[G] Gate-Expands in PvZ

This guide is meant to give an overview of the defenses necessary for various zerg all-ins you'll encounter when playing a gate-expand opening. I wrote this guide because of the, in my eyes, poor quality of the information out there regarding gate-expands. Much of the information in this guide is based on first-hand experience. I'm a diamond-level Protoss on the NA WOL and HOTS Beta servers. I've been using the gate-expand almost exclusively for about a year since I first heard about the YufFE. I've successfully pulled off defenses of all-ins against opponents as high as Top 8 masters. These are my methods for holding all-ins. Although they may not be the only methods, I know from lots of practice that they work. They're designed to win the game quickly, and move on to the next one because I don't like wasting time against cheese.

Gate-expands are as complex as FFE in their execution, and proper scouting is very critical. As a result, I don't recommend this build for anyone below platinum. At gold and below, their timings will frequently be so far off that you often won't be able to get a good read. At higher levels, if your opponent does something stupid and you can't read them, you can make up for it by having much better mechanics, but in the lower leagues you'll be screwing up your macro just as often, and it won't put the opponent at a significant disadvantage.

9 Pylon
13 Gateway
16 Pylon (Scout)
18 Nexus
Zealot
1 or 2 Gas
Cybernetics Core
Gateway or Forge
Gateway or Pylon (whichever is necessary to complete the wall-off)

This guide isn't going to be too concerned with specific build orders, but every build order I've done is some variation of the above. I will note that this is a gate-expand, and not a gate-core-expand, 2-gate expand, 3-gate expand, gate-forge expand or gate-core-tech-expand. Part of the problem with bad information is from lumping all these different build orders together. This guide assumes an 18 nexus and no supply block on 18, so it's in between a nexus first build and a standard FFE in terms of economy. Many of the concepts used can also be applied to other gate-first builds. I don't list timings for anything after the Nexus because those will vary depending on scouting.

2 Pylons in Main (Noob Method)
With this, you can be assured the lings won't kill the pylons before your first zealot finishes even if you don't pull a single probe. You'll still have to pull probes to build another pylon to power the gateway and to assist the zealot in knocking away the lings, but that's only a problem if you don't finish the wall to your main in time. You're delaying your economy to get up a third pylon at the natural. You'll also have more trouble completing the wall at your natural against, say, a 13 pool.



At the Main's Ramp
If you scout the lings, you can get a wall off, and not let any lings into your base. Even if you completely miss the lings, you can still protect the pylon with probes. I've never tried this method because the probe micro involved seems too strenuous if you don't complete the wall-off. If you do use this method or the noob, remember that you'll need to pull at least 4 probes against a 6 pool, 2 probes against a 7 pool, and no probes against an 8 pool to plug the hole in your wall until your first zealot finishes. You can also build a pylon, and cancel it after the zealot finishes, then use probes to make sure the lings don't run past into your main, but I've never tried that.



Next to Nexus
Here, the pylon and gateway are close to your probes to allow a fairly easy defense. You can't get a wall-off, but the amount of mining time lost from probe micro should be fairly minimal.



Behind Minerals or Gas
This is my preferred method. It minimizes probe micro if lings get into your base while maximizing the distance the lings have to travel to attack your pylon. In addition, the lings have to be split in order to get a surround on the pylon and kill it before the first zealot pops out, making those 3 lings easy targets for your probes. If you do this, make sure you rally your gateway behind the minerals and then over to the natural. You don't want to have a unit get trapped between the gateway and the minerals. Yes, this has happened to me before.



At Natural's Ramp
I really don't like this. You're wasting so much mining time to build at your ramp that the economy is worse than a standard FFE, and you're not really able to pylon block their hatchery to make up for it. You could skip the 2nd pylon to get an earlier Nexus, but you're taking a huge risk that you'll be able to scout the lings if a 6 pool is coming. The advantage is being able to get a wall erected very quickly at the natural, in time to stop any ling attack, including a 6 pool, but it doesn't matter much because you can't support the 400 for the nexus, the fast wall-off, probe production, and the chronoboosted zealots until your economy gets bigger, so you have to cancel the nexus anyway and wait until after you have 3 zealots out. If you get the 2nd pylon, but don't scout the lings, you're having to deal with very strenuous probe micro to protect both the pylons next to the gateway and the probes in your main.

The first thing to do is to scout along your opponent's attack path. On Ohana and Daybreak, this means using the path furthest away from your main. On 4-player maps, you'll just have to accept that you'll sometimes miss the lings, but you will still have enough time to react even in those situations. Roughly speaking with a standard 16 scout, if you see lings before you reach your opponent's natural, then they're probably between 6 and 8 pool. A 9 pool will be spotted right when you pass the ramp to the natural, and you'll see a 10 pool as soon as you enter the main. An 11 pool will spawn just after you arrive at the main. If you don't see anything, check to see if the pool is finished. You can look at the eggs to get a good idea of what's happening. 1 or 2 eggs spawning one at a time means they're likely droning. If 3 eggs are in production and nothing's coming out, then those are probably lings. Make sure you don't go behind the mineral line, so that you can't see the larvae/eggs in front of the hatchery. If you do that, lings might spawn, and you'd completely miss them. Read through the pool timing section to learn how to react based on which of these scenarios you scout.

