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Italy12248 Posts
On February 05 2012 18:32 iamke55 wrote:
I haven't tried it but 2 gates don't sound like enough to defend against reactor 2 rax, as I die to it all the time with the standard 1 gate FE where you make 2nd and 3rd gates on 30 supply.
The part about cheese i agree with, but this 1gate fe is made specifically to hold off reactor 2rax. The thread about the opening itself is here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=285834
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Im only gold league, but this strat is frikkin DELIGHTFUL to use. Watching terrans falling apart is pure pleasure
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On February 05 2012 18:32 iamke55 wrote:
I see a few weaknesses in the opening. Though the scouting probe rarely tells you anything useful against a tricky player on some maps, not sending it at all makes you very weak to builds that don't get a fast marine. For example, CC first, proxy 2x tech lab marauders, and some strange hellion openings that can come with marauders. True, they collectively represent about 1% of the metagame on ladder, but that obviously doesn't matter in best of X series. Next, marine/scv cheese is even harder to stop, especially when the barracks are proxied, when you don't scout with a probe and only make 1 stalker. Finally, I haven't tried it but 2 gates don't sound like enough to defend against reactor 2 rax, as I die to it all the time with the standard 1 gate FE where you make 2nd and 3rd gates on 30 supply.
You should give the delayed scout a try to see how it feels. If you do it every game in a BoX, your opponent might find a way to abuse your predictability, but for the most part, it gets just as much information as a 13 scout, and the mineral boost actually makes your stuff a little faster which means a bit of extra safety.
I started out scouting on 9 (back when reaper cheese was potent), then stuck to scouting on 13 for a long time until Terrans started walling off with an early 2nd depot. At that point, I realized that I wasn't getting useful information 90% of the time and that even if I did, I didn't deviate from my opening for any normal pressure opening (1 rax tech lab, reactor 2 rax, stim 3 rax, reactor hellion, etc). Simply seeing what's coming as T leaves his base allows me to prepare.
The big exception is a marine+SCV all-in which does require a deviation, but again, this can be defended as long as you placed a pylon by your ramp (which I do with my scout probe on 22) and see the push coming with a probe at T's natural or at a watch tower. You simply cancel your nexus and wall off the top of your ramp with 2 more gateways while chronoboosting out a 2nd stalker. Easiest win you'll get that day.
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On February 05 2012 15:51 Espion9 wrote:I've been using this build on the ladder and it can really break terrans wow! Heres one of my games http://drop.sc/105432 ( my dt shrine was late and i should have probably made more gates but im only diamond)
Hah, very nice attack. Tip: DT's need +1 weapons to 1-shot SCV's with an armor upgrade, so getting +1 weapons makes the DT harass much stronger. Also, in the opening, starting the 2nd gateway before starting the sentry is a little more efficient, but it's not a big deal.
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First off, I really like the outlines of the build. I have watched severals of your replays so far and I must say that this looks really fucking cool I think that the idea to bring a probe in your warp prism is genius. As I have not yet tested to build due to the no terran online problem, I don't know if my concern is relevant or if it is just a feeling you get from the replays.
When the terran finally holds off all the drops and stuff, I have the feeling that your army becomes extremely weak, almost non-existent. What do you do when you realize that you don't have an army and that the terran player is about to push you ?
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On February 06 2012 03:48 SpiZe wrote:
What do you do when you realize that you don't have an army and that the terran player is about to push you ?
Cannons+templar+choke is insanely efficient for defense. In theory, it should work as long as you're prepared and you haven't completely over-committed to the harass.
Of course, I'm still really bad at this strategy, so I just lose sometimes too. I find templar to be a much more demanding style to play than colossus, but it's also more fun and it lets you be aggressive.
