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Hi there,
I'm currently a 344 ELO platium #1 in my league, and I am looking to get promoted soon.
I have a good opening against terran(1gate-robo-2gate) and protoss(2gate-robo) that is safe against most openings by the opponent (i can always go for 4 gate if i see a 4 gate cheese by the opponent pvp).Against Zerg, I go for a white-ra style 1gate zealot poke into fast expand into 2weapon attack 4 colossi timing push. it is quite solid, and i can deal any opening that the zerg can throw at me.
But for maps that is hard to fast expand such as Scrap station, Kaulas, and Delta Quad, I just can't seem to find a good opening. I'd like to ask you guys for help coming up with a 1 base solid opening that is safe against most early aggresion(or even lets me be aggressive myself) AND that lets me take my expo up relatively quickly.
Here are two of my replays that I lost with my poor openings.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-135311.jpg)
I attempted to 2 gate. did some damage, but he found the sweet spot back door(blistering sands) to kill the rocks without getting hit.
opponent: 291ELO diamond player
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-135313.jpg)
I opened up phoenix, but his ling poke saw the stargate, and he was prepared. couldn't do much damage and my tech couldn't go up fast enough to deal with his hydralisks
If you guys can describe your opening in a rough outline( 9pylon 13gate,14gate....), that'll be great. also, I'll really appreciate the followups and the tech tree that is optimal for that particular opening.
thanks!
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There really isn't any magic build order. You could open 2 gate zealot and then decide what to do from there. The reason you can do 2 gate zealot and mass 5-7 of them is it gives you a fast early aggression with the ability to mass probes and stock up on gas, and you know that lair tech takes a while to come out.
Normally, on a standard 12gate into core into warpgate opening, the moment your warpgate tech is done is the same time a normal zerg will have his lair tech done, so there is no fear of air threat for that amount of time. add in that the 2gate zealot harass may win you the game, or at the least force the zerg to make units instead of drones, and you can get ahead in economy for a little bit.
If the zerg is FE 2gate may be able to punish them for it, and at the very least cause them to cut some drones. If they arent, you can hold them off and 1base up to robo (since they are likely going to have plenty of roaches) and get some stalkers/immortals to fend off the possible roach push. Then you can expo and you will be able to set up for colossus.
colossus off of 1 base is a little tricky as they are so expensive and if you get pushed while you are waiting for 2-3 to mass up you will be short units.
Another possible opening is to get an early(semi-early) council out. Charge is almost always useful in this matchup so you usually will be getting it anyway, then if zerg goes hydra heavy you can punish that with some HTs.
Remember fast expo against zerg FE can be tricky, so you need to either use a timing push to expo, or repel an attack. What you should not do is try to tech too fast, because if they decide to force units out you will be behind hardcore. You also should not sit in base too long as you'll get contained as the zerg player will expo or drone hardcore during this time. Try to gain some map control and play the field.
<-high level platinum (i know) but i get placed against diamond players a bit too.
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i guess the problem i'm having is, if I 1 base and my opponent goes for a pretty fast expo, his economy gets out of control, and my poor economy can't support my fast tech. that's why i go for a fast expansion, but some maps highly disfavors that.
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United States5162 Posts
On August 04 2010 01:54 TDC wrote:
i guess the problem i'm having is, if I 1 base and my opponent goes for a pretty fast expo, his economy gets out of control, and my poor economy can't support my fast tech. that's why i go for a fast expansion, but some maps highly disfavors that.
If an opponent Zerg FE's and you don't put down a relatively fast expo as well, you have to put pressure on them early. You can't allow them to sit back and pump drones. Send your first couple of zealots to harass and make them build more zerglings and spine crawlers then they want to.
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i guess the problem i'm having is, if I 1 base and my opponent goes for a pretty fast expo, his economy gets out of control, and my poor economy can't support my fast tech. that's why i go for a fast expansion, but some maps highly disfavors that.
That is true for all protoss players. That is why if the protoss stay on one base, they 4 gate the enemy. In an interview of Idra (http://forsti-stream.de/idra-interview) he says :
Generally if they’re staying on one base I’ll just assume that theyre doing a warpgate allin since its the most powerful one base build.
A four gate hits normally around the time their lair finishes so they don't have hydra's out yet.
