[G] PvZ Cheese: Dark Templar Expand Redux

On September 14 2012 09:42 ETisME wrote:
your previous thread has that comment about zerg will know you are upto something.

Basically even if you don't show the unit count, as long as you have a late expo, any standard safe zerg opening will have evo chamber at good timing and will sac overlord in to check whether you are going for some sort of warp prism 4 gate or dts or stargate.

Zerg doesn't necessary need to grab that quick third if you delay your natural for so long anyway.

On September 14 2012 21:39 Sated wrote:

The previous thread wasn't mine, someone else wrote that guide.

I play Gate/Core openings a lot in the PvZ match-up and by far the most common response is attempting to take a fast third base using Speedlings or Roaches (or both) to defend against Zealot/Sentry pokes. The Zerg player cannot afford the time nor the resources to get an Evolution Chamber or a Lair if they're planning to do this, nor will they have enough time to get a Spore Crawler up at their third base even if they did go for an Evolution Chamber, all of which leaves them incredibly open to Dark Templar harassment. At the very least they lose their third base, which is definitely worth the cost of 2 Dark Templar when you compare it to the cost of the standard Zealot/Sentry poke that aims to do the exact same thing (cancel the third base). This is the opening that this build is designed to punish and this can be seen in my replay vs. AGǂZagitoutw.

The safe option against a Gate/Core opening is for the Zerg player to go for some sort of 2 Base Lair build and I do see this fairly often when I open Gate/Core. The problem for the Zerg player in this situation is that it leaves them 2 Base vs. 2 Base against a Protoss opponent who hasn't sacrificed Probe production (relative to other Gate/Core openings) in order to hit their Dark Templar timing. Even if the Dark Templar don't do damage they will still scout what is going on and they will also give the Protoss map control, which means that the Protoss player should have plenty of time to react to what will likely be a Mutalisk follow-up.

In neither of the above situations is the Protoss player economically far behind a standard Gate/Core Sentry Expand using this opening because they don't sacrifice Probe production to hit their Dark Templar timing. The real problem for a Protoss player using this opening is that they've sacrificed unit count to hit their Dark Templar timing. The reponse Protoss players need to fear when using this opening is not the safe, macro response because they can deal with that just fine if they respond correctly. The response Protoss players need to fear is a dedicated counter all-in.


Air is a terrible transition after a Dark Templar opening since your Dark Templar already force the opponent to get Spore Crawlers, which happen to be really good against Protoss air units. Even if they didn't use Spore Crawlers to defend against your Dark Templar, you will still need either Blink Stalkers (vs. 2 Base Mutalisk) or a Robotics Facility (vs. 2/3 Base Roach) if you plan on getting through the mid-game without dying.


I sometimes do that in PvR(Z) because I don't want my stuff at the top of my ramp in PvR(T) and PvR(P), but I personally feel much more comfortable walling off my ramp when I know the opponent is a Zerg. I think it all comes down to what you're personally comfortable with because it doesn't really make much difference in the long-run.

And thanks! I've been straddling that high Diamond/low Masters threshold for a while now so it's nice to finally get promoted. I don't think I've gotten much better, I guess I'm just being rewarded for consistency

On September 14 2012 21:47 Teoita wrote:
The wall in the main does help if they do some wierd and silly ling allin or super fast baneling bust off 14/14. Other than that yeah, it's actually overrated and especially these days you can get by without a wall off.

On September 14 2012 08:18 monk. wrote:

I want to emphasize this. I don't believe it's possible to defend a roach counter if your opponent defends the dts perfectly. It has more to do with delayed sentries with low energy/low gas count rather than immortal timing. See Inca vs Nestea GSL finals.

On September 15 2012 00:06 Sated wrote:

You're really underestimating the number of all-ins a Protoss can do after opening Gate/Core. Here are some that you missed:

• 3/4 Gate Blink
  
• 3/4 Gate Blink Obs
  
• 4 Gate Immortal
  
• 4 Gate Warp-Prism
  
• 5 Gate Zealot/Sentry

Besides, like I said in the guide, this is a cheese build for a reason. It relies somewhat on tricking your opponent into thinking that you're opening with a 2 Gate Sentry Expand due to the expansion timings being fairly similar. If they fall for it and go for what seems to be the common response to a 2 Gate Sentry Expand (Speedling/Roach -> Third Base) then they're going to lose their third base at the very least.

