High Diamond Low Masters (ahem)

Yeah, it's an old, overused statement from back in the day, but it's rare that I can get into dimaond league so quickly after a new season starts.  And this came with a patch that nerfed vipers a bit.

 

I still struggle against a Terran a lot, though my promotion came from a ZvT.  Pretty entertaining too: fending off some hellbat/banshee pressure into fighting off early SkyTerran with a crapton of corruptors with hydralisk support surprisingly.

The game immediately placed me at the top of my division too.  Don't think that really translates into easy masters.

The state of ZvZ (as of January 2016)

Each mirror matchup seems to have its own set of complaints (TvT is all about tank drops, PvP is disruptor ping-pong).  But ZvZ is an entirely different beast in my opinion on how ridiculous it can be.  Right now it is almost a coin-flip matchup where early scouting doesn't help and ling/bling wars reign in the early game even more so than HotS and WoL.  The matchup in its entirely isn't bad, but I'll sound off on the negatives first.

Because each match begins with 12 workers instead of 6, this means build orders can be executed faster.  Notably, the 13/12 is a powerful opener in any ZvZ matchup.  If you drone scout to find this, you cannot react fast enough to properly counter-build; you will have most likely already put down your pool or hatchery.  At best you'll have to fly overlords in their general direction to see if any rush is coming.

Following this of course is ling and bling micro.  Because agression/rushing/whatever you want to call it is prevalent in this map pool, you'll have no choice but to micro your zerglings in every engagement, as well as proper baneling micro to either avoid a huge detonation from your opponent, or not to detonate one of your own to 1-2 enemy lings.  Separate your lings and blings into different control groups at the minimum. 

OL placement is pretty key too.  Usual places include just outside your opponent's ramp, or common pathways to your base.  They'll only be in danger of ravagers and mutas for the most part.  Queens can shoo off overlords that float too close to a base.

If you can get past the ling/bling stage, the matchup can diversify a bit.  Some will get a "safety" roach warren for a few defensive roaches to plug up a choke point against future ling aggression.  Others may just focus on mass roaches with some ravagers.  The other, older option is mutalisks.  Mass mutas was a thing in WoL, then died down in HotS, and is now making a comeback.  This is mainly due to changes with the spore crawler.  Right now they do bonus damage to biological units, but not as much as the HotS days, so they won't 3-shot mutalisks.  While solid counters in the infestor and viper exists, teching to them in a muta vs muta war is incredibly difficult; maintaining a mutalisk flock is very gas intensive, and if your opponent finds out you are slowing down muta production at any time they can just fly in and kill you outright.  ZvZ tends to be very snowbally in general, with muta wars being the biggest culprit.  The lone expection of slowing down muta production for something else is for the +1 flyer carapace upgrade, because it affects every part of the muta's glaive worm attack.

Upgrades of course are very important too.  +1 range attack will allow roaches to kill a zergling in 2 hits.  This will ensure the end of the zergling rush phase of the game (not that zerglings can't be useful afterwards; run-bys are still very potent).  As mentioned earlier, +1 flyer carapace has huge benefits in mutalisk wars.  Speed upgrades for any unit doesn't even need to be mentioned on their importance.

After entering the mid-game, roach compositions can start to include lurkers for zone control.  Hydralisks seem like the natural answer to mutalisks for Zergs that prefer to stay on ground, but you need a lot of numbers.  They are still just as flimsy as ever, and can still be countered by flanking banelings.  Making them to get to lurkers is a different story.  Because of their long range they do create positional play in ZvZ matches where both players go this route.

If games get to the late game, ultras are basically the end-all of ground forces.  8 armor really toughens them against all ground units (they deal with Terran bio rather handily, and they have much better DPS than a typical zerg ground force).  Mass air could still work, but you have to watch for vipers, because parasitic bomb can absolutely wreck your flock if you don't pay attention even with the impending nerf.  Brood lords are still very good as long as you don't require them to fly across the whole map to do some damage.

ZvZ starts off as a blind knife fight in a telephone booth, but has the potential to become very engaging.  Thankfully, Blizzard has rescinded on making any nerfs to spore crawlers so ZvZ doesn't return to muta vs muta all the time.

Reactionary Play still exists

The Zerg is most known for their ability to adapt to whatever conditions they are in (which is strange to me, since I've played BW and they were known for swarming more than that back then).  In this game's terms, you'll need to be able to scout your opponent and make the necessary tweaks to your build or strategy.

Generally, the very first things you should do when a game starts is to build a drone (unless you're doing a cheesy 12 pool haha), and then send your overlord towards your oppoenent's base.  I tend to send it towards an expansion or ramp of where I think my opponent spawned.  It doesn't always have to head straight over either; on some maps, you may want to send it to common areas where a proxy would be set up, or wait for your 2nd overlord to do that.

Now for the hard part: what intel are you getting from scouting, and what does it mean?  Granted I'm at Platinum as I write this, but I can get an inkling on what my opponent's general strategy is.  Also important is when you scout, because you can estimate certain timings based off of it.

Scouting Terran
In General: add-ons can tell a lot about the Terran's opening strategy.  For quick access and swapping, usually the production buildings will be close together, allowing a scouting drone to get an idea of what units will likely be made.

No Rax at ramp: proxy.  Immediately get defenses up: lings, queens, spines.  Assuming you did go hatch first, you'll have to decide if your natural is worth saving.  Certain maps make proxy rax rushing very powerul, so note those maps and be sure to scout areas where proxies are built (usually a drone scout at 17 can find it before an OL reaches your opponent's ramp).  You'll also have to do whatever it takes to delay production; even using the scouting drone to attack the SCV building the rax.  If marines and bunkers are in position you're in trouble.

Rax at ramp with no add-on producing: usually for the first reaper to scout and annoy you.  Haven't met a Terran yet that used it to make a marine to kill your OL, but don't put your scout right over the barracks to temp them.

