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Note: I'm at ~700 diamond at the moment.
So I've been trying to find a way to expand in PvP and losing....pretty much every PvP I play for a while now. (Really dragging down my rating....) The problem I've had is that if you expand, you need to spend more on defense early, so your opponent beats you to ranged collosi and you lose. Yesterday, however, I tried out an expansion immediately after my gateway, and before assimilator, cybercore or forge. The idea was that I'd defend rushes with zealots and a couple cannons, and then I'd pump out as many stalkers as possible off of my two bases and try to squeeze in blink when I could. In theory, the expo would be up so early that my income advantage would allow me to fight more efficient robo compositions with pure stalkers. Anyway, I tried it out expecting it to fail miserably as all my other FE ideas have. My opponent (favored in the MU, no less) scouted my FE and predictably rushed for ranged collosi. To my surprise, I won easily. Here's the replay.
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-139075.jpg)
I definitely haven't seen anyone else use this expansion timing, but I think it just might have a shot with some tweaking to be stable. Would a decent Protoss player like to play around with the build sometime to work out if it can be defended?
From that one game, I'm not too worried about collosus rushes, but I am concerned about how it would hold up against 4-gate stalker, blink stalkers, immortal timing pushes, and void ray rushes.
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umm... most pvp are cheeese oriented, 4 gate, or void rush, and all of these i think would be able to destroy this fe because when you are droning and getting down your cybe core, they can be massing or getting voids. if you get some stalkers out then you will be ok from void, but not a four gate. I think that, if done correctly, this will work against most late game protoss, but if they are aggressive, you will loose.
note: i am at 750ish diamond
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Maybe so, but when I watched the replay, I believe I was able to finish my 2 cannons and get several zealots to defend before he finished warpgate research. I think if done correctly, it would at least be close against a 4-gate. If you could identify a 4-gate and rule out a void ray or counter-expand, you could always throw down some extra cannons as well.
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hey, im interested in that replay. Im mid level P and i love to play around with BO.
the idea of FE is mostly not viable since the amounts of minerals you need for probes + gates + pylons + assimilators + cannon just gona delay your army production like forever. cosidering what if he had gone 1 gate star, you should have die right from the beginning 
1 cannon is 150, extra cannon is almost half a nexus when u come to think of it. i normally go immortal counter cannon back when i got cannon rush in placement but i need the replay to say more.
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Also, this FE would obviously be scouting-dependent. You'd pylon scout, and you wouldn't go for the FE against a 10-gate timing or a 2-gateway opening.
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btw courious, you say, you get the Nexus before the Forge, assimilator or cyber. do you still constantly pump probes and pylons when needed, or do you cut workerproduction for some short time at a certain point?, also how many zealots do you get before putting down the nexus, and/or how many zeals, before getting the forge/cannons?
Ok, the last question is probably highly dependent on what your opp is doing...but I'm still courious about when and how you get that nexus down exactly.
Also do you go 12/13 gate, when you do this?
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I hate to be a naysayer but I don't think this is gonna work -.-
cannons just aren't good enough in pvp i think
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FE in PvP is super non-viable.
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The main issue I have with this is you won't have any way to kill their initial probe for a very long time, so they can run their probe around in your base all day and do the 4 warpgate build pylons in your base build, cannons protecting your ramp/nat will not help you there, and I suspect the rush will come before any advantage kicks in from your expo and you will die.
But keep at it and do post reps, the entire reason I'm not playing protoss is because pvp is so stupid atm, a viable FE build would shake things up a lot.
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Yea, cannon just won't do against PvP due to warp prism. I played against Toss yesterday who thought cannon in the front would hold and try to defend with zealots but I made fast robo and got warp prism and loaded my 3 stalkers and 1 zealot and dropped in his base. And then just warped in stalkers with 4 warpgates done. That's when he got his warp gate done too but too much for him to handle and he wasted minerals on those cannons in the front of his natural. If you have enough forces to break him before his natural kicks in then you'll lose
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Ok, so unsurprisingly, if you post on TL about an idea that runs contrary to popular opinion, you get a bunch of people telling you it can't work. I've thought about the pylon-in-base problem, but it's really only a threat if our opponent 10-gates, and even then, I find it very easy to beat. I've crushed the Korean 4-gate with as little as 2 gates, and I even forgot warpgate research. You just constantly produce zealots. He tries to warp in 4 when you already have 5.... I don't think a warp prism would hit before you have stalkers, so again, I see that as something that could be handled.
NB, if you want to try to work out a stable BO sometime, PM me with your name.id and I'll add you.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On August 15 2010 06:34 kcdc wrote: Ok, so unsurprisingly, if you post on TL about an idea that runs contrary to popular opinion, you get a bunch of people telling you it can't work. Yup. That's because the burden of proof is on YOU, not us. You haven't provided a single replay to validate your claims and so is mere conjecture. Given how stupid PvP is atm, I would be very surprised to see a FE being viable.
I've thought about the pylon-in-base problem, but it's really only a threat if our opponent 10-gates, and even then, I find it very easy to beat. I've crushed the Korean 4-gate with as little as 2 gates, and I even forgot warpgate research. You just constantly produce zealots. He tries to warp in 4 when you already have 5.... I don't think a warp prism would hit before you have stalkers, so again, I see that as something that could be handled.
