Build Order(gist) The basic gist is sending 2-3 drones(either immediately or the ones that turn in the diamonds first) so that they arrive before any wall-in can be made. Use the extraction trick to get out enough workers.
An interesting thing to do is to make sure you have 50 minerals left to make another worker so you have a chance at recovering in case you and your opponent are not quite dead enough. This is not necessary and sightly slows the attack down.
This is generally meant as an Anti-Terran tactic. Protoss players,given they are not walling off a single base), can be attacked by simply using the extractor trick(which will be brought out faster given the 3 drones mining).
The reasoning for choosing drones is their natural regeneration abilities and the general fact that they will win a flat-out battle against other workers.
This holds true as of 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtPjl0QRSK8)
Generally, there is advanced micro for workers despite what others say.
Micro:
Foot in the door Get inside the base as quickly as possible to prevent wall-ins.
Follow Rogues Prevents Proxy Bases Mineral Drill Have all workers selected, right-click a mineral field so they will gather together. Once they are together, quickly press attack so they will 1-shot other workers.
Catch Stragglers Basically divide and conquer. Generally since most other players will not care about stragglers since it is only "one worker", it is important to note that one less worker is all the difference between winning a battle and not.
Draw, Divide, and Conquer Most players will attempt to withdraw a couple or even falhhalf of their workers to chase the initial 3 workers. By defeating the initial force separately from.
First Hit Always have the first hit when possible.
Surround Since you have more workers from the outside outputting damage, you will win against the ball of workers since the workers inside the ball cannot attack.
Deny Minerals You can't mine, why should they? Mineral income can bring out other marines and zealots, which will be more difficult to put down.
this is a cute cheese to beat someone lower level than you or someone who isn't paying attention at the start of the game, but any good opponent will just cancel buildings and run workers in circles until they've spent all their money before fighting, at which point they will win with higher numbers
Nice that someone brought up the worker rush after so long. It's a strategy that is definitely a lot more micro-intensive than people think, and it's possible for a reasonably strong player (e.g. "high diamond low masters") to lose to a stronger player if they haven't had the time to think through how to deal with it. No marks for great creativity, but it's well worth the style points.
If you don't mind the micro-essay, I'd like to share about probe rushing to add on to this thread. I myself am only a lowly 4.8k player but I have managed to beat up to ~4k players with probe rushing. For reference, I will use a superior player's matches for reference. Every little detail adds to the strength of this so-called strategy.
Here, a 5.4k player ("Theo") has done probe rushes till they got to 4850 mmr, which was masters 1 mmr at the time. To save you the time of going through replays, I'll highlight the way that this person does the worker rush and the tricks they use to secure a win.
1. Theo pulls all 12 probes at the start of the game to attack, and then starts the first probe. Going immediately with 12 probes has a secondary benefit of circumventing the issue of the opponent creating an early wall, unless they are extremely bad (e.g. build 3 buildings before starting worker production).
By the way, Nina (formerly Puck) does this build by pulling 10 probes after mining 2 trips' worth of minerals. But that is a totally different ballgame.
2. The probe that is made out of the nexus with the first 50 minerals stays behind; it does not join the attack. In some of Theo's games, this makes the difference.
3. Theo creates a stack of probes such that it appears to be only 1 worker (which I will call a "1 worker stack"). This is a surprise element that very often makes a massive difference, for reasons I will explain later. Many people know how to do this by taking their gas and stacking all their workers before going (this is what Florencio also does), but...
i) For protoss, you have to wait until the first mineral trip returns to make an assimilator ii) For terran/zerg, you will always struggle to bring the worker that makes the refinery
The aforementioned player is quite clever and manages to create the 1 worker stack by mineral walking in a special way that I can't describe easily (just watch the replays on that thread if you are interested). The key here is that they use the micro trick to minimise the amount of time taken to get to the opponent's base, whilst ensuring all 12 workers get across in a 1 worker stack, and also giving the opponent the least amount of time to react to the rush.
4. Upon reaching the opponent's base, the probe stack moves ~1/4 of the way across the opponent's mineral line, usually at the point where it is very close to a formation of an appropriate 3 mineral patches (it should be such that only a single 1x1 unit can fit inside the mineral patch formation). Some maps have two of such formations e.g. Simulacrum, World of Sleepers from the previous patch.
5. Theo issues an attack-move command and the probes will spread out, killing 1 worker or maybe 2 if the opponent's reaction speed is slow.
The reason why this works is because usually, the opponent thinks of the stacked up probes as a single worker. At higher levels, players generally ignore it because they expect all players at that level to be mineral walking workers most of the time - it's not worth for them to try surrounding the probe (and very often the probe escapes with 5 hp if this happens).
6. Once the opponent's workers respond, Theo drills the probes into the centre of the nearby 3 mineral patch formation. This is obviously the most important part of the rush, since this is when any player below 3.6k generally dies.
If the opponent makes the mistake of attack-moving into the probes that are drilling into the patch, the opponent's workers start falling very very quickly. The trick here is to continuously have probes drilling into the mineral patch.
If the opponent runs away from the mineral patches or tries to mine only the minerals on the opposite side, Theo uses superior worker micro to catch any straggling workers. Alternatively, if there is a 3 mineral patch formation on the opposite side as well then it is possible to drill into that mineral patch formation instead.
Some opponents will try to mine minerals from the natural expansion. In this situation, Theo attacks the town hall. This forces your opponent to respond.
If the opponent drills into the same mineral patch and does so with the correct technique, it's usually gg. Bear in mind that many people know how to right click on the centre mineral patch, but they do not know how to time the a-moves such that DPS is maximised.
7. Depending on the game situation, Theo sometimes recalls all the probes to play out a 1 base all-in. This is usually done when you've established a good worker lead (e.g. 11 to 6) but the first attacking units are coming out, and the probes don't really have enough HP to take a good trade.
EPT
