, quickly overwhelms the siege moded tanks with pure dragoons.

gg -- finally.



Final Map: Enter the Dragon

Enter the Dragon is a 2 start position land map with an interesting layout which essentially boils down to 2 alternate routes from each main meeting at a flat open center point Each main has 3 naturals, a close in mineral only, a slightly further away mineral and gas expansion along the further route, and a third mineral only past a ramp on that route. For kicks there are islands thrown in at 12 and 6. I'd say the map favours terran in tvp ever so slightly since it's a pretty small map.

Nal Ra opens with a zealot, hoping to capitalise on the close start positions. Followed up with ranged goons, Nal Ra has been known to knock over terran ramp defenses in the past with this build. The zealot starts beating on a depot before any rines are done, but Goodfriend starts repairing right away and also builds a bunker, fortifying his base against that possibility. By the time the goon gets there the bunker already has 3 rines, ending any chance for an early offensive.

Nal Ra continues up his tech order with a dt drop build, getting archives and robotics before expanding. His first shuttle has only a probe in it though, which he uses to start an expansion at the 6 island.

Friend is producing mainly tanks after scouting with a single vulture, a little strange since most terrans will at least try to vulture harass. He may be planning to go for a semi quick expansion, but he already has 2 fac so it won't be that fast. All in all a very defensive build. He uses his vulture to block Nal Ra's expansion nexus with mines, but Nal Ra already has his island up and running.

Meanwhile Nal Ra has gone back and picked up a couple DT's with his shuttle, and moves out towards Goodfriends main. After giving it the once over, he decides Goodfriend's main is sufficiently defended and just puts the dts on his island.

Now he gets a stargate, not content to tech up a mere two trees in the first 7 minutes of the game. It all reeks of desperation, but with Nal Ra you have to keep in mind there's usually a method to the madness.

GoodFriend seems kinda confused at Nal Ras lack of anything visible, and satisfies himself with mining his entrance.

Nal Ra now has 2 stargates and a fleet beacon, with a couple carriers on the way. Nal Ra also amuses himself with a dt drop on Friend's natural expansion attempt, now with a full four dt's. What follows will probably never be forgotten by myself. Luckily I wrote the sequence of events down as I was watching the game.

First Nal Ra drops 2 dts, killing the turret and starting to beat on a building comsat. 3 Vultures come to lay mines, but Nal Ra picks up and repositions his dts on the other side of the cc to safety. Goodfriend does not have a main scanner up yet. Some more scvs come to build turrets, but Nal Ra remembered where the mines were laid and carefully avoids them while killing the scvs before they can make turrets. Friend keeps laying mines everywhere furiously, and while he was doing that, Nal Ra dropped 1 dt into the middle of them, causing a mine to blow up 2 vultures. The Dt, which survived the first mine blast, then kills the third with a mighty swipe before getting killed by another 2 mines. Now the mines and vultures are basically out of the picture and Nal Ra has 3 dts left. More scvs come and another scanner is started. Nal Ra drops all three dts to take out the scvs and scanner again. More vultures come to kill the dts and the main scanner is now up. Nal just picks the dts up once they are scanned and waits 5 seconds before dropping them again. While he was waiting Friend laid more mines to kill the dts. Nal Ra again carefully dropped his dts into the mine fields, taking them and the vultures out and saving himself 1 more dt, which he uses to finish off the hurt ass scanner. SCVs continue to try to get turrets up while another round of vultures is sent. These vultures had laid mines along the other route, so had none left, but Friend was counting on getting that second scanner up, or at least some turrets. Friend uses scvs to repair the scanner while building more turrets and the dt finishes off the scanner, then starts killing more scvs. Finally some more vultures with mines show up, and Nal Ra picks the dt up and carts him back to the island. Hella good harassment.

Turns out Friend used his first scan to scan the stargates, which is partly why it was so late.

Nal Ra takes that opportunity to get his natural expansion, and uses 3 pylons to block the bridge leading to it's rear, blocking off 1 route that vultures could take to harass it. His first 2 carriers are also already out, but because Friend had scanned him he already had range upgraded goliaths out.

Nal Ra wants to harass Friends natural again, but Friends goliaths catch him on open ground and chase him back to his island at 6. Nal Ra gets a third carrier out while starting to produce some regular units for the first time. Friend now has a sizable gol/tank army and is starting to push out. Nal Ra tries to stall with some dts but they are scanned and killed before doing too much.

The battle is met at the location of Nal Ra's mineral only natural, which he hasn't taken yet. Nal Ra has about 3 carriers, 3 zealots, and 11 goons, while GoodFriend has 6 tanks, 8 goliaths, and 6 vultures. It will be a very close fight. Nal Ra takes the offensive, going right after Goodfriends army. He focus fires on the goliaths while keeping his carriers moving. He succeeds in taking out the goliaths with the loss of 1 carrier, allowing him to chase the tanks home with his air force.

He barely won the fight, losing almost all his ground forces, but with Friend forced to turtle up while he's already behind in resources, the game is pretty much over. Nal Ra's gamble paid off.

Nal Ra goes about his business of harassing Friends natural with the 2 carriers, but cloaked wraiths kill them. Friend did lose all of his wraiths to goons in the process though, and Nal Ra already has 2 more carriers out. Nal Ra takes his mineral only expansion while using those 2 carriers to harass at Friend's expansion again. 2 more carriers are added soon after.

Goodfriend gets some vultures into Nal Ra's natural, halting mining for a second while the probes hide behind cannons, but goons come and kill the vults before too long.

Nal Ra then attacks Goodfriend head on at his mineral only while Goodfriend was trying to float a cc there to expand. The tank/gol defenses barely hold out, and Nal Ra pulls back after delaying the expansion for a bit.

Nal Ra lost a couple of carriers, but 2 more had completed, and he goes back to harassing Goodfriends natural with them, which now has a a healthy smattering of turrets. With the 4 carriers concentrating fire, the turrets start to explode, and the carriers get a few scv kills until goliaths come. Friend tried to surround and kill the carriers by going down the alternate path, but Nal Ra takes that opportunity to fly north and hit his mineral only again. Meanwhile, now that the turrets are gone, Nal Ra can send dts into the gas natural. Goodfriend is holding, but he's losing scvs at both bases.

Nal Ra pulls back after a little while, when it becomes clear that Goodfriend has stabalised his situation. Nal Ra has amassed a bigass goon/templar army now, although he lost all of his carriers in the process.

Goodfriend moves out for one last gasp with a big tank/goliath army. After some light skirmishes, Friend succeeds in getting the center of the map. Finally Nal Ra throws in everything, including 2 more carriers, and after a big fight, GoodFriend's army is decimated and he leaves with a GG.

2-1 Nal Ra, excellent series.



Foru vs Sync on Namja Iyagi

This is an Ongamenet Challenge League game, played on February 24th.

First an introduction to our players. Sync is a rather streaky terran user who has been on the scene for a number of years now. He had a breakout year in 2002 when he won an Ongamenet Starleague, but since then has done little to distinguish himself as a progamer. He has been on a tear in the challenge league recently though, winning his last few games convincingly. By all appearances Sync looks to be on the way to making a good run at his 2002 achievement.

ForU is a relatively new school player, known as a terran killer. His pvp and pvz are weak however, preventing him from having any tournament success, even if he has been known to lay a whupping on such terran greats as Nada and Boxer. ForU is looking to break into the big leagues for the first time and needs to get through the challenge league to do it. With the abundance of terrans in this years challenge league, ForU may finally get that chance.

The map, Namja Iyagi is a new Ongamenet map. The map features 4 corners mains with low ground naturals leading to a high ground center. The center is wide open and very large. There are also 6 island expansions - 1 behind each main and 1 each at 9 and 3. The main island expansions are very intelligently done. In order to balance terran being able to float a cc there for a free expansion at the beginning of the game, the designers actually used a single mineral patch with 8 minerals on it to block a cc from being able to land. You have to build a dropship and land a worker to pick up the mineral patch before any expansion can be started, giving terran no more chance to take the island early than any other race.

ForU gets the top right position at 2, while Sync drew the bottom left spot, 7. These positions favour ForU because of the amount of distance between the mains. The center of the map is huge and flat, perfect conditions for Toss to fight terran. However, once you get close the mains, there is elevation changes and ramps, which are heavily in favour of Terran. By maximising the distance between the mains, these start spots maximise the amount of favourable terrain that ForU has to work with.

Sync opens with three rines then goes for a Fac CC fast expansion. It's the perfect opening for this map because ForU will have a very hard time double fast expanding and holding, and an even harder time attacking. Toss really does not have a strong counter in this situation.

ForU scouts the fast expansion and harasses lightly with his first four goons, but does little damage. In order to attack Sync he needs to travel down a ramp through tank fire. He manages to damage an outlying ebay but loses a goon for his troubles.

ForU is really in a quandary but picks the least of all evils with a second expansion to 12. 12 is very open and exposed, but in the case of toss vs terran that actually makes it a more defensible base than a closed in one. The only real drawbacks to the open 12 and 6 expansions are vulture harassment and cliffs behind them that can be exploited with dropship/tank.

Sync begins to move his tanks up a bit, forcing ForU's containing goons away from his ramp, then springs loose a vulture raiding party. The vultures head right into ForU's natural and kill a few probes, but ForU had troops there to fight them off. The vultures headed on to the 12 base once ForU's zealots and goons started to hit them, and got a couple more probes before getting trapped and killed. All in all he lost more vultures than he killed probes.

The real purpose behind the raid was soon made clear though, when the sound of sieging tanks could be heard on the high ground above ForU's natural. ForU was induced to sacrifice entire screens worth of favourable terrain by a few mere vultures, which could have disastrous consequences. In order to attack the tanks, ForU needs to either climb up a ramp or head through a high ground passageway which Sync was even now fortifying with mines. Worse yet, the tanks can reach ForU's natural mineral line, removing his economic edge with ease. ForU splits up the miners, sending half to 12 and half back to his main, saving most of them from tank fire, but still slowing his mining significantly.

ForU is in big danger now, because he is behind economically and doesn't look like he has the forces to break the push. After a few more seconds of buildup, ForU makes his desperationg ploy. Sending in goons and zealots from the north with a flanking zealot platoon climbing up the ramp to the east, ForU attacks with everything he's got to break the push. Amazingly, with some excellent micro and a whole lotta luck, he breaks Sync's push with dragged mines and restarts mining at his natural.

In addition he had made a shuttle to help in breaking the push and uses it now to take the low ground island behind his main. Sync had not been idle either and has taken the 6 oclock base for himself, and with his push rebuffed begins fortifying the position.

Sync is now in a critical position. In terms of economy, he probably caught up to or even passed ForU during his push, but he was most definately behind again. It is possible for terran to come back in this condition because of their potential to win fights they should not and their excellent harassment capabilities, but Sync would have to kick it up a notch. The first thing he tries is another vulture raid into 12. This raid is a little more successful and Sync got his money's worth out of his vultures.

Following the pattern, Sync follows up the vuture raid with a big center push, but ForU was ready for it this time. With a superiour force of goons and zealots, ForU destroys many tanks and forces Sync almost all the way back to 6. Because of the superiourity of tanks in defending ramps and some studiously placed depots, ForU has no chance of pushing into Sync's natural.

Instead, ForU takes the 10 oclock natural, continuing to respect the mass power equation by using his superiour mass to create superiour (or in this case even more superiour) power. Sync is only getting more behind as time goes on. Another vulture raiding party spots the 10 oclock natural base and attempt to harass it, but ForU had not sent probes yet so the vults cannot do any real damage before being chased off by dragoons.

ForU is happily controlling the center while continuing to power up. Sync's dominant defensive position prevent ForU from taking him out for now, but ForU's mass and power are more than enough to keep Sync in control. As Sync tries again to push up, ForU again slaps him down with his larger center force. This time Sync bit off way more than he could chew, as ForU's ensuing counter attack suceeds in overrunning the 6 base and force Sync to lift the cc and run away his scvs. Some are killed before they can escape. Sync's reinforcements arrive, vultures tangling with goons, and with some nice micro ForU holds the vults off for a while, but when Sync's tanks arrive, ForU's goons discover they have no escape route with mines surrounding them, and are all slaughtered. With that, Sync takes his own low ground island natural expansion and starts mining from 6 again.

ForU is now in a more delicate position, having sacrificed his army to deal only superficial damage to Sync. Whereas a westerner toss would have been very tempted to expand more, ForU elected instead to rebuild his army. Not trusting his current mass, ForU is playing very safe.

Meanwhile, Sync uses his expansion dropship to try to harass ForU. At this stage of the game this is very hard to do and I'm not sure why Sync bothered. ForU will have way too many goons for 2 tanks to be a problem, and even if the tanks manage to stop mining at a base and take out a few probes, when you have 4 mining bases that's a very minor concern. Even if he completely wiped out an expansion's probes, it would only be equivalent to taking out about 4 probes near the beginning of the game. He finally settled on trying to take out 12 by dropping on it's cliff, but ForU ran away his probes in plenty of time and then took the tanks out with a shuttle full of zealots, losing nothing. Next, Sync took his other tank with his ship to ForU's natural and gets off 1 seige mode shot, killing a few of the tightly bunched probes, then picks it up right away and flees in the face of uncoming zealots. Sync then took his dropship to the other side of 12 and landed his second tank there. At this point the goons kill the dropship, and then the zealots in the shuttle reload and kill the tank again, but 6 has been stopped from mining for some time now, and a couple of probes got killed. Most importantly, Sync forced ForU to waste just as much time as he did, the biggest drawback to drop harassment at this stage.

While this was going on, Sync attempts to vulture harass into the center of the map, laying mines around ForU's army, but the damage incurred could be called cosmetic at best.

In all the confusion, Sync is able to heavily fortify the 6 base, securing his position a little better. Seeing that, ForU takes the 10 main in response, knowing that he cannot successfully clear Sync out of 6 again at this stage.

Sync feels that he has scrabbled back into the game sufficiently to try another center push. Although he keeps getting slapped down, he knows he has to keep trying. All it takes is one mistake by toss to lose many troops doing nothing, and then he can get right back into it. If he just stays passive though, he will never even have a shot to get back into the game.

By now the forces are getting very large, which is to terran's advantage. Arclite cannons and mines are splash, so as more units are involved in a given battle, terran's total damage output increases exponentially. Even though, proportionately speaking, ForU's army is just as superiour as it's always been, he is forced to retreat due to nature of the increased returns upon terran ground units.

Sync continues to move up through the center of the map while ForU gives ground slowly, buying time. He wants to let his power superiourity translate into as big a mass advantage as possible before having to commit to a center fight. Sync, meanwhile, knows the clock is against him and wants to get into a fight as soon as possible, while not getting careless and losing said fight through poor micro or decision making.

While fortifying his center position to increase his chances of victory in the coming battle, Sync does his best to reduce the toss power that is working against him with a dropship raid to 10. By dropping behind the minerals onto 10's low ground island natural, Sync can safely stop ForU from mining there, however ForU already had loaded shuttles to prevent that move, and quickly neutralises Sync's threat. Sync picks up and tries to head to 12 again, but this time ForU had cannons up covering the cliff, and as the dropship tries to unload the cannons shoot it down, and then kill the 1 tank he did drop before it can do anything.

With that, ForU chooses that time to try to break Sync's push, and starts another center fight. The first thing he does is use his dragoons to clear some of the copius mines that Sync had laid. Sync's tanks are firing on the goons, but ForU had so many that there are still many left after the mines are cleared. Then ForU sends in his zealots with his goons to kill Sync's front line of tanks. Sync fights a running retreat across the center of the map, sieging tanks and laying mines, trying to slow ForU down, but ForU by this point had a way larger army.

ForU fights his way all the way down to 6 once again and since Sync has mined out his natural he really has no choice but to try to use his scvs to hold. There are no zealots left by now and Sync has a buttload of scvs coupled with reinforcing tanks and many vultures, so, unbelievably, Sync holds again, if just by the skin of his teeth.

ForU has clearly had enough of Sync's shenanigans and starts forking carriers. He slaps down 3 stargates to that end and continues to produce probes and a center army.

Emboldened by his last ditch defense, or more likely, in desperation, Sync grabs the 4 oclock natural just east of 6. This base too is easily defended due to the fact that it cannot be hit except by going down a ramp into tank fire. So, in response, ForU grabs the 3 oclock island. Now that he's committed to an airforce, there's no reason he should not be able to easily hold it.

Next, ForU gets together a raiding party of zealots and heads into the 4 natural. Although Sync's tanks and mines are cost effective in holding that position, ForU's numbers are overwhelming and Sync is forced to lift the cc and relinquish the base. In response, Sync drops the 3 oclock island with 2 more tanks, and prevents mining there. ForU uses a dropship of zealots to kill the tanks and hold the island, not wanting to give away his carrier fork too soon.

ForU tries a different tack this time, and, while seemingly beginning a center fight, he forces Sync to siege and lay mines, then just runs past into Sync's natural with a decent zealot and dragoon force. Sync is caught off guard by the ploy, but the worth of the play is questionable, as ForU's forces are now trapped in Sync's base with the only avenue of escape being 2 ramps covered by numerous tanks and mines. ForU does kill some factory units that come out one by one, but Sync calmly pushes into his own main and removes the threat before serious damage is done.

ForU had the troops to spare though, while Sync did not. After forcing Sync to return to his main with the bulk of his units, ForU takes out the 6 oclock base yet again, the real reason for his run past move. Sync just retreats his scvs this time since he still has an army to reclaim the base later and doesn't want to waste any scvs pointlessly. It seems that ForU would have been able to take out 6 with a head on attack anyways had he not done that though, so I don't think it was a smart play in the final analysis. ForU would have been able to not only take 6 out, but also take out Sync's army and force him out of the game. However, it may be that I am wrong and ForU would have lost a direct fight. It's very hard to say.

Sync's army does come back to chase away ForU and he relands his cc and restarts mining there.

Sync now has a decent army going compared to ForU, since ForU split his forces in half and allowed them to each get destroyed piecemeal. ForU is not really at a point where he needs to worry overmuch though. Sync again pushes north, and the caution and good decision making that marked ForU's earlier play is out the window. Now he looks like he just wants the game to end already and throws whatever he's got at Sync. Sync calmly microes against the incoming toss army and actually rapes it pretty nicely, losing almost nothing. That's the kind of break Sync needed 15 minutes ago, but by now it's too late anyways. ForU's navy shows up on the scene, and Sync has only token anti air in a few goliaths and the odd turret. The carriers plow through that with ease, and Sync is forced to leave the game with a GG.

