1961

I think my phoenixes are my favorite unit in the game, although I don’t use them a lot. I just really like their mechanic. Last night I had a game with some friends where I built phoenixes almost exclusively and just about won us the game on that alone.

Our opponents had lots of air (mutas, void rays) and hydras … you’d think that wouldn’t have worked for me but I was able to harass (killing lots of overlords), keep the mutas and void rays from effectively harassing and kill off enough hydras in small groups that they never hit critical mass. Eventually the zerg player actually went mass corrupters just to counter my phoenixes which was silly of course given that my allies were all ground … and we got momentum and rolled them.

1962

Earlier today I got baneling busted and brought down to only ten harvesters at the 12 minute mark and still managed to win the game. As Day9 says, if you don’t expand during a successful attack then unless you straight up win the game in that attack you have gained nothing. The poor Zerg player was still on 2 bases at the 22-minute mark after I rebuilt my economy and then rolled his base with like 12 zealots, 10 stalkers, and 2 collosi. I swear I had to rebuild my wall pylons and gateways like 3 times. My attack was a desperate last stand, I couldn’t believe it when he quit.

1963

Thats a fair call, Colossi against Terran are really easy to counter with vikings. HTs on the other hand, feedback can outright kill a Medivac, Banshee, etc & storm is always handy, it can be really useful to follow all that up with a morph when all their energy is spent too.

Its important to understand that both are pretty much support units, used to weaken a ball not so much kill it off, you still need a strong army to back them up.

1964

HTs are composed entirely of vespene gas and magic, it’s pretty much impossible to build an army of entirely HTs and not buy any zealots or stalkers unless you enjoy having massive amounts of minerals stockpiled.

1965

You missed fairy dust. There’s a heaping helping of fairy dust as well.

1966

…and a dash of love?

1967

I was getting cheesed last night by a guy who kept cheesing me by sending his initial drones to come attack my drones. Despite us having the same number of drones, his were able to slaughter mine and it was gg. How’s he doing that. The first time he caught me by surprise and I kept mine harvesting for a while. But the second time, I knew it was coming and I tried to focus my drones on his to kill them off. How’s he doing that? Is he attack-moving them? Also, I know it was the same guy, because he kept sending me messages that my mic was on and would I turn it off? Hit f10 and n. Also, in all caps. I thought that was kind of clever. I tried to counter his propaganda strategy by pretending I didn’t understand english, but then he used that drone trick.

Love,
Ike

1968

I just won a 2v2 that had me dancing in my seat. I tried canon rushing cheese, got owned, then somehow pulled out the win anyway.

Yes I don’t deserve to win after playing like that, but life isn’t always fair.

Replay

1969

I tried that 5 roach rush strategy last night, and it worked pretty well. I’ve been trying to give all the races a little bit of love, but so far I think I prefer zerg. I like that they’re an aggressive expansive race, and are extremely flexible. I found that if the rush failed (when it succeeds it succeeds spactacularly) I could at least see what my opponent was doing, and have enough resources to build whatever I needed. One game I got the rush off late due to some overlord mismanagement and couldn’t break through. By the time I had my second push going, he had teched up to battlecruisers. Battlecruisers! But with 2 or 3 bases, and a queen on each, I was able to very quickly mass hydralisks and take down all his BCs. There’s also something so enjoyable about burrowing roaches and popping them up in my opponent’s supply lines.

I’m going to try Protoss for a little while. Any recommendations for good starting strategies?

1970

Anyone else watched today’s GSL games? For a tournament with the grand prize of one hundred million Won (85k USD), today’s games are pretty sub-standard.

Here are the casts, if anyone is interested.

http://sc2casts.com/cast621-IdrA-vs-Acupuncture-Best-of-3-GSL-Group-Stage

1971

When not canon rushing, I’ve been having success with massing stalkers off 4 warpgates. Depending on what you scout, if the game carries on you can get either high or dark templar and finish them off.

I’ve found colossi to be unreliable, they’re too easy to shut down with vikings or mutas, both of which can out maneuver stalkers easily. and are easy to switch to once you see colossi. With Templar, you can always morph them into archons after they blow their energy.

1972

If you are looking something to get started with, void rays are a good place to start.

Void Ray rush - 2 gas, 1 gateway, 1 cyber core, 1 or 2 stargates. Save some chronoboost for building the void rays.

