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There have been a lot of great guides about how to gain an advantage in the early game, how to transition into mid-game, and how to wind up a Protoss sledgehammer and drop it on Terran's back at 18 minutes. But what happens when you're 20 minutes in and Terran's not dead? I'm going to analyze a few examples from a pro game and some of my own games to explore key subtleties for winning a PvT after 20 minutes. Hopefully, this guide will have tips for players across the skill spectrum. I know I learned some cool tricks from analyzing Parting's templar play.
To start, there's a common notion that the Protoss army is stronger while the Terran army is more mobile, so it's Protoss's responsibility to sit back, perfect their composition, and track Terran down to force big fights. That frame of mind is counter-productive. First, it's often not true. If Terran has time to get 3/3 upgrades, build a bunch of ghosts, vikings, medivacs, and replace some SCVs with MULES for a super-army, he's going to crush you in a straight fight. Secondly, the "which army wins if we ram them into each other" shouldn't matter at all if you play well.
The four pillars of late game PvT are:
Map vision which tells you where his army is, what direction it's moving, how many bases he has, and gives you advance warning for drops.
Mobility which lets you attack where he isn't and defend where he attacks. Pylons, warpgates and warp prisms give Protoss a huge mobility advantage over Terran in late game.
Positioning which lets you stay alive when you're behind and win engagements when you're ahead. Nail storms as Terran moves through chokes, and you stay alive even when you're 80 food behind.
Space control which allows you to limit Terran's mobility through key points. You can lock down zones of the map to defend efficiently or to punish Terran's positioning.
To illustrate the importance of these points, I'm going to start with a brilliant play from one of Parting's replays. In the following image, Parting finds himself in a situation where he's behind in army size, but is able to effectively use a combination of map vision, positioning, mobility and space control to destroy a Terran expansion for free.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/SKKiL.jpg)
Here, you can see Parting is down about 30 supply in army size, and both he and the Terran are establishing their fourth bases. Parting sees that the Terran is pushing his larger army towards Parting's fledgling expansion. If Parting were to sit idly with his army at his fourth nexus, there's a good chance he'd lose the battle and the game immediately. Instead, Parting takes advantage of his excellent map vision to force a trade where he knows he'll come out ahead.
Upon seeing the Terran force begin pushing, Parting immediately swings his army of zealots and archons toward the left side of the map staging a counter-attack. At the same time, he advances the four templar forward to control the ramp on the right side of the map (highlighted by a yellow line). He counter-attacks on the left while using just 4 units to control the space on the right. As it happens, Terran doesn't have sufficient map vision to see this development, so he presses the attack.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/UhegM.jpg)
As you can see, Parting's army is moving to counter-attack down the left side of the map while two of his templar have moved forward to drop the first two storms. Parting will use the templar two at a time, and he spreads them so they can't both be hit by a single EMP. This play makes it almost impossible for Terran to deny storms. By moving the templar foward, Terran will be surprised by their position. And by sending them spread out two at a time, Terran needs four quick snipes to deny the storms. Instead, he eats the full storms.
Then, the next two templar (which were hidden to the right) show up and Terran eats two more storms.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QqYDw.jpg)
At this point, a third of Terran's army is dead, the rest is in red health, and Terran recognizes that he'll be cleaned up by Parting's defensive reinforcements if he continues pushing. And now instead of threatening Parting's fourth base, Terran's army is simply grossly out of position for defense. While Terran's forces hustle home, Parting kills the fourth base and forces a lift at the third base. At this point, Parting simply pulls back, having turned a small deficit into a huge advantage without a direct army engagement.
So we know from that example how powerful templar can be for controlling space, and that we can use map vision to leverage that space control to gain an advantage in the game. Parting's four templar play to control the ramp was a creative and technical space control mechanism. Here's a less sublte way to control space that even noobs like me can pull off consistently:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WR6vo.jpg)
You might see that and think, "Oh, that's standard base defense," and you'd be right, but with 3 cannons and 2 templar, you can block off any choke you want. Using just four supply (four supply!) you can make it tremendously inefficient for Terran to move through that space. The cannons prevent cloaked ghosts or marauder hit squads from threatening your templar, and the templar punish a full army bull rush. This method is noob-proof in that it works even when you screw up and don't have map vision.
