General advices Protoss strategies

Protoss : the easy way

In all money map races, protoss is probably the easyer to play correctly. They have strong units, they have the highest production rate in the game start with some ground units that they can keep for all the game, and the building mode with probes just calling building is realy aventageous to play quickly in the fastest possible map. Their production rate allow them to have heavy rush from the begining of the game. Advanced players will do nice usage of supports units like templars and reavers and arbiters to fight any enemy in very efficient way, and and hurt in the end game.

The game is running

Starting your base, the classic one

In building advice i will not say obvious things like : "have a continus production of drones" and "build enough pylones to support your army".

While playing protoss, it's still obvious you must start with gates, but some players dont like that too much. About the double nexus start : It will make you slower for the 6 or 7 first minutes of the games, and a lot of things can happens depending on how many units you have in that time. Double nexus start is probably a good idea if the enemy go forge / suken / bunkers early. But you may want to be ready to rush as soon as possible to punish players that evolve undefended. If you do one gate and 1 zealot before your second nexus, you will be only 3 or 4 probes late in the second nexus production, but it will allow you to do a very early 1 zealot rush, and that's a good way to take out or to slow down a risky zerg, or maybe those multiple nexus + gaz protoss. 3 or more gates before the second nexus is something to try if you notice after scouting that you have serious chance to win with a rush.

So i'm forced to continue to talk about obvious things even if i tryed not too : after a few probes, you will have minerals surplus, and your first buy will be 1 (yes ONE) pylone. Why two pylones at the start when you just need one ? It will just delay your 2nd or 3rd gate, and will slow down your production (even if it's something like 10 sec, why to waist them ? you want to be the best or not ? ;) I especialy say that because i sometime see peoples with +100 games that start with 5 pylones. They have all the "double nexus start" drawbacks without getting the advantages. The best time to build the pylone if you want to rush is probably at 7/9. When the probe n. 7 comme out, you will have just a little less minerals than 100, but just by the time you move it in the place, it should be 100 perfectly. Something also important is : where to start to build : i advice near your nexus, because you will be closer to send probe back to harvest, and your zealots will be ready to defend when they comme out, if you are in troubles. but you should have 1 pylone in your base front sometime when you can, it will help you to see the things comming in (especialy usefull to counter cannon rush).

Each time you spend your money in buildings, you should have the probe to go to the minerals, at least at the game start. For the other buildings, you will use the next ones that run out of the nexus. When the probe get out, they will usualy start very close to the mineral. A lot of players like to get relay point of the probes right at the start, but maybe you can get a few more minerals if you dont do that too early. You dont "need" them until you get your assimilators used. But you should realy send the first pylon building probe to scout out. Use the shift key to chain orders, you will get all the map without having to think too much. My usual tactic is to send the probe to one of the map location with a normal move, just after the pylone has been placed. Then you will very soon have a new probe to send to the mineral. Just after this probe should be the right time to shift clic all the positions on the map.

Now here comme the main point of the game : dont go forge first ! :) what can you expect about the enemy if you do your 2 gates before you think about forge ? In very early game, zealots are good enough to take care of enemy rush of any race. So, no forge first, but gate. You will probably be able to place 2-3 gates, and after them an additionnal pylone. As soon as you first gates are there, build zealots in them. Your scouting probe should have travelled around more than 50% of the places. If you play vs zerg you can send a second one that will scout in the oposit direction. Try to get it alive at the end, or if you have been particulary hidden, you can even think about cannon rushing (see bellow). When your first zealots are ready, you can send them if they have a chance to stress your opponent. if you scouted 6 finished cannons or 3 suken just when you have the zealots ready, you better wait to produce more before you attack. keep in mind that you shouldnt suicide if you cant hurt him.

Now your opponent is (hopefully :) hurted. Two things can happens : he go mass def to save himself. Then you can tech, get more gates and more units (especialy dragons and reavers works good on an enemy defence. If he doesnt, make a bigger army and continue to hit him (btw, all of this is reactive gaming and out of topic, but it's still usefull to know:). If during an attack, you think you can keep your units alive, keep seending all you can, by keeping an constant renforcement stream, you are likely to overload the enemy base enough to kill him (but still consider the possibility of beeing countered). While someone is attacked, he will have less possibilities to develop.

