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On June 13 2011 06:27 iamke55 wrote:Bumping this because I found a replay of Naniwa doing this strategy: http://www.sc2rep.com/replays/download?id=9682His interpretation seems to take the comments in here into account. He gets a robo for detection and later adds in immortal, researches storm, and gets charge earlier so he can take map control and secure a third base.
Pretty ballsy of Naniwa to execute a 1gateFE like that. Seems like that opener would be better against hatch first. Still, it's very cool to see the build played by a pro.
You should add this to your OP
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Archons baby.. Having great success with various zeal/archon builds. I'm trying to get like 4 phoenix for scouting and harass purpose that also clears overlords and thus deny nydus play while open up for easier warp prism harass later on, but boy archons are good.. <3
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yeah, I've been trying this out. Its been fun doing something different. keep the suggestions coming, I'll be watching this eagerly.
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I played a game today in which I (a zerg) fast expanded, and saw that he had 3 gated into expansion and then later on near the end he attacked me with purely archon and zealot and I just wondered to myself what this guy was doing.. All I had was mass roach and infestor completely destroyed him :D
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On May 14 2011 12:07 iamke55 wrote:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gtYga.jpg)
OH MY GOD I SEE WALDO IN THAT PICTURE.
That dark archon 
I've been messing around with Archons in PvZ for a while, but the safest way I felt I could use them was to transition from Colossus play. You'll be dealing with lots of Roaches, and I just felt that need to go Robo.
But I've been able to play mind games with Zergs by letting them scout my Robo Facility and the Bay, while hiding Templar tech. It forces them to waste gas on Corruptors while I tear apart their ground army.
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I just tried it for the first time and it worked pretty well, this isn't the best replay since the Z was trying to do a baneling bust/all-in (30 drones on 3 base lol), after I did an unsuccesful timing attack off 3 gate; so I decided to transition into this build. We both made a lot of mistakes and I managed to pull ahead vs roach/bane.
http://replayfu.com/r/ssDm8h
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Italy12247 Posts
Recently i've seen Elfi use a 1base zealot/archon all-in in PvZ after a DT "rush" during the Gigabyte cup tournament; out of the two games i've seen, he won one and lost the other. The replays are these:
http://www.sc2-replays.net/en/replays/6175-imbalowely-vs-viruselfi,xelnaga-caverns;
http://www.sc2-replays.net/en/replays/6171-viruselfi-vs-escdelphi,shattered-temple.
It seems like the build works very well against a zerg that's delaying his roach warren, and kinda dies if he does have one. Now switching from facts and replays from pro's to theorycraft as a diamond player (please forgive me if i say things that don't make sense)...with your first 2 dt's you should be able to scout wether he has the warren or not, and not go for the push if he does, and maybe do a dt expand or something along those lines, does anyone better than me think it's possible?
Specifically, how does a dt expand work against a 2-base roach push? From the 2 replays from Elfi, it seems like the dt's get there slightly too late to scout wether or not he has a one, cancel gates 4 and 5 and throw down a Nexus, but i feel there's too little info in just 2 games.
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I saw the replays and I thought it was interesting how you won while having so many resources.
I played a couple vs the computer then laddered. I did a FFE with voidray air harass, while teching to mass gateway chargelots archon and the third.
It's amazing because I played so poorly, had so many left over resources (and he killed my forge by hitting me in 2 different areas so I was behind on upgrades). But the fact I had 12-15 gateways on 3 bases I could dump minerals however was convenient. And somehow I just rolled the roaches and infestors b/c I could just keep mass reproducing the zealots.
Imagine how effective a polished, practiced version of this style of play could be.
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I've finally played around with this build enough to be able to comment on it. My verdict: definitely viable, but in general weaker than blink stalker play (which is the other obvious alternative when you go down this tech path). There are 2 scenarios where you might prefer chargelot/archon over blink stalker:
1) Your micro/multitasking is not that great. Chargelot/archon is very easy to use, most of the time it's just a-move and a few forcefields to trap roaches if you can.
2) Your opponent is insistent on just massing lings, with very little or no roach or infestor usage.
