Supply Blocked Update

Don't get supply blocked!

Getting supply blocked. It happens to all of us. From pro's, to your grandma. Recently, I was asked if it is that big of a deal to get supply blocked. My immediate thought was yes of course, and it is, but there are certain situations in a game where it is very bad, and other times where it is only an annoyance. While it is important to never get supply blocked, I will attempt to explain ways in which you can prevent yourself from getting supply blocked, and if you do, what you can do to help lessen the blow.

I recommend you check out my last post on the subject: Getting Supply Blocked.

Worse Case Scenario
The worse time to get supply blocked I would say is within the first seven minutes of game play while still on one base. Every unit, every warp in, every upgrade in that time needs to be right on cue.  Imagine this, you are supply blocked at the 26 food count because you forgot that 3rd Pylon. You have two Zealots out and ready to make more. It takes 25 seconds to warp in a Pylon, not including the time to select a Probe and make more Pylons. A Zealot can take 33-38 seconds to make, add 4 more seconds for Stalkers. 25 seconds is nearly 2/3 the time it takes for another unit to be made/warped in at the Gateway. The game can be over before the first push even happens.

Think of the opening/early game as you would a race between two cars. Both cars can achieve the same top speed, but one has higher acceleration than the other. Who do you think will win? Obviously the car that can get to its top speed before the other will take the win. Same concept here, the early you pick that momentum up, the easier it will be too gain the lead and hold it. Getting Supply blocked, forgetting to build Probes, or letting your minerals get too high from lack of effective macro are all speed bumps you want to avoid. They can cause you to temporarily lose some speed.

How I fixed the Blockage...
After practicing on the Normal Difficulty of the Multitasking Trainer, I discovered that if I forgot the Pylon at 26 or 34, I was doomed to lose. No matter how hard I macro'd, Chrono boosted, or positioned my troops, having 4 less units during that timing attack was too much. So I began to look for key moments early on so I could time that Pylon just right so just as I needed it, a unit would be taking advantage of it. This time was somewhere between 4 and 5 food left till cap early on. However, around 50 food and up, it became necessary to build a Pylon after every warp in, and sometimes more as I expanded.

I mentally connected building a Pylon with warping in units. Another Pylon to me was just a second step in Warping in. You cant build one when you need it, you NEED to plan ahead.

For anyone in the lower leagues who are having this problem, it might help to just go ahead and place that 3rd and 4th Pylon down much earlier, like while you are warping in your Gateways, Assimiliator and Core.

What to do when you've been Supply Blocked...
First things first, build a Pylon. Your ability to macro has stopped. If you caught it right as you got capped thats good. Get that Pylon out, and probably a second to keep yourself in the race.

What happens when you catch it later, when your ready to warp in more? This one can hurt you. The first thing you should consider is this. Do you feel like you are safe enough to expand? If so, still place that next Pylon down, but do so near your expansion. A lot of pro's put a Pylon at the end of there ramp when they are about to expand. Warp in a few units, preferably some that take less minerals, like some Sentries or Zealots, and place another Pylon down AFTER the warp in. your mineral count should be approaching the amount needed for a Nexus. This can be one effective way to move into the mid game by taking advantage of a temporary setback. But only do so when you feel safe enough to expand. The end result can put you back on track.

Another way, and this works very well, is to place a Robotics Facility down if your money is building up and no way to effectively use it, yet. You get an Observer out as its cheap and can use up some of that gas you have been stockpiling. This can protect you from Banshee play or Dark Templars.

Placing a Forge also works. The first upgrades are only 100 minerals and gas. A very fast and cheap way to help you gain a slight advantage while your money is building up.

Getting supply blocked directly affects your macro. Finding ways to keep your money low, without building units is the key to staying in the race. It may seem like a good idea, but DON'T and I repeat DON'T place 5 Pylons down instantly out of frustration. The idea is prevent yourself from getting supply blocked, not temporary solutions. Placing a lot of Pylons down at once, in my opinion, is just like queuing up units. Your using up minerals that can be used elsewhere.

New Protoss Builds Part 1 of 3 (PvP)

I have found a few new builds I have been utilizing since I have started laddering again (27 Wins, 32 Losses so far). This is what I have discovered in the Matchups. The one thing I have learned this past week, and after all my thinking of Protoss tactics without actually playing, is that Protoss are best when they have 2 bases supporting them. Our units take very long to build and are very expensive but very fast and powerful when we finally get them out. So it only makes sense that we need a very good economy to help run it all.

