Starcraft II is a very challenging and invigorating game that can take years to master. This article will be the start of a companion guide to a video series that was started this week. Today, we will be venturing on a journey to master the art of control groups and location hotkey. Utilizing these tools in SCII will greatly increase your ability to multitask as well as become more efficient at managing your base.

Before we get started, I suggest you open up your settings within Starcraft II and follow along this simple guide of setting up location hotkeys. Once logged in, go to:

• Settings -> Hotkeys ->Global -> Camera.

Once here you should see a screen similar to the picture below.

If you scroll down a bit, you will notice that Locations can be created using the key combination Ctrl+Shift+F1. Personally, I find this combination of key a little difficult to utilize. I have found that changing this bind to simply Shift+F1 makes these hotkeys a lot easier to utilize. Since I only use 4 location keys, I change locations 1 – 4 to this binding. Once that is complete, if you scroll down a bit more you will find the “Jump to Location #” hotkeys. I would recommend changing these to the simpler F1 – F4. This allows you to instantly jump to a location that has been set up by pressing the F1 – F4 (depending on which location you would like) key. Once these are set up, you are ready to give them a try. Start a custom game and gives these new bindings a try before utilizing them on the ladder.

The next topic I would like to discuss is Control groups. Control groups allow you to assign a group of units or buildings to a number key for easy access. For Example, at the beginning of every game (before the auto glhf), I tend to click the nexus build a probe and immediately hit Shift+4. This binds the nexus to the number “4” key and allows me to easily continue to build probes throughout the game.

Once a unit or building is bound to a number, centering your screen on that unit is rather easy. By double tapping a control group, the camera view will instantly center itself around the unit or group of units. This technique allows for players to switch between multiple units of interest extremely quickly. Pro players utilize this technique to have clear vision of everything within their units’ vision.

Below is the video series episode that discusses control groups and location hotkeys. This video will help you get started with setting up the location hotkeys as well as walk through a brief demonstration.

As a requirement to this Back to the Basics series, I would like you (yes, you the person reading this) to open up Starcraft 2 and create a custom game and give these mechanics a try. Once you have given it a try, come back to this article and let me know how it went. Also, feel free to leave any questions if you have any.

For more Starcraft 2 content and updates on tutorials and live streams feel free to follow me on Twitch and YouTube:

• Youtube.com/SC2Cha0s
• Twitch.tv/ChaoSC2

Have fun on the ladder!

Andre “Cha0s” Hitchcock

“To approach the game in a reverse engineering, or, theoretic way will not only benefit your knowledge as a player but it will also make you understand a lot more and also able to learn faster and better in different situations. So when the meta game does change, you can change with it.”
–  lastshadow

There is an idea from the chess world that I read in the book The Art of Learning a while back that all Starcraft players should be aware of. It is that players can spend a lifetime trying to learn all of the different openings and how they defeat each other. In the end that player is no better than the strategies they know and when their strategies no longer work they are left with very little understanding of the game. This is the fundamental flaw of the way that many people approach learning starcraft 2, and why on this website I don’t really write about builds.

The quote at the start of this article is from a video by the brilliantly-minded lastshadow who, at the time of writing, dedicates all of his time in Korea thinking about, and playing Starcraft 2 (despite not being supported by a team). In the video he talks about approaching Starcraft 2 like water (referencing Bruce Lee). He says it is important to try to understand the why and the implications of what people do in the game as opposed to knowing what the right thing to build or the right place to attack  is.

Think about the way water acts. Water always tries to find it’s way down into the deepest points of whatever it contacts. Try to be like the water when you learn.

I recommend watching the VoD I am talking about  – just skip forward to about 10 minutes if you are not interested in TvP. 

Let’s Break it Down

This concept can be a little bit difficult to understand in your early days of learning SC2 so in my quest to be as beginner friendly as possible (I know what it’s like) I will try to break it down a little more.

We know it’s a good idea to harass the Zerg player in the early game because it forces them to make Zerglings instead of Drones. This is pretty common knowledge for most players and it is actually a pretty developed idea already. But as my ancient history teacher always used to tell me “we need to take another step”. 

Let’s experiment in following the chain of effects harassing the Zerg player in the early game has. We know that it forces use Larvae that otherwise would have made Drones.

What else does it do? 

It uses supply quickly. Zerglings are a much less beneficial use of supply than Drones are. What does this mean? In order for the Zerglings to be beneficial to the Zerg once he has made them he must use them to be aggressive. From this we can take our first implication of harassing the Zerg – they will be more aggressive in the early game in order to make up for their lost economy.

What else does it do? 

It reduces their economy that they will have for a mid-game push. More Zerglings early means less of another unit later on. Now we are getting interesting! Harassing the Zerg early on weakens any mid-game pushes from the Zerg.