Okay, so no lings are about to come. The next question is: did they expand? If they haven't expanded by the time you're ready to start your cybernetics core, proceed as if you're against a 1 Base All-In until you get some indication otherwise. See that section below.

The last questions are did they take a gas and did they take a third. Taking an early gas can indicate some sort of 2-base play. It also might indicate an overreaction to your gate-expand. If they're playing standard, they'll take a third between 4:15 and 4:30. Anything after 5:00 is super late, but is quite common at the platinum and below level. Try and wait until the hatch is in the yellow or even orange to make sure they don't cancel it, if possible. If they don't take a third, see the section on 2 Base Plays.

6-9 Pool
If you see lings coming before you reach your opponent's main, cancel the Nexus, get up another pylon next to your gateway, chronoboost a zealot, grab an assimmilator, and get ready for some probe micro. Mineral walk probes to the center of your mining area as they get low on health, and attack lings as necessary to keep them from depowering your gateways or killing your probes. Use your scouting probe to check when and if he expands. After holding the attack, I'll probably do a 3 gate pressure expand. Back when I was walling off the front of my main, I used to do an old school gate-forge expand into immortal-sentry all-in (see here), which can be fun, but I don't think it's a good idea if you're not walling off the main.

10-12 Pool
It's possible to expand in some situations but unlikely you'll be able to do so especially on wide ramps. Even if you chronoboost it, your first zealot won't arrive at your natural in time, so you'll have to pull probes to hold the wall if you want to try and beat a 10 pool. Otherwise, do a 2 or 3 gate expand.

13 or 14 Pool with immediate lings
Chronoboost your first zealot and get a second right after. You'll need to cut probes slightly to get up your wall in time, and you may even have to pull probes. Losing a pylon while waiting for the second zealot is possible if you're not careful.

13-14 pool without lings, 15 pool or Hatch First
If you see a yellow life bar at their natural, they probably went hatch first. You can check the main to be extra certain that the pool is nowhere near finished. You can't cannon rush their treachery, but you can heavily delay that first zealot, definitely after taking your gas, and probably after your core too. If the pool is finished, get the zealot, but there's no need to chrono it. Against a very late pool, you might also try immediately getting a 2nd gateway and heavily chronoboosting zealots out to try and punish them with 2-gate pressure, but I've never done it, so I'm not sure how well it would work.

Remember, you don't have a cannon. You can build a cannon if that makes you feel more comfortable, but you don't need one. Without the cannon there, what will often happen is lings will start attacking the buildings on your wall. You'll have to use your zealot to defend those buildings, and this brings me to a very important difference between FFE and gate-expand wall-offs. Your opening for the zealot needs to be in the center of the wall.





Do you see the problem in the second image? If lings start attacking the far pylon, your zealot has to go all the way to the other side of the wall to defend it. What will happen is the lings will pull off and dive straight for the hole left open in the wall by the zealot. There's no way for the zealot to get far enough over to attack the lings and still get back in time to defend the hole. You can pull a probe to defend that hole in the wall, but the lings can just kill it and proceed right on into your main well before the zealot can kill them all. You can pull a lot of probes, but that's a lot of economy. If you wait for your 2nd unit to arrive, then you might lose the pylon.

There's another issue with the good wall-off that will occasionally come up. By placing two pylons right next to each other you leave yourself more vulnerable to a Baneling Bust. If you miss a force field, and the banelings hit the pylons, you might get supply blocked. Even if warp gate is finished, you won't be able to warp in new units and will probably lose. If you're worried about this, it is safe to place a pylon further away as long as the hole is still in the middle, but then your zealot micro is going to be more difficult. Don't worry though, you'll get plenty of chances to practice zealot micro.

Possibilities:

7 Roach Rush
5 Roach Rush
Proxy Hatch
Delayed Ling Pressure
Baneling Bust
Nydus Canal
Hidden Base
Something Really Stupid that Probably Won't Work

If you're ready to start your cybernetics core and your opponent still hasn't expanded, it's time to go into panic mode. First, halt all probe production. Second, build the cybernetics core in the main, if you can. Against a roach rush, it might get sniped. You'll still be ahead if that happens, but it does suck to lose it 15 seconds before warp gate is ready to finish. Third, if you went double gas, pull one probe from each gas, you need the minerals. Fourth, get up 2 more gateways on your wall to have 3 gates total. Fifth, chrono boost zealots from your first gateway. Now resume probe production. Sixth, keep scouting. Check his third. Check his fourth. Check your third. Check your main. Quadruple check his natural. Find out what's going on. Use all your chronoboosts on gateways. Start warpgate as soon as the core finishes. Now, here's what to do once you see what's happening.

