Here is my latest project I’ve been working on, about Cannon rushing. This post is intended to be a semi-guide, as it contains facts and valuable information about Cannon rushing, but, since I am not exactly a very good player, there may be wrong conclusions in here. I hope this is still useful, and I would like to hear the opinion of better/pro players on the topic as well.
So just recently I saw a lot of examples of very creative Pylon/Cannon placements in professional PvZ play which make Cannon rushing seem really easy. And considering a successful Cannon rush is almost certain to give you a big advantage in the game, I thought to myself, this should be something that one can actually learn and perfect and win games with. Because let’s be honest, putting down Pylons and Cannons does not require great skill. So I started to look a bit deeper into it, and I found the following. Pro Cannon rushers, like sOs, when really committed and are not just faking, often build their Pylons so that it encloses an area where the Cannon is placed and where enemy workers cannot go. Not only does it protect the Cannon from the workers, but more importantly it also protects the Probe and prevents the Cannon from being blocked by enemy workers. I call this configuration the “fortress.”
I noticed that pro players always build a fortress of three Pylons. This is actually not surprising, since four would be too much of an investment and would be in most cases unnecessary, while two would not be enough. How effective it is, of course, does depend on the map, one would say. While it is true, as there are “better” and “worse” Cannon rush maps, the truth is actually the maps (at least in the current map pool) are not that different in this regard. A fortress of three Pylons, allowing for a direct Cannon rush, can be built on almost every map’s natural base. An indirect Cannon rush with a three-Pylon-fortress is almost certainly possible on all maps.
Now there is nothing really left but to ask, where are those spots. In the pdf here and in the spoiler tag below, is an analysis which answers this question, and adds some details as well as assigns a strength value to the different Cannon rushing spots.
These spots, once learned, will allow you to Cannon rush on almost every map if you so choose (my personal favorite is Overgrowth, by the way). Of course there are maps where it is not that great, but if your Zerg opponent goes for a Hatch first, they are just asking for a Cannon rush, right?
My tips for execution of PvZ Cannon rushes (here is when it may start to be questionable, so treat these appropriately and tell me if something is off):
The thumb rule says that Cannon rushing is good against Hatch first, not against Pool first, so you will have to scout what the opponent goes for. You might do this anyway to confirm that there is no super early Pool on the opponent’s side. If you see a Pool first, the success of the rush cannot be guaranteed, as Drones, Lings, Queens and Spines may kill the Cannons before they kill the Hatchery. If you scout Hatch first, you have green lights to proceed Cannoning.
A Probe poking in the main base and then leaving for the natural can be very suspicious and may alert the opponent. This is not necessarily a problem, though. If you build a good fortress, Drones will most certainly not be able to deny the Cannon rush, even if the opponent knows it is coming.
What is problematic is if the opponent orders a Drone to attack (and thus follow) your Probe. If the Probe is followed by a Drone, you either can’t build up your fortress, because the Drone blocks the Pylons, or the Drone is locked into the fortress with the Probe, in which case the Drone simply kills the Probe (a Drone kills a Probe one-on-one even if the Probe hits first).
After building your Forge, you can send a second Probe out to the opponent’s natural. This way if the opponent follows your first Probe, and knows that it isn’t building Cannons, he may be lured into a false sense of security, thinking that no Cannoning is imminent. When your second Probe arrives at the natural, build the fortress. If you are certain that your Probe is not followed and the fortress cannot be blocked, you don’t necessarily need to bring another Probe, but it is safer that way (although comes with some lost mining time).
The second Probe must not be spotted by an Overlord or a scouting Drone. If it is scouted, you might as well tell your opponent that you are going to try to Cannon rush. Send this Probe on a route where it is not likely to encounter either, or don’t send it at all and hope that you can do it with the one scouting Probe.
