In the mind of a “Top Tier” Protoss player

Hey guys, PtitDrogo here, after reading a really amazing post tournament write up by one of my favorite Magic player ( https://twitter.com/lsv/status/1105124626429079552 , seriously, if you’re even slighty into magic go read this) I felt like it would be kind of cool to write down how the past month went for me in term of strategy preparation for the last few tournaments I played, mainly focusing on wesg and WCS ro8.









You win some you lose some









To set the tone, before wesg I was of two minds about my play, I managed to qualify for the ro8 of WCS after beating Mana and Namshar, but I got seriously owned by Bly and Nerchio at IEM, not taking a single map and going home with 0 dollars.

It’s still honestly a little bit confusing to me, the same confidence in my ability to play a defensive style against mana completely failed against bly, and my faith in my timings that worked great against namshar just got dismantled by nerchio. I could go on longer about this but sometimes you just don’t play well, and I’ve learned that dwelling on it is the worst thing you can do.





All eyes on Spaghetti boy





Looking at the groups of WESG, a top 1 finish in my group would give me a good shot of having a “beatable” opponent in the bracket, and winning that match would mean winning 5k, so it was my objective coming into the event.

The man to beat being obviously reynor, who previously kind of walked on me in the last group stage of wcs, I had a couple of ideas in mind and also discovered some new cool stuff beforehand.





I now knew that he actually really liked hydralisk midgame, and I actually really liked it, what was once the bane of my existense is now a pretty manageable opening in my opinion since the hydralisk got quite a bit weaker, you really don’t have to play scared and can even pressure yourself.

I was practicing some kind of 3 base high eco Chargelot archon pressure and having so-so success with it, I kind of wasn’t sure if I wanted to go for it, but without a better idea that’s what I was gonna go for.





“Wow, he actually does open hydralisk every game”.







There’s a bit of a difference between telling yourself something and seeing it for yourself. After watching Probe vs Reynor It really hit my that reynor was playing hydralisks not only on big maps but on everymap, add to that a tendency to add some zerglings to deny the third, and 15 minutes before the start of my match I’m changing strategy without practicing it.

EDIT: Watching the vod of the Bo3, I actually was completely wrong, lol, I looked at the game at the only time he made some hydralisks, to secure a game already won by a roach nydus, and the other game was just a ling queen nydus, I guess I saw what I wanted to see !





“The Yoloswag build”





It’s honestly such a terrible build, it’s not a particulary strong push, and it relies on your opponent not going roachs and REALLY thinking you’re going for a macro while also being a little bit of a bad player for not using your prism.

This is just an 8 gate that wants to cancel its third base in the first place to being able to afford 8 gateways production in the first place, the idea is you poke with 2 archon, run away from the queen, cancel your third because of the nasty zerglings, and while you pretend to being completely owned you warp more archons and zealot in a corner and you go kill the guy, a classic really, and I knew it would be very effective againt lings into hydras, sometimes last minute change of plans do work, color me surprised.

“Oh no you canceled my third dang it”



“Nothing going on over here”











“The 420 Blazing it DT drop”





This one has kind of a funny backstory to it, I was practicing with a zerg for IEM, and he really wanted me to play DT drop because he thought his opponent would do it for sure.

“Alright, but I really think it’s shit” is what I said.

2 hours later and a LOT of wins later, I had to concede that it was pretty good, to quote my practice partner “your Dts being 7 seconds faster is actually a pretty big problem”.

Sometimes you’re very wrong about what is good. Here’s the thing tho, I didn’t have time to check a vod to do the build, so I went by memory, old memories of 2017 in fact, and the way I remembered it you would have to cut a lot of workers and do a lot of little adjustements to get a very fast DT drop going even if it meant sacrificing some economy.





Turn out not a lot of protosses were doing it. The end result was 4 Dts being warped at 4:23, and most games they would just kill the third hatch. So I was feeling pretty confident it would work.

In my game against reynor I warped my Dts at 4:21.

They killed the third hatch.

I was honestly so confused as to why or how I managed to have a better timing than in the game I was practicing against the ia, but hey I’m not complaining.