Not finished yet ? now let's own in midgame

Midgame is the time when your ressources income will fill your apm. In general, i will also call midgame when you have > 70 unit controls, or after your first "tech rush" usage. You must keep a good balance between increasing production output/full gaz harvest/supplys/unit count/tech/upgrades. You must know what you want to control your resources. If you want reavers or gons in midgame, 4 gaz are required, and for both, 6 gaz are even better. but it's midgame, it assume you already have units and you can aford to put probes on gaz. And once you have some extractors ready, you dont need to wait for new probes, you can use some that are on your minerals and you will get gaz a lot faster. Usualy the 4 gaz at the end of the patch work the best. if you want to take more, fill one side completely or your new extractor will be useless. Taking gaz is an important action, and you should realy asign it a good priority in the actions you make if you decide to take it.

About upgrades : not all the upgrades are equaly usefull, you must know who the upgraded unit damage and the damage types works to understand this. basicaly, the weapon upgrade is the most important, except if you plan to attack low damaging-dealing units (vs marines or muta, go for armor first). A second case where armor is important : if you plan to attack average or low damage dealing ranged units with zealots. In all case, a zealot will kill an hydra quite fast IF he can touch it, so armor upgrade is very usefull, but the weapon upgrade still help). The shield upgrade cost 2x the price of any other, and as any unit has more armor than shield. So, unless you plan to kill a mass marines with a mass archon, dont run the shield upgrade first ;). Other notes about shield upgrade : It's the only upgrade that applys to buildings (but still doesnt make an huge difference except for cannon vs marines) and it also applys to air. But it take full damage no matters what's the attack type of the offender (a firebat with conclusive damage will make full damage on a gon shield, but only 25% on a gon armor) and it's an additionnal reason to give a lower priority to the sheild upgrade over the others.

About the upgrades : either gon range or zealot speed is very important to kill ranged units. gon range help more than marines range upgrade or hydra range upgrade : it give twice as much improvement. In midgame, you will have some advanced technologies, but not all of them yet. You have a lot of money to spend but not an infinit amount, you have to choose now. You should make your mind about what you will need first : observers ? reavers ? templars ? arbiters ? air ? You have quite a lot of choice. Templars and reavers are the most offencive of them : reaver clear the cannon and get ground kills fast, and templar take of any ranged unit, and is a good way to hurt anything that fly. Arbiter are also effective vs units, but their cloaking effect will not be helpfull everytime because just cannon or defencive detector building can reveal it. And they work very well against air units that tend to stack, or to reduice a reaver defence.

It has to finish sooner or latter : End game

You have the full tech tree and now ready to be used ? You have troubles breaking the door of your enemy ? The unit combo and usage is important, and so is the continus attack flow. Be sure you dont lake of anything and rebuild what is best suited for the situation you have to face : for example if you lost some observers, make sure you rebuild enough, it would be stupid to lost a game with "i laked 1 observer and 90% of my defence and unit group has been wiped by a nuke". It will be the build & send & use cycle. Using units in combat means for example will you will refill reaver, cast storm and freeze any big thing moving.

also try to look your enemy in his base, cannons around it will prevent nasty drops and carriers from moving, that will guaranty that if someone can win this game it will be you. Have proxy production building : reaver are slow, and if they have to move from your base to the enemy one, they will spend 90% of their time moving and be destroyed in less than 30 seconds. Transport are cool but you might not be able to manage them perfectly every time : to have a fast reaver production, for example, you can build robotic factorys in the center, even near your enemy entrance is fine, as long as you can keep the map control. keep him inside of his base is 50% of the step to winning. For the other 50% you can try frontal or side attack, idealy both at the same time. whill you send some gon to the front, recall a force from the sides with a big team of allucinated arbiters to increace the chance of arbiters to reash inside. Keep in mind that where 2 reavers failed, 12 can succed. Even if you dont drop on his nexus, any thing that can keep the inside of the enemy base warm will also increase the front temperature. After a couple of side offences, a simultanous front offence can succed. But never forget to build and send : you can kill an enemy with the unit you didnt build, neither with the ones that sleep in your base. Some protoss like to suicide their probes to have more free units in the 200 limit, but you should be sure you will have enough resources to dominate the game for more than 30 minutes at a huge production rate.