Factory with Reactor: may be for 4-8 hellions for harassing your drone line, or for hellbat timing.  For the latter you need more information.

Factory with Reactor and Armory: hellbat push.  Best way would be to try to hit them with a lot of zerglings while they are in mid-transit, or roaches with some kiting to handle hellbats.  This comes in a variety of flavors:
- No starport = no medivacs, but the push will come quicker
- Barracks w/ tech lab: marauders instead of marines for support.  Roach/ling and a couple of ravagers work.
- All 3 production buildings: medivacs most likely.
- Some odd combination of the above could happen too.

Factory with Tech lab and Starport: possible tankivac play.  Ravagers are need to force tanks to get picked up.  Be wary of positioning; you may need either roaches or lings to quickly reach that tank that is getting plopped in areas hard to reach.

Starport with Tech Lab: banshee harass.  Queens and spores will need to be ready.  Extra queens preferably; they can either heal, or place extra creep tumors if banshee harass is light.  If you find a fusion core, they're getting banshee speed as well; you'll have more time, but the attack will hit harder.

Starport with Reactor or no add-on: liberators incoming.  You will need 4 ravagers to shoot them down with bile shots.  Queens usually cannot handle them alone.  Waiting until you get mutalisks/corruptor may take too long unless you went spire tech on 2 bases (even then that's risky)

CC at Natural: should be safe to take a 3rd base.

CC at 3rd base: should be safe to take a 4th base.

Scouting Protoss
In General: your second OL should hover over your expansion site.  Watch for any probe that tries to warp in pylons behind the mineral line.  You'll need 4-5 drones to kill off a pylon in a somewhat timely manner - they can mine at the expansion if you went hatchery first.

No structures at ramp: proxy.  Check your expansions.

1 Gate + Cybernetics Core: general 1 gate build; could be another gate behind it for adept pressure.

Twilight Council: adept or blink research

Starport: oracle or phoenix harass.  You can see what unit is producing if you pay attention to the outline in the starport.  Both can be countered with a spore in each base.  If phoenix, reposition your OLs to either be in locations phoenix will likely not pass by, or over spores.

Robo Bay + Low # of Gates: probably for a warp prism for some drop play.  Adept harass currently terrorizes Terrans, and are also very annoying for Zerg too.

Robo Bay + High # of Gates: if more than 4 gates are seen, then there will be some timing attack incoming.  4 gates can be supported from 1 base; 7 from 2 bases.  Keep those numbers in mind.  Immortal/sentry pushes are not dead, even if ravagers exist.

4 Gates on 1 Base: all-in attack.  May want to see the gas count too; it could come with a +1 attack variation, meaning your zerglings are going to suck against zealots even more if it does.

Scouting Zerg
In General: drone scouting is not advised because of how fast ZvZ tends to be.  That drone that is scouting is a drone not mining, which can be a deciding factor in the meta of 13/12 and 14/14.

Hatchery at Expansion: you'll need to see how much HP it has.  If it has a lot, then most likely your opponent went hatch first.  If low, a pool first.

Extractors: if you click on them you can see how much gas remains.  This can tip you off on whether the enemy may try to add banelings, roaches, or mass lings (the latter would have pulled workers off of gas).  If you scout a bit later, count how many extractors your opponent has.

Multiple Spines at Entrance: more often than not it's a delay tactic to get mutas.  Spines cost no gas, and the limiting factor for mutalisk play is gas obviously.  Related to the previous tip, if your opponent is on 2 bases and already has all 4 extractors, that means he/she is banking up gas for mutalisks.

Ling Pressure: this one is a little hard to explain and gauge properly.  Mostly, the beginning of the game will have ling fights, and then bling/ling fights.  You have to get a feel on who is winning these, and if the opponent is reinforcing a lot.  No reinforcements = droning.  There is no simple way to tell if you should counter or not because of how fast things can go in ZvZ fights and the mind games that go on (retreating = losing, or baiting you into a baneling trap?)  Even if you are taking favorable engagements, a single baneling can change everything.

Buildings in General: most zerg buildings shiver or shake when they are researching something.  Some animation is always going on for any building of any race, but it is usually easier to notice against T and P.

Basic Zerg Openers

I wanted to use this to discuss my basic openers in all matchups, and maybe get some feedback and share other possible openers and builds.  So without further ado...

ZvT Macro Opener
17H / 18G/ 17P
19 OL, halt drone production for now
@pool, 2x queens, 2-4 lings
@100 gas ling speed
2-4x lings if necessary, resume droning
32 3rd hatch if safe
31 OL
My most common build against Terran.  With this setup you can immediately start production of 2 queens, ling speed, and 2-3x pairs of zerglings based on whether you think you can handle reaper openings.  After this, you may pull 2 workers off of gas for extra mineral income, or leave them for roach/ravager production. If you scout with a drone, if you notice no expansion from the Terrans, do not make your 3rd hatchery yet.  If you see no expansion after 4 minutes or so, expect some all-in.  Roaches should handle hellbats, queens for banshees, ravagers for liberators (3-4 ravager bile shots to kill a liberator).  More lings against more reapers; as long as you micro them a bit and avoid mines.  Your first set of lings should pop up just in time to handle a standard reaper opening on any map.  It gets a lot easier to defend once speed is done.

ZvP Macro Opener
17H / 17P / 17G
19 OL
@pool, 2x queens, 2-4 lings, resume droning
32 hatch if safe
Here, this accommodates the possibility of some proxy shenanigans or offensive cannon rushes at your expansion.  You could also use my ZvT macro build if you feel safe, and even omit the ling speed if you want to really rush ravagers; just remember to get ling speed at some point because lings are always good reinforcement units and you want them ASAP (I didn't mention to get ling speed because you may skip it in some cases).  Your initial zerglings can either scout or deal with pylon blocks at your expansions.  Gas isn't needed ASAP like against reapers.  You'll probably have adepts to contend with, in which queens and zerglings can hold them off.  You may need up to 8 lings to deal with 2 adepts backed up by a queen.

