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I am finding that cheese strategies generally don't occur at the platinum level. Players are good enough that these strategies are easily beaten so most people give up on trying them. I am also noticing that platinum has gravitated towards more greedy eco heavy starting builds. I have been getting frustrated playing against this, particularly against zerg. Zerg saturates so fast and I have a lot of trouble putting on effective early punishment with spine crawlers queens and roaches turtling up so fast. Admittedly, I'm not a very good player yet. My micro is poor in general and when I focus hard on micro I slack off on macro and still fall behind. I have found that toe to toe I generally lose to platinum players if I allow them to do their regular build orders without harassment.
I have started doing very early cannon pushes against greedy zerg who open with a hatch and a late pool and I have won almost 100% of the time. I can beat them even if they scout what I am doing, even when they stick a worker on my scouting probe. I throw down a pylon against a wall to prevent surround and stream in zealots. If they take workers off mineral line I've pretty much won... I can keep workers busy all day trying to destroy pylons. pylons are cheap and I get most of the minerals back anyway when I cancel right before it gets destroyed. Eventually the player is going to be faced with the option of attacking the zealots streaming into his base or attacking the buildings as the zealots butcher them.
This cheese has been so effective that I started doing it in all matchups if the oponent is going hard early eco. In fact, I have noticed that my opponents delay army production or FE almost every game. As a result I have gotten into the top 8 platinum bracket just by punishing eco heavy starting builds.
This strategy is actually a lot of fun and has been great practice for building up my micro. Games can be really close and intense, although the opponents are usually pretty pissed when they lose to this. It has also been pretty good practice maintaining my macro as I am putting on the pressure. I have had success transitioning from my cannon push to void rays or expanding everywhere while the oponent is freaking out and trying to mass units.
I kind of have mixed feeling about the strat. Sometimes I win outright and the opponent rages and calls me names, but dude, If I let you fast expand and delay your production for the first 5 minutes its going to be a 45 minute game that I usually lose. Cannon push games that go longer are soooo much fun to play. Army sizes never get too large and it stays pretty intense all the way through. I have noticed that when I lose a long game with big armies I don't always know what I did wrong. Even worse is how quickly large armies are able to obliterate eachother, some minor positioning mistake or hitting the wrong key results in a game loss.
Standard early gateway harass = fail because zealots are so easy to kite. cannons are a great back up and also allows more of my minerals to get into their face sooner rather than slowly streaming in. I know standard build pressure works... but its really really close. Ive watched too many pro pvz games where the early harass gets blocked by queen/ling/spine and the immortal push just cant get there soon enough to bust the FE. I'm not saying there is an imbalance here, just that I find it a heck of a lot harder to deal with if I dont punish with cannons. Also... I often get my ass beat if I try to cannon against faster builds. I really have to be on top of my macro or playing against someone worse than me to try this against someone playing more standard.
Anyway here are some replays vs all matchups
PvZ ... split their forces = win
PvZ all in cannons
PvP transition to void rays. He repells the cannons but is still put behind
PvP using smoke screen to hide canons even though he scouted me
PvT Kind of a sloppy game but transition to mass expo
PvT I feel kind of bad about this one, but I was practicing cannons anyway. No hard feelings mate
Let me know what you guys think. Could this cheese possibly be a respectable response to FE// late production or am I just a jackass? Respond/Flame away
Edit: It just occured to me a lot of people are going to say all you have to do is rush my base with some units and its gg for me. I dont think i needed to do this in any of the replays I posted but a few quick tips:
#1 Forges are amazing: they have more hp than a gateway and build faster than any protoss building. Some games where they send army to kill my probes I can win just by filling my choke with forges. They build so fast that they accumulate a lot of shield/hp quickly... gives me time to build more units or throw a cannon behind the forge.
#2 Build your producion at the choke for your natural, it gives zealots a shorter walking distance and also makes their scout think you're going for a fast expo not a rush. Also since you only need one gateway he wont be expecting what is essentially the equivalent of a 2gate crono rush
#3 Build first pylon and cannon out of sight range if he's not harassing your scout then expand toward one of the gas nodes. Starve the gas and he will have a harder time busting your cannons with just tier 1. If he is scouting you throw the pylon really close to mineral line. Try to get him to pull workers. He will be sending his early units to kill pylon while your zealots streaming in can take out buildings at his choke. Vs zerg always get your zeals to the canon/pylon as soon as possible.
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A rush works against a fast expand? wow, new to me
discuss
User was warned for this post
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so you're complaining that cheese is boring, yet you do it every game?
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Ignoring the above sarcasm, I think this is a pretty good OP. There's a fine line between an econ build that can defend against early pressure and one that cannot. I think most people are still figuring out exactly where that line is. Right now though, I agree, in most games it seems like players are just haphazardly powering early. Even the high level zerg tourney play I've been watching lately there's been a lot of early expanding and powering resulting in an abrupt loss following a solid P/T timing push.
Not saying FE never works, I just think there's a lot more games that need to be played before we find out exactly when it works.
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why should you cheese, if you know your macro/micro is better? usually i dont cheese, cause most of the time i think i wont have problems in mid-/lategame if i get into that phase without disadvantage.
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Interesting. I'll watch the reps shortly.
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is their such thing as chees at the pro level? would you "cheese" your way to victory for a couple grand?
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Actually I think that pylons give you 100% return on cancel. At least I once played a zvp, I killed my opponent's base including the Nexus. He ran around placing pylons and canceling them. Later I watched the replays and he definitely got the full 100 minerals on cancel. This was a few patches ago though.
