Building a 4th gate doesn't commit you to continual production out of all 4 gates. All you have to do is to gain enough advantage to compensate for that 4th gate. In that sense I don't think its all in. I don't like to define your gameplan so rigidly by your initial build. A 4th gate is merely a few cut probes and and 150 minerals. Unless you're telling me there's no way to recoup that cost short of winning the game, I can't be convinced that its an all-in build.

And as Fwiffo mentions to me, Day9 agrees to me too .

Actually, the void rays are pretty much just there to destroy pylons.
I pump out a crapload of zealots and a bit of stalkers, and 2-5 void rays. The main group charges, taking fire, while the void rays eliminate the cannon's power pylons by circling around.

Of course, I'm playing in bronze, and people who build cannon builds usually turtle up, push out an expansion, and then just build cannon fields, with a few zealots.

My midgame sucks. If I can't close a game out early, I really really need to figure out what to do, because right now, 90% of my games that go past 20 minutes are losses.

Maybe that's because I'm focusing so much on my early push, and not paying enough attention to expansion. About when do you expand as protoss? What's a good build to study when trying to develop at a more reasonable pace than 4 gate?

I'll post some of my more epic losses when I get home from work in the morning.

Sometimes I feel like terrans play more like zergs than zerg do. (You know what I mean, 3 rack mass marines.)

If you're not committing to continual production out of all 4 gates, then sure it's not an all-in build. However, the build can then be considered excessive as your 4th gate is gathering dust after one or two warp ins. I think the fundamental difference between our perception of the 4-gate is your second sentence. At least in my eyes, the initial build does in fact define the gameplay. Why else would a build like a gateway + stargate + robo off one base be criticized so harshly by top level players? Because it reveals an indecisive gameplan with regards to the tech tree the player is trying to follow. And why is a 3-gate expand an opening commonly discussed and used, but a 4-gate expand something you hardly hear about? Because one is optimal and the other isn't. Unlike Go and more like Chess, I think the opening/build means everything, and if we don't share this sentiment then we'd really have to agree to disagree.

I can add a 4th gate because it gives more pressure and gives me the option of going all in. Its different from a 3 gate expand in that my opponent has to account for the later possibility, and has to choose a more defensive build.

Also, the analogy between a 4th gate and 1 gate 1 star 1 robo off 1 base is not right. The 4th gate is being used, primarily for its biggest advantage in the first 2 production rounds. It also gives you more flexibility later to warp in quickly for defense. Not to mention, you will definitely need the 4th gate when your 2nd base comes up (pretty soon).

Being decisive doesn't mean you have to over-commit. If you go 2 gate against zerg, does it mean you have to maintain full blown zealot production until the zerg dies? I don't think so. You build the first 4-5 zealots, but after that you assess the game situation and react accordingly. Its not a binary where the rush either fails or succeeds. You force some lings, get great scouting, and then cut zealot production and resume on the tech path. Similarly, when I go 4 gate, all I am commiting too is that timing window where I have a huge army after warping in my first 2 sets of units. That 4th gate is idle for a lot less time than the 2 gateways in a zealot rush.

I will readily concede that the 4 gate needs to do damage, or fall behind. It certainly doesn't not transition as comfortably as a 2 gate robo or 3 gate expand. But using that to call a build all in is fairly arbitrary. All builds need to do damage at a specified time frame. Some need so more than others, but as long as the game situation is not a binary win / autoloss I don't consider it all in.

Fair enough; I'll just call it "aggressive" then . However, I think too many people tend to over-commit with the 4-gate (so rather than the build being all-in, they all-in with the build), and I notice that in both my games and in pro games, most games involving 4-gating do tend to end pretty quickly depending on whether the first or second push fails or succeeds.

Nonetheless, it does feel that 4-gating is starting to fall out of trend and I've been seeing it a lot less the past week or so. Anyone else watching the GSL and noticing a trend going on with DT builds in PvT? It's something I'm gonna try to work on, though it's hard to build the discipline to not try and end it all with the DTs instead of just trying to gain an advantage from the harassment.

