[D] Unorthodox Builds That Work

9 – build 1st pylon down by natural choke and probe scout/send probe to opponents base (if 1v1 map)

14 – gate (probe has scouted base and is patrolling by enemy natural waiting for drone to try and build hatch or run by to 3rd)

16 – pylon block zerg nat and follow drone to 3rd to try and block that as long as possible too. Chrono probs whole time when energy is ready.

20 or 22 – nexus (this seems late but it lets you prepare for next step) – it’s okay if zerg gets 3rd down. If you do a really good job of blocking, you may need to be careful of ling all in or some other cheese cause zerg will be on 1 base, his 1st OL will see your nat and the gateway and he may just all in.

22 – Zealot, Pylon, Pylon – the 16 Pylon is to ensure you can build a zelot right after your nexus so you can deflect 6 lings trying to run into your nat to kill/weaken you – if this happens, pull some probes and fight with zealot. If zerg doesn’t kill the nat pylon back in their base; prepare for all in and wall off asap.

23/24 – 2 assimilators in main – keep building zealots and sneak in probes when you have money – make sure to not spend too much chrono on probs you need 2 saved up for when your natural finishes.

26/28 – build cyber core and another zelot – you want 3 zealots as quickly as possible without using any chrono on the wg

Around 30 supply – nat nexus is finishing and cyber core is nearly done as well- you should almost have 3 zelots without using a chrono on your wg yet. You also want to put down a forge around this time to ward off any roach allins (which would be coming soon if they know a good BO).

When cyber core finishes, chrono out a stalker and your MS core. Forge should be finishing so put down a cannon. Take your stalker, MScore and 3 zelots and move out onto the map. Build a sentry and put it in the doorway so no lings rush by as your little brigade runs out. As the your strike force gets out on the map (heading for the 3rd) send a probe somewhere to hide on the map for proxy pylons later on in the game. Start chronoing probes like crazy and start researching Warpgate.

The purpose of the strikeforce is to make zerg build lings or roaches – not drone up. If he does drone and misses your army leaving your base you might just kill his 3rd. If I play diamond or lower players – I usually kill the 3rd cause they misread this attack. Masters and higher players usually defend it, but it serves its purpose as a way to stop droning. TRY NOT TO LOSE ANY UNITS (they are important to defend all-ins and to take your 3rd). If you get into the 3rd and there is a small group of lings and a queen or 2, engage, but try and keep your units alive. It’s better to just force them to over build lings. While this army is out on the map, use your multitasking and apm to screenshot back home to build your assimilators at your nat, continue probing (you should pass the zerg in worker count during this attack) AND to build 2 Stargates.

This seems like a lot of stuff going on, and it is – so you gota be quick and you gota posture lots with this army - it might be on the map for a good 2 or 3 minutes. Try and bounce around the map either posturing at the 3rd, killing overlords or sitting in 3rd mineral line (if you can get in) delaying droning while the army arrives. When in doubt, recall back home.

So you forced a lot of lings, you recalled your army home, you have 2 stargates building (or finishing) and you’re up to 35+ probes. Next, start +1 (weapons) on your forge, chrono out phoenix, get your probe count to roughly 45 and build 3 more gates – putting you at 4 in total.

Once you hit 4 phoenix (and continually building them) build a proxy pylon with your probe out on the map and head to the zerg main with your phoenix. You’ll notice you’re banking A LOT of minerals. This is so you can push with a zealot warp in, keep building phoenix and take a 3rd all at the same time. If you do a good job of hiding your 2 star gates, these phoenix will be a huge surprise – and they’ll seem like they came out of nowhere since you were just out on the map a min or two ago with your little strike force. The idea here is to kill queens and overlords and warp in zealots and hit the 3rd. If you do it right, you should supply block the zerg, kill 1 or 2 queens and put A LOT of damage on the 3rd – if not straight out kill it. Meanwhile you can use your mothership core and a zealot or two to escort a probe to the 3rd and start your nexus - sometimes I use my initial strikeforce to do this while my new warped in zealots hit the 3rd. Sometimes I send the strikeforce out on the map if I feel I can do real damage again with them and the new warped in army as well..