This whole game changed when ForU broke Sync's first push through some miracle. He should not have been able to win that fight, let alone so convincingly, he really caught a break on that one. From there he was able to keep the game flowing to his favour, control the conflicts and the action, and keep the battles in the center, fighting on favourable terrain

I. Introduction
Borrowing from the Starcraft Compendium: "As with any same species encounters, Protoss vs. Protoss battles are more a race for resources and unit production than anything else. The capabilities at hand are the same for both sides so the player that knows his/her force the best, both their strengths and weaknesses, will usually be the victor."

The quote above sums up why Protoss vs. Protoss is my favorite match up. The match up is even to start so its all about how one uses what one has and the other guy cant get anything you cant. The winner of the match rests largely on unit production and countering, which I believe I'm pretty good at. The match up is open for much analysis. I find this match up more straightforward then different race match ups yet many people do not play it well.

PvP is often considered thinking mans game. I believe that is correct in some sense. This MU relies heavily on scouting and adapting to your opponent to get the most out of your build and units. Many people believe winning or losing a PvP game is highly dependent on luck. I don’t believe the outcome of a PvP game is any more lucky or random then the other match ups, if anything, probably less. Most of the people who comment about PvP that way just show their lack of understanding.

In keeping with the "what some think" trend: some think that PvP is easier to understand and play compared to the other match ups. I agree with this somewhat as well. Your opponent can not get anything you can not, that makes things easier right there. This fact means that PvP is often a solid counter game with both players using a similar build, but one making better use of build orders, units, etc. Overall, PvP was the easiest match up for me to become comfortable with.

I started this guide because I wanted to gather my thoughts about PvP as well as create a guide for the community. There is so little knowledge out there on how to play PvP well (or any match up for that matter). Surely the pro Koreans and top European toss players know how to play PvP quite well, because they have played many PvP games against skilled opponents, and have been able to adapt their build though trial and error to figure out what works for them. But, for the average player out there, there are not many resources on how to learn to play well. The advice most often given is to play a lot of games. And yes that works, but its clearly not the easiest or fastest way. Well big surprise, you can learn much faster if you have good knowledge about the game imparted to you from someone else. I wish a guides like this were available when I started Starcraft. Now, some people complain that Starcraft was ruined with replays, if your the kind of guy that believes that you’ll probably dislike my guide too because I reveal many things about the match up which will probably decrease time spent playing in order to become a very good toss player. Nonetheless, this is just a guide. Something to help you become a good PvP player, not an end all be all of all Protoss builds, counters, etc.

Another aim of this guide is to systematically think about PvP. This guide would more aptly be named apart of the science of playig Protoss well, not an art. One thing that this guide does well that is not often attempted is covering efficient builds. That is a very important part of Starcraft, yet it is often neglected. Why? I venture that the vast majority just do not know about good efficiency. Those who do know don't often tell because they don't want others to know or don't really recognize it themselves. Hautamaki gave some decent general advice about Protoss and had sections about PvT and PvZ, but no PvP even though he supposedly had written something up. I suppose he just never got around to posting it or it was not the quality he wanted. Tsunami seems to have considered strategy more systematically then Hautamaki, but he also had many very general articles in which contradictions were able to be found all over. When a contradiction arises from my explanation of a certain part of PvP I want to point it out, to not leave you in the dark wondering about so-and-so situation so that you will not take incomplete advice to game play. Though, I admit this can be annoying at times as I often don't commit to one thing or the other. I'm forced to type that this way or that is often the better way or that this usually will work, and so on.

One last thing. Read my advice, but consider things for yourself. Feel free to test my advice and see if it works. Feel free to criticize whats in this guide. This guide certainly requires more intellectual understanding then most guides, but I’m sure it will also be more rewarding. Lastly, you might want to know a bit about the person who wrote this guide. Well, I'm not a very well known player. I have not played Brood War a lot. Only around 1000 1:1 games as Toss, then I stopped playing for the most part and worked on this guide. Yes that means I’ve probably played only around 200 PvP games, and most of them vs. no one special. Unlike most people (I assume) I got good by thinking my way there, not playing mass games. I played about half of those games before it clicked. I'm not sure exactly how, but suddenly I understood PvP at different level. I have watched around 500 reps of PvP games and builds. Most of what is in this guide comes from what I have figured out through that, though experience has certainly played a part as well.
II. Opening Builds
Contents:
- Intro
- Basic Builds
- Builds Template
- Unit Times
- Builds Explained
- Scouting Summery
- Other Builds Considered


Intro:
I understand all of this may be a bit much to take in if you don''t know much about the more technical aspects of this game. This may even be a bit much if you are a good player but are not used to thinking in such a way. Nevertheless, I will give you lots of good info that you should attempt to put into practice. I'd like to point out something very important now. This analysis is based around Lost Temple, though it is still rather applicable to Luna, and other similar maps. Maps such as Rush Hour, Nostalgia, or Neo Forte may require slight style changes, which I do not cover throughly in this guide. Admittedly, certain maps such as Requiem require a somewhat significant change in play, which I try to give some brief advice on. Maps without a ramp are only covered briefly. I don't consider the unique possibilities maps like Bifrost bring about, with cannons behind main minerals or the like. I am not considering island maps, nor rather unusual maps such as 815. Seems like a lot I'm leaving out, and it is, but my goal was to cover the most popular map type, which will serve as a foundation you will be able to apply to other maps with your discretion. Watch replays and play on other maps in order to get a better grasp of how they are played.
Now that we have covered maps, I'd like to let you know what your getting into before you get too far in. PvP builds can roughly be divided into three groups, expo/forge first, 1gate, and 2gate. This guide is mainly about one gate tech, but I made an effort to cover two gate as well. For one gate I focus on zeal first builds, but I make an effort to cover core first as well. I largely ignore fast expo and forge builds as they are not as popular. My builds often center around reavers, though I will make an effort to include non-reaver styles, such as dark templar.
Lastly, I'd like to note that the most important thing for beginners to realize about early game is to effectively counter what your opponent does so that you don’t lose units/probes early needlessly, while maintaining as constant probe production as you can, with good unit production and tech progression. This is a very consistent, stable, and overall quite good way to play.



Basic Builds:

1) Tech: 8pylon, 10gate, 12assim
The basic tech build order. This build warps in an assimilator the fastest, most reasonable way possible. This build is usually followed up by a 13 zeal or 13 core, followed up by a 15-16pylon.

2) 8pylon, 10gate, 12pylon
You could look at this build as somewhere between the build above and the build bellow, that is, between 1gate fast gas and 2gate. I generally don’t favor this build over the one above because I tend to go goon/ob/reaver/range builds which are gas intensive. However, like anything in SC, if there is a diffrence, there is some advantage to be had, as well as some disadvantage.

Note that with this build you can be offensive gassed easier (when your opponent warps in an assim on your gas geyser). That can be a pain to deal with -- note the CKG game between Kingdom and Legendary. However, Kingdom tends to do this build order often. The main positive of this build is that you have more minerals coming in faster. However, you have less gas in the long run. You also have a second pylon quicker, which you can use to block manner pylons (when your opponent places pylon in your mineral line to disrupt your mining). You can also stick the 12pylon somewhere else on the map to try to keep the other Protoss guessing about proxy, or actually go proxy, or have a scout on another expo or common shuttle flight path. This build is almost always followed up with a 13zeal. Also, 12pylon build gives you more psi to work with quicker, so often if you go two or more zeals before core, you can have them slightly faster than going gas on 12psi. Another potential advantage of this build is that you can add another gate quicker than the above build (usually on 17psi vs. 20psi for above) with consistent probe production, if you spot them going 2. That translates into more zeal’s faster, but at the cost of later gas. So, to sum up the differences between this build and 12assim are rather subtle, but can help slightly depending on the situation.

3a) 2 gate: 8pylon, 10gate, 12gate
The basic 2gate economy build order. If you’re a novice this is the build I recommend you start with on most map/positions because it’s a rather safe and versatile build. This build can be done every game. You can either rush and make 5+zeals, or even gas up quickly after just one zeal. But, much of the time this is not the most efficient way to start economically, even though it may add to safety. For 12/3 positions on LT I recommend going 10/12gate. For certain maps like Requiem or non ramped maps I would recommend 2gate as well. Its rather simple when to decide to go two gate or not. Go two gate if you are likely to have problems vs. someone who goes 2gate (because of zeal pressure).

3b) 8p, 9Gate, 10Gate (and similar fast or proxy rushes)
Doing this build is much more a roll of the dice than the above builds. 9/10 gate will typically get you your first 5-7 zealots faster then a hard 10/12 gate and 6-7 zealots around the same time. This is a gutsy build, but it is not done much because if the other guy does 10/12gate you are instantly at a significant disadvantage. It is rather easy to stop rushes on smaller ramped maps as one can use probes to help defend as well. I don't recommend this build often, but I suggest you do it several times to get a feel for how it typically plays out vs. the other builds. Also, core first builds work fine against this if the walk time is sufficiently far and one's goon micro is good. Remember that this builds strength is in close positions (but then it’s likely your opponent will 10/12) and when your opponent goes for a gas first to zeal build.

3c) 8 pylon, 12 two gateways.
This is an interesting build that I've been seeing more often. I don’t have much experience with this so I won’t comment extensively. I suppose the basic idea is that by delaying gateways one brings in minerals faster. This is true. This build is safe vs. 10/12 (don’t know about 9/10 or proxy) and can easily adapt to a tech build. I don’t favor this build simply because it forces you into later gas always, and while it may be a good basic build that adapts well its not the best build for certain situations.


4) Others:
- Gas before gate builds for island maps/gas intensive builds.
- Fast Nexus builds. Only viable on certain maps/positions. But usually very effective on those maps. Usually, you'll go nexus at around 13 and then make as many probes as you can while holding your opponent off. This is often done by building two gates right after the Nexus. Eventually, you may be able to easily overpower them off of just two bases. I don't have much experience with this build, so I will not comment extensively.
- Fast forge builds. Mostly used for cheese/high risk builds.
- Faster then normal gateway(s) builds, proxy or not. Only viable on certain maps/positions or mostly used for cheese/high risk builds. These kind of builds are done primarily for the quick zeal harass. The idea is to run around picking off probes, which will put you ahead despite your disadvantage of not as consistent probe production early on. Example replay: Nal_Ra vs. Fisheye on Intothedarkness. Nal_ra went 1gate constant zeal harass to dt. Fisheye (a well known German Protoss player) lost, and Rekrul (a well known American Protoss player) reported saying that he lost vs. Nal_Ra playing this style as well. However, if one can deal with the first couple threats well, one is in a good position to go on to win.



Template of PvP Builds (Early Game):
This section shows you more in depth very efficient ways to go about various builds. All start from 8 pylon. Also, note that I usually favor as consistent probe production as possible early on. I usually prefer to gain an economic advantage, rather than take risks on micro based gameplay decisions.

- 2gate builds (fastest/most zeal’s to slowest):
-- 9gate-scout => 10gate => 11z => 13p => 13zz (hard 9gate)
-- 9gate-scout => 11gate =>12z => 15p => 16zz (soft 9gate)
-- 10gate => 12gate => 13z =>15p => 16zz (harder 10/12 gate)
-- 10gate => 12gate => 13z =>16p =>18zeals (softer 10/12 gate)
-- 12 2xgate => pylon => gas or zeals
Faster two gate builds are certainly possible such as 7/8Gate, but I don't generally recommend them. Most people consider such things cheese, that is, high risk, lame playing, that depends on luck more than skill.

- 1gate core builds:
-- 10gate => 13core => 15p => 15zeal => 17goon
-- 10gate => 13core => 15p => 17goon
One issue someone raised is why not 14core? Well, you could go 14 core, but it doesn't matter much and perhaps 13 is better overall because of faster goon(s)/tech. If you scout late, say 12assim, you should be able to go 13core with consistent production anyway. Also, note that vs. fast 2gate builds a gate before goon is often preferred. Check the builds section for more info. Lastly, you could go zeal before pylon, but thats only perhaps worthwhile vs. very fast zeal harass builds such as 7gateway. Another variation is to go gateway on 15instead of pylon, that that is unusual.

- 1gate zeal builds (fastest/most zeal’s to least):
Note that often the point at which you build the assim is interchangeable. It is either 12assim,16pylon or 12pylon,16assim.
ZZgateZZZ: 12pylon => 13zeal => 16assim => 17zeal or gate (could potentially not build the assim in favor of a faster 2nd gateway)
ZZgateZZZ: 12assim => 13z => 16p => 17z => 20gate => 21zeal => 23/24p => 25/26zz => 30pylon
ZZZcore: 12p/a => 13z => 16p/a => 17z => 20p => 21z => 25core => 26z (or gate, or wait for range/robo/citadel perhaps quicker)
ZZcoreZGoon: 12p/a => 13z => 16p/a => 17z => 21core => 22z => 24p => 26goon
ZZcoreGoon: 12p/a => 13z => 16p/a => 17z => 21core => 22p => (usually either wait for goon, or make a faster 2nd gateway)
ZcoreZGoon: 12p/a => 13z => 16p/a => 18core => 19z => 22p => 23goon
ZcoreGoon: 13z => 16p/a => 18core => 20Gate (or you can go earlier robo/range/citadel)
I suppose slight differences may be had so others can be used, but, again I don’t see any particularly good reasons why anyone would want to. Note that core and/or goon may be delayed in favor of getting a faster 2nd gate (usually done vs. a 2gate build). Note that sometimes people go robo/citadel/range/gateway before goon for faster tech, but I don’t recommend that usually, because this means poorer unit production overall and possibly pausing probe production.



- Other:
-- Early gas builds
-- Early expo ( Usually as 8p => 13nexus => 13gategate => p => zeals )
-- Early forge builds
-- Early gate/proxy builds
Don’t mind the BIG 4 options list with these

After those openings there are 4 options to pick first from (I'm trying to simplify and break down your options so they are easier to understand):
- Gate (but, not if you went for 2gate before core, obviously) – for better unit production
- Range – for more powerful goons.
- Robo – for tech, meaning, ob, shuttle, and reaver.
- Citadel – your other option for tech, dt with later ht most likely, but could go for speedzeals.



Unit Times:
Some rough unit times for players who might want to know exact timings, which might be helpful for planning or seeing what kind of build would work in what situation. Note that travel distance from your base base to your opponents base is usually around 30seconds. For example, say you do a zcorez build and your opponent does a zzcore build. Your opponent will have 2zeals at the bottom of your ramp around the same time (usually after) you block it with your 2nd zealot.

first zeal pops out at ~ 2:30
zzcore, 2nd zeal pops out at ~ 3:00
zzzcore, 3rd zeal pops out at ~3:30
zzzcorez, 4th zeal pops out at ~4:00, at 5:00 4z/2goon or 3z/3goon if skipped 4th zeal for faster gate.
zcorez, 2nd zeal pops out at ~3:15, 2z/1g at ~3:50, at 5:00 2z/3-4goon depending on faster 2nd gate or not.
zcoregategoon, 1zeal/1goon by ~3:50, 1zeal/3goon ~4:25, 1zeal/5goon ~5:00

13core, 17goon, first goon pops out at ~ 3:20

9/10 hard rush, 1st zeal done ~ 2:20, 3zeals ~ 2:45, 5zeals ~ 3:15, 7zeals ~3:40, 9zeals ~ 4:05
9/11, 1st zeal done ~ 2:25, 3zeals ~2:50,
hard 10/12, 1st zeal ~2:30 , 3zeals ~3:00, 5zeals ~3:20, 7zeals ~3:50, 9zeals ~ 4:05 (see 9/10 is considerably faster)
soft 10/12, 1st zeal ~ , 3zeals ~

*for hard rushes did not add gas until ~4:00.
*all tests done on a 8minerals in main map
*your times may vary slightly depending on probe production, number of mins in main etc. This should give a good notion of timings, but if you want to be sure, I would recheck my times as I did this quickly.



Builds Explained
The counters in this section depend quite a bit on travel distance, as well as micro. This section's purpose is to give you a general idea of what you can get away doing vs. what, but its not foolproof as I'm not taking into account different map positions and the travel distance between them. That would take more time then I'm willing to commit, and it would complicate matters.



1 gate zeal first:
- Zcore(usually gate)Goon
This build is fine vs. zcorezg and core first builds. It should be OK vs. zcorez, though you may end up fighting 2z with 1g/1z. I don't usually recommend doing this build vs. a multiple zeal before core or 2gate zeal build.
- ZcoreZ
This is fine vs. core first, zcoreg, and zcorez. Doing this vs. a several zeals before core build is the wild card here, as it that depends on travel distance and micro. I generally favor going multiple zeals before core vs. multiple zeals before core so I simply don't have to worry about this. Of course, you should not usually attempt to do zcorez vs. 2gate.

-ZZ(-/+Z)Core
Rather safe and standard PvP opening. I don't particularly recommend this vs. 2gate rush, but it sure is safer then zcorez or zcoreg, and core first in many instances. Depending on your opponents build, distance, and if you go for a battery & back zeals up with a probe or two, you might be able to get away with it vs. 2 gate rush. Note that going vs. core first with fast goons with range may cause more problems then usual as you don't have range or nearly as many goons as you would if you went for core faster. But, your opponent going core first opens up harass possibilities with your early zealots, depending on distance, map, and micro.

-ZZgateZZZ
Standard response to a 2gate build when you start with a gate gas build. Check my builds section for more info.

10/12 Gate:
There are basically two ways I'd consider playing 10/12Gate. One is that you build just enough zeals to hold your opponent off so you have the earlier goon/tech advantage (assuming they go two gate). The other is to tech more slowly while going for a steady stream of units (it is more common to play this style vs someone that goes 1gate). You could go for faster gates than 10/12, but I personally don't like that as its more based on micro and more of a gamble. One interesting thing about 2gate is that if you cut out for tech sooner then another guy going 10/12gate, you'll have faster tech/more goons, but you'll have less units overall. Why this is is simple, zeals cost less then goons, and the other player kept up almost constant production while you sacrificed production for tech. So, only go for the faster tech if it will help more then better unit production. Often you don't really know and its a difficult call to make...well, thats SC. Typically I would suggest warping assim after 3 or 5 zealots, for a moderate build.
It is essential that you keep your scouting probe alive so you can see what your opponent is doing, because only then can you can figure out what’s actually best for you to do. Then it’s not necessary to guess. If your probe dies I suggest you play it safe and/or consider sending another one out. For instance, if your opponent goes 10/12 gate, goes1z then gas, but continues hard zeal’s and does not put any probes on gas while you go 1zgas2zcore2z you are going to face a somewhat though situation of 3z vs. 5-7zeal’s or 5z vs. 7-9zeal’s. Also, by keeping the probe alive you keep open the opportunity to offensive gas your opponent.

