Starcraft 2 Guide

Starcraft 2 is a real time strategy from Blizzard released on July 27th, 2010. It is a sequel to Starcraft: BroodWar, arguably the best RTS strategy in the world and one of the marvels of PC gaming. Starcraft 2 had been anticipated for a long time and its release has been met with a lot of praise (for the most part anyway). I will try to offer you a very short Starcraft 2 guide including, but not limited to:

• game introduction
• gaming basics
• Stacraft 2 websites

Starcraft 2 Introduction

The game operates with 3 races, Terran, Protoss and Zerg, which battle across a sector in a small part of the universe. Each race is completely different, has different units and needs to utilize different tactics if it wants to prevail. Starcraft 2 has a 3-part campaign and only the first part, The Wings of Liberty (also known as the “Terran” part) has been released yet, the other two will be datadisks to the original game. The second part, Heart of the Swarm, has not been announced yet, but informed guesses say it ought be out in 2012-2013.

Starcraft 2 is based upon the classic RTS model – you need to gather resources, build units and vanquish your enemy before he does the same. Each race has a wide variety of unique units and the player needs to think very carefully about his resources investment; some units can act as a direct counter to the army of your foe whereas others might reduce you to rubble.

Starcraft: BroodWar had a limited number of viable tactics and it was their execution that distinguished the players. With Starcraft 2 on the other hand, the developers have opened doors to a much larger community of gamers by simplifying the basic mechanics as much as possible and expanding the number of possible tactics. If you’ve never heard of Starcraft before, fear not, because SC2 can be learned very quickly and above all, it can also provide you with a lot of challenges, rewards and of course, a lot of fun!

Starcraft 2 Gaming Basics

You ought to use both your keyboard and your mouse when playing Starcraft 2. The most common mistake rookie players commit is they ignore the so called hotkeys, which are keyboard shortcuts for individual commands. For example, you can train a Terran Marine (the most basic combat unit) either by moving to its portrait or by pressing its appropriate hotkey, e.g. M – which is much faster.

While the Single Player can be played only as Terrans, the multiplayer experience offers three equally balanced races, each following a very different gaming style. Let’s have a quick look at all three races, shall we?

Protoss

Being a highly advanced alien race, the Protoss rely on their heavy and strong units to win a battle. They have mastered the Warp technology which on one hand means they can instantly warp-in reinforcements anywhere on the battlefield once they create a Warp Field, but on the other hand 99% of their structures are rendered useless when the very same Field is lost.

Protoss might be perhaps the best choice for the beginners because of their simpler mechanics and learning curve; you also need to perform less actions during the game (an opposite to e.g. Zerg) and novice players may also appreciate the way Protoss create buildings – their worker will just open the Warp rift and it will finish itself, allowing the worker to get back to gathering resources or scouting.

Zerg

Another alien race, but it couldn’t differ more from the Protoss. Zergs are bee-like demonic creatures who ruthlessly assimilate any other lifeform that might prove useful to their hive clusters. Zergs are commanded by one central mind (originally the Overmind, later the Queen of Blades) and by a few “lieutenants”, the Cerebrates. Their strength lies in great speed and flexibility; most of their units are however weak and they need to outnumber their enemies.

Zergs are perhaps the most complex and interesting race in Starcraft 2. They produce all units from Larvae in one major building, the Hatchery; each time a building is being built, their worker Drone actually morphs into the building and is thus lost in the process; and so forth. They are very hard to master but if you succeed, you might be unstoppable in your multiplayer games!

Terran

The humans somehow stand in the middle of the two races. They can be both very mobile or rely on super strong units (just as is the difference between SEAL or a brigade of M1A1 tanks). The human perseverance to fight until the very end is expressed in the game by MULEs, a better class of workers which can gather minerals much quicker than any other worker in the game.

Terrans are also good for rookie players due to their easier mechanics and a wide variety of strategies they can implement. Some experienced players might say something like “Terrans are OP” (where OP stands for over-powered), but the fact is all three races are very well balanced and it is players who decide the outcome of the game, not what race they are playing.

