Tips for beating SC2 Brutal Campagin

I've just beaten the entire campaign on brutal difficulty (including the alternate branches) and figure I'd share tips from some of the harder missions in case anyone is having trouble.

Everything is protected by a spoiler tag, so you can avoid the ones you don't want to see.

The Dig

This mission sucks. The key is using your laser cutter to kill enemies. Target templar->colossi->immortals in that order. You might need to target archons too in the early game. Always target the first wave that comes out first, as waves that come out after it pause for longer before attacking. DO NOT WASTE BEAMS ON REGULAR UNITS. You'll get stuck having your beam shoot a ton of stalkers when it could be speeding up the map or hitting more valuable units. All the regular ground guys die to siege fire anyway.

For the southeast, I walled in the area north of the expansion with planetary fortresses, siege tanks and scvs. The area to the northwest is much harder- bunkers and siege tanks were the best I could come up with. Remember to manually target templar that avoid your beam with your siege tanks.

I tried breaking the protoss with attacks to get the building kill achievement, but it proved far too difficult. Just wall in.

The Great Train Robbery

The key here is the diamondbacks. You get a few to start, and you should immediately seek out the other diamondbacks on the map with them (they're fairly easy to find, as they reside on small plateaus around the sides of the map).

With your main ground army that isn't a diamondback, go NW of your base and clear the expo. You'll need this soon enough.

The first few trains can be handled by diamondbacks alone.

The next few trains you can bunker up at the and hold down with a bio army and diamondbacks at the intersections of the North/Middle tracks and the Middle/South tracks.

Once the hellion death squads show up, salvage your bunkers and retreat into your base. Go after the train whenever a patrol isn't about to run into it. You will most likely need to focus fire the train exclusively, ignoring the guards, in order to kill the train before you run into another patrol. Make sure to pick up the salvage afterwards.

This mission could be more or less hard depending on what units you have available. I did this with only diamondbacks and bio (no tanks or air) but it was pretty tough.

Smash and Grab

In this mission you have two main threats: Colossi and Void Rays. The scouts do poor damage against ground, and their standard gateway/immortal units aren't anything that bio balls can't deal with.

There's no special trick or super useful unit for this mission, at least not when I played. I did it with all standard bio balls (marines, marauders and medics) and goliaths.

When you're starting out at your first base, don't bother with bunkering up and defending. Just get a critical mass of bio units (MMM) and then push out. Stop only the seals that are near your base. Give them the ones that are on the other side of the map.

After you take the middle base, then you should get some bunkers and tanks down.

The key points are targeting, positioning and keeping your goliaths alive.

Targeting

-Always aim your goliaths at Void rays first, as they do much more damage over time.

-Use Marauders and goliaths to take down colossi quickly.

Positioning

Keep marines, medics and goliaths away from colossi. Colossi two shot marines/medics and you have to repair goliath damage. Use marauders to tank their damage instead.

Let your bio units soak up damage from air units while your goliaths use their superior range to take them down. Healing is free- repairing is expensive and micro intensive.

Keeping goliaths alive

Goliaths are super expensive compared to the bio units. Keep them near the back of your army and use them against air and colossi (they use their anti-air attack against colossi). If they get low on health send them to the nearest base where idling scvs can repair them. If you're going to lose a fight, leave the bio units behind to buy the goliaths time to escape.

Don't forget to expand to the middle position as well. That should be your main base of operation with turrets, bunkers and 3-4 scvs that are just idling that will autorepair injured mech units coming back.

In Utter Darkness:

This is the final defense scenario with protoss. For starters, get tons of colossi and keep your phoenixes alive. Colossi are good units in general, and you need the phoenixes to kill the brood lords that harass you occasionally.

In order to survive, WALL OFF YOUR BRIDGES WITH DARK TEMPLAR. They don't get detectors for about 5 minutes, then get them infrequently, then often. When they do get detectors, run in your flyers to snipe the overseer, then rebuild the dark templar immediately. Once you get to really late waves, wall in with a dark templar wall and a zealot wall right in front of them. The zealots will buy you time to kill the overseers before the reach your DTs.

When your lines start falling, withdraw to the inner base where your mothership spawns. Hopefully you have enough carriers to do some serious damage. Fly to the southwest corner of the map (the enemy units will congregate there) where not all the ground units can hit you at once, and the overseers take longer to get to you. Keep killing units, sniping overseers as they come.

If you're having a lot of trouble getting those last kills, spam right click on all the zerglings, who will die much faster than other units.

All in:

The final mission, this one has you holding out for a pretty long period of time against waves of zerg.

[i]The key here is that you MUST kill the nydus worms around the map.[/i] They appear with boxes around them on your minimap and spawn orange colored zerg instead of the standard purple. You CANNOT hold out against them- I tried, really, really hard with siege tanks, bunkers, scvs, planetary fortresses, nukes... not possible. Thankfully, killing them isn't that hard. I did it with Battlecruisers, but banshees are probably better.

When Kerrigan comes out, she has 1500 hp and some sort of weird unlabeled damage resistance. Battlecruisers are the most effective unit against her, but she'll auto kill a few of them in every fight.

I suggest bunker walls with MANY scvs repairing and siege tanks for support.

When you use your final artifact blast, get all your units onto the high ground with the artifact. Before this happens cover the platform with supply depots and wall off the entrances with barracks (you will probably have plenty of excess minerals). This will prevent mass nydus worms from appearing on the plateau in the closing seconds, which will otherwise kill you.

If you have a problem with a mission I didn't list here, post it and what issues you are having and I'll add my suggestions.

Guide to The Lost Viking minigame

So once you start playing the campaign missions, you'll get access to the Cantina and be able to play "The Lost Viking" minigame. It's a scrolling space shooter, reminiscent of similar games made in the 90s.

In case you're wondering why you should play it at all, it's a nice distraction and there are achievements to be won. You get an achievement for scoring 125,000, 250,000, and 500,000 points in it. The game itself is somewhat fun, albeit very repetitive.

I got 500,000 points on my first try and it takes about an hour and a half. It got pretty difficult to fight the boredom near the end, but I knew what I was getting myself into. You can't check achievements in game, so either memorize the score benchmarks or pause the minigame and alt-tab to look up the score levels.

Quick guide:

The best weapon loadout I could find is the double plasma + double drones. Plasma is way better at killing bosses and keeping drones alive allows you to deal with normal enemies.

Your main weapon is either the dinky default gun, the side missiles, or the plasma. Both of those can be upgraded once by picking up the same upgrade again. For example, pick up the "side missiles", then pick it up one more time to have the upgraded version. Future pickups don't do anything.