VS zerg: Once you can pull this off with the proper timing, it will win you most games against low level zerg players. 1 void ray kills one queen and vice versa. Most zerg don’t think to build more queens when being attacked by air, so unless they run their zerglings into your base and destroy your economy, this is an all in strategy. You need good scouting for this to work, if you are getting zergling rushed, you need to delay the stargates and build an extra gateway to hold them off with zelots.

Vs terran: This is one of the best strategies to disrupt MMM. Here, you only build 1 stargate and 2 void rays. The point of the void rays is limit the terran’s options, force them to go anti air with marines and missile turrets. You transition into 4 warp gate, throw down a twilight council, and get the robotic legs upgrade for your zelots. Your speed zelots with a few sentries using guardian shield will chew through his marines.

Vs protoss: I never go void rays in PvP. However if you find yourself getting void ray rushed, the proper counter is not Phoenixes, it is stalkers and sentries with guardian shield.

4 warpgate - gateway, 1 or 2 gas, cybernetics core, warpgate research, 3 more gateways, transform all to warp gate when research complete.

This is the stock protoss opening and works well against almost everything other than an well played MMM ball. Your army composition is going to vary based on what your opponent is doing and how much money you have. Make sure you keep your scouting probe alive to place a proxy pylon near his base. Keep warping units in and send out 8-10 units to harrass. when you get engaged by a large enough force, back off to recharge your shields and reinforce. The point isn’t to kill your opponent, it is to contain while you get an expansion and tech up.

1973

You should be cautious trying to go Void Rays against an MMM ball. Part of the MMM build includes building a starport with a reactor, which is gives them access to double vikings. If he scouts out your stargate, he will be able to react in time. Hide your stargate somewhere he won’t immediately see it, and you might be able to catch him by surprise while all he has is marines.

1974

How timely! Day[9] just did his daily earlier this week on basic Protoss 4 Warpgate play.

http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4069261/

I highly advise watching this. It’s not a replay - it’s just him playing some games against a Very Easy computer, executing 4 Warpgate builds, all while talking through the variations of 4 Warpgate strategies and how to make good use of the units.

He starts with a more defensive variant based around building a lot of early sentries, and then covers offensive variants with less sentries that are designed for making early pushes.

I’d start with this style of play for learning Protoss - it is absolutely essential to learn how to make use of and win games with the basic Gateway units. Even if you later decide you really like Void Ray rushing, for those games where the Void Ray rush doesn’t win things outright you’re always going to be falling back onto Gateway units, so I think they form the core of coming to terms with how to win games as Protoss. Also, PvP is all about Gateway armies duking it out.

1975

You aren’t going void ray against the mmm ball. You are getting out 2 void rays when he only has marines and a few muarders. The void rays are to buy you time and to get him to make more marines.

If you are scouted, all the better. You still get the same effect, oh fuck- void rays without havin to build void rays.

You can do void rays as an all in rush, but this leads to very unstable play and isn’t what I discussed, especially against terran.

1976

Mining drones do not fight back, so they die if they get attacked. It takes a while. If he’s really sending all his starting drones at you, I’d just make a couple more, 6 or 7 pool, crank our 4-6 zerglings, and win the game.

1977

Yeah honestly a harvester rush is an insta win for the recieving player every time. On the last episode of TLAttack QXC tried to SCV rush a gold level player and he lost the game, so what that means is that no-one should ever lose to an SCV rush.

You just make sure your workers are attacking back when his are attacking and mining when his are not attacking, and you win by sheer numbers. Plus if he sends all of them right away on a small map you have 7 to his 6 and on a bigger map you have 8 to his 6 plus you have some income while he has absolutely none. GG

1978

I think these are technically stolen (or, I guess, actually are), since the GOM-TV casts are pay-to-view. I had planned to check it out, but I’m not paying $40 or whatever to watch people play starcraft.

1979

Seems like someone has developed a drop-hack, and I swear someone is somehow making the ‘quit game?’ dialog come up unexpectedly. The former just dropped my 2s partner (in a game I went on to win on my own) and the latter might be me clicking randomly, but I swear it pops up and it takes me a moment to realize “Hey, this isn’t the ‘You Won!’ screen!” before I close it to move on with the game.

1980

It’s been around a while, or at least since the beta anyway.

The people using it were usually pretty obnoxious aswell. Typing “GG” and then suddenly you were dropped… Fun fun.