PvP

This matchup is so weird to me. It always throws me for a loop. Here are a few examples of the games I played. At first, I tried going something other than 4 gate against Toss, trying to find out what they were doing then do the appropriate build, however I soon found out that most other Toss as this level of play was doing the same thing in most cases. In fact, I was always beat when the opponent did a build without reacting to mine, thus my build was slightly behind and I ultimately lost. The PvP matchup seems more and more like a staring contest, seeing who will "Blink" first so someone has an advantage.

2 gate Rush vs Fast Forge

This match I saw him have 2 gates really early. My build always gets a Core first. If I see those 2 gate ways early enough, I have enough time to grab a Forge and place a few Cannons down while also grabbing a Sentry to FF the ramp to trap some of his Zealots as I pick them off. I quickly transitioned into a 4 gate and apply the pressure on him until I finally push into his base and win.

4 gate vs Cannon defense

This game was odd. I held my own against constant pressure only using Cannons and enough units from 3 gates. I was very surprised it worked and the only reason I won was because my opponent didn't expand, which is a common epidemic for lower league Toss. They have this mindset that the 4 gate is a Win all Build, and its not. Its fundamental weakness is your constantly building units and not generating enough to expand.

Colossus will rip through any army of equal size.

Fast 3 Colossus with a Council as a fake out

This guy was very smart. I scouted a Council and a Robotics Facility and immediately thought he was going Immortal/Zealot with Charge as I saw many Zealots already. I began to get an expansion while also going for some Immortals as well with Stalkers to kite the Zealots. Yes You can still effectively kite Zealots even with Charge. However, when he pushed he had 3 Colossus and I had just expanded. It was gg shortly thereafter.

So this is what I have taken out of all this. 4 Gate is still the best way to go in this matchup. The fast 3 Colossus could have been easily taken down if I had gone 4 gate and applied some early pressure. However it is still important to grab a Robotics Facility at some point to grab an Observer in case there are Dark Templars coming out, which happened at some point in another game where it was 4 gate vs 4 gate. Most PvP matches don't last very long as one of the players will quickly gain a disadvantage and the other will take that advantage.

Next will be PvZ. Probably my favorite matchup.

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**

When to.....

Ever wonder when you should be doing ______?

I do. I have a terrible time knowing when to start teching up.

I typically start with 4 gate and get some units up. once 8-12 units are up I begin pushing out. I poke in, see if those initial units are still their, if not I know hes teching up and wont have many units. Thats a clear sign for me to do one of two things. Expand or drop 1 of 4 tech buildings, a Forge, Robotics Facility, Stargate, or Twilight Council. Lets assume I am up against a Terran player. I tend to Expand because it is relatively safe if my army is outside his base and preventing him from moving out. With only  half a dozen marines at his cliffs, that tells me hes either going for some tanks, or Banshees. More than likely its Banshees.

Do I drop a Robotics Facility down instead of expanding?

No, I still will expand, because getting that 2nd base up and going while preventing him from getting his is so important. I'm now in a position to know what hes probably doing, and I have now limited his choices. He can either continue with Banshees and get cloak and probably hold his ramp off if I decide to push in again, or make some more ground forces to push me back. Both are perfectly reasonable. Most players I have faced tend to continue with their Banshees and get cloak. Its important to poke up his ramp to see whats their, as if some Marauders suddenly pop up, I know hes looking to buy time before cloak is ready and hes going to make a push a bit later with not only a force, but also Banshees.. That means I need to have dropped a Robotics Facility sometime after my Nexus gets placed.

See how important Scouting is? I began scouting more frequently and accurately because I primarily play in a reactionary way to my opponent. Because I do this, I need to be knowing what my opponent is doing pretty often. If I see some heavy Marauder play I need to grab an Immortal or a lot of Stalkers ASAP. An observer would also help as well as these provide a way of keeping track of your opponent without having to sacrifice the occasional probe up his ramp.

So what things do you wait for either in your build order, unit count, or what your opponent does to justify teching up?

Getting Supply Blocked

So lately I have been having a problem with keeping myself from getting supply blocked. I have been using the Multitasking trainer and have noticed I supply block myself anywhere between 4-6 times a game. I try to make myself look every so often, but it always escapes me. I almost never had trouble in War3. I always built them on time and only occasionally got supply blocked. But I may have found the reason for it, at least partially.

In War3, I had my buildings hotkeyed and would constantly check them for production to make a steady stream of units. With Protoss of Starcraft 2, units come in chunks with warp gates, which is my primary strategy. One round of warp ins is 1 Pylon. You almost need to build a Pylon after every round of warp ins, and to be further accurate with it, be at least 16 supply over what the current food supply is.

You know, now that I have put this into words, I feel like I should try this....Anyone else run into the problem of getting supply blocked and have found a great way to push through it?