Getting back to map vision and mobility, there are many other ways to leverage these resources to gain advantages. One of the best and easiest ways to increase your mobility is to put a pylon on the left side of the map and a pylon on the right side of the map, as close as you can get them to Terran's bases without them being spotted too easily. A warp prism bumps that mobility edge up another notch. As soon as you have options to warp in on either side of the map, you can do cute little tricks like warping some zealots in on the right:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/thqkM.jpg)
And then hitting him on the left when he sends his army over to deal with your decoy.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1uiyW.jpg)
These tactics are simple but effective. Remember that Terran can only kite in one spot on the map at a time and chargelots rock unmicroed MM. If there are three fights happening at the same time, kiting is only happening at one of those fights, which means you're kicking ass in at least two of them.
And if you augment the "hitting where he's not" tactic with a little map vision (controlling your opponent's watch tower for example) you can drop in his main (or if you're using pylons instead of a prism, send a pack of zealots at his third) as soon as he pushes out. I dropped DT's here because I had the tech and I knew he didn't have detection in his mineral lines, but chargelots would have worked great too. As it turned out, this Terran had tunnel vision on controlling his main army, so either drop cargo would have been game-winning.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/qGjvA.jpg)
It's worth noting that in those examples, I chose to attack with small forces while controlling my side of the map with my main army. This is in contrast to the Parting example I showed above where he attacked with his main army while controlling his side of the map with a small force. The right choice will be specific to the situation, but to get everything out of your late-game PvT, you need to set yourself up to be able to make that choice.
In the example where I dropped DT's, I failed to give myself the option of attacking with my army while controlling space with a small force to punish a counter-attack. Instead of keeping my army back at my third, I should have positioned it forward giving me the option of attacking down the right side of the map. Along the left lane, I could have stationed a handful of templar, perhaps with a few cannons forcing heavy losses on Terran if he chose to attack down that path.
This set-up would protect the attack paths toward both my third and fourth bases, freeing me to be aggressive with my army on the right side of the map toward Terran's third and eventually his fourth. It would also tend to funnel his army toward the action on the right side of the map, which limits his ability to deal with my mobility on the left side of the map with my warp prism.
Try watching your own games or pro games and thinking about how map vision, mobility, positioning and controlling space work together to determine who wins the game. Commentators focus so much on unit counts and compositions, but those are such tiny pieces of the puzzle. What matters most is who has more information and who better uses that information to score small victories before that final fight.
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Wow, I like this guide and I think I'll come back to it more. I'll try some strategies in here in some practice games and hopefully they work wonders (which I already have a feeling they will).
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" Remember that Terran can only kite in one spot on the map at a time"
I dreaded the day that you dear protoss would figure this out :D Well done. The high level concepts in the PartinG replay are crucial and I wish somebody would do it for Terran.
I think the same concept is consistently executed by Taeja in TvZ, dropping in one place to displace Zerg and then attacking CREEP (!!!! it's the secret!!) to consistently control information.
Going to write something about this concept  ))
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Recently I've been doing this kind of stuff as well. Get a few pylons in some spots to look for drops (yes it works) and to warp in zlots/DT's. Also I've been doing a By.Rain / HerO warp prism style with 2 HT and 2 zlots, storm the mineral line with 2 storms, merch to archon and warp in a few zealots. Works quite well.
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oh wow thank you so much. I kind of expected this to be another "deathball and pray" unit-comp guide but this kind of mechanics guide is SO useful at any level. I generally dont read guides if they have a lot of text (I have a small attention span haha) but I read every word here!
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Italy12246 Posts
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I'm really glad you wrote this guide. As you noted, many commentators and players alike focus too much on build orders and timings, which become completely irrelevant when you get to mid-late game. The "management" part of mid-late game is so crucial, but often ignored. I'd like to add some additional tips I utilize among your 4 pillars:
Map vision: Observers. Make them. A lot of them. If you're a player who typically only makes 1-2 observers each game, and doesn't bother to remake them after the terran scans and kills them, try making 3-4. I regularly chrono out 3 observers every game as my first 3 robotics units. And then when I lose them, I prioritize remaking them over colossus. Put them along attack routes, drop routes, everywhere. The game will become so much easier for you when you have a virtual maphack.