Proxy hatch in Main
Don't allow ling run-bys past your wall. If spotted early enough, two zealots are more than enough to kill it quite quickly. If the hatch is going to finish, pull a few probes to speed up the assault. At worst, they'll get a couple of roaches or lings out before the hatch dies. Don't chase them until after you've killed the hatch. Your 3 gateways should have stalkers to deal with them in due course.

Proxy hatch on your wall
They're planning on canceling the hatch as soon as their lings arrive, giving you no way to wall off. The best thing to do is to block it from building with a probe. If not, you need to pull a bunch of probes to help your zealots kill the lings, and then finish up your wall. The most important thing is to complete the wall-off as soon as possible, so more lings can't get in.

Roaches
You should be able to take map control and see the roaches coming. A 7 Roach Rush will arrive around 5:45. Kite your stalkers to keep the roaches from killing them off before warpgate is done. If the wall is busted down, which it likely will be, pull probes from your natural to help your zealots contain the roaches, and protect the stalkers. Once warpgate finishes, you'll be in the clear in short order. If they target the core down, then you'll have a lot of time to get some free shots in on the roaches, and the loss of warpgate research won't be such a big deal.

Delayed Ling Pressure
Just keep chronoboosting zealots, and hold the wall. He's taking a huge hit to his economy to do this. He's probably planning on transitioning into a baneling bust, which won't arrive until the same time warpgate research finishes at best. Try and get a sentry or two out just before warpgate research finishes to be extra sure you're safe.

Baneling Bust
If they go straight into baneling nest before sending out a bunch of lings, this can hit a little before warpgate research, but you should have enough zealots to scout the lings outside and possibly kill a few of them before the banelings are ready. Switch back to chronoboosting the core. One set of forcefields to protect your wall should give you enough time to get warpgate research finished, and warp in some back-up.

Nydus Canal
Proxy Hatch into Spine Crawlers
Both of these are only really good against FFE. Even if you completely miss them, you'll have plenty of units to defend with.

Hidden Base
If the base is further away than the player's third, he simply won't be able to defend it because of the rally time from his main. He's also taking a huge economy hit because he can't transfer drones or queens.

Possibilities:

Speedlings
Baneling Bust
Roach All-In
Baneling Drops
Fast Mutas
Fast Infestors
Nydus Canal

You shouldn't overreact if they go for 2 base play. Until you get more information, the only real change to your opening is to make sure you have at least 3 units and preferably 4 before warp gate finishes. As soon as your 2nd unit finishes, try to take control of the watchtower with your zealot. The only thing he can block that with is a lot of lings, and if you see a lot of lings, that's a major clue about what's happening. If you're teching to something other than gateway pressure, make sure at least one and probably two of those early units is a sentry.

Speedlings
Chrono those zealots like crazy. You want to build a minimum of 1 zealot for every 4 lings that you see. If you see more than 8 come towards your base, get a 3rd gateway or a forge as quickly as possible. If you built a forge instead of a 2nd gateway, get a cannon. It helps to keep your scouting probe alive to see how many lings he's sending. Keep kiting with those zealots so they don't get surrounded, but you don't give the lings time to go after your buildings. And whatever you do, don't let them into your base. You may have to pull probes occasionally to assist the zealots. This will be a nightmare when you're first learning the gate-expand, but once you learn to deal with them efficiently, you'll be able to get way ahead going into the mid-game against these attacks.

Baneling Bust
The nice thing with a gate-expand is that if you constantly chronoboost warp gate, it will finish before the banelings finish morphing. If you're not chronoboosting warp gate, then you need to have sentries ready to force field while you wait. Throwing down a cannon or two if you see 20 lings sitting outside your base doing nothing certainly won't hurt either. Make sure you build a couple extra pylons, so if you lose one or two at your wall, you'll still be able to warp in units.

Roach All-In
This hits even later than a baneling bust. With the standard version of this build, they only build 4 lings, so you'll be able to take map control, and see the roaches coming. If they build more lings, that's going to delay roaches and give you more time to warp in units at home. If you see this coming, get some cannons to be extra cautious if you don't have too many gateways finished. Then just forcefield to give the cannons time to finish.

Baneling Drops
Fast Mutas
Fast Infestors
Nydus Canal
These are too slow to show up before warp gate finishes even if you don't chronoboost it at all. This is more of a macro game issue, unrelated to this opening, so I won't go into it.

The fastest way to win after a 2 Base All-In is with a Warp Prism and lots of Gateways. They'll probably have around 20 drones versus your 40 probes, so can't keep up with you in army production, but can deny forward pylons with all the units they've built. The Warp Prism alleviates that problem.

Pretty much any build that you can think of with a FFE can be done with a gate-expand. I recommend starting with a 4-gate build just because having a lot of gateways simplifies a lot of issues, particularly against 2 base timings.

Adonminus' +1 4 Gate Opening
5 Gate
7 Gate Warp Prism
+1 Blink with Mothership Core (HotS)
Fast Stargate (HotS)