A Mental Tactic

After watching the Day(9) Daily about the contaminate, it got me thinking about other ways to mentally screw with your opponent. We saw that Contaminate can really screw with a persons macro, which is huge! So what can Protoss do to mess with an opponents mind?

Well for one thing, our options for some effective early harassment are limited. The only real unit that is fast and able to due extra damage to Lightly armored units are the Phoenix, and they can only attack air and a limited number ground targets. The best they can do is harass mineral lines or snipe Overlords/Overseers. So I began looking into Protoss mechanics and how the race differs from the other two. So I thought of the Warping Mechanic, and how it can help Protoss develop some mental tactics against their opponents. In the past I had one opponent who did something similar to what I am about to propose, and I cannot wait to try it in a real match.

What this player did was setup a line of Pylons from his base to about 1/2 to 2/3 to mine. In an effort to allow for quick reinforcements if he is ever pushed back while also creating an advanced warning and scout system to know when I am making my push forward. It also buys him time to regroup, as a Pylon in the middle of nowhere is more threatening than an army retreating. However the amount of minerals lost if you have to retreat can cost you quite a bit. So here is my variation of this tactic.

What if instead of creating a line of Pylons, you actually place proxy Pylons in key places that aren't normally scouted or maneuvered through. It would really benefit someone later on when control of the map is more important. The enemy could come out at places you would not expect to have seen. For example, on Xel'naga Caverns, you could place a Pylon near the visibility reeds at the natural expansion, one at the expansion behind the rocks, and one near the other end of the back door trail behind the visibility reeds. This gives 3 additional attack routes that are not commonly scouted or moved through. It will cause your opponent to scout around and find these Pylons if he indeed realizes that is what you are doing. Warp Prisms work with this as well because they can maneuver, however, they cost twice as much, have a smaller warp field, and do not offer supply.

It is also important to remember that this will not work effectively on every map. Lost Temple for example gives very easily defend-able attack routes that allow a mobile force to move around the map quickly, but hard to implement this tactic as there are no visibility issues or alternate routes. Metalopolis would actually be a good map to implement this on in almost any of the spawn locations, as well as Steppes of War, Shakuras Plateau.

**Edit: After writing this post I stumbled across an article about the new 1v1 maps and discovered that several of the maps I mentioned are not even on the ladder map list**