1 gate core first:
My guide is mainly about zeal first builds. Obviously, core first is a slightly different matter. Generally, core first is seen as better then zeal first if you don't take any significant damage early with zeal harass. I admit that core first is often what I dislike going against the most if I'm not able to do any significant damage early with a zeal first build harassing with my zeal(s). This is because they have two rather different, yet strong options. They can go for a powerful army with ranged goons, or for faster then normal tech, usually ground dt or reaver drop. Though, if they are going fast range, you should usually be able to spot this with your scouting probe. But, of course, they could cancel it, just like if they go fast robo or gate and cancel that. There is a useful technique that you can use to scout core first that I cover in the scouting section of the notes section.
Two gate vs. core first is very iffy. The outcome of an early game skirmish is dependent on many things, micro, map, builds, etc.
The main consideration for going core first is map, travel distance, and builds. And it varies wildly. You can hold off two gate rather easily with micro or the zeals could overwhelm you. Really depends on map, micro, etc.

A consideration with core first is if your going to go zeal before goon or not. You'll probably want to try to get away with not making zeal before goon if you can as producing a zeal usually means paused probe production. But, a zeal before goon may help defending vs. zeal first builds though. And you may not have scouting your opponent by the time it is to make a zeal. Thus, I generally only may go core first builds when normal timed zeal first builds will not be able to hurt me significantly.
To sum up, core first builds are useful for fast/many goons with range early, or very fast tech early. Other then that there is no real reason to go core first rather then zeal first. So, decide in which situations these factors may be especially useful.



Scouting Summery:
So, I'll review scouting and builds in first person. I generally start a game with the plan of going 8p-scout, 10gate, 12assim, 13z, 16p. If I am not able to scout the other player by the time it is to make a zeal at 17psi. I make the zeal incase they are going 2gate or multiple zeals before core. Remember you can cancel the zeal slightly later and build the more expensive core slightly later if you scout them not going 2gate if you wish.
If I am able to scout them and see one gate I have quite a few options depending on what they are doing and how far along in my build I am. If I spot core first, I can pretty safely do any build. Though, note that range goons are a bit harder to deal with if you don't have as many goons. If I spot a zeal first build I can choose to pretty safely go zcorez, though if they go multiple zeals before core its kind of a toss up. I would only choose to go zcoreg if I spotted a core first or after the first zeal. So to sum up, if I see core first I have a wide variety of options, depending on if I want more goons or less considering zeal harass possibilities and goons with range attack, as well as what time I want tech. If I see a z first build, I prefer multiple zeals to either core or gate.
Also, if it is the case that you can scout them rather early, as in the very first spot, before their gate warps in, note their gateway timing based on your own. This gives you the feeling if they are going for a fast 1gate build for early zeal harass. It also gives you a notion if you zeals will be faster, and thus zeal harass might be easier to pull off. Also note if they put up another gate fast, this generally means you should stick another one down soon as well.
And finally, If your opponent can possibly have a more powerful army then you early (this basically means core first early range+goon micro and/or a skipped probes timing build) don't move out. This is all part of the playing it safe and maximizing your ability later on.





Other Builds Considered:

VS. Early 1 gate zeal pressure. This usually comes in the form of early 1gate in main on standard maps or proxy 1 gate on 2 player maps. This does that popular of a build, but be aware that it is a possibility. These builds are generally a gamble and rely on micro. Just make sure to scout well, play a safe game, and micro well and you should be fine. If someone goes 7Gate zzzcore build in their base vs. you, and you do a zcorez build you’ll be hard pressed with zealots. Most likely they will have 2 zeal’s in you mineral line just as your 2nd zeal is coming out. This is why you have to be careful vs early gate builds. Going core first, you'll usually be in an even worse situation.
If you scout your opponent soon enough compare their gateway warping in timing compared to yours (10psi). Later, you can try to compare the time their zeal finishes compared to your zeal or how far along your goon is. Obviously, if you see something out of the ordinary with quicker gate/zeals, play safer. The good thing is that a basic 10Gate, 13z, 17z build is a fine build vs. a 7g, 10z,13z build, its basically like playing a standard zcorez build vs. a standard zzcore build, micro well and you'll be OK. If they proxy outside of their base, things become more tricky. If they stay one gate, I would probably recommend you stay one gate as they tech fast for dt. Depending on the number of zeals harassing your probes either move just the one probe thats being attacked, or stack them and attack your opponents zeal(s)/probe(s). If there is only one zeal, just move that one probe thats being attacked. If your under hard pressure stack them and use them to help kill your opponents zeals.

VS. 9/10 Gate. Realize that 9/10gate is just a faster version of 10/12. If they go 9/10 gate expect them to rush hard with zeal’s. Though, I've seen Nal_Ra do a rather softer 9/10 with just the first 3zeals then tech hard. Scouting is important in seeing if they went 9/10 in the first place and in seeing when they tech, watch their gas. You will not always be able to spot a 9/10 or a proxy 9/10 which adds to its effectiveness. If you go 10/12 judge their gate progress and when their zeal’s pop out to your own to decide if they went 9/10, make more/faster zeal’s as necessary. Use probes at your ramp to help defend with your zealot’s if you find that helpful. Core first can counter this if positions are sufficiently far. If you don’t go core first or 2 gate stick another gate up ASAP and make zeals until safe. This is also covered in the Builds section.

Vs. 3+gateway, proxy or not. The two main builds you might face off against are, 2gate in main to proxy(or not) 3rd gate, or 1gate in main to multiple proxy gates.
With 2gate in main to proxy (or not) 3rd gate, you have to be able to fend off the 2gate to start. The 3rd gate does not usually kick in until 5min or so. Your best bet is to play safe and micro well. Go 2gate with moderate tech, or at least stick up another gate if you don't know what your opponent is doing.
1 Gateway to multiple proxy gateways is more of a trick play. This kind of play occurs most often when you are not able to scout your opponent, and your opponent realizes this and decided to rush you hard, perhaps without even scouting your build. Again, your best bet is to play safe and micro well. Go 2gate with moderate tech, or at least stick up another gate if you don't know what your opponent is doing.

Vs. Fast Nexus. How to counter this certainly depends on the map, Flat or ramped. Another feature is cliff over nat or not. If its flat 3gate range goon is quite good. Usually the fast expo player will have cannons/zeals. Micro and take out the cannons then its easy pickings on the zeals. If its ramped things become more tricky. It may be best to simply expo quickly as well. Harass may work. Dt ground/drop may work, but can also fail miserably (same on flat maps). If they have a cliff putting goons up there/cannons up there is good.
Threads about fast expo in PvP: http://www.blizzforums.com/showthread.php?t=1628
http://teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=46531
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=30971
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=30617

There are the builds and when/how I use them. Perhaps I'll update this section to account for the "other" builds when I feel I have sufficiently grasped them. If anyone thinks they have useful information on these builds, feel free to share.

Lastly, some contingencies to take account of.

1. Note that there are variations on tech builds with extra and/or earlier pylons then usual in order to stop manner pyloning. An example of a build like this would be 8p,10g,12a,13p,14core or zeal, and so on. This is not as efficient as the standard but this secures gas fast and prevents manner plyons. Also, if someone tries to manner pylon you stay calm. Just attack the pylon with the probes that are trapped and attack it with zeal(s) when possible. There is a method of stacking and spamming the stop command to get probes out of a trapped manner pylon, but I typically just attack the pylon. Also, with manner pylon, be aware of zealots that they might send to attack, its typically more important to block your choke and not let their zealots roam around in your base than to take care of the manner pylon more quickly.
2. Related to the above is a variation on the standard tech build that I did not cover.
One could go 8pylon, 10gate, 12assim, 13pylon, 14zealot.
See, this delays your zealot, but gets gas fast, and a 2nd pylon fast so that probe production is not potentially delayed.
The difference between this and the standard is really that that important in the whole scheme of things, but I just wanted to point it out.
Feel free to use either version really.

3. Related to both of the above is the difference in timing of when you scout can have upon your build. The later you scout the more minerals you have coming in quicker. Scouting on 8pylon vs. 12gate poses a significant difference. Also note that map, and even diffrent map positions can have an effect on how fast you gather minerals. This is why everything I write about build orders in this guide should be taken as generality's. Good generality's, but generality's none the less.

II. My Builds
You can consider this the early game section. You may want to skip this for the moment and go on to the next section which goes into some more general strategy and why I do the builds I do, unless you want in depth build orders and some basic explanations of my builds soon. Notice how all of these build are based on similar patterns, builds with good efficiency are similar.

Here I present, for the most part, in depth build orders based on the early game builds that I have already explained. This is one thing I can especially pride myself on perhaps. No one else has really done this, that is, write down a compendium of efficient build orders that go well into the game. There are several reasons for this, with probably the foremost being the knowledge and effort necessary to assemble such a compendium. However, some people seem to be against the very notion of build orders that extend beyond the very early parts of the game. They are right in a sense. Adaptation is a good idea, but rarely can these builds not be followed closely. Admittedly, there are many factors which I simply do not take account of, but that does not mean one cannot try, and that this effort will not be helpful to many players.
As I quoted in the introduction, same race match ups are largely about a race for resources and unit production, thus builds are very important. Check out this thread: www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=19596, specifically MPXMP’s post. Think of it another way. rarely does any good player not have a game plan before the game. These builds can be your various game plans, and you should adapt when it benefits you. Besides, pros regularly use build orders and other good players must (or may as well) as they tend to do the same thing over and over. These builds give superb efficiency, but they do not indicate things such as how to move units, adaptation based on what you scout, etc. This is part of why I was somewhat reluctant to give these builds to you because I spent quite a bit of time finding various builds and molding them into what you see here. Just coping the build order of these builds can turn a poor macro player into one that is very efficient and seems to know what they are doing well, even though they don't have much experience or know how on where to move units, and so on. But, I figure that repetition and copying is a great way to learn. I'm giving you great builds to use, just play them and adapt them as you will. No nearly as much time will be necessary to figure out good builds. I welcome people knowing what I do and why it’s effective because I don’t play extensively or have ego or money involved. Plus, this may lead to critiques and greater overall understanding of PvP strategy for me and certainly the community. PvP would be a damn scary match up not just for pros if everyone understood and followed this guide, while perhaps putting their own spin on it.
In an effort to be consistent I have standardized these builds by playing only on Lost temple, an 8mineral patch main map. Many maps these days are 9mineral patches however. Nonetheless, these builds remain perfectly applicable on those maps, though there may be small adjustments that could be made. All of these builds I've seen played out in some form or another, and I've usually worked on making them more efficient. For most of these builds I have played a game to get the basic build. Then, I look at the rep and adjust probe psi counts and robo/range timing. Then I play again, and make some finishing tweaks, and thats what you see here. If you think there are important builds I have not included, or that you can improve upon these builds go ahead and contact me please.

- 1 Gate Opening/Tech with reaver
1) Goon first, fast range
2a) early robo
2b) ZcoreZ, later robo
3) ZcoreGoon, later robo (Credit: Draco)
4) 6:00 expo build as ZcoreGoon (Credit: Daezang)
5) ZcoreGoon, very early robo ( Credit: Nony)
6) ZZ(+Z)coreZGood, later robo & early robo

7) ZZgateZZZ, 9+ expo (Credit: Daezang, Draco)

- 1 Gate Opening/Tech without reaver

8a) 4gate pure goon/zeal/ob.

8b) Pure goon/zeal/ob early expo.


- 2 Gate Opening:
9a) 2gate, 23gas (Credit: Slider)
9b) 2gate, fast tech + constant Zeals (Credit: Bisu)
9c) 3-4gate Zeals (Credit: Foru, Nony)


- 10) Example dt tech build


Others:
- 2gate to expo + cannon (Credit: Nony)
- ~5:00 expo before robo (Credit: Daezang, Superspinkick)
- Island expo + mass reaver (Credit: Fayth)
- 9/10gate / hard rush (Credit: Nal_Ra, Zeus)
- Core first vs. hard rush (Credit: Reach)
- DT Drop (Credit: Nony)
- One base speedzeal
- Other stuff like cannon rushes, and other tricky or gimmicky stuff I don’t usually care to do.
*for simplicity I assume you don't lose any units, but of course you will probably lose a scouting probe or maybe other units so adjust accordingly, that is, build 1psi earlier or don't build a pylon if its not necessary. Also, most of these builds are based off of PGT Lost Temple, meaning an 8 mineral patch map. So, I build 27probes+1for scouting. On maps with 9-10min patches in main, it may be worthwhile to consider building more probes before expanding, though I'd stick to the builds most of the time as they balanced just so, and more probes may disrupt psi counts. Of course, things may fall apart from time to time, you might lose some probes to harass. I would make sure to build extra probes to make up for these rather then do with less then 27 mining. Check out the economy section in the notes section for more information regarding the optimal number or probes per mineral.



1) I don't play core first much, but it is a very versatile start, so I could give many build orders dealing with it, however I'll just give an idea of how to go. I tend to favor range => gate => robo with core first.
Here is how I would usually start: 8p, 10gate, 12assim, 13core, 15p, 17goon, 20range, 21g, 24p, 25gate, 25gg, 29p, 31gg, p, 37robo(~5:00)+gg
You can expect something like 20g/3z/2rs/ob by 9minutes if you don't expand.

Other options include range to robo before 2nd gate, or even fast ground dt. A very fast robo version of core first is shown bellow.


2a) Early robo reaver builds
General info: *Tested on 9patch mineral mains I think* These are probably my basic all around tech builds that I use most often on ramped maps. You should never lose due to dt harass with an early robo build. zzcore or zzzcorez are the two varieties I show. Obviously a faster core means faster reavers, but slightly less units overall. Some players go for range before robo. Often, I don't think there is a good reason to do this. Always go for the faster tech/more units before range unless range will do something significant for you, and I think those cases are very rare vs. good players. Another idea is to follow up with another two reavers quickly after the first two. This way you have another two to replace your first two you may have lost and attack again quickly. Or you can have 4reavers and a shuttle at around 10:30 to attack or use one to attack one to harass, etc.
Example1 zzcoreg: 8p, 10gate, 12assim, 13z, 16p, 17zealot, 22pylon, 24goon, 27robo, 28goon, 30p, 31range, 32goon,
34observatory, 35Gate, 36p+ob, 38g, 41shuttle, 43bay+p+gg, 47reaver, 51p+ gg, 55reaver, 59gg, p, ~7:20 Nexus
7:20 - 2z/10g/2reavershuttle/ob
Example2 zzzcorez: 8p, 10gate, 12assim, 13z, 16p, 17z, 20p, 21z, 25core, 26z, 29p, 30g, 33robo, 34range, 35g, 38p+G, 39g+observatory, 42p+ob, 43gg, 47p+shuttle, 49gg, 53bay+rvr 57gg, 61rvr+gg, 69p+gg+rvr, ~7:50 Nexus
3:20 - 3z
3:50 - 4z
7:50 - 4z/11g/2rs


2b) 8p-scout, 10gate, 12a, 13z, 16p, 18core, 19z, 22p, 23g, 26gate, 27goon, 30p, 32gg, 37robo+p+gg, 42range, 43gg, 47p+observatory, 49ob, 50gg, 54p+Gate+shuttle+gg, 60p+bay+ggg, 66rvr, 70p+p+ggg, 76rvr, 80ggz, 86p+ob, Nexus or units.
5:00- 4g/2z; 8:00 - ~2z/15g/1rs/ob; 9:00-3z/20goon/2rs/ob
9:00 - 27 probes mining(28total), 87psi if expo, 93 if 3x more units.
Later expo build. You should easy notice the similarities to #3. Another zeal is made later because of gas shortage. Depending on map you may not have a shortage. You could add that zeal at anytime instead of a goon.


3) 8p, 10gate, 12a, 13z, 16p, 18core, 20gate, 21g, 24p, 26gg, 31p, 32gg, 37robo+p+gg, 42range, 43gg, 47p+observertory, 49ob, 50gg, 54p+gate+shuttle, 56gg, 60bay+p+rvr, 64ggz, 70p+ggz, 76rvr, 80ggg+p+ob, Nexus or units.
5:00-1z/5g; 8:00 - ~15g,2z,1rs,ob; 9:00-2rs/3z/20g/ob
9:00- 27probes mining(28total), 87psi expo
This is the basic zeal to gate start. This build is pretty popular because of Draco as well as its easy to macro well because the build flows well. For example, you’re usually building in pairs and at 37 you build robo and pylon with the same building probe. extra zeals build because of gas shortage, but depending on map you may be able to build goons. Can build these zeals when you want, don't have to follow the units exactly. This build is pretty much the same thing as 2b, but with a slightly diffrent opening with faster/more goons.

4) 8p-scout, 10g, 12a, 13z, 16p, 20gate, 21goon, 24p, 26gg, 31p, 32gg, 37range+robo+gg, 41p+gg, 45observetory+p+Nexus+ob, 46gg, 50shuttle+gg+bay, 56rvr+gg, 64p, 66p+gg+rvr, 78p+gate+gg+ob+assim+p
9:00 - 33probes, 85psi
At expo – 7goon/1z, 8:00 – 15g/1rs/1z/ob, 9:00 – 19g/2rs/1z/ob
This build order that I came up with uses the basic zeal to gate start, but not necessary so. You can easily adapt this to zcorez by changing the opening and you can do it with other openings, but you can figure out some build order. Unlike my other builds so far, this Nexus is made before the ob/reavers are done, which makes you more vulnerable, especially to many units early builds tech builds. Vs 2-3gate you'll want to adapt of course. Early speedzeal builds may cause problems. People who max unit potential for 6-7mins, meaning 3gate goon/zeal no robo, will be hard to deal with. You may also have to contend with defending two places to reaver harass earlier. This was my attempt to come up with a build that has early robo as well as a fast nexus, too good to be true eh? Well you get both, but a slightly less powerful army then some of my other builds for late early game. Often I prefer this build rather then a one base timed build on maps with easily defendable expos such as, rush hour, forte, Nostalgia, etc. The BO that I showed is for a safer version. If you would like to power more for later (which in turn means slower tech and/or less units. Most likely less units.) the main thing to keep up is more constant probe production. Consider later range and a couple probes more before Nexus, as well as more after for, say, about 40 probes at 9min.
Also, consider going ground reavers especially with this build, which allows for a slightly earlier/safer expo, but you don’t have the option to harass with reaver/shuttle obviously, and it leaves your cliff (if you have one) open for harass. Also, you may find your expo contained and reaver walking is a pain in the ass. Expect around 18g, 3r, 2z at 9min.

5) 8p, 10gate, 12assim, 13z, 16p, 18core, 19p, 21goon+robo, 25range+goon, 28p, 29shuttle, 31goon, 33observetory+bay, 34ob, 35Gate+Gate+goon, 37p+rvr, 41ggg, 47p+rvr+ggg, 57p, then either expo or ggg
I came across this build recently which I was somewhat surprised with. That doesn't happen often because I seen so many.
Anyway, the rep was on Neo Forte, and displayed an early robo build. I have not bother to come up with a build for this rep because Nony seems to have done quite a good job with that. The rep can be found at: www.teamsmi.net/ The map is Forte, which is somewhat important because 10min patches in main rather then 8 does allow for certain builds which you'd normally not be able to pull of nearly as fast. So, I'd only start to consider this build on maps with high min patch counts.

