I asume that the first Starcraft 2 expansion, Heart of the Swarm has not gone unnoticed past RTS and Starcraft fans around the world, it is supposed to be released sometime during 2012. The game features a handful of new units for all races, some which might be scraped before the release and some new ones may be added, but we will know that in due time. So I thought we’d take a quick look at the new units which have been announced so far. All races will get two new units as it looks right now.

For Terran there will be one new mech unit, the Warhound, which will replace Thors and work somewhat similar, while the Thor will be turned into a unit similar to the Protoss Mothership. The other one is the good stuff though, helions will turn into transformers! They can turn into a robot which increases their combat stats but reduces their movement speed. Appart from the Terrans were supposed to get Shredders, static defence units which cover a large area with AoE damage, but these were removed. A long range missile launcher may be implented.

Zerg will get their first siege unit in Swarm Host, which burrows and sends out a bunch of broodling like creatures as well as a new support unit, Viper which reduces attackrange of all enemy units within their “poison cloud” to 1. Appart from that Banelings and Ultralisks are getting major revamps as well as Nydus Worms will be reworked.

Protoss will get Tempest which is a flying siege unit made to counter builds like mass Mutalisks, as well as Oracle which is a flying support unit. Phoenix may be reworked to synergize better with Tempest against mass Mutalisk i particular. As you can see the focus is on air units for Protoss as their fleet is rather weak compared to Terran and Zerg. We are looking at a bunch of interesting changes indeed.

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