Lost a fun game before work today, involving DT's in a PvT scenario.

I was well behind before I started pushing out DT's and at one point, they rolled over with a MMM group, and 2 tanks. My 2 collosi and chargelots dealt massive damage, and I had just built my DTs, so I threw them in too. It ended up that I had 2 DTs and an immortal live, and everything else died in the skirmish. Trying to capitalize, I threw the remaining DTs down the map, warped in a couple more. Unfortunately, they were far ahead of me. I had expanded early, and as always when I expand, the enemy had gone 3 rack MMM. Great stuff, that. My expansion, and half my base died. For some time, the only thing I could warp in were zealots, dts, and immortals. They had also managed to decimate my probe population, and I ended up /far/ behind in resource collection.

The DTs did a great job of prolonging the inevitable though, and I think if I find terrans going MMM again, I'll try for a 3 gate DT/S build.

I know what I did in that game wrong. After my initial pushes, which were fairly successful, I kinda lost track of building stuff, and ended up well behind on unit and tech production. Shot myself in the foot, as it were.

There were a couple times I thought that if I could just get the units over there, I could have closed him out, but I just didn't manage it.

But I'm pretty wildly out of it today. I probably shouldn't have even been playing.

Just in case anyone doesn't know, Reddit organized a donation tsunami on Day[9] to commemorate his 200th Daily, and people are donating right now:

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comme ... ck_update/

Well this sucks...my finger was basically a giant scab just waiting to be peeled off for the past week or so, and lately I've even managed to play a few 1v1s with it after the scab hardened up...felt weird and stung a bit, but way better than 8 finger play. Today I couldn't resist and managed to take off most of my scab, thinking it'd be victory and that I could at long last type comfortably with it. This was until I realized that the skin under a scab, if peeled too soon as it seems to be what I've done, can be super sensitive and needs time for another layer of skin to grow...so now it's even worse than when I had the scab in the first place since anything that touches the surface of my finger burns like fire. Fantastic . Should have listened to my dad (a doctor) and not pick on the scab instead of the hand surgeon who said picking on it would be alright (as long as I gave it "enough" time).

Oh well, GSL ro32 in a few hours!!

Wow, I'm glad I don't have a giant saw wound. I am the worst scab picker in the history of all scab pickers. I pick stuff that isn't even scabs, like dry lips. Good luck to you, sir, and Godspeed.

p.s. I can't wait to start trying to get into the Master League.

Did a whole bunch of Funday Monday games last night with a couple different teams. This one was the most Epic - both teams were doing Funday Monday:

Ink Saya Protein Keith vs Heff Gryzzly Steven Fwiffo

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KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

Haha, watching right now...I think your role was the hardest...the mothership is such a crucial unit, but it's so slow and it was always behind allied units. And it didn't help that one guy went mass ghosts and kept EMPing, would have been nice to see some vortex action earlier .

It seems like both HTs and Ghosts counter the mothership pretty hard, and they were using both (I think it got feed-backed and EMPed several times over the course of the game). Its build time is 160 seconds, and doesn't spawn with much energy, so each time it lost its shield and energy, it had to back off or I'd be completely out of the action for a long, long time. I actually got to use it a lot more in some of the other games we've played, but they've all been pretty one sided. Either we just rolled over the other team because they were such weak players, or we got rushed before our high-tech units got out.

One combo that seems to have worked more than once is mothership+thor for some reason. I guess because mass SCV repair works really well on both. In another game we managed to archon-toilet a large group of enemy mutalisks and terran bio, but it wasn't a very competitive game overall.

The nice thing about being the mothership guy is that it's easy to macro exactly one unit; you never need to expand, or get extra production buildings, just worry about controlling one unit, getting upgrades and passing off excess resources to teammates.