ZvP Safety Opener
17P / 17H
@pool, queen, 4 lings
@100 minerals OL
If for whatever reason you suspect some really cheeky play by the Protoss, you can open with a pool first to ensure that any proxy can be dealt with.  After this, the rest of the build sort of follows the macro opener, except of course you can't get speed nearly as fast.  Just ensure you have 250 minerals when the pool finishes to make a queen and 4 lings immediately.  Also watch your supply count; what I just mentioned needs 4 free supply.  That would normally mean halting drones at 18/22 supply until you start producing lings.  Only issue with this is that since the hatchery is later, there is a higher chance of a pylon block occurring.

ZvZ Blind ling/bling rush
13G / 12P
13 OL
14 6 lings, ling speed
17 lings
18 queen
20 lings
21 lings
@50 gas bane nest
21 OL
Yes, this is a very quick gas and pool.  As much of a rush strategy, it is almost standard given how drone scouting in ZvZ puts you at in inherit disadvantage right now, even on 4 player maps.  After getting lings at 21, you should get to your opponent's base and decide if you want to continue the attack or resume drone production.  Saw this first explained in Fenner's stream, and it's quite used at high level play.  Success is determined mostly by how your opponent reacts if their opener wasn't 13/12 or 14/14.

ZvZ rush defense
17P / 17G / 17H
A safer opener, but obviously puts your economy behind a hatch first opener.  Faster access to queens and lings, and spines if you need it.  Right now, OLs can't get proper intel in a timely manner; usually you can see a ling rush while your OLs are still flying to your opponent's base.  Start practicing your ling/bling micro.  You could also swap the gas and hatch timing if you are committed to defense, but I still prefer the faster speed.  If a rush is spotted, get a spine crawler.  Good sim city is also preferred to prevent surrounds on your queen, spine, or getting into your mineral line.

14/14 speed opener
14G / 14P
Not as extreme as the 13/12 ZvZ opener, but can really punish certain T or P builds that expand quickly.  I don't use this much in LotV, since OL scouting isn't quick enough to determine if this can punish an greedy build unless you do a really early drone scout.  In HotS there was an extension of this which was a quick +1 carapace build.  You'd get ling speed immediately and continue to get gas, and then start an evo chamber once you got 72 gas, allowing you to have 150 gas when the evo chamber finished.  In the current meta, I'd doubt you'd finish +1 armor before pressure arrived at your doorstep.

What's so magical about 17?
16 workers will give optimal mining at your mineral line.  That 17'th worker will make buildings without disrupting it.

Why is drone scouting bad in ZvZ?
A big change from HotS to LotV was the initial worker count doubling from 6 to 12.  This means you can execute a build much faster.  It mostly removed the initial stages of the game where almost every build order just built workers and supply up to a number in the teens.  Now this just cuts that part out, which speeds up the game overall.  It also means your scouting information will come later than compared to HotS.  Usually, with a drone scout it will already be too late.

This is obviously not comprehensive; there are other sites that have builds that go into huge detail about timings and what to expect.  But this is a listing of builds I consider at my level for now.  I'll try to incorporate more as I play more.

SC2 Abbreviations and the Like

Throughout these posts (and in most things SC2 and even non-SC2) related, there will be much use of abbreviations, shortenings, or alternate names to many terms.  I'll use this post to clarify what I mean when I use them, though a lot of them can be figured out by simple context.

Since this is a Zerg blog, I'll start with them.  Not everything has a nickname, like Roach or Ravagers.  But I will try to be as complete as I can be.  Here's a list of ones used frequently:

Zergling: ling
Baneling: bling, bane
Overlord: OL, ovie
Hatchery: hatch, H (used in describing openers)
Hydralisk: hydra
Mutalisk: muta
Infestor: WINfestor (they were in Wings of Liberty at least, but they are creeping back up in LotV)
Brood Lord: BL, brood
Ultralisk: ultras
Swarm Host: SH, money host, cash hosts (mostly referring to the HotS days)
Extractor: gas, G (similar use as H)
Evolution Chamber: evo, evo chamber
Spawning Pool: pool, P (similar use as H)
Spine Crawler: spine
Spore Crawler: spore
Nydus Network/Worm: nydus
LBM: ling/bling/muta (zerglings, banelings, mutalisks)
Morphing: building a unit or structure (technically, drones morph into structures, larvae morph into the various zerg units, and some zerg units can morph into other zerg units)
Droning: building drones


Now with the other races, starting with Terran:

MMM: marine, marauder, medivac
MMMM or 4M: MMM + widow mines
Bio: unit composition that is primarily made up of units produced from the barracks.  It does not only contain those units, as medivacs are always included (MMM for example is bio)
Mech: unit composition primarily made up of units from the factory
SkyTerran: unit composition made up from the starport
Siege Tank: tanks
Widow Mine: mine
Liberators: FREEDOM, libs
Battlecruiser: BC
Medivac: boostvac, speedvac, vac
Tanks + Medivac: tankivac
Command Center: CC
Orbital Command: OC
Plantetary Fortress: PF
Engineering Bay: ebay
Missile Turret: turret
Barracks: rax
Factory: fact
Starport: port
Fusion Core: core
Refinery: gas
1/1/1: one barracks, one factory, one starport build
Pull the Boys: bringing SCVs into an attack

And now, the Protoss:

Zealot: zeal
High Templar: HT, temp
Psionic Storm: psi storm, storm
Dark Templar: DT
Observer: obs
Colossus: col
Immortal: immo
Warp Prism: WP
Phoenix: nix
Void Ray: VR
Mothership Core: MSC, momma core
Gateway/Warp Gate: gate
Assimilator: gas
Cybernetics Core: core, CC (rarely used since CC is mainly for Terrans)
Forge Fast Expand: FFE (building a forge, then a nexus)
Gateway Expand: building a gateway, then a nexus
Twilight Council: TC
Stargate: SG
Robotics Facility: robo
Fleet Beacon: FB, beacon, bacon
Templar Archives: archives
Dark Shrine: shrine
Photon Cannon: cannon
Photon Overcharge: PO, photon overrustle, photon overskill


