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Hey guys!
Let me introduce myself, I'm a Swedish master protoss who's a big fan of NaNiwa. When I saw him doing this gate expand over and over yesterday I couldn't wait to try it out myself. To be honest, FFE feels really boring and leaves you on the backfoot. You can't really be offensive with that build so I welcome this "new" style from nani.
Whether this should be classed as guide or discussion, I'm not 100%. I'm no pro (I'm not even high master) so I won't be able to do any high-level analysis but I really thought that he can't do this build without we having a discussion about it here. I took my time to write it down and analyse it but if someone has more input I'll be glad to edit this post and it in.
What's the purpose of this build?
The purpose of this build is to deny a third. I feel like the first game against SortOf was the best one to describe this build. NaNiwa goes for a 21 Nexus and follow it up with a 4gate of zealots. This has three purposes:
1) Deny a third
2) Force lings
3) Try to get a queen kill or drone kills
When naniwa doesn't scout a fast third (For example when Leenock went for the ling ultra style with super early upgrades), he tries to fake pressure to force lings by planting a pylon.
Transitions?
Nani showed us how to transition into the midgame with ease. A stargate is put down before the gates are even complete. Sometimes he went for 4 phoenixes but sometimes he opted for an early void ray (If anyone knows what made him do the vr I'd be glad to know!) to shut down overlords, scout and also perhaps get a drone kill or two.
Most likely, this will force a hydralisk den and because of that, the robo is soon to come. The forge is built at the same time as the robo which results in quite late upgrades (+1 starts at around the 9 minute mark) but since he does most of the pressure off of one gas, there's not much room for upgrades.
Transition into colossus and take a third.
Build order
I'm no fan of food based build orders but I'll add one:
9 pylon (in-base, no scout)
13 gateway
14 assimilator
15 pylon
18 cybernetics core
@100 minerals zealot
Rally the 23th probe down to natural
Cancel zealot at last second if no aggression (Standard lings will pop at 3:00~, if he goes for earlier pool, they will arrive before you cancel)
21 Nexus
21 Warpgate
21 Mothership Core
23 zealot
25 pylon (At natural)
@100 gas sentry
31 Gateway x 3 (Wall off your natural ramp)
31 pylon
Send probe, zealot and MsC to place a forward pylon for warp-ins
@150 gas Stargate
Build order after this is irrelevant since you will apply pressure and probably lose a couple of zealots.
All chronoboost is on probes until stargate.
On 4-player maps an overlord will reach your base if he's not spawning diagonally so you should know which direction to push.
Build counters
I believe this build will do pretty good against early pools due to the zealot. Jaedong's blind counter was to go for two hatches before pool. The extremely late scout (zealot, probe and mothership core) will make it impossible to prevent this but on the same time, no one is probably doing this on the ladder and you shouldn't worry about it I think.
Sadly, we didn't see any quick roach warrens to counter this. I believe a quick 4gate after expand was starting to get popular a while ago but lost popularity when zergs started to go for a pretty early roach warren. This build hits at around 6:30 so the roach warren has to be put down at 5:00~ to have roaches in time (55 sec build time + 27 sec for roach)
Final words
As I said, I'm nowhere near a high level player. I simply wanted to provide the base for a discussion on whether we should move on from the old forge fast expand in hots. Even though nani used it in one or two games he chose to play every pvz just like this which should mean that he really has faith in this kind of style.
VODS
http://www.twitch.tv/dreamhacktv/b/396294648?t=6h53m53s --- NaNiwa gives SortOf a headache on Akilon Wastes by forcing a cancel on the third base. He gets a couple of drone kills with his phoenixes and proceeds to kill SortOf with a 3 colossus timing.
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Italy12248 Posts
As you said, a decently timed roach warren or even baneling nest would shut this down. I think the Protoss might end up in a decent position though.
Another potential risk is an oldschool, fast roach ling allin (imagine it hittting at 6:45 when you only have 4 zealots, a msc and a round of zealots), but i'm not sure about that one.