If you're using the side missiles and pick up the plasma, you will switch to level 1 plasma. Same thing if you have plasma and switch to the side missiles.

Item drops are random, and rotate over time in a set sequence. The order is: side missile, drone, plasma, bomb.

You can hold two drones at any time. More drone pickups do not do anything. If you get hit by most weapons (some boss attacks instantly kill you), it will destroy one of your drones. If you have no drones left when you are hit, you die.

If you die, you drop your main weapon upgrades as pickups.

Bombs clear most of the screen of enemies and projectiles and give you a short duration of invincibility.

Almost always use a bomb instead of risking a hit. Losing drones drastically hurts your ability to deal damage, ESPECIALLY in boss fights.

Boss guide

The carrier (first boss) is very straightforward. The interceptors don't do anything for most of their life, but fire a few projectiles before they retreat. Then the carrier fires a constant rotating beam. Start out in the middle, then pick a side and move that way when it starts firing.

The corruptor (2nd boss) has tendrils that instantly kill you. Using a bomb will destroy tendrils headed towards you and make you invincible. Strafing away from the first tendril almost always is safe. It also will rush you with an instant kill ability.

The last boss has several difficult to dodge projectile attacks, and on harder difficulties fires a bouncing blade. I'd make sure I have bombs going into this boss fight- usually only 2 or 3 is necessary for a pretty easy win. Just blow the bombs before projectiles hit you.

Interesting Protoss cheese on Desert Oasis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGC0tiErMdw&feature=PlayList&p=222391E9E52F4406

It's a game with Machine (Z) playing against Idra (P). Idra won the first two games against Machine playing ZvZ, then changed to Protoss for this game.

Idra sends his probe to Machine's base and builds a pylon right outside his ramp. Idra then walls in Machine with a forge and a gateway using perfect placement, then puts down a couple cannons around the outside of Machine's (one covering the ramp, the other able to hit the end of the mineral line. He rallies his gateway into Machine's base and begins producing zealots.

Machine starts building spine crawlers within range of the cannons (standard anti-towering strategy- WC3 players will remember this) and spamming zerglings.

The cannons finish, but Idra can't hit anything with them as everything is on high ground. However, his zealots that finish building are used as vision, allowing him to attack the drones with the cannon.

I won't go through the rest of this game, but I thought this was a really interesting "cheese" tactic that's possible against Zerg especially (lack of early ranged units).

As for counters to this... Machine could have scouted a little earlier and seen the pylon (it's in a really obvious spot by necessity) and blocked the building placement using drones. Banelings would have been a risky "all-in" strategy but could yield huge gains. They do 80 damage a hit, and the forge has 400/400 health compared to the gateway's 500/500. Ten banelings (assuming none died- you'd probably want some extras) would instantly kill the forge and nearly the gateway as well, allowing zerglings to clean up. That would cost 500/250 to pull off, not including the backup units to finish the job, but would strongly swing things in your favor. It's still very risky though. The best option here would be to block it from happening.

This game was played back in March 20, fairly early in the beta (about a month in). I think the timing for forges and cannons are changed, but it's still a possibility.

ZvP: Baneling bust against Forge Fast Expand

MLG Slush vs. InControl Game 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJJB3gBcW_s

In this game, InControl (as Protoss) leads off with a pretty common one gate into forge fast expand.

Slush puts out a normal timed pool and extractor, but as soon as he sees the forge builds a baneling nest and starts massing banelings.

After watching the game, I think this is a great example of how Zerg can punish opponents who assume that the Z is fast expanding as well. This kind of opening is extremely common when the P player declines to put early pressure on and instead wants to keep the economies even.

If you look at the timing and the layout, there's really nothing InControl could have done to stop that without advance warning of the banelings, which he couldn't get while maintaining control of his front. This obviously works better on positions/maps with smaller rush distances as the banelings will kick in before the enemy has a large enough army. On Blistering sands this could be really tricky if the opponent walls in with gateways, but if you were really dedicated you could send in the banelings in the junction between the two gates in order to blow up both at once (with enough banelings).

More random zerg notes...

Infestors can cast infested terrans while burrowed. Units cannot pass through eggs, and thus they can be used as a wall off or to block movement. They also can draw siege fire to friendly units.

Roaches two shot zerglings when they have a +1 upgrade advantage over them- important in ZvZ if you plan on using roaches.

Would you kindly...

"Would you kindly..." is the code phrase used to make the main character of Bioshock 1 do whatever the speaker wishes.

How sweet it is...

Finally in diamond, after 37 games of being in gold. I placed in gold after I lost one of my placement matches to a 6 pool rush. On scrap station. By a random race player. When I tried to expand first.

That sure taught me to never expand...

I've decided that at lower divisions, "cheese" happens MUCH more often. At least half of my wins have to be against fast pool, baneling all-ins, bunker and photon cannon rushes...

Ugh.

Patch 16 Notes

Patch notes are below.

I'm not really sure why rallying got changed from "move" to "attack move". I can't see how you'd want "move" to happen more often than "attack move".

I'm scared to ask what "cross-social" features exist between WoW and SC2. Can we not get away from that game ever?

Zerg changes:

WOOT.

Love the buffs. Frenzy was too difficult to use. It's micro intensive and you need a unit to stay alive long enough to have the buff be useful and justify not spending the energy on fungal growth... which basically only applies to brood lords and ultralisks.

Infested Terrans coming back to infestors is neat, but I still doubt it'll see much use.

But the biggest change of all is that Ultras are now immune to mind control and stuns. No more 250mm annihilation. I mean, 500 damage over 5 seconds still hurts like an anvil dropping on your foot, but the lack of stun is awesome. Not for the ultralisks that had 250mm casted on it- that guy is dead. For the OTHER units behind that ultralisk. The problem with 250mm is that if you did it in a line, all the units behind the stunned ultralisks would get pinned back and mess up timings as well as take splash damage.

Sweet change.

********************

StarCraft II Beta – Patch 16 (version 0.19.0.15976)

General

• Rally points now behave as a move command, instead of an attack move command.
  
• Enabled the ability to manually add a StarCraft II character friend using the player's character code. Character code is a server-assigned numerical code that is displayed within the Add Friend panel.
  
• Battle.net Achievements & Rewards have been updated.
  
• All Quick Match modes are now available: 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, and Free For All.
  
• All A.I. difficulties are now available for play.
  