Race dependent advices

PvP

In some match-up it's up to you if you want to start with simple nexus zealot rush, double nexus zealots, or triple nexus + forge. the last one is a little risky because it put you somewhat vulnerable to zealot rush, and heavily vulnerable to front cannon rush. When you attack a protoss base in the first time, your target number 1 is his probe. Think that every probes give about 8 minerals every 5 secondes, after 5 minutes of game, each probe destroyed costed him nearly 300 minerals. For example, you comme with one zealots near the enemy nexus, and he also have a zealots, it's in very early game. If you attack the zealot and your enemy is good, he will put 1 or 2 probes to help his own zealots and at the end you will not even have killed anything. If you force the attack on the enemy probes you will probably have time to kill 2. You can also split your zealot forces when attacking : the most of them attack the front, and perform hit and run on random buildings, partialy retreating if the enemy is superiour in number, but trying to get the enemy concentrating on this group. And for the other part, you send 1 or 2 zealots sneaking around the base and comming for a probe slauthering, forcing attack on them if necessary, the success % of this is often very good. Just keep producing zealots because your enemy can still counter you. After the probes, the main nexus is the next target, but only if you are sure you can do it. Dont nexus rush if the enemy has units alive that can comme fast enough to your zealots before they are all on the nexus. Dont nexus rush if the enemy move his probes in your way just before your zealots arrive (change it to attack move and force attack on some). Dont nexus rush if you have less than 5 zealots, it will take to much time (except if your enemy is already severly wounded). Think that in more than 1vs1, he can get help from other players and stop your nexus rush. Or maybe the help will come just too late, in that case if you can have his nexus do it :) Having the enemy nexus in yellow will not help you that much, and it's especialy stupid if you could have easly killed 15 probes in this time.

I dont advocate playing zealot rush in every game, if the enemy mass cannon, or if the enemy place his cannons behind buildings, in the way the zealot must travel in a hard way and take the cannons 2 by 2, then, you should be better with some amount of goons.

If you see your enemy do double / triple nexus and-or tech without def, rush him. If you see double or triple nexus with def, double your own and go fast tech & mass gon or mass reavers + gons. As you didnt started with defence, you should be able to do like him, but faster :) You can also cannon rush from inside his base if he triple nexus and def his main nexus only. He will not have enough units to counter and will only be able to keep it in a blocked state, but the lost room and maybe the lost front-gates will give you an advantage. If he goes plain mass zealot with 1 nexus, try to double nexus and mass zealot yourself, start techning or attacking at around 8 - 10 mins of the game.

After the basic zealot rush, there is a lot of chance your enemy will still be alive :( So you have 5 gateways and you worry about what's going next ? depending on your mood, you can either go for fast zealots, gons or reaver, maybe with some amount of templar. Your production must stay tunned with what is in front of you... To know what he is doing, you can afford a 1 zealot sacrifice, keep the rest near the hand in case it could be a good time to attack. If your enemy go for mass zealot, you should try to get reaver/upgrades, while continuing mass zealot yourself, + just enough cannon/semi-wall to protect from the enemy zealot threat, or you can also just build mass zealots + a few gons to get a larger fire force. But avoid to fight a mass zealots with a small gon only force. With a larger number of gons, you can kill the zealots efficiently with some retreat/dancing micro every time your front gons are threatened by the zealots, move them to the back, the zealots will follow on a small way, taking damage of the standing ones, and will have to change target to attack the new "front ones" or to take a lot of damage in the travel to the back. If he build a lot of cannons, you should concider a large ratio of dragons. If he builds an insane number of cannon, then, reavers + dragons is the way. Templar doesnt do as much damage to protoss compared to a zerg. It also use quite much gaz, so it's not an early option in PvP. But having some to cast a few storms is realy usefull vs gons, especially when both players are at reaver + gons, the one with templar can attack a group of reaver and deal better damage than any other attack. A long range +100 hp attack that can hurt more than 5 units in one time allways help. Arbiters are a good end game unit, especialy with static filed. About carriers : you should avoid them except if your enemy go for an insane number of reavers (in this case arbiter with static field would be probably enough). Carrier have serious problem when fighting a large number of gons and cannons, and things get awfull if you must face arbiters and templars with them they can be an option if you are fighting a blocked protoss and you got a 2vs1 adventage for your side. At last if you want to make them, make them fast upgraded and be sure your opponent is stressed enough to cut down his mass dragon.

brood war note : DT restrict the low tech mass zealot option, and push the game toward robotics or archive faster. When you attack after 8 minutes in a normal game (it means you didn't scouted any strong teching build.