We can continue following this train of effects down further but we will stay here for this example.

You can apply this type of thought process into any situation – forcing Scans from a Terran, rushing for tech, taking an early expansion etc. 

What’s the benefit?

What this actually does for us as players is gives us a fundamental understanding of the game. This type of understanding is the basis for every opener, every tech switch and every meta game tactic.

Aiming for this type of understanding will give you the ability to play well regardless of what balance changes are made, what new build is the ‘best’ in any given matchup and which race is imba this season.

A fundamental understanding lasts forever, builds change all the time. 

Mouse acceleration changes the distance your mouse cursor moves on screen based on how fast you move the mouse. Essentially, the faster you move your mouse the further your cursor will move.

Mouse acceleration is enabled by default on most Windows systems and all Mac systems (due to Mac’s emphasis on touchpad use) as it makes it easier to move  the cursor across large screens or on small desk spaces. 

There is a simple test you can do to better understand the effects of mouse acceleration. First move your mouse from one side of your mouse pad to the other very slowly and take notice of how far your cursor travels on screen. Now do the same thing but this time move your mouse very quickly, again notice how far it moves. In the first instance you may reach the end of your mouse pad before your cursor reaches the end of the screen and in the second instance the mouse probably hit the other side of the screen very quickly. If you didn’t notice any difference then you may already have it disabled.

Why You Should Disable Mouse Acceleration 

 Although mouse acceleration can be quite useful for touch pads and small desk spaces it is not ideal for most gaming applications, especially Starcraft 2. In SC2 consistency is very important and every time you move your mouse from point A to point B you want your in-game cursor to do the same thing. A good example of where this consistency is important is in selecting a worker and telling them to mine. With mouse acceleration you may select the worker but then overshoot the mineral line if you try to move to quickly. With mouse acceleration disabled the mouse movement to send that worker to mine will be the exact same movement every time. 

Having the same movement to perform the same action every time is great for the creation of muscle memory. We know from keyboard usage that muscle memory is very important in Starcraft 2, it allows you to perform actions without thinking about them. The same goes for mouse actions.

At first having mouse acceleration disabled will feel quite odd and your mouse movements will feel exaggerated but this is good and it does not take very long to get used to. So do yourself a favour, stop wrestling with erratic mouse movements and disable mouse acceleration.

How to Disable on Windows

 A windows 7 fix can be found here.

 A Windows XP fix can be found here.

Both fixes involves disabling the ‘Enhanced Mouse Precision’ feature and then installing a registry fix to prevent it from enabling itself again, which it seems to do for some reason. As for Vista it seems that just disabling ‘Enhanced Mouse Precision’ under mouse settings is the best you can get as I have not been able to find a registry fix for it. If you do know of one for Vista please let us know in the comments section.

How to Disable on Mac OSX

The simplest Mac fix can be found here. 

Install the fix provided and review the readme as there are a few things you have to be aware of so that mouse acceleration does not re-enable itself. The only strange thing I have noticed with this fix is that when Starcraft 2 is windowed and you click elsewhere acceleration re-enables itself for about one second before disabling again, however, this is only a minor issue. 

Disabling mouse acceleration was a big step for me as I had always had it on prior to playing Starcraft 2. The drive to get better at the game made me willing to make the adjustment and I could never go back. The accuracy of 1:1 mouse movement makes controlling units much less frustrating and has really helped me improve.

What are your experiences with mouse acceleration? Chances are that if you’re fairly new to gaming this is something you did not realise was affecting your gameplay. Leave a comment below!

No one ever became a great Starcraft player on their own. Behind every great player is a large community of people who practice together. Playing with practice partners allow you to refine strategies and openings and to practice specific situations many times over. In this article i’ll talk about where to find practice partners and who to practice with.

Finding Practice Partners

It’s pretty common for Starcraft 2 players to not have many friends in real life that play SC2, if this is you don’t feel alone. If you do have a large network of friends who play then you are one of the lucky few! Even if you do it is still important to play with many different styles and levels of players.

Practice Groups

Sometimes a few outstanding people will take the time to create a place where like-minded people can link up and play games of SC2. This is a great method of finding practice partners not because of the amount of people you will find (these groups are often small) but because their mindset. People in these groups have come together with the same goal, to improve at Starcraft 2 and this makes them very helpful and very keen.

Unfortunately, finding these groups can be quite hard. You can sometimes find their posts in forums or you may hear about their website or chat channel from a friend. The following are two groups that I have came across:

PRACBUD (SEA)

Located on the SEA server PRACBUD was founded by a few Bronze and Silver League friends who wanted to have practice games with other low level players on the server. Since then it has evolved to include players up to Platinum. You can find out more info about PRACBUD by visiting their website PracbudSC2.com or by joining the chat channel “PRACBUD” in game.

