How to become mediocre at StarCraft II really fast – Part III

Part I – The Basics
Part II – Micromanagement

With the impending release of StarCraft II on July 27th and the mass of Beta keys going out these days, it occurs to me that StarCraft is a fairly deep game with a steep learning curve. It’s tricky in that it has a lot of nuances that are not intuitive to people who have never played a strategy game before. And it would sadden me if knowledge was the only barrier keeping people from playing a great game, so I am here to write a guide to get people from a beginner who has never touched StarCraft or WarCraft to winning some games fairly quickly. This is not a guide that will get you to the Platinum leagues. But after following this guide, you should at least be able to make your way through to Silver, and then maybe I’ll make another guide to get better at the game.

In this part of the series, we talk about scouting and unit composition. Given the diversity of the units in StarCraft II, a natural question to ask is: What units should I build? The answer to this question is actually another question: What is your opponent building? And thus you can see why these topics are grouped into one part.

Scouting is the art of gaining as much information about your opponent as possible. For your beginning games, simply focus on three things:

1) Scout at around the time your first unit building structure (Barracks/Spawning Pool/Gateway) is completed. You can use the worker you used to build this building to do this. On larger maps, scout earlier. Get a feel of when you can get this scout out to get enough information

2) Keep your scout alive as long as possible. If an opponent tries to chase you away with a worker or a Zealot, you can use the shift-queuing trick with the movement command (covered in Part I) to avoid dying permanently. Simply shift+right-click around the base, go back and do some base management, and then come back and shift-queue some more. When your scout does die, note which and how many units your opponent has and which buildings they’ve built.

3) Send another Marine/Zergling/Probe to scout every two minutes or so. It will die, but you’ll get an idea of where the army is, the size, and what’s in it. Remember to watch your scout carefully because it will die fast. Also scout all the mineral patches on the map to see if your opponent has taken another expansion beside his natural expansion (the one right outside his base).

Using this information, you can identify when to attack (ideally when your opponent is not in their base) and what to make (if he’s making lots of armoured units then make units that deal extra damage to armoured units). The actual unit composition of your army will depend on the race matchup, so I’ll list some common counters here. Remember that these are general recommendations but no army should consist of only one unit type. I am simply listing which units are effective against other units. Remember that you can win the game without having effective counters. No matter what, building way more stuff than your opponent will win. Remember Part I: Build lots of stuff.

One important thing to note about Terran armies is that you can pretty much never go wrong with Marines. They are extremely versatile and do a lot of damage, and are important to soak damage in front of your tanks. For Terrans more than any other race it’s really important to have a good mix of units, so don’t overdo anything, even Ghosts against Protoss. Just get a few to throw some EMPs around.

My recommendation for this matchup is to always get Banelings as fast as you can.

The advantage of the Zerg army is that you can tech switch very easily. Once you’re into the midgame, start building the unit buildings just so you have them ready in case. For example, you may have a ground army but lost a fight to Colossus. Make sure you have a Spire already built so that you can make a handful of Corruptors quickly.

Remember, I strongly recommend mixing your army! These are general guidelines, but don’t overreact just because you see your opponent is building one Colossus or Void Ray.