Terran Marine

With the release of Starcraft 2 the gaming world is all abuzz. I'm a big fan of Blizz games, and I can tell you from first hand experience that there must be a lot of us out there. The day after SC2 hit the shelves there was like nobody on WOW. Random dungeon queues for DPS toons have always been long, but on July 28th you could wait around for hours and fall asleep. I was a big fan of the original Starcraft, but since PvP in most games has never been my thing, I kinda skipped the whole Brood Wars thing.

But SC2 is a breath of fresh air, and a big part of that is because of the upgrades. And I'm not just talking about the graphics of the game, although they are stunning. But the whole thing changed in some subtle ways that bring the feel of the game, especially for the terran race a bit more in line with how the wars should have always felt to me. That's just me, and I'm sure you can find your fair share of those who will flame Blizz for just about everything they do, but SC2 is awesome, and the Terran marine is part of the reason why.

The terran marine is to the Terran race what the zergling is to the Zerg - only better. And one of the keys to the usability of this unit in the game is based on their range. They can hit anything and do so from a good distance. And since all of the new game maps have a nice little choke point at all of the expansion areas, it's cool to be able to flood those chokes with a band of marines and just pwn. The marine makes a great offensive attack unit against almost everything as well as a terrific defender, especially when you load them into a bunker.

But the marine is also the most cost effective unit in the entire game. Not only are they versatile, they are cheap. Not as fast as churning out a crew of zerglings, but far more powerful per unit. If you compare how much damage they can do per how much it costs to build one, you will find that there is not another single unit in the game as good as the marine. Even if you take into account the upgrades, such as stim packs and weapons, they still remain at the top of the heap in raw power per cost.

So when you begin the campaign there is a really good chance that you're going to fall in love with the marine as your go-to unit when playing the terran race. While there are sexier units for Terran, or the other races for that matter, it's still hard to beat a big pack of upgraded terran marine units charging around the map laying waste to your opponent. And if you haven't laid your hands on SC2 yet, it's high time, as a matter of fact you're late!