Bronze Practice (EU)

Located on the EU server, this group caters to low level players by running custom games, tournaments and coaching. You can find out more about them by visiting their website www.sc2practice.com

If you know of any practice groups like these please share them in the comments below!

The Forums

Head to your local Battle.Net forum or to the Team Liquid Forums to find threads written by people looking for practice partners. Or you could start a thread yourself. What is great about this method is that you will know exactly what type of practice the person is looking for. If you are a Gold level player looking for ZvP practice and you come across a thread asking for Gold level Zerg players to practice with then you know it’s a perfect match!

Clans

Clans are something that I have not personally explored yet but I have heard from many people who are members of clans that it is the single best way to get a lot of practice partners. Clans are more formalised communities of gamers who join together to practice, to compete or just to socialise. There are a lot of clans available to SC2 players so I recommend doing a bit of research before you commit to one.

The Ladder

This may seem counter-intuitive as the ladder is where you got to compete not to practice. However, something that I often do is ask people I have played on the ladder if they would like to have some practice games. Not everyone wants to of course, some may want to continue to ladder, but many people were more then happy to play a few games and I have even made a few friends this way. This gives you a chance to practice with people who defeated you on the ladder and to explore why you lost. Just make sure that you use good manner in game if you want a chance to play practice games with your opponents afterwards!

Who to Practice With

Some people prefer to only practice with people their own level and below, while others swear by only practicing with high level players. It’s important to understand that both groups of practice partners have their own distinct benefits and drawbacks.

Evenly Matched or Below

Benefits

Practicing with these players give you a chance to play a lot of games while you are still familiarising yourself with the game. Games will be more forgiving and will often last longer allowing you to get more overall learning time. These games will also give you a chance to learn how to take advantage of your opponents errors when they make them, this becomes much harder to do when facing off against higher levelled players so it’s a good idea to learn this skill here.

Drawbacks

When playing lower level or evenly matched players you will find that you can use ‘tricks’ more successfully and that you can get away with many more mistakes. Playing games at this level for too long can cause you to develop bad habits. For example, against lower level players getting supply blocked is not game ending, where a more experienced player would take advantage of this slip. Without the threat of losing you will be less motivated to prevent this from happening.

Higher Level Players

Benefits

Playing against experts of the game will teach you what you cannot do. Make a mistake against one of these players and you will be punished for it. Thus, playing against high level players trims your play of tricks and gimmicks and helps you identify flaws in your play.

Perhaps the most important benefit of playing higher level players is that you must actively try to beat them. These players will rarely make a mistake and you will never win with passivity, you must try to take the win from them because they will not give it to you.

Drawbacks

When facing these players your every move must be well refined as you will be punished for the smallest inefficiencies. As such, there is little room for experimentation when playing high level players. Also note that unless you are fairly competent in the mechanics of the game, you will not get much benefit from playing someone who is able to crush you 100 times in a row.

Make sure that you practice with the players that are best suited to your current learning goals. If you are still struggling with the mechanics of the game, getting beaten repeatedly wont help you too much. In this case practice with people that are at or below your skill level. Once you are confident with the basics and you want to learn what your doing wrong you should seek out high level practice partners.

Do you have a good network of practice partners? Do you prefer to play with people at your own level or do you prefer to punish yourself against high level players? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

We all have a few (or many) bad habits when it comes to playing Starcraft 2, however, many either don’t realise what they are or don’t feel that they are significantly affecting their play. The following are bad habits that I have dealt with, am dealing with or have seen a lot of. Breaking our bad habits is one thing that we can do to really improve ourselves as players.

Entering ‘Spectator’ Mode

This is one that we have all been guilty of at some point. When it comes time for a big battle we stop playing and watch it happen, who will be the winner? Battles in SC2 look fantastic but save the spectating for replays. Whenever you find yourself just watching the game play itself remember that you should still be working! Macro-ing while battles play out is extremely important, often the winner is the one who was preparing for the next battle not just watching the current one.

Quite an epic battle but watch it in the replay not the game!

Not Using All of the Hotkeys

Often times we know and use the main hotkeys for our race but there is usually one or two hotkeys that we would only use once a game that we never take the time to learn. Whats the hotkey for the Warp Prism speed upgrade? I can’t think of it off the top of my head so I know this is one bad habit that I am personally guilty of.

Why is this an issue if we only use it once a game? It’s not so much the extra time it takes to go down and click the upgrade button but the extra thought it takes. Learn the hotkey and make it as second nature as building workers and you will free your mind up to think of more important strategic decisions.

Not Watching the Minimap

Keeping one eye on the minimap lets me see that there is a counter-attack force trying to flank my army.