Non-specific race ones here:

Wings of Liberty: WoL, WOL
Heart of the Swarm: HotS, HOTS
Legacy of the Void: LotV, LOTV
Starcraft: SC
Brood War: BW
Build/BO: build order; a set of instructions used when you start a game.  Each instruction is given as a number and a structure or unit. An example:
 - 13 OL, 17 H, 17 P, 17 G
 - Translation: At 13 supply, morph an overlord.  At 17 supply, make a hatchery.  At 17 supply, make a spawning pool. At 17 supply, make an extractor.
- The number refers to your supply count.  Usually, this is the number of workers you have, since you won't have any other type of unit at this point.  Following the number is what to make obviously.
- In this example, note that it is to make the hatchery when you reach 17 supply, then make the spawning pool when reaching 17 supply again, and then making the extractor after reaching 17 once more.  It does not mean reaching 17 supply, then making all 3 structures.  Remember that Zerg use up a drone when making a building, so each time you make a structure you essentially lose a worker and go to 16 supply.  To clarify, after making a hatchery, you build another drone to get to 17 supply again before making the pool.
- Sometimes, the 13 OL may be omitted because it is assumed you will need to make one to reach the supply needed in the build order.
- Later annotations can include @100 [resource], simply stating to build a unit/structure or research an upgrade whenever you reach 100 or a resource.  Most common example: @100 gas ling speed.
- Some may just state a time to perform something as well.  Example: 3:20 3rd hatch.
Worker: SCV, drone, or probe
Mineral Line: the area where your workers mining minerals is.
Gas: vespene geysers
Natural: the expansion players are most likely to take first/
Third / Fourth / Fifth / etc.: refers to expansions.
Gold: refers to an expansion that has gold minerals.
Good Game: gg; used to surrender before a match usually (some exceptions exist, like said at the beginning just to mean to have a good game)
Good Luck, Have Fun: gl hf; usually said at the start of a match
Pause Please: pp (courtesy to say before pausing)
Fast Expand: FE
Proxy: building structures away from your base, usually near the enemy's location for quick aggression.
Bad Manner: BM, an "inherited" way of saying poorly mannered
Cheese: has different meanings based on use.  Can refer to an opener that is easy to execute but hard to defend against, or a strategy that is frowned upon in general.
All-In: a strategy where all resources are dedicated to an attack.  Sometimes intertwined with a "timing attack" or "timing push", which is a strategy that is designed to make an attack at a certain time frame
Rush: a strategy that focuses on getting to a certain point in a strategy above all else.  Most commonly used to refer to building up to attack quickly.  You can "rush" to make a zergling attack, or "rush" to DTs.
Turtle: a strategy that is all about defending your position as much as possible.
Teching: rushing to achieve a specific unit or building in your technology tree (e.g. rushing to DTs is teching to DTs)
Tech Switch: somewhat self-explanatory; switching your army composition based on unlocking or expanding a tech path.
Death Ball: refers to the idea that armies work best when grouped up together.  Instead of splitting up forces to cover more ground, they all need to bunch together for the most effectiveness.  This holds true when units synergize with each other.
Doom Drop: a tactic of loading your entire army into dropships (medivacs, overlords, etc) and dropping them on top of your enemy's base or forces.
Pathing: the path a unit takes to reach a destination.
Run-By: a tactic of ignoring defenses to reach a key destination, such as a mineral line (e.g. hellion run-by to attack a mineral line).
Saturation: reaching the optimal amount of workers for a base.  Saturating a base requires 16 workers on minerals and 6 (2 x 3) workers on geysers.
Floating: refers to having extra resources.  Usually, you don't want to do this, except in cases where you are planning to do a tech switch or saving up to produce a lot of units at once.
Area of Effect/Splash: AOE, or AoE.  Referring to an ability that affects an area instead of just a specific target.
Greed: a strategy that focuses on developing economy before technology or military.  Involves expanding sooner than expected, or saturating a base to maximize income quicker.
Macro: macromanagement, referring to controlling base infrastructure and economy.
Micro: micromanagement, referring to control of individual or groups of units
Meta: a term that is loosely referring to what is "in" at the moment, or the over-arcing norm.
Kiting/Dancing/Stutter-stepping: continuously backing up and stopping to attack.  A common tactic used by marines to maximize damage output before taking damage, or to spread out against AoE (obviously not limited to just marine control).
Sim City: referring to building placement.  Usually, this means making pathing difficult for the enemy to get to key locations, or preventing surrounds on important structures or units.  An example is making a maze of supply depots (or a full wall of depots) to prevent zergling run-bys from entering your mineral line.
Grandmaster: GM; the highest league a player can be in.
Diamond: dia; an upper league just behind masters and above platinum
Platinum: plat; a middle of the road league


There's probably a lot more I have missed, and like mentioned earlier I'll update this post as I remember or come across more.

On another note, here are "controversial" slang:
Ebola: parasitic bomb used in mass by vipers
Cancer Mech: turtle mech strategy
A-Move: controlling an army by simply pressing the A key to attack and clicking on a location, without any micromanagement on the units.

Karax (you got any more of that Solarite?)

Overview
Karax is a Protoss commander that specializes in mechanical units and powerful defensive structures.  Tower defense is totally his thing, as his photon cannons can get some impressive upgrades.  As for building an army, he can do it, but there is a huge drawback in that ALL of his units (except probes) cost 50% more resources than other commanders.  This makes creating direct support to your ally rather difficult.  Fortunately he has ways to cover for this in abilities.

Units
Sentinel: Karax's mechanical zealots.  Can be upgraded to auto-revive every 2 minutes.  Other than that, they are overpriced zealots to be honest.  Emergency units are more of what I'd think of them.  Even then, a photon cannon costs just the same, and is more durable.  Once you get insta-build cannons, I can't see many situations where I would warp in sentinels instead - just bring a probe and proxy pylon your way into an attack.

