<Starcraft>

Tips compiled from Valar Guild Members in 1999. The content of this page has been left mostly intact, with changes made mostly for the purposes of layout.

Greetings! This guide has been planned for a very long time (inside my head :) ) and finally I've gotten round to writing it. Remember, tho I am SC/BW trainer of the Valar guild, I don't know everything, I probably get my butt kicked just as much as you guys... This is definately not the SC/BW Holy Book of Tactics, for info on units, lotsa tips and other great stuff, goto http://www.battle.net/scc/GS/. It rocks. Ah well, here we go:

General Stuff:

1. Expand, expand, expand! Get at least one expansion as early as possible. And get plenty of workers, about 4 per 3 mineral thingies and 3-4 per gas mine should do it. Having a fast cashflow makes you able to get buildings and those essential upgrades earlier. It's better to have far too much cash than being just a tad short. :)

2. Try and make sure that your opponent(s) are constantly short of cash. There are many ways of doing this. Kill his workers with drops of firebats, hydras or whatever you got handy into his resources, that way you stop his cash from flowing in until he gets new workers. Or try and control the expansions, so that he'll have to manage with what he's got in his main base. (That last one is not so effective in mucho money maps, but it helps :) ) The most fun way (for you, it's very annoying when someone does it to you) is to keep your opponent in his base, by building defenses by his exits. Then you get the whole map to yourself :) This works only when you discover where your opponent's base is very early in the game.

3. To win, you need to eradicate your enemies. To achieve this you need units, preferrably more and tougher units than your opponent. This is where the nagging about expansions and cashflow comes in. :) With more cash than your enemy you can build more units than him, and get upgrades for them quickly. The trick is to have enough buildings: With, say, 6 hives you can pour out 18 hydras in notime, if you got only one hive... Well, you get slain. This goes for all races, get 3-7 (depending on cash available) factories, starports, gateways, hives or whatever building you need to get your favorite unit.

4. Build units according to what kind of resources you have. If you play protoss, got lotsa gateways, 600 minerals and 6000 gas, make heaps of templars (cost 50mins/150gas) and make archons out of them. (Archons rule, just watch out if you play against a terran with science vessels that have emp shockwave, when used against protoss units they lose shields and archons only have 10 HP without shields...)

5. Build units according to what type of units and defense your enemy got. If your enemy goes for air units, zealots don't help very much in defending, no matter how many you got...

6. Find out what all the units do, especially the ones with spells! Knowing this, you may predict what your enemy is thinking of and take action to prevent him, and equally important, you can use advanced tactics yourself. The combination of spell casters and ordinary units, when used with skill or luck, can be much more efficient than just throwing all you got at your opponent's defenses.

7. Defense. Though you cannot win without attacking (duh), a good defense is important. Get it as soon as possible. I'll go through this later, in my race specific tactics thingie, coming soon to a website near you. :) Very briefly: Terran: Bunkers (3-4) with marines (get range upgrade!) (and a few bats if opponent is protoss) with siege tanks (4-5 ++) behind and turrets for detection. Protoss: Photon cannons (5-6 ++) and some zealots if opponent should attack with sieges. Zerg: Sunken colonies, lurkers... I never really go for defense with zerg, having lotsa units handy is better :) Protect your workers, don't let enemy dropships or arbiters sneak into your base.

8. Detectors. Get them and use them actively to protect your base and find out what your opponent is up to. Zerg's Overlords and Terran's comsat station (command center add-on) is great for finding your opponent, as you get those early in the game.

There are heaps and heaps of other stuff that I could mention here, and this might seem very basic and useless to most of you guys out there... I will do a thing on more race specific tactics and tricks sometime in the near future. Just keep in mind that to get good at this game, you need to play it! Reading guides is no good if you don't know how the units looks like. :) Good luck with your playing, and if you're wondering about something, ask me when you see me on bnet or mail your question to Murezor@hotmail.com. Part two of this guide, with some more advanced tactics, will be out sometime next week (I hope).

Murezor