Mobility: In addition to pylons all over the map, get in the habit of overmaking gateways so that you can instantly create an army anywhere on the map. This can also help you set up some nice flanks, or allow you to just drop 20 zealots into his main and wipe out his production (barracks/depots) even when it's mined out and you can't do any economic damage.
Also, I want to stress kcdc's point about multiple battles at once. Anytime you're about to attack, or an engagement is about to occur, you should be warping in zealots/dts somewhere else on the map, whether it's next to a pylon near his 3rd/4th, or via a warp prism into his main. It literally only takes 1 second, but has the potential to do so much damage - shift clickclickclickclick, then drag select and shift click into the mineral line.
Positioning: This is difficult especially in the heat of battle, but it's extremely important. As your armies are dancing around each other, keep your stalkers and colossus near each other, and zealots separately so that zealots don't get in the way of stalkers chasing vikings and stalkers don't get in the way of zealots charging into the terran army. Always know where the enemy vikings are, and position stalkers in between your colossus and the vikings. Keep your colossus away from cliffs and water where it's more difficult for stalkers to protect them. This means that when you're walking between your natural and 3rd on daybreak or cloud kingdom, make sure they're not hugging the cliff/edge of the path. When your armies engage, DON'T immediately engage with your zealots. Wait for the MMM ball to get in range of your colossus before engaging with zealots. The terran wants to kite your zealots while being out of range of your colossus, and if you just a-move your zealots into the terran and forget about them, the terran will end up killing all your zealots while avoiding colossus fire while your colossus are dying to vikings. If terran runs out of range of your colossus, PULL your zealots back and wait for him to get in range of your colossus again before engaging with zealots again. Meanwhile, always target fire vikings with your stalkers and don't let them just a-move. So pretty much when the engagement happens you want to quickly shift-click target a bunch of vikings with your stalkers, a-move with the colossus, and then focus on controlling/dancing your zealots with the MMM ball. Use blink to reposition your stalkers so that they're not in the way of your zealots and/or so that they're not directly being killed by MMM.
Another note, when the terran gets a million ghosts and you can't land any storms, you should be colossus heavy (4-6+ colossus), and focus on storming the vikings. You'll never get a storm off the main MMM ball, but it's much easier to get storms off the vikings and they will actually die pretty quickly (especially if you also have archons) and then at least you'll still have colossus against MMM.
Space control: HT all over the map. You never want more than 3-4 templar in a single group, because it just takes too much effort to keep re-spreading them out. A lot of times in late game I don't even have any templar hotkeyed. Everytime the terran pushes forward, he should have to go through 1 templar at a time, eating storms or feedbacks if he's not careful. If he is careful, you only lose 1 HT at a time. Be active with your group of blink stalkers so you can snipe ghosts who stray too far forward to snipe your HT, or small groups of MM that try to snipe your HT.
Also related, while it's not about space control but rather how to use HT, always try to "attack" the terran army like kcdc mentioned with 1 or 2 HTs at a time. It's easy for terran to deal with stationary HT after he scan where they are, but oftentimes you can take the terran by surprise by just attacking with 1 or 2 storms, by themselves, at a time.
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Do you have any plans on perhaps writing something on PvZ or PvP lategame?
Because I'm sure those would be interesting as well^^
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Italy12246 Posts
From monk's op in the protoss help me thread:
How do I deal an opponent once he gets infestor ling/roach broodlord?
- Hide Spoiler -
Note: this section will be expanded upon heavily in the future.
^_^ blue posters are so awesome
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Canada13403 Posts
Ah, so so good. Thanks for the post I look forward to reading it many more times in the future
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Beautifully done; this guide is exactly the sort of thought-provoking, high-level strategy that I love to sink my teeth into.
Speaking from the Terran point of view, this sort of thing is exactly the beautiful game that I love to play with decent Protoss. Not this 'box it and kill him' style, but a constant, rapid-fire dance of various forces searching for a minute edge in positioning. I think as Terran the next level of late-game planning and strategy is sinking some excess minerals into partial turret rings, as well as forward Sensor Towers to give maximum lead time on stopping any drops.
Regarding the HT/Colossi positioning, any Protoss player that masters the basics of what Parting is doing there will do incredibly well against Terrans who do not have balls of steel. As much as Terran requires high combat APM in order to maximize efficiency, I believe that more and more the game will favour Terrans who can hold that in reserve and be patient until the PERFECT moment arises. The number of games I've seen lost by Terrans due to a single impatient strike which runs head-on into a Colossi/HT trap of some kind (or neglects the Warp Prism/DT defense) is just staggering.
