You spent all this time constructing an impenetrable turtle shell of a wall at the front of your main base and natural expansion to defend against almost any attack.

Maybe you’ve got a siege tanks and bunkers, all places in the best possible positions, or great cannon placement with zealots guarding the wall off at the front. Or maybe it’s a ZvZ and you have the perfect spine crawler and queen defence.

No matter how many times you’ve held off those harsh attacks on the main ramp, when you find a Nydus Worm in your main base spitting out units like there’s no tomorrow, you feel like you’ve just been stabbed in the back, even if you hold it off!

But I’m stuck wondering why if they are so good, and so crippling to your enemies positioning and economy, why people aren’t using them more. There are a lot of units in the game that see very little light in the average day. But one as powerful as a Nydus Worm, enabling instant transport around anywhere on the map is just a bit weird, don’t you think?

Uses

The Nydus Worm is purely a transport unit, but the reasons and placement of one are important. You don’t just have to use the network for one reason, but whatever you do ensure your placement is good.

Connecting bases – Even with good Creep spread you can find yourself struggling to defend mid and major late game harassment. But you want to ensure you don’t make two main mistakes that can really harm your defence.

1. Putting the Nydus Worm / Network in-front of your base – You want to keep it safe, the enemy will want to prevent you from getting forces to the expansion as much as possible. Before throwing down the Nydus, just take a look around and make sure you’re putting it in the best possible place!

2. Placing the Nydus behind the mineral line – Yes keeping it safe is important, but don’t do what I’ve seen so many people do, and put it behind or next to your mineral line. When your almost maxed 2 2 army pops out of that Nydus worm, the units are going to get stuck, clustered and you may even lose you base from it!

Harassment – This is a really obvious one, but when it gets past the mid game mark you need to play smart with your Nydus Network. Throwing one up in a blind spot is only going to work once, after that the player will cover the area, so it’s a good idea to pick out some key Nydus locations.

(At only 100 Minerals and 100 Vespen Gas each, a Nydus worm can do a lot of good when used in moderation)

Let’s take an example; you’re playing on a map with 4 possible spawn points. If you want to deny a 3rd and 4th, you can easily put a Nydus Worm in a more hidden area of one of the other spawn point bases.

Leave your Nydus worm there, keep some overlords around the expansions and lay in wait for them to try and take the expansion. You can easily launch an attack of a small or massive army from behind enemy lines and really deny those expansions for a long time.

Hold the centre and counter attack – A bit of an unconventional way to play, but if you’re in the late game and you currently hold the centre, try spawning two Nydus worms on opposite sides of the centre, this way if your opponent comes up with a massive attack that you’re worried about losing, you can split your units and load up into the Nydus Network twice as quick! Then make a quick exit back to your bases.

(Taken from a 4v4 earlier in the week, worked a treat when the entire enemy army ran up the centre!)

Alternatively, wait until your opponent attacks, exit back into your Nydus Worms and quickly pop up in his base! It won’t work every time, and you won’t always be able to set it up to work perfectly. But it’s a great thing to try and if you manage to do it right, you could just kill their base before they are back at their base.

Hard to pull off, but you will feel awesome pulling those moves with a Nydus Worm even if It’s just to feel your opponent cringe at the sound of a Nydus Worm appearing in their base!

Conclusion

There are way too many things you can use a Nydus Worm to help with and do for you, that it can really be an invaluable unit to pepper your play with. It’s not going to be useful in every single situation. But if you start thinking with the Nydus Network, or just put one down when you’ve got the money you could open up a lot more opportunities to win the game or at least pressure your opponent.

Please, give the Nydus some love!