Teaching Starcraft 2

Sometimes, we need to take a break. Enough programming, enough study, and just relax. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything while relaxing :D StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game currently under development by Blizzard Entertainment as a sequel to the award-winning 1998 video game StarCraft.

I am, and always have been, a Zerg player (“sspawn more overlordss”), and today’s little video will teach you some of the basics on playing starcraft 2, specifically a tactical play known as “Seven Pool” as well as some of the terms used in-game.

Btw, turn on the annotations ^^ So, a bit of a primer about the terms used in SC2:

1. X unit/building – This means that when you get to population X, build the unit or building eg. 7 Pool (build a spawning pool at 7 pop.) or 12 Rax (build a Barracks at 12 pop.)
2. Micro – Shorthand for ‘Micromanagement’, or selecting unit(s) and giving individual commands on each. This ranges from normal (Stalker blink, Zergling surround, Reaper evasion) to extreme (getting 3 harvesters on each resource)
3. Macro – Shorthand for “Macromanagement”. To most players, ‘macro-ing’ means getting the most resources out of multiple bases ex. Getting an early expansion is a Macro move, or ensuring that each of your bases are saturated with just-enough harvesters.
4. Tech, or Teching – Means getting upgrades, normally to get a certain unit eg. Teching to Hydras means getting gas and lair.

Ok, to recap, Zerg 7 Pool goes like this:

• Game starts with 6/10 Population
• 6 Drone
• 7 Pool
• 6 Queen (I made Lord+Drone here instead.. my mistake)
• 8 Gas (Didn’t have to do this since I have an extra Lord)
• 7,8,9 Lings
• Attack
• …
• Profit!

I didn’t really follow the optimal build for 7 pool, and my micro needs more work. But you get the general idea~! :P This works great vs Terran or Protoss, but not against zerg since there’s normally an early Queen (on most builds) which can delay your lings enough for them to recover.

So, I guess that’s it~ I’m planning to create a new blog where we’ll post our ramblings w/ Starcraft 2, and yes, I said we. Guess who’s with me on this one? ^^ Until then, sayonara~