• Cooperative matchmaking versus A.I. players is now available as a play mode.
  
• Enabled cross-game social features between World of Warcraft and StarCraft II.

Balance Changes

• ZERG
  
  
  • Infestor
    
    
    • Frenzy spell removed.
      
    • Infested Terran spell added.
    
    
  • Overseer
    
    
    • Infested Terran spell removed.
    
    
  • Ultralisk
    
    
    • Now immune to stuns and mind control.

SC2 Beta Phase 2 Now Up!

Good luck actually playing a game though. 615k players online, 0 games being played. The buttons to start matchmaking are frozen or erroring out.

It's pretty cool to see that many people online, though. How many games in HISTORY can say they've had that many players online at once? And this is in a closed beta, at that. Sort of closed, anyway- people who want to get in, can't anymore, so that's closed enough for me.

I'm not even sure if that's US only.

Also, while I was bored I saw this:

Not really sure what to make of this. Assuming they haven't released any new functionality, the only way this is possible is to mind control a probe and start building gateways, I guess.

Interviews with White-Ra

White-Ra, the famous Ukranian player who's probably the top SC2 player in the world at the moment, has his own official site about him. He posted a couple interviews of him talking about SC2.

White-Ra Interviews

He talks about his practice routine, some favorite strategies, thoughts on balance, and has some photos of him on vacation too.

Also, he offers some advice about what to do while the beta is down.

This is why TLO is awesome.

This was Game 1 of the HDH Invitational, round of 8 between TheLittleOne and WhiteRa.

One of the most exciting games I've seen in the beta and continued proof of how TLO will always keep a game interesting, win or lose. This one isn't settled until the last minute.

Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/user/HuskyStarcraft#p/u/128/UbH2kmfGQ-g

Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/user/HuskyStarcraft#p/u/127/m461kJZ-TVI

If you want some early spoilers/setup:

TLO is Zerg against WhiteRa's Protoss on Kulas Ravine. WhiteRa shows 3 gates to warp gate tech, which causes TLO to stick to 1 base play and builds a roach warren. WhiteRa ends up keeping his unit count low while pumping drones and getting an observer and immortals.

TLO scouts and realizes that WhiteRa has been pumping his economy and goes straight for the gold. WhiteRa scouts the gold with his observer and moves out with his army after TLO breaks down his rocks and opens a hole to his base.

Watch the video for the exciting final battles.

More shoutcasts from HDStarcraft and Husky

Husky has a great youtube channel with shoutcasts he does of Sc2 games, mostly top level players.

http://www.youtube.com/user/HuskyStarcraft#p/u/155/YR0L81omiXM

It's really obvious that day9 is a much more experienced player than Husky, but Husky does a good job of keeping his eye on the action, making a decent amount of observations about trends/unit strategies and staying enthusiastic.

I prefer his shoutcasts of live games rather than his analysis of replays, which isn't nearly as deep as day9's (which is understandable).

Contaminate

Contaminate, the zerg Overseer ability that prevents buildings from functioning, can be used on floating Terran buildings to prevent them from moving or landing.

Just a useful thing to know. Thanks to TLO for doing that in one of his games :-)

Hallucination

Hallucinate

A fun spell that sentries can cast, but it has to be researched from a cybernetics core for 100/100 first.

Hallucinate allows you to spawn hallucinated units that cannot attack and take double damage. Your opponent cannot visually tell the difference between real and hallucinated units without detection (though the fact that they aren't attacking will make it obvious real fast usually).

Above are the units that you can create with hallucinate. However, they spawn in differing amounts. Lower tech units spawn in more numbers. For a full list, check out this link.

Some uses of hallucinate:

1. Scouting. Spawn some hallucinations and send them off to scout for free. Some players will even research hallucinate quickly (from the cybernetics core) so they can spawn a phoenix ASAP and take a look at their opponent. Phoenixes also can give you high ground vision, which is useful for not just shooting upwards but allow safe blinking with stalkers.
2. Soak up damage.
3. Scare the enemy. Spawning several void rays and floating them near his base will scare the crap out of him. Mixing hallucinations in with real void rays will really scare him. This can be used to force him to build units/structures he doesn't want to or to call off an attack he'd otherwise have won.
4. Block movement. Just make some hallucinations and run them to a ramp or chokepoint to clog up the enemy. Even if they know they're fake, they'll need to shoot through them before they can proceed.
5. Crush force fields. WTF?

Yep. Colossi are massive units, and massive units crush force fields. Hallucinated ones do as well, apparently.

List of basic unit composition/strategies for races

This is a barebones list of strategies for certain racial matchups. I won't really be fleshing them out right now, but I want to store them in a single spot anyway for reference and remind me to test/post them out in more detail later.

(race who the strat is for) vs. (opponent's race)

Tv?

TvP

-double rax marauders

TvT

-marine/hellion harass -> fast thor + banshees + marauders (TLO on metalopolis)

-marine/siege tank/viking (CauthonLuck on metalopolis)

TvZ

-barracks, rax + reactor, marines, factory, factory gets rax reactor, hellions, rax builds tech lab, marauders + hellions, expand?, swaps with factory (so you now have rax + reactor and factory + techlab), armory, thors (TLO on metalopolis)

Pv?

-3 gate

PvP

-double gateway stalkers to blink to 4 warp gates to dark templar

-2 gate to dark templar (tasteless)

-2 gate to robo to immortals with warp gates (WhiteRa on Metalopolis, LT)

PvT

-one gate to fast void ray to mass warp gates (white ra) to charge zealots to high & dark templar

-2? gate with phoenixes (vs. marauders, siege tanks)

PvZ

-2 gate to zealot harass to...

• -forge/cannon -> expand -> mass warp gates
• -to double gas -> mass stalkers -> expand (very effective vs. mass roaches)
• -to blink stalkers + dark templar

Zv?

-14 pool, 16 hatch, speedlings -> hydras -> roaches

ZvP

-(against 2 gate): pool, gas, roaches for defense, expand, drone pump

-10 pop of all drones, spawning pool, double extractor trick, double drone, cancel extractors, overlord, queen, roaches

ZvT

-one base speedlings to mutas

-lings into roaches into mutas into banelings into ultras or brood lords

-lings into mutas into banelings into hydras

-roaches to expand to roach/hydra

ZvZ

-baneling bust

Random links...

Starcraft theme song on a guitar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wEs_1cGonk&feature=related

Happy Birthday video tribute to day9:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKS8nXchq9w

Fan site devoted to day9, also has brief summaries of his shoutcasts:

http://day9fan.com/

How to watch replays in SC2 without logging in, and integrating Steam with SC2

Seeing as how the beta has closed and you can no longer log in, you might be disappointed that you can't watch replays. Not so!

