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

The Protoss vs Terran early game is one of my favorite things in Starcraft 2 (Heart of the Swarm or Wings of Liberty). As Protoss your goal is to take a safe but fast expansion to be able to deal with anything Terran can throw at you. Scouting is crucial and micro can play an important role in defending early aggression or in dealing some damage yourself. In this guide I explain one early game situation that can arise in a PvT 1 Gate Fast Expand – early marine pressure.

Check out the video above for a full guide to micro and strategy for dealing with early Marine attacks in PvT. It also goes over how to follow up with your own counterattack and how to bust a bunker with gateway units. In this article I’ll go over some other important points to know about this sort of situation.

Scouting with your first Zealot and Stalker is crucial. If you see a few marines and no Barracks add-on then you can assume the Terran is either looking to expand with some light Marine pressure or is looking to tech up to Starport or Factory on 1 base. Have your Stalker(s) hang out near the Terran expansion to find out which. If by 6:30 there is no expansion it’s time to head home to prepare for any drops or air attacks. 

If your opponent pressures with Marines like in the video above then the best way to deal with it is to send Stalker out to meet him as close to his base as possible. Stalkers out range and outrun Marines so the more space you have the longer you can kite them. It’s possible to kill off a large group of Marines with only two Stalkers.

If you kill off a few of his Marines and scout his expansion then you can potentially follow up with a Gateway unit attack of your own. Simple take your expansion and make 4 Gateways total. A light 2-base 4 gate pressure can be enough to break the front of an under-defended Terran, especially if you can use a ForceField to prevent the repair on the bunker or wall.

Don’t over commit, if you sense you can’t break the front just pick off whatever you can and start teching to either double Forge + Twilight Council or Robotic + Colossus.

Helpful Resources:

• ZiggyD Coaching a 1 Gate Expand Build [Video]
• A General Guide to Scouting in SC2 [Article]

Being a Protoss who wants a long PvP is a hard life. The Warpgate mechanics that make Protoss so unique and fun to play also makes for a very powerful timing attack – the Four Gate. The Four Gate gives a large flood of units early in the game and allows for an aggressive early game that can damage an opponent greatly or kill them outright. It is relatively simple to execute (although difficult to perfect) making it very popular and very hard to deal with, especially for newer players.

In fact the Four Gate can become a nightmare for some players making them dread the PvP matchup which is a shame as there is a lot of fun to be had in the Protoss vs Protoss late game. In this article I will go through how to identify a Four Gate, how to stop it and how to transition after the attack has been defended.

Scouting the Four Gate

Scouting is the most important part of beating a Four Gating player. Effective scouting will allow you to identify that they are Four Gating, gauge the type of Four Gate they are doing and kill the proxy Pylon and Probe.

Signs of a typical Four Gate:

• Nexus has high energy – After two Chrono Boosts are spent on Probes the Four Gating player will save up energy to Chrono Boost the Warpgate Research. This is true for all all Four Gates as the faster the research finishes the stronger the attack will be.
• Missing Pylons – Count the number of Pylons in your base then count his. Is one of his missing? It is likely hidden somewhere near your base so that your opponent can Warp units in. Although this is a common sign of a Four Gate it could also be an indicator of a hidden tech build such as Stargate or DTs.
• Stalker and Probe (and possibly a Zealot) moving out together – This is the best but latest indicator of an incoming Four Gate. The opponent will move towards your base with these units and then build a Pylon to reinforce his attack.

Signs of a ‘Korean Four Gate’ (Pure Zealot):

There are two sides to scouting in PvP. Firstly, identifying the Four Gate, and, secondly, map control to spot Probes and Pylons.

Initially you want to look for the above indicators by sending a Probe to your opponents base on 9 or 13 supply. Sending the Probe on 9 is safer but is less economic then sending it on 13. Poke around their base for as long as possible to get as much information as possible. Once they start building their first Stalker it’s a good idea to pull your Probe back.

