Photon Cannon Rush Comeback (TvP)

**UPDATE - 17/06/2011**
This is a video back in the beta, so comments about how I should be stopping cannon rushes aren't necessary, I can usually stop them right away and its an easy win. I've seen al ot less cannon rushes but they're more or less the same, I think due to the large amount of 4 player maps its very easy to tell when someone is cannon rushing and therefore easier to prevent. Hope this is still fun to watch and possibly instructive of how NOT to try and counter cannon rushes :P

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Don't you hate it when you run into a Protoss base and the first thing you see is a forge? Yeah, well I had this fun little match not long ago and the outcome was so awesome I just had to upload it.
First off I ought to set your minds straight. This is a Bronze league match, I certainly don't claim to be a master of this game but i'd like to say I was 'good enough'. Good enough to know what an early forge means anyway. This player also rolled Random and was Slightly Favoured.

As you'll see in the video, I got absolutely buggered by a sneaky photon cannon rush from this here Protoss player. For any of you unaware of what a Photon Cannon Rush is..well it'll become obvious to you. But in short, it involves rushing into an enemies base (or near it) and planting many photon cannons in order to contain the enemy to his base and effortlessly pick off anything that tries to blow them up. As you'll see from this example, they can be multiplied until they essentially cover the whole base an there's jack all I could do about it early on.

But here I manage to cling on by the skin of my teeth. Luckily I was about to expand and I lifted off that expansion to another mineral field in order to rebuild. This resulted in my best comeback yet, I couldn't help but show the world!

Things to note:
Well firstly, this is a very cheesy rush tactic. People won't appreciate you doing it and won't necessarily make you any better at playing Protoss. In fact this is such a dodgy build order that it'll be hard to recover should your rush fail.

The protoss player did well at the rush element, but once that failed he was virtually without a base (probably because he expected me to lose or quit by this point). So once I rebuilt we were pretty much on the same level. Furthermore, when his initial rush didn't work..he attempts it again, instead of building his base properly. So while i'm happy with this win, I can see from this he's not necessarily a brilliant Protoss player. Since I imagine a good one wouldn't have allowed me to turn the game around after such decimation.

This map is excellent for a photon cannon rush strategy because the base platform is very large and theres a lot of fog of war around the edges, bits of the platform you won't see in the very early game. This is how he managed to sneak his probe into my base at the start, and construct his cannons without me noticing right away. Also because he chose a random race, there was no way of telling he was protoss until I saw his base. Bummer.

How do you counter something like this? Well I can't give you a good answer..in this case there was nothing i could do to stop his early probe getting into my base, the only thing I could have done was to scout out every bit of my platform and kill his probe but I wouldn't have thought to do that at all until I saw his forge, and by then it was too late. If however you encounter a wall of cannons outside your base, a simple Nuke will do the trick (if you're terran).

Last of all, DON'T GIVE UP! In this situation its tempting to just give up at the point the cannons were overunning my base, but because I had my expansion ready i spotted a chance and I didn't give up. In the end it payed off!

Try and avoid flaming mine and the opponents skills when commenting. As I said, its only Bronze league. If you have suggestions that I can improve with feel free though!
Enjoy.

Geis Archrion

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Starcraft
• beta
• photon
• cannon
• rush
• comeback
• terran
• protoss

[tomichasquad]

I like how you used the nukes.

[Arksimon2k]

@tomichasquad hehe thanks. Back then I was thinking "OMG What can i do to quickly get rid of these without getting killed?!" Too bad it took ages to get them and my base was done by then.

[hlin224]

uhh just focus down the pylon if there's only one? or even try focusing down the probe once you see it laying down shit next to your base? you had marines, even if theres a shit ton of cannons just rally them away and keep making until your racks go down or you just push out and like 3 shot a pylon with marauders.

[Arksimon2k]

@hlin224 Was a bit too late for me to do that at the time. Also this over a year old, I can stop these easy now :P

[pyrusFTSC]

Not only did he fail at cannon rushing but most likely fails at life. What a piece of shit fucking failure! I main Protoss and I have NEVER canon rushed in a ladder match. Mucking around with friends fine but ladder? c'mon...

[Arksimon2k]

@pyrusFTSC Ah loads of people do it in the ladder. I was cannon rushed 3 times yesterday, which is the most all season. But I stopped them all no trouble, it was quite funny seeing people try and salvage their strat simply because I walled off and they couldn't get high ground into my base :P

I can usually guess a cheeser from the start.

[Qui3tman]

YO DAWG WE HEARD YOU LIKE BASES SO WE PUT A BASE IN YOUR BASE SO YOU CAN RAZE WHILE YOU BUILD!

[Fletzherdk]

He tried cannon "rushing" for 30minuttes gametime O_o

[digitalisfx]

Hah, take that you cheap bastard

[Spenis6969]

Showing how op terran is.

[beybladekid41]

thumbs up if u tried to control his units>:O***

[the777heretic]

If you get inside your opponent's base and you see a forge, just proxy him.

no cash = no cannons.

[56nano]

easy super easy as zerg just Get banelings

[bananian]

cant you just fly buildings away?

[Malacite]

That kid was terribad. Fails to frag the ghost, fails to capitalize on you basically having to restart the game...

I mean wtf, 20+ minutes in and no Colossi?! Not even blink?! 1-trick pony much...

[jlkos]

If your`e cannon rush is successful or it fails, continue cannon rush.