Energizer: a sentry like unit that can give a speed buff to friendly units and structures as well as act as pylon power when in phasing mode.  Gas intensive, but very useful as a support unit to units and defensive structures.

Immortal: Tough robo unit with the barrier ability to absorb hits.  Can also be upgraded to gain the shadow cannon for a very long range, single target nuke.

Colossus: towering siege unit that resembles the campaign version with the upgraded ability to burn the area it attacks.  Powerful, but very expensive.

Observer: because every race needs a detector.

Mirage: a variation of the Phoenix.  Instead of gaining the ability to pick up more enemy units, it has more defensive capability in that it can avoid damage by phasing out for a short time.

Carrier: capital ship that can repair other mech units after being upgraded.  Launches interceptors to attack its target.  Like the colossus, very powerful and insanely pricey.

Photon Cannon: listed here since Karax's version is better with the ability to get some good upgrades on them (faster attack speed, better range)

Khaydarin Monolith: these impressive looking towers with crazy range and slow, but powerful strikes are available to Karax.  Note that it alone is not a detector, but you should support them with photon cannons anyway.

Shield Battery: replenish the shields of any friendly unit OR STRUCTURE.  Also gains a researchable ability to make a barrier for structures to absorb more damage.

Initial Traits and Abilities
- Orbital Strike (5 energy): resembles Artanis' ability, but is different in use.  Karax's version has no cooldown, and costs 5 energy to fire once.  Overall much more friendly to use, as it also does not bring up that annoying HUD.  Can be upgraded later to stun anything it hits.  Works great as your primary defense while you are still building up infrastructure.

- Solar Lance (50 energy): similar to the one in the campaign.  Fire 3 lasers that sweep in a line where you can dictate where the laser sweeps.  Not as impressive as the orbital strike, but can be upgraded for a damage over time as well.

- Chrono Wave (50 energy): increases production of all friendly structures by 200% for 20 seconds.  Quite handy for speeding up upgrades or high build time units.  Communicate with your ally on when best to use it.

Level Upgrades
1) Orbital Assault: orbital strike only costs 5 energy to use and has no cooldown, but fires only 1 laser.  Let me rephrase this: you can spam lasers as long as you have the energy for it.  Some strategies involve using this as your offensive tool to support your ally's army.  This also means rushing upgrades for your energy too.  I'll go into it later.

2) Spear of Adun: Chrono Field: grants you and your ally 15% increased production speed on all structrures.  Makes both of you train things faster for free.  Pretty nifty.

3) Khaydarin Monolith: unlocks the warp in of these defensive turrets.  Powerful, but slow rate of fire.  But the immense range is nothing to scoff at.  Works against tough, lone high HP targets like ultralisks and capital ships.

4) Twilight Council Upgrade Cache: grants upgrades at the TC for your energizers.  They can gain the ability to do a 2-minute mind control on mechanical units (afterwards they simply die), and increased energy regen (400% is a lot).  Both are quite useful if you support your ally often with energizers.

5) Spear of Adun: Chrono Overload: Enhances Chrono Wave to boost production of all friendly structures by 500% for 20 seconds.  Amazing if you can time it right with your ally.  Be sure to communicate with your ally when to use it.  Decent power spike for accelerating key upgrades.

6) Forge Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades for your cannons and batteries.  Increased range, increased attack speed, and the shield battery ability to construct a barrier for structures.  The cannon upgrades are very good to say the least.  Another decent power spike.

7) Spear of Adun: Reconstruction Beam: Automatically repair 3 damaged mechanical units passively.  Also works with allied mechanical units.  So even a Swann ally would benefit a lot. Saves on building replacement army/structures.

8) Solar Forge Upgrade Cache 1: reconstruction beam can repair 4 mech targets at once, and an additional energy upgrade at the solar forge for extra energy regen for the Spear of Adun.  The extra regen is quite useful for laser spam.

9) Robotics Bay Upgrade Cache: allows you to research the shadow cannon for Immortals (200 single target damage on anything) and allow Colossi attacks to set the ground of whatever they hit on fire.  Both worked pretty well in the LotV campaign, and work well here too.  You probably can't afford to make both at the same time though.

10) Spear of Adun: Purifier Beam: gives your a new calldown attack skill.  Works like the one in the campaign - a big beam of death you can control or let loose automatically.  A good wave clear skill.

11) Khalai Ingenuity: warping in pylons, photon cannons, khaydarin monoliths, and shield batteries is now instant.  Wow.  Huge power spike.  You can optimize your build orders with instant pylons, and even more so with instant production of defensive structures.  You can play games without ever making a single unit, and this helps do that tremendously.

12) Solar Forge Upgrade Cache 2: grants more research at the solar forge: your orbital strikes can stun, and your solar lance also sets the ground on fire for extra damage over time.  The former is worth it for how often you will use that ability.  The latter, well, not so much.

13) Spear of Adun: Purifier Protocol: your purifier beam moves a lot faster, and lasts 5 seconds longer.  Sort of unnecessary, as it is quite powerful at baseline.  Just makes it a little better at managing.

14) Fleet Beacon Upgrade Cache: grants upgrades to make your Mirages invincible for a moment after taking damage, and carriers to gain repair drones.  The latter is amazing, even if carriers cost an arm and a leg to produce.

15) Unity Barrier: grants a 10HP barrier to any newly produced unit from you or your ally.  This shield does not stack or regenerate at all.  Er, I dunno what to make of this.  It doesn't sound impressive, and works best with throwaway units, like marines or zerglings.  A flat HP buff only that cannot be recovered once lost.  Karax himself doesn't benefit much from it either.  Strange.

Pointers
- Karax is mostly a defensive commander, who's strengths are in his defensive structures and abilities from the Spear of Adun.  His armies are very expensive to create with that hefty 50% extra cost.  It may be a little weird adjusting to his style of play.

