I’m no slouch, but I’m certainly no master at the game of StarCraft II. The author of Shokz Guide for StarCraft II is a master, though, and it shows through his elaborate, in depth knowledge of the overall game, its units, and the minute-to-minute strategic decisions that create wins and losses. I know I certainly learned a few things from his expertise, and considering the amount of information packed into this guide, I’m fairly certain just about any reader could stumble across something enlightening, from the lowest of bronze league players to the upper echelons of diamond league.

The Shokz Guide completely ends any confusion about which units are best suited for which situations. The long list of counters for and against each unit are nice, but for most readers of the guide, will be largely known already. What was new to me, and what I’m sure will be new to several others, was the analysis of how each unit does against all three races, as a whole. Sure, each unit can be useful in some way against any race, but this kind of guidance speeds up the process of trying to break down enemy weaknesses over the course of a game. Once you know what race your opponent chooses, you can use the information given in this guide to create a basic game plan for which units you want to produce, and exactly how you want to use them.

I was also impressed by how certain basic elements of the game were explained, and their importance stressed. You can get a good idea of how you should prioritize tasks and goals within the short-term and long-term in every game. The need to expand, and how it affects the game, is in particular made clear. Players are made to understand not only the economic gain made through expansion, but the advantage to be had by denying resources to your opponent. The game is made out to be a game of gaining an advantage, either in army size or resource collection rate, and doing everything you can to preserve that advantage long enough to be able to strike and win the game decisively.

If you’re inclined to pursue the many achievements to be had in StarCraft II, the Shokz Guide has you covered, too. Detailed mission strategies for the Wings of Liberty Campaign are gradually being posted, and if followed, are sure to lead to victories on even brutal difficulty. Specific achievements are addressed in another special section, a solid and welcome addition.

I really benefited from having the game broken down so simply and clearly. Using the information in the guide, I was able to test different strategies and units in actual games and begin to understand the mechanisms at work that determine whether or not my plans end up successful or not. The Shokz Guide is a must read for any StarCraft II player looking to rise in the ranks, or for any player who is just frustrated and tired of losing. It’s an easily accessible read from which even experienced players could learn a thing or two.

PS : Click here to get more information on the Shokz Guide

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Ever since the early builds of StarCraft II were shown to the public, there has been endless debate about the addition of Multiple Building Selection (MBS). MBS marks a departure from the StarCraft I standard, where each building had to be selected separately for unit production. In StarCraft II, several of the same kind of building can be selected, and units will be created evenly across all buildings, though each hotkey must be pressed once for each unit (you can’t select four gateways, press z once and have four zealots on the way). It seems like a minor and convenient change, but it actually does have a significant impact on gameplay, which is why it has been one of the biggest lightning rods of controversy since the game was released. The classic StarCraft training points of micro and macro will be altered in no small way, especially in the coming months, as players get more accustomed to StarCraft II.

Detractors of MBS hold that it takes away from the skill required to play the game, in two ways. First, they claim that being able to select multiple buildings oversimplifies macro. One of the greatest challenges of competitive StarCraft I was the delicate balance that needed to be maintained between micro and macro during battles. In order to keep up unit production, players would need to leave a battle to go back to their bases and individually select buildings to produce units efficiently. Now that entire groups of buildings can be hotkeyed to a number 0-9, shifting attention away from battles is unnecessary. Second, there are claims that StarCraft II, an RTS, is based partly on the skill of mouse speed and effectiveness. As silly as that might sound, it is a fair point. It takes a certain amount of practice and ability to control a mouse and get the most out of each movement of the hand. It is a skill that is difficult to master, and contributes to the learning curve of StarCraft I, but less so to StarCraft II.

Personally, I am on the other side of the fence. I welcome the streamlined unit production that MBS brings, because it allows StarCraft II to have its own unique learning curve. True, macro is easier to manage now, but I think the feeling that this decreases the skill needed to master StarCraft II is misguided. The amount of time players will now have at their disposal when they would have been managing macro will be put to good use by the best, and squandered by the worst. Players will have the freedom to develop new micro tactics that would have been unthinkable or impossible in StarCraft I. Lamenting how things are now seems shortsighted; the masters will apply their ingenuity, and will use MBS to their advantage more than lesser players.

I think the opportunities for micro opened up are the most compelling. StarCraft II has done a much better job of making every unit in your arsenal uniquely important, which means we will see less and less of the “mass one unit and attack” strategies that were prevalent in StarCraft I. The use of abilities by support units can now be managed more effectively, without the cost of not being able to micromanage your attacking units to prolong their lives or lure enemies into traps. I think all battles will become more exciting, and as players realize that, will almost subconsciously develop new strategies to be http://www.starcraft2guidestore.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=128&action=edit&message=1used to gain the upper hand. Perhaps StarCraft II requires less skill to play right now, but give it a few months, and its learning curve will be as steep as StarCraft I’s ever was.

