Prelude – Orders – Protoss – Zerg – Terrans – Wrapup

This is the first out of three race-specific posts, going into how you can play a race if you want fun with the game. I’ll try to include pointers that help newbies as well as hints that might be new for veterans, let me know if I succeed. I’m also, as always, happy about factual errors that I didn’t catch sneaking into my posts!

Generic Protoss Strategy

The main thing that is striking about the Protoss, starting with the +2 drawn cards when defending and staying true when looking at the 3 +1 health cards in their standard combat deck and the cheaper defensive modules, is that they’re a defensive people. And, a high-tech, expensive-unit people. So you want to make your combats count, and you don’t want to be involved in too many struggles early on – as that’s when you still can’t necessarily keep up with the faster unit output of the other races.

Protoss

However, the Protoss can make better use of unit limits, simply because they have the stronger units to fill them with by default. Make good use of that, and keep others from attacking you until it’s too late.

A few minor points…

• As Protoss you’ll probably want to use less defend orders than the other races – since a guard token’s +2 health doesn’t stack with Shield Battery, or the regular +1 shields.
• If you can get Defensive Strategy, you’ll draw 5 combat cards whenever anybody attacks you. Just mentioning.

Strategic Focus

Essentially, there’s two ways to play the Protoss: Go for ground forces, or go for air forces. Unlike the Zerg, but kinda similar to the Terrans, there’s not technically a “tech building” – so you’ll get tech-y units either way, and the Robotics Facility is a good investment for both because it kinda evens out the strategy’s weaknesses.

Aldarchons

Going for ground forces can be incredibly simple, if you follow the guidelines dubbed Aldarchons! (note the exclamation mark) by their rather self-righteous creator, magic gecko. In vanilla StarCraft, that strategy was overpowered, which is why Brood War watered it down – although it can still be powerful, it can now be countered. Read the linked post for a pragmatic explanation – it will work with Aldaris and Tassadar, just make sure you have enough resources and also some anti-air for defense.

• Tech – if you want Aldarchons, you don’t want tech except for maybe Shield Battery, as it’ll diminish your chances of drawing Archon cards. If you feel adventurous, you can get some Dark Archons along and research some tech for them. What you need, obviously, is Summon Archon and Dark Archon.
• Strengths are simplicity and that it brings you to some top tier units that don’t need a huge lot of backup rather fast. They do pack a punch and have splash damage, never underestimate Archons!
• Weaknesses are mostly that you’re betting everything on one strategy and 3 miniatures, you will need loads of gas (so you can’t develop diversity), and you will bring up many enemies at once against you if they’ve seen Archons at work in the past. Archons, your focus, only have 4 combat cards, so you can’t tech without making them weaker. And the generic ground-based-strategy problem of air-only conquest point areas.
• Variants, there are none.
• Countermeasures to this strategy include defend orders to avoid splash, overwhelming numbers (rush him early!), splash of your own (supported Mutalisks, Spider Mines, or Lurkers) or cloaked troops (Wraiths, Dark Templar, Lurkers). Later EMP Shockwave, Plague, burning the Aldarchon player’s hand with Hallucination, or even stronger units than Archons (all of which require tech in order to be efficient - Yamato Gun, Siege Mode, Chitinous Plating, Increased Reaver Capacity, or Increased Carrier Capacity). Collateral damage to kill his unit producing bases is useful as well, you get that with Increased Reaver Capacity, Improved Flyer Attack, or Siege Mode. Particularly Mind Control is tremendous fun, too – think of the implications.

Weenies

Another alternative is whatever the Protoss mean by “weenies“. The standard combat deck has 5 Zealot cards, Zealots are among the strongest 2-resource units, and definitely the strongest unit available for the first build order. If you supplement them with Dragoons against air, a few Dark Templar for their cloaking, and High Templar with Psionic Storm against overwhelming numbers, you have a reasonable force. A great supplement here is the Scout, as he’s rather easy to get and has really good combat values (better than Wraiths or Mutalisks), and you might need some air support. If you have all that, continue with either Reavers or Archons, as out of the 7 still unused regular combat deck cards either will use 4 – or go for the Arbiter for some added techy-ness.

• Tech is available in masses for this. Zealots are made even stronger by Leg Enhancements, Dragoons truly benefit from Singularity Charge. Psionic Storm is necessary for High Templar to do damage. If you’re getting Reavers, you might want to get Increased Reaver Capacity as well, for the collateral damage. Finally, since you’re really close to Dark Archons, you can use all their fancy stuff (Maelstrom, Feedback, Mind Control) as well, and they might well be the things turning the tide for you – make sure you only research stuff you might use though, Feedback doesn’t make much sense if you have no opposing assist units.
• Strengths are that you can attack somewhat early (nothing like the Zerg though), and keep producing a steady stream of strong units. The strategy is expandable and remains flexible.
• Weaknesses are, like any ground-based strategy, aforementioned air-only conquest point areas. The big flexibility makes the strategy pretty solid overall.
• Variants are many, since you have so many units that are involved. Go for Zealot rush, or just have a few of them and concentrate on High Templar later, or skip the earlier steps nearly entirely and go for Dark Templar and their cloaking as fast as possible. Or if you see your opponents go airbound, get some more Dragoons than you would otherwise.
• Countermeasures, easiest, go air and avoid the masses of Zealots and Dark Templar without air attack capability. But mind their Scouts and Dragoons with Psionic Storm, you want to be the attacker here. Alternatively, go for ground splash damage, with stuff such as Reavers or Lurkers or Spider Mines or Siege Tanks, the list goes on.