- A lot of his power comes from the Spear of Adun, and you should consider rushing upgrades to it.  Especially any upgrade that increases energy generation so you can spam lasers more often.  You gain the ability to buff it as you level, so you may struggle at lower levels initially.

- If you like tower defense games, then you'll love this guy.  His other main strength comes from this cannons.  While Swann can build multiple types of turrets, Karax's cannons are the best defense so far in the game.

- Level 11 is a turning point for Karax, since warping in pylons and defense becomes a breeze.

- Usually I tend to rush getting upgrades for energy generation for the Spear of Adun.  It's debatable whether that should go first or the cannon upgrades, because those are amazing as well.

- Following up on that, at some points you can forego producing units in the early and mid game.  It's possible to just cannon up, support your ally with lasers, and slowly build up a deathball of carriers or colossi.  Other times it may be better to build up energizers a bit earlier to support your ally too.  Based on your strategy, you may or may not have the gas to do so (IIRC energizers are 175 gas a piece, so don't lose them carelessly).

- His power spikes really define him; it's hard to play on brutal if you don't reach certain milestone levels, especially 2, 6, 8, and 12.

Vorazun (EZtoss mode)

Overview
Vorazun is a Protoss commander who focuses on Shakuras-designed units (unsurprisingly).  A combination of striking from the shadows and the spear of adun arguably make her the strongest commander in the game right now.  Even at level 1, she is probably the best option for tackling brutal difficulty missions with proper ability usage.

Units
Centurion: the "dark" zealot.  Initially works like a standard zealot, but can be upgraded later to be a lot more potent at the front lines.

Stalker: similar to the ones in multiplayer.  Can also research the ability to gain shields over time after blinking.

Dark Templar: a lot better than their multiplayer counterpart.  For one, they cost less gas, and also gain some abilities that IMO are just broken.  You can win missions by only spamming these units due to the Shadow Fury ability.  After researching it, DTs can attack all enemy units/structures in a small area by blinking around and slashing them.  It's crazy to watch a legion of DT just wreck whole waves or bases with this ability alone.

Corsair: somewhat similar to the campaign version, but also get an upgrade later for free cloaking.  Sort of OP when massed up; they synergize quite well with certain upgrades.  You can research the disruption web ability which stops any enemy from attacking underneath it.  Very powerful ability, as it lasts a fairly decent time and has a respectable radius.  If you are skilled enough you can take it off autocast and do it manually to get the most out of it.

Void Ray: the other unit you can mass up and tear every enemy down with, especially with upgrades.  Yes, there are some builds where you can rely ONLY on making these, and using calldowns to handle initial defenses.

Oracle: Vorazun's detector.  Don't need to use an ability like revelation or whatever; the unit itself is the detector.  If not for that, I'd say it's more of a fluff unit.  It does have the stasis ward ability which could be useful in delaying enemy waves.

Dark Archon: ground spellcasters.  You don't morph them from combining DT, you just warp them in as normal units.  Very gas intensive, but are rather powerful.  Besides their own attack, they also have some nasty spells like mind control and confusion.  A few in your army helps a lot, but can be focused on since they are not cloaked.

Initial Traits and Abilities
- Deploy Dark Pylon (25 energy): drops down a dark pylon anywhere with vision.  It provides supply and a free cloaking field to anyone near it.  It also has the ability to recall your forces after leveling up a bit.  A bit crazy as it gives you a lot of mobility.  Plant one at key locations can you can bounce around the map.

- Black Hole (25 energy): creates a black hole anywhere with vision that traps all targets within it while it is on the field.  There is no cooldown on this ability it's ridculous.  Any AoE will decimate anything caught in it.  It is so versatile of an ability and I can't understand how it is so cheap to use.

- Deploy Shadow Guard (50 energy): spawns 2 (4 after leveling) Shadow Guard units that last for 60 seconds.  They are essentially beefed up DTs with all abilities unlocked.  They alone can clear the initial wave of any enemy, and can also clear rocks afterwards (or before hand).

Level Upgrades
1) Shroud of Adun: your DT have enhanced shields and cost less vespene gas.  Basically, her DT are tough cookies.  This is just the beginning.

2) Spear of Adun: Orbital Assimilators: your assimilators no longer require probes to harvest gas.  Insane power spike.  You can quickly get 4 gas up and save on probe production with this, funding gas for everything else.  Huge power spike for sure.

3) Shadow Legion: using the Shadow Guard calldown ability spawns 4 units instead of 2.  Doubling the effectiveness of an already powerful skill.  As if she wasn't OP already.

4) Twilight Council Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades at the TC to allow your zealots to stun targets and stalkers to recover shields after blinking.  Both are pretty good, but not really needed either when your composition is mostly DT or VRs.

5) Dark Archon: allows you to warp in Dark Archons once you get a Dark Shrine.  Excellent support casters that can confuse enemies into attacking their own units.  Later gets upgrades to be even more effective.

6) Dark Templar Upgrade Cache: unlocks researchable abilities for your DTs.  Now DTs can blink and disable structures for a limited time.  I didn't mention their shadow fury ability earlier - this doesn't require a level up, and turns DT into killing machines.  Both abilities are gravy at this point.

7) Veil of Shadows: increases shield regeneration of cloaked units by 400%.  This affects units in a dark pylon's radius, helping Protoss allies too.  Seems like a "win more" trait.

8) Spear of Adun: Event Horizon: reduces the armor of units in a black hole to zero.  Just a fluff upgrade.

9) Dark Archon Upgrade Cache: research the ability of mind control and to spawn on the field with full energy.  Makes warp in casters a lot stronger and gives them even more utility to steal big, powerful units.  The former is quite useful, and the latter is somewhat useful, but more gravy since DTs and VRs can usually handle anything that comes their path.

10) Spear of Adun: Time Stop (300 second cooldown): grants you the ability to freeze and reveal all enemy units and structures for a 20 seconds.  Another OP ability to add to her checklist.  Kerrigan's lesser version was already pretty good, but Vorazun's version is map wide and does not require any positioning to use.  It even gets another upgrade at level 14!  Like WTF seriously?