Starcraft 2 Websites

You are not alone. Starcraft 2 is played by hundreds of thousands of players literally all across the world and it would be folly if each and every one of them tried to reinvent the wheel. You may (and I strongly recommend to) utilize these great websites which can help you by giving you replays of professional players, discussions about various aspects of the game or they may help you with your strategies:

Team Liquid – the biggest Starcraft Forum, replays, discussions, tournaments… you name it

Liquipedia – a partner project of TeamLiquid, it offers basic overviews of the races and their units

SCV Rush – a site by gamers for gamers, SCV Rush offers well researched articles, great replays, tournaments for all skill levels and much more!

Reddit – particularly the Starcraft Strategy, Starcraft2 and Starcraft2 Class subreddits of one of the most famous US social sites can prove more than useful.

Conclusion

There is no doubt you should get your own copy of Starcraft 2 as soon as possible if you have any interest at all in RTS games. Not only it’s perfectly balanced and the previously unheard of auto match-making system makes looking for appropriate opponents a piece of cake, but can enjoy a strongly competitive environment, a scene of hundreds of thousands of players, casters, writers etc. and major tournaments with tens of thousands of US dollars in prizes – not to mention the South Korea is the Mekka for all Starcraft players with a 10+ year tradition in popularizing the e-Sports in general by having professional leagues, whole TV channels dedicated to Starcraft and fan bases which could be envied by other more traditional sports.

Thank you for reading!

Starcraft 2 Terran Strategy

While there are huge discussions about which race is the best one, it is fair to say that every one of them has strengths and weaknesses. To be come a good player, you need to be able to capitalize of the strengths of your race, and also exploit the weaknesses of your opponent.

There are many ways to approach playing Terran, some of them are more aggressive, some are purely defensive, and some include a bit of both. Let’s take a look at the list:

• pure bio = Marine Marauder Medivac
• Marine Tank Medivac/Viking
• pure mech = Tank, Thor, Hellion

And now let’s look at each and everyone one of them in more detail.

1. Pure Bio

Playing with pure biological army gives your army great mobility. While Marines are the most basic Terran unit, they’re also the most cost effective unit in the game while fighting in the right numbers.

Marines are usually strong when fighting in smaller groups, but not small enough to be surrounded easily. This is usually called a “squad fight”, because bio army tends to fight in numbers around 8-16 units.

Upgrading Stimpacks and Combat Shields is the most vital thing you need to do, because they give your Marines much better fighting power and survivability in combat.

While Marines are perfect at dealing damage, they don’t really excel in taking damage. That’s where Marauders come in. Every Marauder has 145 hit points, which allows him to take A LOT more shots than a Marine would.

Most of the time, Marauders serve as a meat shield, to allow your Marines to keep shooting freely and demolish the enemy. They can also be of great help while fighting against Armored units, or Protoss in general.

2. Marine Tank Medivac/Viking

If you prefer having a stronger army, but you would like to keep some mobility of pure bio, Marine Tank is the way to go. The key idea here is that you’re going to spend most of your gas on building Tanks, while dumping the rest of the minerals into Marine production.

Tanks are amazingly strong when they get in a good position. The more tanks you have, the stronger they become. And by the time you reach 10+ tanks, your opponent will be really scared of attacking you.

One difference here is that Marines are the ones who serve as meat shield. While they can do some great damage, Tanks are way, way better. It takes longer to build up this kind of unit composition, but if you manage to get into a good position, you can crush basically any type of enemy army.

3. Pure Mech

Mech is the exact opposite of bio army. All of the units are very expensive and take long time to build. But once you build the army, it is way stronger than anything else in the game.

Tanks can demolish anything that will come on ground, while Thors will destroy any kind of air units. To make things even better, you can add some blue flame Hellions to the mix, so there’s literally no way for small light units to run into your tank line.

Another advantage of having blue flame Hellions is the mobility and map control they give you. Even small number of Hellions like 4 can destroy a mineral line in just a couple of seconds.

There is also a downside though. With a 200/200 Mech army, you need to be able to do one big “doom push” and kill your opponent right then and there. It just isn’t possible to lose 10 Tanks and 5 Thors and then be able to replenish those quickly.

With mech, you are going to be very cost effective against most unit compositions, but you also need to kill your opponent. If your push fails to do so, you will usually lose the game.