{"id":306,"date":"2013-03-23T11:44:06","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T18:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/starcraft.kevinleung.com\/?p=306"},"modified":"2013-07-07T21:12:53","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T04:12:53","slug":"dealing-with-a-3-hatch-opening-in-pvz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/?p=306","title":{"rendered":"Dealing with a 3 Hatch opening in PvZ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m playing random on HotS right now until I figure out my best race. I&#8217;m feeling okay with all of the match ups, except PvZ. Gosh, I just have no idea what&#8217;s going on. I know that I need to open with a fast expand as Protoss, but the Zerg just goes up to 3 bases when they see that. And then a few minutes pass, and all of a sudden, an army of arbitrary composition but immense size rolls up and kills me.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that I don&#8217;t know what I&#8217;m to do from about 4:00 to 12:00. Pros do Stargate openings, so maybe that? Oh, but I should take a 3rd base at some point. How much army do I need? Maybe I should poke with my 1 Zealot, 1 Stalker, and 1 MsC. It&#8217;s pretty disastrous.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, I&#8217;m currently watching <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLPW1oxf-pY2z_TlIpqbP5QU_R940oevX9\">Apollo&#8217;s Protoss Tutorials REVAMPED<\/a> from WoL, and he has an excellent video showing what I think is the prototypical Protoss play against 3 bases. Admittedly, I haven&#8217;t watched enough PvZ in HotS to know if things have changed a lot, but I&#8217;m inclined to believe that things haven&#8217;t changed too much yet.<\/p>\n<p>So check out <a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/QMTfhJ9s8QQ?t=23m38s\">this game<\/a> (24:00 into the 2nd Protoss video), with the build order written out below. The keys here are timing attacks. First, he goes in with 4 Zealots and 4 Stalkers with +1 attack around 8:15 (you can even add the Mothership Core too). It doesn&#8217;t look big, but I&#8217;m certain that the early pressure is very important. At my level, I think Zerg knows to get to 3 bases, but they have difficulty knowing how to time aggressive Droning and enough defense. Second, he goes up to Colossi and attacks around 15:00, which is slightly earlier than classic deathball pushes. This timing might have changed as Zerg are looking to get to Hive sooner with Roach\/Hydra\/Viper, so let me know if that doesn&#8217;t work out as well.<\/p>\n<p>The build order writeup is a little sketchy, but it&#8217;s a good outline. Just watch the game: it&#8217;s only about 11 minutes of real time.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Apollo&#8217;s Prototypical PvZ from WoL (Oct 2012)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>9 Pylon<\/li>\n<li>11 Chrono into probes<\/li>\n<li>16 Nexus<\/li>\n<li>16 Forge<\/li>\n<li>16 Pylon (resume Probe production + Chrono)<\/li>\n<li>20 Cannon<\/li>\n<li>21 Assimliator x2<\/li>\n<li>26 Cybernetics Core<\/li>\n<li>28 Zealot<\/li>\n<li>32 +1 Attack upgrade (with first 100 gas)<\/li>\n<li>Warpgate<\/li>\n<li>(Sees 3 base)<\/li>\n<li>6:30 Gateway x3<\/li>\n<li>7:10 Assimilator x2<\/li>\n<li>Robotics Facility<\/li>\n<li>8:15 attack on 3rd with 4 Zealot\/4 Stalker<\/li>\n<li>+1 Armor upgrade<\/li>\n<li>Observer<\/li>\n<li>Sentry x4<\/li>\n<li>Immortals<\/li>\n<li>9:30 Gateway x2, Twilight (for more upgrades)<\/li>\n<li>10:30 Nexus at 3rd<\/li>\n<li>11:30 Robotics Support Bay(seeing Reach\/Ling), Robotics Facility<\/li>\n<li>13:00 Gateway x3<\/li>\n<li>Gateway x4 (shooting for 12 total)<\/li>\n<li>15:00 Attack (timing attack before Hive)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m playing random on HotS right now until I figure out my best race. I&#8217;m feeling okay with all of the match ups, except PvZ. Gosh, I just have no idea what&#8217;s going on. I know that I need to &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/?p=306\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,18],"tags":[21,37],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-build-orders","category-protoss","tag-apollo","tag-specificbuild"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425,"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.spawningtool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}