11) Dark Pylon: Recall (60 second cooldown): unlocks the ability for dark pylons to recall forces to it.  Basically, you can call back your forces to any place you have a dark pylon. Theoretically it is super useful, but isn't truly necessary in the current mission map pool, except for Lock and Load where you can quickly defend different locations at a moment's notice.

12) Fleet Beacon Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades for stargate units at the fleet beacon.  Corsairs can be permanently cloaked; VRs get a range boost with their damage boost when firing for a longer period of time, and units caught in a stasis ward from oracles can be attacked while stunned.  The first upgrade is nuts, not just because they are cloaked, but another level upgrade later gained.  The VR upgrade is also really nice; it served me well in the campaign, and continues to do so here.

13) Spear of Adun: Emergency Recall: cloaked and burrowed units that take fatal damage are instead teleported back to your main structure (e.g. Nexus).  DTs and corsairs just got a lot more cost efficient.  It includes burrowed units; so Lurkers can benefit from this as well.  Somewhat of a power spike.

14) Spear of Adun: Chronomancy: reduces the cooldown of time stop by 60 seconds, so you can use this OP ability more often.  Great.  Can't say much about it.

15) Strike from the Shadows: 25% damage boost to all friendly cloaked and burrowed units.  A nice top level skill to round off this ridiculous commander :P

Pointers
- She is listed as a commander for experienced players, but I feel like she is the most powerful commander by far.  Even at level 1 she can tackle brutal difficulty without much issue.

- As soon as you reach level 2, you'll probably go with heavy DT compositions and notice you are mineral starved most of the time since DTs only cost 75 gas a piece.  Doesn't seem to hold true for corsair or VR compositions.  In any case, you can incorporate getting 2 (even 4 if you take the geysers at your expansion BEFORE clearing the rocks) assimilators quickly to take care of any gas resource issues.

- My build usually goes 14 pylon, 14 gateway, 14 2x assimilator.  Yes, I go with 14/21 probes on minerals, optimal saturation of a mineral line before your first pylon lol.  Of course this is assuming you are level 2+.  If you are still at level 1, you'll just have to go 14 pylon 15 gateway 15 or 16 assimilator.  When I go DT I try to rush to the DT shrine for the shadow fury upgrade because of how broken that ability is.

- If I build zealots it is because I have extra resources due to trying out an unusual build or macromanagement slip-ups.  Stalkers for emergency anti-air, though dark archons can do nicely in that role.  Mass DT is the prime choice of strategy for Vorazun users for a good reason.

- I always save my initial 50 energy for Shadow Guard.  Use it right when the first wave of enemies appear to clear rocks, then kill off the wave.  If you have spare time, you can use them to break the rocks at your ally's expansion.  If you coordinate well with your ally, you can also use this to guard against waves with a VR build.  Save up 400 minerals too for when you clear your expansion's rocks.

- DT/Sair was a powerful composition in Brood War, and it holds true here as well.  7-8 corsair for d-web, and DTs handle the rest.  If you need more anti-air just make more corsairs or get dark archons.

- Void Ray based comps can also work too.  You just have to ensure you can survive to that point with Shadow Guard or with your ally's help.  Don't have to rush to the Fleet Beacon, but you should eventually save up 300 minerals and 200 gas for it.  VRs do not manually activate their increased damage buff like in multiplayer; it functions like the classic version of focusing on a target for periods of time to get the damage buff.  Even with a VR comp, get 6-8 corsairs to shut down any ground-to-air threats.

Zagara (how Zerg should be?)

Overview
Zagara is a Zerg commander who seems to embrace the concept of swarming.  Her strength mainly comes from production of lots of throw-away units (save for one type) and overrunning enemies with sheer numbers and attrition.  She may seem weak at lower levels, but gains some upgrades as levels progress to make her a powerhouse in the early game and onward.

Units
Zagara: your hero unit.  Like Kerrigan, she hatches from your main hatchery after a certain time, or after 1 minute after being killed.  She has the following abilities:
- Summon banelings (50 energy, 10 second cooldown): spawns a set of banelings that travel in a straight line for a certain distance.  They will explode on contact with the first enemy they touch.
- Summon hunter killers (60 energy, 30 second cooldown): spawns a set of beefed up hydralisks that last for 20 seconds.  They can serve as your main anti-air.
- Mass Frenzy (25 energy, 120 second cooldown): grants all units 15% increased attack speed for 15 seconds.  Global wide buff too.  Very nice.
- Infested Drop (300 second cooldown): call down a force of 10 roaches which do 50 damage on impact.  Your ultimate skill if you will.  The roaches last 30 seconds.

Zergling: your basic light melee unit.  Can be upgraded later to swarmlings that hatch in triplets and build extremely quickly.

Baneling: your suicide bomber morphed from zerglings.  Already somewhat powerful like in multiplayer, and can get upgrades to make them more effective, as well as the splitter strain to get more damage out of them.  There's also another upgrade that gives you them for free!

Abberation: a large anti-armor unit that slaps around its target.  It also allows other Zerg units to walk under them similar to how Colossi do so.

Scourge: anti-air units that in my opinion, should have stayed in multiplayer.  Think flying banelings, but you need to upgrade them to do splash.  They are gas intensive (75 gas for a pair), but fortunately there's a fix for that...

Corruptor: the other anti-air option.  You really shouldn't have to build these, as scourge should be enough.

Initial Traits and Abilities
- You get to control Zagara on the battlefield, who comes with her own set of unique abilities.

Level Upgrades
1) Relentless Swarmer: drones hatch in pairs and cost only 1/2 the supply.  Her units also seem to morph a little faster, and cost a little bit less than Kerrigan (and any future potential Zerg commanders).  However, to balance this, her supply cap is 100.  At lower levels, that cap really sucks, but is in place because she gets really strong later on.