PvZ

This is not an horibly hard matchup, but you must realy be aware of the enemy tactic and of his developement. Due to the way a zerg evolve, he can defend or improve, whereas a protoss can do both nearly in an independent way. That's why every protoss should try the "fast scout probe + fast 1 zealot rush". This is not a very classic rush so you can hurt a lot of opponent. Even when it fail, it cost more to the zerg than to you, because he will be forced to defend, and every suken cost him hatch/ drones, especialy in early game. There is 2 way a zerg can put his defence : near his main hatch and at the entrance of his base. With a 1 zealots very early rush, 80% of his attempt to do an entrance defence will fail. For the 20% remaining, you will probably have to reaver drop or to go reavers+gon+templar except if he build a bad wall, but most of them will put hatch just before the defences to block 90% of your zealots from entering, and to slow down the gons from attacking. The "dont go forge first" advice is very important vs zerg. There is no way a zerg can rush you successfully with lings if you play aggressively with a 1 nexus zealots rush for the first 5 minutes. Going straight double nexus can be dangerous, it give some time that is more precious for a zerg than for a protoss. A 1 gate, then double nex is something in between, it has the adventage to stop the maphackers 4 pool rush, you just need some micro with your first zealot + probes, if you are good you will not loose a single unit. It's still important to defend the nexus after 5 minutes, just 1 or 2 cannons can prevent a probe slauthering lings rush and can hold them until your zealots arrive in case of nexus rush.

If he stay with a low defence after the first zealot rush, it's just a matter of how many zealots you build in more. When attacking a zerg base, keep in mind that the lings have the highest damage/hp ratio, basicaly it means that you will want to kill the lings first, except if it's to finish a severly damaged suken. If he goes for hydra, then the speed upgrade (and possibly others) will be usefull. Logicaly, he shouldnt be able to build a mass hydra without and counter a mass zealot. And lings realy die fast vs zealots. But if he goes mass lings and manage to counter the zealots, then the weapon upgrade is a must have : it allow you to kill a ling in 2 hits instead of 3. In early game you cant probably afford a 3 running forge upgrade. As you will probably have 1 forge sooner or later, it's not that costy to take 1 gaz and start this +1 upgrade. Mass ling is probably not a huge threat, but dont go fast gon if you scouted that.

A zerg that mass defend near the main hatch can be killed in most case with a mass ranged goon (+ some zealots to kill the lings) reavers or templars are not realy necessary if you dont have to fight a mass hydra. And he will not have guardians in the time you can get 24 gons, especialy if he has been forced to go mass defence.

If you must fight the very end game vs a very developed zerg, you will probably have to go mass reavers + carriers + templar. carriers onlys are not that good, but carriers + reavers do a nice job togather. keep in mind that the ground to air switch can be a difficult time, you will need mass def + reavers + templar first and pray to get some air before his guardians (maybe a few scouts then, if you thing it will be close). But if you succeed, your will have efficient offence and defence. A good counter to carriers + reavers for the zerg can be to go mass scourges + mutas (+implosion, maybe), but that's gaz costy and that will not help him too much to break into your base. The scourge AI is not the greatest thing.

brood war note : brood war change quite a lot of things for this match up... There is the possibility to go corsair + DT. Wait unlil you have at last 5/10 of each. When used in a rush, it can hurd especialy if he dont have yet "spore/evolution chamber" and if he dont have a mass hydra. In mid / late game when he has a lot of resources it can help a little defencively, but it should still be harder to control than a reavers + gon + high templar build. You you meet spore in front you can try in a drop but it's generaly a bad sign. if only his main hatch is spore defended, then you can damage the front while preparing gon/reavers to finish that. Of course, try to get the main, the 40 dmg of 7 or 8 DT can bring it to red quite fast, even if you lose 2 or 3 DT. At the same time, hunt any respawning overloard you can. But if it take too longs, it can be a sign that the zerg will manage to get mass overlords + some hydras to protect them. DT + sair require quite a lot of micro, it's not sure who will be the most late after the tactic. Corsairs are valuable even without DT to counter mutas and hurt guardians, if you suspect your enemy is going for it. An other unit that could be used is dark archon maelstorm but i never saw that, it's even more rare than ultra.