Basically this build has an early robo for a faster then usual 2reaver/shuttle/ob. The drawbacks: 1) Perhaps unsafe early on because of 1ztogoon build. 2) Not quite as good as some of my other builds as far as unit production goes for late early game because of the skipped probes. But putting that aside, the time to concentrate on is 7:00. This is the peak time for this build, at which you'll have 10goons/1z/2rs/ob. Now thats a pretty powerful army for the time.


6) 8p-scout, 10gate, 12assim, 13z, 15-16p, 17z, 20-21p, 22z, 25core, 26z, 29-30p, 30goon, 33-34Gate, 35goon, 37p, 38robo, 39gg, 44range+gg+p, 48observetory+Gate+gg+ob, 53p+shuttle+ggg, 61bay+p+rvr+ggg, 71p+p+ggg, 77rvr, 81ggg, 87p+ob, 88Nexus or ggg

For 1gate - > robo go, 34robo instead of gateway, then 35g, 37p, 38range,39goon, 42observetory+Gate+p, and so on. 2rs should be done by 8:20 or so. Go ahead and expand then or make 3xmore goon. Either way, expect 2 units less by 9:00. Because of the expo being so close to 9min, 8:20 or so. You'll have something like +1-2 unit more then a 9min expand player when they are at your base. This shows how why going slightly earlier expo then your opponent often plays out the best. In turn, vs. an 8 min expander, it would be better for them to sit back then attack, though still not good enough perhaps depending on their build.

9min-27probes mining, 88psi

5:00-4z/2g, 8:00-14g/4z/ob/1rs, 9:00-20g/4z/2rs/ob

I have not played much attention to 1gate multiple zeals before core builds because I have used either zcorez or zzgatezzz. That is because if you know whats going on you know if you can get away with zcorez, or you can just go zzgatezzz to be safe. You don't really want to end up going for a 1gate consistent zeal build vs. a hard 2gate rush. The question remained though, just how useful is a 1gate multiple zeal before core build? Somewhat to my surprise, the build turned out quite well. Unlike my other tech builds where probe production is paused at 37psi for robo+p+units, this build is able to continue with consistent probe production with similar robo timing. The largest difficulty besides going against a hard rush is vs. core first fast goons with range because of less goons early then usual. But, if your opponent is going core first that opens up harass possibilities early as long as the distance is not too great. But, if harass is not able to be successful, then just hold your units above your ramp, and you'll probably end up jocking for position and moving out of range, then moving back in so they cant get into your base to hit probes. This is one of the few situations where range before robo may be better on standard maps such as LT, Luna, etc.


7) 8p-scout, 10gate, 12a, 13z, 16p 17z, 20gate, 21z, 24p, 26zz, 30p, 31core, 32zz, 37p+gg, 41robo, 43gg, 47p, 49range+gg/zz, 53observetory+p, 54ob+gg/zz, 59p+shuttle, 61gg, 65bay+gate, 65rvr, 69gg, 73pp+ggg, 79rvr, 83ggg+p+ob, Nexus or more units

9:00- 27probes mining, 90 psi
5:10-7z/2g, 8:00-10g/9z, 9:00-16g/9z/2rs
Quite safe and versatile build all around. This build has the highest number of units by 9min out of all of my builds. Basically, this is the build you do when you plan to tech but instead see your opponent go 10/12 gate. 5-7zeals before core then 2 after is the standard for this build but adapt as many as you see fit based on the circumstances for the pressure your facing. Note when the other player takes their gas and how many zeals they make. Also, you going to have more then enough gas compared to your opponent as they went 2gate after all, so I would recommend not putting probes on gas until slightly later or taking them off and putting them back on later. Usually I wait until I warp in the 20 gate, then put them back on gas if they were not on yet.
You can do this build anytime really, but there are two things to watch out for -- The extremes. Lots of zeals early or fast goons with range. If some toss goes 3gate they could have 12zeals by the time you just have 7z/2goon or 9z. Not a position you really want to be in, especially without a ramp. Vs fast range goons its all about travel distance. If it something like 3vs6@LT you'll likely screw them over pretty bad and win pretty easy. But, something like 3vs9@LT is really iffy. Also watch out for one gate dt players. You should be able to either have obs in time, or take them out if they try to tech to fast, but there are most likely borderline cases that are iffy.
Vs someone who goes 2gate fast tech your ahead in gas and production anyway, but you could consider making less zeal’s as they will probably not make many, or perhaps you could even turn this around on them and attack. Vs. someone who gasses fast and makes less zeals consider going for a quicker tech b.o.: 8p, 10g, 12a, 13z, 16p, 17z, 20g, 22core, 23p, 26gg, p, 33gg, 37robo, if you’d like.
Lastly, if you are doing a 10Gate,12pylon,13z,17Gate+z build instead of GateGas, you can expect something like12z/14g/2rs/ob by 9min. Also, 8z around 4:30 or so.


8) 8p, 10gate, 12p/assim, 13z, 16p/assim, 17z, 20p, 21z, 25core, 26z, 29p, 20g, 33Gate, 35g, 37p, 38robo, 39gg, 44range+p, 44gg, 48observatory, 48Gate, 48gg, 53ob, 53p+Gate, 3xunits, p+ob, 60 4x units, 66p, 4x units, 74p + Nexus (8:00) or 4x units, 82p + Nexus (8:30) or 4x units, ...

Newest addition. A non reaver build. I use zzzcorezg for the B.O., but could easily adapt to another opening, which will change the unit times and numbers around a bit. When I wrote "4x units" that means you can go for goons or zeals. General go for goons first with the gas, then build zeals if your short/lower on mins as they build faster. I generally recommend 12 pylon. Perhaps some have been waiting for this build, but probably not. Easy enough to figure out on one's own anyway. The main point is that if your going one base for maximum units with pure zeal/goon, your going to go 4gate before expanding. Another interesting thing is that you can decide to expand at 8:00, or 8:30, or 9:00+, so the B.O. is less strict as far as expanding then my others so far. Whatever you think would work best for the situation. Optimally you'd want to power enough to do damage, then expo right away. I'd generally recommend 8:30 expo if your not sure.

28 probes total, 27 mining.

~7:10 - 11g/4z
~7:30 - 12g/6z
~8:00 - 16g/7z
~8:30 - 19g/8z
- 8:30 expo -
~9:15 - 22g/9z


8b) 8) 8p, 10gate, 12p/assim, 13z, 16p/assim, 17z, 20p, 21z, 25core, 26z, 29p, 20g, 33Gate, 35g, 37p, 38robo, 39gg, 44range+p, 44gg, 48observatory, Nexus, ob, 49gg, 54p + G ...

Basically same as above, for the first 5min or so. Expo around 6:00. Only go for 2gates before expo. Add another 2 gates shortly after expo, and its your option to go reaver or not. I show a low probe reaver expo build elsewhere. The main difficulty is deciding how many probes to build. If they are going to attack quickly, don't build any more then you made off of your main, so you can make more units, then pump probes after you win. If they are not going for an attack though, its much better to pump probes. Note that your expoing at 6:00, but your range kicks in at 7:00. You could modify this however, trading earlier range for something else. So, early mass unit builds will cause problems. Have to be careful about early drops especially as well. But, as long as your opponent does not pull some unusual counter early, or is spot on with a one base attack, you'll have a significant advantage.



9a) 8p,10gate-scout, 12gate, 13z, 16p, 18zz, 23a+p, 25zz, 30p, 32zz, 36core+zz, 40p, 42gg, 45robo+p+gg, 50range, 51gg, 55obsevetory+p, 56ob, 57zz, 62p, 63shuttle+gg, 69p+bay, 69gg+rvr, 77p+gg,+rvr, 85p+gg+ob+NeX or units
9:00 - 27 mining, 89psi. For this build since the latter probes come so late, if you skip a few and go for a 3rd gate your production may be slightly better at around 9 min, but of course at the cost of less probes.
4:50 – 9z, 9:10 ob/11z/14g/2rs.
Like core first, two gate can be played quite a few ways. I just show a good moderate way to play two gate here. A difficult thing about two gate is that you almost constantly have to make decisions whether to play for now(faster zeals) or later, more consistent probes. This is perhaps the safest, best overall build. Because of the lower cost of zealots and the 2 gate start you can have more units overall then a tech build. I was never a fan of 2gate builds much except on requiem or close positions where it was basically required until I started making probes almost constantly from the beginning. True, this rush is slightly slower then a 10/12 that skips probes, say, 9zeals vs. 11zeals at 9min, but the economy is much better, and you should have enough units to be able to hold off a 2-3gate zeal rush easily. This is a good build because it’s able to apply pressure while being safe and maintaining good economy. This is my standard opening build on 12/3 so they can’t go for a 2gate expo build safely (Nony version shown bellow). It’s also good to start a series because 2gate keeps them on their toes early game, making them not so tech greedy. Its safer vs. proxy of fast 2gate builds. Plus, there’s always the possibility of getting up their ramp and winning early vs. people who don’t understand how to counter 10/12gate with a gas first build well or if they don't scout you in time and play risky. The extra zeal’s are helpful later as well vs. speedzeal/goon builds. Robo is gotten fast enough to hold dt attempts that you would not otherwise kill easily with your zeals because they teched too hard..


9b) 8p, 10gate, 12gate, 13z, 16p, 17Assim+zz, 21core+zz+p, 25gg +range, 29gg, 31p+gg,
~3:30 - 5z, a bit after 5:00 - 5z/6range goon
Basically the build used by Bisu[Shield] on Requiem. This build is a basic 2gate build, but it skips some probes for good zeal production while being able to gain faster tech. After the build order I showed this build branches off. You can continue goons and probes for better production. You can go forge if you suspect dt. You can go robo for ob/shuttle/reaver, or even citadel for dt. The only other build I would really consider doing on requiem would be a 3gate zeal build. dt can work at times, buts its largely a gamble.

9c) There are quite a few ways to do this kind of build. One could go 1gate ->4gate zeal. Or 2gate steady zeals->3rd gate. You could proxy or not.
Of course, these builds are stronger on maps with ramps that go up from one's base, i.e., Requiem, and non-ramped maps. I would only really consider doing this kind of build (mass early zeals) on these kinds of maps.
If you want to proxy, your second pylon is usually your proxy, otherwise its probably not worth it to proxy.
Expect ~12zeals at 5min.


10) Typical dt tech build from one gate:
A good build order to serve as an example:
8pylon, 10gate, 12assim, 13zeal, 16p, 17zeal, 22pylon, 24goon, 26citadel, 28p & goon,
forge & archives + pylon at nat
dt & 1+ cannon(s) at nat (to protect vs dt and general defense, can modify as see fit--build before or after nexus, number, etc)
37p & Nexus
2nd dt (more than one dt is useful incase the first gets killed, for scouting, etc)
hts and storm
pump probes from both nexus, and more cannons if necessary, add gateways, robo, etc, etc



- Example Rep: Nony vs. Draco, LT
The basic idea is to expo after 5zeals or so when you both go 2gateway. Only works if they don’t rush hard. Cannons are made shortly after expo for defense vs. dt/goons.


- Example rep: Daezang[gnh] vs. Much[gm]
Basically I'm talking about 1gate opening to 2nd gate to expo build before robo. I’d only like to do this kind of build when I get a great scout on my opponent and see them going robo or perhaps vs. a rather fast expo build. This is because if you don't see them going robo, they could easily be going dt. Thus if I have no detection, I'm screwed. Basically the idea is to go 2gate goon to expo, then go 4-6gate goon. Expect around around 28goons at 9min. You could go expo and robo at roughly the same time, but I see that as somewhat pointless as you may as well go robo then expo, getting things more gradually and macroing better overall. Also, range before expo is standard with these kind of builds in case your opponent is going for fast range and good unit production.


- Example rep: Fayth vs. Draco, LT
The power of this build comes form the relatively fast safe expo (6-7min) as well as mass ground reavers. This build works because of ramps on maps and islands. Your mass will not as good as my builds above at 8-10min, but that does not matter much because all you have to do is hold your ramp. Take the other island or your nat next. Just macro well and basically wait for them to attack you. Counter to this build is not letting them get a hold of the island expo which is difficult since they went 2robo as well as just plain outplaying them though macro. This build is quite good and rather safe, but it pretty much guarantees 13+min games which is why I usually don’t do it.


- For example: 8p, 9gate-scout, 10-11gate, 11z, 13p, 13z, 15z, 17probe, 18z, 20z, 23p, 24assim
A risky build. Probably better as a surprise tactic and on maps with larger ramps.

- 8p, 10g, 12a, 13core, 15p+z, 17Gate+goon, then zeal/goon out of both gates until safe. Perhaps use probes to defend.
Watch old, but classic, Reach vs. Zeus rep on LT for how this is played out.


- Example rep: Nony vs. Fayth, LT.
I find dt drop an interesting play that you should at least have in your bag of tricks or consider. But, I don't think this is a very good build strategically most of the time. The rep referenced shows a late dt drop, but you could attempt a fast dt drop. The main problem is that you'll probably be scouted by an ob before being able to drop, and that early dts can screw you over if you don't have detection. The main hope of this build is that the person wont have obs in their main so you can wreak havoc there.

More info on this build, a guy writing how to play it out, and me writing about the build in general: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=44276


- One base speedzeal. Example rep: Hitemup vs WhiteRa @ sandlot.
The purpose of this build is mainly to screw over someone fast expo+robo builds, so I feel free to call it a cheese build somewhat. At 7 min hitemup had 13z/3g vs. White-ra's 5g/6z/1dt. WhiteRa did go for somewhat fast expo, but he also used probes to defend. His dt harass was pretty successful, and 2mineral lines to 1, went on to win the game.
Staying one base and going zeal/goon/reaver is a pretty sure way to beat a one base speedzeal build, but players are only likely to do this build on maps where fast expo is common, such as rush hour
I'm not sure exactly how this fares vs. a good robo to early expo build. Typically at 7min a build like that would have 11range goon and 2 z or so, vs 13speedzeal and 3goon going by Hitemup's unit numbers. A difficult fight it seems, so probes are probably necessary to combat the threat, but if you can make it out of that first battle well, you've basically won.
IV. Notes
- On Hotkeys
- On Scouting
- On Builds
- On Big 4 Options
- On Shuttle/Reaver/Ob Builds
- On Other Builds
- On Economy
- On Expanding
- On Micro
- On Macro
- On Improving
- On Mid Game
- On Late Game
- On Attacking
- On Early Zeal Harassment
- On Building Placement
- On Critical Thinking
- On DT Builds
- On Reaver Builds
- On Cannons
- On Reading Maps
- On Philosophy
- On Common Mistakes
- On Remaining Questions



- On Hotkeys:

Are hotkeys really that great? Check out this thread started by Hautamaki: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=12741

The community has learned that spamming constantly is not necessary or even good. Dominant players such as Iloveoov & Savior[gm], arguably two the two best players ever, typically have around 250apm, compared to Nada’s 500 or so. So, yes, apm is important, but only when it goes towards significant actions. 100apm is low, and will affect your multitasking ability greatly.

The main reason I see to become proficient in hotkey use is because it allows for greater and faster control. Hotkey’s can help multitasking greatly. For instance when you are controlling your scout in your opponents base (so it does not get killed) you can just hit your nexus key to check on its progress or build a probe without taking your screen off your probe. Other players often point out that spamming early game helps them for later game, when speed is more useful. Some spamming is perfectly acceptable and normal, such as spamming “p” shortly before you gain 50minerals to build your probe as fast as possible.

Function keys, f2-f4 and spacebar are probably the least used keys overall. I hardly bothered with them, though some insist that they are worthwhile.

How to get proficient at hotkey use? Some recommend spamming at first to get the hang of it. I think this in principle can help. Spam and don't pay much attention to other things in order to at least be able to get your skill up, then start brining in other things. Most important of all is simply to want to improve and force yourself to be faster. Hit the keys faster and better. Move your mouse quicker, make quicker boxes and so on. Play every game like your life depends on it. I also think it can help to practice combinations you will use in game. For instance if you use 1nexus, 2probe and 4gate to start, hit 112244 x3, then go on to what you'll usually have next, such as 1nexus, 2probe, 3unit, 4gate, 5gate, so hit 1122334455 3x, and go on until you are fast. Use diffrent combinations, and get used to hitting ctrl and shift as well.
________________________________________

Some Noteworthy Hotkeys Setups:

The classic toss hotkeys:
1,2,3:: units
4,5,6,7,8,9:: gates -> units
0:: nexus

This, or similar is used toss players such as Reach & Kingdom. The main reason for this setup is that 0 is close to the p key, so one can produce probes quickly. I dislike this setup because one is forced to move all the way aross the keyboard to simply hit scout then hit nexus. So, its definitely slower overall, but clearly workable, and might help to develop wide control of keys 1-0.


1:: units
2:: scouting probe -> units
3:: units
4:: nexus -> units (often shuttle)
5:: gate -> units
6,7,8:: gates -> units
9:: robo/nexus/gate
0:: nexus/gate

Similar to the classic setup but keeps the hotkeys more compressed by sticking nexus on 4 (or less popularly 3). Rather then hit p for probe one can just hit the icon, or perhaps bind another key for p. I rather like this setup. This is what is used such players as Bisu[shield], Pusan[S.G], and Play.Slider.


1:: units
2:: gate
3:: gate
4:: nexus
5,6,7,8,9,0:: gateways/nexus/robo/etc

This is used by players such as Daezang[gnh], and Anytme..[gm]. Legendary uses a similar, but nexus on 0. PJ used to use this. This setup allows for very quick and easy use of the gateways. I find this setup to be very good for early game as it has all you need, one unit key, one nexus key, and two gate keys. But, later on it becomes annoying because of constrained setup which limits unit keys, and I think other setups are better.

There is another build worth mentioning which Nony uses. It puts nexus on 1, another nexus or gate on 2, gate on 3, starts unit keys on 5 and goes on. I rather like this. See, he would rather hit one key to go to base then select the rest of the gates. Easy, pretty fast, and only takes one key. My problem with this is that the unit keys are far from the ctrl key.


My setup. Dream.T_Jangbi also uses this.
1:: Nexus / special key
2:: probe -> units
3:: units
4:: 1st gateway (bing to 7+8 as well)
5:: 2nd gateway
6:: 3rd gateway
7:: 1st or 4th gateway
8:: 1st or 4th or 5th gateway
9:: robo/nexus/gate
0:: nexus/gate

Once you have two keys of units you can get rid of nexus and use 1 for units or just key units to 4 and use the 7th or 8th key for gates instead. Just move key units over gates as you would like. Can eventually just use a 1-2 keys for a gate per base and double tap that to get back to base and macro. Use pinkey for Shift/ctrl. Use ring for 1, middle for 2, index for rest. ring for 1a2a3a, pinky hits a for 4a5a6a7a+.

