Now to a certain degree I can understand balancing issues and the fact that Blizzard’s matchmaking system needs a few tweaks and a much bigger player base to pull opponents from because as it stands now you have about as much a chance to face an equal enemy player as you do somebody ranked infinitely higher than yourself. But the game is far from broken and with a few minor tweaks, you can find yourself on the delivering end of the ass beating.

Scout and Counter

You can have to learn to properly scout. The game of StarCraft has become more like action chess than anything else. As soon as you can afford to pull a worker away from your mineral line (typically around 11 supply being used) send them out to find the enemy base and to more importantly see what he is building. Use some foresight. If you see vespene gathering early then you can estimate they’re going to tech fast and rush later.

If you see the Terran building a tech lab onto the barracks expect some marauders and reapers so guard your mineral line from the harass and don’t bother making armored units (roaches, stalkers, marauders, most vehicles) because they’ll be destroyed. If he’s making a factory right away don’t expect it to make vehicles, the factory is a gateway to the starport. Building a factory with a tech-lab then lifting off the factory and replacing it with the newly finished starport means the player can build banshees and research cloak extremely fast. Cloaked banshees account for a vast majority of my wins because players rarely make anti-air units and detectors that early in the game.

If you see the Protoss player with 2x Gateways before the cybernetics core than maybe you’re in for a zealot rush (with the use of chrono-boost to build them faster). If you see a quick build of cybernetics core with a robotics facility expect early colossus rush (counter with heavy marauder mass, air units, hydralisks or banelings) or immortals (counter with zerglings and marines en mass). If you see a stargate then get ready for voidrays very early. A rush of immortals and stalkers with about 9 zealots upgraded with Charge are really hard to stop at your choke. The immortals deal impressive damage, the zealots are like zerglings on steroids, and the stalkers typically wipe out any air threat to the force since they’ll be typically ignored in favor of the other two units. A high-templar with psi storm thrown into that mix and it’s a fucking devastating army especially against zerg. Dark templars are downright horrible to fight early in the game. Terran have shit for detection and the DT can dish out a lot of damage in the meantime.

If the zerg player builds a roach warren expect that rush and counter with stalkers or marauders or anything that flies. If you see a nydus canal then watch for the worm spawn behind your workers. Spire? Get some anti-air for the mutalisk threat. Zerg can stay dormant for a long time during a match. You may never get hit with a rush and end up with a small standing army because you’re busy teching up. Zerg players with the queen’s inject larva ability can get a massive army in a matter of seconds. Zerglings become banelings which burrow and become land mines that destroy damn near any ground unit with deadly efficiency for the cost. Roaches that move while burrowed are almost invincible. Infestors now with full energy can churn out a temporary army of infested marines and blow the shit out of your units. The zerg are a big shock/awe exploding race with an answer to almost anything and with current Nydus mechanics, you can be assured that the worm infiltration into your base will almost always spell GG. Its not often players keep a bunch of units scattered inside their own base.

Pressure, Harass, Rush

It’s not a cheap tactic, it’s strategic and it works a lot of the time. Be aggressive! When you get attacked if you win, shore up with whatever you’re currently building and then send them out ASAP to the enemy base. Chances are they won’t have much to fight back with and even if they do you’re keeping them of the defensive and not letting them take control of the map. Map control, that is having units and buildings out on the map to your benefit either gathering resources or providing vision, is essential to winning every game. Keep up the pressure you always want to have some little group of units out and about squashing any expansions and guarding the high-yeild minerals.

Harassment is part of the game. Get used to it. Reapers are in the game for a reason so are Stalkers and cracklings (speed upgrade zerglings). More than half of the matches I’ve been in were won not because my army was dead, but because my economy was. If the player has no main base (Command Center, Hatchery, Nexus) at all and no workers to build a new one, it’s over. There’s very little that can be done at that point to recover. It may be cheap to rebuild a bunch of lost drones/probes/SCVs but it takes time and it means you get the advantage. A lot of players will just give up at that point too. Remember you’re playing against another living person. The game is also psychological in this respect. A machine will fight to the end. A player will often times panic, get emotional, get angry, nerd rage and quit. Keep your cool no matter what and try to use that against your enemy. When you lose, do it with dignity and watch the replay, see how you lost.

Rushing is something a lot of players hate but it too is part of the game. Get over it and move on. Rushing keeps the game exciting, like multiple action scenes before the big climax. Rushing is an all or nothing strategy, odds are if you survive an enemy rush or they fucked up scouting and rushed the wrong type of unit, you can win extremely quickly by sending your forces into what you will soon realize is a skeleton main base with little to no expansion. The matches that are the most fun are the ones that last past this point. It keeps the adrenaline pumping and opens a lot more opportunity for skill and micro managing units to overtake the rock-paper=scissor type of gameplay synonymous with RTS games.

I’m writing this under the assumption readers have played through the original Starcraft and Starcraft Brood War expansion pack’s single player campaigns. There also might be major spoilers involved as a lot of this information was gleamed by me during Blizzcon 2009.

We begin with the Zerg. What’s become of the zerg and more importantly, Kerrigan. All of her enemies lay beaten and broken beneath her feet, the zerg Queen of Blades was the undisputed ruler of the Korpulu Sector.

