[D] 'New' PvZ Phoenix-heavy style

http://www.justin.tv/ignproleague/b/291716219 Game starts 1:54:10 and continues on part 2

Crevasse is the map which is very important. The spawns are vertical on the right hand side, but Crevasse is still very large. Kiwikaki sees Strifecro expand at the third instead of at the in base natural. Kiwikaki decides to go nexus first at his natural. This makes sense as Kiwikaki won't get terribly behind if Strifecro takes a fast third (Which he opts to as he can expand to his in base natural) and Kiwikaki can defend his entire base against any pressure with a wall by the ramp and destructible rocks.

The build is 18nex, 18 pylon,18forge, 19gate, 21 assimilator. The nexus could have been planted at 17, but a lot of players have different timing for nexus first so it is very possible that this was intentional. Plenty of probes are coming out and two cannons come after the gas and keep the wall safe. A cybercore goes up at 27. Again I think he has been just a little late on some of these structures, but I'm not a pro so there may be a reason to some of these timings.

Kiwikaki continues to make lots of probes, gets a second gas before his core finishes, and gets warpgate as soon as the core finishes. Kiwikaki begins plus one weapons quickly after warp gates. It should be noted that lots of probes are coming out with chronos still going to them despite warp gate and plus one being researched. 5 gates are placed down before the 50 food mark for Kiwikaki to bring him up to six gates.

2 stargates get thrown down simultaneously and then ground armor after that. The gates start making a mix of units, but there are a lot of zealots. The stargates get chronoed to produce tons of pheonixes. Kiwikaki wants to expand here but when it gets denied he instead makes zealots to spend his money temporarily. After fighting back the lings Kiwikaki does plant the third again while getting a robo. This happens just before Kiwikaki hits 100 food.

Strifecro engages at the third with roaches and lings, but the pheonixes keep a huge chunk of the roaches lifted while the whole army of Kiwikaki just blasts the units on the ground with the help of two photon cannons and good force fields. The +attack speedlings were getting ripped apart by the +attack zealots which were present in pretty decent numbers.

Lots of pheonixes are still coming out, a few cannons are used to defend the third. The robo makes mostly observes, but a few immortals are used (I think he consistly keeps a couple throughout the game). Once kiwikaki's third gets up and running and he has both gas at the third, Kiwikaki starts making a twilight council and gets plus 1 air attack. Once the twilight council comes up charge and plus 2 ground attack start getting researched. It is still pretty impressive how many probes Kiwikaki is producing.

Strifecro again engages the third of Kiwikaki but it is a large group of hydras with too few speedlings to tank and almost no roaches. The speedlings are again getting two shot by the upgraded zealots. The pheonixes kill huge quantities of hydras (I think the upgraded air attack helps lower the number of shots they need to kill a hydra). The interesting part here is that the high hydra dps gets split trying to kill pheonixes and zealots (Charge isn't done yet). Both of these units usually die too quickly to really hurt hydras, but once they start dealing damage the hydras just melt due to the good dps of both units and especially due to the paper tissue health of the hydras.

After that failed hydra push Kiwi starts templar tech and charge finishes. He gets his fourth relatively soon after templar tech starts and also begins +3 attack. Kiwikaki begins building archons around the time his fourth finishes. The next attack from StrifeCro (Again at the third of Kiwikaki) contains mostly hydra but this time there are a few more roaches and speedlings. The thin roach line melts to archons and the few immortals kiwi has produced. After that it is just chargelots and the huge pheonix ball melting the hydras.

Kiwi's economy at this point is insane and he can just make mass quantities of archons or whatever he wants and his units are insanely well upgraded. His next push smashes through StrifeCro's stuff to end the game.

Speculation/End Thoughts

The only thing I didn't track was the gateway count past the 6gates in the early game. I think the gateway count and pheonix count are pretty important to keep track of as Kiwikaki could die easily if he lacked production. However, the upgrades and insane probe production seemed to be the most important tool here to keep the build effective as you need both to make zealots work well, to support enough gateways to protect yourself against zerg pushes, and to make expensive units such as pheonixes and archons viable to produce and fight with.

I think you can justify the high gateway count as you need them to build large unit counts in quick bursts. Kiwikaki definitely seemed to spend his money on anything but gateway units when he could do so without dieing. Also, Painuser seemed to think that infestors are the answer to this style, but I really beg to differ. Sniping infestors with pheonixes is way easier than vice versa. Pheonixes are hard to pin down with fungal and as long as you aren't surprised by infestors they are also easy to keep spread out (They attack while moving come on!).

Building infestors and hydras at the same time would be necessary just to kill the pheonixes, but at that point the zerg won't have enough gas. Catspajamas did seem to make fun of that fact that getting spire tech would take too long, but honestly that should not be the concern. I think the appropriate response is spire tech as corruptors own pheonixes and set you up for brood lords in the late game which will do well if you have successfully taken air control (Ultras don't help very much against zealot/archon anyways).

Another thing that would be important against this style is to get the right upgrades. Plus melee attack is the wrong upgrade. Lings are going to melt without armor and are very bad against high zealot counts and totally worthless once archons show up. The zerg has to be johnny on the spot with his upgrades as they are what stop the Protoss units from being cost effective. In short, make sure your roaches get lots of attack and armor upgrades and that your corruptors don't get out upgraded either as they need to be extremely efficient or you will have too many and just die to the ground army. Armor is important when you fight zealots and pheonixes which attack twice in one firing animation.