Just drag the replay file onto the SC2.exe launcher. This works for shortcuts too. For example, download a replay file to your desktop ("blah.sc2replay"). On your desktop, there is a shortcut to your SC2 exe file (the original is normally in C:/Program Files/Starcraft 2 Beta).

Drag the replay file onto the Sc2.exe shortcut or launcher (it should highlight when ready). It will automatically launch SC2 and load the replay without logging in.

This won't work with a steam launcher, however.

Speaking of which, you can launch SC2 with steam and get the steam overlay plus your "friends game status" say that you're in the game. Just go to the steam toolbar (accessible via the library window, for example), and click "Add non-steam game to library". Find the SC2 launcher (default location listed above) and select that. Then load SC2 only from the library, or right click on the game in the library and make a desktop shortcut.

One note:

It doesn't look like the replay viewing without logging in trick works with previous patches :(

"How do I fight mass mutalisks as terran?"

Will edit tomorrow.

2:15 AM - MacBeth |TCO|: whats a good anti mutie ball as terran?

2:16 AM - MacBeth |TCO|: M ball with thor and viking work well but it seems mass vikings will go down to mass muties

2:17 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: mutas > vikings

2:17 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: it really is jsut marines and thors

2:17 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: you literally don't have any other option

2:17 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: just use missile turrets to cover your base

2:18 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: and put pressure on their base

2:18 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: they're more maneuverable but if he's spamming mutas he won't have much of a ground force

2:18 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: and if you're equal in supply and army cost your marines and thors will easily beat mutas in a straight fight

2:18 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: if you attack his base you force him to fight you straight on

2:19 AM - MacBeth |TCO|: how many thors would you take with an M ball?

2:19 AM - MacBeth |TCO|: I generally run two

2:19 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: how many mutas does he have?

2:19 AM - MacBeth |TCO|: less ground and large mutie

2:20 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: i need a number

2:20 AM - MacBeth |TCO|: haha

2:20 AM - MacBeth |TCO|: ive never took the time to count a huge army of muties lol

2:20 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: i mean once i have marines and thors going

2:20 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: i'd make thor production nonstop

2:20 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: no reason to slow down

2:20 AM - MacBeth |TCO|: k

2:20 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: so the question is moot

2:20 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: it's "as many thors as i can make"

2:20 AM - Adder[sc2 marathon]: :)

2:20 AM - MacBeth |TCO|: point taken

Protoss 10 gate vs. Zerg

This is an extremely popular strategy against Zerg. While it has its uses against Terran as well, I'm not as experienced at that matchup so I can't comment.

Basically, the protoss builds a pylon on 9, and then a gateway on 10. They build a gateway as soon as possible (skipping probe production until they can) then chrono zealots out of the gateways to go harass the zerg.

After a few zealots (4-8, depending on the circumstances) the protoss transitions into either forge + expansion, robotics (immortal, or straight to colossus) or 4 warp gates (high aggression strategy).

There are three main reasons why this is so difficult for zerg to defend.

#1: Zealots annihilate zerglings before they have speed upgrades. It takes at least four zerglings to kill a zealot, more if it can prevent itself from being surrounded.

#2: It's much easier to build more gateways and crank out units early than it is for the zerg to get a queen out and spew larvae.

#3: Against a fast expanding zerg, the first two zealots will show up before the expansions is even done. Smart micro by the protoss can make it impossible for the zerg to safely build drones for at least a minute after the expansion is up, as they are forced to nonstop zergling spam.

Even after a zerg fights off the initial zealots, the protoss is still in a great position. If they expanded, their economy is almost as good as the zerg's. If they went robotics they have a great tech advantage, and if they went mass warp gate there's a distinct chance they could just win the game five minutes later with a huge gateway unit push.

Variations on this strategy also have only one gateway, giving you some extra minerals that allow you to expand earlier.

A glimpse as pro gaming in South Korea

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/423150.html

A short article on the hazards of the professional gaming scene in South Korea and a reality check on how many of the players actually make it big.

Kittens! ...and Battle.net 2.0

HuskyStarcraft made this great video talking about Battlenet 2.0 and what problems he has with it, in a mostly constructive manner.

However, the real reason why this is awesome is that it's a video of 4 kittens playing with each other for 25 minutes.

I actually muted it about halfway in, turned on happy music and just watched the kittens. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-r_uCaFxg8&feature=player_embedded

7/3/2010 Patch 15 notes

Notes are at the bottom.

Nothing terribly exciting in this patch other than the nerf to sieged tank damage. The nerf on bonuses shouldn't play a significant role in any games.

As a reminder, you can always get the latest patch notes here.

General

Improved the system that handles initial placement and promotion/relegation between Leagues & Ladders.
Balance Changes
TERRAN
Hellion
Weapon upgrade bonus decreased from 1 (+1 Light) to 1.
Reaper
Nitro Packs research cost decreased from 100/100 to 50/50.
Siege Tank
Siege Mode damage decreased from 60 to 50.
Thor
Anti-air weapon upgrade bonus decreased from 1 (+1 Light) to 1.
ZERG
Brood Lord
Weapon upgrade bonus decreased from 3 to 2.

Mothership rush!

Artosis, a high level Starcraft player and part of the Korean esports community, loses a game in one of the most hilarious ways possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUxF4XWtj4g

Go to about 6:10 and notice that Artosis is pretty much annihilating his opponent, then see what happens.

Q: "What do I do against siege/tanks and hellions as protoss?"

Edited for clarity/brevity...

Mr. Chupon: What do i do against [siege tanks and hellions]? This was on Lost Temple and I was playing protoss (low diamond level game). He was stuck in his base and i thought it was ok to expand. He was at the 6 position, me at the 3. He had expanded to his natural and I had expanded to the high yield between us, which might have been a mistake. I saw that he was going siege tanks and hellions and I thought, "no problem, stalkers, sentries, and immortals will destroy them." Well i got [destroyed when I attacked him].

It's always impossible to claim gospel truth for any situation, but I think making good, thought out suggestions never hurts.

Unit Matchups

Sieged tanks are good against just about anything in groups, dealing the highest per hit damage in the game with great range. They can't hit things that get up close and generally do poorly against fast moving units. Immortals fight siege tanks really well because of their massive damage bonus against them and their hardened shields (max of 10 damage per hit as long as shields are up- guarantee of at least 10 hits before their shields fall).