There may be an Overlord watching the natural Hatchery, exactly to see if there is a threat of Cannon rushing. This means that if you move your Probe in the position of the fortress and build the first Pylon, Drones are very likely to be pulled immediately (they may be on the way already when you plant your first Pylon because of the suspicious position of the Probe). For this reason, make sure that when you build your first Pylon, you build the other two immediately afterwards, before the Drones arrive and block them. This means you have to have 300 minerals banked up when building the first Pylon. This is very important. You may think that 200 or 250 is enough, because you will have mined enough when the first two Pylons are built to have 100 for another one, but it is unnecessarily risky.
Build the fortress from the inside, otherwise your Probe may lock itself out.
Always build those Pylons first which are closest to the direction the Drones can come from (usually the main ramp). This is important because while Pylons are built practically instantly, there is still a little time between building two. This can give you a couple of seconds which may decide whether you can finish the fortress or not.
If the Pylons go up successfully, there is a minimal chance that the rush will not succeed. However, if it seems that all the Pylons may be killed, depowering the Cannon, you must construct additional Pylons to keep the Cannon powered.
If the circumstances are unfavorable, because, for example, the opponent opened Pool first, or a Drone is following your Probe and you did not send a second one, or the second Probe has been spotted, or the fortress is blocked, you don’t have to commit. Sure, you lost some mining time, especially if you moved out with two Probes, but you can still safely transition into a standard-ish Forge Fast Expand. You may decide to still try the rush, but it is risky; without a proper fortress, your chances are not that great any more. If you invest hundreds of minerals into Pylons and Cannons just to be killed or cancelled, you at best delayed your own expansion significantly by floating a huge bank, at worst outright lost that money if the structures are destroyed.
As said, if the fortress goes up, the rush is pretty much successful. If you are the Zerg player, you will be very frustrated that your opponent gains a huge lead in the game with so much skill that they can place three Pylons in an appropriate configuration. (The amount of BM you can get when you Cannon rush successfully is immense.) It seems that you knew what the opponent wanted to do, reacted instantly, and still could not do anything about it, right? Yeah, you are pretty much right. It does not mean the rush cannot be defended, though, only that it cannot be defended (or at least it is very hard) by reaction, only by prevention. The easiest ways to prevent such a Cannon rush are the following:
Go Pool first. This is the most obvious one, although not ideal. If the opponent decides to go for a Nexus first, you are at economic deficit already, so it is not really a solution, but a safe way nonetheless. You can still go Hatch first, though, but you have to be careful.
If a Probe enters your base, follow it with a Drone. This will stop it from building a fortress at the natural.
However, if a second Probe is sent, this may not be enough. The safest way is to send a Drone to the natural, possibly already blocking out the most abusable position. Having an Overlord above the building Hatchery will not suffice, you will need Drones to actually block off the space. Knowing is half the battle, but in this case it is not enough.
If you scout the second Probe with either an Overlord or a Drone scout, the Cannon rush is imminent, and you may want to pull more than one Drone to the natural to make sure no Cannoning will happen.
Even if no proper fortress is built, the rush can still be successful. Respect the Cannon rush, because if you don’t pull enough Drones, the Cannons may finish and your natural is gone.
Know when you lost the battle. If a closed fortress is building near your base, you have very little chance to actually prevent the Cannon rush. If you pull Drones, you are most likely only losing mining time and even Drones if you stick around too long. You will then have to cancel the Hatchery. The best thing you can do is to cancel it after all the Pylons are finished, otherwise the Protoss may just cancel some and get a refund for them. If you don’t scout the Cannons at all, only when your Hatch is finished, you are in a really bad position, and you will lose the Hatchery.