Another thing I have not mentioned until now is that you should place your hand more toward the middle of the keyboard so your hand leans left for left keys and right for right keys. This gives your better range. For instance if you keyboard is horizontal, put your palm horizontal to your keyboard, and rest ring between 3-4 keys, middle between 4-5 keys, and index between 5-6 keys. This is what I prefer and it allows one to easily reach 1-8. 9 & 0 are a bit of a streach. Try out diffrent palm positions to see what you prefer. If you place towards middle you could reach 1-0 without lifting up hand, but then it becomes more difficult to hit the far left keys.


________________________________________

Finger positioning:

TL.net threads on:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?currentpage=1&topic_id=42579
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=42919

There are basically two positioning. Either you use palm on desk or you do not. Drone (from tl.net) thought me crazy when I talked about using thumb for, but he was assuming a pam on desk position.

Well, I'd recommend a palm on desk position anyway. Keyboard at the same level as your mouse. All progamers do this and most good players.

A difference between the palm position is what to use for ctrl. Most use pinkey, and I would probably reccomend that as well, for the sake of greater reach. But, if you position your hand to the left of your keyboard you can use the underside of your palm to hit ctrl.

What is most important though is that you find something thats comfortable for you and is fast and easy. Above I assumed normal hotkeys, I don't have a problem with a player assigning ctrl to say the f key to make things easier (which in turn brings about the possibility of using the pinky and thumb more effectively) , or putting hotkeys 1-0 on 12345qwert or something, or using keycraft to stick bottom right action key screen on hotkeys. But, I do have a problem with people being lame and creating macros or put a bunch of stuff on one key. Different language versions of SC have diffrent key setups. In WCIII people are allowed to change their keys. Be warned though that in most serious lans you probably won't be allowed to change your keys.
________________________________________

Shortkeys:

Nexus
P - Build Probe
R - Set Rally Point

Gateway Forge
Z - Zealot W - Melee Weapon Upgrade
D - Dragoon A - Ground Armor Upgrade
T - Templar S - Shield Upgrade
K - Dark Templar

Cybernetics Core Robotics Facility
W - Arial Weapons Upgrade S - Build Shuttle
A - Arial Armor Upgrade V - Build Reaver
S - Dragoon Range Upgrade O - Build Observer

Observatory

G - Increase Observer Speed
S - Increase Observer Sight

Stargate Citadel of Adun
S - Build Scout L - Zealot Speed Upgrade
C - Build Carrier
A - Build Arbiter Shield Battery
O - Corsair R - Recharge Shields

Robotics Support Bay
S - Upgrade Scarab Damage
C - Increase Reaver Capacity
G - Increase Shuttle Movement

Templar Archives Fleet Beacon
P - Research Psionic Storm A - Increase Scout Sight
H - Research Hallucination G - Increase Scout Speed
K - +50 Templar Energy C - Increase Carrier Capacity
M - Mind Control D - Research Disruption Web
E - Maelstrom J - + 50 Corsair Energy
T - +50 Dark Arch on Energy

Arbiter Tribunal
R - Research Recall
S - Research Stasis
K - +50 Arbiter Energy

Combat Units
M - Move
S - Stop
A - Attack
P - Patrol
H - Hold Position
G - Gather
B - Build Basic
V - Build Advanced

High Templar Dark Archon
T - Psionic Storm F - Feedback
L - Hallucination C - Mind Control
R - Archon Warp (2 Templar) E - Maelstrom

Arbiter Dark Templar
R - Recall R - Archon Warp (2 Dark Templar)
T - Stasis Field

Reaver
R - Build Scarab

Shuttle
L - Load Troops
U - Unload Troops

Carrier
I - Build Interceptor

Corsair
D - DisrupTion Web

Building Construction
Basic Build ( B )
N - Nexus
A - Assimilator
C - Cannon
B - Battery
G - Gateway
F - Forge
Y - Cybernetics Core
P - Pylon

Advanced Build ( V )
K - Robotics Facility
S - Stargate
C - Citadel Of Adun
B - Support Bay
F - Fleet Beacon
T - Templar Archive
O - Observatory
A - Arbiter Tribunal



- On Scouting:

Check Hautamaki’s guide on scouting here: http://sc.gosugamers.net/features.php?i=a&id=2070&query_id=53

That is the best guide on scouting currently out. I recommend always scouting on 8 pylon if you plan on teching, but consider scouting on 10 if you plan on going 2gate. Scouting on 10gate can be helpful as you gain an extra 16mins before you scout, but it can be harmful, because your scouting probe is later and may not get in their base to see what they are doing. The usual thing to do is scout the closest position by ground first. One thing to note is that you’ll often have to choose one of the 4 basic builds before you can see which of the 4 basic builds your opponent is doing. This is why scouting is essential -- so you can see what your opponent is doing and adapt effectively. Spawning positions are random, so effective scouting in some sense comes down to chance.

Scouting is all about seeing what your opponent is doing. The basic scout is, of course, a probe that you will send soon after the game starts. You don’t have to stop using probes there though. They can be useful for checking on expos later, or your opponents units, or expansions, and so on. Observers are the ultimate scout. If I lose mine I usually build another as soon as reasonably possible unless I deem it unnecessary, mainly when I believe it will be an easy win anyway. Watch out for cannons or opponents observers+units though. The key things to note with your observer(s) are opponents build, to see what they have done and give you hints about what they will do. Check for key buildings like archives or robo support bay. Note units and unit positioning to see if you can safely attack or harass. You can even use your attacking units to gauge your opponents strength and positions. Buildings can even help you scout by place pylons along your perimeter to have advanced warning of drops or at key locations around the map.

On LT, you should usually be able to scout your opponent by the 2nd position. For instance if your at 12 and your opponent is at 9 you scout 3 first, then you see his probe in your base, and head toward 9. Or, your at 6 and scout toward 3first, you either see his probe on your way before you get to 12 or you don't. If you don't head toward 9. Just use common sense to figure out the best way to scout. Every once in awhile people may scout late or scout in odd order so play safe anyway.

Counter scouting includes blocking your ramp early game with units to stop the opponents scouting probe from entering such as 1zeal or 1 probe block on a smaller sized ramp (LT) or a 2z or 1z/probe or 2probe block on a larger ramp (Luna). Make sure you center your unit on your ramp, in the middle of the diamond figure (LT). Building cannons or having observers with units around to kill opponent’s observers.

Most of the time you should be able to get inside your opponents base with your probe. It’s important to keep it alive until your opponent has goons.There are a variety of things you can do with you probe. Usually I keep moving it around even when he has goon rather then trying to save it because It give you a better scout on his base and is less likely that he will go another build as soon as you scout is gone. Plus, it frees up 1psi.

Things to do with your scouting probe: Place it on your opponent’s ramp early to cause your opponents zeal’s to lose path finding if they rallied their gates beyond the probe. Steal their minerals. Harass probes. Run away after you have sufficient info and hit it behind their Nat's mins to see when they expand. Hinder buildings warping in. Hide the probe in a corner of their base till later when you can scout. Build a gateway with that hidden probe to have fast dts in their base. Build multiple gateways in order to attack them with zealots. Have your probe attack their pylon supporting their gateway, so if you get zeal’s in their base you have a better chance of taking this pylon down. Save it until you have zeal’s so you can attack probes with it and a zeal. Attack probes from behind minerals.

Manner pyloning is a somewhat controversial issue, though its basically accepted as valid now. It can be rather effective at times, but I don’t include it in my play because I consider it unfair at times. Because of this I'm not sure when its worth it or not. If anyone knows that let me know. Anyway, on some maps you'll just spawn on a spot that can be manner pyloned, while you opponent spawns at a spot where you are not able to manner pylon him. If someone does this to you you can try to escape with some probes and then just attack it with zeals later. What I do is usually just attack the pylon with the probes that are trapped and zeal(s)/goon when I can if its safe. Sometimes you'll be manner pyloned and may lose out on some mins, but so did you opponent. This can be somewhat obnoxious when your trying to follow a build order, but thats the breaks. Another thing that may happen is that you get your gas stolen. Just how bad do you want that gas? Very badly, attack it with probes. Myself, I'd just use zeal(s)/goon, and deal with the later gas.

TL.net threads on manner pylon: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=16633
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=5420
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?currentpage=1&topic_id=748
Also, check out the first link in the economy section for breakdown of minerals lost with manner pylon.

I don't support the gas trick with a probe to be able to shift into your opponents base, but a similar thing you can do which I think is 100% legit is to mine your opponents minerals. Your scout will then return to your nexus and right back to your opponents minerals ignoring any units in the way. Especially useful vs core first builds at times.



- On Builds:

Someone once told me that Rekrul said that 2 gate goon/reaver < 4 gate goon < dt rush < 2 gate goon/reaver. This is pretty much correct. But, I'd like to note that I believe 2gate goon/reaver is the safest build overall, as you still have a decent chance vs. someone that does not go robo early, and its pretty much guaranteed win vs. typical dt builds if played well. Some dt players go no forge or robo, which actually puts them on decent ground vs. you, but they would instantly lose to dt, so you see the trade off.

Stated differently: 4gate goon (usually as 2gate expo, no robo) > 2-3gate goon/reaver/ob > dt > 4gate goon

I’m not including odd builds like fast expo, forge first, 1gate expo, etc, and also 2gate builds because they are much more about adaptation and how both players play then the above builds.



- On Big 4 Options:

Range first, robo first, citadel first, or add another gateway? Range first means that your goons are upgraded and that they will be much more effective in battle. If you notice how Bisu[Shield] plays on requiem, he often times a 5z,6goon attack just when range is done and he often wins on just that attack. Robo gets you obs/shuttle/reaver, really that’s it. Figure out when you want the units that come out of the robo building and get them at the right time. Citadel first means faster dt/ht/leg upgrade; again get them at the appropriate time. Add another gateway if you feel it’s necessary to compete to keep up in unit production or don’t need other tech. This is all pretty redundant, but I’m trying to get the significance of what each building means. Generally, I favor gate first to increase production. Then I favor robo, as this usually comes in time for detection and gives tech relatively fast. Then range comes later. This order results in the best production, but beware of people who go earlier range and skip probes as their units may be more powerful then yours on open ground early on.



- On Shuttle/Reaver/Ob Builds:

You have probably recognized the vast majority of my builds are the shuttle/reaver/ob variety. Here I will explain the reasons why I usually favor this unit combo.

- Simplistically, dt > mass unit builds, mass unit builds > obs builds, obs builds > dt builds. This trend is what some consider the major chance factor in PvP. However, the robo builds remains the best for consistency. I rule out mass unit builds because I want to be safe vs. dt builds, and I rule out dt builds because I want to be safe vs. obs builds. Anyway, obs give valuable scouting information, and shuttles may be useful considering terrain. Also, if you skip robo, that only means slightly more units, say, about 3 more goons at 9 min. I believe that perhaps often the good scouting provided by obs is more useful. Thus, robo builds are the most consistent and safe, if not always the best. This is why robo build should be your standard, but surely feel free to mix it up from time to time so you are not easily predictable.
- Whether you go reavers or not, I'd like to point out one that that should usually remain the same -- Robo timing. You'll usually want it set up so that you get ob just as dt comes knocking. But after that you can use your robo either for obs or for reavers. The first consideration is obs, you really don't want to spend more minerals on obs then is necessary to gleen enough info to act accordingly. I found that 1 is usually fine for awhile. Maybe add another early if your facing dt or a contain or lose your ob. After that your robo is of no real purpose expect more obs later or a shuttle, probably later as well. But, with a reaver build your making use of that robo. If a goon player wants to keep up in unit production and power they will have to go 4gate if you go 3gatereaver, 3gate if you go 2gatereaver. So, they are paying an extra 150 mins, which basically pays for your shuttle which is mainly your reaver transportation, but that shuttle adds other useful features as well in mobility, such as cliffing, dropping opponents main, etc. This leads to the next point...

- Shuttles increase mobility in ways such as harass, attacking at 2 different places, cliffing other player with goons/cannons. For instance, if your armies are roughly equal, but your opponents main is unprotected, you can feign and attack with your units but attack his eco with your reavers. You can't win the ground battle, but what you can do is just go back to your base if he tries to attack you, you should have new units coming out and reaver support, which should be enough to defend.

- reavers are excellent harass units because of their splash damage. reavers decimate zeal’s and clumped goons. I think of myself as an aggressive macro player. Reavers fit this style well because I’m usually attacking others in their natural, where they are clumped up. Also, I like the ability to pick from multiple options, which their power and mobility give me. I could just have easily made all my various builds for goon/speed zeal builds, but I don’t for reasons which I give here.

- They rock if someone is trying to get into a smaller space from a bigger one. Up a ramp, into a smaller choke, etc because units clump up, and come slower with less mass.

- If someone is containing you under your ramp or in a choke, you have 3 choices apparent to be able to at least stay in the game. Expand or try to get out of the contain or try to mess up your opponents economy. Reavers have far range and as long as they don’t have ht you will be able to break the contain easily compared to non-reaver builds. Of course, you'll also have a shuttle, so loading it up with a probe and trying to expand is an option. And you have the option open to harass as well with reaver+shuttle. Though, you could consider teching to dt/ht if you think that would be more helpful. But, you may as well try with the reaver first if there is an opening.

- Citadel+archive+2xtemp+storm=600/800. Bay+2xrvr+shuttle=750/300. Notice minerals are slightly higher for reaver/shuttle build and gas is way higher for temp build. This is why basically why temps are not often built out of one base (one gas). If they are, you will be forced to go for mainly zealots and perhaps no obs. The other problem is what to do vs. dt, which is apparent in all archives first builds, though perhaps more so as you don't intend to go dt at all. You can usually be protected for a short while by placing a dt on your ramp so that a dt cant get up, but this assumes that know that dt is coming, or at least make a dt in time to block your ramp. Pretty iffy. Then there is the option to go forge. But, if you start by placing cannons above your ramp, you'll be contained by dt and will basically be forced to go robo. You could place them at choke, but this means your getting forge and cannons pretty early which is not good for production and tech overall. Lastly, there is the possibility that you'll be dt dropped, which you won't know about. So your gambling either way by wasting cannons to defend your economy, or leaving yourself open to basically instantly lose to dt drop.
- Citadel+archive+2dt=550/500. Thats considerably less gas then going for high templars. I covered the main problems that one will face going for an archives first build above, so I'll just consider some aspects of dts here. Really, theres not much to say. Thing is, dt builds pretty much prey on their opponent not having detection and some units at the right place at the right time. I cover some aspects of dt dropping in the builds section.

- The best early combo early besides reaver/goon/ob is basic zeal/goon/ob. The main considerations besides expo timing is whether to go for legs, and how many obs to make. The gas works out fine for legs for zeals if you wish, though I don't usually recommend them before expo. If you do go for them though you'll probably want something more like 50/50 goon/zeal rather then mostly goons. You should try to get away with the least obs necessary early game. 1-2 is all I would make before expo if i can help it, except for some odd circumstance where I might make 3 because of obs getting shot down.

This build vs. a goon/reaver build seems quite even assuming good macro by both. Its often stated that, Goons > reavers if they can take the reaver on while spread out and in large numbers. Reavers > goons, if the goons are bunched up, or equal in small numbers.

I did not include any regular goon/zeal builds in my builds section simply because that is not my style of play. If you understand why my builds are very efficient, you'll be able to adapt them into non reaver builds. The main thing to keep in mind is that its necessary to go 4gate before expo if you want to keep up in unit mass with a 3gate reaver player, assuming starting with a one gate zeal tech build. I don't recommend expanding before the 3gate reaver player does either, as that will likely mean less units. Mainly, you have to rely on the travel advantage, and well as any position advantage you can come up with. Keep an eye out for drops too.

I've pondered that perhaps just goon/zeal builds are better then timed reaver builds when a one base timing attack is probably not the best option, say, most of the time on nostalgia. In this instance nonspeed shuttle harass is not as good, walking distance is far, and the nats are easy to protect so they can focus more on macro(meaning good macro, continual probes) early, so if you try for a timing attack off of 1base, you will probably only be able to contain them at the bridges not their ramp, and its questionable whether the contain is worth more then earlier expo/better macro. These two things are perhaps the biggest questions on my mind.When is more continual probe production and no reavers worth it? And, is having the contain advantage > eco advantage.

- 2rshuttle = about 5 goons cost wise. Simply put, my builds are very very good, and most people do not play nearly as efficiently. It's only the cases where people can play as well, be it with or without reavers that even matter, unless I mess up of course :p. Another consideration is that once you get goons up in high numbers they take up quite a bit of space, so I’d usually prefer the reavers and zeals. Finally, here is a real wold example to convince you just how good this guide and my builds are. Consider Nal_Ra vs. Reach at Blizzcon on Roads to Antiga Prime, which one of my friends made. Ra produced 19g/2z/2ob by 9min, Reach, 11goon/2z/1rs/2ob. Any of my standard tech builds would have worked perfectly fine, say 2b, which has 20goons/3z/2rs/ob by 9min. Its rather plain who has the advantage, and would most likely win. This just goes to show that even pros can macro somewhat poorly, and how important macro can be. In order to not look like I'm being bias and selective I'll give the other game figures as well. On Nightlight Ra had 17g/1z/2r/ob at 9min, being generous. Reach had 19g/2rs at 9min, being generous. On Signal Ra had 14g/3z/3c/norobo at 9min. Reach had 18g/2rs/noob(pun unintended ;p). Yea...it should be apparent why I don't recommend these replays. In my opinion, their production in all three games were rather poor for top Protoss progamers. Closing comment, people may bitch at me, saying that I said that I was better then Reach/Nal_ra. I don't think I'm better. Nonetheless, I do think that if I were to play either of them how they played on those maps I'd beat each 2-0, and so would other players playing well. Consider the facts yourself.

(You were way too into reavers. I use them as mid game harass mostly or an early game rush, while they basically seem to be the basis of your game. And that’s pretty unique, so this guide might not be resound with everyone. — -_- )

I can agree with that looking back. When I wrote this guide I saw reavers as the best way to do things. Now though, I realize that both reaver and non-reaver are viable. In fact, in some circumstances, non-reaver can be significantly better.



- On Other Builds:

Above I went over some of the reasons I prefer making reavers/shuttles with my robo and why I don’t usually go early citadel tech. Here, I’ll go over some more specific parts of builds that I usually don’t prefer.