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Playing StarCraft I and StarCraft II, I always thought it was funny that siege tanks were most commonly used for just about everything but what their name implies. That’s not to say they aren’t or weren’t being used effectively; there is no better defensive unit against ground assaults for Terrans, or in the game as a whole, for that matter. As an attacker, they manhandle enemy buildings in the blink of an eye. All that is well and good, but I always had more fun using siege tanks as, well, siege tanks. Making them the backbone of a good siege of an enemy base, especially early game, is a wonderfully satisfying way to get a victory and leave an opponent very frustrated.

I almost feel like the siege in StarCraft is a lost art. So many players are too eager to get battles started, and create showdowns with enemy forces that make or break games in a few seconds. Patience is a virtue, though, and sometimes, letting the battle come to you is the best way to win. After pumping out a few siege tanks early and using them for defense, I like to advance them toward the enemy base. At this point, most of the map should be scouted regularly, so I’ll know whether or not there is an enemy expansion base. If there is, I’ll work on disposing of it, but if my opponent was unwise and failed to expand, then I’m going to go make him pay for it.

I’ll usually start out putting my tanks in siege mode in a semicircle around the enemy choke point, far enough out to where my tanks can just hit the edge of the enemy base’s high ground. Of course, if my opponent is another Terran, I’ll put them a little farther out, so they don’t get hit by enemy siege tanks. The tanks will take care of any workers that try to escape the base to expand or scout, or attack any ground forces that come out to attack, but this will give away my position, so I’ll give the enemy pause by scanning his or her choke point, so my tanks can do some damage at the rim of his or her base.

All that’s left for me to do is to build a couple factories and a couple starports near my tanks, and churn out reinforcements. Patrols of vikings around the base will catch transporters trying to escape, while a small cluster of vikings or marines with medivacs near my tanks will fend off any aerial attacks. At this point, I don’t need to be too concerned about how many units in my siege I lose, as long as I don’t lose all of them. The siege allows me to set up all the expansion bases I want, which means I’ll soon be getting more resources than I can ever use. More importantly, my opponent will soon be running out of resources at his original base, meaning the flow of reinforcements will soon be coming to an abrupt end.

This is why I always make it a point to expand early; the feeling of having your base well-protected and unscathed, yet being completely out of resources with no way to access any more is one of dark, oppressive hopelessness. It might be a little cruel, but I think of it as means to teach an important lesson that will help my opponent in future matches: expand!

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After being saddled with an almost unhealthy addiction to the much anticipated (twelve years!) Starcraft II for the better part of the last two weeks (something that will likely continue for weeks to come), I’ve made some surprising observations. It seems to me that the dark templar and siege tank hordes I always used to see in Starcraft I don’t get churned out nearly as often anymore. The old Terran vs Protoss match-up just doesn’t play out the same way it used to.

At first, I thought this was a little weird, seeing as how dark templars and siege tanks are two of the least changed units in Starcraft II. Upon further reflection, I realized that this makes perfect sense. With so many new toys to play at your disposal, why restrict yourself to the old standards? The more I thought about it, though, the more it seemed that the reasons might be a little more technical than that. It’s more of a reflection of what the Terran vs Protoss match-up is becoming in Starcraft II.

A lot of the counters for these two units have been strengthened, and sometimes they just aren’t worth their risks to produce. The zealot charge ability, for example, has turned what was once cannon fodder into a disaster for a cluster of siege tanks, allowing zealots to close that deadly gap almost instantaneously. With detectors like the sensor tower and less tech needed to add scanning capabilities to a command center, dark templars are a little trickier to use, too. Considering that both counter each other, the decline of one could lead to the decline of the other.

Granted, the siege tank still is used often enough: most Terran wall defenses at choke points have at least two or three as a rule. Offensively, though, they never seem to be leading the way in any sort of assault. The ease of void ray production for Protoss players probably contributed to that. A couple void rays coming across poorly protected siege tanks is going to get very ugly for the Terran player very quickly.

The decline in dark templars strikes me as peculiar, though. Using them forces the Terran player to guard against the cloak sooner than would normally be necessary, at the cost of army or worker production. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to not throw some into the mix, yet I’ve only had them used against me a couple times since the game launched (and let’s just say I’ve played more than a couple games in the past two weeks). Most of the time, the Protoss player will just mass up zealots and stalkers, or tech straight up to colossi or void rays. There have been a few that try to tech straight up to mass carriers, which was popular with some people in Starcraft I. Old habits die hard, but from what I’ve seen in Starcraft II, that habit might not have a very long life ahead of it.

Of course, this is just based on my personal experiences. Maybe I just haven’t found the old diehards who won’t let go of their familiar friends, or maybe I haven’t found great players who can use them in new ways that few have yet imagined. We’ll just have to keep playing to see how the strategies of Starcraft II evolve over time.

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