[G] Be the Leaf! A Passive opening for PvT

Hello, I am AGIANTSMURF, frequent poster on Teamliquid and /r/starcraft. I am a North American Grandmaster protoss currently playing for the Complexity Academy. I have been a Grandmaster player for the past 4 seasons of ladder. Assuming I am playing actively and have avoided laddering when emotionally compromised (DAMN ZERGS!) I hover within the top 100 ranks of GM. For the past year or so, PvT has been my strongest Matchup. This is the first real guide I've written and cover's a build I have been working on and refining for over a year. At the time I began this guide I had a 62% win rate in PvT. Admittedly, since then it has gone down a little, but this is mostly due to mid game late game issues I face defending things like doom drops and hellbat drops etc..

This is a guide for an OPENING BUILD ORDER. It does not cover mid game transitions, how to deal with mid-late game drops when to make Templar etc...

I have a very passive playstyle, I prefer to put myself in a position where I can scout and react, flowing gently like a leaf in the wind. Obviously, this build is very passive. You will not be scouting with your mothership core, you will not be doing 3 gate sentry pressure, you wont even be securing your own watchtower until the mid game. The purpose of this guide is to put you in an economical position and leave you in a stance where you have many options going into the mid game. This build offers the opportunity to stay even or ahead economically with just about any terran opener (except maybe CC first, you should probably go gateway - nexus - cybercore if they do that) while also granting you early game scouting through hallucination, and the basic infrastructure needed going into the mid game (sentries, a forge and a robotics)

You generally want to spend all of your chrono boost on probes all throughout the opening phase of the game. You will only be using 2 chrono boost elsewhere. 1 will go on your mothership core as it is in production, the other will go on your 1st sentry. The reason we chrono boost these units is because we want them to begin gathering energy ASAP. Chrono boost will effectively remove 10 seconds from their buildtime which as a result boost ahead the timing of their abilities by 10 seconds (I.E. your hallucination scout will be 10 seconds earlier if you chrono boost your sentry right as it begins). To make this easy to keep track off, here is a tip to make sure you are spending correctly. Prior to building your nexus on 20 supply, spend ALL your chrono boost on the nexus. Once you hit 20 and begin saving for your nexus you will gather enough energy for another chrono boost. The next 2 chrono boost following the construction of your nexus will go on the mothership core and then the sentry.

This is important. There have been many games where I did not chrono boost one or the other and it cost me the game under very special circumstances.

You should have had a zealot in production in anticipation for this. If he leaves your base early towards your natural, pull a probe and start zapping away. If he commits to the engineering bay even with your probe hitting it, you want to shift - attack click the scv multiple times to insure that the probe follows it accurately when it moves. Start your mothership core before your nexus. The engineering bay shouldn't finish with too much HP. Let the zealot/probe take it down, continue probe production following the core and drop the nexus as soon as the engineering bay is canceled.

Keep calm and make probes. Unless they cut stuff and rush out a reaper, your mothership core will spawn just as it arrives at your base. Some probe micro on your part and making sure the mothership core zones it properly will prevent you from losing any probes. It also helps if you position your 2nd pylon + cybercore to wall off sections near your mineral line to limit potential reaper mobility.

Versatility, the early forge allows you to cannon each mineral line early on in the event of a widow mine drop rush, If this is not a threat it also serves for early upgrades.

Observer's are a good way to deal with mine drops. However with the minimal gateway units we have for the early game you dont really want to split anything unless completely necessary. Also having an observer in your main will not stop the mine from burrowing and detonating killing clumps of probes. It also sucks when you don't have an obs or units 100% ready and you are forced to pull probes for long periods of time.

The mothership core is so early that it will have energy for the Nexus cannon ability in time for just about any terran push that hits AFTER your natural nexus is completed. Slightly delayed pushes will allow the nexus cannon time to gather energy for back to back nexus cannons, that's 2 full minutes of Nexus defense. This combined with well placed forcefields, a cannon + a few other gateway units should be more than enough to deflect any pre-medivac push.

When terran has medivacs and or tanks, they become much much scarier. In these situations the nexus cannon loses its effectiveness. You may be forced to engage outside of its range or you may be forced to split your army into 2 or more groups. In these situations you want closer to 4-5 gateways in order to warp in more effectively and make it easier to be in 2 or more places at once.

That's totally up to you, If you're able to make it to 8minutes and havent lost half your probes to widow mines or some other form of early aggression, then congratulations. The awesome part of this build is that you can transition into almost anything.

Personally, my favorite is either blink into colossus, or Dark templar drops off of 2 base just as the terran pushes out. If this guide garners enough interest then I will consider writing follow up guides about more of the stuff I do in the Mid game.