I know there are many out there who are stuck in the lower Starcraft 2 leagues, bronze league – gold league and seem to get nowhere, and these leagues are prectically swarming with Zerg, no kidding there. Well, in this 3 post series we will break it down to basics and cut out everything you do not need down there. Basically what we will be looking at in the end is a few generic ways to speed up your progress, although keep in mind not to sway from your plan regardless of what your opponent does, that’s lesson one.

Well, first of all, what low league players do wrong most of the time is to either resort to cheesing (I may point out to you that this may win matches but you will never get up through the ladders this way), or they will try to one or two base a way too complicated build considering their abilities, also, keep in mind that most of these tactics require 4 – 6 bases to pull off so their overall armystrength will be greatly reduced. And how do we solve this? Well, focus on macro of course, macro is the basic line to everything you do in Starcraft 2. In low leagues you will be able reach a high winrate on macro alone, hardcore macro works all the way up to low diamond league where other mechanics will step into play. So far so good, you may see where I’m going with this, yes, what you wish to do is expand early and expand a lot, you wish to have better echonomy than your opponent, which in the end equals a higher army count, which equals a win in most situations.

The macro part applies more to Zerg than any other race, as Zerg are focused on massing more units than anyone else, fortunately, this is not hard to achieve. Forget everything about fancy builds, even mutalisks as your macro will drop while controling them, forget about trying to micro, you are here to overwhelm your opponent. It’s that simple. And keep in mind to always build those workers, the golden rule is 24 per base + 3 in every gas geyser, but once you get on more than 3 bases you will not need to create that many workers anymore, around 85 – 90 is maximum, otherwise your army will be too weak. Also, queens and larva injects are very important as a Zerg, if their energy get too high, then you’re not using them often enough.

Alright now that we got this straight, consider this, what if you had a 200/200 composition of nothing but zerglings, roaches and banelings with upgrades at 4 bases while your opponent is at 140 supply with nothing but basic upgrades and 2 bases? Who would come out on top? Well, you of course. There is absolutely nothing fancy about it, no building counter units etc. The one, single thing you’re doing is massing more units than your opponent, you don’t even need to control your units as you will basically steamroll him. Even if he somehow repels your first attack you will be back with the same armysize within minutes while he is still completely crippled.

And one last thing, scouting as a Zerg should not be done with drones, your drones are valuable while your zerglings are cheap and expendable, use a zergling or two to get information, as well as overlords, not your drones. Once you get up into the higher leagues you may have to use the occational drone early on, but that is nothing you should worry about before diamond league. And don’t forget to have fun, that’s what Starcraft is about, don’t get upset over loses, it happens to the best of us.

.......................................................

•