The exact same thing was true of the old Dark Templar Expand as it also relied on tricking the opponent into thinking that you were opening with a Sentry-based expansion. All I've really done with this guide is update the Dark Templar Expand so that it works alongside the up-to-date 2 Gate Sentry Expand instead of the outdated 3 Gate Sentry Expand, and so that it also takes advantage of some of the metagame changes that have happened since the 3 Gate Sentry Expand was popular.

On September 15 2012 01:08 AGIANTSMURF wrote:


I want to emphasize his emphasis of my point. This game is no where near as simple as ""Get a robo out in time for immortals to stop a roach push"" your not going to be able to make DT's AND make more than 2-3 sentries (Which wont have energy because you made them late to make dt's) AND get a robo out in good time AND have more than maybe 1 immortal by the time 30 roaches arrive at your base and boom. your dead.

1 base tech builds that rely on the zerg being caught off guard/unable to scout are just straight up bad at this point in the meta game.

Any smart zerg will get an evo chamber + spore vs. any kind of 1 base double gas opening from P.

This may work out for you in platinum league and below but I guarantee you this build would never succeed ever in higher levels of play

Why do you say stuff like this? Saying it doesn't make it true, and both I and the OP are masters level protosses who say it can work and have tested it, as opposed to you, who is simply theory crafting and acting like anyone who ever goes dts must be terrible, and anyone who dies to it must be twice as bad. Get off your high horse and talk like a real person.

On September 14 2012 21:39 Sated wrote:



Air is a terrible transition after a Dark Templar opening since your Dark Templar already force the opponent to get Spore Crawlers, which happen to be really good against Protoss air units. Even if they didn't use Spore Crawlers to defend against your Dark Templar, you will still need either Blink Stalkers (vs. 2 Base Mutalisk) or a Robotics Facility (vs. 2/3 Base Roach) if you plan on getting through the mid-game without dying.

you're personally comfortable with because it doesn't really make much difference in the long-run.

On September 15 2012 01:57 playa wrote:


Everyone says that, but I don't get it. I have no idea why everyone assumes you make void rays to rely on harassing a zerg that has spore crawlers, like that's the only foreseeable plan. Don't make any probes after you have 15. They aren't good at attacking. You have to be able to attack or defend! That's pretty much what I hear when I see people say that. If you open dts, you're going to be vulnerable to roach counters, unless... you have 1 or 2 units that can't be attacked by units that don't shoot at air. And, then, once they have enough units to ignore always being shot at by 2 units, you can start to use DTs if need be, to stall, since you can snipe their overseers.

By simply making 2 void rays, you're able to accomplish a lot. You're able to scout their main. You're able to stop counter attacks. You're able to deny creep spread, and if you ever delay their third or kill it, the void rays will truly not enable them to get the third up in time to have a chance to recover. And, ofc, you're able to clear out any overlords that are on the map. It's complete map control, and killing overlords or forcing more spore crawlers is just money that essentially goes towards paying for your units.

If you only need to make a few units to be safe, what does it allow you to do? Tech to things that kill stuff once your period of invincibility is over. I'd rather be making immortals, colossi and a mothership than massing sentries and stalkers just to live. Have fun with that. I'm sure that's a lot stronger come mid-late game.

On September 15 2012 02:25 Surili wrote:


You make a good point, Void rays can be good for hold roach counters, although the mondragon equation might come into play here if you do zero damage vs a fast 3 hatching pool who decides to go mass roach with overlord drop for instance, i reckon you would probably straight up die. But it would all depend on building positioning etc.

On September 15 2012 12:29 SidewinderSC2 wrote:
This build has a lot of problems, coming from ~1350 Master Protoss last season.

You are telegraphing the fact that you are up to something crazy (it's obviously either DTs or Stargate) if they see you making only Zealots and mining from 2 gas, since Robo does not require that much gas on 1 base, and you always need sentries to make a Robo opener work. Nearly every Zerg that understands what Protoss is capable of would throw up blind spores without even seeing your Dark Shrine, so the DTs would very likely do negligible damage if they saw your unit count and especially it's composition.

Besides that, you have only Zealots.. an overlord could easily float in and see everything since you have nothing to shoot it down.

I also don't understand what's supposed to stop a speedling opener from cancelling your Nexus at least once, other than you hoping that they pull their army home to deal with DTs and then not immediately counter once they get an overseer across the map. Queens along with spores by themselves could easily hold the 2 DTs off, and as far as I understand, extra queens vs gateway openers are common since a Stargate opener on 1 base is a possibility.

This is actually the most coinflippy DT expand I've seen. DT expanding in PvP and PvT are safer than this since you can at least deny scouting of your geysers for a while (and a quicker Nexus is viable with only a few units) against the other races.