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On February 06 2012 03:48 SpiZe wrote:First off, I really like the outlines of the build. I have watched severals of your replays so far and I must say that this looks really fucking cool I think that the idea to bring a probe in your warp prism is genius. As I have not yet tested to build due to the no terran online problem, I don't know if my concern is relevant or if it is just a feeling you get from the replays. When the terran finally holds off all the drops and stuff, I have the feeling that your army becomes extremely weak, almost non-existent. What do you do when you realize that you don't have an army and that the terran player is about to push you ?
If I'm not mistaken, you should keep a few templar at home as they gain energy. When the counter-push comes, you throw down cannons, hug them as you storm and try to wear him down as your superior economy gives you bigger reinforcements.
Kcdc, in a lot of your replays it seems that your floating resources, which is understandable given the multitasking you have to do. Would it be wise to throw down a second forge, robo, and robo bay earlier to pound out upgrades and colossus? Even when you were constantly warping in zealots on almost every CD you were floating 1k~ minerals and gas.
Also, do you think it weakens the army too much to start attacking three places at once? For instance, your match against icGMInd - after you warped your pylon in the main would it be feasible to take your WP immediately to his third, warp in zealots there and then push the natural entrance at the same time? Or does that weaken your army too much.
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cooool. I've been trying to do drop-harass vs. T for a while now, but nothing like this. Will defeinitely try it
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Serotonin:
I never seem to have enough WG's. 8 is enough for 2 bases, but after the third kicks in and you stop building probes, you need like 1.7 million WG's, and I struggle to find APM to build them.
I'm not sure whether a 2nd forge is a good idea. It seems like by the time you have money for a 2nd forge, you're already researching +3 armor, so what does the 2nd forge really accomplish?
Teching colossus is a good way to spend extra resources tho. Cannons and bases are a good mineral dump.
About the multi-pronged attacks, feel free to hit as many places at once as you think you can pull off. I'd recommend having just a few zealots, maybe with a DT, in the third attack position tho.
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as a terran player plz plz plz do this strategy! i lose every single time to the turtle to deathball strat so something like this would be very refreshing. do it up
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On February 06 2012 06:17 kcdc wrote:
Serotonin:
I never seem to have enough WG's. 8 is enough for 2 bases, but after the third kicks in and you stop building probes, you need like 1.7 million WG's, and I struggle to find APM to build them.
I'm not sure whether a 2nd forge is a good idea. It seems like by the time you have money for a 2nd forge, you're already researching +3 armor, so what does the 2nd forge really accomplish?
Teching colossus is a good way to spend extra resources tho. Cannons and bases are a good mineral dump.
About the multi-pronged attacks, feel free to hit as many places at once as you think you can pull off. I'd recommend having just a few zealots, maybe with a DT, in the third attack position tho.
When do you usually add the gas on your third? I didn't see a game get far enough. Not sure if it's an APM thing or if you don't feel you need it. I think 2nd forge would be decent +2 attack and then after +3 armor finishes, start getting +shields because why not. I feel like if that harass kills ~20 workers and you hard switch to colossus the game is probably over. I like this build a lot, thanks for coming up with it/writing it out!
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Where can I get a reversible jacket?
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On February 06 2012 07:59 Serotonin1 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2012 06:17 kcdc wrote:
Serotonin:
I never seem to have enough WG's. 8 is enough for 2 bases, but after the third kicks in and you stop building probes, you need like 1.7 million WG's, and I struggle to find APM to build them.
I'm not sure whether a 2nd forge is a good idea. It seems like by the time you have money for a 2nd forge, you're already researching +3 armor, so what does the 2nd forge really accomplish?
Teching colossus is a good way to spend extra resources tho. Cannons and bases are a good mineral dump.
About the multi-pronged attacks, feel free to hit as many places at once as you think you can pull off. I'd recommend having just a few zealots, maybe with a DT, in the third attack position tho. When do you usually add the gas on your third? I didn't see a game get far enough. Not sure if it's an APM thing or if you don't feel you need it. I think 2nd forge would be decent +2 attack and then after +3 armor finishes, start getting +shields because why not. I feel like if that harass kills ~20 workers and you hard switch to colossus the game is probably over. I like this build a lot, thanks for coming up with it/writing it out!
