After 3 weeks of nonstop pressure from teachers, doing quizzes, quests and tests right after exams I was pretty damn tired. You can problably tell if you had read my sad excuse for a flame report.

but I'll try to make up for that with this guide to protoss. I'll try to make it so that when newbies read it, they'll learn something, and it will be review for already gosu’s, but they would problaby already have their own way of thinking. From the feedback that I receive, I might write more, but since I’m in a boring mood right now, as I am writing this, this might end up to be boring.

STRAT USAGE.

The problem for a lot of people that I have taught in the past, is that the best combinations of units, or strats, for a certain situation may not be the best for the individual using it. For example, if a terran that does not wallin, and rushes with marines and medics from three raxes, you may be tempted to go with a couple goons and then go reaver/goon or dt drop, when at that moment, what you *really* wanted to do is go dragoons and range

My advice is, do what you feel like at the time. Even if you feel tempted to do a strat you saw from a replay because you feel it is "standard" or "officially good", you should just go with what you want to do. If you just do what you want to do, it will be funner, and also you will be executing the moves with a nicer touch of micro because you don't have to worry and think about what else that other guy would have done in your situation (replay person), and simply do what you want to do

There are of course some exceptions to this rule, and these are the things I feel should never be done

-double pylon before gate

-forge first build

-gas first build, unless islands

-pylon, gate, pylon, pylon build, vs any race (its slow, and you will die vs a terran)

-pylon, nexus vs random, terran will own you

-triple gate

HOW I USE MY KEYBOARD AND MOUSE.

Sure.. I ain't the best, but for those who don't micro with hotkeying units like me, or are lazy, this is the best way to hotkey for protoss. Early on, hotkey your nexus 3 and 8.

Yea.. two buttons. Without this technique, I believe I would have never had a won vs greats such as Fox^1 and NewbieMcnasty because they pressured me so much that I would have had to struggle with hotkeys in mid game.

Now because when you are playing protoss, naturally you will build 1 or 2 gateways early on, unless you are a dumbfuck like MTCFB who goes forge first. The two hotkeys that I use are 1 and 2, for the first two gateways, and since I am always pressing those two buttons, its faster for me to press 3 for probes. When I eventually overlap the 3 button for my third gateway, I will use 8 for nexus probes. Then all the hotkeys after the third button will be for gateways, eventually pushing the 8 button to 9, then 10. But by the time you have 10 gateways, you should still be building gateways, but since you will have a lot of expansions, just que up all the nexuses to the limit whenever your not doing anything important or just thinking

*After the 3rd gateway takes away the 3 hotkey from the nexus, you can chose the 4 hotkey for the nexus and so forth if you have the time to do it More hotkeys on your Nexuses are always a good thing... you can be accidentally making probes ;) There isn't really that much I can say about how I use the mouse. But I like to have the mouse on the smoothest surface possible, such as my computer desk without the mousepad.

BUILD ORDER CONCEPTS . There are no “best build orders” for protoss, especially since in brood war there is the random button, so unless you hack, you cannot really tell if you want to go gas early or later. (I may sometimes refer to assimilator as gas)

Even for me, it was hard for me to describe how I wanted others to imitate me when they had wanted to learn and I felt like teaching. The reason is because I followed a set of rules in how I liked to build, and I always felt there was some flaw in my thinking that way. Hey.. don’t teach when you don’t know what your doing right? Hmm.. I suppose I made myself follow a strict set of rules when I had played NewbieMcnasty in the past (Nmcnasty was/is a great a terran player) . Before I had reached my best skill, which I no longer have, NewbieMcnasty would own me 20 – 1. After using all the combinations of build orders, and losing, NewbieMcnasty’s advice to me was to always build 4 – 6 goons, building robo and ob, then expanding. Always going shuttle speed fairly soon, as I needed to counter dropships fairly soon.

The key word is always. There should be no always, and in fact, once I had reached by peak skill, I think I won about three or four games for every six games that NewbieMcnasty beat me. This happened in 1.07, but the concept is the same. What I had done, was apply deep thinking and variety of strats executed in a manner which would always annoy him, different openings, such as dt drops, goon rushes, and goon/ob are needed vs terran.

DEEP THINKING .

The thing about Starcraft that I feel a lot of players lack, is the deeper thinking. I believe Fennec-the-fox first introduced me to this concept. In a span of three games, he had completely dominated me in two, the first with a mass ling vs my early expand grr’ style (it was the popular thing to do back then, when grr’ posted his strat on starcraft.org which you can no longer get, a stupid strat) and the second winning by superior economy. During the first game tsunami and Fennec were talking about how mass lings was undeniably the best strategy vs protoss, and the way I spoke reflected that I believed him, and Fennec gave every intention that he would do the same the next game, in a really cocky manner. Second game he build 2 lings that scared away my scouting probe, and he went 3 hatch drones early. I was owned.

Another example of deep thinking is when Mcnasty used to own me when we played many games. After Mcnasty used the same consecutive strat to beat me twice, his third strat would be different, because I would think that he would do the same thing, when I had finally figured out how to counter his strat effectively. Ugh... Maybe I should have said mind games instead of deep thinking. ahh whatever

I guess I just made this term “deep thinking” because I felt it was appropriate for what I wanted to describe. When I say “deep thinking” I don’t mean that you actually have to think really hard, that’s for school! Deep thinking just means outguessing your opponent.

OPENINGS

Like I said earlier, no one build order is superior to all others. But here are all the things that I have done as a protoss player.

GOOD OPENINGS VS TER

-dt drop

-goon rush

-goon rush /w range

-goon observer

–goon rush with shuttle + 4 zealot on terrans wallin

-goon rush with 2 reaver drop on terrans wallin

VS TOSS

–Goon reaver -Zealot templar -dragoon templar and token zealots -all goons (vs some builds such as early expo and zealot rush, it works) -1 gate dt -zealot dragoon rush -ranged goons

VS ZERG

-1 gate zealot/templar with semi quick 1/0 upgrade – note* Timing of 2nd gate must be well made or you will die

-2 gate dragoon/reaver

-sair reaver goon

-2 gate zealot rush – templar + expand

MEDIOCRE OPENINGS VS TER

-1 gate quick reaver

-1 gate goon, ob, expand

-zealot/goon rush

-sair dt

VS TOSS

–1 gate reaver

-1 gate goon ob

VS ZERG

-sair dt

BAD OPENINGS VS TER

any kind of dt rush

-zealot rush

-zealot templar

-dragoon reaver

VS TOSS

-expansion then kinda early carriers

-half zealot/ half dragoon, without rushing

VS ZERG

-3 gate zealot

-early templar drop, either dt or ht

-drops, period

-probe zealot rush (I don’t recommend many probes with zealot rush, may work for some)

forge first

forge then gate or gate then forge

I enjoyed writing this. It took me about two and a half hours to write this.. now that I read it, it seems that this just may be a tad on the boring side. *Shrug*. It will be a good reminder to myself if I ever want to get good in this game again.

I note that when I say bad openings, those openings are not really bad.. if you think it will work for vs your opponent then you should just do it. Btw I would like someone to type in the comments section how to make a better background, like with a wallpaper or a color without having to have to make a seperate webpage to do it. This is the first time I have ever used html before, and it shows. :(

It's a lot of work to copy paste

over fifteen times, and the minor coding that br.com tells u to do