On the main screen there are units, battles and all sorts of flashy stuff. The minimap by contrast is relatively dull, but it’s an extremely important tool and you should alway be keeping one of your eyes on it. Falling into the habit of not watching your minimap will result in you missing enemy army movements, drops and expansions.

Breaking this habit is hard work –  to do so you will need to incorporate minimap checks at least every few seconds into your mental to do list.

Your mental to do list should look something like this:

• Build workers.
• Check Minimap.
• Build Units.
• Check Minimap.
• High Minerals? Build Production.
• Check Minimap.

All of this happens in a few seconds, eventually it will seem like you are always looking at the minimap because you wont miss anything. The next bad habit ties in with this one.

Excessive Screen Scrolling

Screen scrolling is when you move your mouse to the edge of the screen (or worse yet using the arrow keys) to move around the map. Screen scrolling should only really be used for slight adjustments or for controlling units during battle. Every other screen movement should either be the result of hotkey use or minimap clicking.

There are two very good reasons why this is the case:

1. Using hotkeys to control your screen movements suggests that you are building units and checking the status of upgrades etc.
2. Controlling your screen position via the minimap ensures that you are looking there more often. Without using it to click around players often fall into the habit I mentioned earlier.

Neglecting Upgrades

Getting to max or have a lot of spare resources? Dual chrono-boosted Forges!

This bad habit has been costing me games lately. I will often get to 1/1 upgrades and forget as the game goes on. Neglecting upgrades becomes more and more of a problem as you start playing longer, more drawn out macro games where the difference in army strength makes a huge difference.

A simple solution to this problem is to make upgrades a part of your ‘getting to max army size’ routine. As you get close to the point where your army is getting maxed out build an extra Forge, Evo Chamber or Engineering Bay and start upgrading two upgrades at once. As your game refinement increases you will find out where you can more effectively squeeze upgrades in but following this ‘max army’ routine is a very good starting point.

Overreacting to Harassment

There are three things that can make harassment effective, direct damage (ie. killed workers etc), taking up attention (forcing you to deal with harassment when you should be macroing) and overreaction. This bad habit tends to develop early on in our Starcraft 2 career when we panic over how to deal with it.

The following are ways that you might overreact to harassment:

• Building a lot of static defences – Cannons, Turrets and Spore Crawlers all take up a lot of minerals that cannot be recovered.
• Sending your entire army to deal with a small harassment – Often this will result in your enemies main army being able to freely attack.
• Pulling all of you workers off of minerals when you only need to pull a few – You will lose mining time that you didn’t really need to.
• Sending everything for a panicked counter attack – Your enemy will likely be prepared and unless you are very far behind a panicked attack is never a good idea.

Each of those things has the potential to do more damage than the harrasment itself. It is, however, possible to avoid all of this damage simply by remaining calm. If you spot a red dot heading somewhere suspicious (you should be watching your minimap, remember?) grab some of your units and immediately send them to intercept via the minimap. Then go see what it is, if it turns out to be nothing then no problem send your troops back. If it is small enough for the units you sent to deal with, great! If it turns out to be much worse, send more of your army to deal with it. Above all else simply remaining calm is your best defence against harassment.

Queuing

This last bad habit is one that a lot of people struggle with even knowing they do it. Queuing up units in your production buildings is all round bad practice. Each unit that is queued up and not currently building is essentially wasted money that could be spent on expanding, upgrading or making more production facilities.

Ideally you want to be starting a new unit just as the one that is currently building finishes, however this can be quite hard to achieve. It requires constantly checking the production status of your buildings which takes time to learn. While you strive for ideal macro queuing up one unit when the first is almost done is a good start. I am still working on this habit myself, at the moment my main queuing problem is with workers – I tend to build them two at a time.

Do you suffer from any of the above bad habits in SC2? What other bad habits are you working on at the moment? I know that lately one of mine has been playing Starcraft when I should be studying for exams.

Game settings are something people will often neglect, but optimising them is simple and it can benefit your play immediately. In this article we will go through some of the settings that you can change in-game and what they will do for you.

Display the Command Hotkeys

In a previous article I discussed the importance of learning to use hotkeys in SC2. This setting shows the hotkey for each command on the command button itself rather than the tooltip (popup box when you mouse over the command).

Benefits

Having the hotkeys for each command easily visible can make learning them just a little bit easier. Once you have learned them all you will simply forget about even looking in that corner of the screen but for now this setting is one you should definitely enable.

How to Change This Setting

To display the command hotkeys:

1. Go to the ‘Options’ menu,
2. Open the Gameplay tab, and,
3. Check the ‘Command Hotkey Text’ box.

The Game Timer

This handy addition to the game simply puts a timer above the mini-map in the user interface. This timer shows the current time of the match in Starcraft 2 time (1.38x Normal time on the ladder).

