Warp Prisms and you. A guide to having safe Warping with your partner.

Did you know a transformed
Warp Prism can still
carry units?

A docile Warp Prism

OK boys and girl(lets be honest, theres not many of you out there in SC2), Its time to tell you about the Warp Gates and the Prisms...


When two opponents want to kill each other really passionately, they will sometimes resort to very invasive measures. The key is to test the waters and to make sure your opponent can handle that type of pressure, er wait I mean not handle it...oh boy....this isn't going well...


I used Warp Prisms back in the Silver league of the Beta. It seemed to be the only way I could in against a turtling Terran going mass Vikings. Recently I began using them again. A Zerg match I had earlier today inspired me to begin using them again. The same match I used for my Phoenix build in my post about New Protoss Builds for PvZ.


This match was an epic one. Ever since going 4 gate against Protoss I have begun having more success in this matchup, I know it's sad, but I don't have much choice at this level of play. My opponent snuck a Probe behind my line and near the not so natural expansion on Delta Quadrant. Then the war for the non natural expansion began. If he had done this at the front, I wouldn't have had such an easy time expanding, teching up, and feel safe in general.  Check the replay out, it was quite a good match.

Both Offensive and Defensive Forcefields at work here.

As soon as I fended off the Proxy push, I had an already setup Expo, and was building a Warp Prism with Blink to abuse his obvious high unit count. Protoss units are best stuck together. We don't have the numbers of units that Terran and Zerg often have at later stages in the game. A Protoss army consists of Quality over Quantity(when you think about it like this, those Forge upgrades suddenly seem a lot better huh?). So I loaded up a few zealots and flew to his not so natural expansion, and warped in 7 Blink Stalkers on the cliff over looking it.

Blink Stalkers in combination with Warp Prisms are a very useful.

I waited till a 2nd round of warp ins were ready and brought those in as well. I blinked 14 stalkers into his mineral line and cleaned it up, when his units came over to defend, I blinked back up, waited for them to move and blinked them back in. I then sent my main army to his front and it became a two pronged attack. Shortly after he GG'd.


This next one was on Metalopolis. We spawned in close positions by air. However it was another PvP so using Phoenix's were not an option. When you are close positions by air, utilizing Warp Prisms should be a must, like using Phoenix's or Void Rays against Zerg in the same spawn points.

Did you know you can cut off an army using this choke point? 

The Warp Prism came in handy, and I only used it when I knew my opponent had a Sentry at the ramp waiting to FF me the moment my Army was halfway up. I quickly macro'd up and got a Prism with about 7 Gateways to support it. I knew he had an expansion so I Warped in 2 rounds of units. Notice a pattern? when you warp in units, you want to make sure they are going to do damage and be big enough to warrant bringing the entirety of his force to hold it off, so waiting 20 seconds to warp in another round is worth it.

What warping in behind a shrouded area of the map looks like.

Once he moved back I moved in and took out his expansion, while at the same time, I took my third. My force in the back didn't do much damage, in fact we were on more even terms after that exchange, however I was going on 3 bases while he was now back on one. So in the grand scheme of things, it was a great exchange for me.

Summary
So to sum up, Warp Prisms are best used when your opponent does not know about them, and unlike drops they can transport more units into the base. This is why it is so important to wait for another round of warp ins, or to wait until you have more than 4 gateways. If the main has cliffs you can abuse, use them in combination with Blink Stalkers. Delta Quadrant is a great example of this.

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**

Back to Macro, Back to Hokeys, Back to Starcraft...

Hey guys! Sorry I haven't been writing alot. Real life required my attention for a bit and I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things... I have not played a ladder game in 6 weeks, instead I have been concentrating on getting my groove back with the MultiTasking Trainer by Stet_tcl. It has really helped me realize what my game play should look like. I have even used it to prefect my own build orders so I don't get bogged down with new elements. Over the next week I will be posting a few blogs on my progress as well as an update when I finally feel comfortable enough to play a few ladder games... If you want to use this multiTasking trainer map, search for Multi in the map screen, and find the one published by Beefheart. Now on the the real purpose of the post!

http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4712303/

That link goes straight too one of the most helpful videos I have ever watched. Being shown what to do and what not to do with your hands is so huge...How would we know if we were doing something right if someone much better than us didn't show us in one way or another? I have taken to watching Huks stream occasionally to watch his hotkey setup. Its really helped as I am beginning to understand why certain groups are the hotkey to certain keys. Easy access as well as priority come into effect and you quickly have to determine whats most important. My trouble with hotkeys is how to easily access buttons 6-8 effectively. Currently this is my setup:

• 1 main army, all grouped together(I know thats bad)
• 2 I keep open so when i do start grouping my stalkers separately, they go here.
• 3 is for my initial scouting Probe and later on as my caster group or Warp Prism for drops.
• 4 is my Nexus.
• 5 is for my Warpgates. Some people use W but I believe W focuses on the gates instead of just selecting them.

I try to use 6 for my Robo, but its hard to press that key smoothly. I also need to find a key to use for upgrades. either with the forge or whatever building I'm currently researching with to help me keep track. Getting hotkeys right is the first of the things I'm working to get better...

Anyone have any suggestions?

Ways to control your opponent.

One very effective strategy to gain the advantage is too attack him with certain units that force a building or training or action from him.

Example: If you simply get some Dark Templar and very obviously send them to a spot and start harassing, that forces your opponent to start building detection, thus wasting some resources and time in getting it. If you time it right, you can even attack him while he is in the midst of this transition. Attacking while your opponent is teching to a new unit, researching a vital upgrade, or building defenses is very important. You can catch your opponent off guard while he is waiting for that upgrade to complete before he pushes.

Another way I found was through a match a few weeks ago on Scrap Station. The ground distance to our bases was far, however I like to take advantage of the short air distance by sending in warp prisms to deploy and warp in troops. He saw this and began to build Missile Turrets, EVERYWHERE. I’m not talking about 2-3 here and there, I’m talking about at least 5-10 for each of his expansions (he had 3 by the end of the match). I didn’t have a backup strategy back then so I continued to try and do the same thing with little success. What I should have done is take advantage of the fact that he was pumping in at least 2k+ amount of resources for this defense and started just mass building units to try and break this Terran who was by now turtling. Its important to remember this key fact: If he starts mass building these defenses, he is not building units. With all those Missile Turrets, an army consisting of mainly Gateway units and Immortals could break the line and would have probably won me the game.

The game ended with him building up several Battlecruisers and sending them at me after I attempted to use a Mothership and Mass Recall inside his base.

The key to begin to start controlling your opponent is scouting. If you don’t know what he is doing through scouting or early aggression, it is very difficult to gain the advantage. I am interested to learn other ways of controlling your opponent. I’ve only played a total of 40 games so I still have a lot more to experience.