-I don’t usually don't go shuttle speed off of one base. It’s a load of money, which decreases my overall unit production.. You’re required to do it early if you want it any time soon. If you research it just as you start your first reaver, I believe it will be done just after your second one comes out. If you go shuttle speed that early you’re basically sacrificing ~3 goons at 8-9 min to have it, which in my opinion is usually not worth it. What your basing the upgrade on is that speed will help you get a drop off that will be more worthwhile then more units. I think thats pretty risky and the more often better way to play is to have more units instead. I consider doing speed after I expand to help with mid game harass.

-I don’t like expo before robo unless I know its safe to do, which is when I get a great scout off on someone who’s doing 2gate robo usually. 2gate to expo build is possible if you play vs. someone who goes 2 gate but does not rush hard.

- Which first out of robo - shuttle or ob? I prefer ob for several reasons.
1. If you go ob first that means ob comes out faster. You can go later robo then, which is beneficial to overall macro.
2. Your spending 25mins or whatever ob costs insteand of 200mins early for shuttle, this allows you to spend those mins elsewhere early on another gate, goon, etc, which is beneficial to overall macro.

One thing that shuttle->ob->reaver does though is get these things out the quickest because robo is being used more.
Its not a huge deal overall, but consider if you want slightly faster ob & slightly better macro OR slightly faster reavers shuttle.


- I don’t favor the idea to drop some probes into the other persons base to scout. First, your sacrificing your economy a bit by sacrificing probe(s), and you may be more vulnerable to dt because of shuttle first, thus later ob. Also, your opponent obviously knows you have shuttle and will protect his/her minerals now if he/she is a good player. Otherwise, you might get lucky and be able to scout an opening with your ob.

- I don’t usually prefer fast reaver/zeal drops because it’s essentially dropping blind without obs and it stunts macro because of the fast shuttle. Go ahead and scout your opponents main. Try to check his units, basically if your opponent has enough goons close by to quickly defend. Note the map. Only drop if you will be successful, and not just successful, but more successful then all other options. When to harass is often not an easy thing to consider.

- I don’t like fast just speed zeal builds. These builds work quite well vs. players who expo blindly, but safe good play with reavers rapes them.

- I don’t like 9/10 or proxy because it’s gambling. I don’t like rush builds for the most part because they can somewhat easily be effectively countered. Zeal’s vs. someone who’s good with goon micro is often not too good as well. Going two gate every game and then adapting is one style of PvP. That style its rather safe overall, but its not the best way to play always.

-I don’t like shield batteries early because they put you in a defensive position. Also, units don’t attack while getting healed. Maybe if you go hard 2 gate and battery in their main or go fast dt and go battery to hold ramp or ground reaver build. May be useful for healing carriers/shuttles/reavers at times.

- I usually don’t cannon someone’s cliff because that is expensive and they may be able to run me over. Reaver/shuttle also counters this rather easily. I don’t usual put goons on someone’s cliff unless they are plain asking for it, that is, expo without robo.

- I usually don’t like mass zeal builds, that is, 2gate into proxy 3gate, unless I spot a prime opportunity, as in, no ramp map where they go core first and late 2nd gate. 2gate builds if done property can hold this off easily as long as the map is favorable.

- I don’t like forge before 2nd nexus because it stunts unit production/eco for early ups and cannons are simply not a part of my game plan before I expand. You could go for early +1, but the cost is 250/100 just for +1 which equals about 3 goons at 9min, since you went for it so early, but it only increases my overall damage by about 40, and gives me about 3 less goons with hit points. I’d be more open to 1base +1 for zeal/goon builds though.

- I don’t like reaver walking builds usually because the purpose behind skipping shuttle is to gain an earlier expo, yet you leave yourself wide open for cliff harass (if you do in fact have one, of course) if you do not build a shuttle. Also, reavers are damn slow, and it tends for a longer game. On maps most without a cliff over the nat this build is more viable. It does allow for a slightly earlier/safer expo, but trades that for no early harass possibilities. Plus, I'd want a shuttle later probably anyway.



- On Economy:

Good article: http://www.sclegacy.com/showthread.php?p=58861#post58861
Check out this thread as well: www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?currentpage=4&topic_id=20166
Check out this thread as a supplement to this section: www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=23172

Notice that with 24probes mining on 8mineral patch lines the probes will stop moving from patch to patch looking for a mineral to mine. Thus, the mineral increase goes up significantly at 24 probes. Basically, mineral patches x 3 = optimal probe amount. By building enough probes your game should get better significantly instantly. On one base build 27 is the prime for 8min patches as far as minerals go unless your going to be able to expand soon, in which case more probes will lead to better macro later, but if you play someone who only goes 27 probes your likely to get overwhelmed because you do not have enough units. Once I have two nexuses I usually up that amount by 10 or so. You may ask why not more? Well, building 25 or so probes takes a lot of recourses and by that time my main would have run out, which means if I don’t expand I have way to many probes. Plus if you build that many probes your giving your opponent an opening, in which he many pump units instead of probes and overtake you.

Also, early game I like to keep solid unit production while maintain almost constant probe production until 20-30 as well. I usually don’t favor cutting probes early because it’s VERY detrimental to later production. On maps like requiem though, I often favor cutting probes for a stronger army sooner.

On Neo Forte mineral layout: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=39854



- On Expanding:

Expanding is a rather difficult topic to cover well because expanding is very relative. You can see some of my general thoughts about expanding here: www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=41666

Generally, expand as soon as you safely can for a future advantage, but not too soon as to get overrun is the best bet, but you have to be especially wary of unusual builds then such as 3gate goon no robo, or speed shuttle harass. Vs. a one base attack build, your unit counts should be roughly equal by the time your opponent arrives at your base, so thats no piece of cake either.

In PvP I believe it will be useful to make a distinction between two features of many popular maps. Some maps have exposed and somewhat easy to attack naturals, say, LT and Luna. Though, I really consider these maps as having semi-open naturals, as they are only open on one side. Then there are maps with easy to protect naturals like Nostalgia, Rush hour, and Neo Forte (though this one has other vulnerabilities). I consider these kinds of maps as having less open naturals. These kinds of maps are setup such that effectively attacking your opponent’s expansion nexus at their natural is rather difficult because of one or more chokes usually. Of course, this is not a clear cut description; naturals may be more or less open, which should effect decisions.

I’ll tell you how I tend to play on maps where the natural is more open. I’ll explain more about the less open sort soon. I usually expand at around the peak off of one base, which means about 9 min. This peak is when unit production hits the top of the hill (so to speak) from one base using the consistent style that I show you in multiple forms in my build section. If someone expanded earlier then you they are simply not going to have as powerful of an army as you do at this time if they went obs tech. I think there are two things worth mentioning here that may go against that statement though. Depending on the map, they may be able to get away a significantly earlier expo, and thus may be able to get away with powering more which will turn into more mass later. Storm is also a odd variable. Nonetheless, you get the idea, that you’re going to have a very powerful army. As for people who plan to expand later and go obs tech, well you’ll probably be able to contain them and/or defend vs. them while being able to gain an economic advantage if you don’t have one already. What about vs. 1gate reaver players, who tend to attack around 8:30. Assuming, you go for a 2gate before robo build, your production will be better overall, plus they have to deal with travel distance, giving you even more of an advantage. Nonetheless, this is nothing to sneeze at either, to give an example, 13g/2z/2rs for early robo player attacking vs. 14g/4z/1r at 8:30 with this player having 3more goons soon. So you see there is an advantage, but it can easily be overcome depending on the attack. And if you go early robo as well all you have is the distance advantage.

Vs. players who do not go robo or cannon at all, they open themselves up to instantly losing vs. dt, and a robo plyer does have a scouting advantage then. The unit disadvantage can be overcome by a robo player, but going no robo is clearly an advantage, especially when the robo player does not go reaver.

Consider travel distance on a map with a rather open natural. Because of this, my opponent could expo at slightly before me, yet have roughly the same amount of units by the time I arrive. So, in this case, because my expo is later, I will want to take advantage of my units to make up for that. This advantage may be had a number of ways, winning an all out attack, killing some probes harassing, killing some units harassing, containing, and so on.

But, would it not be wiser for my opponent to realize I am going to attack, and then not expo early so they can have more units then me? But, then I could just hold back and wait for him to attack me. So, you see how these roles can reverse in an instant, and for no clearly superior reasoning on the part of one player. Its just how the game flows. To summarize, if someone expands earlier then you, you’ll probably want to attack them, which should be a pretty equal situation assuming they can keep up in production relatively and they went robo. If they expand later, your two reasonable options are to either hold back, or attempt some kind of contain. Hopefully this demonstration has been insightful as to expanding in PvP. It really is often a crap shoot, so I tend to expo at 9min or at 6min, to have consistent times to judge from. This consistency is important so I will have stable points to judge all cases from, which makes it easier to analyze and improve.

But, really these are rather subtle considerations that often don’t even matter. The main point was to get across that expanding slightly earlier or later on an open natural map does not matter too much, except for the flow of the game, unless you can get away with something significant, such as not warping in a robo at all. If one attempts to expo earlier or later while building significantly more then 27probes they are most likely going to be easy wins on a maps with more open naturals.

Now, I’ll consider travel distance on a map with a rather closed natural. In this case, attacking your opponents natural would often be a bad decision because of good defensive positioning. But, these conditions are on your side as well. Thus, one can pretty easily get away with a rather earlier expo and produce significantly more probes (this is the key difference). For more on this style of play check build #4. The reasons I don't recommend this style on more open natural maps for several reasons. 1) when you win, it tends toward longer games. So, I prefer a more active approach on these kinds of maps. 2) You production is significantly worse then a one base peak attack style. Factoring in travel distance, unit production should be roughly the same assuming about equal probe numbers, but then you have to concern yourself with defense rather then offense, which means your not taking the initiative, and its simply not as interesting and fun. Lastly, I should not that by going for an earlier expo and less units as fast you are leaving yourself more open to odd strategies like speedzeal builds, 3gate no robo hold probes for many units early, drops, and perhaps others. If you plan to always expo after your opponent, your also limiting yourself to just reacting.

More on why I choose 9 min to expo on more open natural maps rather then slightly later or slightly earlier.

As I mentioned before, going by one time gives me a consistent point to judge from.

From my analysis of builds, around 9:00 is the peak off of one base, so if you take longer to attack then that, someone should be able to contain you for a possible offensive advantage, or expo and lay back for the possible defensive advantage.

9:00 vs. 8:00. What i mean by 8:00 is one gate robo, so I'll have 2reaver around 8:00 rather then 9:00, but the overall production will be slightly worse. Generally whether i do one or the other comes down to robo timing and what is most safe vs. a possible dt build. If you don't have much of a clue as to what you opponent is doing, the earlier robo, and thus ealier ob/reavers/shuttle is what goes along with that. But if you get a hint from your opponents build that you can go later robo safely, I tend to prefer that, as the production is better overall. Nonetheless, if circumstances are such that you will be able to do more damage if your reavers come earlier, then that is likely the way to go. But, I feel that such circumstances only come about by timing accidents so to speak, or opponents poor (accidental or not) play, thus 9:00 is more consistent to go with if it is safe.

Of course, you could do a build that maximizes potential at 6-7 min to overtake their earlier expo of say 5-7 min. So, why don’t I like to do that kind of build? Because it has more disadvantages then advantages because going early 3gate or fast core are vulnerable to fast dt tech and zeal’s respectively, plus it loses to builds that go for a peak attack at9min. So when should you expand?

What about odd builds like one base speedzeals or one base carrier. I can say that one base speedzeal tends to work when one player is simply not playing safely, so its a risk on both players sides. Again, the result is just how the game worked out, and does not reflect any superior strategy on the side of one player or the other. One base carrier and other odd plays I will admit that I don't have enough experience on to want to comment.

Almost as important as knowing when to expand is knowing when your opponent expands. Most importantly this lets you plan what you will do, when you will expand, or attack, etc. Recall that fp rep that I posted a link to in the recommended reps section. The guy was able to kill about half my probes because I was careless. He figured himself ahead and expanded at around 8min. Because I had an observer scouting his units, I knew I could attack later and win. His shuttle was flying around to attack my probes again slightly before I attacked him. It was an easy win for me with no reaver support for him until the battle was almost over. I would have won anyway even if he had the reavers but it would have been closer, so his largest problem here was actually macro, but nonetheless he carelessly expanded when I could have overrun him, and did.



- On Micro:

The purpose of all micro is to maximize the effect your units have and in turn minimize the effect of your opponents do. Micro is about withdrawing damaged units, focus fire, flanking, dodging, spell casting, and so on.

Useful guide on shuttle/reaver micro: http://www.freewebs.com/iamknickknack/reavers.htm

There are multiple ways to micro a drop where you just want to fly in attack quickly and fly out. The easiest fast way is to click past where you want to drop your reavers then when the shuttle is where you want to drop them click "u" then click on shuttle, the reaver(s) will drop. Then select reaver(s) + shuttle and attack. Then click on shuttle. Then shift right click away (move). The problem with this method though is that the reavers will stop firing and move toward your shuttle when you click on the shuttle. So, you must allow the reaver(s) enough time to fire before clicking on the shuttle. You could select and move the shutle toward the reavers after they attack, then select the reavers and click on the shuttle, then shift click away, but its more difficult.

Note that you could just select the reavers and attack, but selecting the shuttle as well makes sure the shuttle does not fly far away, or in the opposite direction, though it does potentially put the shuttle in more danger if your opponent aims for it. But, if they aim for that, it means you'll probably be able to get more shots off.

Another way is to select the shuttle after you attack and move it back toward the reaver(s), then when its over/near it click on the reaver, then click away. This way requires more actions, but the reaver stays in place and can continue firing until you click on it. This way requires timing in when to click on the reaver (so you actually pick it up and don't miss it) and when to click away (so you retain momentum).

This last way is the hardest. Select the shuttle after you attack and move it as far as you have time for away, but make its path so that it will fly over the reaver(s). Select a reaver and click on the shuttle just as it passes over the reaver. This way also allows the reaver to continue firing, until you click on the shuttle. But, its the most difficult before it requires more actions and better timing when to click.

All of this micro can be a bit tricky for the fingers, so practice it. You could mix these ways a bit if you have multiple reavers, of course, though I dont reccomend it. Some other tips: If you drop reavers behind minerals make sure its directly behind them so scarabs shoot through the minerals. If you load up other units such as zeals with the shuttle youll usually want to drop them first to draw fire, but if there is no defense just drop the reaver first. Theres alot more to type about reavers, but I gave you some of the technical basics so you can explore diffrent options on your own with these.

This is how you should setup a goon/rvr/zeal attack vs. a static opponent. Place your reavers just in range of your opponent with goons slightly behind. This way, your reavers will be able to attack without them attacking anything of yours. Hopefully, your first 2 shots out of your reavers will do splash and kill 2 or more goons right away. After your reavers have released their scarabs or they begin to move to attack you, attack move with your goons, now they should be slightly in front of your reavers. If they were watching their units they may try to rush your reavers with their great force. Stay calm, and let your reavers get the next 2 shots out which will often do large damage because of clumped up units, then pick them up with your shuttle if necessary in order to save them. You kind of have to guess if they are going to target your reavers or your shuttle. If reavers pick them up, if shuttle move it back. Its often important to take this lull just after yove attacked and done the most significant actions to check back home and produce units, expand, etc. Then take a look at your army, and take the appropriate actions. You can reposition your goons for better effect. You can aim reaver shots at clumps or reaver(s) for maximum effectiveness if you want or you can use your shuttle to 'shuttlepop' to prolong their life. If they click a reaver and you pop it in a shuttle just before they fire, they have wasted a round of shots, pretty valuable, plus you prolong the life of your reaver. Beware of them just selecting the shuttle though, as you don’t want to lose the shuttle and reaver for the price of one. A shuttle can soak up some shots of a battle, but generally I try to save my shuttle when in a battle because I want reaver mobility after the battle, shuttles take awhile to build, and they are rather weak and don’t take many shots to kill, so they are not worth much for soaking up damage.

( Here’s a trick I use to save myself from reaver rushes when I know otherwise I’ll lose. I take about 5-6 goons, attack a reaver, and then aim for the shuttle. The shuttle guy will think a reaver pop will work, pick up a reaver or two, then either he’s too slow to drop the reavers or he can’t because he’s flying over his own troops. Risky, but worth a mention and it’s saved me many times — -_- )

When going 2gate and attacking with zeal’s your probably going to be attacking up a ramp. With your first zeal try to slip in and kill some probes or if they only have one zeal and your probe is still alive you can attempt to kill their zeal. Check to see if your opponent does not block his ramp well first of all and you can just run in. Once there are multiple zeal’s on the ramp you want to get into a sutuation where you have somethign like 2 of your zeal’s attack 1 of theirs and have 1 of yours attack 1 of theirs. Move around and maneuver to see if you can slip in or get a favorable position to attack from. You can also use the gas trick to walk up your opponents ramp without vision with your probe then attack move on their zeal’s causing them to move and not attack. I consider this unfair though, and do not do it.

Tips on zeal micro: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=42658
Due to zealot’s durability vs. goons and goons 1/2 dmg vs zealots, if a goon front is being pounded on by a zealot front, move the goons.

Tips on goon micro: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=17175

Basic goon micro vs. goon micro. Keep your goons in a slight arch with the ends ends facing their units on open ground. Try to have as many as your units attack theirs while keeping theirs unable to attack you. Surround if it will work well and is possible. Same as zeal micro pull back the hurt ones, then stick them back in, as long as you can pull back without dying or else you’ll be better off getting off that one more shot.

Focus fire can really screw you up in smaller goon battles especially if you don’t have range and he does. He can just back that unit off you end up chasing it taking extra hits. He backs off and basically wins right there. In a case where they back off one goon thats almost dead, just attack the ones that are closest or send one after it to kill it. Another basic tactic is shift attacking. You do this by shift attacking his goons, and your goons will focus fire automatically. You can right click to attack, but If you miss that can be dangerous.



- On Macro:

I have covered some parts of macro in other Note sections. Probe production is certainly part of macro. Expanding and builds have to do with macro. I suppose I consider macro everything that has to do with production. Pay attention to the small things like pylon timing. Gateway timing. For example if you want to build 3goons soon and you have 2 goons halfway done, stick a gateway down now, produce 2 goons, and then you will be able to produce 3goons next time. Only stick the gateway down though if it does not interfere much with the next 2 goons production or you will be better off not making the gateway.

Basically the more probes you can get away with early on the better off you will be later. Skipping probes early on really hurts macro so I don't reccomend it it unless you’re quite sure it will work t0o your benefit. But, making too many probes regardless of anyting else, is just as bad. The game is a ballance of attacking unit production, tech, probe producion, buildings, upgrades, etc. Remember to check on your base and macro where there is a lull in a battle after you've done the significant actions. The way to get better at macro is simply practicing, understanding how buildings work with units and coming up with good builds.
From a post of mine on TL.net:

Alright, I'll try to go over some basics of good macro.