This is pretty much all I can say about PvZ Cannon rushes. The moral of the story is: always be prepared to get Cannon rushed if you go Hatch first, because there is no reason the Protoss shouldn't try it if they had already built a Forge. Now a quick note to PvP Cannon rushes. It is generally a very cheesy and all-in strategy in PvP, which, if fails, results in an immediate loss, while if it succeeds, results in an immediate win. There are basically two approaches of the rush here. One is to hide the Cannons and rush the mains indirectly, building one row of Cannons after another and slowly creeping towards the enemy Nexus. This can be shut down easily if scouted, and is a greater investment (more Cannons and Pylons, more money), but can still work if unscouted. The other way to Cannon rush is to abuse the terrain and even possibly enemy buildings to build a fortress just as in PvZ. The strength of the fortresses is much lower in this case, since Probes are right next to it, and take practically no time to start attacking. Usually these fortresses are unstable, at least theoretically, meaning that at least one of the Pylons can be destroyed before finishing. Also, since enemy workers are very close to the place of the fortress, the Pylons have to be placed very swiftly after each other, otherwise they will be blocked. For an example of such a Cannon rush in a professional game, see San vs. MC in WCS Europe 2014 Season 2 Quarterfinals, Game 1 on Habitation Station:
The execution of PvP Cannon rushes is basically similar to that of the PvZ rushes. You can bring two Probes to distract the opponent here as well, but you risk being scouted. The great difference is that while if something goes wrong against Zerg, you are not forced to proceed Cannon rushing, you don’t really have an option against Protoss, because your tech will be so late with your Forge opening that you will certainly lose if you don’t do critical damage with your rush. Defending the Cannon rush in PvP is also a much simpler story than in PvZ. Of course you want to prevent it from happening in the first place, but if you scout it, you have to try to stop it with your Probes. If one Cannon goes up, others will follow, and you will lose your whole base. You may try a counterattack but the opponent will most likely have a wall-off at the main ramp with a Cannon, or a Cannon in the mineral line.
As a closing thought, here is my favorite PvP Cannon rush build tailored to Expedition Lost, which probably does not work in higher leagues but is fun anyway.
This build uses the fortress called “The Seam” (see in the pdf above).
Send out a Probe at 7 Supply.
Build a Pylon behind the enemy natural mineral line, closer to the main, at 10.
As soon as you have money, build a Forge at the Pylon.
Build one more Probe.
Send out another Probe to help out if need be (optional).
When the Forge completes build a Cannon so that it covers the position of the fortress on the high ground.
When the Cannon is roughly 3/4 complete and you have almost 300 minerals, move up the ramp and build the fortress where it is supposed to be built.
If you successfully built the fortress, build the Cannon inside, thus escaping with the Probe, and proceed to plant additional Cannons and Pylons. If the opponent counterattacks, wall off with a Cannon and Pylons. If the opponent tries to build a Mothership Core, place Cannons in the mineral line.
Build a Gateway and win as you want if your opponent hasn’t left already.
This build obviously only works if the opponent does not scout what you are doing. If the proxy Forge is scouted, all sorts of hell break loose and you most likely lose. If the opponent orders a Probe to follow yours, well, that’s why you sent the other one. If the position of the fortress is blocked by an enemy building, you have to improvise, using that building as part of your fortress. Your low ground Cannon may kill said enemy building as an added bonus. (Usually Protoss players don’t build their buildings to the edge of the base, though, at least in my experience, because it would be vulnerable to Stalkers, etc. from the low ground.) Of course this fortress can be built with a standard 13 Forge, without any fancy proxies, and that version can be scouted much later. However, the proxy version, being much quicker, allows for a low ground Cannon which makes the fortress indestructible. And anyway, you don’t always have the chance use a proxy Forge…
I am interested to hear your feedback; please tell me if I got anything wrong, I will correct it gladly. Zerg players, please don’t hate me, and make sure to check out my previous works as well.
I really want to comment on this before going to bed but this post is huge. It seems like you did a good job in examining all the different wall offs and their advantages and disadvantages. To be honest as a player I know all the wall offs and my biggest worries when cannon rushing are: -the timings on when to send probes out (especially in 3/4 spawn maps) -in PvZ deciding whether a cannon rush is or is not worth it, especially if the opponent decides to build hatcheries all over the map.
I disagree that PvP cannon rush is the same as PvZ. It's completely different. In PvZ, you cannon rush to achieve 2 things, in general. If you can't achieve both of them in general it's not worth it: 1) Kill/cancel your opponent natural 2) Contain your opponent on 1 base blocking his way outside the natural (this doesn't necessarily mean that you prevent him from getting a hatchery up in another base, as the advantage of him not being able to transfer drones/units is pretty huge).