PvT

Most of the PvT are easy, but some good terrans can give you a lot of troubles. Some terrans will start with infantery and wipe your zealots with bats, but they are vulnerable to ranged gon, and thing can become particulary funny if you get reavers or templar. For this you will want a resonable ammount of cannons at the entrance if you think the dragons will not be enough. Keep an eny on rax floating and probe burning, after 5 mins you should have some defence around your nexus.

A good terran in 1vs1 will go mainly for tanks + vultures + goliaths after he is walled in. A zealot or gon rush is probably something to try, and from my own experience gon rush has a better success rate. If your scout probe notice a terran wall beeing build, you can try to harass his building scv, and with some luck you can slow it down enough to increase your following rush attack success. An unbunkered or slow gaz terran will fail to counter that, but a good terran will counter both of them. Front cannon rush is also an option, and if you manage to have an heavy zealot production while you break the front baracks / supplys, you might be able to finish him as soon as his first tanks comme to help. If the terran can get a lot of factory and manage his tanks correctly, it will become a hard fight. Templar works good when combined with other ground units, the terran will probably not have the time to aim the busy tanks on them before they cast. Reavers + gons + zealots are good vs goliath only attack but it will become harder as the tank count increase. After a mass gon if the terran go mass tank, you can try a mass speedzealots, gon alone will not hurt the tanks enough. You might also want concider carriers in late game.

Some terrans will go for marine rush, if you fear the "no gaz" unupgraded marin rush, then you can put some cannon in your front. Big mass cannons packs will get waisted as soon as tanks commes out, so be sure of what you are doing. As soon as your gons will get the range upgrade, the fight will become easyer, if it can get a +1 armor/weapon then it will be even better, it should allow you to take out any enemy infantery force. Firebats are the best dragoon friend, if they enemy produice a lot of them assuming he will have to fight zealots, then you have a serious adventage.

Occasionnaly, your enemy will try a wraith nexus rush, easly counterable with cannon if they are not just concentrated in the back of the nexus, but also spread around it. Sometime you will also see mass bc, templar + gons should counter them correctly. But a good terra may rather use tanks + bc combo at the end game, and that's a hard thing to counter with ground only forces. in this case you will realy need air, scouts are the fastest deffencive unit to produice, but if have the time to afford carriers, they will be a lot better on offence because turrets and goliaths will not hurt them as much. Arbiters with static filed will be very usefull if you can tech that high. Keep in mind that observers are very required for any offensive tactic with air if you fight a terran, wraits are not a big problem if you have a huge production of ground only units but they become harmfull if all your arbiters blow up misteriously just before they can freeze the big BC team. Carriers vs BC can give you the advantage if you manage to put the damaged one at the back and run the BC a little while aiming at them with shift+clic. It will get easyer as the carrier count increase.

brood war note : Again, dt change the bigest part of the game. The front will be most often covered by turets by the time you arrive, and direct CC drop will most of the time fail. However, if you can make some haras drop and kill a few supplys and secondary buildings, it will not be too bad, having DT in his base is stressfull for the terran. The success of the drop will also depend on the number of cc he builded, if he is good enough, he will have comsat on them, ready in a hotkey to cast +2 times, in this case your dark templars are just costly zealots.

Professional noob tactics

All thoses tactics will probably make you called "big newbie" or worse. In my opinion, there isnt any noob tactics, there are just noob victims. (Thanx for the [ZO] team, which has helped to analyse thoses tactics)

Reaver drop

It's not a total cheesy noob tactic unlike the others named here ;) Any time is a good time to reaver drop an enemy, except when he realy does mass defence but in this cases the reaver tech is not waisted and can help to break the front. First why reavers ? archon or templar could be as effective in the probe killing fun, but this would require the double tech tree "robotic + citadel & templar archive & storm upgrade". When reaver droping, try to determinate your goal : kill probes or expload nexus (of course, if you go for the nexus, you should still try to get the probes first). For the 1rst one just 2 reavers should be enough, but it will not make a lot of difference unless you do it very early in the game. For the 2nd, 6 reavers are recommended to kill a normaly defended nexus. If the enemy is going for air, then 4 may do it, if he has a lot of gon, maybe 8 are better, and if he is realy paranoid, it could fail with any number.