First, make enough damn probes. If Someone has as much psi in probes as you do overall at 10 min, of course they are going to have much better macro. Generally with 8min patches, you don't want more then 24 probes mineing on them. Watch some pro pvt games and youll see that they usually have around 50 or so probes by 10min.

Second, make probes as consistantly as possible. Going 7p, 8gate, 9gate, is much worse for economy then going 8p, 10gate, 12gate. Sure, there are some times you may choose to pause probes, but you havent got much of an idea about consistant probe production, so I don't think you should be considering that at this time. For instace, in your game you go: 8p, 9gate, 12assim, 11core, 13gateway +goon. More consistant probes would look like this: 8p, 10gate, 12assim, 14core, 15p, 17goon, and so on.

Third, get rid of all the crap that you don't need, and get the stuff that want at a good time. You get forge before expanding, 150mins wasted right there. Could have 150min earlier expansoin, and thus be making more probes more quickly. Go +1 very fast, not reccomend usually, as other things are more important. You get the idea.

Of couse, you should practice in orer to become proficient at bringing all of these concepts together. There is surely lots of stuff that can help that I did not go over, such as becoming proficient at hotkeys. I reccomend you use the search function for threads about becoming better at macro/macro to see what else you can find that may be useful.



- On Improving:

Check these out: www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=20256
www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=20082

One's game can roughly be divided into two parts. The actual ability to play, and the strategy, that is, how to play. They are connected, as you most likely need to have a certain level of ability to understand whats possible, and you need to know how to play well in order to carry that out with your ability. Playing games is the main way people practice their ability, but there are also other things you can do such as do hand exercises, practice hotkey combos, and so on. Watching replays for ideas, coming to conclusions based on playing, and reading strategy are the main ways people increase their knowledge of how to play well. Generally, I've found that most players increase roughly equal and gradually in both over time. At the top level its mostly about strategy and concentration as everyone has the basic skills needed to play well. I'd recommend that you watch mass reps and start really thinking about the game once you believe your ability is at a point where you can absorb good strategy and carry it out. If your not getting anything from watching reps the problem could be poor reps or you ability to analyze them. Watch pro reps to get an idea of the best way to play. Try to figure out patterns. Then try to play like what you saw. Then, watch your own losing reps, and adapt as needed.

Take this to heart. It take a lot of damn playing to become great. A hell of a lot. Most of these top non-kor players that you see at the top have been playing SC for 5years or more. Of course, a lot of playing takes a lot of time. So if you are not willing to commit to SC as your major hobby at the very least, you can never expect to be top of pack, placing high WCG, etc.

That being said, I think the most important aspect is simply to play a ton, so you can see a lot of diffrent styles and learn to adapt. The second most important I think is watching many replays in order to get good game plans to work with. Watch reps with a careful eye though, what could they have done better, what could they do better, and so on. finally, I hoped that a guide like this would be the 3rd most important aspect. That may seem like asking a lot, but a guide very well done I think can boost a players skill level rather quickly, and thats the whole point. I want players to learn and not have to fuddle around with the lower stuff for a long time. Then they can see if they really have the dedication to stick to this game and put in the long hours. I didn't, but perhaps you will, and I hope I have helped you get there quicker and have more fun.

I’ll be honest about my progression. I started sc out as a ums/vs. comp on normal maps player. Then I moved on to 1:1 more and starting watching reps of good players. I’ve probably played about 500 1:1, and 500 ums/2v2/vscomp games. Those first 500games got me some basics and to almost 100apm. After that part of my play I was still not much good at 1:1. This is where macro and strategic understanding comes in. This is when I started getting significantly good, more then halfway though those other 500games. I came up with some efficient builds, which helped tremendously. Then the strategy came with when to attack, when to expand. I susppose this is what some might call timing. The game was not so much about macroing well, hitting hotkeys well, at this point, but just playing well. Nonetheless, I do have to push myself by taping keys or squeezing actions in to get the most out of how I know what to do.

I find it amazing the the people who I have told about the guide usually don't even to bother to look at it. I remember one person recently who I watched a rep of theirs and they attacked well, but their macro and unit production was somewhat poor. He had at 9min what I usually have at 8. I tell him the guide would improve his efficiency greatly, and I got something like "my efficiency is good." Here's the point, if you want to improve you have to be open. Listen to people who try to help you, figure out if what they say is valid or not. Most people don't give a damn or cant help you, yet here I am helping greatly with a certain match up, yet I doubt more then a dozen people have read the entire guide. I can easily understand why good players do not want to spread this around, but its amazing how little other people take notice and care. If I had the resources I would do a study on this phenomena.



- On Mid Game:

I consider mid game as starting usually after I have made my goons/zeals/2rs and it’s just after I have expanded and probably attempted an attack. I usually consider this 2gas/2min lines. Because of the peak attack style that I usually play the winner has usually already been decided for all intends and purposes before mid game really kick in if its a map with an open natural. Usually, I’ve just won outright or they are contained and it’s just a matter of time. But, if this is not the case, here are some guidelines.

Of course, protect your minerals with goons, and then bring them off only if you believe you can win with an attack. Keep an eye your cliff (if you have one) for cliffing attempts, but this is usually not too big a deal because I go with reaver/shuttle anyway. If they try to mass cliff you (4+goons) consider trying to simply overrun them. I usually like to continue goons and make another ob then 2 more reavers and a shuttle as they do well vs. just about everything and continue the opportunity for drops, but consider skipping them if your opponent already has temps or will have them soon. Then, I like to go for speedzeals/temp/arch/dt. If the other player goes for lots of goons, make a more heavy ground army with zeal’s and consider temps for storming clumps of goons. If you spot that that they don’t have an obs with their army consider going for a significant amount of dts (4+). If they go for a heavier zealot army and have obs with their army, go for archons. It’s a crucial part of my mid game to hit their economy significantly so the games does not turn into some boring post 20 min game. Go for reaver or dt or ht drops. Contain them, if possible, and then protect and improve on your economy. Basically, you’re just laying siege at this point. Make sure to check for island/other expos if you contain them. If I’m behind, which usually means they have a bigger eco and similar power, I'll try to hit their economy to even it out as I’m simply not going to win a power game with an inferior economy. Go for drops, dt, reaver, or ht. Just like how I like to reach peak potential off of one base then expand, that’s what I like to do with two, in order to try and stop them from gaining an expansion. I’ll usually Expand just before my main runs which is around 13min, and then transfer those probes to my new nexus. Pay special attention to attacking army vs. army as well, if you have an advantage take advantage of it! Mid game is not too complicated, it’s basically just a continuation of the game, and that is certainly dealt with elsewhere in a variety of sections.



- On Late Game:

Things get messier as they game goes on, and I dont have alot of good tips from experince to offer you. I usually consider this 3gas/3-4mins. Continue the same principles as Mid game. The biggest question I have is when to add in Carrier/Arb. Go for upgrades at this point. Peppering your expansions with cannons can be good at this point to help with harass and detenction vs. dt.

Check out: www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=20878
www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=19798



- On Attacking:

This is a rather difficult topic because it is so dynamic. There are many aspects to consider. Map and positions, how that effects attacking. How builds effect it. How micro effets it. How unit formations and where you have your units will effect it. Becoming better at the actuall process of attacking will come mostly with play as you get better control due to hotkeys and simple mouse control and knowing what you want to achive and how to do it. I will try to cover some of the mental or strategical parts of attacking though.

As I have said before going for a reaver/shuttle build gives you even more options with attacking, which I belive to be a good thing most of the time. I'm going to consider a common situation next. The situation in which you have massed up, you have your army and at least one reaver. Most commonly this is around 8-9min.

A tree view is the best way to demonstrate possible choices. Sady I wont be able to draw a tree diagram, so here it is in linear form.

1) Attack
or
2) Don't attack (Defend)

1) Attack, then:
a) All out attack
or
b) Leave some goon to defend
Then either:
1) Frontal attack with all units.
2) Fake frontal, harass
3) Decided not to attack at all, and back off

2) Don't attack, then:
a) All of army at front
or
b) Some in back to defend economy, rest in front
Then either:
1) Harass
2) Don't harass

Thats 8 basic options right there, which should pratically all circumstances at the end of early game, 7:00-9:00 or so. If your playing an ealier expo strategy you are aiming for a advantage later on, so you'll likely plan attack later, only harassing beforehand if you recognize good opportunities.


I'll look at these paths more in depth by breaking the choices down to the fundemental questions:

1) Defend or attack?
Typically the person to expo first is the one that will be on defense, on order to buy some time due to travel distance. And the person who has not expanding will then want to try to get some advantage out of their army size advantage. But, like I stated before, attacking is a dynamic process. If you realize early on that your opponent does not have enough units to hold you off, by all means attack. You might even decide on a build such as 2-4 one base speedzeal before the game or if you see your opponent doing certain things, such as robo+expo, in which case you'll want to attack regardless because you decided on a more risky build that attempts to gain a large advantage early.

2) If attack, all out or defend as well?
If the positions are close by air, and thus in turn probably far by ground, you'll most likely want to keep some goons in main to defend. Otherwise, I tend to like to bring all my units to attack. Its easy enough to drag probes from mineral line to mineral line in order to buy enough time for new goons to come out. Also, if your opponent is harassing with, say 2 reavers, their force at home is likely to be much less powerful, and I likely can overrun them early on, even though they may wreck half my probes, its well worth it.

3) If attack, fake or not?
If you can win the frontal attack, then its probably best to do that. So if they have goons up in their main to defend vs. a drop attack front if you'll win. Now, if they don't have goons defending their main probes, and its iffy if you can win the frontal battle, you may be better off harassing. Move your units as if you are just about to engage but dont attack, while at the same time drop, in order to divert their attention to your main units.

4)If defense all front or ballanced
If you know they dont have a shuttle, then your fine sticking all up front. But, if they do have shuttle, ballanced is usually best. If you suspect frontal perhaps have goons half way inbetween economy defense and at natural, then they dont have as far to move in order to help out vs. the frontal attack. You can always drag your probes from your main to your nat, buying you some time.

5) If defense harass or not?
Always harass if the opportunity is open and you will not lose vs. a frontal attack while you are harassing. If you may lose to a frontal attack, but you are behind overall, you don't have much of a choice, but to try and harass to come back into the game even though it may be your end.
________________________________________

Important aspects of attacking:

Unit Positioning:
Positioning can cause a larger army more costly army to lose to a smaller less costly army. Positioning is all about where your units are in relation to your opponents taking the map into account. For instance you don't usually want to be attacking down a ramp, past a choke, etc. You'll want as many of your units engaging your opponents units as you can. Even if you must delay the fight or wait for units, it’s usually worth it.


Maps:
I like to distinguish between two important aspects of maps. Either a map has a more open natural or a less open natural. LT, Luna, and so on are more open. They have a full side free to come in from to attack, no small choke points. Maps such as Nostalgia, Rush hour, and neo forte, have less open naturals because they are more difficult to attack frontally, though the last map has other vulnerabilities. As you can see maps with less open naturals tend to have two ways out of the natural. The trend is to expo a bit faster on less open natural maps as it is easier to defend the expo, while the trend is to expo later on on more open maps, as it is not quite as easy to defend an expansion. If your opponent takes down your first expansion, its usually very difficult to win the game, as they will be able to build on their economic advantage.

For example, 3 on Luna is great for harassing their main with reavers then switching to a frontal attack, but 9 is not nearly as good. Whoever denies chance is part of sc is foolish.


Guaging opponents army:
You don't have to see their army to get an idea of what it is composed of. Note the buildings they have and how many. It is important to be able to gauge the actual strengh of your opponents army accurately and quickly though. Is he hiding units somewhere in order to surround you? Is he trying to hide shuttle?


Observer movement:
If you suspect dt, move your ob in the path the dt would take, so you can spot it more quickly. If you dont suspect dt, you'll usually want to go right for your opponents main to see get an idea of what build he/she is doign and what units he/she has. Check for robo, number of gates, number of probes, robo facility, shuttle, etc. Make sure you ob does not die. After that, fine a good place for it to rest, usually I like my opponents natural to see when they expand/move units out/how many units they have there. Once you get an idea of whats going on there, you might want to check their main to see if they are leaving any goon to defend their probes there.


Tips:

One thing that almost always holds true is when you expand ealier then your opponent you'll want to hold back and take advantage of travel distance. But, if your opponent expands earlier then you, you'll usually want to try to strike at them soon, before they get an even larger advantage.

Reavers become just about useless when the battle turns into many goon vs small numbers of goon+rvr. This is because of Reavers slow rate of fire, and the fact that they die easily when concentrated on. When going goon/reaver vs many goon or goon/zeal make sure your goon/zeal numbers are only slightly less, enough that the reavers can make up for, or don’t attack.

Another thing about mid/late game, is that people tend to add to their army in waves of units because of how they produce and rally as well as speed limitations. When your opponents army is closer to your base and your wave of units has just come out you probably have the mass advantage, so consider attacking.

It is not always good to attack after you have won a battle. Your opponent might have reinforcements coming in, while all you have is several damaged units. I often find it helpful to regroup after a battle I have won, and attack at a later time, when it is clear I have an advantage.

If they spend money on cannons early on to defend their expo/main while going robo, thats fine by me. Often players do this to make themselfs fell more safe, and they are for the time being. Reaver harass is likely to not work well, but what they dont realize perhaps is that they are spending money on immoble structures rather then mobile units. One who does not go for cannons early with robo should have the unit advantage and be able to build upon that, winning eventually. Also, cannons at the front of a natural are rather poor defense vs. reavers anyway, as reavers have greater range. Now, sometimes opponents will go cannons without robo, this is almost a necessity in order to be safe from dt, and it helps with other sorts of drops and attacks.
________________________________________

(Section of old advanced play section which I'll probably get to editing into the above: - Knickknack)
If we both expand at around 8-9min we're likely to run into each other, cancel each other out and continue play. The battle is key in games like this as whoever gains the advantage can continue to build on that. Also, try to keep your reavers/shuttles alive after the battle in this situation so you have the possibility for harass ASAP. You could try to attack him with your goons and use reavers to attack his probes, but this is a gamble on whether he has units out in time or not and if you'll be able to stop him after he probably overruns your main army. If your opponent does have units in time to defend your harass and he overruns your army, your at a pretty large disadvantage. Another option is to just lay back and try to defend vs. an attack, but the likely result will be that your contained and you both have sustained no losses. Not exactly a good situation. You’ll have to rely on harass and attempt to breaking out if you don't have enough units to break out straight. So, imo the best bet is to try and get superior positioning and micro to win the straight fight. Depending on your position after the battle judge if you can be successful attacking the other player right away. This is probably only a good idea if you won the fight rather decisively, say, with 6goons left over, while he lost all of his units. Otherwise, fall back, build a small amount of probes for your main/expo perhaps, mass up and get ready to attack again. Make sure to defend your minerals in the meantime.

If they don’t expand and don’t hurt your economy and you have them contained and will probably win the game easily eventually. If they expanded somewhere else (island, hidden expansion), try to spot their intention to build it as soon as possible and take it down if you can for little/no loss. If you can’t take it down easily just contain them and out macro. There is another problem that I touched on earlier which might happen if your opponent does not expand. This is if they just hold their ramp, just waiting for you to leave before they attack your minerals. It takes about 30seconds to move units to your opponent’s base, so you need to move your units off your minerals before your 2nd reaver is completed. Then if you expo right away, it will take another 30seconds before you can get goons. So your minerals are rather vulnerable for 1min, or if you go units instead of expand, 30sec. If you follow my plan, the only way to adapt well vs. someone who has this plan in mind is to use your ob to scout them and see if this is their intention. Then, keep some goons and an ob at your main base. Then, you may still have enough units to overrun them.



- On Early Zeal Harassment:

Perhaps attacking with your first few zeals trying to pick off their probes in what I'm considering here. Most of my builds are economical zeal first builds. So, its natural to ask if one should attack with those first few zeals.
The main considerations are your build, your opponents build, the distance between, and the map.

I’ve seen harassing with ones first zeal do as much bad as often as I have much good for the attacking player. If your going to harass, try to do it only when you can actually afford to lose those zeal(s). If your teching and waste that zeal for nothing/almost nothing and they come and crash your front with all of their units, it may turn out poorly when you other wise could have held them off.

As for actuall unit control, a lot of the outcome depends on your control and how they respond. I don’t usually like to have games come down on factors that could go unperdictable ways so I won’t usually attack with my first zeal unless I realize a great opportunity to say...kill 2 probe and run my zeal away for no loss. When going 2gate it’s usually a good idea to try and attack with your first zeal as long as you’re not going for the minimum amount of zeal’s to hold them off then tech kind of strategy. Vs. core first you are going to lose that zeal, it’s just a matter if it’s worth it, how many probes you kill. Generally, I consider 2 or more worth losing a zeal early over.

Also in the "early build explained" section recall zzcore vs zcoregategoon. I was assuming that the zzcore person would attack with both zeal’s. Certainly he may decide to attack you with the first zeal + scouting probe instead and you may gamble and go for a zcoregategoon build which if you get away with it without any probe losses the your certainly ahead. How do you decide if you want to go for the gamble? Usually I’ll do it if they use their 1 and/or 2nd zeal to chase my scouting probe around their base, this generally means they are being more defensive and will not take the initiative to attack you, and thus you gain a significant advantage.



- On Building Placement:

Consider placing pylons to block off other pylons that your opponent may place in your mineral line in order to trap your probes. The act of placing pylons in your opponets mineral line blocking off probes is known as manner pyloning. Placing pylons in your mineral line does decrease mining efficiency by a bit though, but it may be worth it.

Consider placing pylons along the borders of your base so you'll have an increased range of vision. This increased range may you to catch if your opponent is trying to ferry units up onto your main or has hidden buildings or scout(s). Also, this helps to give more of an advanced warning about drops.

Consider not placing your gateways in such a way that they can be prison pyloned. But, if someone tries to do this to you just bring some probes along and place them inside the prison area so the goons with pop out outside of the prison. You could also place a pylon inside. Generally, its useful to place your gates together.

If you 2gate place your gateways closer to the ramp to reduce travel time. If you tech, generally do the opposite, and place them closer to your nexus. I generally favor 3gateway builds => expansion => probe/goon/reavers/shuttle => 2-3x more gateways and leg and archive tech.

Keep tech such as star gate + fleet beacon together so its less likely your opponent will see it, but keep stuff like robo + support bay apart so that if your opponent just sees robo they have no evidence your going reaver.

It’s not necessary to keep your base looking good and neat, but make sure the path is clear to your minerals so you can get there faster if your opponent drops your mineral line, and other such common sense things.

You can place pylons in your choke to absorb goon shots. You can also quickly pylon up on top of your ramp if you don’t have any units, but a lot of minerals and need a quick defense.

