Art of Protoss

Borrowing from the Starcraft Compendium: "As with any same species encounters, Protoss vs. Protoss battles are more a race for resources and unit production than anything else. The capabilities at hand are the same for both sides so the player that knows his/her force the best, both their strengths and weaknesses, will usually be the victor."

 
The quote above sums up why Protoss vs. Protoss is my favorite match up.  The match up is even to start so its all about how one uses what one has and the other guy cant get anything you cant.  The winner of the match rests largely on unit production and countering, which I believe I'm pretty good at.  The match up is open for much analysis. I find this match up more straightforward then different race match ups yet many people do not play it well.

 
PvP is often considered thinking mans game. I believe that is correct in some sense.  This MU relies heavily on scouting and adapting to your opponent to get the most out of your build and units.  Many people believe winning or losing a PvP game is highly dependent on luck. I don’t believe the outcome of a PvP game is any more lucky or random then the other match ups, if anything, probably less.  Most of the people who comment about PvP that way just show their lack of understanding.

 
In keeping with the "what some think" trend: some think that PvP is easier to understand and play compared to the other match ups. I agree with this somewhat as well. Your opponent can not get anything you can not, that makes things easier right there. This fact means that PvP is often a solid counter game with both players using a similar build, but one making better use of build orders, units, etc. Overall, PvP was the easiest match up for me to become comfortable with.

 
I started this guide because I wanted to gather my thoughts about PvP as well as create a guide for the community.  There is so little knowledge out there on how to play PvP well (or any match up for that matter).  Surely the pro Koreans and top European toss players know how to play PvP quite well, because they have played many PvP games against skilled opponents, and have been able to adapt their build though trial and error to figure out what works for them.  But, for the average player out there, there are not many resources on how to learn to play well.  The advice most often given is to play a lot of games.  And yes that works, but its clearly not the easiest or fastest way.  Well big surprise, you can learn much faster if you have good knowledge about the game imparted to you from someone else. I wish a guides like this were available when I started Starcraft. Now, some people complain that Starcraft was ruined with replays, if your the kind of guy that believes that you’ll probably dislike my guide too because I reveal many things about the match up which will probably decrease time spent playing in order to become a very good toss player. Nonetheless, this is just a guide. Something to help you become a good PvP player, not an end all be all of all Protoss builds, counters, etc.

 
Another aim of this guide is to systematically think about PvP. This guide would more aptly be named apart of the science of playig Protoss well, not an art. One thing that this guide does well that is not often attempted is covering efficient builds. That is a very important part of Starcraft, yet it is often neglected. Why? I venture that the vast majority just do not know about good efficiency. Those who do know don't often tell because they don't want others to know or don't really recognize it themselves. Hautamaki gave some decent general advice about Protoss and had sections about PvT and PvZ, but no PvP even though he supposedly had written something up. I suppose he just never got around to posting it or it was not the quality he wanted. Tsunami seems to have considered strategy more systematically then Hautamaki, but he also had many very general articles in which contradictions were able to be found all over. When a contradiction arises from my explanation of a certain part of PvP I want to point it out, to not leave you in the dark wondering about so-and-so situation so that you will not take incomplete advice to game play. Though, I admit this can be annoying at times as I often don't commit to one thing or the other. I'm forced to type that this way or that is often the better way or that this usually will work, and so on.

 
One last thing. Read my advice, but consider things for yourself.  Feel free to test my advice and see if it works. Feel free to criticize whats in this guide. This guide certainly requires more intellectual understanding then most guides, but I’m sure it will also be more rewarding.  Lastly, you might want to know a bit about the person who wrote this guide. Well, I'm not a very well known player. I have not played Brood War a lot. Only around 1000 1:1 games as Toss, then I stopped playing for the most part and worked on this guide. Yes that means I’ve probably played only around 200 PvP games, and most of them vs. no one special. Unlike most people (I assume) I got good by thinking my way there, not playing mass games. I played about half of those games before it clicked.  I'm not sure exactly how, but suddenly I understood PvP at different level. I have watched around 500 reps of PvP games and builds.  Most of what is in this guide comes from what I have figured out through that, though experience has certainly played a part as well.