Benefits

The game timer may seem unimportant but it serves as an easy point of reference whilst in game. This allows you to note timings and have an idea of what you could see from your opponent at certain points in the match. You can also set times for yourself to aim for with certain things. For example, in Protoss vs Zerg I try to expand by 6:00, referring to the game timer lets me know if I have been delayed and by how much.

How to Change This Setting

To enable the Game Timer:

1. Go to the ‘Options’ Menu,
2. Open the ‘Gameplay’ Tab, and,
3. Check the ‘Show Game Timer’ Box.

Enable Friend or Foe Colours

This setting is one of my personal favourites. Changing this setting changes the team colours from their defaults to green (yourself), red (enemies) and yellow (allies).

Benefits

Friend or foe colours make identifying enemy units via the mini-map and main screen much easier in 1v1 games. I am still undecided about it’s usefulness in team games, however, as it makes communicating with your allies a little difficult as all enemies are red. Being able to quickly identify the enemy will make it much easier to spot drops or enemy troop movements in your peripheral vision.

How to Change This Setting

To enable/disable friend or foe colours press ‘Alt+F’ whilst in a game. Alternatively, you can click the bottom button besides the mini-map. Your friend or foe colours setting will carry over into future games so you do not have to enable it every game.

Disable Operating System Shortcuts

This setting is worth changing if you have a problem with accidentally hitting a button that minimises the game or interferes somehow. If you don’t have a problem with this don’t worry about this setting.

How to Change This Setting

To disable the operating system shortcuts:

1. Go to the ‘Options’ Menus,
2. Open the ‘Controls’ Tab, and,
3. Check the ‘OS Keyboard Shortcuts’ box.

Show Unit Status Bars

It may look messy as a viewer but as a player the status bars provide a lot of vital information.

Enabling the display of unit status bars will show  the health, shields, energy and production status of all units and buildings on the main game screen.

Benefits

• Makes it easy to see the condition of your units so that you can make a decision to micro or retreat.
• You can see the condition of enemy units allowing you to focus fire them easily.
• Allows you to easily make out enemy spell-casters to focus fire, EMP or Feedback.
• Allows you to easily see the current production or research status of any of your buildings, assisting with macro.

How to Change This Setting

I highly recommend setting the display of unit status bars to ‘always’, however, if you find this too messy you can set it to ‘selected’. You can change this setting by:

1. Going to the ‘Options’ menu,
2. Opening the ‘Gameplay’ tab, and,
3. Selecting ‘Always’ or ‘Selected’ from the drop down ‘Show Unit Status Bars’ menu.

Un-clickable or Hidden Control Groups

If, like me, you find yourself accidentally clicking the control group icons at the bottom of the main game screen or you just want to get the most amount of screen space possible this is a good setting to change. There are two options available to you instead of the default visible and clickable setting: Visible but un-clickable or hidden.

How to Change This Setting

To set the control groups to unclickable or hidden:

1. Go to the ‘Options’ menu,
2. Open the ‘Gameplay’ tab, and,
3. Select either ‘Hidden’ or ‘Unclickable’ from the ‘Control Groups’ drop-down box.

Display Build Grid

The build grid shows unbuildable terrain as yellow allowing for easier wall offs.

Enabling this setting will show a grid whenever you attempt to place a building. The grid shows unbuildable terrain and gives you an idea of how much space there is betweeen your buildings.

Benefits

The build grid makes walling off and base planning much easier. For example, as Protoss you need to leave a one square gap in your wall for units to pass through. Enabling this setting will help you set up your base just a little better so give it a try.

How to Change This Setting

To enable the display of the build grid:

1. Go to the ‘Options’ Menu,
2. Open the ‘Gamelpay’ tab, and,
3. Check the ‘Display Build Grid’ box.

How do you set up your game? Are there any useful settings that I haven’t mentioned here? If so let me know in the comments below!

This article was a collaborative piece between ZiggyD and Ramzdale, a big thank you to Ramzdale for his help! If you are an aspiring writer and would like to write for LearningSC2 let me know!

In another article (“Getting Used to the Keyboard in Starcraft 2”) I talked a little about the Shift key and if you have been playing SC2 for a while you probably have a bit of an idea of how versatile it can be. Players are still coming up with creative new ways to use the functionality of the Shift key, it’s just such a great tool. If you are keen to improve your play, then you should try and take advantage of what the Shift key can do for you.

What the Shift Key Does

Before we move onto all of the nifty things that you can do with Shift lets take a brief moment to understand the mechanics of what it actually does.

Shift basically ‘Adds’ something to a list

In nearly all situations holding ‘Shift’ tells the game to ‘add’ something to a list. This list could be a list of commands or it could be a list of units/structures. There are a few situations where it acts a little differently but this is its main function. For example, ‘Shift-clicking’ a Marine whilst already having a Marine selected adds it to your current selection group. However, ‘Shift-clicking’ an already selected Marine will Deselect it. So in that situation it acts in reverse to its normal function.