You can place pylons around the map for scouting. You can place pylons in vision of minerals other then your main so you can quickly click on a min patch with your probes to move away quickly if droped.



- On Critical Thinking:

This is an example my thought process. Let’s say you’re at the 9position on LT and your opponent is at the 6position. You decide to scout on 8psi because you want the fastest reasonable scout and thus forgo the extra 16mineral advantage of scouting on 10gate. You can either scout at 12 which is the closest position by land and thus the most dangerous. Or you could scout cross map, which has the main incentive of perhaps catching someone proxying gateways in the middle of the map. Or you could scout counter intuitively, the fartest postion by land, which has the main incentive of just being able to scout them becasue you might not otherwise if you scout them last when they will probably have a zeal out to block your probe. Geez, so lets say you just go basic scouting to the closest position, which is my standard way of scouting. You opponent is not at 12 so you decide to go 13 core. Now lets say you see your oppponents scout around the choke at 3 position, and you just see it heading into 3 so you go towards 6. Now, you have no clue what your opponent is doing. Do you decide to build a zealot on 15 after your pylon? If your opponent went 9gate by ramp or proxies 9gate then you really don’t want to go goon first as their zeal will probably be in your mineral line before you goon pops out. If they went 10gate then goon first will probably be better as your goon will be out in time to ht the zeal as its coming up your ramp. If they go 13core and they go 15zeal, going 17goon would be better then copying them. If they go goon first too, well its basically even build wise. What if your opponent went 7gate and a zeal is heading toward your base and you don’t know it? See how many situations you should consider. These are pretty in depth questions that require actually playig to see what is in style and what the safest way to play is. But even then, to some extent you are guessing on which way to go with your build. Basically, if you want to play it safer go 15z, but be aware the safer may not be best for the situation. Or what if you scout 9 first, against common practice, then you will know what they are doing quickly. This is just one example of a thought process on deciding what to do. The main point of this sectinon is to show you tht that you'll often have to make guesses on which way is the best to play on not enough information. The safer play may not be the better play, so playing the best game includes guesswork. Even if you are the best player you may lose to someone else because of the guesses made. The guesswork that I showed in this analysis is a rather simple one, imagine a more advanced example. I Admit I am not able to continue analysis this in depth past 10min or so as the game becomes increasingly complicated, thus the small mid and late game sections. I just work with generalities at that point which I have picked up mainly from experience and common sense and hope that the way I’m playing will work out.



- On DT Builds:

What I'm going to consdier here is a standard goon/zeal/ob + perhaps reaver vs. a dt build.

Dt can start out many ways, but I break it up into 1gate, 2gate, or drop. Then they can either go for speedzeal+arch or try to expo + storm/cannon. Ground dt is much more common overall then drop, excpet perhaps in locations that are far by ground but close by air.

Most of the time, going against dt builds is rather easy, as it should be when going for an obs build. If you are able to keep your probe alive until they kill it with a goon with a zcorez build seeing no citadel and assume no early proxy, the earliest dt(s) will show up at your base is around 6:30 by ground. This is more then enough time to go for 2gates first for better production then robo. But, if you are not able to scout them early on, consider going robo before another gate in order to be safe.

Vs. dt drop, you should be able to scout their intention to do this and just have units in your main with an ob. Your pretty safe for awhile now.

If you suspect ground dt, scout with your ob in the path the dt(s) would likely travel. After you spot dt(s), consider making another ob so you can have 1 for your base and 1 for his base/your army. Keep enough units at your minerals to defend if you suspect dts roaming around.

2gate to dt is pretty much the same as 1gate. You just need to build more zeals then a robo in order to be safe. 2gate to dt is a more powerful build on non standard ramped maps because often people go for range first incase of a goon attack, which delays robo.

Now, you know they went dt, so what do you do. Well, expand or power a bit and attack. I reccomend trying both out in various ways and seeing how they interact with your opponents build. If they did not go storm early, then a 1base reaver attack is game. If they did, a one base attack is hard to pull off vs mass cannon + storm, so it would be better to just expo, letting them spend tons of mins on cannons which don't really help them too much as you won't attack.

If you are going to attack note if the map has a cliff over the natural. If the dt player expaned fast, but a couple goons up there in order to for the player to either not mine or waste storms. Have your obs see if your opponent is protecting his minerals, most likely with cannons. If not, consider attacking their first. The frontal attack is largely about dodging storms. If you can do that well, you've easily won the game as they will have a small number of cannons and a small number of units. It's often better to attack methodically and dodge storms then just charge in as cannons are good defense structures in this case and youll get your reavers stormed and your clumps stormed. The outcome is likely to be roughly even, which you don't want when you have expanded later. You'll often want to contain the dt player, and just leave enough units at your base to defend vs dt/storm drops. By containing you gain the position advantage. Try to surround them if you can to cut of shuttles from leaving their base. Pick off hts with your reavers when you can. Go storm soon as well.

If you are going to expand right away, this is a pretty safe way to go overall. The thing to be most careful about is storm drops. There is really not too much you can do here except try to shoot the shuttle down and move probes away. If they have speed this becomes more difficult. Just deal with it the best you can. They dt player will hardly have any units for quite some time so they wont be able to attack you outright. All they can do is harass and lay back and defend.

Most of the time the dts won't do much damage early and you'll either be able to attack well early and win or just lay siege and starve them to win. This does not mean dt builds are useless though. They tend to be better on other maps then LT, Luna, Nostalgia, etc. Maps like Guillotine, and so on. They also counter no robo/forge builds such as 2gateproxy3rd gate, mass zeals, or expo before robo to mass units.

TL.net thread on: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=48860



- On Reaver Builds:

Not a lot to say here on vs. players who use reavers. I used to have two large paragraphs, but the most important thing is simply to place goons around your minerals well when you opponent could drop on you. Depends on game, but around 6:00 is a pretty standard time to prepare incase your opponent went for a semi quick reaver drop.

If you have enough goons around your probes, then your opponent will simply fly away if they are a good player. If they think its worth the risk to try to fly in and get a shot off, its probably best to pull probes off of your line away from the drop asap. This works best when you click on another mineral patch as that lets your probes ignore obstacles. So, its good to place a pylon so you have vision often.



- On Cannons:

There are several ways that cannons can come into play. Perhaps the most annoying is when an opponent uses them in combination with building to block off the area behind your min line so he can build cannons and win easily. To counter this you need to move your probe(s) though the minerals and attack his probe before he can build cannons. Worker Clip-Hop: Used to hop through minerals by having 2+ workers mine a single crystal and then stopping them as they start while clicking on the destination. One will pass through the minerals. Another form is containing with cannons. This is not that big of a deal because of reavers. Lastly, cannons on cliffs can be a real pain. Make sure to check up there with an observer every once in awhile. I don’t worry about this one too much either because I usually go reavers and shuttle.

Anther cheese is if they try to block of the area behind your minerals with larger buildings such as pylons + gateway. If you suspect anything suspicious have a probe or two follow their probe around.

I'll usually go forge for cannons/ups after I warp in my 3rd Nexuses.



- On Reading Maps:

This section really should be fleshed out more due to the fact this guide is based on LT, but here are some Factors to consider:
- Open or less open nat. Open nat for the most part is apparent on maps like LT, Luna. Less open nats on Nostalgia, etc.
- Chokes. For instance on Rush Hour there are two bridges between mains which are easily defendable.
- Travel distance.
- Ramp or not as well as what kind of ramp.
- How many exits from bases. For example, Nostalgia & Rush hour have 2 from Natural. Luna has semi two. LT has 1.
- Harassment possabilities. Cliff over nat, Mineral placement, etc.
- Open middle like Luna or obstacles like LT.



- Philosophy:

"When the outcome of a game is certain, well call it quits and begin another." - Alan Watts

"...if the game of order-versus-chance is to continue as a game, order must not win. As prediction and control increase, so, in proportion, the game ceased to be worth the candle. We look for a new game with an uncertain result. In other words, we have to hide again, perhaps in a new way, and then seek in new ways, since the two together make up the dance and the wonder of existence. Contrariwise, chance must not win, and probably can not, because the order/chance polarity appears to be of the same kind as the on/off and the up/down." – Alan Watts

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." – Sun Tzu

"Our greatest glory lies not in never falling but in rising every time we fall." – Confucius

"Conquer, but don't triumph." – Marie Ebner von Eschenbach

"Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances." – Sun Tzu

"The contour of the land is an aid to the army; sizing up opponents to determine victory, assessing dangers and distances... those who do battle without knowing these will lose." – Sun Tzu

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." – Dougless Adams

"Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment." – Rita Mae Brown

"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do." – Epictetus

"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to stay, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact." – George Eliot



- On Common Mistakes:

Use shift-tab to change your opponents color to red on the mini map always. Easier to recognize and react faster over time.

Make sure you place your zeals on ramp correctly so that you don't let in your opponents scouting probe, or even worse your opponents zeal early, which may kill probes.

Multitasking. Try to keep an eye on everything at the same time. This is what hotkeys are good for. Keep switching between units so you don't get hit by surprise. Keep an eye on ob(s) from time to time, so you have a better idea of what your opponent is doing. And of course, focus on nexus for probe production and gateways for unit production.

Not scouting properly with probe. Keep it in their base as long as you can, good for information and multitasking practice. If you are sure a goon is going to pop out soon you may leave a bit early if you would like, but usually I don't as that means its all that much earlier they could change plans, plus that frees you up 1psi when the probe dies.

Not looking at minimap enough. Keep tabs on this. Allows you to spot drops early, unit movement, how much of the map you have vs. what your opponent may have, and so on.

More...



- On Remaining Questions:

- Is 1base carrier viable?
- When should one transfer to arb/carrier tech?
- Island maps.
- When are cannons/shield battery’s really useful?
- Other builds.
- Large battle micro.
- Is going 1 base peak attack vs. a somewhat earlier expander worthwhile because of cointain, even though they may have a stronger economy and more units soon?
- Upgrades such as armor/shield/wepons, as well as air attack, etc. When to get them.
-Suicide probes while attacking effective at times?
- More...
V. Unit Choice
Become familiar with unit stats, which can be found here: www.battle.net/scc/protoss/pstats.shtml
Also, check out this thread for ideas, though I found it rather unsatisfying: www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=40036

Unit choice is somewhat of an odd thing in PvP, but this is how the units usually flow. If you have a ramp one gate builds are generally the standard. If you don't two gate builds are. The first part of the game is a clash of openings to see to can gain an advantage. The early zealot portion of the game fades as goon tech comes, presenting an advantage though a ramp as well as micro. The goon stages lead to either citadel tech or robo tech or no tech is chosen which decides the late early game unit composition. Mid game transitions to speedzeals and temp/archon. Rarely, the high tech units Carriers and Arbiters come into play.

Zeal’s: I’d say this is the second most used unit in PvP. Archons & reavers tear up zeal’s. Zeal’s above/on a ramp > zealots trying to come up, so the defense has an advantage, but you could get contained if you are not careful. Early games don’t let the opponents zeal’s get in your base so you don’t risk having your probes killed or waste mining time. zeal’s are good meat shields in goon vs. goon battles, but if you have more zeal’s then your opponent you probably have less goons, so don’t misuse them or it could quickly turn into a situation where its just your small amount of goons vs. his larger amount of goons. Leg speed the the chief upgrade for zealots. I usually get his after I expand because of my style of goon/ob/shuttle/reavers. Requiem is a good map to play in order to learn how to do 2gate zeal to goon transition.
Goons: The bread and butter unit of PvP. Range is their primary upgrade; this increases range from 4 to 6, which is rather significant. It’s much easier to kill non-speed zeal’s with range or easier to work your way up a ramp. Vs. speed zeal’s there it’s not as easy to do hit and run tactics without range, just shuffle and attack. Goons vs. goons, make sure all of your goons are able to attack. Try to come at your opponents goons all at once rather then in a line. You can focus fire to kill their goons more quickly, but beware, they can pull that one goon back causing your goons to move and chase that goon and not shoot, which lets their goons get free hits.
Reavers: Ah Reavers, not a whole lot to tell about them that I have not covered elsewhere. Lets look at how reavers balance with goons. 2xreaver = price of 4xgoon. Shuttle is an extra 200 and perhaps speed is extra as well. Scarabs are extra at 75min for 5, kind of expensive eh, but that’s what balances reaver vs. goon price. And reaver has ½ the firing rate of goons yet 2.5x the damage over time not including splash. 1reaver on ground vs. 2spread goons = double KO. 1reaver vs. 2 clumped goons = reaver wins. Its obvious blizzard intended to balance the reaver vs. the goon. In a choke reavers are going to rape goons, but spread out in small numbers its even. In fact a reaver is only as durable as a goon. You pay 200for a shuttle for mobility. You pay extra 150min for a gate in order to pump out more goons, but bay does cost 150min/100gas. Reavers are ahead (15min) an extra scarab though after coming out victorious vs. 2goons spread. Reavers seem to be pretty well balanced with goons, so what it seems to come down to is how spread out the units the reaver is attacking are and the shuttle, that is, micro and decision making.
Scouts: Have little use in PvP. Used vs. carriers at times, but then carrier users usually just add in some corsairs and scouts become much less effective.
DA: have little used in PvP. Mind controling Arb/carrier, malestroming clumps of zealots, or feedbacking arbs/temps may be effective...
DT: I would not usually recommend dt over reaver as a mid game tech choice, but it can win games if used properly. Most used as 9/6 dt drop, 1gate to dt tech, 2gate hard zeal rush to dt tech. A forge is often gotten with dt tech so cannons may be gotten to protect against dt and perhaps drops. dt tech in response to dt tech is advocated by some. DT’s like reavers, can cause major damage quick if not dealt with fast.
Arbs: Late game unit. Consider teching to after attaining 3 assimilators.
Carriers: Same as Arbs, above. I’ve seen some people do a one base carrier build successfully, such as fisheye, but I’m not sure how viable this is.
Corsair: Have little use in PvP. Perhaps used with carriers for dweb and to help against scouts. Sometimes used in isand style maps.
High templar: Used for storm and to morph archons. Useful after obtaining 2gasses. Storm > clumped goons/zeal’s and archons > zeal’s. A Ht with Storm is perhaps the best harass unit.
Observers: Essential unit in PvP. Used to scout were probes/units are ineffective. Used to see dts. Optimally, you want to usually go as little obs as is reasonable, 1 if 12/3 or 9/6 and 2 obs perhaps if farther positions before pumping out reavers so you will have more gas and faster reavers. If you don’t go for a goon/reaver/shuttle build you have more gas/time to build in your robo, thus making more obs is easier.
Shuttle: This little bastard is what carries your reavers around. Also used for probes and other units at times. May put probes in it to transfer some to an island or to cliff your opponent with cannons. May put goons in it to cliff the other player or other units to help attack. The only upgrade for the shuttle is speed. At 200/200 this upgrade is expensive but it increased shuttle velocity dramatically. I ony consider getting this after I expand. This will help with harassing and keeping your shuttle alive.



Unit counters, by Hautamaki:

Vs. slow zealots: slow zealots/ranged goons/possibly dt (you'll want mostly goons but a couple of zealots go a long way. DT if no observers.)
Vs. ranged goons: zealots/ranged goons/possibly reaver/possibly templar/possibly dt (if you went for a reaver drop obviously you need reavers to match his greater material. A few zealots can help a lot since they take a lot more damage then goons (taking only half damage from goon shots) and a heck of a lot of zealots if you have speed upgraded. If you have templar tech, use it. Obviously use dt if he has no obs.)
Vs. zealot/goon: zealot/goon/possibly reaver/possibly templar/possibly dt/possibly archon (archons clean house against zealots but don't do well against goons. If he has many speedy zealots I'd make an archon or two. I'd also build reavers if I have a support bay because reavers clean house against zealots and pull their weight against goons if used well. If he is showing more goons then zealots, emphasis on templar, otherwise make archons before the battle)
Vs. dt + other units: obs/whatever (basically dt counter nothing in the toss arsenal, so long as you can see them anything will pull it's weight against the cloaked warriors)
Vs. templar + other units: try to have an emphasis on zealots over goons if at all possible, but remember that archons own them. Don't have more then 2 reavers and 1 shuttle, otherwise you'll never be able to outmicro storm.
Vs. carriers: ranged goon/templar/speedy scouts
Vs. reaver + other units: templar to storm the reaver are a big help, otherwise pure goon and flank him for cost efficiency
Vs. DA's: keyboard (you'll need it to mock him =p)
Vs. scouts: corsairs
Vs. corsairs: goons/possibly carriers (if we're talking an island map and you want air superiority, carriers are the unit of choice against sairs)
VI. Conclusion
As I look back on what I wrote I’m mostly satisfied. I believe I wrote most of what I understand about the match up. I believe this to be the best match up guide ever written, as far as I know, because perhaps something in Korean is better, but I doubt it. I would have liked to continue my systematic analysis of every possible useful build which I did for opening builds into early, mid game, and late game, but I don’t think I could have pulled that off well. So, instead, I decided to give you my builds and some general advice. The guide lapsed into explaining my style of play, but I don’t consider that a bad thing necessarily. I'd considered having a Q&A section but there does not seem to be enough demand. Also, I’d planned to have an RWA section, but I don’t believe the program has been updated, and my mic is rather poor quality.
Keep in mind this is just a guide -- Something to help you learn how to play PvP well. Do not take this as a complete explanation on PvP or even a compete explanation on how to do a certain kind of build. Nothing can substitute for playing a lot. You must play a lot in order to execute well and in order to come in contact with a variety of strategies and learn ways to counter them.
Watching replays, as always, may be helpful. But, it is necessary to take something form the replays and not just watch mindlessly if you wish to improve quickly. I would recommend sticking to many games by one player if you can, because this allows you to see how they adapt from game to game and situation to situation. My recommend reps section is a great place to start, and should keep you busy for a while. I usually enjoy watch reps of Daezang[gnh], Stork[gm], Nal_Ra, Pusan, Nony, Slider, Kingdom, Reach, Bisu, and quite a few more. The First thing to take from the replay is what map are they playing on, what builds and opportunities exist? Then realize what build of the big 5 the Protoss is doing. Watch how he scouts and see how he adapts his build based on the info he has on what the other person is doing. Keep macro; build orders, and efficiency in mind. Take note of building placement. Watch how the player uses his units -- this is anything from blocking his ramp to controlling his observers, as well as many more considerations. GL, HF and Learn everyone!

If you appreciate what I have done the biggest favor you can reasonably do me is to donate and help others out in the community!

I would like to thank all of the people who made this guide possible. Notably, Hautamaki, the father of Protoss strategy writing, who also wrote wise things such as this: www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=23933
Thanks goes to -_-, for looking over my guide before release and giving me some critiques. Also, the good manner players that I have had the pleasure of playing Starcraft with, as well as the TL.net and GosuGamers.net communities.