Bravo, OP!
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On September 20 2012 06:20 CrazyF1r3f0x wrote:
Do you have any plans on perhaps writing something on PvZ or PvP lategame?
Because I'm sure those would be interesting as well^^
Sure, those are easy.
PvP: Spread your colossi to limit splash damage from your opponent's colossi. The easiest way is to step one colossus forward so that the AI targets that one. And since it's a step forward, the lateral splash from your opponent's colossi doesn't hit your other colossi. Boom, game won.
PvZ: Oh, he got infestors and broodlords? Hope he's not good enough to spread them out against vortexes.
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give me your honest opinion kcdc. Does it favour toss heavily in pvt late game stages?
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On September 20 2012 07:09 j.k.l wrote:
give me your honest opinion kcdc. Does it favour toss heavily in pvt late game stages?
It really depends on the players and the map. There's so much potential for small skirmishes and multitasking overload that the game can always be decided by out-playing your opponent.
But each race does have their advantages. I think Toss is a little more mobile with their warp-in mechanic, but Terran can use medivac mobility pretty damn effectively as well. And while Toss AoE damage is scary, a perfect Terran deathball should beat a perfect Toss deathball if both sides control well and focus 100% on the battle.
Vikings+scans to pick off observers, and then running in cloaked ghosts to EMP everything is so strong.
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On September 20 2012 07:19 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2012 07:09 j.k.l wrote:
give me your honest opinion kcdc. Does it favour toss heavily in pvt late game stages? It really depends on the players and the map. There's so much potential for small skirmishes and multitasking overload that the game can always be decided by out-playing your opponent. But each race does have their advantages. I think Toss is a little more mobile with their warp-in mechanic, but Terran can use medivac mobility pretty damn effectively as well. And while Toss AoE damage is scary, a perfect Terran deathball should beat a perfect Toss deathball if both sides control well and focus 100% on the battle. Vikings+scans to pick off observers, and then running in cloaked ghosts to EMP everything is so strong.
do people still do that? at least 2-3 extra obs behind that army, you should be able to just a - move with your existing army and crush that kind of comp. I do not believe that a perfect terran army can beat a toss army. The deadliest splash damage combined with instant reinforcements, mothership, and archons, nothing beats that.
can you for example give me a perfect terran army and how it should look like?
drops in the late game shouldn't be a problem for toss. Hts, and DTS should clean up pretty well.
EDIT: btw i play mostly protoss and zerg.
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I'm silver league with Terran, so I'm not gonna be much help to you. Try analyzing pro games where Terrans win after 20 minutes.
For drops, I'll say that when Toss is on 5 bases, there's always a vulnerability somewhere. You don't even need to drop--just run small forces everywhere and chip away. Also, putting missile turrets and bunkers or PFs up at remote bases goes a long way toward saving your APM against zealot and DT harass.
As for deathball vs deathball, it really doesn't matter much which side is stronger because deathballing is not an optimal strategy for either player. Out-multitask your opponent and you'll win.
Also, it's worth noting that in the Parting game I analyzed in the OP, the Terran actually came back and won.
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some players get shield upgrades and others don't. what is your opinion on this??
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On September 20 2012 06:31 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2012 06:20 CrazyF1r3f0x wrote:
Do you have any plans on perhaps writing something on PvZ or PvP lategame?
Because I'm sure those would be interesting as well^^ Sure, those are easy. PvP: Spread your colossi to limit splash damage from your opponent's colossi. The easiest way is to step one colossus forward so that the AI targets that one. And since it's a step forward, the lateral splash from your opponent's colossi doesn't hit your other colossi. Boom, game won. PvZ: Oh, he got infestors and broodlords? Hope he's not good enough to spread them out against vortexes.
ahahaha so true~
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On September 20 2012 07:51 INTquovadis wrote:
some players get shield upgrades and others don't. what is your opinion on this??
Get them after you finish the other upgrades. Don't get them if you don't have much economy.
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It's super important to realize that you don't have to attack just because you're maxed, or just because you feel pressure to attack. Get into good positioning, starve out the Terran, but you don't need to go into a better positioned foe "just because."
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EPT
