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About me: I've been reading these forums for years but I haven't posted at all until now... I've made North America's top 200 list a few times, but I lost a lot of games experimenting with new strategies. This is the best new/original one I've come up with, and it's a lot of fun 
Here is a video showing off a few games I've played with this build:
The general idea of the build is to double-nuke as many Gateways as possible. A nuke does 500 damage, and two are enough to kill a Gateway/Robotics Facility. Pylons and mineral lines are also good targets. As shown in the video, it is pretty effective.
I think nukes are underused in TvP; they are such a small investment (100/100 minerals & gas) and Ghosts also add a lot to your army. Using this build I have been able to consistently defeat almost all Protoss builds, including 4 warpgate pushes, immortal pushes, early colossus, Protoss FE, void rays, phoenix, DTs, etc at the 1700 diamond level.
Update: Since people really liked the first video, here are a couple more:
The build order:
- 10 Supply Depot
- 12 Barracks
- 13 Refinery
- 15 Tech Lab
- 15 Orbital Command
- 15 Reaper (scout, harass... keep him alive)
- 19 Command Center at natural
- 19 Supply Depot
- 19 Lift first barracks, build reactor
- 19 Build second barracks on tech lab
- Orbital command at natural
- Bunker at natural
- Third Barracks, tech lab
- Take remaining Gas at natural and main
- Ghost Academy
- Train 2 ghosts, begin researching cloak immediately
- Build factory when cloak is 50% complete
- Second Ghost Academy, should finish same time as cloak
- Reactor on factory
- Starport (can use for Dropship)
- Build 2 nukes as soon as cloak is finished
At this point you should have 4 Ghosts and lots of Marines and Marauders. 2 Ghosts should have approx 100 energy. Send 2 Ghosts out & time it so the nukes finish when they arrive in the opponent's main. Take your second expo while nuking.
The nukes should fall anywhere between 10 and 12 minutes into the game depending on how fast you are & how much pressure the opponent puts on you.
Tips:
I've found the best midgame transition is to make Hellions from the factory (for zealots) and Vikings (for colossus) & Medivacs from the reactor Starport.
Watch for observers around 6-7 minutes, you can see them moving across the screen and a scan is definitely worth it to kill one. Most players are too busy making immortals or colossi and they don't bother to make another one.
Make sure to scan the opponent's ramp and main for observers & good nuke targets. A pair of Ghosts kills an observer in 2 hits & EMP reveals cloaked units.
If the opponent has a cannon at his ramp, you can make a Dropship from the Starport and fly into his main to nuke it.
Avoid walking by Xel'Naga watch towers you don't control with uncloaked ghosts. Try to maintain control of them, or send 3-4 marines ahead of the Ghosts. You can usually sneak around the back / edge of the map with your Ghosts to avoid detection.
Hotkey your Ghost Academies & build 2 more nukes as soon as you launch the first pair, these will finish in time for you to nuke again.
2 Ghosts 1-shot probes. After killing his gateways you can usually snipe 10-20 probes before you run out of energy or nuke again.
Move your Ghosts in closer than you have to in order to Nuke. Sentries can Force Field to push Ghosts outside their max nuke range, canceling the nuke. Split your Ghosts to avoid losing them both to a Storm.
Nuking Pylons often supply blocks your opponent and creates an opportunity for you to finish him off with your army. If he is supply blocked, he can't make observers and you can continue to nuke him. To keep your opponent from making observers, try to unpower or destroy any Robotics Facilities with your nukes.
When double-nuking the main and expo, try to start them at the same time so the opponent will only hear 1 notification and only react to one nuke. If they are listening to music, it doesn't really matter.
10% of the male population is red-green color blind and can not see the red nuke dot.
Large clusters of pylons and gateways are the best targets. The center point of each building is used to determine the damage, so if you place the nuke carefully, you can fit a lot of gateways and/or pylons in the inner (500 dmg) circle. Any pylons in the 250 dmg ring will die to 2 nukes. The 125 damage ring is a little bit wider than it is tall & fits an extra 2 pylons on each side.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/fY86F.jpg) Nuke damage radius
Below is a list of each Protoss building and the number of nukes required to kill it:
+ Show Spoiler +
1 Nuke:
Pylon 200/200
Photon Cannon 150/150
2 Nukes:
Assimilator 450/450
Gateway 500/500
Forge 400/400
Twilight Council 500/500
Robotics Facility 450/450
Templar Archives 500/500
Dark Shrine 500/500
Robotics Bay 500/500
Fleet Beacon 500/500
3 Nukes:
Cybernetics Core 550/550 (1 EMP for 2 nukes)
Stargate 600/600
4 Nukes:
Nexus 1000/1000
10/25 Update: Here are a few replays, showing the build against a few different Protoss strategies. I included a few losses as well. I would recommend XelNaga51 (Heresy vs MoMooMo) as a standard example of the build. The second replay vs Ocean is the 2nd match from the video & it's a very good game.
8 more:
+ Show Spoiler +
If anyone tries this build, please let me know how it works for you.
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I'd like to see replays. I'm mostly curious how you don't die to any kind of early timing push with an expo that fast and so many add-ons before units.
I love ghosts and nukes so this should be fun to try out
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I think you're going to get nukes nerfed in the next patch with talk like this...
Seriously, I am very interested in some replays if you can post them. Also, nukes ignore armor, correct? I'm pretty sure they do, so you can kill the gateway with exactly 1000 damage. Do you think it's necessary to FE and rush the nukes, or would it be better to start out with a 2 rax expo or a ghost marine opening? I suppose the reaper keeps him contained for a little bit so the FE is safe.
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I love this sound of this, will try.