Once you have identified that the Four Gate is incoming its important to begin having as much map vision and control as possible. Check around your natural expansion with your Zealot and send you Stalker to scout around the map and to check the opponents front. Try to hold the Xel Naga towers as much as possible as this will help you spot the Probe on its way to build a Pylon. If you can spot that and kill it you will gain a huge advantage. Hold map control and the Xel Nagas until the very moment your opponent moves out then give up map control and head back to your base to prepare.

Stopping the Four Gate 

The following is assuming you are defending with 3 Gateways or a defensive 4 Gate. The following will also work with an Immortal-based defence except you will be unlikely to have as much early map control. Other builds that are specifically designed to defeat a 4 Gate will have their own methods but more often than not they will revolve around the same principles.

Before 5:50

Being active with your initial units is crucial. Send your Zealot to check for proxy Pylons near your Natural and send your first Stalker to check the Xel Naga towers and try and intercept any Probes.

If you encounter any of his units converge all of yours and try to kill them, even doing a small amount of damage will help you a lot. Be cautious not to lose anything yourself, if he outnumbers you (particularly in Stalkers) give up map control and pull back to your ramp.

If you are planning on defending with Immortals you will likely have more Zealots than Stalkers and your map control will be limited at this point, keep your Zealots near your ramp.

Holding the Xel Naga will often help you spot the Probe heading to Proxy.

After 5:50

Once you have pulled back to your ramp arrange your units in an arc at the top. Make sure you position some Stalkers to prevent Pylons from being warped in. I find it extremely helpful to put all of my units on ‘Hold’ as this prevents them from being baited down the ramp and allows you to focus on macro and Force Fields. 

It is extremely important to always have a Force Field available to block your ramp. If your Sentry is low on energy always preference warping in another Sentry over a Stalker. Six Sentries are able to Force Field a ramp perpetually but it is unlikely that you will get to this point defending a 4 Gate.

If you can split his units as they try to move up the ramp and kill one or two Stalkers each time you will get ahead on Stalker count very quickly. This puts you in an excellent position if he pulls back. If he continues to try to win with the 4 Gate you can just keep Force Fielding and gaining small advantages.

Units on Hold at the top of the ramp.

Cutting a small amount of units with the FF maximizes your defenders advantage.

Transitioning with an Advantage

 After defending a 4 Gate you should have at least one of the following advantages:

• Economy/Probe advantage,
• Gas/Technology advantage,
• Unit advantage.

Keep in mind whilst defending how you can work towards these advantages. For example, in a defensive 4 Gate situation you should be aiming for a slight Probe advantage by building a few as you defend. You should also be trying to get the Unit advantage by cutting his army on the ramp while not losing too many of your own units.

In a defensive 3 Gate situation you should be getting as much gas as possible and maximizing your Stalker count while remaining safe with as few Sentries as possible. The extra gas you have collected can then be used to transition to Blink Stalkers, a Robotics Bay or a Starport.

Other openings will have one of the above advantages as its main goal. It is important that you identify this and think about how you can work towards that goal. 

In the Protoss vs Protoss early game you will have to be comfortable gaining and keeping a very small advantage. Having a few extra Probes or a bit of extra Gas will secure you a long-term victory but it can be easy to lose that advantage if you try to move too quickly. Holding a small advantage is more important then gaining a large advantage or even getting a quick kill.

Things to Note

No matter which build you are using the smooth execution of your opening will play a big role in your success. Early supply blocks will result in a loss when facing a 4 Gate (or any rush for that matter). As such, it is important that you practice your opening against the AI or a friend until you can do it without any errors. Remember, it will be a lot harder to perform a flawless opening when you are being attacked.

If you Chronoboost your Gateways instead of Waprgate research you will have an easier time gaining early map control and denying Proxy Pylons. Unless you are defensive 4 Gating it is a good idea to do this.

Denying the first Pylon can set the opponent back by 10-20 seconds and one Zealots worth of Minerals. It may be worth sacrificing your initial Zealot to do this.

Additional Resources 

• Replay – A replay of a ‘Textbook’ 4 Gate defence showcasing some of the ideas in this article.

• Build – Safe PvP 3 Gate build.