It's definitely a devastating build for ladder play, but i wouldn't rely on it in ever game of a BoX. Naniwa himself had other followups, and as you pointed out they can all be blind countered by 3hatch before pool into gas.
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On April 29 2013 00:42 NVRLand wrote:
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What's the purpose of this build?
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Break the meta game?
edit: ofc, every protoss i have faced on the ladder today did this. A roach warren does shut it down.
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United Kingdom304 Posts
I fail to understand how any early pool from 6 to 11 doesn't just shut it down hard. I though the fact that you need to wall off against zerg and scout was established in WoL beta.
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I've been doing something similar since HotS came out, so it's nothing to be joked about.
The build is really strong but sometimes you get in a weird situation where you can't do much dmg but still have decent early tech.
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I've done that for 3 months too. Though I tried various transitions. A fast third is quite interesting too.
I have a variation that goes Nexus before cybercore. It's very very eco, similar to forge expand. And still quite safe, especially on big maps.
You're safe from early pools because you make a zealot asap, you can chrono a second zealot if you scout a stream of lings coming in, and your MScore is incoming soon. Playing against early pools feels great actually with that build.
There are a couple downsides of this build though:
- there's no way to punish a hatch 1st. You're not too far behind in eco though.
- ... however I've seen some zergs go hatch 1st and gas before pool. That's very greedy play and here again there's pretty much no way to deny it.. but it must be done almost blind.
- if overlords / lings see your proxy pylon and deny it, the zealots pressure cannot happen. If Zerg has taken a fast third, you'll be far behind..
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After playing around with this build a lot, I begin to see how solid and flexible this build can be. The beauty lies in the order of the nexus / warp gate research / mothership core / zealot order. Incorporating a 13 gate scout and putting the first pylon / gateway at ramp as part of the main base wall allows you to be absolutely safe against early pools. Unless its a 4 player map, a 13 scout will reach in time for you to drop a forge/pylon for a complete wall off against 6/7 pools, while simply chronoing a zealot before core will make you safe against 10 pools
The early mothership core also gives protection against roach allins at the 7 min mark due to nexus cannon, while 2 sentries after the zealot as well as mothership core vision below your natural ramp gives you advance warning with regards to baneling bust.
The wall in at 5.20~ at the natural with 3 gates and pylons also comes at a very nice timing (just as ling speed off 14pool 14gas) which prevents a large round of lings from cancelling the nexus.
Best part of the build is that it seems to counter the very popular 3 hatch before gas opening by zerg (something FFE cant always punish if the zerg does it right) because the 4 gate timing hits around 7 mins with mship core and 2 round of zealot warp ins. There is also a high degree of flexibility after the generic opener. You can go robo / stargate or even DT rush with slight modifications to the build by taking an early second gas.
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United States4883 Posts
On April 29 2013 01:51 habermas wrote:
I fail to understand how any early pool from 6 to 11 doesn't just shut it down hard. I though the fact that you need to wall off against zerg and scout was established in WoL beta.
You can easily hold off a 6pool with early zealots and a fast stalker to follow up. You only need to wall off if speed is incoming. Of course, all this gets quite complicated when you put the gateway on the low ground, but even then, you can probably survive with a probe pull.
On April 29 2013 02:01 synd wrote:
I've been doing something similar since HotS came out, so it's nothing to be joked about.
The build is really strong but sometimes you get in a weird situation where you can't do much dmg but still have decent early tech.
I agree. I think that with the MsC, there's a lot you can do with this build. I loved how over and over Naniwa kept doing ridiculously small attacks like 4-5 zealots and then recalling. In the game against Leenock on Bel'Shir, he prevented the 3rd base from going down until he was almost fully saturated on 2 bases! Following up with the quick stargate allows Naniwa to prevent any kind of counter pressure from killing him and also allows him some map vision and control as well as forcing some hydras/corruptors and generally limiting the muta count.
All in all, I think it's a very good build that doesn't suffer the exact weaknesses the WoL version might have suffered. Definitely worth looking more into because I think it could be a reliable build.