If nothing else, I have a new favorite youtube video. That was so much fun to watch- is there a chance you could provide the full replays, along with instances of where it failed miserably? (So I can see what works really well against this and avoid it)
EDIT: Considering that zerg makes and uses of a single structure for their stuff, generally clumped to stop dropship sniping, do you think a similar build would work against them?
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LOL...watched the video...and umm....wow...LOL... surprised they didnt scout the academies...and/or made some cannons or more obs.... good stuff though....
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"FE Double Nuke"
Now that's how you catch someone's attention.
I will definitely check this out; replays would be great.
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have you tried EMP then nuke? get the nuke out faster instead of waiting on the second to finish
just wondering
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On October 25 2010 12:46 mikiao wrote:
have you tried EMP then nuke? get the nuke out faster instead of waiting on the second to finish
just wondering
EMPs only do 100 damage to shields, and unless you're still using two ghosts, 75 energy is iffy to throw away if you're relying on Cloak to get the Nuke down.
On October 25 2010 12:21 Senorcuidado wrote:
I think you're going to get nukes nerfed in the next patch with talk like this...
That would be so sad, because just one cannon in the right place / good observing would prevent this from ever going down.
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If the protoss has +1 shields upgrade, do the nukes still kill them?
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Other than the fact that its reliant on sniping the observer, which is still possible, its the best terran strategy that actually has sound logic
I especially Like the one where the protoss DID have cannon/s and an observer, but you still nuked the shit out of him lol
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I would love to see some replays from the start.
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great video, sounds like an awesome strat to give a whirl also.
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That is so completely awesome. I resolve to use nukes more often.
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That was such an awesome video. Can't wait to play some TvP now, def going to try this build. I've always thought Ghosts were way underused in the MU. Thanks for the post Heresy, but can you post some reps, those look like sick games!
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Awesome. Please post replays
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Heh. I was waiting for you to post this.
I ran into Heresy on the ladder when he was just starting this. He killed me twice with this, I beat him once, then I gave up trying to figure out a good way to fight it and cheesed him the next 3 games, with varying success.
Some thoughts about his build:
Despite his low unit count, there is no way to punish him for both not building a Marine before tech lab and expanding off of that one rax.
That fast expand comes before Protoss one gate expo, putting the Terran in a good economic position.
Reaper generally gets to see everything Protoss is doing early game, which allows for a better transition against a 1 gate robo than ghosts, because FE + fast ghosts really delays anything that can handle Colossi.
On maps like Metalopolis, LT, and such, you can keep ghosts out of your bases with a single cannon at each one, forcing him into drop play to nuke stuff.
Spreading your buildings around your main like a smart Protoss (to avoid scans seeing everything) also makes his nukes a lot weaker. A lot of the players in the videos shown just clumped everything. That one guy who kept rebuilding the 7 or 8 pylons around his Nexus was the worst, though.
Some thoughts on Protoss dealing with this:
In general, this is really going to suck. Observers are both expensive and fragile, and with that many ghosts wandering around, Templar are probably a pretty bad choice unless your opponent has horrible emp control or you have the micro to give each Templar separate move orders every time you move your army.
On the subject of observers, they're not really invisible. There's another thread somewhere about how they're easy to see if you shift the camera orientation. Ghosts can detect them after that with EMP, allowing cloaked ghosts to kill Protoss's only mobile detection unit relatively easily. I'm personally not happy about this, but I'm not ready to start crying imbalance yet. If the metagame evolves to the point where Protoss players need to start building cannons when they see a ghost academy, I'll start whining then.
Put the two together, and it's probably a good idea to get 2 robo facilities if you're playing against this, because Observers take forever to build, and you're going to need a lot of observers and colossi to fight this.
Also, I will just observe for Protoss players trying to fight this that his unit composition was almost exclusively GtG, with only vikings and ghosts for anti-air. Maybe Carriers are the way to go against this?
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Thanks guys, I updated my post with some replays.
I'm mostly curious how you don't die to any kind of early timing push with an expo that fast and so many add-ons before units.
The reaper keeps the first zealot and stalker busy and allows you to see his build. The bunker finishes in time to stop any early aggression and the scvs at your natural can repair it. I try to keep the reaper alive / at a watch tower so I can see him coming. Once you get the third barracks you start outproducing him & your income kicks in from the expo, allowing you to get stim / turrets / whatever you need to react to his build. The replays I posted show a few examples of the build stopping early timing pushes.
Also, nukes ignore armor, correct? I'm pretty sure they do, so you can kill the gateway with exactly 1000 damage.
I'm pretty sure nukes ignore armor. I've never had a double nuke not kill a gateway. I'm not sure about shields though, anyone know?
Considering that zerg makes and uses of a single structure for their stuff, generally clumped to stop dropship sniping, do you think a similar build would work against them?
They just buffed zerg building health. Zerg buildings are really good targets though. I find that nuking hatcheries and rally points works the best, because any larva, eggs (building ultras for example), and overlords in the area will die. Overseers are difficult to avoid; it takes a lot of snipes to kill them and they can build one faster than the nuke takes to drop. Vikings work well for support.
In TvT, nuking supply depos is very hard but you can kill 20+ at once with one nuke (Terrans almost always build them in one place). It's hard to do and I've only done it a few times. It requires EMP'ing all orbital commands, or you can wait for him to MULE since you can click on the OC to see how much energy it has. Nukes work very well in tank vs tank stalemates, though.
Nukes definitely work best in TvP.
Kyadytim, thanks for the analysis. Its nice to hear things from a Protoss perspective.
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This thread has convinced me to not put my gateways in a group anymore against terran.
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Which replay shows a defence of the dreaded four gate into the planned nuke strat? DL'd the "standard" one and would like to see how this build stack up against the competition, but time is short.
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