What I've been doing is FFE into 6 gate +1 attack with mostly zealots. This puts a lot of pressure on the Zerg and forces them to get units instead of drones. This attack comes really early (I chrono warpgate tech all the way, attack with my first round of warp ins), so if they even try to saturate their 3rd base they're going to lose it. Meanwhile I've already taken my 4 gases pretty early so I'm stockpiling a lot of it. As I attack I throw up my council, and follow it up with charge and templar archives. Then I move out again with a +2 or +2/+1 chargelot/archon/sentry army, and take my 3rd as I'm doing so.
I had the most trouble with heavy roach armies, and also the longer the game lasted and the bigger the armies got, the weaker yours is relatively (melee based armies get weaker vs ranged ball armies). It's easy to get into a poor engagements and not be able to forcefield trap all the roaches, and every time you do that you're going to lose a good chunk of your zealots without returning that much damage. Infestors also ruin your day pretty much.
The big issue is that even when roaches are completely unmicroed, zealot/archon is still only slightly more cost effective than roaches. You will have to gain some sort of advantage in other ways, such as via upgrades (more like praying that the zerg gets behind in upgrades) or economy (which is also pretty hard to do against zerg). Other protoss compositions based on stalkers and/or colossus rely on forcefields to combat the cost effectiveness of roaches. While forcefields certainly help a chargelot/archon army, they don't help as much because even when forcefielded all roaches can attack, unlike when you forcefield roaches with a stalker and/or colossus army.
Archons are not bad units, but in the end I still think they should only be made when your HTs run out of energy. Or, in this case with a chargelot/archon build, the chargelots are actually the better units here, and you're just making archons since you need to use up your gas somewhere and they cost the least minerals. Note that I'm talking about mid-game here, obviously this isn't the case in late game where zealots are useless and archons are very supply efficient.
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On June 16 2011 23:14 Teoita wrote:Recently i've seen Elfi use a 1base zealot/archon all-in in PvZ after a DT "rush" during the Gigabyte cup tournament; out of the two games i've seen, he won one and lost the other. The replays are these: http://www.sc2-replays.net/en/replays/6175-imbalowely-vs-viruselfi,xelnaga-caverns;http://www.sc2-replays.net/en/replays/6171-viruselfi-vs-escdelphi,shattered-temple. It seems like the build works very well against a zerg that's delaying his roach warren, and kinda dies if he does have one. Now switching from facts and replays from pro's to theorycraft as a diamond player (please forgive me if i say things that don't make sense)...with your first 2 dt's you should be able to scout wether he has the warren or not, and not go for the push if he does, and maybe do a dt expand or something along those lines, does anyone better than me think it's possible? Specifically, how does a dt expand work against a 2-base roach push? From the 2 replays from Elfi, it seems like the dt's get there slightly too late to scout wether or not he has a one, cancel gates 4 and 5 and throw down a Nexus, but i feel there's too little info in just 2 games.
Well, the game he lost more seemed like it was the zerg who played very well. If you look well, the zerg got blind spores + crawlers to deny the 2 first DTs. Then again, I say blind when it wasn't blind at all, because when he looked up the ramp with a zergling, he saw 2 zealots and 1 stalker, something that can let a zerg assume some kind of fast dt play. So no damage with the dts and then, the zerg saw no expantion and found the proxy warp location. From here, the zerg mass produced roaches with his initial zerglings and roaches + spines and stalled the protoss enough to overproduce it. I think the strategy could have worked if the protoss had hidden his intentions a bit better (like take those extra zealots and pull them back). In short, I dont think the roach warren was what defined the outcome of that game.
Concerning the dt expand question , i never tryed that, and I would be interested to know the answer too.
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On June 17 2011 05:17 Anihc wrote:
The big issue is that even when roaches are completely unmicroed, zealot/archon is still only slightly more cost effective than roaches. You will have to gain some sort of advantage in other ways, such as via upgrades (more like praying that the zerg gets behind in upgrades) or economy (which is also pretty hard to do against zerg). Other protoss compositions based on stalkers and/or colossus rely on forcefields to combat the cost effectiveness of roaches. While forcefields certainly help a chargelot/archon army, they don't help as much because even when forcefielded all roaches can attack, unlike when you forcefield roaches with a stalker and/or colossus army.
