Classic managed to win our hearts over yesterday after employing a rather ballsy (unless your name is Puck) Colossus drop build in order to take Game 2 of his series vs Polt. I'm just going to give the build order and talk about a few things as to why this build worked and what his overall gameplan is.
If you want to watch the VoD of this game, it can be found here.
The build order is as follows: 9 Pylon 13 Gate 14 Assimilator (Saturate with 3 probes) 16 Pylon 18 Cyber Core 18 Second Gas (also saturate with 3 probes) -Classic skips the Zealot, but you can make it and cancel it if you are afraid of engineering bay block- At 14 probes on minerals and 3 on each gas, the 15th probe goes down to make the expansion MSC @100% Cyber Core 3:50 Nexus (@ 23 supply) 23 Pylon 23 Warpgate 24 Sentry Robotics @4:50 @100% Sentry - 2nd Sentry 2nd Gateway @5:20 @100% Sentry - Stalker @100% Robo - Observer @100% Observer - Robotics Bay and x2 Assimilator Uses Hallucinated Phoenix in order to scout Warp Prism @100% Robo Bay - Colossus + Thermal Lance 5x Gateway
At this point, Classic has skimmed a decent amount on his army (only having 3 Stalkers and 2 Sentries) and has cut probes at 43 (15 probes at natural with all four gases taken). Classic scouts Polt moving out and drop his Colossus and warps-in Zealots at 10:00. He then moves out with his Colossus/Gateway force. Besides the 3-4 sentries that Classic made, his entire army is composed of Stalkers and Colossi. With his 7 gateways, he is easily able to overpower Polt and take the game.
Classic's build is most definitely dependent both on the map and what he scouts. The first two units out of his gateway are Sentries. This works because the layout of Nimbus allows for 1 forcefield to stop any aggressive pushes. The Sentries are also used in order to scout due to the fact that Classic played the first 8 minutes completely blind. Fortunately for him, Polt was going for a rather passive build after making a CC on 15 supply and not trying to be hyper-aggressive in the early game.
Classic's singular observer is used to have a quick once-over of the Terran base and is then parked right below Polt's natural ramp to see when he is moving out. The point of the Colossus drop is to hit when the Terran army is in the middle of the map and not in position to defend. What makes the colossus drop special is that unlike a regular Warp Prism drop, it is almost impossible to defend without Vikings or a well placed missile turret. A Terran's usual response to drops is to simply rally units until the Zealots die. However, the firepower of the Colossus makes that usually impossible, therefore forcing the Terran to abandon their plans of attacking in order to defend their own base.
Classic's Colossus positioning prevents the SCVs from retreating to the main due to potential damage from being stacked up. This leads to a lot of lost mining time for Polt.
In regards to the follow-up, Classic was simply able to abuse Polt's poor sim-city, mowing down units caught in tight chokes and focus firing down the Vikings with his giant mass of Stalkers.
San decides to duplicate this build vs Jjakji in Game 2 of this series and conforms it to be slightly more standard, going for a standard 1-Gate expansion build and only adding his 2nd gas after the Cybernetics Core finishes. His 3rd and 4th gases are slightly quicker at the cost of delaying his second gate. His drop hits at the same time as Classic's, but with only 3 Zealots able to warp-in.
Jjakji's response to this is to go ahead with his attack and quickly drop San's main, however, that drop is deflected due to San's great army position and his third Colossus finishing up. His fourth and final Colossus finishes just in time to defend Jjakji's second attempt to counter-attack and is able to defend with the help of Photon Overcharge while San's Zealot/Stalker/Sentry/Colossus force rips through Jjakji's scattered army.
The power of Colossus...and double Photon Overcharge
In conclusion, this build hits a very nice niche where the Terran is moving out and not making Vikings. While both Terran opponents were playing extremely greedy, San demonstrated that this build can be tuned to open in a more standard fashion. It's a fun build that is both really fun and can teach players about the power of anti-timings.
I hope you guys enjoyed this small article on a fun build. If you have any questions or think I've gotten something wrong, let me know in the comments. Let's hope we see more fun strategies like this at Blizzcon. Thanks for reading ^^
Nice! I really like that this is an anti-timing. It's a redirection of the ridiculously early colossus (~8:30) builds that allows the Protoss player to completely blunt the 10:00 medivac timing and either take a free 3rd base and transition into blink/colossus with double ups OR roll over the Terran player with a scary all-in.
Anti-timings are my favorite thing in the world. They make it so that your opponent hits when they're supposed to have the advantage, but end up hitting when you're actually at your strongest. This is yet another example of using tech to gain map control and transition smoothly into the mid game, much like the blink/WP builds.
thanks for the write-up! The games were great and fun on ladder is guaranteed. I've tried it on ladder already, unfortunately not a single Terran was playing standard that day. A lot of fun none the less:D
On November 03 2014 03:00 SC2John wrote: Edited
Nice! I really like that this is an anti-timing. It's a redirection of the ridiculously early colossus (~8:30) builds that allows the Protoss player to completely blunt the 10:00 medivac timing and either take a free 3rd base and transition into blink/colossus with double ups OR roll over the Terran player with a scary all-in.
Anti-timings are my favorite thing in the world. They make it so that your opponent hits when they're supposed to have the advantage, but end up hitting when you're actually at your strongest. This is yet another example of using tech to gain map control and transition smoothly into the mid game, much like the blink/WP builds.
I was upset when Polt lost after a mistake-filled game 5, but I was thrilled to see game 2, even though he lost. I love seeing awesome stuff like this, even when it knocks down my favorite players.
Mech, though certainly not as reliable as bio, is beginning to be more than a surprise option in the PvT match-up. Some players use it as their staple build and beat strong players with it (Drunkenboi-State) and biomech pushes of the kind Polt showcased can take even extremely skilled players by surprise.
colossus drops are so fcking fun. i altered the build to use it for PvZ and its hilarious against zergs on catellena and merry go round. keep dancing back and forth from the third and the main and if zerg is out of position once you warp in sentries to ff ramp for free win :D
On November 04 2014 10:46 [UoN]Sentinel wrote: Definitely want to try this. PvT is my weakest matchup and I have a 29% winrate on Nimbus. I want to change both of those.
A bit late though for this map will disappear in like 5 days now
Do you guys think this would be doable on Overgrowth, with the prism coming from the third base location, possibly with colossi being leap frogged from natural to third and then back again if need be?
On November 04 2014 23:28 HelpMeGetBetter wrote: When is the best time to try this? When the terren goes the basic reaper expand?
This is basically a very greedy macro build that gets a colossus out at 8:30, so start there. You can pretty much do it against any opening, but you have to be careful because you can only afford one observer (you start the robo bay before any obs, so you're pretty gas starved).
From there, it's specifically an anti-timing versus the 10:00 medivac pressure, so that's what you're aiming to break. If your opponent goes 2rax really fast medivac pressure, it might be in your best interest to just skip the WP and continue on with a normal blink/colossus game. Against stim timings, you definitely have to keep the first colossus home to defend, but a warp prism might not be a bad investment anyway for just zealot drops to keep the Terran pinned back after the stim pressure is defended.
EPT![[image loading]](/staff/Corazon/colossusdropoff.jpg)
![[image loading]](/staff/Corazon/Colossusdropdef.jpg)