• Opening – Triple Stalker rush. This opening is built around the idea of gaining early map control to deny the 4 Gate.

Have you had a lot of trouble with the 4 Gate in PvP? If you have any tips or advice to add or if you found this article helpful please leave a comment!

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.

The Sentry’s Force Field ability is probably one of the most important tools Protoss has. It can be used to defend when an early attack could not otherwise be defended or to assault your opponent while forcing their army into a bad position.

Games can hinge on good Force Fields, it’s not uncommon that an incorrectly placed Force Field will cost a Protoss player the game. It is crucial for your progression as a Protoss player to at least have a decent grasp on Force Field use.

In preparation for this article I looked at a lot of games from three professional players well known for their near-perfect Force Field use: White-Ra, iNcontrol and oGsMC. I have also been doing a lot of work on my own Force Field use, with great results.

How To Cast Force Field

Assuming ‘F’ is the hotkey for Force Field (F is the Default) the to best ways to cast it are:

• ‘F’ > Click each Force Field individually, or,
• Hold ‘F’ down and click for each Force Field you want to cast.

This is purely personal preference, I use the first option because I feel it makes me place each Force Field a little better than if I use the second option. Try both and decide which is more comfortable for you. Do not ‘Shift+F’ Force Fields as it causes the Sentries to cast after they kill the current unit that they are attacking.

How Many Sentries are Needed?

The following is based on my experience and my observations on professional Protoss players. I give a range of recommended Sentry counts so that you can adjust depending on how good your Force Field placement is. If you are not confident that you can be very efficient with your Force Fields use the higher Sentry count suggested.

• When defending one base with a ramp 3-4 Sentries is enough to block the ramp for as long as you want.
• When moving out to take an expansion a minimum of eight Sentries is recommended against Zerg. Eight will allow you to have enough Force Fields to easily defend any Zergling attacks and small Roach pushes for a good amount of time.
• When moving out to attack or secure further expansions 8-10 Sentries is recommended to effectively apply the techniques discussed in this article. This is true in any matchup, especially when you are using Colossus in your army. Effective Force Fields will greatly amplify the effectiveness of Colossus.

Force Field Techniques

The Force Field ability is very versatile and its uses are only limited by your creativity. The following are common techniques that you can use to great effect.

Ramp Block

This is the most simple of the techniques and only requires a bit of timing to do well. Force Fields are used to block enemy forces from coming up (or going down) a ramp. You can place the Force Field to completely block enemy troops or you can attempt cut the army in half as it comes up the ramp netting you a few easy kills.

In the same game WhiteRa uses a Force Field to trap a few Zerglings on a ramp. Easy kills.

Open Field Block

Used to prevent enemy forces from engaging with your army or to prevent flanks. This technique should be used when you want to completely avoid an engagement or if your troops outrange those of the enemies, a common thing for Protoss. You can improve the effectiveness of this technique by utilising chokes, walls or buildings to help block the enemy’s movement.

Zerglings can easily be blocked by using Force Fields in the choke created by the gateway

oGsMC blocks off the Roaches allowing his Stalkers and Colossus to attack freely.

Cut and Trap

Using Force Fields you can cut an enemy’s army in half and trap some of the units to be easily killed by your Zealots. Using this method you can safely chip away at the enemy’s forces whilst taking minimal damage yourself. You can also trap any units caught off guard by creating a concave of Force Fields behind the enemy’s units. I group these two techniques together because cutting an enemy’s army is the same as trapping a portion of it. Using these methods you will never have to engage the enemy at his full strength.

oGsMC uses Force Fields to trap a few roaches that are separated from the Zerg's main army.

In this game I manage to cut a few units off from my enemy's army giving me easy kills.

Bottleneck

A bottle neck is essentially a small choke, it restricts movement to your enemy’s army and causes them to bunch up into a gap. This technique works with splash damage from Colossus or Psi Storms and it also tempts all but the most experienced of players into engaging when they should be pulling back.

The bottleneck created here forces the Terran opponent to either pull back or fight a bad engagement.

Here multiple bottlenecks have disrupt the enemy's arc and maximise the effectiveness of the Colossus.