You can also do a four gate with forge and +1 attack. If you see the oppnent has a lot of spine crawlers you can then expand and build a couple of cannons. A four gate is so powerful, especially on Desert Oasis (because ou have the choice of going to the main or the natural-> spine crawlers not effective). As a diamond toss I use it sometimes and always on DO and (even) diamond zerg haven't learned to defend it.
EDIT: 4 gate: Just make sure you build proxy pylons along the way and constantly reinforce
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4 warpgates is not as effective anymore, I'm noticing zergs are stopping it relatively easily now.
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4 warpgates is not as effective anymore, I'm noticing zergs are stopping it relatively easily now.
Not on the european servers out of my own experience
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If I play against zerg and my scout shows they are not intending to expo I get both gas going with 3 probes and tech straight for DT's with 3 warpgates, it makes it harder for them to expo later and it makes them use there limited gas for overseers instead of roach or hydra production. While your waiting for them feel free to pump zealots and get a forge for +1 attack (If they go mutas you can make the dt's into archons, which are still very effective vs muta and it costs 50 less gas per archon if you use DT's instead of HT's to make the archon. Which will be important because your on 1 base!)
Also, the zerg will have to bring the overseers with their army to attack. If you can pick them off with sentries or phoenix the zerg player will be wishing he didn't 1 base.
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Thanks for the advice Anomandaris.
I also won a game recently against a Diamond zerg with 4warpgate push, but I thought it was sort of all in, and since I didn't know how to transition out of it properly, I've been trying to avoid using the build. 4warpgate is very powerful, but if my opponent has a ton of spine crawler with lings and some roaches (it is likely the 4warpgate will be spotted with a sacing ovie), my tech will be too slow, and i won't have an expo, while he'll be able to tech to hydra after he deals with my push first.
as you guys know, hydralisks rip through tier1 gateway units even with pretty good force fields.
If I am to 4 warpgate, how should I 1) follow up and 2)react when I see a bunch of spinecrawlers and lings?
also is there any other 1base, or semi 1base player(2gate lowground for early pressure, and then core, forge, and then expo relatively early) that can kind of control the zerg's economy?
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I've favored stalkers in my zerg matchups and it's worked fairly well so far. Basically rush to a stalker and skip the zealots in favor of getting a large stalker count quickly with +1 shield and blink.
This will punish any roach play, work well against mutas, provides survivability vs speedlings, and sets you up nicely for HT vs hydras. Your biggest threat will be speedlings and that's what blink and +1 shield is for. I press out midgame, and exercise good use of "rolling" blinks (blinking front line to back line continuously instead of blinking the whole force at once) or terrain blinks (for instance, on LT blinking across the chasm to the gold expo if I'm overwhelmed).
Your midpush should coincide with expo setup, and don't overexert yourself. If you lose that stalker force it's gg, it's meant to keep pressure on while you setup 4gas + HT tech. It'll force your opponent to go Hydra/Speedling, which your HT will obliterate. The +1 shield helps HT high shields and even higher archon shields.
Have fun.
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On August 04 2010 02:22 chair wrote:
I've favored stalkers in my zerg matchups and it's worked fairly well so far. Basically rush to a stalker and skip the zealots in favor of getting a large stalker count quickly with +1 shield and blink.
This will punish any roach play, work well against mutas, provides survivability vs speedlings, and sets you up nicely for HT vs hydras. Your biggest threat will be speedlings and that's what blink and +1 shield is for. I press out midgame, and exercise good use of "rolling" blinks (blinking front line to back line continuously instead of blinking the whole force at once) or terrain blinks (for instance, on LT blinking across the chasm to the gold expo if I'm overwhelmed).
Your midpush should coincide with expo setup, and don't overexert yourself. If you lose that stalker force it's gg, it's meant to keep pressure on while you setup 4gas + HT tech. It'll force your opponent to go Hydra/Speedling, which your HT will obliterate. The +1 shield helps HT high shields and even higher archon shields.
Have fun.
I've read about a thread that discusses the use of blink stalkers with +1 shield. I have practiced using this build many times, but I didn't get any viable timing. if I open 3gate first, the blink and the +1 shield comes out way too late, and rushing to blink and +1shield keeps my stalker count too low. could you post a replay or describe the approximate build order please? (13gate,15core, 17gate...)