I'm still playing around with the timings on the 4th gas, robo, extra gates, charge and DT shrine. If you get the 4th gas sooner, you can afford charge sooner and more templar later, but your 3rd and 4th bases might be later. I'm finding that the big hurdle to overcome before you can make the multi-pronged attack work is taking map control at ~12 minutes, so I've been tinkering around with the timings to make my army strong enough at 12 minutes to push T back into a defensive posture. To do this, I've been starting charge after my templar archives, delaying my robo until after I start storm, and getting to 6 gates before taking my third.
You can play around with the orders in that stage to see what works for you. The earlier robo means observers in time to watch his army movements with his medivac timing which is very nice. Getting charge and gates earlier gives you a more powerful force to take map control before starting your drops. A faster third will play out a little more defensively, but it's obviously better economically.
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I've been trying this style for the last 5-10 games of PvT on ladder and while I have been getting my ass whooped, defending the 10min marine/maurader timing with or without medivacs on maps with a secondary map is really quite easy. By the time the push comes you can have charge, +1 (or +2) armour and storm about 20 seconds off and that's off 2 gates most of the time with another 2 added on and morphing when the push comes.
Great! So I'm learning how to survive with a 1 gate FE opening past 10 mins. Now laying the smackdown after this time haha.
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The terran with the 3 rax in http://drop.sc/103700 had really bad macro. Normally you should be at 49 or so food at 6:30 and he was 42 or 43 and supply blocked.
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Not remotely your Midgame-Goal, but I am experimenting with a Variation of your 1 Gate FE with 2x2 Gasworker until Nexus, to gather gas slightly more efficient and substitute as much Zealots as possible early on unless needed. Maybe something to consider for you in order to get some more Gas.
Followup is Warpprism first to scout and pin him in his Base. The point I dislike the most about your Opening is that you rely so heavy on your Templars against the Medivac-Timing. There is like no room for errors (even just positioning) at all and although the build claims to be "aggressive" it takes more than 12 Minutes until you claim Mapcontrol, completely elapsing the huge Timing-Window without Stim and Medivacs. I did not watch every replay yet but so far the gains do not outweight the risks for me.
I wish TL would have some kind of upload-space so I dont have to use external sites to share replays.
Edit: There you go. Kind of horrible execution (just Dia vs Master) but imagine a third Gate instead of Forge (if adapted correctly) and Units already at his front when Prism reached his base.
http://drop.sc/106182
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On February 06 2012 23:40 Xanatoss wrote:Not remotely your Midgame-Goal, but I am experimenting with a Variation of your 1 Gate FE with 2x2 Gasworker until Nexus, to gather gas slightly more efficient and substitute as much Zealots as possible early on unless needed. Maybe something to consider for you in order to get some more Gas. Followup is Warpprism first to scout and pin him in his Base. The point I dislike the most about your Opening is that you rely so heavy on your Templars against the Medivac-Timing. There is like no room for errors (even just positioning) at all and although the build claims to be "aggressive" it takes more than 12 Minutes until you claim Mapcontrol, completely elapsing the huge Timing-Window without Stim and Medivacs. I did not watch every replay yet but so far the gains do not outweight the risks for me. I wish TL would have some kind of upload-space so I dont have to use external sites to share replays. Edit: There you go. Kind of horrible execution (just Dia vs Master) but imagine a third Gate instead of Forge (if adapted correctly) and Units already at his front when Prism reached his base. http://drop.sc/106182
Not bad. I don't think you actually need the second gas that early for what you're trying to do tho. You can get the robo just as fast (maybe a few seconds faster) off of 1 gas with the 2nd gas after robo. The result of the 2nd gas is probably one less zealot and slightly slower infrastructure but an extra sentry.