A Few Tips

Following this advice can help you use your Sentry’s energy more efficiently and help you to have better engagements.

• Troop Movement is extremely important: engaging at chokes or near walls will make your Force Fields much more effective.
• As the enemy approaches throw down one or two Force Fields pre-emptively, then if he continues past those complete the cut. This makes cutting his army easier as it makes a temporary choke-point.
• Try to not overlap your Force Fields, doing so wastes valuable energy that could be used on more Force Fields or Guardian Shield.
• If you have High Templar in a control group casting Force Field becomes difficult, set your Sentries to a different control group to make using Force Field quicker and easier.
• Calm Force Fields are well placed ones. Easier said then done. Try breathing out before you spam them everywhere.

When Force Fields DONT Work (Or, How To Deny the Protoss Force Field Use)

In the following situations Force Fields will hinder you or flat-out not work, avoid over producing Sentries if you encounter one of these.

Against Massive Units

Colossus, Thors, Ultralisks and Archons (as of patch 1.3.3) are all ‘Massive’ class units and will break Force Fields upon contact with them. If your opponent is leading their attack with these units do not Force Field, instead use your energy on Guardian Shield and Hallucinations.

Against Siege Tanks

Siege Tanks are generally stationary and have a long range, using Force Fields when facing a large number of tanks will help your opponent more than you. However, if you can, use Force Fields to prevent Terran’s units from pulling back into range of their tanks using the Cut or Trap techniques.

Against Air

Yep. Doesn’t work against air units.

When Your Opponent is Highly Mobile

This one is a little different. If your enemy is playing a highly mobile game (using fast units and drops or other harrasment) Force Fields become limited in their usefulness overall. You can still use a few Sentries to prevent some attacks but most mobile players will simply attack elsewhere. In this situation limit your Sentry production and instead focus on your own mobile units to counter or build up for an attack.

Has Force Field use been something you have struggled with or are you the oGsMC of your division? I am still having trouble with making sure that I don’t overlap them too much. Let me know about your Force Field skills in the comments below!

A special thank you to Ramzdale for helping me get a few of these awesome pics!

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!

Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” has been read and interpreted throughout history by many different people for many different purposes. Occasionally, in between University, Work, Playing SC2 and writing about SC2 I find a little bit of time to read (on my lunch break at work if there are no new Dailies). Reading through one particular section of this book I couldn’t help but apply it’s lessons to SC2 because it was just so clearly relevant. In this particular section Sun Tzu states the best things a general can do in war in descending order.

“Thus the highest form of Generalship is to balk (destroy) the enemy’s plans.” – Sun Tzu

This is the moment when you cheer as Terran, an almost guaranteed victory!

To destroy your opponents plans is clearly the best thing you can do in Starcraft 2. Note that Sun Tzu says to destroy your enemies plans, not just to counter them. Generally, countering implies that you merely defend or survive – not really the best thing that you can do. But to destroy your opponent’s plans puts you in a dominating position in the match which is where you always want to be.

A good, but extreme example of destroying an opponent’s plans would be having your opponent’s 6-pool rush reach your base after you are completely walled in. Anyone who has been in this position will know that you are at a massive advantage at this point. You haven’t just countered your opponent’s plans, you have destroyed them. Even in less extreme examples having their plans destroyed will throw off all but the most experienced of players. It can be very hard to formulate a new plan mid-game, so take advantage of that.

You can achieve the destruction of your opponents plans in SC2 by scouting, covering your vulnerabilities (adequate detection, anti-air etc.), and by always being aware of what your opponent could do — this means having prior knowledge of the possibilities at any given point in the match. This type of knowledge comes with experience and research.

“The next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy’s forces.” – Sun Tzu

Pick off every undefended unit you can, this Probe is extra valuable because he is also holding a little gift of minerals.

If you fail to destroy your opponent’s plans or if your opponent plays straight up without any ‘tricks’ then this is your next best step. In war, cutting off your enemy’s supply lines or reinforcements would give you an obvious and great advantage. And it works much the same way in StarCraft 2. Simply, its all about not letting your opponent’s army reach its greatest potential strength.