That's why cannon rushing on vaani is extremely bad, by the way. If you cannon rush the indoor zerg's natural, he can just take the base outside, without any problem of transfering workers, and vice versa.
In PvP you have to kill your opponent's main nexus, that's it. It's an extremely aggressive strategy as if you fail, (as you said) you are miles behind on tech and you can't recover. Although it might happen that the game goes on as even if your opponent rebuilds his nexus elsewhere. Also protoss has a stronger defense against cannon rush, due to stalkers and overcharge, which deal with that much more efficiently than zerglings and 1/2 queens obviously (spines can't usually come into play quickly enough).
Because of that, PvZ cannon rush is more wall-off focused (prevent your zergling from attacking the cannons) whereas PvP cannon rush is more "get a cannon up ASAP"-focused. Wall offs might still be needed to protect your cannon from probes but it's less effective than against zerg because you need to build it in your opponent's main, so there's much less distance to cover for the probes. Usually, pulling the probes immediately can kill those wall offs in time. (notable exception: daybreak).
You don't necessarily have to stop it with probes in PvP. There are tons of different responses, to name a few: 1) Get your own forge (nice if you have pylons in the right places already) 2) Chronoboost out stalkers and msc for overcharge (good if you started 10 gate or if the cannon rush is quite far away/you delayed it with probes) 3) Re-expand and pressure with mothership core and a stalker (he needs to get a cannon up both at his ramp and his mineral line or he is dead) 3) Proxy void ray : this is probably the trickiest to hold and it's always advisable if you have enough gas and a probe out on the map. The cannon rusher needs at least 2 cannons (a void ray can defeat 1 with charge) while he techs up to stalkers asap, making sure he has also at least 2 pylons powering his gateway/cannons.
Hi fellow cannon enthusiast, here's my album of cannon spots on the 4new maps of s1, some are not 100% perfect but work quite well. http://imgur.com/a/B4dEu
On March 20 2015 07:42 KingAlphard wrote: I really want to comment on this before going to bed but this post is huge. It seems like you did a good job in examining all the different wall offs and their advantages and disadvantages. To be honest as a player I know all the wall offs and my biggest worries when cannon rushing are: -the timings on when to send probes out (especially in 3/4 spawn maps) -in PvZ deciding whether a cannon rush is or is not worth it, especially if the opponent decides to build hatcheries all over the map.
I disagree that PvP cannon rush is the same as PvZ. It's completely different. In PvZ, you cannon rush to achieve 2 things, in general. If you can't achieve both of them in general it's not worth it: 1) Kill/cancel your opponent natural 2) Contain your opponent on 1 base blocking his way outside the natural (this doesn't necessarily mean that you prevent him from getting a hatchery up in another base, as the advantage of him not being able to transfer drones/units is pretty huge).
That's why cannon rushing on vaani is extremely bad, by the way. If you cannon rush the indoor zerg's natural, he can just take the base outside, without any problem of transfering workers, and vice versa.
In PvP you have to kill your opponent's main nexus, that's it. It's an extremely aggressive strategy as if you fail, (as you said) you are miles behind on tech and you can't recover. Although it might happen that the game goes on as even if your opponent rebuilds his nexus elsewhere. Also protoss has a stronger defense against cannon rush, due to stalkers and overcharge, which deal with that much more efficiently than zerglings and 1/2 queens obviously (spines can't usually come into play quickly enough).
Because of that, PvZ cannon rush is more wall-off focused (prevent your zergling from attacking the cannons) whereas PvP cannon rush is more "get a cannon up ASAP"-focused. Wall offs might still be needed to protect your cannon from probes but it's less effective than against zerg because you need to build it in your opponent's main, so there's much less distance to cover for the probes. Usually, pulling the probes immediately can kill those wall offs in time. (notable exception: daybreak).
