This thread is a discussion about the build that MVP_Tails used against IM_Mvp on crossfire in the GSTL playoff yesterday. I have not extensively tested this build, but I really want discussion about this build to start immediately for the Protoss community because of its far reaching implications.
Intro:
The guy took out MVP's 1-1-1 on crossfire, and looked like a boss doing it; thats all the intro this build needs
Two stalkers are chrono'd out ASAP and sent directly to the Terran players base for two purposes: Scouting the 1-1-1, and to establish a contain. They are followed up with a zealot and a sentry that can then forcefield the ramp and prevent Terran from pushing out at a time they would like to.
Expansion is thrown down as soon as 1-1-1 is scouted, and the final build consists of 6 gates and a chrono'd robo pumping out immortals.
Stalkers are a favored unit early on to try and delay the 1-1-1 even more as production ramps up at home. Zealots are favored as the gas is dried up from Stalker and Immortal production.
The 2 stalker opener is not a reactionary opener that forces you to guess a 1-1-1 is afoot. This is evidenced by the fact that Tails does not even scout IM_MVP before the 2 stalkers are chrono'd out of the gateways and only pokes with his probe just before the arrival of the stalkers to check for an early marauder.
From here we are unsure what Tails does depending on what he sees with the two stalkers. We can intuit that a fast expansion after 2 gates is not always his followup because he immediately places the third pylon at 24 and has the probe anticipating at the natural for when the stalkers do arrive and pressure/gather the critical information with respect to what Terran is doing. Upon seeing the bunker and low unit count, Tails throws down the Nexus (which Mvp delays with his Engineering bay).
It should also be noted that at this point, the stalkers arrive when only 1 marauder with concussive can be out (unless he goes tech lab before marine), thus, it is likely safe to poke with both stalkers. NOTE: This depends on the spawn distance; your stalkers pop at 4:10 and a walking distance of over 40 seconds mean that the second marauder will pop as you arrive.
Nexus or ??? (3rd gate/Robo/etc) - depending on scout
zealot+sentry as soon as Nexus starts building (before warp gate) - walked straight to Terran base for contain.
6:10 - Robo as soon as you can afford it (2 observers and 1 Immortal from robo)
Add 4 gateways once mining is in full swing at expansion.
Once the contain is up, he keeps only a small detachment there and sits at 9 range of the ramp with an observer spotting the high ground. There seems to be two ways that Terran can break this contain.
1.) Early Siege 2.) Cloaked Banshee - if he keeps the 1st one at home, you will have to retreat to your observer which is on its way there.
If he sieges up, he's not entirely out of the woods, you can sit your sentry just outside siege range and forcefield the bottom of the ramp when your observer sees him moving down, you will at the very least delay him, if not snipe a few marines with your stalkers before they take hull damage from siege fire.
From here, it is all about positioning as you kite him back to your base and overwhelm him with superior forces.
This is all I can gleam from the vod, I want to hear from people who know infinitely more than I do what they think this build is looking for and the million things this post is probably missing. Lets get to work and crack this build so 1-1-1 can be dead forever!
I don't really know if your build order is correct because first of all he will get suply blocked with that pylon on 18, second of all it would be nice if you can tell us when he builds asims cuz it matters a lot.
anyways I think early contain is a great way to slow down a 111 push and tails' way of doing it is good even for other builds as well and if the terran isn't prepared you can actually do some damage with this(tho unlikely)
ehhh, I don´t think this was a super effective opening as far as VS 111 is, he transitioned well and crushed the 111 though. But I don´t think those 2 super quick stalkers did much.
Still, thanks for this. I think this is a good build anyways it just wasn´t showcased that well in that game IMO
Wow i can't believe i forgot gas timings, and neglected to mention the two probe cuts, thanks guys for picking that up; fixed. Supernova: I think its the opening that allows for his transition.
Stalkers can be bad on thw 1-1-1 if he brings raven with pdd. you may be better off using phoenixes to have them lift the tanks while the rest of your army kills the bio.
The two stalker rush was popular a long time ago in pvz to punish zergs who don't speedling expand; you would use the 2 stalkers to harass him until speed kicks in (here is a video from CecilSunkure about the opening);
i think day9 during the beta also had a similar build where he would get two fast stalkers out but i'm not 100% sure on this.
I have never seen the build used in pvt as early concussive is a huge threat, but if you lead with the probe i can definitely see it's merits.
Back a few months ago i did the two stalker rush, which could do 4 stalkers in a row with no cuts at A really fast timing. Got me to diamond pretty fast. It seems like a pretty easy rearrangement of money to do what he did and set up an easy peez contain and such. If I play toss again ill be sure to look into this, I just wonder how it does vs conc rush(as in, whether or not the sentry gets to the base to FF
On September 25 2011 01:38 Bippzy wrote: Back a few months ago i did the two stalker rush, which could do 4 stalkers in a row with no cuts at A really fast timing. Got me to diamond pretty fast. It seems like a pretty easy rearrangement of money to do what he did and set up an easy peez contain and such. If I play toss again ill be sure to look into this, I just wonder how it does vs conc rush(as in, whether or not the sentry gets to the base to FF
Well, I havent tested it yet against that but TC says that you arrive with 2 Stalkers when only 1 Marauder with Consusive shell is out.