The idea with this push isn’t to kill the zerg, it’s to cripple him again or at least get him flustered or making the wrong units.

The transition is to finish 3rd with cannon support, build 5-6 more gateways, get charge +2, then +3 and eventually get archons. Feel free to continue to mass phoenix. If you feel like you’re getting a lot and the game is going to go on for a while, you can swing into double robo immortal production instead. The scariest moment for you will be the 2-5 mins after your 2nd attack. Zerg should be able to pump out a decent amount of roaches and hydras to hit your 3rd. So be sure to defend with good phoenix pick-ups, photon overcharge and zealot warp ins. If not handled well, you could die to a retaliating zerg who can macro efficiently.

The idea with your late game army is to pick up light units (hydras) with your phoenix and have your ground army pound out the rest. The zerg will naturally transition into either hydra /ling/infester or mass roach with burrow/movement sometimes they try and ignore the air and do simply mass ling into ultralisk – but this is not common and a mass void ray tech switch is very scary for zerg. The mass roach build is harder to stop because if they max quickly, your phoenixes are mostly useless – but with double stargate you can start to chrono out voidray.

It is important to have your phoeonix always attack from a different angle than your main army. This will screw up the players physical ability to focus on more than 1 lane. For example: ground army moves up from the left and player focuses attention there, and phoenix army flies from the middle right – now the player has to focus and multitask 2 army fronts and it makes their engagement messy – especially if they are using infesters! This way of engaging will ensure that a lot of their positioning is compromised and their fungles are more prone to miss. *NOTE make sure ground army and phoenix hit their army at the same time because the ground army will take precedents and the hydras will leave your phoenix alone – unless targeted – ensuring that you can simply mass pick them up and kill them off.

Believe it or not, in a pinch, mass phoenix can work like force fields in the sense that you can section armies off by simply removing them from the battlefield all together. If you have archons in your army, they will blast them from the sky – if your apm is good, you can release sections of the army piece by piece and have zealot/archon/immortal clean up.

I believe it was Mana who made this build very popular at the start of HOTS.
The idea here is to open with a standard econ build (1 gate, 1 assimilator – build nexus after cyber core finishes, chrono out mscore after nexus goes down in nat, build 2nd assimilator, build Stargate) and transition into early stargate and defend against early aggression or macro into mid game.

In this build you want to macro up into 6-7 gates, +1 armor, charge, templar archives and 5ish phoenix. When the terran pushes on the map with initial army with 2 dropships, you want to completely kill that army and rush their natural (proxy pylons are helpful here).

*NOTE pros ALWAYS pick up marauders for some reason with their phoenix but since marines are light units, you can 2 shot them with phoenix and they are much better to pick up. When terran moves out, you should be able to crush most of their marines with your phoenix alone – as long as your army is engaging at same time.

If the terran is surprised by attack, you may want to all in him and take the win. If he defends in his nat, you want to pull back army, harass with phoenix/scout and macro to 3rd base with storm. More recently, I’ve been crushing the terran army, and instead of crashing into the nat I’ve been saving my army, setting up a soft contain – transitioning right into storm and taking a 3rd. I believe this method is best because it allows for a more stable build. A soft contain with storm can be VERY strong. I’ve often simply ended the game through a soft contain with storm vs mid/high masters players because they mine out their base and I whittle down army with good storm. Because of phoenix, even dropships can be easily scouted and picked off if sneaking away or manoeuvring away from the contain.

I used to open with an oracle and try and harass, but more recently extreme terran aggression with early mine drops and hellions is popular on ladder. So I’ve been opening with 3 phoenix to help deflect attacks and pick up workers if he is simply macroing up. Also, terrans are deflecting oracle attacks easier and I feel like phoenix are a better unit in late game – even if you only build a handful, they are still great at helping shut down drops. Whereas oracles are reduced to simply scouting and obs can do that fine.