Unsieged tanks do decent damage in general, but aren't terribly cost efficient if they're taking damage. They're especially good against armored units.

Hellions do good AoE damage, especially against light units. They're also one of the fastest units in the game. Against non-light units, and ranged units in general, they tend to fare poorly.

Zealots would beat the siege tanks normally, but the hellions are there to counter that. Stalkers get beat up by siege tanks pretty quickly, but blinking stalkers could take minimal damage on the way in and focus fire the siege tanks down quickly. The damage of the hellions shouldn't be significant against the stalkers.

My actual suggestion here would be to tech straight to void rays, actually. He's not pushing out of his base at any fast rate against stalkers/sentries/immortals. The siege tanks are the only ones that can lay out any hurt against that, and they have to slowly siege and resiege to do that. I'd cede ground very slowly while getting void rays. The gold minerals will give you way more $ than you know what to do with. I'd nexus someplace else immediately and put up the 2 assimilators while you're at it, since you're going to need the gas to support double startport + normal unit production. I'd keep immortals building nonstop, and with the extra minerals invest in some zealots or photon cannons (just to slow him down if he attacks you when you're unprepared). If you still have extra gas with chronoed immortals and void rays, I'd get either another robo facility for more immortals or get blink for your stalkers, depending on how many of them you have.

Strategic Level

You made a big mistake by attacking him. Siege tanks fail at taking ground because of their setup time and vulnerability to flanks. If you have an advantage (which you did here- a better army on open ground, and the gold expansion) sit back and use it. Don't press your attack unless you absolutely have to or know you have a great opportunity. Make him come to you. Attacking siege tanks is bad- your observers should have told you this. Keep expanding while you keep him sealed.

Day9 put this well in one of his videos: Any time you're feeling confident that you can bust into his base and win the game, take a deep breath, relax, and expand. That will win you far more games in the long run than most any other tactic. Don't risk stupid losses by rushing victories. There's nothing more frustrating than being on your back foot and watching your enemy expand and make an even bigger army and economy instead of going in for the kill.

While we're on the subject of expansions, don't expand to the gold of a terran going mech. Siege tanks are just too tasty to pass up. If he had a MMM build, that would make a lot more sense, because it'd be easier to defend than the gold on the other side of the map.

Micro Level

At the micro level, use an observer to scout his ridge. Chances are his siege tanks are siege on the ridge, but the hellions are down below to prevent attacks. Bait some zealots to eat the siege tank shots then blink your stalkers to them point blank and kill his tanks. Blink back down when his reinforcements come. Hopefully you'll have only taken shield damage at most. ONLY do this if you have to pick off some tanks for some reason, like him pushing before void rays are ready. Like I said, don't attack unless you need to.

Immortals can easily bust through his army, but just because immortals take dramatically reduced damage against tanks doesn't negate the sieged tank's range advantage and high ground. In an open field fight have your immortals target the tanks, but don't try to bust through his front with them (or any unit, other than air).

Follow up

Q: : Do hellions actually not do a lot of damage against satlkers?

A: Hellions do a whopping 3.2 damage per second against a single non-light unit, not including armor. Best case scenario, it would take an upupgraded hellion 50 seconds to kill your unupgraded stalker. Yes, they do awful damage.

Q: Aren't hellions good against immortals because they do less than 10 [and thus don't suffer reduced damage from the hardened shields ability]?

A: See above. At 3.2 dps, it would take a single hellion 31.25 seconds to take down just the SHIELDS of your immortal. Immortals kill hellions in two hits. Just because immortals don't get the shield ability bonus against hellions doesn't mean hellions are good against immortals. The best counter to immortals are rapid firing units that do around 10 damage. Hydralisks go great jobs, as do stimmed marines. Zealots (count as 2 separate attacks, so it does the full 16 and not just 10) and zerglings are the same way.

Unit Speeds

Just for fun, I thought I'd check out the units and compare speeds. All stats are from www.sc2armory.com, and they're updated as of the end of day 6/2/10.

Bolded units are flying.

Interceptors: 7.50

Hellion: 4.25

Phoenix: 4.25

Mutalisk: 3.75

Speedling(+20%): 3.54

Ultralisk: 2.9531

Zergling: 2.95 (this might be tied with ultralisk, sc2armory numbers appear to be rounded)

Reaper(no nitro): 2.95

Stalker: 2.95

Drone/SCV/Probe: 2.81

Dark templar/Archon: 2.81

Viking (air): 2.75

Banshee: 2.75

Medivac: 2.75

Baneling: 2.50

Infestor: 2.50

Warp prism: 2.50

Roach: 2.25

Hydra: 2.25

Marine/Marauder/Ghost: 2.25

Siege tank: 2.25

Viking (ground): 2.25

Raven: 2.25

Void ray: 2.25

Zealot/Sentry/Immortal/Colossus: 2.25

Overseer: 1.88

Thor: 1.88

Observer: 1.88

Templar/Carrier: 1.88

Brood Lord/Battlecruiser/Mothership: 1.41

Queen (off creep)/Infested Terran: .94

Overlord (default): .47

Nitro reaper: ?

Pneumatized overlord: ?

Centrifugal Baneling: ?

Glial Roach: ?

Creep bonus: ?

Stim speed: ?

7/1 Patch 14 Notes and Analysis

Patch notes are at the bottom of this post.

Overall, this patch only really affected zerg, and in a small (but not insignificant) way.

The changes to archons makes them easier to warp in in battle, but still doesn't make them a viable unit in anything other than an emergency situation.

The nerf to viking ground damage was to prevent a lot of hard to counter viking play- for example, going into ground form and target firing a hatchery or nexus. 14 straight damage at a high rate of fire is pretty vicious, even for the relatively high viking cost.

The zerg changes really nice (of course! I play zerg... :-) ) and needed in my opinion. The corruptor change wasn't necessary, but the burrowed infestor speed increase (removing the upgrade and giving it to them innately) increases their survivability and promotes more infestor usage.

The combination of tunneling claws with organic carapace is the biggest change by far, turning roaches into a very survivable and cost efficient unit for zerg. Giving them the ability to move while burrowed while increasing their health regen at the same time is huge.