You don't necessarily have to stop it with probes in PvP. There are tons of different responses, to name a few: 1) Get your own forge (nice if you have pylons in the right places already) 2) Chronoboost out stalkers and msc for overcharge (good if you started 10 gate or if the cannon rush is quite far away/you delayed it with probes) 3) Re-expand and pressure with mothership core and a stalker (he needs to get a cannon up both at his ramp and his mineral line or he is dead) 3) Proxy void ray : this is probably the trickiest to hold and it's always advisable if you have enough gas and a probe out on the map. The cannon rusher needs at least 2 cannons (a void ray can defeat 1 with charge) while he techs up to stalkers asap, making sure he has also at least 2 pylons powering his gateway/cannons.
Thanks for the reply! I was actually wondering if it is really worth investing hundreds of minerals into one cancel on the Hatch. I guess, then, it only is if you contain the Zerg on one base. This makes perfect sense. I see why it is bad on Vaani, too. Can't simply Pylon blocking the third work, though? I mean, they can still take their fourth, fifth, etc., but it will be so far away that it will be very hard to defend against any aggressive push, won't it? Or you can just Cannon the third, can't you? I mean, if they keep expanding on the map and you keep Cannoning their bases, surely you will not have enough money, but if they are forced to take their fourth, it's kind of a bad spot for them, right? Anyway, I see why it is the best to not let them transfer units, but maybe it can also work if they can.
About PvP, as you said, the wall offs can be killed in time with Probes in most cases. If you don't try it with your Probes, some crucial buildings, like the Gateway or Cyber core can die, depending on the building placement (even a Pylon destroyed and supply blocking can be a big deal). Also, I think getting your own counter-Forge only works if the first Cannon is not in range of anything important. If you start your Forge as the first offensive Pylon goes up, your Cannon will be 20 gs delayed relative to your opponent's Cannon. Same for Stalkers, I think (as you said, it works if the rush starts far away or you have an early gate). I believe you can Chrono out a MSC and wait for Overcharge, which will totally kill the Cannons, if the Nexus does not die first. I think you can hold your Nexus that way, but you can't really mine with Cannons in your mineral line for a long time. Then you can also pressure with Stalker + MSC, but if there are 2 Cannons and a wall at the enemy base, it will be shut down. The proxy Void Ray is pretty nice, I never heard of it, but sounds like a nice solution, if you have enough gas. The question is, can you get enough gas, if the Cannons are near your Assimilator(s)? I think the safest is to not let the Cannon go up, if you can stop it (which you usually can). I'm not saying there is no other way to defend, but they may be very conditional and risky.
At the same time, it seems weird that in the San vs. MC game, San didn't even try to stop the rush with the Probes, when I think he might have had a chance. Then his follow-up MSC + Stalker pressure was shut down as well, and would have been shut down even more if MC's Cannon had been in the middle of the mineral line. On the other hand, the MSC had 100 energy when the Nexus had almost all its hit points left still (all its shields gone). I think an Overcharge might have cleaned up the Cannons, but I'm not sure if that would have helped San that much.
When I played Toss getting cannon rushed was basically a free win for me. Just mine as long as you can, build a Stargate, a Voidray and a Nexus at another base. Don't waste money on anything else! Transfer Probes when the original nexus dies and/or you can not mine anymore. Proceed building voidrays. gg. At least in diamond this worked 9/10 times. Now I play zerg... thank you for this guide....-.-
On March 20 2015 22:03 TheBloodyDwarf wrote: How about cannon rush vs terran? There was guy in NA gm who didnt do anything else than cannon rushes I might have some of his replays saved.
I would love to see those Although I can't really imagine how you can successfully cannon a terran. You know, Marines, floating buildings and stuff.
On March 20 2015 20:37 Meavis wrote: Hi fellow cannon enthusiast, here's my album of cannon spots on the 4new maps of s1, some are not 100% perfect but work quite well. http://imgur.com/a/B4dEu
Those are nice positions as well. I see attacking from the low ground on Expedition Lost is quite popular
On March 20 2015 22:03 TheBloodyDwarf wrote: How about cannon rush vs terran? There was guy in NA gm who didnt do anything else than cannon rushes I might have some of his replays saved.
I would love to see those Although I can't really imagine how you can successfully cannon a terran. You know, Marines, floating buildings and stuff.