You can achieve this by harassing your opponent, attacking and retreating (particularly against Zerg as it forces them to waste Larvae on defensive units) and by picking off all undefended units or structures. All of these things will weaken your opponents overall army strength as well as their resolve. Utilising highly mobile units (Blink Stalkers, Medivacs, Hellions, Speed Zerglings, Mutalisks etc.) is the key to succeeding in this style of indirect engagement.

This is the method I favour in most of my matches, I always attempt to destroy my opponents plans first but lack of experience often makes this difficult. Letting your opponent mass a powerful army without any intervention is nearly always a bad move, if you have ever had a maxed out Stalker/Colossus army bear down on you then you will know why. Suffering this too many times I have resolved to always pressure and do everything I can to reduce my opponents ability to mass an army.

“The next in order is to attack the enemy’s army in the field.” – Sun Tzu

Having Zealots flank an attacking army like this will deny their retreat whilst you cut through them.

If you allow your opponent to amass their forces unopposed, then a straight up engagement in open ground is your next best option. In this situation the winner will be the player: who has the best unit composition, who can micromanage their army better and who can best continue production to reinforce their army throughout the conflict.

Why should you ever let the situation get to the point where you and your opponent are in equal positions? It is always better to be in a dominant position in each match. However, your opponent will be making their own efforts to get an edge over you and it is sometimes unavoidable that you will need to enter a battle on (nearly) equal grounds.

In this situation there are a few things you could do to tip the scale in your favour;

• Position your forces well just before the conflict ensues (such as creating an arc with your ranged units and moving your melee units to the front),
• Send some units to flank and trap your opponents forces, and,
• Take advantage of terrain such as high ground, choke points and visibility blocks (smoke or grass).

Using these tactics you can turn an equal situation into a one sided victory. For an excellent example on how to do this as Zerg against Terran see Benji’s Guide on How to Control Zerg Units.

“And the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.” – Sun Tzu

What if your opponent amasses their forces but does not leave their, well defended city? The most common reaction in this situation is to attack their base. In StarCraft 2 when your opponent is being completely defensive you should realise that you have the advantage. Attacking your opponent at their base where they have defences effectively hands that advantage over to your opponent.

Why attack this straight up? He isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

So instead, use the fact that your opponent is not putting pressure on you to secure a long-term victory. Attrition is the name of the game here, starve your opponent of resources and deny their attempts at expansions. At the same time you should expand yourself, improve your tech, research upgrades and create a formidable army. Whilst doing this probe for weaknesses in your opponents defences with gentle harassment, this will force them to plug those gaps with more defences — further weakening his army. Put pressure on your opponent but never feel like you need to break in and kill them, instead let them kill themselves with their passivity.

Eventually your opponent will have to move out, as they will have exhausted their resources and if they delay attacking any further they will become weaker and weaker. Usually this attack will come in the form of a ‘doom push’,  just remember that although this may be hard to deal with your opponent has no capacity to replenish their forces. So just whittle them down slowly or if they head straight for your main base you should simply fall in on theirs. Because of the amount of expansions you should have by this point and with your ability to restock your army you should have no trouble destroying their base first.

So don’t waste your army against a walled in opponent, if you have ever attacked a turtling Terran player with siege tanks and turrets ringing their base you will know how little you can achieve and how swiftly defeat can follow. Take the advantage when it is given to you and don’t give it away for nothing.

I recommend that anyone interested in strategy (that should be you!) should read Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” for themselves. It’s one of those things that you read and then it becomes a part of your character, helping you in any area of your life where a strategic decision needs to be made. And its like $10 on Fishpond with free postage in Australia, so you have no reason not to. On that note I also recommend “Go Rin No Sho” (“The Five Rings”) by Miyamoto Musashi, it talks about mentally dominating your opponent and seizing any advantages you are given. It’s probably my favourite book in this genre.

At which of the above points do you have most of your wins? Do you scout well and destroy your enemy’s plans? Or do you engage in the field and win with superior tactics? Which one do you most commonly lose to? Comment below and let me know!