Air Forces

Going for air forces means first getting Scouts, then going for Carriers as fast as possible. Keep in mind, those things are expensive. Then (or before if you have enemies with anti-air units), get Corsairs, or if it’s useful against the enemies you’re facing (or you want easy means of transporting units), some Arbiters. Since that’ll give you a strong force with few units, you’ll maybe want to get some Zealots as well, to protect the areas your offensives leave behind, and because that reduces unused combat cards from 8 to 3. Finally, if you have free time, get some Reavers, to have impressively strong ground units as well.

• Tech – Increased Carrier Capacity, definitely! You want to protect your investment. Maybe a Shield Battery, too. Disruptive Web if you got Corsairs. You want your Carriers to look intimidating and near impossible to overcome.
• Strengths are mostly, the units you get are really tough. This will give you the best unit limit useage in the whole game.
• Weaknesses are two: Cost, and concentration of power. If you lose just a few of your units, you do take a big hit – so avoid splash damage at all costs. While building up, if you want Carriers as soon as possible, you’ll have to conserve resources and tech up, and are thus still weak.
• Variants are somewhat limited, as there really are just three flying (combat) units at your disposal, and you’ll probably want more Scouts and Carriers than Corsairs. But you can always get the Arbiter a bit sooner, combine it with Corsairs, and surprise the opponent with a tech-heavy force – or charge in with your Scouts and make a point of rebuilding them right away.
• Countermeasures, essentially, exploit the weaknesses. Get some Archons, or Devourers (with Improved Flyer Attacks), or Plague, or Valkyries, to gain air splash. Also nice: Charon Boosters. Hit him before his Carriers are at full force (that includes him having collected good hand cards). Or try burning his hand (maybe with Hallucination) or even getting a lucky hit with cheaper units such as Scourges.

Specific Units

Some specific units and combos are worth pointing out:

• An evil combo that works particularly well for defending air-only areas is: An Arbiter with Stasis Field and a Scout or Corsair. Recharge the Stasis Field with Khaydarin Core to keep it. Only a Terran with an EMP Shockwave can get through this on the first try, all others need three attempts or more (and thus better leave it be). The Stasis Field works for regular areas as well, but there’s more countermeasures (Plague, Nuke, Mind Control, Feedback).
• 

  Reavers

  There was a strategy going for an early Reaver drop in vanilla StarCraft, however since you now need a tier 2 Robotics Facility and thus can only produce Reavers in your third build order, that’s not really a viable focus anymore. If you want, you can try it out anyway – Reavers wreak havoc in enemy rush forces, so if you see a Zerg rushing you early, try to survive the first round and you might have a juicy surprise with splash damage (and collateral damage if you get Increased Reaver Capacity, which you should) in round 2.

• A nice defensive combo is Arbiters and Dark Archons on the same planet, with Stasis Field and Maelstrom. Don’t even let the enemies enter, and if they do, don’t give them a fair fight. The trouble with this combo is that you rarely get it early, as you’ll need a tier 3 Gateway and a tier 2 Stargate for it. While you’re at it, make sure you have the Shield Battery, too.

Other Tech

Technology Deck

The Protoss have pretty high-tech units on their own, thus there’s not much tech that isn’t involved in their main strategies. Tech we haven’t mentioned yet, and its uses:

• Khaydarin Core, a must-have if you go for Psionic Storm, Disruptive Web, or any other reinforcement tech. The increased hand limit is incredibly useful as well, for any reasonably diverse force.
• Observers, research those as soon as you see the opponent going for stealth troops. Getting Detector with just 1 gas is the cheapest any race gets – Terrans have to research again, while Zerg need Queens in their skirmishes.
• Cloaking Field, this goes well with many forces, particularly in the defense or with a double invasion maneuver. But it’s somewhat expensive to field, as you need an Arbiter in that specific battle. The same goes for Recall, particularly now that the factions each got their own flavour of teleporting technology leadership card.
• Mind Control is a card that, depending on opponent’s troops, it might even be worth going all the way to Dark Templar and through the hoops of Summon Archon and Dark Archon for. And while you have Dark Archons, you can get their other tech as well. Oh, do I have to mention recharging Mind Control?

Factions and Leadership Cards

Tassadar is the more proactive of the two stock Protoss factions. He’s the only faction who can potentially have two heroes, too (if he gets that stage 3 event card that lets him play a stage 2 leadership card). He shines in stages 1 and 2, with a very situational stage 3.

