Now that I’ve covered some general strategy for playing StarCraft 2 on BattleNet, I’ll now delve into some race specific strategies. Each race needs to start with a core build that allows the player to efficiently move past the early stages of the game. In my own experience playing online, I play Protoss about 70% of the time and use two distinct builds depending on my level of play. The first build is a long-haul build that is designed to win late game, and the second build is a quicker early to mid game build that disregards quick air units for early ground unit attacks.

Build One: Quick Tech Up

• Start by building up eight workers, using the energy booster to increase production of workers. Also, make sure to set the rally point on to the minerals to avoid having idle workers.
• After building your eighth worker, start building a Pylon and then have the worker that build the Pylon scour the map for the enemy base. This allows for your pop cap to increase before you reach the pop cap limit to avoid worker production downtime.
• Continue building workers while scouting, as soon as you can build a single Gateway and a second Pylon.
• After finding the enemy base, build an Assimilator on one or both of your opponents Vespene Gas Geysers depending on their level of production. These Assimilators serve as an annoyance to your opponent and also gives you limited sight into their base. Likely, your opponent will attack the Assimilators as soon as they produce combat troops, allowing you to see their early game production
• While scouting and building, warp in a total of four zealots for early base defense at the gateway.
• After scouting is over, build up a Cybernetics Core and a third Pylon. Also start building Assimilators on your own geysers and continue constant production of workers until you have twenty workers on minerals and three on each geyser.
• After the Cybernetics Core, you can branch off into several sub-strategies. These include an early second base, building a Robotics Facility and dropping in a transported Immortal to attack your opponent’s workers, teching up to a Robotics Bay to use a similar strategy with a Colossus, or going straight for Stargates and a Fleet Beacon to produce a small fleet of raiding Void Rays.
• The overall goal of this build is to both disrupt your opponent’s production and to tech up as quickly as possible, allowing you to reach maximum tech well before your opponent does. The only time this build fails to work is against an early Marine or Zealot rush from an opponent, as workers set to attack mode can usually take care of an early Zerg rush. This build has worked four of every six games I have used it.

Build Two: Gateway Sneak Attack Madness

Once again, start by building up eight workers, using the energy booster to increase production of workers. Again, make sure to set the rally point on to the minerals to avoid having idle workers.

• Just like before, start building a Pylon after the production of your eighth worker. However, this time try to build a second Pylon before you begin scouting.
• As soon as the first Pylon is complete, immediately build two Gateways. Before the Gateways are complete, build a third Pylon.
• Scout as before, but limit yourself to one Assimilator on your opponent’s Vespene Gas Gyser regardless of production. Early game minerals are more important in this build.
• Upon completion of the Gateways, start churning out Zealots but only queue up one at a time to save minerals. Once you scout out your opponents base, send Zealots unless they are Terran and have a wall of Supply Depots and Barracks blocking their base with Marines defending it. This allows you to rush for a possible early game win without gearing your economy completely towards rushing.
• As well as continuing to build a constant supply of workers, keep building Gateways until you have four. Then build a Cybernetics Core, a fourth and fifth Pylon, and Assimilators with workers.
• After building a Cybernetics Core, halt mass production of combat troops. Instead, focus on the Gateway warp upgrade from the Cybernetics Core, building a Twilight Council with the Zealot Rush upgrade, and a Robotics Facility.
• After building, produce an Observer from the Robotics Facility and send it into the back of your opponent’s base to scout. Then produce a Phase Prism and build a Dark Templar Shrine. Also build two more Gateways and warp in some Stalkers for air defense. Upgrade the Gateways to Warpgates.
• After scouting out your opponent’s base with the Observer, send your Phase Prism into the back of their base and set it up for warping. Then warp in six Dark Templars. Before you attack, build up some more air defense, which may include more Stalkers or a Forge with Proton Cannons depending on your play style. This is necessary because your opponent will likely counter-attack your base with air and you need to be prepared. If your base defenses are not adequately prepared, you will likely lose at this point.
• After build up air defenses, attack the workers with the Dark Templars. Then warp in two waves of six Zealots with charge for support. Destroy all buildings as quickly as possible, as you are going to be counter-attacked.
• Overall, if the counter-attack is successfully repelled, this strategy has worked five out of six times for me. The only times it has failed is when my opponent had secondary bases that I was unable to find in time.

These are the two primary builds I use to play Protoss. The only time both of these strategies won’t work is against a fleet of eight or more Battlecruisers, as these are currently highly unbalanced. If you have any strategies you think can destroy my Protoss builds, either post them below in the comments section or challenge me personally on BattleNet at HavenDan with Character Code 770.