StarCraft II – Protoss Strategy: 10-Minute Mothership [Guide]

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• Build Order
• Strategy and Execution

It is rare for a build that is supposedly “cheesy” strategy in StarCraft II that is actually endorsed by pro players. This one comes from a Korean Protoss player from Team ItsGosu named HwangSin, and it’s both fun and pretty effective against an oblivious Zerg.

If you feel like stomping on Zerg is getting too easy and boring, then try out this build that gets you a Mothership at around 10 minutes, but only if you play it right. It’s a good challenge for Protoss players who want to keep having fun in Wings of Liberty before Heart of the Swarm rolls in and mixes things up again.

This strategy takes advantage of the mass cloaking that makes you look like an overpowered mass of guts and glory in the name of Aiur. You have to make sure that you defend well though while getting there or you won’t even have the chance to do your Mothership magic.

Build Order

9 Pylon
14 Forge (wall)
17 Nexus
18 Gateway (wall)
18 Cannon (wall)
18 Pylon (wall)
18 Assimilators x2 (# 1, 2)
20 Core (wall)

Stargate
Fleet Beacon
Gateways x4 (# 2, 3, 4, 5)

@100% Fleet Beacon, make the Mothership (don’t stop chrono boosting the Nexus)

Robotics Facility
Robotics Bay

@100% Robotics Bay, make Colossi

The build basically goes with a forge fast expand to an early Stargate and Fleet Beacon, then four more Gateways for your ground army. You can also go with Robo to churn out Colossi later on for more devastation.

Strategy and Execution

This strategy is not necessarily a cheese, but getting units that are supposed to be late game tech is pretty cheesy. But what it does let you do is let you focus on macro once you have all the tech you need. From there, it’s just a matter of expanding and making more units. When you get enough, you attack then get some more units.

By the time you do attack, your mothership hopefully will have enough energy for either recall or vortex. Your very first attack is definitely about taking advantage of having mass cloak while your enemy is unprepared. It is imperative that you don’t

By the time you’re about to make the Mothership, you must have at least 18 probes in each mineral line and 3 in each gas for proper saturation to keep the resources coming in. This will enable you to keep building up your ground army.

What it sacrifices though are upgrades since you’re going for late game units so early, so if you can’t end the game with your first attack, then you’ll be in a bind. If you didn’t fall back and weren’t able to preserve your units, then you’re in deep poopoo since you have to rebuild your army and won’t be able to get those sweet upgrades that could’ve made your deathball more awesome.

This build is all about fun while still having a shred of strategic soundness. You will have opponents calling you a cheesy scrub as you win with this build, but it’s all in good fun. Of course, you could just cannon rush and make it really cheesy, but most people just can’t appreciate novel strategies like this one.