I will not give one build order for each one, you just have to take gaz early, and to follow the protoss tech tree. You should also make cannons and a 1 gate nearly continus zealots / gon production especialy vs protoss that can generate the hardest rush. VS terran, blocking the entrance should be enough. In all case, try to avoid to be noticed by your enemy, once he know a possible reaver drop is comming he will take extra caution to be sure you fail it. In XvsX you shouldn't go directly to reavers (except if your ally is useless and reaver drop is your only chance), but a lucky mid game drop can realy help the team. For example, one can make zealot + gon while the other do only fast speed zealots, + gaz use in reavers.

Now a very psychological observation : if the enemy has some units, he will mass counter JUST AFTER the reaver drop (especialy in 1vs1). Actualy, it's a sensible thing to do, because it's the time you will be the most vunlerable to his land attack, if he wait to much the mass reaver will get worst. So, if you did a reaver rush you realy need to have a continus reaver production and a realy good cannon / gate wall, unless you have a good ally that can stop any incoming gon force. Zealots will be stoped by reavers quite easly, especialy if you can move them with dropship, or if they are behind cannons, dragons are your worst enemy at this time. I have seen some guys coutering with 40 range upgraded gons just after a fast 6 reavers drop, so you must be prepared, quickly renforce your wall and REFILL THOSE NEW REAVERS (did you noticed reavers are allways empty when you need them the most ? ;). Also think about the murphy law, and defend further your "in-base" with cannon for when the enemy will wipe your front wall.

When going for a large reaver drop, obs are your friends. at this time you can except some cannons, but the best is to know where you must except them. after you have a running produciton of reavers, going fast obs is also a good idea. If you must put a lot of hope in a fast drop to kill someone, you better not do a "blind drop". After the reaver drop, save at last the dropship, and maybe you can fetch back the reavers if you sens something bad comming to kill them. There is also the "drop, fire and pick" game that can be very ennoying for your enemy if he has only close combat units.

Reaver drop micro : When you do your drop, dont go to hard on the place where you want to do it if the enemy has cannon. Often the enemy has cannons behind, or in front on the nexus, but it's rare that the nexus is perfectly defended. So adjust the dropship moves when near the nexus (You should use the travel time between your base and the enemy one to macro, except if the positions are very close). Your first target, even if you want the nexus after, should be the probes. If the enemy has only 1 or 2 unavoidable cannons and you fear for gons comming to defend his base, it may be a good idea to force the cannon perimeter and to aim directly on the probes, your reaver can handle something like 10 hits. When the enemy only has zealot, you can kill a lot more if you lift the reaver while it is refilling, maybe going a little away from the zealots before droping again, but staying close to nexus. Look on pro non money map replays, it's about the same.

Cannon rush

99% of the time you cannon rush, everybody on the game will shout "stupid newbie" and laught at you. But the most important point is "did it worked ?". If it's a yes then the newbie is the poor victime that didnt deal with it properly (hi napoleon ! (insider private message)). If every time you do it, it fail, then it means that you dont know how to do it correctly. Cannon rushing is an art :) A lot of players will plan their cannon rush in a static way : "i will start this game with a cannon rush" they think before even they join it. In my opinion that's a big mistake, because while some games are very likely to have working cannon rush, you can know most of the time if the cannon rush will work or fail even before you start it...

It's likely it will work if :

As any art, there isnt only 2 states like "it worked" and "it failed". Many time it will stay in "blocked state" where your cannons are still there, but the enemy build his own static defence preventing you to go further. Zerg are very likely to keep you in blocked state, because they have suken tech at the same time they got their first attack units, and because drone-to-suken morph faster than cannon, so they can block it even if you put cannons before him. A protoss can also block but he must have a forge and some pylones near the cannon rushed area to do that. When blocked, this enemy with have reduced space, defencive problems because of units that can comme from there, and also maybe he is prevented from attacking or beeing helped if the cannons block his exit. (about rediuced space : if you contain your enemy, make sure he doesnt build in other part of the map or you could get bad surprises). Also both player will have spend money for cannons or defence. In XvsX games with X>1, you and your ally(s) should keep the other enemys busy (or kill him) once the state get to blocked.

