"Carrier Has Arrived" Refreshing New PvZ Strategy

This build starts out with a safe 3 warpgate expansion with sentry's and zealots, however it involves only 4-6 sentrys instead of the 6-10 and is extremely zealot heavy. The main goal of this build is to safely expand and then deny zerg a 3rd base for as long as possible and constantly keeping zerg in their base as much as possible. After puting down the nexus a forge is built and then a 4th gateway and 2 stargates, you must put down 2-3 canons at your natural since observers come extremely late in this build. As soon as the stargates finish 1 voidray is made and then phoenix are made for as long as you wish. I usually go to 5-8 phoenix.

The voidray's main purpose is to snipe zerg's 3rd base that usually is starting or just started at this point. With 1 voidray and 5-6 phoenix you can almost always kill the 3rd hatch, or force a cancel. The phoenix can then go around killing overlords and queens. The usual reaction by zerg if they aren't already going Hydra's is to make a Hydra Den. Now you have 1 of 2 options with this build. You can continue to make phoenix and get into the 10-12 count and just start picking small groups of hydras up, phoenix do amazing damage to Hydras and kill them quite quickly. Or option two is that zerg will put down spore crawlers at his bases, if they put down 1 spore you can just ignore it and pick up drones and queens no problem, so it really makes them put 2-3 which hurts their economy greatly.

The reason this build is so zealot heavy is that all your gas is going into the air units and upgrades, I start +1 air attack and +1 ground weapons around the time my stargates finish. So the gas ends up being sunk into upgrades, air units which leaves a need for a mineral sink. Zealots, Probes, Canons and Nexus are the main mineral sinks.

When comfortable you take your 3rd and make about 3-5 canons at it zoning one side off. At some point before taking your 3rd base put down a twilight council, when it finishes research charge ASAP, this makes all those zealots you made in the early game only semi useless, and start on ground weapons 2 and 3. When the 3rd goes up put down your fleet beacon and a dark shrine and 2 more gateways, and start making carriers out of your 2 stargates, make sure to get the intercepter upgrade and you can start a mothership if you can squeeze it in, I usually only get one towards when I'm at 180-190 food. Also put down your robo when you feel you need an observer.

All the while you should be harrassing with DT's and Phoenix where you can, I usually use DT's to deny zerg a 4th base while sending 1-2 to try and kill drones. Throughout the game upgrades should be going, I usually have atleast 2+/1+ on my air and 3/1+ on my ground each time, but since you can just constantly chronoboost the cybernetics core and one forge you can upgrade constantly and consistently.

Once you get 3 bases rolling you can just harass as much as you want and max out, once maxed add 2 more stargates and 4-6 more gateways.

The main power of this build is that the only good anti air zerg has are queens, hydras and corrupters. Voidrays kill corrupters extremely fast and carriers kill hydras and queens quite fast. Along with tons of zealots and a few stalkers the hydras just disintegrate. When refilling your army all your gas is going to go into carriers so you mostly are warping in zealots unless you have extra gas in which case you can use stalkers.

This build can even hold most early aggression with use of good scouting and voidrays + ff's. Phoenix can also lift 6-8 units and just erase them from the math, which allows you to be safe while harassing.

Stargate play, phoenix, voidray, carrier, zealot

NOTE: this build order is very weird. You can tweak it as much as you want and transition into whatever you want.

-9 Pylon (scout) - I usually pylon block the zerg's natural 95% of the time if I can
-13 Gateway (to form the zealot wall at your ramp with the core)
-14 Gas
-18 Core (when your gateway finishes)
-19 2nd gas after your core
-19-21 Zealot (when you can afford it)
-22-24 Pylon
-(supply counts discontinued from here - keep making probes nonstop and don't be afraid to chronoboost them out as much as you want)
-Warp Gate when your core finishes
-2-3 sentrys after the zealot
-Gateways 2 and 3 around 28-32 supply
-when warp gate is 90%+ done walk down your ramp and plant your nexus
-pylon by your ramp
-take the 2 gasses preemptively when the nexus is about 40-50%
-forge next to the pylon
-2 stargates in a tucked away corner
-4th gateway next to the forge, 2 canons wherever you feel they are needed. Youcan get -a 3rd but it's preferential.
-Once stargates finish, voidray, phoenix
-once you start those two air units +1 ground weapons and +1 air weapons, upgrade +1 ground armor and +1 air armor when they finish
-send your voidray wherever you feel it's most useful, leave your base with phoenix when you have 4, rally the other phoenix to the others and harass, pick up queens 1st
-pylons,probes constantly
-Warp in gateway units when you have the money, zelaots mostly but you can fit stalkers in where you want. When you're done with phoenix production make 4-6 voidrays. Now if the phoenix harass does a ton of damage you canjust go and kill them with the voidray timing, otherwise take your 3rd and plant down a twilight council and fleet beacon
-canons at your 3rd and begin carrier production

This build gains early map control over all Zerg Compositions simply because phoenix keep overlords off the map and can lift units off watchtowers, a zerg in the dark is not nearly as dangerous as one with vision everywhere.

DT's and Phoenix give protoss harassment potential all game and since phoenix are so fast they can harass and still be recalled to defend. Phoenix also act like marauders in the fact that if you try and run from them they will lift the units and kill alot of them for free

Hydras - Extremely slow, and fragile, even if someone were to push using hydras, well placed forcefields and voidrays + phoenix lift can easily defend.

Corrupters - Zerg must have a metric ton of these to beat carrier, voidray, stalker. Since zealots just draw fire while everything else kills corrupters.

Queens - Only viable against 1-2 voidrays, phoenix negate them almost completely as anti air.

Mutalisks - Phoenix just shred these, it's not even worth trying.

From there, notice:

Zerg can't really make a good attack
Hydra - Too slow and fragile
Queen - Too slow and phoenix have usually killed 4-5 of them already
Corrupters - quite slow, don't really do the job well enough
Mutalisks - No chance against 2 stargate phoenix

Phoenix can literally just kill infinite queens, overlords, drones and run away since they are so fast, while DT's add a late game option

You force Hydras or spore crawlers or the zerg loses, simply put.

Since it uses the 3 gate expand, you can use the same strategies as your colossus strategy to defend 1 base all ins, and it can defend early roach pressure with void rays and phoenix, it can defend vs ling + hydra pushes with zealots, ff's, voidrays and pheonix.

Here's some basic principles:
1) You must be as active as possible with the phoenix to fully utilize them
2) Do not be afraid to build zealots, they soak up a TON of damage and they stall
3) Do not forget upgrades, the forge and core should always be upgrading
4) Once Carriers are out, you are in control, carriers are quite underestimated, unknown in SC2

Carriers are better than colossus for a couple reasons as an end game unit:

1) 6+ colossus become redundant as they cannot usually form a good enough concave. Carriers just become exponentially better as their numbers increase

2) Carriers have massive range just like colossus, but the intercepters wreak havoc with the targeting AI, and Zealots keep Hydras from crawling forward to hit the carriers.

3) Zerg T3 CANNOT ATTACK AIR UNITS!