I went away from the pure chargelots/archons/sentries army and recently I've been adapting my strat for a different compo, give it a try if you can. This is: chargelots, blink stalkers, archons and immortals. No sentries, no templars/storm, and good upgrades. Chargelots and blink stalkers roughly in equal numbers. I've found it very effective and less sensitive to infestors.
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I use this composition with some Immortals mixed in. It plays like a dream against Zerg. You just need to push before Zerg gets Broodlords because they can be tricky do deal with.
Edit: Great OP by the way
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On June 17 2011 18:38 Nyast wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2011 05:17 Anihc wrote:
The big issue is that even when roaches are completely unmicroed, zealot/archon is still only slightly more cost effective than roaches. You will have to gain some sort of advantage in other ways, such as via upgrades (more like praying that the zerg gets behind in upgrades) or economy (which is also pretty hard to do against zerg). Other protoss compositions based on stalkers and/or colossus rely on forcefields to combat the cost effectiveness of roaches. While forcefields certainly help a chargelot/archon army, they don't help as much because even when forcefielded all roaches can attack, unlike when you forcefield roaches with a stalker and/or colossus army. I went away from the pure chargelots/archons/sentries army and recently I've been adapting my strat for a different compo, give it a try if you can. This is: chargelots, blink stalkers, archons and immortals. No sentries, no templars/storm, and good upgrades. Chargelots and blink stalkers roughly in equal numbers. I've found it very effective and less sensitive to infestors.
lol in order for that to work you will have to have more bases than the zerg. GL doing that. You realize that roaches are extremely cost effective against all gateway units right?
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My friend is adapting this style in his PvZ heavly. I think this style is far too strong vs zerg. If you mix in a couple of DT's into your army and snipe the overseers with archons (not that hard to do, only 5 hits) then you can trash zergs army with just the DT's and he has to invest even more into overseers.
Just watched the replay vs mrbitter2 and you only lost because he caught you out of position.
Archons are just rediculous vs zerg in reality. They have bonus to biological, and an extra range now. Massive doesnt matter too much. Archons are good vs everything zerg has untill T3. And zealots just destroy ultras. Broodlords you need some void rays to take them out.
The only possible way zerg can outplay you is getting 5-6 infestors to delay your push (assuming you don't know how to feedback or misclick your HT into his roachs or something) then massing up alot of broodlords and corruptors for anti air.Banelings would also work pretty well vs the mass zealot if you control well then use roachs to overpower the archons.
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On June 13 2011 06:27 iamke55 wrote:Bumping this because I found a replay of Naniwa doing this strategy: http://www.sc2rep.com/replays/download?id=9682His interpretation seems to take the comments in here into account. He gets a robo for detection and later adds in immortal, researches storm, and gets charge earlier so he can take map control and secure a third base.
I was about to try this out, but then I saw this replay and decided against it. Naniwa had literally 4k resources more in his army and was 20 food ahead of a Roach-based army, but basically lost the fight and was 10 food behind afterwards.
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Sounds cool i would rather get more stalkers than zealots so incase the other has fungal or broods because zealots can just be kited quite easily and hydras will rip any of this apart. Archons can act as zealots and stalkers are back up against anything else. Blink is much more useful than charge. Harass, blink micro and catching broods or armys
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very...amazing. i played toss last game (i play zerg mostly) on ladder in plat, and while i normally get crushed, i just demolished the guy. his muta/ling didnt stand a chance...
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HT and Archon are just the super strong units against zerg. I always have problems with them, even if I managed to scout them out.
My units composition always is mass lings and infestors, it's just tough to deal with these "anti mass" units. Lings last too short for neural parasit-ing the archons. Muta's miss micro will die to storms and archons.
Every time I win against this is that I managed to have my 3rd fully saturated and immediately tech to brood. It seems to be the only way imo
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Address how to deal with infestors and ill give it a shot.
I tried my own version of this and Infestors completely own you.
Hydras and Roaches have more range than Archons and your zealots are stuck in place until they die.
There's feedback but your making archon's so your not gonna have too many templar left to feedback(or your gonna get overrun cuz zealots = fail vs roaches).
I could see a Zerg who isnt prepared and doing a build like ling/muta losing to it. However infestors and roach/hydra(especially all of those combined) are pretty hard counters to this build.
Not saying it wont work, i just wanna know what you would do to deal with it.
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EPT