I did this prior to this new patch and its really comfortable having map control with your 2 stalkers...the only one I had a major issue was hellions since they are faster than stalkers so they can go to my base but its no issue since we can ff...but it beats any rax expand cause of the contain...I think it would be neat on maps like tal with no ramps but you sacrifice the typical faster 1g fe
You say that this could only be broken by a Siege Tank or a Cloaked Banshee. However, couldn't it also be broken, likely, by immediately getting a single medivac to elevator units out to kill the sentry and so forth. This, obviously, still works as a contain since it's 42 seconds of production that's not a Banshee, but otherwise I'm at a loss to why that isn't an option?
I made a video explaining the build as done by Tails:
The exact build order is thus:
9 pylon 13 gate 14 gas 16 gate 17 cyber core 18 pylon (yes, you get supply blocked) 19 stalker (chrono) 19 stalker (chrono) 19 warp gate (chrono continuously) 24 gas 25 pylon 27-28 nexus as soon as money permits: 2 sentries from gateways (Tails does zealot+sentry to kill the ebay, but I believe money works better for 2 sentries and that was his plan) pylon near opponent's ramp when warp gate finishes: 2 sentries at opponent's ramp. contain him. robo warp in zealots or stalkers depending on scouting
from there Tails adds on 4 gateways and makes immortals constantly. The 4 extra gates finish by the time 1-1-1 arrives at the base.
Tails makes 2 observers from the robo bay, which are perfectly timed for the cloaked banshees IM_MPV was doing.
The nexus finishes at the same time a no-gas expand lands from Terran, assuming he didn't build on low ground. If he did, the stalkers should be able to heavily pressure/force a cancel, theoretically.
This build seems safer than 1-gate expand against stuff like marine-scv all-in, because you have 2 gates you can chronoboost and you get 2 early stalkers. Yet it expands just as quickly as 1-gate expand.
I don't know how well this build performs against marauder openings. Probably not so great, but I don't think I'd totally rule it out either.
With good forcefields and possibly a probe pull, I imagine this holds against 2-rax. Haven't tested it though.
9 pylon 13 gate 14 gas 16 gate 17 cyber core 18 pylon (yes, you get supply blocked) 19 stalker (chrono) 19 stalker (chrono) 19 warp gate (chrono continuously) 24 gas 25 pylon 27-28 nexus as soon as money permits: 2 sentries from gateways (Tails does zealot+sentry to kill the ebay, but I believe money works better for 2 sentries and that was his plan) pylon near opponent's ramp when warp gate finishes: 2 sentries at opponent's ramp. contain him. robo warp in zealots or stalkers depending on scouting
from there Tails adds on 4 gateways and makes immortals constantly. The 4 extra gates finish by the time 1-1-1 arrives at the base.
Tails makes 2 observers from the robo bay, which are perfectly timed for the cloaked banshees IM_MPV was doing.
The nexus finishes at the same time a no-gas expand lands from Terran, assuming he didn't build on low ground. If he did, the stalkers should be able to heavily pressure/force a cancel, theoretically.
This build seems safer than 1-gate expand against stuff like marine-scv all-in, because you have 2 gates you can chronoboost and you get 2 early stalkers. Yet it expands just as quickly as 1-gate expand.
I don't know how well this build performs against marauder openings. Probably not so great, but I don't think I'd totally rule it out either.
With good forcefields and possibly a probe pull, I imagine this holds against 2-rax. Haven't tested it though.
Nice video!
i have a question though: In your adaptation, you use the 14 assimilator instead of cutting probes to get the 13 assimilator, why is that? I think this is why your warp gate tech could not start immediately when the cybercore finishes.
After some tinkering I've also come to believe you may be able to get away with more chrono on probes, since you only need warp gate for the 2 additional sentries anyways; have you tried that out in experimenting with the build?
i have a question though: In your adaptation, you use the 14 assimilator instead of cutting probes to get the 13 assimilator, why is that? I think this is why your warp gate tech could not start immediately when the cybercore finishes.
After some tinkering I've also come to believe you may be able to get away with more chrono on probes, since you only need warp gate for the 2 additional sentries anyways; have you tried that out in experimenting with the build?
Thanks!
I hadn't tried the 13 assimilator. I'm a bit leery of a further probe cut in addition to the supply block on 18, and I don't think it hurts that much to start warp gate a second or two later than normal with this build. That's just my opinion though.
You may be right about the early probe chronos. I've just been chronoing probes once the expansion goes down and I scout Terran's expo, since I have a window of time to power before a medivac or ghost push hits.
Watched the game and it seems to be a great new possibility in holding off 111. This is what we need, more innovation and experimenting and less imbalance complaints. Anyone happen to have a ladder rep of this ?
tails probably has a good reason for his timings, though.
Generally the goal is to harass wall and kill a few marines with the poke. Depending on what you see you can potentially keep up stalker production for sustained aggression (6 stalkers out before 6:00), or build sentries to contain and expand.
I usually follow up with robo as stated above, though I've yet to have the opportunity to try this much in 1.4. I'm interested to see how the new immortal and warp prism can be used to follow up the push.
This build is also surprisingly effective in pvp. the early stalkers can stop a lot of cheese, your unit count will be higher than his early game if he tries to 4 gate, so killing proxy pylons is easy, and if he scouts the 2 gateways and panics into building defensively you can safely expand and get ahead in macro.
edit: just looked at the builds side by side, 12 gate results in stalkers being 5 seconds faster, at a cost of 3-4 minerals by 6:00.
the most economical build is 13 gate, 17 pylon, which delays 18th probe slightly but 19th probe much less than tails' build. Still, overall it's a difference of about 10 minerals over 6:00.
edit 2: Also, in case you are interested -- If the terran flinches and you want to 3 gate stalker all-in, here's what I usually do:
EPT
