StarCraft 2 Zerg Strategy Tutorial

I am giving an intro tutorial for zerg players in this article. When the game starts, just like StarCraft. You start with a hatchery, 50 minerals, overlord but 6 drones instead of 4. The first thing you want to do is send those drones to mine minerals by right clicking on the minerals with you selected drones. Then you want to use your overlord to scout the enemy's base. Something new to StarCraft 2 is the rally point for your drones. You can right click on minerals or gas and your drones will automatically go to the rally point gathering once the unit is produced. You can have two rally points, one for your drones and one for your units which is really cool. The first thing you want to build is a spawning pool which costs 200minerals typically. The Spawning pool allows you to build zerglings just like Starcraft classic. In addition, the completion of the spawning pool allows the player to build a queen from the hatchery. At this point, you can decide what type of Starcraft 2 strategies you want to implement. Check out our StarCraft 2 Strategy Guide for different strategies

Queen: Once you finished the spawning pool, you want to build a queen. The queen is a great defensive unit that allows you to spawn larva, generate creep tumor and blood transfusion. You can click on the hatchery to build a queen. The queen is the only unit produced by the hatchery not the larvae. Once the queen spawns, you can use the queen to spawn larva. This is something you really want to do in the beginning of the game to increase your units production. Once you cast the spawn larva on the hatchery, you can see four eggs and a countdown timer. When the countdown timer finishes, four additional larvae will be spawned. Spawn larva can produce up to 20 larvae at a time.

You can also use the queen for the creep tumor ability. The creep tumor is kind of like a creep colony but spawned by the queen instead. The creep tumors are exceptionally important in StarCraft 2. This is because ground units gain additional movement speed when they are on creep which was not the case in the original Starcraft. So you want to spread the tumors as often as possible. Furthermore, after the creep tumor has been spawned for 30 seconds, an additional creep tumor can be spouted from this creep tumor and also make this tumor invisible. In other words, you can spread the creeps indefinitely with a 30 second cycle.

Roaches Warren is the building that is allowed after spawning pool. It allows the production of Roaches. This is a new unit in StarCraft 2 for your early game. Roaches do exceptionally well against zealots, zerglings and marines. Roach is a low mobile unit until you upgrade their speed. However, they are durable for their cost. If you compare some of the costs of other tier 1 units from other races, Roachs has 145 HP for only 75minerals and 25 gas. A Marauder has 125 HP and cost 100minerals and 25 gas. As you can see Roaches are support units that can really take hits.

Zerglings: Lets talk about zerglings for a moment here, the spawning pool offers two upgrades for the zerglings. The Metabolic boost which increases the movement speed of zerglings. Most people refer zerglings with this upgrade as speedlings. Zergling is an extremely versatile unit that is effective in many situations. Zerglings can be used to scout the enemies base without sacrificing too much cost. Mass Zerglings can be extremely effective when they can surround the enemy. Zerglings in groups can be used to flank enemy units while your main army takes the hits.

Building the extractor depends on your playstyle. Most people build the extractor when they have around 15 drones. But it is really up to you when you want to build it. Vespene gas is the core of almost all higher tech Starcraft 2 units. So if you want to go for something powerful, get gas early. If you want to rush and harass the enemy and tech later, you can put off the gas stuff for a while.

Once you have 100 vespene gas, you can now tech to a Lair which is the next tier of the Zerg Swarm. It opens up the possibly of many upgrades like Hydralisk, Mutalisk and Infestor. We can see that in StarCraft 2, blizzard moved Hydralisk from a basic tier 1 unit to tier 2. Hydralisks now are much more powerful now. Once the Lair is complete, we have reached the mid games of StarCraft 2. That tutorial and guide will be covered in the next chapter of our StarCraft 2 Zerg Beginner Strategy Tutorial