Disclaimer: Tons of players are working on different builds, strategies, and tactics for this matchup. As our collective understanding and execution of this matchup changes (which will happen!), its likely that the questions and arguments posed in this theorycraft will change. Not meant as a real guide, rather as my musings on the matchup. All questions are rhetorical. Oh, and different maps can change this all of course, its all in generalities!

PvP Metagame

PvP is a tough egg to crack right now. Two builds sit up at the top of the strategy heap. Blink / Observer and Phoenix variants (probably the best of which is Phoenix/4gate).

Lets go into a bit of depth about the perfectly played Blink/Observer strategy:

You and I are both going mass Blink Stalkers with an observer to be able to harass with. If you expand, I will have more units, and all Micro being even, I will kill you. How do you get the edge? Well, you might add some Immortals to the mix, which I might as well. Maybe if you go Immortals, I go charge Zealots with my Stalkers, rendering them completely useless. Maybe if you are going charge Zealots vs my Immortals, I will make a nice sim-city in front of my expansion with a nexus and a few Gateways, rendering your Zealots useless long enough to get the edge through expanding. Maybe if I do that though, you weren’t actually going charge Zealots, and you come up with your Blink Stalkers and Immortals, destroy my sim-city, and my expansion.

Its a circle. Right now when both open with Blink Stalker / Observer, someone has to get greedy eventually, or be out-microed.

Now let’s add in the other top build, Phoenix/4gate (there are variations, we’ll just use this one). Eventually we will figure out which build is actually better between Phoenix and Blink/Obs, but for now we will assume that no one knows for sure.

As Phoenix/4gate takes up more and more of the current build %, it begins to make PvP do something really funny. It makes it open up more. How? Let’s assume that a hardcore Blink rush (not Blink/Obs) beats the Phoenix/4gate if controlled correctly. If both Blink/Obs and Phoenix/4gate represent 50% of the metagame, then Blink rushes return. If Blink rushes return, then every other decent build returns. What do all decent builds have in common? Blink/Obs and Phoenix/4gate are better than them.

LOL. Excited to see how this all turns out as SC2 moves forward!