You would very likely have much more success opening Zealot, Stalker, Zealot and putting a little bit of pressure on if they aren't mining gas (and every Zerg should mine gas vs gateway openers anyway). But at least the Stalker wouldn't make it blatantly obvious that you are opening either DTs or Stargate on 1 base, and you could even use the Stalker to shoot a curious overlord down.

So, basically, this build relies on the Zerg player not understanding what is going on, and taking a lot of damage from DTs. It can work, but it's a total coinflip. If your DTs do no damage, you should die shortly afterward or at least be way behind on economy for a long time.

I hear what you're saying but the zany thing is, I see Zerg players totally disregarding the gateway openers and just going for standard 3 hatch before gas anyway. Its fucking nuts in my opinion but its happening more and more. I can't say for Masters league but certainly in Diamond and below I've seen them just saying "ah..fuck it" and its just plain zany cause like you said, they should be mining gas if they see a gateway expand. I mean, the way I used to understand the meta-game was that if you went for some kind of gate expand you could expect zerg to respond by speedling expanding in some way.

I guess you could say we're seeing a sort of back lash to the prevalence of what some have called the "Stephano style" roach builds. At the lower levels, players commit to this build almost every single game they play without taking notice or caring if Toss gateway expands.

If I'm not mistaken I think the OP was experiencing something similar with Zerg opponents?

On September 15 2012 15:28 SidewinderSC2 wrote:


The beautiful thing about TL strategy is that good threads work for every skill level. I think this build really falls off around low Masters, where people really start to understand the game thoroughly and will punish stuff like this.

At Diamond and below, tons of things work that shouldn't, just because play is so imperfect. No offense of course, I just thought that I'd add my thoughts from my skill level, and the fact that I'm kind of a PvZ connoisseur. At my level, this would maybe work about 20% of the time, and if I followed the build exactly, if the DTs failed, I'd lose about 85-90% of the games played, regardless of my personal skill level.

On September 15 2012 01:27 Surili wrote:


Why do you say stuff like this? Saying it doesn't make it true, and both I and the OP are masters level protosses who say it can work and have tested it, as opposed to you, who is simply theory crafting and acting like anyone who ever goes dts must be terrible, and anyone who dies to it must be twice as bad. Get off your high horse and talk like a real person.

Yes, if the DTs do 0 damage, and he goes for a roach counter, you may be in trouble, but every opening you do in starcraft is going to have its positives and negatives, this one has to do damage, or at least by time, so that you can get cannons/immortals.

On October 14 2012 20:27 Surili wrote:
So far every time i have done this build it has worked, and i am still not using it much at all. To all those saying any masters player would have detection automatically on scouting gateway expo, it just isn't true.

http://drop.sc/264492

This game was against muta, which i am usually horrible against, but the dts had done enough that i managed to transition it into a win.

On September 14 2012 08:18 monk. wrote:

I want to emphasize this. I don't believe it's possible to defend a roach counter if your opponent defends the dts perfectly. It has more to do with delayed sentries with low energy/low gas count rather than immortal timing. See Inca vs Nestea GSL finals.

On October 15 2012 06:58 Sated wrote:


As stated several times in this thread, it's really only a massive Roach counter that scares me when I use this build and I personally believe that I can only hold that type of response on maps with a 2 Force Field ramp at the natural. An economic response doesn't scare me because I'm not cutting that much economy relative to a standard 2 Gate Sentry Expand and because I'm also ensuring that the opponent can't take a third base until they have mobile detection.

On October 15 2012 10:04 Sated wrote:

The title says "Cheese" for a reason. The thread says that this relies on the opponent reacting badly for a reason. Etc.

On October 16 2012 17:47 ImNightmare wrote:

There was no cheese in the title when I clicked on it. maybe op edited it or something.
Edit: oh shit you are the op, while I didn't see any cheese when I clicked on it the last time.

On October 16 2012 21:50 Surili wrote:


It was there the whole time.

People are referring the the timing as "text book" for zerg detection, and yet it just doesn't seem the case for me. Maybe zergs have forgotten gateway timed DTs? Maybe i am good at hiding it? I don't know, but it seems to be working.

On October 18 2012 02:53 Sated wrote:I approve of your signature, by the way. Dark Templar are always a good choice

On November 04 2012 02:10 Sated wrote:

I don't have any problems with the replays. Is that happening for all the replays or just for some of them?

On November 04 2012 03:30 Sated wrote:
Wow, that's weird. I've never seen anything like that before. I don't really know what to say if no one else if having any problems... I mean, drop.sc usually works just fine for me.