Hello everyone, you may have noticed but, I’m not Mycotoxin. My name is Cabal, I am a Zerg player as well. I am a big fan of war scenarios, and strategies. I also am certified as a police officer, and I will use real life scenarios in my posts. While Mycotoxin is working on a very specific line of posts working his way up The Pyramid, I would like to post on other varying techniques that will not follow any particular order. So, let’s begin.

One of the most important, and time-consuming matters in working your way through the SC2 ranks is Practice. Practicing with your friends, laddering, playing vs. the computer are all important in their own diverse ways. You may be saying to yourself “well, duh.” but let me make an analogy first. I love going shooting, it’s a great hobby of mine. I used to not really know what i was doing but figured “heck, I hit my target most of the time; that’s pretty good.” Then I enrolled into a firearms class. One of the first things my instructor taught was that practice does NOT make perfect, practice makes permanent. What that means is that if you shoot a handgun and hold it in certain stance 100 times, your brain uses a “muscle memory” and every time you hold a gun you will go back to that stance. Once you have gotten yourself into a bad habit it can be EXTREMELY difficult and painful to break. Now that i have retrained my “muscle memory” into a better, more comfortable stance; I shoot with far higher accuracy.

What does that have to do with SC2? Well, say every game you do a double extractor trick then overlord; only to find out now that some high level player has determined that economically speaking 9 Overlord 10 Drone is better. If you have played 100 games always doing a double extractor trick, you will almost automatically do it. On a larger scale, if you always do ling rushes, once you get into higher ranks that will not always work for you, then you hit a wall that you can’t seem to quite get past. These are things that if you practice and make a note to yourself that “I will change my double extractor trick to a 9 ovie, 10 drone build” then with practice, it will become permanent.

Now, practicing in ladders adds a lot of stress; and if you change your play style drastically while laddering you probably will lose some games till you get more used to the “feel” of the build. But, you don’t have to deal with that. Use your friends, and your communities to practice. Mycotoxin mentioned this in an earlier post, but i feel it’s important so i’ll mention it again. The Training Pit is an open community, of players varying in skill from bronze to platinum level players; and many of them are willing to help you practice a new build or practice a certain build you have a hard time defeating. I strongly recommend getting involved in a community, because we all know that the ladders are full of Trolls, Cheesers, BM’ers, smurfs, etc. That is not a good practice environment. Places like the training pit have no time requirements, just pop on and play a few games vs some people.

Another tip I have is there are some great custom maps that people have developed as perfect practice tools:

The Unit Tester

The unit tester is perfect for sparring against units. Say you have a really hard time against Marines, and tanks. You can pit units vs. them and see how they do. This is great to give yourself the knowledge of other teams that is so important especially with a reactionary race like the Zerg.

Unit tester for one or two players. Easy to use unit creator, resource spending tracker, different arenas, and many options. Compare unit compositions and costs, or practice your micro with friends.

To play the map online:

Search for keyword “ online “

“ NA server: “Unit Tester Online” published by Killer

EU server: “[Official] Unit Tester Online” published by Westberg

SEA server: “[Official] Unit Tester” published by EpicZergling

To play the map offline:

Download TheUnitTester.SC2Map from the right side.

Choose from “North America” or “International” versions, depending on your client.

Drag TheUnitTester.SCMap over Starcraft II to open with the Blizzard Launcher

Multitasking Trainer

The Multitasking trainer is good for, well Multitasking! How many times have you run into a situation where you are trying to work on economy and a battle happens, or you are fighting someone and realize that they have taken an expand and you better expand right now. This map will help you dramatically increase your Micro and you Macro abilities. The map will force you to use Hotkeys, and Queue up commands.

Build Order Tester

This project is a series of standard 1v1 Blizzard maps adapted to include a sophisticated build order testing system. The goal is to execute the chosen build while keeping up worker production and creating the largest army possible. The AI will execute a given build order or execute a random one. At the end of the round, you are given a score which tells how well you executed the build. Also included is a “Freestyle” mode, which monitors your play and displays the build order that you performed.

After playing a freestyle, you can open your bank (save) file at My Documents/Starcraft II/Banks/YabotSettings.SC2Bank in a text editor to see the encoded build as a single line of text. This text can then be decoded and edited at sc2builds.

The Sandbox

Take all that you’ve learned and practice it in the sandbox.

Play in The Sandbox solo or 1v1 with a friend:

Find hard counters to any unit composition

Test different upgrade variations

Practice new unit compositions against random armies

Micro against a working tactical AI

Outmicro mirror armies

Hold ramps of all kinds

Plan your base build

Defend your mineral line

Practice drops

Invent your own challenges

The easiest way to use any of these maps is to get SC2Allin1 or Lazy Launcher

I know that this is a lot of Information for one single post but I wanted to give everyone the tools needed to get deeper into your training. If you have any questions or would like to add your personal input feel free to leave a comment below.

–Cabal