Later Reynor told me he didn’t know Dts could come this fast, and the 4:20 DT drop kind of became a meme among players for the rest of the tournament, I haven’t warped exactly 4 Dts at 4:20 yet, but hey maybe next wcs I’ll do it without meaning to !









So I ended up with a very pretty to look at 10-0 score, wasn’t easy of course, Iasonu and Probe were two players I was also scared of but I thought that playing standard was my best bet and indeed it was, also almost lost a game to PsiArc where I was very behind in economy but managed to attack right before his bunker finished, sometime lucky.













There is no way the Germans can cross the Maginot Line





My opponent for the ro16 was Lambo, not a bad draw but not the best, I was confident I could win tho, and the new variation I was trying out in practice were going great, I had a great plan for the best of 5 and a build for every single maps.

All of that preparation came crashing down with a pretty swift 3-0 LOL.

Game 1 was death by 12 pool, Cuz here’s the thing, to get a 4:20 DT drop, you can’t probe scout, little guy needs to work overtime ! I actually was mainly hoping he wouldn’t have the balls to 12 pool game 1 and I was going to scout after core anyway, whats the worse that could happen?





Game 2 was a very good game until it all came crashing down, I actually very like this double stalker opening poke, I was practicing against a zerg and made 2 stalkers by mistake on this map, and the overlord that usually always manage to run away died this time, and the very confusing double stalker oracle move out forced quite a lot of lings. So I decided to run with it in the tournament

When I was trying to explain it to the other protoss as a “great opening that looks very confusing to the zerg but doesn’t actually do anything” they were unconvinced; Haters; when it becomes the norm in 2020 don’t forget about me.

In the actual game the 2 stalkers squad worked great, I actually even killed an overlord at his base ahahah. I was in a VERY strong position in the midgame, and thought there was no way I could lose.





Well, nydus happened, no warpin available, no recall, an awkward attempt at a basetrade and a very long death animation trying to rebuild my templar tech to spend my gas bank later, It’s 2-0.



“Money in the bank pimping ain’t easy”



Game 3 was just a standart 2 base nydus that if I was a few second faster to recall my oracle or if I wasn’t supply blocked on 53/54 to then warp one more stalker I would have won, oh well, sometime it’s just not going your way.

“The correct play here is to go alt tab and go complain on Bnet forums”



It was obviously very annoying to lose one step short of making 5k, but there was a silver lining to losing to hard and so quickly to cheese.

All of my preparation could still be used for WCS.









An FFA would pretty much have been the same right ?





The big Round robin was here, and good god is it spooky. All of the players there are good and even if 6 players out 8 makes it it is very very scary.

My goal coming into the group was to barely make it, “maybe 2 wins is enough to squeeze in” is what I thought.

The first thing that is interesting to note is that I got pretty lucky in the order of my matchs, my 4 first matchs were all PvZ, then on day 2 I got the two PvP and the PvT.

That made practice fairly easy and nobody was able to prepare for me for day 2 as I didn’t have any of the same match-ups.





“You lose some…

Against Serral, I had a pretty good first game to be honest, even tho I didn’t do flashy damage with the DT drop I still kept the pressure with the archons and was in what I thought a pretty good situation with the army I wanted.

Here’s the thing tho, Serral is annoying, like VERY annoying with his mutalisks, so before moving out for a strong attack I overmade defensive structures by quite a bit (3 canons in natural mineral line lololol) because I felt like I could afford it. So when I pushed, as you might expect it, broodlords were already out, and even if it might not be a well known fact in the community yet, Lategame PvZ is pretty unwinnable, at least against serral, gg.

Game 2 was just an embarrassing game of me messing up my build order and losing my prism to 6 queens to then die to mutalisks and roachs. Not the most interesting of games and the kind of showing you really don’t wanna produce but it sadly happens too many times.

“Queens defend everything reeeeeee”



Against Reynor I’m actually blaming the first game loss directly onto serral. I actually very efficiently dealt with the mutalisks while teching to storm extremely fast (more on that later) and was in a very decent position. But I subconsciously felt like I needed to attack much faster than I actually had to because of the previous game (Check the Hive Drogo !! Scouting is allowed reeee) And just made the game extremely easy to play for reynor with a reckless attack.