Shift can be combined with other Keys

Using the Shift key with other keyboard keys can produce some interesting results. For example, “Shift-[Control group ‘1-0’]”. While ‘Control-[1-0]’ creates a control group, using Shift with a control group number will ADD the current selection to that control group. Use this frequently to ensure that all of your units are bound to a control group.

Now that we have that covered we can move on to the ways that you can use the Shift key to ‘pwn n00bs’ in SC2.

Using the Shift Key: The Basics

The following uses for Shift are more than just ‘cool’ or ‘tricky’, these are the crucial things that you should use every game if you want to play well.

Hands Free Scouting

You can queue up multiple move commands with any unit by holding the Shift key and right clicking for each point you want the unit to move to. Using this your unit can scout for your enemy’s base, proxy buildings and expansions without your direct control, freeing you up for more important things. You can even do this via the mini-map!

Attack-Move Scouting

This is merely a variation on the previous Shift technique. Instead of queueing up multiple Move-commands you can queue up multiple Attack-move commands. Simply press ‘A’ (or your equivalent attack hotkey) and left click each point you want your unit to attack move whilst holding Shift. You can use this technique to find and attack any stray workers or Overlords around the map. Having a few units Attack move scouting around the map can really help you maintain map control and deny your opponent’s scouting attempts.

Queuing Buildings

This works best for Protoss and can be useful for Terran but if you’re Zerg you’re not going to get too much use out of this one. To do this simply hold shift every time you place an additional building and your worker will add them to their ‘to-do’ list. I’ll run with the Protoss example because it works so nicely for them. You can tell one worker to build a heap of Pylons at once or you can easily place different buildings such as a Pylon, a Nexus and 2 Assimilators (Instant Expansion, just add water!™). It works the same way for Terran, but much more slowly due to the worker having to physically build each building. Unfortunately for Zerg each Drone can only morph into one building.

Automatic Return to Mining

This is most useful for Terran, quite useful for Protoss but, again sadly, of no use to Zerg. Once you give the order for a worker to construct a building hold Shift and Right-click a mineral patch. Once your worker is finished building he will return to mining with no downtime. You should be doing this 100% of the time, so start getting into the habit!

Using the Shift Key: The Fancy Stuff

Leapfrogging Siege Tanks is much faster using Shift.

The following uses of the Shift key can be extremely useful but usually only in a very specific circumstance. Take the time to learn the ones that are relevant to you Race and play-style.

Easy Siege Tank Movement

Using Shift you can tell a tank to un-siege, move, and re-siege on arrival. Moving your Tanks in this way allows you to leap-frog your tanks towards your opponent much more easily.

To perform this technique you select a Siege Tank and whilst holding shift  press ‘D’ (Un-siege), issue a move-command and then press ‘E’ (siege-mode).  A tank army pushing forwards using this technique can be quite hard to engage.

Smart Blink

This technique allows an entire group of Stalkers to Blink across a gap one at a time without leaving any behind. It is quite a complex technique to explain and its best done in this video by StarcraftScientist. This is an awesome technique to watch and even better to execute.

Overlord Creep Highway

Spine Crawler, Hydra, Queen pushes are only possible with a fast creep highway.

You have probably watched Fruitdealer or another top Zerg player use Overlords to make a creep highway to their opponents base, but if you have attempted it before you probably realised how fiddly it is to tell each Overlord to go to each point along the highway.

However, there is a much faster and easier way to do this. Select a large group of Overlords and tell them to generate creep. Now send the entire group to the first point on your highway. Now, holding Shift, de-select one Overlord and then tell the rest of the group to move to the next point. Continue for each point along the intended highway.

It only takes a few seconds to set this up and the result is that the entire group travels along the highway leaving one Overlord behind at each point.

Move To and then Patrol

Using the patrol command will cause a unit to patrol between its current location and the selected one. Using Shift you can tell a unit to move to a location and then patrol from that location. Simply tell the unit to move where you want it to start patrolling from then hold Shift and press “P” (Patrol) and left-click where you want the unit to patrol. You can use this technique to easily tell a unit to patrol between two of your opponents potential expansion locations.

Kill That Constructing SCV

Ever notice that your melee unit stops attacking the constructing SCV when it moves? Simply hold shift and tell your unit to attack it multiple times. Your unit will now follow it whenever it moves. Deny the Terran’s wall-off with 50% more ease!

Rally to Your Units

You may already employ the tactic of attaching a rally point to a unit so that your forces stay together even when you move your army. But what happens when that unit dies? You lose your rally point. This can be especially painful when you lose a battle because half of your units are back in your base.

