Starcraft 2 Protoss Strategy

As with most things in starcraft 2 you're going to have to keep a few things in mind when it comes to the differences in starcraft protoss strategy from the original to the new game. There have been so many changes that it's actually quite interesting how much the game has managed to stay so much like the original starcraft and yet be such a great new groundbreaking pleasure to play. But there are some new mechanics and things you're going to have to keep in mind. We won't go into much compare/contrast here because it doesn't matter all that much what used to be, the only thing that matters is now and starcraft protoss strategies start with these things and then continue in part 2 with builds.

First, you'll simply have to make use of chronoboost. It's an interesting ability that draws from your economy to speed the build rate of a structure. You'll have to figure this in to your planning and be very tactical when applying chronoboost in order to win with the protoss. Since protoss buildings build more slowly and have to gather up energy you're going to fall behind if you let a Nexus just sit there and wait for it to hit full strength. You can almost figure in the cost of chronoboost into certain unit builds in order to get them fast enough to counter your opponent for certain must have units and upgrades like the observer and thermal lance.

warpgates are also simply awesome and you really need to get them figured into your builds and strategy. There are five units for protoss that can use the warpgate anywhere there is a power field. This levels the playing field against the much faster zerg units since you can just "warp in" zealots, stalkers, sentries, high templar and dark templar units at strategic locations.

Next come shields. every protoss unit has them and they regenerate much faster than in the original game mechanics. Shields basically work like an extra life bar. As long as your shields are up you're not taking any health loss. If you can figure out how to micro manage your shields on your units you can know when to pull back and let your shield recharge. Really, this is one of the keys in the new version of the game. I like to call it pecking at the foe. You run your units up and blast away for a bit, and then retreat to keep from losing any units. Take out what you can bit by bit without losing much yourself - if at all. It takes great micro to do that, but if you can enter the mid game without having lost anything while at the same time taking down maybe half of your opponents units, you're almost sure to win the match. We'll go into the specific build strategies in part 2.