The second game was just a meme, another case of 12 pool, but this time even tho I scout it very late I pull all of my probes and take a very efficient fight against the zerglings, and at this exact moment I am in a very good position.

The correct play was to make a stargate in the wall and just move out with the adept and leave the zealot home.

I didn’t finish the wall and moved out with 2 units, Reynor did a runby with some more lings and I had to go home.





I then proceed to not finish the wall and moved out with 3 units, Reynor did a runby with some more lings and I had to go home.





I then proceed to move out with 2 adepts leaving 2 at home, Reynor did a runby with some more lings and I had to recall home

I then proceed to try to finish the wall but Reynor did a runby with a LOT of zerglings and I had to gg back to the lobby.





This is the kind of game where you just feel very stupid, I like to call these games failing an IQ test, because thats what they truly are.





… You win some”





This is where I finally get the talk strategy, because there’s kind of of prerequisite to win games to be able to brag about how great of a strategical mastermind you are.





“The triple triple”

After all the hype about the 420 DT drop, the first thing I obviously was looking for was a build that would look like a DT drop, but was actually a complete blind counter to the usual DT drop response from most zergs.

Thus came to life the triple triple, 3 gate, 3 oracles, warp twice (not 3 times rip symmetry ) and then you just go for it. The gas timing is very similar, only one adept and stalker are produced by the gateway, you have a proxy pylon from your main that can directly warp low ground so that the overlord at the natural cant see it, and the one adept boy can walk around to deny lonely lings from getting vision. All of that for an explosive cocktail that will kill a zerg making roachs expecting Dts, not having enough spores or queens to handle the triple triple squad.

Also, I’ve come to realize in practice that it’s not even that bad of a build in the first place even if scouted really early for some reason.

“Sometimes it kills 10+ workers”



“Sometimes a lot more”



This amazing innovation of the PvZ metagame that I’m sure will be a staple in the metagame (it won’t) allowed me to take a map off Lambo and Elazer, for the other map I had to resort to the amazing build that comes next.













“This is totally an archon drop I swear you better make roachs”





I really don’t know how to call this, You just go for the normal archon drop build except you mine more mineral and make an early forge, then take a third slightly faster than an archon drop timing and just make 4 templars super early so they can bank energy so you can do a +2 push with 8 storms extremely fast. While you’re doing the build you run around with your first few units to deny vision so the zerg gets scared and think he might have missed the prism.

Oh, and you also make a LOT of probes, I’m talking non stop, enough probes to fully saturate the third when its done.

“But Drogo, wouldn’t it be strictly better to just go storm drop? Zerg would actually see a prism and be scared and you would also do economic damage even if they make roachs !!”

And to that I say, I like to keep it simple ok, maybe next year when I actually get good at the game.

Anyway, This build actually gives you a pretty powerful set-up in the midgame, I used it to kill the Hydra bane of Lambo and succesfully defend the nydus onslaught of Elazer (I didn’t strictly do this against elazer actually, I was pretty scared of a spooky all-in), which is usually not possible unless you were a greedy boy in the early game. So all of that gave me 2 points on the board.

“4 templars just chilling at home, Safe working conditions are too rare in the Starcraft universe”







When the Zerg is away the Toss will play.





For the second day I had 2 PvP, a PvT, and a lot of times on my end to prepare. So I did, I watched a ton of rail footage, and observed that he wasn’t afraid to play his ladder builds in tournament, so I was feeling fairly confident I could just win by having stronger build orders.

Little did I know this would be the hardest series of the tournament by far.





The first game felt like a walk in the park at first, you’re going 3 phoenix against fast expand forge first? There is no way in hell I am losing this. I played it a little bit safer than I could have but I was very confident in my ability to hold his 2 base push.





Turn out, I was wrong, very wrong, Rail just made a bigger army and kept warping in, and eventually our armies got to a size where his two untouched immortal he had over me actually packed quite the punch and our upgrades were equal. So even with a third nexus mining for a while, I’m losing the game.





The second game I was sure of what he was going to do, some adepts with an expand and robo follow up, so my plan was pretty much to play with a lot of gates units and go Stargate to have good control of the game, simple plan, but effective.

