Starcraft 2 Zerg Gameplay

If you've played starcraft since the original a lot of this isn't going to be big news to you overall. But consider it a review before we get into the new bits in part 2. Since most of the pros tend to hang out in their own secret internet lairs discussing the finer points of macro micro and cheese that means I'm talking to just about 95% of the SC2 population. It's a great game and the zerg are certainly a lot of fun to play. Blizz did a great job with balance right out of the box and throughout the beta, and the end result is fantastic both in single player and on battle.net. So let's get into a little starcraft 2 zerg gameplay discussion so that you'll be ready for those matches once you hit the end of the campaign on your own.

Let's start with the burrow ability. You may be tempted to overlook this one and try to mass units and use other upgrades, but it's very important and you don't want to skip it. As a matter of fact it needs to be pretty high on your build priorities list. This is for two reasons. The first is that it's really easy to lay little ambush traps for your opponent with burrow. Every single zerg ground unit can burrow, including the ultralisk. It's pretty sweet to run a little group of units up to an expansion when you've got him preoccupied with beating off a little zergling harass somewhere else and burrow them and just let them sit there. Later, when he is trying to make a big push you can just pop out your burrowed team and wreck his economy. If you get in trouble - just  burrow and live to fight another time.

The second reason for burrow is another zerg high point; Since every single zerg unit is biological they regenerate health over time. Not very fist, mind you, but still. This health regeneration speeds up when burrowed, so if you are taking a beating you can just burrow everything and go do something else for a few minutes. Which leads us to another point about zerg. Run away. the more of your units you keep alive, burrowed or hidden away somewhere after each scrap, the more likely you are to be able to do what zerg do best, and that's swarm. There's no need to just sacrifice a pack of zerglings just because they are cheap. Use five zerglings over here to kill a few workers and then run away before they get slaughtered. Another five over there, here a few, there a few, if you don't let very many of them get killed you've got thirty in no time - thirty zerglings can take out a whole bunch of stuff - but only if they are alive.

Next, be sure to make good use of your overlords and creep tumors to spread your creep all over the map as you move around. It's cheap and easy and can really give you an advantage. All of your units move faster over the creep, which is one advantage, but another is the ability to see everywhere your creep is. Creep tumors cannot be seen without detection but allow you to see everything around them. using creep tumors to build a "creep highway" takes a bit of extra micro, but it can be worth it in the long run. Just have your overlord crap out some creep as he oozes his way across the map and before you know it there's creep everywhere, and that's good for you, not so good for your opponent.