Background: My friend who never played starcraft asked me for an introduction to the game after he bought it. This is the email chain between me, him, and a third friend. I thought some of you players might enjoy our analysis and descriptions. Keep in mind this was pre-patches. The information gets more 'advanced' as my friend became more comfortable with the game. Since it's a massive wall of text, I've divided the post into 3 submissions. This is meant as a guide for 'true' beginners but the concepts in the later posts are for 'experienced' beginners.

ITT: What are helpful resources to get better, what does the game have to offer, what are some strengths/weaknesses of the races and their armies

On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 8:12 PM, eian wrote:

I'll follow up soon with more "guideline" tips but it turns out there are a TON of resources online. I've found youtube to be a great learning format because you can actually "see" how things work out...like build orders and counters. I would look for more "tutorials" rather than "streamcasts" because you're just beginning and need to soak up as much "basic" info as possible. Right now searching for Day[9] on youtube will net you a great well of knowledge...or his direct site: http://day9tv.blip.tv/

The most helpful in game resources are

• 1) replays: to see what your opponent did and analyze your leaks

• 2) the "challenges" which is like mini-missions set up to teach you basic skills.

Also the campaign is a ton of fun and will subliminally teach you how certain units fair against each other and how to balance attacking versus managing your base/economy.

Once you have enough "game play experience" in your downtime check out Blizzard's starcraft 2 forums and teamliquid's forums if you want info on specific topics.

Multiplayer is divided into "quickmatch" (ranked league play called ladders) "custom" (design your own, non-ranked) and "coop" (play with others against AI). I suggest battling several AI on medium until you feel you've got a comfortable handle on "what's going on." Then start testing yourself against "hard." I'm at the point where I always 'warm-up' with a 3v3 hard match to see how my build order is doing and if I can hold my own while my teammates falter. Then if I don't have any 'friends' online, I'll play some 1v1 custom or screw around with crazy gametypes built by the community.

So yeah, I know there aren't any "details" in this message but I feel it's better to get your hands dirty first with campaign and challenges and then we'll get together for some custom practice matches and AI computer battles.

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 6:08 PM, Leo wrote:

Look like Eian did a fine job of covering some good sources of early advice, so I guess I'll chime in with some specifics. For now I wouldn't worry too much about a build order. What's important is having a general plan or a repertoire of strategies. Build orders are the specifics of you get to executing that strategy, and it's something you get a feel for once you're kind of experienced. For example Eian always plays Protoss. In the beginning he's a noob and it's all he can handle to just produce some sort of army and keep up with the game. However now that he has some games under his belt, he's been able to refine his opening strategies to some degree of precision, so he knows "ok so I build a pylon now, an extra gateway now, get this tech now, etc.

That said, I'm assuming you haven't picked a race so I'll cover all three very generally. Eian plays Protoss and I play all three, though leaning towards Terran. Each has a couple of sort of bread & butter strategies that are versatile and strong. Of course when you see what your opponent is doing and you have options to counter it things changes, but here's the general gist:

Terran: Easy/intuitive/fun to play, very well rounded and flexible. Good for beginners but also powerful in the hands of an expert.

• Infantry/Bio - This build focuses on the units that come out of the barracks- mainly marines and marauders, eventually supported by some tanks and medivacs (transports that also auto-heal biological units). If you upgrade the infantry and handle them well they are very, very strong and versatile. Good for beginners because the stuff that counters this is generally higher tech/harder to use.
• Mech/Metal - Focus on factory units, with some light air support to engage enemy air units. This gives up a lot in terms of mobility vs. the infantry strategy and the units are very expensive, but they really pack a punch. The main force consists of Hellions (go karts with flame throwers) to toast light units, tanks to toast heavy units/anything, and Thors (gigantic walking robot) to soak up damage and provide anti air and fire support. Tougher to execute than an infantry force but very difficult to effectively counter with equivalent resources.
• Air - A riskier build, this relies on mainly vikings (long range air-air fighter) and banshees (cloakable air-ground bomber). You can rush for the banshees and if you show up with a few cloaked ones before they have detection it can end the game. Generally less used than the other strats though, as ground units do tend to win in straight battle.

Zerg- Hard/unforgiving to play, very mobile and and great at getting and maintaining map control. A bit underpowered as of release, but the recent patches have helped.

• Mass zergs - Get more resources and just make a fuckload of hydras (basic ranged attacker) and roaches (basic heavy attacker) and attack. Repeat until enemy is dead. Unlike the other races zerg units are plentiful but not very cost-efficient. The idea is not to have an equivalent army to the enemy and win an even battle (you won't), but to have more resources and wear him down by just throwing meat at him until he can't take it anymore. I don't think you'll be able to view old replays now that the new patch is out but the last game I played as zerg vs. eian illustrated this well. For most of the game I had a worse army but I just kept trying to keep him contained and stall, skirmishing with his forces but never accepting full scale battle. He killed way more of my units and I basically lost every skirmish, but I was expanding and getting more resources the entire time. Eventually I just had enough zergs to overrrun his smaller, more advanced force.
• Air harassment - This makes use of zerg's awesome mobility. You build a lot of mutalisk (fast but weak air units). On the ground you most just have zerglings (very fast and cheap but weak ground unit). These forces aren't good in direct battle, but they can be used to attack where his army isn't and then run away by the time they get back using their great speed. Another 1v1 with eian comes to mind. He was holed up in his base behind a strong wall that I couldn't easily breach. I take some mutalisks and strike his worker line, but he reacts fast by moving defenders over quickly, so I have to retreat. After waiting awhile I send a bunch of zerglings at his front door along with a few mutalisks, to make it look like i'm sending all the forces I have to breach the wall. He moves his defenders back from his mineral line to help defend the front door, but it's a distraction! My main force of mutalisks cruises into his now-undefended mineral line and slaughters all his probes, basically ending the game.

Protoss- Harder to play than Terran but easier than zerg. Has the strongest individual units and a lot of tricks that are hard to anticipate.

• Gateway units- This focuses on your infantry units, which can all be warped in instantly and thus have great mobility. It's a well rounded force and a lot of players like to put up a pylon near the enemy base so they can warp reinforcements directly to there. Mostly zealots/stalkers/sentries, but some templar can be added later.
• Robotic units- Very strong against ground armies, focuses on immortals to destroy heavy units and colossi to destroy masses of cheap/light units. Phoenixes make good support.
• Air units - Relies on the power of the void ray, a ship whose attack gets stronger once it charges up its laser beam. Weak at first but they can reach a critical mass where the high amount of concentrated firepower becomes really hard to stop.