You're also correct that there are aggressive macro plays that attack much earlier than the build I outlined in the OP. There are 3-4 gate pressure after expansion builds, immortal pressure after expansion builds, and warp prism+gateway pressure builds sort of like what you were going for. Those have nice timing attacks, but if Terran defends, he'll soon have medivacs and complete map control again, and you'll find yourself sitting in your base defending drops until 200/200. My goal with this build was to find a style of play that would let me contest map control in a lasting way so that the game would largely be played out on his half of the map.
The idea for this build initially started with just teching chargelots with armor upgrades and a warp prism. I'd tried dropping zealots without charge in the past, and it was like dropping suicidal sheep herders. The zealots would chase the SCV's away for a moment, and then marines would show up and it'd be over. I figured adding charge would make it more potent, and adding armor upgrades would make it take longer to clean up so that I'd have time to drop elsewhere or hit the front at the same time. Cutting out the templar tech let me hit my tech goals earlier, but I found that without storm, I didn't have enough defense.
In the end, I settled on the build in the OP. It takes ~12 minutes to get a composition that can seize map control, but after that point, you can contest map control for the rest of the game without worrying about dying to a 2 medivac drop in your main. This seemed to work best for me, but there are lots of options.
Another possibility if you want earlier map control is Liquid'HerO's templar style where he gets fast blink with an obs, then storm and charge, then a third. He constantly pokes with his blink stalkers to pick off anything he can. The downsides with that style are that upgrades are very late, you instantly die to T's counter push if you get your templar EMPed, and you need to be constantly microing your stalkers to make the investment pay off. It's a very cool style if you have the mechanics to pull it off, but it's even more fragile than what I do.
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Ye, the opening actually piles up to much gas for me, but I developed it when I was still going for double Obs and 4 Sentry/2 Stalker. The delayed Infrastructure is correct, but in the end it just delays the Nexus by a couple seconds which is not that big of deal imho.
I find it very fascinating, how much gas management is needed to accomplish anything at all until 3rd Base kicks in and then I am like "Ewww 600 Gas again, better Warp in a round of Templar"
I used to go for 3 Zealot, 2 Stalker, 1 Sentry like you (but then i took... no!) but I have serious problems versus 2 Rax that waits for one more cycle (2 Rauder, 7-9 Marines), starts a bunker and kites "around" it to freak out my Unit-AI. The Damage dealt by 2S/1S is just to low while T's Damage is to high and eventually I get overwhelmed (especially without Robo as 3rd for eventual Immortals). Due to that I changed to 2 Stalkers, 3 Sentry, 1 Zealot to immediatly crush his push with FFs and if he opted for some kind of gaseless expand I should be able to drop 2 Sentries 2 Zealot to prevent the Shephard-Scenario (nice Metaphor btw) while having 1 Sentry with the Front Force for GS.
I would love this style if you find a way to incorperate 3-4 Phoenixes during Midgame. In my eyes they are far superior compared to Blinkstalker as long as overall Unitcounts are limited and Upgrades are low (speak Midgame) and make every Drop a suicide mission that has to do huge damage in order to pay off. In addition they synergize pretty well with Chargelots. I zapped into Hero vs Jjakji yesterday and he mad a few Phoenixes Midgame and it was just beautiful.
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Yeah, I think phoenixes are a cute, fun unit vs T, and they help to prevent T from stacking medivacs which eventually makes the bio ball invincible to chargelots, but I don't know when I'd work them into this build. It seems like I'd want HT, then DT, then colossi, and each would be more needed than phoenixes.
I'm still uploading replays when I get a good game. I beat a semi-pro with it yesterday, but he BMed me kind of out of the blue, so he asked me not to upload it. Anyone have any high level replays to add? My multitasking is pretty crappy, and I'd love to see what better players can do with this style. It's always fun to watch.
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EPT