To avoid this you can select a building, hold Shift and Right-click on multiple units. Now if one of those units dies, your newly built units will still move to your army. Unless of course your entire army dies.

Easy Drops

Want your untis to drop as soon as your Medivac/Overlord/Warp Prism arrives? Simply tell your loaded transport to fly to where you want to drop, hold Shift, Press “D” (Drop) and left click at the drop point. With the Warp Prism you can also hold Shift and press “E” to tell it to enter Phasing mode after it unloads.

Similarly, you can tell a Viking to fly to a location and then transform upon arrival using the same technique of Move > Shift + “D” (Assault Mode).

As you can see there are a lot of useful and creative uses for the Shift key. I am sure that there are even more creative uses that are yet to be discovered. Do you know of any other uses for the Shift key? If so let me know about them in the comments below!

I recently had an interesting knowledge management class in which we discussed the concept of knowledge within a community of practice (ie. a group of people who practice within a particular field) and how experience affects knowledge. As per usual I choose to think about this in relation to Starcraft instead of the business world. ^_^ There is one particularly good quote which sums up what I am talking about, try to see if you can figure out how I applied it to Starcraft.

“When we learn a discipline whether at school or on the job, we learn more than facts, ideas and techniques. We enter a territory already occupied by others and learn by participating with them in the language of that discipline and seeing the world through it’s distinctions. We learn a way of thinking.”

There are quite a few points for discussion but I am going to focus on what I feel to be the most relevant for someone learning Starcraft 2: the aspects of the learning process and how they relate to your in game improvement. Why is this relevant for someone who wants to become a good Starcraft 2 player? A common thing that holds players of all levels back is that they only focus on one particular area of the entire learning process.

I tried to drill down to the most important aspects of the learning process as it applies to Starcraft 2 and this is what I came up with (in nifty diagram format):

Combine the information you receive with practice and experience to get Knowledge and Mechanics, combine your Knowledge and Mechanics to get Execution.

Usually, the first thing new players do when they want to learn StarCraft 2 is to seek out information. Information is all well and good but by itself it cannot achieve much (notice that information is not connected to execution in the diagram). For example you may read or see in a video that constantly building workers will help you do better in the game. However, until you have actually practiced constant worker production you will receive no benefit from that information.

When you combine information and practice or experience (experience is more closely linked to the knowledge side of the process) you will improve in either knowledge or mechanics. However, to have good execution in game (execution is how you actually carry out your planned strategy) you have to have good knowledge AND mechanics. Try to think of execution as being 50% knowledge and 50% mechanics (whether this is the case or not).

This is where the problems commonly arise for new players (and probably experienced players too). It is too easy to get stuck focusing only one side of the learning process, usually the ‘knowledge’ side. Too often players with poor execution focus only on trying to find the ‘best’ strategy or build and neglect the mechanics side of the game. If we keep in mind that ‘knowledge’ is only 50% of the equation then its easy to see why this can hamper our progress. It may seem that I am mocking newer players, but I too suffer from this imbalance in learning. If my mechanics were to instantly catch up to my game knowledge I would probably be in diamond tomorrow (I am now in Silver after my recent promotion ^_^).

Make sure you balance your time between practicing/researching strategies (Knowledge) and practicing/refining your core gameplay skills (Mechanics).

So what can we do about this imbalance in the learning process? Simply keeping in mind that knowledge is only half of the process is a good first step. If you find that you are spending most of your time looking up or practicing strategies try to instead put some of your time towards practicing your mechanics. A good way to do this is to focus on one particular mechanic for a series of games, for example, making sure that for the next 5 games you are constantly building workers and then for the five games after that make sure that you are spending all of your minerals. Then go back to practicing your strategies for the next 10 games. If you keep your learning time balanced like this you will see your self progress at a much faster rate.

You may have noticed that this article was a lot shorter than usual, I realised that this topic had a severe chance of suffering from the dreaded TL;DR. To avoid this I tried to keep it short and to the point. However, if you want to know more do not hesitate to ask questions in the comments below. I will always take the time to respond if you take the time to comment.

There are many things that players do to get an edge over their opponents in Starcraft 2. Individually these wont take you from bronze to gold, but when combined they can give you a decent advantage. Normally, you would pick up these nuances through experience and by watching other people do them, but this can take a while. Instead I thought I would save you the time and just share them with you here. Aren’t I nice?

‘The Split’

A perfect 'Half and Half' split. Not mine of course.

How you send your initial six workers to mine seems like such a small thing and really, it is a small thing. If you box select all of your workers and send them to a mineral patch they will sort themselves out, but this can take a few seconds. To correct this players perform something known as ‘the split’. The specific impact of an effective split is allowing you to start production of your second worker as soon as the first finishes. Take note: Start building your first worker before you send your workers to mine.