The issue is, I forgot to prevent him from pylon blocking my wall, then I didn’t realise he let his pylon finish, I built my Stargate in vision of his pylon …





So yea I canceled that real fast and improvised a blink opening, a build I haven’t practiced in a really really long time, without any possibility of scouting, turned out I didn’t need to, since verdi went for his robo opening into constant presure with adepts sentry immortals, with me sitting and pure useless stalkers, down 1-0 and 30 supply, disruptor knocking at my front door, I didn’t like my odds one bit.

Oh well, sometime lucky.





I’m sure the third game will be much smoother.

Oh

Oh no (not pictured here, 3 sentries also died)





This has to be a record for the most amounts of units lost to the 2 initial adepts in a professional game





There’s almost something peaceful about being so far behind, you can just try out wacky stuff and see if it works.

Which is somehow did, after two pretty successful adept and a basetrade clearly going in my favor, I brought back an impossible game and was very happy with myself.

If you’re wondering how on earth I managed to get surprised by 2 adepts, all I can say is that I was way too confident in my preparation, as I was so sure that he was going for his safe expand double probe scout strat, I didn’t have adepts on my mind until the last 3 seconds.

Overall I would say that my preparation for this serie was very bad, even tho I spent the most time on it, even if you can tell yourself beforehand to not mindgame yourself by thinking too hard, it can still very much happen.

So after that emotional roller coaster of a series, it was time to play a PvT against big Gabe, and I had quite the revolutionary strat prepared.









“The triple triple… Again…”





Sometime you watch one series that makes you fall in love with a strat, for me it was Zest vs Innovation where Zest defended a marine drop with 2 oracle and a phoenix, warped more adepts across the map and immediately killed Innovation, I thought to myself “I can do that” as it didn’t look too hard.

I hate Stargate openings in PvT, I truly hate them, I’m always in a good position with them but I always lose anyway, but on the other hand, I’ve loved shading adepts and oracle at random times since LOTV beta, so I thought it was worth to give it a shot, especially because I thought Gabe wouldn’t expect me to play stargate.

Worked just as planned, a refreshing turn of events after the last series.





The second game (what game on kairos ? never happened Protoss doesn’t lose PvT remember) is what I like to call “New Year Zero, the movie”. I really think this map is incredibly protoss favored, it’s really not on everymap that starting 2 forges because you’re supply blocked and can’t start your first colossus ends up being a the best decision you could have made.





After killing the Raven and a decent chunk of bio in the middle of the map, I thought I had a real timing there, I had 5 seconds of hesitation after seeing so many liberators, but after sending an hallucination and seeing that Heromarine was Still 1/1, I decided to A move into him anyway, it was either gonna be a genius, killer instinct like move, or another brick to the monument that is the ThrowGo Legacy, a win win really.

“Sir, this is Hallucinated phoenix speaking, Terran is 1:1 you’re clear to go”

“Roger that”



It went great and the twitch chat of that game had a very reasonable discussion about game design talking about how great it was that protoss could attack into this many liberators.









I don’t have much to say about the last Serie vs Showtime really, I was already qualified so all the presure was off and I felt great, and I don’t think I could talk at length about great of a strategical mastermind I am for faking going phoenix and actually going Dark templars !

He didn’t exactly do what I expected to him to do so this was pretty much freestyle that worked in my favor and not anything prepared.

“Artosis favorite unit showing us what peak starcraft is all about”





The second game was a cheese that I had seen before, Double proxy gate zealot with canon rush, I was fairly confident that it was overall pretty bad, and this game didn’t change my mind.

“The best unit against canons is actually the probe”











Amazing Gaming





So overall it’s a 5-2 Score !! This wasn’t what I expected at all and I was obviously thrilled, too bad I failed so many IQ tests otherwise the first place would have been easily in my grasp.





I have a lot of cool new strats with weird names prepared for LA, I hope I’ll win so I get to brag once again about how smart I am ! (not really).





Hope you guys enjoyed this blog, and I would like to dedicate this victory to this chinese Stuff bear, he kept his promise and without him I would never have survived those nyduses.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvPWIAvhKSl/

For more Yee https://twitter.com/PtitDrogo