Anyways, many players are trying to figure out how much they can get away with. Usually the more economic build wins in SC2 unless the timing window is large enough to allow the other player to attack. Then some people like you will emerge and seize those timing windows. Figuring this stuff out is necessary for a better understanding of the game (for the community as a whole as well as the individual). Be happy that you are currently winning a lot. Tomorrow you might be the one who loses all the time 
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it seems like you could keep a zerg on one base but all they really need to do to stop a cannon rush is throw down spine crawlers...
and it doesn't sound too cheesy.... If you scout they're doing an eco build and put early pressure on with cannons and zealots it sounds pretty reasonable as long as you can protect your main. Cannon shit was always called stupid because you open forge pylon, if they kill your first cannon you're way behind and it's pretty much over. Nor is it hard to do that if the player scouts his main.
Teching to void rays seems like a nice transition since they're more mobile than immortals and the zerg will probably just be going mass roaches to break your cannon contain.
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I suggest you start going 10 pylon 11 gate against zerg. If you chrono boost 2-3 zealots out there he will have to mass lings instead of drones. While you are microing against his lings and hatchery you keep teching and building pylons/probes and you will often times have a vastly superior economy as zergs that get pressured often overproduce lings.
After this you can transition into almost anything. I like the void ray transition if I did alot of damage or a 4-5 gate timing is also great. Just take advantage of the fact that he made lings early and force him to make anti air or even more lings or roaches when he wants to drone up.
If he is a smart player he will see the early gate and steal your second gas. If you ignore it you can harass him and expand with cannons or sometimes only units. If you kill it well then you have to play standard from that point and his 25 mineral loss is probably about equal to the mins and tech time you lose from a 10 pylon 11 gate so it doesn't matter that much but I definately preffer going on with the harass.
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On April 30 2010 02:28 DuneBug wrote:
it seems like you could keep a zerg on one base but all they really need to do to stop a cannon rush is throw down spine crawlers...
Until the hatch is finished you can't put spine crawlers down ( no spare creep to do it on ) - and while the hatch is building the vision is extremely limited ( easily allowing cannon placement out of vision ).
Interestingly though zerg could put a hatch cancel down at the natural's choke - creep tumour it and then put crawlers down before expanding - if they really wanted to and thought the cost was worthwhile.
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I only ever get cheesed by toss players. (I play toss). it is really annoying.
Stopping offensive cannon/gate in your base is incredibly counter-intuitive and really really annoying. On some maps the toss can put the pylon below the plateau of your base then build Gateways inside your base off its power. That seems virtually impossible to stop unless you notice the gate within 3 seconds of it being started.
Even when I scout on 8 I don't necessarily find out what he is doing until it is too late to do an optimal counter build. I guess I can be paranoid and just explore my entire base every game, but then I have a disadvantage versus a non-cheese player. Gah.
Pulling workers is pretty much the worst thing you can do. In PvP I end up just 9/10 gating every single game because of this on smaller maps. Then the other Toss'es that don't cheese complain for some reason about me doing 9/11 gate builds and call me cheesy. PvP is such ridiculously escalated inter-racial violence. There are no winners TT
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Congratulations on abusing the metagame! If you don't mix in standard play, though, you will be a low win % player when everyone learns to play 5% safer
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I baneling bust Terran on kulas because I think terran has too much of an advantage on that map. Mostly I just think the FE location is so terrible that you need to do something like that rather than take such a awful expo.
Also I got proxy gate rushed the other day.
I'm in Platinum
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When you FE you are taking the risk of being pressured early. If you get cheese because you FE'ed, then its your bad, no one else's.
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Zerg has to FE vs P or T, unless you do some kinda bling bust
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On April 30 2010 02:41 maleorderbride wrote:
I only ever get cheesed by toss players. (I play toss). it is really annoying.
Stopping offensive cannon/gate in your base is incredibly counter-intuitive and really really annoying. On some maps the toss can put the pylon below the plateau of your base then build Gateways inside your base off its power. That seems virtually impossible to stop unless you notice the gate within 3 seconds of it being started.
Even when I scout on 8 I don't necessarily find out what he is doing until it is too late to do an optimal counter build. I guess I can be paranoid and just explore my entire base every game, but then I have a disadvantage versus a non-cheese player. Gah.
Pulling workers is pretty much the worst thing you can do. In PvP I end up just 9/10 gating every single game because of this on smaller maps. Then the other Toss'es that don't cheese complain for some reason about me doing 9/11 gate builds and call me cheesy. PvP is such ridiculously escalated inter-racial violence. There are no winners TT
Lol I tend to agree. I usually scout with my 9/10 pylon building probe and if I don't see any gates when i get to their base, I assume the worst and start scouting my base like mad. I always early 2 gate vs toss with a possible 3rd/4th added on later. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside :D
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I don't see it as platinum players being lazy who go for heavy econ builds. The best builds in sc1 are those that can let you easily defend your FE and come into the late game with a high economic advantage. And thats pretty much what you said the zerg FE build is doing conisdering you are "having a hard time harassing".
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On April 30 2010 02:46 Shambler wrote:
Zerg has to FE vs P or T, unless you do some kinda bling bust
I win plenty of games without FE as Zerg. And by FE I mean expand right after or right before pool. It's not impossible to play without an expansion. Like the OP said you can't always FE you will be punished if you run up against someone like him.
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On April 30 2010 02:53 ManiacTheZealot wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2010 02:46 Shambler wrote:
Zerg has to FE vs P or T, unless you do some kinda bling bust I win plenty of games without FE as Zerg. And by FE I mean expand right after or right before pool. It's not impossible to play without an expansion. Like the OP said you can't always FE you will be punished if you run up against someone like him.
Dito. I fe only rarely, usually I do something like pool gas queen lair expand. Works like a charm.
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EPT
