Any viable PvP build which uses 1gas in the early game?

Question

Novadays, PvP in general starts with 2 gases and some kind of early pressure using 2 gateways + stargate or robo.

Is there any viable build which is base on 1 gas and allows earlier expansion?

Thank you

Answer 1

There are a few single gas openers ... both standard and cheese.

This is a thread on what to do if your gas is stolen (playing with 1 gas) http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2793393763

This build is a little dated, but can still work if the walking distance to your opponent is short:
Adel's late gas pvp http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Adel's_Late_Gas_(vs._Protoss)

Classic 4-gate : http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/4_Warpgate_Rush

Proxy gateway rush: http://imbabuilds.com/hots-protoss/hots-pvp/pvp-partings-proxy-stalker-rush/

Overall standard play requires both gas, but there are some gimmicky builds that you can bust out once in a while to use a single gas.

Also there was an ancient zealot/immortal build that used only one gas. Unfortunately I'd say it's inferior to the same build with a MSC, or double gas for sentries and expand. Esp. due to the prevalence of oracle play

If you really want you could use a single gas build of your liking and gas steal their gas ... so you're guaranteed to only have one gas each.

Take a look at this thread looking at sOs' gas steal build:

http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/430364-sc2-notes-soss-gas-steal-pvp

Mentioned in there is the following:

First thing, sOs sends a probe to steal a gas, which generally forces a zealot to be made by his opponent. This zealot is necessary because there are only a few single gas strategies; to avoid being predictable, you HAVE to kill off the assimilator.

I think this is the real challenge of a 1 gas build. PvP has some pretty hard counters that you could hand to your opponent

Edit: State's PvP build is about as early as you can manage an expansion ... and it's a bit vulnerable to oracles. At a level below masters you could probably get away with it against oracle builds anyhow: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/414216-analysis-of-pvp-build-states-safe-fast-expand

Answer 2

Short Answer: Sure you can. You can focus on getting mostly zealots/stalkers early and some hard scouting. It will work sometimes when the enemy goes too lax and tries to tech hard.

Long Answer:

The issue with doing this is that 2 gas is essentially the counter for 1 gas. The only thing to counter 2 gas is to 2 gas yourself. If you go 1 gas the enemy has multiple routes to go:

1) Block and get air. You cannot get enough stalkers to fight off void rays with only a single gas early.

2) Zealots/Immortals is a strong early counter as well. You have your zealot fodder and then immortals behind this. Immortals do ridiculous damage to both buildings and stalkers. The opponent will build a decent number of zealots to fight this and then have sentry's as well bolstering your defense and damage. Immortals will be behind chunking and once your zealot line falls everything else will get instantly melted from the damage.

3) They do a similar heavy zealot/stalker early in order to fast expo themselves. If you try attacking early they can warp in a lot of sentry's that cost very little minerals and all that spare gas they have on you. These units are great to fight other zealots with a decent front line.

TL;DR; It can work but you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. You need to heavily scout so you know what they are building and begin getting the counter for it asap. Building counters to them will be slow since you will be light on gas early. If you scout good enough you may be able to find a weakness in their defense to exploit with that extra zealot or 2 that you likely got from starting solo gas.

Answer 3

There is a build I use which is a very good one. It was used a "long" time ago by Naniwa and it uses only one gas at 15. It's a fast expand build and it's safe if you scout and if you react well :)

You can find this build here, on imbabuilds.