In the case he will get a large number of defence to block (that's what most players will do), you should let him alone a few mins to evolve : build gons in your base and or reavers in his base :) The reaver tactic is fun : now you have a nice protected zone in the enemy base, you can go in the offencive with reavers. Call 2 or 3 robotic fact behind the cannons and put one reaver tech bay in your base. wait unitil you have 3 or more reavers scrab-loaded reavers to attack. If he is still at zealots or lings, he can just quit. If he have dragons or hydra, then it will at last keep him busy for a few minutes :) he cant have strong air units good enough to kill cannons in the time you got your reavers. Try to get his nexus or at last his probes. But dragon tactic can be more efficient and faster. Also possible if you have a terran on your side : ask him to send or drop a few siege tanks there. The enemy will have to suicide a lot of things to get them. In any time, dont let a blocked player alone for a to long time. In general, a good blocked player will stop the static defence early, once the state is confirmed to blocked. A blocked zerg will probably go for hydra. The amount of cannon you should build after the first ones depend of the threats that are on them. If he never attack them you shouldnt build more, except if you have a real money excess, or if you need more time to kill an other enemy and you can block the blocked one even more than he is already blocked ;) Note that it doesnt give you the complet immunity : you are still very vulnerable to mutas or drop if you forgot about your main base for too long.


Special varation : The fake cannon rush (C)
To fight good players, the cannon rush will not work that much often. But you can have a chance with the less costy fake cannon rush. When scouted early (3 first pos), you can probably disturb him enough just by runing your probe in his base : use shift to queeue a few nexus rounds, while you continue to develop your base. He will probably send some of his one probes after it. It can get funy when you see +3 probes following yours.

If your probe run around unpunished, you can still be even more provocating : place a pylone in front of his nexus and look at his reaction. You dont need a forge to build a pylone, and you dont need to pay 100 mins for it if you cancel it.

Finaly, if you think he is realy sleeping, you can wake up by attacking his big probe clutter. If you are very aware (and lucky) you can have it running back a short way with is followers just by the time he attack it with all of them. Even if it dies, the harvesting time waisted might compensate a little.

Special varation : The gate rush (TM)
It only work vs terran and if you find him in the 1st position you scouted. It's something like 1% of the games you will play. Also note that if in XvsX there is an other protoss enemy, that planed to rush, it may become quite useless if it doesnt succed right at the start (except if your ally keep the protoss busy). at this time, you will have just 1 pylone and everything in your base is to be built. The interesting idea is to build gates instead of photons in his base. A good terran will defeat the cannon rush just by putting 2scv on each cannon as soon as noticed and will have marines to finish the jobs if you insist too much.

Here is the thing : When you are in, build 1 pylone anywhere in the base, and not a lot of time after, a second one, quite close to it, and keep your probe alive. When finished, build 3 gates around the pylones, try to get the 3 at the same times. The enemy will maybe have his first marine when the gates are completed, but it's not over yet. Train 3 zealots exactly at the same time and maybe an other pylone if the others are in danger. You should also use the training time to continue to manage your own base. Your 3 zealots will probably be ready by the time he has 6 marines and the zealots will do the nasty job. If he bunkered the gate place, you should try to hurt his SCV near the main nexus.

With gate rush, even a decent player can be severly slowed down, if not killed because :
The best way to counter a gate rush is probably to (countrary to the cannon rush) take down the pylones before the zealots come out (that's why the protoss will build more pylones than he need to fill the unit count). The second way is to build a bunker in the gates place, and one other to cover the mining probes, and to micro the marines to hit & run any zealot that attack somewhere else. Dont forget that as a protoss you can continue to hit the front of the terran base from your main one. And if the terran is late with the gaz harvesting you can have gons faster than his tanks. When it work completely in XvsX you have -1 enemy and a nice production outpost, a lot more efficient than a pack of cannon in the midle of nowhere. Even when the gate rush fail, you might not be that much late if you take in account the psychological effect your nasty rush did to him ;) Something to try : build in the terran entrance to prevent him from blocking. An other thing to try : include the underused shield batterys in the build.

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