#four gate

So some of you might remember that I off-race as Protoss and that I almost always do some four gate all-in or two gate proxy when I play. A couple of days ago, I was on my Zerg account and I played against a Protoss player who opened in a fairly familiar way. I'll let the photos tell the rest of the story =) *Warning: Image heavy post ahead!*

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We started off with the usual courtesies...

And as per usual, my 12th drone was sent out to scout around the map and find my opponent's starting position. I prefer 12 scout as opposed to a 9 scout because in a ZvP on a 4 player map like Antiga Shipyard, you don't have to worry too much about 2 gate proxies. The closest point he can put the proxy gates is at the watch tower and even then it's still pretty far away.

15 Hatch coming down, really standard play against Protoss since most Protosses open Forge FE anyway in ZvP. A smaller number still do 1 Gate Expand, but those are easily scouted and going Hatch first vs 1 Gate expand isn't all that bad if Zerg gets their spawning pool at 15 as well after the Hatch...

Which I do always anyway to be safe =) By now, I know for certain that he was in the top right position because my drone and overlord scouts have confirmed that he was not in the bottom right and top left positions. The thing that I would be looking out for now is whether or not he had Forge FEd or if he was doing some sort of 1 Base opening.

Chronoboosted Cyber Core and a deliberately hidden Pylon? Hmm... This seems fishy...

Cyber Core had been chronoboosted twice and it seemed like he was desperate to get my drone out of his base.

Normally, you don't see many second geysers being taken in the usual four gate build orders, but it could be that he's going for a Stalker heavy four gate which is very effective against Roach/Spine builds that Zergs tend to use in response. The difference between a Stalker heavy four gate and the usual four gate is that Stalker heavy ones tend to come slightly later than the usual ones.

At about 6:00mins, the usual four gate would have already hit by then. However, as you can see, my opponent had just finished his 3 additional Gateways due to his lower mineral income. During all this, I got up a Roach Warren, 2 Spines and a second gas in anticipation of the push. Notice, that the two Lings in production are my very first sets. This reaction was very greedy and it requires some amount of luck and knowledge of the Protoss' build orders in order to respond correctly.

Eventually, the push arrived very late at 8 minutes which gave me ample amount of time to build up a high roach count and get my defenses in place.

We traded back and forth a couple of times before I managed to push him out of my base...

And kill his proxy pylon... (Well one of them anyway, I didn't notice the second one at the other wall) At this point, I had him on the backfoot and while I had both the economic and army advantage, I didn't want the Protoss to have a chance and wall himself in. On Antiga Shipyard, it is difficult for a Zerg to properly break a Protoss wall (force fields lol) without having Mutalisks and teching to that requires quite a bit of time. So...

I decided to go in for the kill and...

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After analysing the game and writing this post, I realised that my opponent actually had 5 gates on one base - one too many for his economy to support properly. Also, he pulled out his probes from the second geyser after mining for a bit so it could have been a decoy. Nonetheless, the extra 75 minerals and lost mining time from 3 probes really messed up with his timing. He could have had the push come even earlier at about 6:30 mins but he decided to go around and hunt for some Overlords, which gave me the precious time that I needed to respond and build up my army.

Additionally, a Roach only composition doesn't work as well against Stalker/Zealot without Ling support. Having those extra Lings coming out mid fight helped to block the Zealots and drew Stalker fire away from the Roaches as well. Overall, I think my opponent could have had a better chance if he didn't wait too long and instead grabbed whatever he had and try to wear down my Roach army while waiting for his warp cycles to finish. Also, I mentioned that some of my Overlords were 'hunted' - Another thing I could have improved on was to move my Overlords away from the possible danger zones so I could have saved more minerals and instead use it to build more Lings or Roaches!

Good Luck, Have Fun!