Starcraft Noob: Idea

I had this idea after reading a few posts about Protoss Shield upgrades. It seems that having 2 separate upgrades for defense(1 for shields 1 for armor) is kinda redundant. What if the Shields upgrade increased the max shield available to the unit instead of reducing the damage the shield takes, perhaps a set amount or a percentage of the units current Shield points. This could make getting the shield upgrade more viable as currently its, "Well I've upgraded my weapons and armor to the max I might as well get the shields upgraded" To top it off, the games which you get that far are few and far between.

The units that would take most advantage of this would be the Immortal and the Archon. Lets say the upgrade would give 10% more shield life. That would give the Immortal the chance to shrug off 1(if fully upgraded up to 3) extra big attack, but still keep it vulnerable from smaller hitting creatures.

The Archon would gain 35 shield per upgrade, or 105 total, which puts its hp at 455(i think right?). Which would increase the viability of this particular unit as I have also read too many threads concerning the uselessness of this unit.

As for buildings well our most important building, the Pylon, would gain 30 shield points, not a big upgrade but still, as the game goes on the importance of this building grows. This could be a great way for us to help protect our key buildings without giving us an huge early game advantage.

But in some cases like the nexus, its shield life would increase by 100 at a time. However, Zerg's Hive have 2500 Health by the time they upgrade it, and Terran's have the ability to not only repair their buildings but also upgrade their Command Center to a Planetary Fortress as well as have separate armor upgrades for their buildings.

Cannon Rush Cheese

We all hate this. I for one never employ this tactic, I think its cheap and unfair. So as an update to my last post about the topic(which you can find here), I'd like to discuss a bit more about the subject as the cheese play has gotten a bit more difficult to deal with. First lets start with the maps this is more commonly used on and why:

Any map where only two players can spawn have a higher chance of this happening as the rusher already knows where you are at. Steppes of War is probably the most common as this map has close positions and big areas to hide that pesky Pylon. The key is taking out that Probe creating them and preventing him from escaping. If he manages to get a Cannon down, this is something I found out recently, if you put 3-4 workers attacking it while its warping in, they will destroy it before it becomes active.

Remember, Canon Rushes are for the most part All-ins, but lately the person doing the rush will block his ramp as to prevent you from coming and and destroying his economy. At this point you will need to focus down his pylons and make sure those probes go down first. No probes means no way of building more trouble, and a blocked entrance into his base means he cannot bring more probes in.

Once you have cleared him out you are already ahead as the majority of his economy has been devoted to knocking you off early, but don't rush into his line expecting victory as he can still hold his own against you, but his weakness is the immobility of his force. He will have not built a Cybernetics core yet so expect a force primarily of slow moving Zealots and stationary Canons. Whats the best way to mop this up? Drops into his mineral line. You need to bring in forces to put pressure on him as this is the point in which he is weakest. When you know you are about to mop up his buildings in your base, begin researching or building that structure that lets you transport units. The sooner the better.

Back to 4 Gating

So I find myself going back to four gating. My three Gate Robo build was not working out as well as I had hoped. After three week of not playing Starcraft 2, going back to four gating just seemed natural. Its an easy build:

4 Warp Gate Build Order


9 Pylon
13 Gateway
14 Assimilator
16 Pylon
17 Cyber Core
19 Gateway
20 Stalker
23 Gateway
24 Pylon
24 Gateway

By the time you hit your 26th supply(provided you only build 1 Gateway unit and are constantly building probes) Warp Gate tech is ready and you will need to produce mass amounts of Pylons. I like to drop 3 more at once to expand my supply to 50. Then start warping in units and gradually be placing Pylons down as 4 gateway units count as 1 Pylon worth of supply. This is also a good time to put a proxy Pylon somewhere.

Chrono Boosts
Chrono Boosts play a big part in any Protoss Build. No matter what opening build you are doing, you should be going for Warp Gate research. It is the cheapest research with the biggest benefits. It cuts training down by five seconds per gateway unit and allows any Gateway unit to be warped in to your Pylon influence in four seconds. Ideally you can use 4 Chrono Boosts on Warp Gate before it finishes. Each one cuts 10 seconds off the time. However, if your timing isn't perfect you can end up wasting half of the 4th one so I tend to stick with 3. By doing this I can also use 3 Chrono Boosts on my Nexus as well.

Poking and Scouting
While you are getting your base setup, send a probe every now and again to poke into the base, yes you will lose a probe but you will be able to tell what his unit comp is or isn't. In my latest match, my opponent went for heavy Stalkers and very little Zealots, I saw this by simply suiciding a probe onto his ramp. So I quickly put down a Twilight Council and started researching Charge. Zealots with just the movement speed increase move almost as fast as a stalker.