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KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

Watching sanZenith's games in the GSL ro32 almost makes me think I could fly over to Korea and make it past qualifiers, what was he thinking with that build order and strategy in game 1? Yeah okay, he probably choked or was on a bad day, but still...blahhhhhhh. Game 2 was also bad, but understandable as I have seen that BO a handful of times in PvZ on Scrap...although I've almost never seen it work out for Protoss. Roach rush as it was played in the game kills it, and I've also seen PsY take it out very easily with a ling rush that's not all-in (though an all-in with a super early pool could probably of course also take it out).

And IdrA played really well . I'm sure everyone knows which particular ZvZ matchup I'm really looking forward to . Nada also played very well of course, but that was expected since he is Nada. Game 3 especially shows how to win a game when you've got the lead imo.

I only have been able to watch the first game from each series, but that cannon thing was *horrible*. I would have beat that, and I am really bad. I don't remember sanZenith being that bad in GSL1. I'm surprised at some of the players who didn't qualify considering a few of the matches we've seen so far in season 2.

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KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

Now there's an understatement. Maybe it's just because I follow him more than any other player, but he is the only guy out there that gives me the impression of effortlessness. He isn't using special strategies or busting out surprises on his opponent. He just calmly marches, step by step, toward inevitable victory, responding comfortably to whatever offensive attempts his opponents make. Pure poetry.

For anyone who knows of such things, feel free to recommend to me any other players who have a similar ability.

EDIT: I just watched that sanZenith Forge expand on Delta Quadrant, and that was actually uncomfortable to watch. I feel awful for him. Only he knows what led to him doing all that, and he probably feels incredibly embarrassed about it. Too bad. (Artosis even called his play "dumb". Ouch.)

I got the same impression from IdrA in the last round of the gsl, but I thought it was more because his opponent wasn't playing so well (though I admit I can't really tell the difference between IdrA being amazing and his opponent good and IdrA being good and his opponent average). I've seen games with IdrA where it felt like he was struggling to adapt, just hoping to be able to sit in his fantasy world where he can play as usual and effortlessly crush his opponents (eg. when he got knocked out of gsl season 1). Fruit dealer on the other hand, has seemed to be playing effortlessly in every game I've seen him in, as well as responding well to his opponents and coming up with cool ideas.

I think it's most likely to get that feeling from games with Zerg as that's just how they work. You can't really see all the tough decisions that go into getting the ratio of drones to army right or quite how close they come to failing when it is done well. With some of fruit dealer's games I get the impression that he's sat there thinking:
(thoughtfully) OK, so he's going all-in with an early push.
(despondently) I guess I'll have to build another roach and one less drone...
(gleefully) ...and then I'll just win once I've defended it.

NaDa. Especially his 2nd game in the most recent GSL round. Unlike what most players would do, he didn't try to win by outright aggression and commit to a push when he knew he was ahead. Instead, he calmly expanded and slowly starved his opponent to death as he gained map control with a tank line contain until eventually his opponent couldn't take it any longer and run resource-hungry into a brick wall and lose. His tank management is nothing short of godly.

This GSL RO32 is something I'm reallyyyyyyyyyyyy looking forward to watching, with 3 PvX matchups, a fruit dealer, and a bunshin + real Boxer playing. I don't know much about CoreJJang, but NEXGenius and oGsInCa are top class Protoss players. NEXGenius unfortunately got knocked out last season to the biggest cheeser (but best interviewee) DAVIT, and oGsInCa lost to a 6-pool from the fruit dealer on Kulas Ravine of all maps lol.

My predictions:
FruitDealer 2 : 0 BoxeR
oGsInCa 2 : 1 TankboyPrime
NEXGenius 2 : 1 Gilja
SlayerSBoxeR 2 : 1 CoreJJang

Win, did not see this daily, but funny clip. No wonder he gets over 9000 viewers nowadays

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utaWZT5N-tQ

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I know nothing.

I literally fell out of my chair laughing when I saw this. Perhaps the funniest Day9 moment of all time, although Day[9] Daily #193 - Funday Monday: No Marines, Marauders or Tanks! was of the same calibre. For one hour straight. He was on some serious bearsemen that episode