• Stage 1 for him basically decides in what way he wants to be sneaky – as all of the leadership cards here are.
  • The Warp Gate is, for opponents, a very annoying card. If they leave unprotected empty areas on their back planets, you will find ways to go there. It’s a big threat, and in addition to that, the gate lets you reinforce your own key areas as well if necessary. Sneaky indeed. Also, I love installations.
  • Orbital Platform is as boring as the Overmind’s Endless Hunger, which is more boring than any other leadership card to me. Of course, additional resources are nice, particularly if you’re resource-starved on your planets – but when selecting this card, you don’t know yet if you will be. You get a Dark Templar and 9 workers to start with, which is nice. If you get a quiet corner on the map, you can build up fast.
  • Domination, Tassadar’s special victory condition, can be relatively easy to complete with the right planets, and it’s very flexible as you can take any areas to fulfill it – even those nobody else really wants. Keep in mind that here, just like with Orbital Platform, you get no anti-air starting unit. Also, you don’t know yet if the planets will favour your objective or not.
• His stage 2 leadership cards are then the two heroes we talked about.
  • Zeratul the slaughterer. His start-of-battle ability is really nice, just make sure you don’t overestimate his defensive capabilities: Cloaking only works if you have a place to withdraw to, and his +1 health only get him to 8 tops (before reinforcement cards). He is, funny enough, best if you did not go after Dark Templar – as there’s only 3 combat cards for them, so if he can use them all, he’s better off.
  • Gantrithor the behemoth. Carriers alone are impressive, even more so if they have +1 health, too. I love the thematic touch in memory of its suicide into the Overmind in the computer game. Best if you went for Carriers, since that means you should still have some Increased Carrier Capacity lying around.
• As for Tassadar’s stage 3, it’s very situational, and both cards need some building up towards them.
  • If you want to use Ultimate Sacrifice, you’ll need a few units on a planet occupied by a strong enemy force – one of yours is enough, but two are better (since you’ll then keep the area). If you’re prepared like that, Ultimate Sacrifice can be ultimatively good.
  • Similar thoughts go for Return to Aiur, although this is even more situational. It’s great if you somehow (at this late stage of the game) still don’t have all the transports you need, or if you destroyed a couple for your offensive module last round. The added protection is nice, but only very rarely foreseeably good.

Yay, random Leadership Cards

Aldaris is the staller. He wants to deny everybody else victory, while slowly closing in on his own throne. His strongest leadership cards can be found in stages 1 and 3. His starting units are rather strong, but not that varied, they’re all a combination of Zealots and Dragoons.

• Aldaris’ stage 1 makes the big decision whether you want to play Aldaris true to his roots and win by stalling, whether you’d prefer a still defensive role that goes for conquest points after all. Or finally, you can even start out relatively aggressive, and maintain resource superiority throughout.
  • Predestined looks like it draws out the game (but see stage 3), it does definitely make everybody’s special victory conditions even more important. Including your own, which is drawing The End Draws Near event cards.
  • Conclave Fleet is a purely defensive card – and good at that: You can build your defense on the card, and then use it wherever the opponents engage you! No more committing to the wrong place. Also, the card does make your offense more powerful as well: You don’t have to have troops sticking around in every single base that could be attacked, but you can commit more troops to your offense while still maintaining a healthy defense on the fleet.
  • Riches of Aiur finally is the aggressive card here. Personally, I think it’s better than Tassadar’s Orbital Platform or the Overmind’s Endless Hunger – as it gives you a risk-free additional resource for every resource-providing area that you have.
• His stage 2 leadership cards don’t seem all too spectacular, although with careful planning, they can be.
  • Fenix is really good if you chose to go for the cards he needs earlier on – but more so than others, because the High Templar cards he can use are all tech-based only. If you have High Templar cards, you make him more flexible than any other hero in the game bar maybe Sarah Kerrigan. He’s both a brilliant supporter and a strong front-line unit then.
  • Khala Devotee is very situational. It can be really strong – you can make sure you’re the first one to execute an order on a planet, or you can mess up other’s order stacks and destroy their entire careful planning. I found that it sounds slightly better on paper than it plays out, but it really does depend on the specifics of the game.
• Stage 3, finally, has great synergies particularly with Aldaris’ special victory condition – and generally stays true to his role as game staller (which can be awesomely fun, particularly for the Aldaris player, despite the negative connotations the word “stall” calls up).
  • If you selected Predestined early on, The Will of the Conclave is what you want as stage 3 leadership card – try to block everybody else’s orders, making them draw event cards, and have a couple (special) research orders of your own that draw you event cards as well, and finally choose the event card option with a few of your remaining orders – that can be up to 11 event cards from your own orders (if you have special order areas), plus the obstructed ones, plus those from opponents foolish enough to use research orders. Every drawn event card is particularly good for you now.
    The card is good without the special victory condition as well, it’s pretty similar to the Queen of Blades’ Deathblow anyway in that it lets you overwhelm opponents with sheer mass – you just need the resources to use it.
  • Destiny is good in exactly two cases: Somebody has a special victory condition fulfilled, nobody has a chance to deny him victory this round (or the odds for denial are bad), and you don’t want that someone to win. Or, somebody has enough victory points already and you know you can overtake him if you just have enough time. In all other cases, The Will of the Conclave is better.

Prelude – Orders – Protoss – Zerg – Terrans – Wrapup