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Gotta remember that zerg has to choose attacking units or drones. If you put pressure on them they need to either make crawlers or attacking units, preventing their economy from skyrocketting.
As a toss you need to take advantage of that to survive on 1base
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On August 04 2010 02:22 chair wrote:
I've favored stalkers in my zerg matchups and it's worked fairly well so far. Basically rush to a stalker and skip the zealots in favor of getting a large stalker count quickly with +1 shield and blink.
This will punish any roach play, work well against mutas, provides survivability vs speedlings, and sets you up nicely for HT vs hydras. Your biggest threat will be speedlings and that's what blink and +1 shield is for. I press out midgame, and exercise good use of "rolling" blinks (blinking front line to back line continuously instead of blinking the whole force at once) or terrain blinks (for instance, on LT blinking across the chasm to the gold expo if I'm overwhelmed).
Your midpush should coincide with expo setup, and don't overexert yourself. If you lose that stalker force it's gg, it's meant to keep pressure on while you setup 4gas + HT tech. It'll force your opponent to go Hydra/Speedling, which your HT will obliterate. The +1 shield helps HT high shields and even higher archon shields.
Have fun.
Seems a good strat. Harrass with your 3gate blink stalkers while expanding, take the gas and get templar. Never tried it before, will try it. I understand why you take the +1 shield, because with blink stalkers you should only loose shields and no life, and it definately helps against zerglings. However I find the shield upgrade somewhat expensive... dunno what you think about it, but i think that +1/+1 for the same prize is superior.
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On August 04 2010 02:42 Anomandaris wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2010 02:22 chair wrote:
I've favored stalkers in my zerg matchups and it's worked fairly well so far. Basically rush to a stalker and skip the zealots in favor of getting a large stalker count quickly with +1 shield and blink.
This will punish any roach play, work well against mutas, provides survivability vs speedlings, and sets you up nicely for HT vs hydras. Your biggest threat will be speedlings and that's what blink and +1 shield is for. I press out midgame, and exercise good use of "rolling" blinks (blinking front line to back line continuously instead of blinking the whole force at once) or terrain blinks (for instance, on LT blinking across the chasm to the gold expo if I'm overwhelmed).
Your midpush should coincide with expo setup, and don't overexert yourself. If you lose that stalker force it's gg, it's meant to keep pressure on while you setup 4gas + HT tech. It'll force your opponent to go Hydra/Speedling, which your HT will obliterate. The +1 shield helps HT high shields and even higher archon shields.
Have fun. Seems a good strat. Harrass with your 3gate blink stalkers while expanding, take the gas and get templar. Never tried it before, will try it. I understand why you take the +1 shield, because with blink stalkers you should only loose shields and no life, and it definately helps against zerglings. However I find the shield upgrade somewhat expensive... dunno what you think about it, but i think that +1/+1 for the same prize is superior.
You get +1 attack as zealot because it means they kill 0/0 zerglings in 2 hits instead of 3.
Stalkers take 4 hits to kill a ling with or without the +1 attack, so there's no point in +1 vs lings.
Vs 0/0 roaches it takes 10 instead of 12 hits with +1 attack, but stalkers already beat roaches handily.
The armor is a toss up, as it's 80/80 on health / shields with stalkers, but I'd rather soak up more dmg on the regenerating shields than the non-regenerating health. On top of that, the +1 shields helps HT more than +1/+1, and +1 shields helps the eventual archons infinitely more than +1 armor.
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On August 04 2010 03:08 chair wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2010 02:42 Anomandaris wrote:On August 04 2010 02:22 chair wrote:
I've favored stalkers in my zerg matchups and it's worked fairly well so far. Basically rush to a stalker and skip the zealots in favor of getting a large stalker count quickly with +1 shield and blink.
This will punish any roach play, work well against mutas, provides survivability vs speedlings, and sets you up nicely for HT vs hydras. Your biggest threat will be speedlings and that's what blink and +1 shield is for. I press out midgame, and exercise good use of "rolling" blinks (blinking front line to back line continuously instead of blinking the whole force at once) or terrain blinks (for instance, on LT blinking across the chasm to the gold expo if I'm overwhelmed).