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What if the zerg goes for a 1 base roach all in on a map with wide ramp? Can you get enough units in time?
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I haven't faced that yet, but I would think you could immediately recall upon seeing the roaches with your first zealot and the msc. You should spot it because the roaches should hatch around 445 and you move out around 530 iirc. And then by the time he gets to you you should have 2-3 sentries in back at home which should allow you to delay long enough to chrono out a void ray and get your warp gates up while bruising the roaches with the MSC. Seems like it's timed out to stop it just fine if you spot it and delay long enough with sentries/msc.
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About the vods: I think he used that build in more than 1 game, not sure though. If true, could you also link those?
EDIT: found another vod, linked it a few posts below; please add it to the OP
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On April 29 2013 01:51 habermas wrote:
I fail to understand how any early pool from 6 to 11 doesn't just shut it down hard. I though the fact that you need to wall off against zerg and scout was established in WoL beta.
People have figured out how to hold early pools with in-base gates since at least 2011.
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On April 29 2013 00:58 Sated wrote:
I find it funny that NonY's 2 Gate Sentry Expand -> Stargate build has been doing the exact same things (denying third bases, killing Queens, forcing Lings) for ages, with the exact same Robotics Facility and Forge timings. It's also safer against Roach/Speedling/Baneling busts, better capable of scouting given that Hallucination is now free, isn't hard-countered in a BoX situation, and is much more capable of pressuring because of how good Force Fields are...
... of course, it's slightly less economical, but not so much so that I think the positives are cancelled out.
Nony's build is much safer vs roach and baneling threats, but much less economical since the very late nexus. And that is the weakness imo, you need that slight eco edge at the highest level.
About the roach weakness: If the Z goes for roach to attack you, you will scout it with the poke and you can warp stalkers instead of zealots (Nani uses his gas to make a stargate in case of no roach threat), and that plus msc should be enough to defend (with some loses ofc). I case of defensive roaches, then just back off (slow roaches), the objetive of slowing Z down have succeded.
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Isn't it possible to probe scout with this build ? Probably not at 9, more like at 13... But I'm not sure of what kind of info one can get with a 13 probe scout versus Zerg.
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The game he made a void ray I would venture to say was because the third base wasn't up yet when his zealots arrived. When the third hasn't gained much hp or been connected with creep a void ray can often force an cancel on its own.
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I think Artosis was analyzing and trying out a variant of this build on his stream earlier today so you might wanna check out some of his vods as well.
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On April 29 2013 00:46 Saumure wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2013 00:42 NVRLand wrote:
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What's the purpose of this build?
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Break the meta game? edit: ofc, every protoss i have faced on the ladder today did this. A roach warren does shut it down.
Doesn't break the meta tosses have been doing this on ladder for the past couple months.
It's honestly not that good especially if zerg is smart, some key giveaways to if he commits to the attack or not is a forge and tech. Whenever the toss goes for the 4-5 gate attack he puts only gateways in front and doesn't make a forge. Huge giveaway what's coming, sacrificing an overlord will give you even more information on what he is doing.
A zerg should have a roach warren done and if the toss never attacks should be droning, if toss attacks will roach/ling and zerg is super far ahead.
If zerg plays correctly and is not caught by surprise toss is going to be behind from the second he chose gateway expand. This really does rely on the zerg being caught by surprise. If toss doesn't do the 4-5 gate push and zerg doesn't make units he is going to be far ahead economically.
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On April 29 2013 01:51 habermas wrote:
I fail to understand how any early pool from 6 to 11 doesn't just shut it down hard. I though the fact that you need to wall off against zerg and scout was established in WoL beta.
This is straight up untrue by the way, the reason a wall off was required is that people used to go gas pool and against speedlings people thought you needed the wall, as it happens, when people dont get early speed, and you expand EARLIER, you have a defence in time.
Also gateway openings that build a zealot roflstomp 6-10 pools, and if you don't believe me, i can demonstrate 
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EPT
