Proxy Five Gate

So I’ve been playing in Gold League this season. I’m not sure why but the apparent cause is that players are leaving the game in such large numbers, that the league player distribution tends towards rank decay. In other words, if you were Diamond at the height of the popularity of the game, there’s a good chance you’re Plat or Gold now.

Since the leagues were always just a cosmetic feature of the game, and never really correlated to a player’s MMR, I have to say I feel this was a big mistake from Blizzard. I would have preferred to stay in Diamond league, once I attained that level. You want to keep my MMR hidden? You want to give me the illusion of being better at StarCraft than I am? Fine, then don’t demote me from your meaningless league.

I have enjoyed more victory than usual in my new league. For some reason, this season, I’m having a lot of trouble against terran. And I can’t figure out why. TvT used to be my best matchup. Now it’s my worst. Surprisingly, toss is now my best race. But I was still losing against terran players.

Call me a dinosaur, but one of my best PvT builds was a five gate. I can execute that built without even trying. But lately, my five gates have been shut down by terrans. And shut down hard.

So I devised a new strategy, just for PvT. And I haven’t lost yet. I call it the Proxy Five Gate.

You start off with a standard, one base build. I like to always take both gases, and put two probes in each until I have full saturation. Normally, when your Cybernetics Core is done, you would built a mothership core. I delay the Core in order to built a Robo first. Depending on the map, I may proxy the Robo. Then I proceed very much like a regular five gate.

It’s important to built a Zealot and Stalker in this built, and to poke at the front of your opponent’s base. Warpgate research finishes about the time you would get a Warp Prism. I usually fill the prism with two zealots and two sentries. Then, you do one more poke at the front of his base with your stalker. This time, it’s a diversion. If you time it right, he’ll be rushing to catch that Stalker right about the time you’re dropping and warping in units in his main. Depending on the map and army positions, you can sometimes FF him out of his own base! Or out of his natural.

This attack works because in the current meta game, Terran is encouraged to have a strong front line. Typical protoss attacks involve using an Oracle. Blink favored maps are out of style, so in general Terran players aren’t expecting an attack at this point in the game from anywhere other than the front of their base, or an Oracle flying in.

The advantage of attacking away from bunkers is enough to win the game.

Enjoy.

PS - What happened to the traveling pro players and tournaments that used to happen? It’s like they’ve dried up and now everything is either in Korea or online. I’m sure this effect is as simple as a major sponsor pulling his support. But I must’ve missed the memo on the details.