The two most common variants of ‘the split’:

• ‘The Half and Half’ – Box all six workers and send them all to a mineral patch to the left of the middle, then as they are traveling box select three and send them to a patch on the right side of the middle. The workers will still have to sort themselves out but much less so than normal. This method is popular because it is relatively easy if you are fairly accurate with you mouse.
• ‘F1 and Send’ – This method speaks for itself, simply press F1 to select a single worker and then send him to a mineral patch. Repeat for each worker, sending each to their own mineral patch. This method is less popular than the ‘half and half’ method because it requires you to be fast and accurate enough to do effectively.

In the beginning practice each a few times against the AI and select whichever one you find the most comfortable. Over time you will find that you will naturally develop your own version of one the above methods.

Edit 1/7/2011: A helpful reader, Jeffery, pointed out that a study of split has shown that the benefit gained is very small. As such, it’s entirely possible for you tip skip this tip completely. I have decided to continue splitting my workers anyway, a decision that seems to be echoed by others. I find it a fun way to start the game and it has become a part of my warm-up routine. It’s also wise to not underestimate the power of being a little bit fancy. Thank you, Jeffery, for the helpful feedback! It goes a long way towards making my site a better place to learn SC2.

Rallying Your Workers Correctly and Creating ‘Worker Pairs’

Rallying the first two workers that you build to empty (not being mined from) mineral patches can give you an extra economic advantage at the beginning of the match. At that point in the game you are not usually doing anything else anyway so there is no reason to not do this.

The second part of this is creating ‘Worker Pairs’. Worker pairs are two mining workers that are perfectly in sync, that is, right as one worker finishes mining the other one begins. Workers will eventually pair up themselves, but only after considerable shuffling about. You can manually create a worker pair by rallying a worker that is about to finish building to a patch that has a worker that is just about to finish mining. This will take some practice to get the timing down. You should only worry about this if you are not doing anything else at the time. Although it will help your income it is not significant enough to get distracted over.

‘Maynard Transfer’

Try to time your transfer so they start mining right as it finishes. Profit!

Named for its creator, the Maynard transfer involves overproducing workers at one base so that you can transfer them to an expansion base when it completes. Transferring workers in this way means that you can start reaping the economic benefits of an expansion immediately.

This technique is the standard now for nearly all top players and you should be doing it too. Simply continue producing workers at your main base and then transfer over 10-15 workers from your main to your expansion. Do this every time you expand and your economy will never dry up. This is also another great reason why you should never stop building workers.

Starting Buildings Right on Time

This is one of those things that will really make a noticeable difference, namely in how fast you can execute your build You want to start construction of each building at the exact moment that you have enough resources to do so. Basically, you always want your workers to be building right underneath themselves, every second spent travelling to build is wasted time.

In order to do this send your worker out to where you want to build the building before you have the correct amount of resources. Ideally you want your worker to arrive right as you get enough to build. But this sort of accuracy takes experience and practice, so don’t stress too much if you don’t get the timing right at first.

Giving Your Ranged Units Space

This one may not be as little as the others, because it can provide a great number of benefits. What happens normally is that your units will get rallied to a point in or just outside of your base where they end up in a big bunch. The problem with this is that they have no room to manoeuvre around or retreat if the opponent attacks, severely limiting their effectiveness.

It is much better to get into the habit of moving your units out towards your enemy, particularly if they are ranged units. Doing so gives them room to move around, gives you the space to kite enemy units (attack while staying out of range of their attacks) and it gives you an early warning of incoming attacks. Once you do spot an attack you can simply pull back to defend. Doing this has also seemed to help with breaking the passive mindset that has been a problem for me since I first started playing.

In Daily #189 “Newbie Tuesday: Losing to Early Pressure” Day[9] discusses how moving out with your units can help you deal with an early attack. Definitely worth checking out if this is a problem for you.

Stalkers out range Marines so you should always move them out against Terran.

Compensating for Lacking Hand Speed

This is a technique that you should employ if you find that you are simply not fast enough to keep up with the build you are trying to perform. If you are not fast enough what happens is that your resources will begin to build up simply because you cannot build as fast as the person who created the build. Remember, not everyone can play as fast as the pros. The problem is that most new players will not compensate for this difference in hand speed and will just ignore or waste the extra resources.

All you have to do to compensate is to add an extra production facility to your build so you can spend those extra resources. It is much better to do the build ‘incorrectly’ and spend that extra money rather than to just ignore it and try to play faster. Being aware of your limitations is a good skill to have! If, over time, you find that the extra production building does not see any use then you are most likely getting faster and you don’t need to compensate any more.

How familiar were you with the tips in this article? If you know of any more let me know in the comments below, I’d love to hear them!