What to do against Warp Prism infiltration strategy in Starcraft 2?
Yesterday, a friend won 3 plays with this strategy :
http://www.theuen.com/strategies/protoss/warp-gates-using-warp-prism
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/a/184/61571
The fourth, he stopped because he was bored of beating me this way...
Since it's not possible to built tower defense all around the base, does anyone know a good Terran defense against this strategy ?
Thanks
- The most important thing: Map awareness! Figure out what route he can take to get into your base with the warp prism have have a unit there to give you sight. That way you can move your army in place to wait for him by the time he reaches you.
- Usually this strategy involves mineral line harassment. So a good counter would be to have some marines hanging back to defend your mineral line.
- A very common follow up to mineral line harassment is when you panic and send your entire army back to defend your main, his main army attacks your natural. What can you do? Keep calm and only send what's needed to deal with it. Remember that you not only need to repel your attack but destroy the warp prism to stop (or at least delay) subsequent harassment.
Use your supply depots to gain sight around the edge of your primary base. Put missile turret at mineral line to repel any flying harassment, as it is also a detector it should reveal any dark templar that might come your way. Marine\marauder combo is great for countering early protos harassment, so have a small "kill squad" of that ready to roll out ASAP if needed. Send out an SCV to check nearby areas for any sneaky proxies.
A more risky but also rewarding play is to rush in with a small force of marine and marauders to deny or at least delay warpgate research, or at least kill of some gateways. If he has sentries or pumps out zerlots, back away. Even with concussive shell on marauders, zerlots are cheap and can just be flooded out to reinforce quickly, if you are at his base.
Often when this happens you will take damage on the first warp-in. As always, pull your SCVs to safety and send part of your army over to deal with it (you should never be sending your whole army, that would open you up somewhere else).
If you don't kill the warp prism the first time, it is very important to leave defense in your base:
- If its early in the game and you're both on 1 base, the most gateways he could have would be 3 or 4, so leave 6-8 bio units.
- If its in the mid to late game, patrol a viking off the cost of your base, and leave a dozen or so bio units.
Other notes:
- Building a turret behind your mineral line only costs 75 minerals, and having one there will force your opponent to warp-in in a different part of your base, which buys you precious seconds.
- If you have a factory sitting idle, build a widow mine or two and position them where you think the protoss player will come back with his warp prism.
Once you kill the warp prism, you're usually safe to relax a little bit, because the protoss player will need to be using his robotics bay for colossus/immortal production.
Keep vision of the map. Try to have control of the towers on the map. Also, use the terrain buildings that let you know if there is an any within a large radius so that you can be ready before he even begins to warp things in. It doesn't hurt to have a viking or 2 for a scout a little outside your base to cover possible routes.
Basically, you simply need to scout it. Don't sit there an turtle in your base like it sounds like. You need to constantly be doing something. You don't need defensive structures, you need to know his troop movements.