Ultralisks, in the same theme as infestors, were given their upgraded speed for free and had their health increased. Ultralisks with 2.9531 are now the same speed as unupgraded zerglings (2.95), which makes them pretty dangerous on creep. Will this make them viable? Still probably not, but it's a step in the right direction. I just wish Blizzard made it clear exactly what they wanted us to do with ultralisks. They're too expensive to be used as cannon fodder and don't do enough damage and have too large a collision size to make for good DPS. I can see them being used in flanking maneuvers with even more effectiveness because of the speed boost (bonus damage to structures and AoE damage will make killing workers and expansions a quick job, not to mention being able to beat out most units in the same in small numbers) but that's a huge gas and time investment for something that can be done really well by a small pack of speedlings.

A friend of mine pointed out that you can use ultralisks to realistically bust forcefields now with their speed upgrade and the recent massive unit patch, which is something I'm considering trying. Force fields in the late game are brutal.

Balance Changes

• PROTOSS
  • Archon
    • Build time decreased from 17 to 12.

• TERRAN
  • Viking
    • Ground damage decreased from 14 to 12.

• ZERG
  • Corruptor
    • Corruption energy cost decreased from 100 to 75.
  • Infestor
    • Burrowed move speed increased from 1 to 2.
    • Peristalsis upgrade removed.
  • Overlord/Overseer
    • Pneumatized Carapace cost increased from 50/50 to 100/100.
  • Overseer
    • Infested Terran energy cost decreased from 125 to 100.
  • Roach
    • Organic Carapace upgrade removed.
    • Tunneling Claws now also increases burrowed regeneration rate from 5 to 10.
  • Ultralisk
    • Anabolic Synthesis upgrade removed.
    • Health increased from 450 to 500.
    • Speed increased from 2.25 to 2.9531.

Zerg Unit Overview

Zergling

The staple of zerg armies, you will end up building these in almost every game you play.

There are two key upgrades zerglings need: speed, for all around improved effectiveness, and carapace, to survive two hit zealots. If the protoss has at least +1 weapon level over the zerg (i.e. protoss has +1 weapons and zerg has +0 carapace, or toss has +3 and zerg +2), zealots will kill zerglings in two hits instead of three. This is very, very bad.

Pros:

• One of the fastest units in the game with their speed upgrade, and have phenomenal DPS for their cost (good DPS value).
• Great at early harassment before the enemy can lock down chokes, remains effective in later game by hitting poorly defended expansions and through drops/nydus worms
• Massing and attacking unexpectedly with them in the early game can sometimes win games easily
• They're really cheap and build quickly.
• They can be morphed into banelings cheaply.

Cons:

• Any unit the lings can't surround they suck against. Since packs of units are harder to surround than lone units, as unit numbers increase zerglings become harder to use. This also applies to chokepoints. Zerglings suck at attacking or defending chokes.
• As the game progresses, lots of units can instantly kill zerglings (colossi, zealots, siege tanks, high templar, hellions...) and they switch from a front line staple to a gas-free meat shield and flanking force. They can still take damage cheaply, but their overall damage plummets even with more zerglings because many of them will die before even reaching the enemy.

Baneling

A neat suiciding ground unit that morphs from zerglings. Brutal damage against light units, mediocre at best against non-light enemies. Its use closely mirrors that of zerglings: able to bust up the front in the early game, but flanks/burrow are necessary for the most damage as the game progresses.

Pros:

• Splash damage
• Automatically explode when killed
• Bonus against light applies to all sorts of spammable units like zealots, zerglings, other banelings, hellions and hydralisks (if they can reach them)
• With the speed upgrade they can outrun most of their intended light targets
• Fairly cheap- the cost comes out to 50 minerals and 25 gas

Cons:

• Transforming from zergling to baneling leaves them vulnerable
• Damage against non-light targets isn't cost effective
• Requires flanking or surprise to be effective, especially later on
• Requires more micro than standard attack-move units
• Can't hit air units (duh)
• Easily avoidable by faster units
• Techniques exist to mitigate damage, such as "feeding" units to the banelings one by one

Roach

The roach is a very interesting unit that has use throughout the game. In the early game it acts as a very efficient damage dealer, providing great defense in small numbers and good offense when massed. In the mid and late games it has lower DPS than hydralisks, but tanks much more effectively. It's also a great unit when you're somewhat low on gas and high on minerals and don't want zerglings.

Pros:

• Completely dominates vanilla zealots and marines. Even zealots with charge and stim/combat shield marines have trouble with roaches still, though the amount of damage the roaches take won't make it quite the slam dunk it was before.
• Effective deterrent against stalkers and hellions. Roaches will easily beat hellions in a straight fight and do well against stalkers (despite the armored damage bonus) but the range of 6 on those units (vs. 3 for roaches) can make fighting a well microed force a nightmare for roaches.
• Similarly, roaches can beat marauders that aren't able to kite them. Marauders do more damage, but roaches are cheaper and much easier to build. However, in the open field concussive shells + kiting can easily pick off roaches with no losses to their force. Mixing in zerglings is advised.
• Their high health makes them a great unit for tanking in general, especially for certain late game units and effects. Psi storm, siege tanks, colossi and thors all come to mind as units that roaches tank well against.
• Roaches 3 shot marines. Roaches with at least +1 weapon over their enemy's carapace level two shot zerglings.
• Large unit size makes it easy to block off areas. This is crucial in the early game for stopping speedling run bys or hellion harassment.
• Roaches share the missile upgrade with hydralisks, leading to an easy transition into that staple mid game unit.
• Fast burrowed regeneration make them a great unit with some micro. Getting tunneling claws also increases their regen now, and allows you to burrow move under forcefields for great effect.

Cons:

• Without their speed upgrade, roaches are pitifully slow off creep and average on creep. This means that you can't chase enemies back early, and roach rushes early on have to expend some of their gas to get the upgrade.
• The actual DPS of roaches is pretty low. They excel in longer fights where their high health is useful.
• Their large size becomes a liability later on in the game, as it prevents more roaches from being able to attack at the same time.
• The limited range on roaches makes it harder to kite and extremely easy to be kited. Stalkers and marauders with conc shells in particular have a field day with roaches if they have room to back up.

Hydralisk

When zerg hits midgame, they have essentially two options for an upgrade to roaches: hydralisks or mutalisks. Hydras are a phenomenal ranged DPS unit (they have one of the highest of all zerg units) for a unit that's cheaper than stalkers by 25 minerals but does over twice as much damage (albeit with less health). They easily destroy any air units that stay within range (they have the standard 6 when upgraded) and rip through most ground forces with easy. Their high DPS make them a common ground staple all the way to the end of the game.