The Queen of Blades did not become complacent in the wake of her victory. She kept watch over the Swarm from her core hive on Char. The Brood War left her the dominant force in Koprulu sector. The initial explosive expansion of the zerg has been replaced with a foreboding silence for four years, but no scouting expeditions to Swarm-controlled worlds have lived to tell what they saw there.

Thus, outsiders can only speculate about what she has been doing–or what she has been seeking–these past four years. Many believe that the zerg are building their strength and engineering new organisms before going on the offensive again. Some contend that Kerrigan is staying her hand due to some small shred of humanity buried deep inside the creature she has become. Those who have encountered her savage fury know this to be merely wishful thinking.

The zerg has pretty much not invaded anything recently. You don’t see them unless you go looking for them is the status quo and those few folk that do encounter the zerg don’t live long enough to lift the shroud Kerrigan has so totally secured. Kerrigan is essentially looking for Xel’naga temples and other artifacts because within them she hopes to harness power unimaginable.

Mengsk and his forces have regrouped on Korhal IV. His first order of business was to rebuild the Terran Dominion. In Kerrigan he had found a new target for revenge, and he’d always been happier with a goal to work toward anyway. The Dominion has since become the most powerful force among the terran factions, having taken over many of the original Confederate worlds.

The Kel-Morian Combine and the Umojan Protectorate have been preparing for the inevitable war with either the zerg or Mengsk. The UED task force was almost completely destroyed in Brood War; only a few isolated pockets of survivors remain hidden in the Koprulu sector.

Jim Raynor has led a resistance movement against the Dominion, but that has been a losing battle. Arcturus Mengsk has used his greatest weapons–the media and propaganda–to marginalize Jim’s efforts. Raynor seems to be losing faith, drinking heavily and haunted by the ghosts of his past. He has never forgiven himself for letting Kerrigan be taken by the zerg.

So the Terrans. Well, Mengsk pretty much owns everything, his own son included who isn’t very fond of dear old dad as is knowing full well the depth of Arcturus’ psychosis. On the flipside is Raynor, god I love Raynor but the poor bastard really is in a bad way these days. He too is eventually going to start hunting down the Protoss artifacts for resale or other more honorable purposes. The deaths of Fenix, Tassadar, the destruction of Auir, the betrayal and subsequent madness of Mengsk, and of course the loss and corruption of Kerrigan would be enough to drive any man to suicide at the brink of the void. Luckily Raynor isn’t just any man. At the start of Starcraft 2 Raynor’s ultimate goal is to free the sector of Mengsk’s grasp.

At last we observe the Protoss who have had the very core of their society torn more than a few times during the events leading to Starcraft 2.

The protoss evacuees from Aiur have been struggling to recover from the loss of their home planet while finding ways to mesh their society with that of the dark templar who call Shakuras home. The transition has been difficult for both sides, and the name of Raszagal has been invoked more than once to keep the peace.

The old Conclave has been swept away, and in its absence many protoss have begun looking to their ancient tribal affiliations for leadership and a sense of identity. With the protoss people working together as they did in ancient times and studying the xel’naga technology on Shakuras, the protoss have made many technological developments for continuing the war with the zerg.

Memories of Raszagal have plagued Zeratul, who was further disturbed by his encounter with Samir Duran and the zerg-protoss hybrid Duran had apparently been creating. Shortly after bidding Raynor farewell on Shakuras, Zeratul departed the planet, and he has not been heard from in years. To this day he seeks to understand what Duran and the hybrid he was creating might portend. Lately he has uncovered something that may be related to the xel’naga, creators of both protoss and zerg, and he seeks new clues to unravel the mystery

I’ll give you the story right here and now, the big secret, the big mystery that Zeratul was given. Here it is as detailed in the Dark Templar Saga trilogy written by the amazing Christie Golden. I won’t get into the deeper details of the Protoss and believe me when i say they are very relevant but this post can easily turn into a book in itself if I start. Here’s the deal with the Xel’naga. They created the zerg and the protoss for a very important reason as both races are connected to each other. The Xel’naga are not immortal heavenly beings like gods, and they do have a life cycle. The Xel’naga set out to create 2 races; one pure of form (protoss) and the other pure of essence (zerg). The Xel’naga would eventually return and merge the two races together into a single species and then inhabit/implant their souls/minds into them and thus being “reborn” only to begin the cycle again. This is as normal to them as breathing is to a terran or absorbing nutrients is to a protoss.

The Xel’naga are coming back and life as we know it in Starcraft will never be the same.

Blizzard has officially updated the Starcraft 2 homepage and they have some very nice content over there. They’ve added a bunch of new videos, stories, pictures, features, all in preparation for the Beta I reckon.

• New Artwork
• New Screenshots
• New Hero – Tychus Findlay
• Hero – Zeratul (Redone)
• Hero – Jim Raynor (Redone)
• Legacy of War – Multiplayer Preview
• The new Zerg Changeling Story
• Wings of Liberty Single Player Story Telling

As well there’s a brand new splash screen on the homepage (which I copied over to this post) that seems to look more like a movie poster than a game logo. I’m really liking the direction this is going since I always appreciated the Starcraft universe’s storyline more than any other (including WoW and Diablo which is saying a lot – what can I say I really dig space operas). Here though, is the new Zerg Changeling in action sine the official site has a very tiny window.