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If you’re not watching Proleague, you’re missing out. I wasn’t watching too closely for the past few rounds, but then I started playing Fantasy Proleague, and it’s now consuming my life. If you’re not familiar with Proleague, it’s a team format where 8 teams play best of 7 matches once or twice a week. Each team comes up with their lineup based only on the maps, and they spend the week practicing that map. Because the lineups are announced early, this leads to very different games from the individual, weekend tournaments. Instead of just needing to be in good shape for any games you might play, you can prepare a specific build for a specific map for a specific opponent for one week.

Last night, STX Soul’s Dear came ready with a 3 base Skytoss build against SK Telecom T1’s Sacsri on Naro Station. This build looked great on Naro Station, where the natural has 1 choke and another path, which leads to the 3rd, blockable by collapsible rocks. The 3rd also has 2 entrances, with rocks at one of them. Dear walls off the natural, then quickly moves to take the 3rd and walls that off as well. And the best part of Skytoss is that the 3rds are close by air, so Tempests can almost shoot from your 3rd into your opponent’s third.

Anyways, here’s the build. You can probably follow it up till around when the Tempests start at 9:20. The rest should be reactive.

Dear’s PvZ Skytoss on Naro Station

• 9 Pylon (in base)
• 16 Nexus
• 17 Forge (in base)
• 17 Pylon
• 19 Gateway (wall natural )
• 19 Cannon (at natural)
• 21 Assimilator x2
• 4:20 sees 3rd base
• 27 4:30 Core (wall nat)
• 29 Zealot
• 31 Pylon
• 5:30 Stargate
• 38 5:40 Assimilator x2
• Sentry
• Warpgate
• Sentry
• 50ish 6:40 Void Ray
• Mothership Core
• Void Ray
• 7:30 Nexus (3rd)
• 7:45 Gateway x2 (walling on 3rd)
• Void Ray
• 8:10 Fleet Beacon, Stargate
• 8:10 (Zerg starts Spire)
• 8:35 +1 Air Weapons
• 9:20 Tempest x2 (continuous)
• 9:20 (Zerg starts Hydra Den
• 10:40 Stargate, Tempests attacking 3rd
• Cannons
• 11:40 +2 Air weapons
• 12:20 Sees Mutas, Switches to Phoenix
• 14:10 Zealot Leg speed
• 15:30 Back into Void Rays (maybe 12 Phoenix at this point?)
• 16:20 Templar Archives

So, a few notes on how this game went.

The 3rd base comes very quickly, and this build depends on being able to secure this. Of the current ladder map pool, I think Akilon Waste is maybe the only viable map to use this build on. Maybe Newkirk Precinct if you’re lucky.

Dear doesn’t harass with his early Stargate and instead gets Void Rays. I can’t really explain that. Please comment if you know why.

For defense, Dear walls in a lot and gets lots of Cannons. This does leave his main open for Mutalisk harass, but some emergency Stalker warp-ins and bringing the Void Rays home rescue that. The Mothership Core will also be a huge help in defense.

In the midgame, he switches into 3 Stargate Phoenix, which locks things down. They’re good against both Mutalisks and small numbers of Hydralisks.

In the late game, he has a Tempest/Void Ray force with Phoenixes, High Templars, and Zealots (the mineral dump). The High Templar can deal with the Hydralisks and Abducting Vipers.

Dear doesn’t take a 4th until 19 minutes into the game. I guess that’s not part of the game plan as he depends on good control and retaining his core, valuable air units.

Sacsri never builds Corruptors, and I’m assuming this is because of the Void Ray count and the new Prismatic Alignment ability.

So, try it out and let me know how it works. It’s a little wacky, but this is Proleague: you will see strange, but very well optimized and thought-out builds.