Pros:

• Extremely high DPS. The highest damage dealer of all "spammable" units.
• The only non-queen ground zerg unit that can hit air. That's pretty important.
• Has the "standard" range of 6 when upgraded.
• Slaughters most other spammable units. Marines, marauders, roaches, stalkers, zealots... all fall to hydralisks.
• Their low base damage but high rate of fire makes them effective against immortal shields.
• Their classification as "light" barely acts as a problem, as the main units that do bonus damage to "light" are banelings and hellions, neither of which pose threats to hydralisks normally.

Cons:

• Low health for a mid game unit makes them crumple easily when they're taking damage.
• For a zerg unit they're expensive. Much gas needs to be collected to support nonstop hydra production. You usually need to mix in non-hydra units like zerglings or roaches to use all your larvae.
• Slow unit in general, especially off creep. Has trouble pulling off flanking maneuvers or harassment. In many regards, hydralisks are glass cannons- they deal tons of damage, but have low health and poor speed.

Mutalisk

Mutalisks are the other side of the mid game coin for zerg. Hydras are slow but strong damage dealers with low health.. Mutalisks are fast, aerial units that deal moderate damage and excel at harassment and killing packs of low health units due to their bounce. You'll want mutalisks to wreck ground armies with no or insufficient air, to harass bases and force them to spend minerals on anti-air emplacements, and to confine their mobility and keep them in their base, leaving you to expand. They're also your versatile anti-harassment force, able to fend off most air harass and attacks on your more distant expansions as mutalisks are very fast.

Pros:

• While individual damage is low, the bounce damage can add up very quickly
• Bounce damage is very effective against low health units
• Beats vikings in packs (but not solo)
• Fast enough to harass and back off, as well as to defend distant expansions
• Great at intercepting rallying units
• Great at sniping off targets (templar, ghosts, sentries)
• Can overwhelm terran ground armies that rely on marines for defense if they don't have enough of them
• Tendency to "clump" makes individual targeting of mutas by the enemy difficult and allows many mutas to hit the same target at the same time
• Able to attack ground and air without special effects: only one of the early air units to do so (phoenixes need to lift and vikings need to land)

Cons:

• Low single target damage makes them poor against high health units (ultralisks, colossi, thors), especially when the unit is alone, as well as buildings
• Relatively low health makes them fragile
• Not a cheap unit: 100/100
• Low range allows well microed vikings and phoenixes especially to chew away at them while taking minimal return damage
• Doesn't upgrade or transition into anything well. If the enemy gets a good counter (thors+marines, well microed phoenixes, etc.) mutas have no upgrades or good transitions
• Clumping makes them vulnerable to AoE attacks like Thor missiles, psi storm and archons (yes, that happened to me once, and it sucked)

Corruptors

The zerg air-to-air unit, this unit has an odd line of stats. It does better DPS against a single target than mutas do, but mutas do more as long as there are at least two targets remaining. Generally this means that mutas are better than corruptors at straight fights in the air. However, corruptors have a great +6 damage against massive units. As far as I know, the only massive unit they can hit are colossi (terran buildings lifted off are not massive). You can't even use it in 2v2s with phoenix lifts, since you can't lift a massive unit to begin with.

Pros:

• 200 hp is a lot of health for a 150/100 unit.
• Range 6 allows them to fight off microing phoenixes (range 4) but not vikings (range 9)
• Bonus against massives makes them the key unit against colossi. High health allows them to keep shooting through focus fire
• The corruption ability (+20% damage to an enemy unit or structure) is useful for taking down higher health units and structures, usually colossi. The cast time on it means that it's not worth it for most lower health units.

Cons:

• Not really fast, so it's more of an AA defense force. Can't gain air superiority because it can't hunt down enemy air units.

Brood Lord

The highest tech unit for zerg along with the ultralisk, the brood lord is the ultimate air to ground unit. It does decent straight damage and has great range (9), but the best part is the broodling spawn. Every hit spawns two broodlings immediately, which are similar to weak zerglings. In small numbers it's not a problem, but as the brood lords keep attacking the broodlings add up. They also serve as a good buffer for higher damage units like hydralisks.

Broodlings can hit a "critical mass"; a state where broodlings are being spawned faster than they are killed, which usually spells the end for your opponents.

Brood lords must be supported. They're vulnerable to air attacks as well as quick rushes by ground forces who ignore the broodlings and focus fire the brood lords.

Pros:

• Great range
• Decent on hit damage
• Broodlings add extra damage and take extra hits
• Hard to focus fire due to decent health (225), flying unit and range

Cons:

• Cost: 300/250
• Requires Hive + Greater Spire
• Slow attack speed
• Takes several shots or a good number of brood lords to reach "critical mass"
• AoE attacks can easily kill broodlings (hellions, psi storm)
• Large ranged armies can often kill broodlings as fast as they spawn
• Very slow

Ultralisk

The other highest tech unit zerg has is the ultralisk. The highest health unit in the game besides the mothership with high armor, theoretically it's a tanking best. In reality, it's much more complicated than that.

Even after the most recent patch that buffed their health and speed, I still can't see the ultralisk as a good choice in all but the most specific circumstances. The only unique thing about them is their ability to run through force fields. By the time ultralisks come out ranged units of ANY kind can kill one in a single volley. For their enormous cost and time to build it's really not worth it.

More specifically, ultralisks are almost never worth it compared to their alternative, which is brood lords. Which would you rather have, a slow but long ranged aerial unit that does good ground damage and spawns zerglings on hit, or a moderate speed melee unit that usually dies before reaching the enemy?

For comparison: an ultralisk costs 300/200, 6 supply and takes 70 seconds to build. A carrier takes 350/250, 6 pop and 120 seconds.

Which would you rather have, 10 ultralisks or 8 carriers? Yea, this unit still needs a buff.

Brood lords cost 300/250 and 74 seconds to build, for reference.

Pros:

• As a massive unit, it automatically breaks force fields when it runs into them. Ultralisks and zerglings make for a good combination.
• Also can't be lifted because it's a massive unit.
• Very high health makes it very survivable, especially against slow rate of fire AoE attacks like siege tanks or colossi.
• Splash melee damage makes it good against low health units that clump like marines or zerglings.
• Fast attack speed combined with good base damage means it can beat just about anything once it gets within melee range.
• Special alternate attack vs. buildings allows it to kill strutures quickly.
• High armor (3 after upgrades) makes it take much less damage from fast firing, low per-hit damage units like marines.
• Can burrow- surprise ultralisk attacks are deadly.