NB, if you want to try to work out a stable BO sometime, PM me with your name.id and I'll add you. Sounds like BS to me. If someone Korean warpgating you there is no possible way to defend using 2gates after a FE. Your opponent must have been terrible for that to work.
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I'd like to see some replays, like Plexa said. I'm open to anything at this point, but you can't get mad without being able to show anything.
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@Plexa
I haven't said it works against everything. I'll post the one replay I have showing it probably works against a collosus rush. Just saying, "it won't work," doesn't help much in terms of figuring out how to make it work. I just had a long argument about FE in PvT where basically everyone said, "It won't work" over and over and over. When people tried their supposed counters against my FE, however, it held perfectly fine and granted me a big advantage. I think this PvP FE is a long way from being worked out at this point--I've tried it exactly once--but I have a good bit of experience trying relatively early expansions in PvP and this is by far the most promising one I've come up with, so I thought I'd ask if anyone would like to help me test it out and try to optimize it against various responses. If nothing else, the build basically begs people to collosus rush it thinking they'll outrange the cannons, which will turn into easy wins on ladder until people figure out the proper response.
There's a reason I didn't call this a guide thread. I'm asking for (1) ideas for ideas about ways to bust the FE, (2) ideas for how the FE might be tweaked to reduce those threats, and (3) a good player to help test those ideas.
As for beating a Korean 4-gate with 2 gates, it definitely happened. (Tho it was 2 gates before cyber and I didn't FE. The FE was a different game entirely. You certainly can't FE against a Korean 4-gate, but it's easy to scout a 10-gate....You know he's 10-gating before you even reach is base if your scouting probe gets more than halfway across the map before running into his scouting probe) I can't say for certain that my opponent was good, but I was at ~700 diamond and I believe he was favored. He'd said he'd just lost to TTone Korean 4-gating him, so he must have been, you know, good enough to get matched against TTone. Anyway, I haven't watched that replay, so I don't know if it was an optimal BO, but I just don't find the Korean 4-gate scary at all. I cut probes, chronoboost zealots and a single stalker off of my gateways, don't stress warpgate research and kill the zealots as they warp in. Then my opponent GG's....
Also, Plexa, would you mind doing some testing w/ me? I think we've played each other before and I remember you being pretty decent.
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if You're going Zealot --> Stalker + Canon Defense then wouldnt 3/4 immortals completely own your composition? And that can be made way faster than ranged Collsoi without giving you much time to reap the rewards from your expansion.
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4gate warp rush or 2gate proxy seems like the best option sadly
i cant wait to see korean pro pvp micro battles lasting only 6 minutes are gonna be intense
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On August 15 2010 07:21 PureReborn wrote: if You're going Zealot --> Stalker + Canon Defense then wouldnt 3/4 immortals completely own your composition? And that can be made way faster than ranged Collsoi without giving you much time to reap the rewards from your expansion.
I don't know. I'd be more concerned about a 1/2 immortal timing than a 3/4 immortal timing tho. 3/4 would hit when I'd already have 5-6 warpgates, so I could always just defensively warp in a round of zealots to counter the immortals. I'd like to try both tho.
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I've been working on a PvP stargate expo build with cannon sentry voidray as your defensive army. I haven't played it enough and I'm pretty mediocre with protoss right now, but the big boon to the strategy is being able to charge rays on your own buildings. Charged voidrays are imbalanced, and since you always can be charged if you're defending, beating stalkers shouldn't actually be that hard. The cannons/sentries buy time.
The transition is to *insert drumroll* mass voidray with air ups and void speed. COMPLETELY IMBALANCED if you are on the same economy.
So yes, the question is surviving/handling a korean 4 warpgate more than anything. If he goes colossi to break you cannon line, you win because voidrays will decimate him. It's SO funny when you get 6 charged speedvoids with +2 weapons =P
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On August 15 2010 07:32 Floophead_III wrote: I've been working on a PvP stargate expo build with cannon sentry voidray as your defensive army. I haven't played it enough and I'm pretty mediocre with protoss right now, but the big boon to the strategy is being able to charge rays on your own buildings. Charged voidrays are imbalanced, and since you always can be charged if you're defending, beating stalkers shouldn't actually be that hard. The cannons/sentries buy time.
The transition is to *insert drumroll* mass voidray with air ups and void speed. COMPLETELY IMBALANCED if you are on the same economy.
So yes, the question is surviving/handling a korean 4 warpgate more than anything. If he goes colossi to break you cannon line, you win because voidrays will decimate him. It's SO funny when you get 6 charged speedvoids with +2 weapons =P
Voids to defend an expo are a pretty decent idea since they handle the collosi and immortals which are the obvious threats to cannons. Blink stalkers are the not-so-obvious threat to static cannons, however, and might pose more of a problem.
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On August 15 2010 02:24 JiSu wrote: Yea, cannon just won't do against PvP due to warp prism. I played against Toss yesterday who thought cannon in the front would hold and try to defend with zealots but I made fast robo and got warp prism and loaded my 3 stalkers and 1 zealot and dropped in his base. And then just warped in stalkers with 4 warpgates done. That's when he got his warp gate done too but too much for him to handle and he wasted minerals on those cannons in the front of his natural. If you have enough forces to break him before his natural kicks in then you'll lose
I second this. Any protoss that builds cannons at his ramp or at his expo will auto-lose to any robo build because of the warp prism.
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