Your midpush should coincide with expo setup, and don't overexert yourself. If you lose that stalker force it's gg, it's meant to keep pressure on while you setup 4gas + HT tech. It'll force your opponent to go Hydra/Speedling, which your HT will obliterate. The +1 shield helps HT high shields and even higher archon shields.
Have fun. Seems a good strat. Harrass with your 3gate blink stalkers while expanding, take the gas and get templar. Never tried it before, will try it. I understand why you take the +1 shield, because with blink stalkers you should only loose shields and no life, and it definately helps against zerglings. However I find the shield upgrade somewhat expensive... dunno what you think about it, but i think that +1/+1 for the same prize is superior. You get +1 attack as zealot because it means they kill 0/0 zerglings in 2 hits instead of 3. Stalkers take 4 hits to kill a ling with or without the +1 attack, so there's no point in +1 vs lings. Vs 0/0 roaches it takes 10 instead of 12 hits with +1 attack, but stalkers already beat roaches handily. The armor is a toss up, as it's 80/80 on health / shields with stalkers, but I'd rather soak up more dmg on the regenerating shields than the non-regenerating health. On top of that, the +1 shields helps HT more than +1/+1, and +1 shields helps the eventual archons infinitely more than +1 armor.
Yeah. I am still not totally convinced its worth its price.
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I like to open phoenixes against Zerg generally, you can stay on one base until you have 3-4 phoenixes and then expand while teching charge and +2 attack for colossi or just tech charge+storm. With phoenixes flying around you can contain the Zerg to 2 bases or else if he tries to expand pick off a ton of drones.
The important thing when doing this is to use your phoenixes to keep a close eye out for an attempt at a 3rd base so that you can punish it. Also, a midgame hydra push will kill you if you don't use your phoenixes to help defend (phoenixes rape hydralisks really badly if allowed to pick them up untouched, which they will be if your ground army is also present).
Also dangerous is a roach switch after 10-15 hydras or so, colossi deal with this well, but if you go for storm you need to be ready to morph archons quickly and pump out a few immortals. In midgame you need an observer regardless to go around pushing back creep.
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i just can't beat zerg as protosss at all anymore, there's nothing that zerg can't counter. if you go no gas zealots against the fast expand, the overlords will stay around and see your going to zealot push, and they'll push you back with roaches, you say the point of doing this is to set them back but actually now you're the one set back, you have to make cannons to hold off the roaches, you have no gas/tech, possibly some dead zealots, and you're contained.
i try to fast expand with building wall off they'll take a third, baneling bust, or use destructible rocks. (like what happened to white-ra)
i try to take it w/o the wall off ling swarm.
try to stay on one base and 4 warpgate use to work, now it doesn't for me at least.
try to go phoenix, if u attack an ovi with 1 they know about your phoenix if you wait for more they up having hydras anyway because they think im going gateway.
try dts which cost 100/250 for darkshrine and + 125/125 for each templar and have it countered by an overseer which costs 50/100. it' gives you 17 seconds to inflict your damage which probably wont amount to 625 worth gas off drones.(shrine +3 dts)
get collosi, they get corrupters or ultras.
I'm going to try the stalkers with blink/shield but i don't think it'll work, speelings will devour it if you don't have perfect micro, and eventually hydras will too.
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2-gate => robo and 2-gate => stargate are both fairly safe 1 base openings against zerg. You want to be able to put pressure on the zerg early on to slow down his economic development and open up a safe timing for you to expand yourself. The 2-gate opening accomplishes this. Pressuring with five zealots or so forces the zerg to build roaches. As long as you follow up with a core to get some stalkers, you'll be able to handle the roaches with a zealot/stalker force. You're usually safe to expand at this point.
The next step to see whether the zerg is going hydra or air. Observers and phoenixes are both good for letting you know what the zerg is doing. Observers are generally safer, but good players can leverage phoenixes to further cause problems for the zerg and slow him down. Once you see the zerg's tech path, you can choose yours in response. If I see air, I typically go 2 stargate + twilight archives. If I see hydras, I go dual robo colossi.
From this point, it's just a matter of how well you're able to manage your troops and adapt to the zerg's force composition. Always, always, always get charge at some point. Chargelots are king in the late game when neither side can field a particularly large army.
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2gate opening with pressure into an expand is good. after that you adapt to what you see. usually turns into gateway units with immortals or collosus
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EPT