On March 20 2015 20:37 Meavis wrote: Hi fellow cannon enthusiast, here's my album of cannon spots on the 4new maps of s1, some are not 100% perfect but work quite well. http://imgur.com/a/B4dEu
Those are nice positions as well. I see attacking from the low ground on Expedition Lost is quite popular
By the way, talking about PvT cannon rush, I wanna share with you a silly build that I don't use anymore but I've beaten a couple GMs with it.
In Expedition lost you can enter with the reaper only by 1 side, which is the natural ramp, so if you put a cannon up there, a reaper can't enter (I was inspired by Myungsik going FFE against Innovation on Nimbus). That's important because against cannon rush, with a reaper opening, the terran player can just lift off the cc and use the reaper to kill all of your probes.
So you can build a forge in the low ground, then use that probe to cannon rush the terran from the low ground. Then if the terran lifts off or if he blind countered you with a marine opening you can just expand to your natural (be careful about backdoor rocks though).
On March 20 2015 21:00 Sholip wrote: Thanks for the reply! I was actually wondering if it is really worth investing hundreds of minerals into one cancel on the Hatch. I guess, then, it only is if you contain the Zerg on one base. This makes perfect sense. I see why it is bad on Vaani, too. Can't simply Pylon blocking the third work, though? I mean, they can still take their fourth, fifth, etc., but it will be so far away that it will be very hard to defend against any aggressive push, won't it? Or you can just Cannon the third, can't you? I mean, if they keep expanding on the map and you keep Cannoning their bases, surely you will not have enough money, but if they are forced to take their fourth, it's kind of a bad spot for them, right? Anyway, I see why it is the best to not let them transfer units, but maybe it can also work if they can.
The problem is that by the time the zerg takes his third instead of the natural, he has the pool finished, so he can use lings to bring down the pylon/protect from further cannon rushes. That's the big problem of cannon rushes that don't contain zerg players on one base, they are almost never worth it. Or even if they are slightly worth it, it doesn't make it worth to open forge on that map anyway And by the way, the fact that Vaani has gold bases makes things even worse.
Transfering units is crucial, because if 2 bases are not connected, it's very easy to kill them. That's why a good follow up to a cannon rush/contain is to simply go 1 base 4 gate, or even better, 3 gate with a robo proxied close to your cannons, 1 base immortal/sentry (sounds crazy doesn't it? But it's actually almost impossible to hold, and even if they do, you're still ahead because you can expand while they can't). Zerg players know it and therefore they try to get some roaches out asap, which delays their economy even more.
About PvP, as you said, the wall offs can be killed in time with Probes in most cases. If you don't try it with your Probes, some crucial buildings, like the Gateway or Cyber core can die, depending on the building placement (even a Pylon destroyed and supply blocking can be a big deal). Also, I think getting your own counter-Forge only works if the first Cannon is not in range of anything important. If you start your Forge as the first offensive Pylon goes up, your Cannon will be 20 gs delayed relative to your opponent's Cannon. Same for Stalkers, I think (as you said, it works if the rush starts far away or you have an early gate). I believe you can Chrono out a MSC and wait for Overcharge, which will totally kill the Cannons, if the Nexus does not die first. I think you can hold your Nexus that way, but you can't really mine with Cannons in your mineral line for a long time. Then you can also pressure with Stalker + MSC, but if there are 2 Cannons and a wall at the enemy base, it will be shut down. The proxy Void Ray is pretty nice, I never heard of it, but sounds like a nice solution, if you have enough gas. The question is, can you get enough gas, if the Cannons are near your Assimilator(s)? I think the safest is to not let the Cannon go up, if you can stop it (which you usually can). I'm not saying there is no other way to defend, but they may be very conditional and risky.
Overall all the responses are very situational, except the probe pull, which always works as long as you can scout the cannon rush as soon as the first pylon starts. With proxy void rays you will always have enough money to start a void ray, then depending on how much money you can mine, you can either re-expand (400 minerals), build a 2nd void ray (250/100) or a mothership core (100/100)... you will never have the money to build all 3 of them obviously.
EPT
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I might have some of his replays saved.
