Gas Steal
A Gas Steal means you block your opponent's Vespene Geyser by placing one of your own extraction buildings on top of it. This is typically performed in the early game, denying the opponent their initial Gas production. This can potentially devastate an opponent's early game, since it may interrupt their build order. Further, if the opponent has not yet produced combat units then workers are sent to destroy the building, leading to lost Mineral income and delayed Gas income.
It is performed
- Commonly by Protoss against Terran.
- Commonly by Protoss against a two gate zealot Protoss. Stealing the gas in this situation is extremely strong when the player has already controlled the zealot harass in his main base.
- Uncommonly by Protoss in other match-ups.
- Rarely by Zerg.
- Rarely by Terran against a Protoss who steal Terran gas.
The reasons for this are simple: A Probe can keep moving after it starts warping in the Assimilator, while an SCV stays to do the construction work and can be killed while doing so. Doing it as a Zerg means sacrificing your scouting and that Drone (however, in rare situations it can be used to the Zerg's advantage, as building and later canceling an Extractor will restore the Drone's hit points). Therefore, it is mostly valid for Protoss.
Typically, a building used to Gas Steal is canceled when it is close to being destroyed by the opponent, restoring some of the building cost. A Gas Steal can be repeated for increased effect by canceling the construction and immediately re-stealing the extraction node.
A frequent application is when proxying in the PvT match-up, as the proxied Zealots are best combatted with Vultures, and stealing the Gas delays the Factory construction.
In 2v2[edit]
It is often used in 2v2 games against Zerg players because of the importance of Mutalisks and the Zergling speed upgrade in 2v2. In 2v2s in which both teams have a Zerg player Mutalisk timing is extremely critical, as in a 1v1 ZvZ. The delay in Mutalisk timing from a gas steal is critical and puts the Zerg player at a big disadvantage, especially when their only option that doesn't require gas is slow Zerglings. If you gas steal a Terran player in 2v2, he is more likely to go Bionic rather than Mech.
How to Respond[edit]
The easiest thing to counter a gas steal is to pull an scv off of your mineral line and make a refinery once you notice the probe entering your base. After the refinery is placed on the vespene geyser, pull the building scv off of the refinery and have it mine again. Continue the refinery's construction when you begin your barracks; the build order should continue from there.