Cons:

• Susceptible to 250mm strike cannons from a Thor.
• Requires a ton of tech to get.
• Expensive (300/200) and builds slowly (70 seconds)
• Poor at retreating because it's a melee unit.
• Large collision size prevents many ultralisks from being able to attack at once.
• Very slow health regeneration requires ultralisks that survive battles to be transfused by queens to recover.
• As an armored unit, a lot of big damage dealers do more damage against it.
• High supply (6)

Queen

One of the most unique units added to the zerg's arsenal, the SC2 queen is completely different than its predecessor. It's more of a hatchery guardian now, but has a few powerful defensive abilities.

The queen is also the only zerg ground unit that can hit air besides hydralisks, making it invaluable against early air rushes.

Pros:

• Can hit air and has decent range/DPS.
• Vomit larvae is a requirement to zerg macro success. There is no way you can ever become a good zerg player without using it.
• Provides excellent early defense against rushes.
• Transfusion is helpful for getting high health units back to full such as roaches, brood lords, corruptors or ultralisks.
• Creep tumors are important for linking bases and expanding creep into the middle of the map, giving you map control.
• Very high health for an early game unit (175) gives it great survivability.
• Only mineral cost
• Low supply (2)
• Large collision size allows it to block enemies easily

Cons:

• Extremely bad speed off creep.
• Since it is required every 40 seconds to spew larvae, can't move far from a hatchery/lair/hive unless it's a duplicate queen.
• Builds slowly, making lost queens a pain to rebuild
• Lots of macro attention must be dedicated to constantly spewing larvae at all hatcheries.
• Can't beat a banshee in a solo fight
• Because of its high value to the zergling economy, it is often focus fired

Overlord

A worse version of the original SC1 overlords, as they no longer have detection.

Pros:

• It's a flying farm! (gives you supply)
• It flies. Units that hit ground only can't hit it.
• It can be upgraded to have moderate speed and transport units for drops.
• It acts as an early scout and provides valuable vision around the map.
• It can spread creep under it for free once you have a Lair.
• It can be upgraded into an overseer.
• Serves as a high ground spotter and can detect drops on your base early
• Can be thrown into the enemies to serve as meat shields so that other air units gain valuable time when attacking or dropping

Cons:

• Insanely slow before the upgrade, such that even a single anti-air unit can kill it. Even when it has the speed upgrade it's only below-average speed at best.

Overseer

dassda

Pros:

• 
  

Cons:

• a

Infested Terran

dassda

Pros:

• 
  

Cons:

• a

Unit Overview introduction

I think that the units can be very overwhelming for a new player. Sometimes a simple overview of a unit and a description of its strengths and weaknesses can be very helpful.

For example, you could look at a roach and see that it does 16 damage per hit, with 145 hp, costs only 75 minerals and 25 gas and compare it to the hydralisk that does 12 damage per hit, with 80 hp, and costs 100/50 and just assume that roaches are much better units (which is false). Even if you notice the attack speed difference and realize that hydras do more damage per second, the extra health and lower cost of roaches still makes them seem very tempting. Marauders are another unit that seems like an upgrade to marines at almost every statistic, which proves untrue in real games.

Another example of a common confusion is how to use zerglings. They tend to get slaughtered if you just charge them into huge packs, especially without upgrades.

Important links

Here are some staple websites that you should get familiar with to improve at Starcraft 2.

Reference

1. Starcraft 2 Armory Unit Listings

• While the strategy discussion on this site isn't great, the constantly up to date unit stats is great for theorycraft.

2. SC2 Beta Patch Notes

3. TeamLiquid SC2 Wiki

• Useful source for community-related SC2 information as well as some basic articles on the game. For example, I use this to lookup famous players that are mentioned often (flash, sen, TLO, etc.).

4. DPS/Unit Statistics charts

• Kind of outdated but still contains plenty of useful information. Let me know if you have a more recent source.

Shoutcasts

1. Day 9 TV @ UStream

• Great shoutcasts and analysis of SC2 games. He broadcasts on this channel live.

2. Day 9 TV @ blip.tv

• Archives of day9's videos.

3. Husky @ Youtube

• Shoutcasting of high level games live, plus occasional analysis of replays.

Replays

1. sc2win.com

• Great site for downloading high level replays

My Zerg build (hydra macro)

This is my standard zerg build on all maps except incineration zone and Desert Oasis.

14 pool
16 hatch
16 queen
16 overlord
16 extractor
16 zergling
17 drone
18 drone (use the extractor trick to get this one in)

First 100 gas: zergling speed
Second 100 gas: Lair
Double evolution chamber when Lair is transforming.
Build third queen while Lair is transforming.
Hydralisk den when Lair is complete.



With your first couple zerglings, send them to scout your enemy. Try not to lose them- keeping them alive outside your enemy base serves as a valuable early warning. Use the other one to camp at a Xel'naga watchtower outside your enemy base, to provide even more warning if your first zergling dies.

Verus early aggression: Pump out lings and spine crawlers as necessary. Speedlings can handle just about any threat as long as you have the time to build them when they start attacking (this is why your early zergling pair is critical).

Versus enemy fast expand: No problem! NOBODY macros better than zerg because you can outworker anyone with hatcheries and queens.

After your Lair is up, pump hydralisks. These will beat out almost any lower tech unit very cost efficiently (marines, marauders, zealots, stalkers) and handle quite a few mid game units (hellions, banshees, mutas, immortals) as well.

Depending on your enemy unit composition you probably want to backtech to roaches and start putting them into your army at a low ratio. 1:3 Roaches:Hydralisks works well.

If they have colossi in large numbers you'll want to switch to mostly roach and zergling production with some hydras as backup while using your gas to get corruptors. If he does a great job keeping your ground army back with forcefields and keeping stalkers near the colossi, get roach tunneling claws to burrow and move through force fields.

If you have trouble ending the game but have a strong lead, finish up with brood lords.

Welcome!

I'm making a blog to put a place on the internet for my Starcraft 2 thoughts. This will be focused around in game strategy and tactics, and not on SC2 news, interviews or the like.

For a little background on me:

I'm a high ranked diamond player as zerg on the US server. I'm not an "elite" diamond player- you won't see replays of me taking out famous Americans- but I think I'm still in the top 10%, if the not the top 5%, of American players.

I play around with the other races, but I'm probably a high gold or low platinum player at protoss/terran at best.

I've only played about 50 total games in the beat so far, but I've watched many hours of shoutcasts (especially from day9) and consider myself much better than my game count would indicate.

I was a high level WC3 player (top 5% in US for 1v1) as well, but I barely played SC1 ladder.