What to transition into.
Before transitioning into Colossus or Voidrays or whatever, you need to take an expansion. Having two bases mining is so important in Starcraft 2. You will want to take you small force in and cause some trouble, make him think twice about moving out. This will allow a safe expansion to be warping in. Once you have two bases its time to decide what to do next. Two bases can support up to 8 Warp Gates and a Forge. However this way leaves yourself vulnerable to Cloaked units. You may want to grab a Robotics Facility to grab an Observer. This will also open up a transition into Colossus. You can make one Robotics Facility and get up to 6 Warp gates for faster unit production. Picking up a Twilight Council as well to grab Charge or Blink is also useful as the building alone allows you to research more effective armor and weapons upgrades.

There you have it, the 4gate build order. It is a heavy macro oriented build. To learn more about macro and how to master it check out my post about the subject here.

1v1, 1 v 1, Protoss, Starcraft 2, SC2, Starcraft2, Protoss Build Order, 4gate, 4 Gate, Chrono, Chrono boost, Chronoboost, Nexus, Pylon, Pylons, Supply, Supply Blocked, Stalker, Zealot, Core, Cybernetics Core, Warp Gate, Gateway, Assimilator,Strategy Game, 3 Gate Robo, 3gate robo, 3gaterobo, Probes, Probe, 4 warpgate build order, 4gate build order, Twilight Council, Charge, Blink, Blink Stalkers, Stargate, Star gate, Observer, Macro

When and what to push

In the early game, Zealots are the slowest units,
but make excellent meat shields to Marauder fire.

Immortals are great to use for early pushes in all
match ups. They do 50 damage to Roaches,
Stalkers, and Marauders

Pushing is something I have been having trouble with recently. I am still in the mentality that if I want to win, I should be pushing really early on, something that carried over from all those matches I four gated every time. In fact I rarely had a match that lasted longer than 18 minutes. I would always push when I felt I could do enough damage. What I didn't take into account was things I should wait for to make my push 100% better.

What to wait for
Things like waiting on a Forge upgrade, or a couple of Immortals, or even Charge. Things like that can make that push that much more effective. So now instead of pushing with a large force and surprising your opponent, you know have an upgrade that makes that large force much more powerful, and that upgrade isn't even noticed until after the battle starts. You might see 6 Zealots assembling at your front and think oh all I need is 3-4 roaches and I can kite em around, but what you don't see is 6 Charged Zealots assembling at your front and suddenly kiting is suddenly near impossible to achieve.

You never want to push into your opponents base without scouting what he has or what he was going for. Constant scouting can help you determine what you should be making or if that push you were making was going to work.

Also, don't plan to defeat your opponent early unless you know for 100% you can. In most cases its more beneficial to wait on that upgrade and do small pushes to help you establish that expansion. However waiting to push until you have a higher tech unit is generally Ok. Good units to wait for would be the Immortal, Collossus, Hydralisk, Siege Tanks, Medivacs.

So far we have  two elements that should be considered before pushing, upgrades, and scouting. Going for specific unit counts before you push is only useful if your going for a build where all of your resources are going straight into unit production, like the 4 warp gate build because your objective with pushing is gaining an advantage, not losing it.

Defenders advantage and the proxy Pylon
Another problem with trying to push early on to win the game is something called the defenders advantage. No matter how many units you have, your opponent will be able to reinforce himself faster if he is defending against your push. This is why proxy Pylons are so GOOD! I tend to always build a Pylon near the Watch towers. They are usually the half way marker between our bases and cut my reinforcing time down by half.

Plugging Leaks

So lately I have been on a win one lose one streak. Kinda good, kinda not. But I have noticed that the ones I lost, could have been avoided if I did some small changes, like make sure I had Pylons, robe Production didn't stop, I was scouting, getting information I could use and applying it to my build. These things I need to plug to fix the leaks.

So I have been paying against the medium AI over and over again doing the same thing, over and over again.  4 Gate build with a proxy pylon, and a backup in case he finds the first. It took me 8 games to get it down pretty well but I am still not comfortable with it. I think I'm going to avoid playing some match ups for a few days and work on getting my play up to par where it needs to be. Also, since I am a Achievement Whore(2000+ and growing) I found that playing against the AI will get you some points, may as well do it right? Im plugging my leaks and getting some achievements to boot!

I encourage you, if your at this point where you notice small things you can do better, or lose to things you know you wouldn't lose too, take a break, do what I am doing and see if it helps. Doing your build order over and over agian can help you realize when you should be doing something. And its important to note, if you start having more trouble with your build order in matchups, than you are reaching a point where that one strategy you always used isnt going to cut it. It is now time to expand your horizons, think of ways to improve against that type of matchup, knowing what to look for in your scouting to expect it, and keeping an eye on him in general to know when hes making that push. At this point, the small things do matter.