2) Inftested Drop: allows Zagara to drop a bunch of roaches wherever she pleases.  A power spike for sure since it is a new calldown ability, perfect for securing objectives or defending a wave.

3) Inject Larvae: doubles the amount of larvae produced from the queen's inject larvae ability.  Another power spike, since you need a lot less injects to get the needed amount of larva for production.  Also frees up time for creep tumors, since you'll be hard pressed to use all of your extra larvae early on.

4) Scourge Upgrade Cache: unlocks researchable upgrades for the scourge.  The reduced cost upgrade is all but mandatory; the main drawback of massing up scourge was their gas cost, and this severely reduces that.  The splash damange upgrade is more gravy than anything else.  This alone should allow you to never morph corruptors ever again.

5) Bile Launcher: allows you to morph bile launchers, a defensive structure that must be manually used.  They are theoretically great for defensive missions, though I do not use them.  They do AoE damage to air and ground alike, so they have potential in missions like Temple of the Past.

6) Zergling Upgrade Cache: unlocks extra upgrades for the Zergling.  The same as Kerrigan's version: you can add 10 health to zerglings, and give them the ability to reduce their target's armor to 0 for a short while.  Can't complain really since after the mid game, you should have excess resources.

7) Baneling Nest: Birthing Chamber: baneling nests automatically spawn up to 4 banelings at a time at set intervals.  Another big power spike, as it allows you to defend initial waves of enemies if you adjust your build order to get a baneling nest ASAP.  Free units that explode!

8) Incubate Banelings: if you build Aberrations, this is for you. When they die, you get two banelings to pop out from their corpses.  More free damage, and its great when you consider that Aberrations are melee units that are always near their target.

9) Evolution Chamber Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades at the evo chamber.  One gives Zagara's basic attack some AoE, and the other grants Aberrations the ability to give 2 armor to any unit underneath it.  The former is pretty good when you rely on Zagara for anti-air, and the latter is ok.

10) Darken the Skies: doubles the amount of roaches that spawn when you use infested drop.  Just makes the ability twice as strong.  Not much else to say.

11) Baneling Nest Upgrade Cache: allows researching increased blast radius and increased primary target damage for banelings.  Both are excellent with baneling heavy compositions, which isn't that uncommon when the nest spawns them automatically and with another upgrade which makes zergling production a lot better.

12) Zergling Evolution: Swarmling: zerglings are permanently upgraded to the swarmling.  This variant spawns in a set of 3 instead of 2, but they still cost 1/2 supply each.  Still, 3 zerglings per egg for 50 minerals is a steal.  Oh, and the morph time is incredibly fast.  A power spike I'd say: you can mass a force much faster and reinforce quickly as well.  Zerglings under Zagara are no joke.

13) Bile Launcher Upgrade Cache: allows researchable upgrades for Bile Launchers for increased attack radius and shorter cooldown of use.  Can't comment on them since I don't use bile launchers.

14) Baneling Evolution: Splitter: banelings are now Splitters from the HotS campaign.  That is, you get two smaller banelings when a baneling explodes.  Each smaller one does a small damage, but you get 2 per dead baneling, and its still even more free damage.  I wouldn't call it a power spike, but a bump in power nonetheless.  It's totally free of charge too.

15) Broodmother: enhances Zagara's initial abilities.  Both cost 50% less, and spawn 50% more units.  In essence, makes Zagara a lot stronger, and easier to get those annoying achievements.

Pointers
- Do you like swarming the opposition with tons of throwaway units?  If so, then Zagara is for you.  Zerglings, banelings, and scourge with a few Aberrations sprinkled in should cover all of your bases.

- Drones cost 75 minerals to morph a pair.  So when describing builds with her, it's a little different than usual.  My opener does go 11 pool and gas, then bane nest at 50 gas.  At 11 supply you have 22 workers, and should be able to stop worker production for the most part (I find 14/21 workers on minerals the main the most you need there).

- You should be able to handle initial waves with just zerglings and banelings.  Afterwrads, Zagara will be available to take care of future waves.  Note that her anti-air is limited, and usually relies on her hunter killers to handle it.  Keep that in mind; you may want to tell your teammate to help out with anti-air if it is necessary until you get mass up a scourge fleet.

- My main strategy usually revolves around massing up tons of zerglings, eventually getting in 6-8 aberrations into the mix.  Sometimes I morph banelings if I really need them against T or Z, but the free ones from the baneling nest usually suffice.

- Since you can morph a lot of drones, you could assist in defenses with lots of structures, even the bile launcher.  If your macro is on point, you'll find yourself swimming in resources at the supply cap.  Swarmings spawn in triplets, but cost 1.5 supply per egg.

- You can usually get to hive tech rather quickly, as there isn't anything really blocking you from going there.  It's mainly just to unlock upgrades.  If you find yourself floating a lot of minerals, make more hatcheries (you don't need to have queens at your extra hatcheries.  It will make reinforcing your army a lot easier.

Swann (GOLIATH ONLINE)

Overview
Rory Swann is a Terran Commander with a focus on mechanical units.  Not just a preference either - he cannot produce barracks at all!  Fortunately, accommodations have been made to account for this.  He's also got multiple turrets that can handle base defense fairly well.  He's better suited for defensive style of missions, but that doesn't mean he just builds turrets all day and play turret defense.

Units
Hellbat: his basic unit.  Also a unit you don't have to ever build technically, strange enough as that sounds.  I've personally never built them, but I've had some allies build a few to start for some defense.  They can transform to hellions too, but some odd reason you cannot train hellions themselves.

Siege Tank: functions as you would expect from multiplayer.  They also gain an upgrade that allows you to rebuild them after death at the location they died for a gas cost.

Goliath: all-purpose ground unit.  Has excellent anti-air capabilities, and decent ground attack as well.  Also has some upgrades to make them almost overpowered, making other units almost unnecessary.

Thor: slow, hulking mech unit.  Powerful ground attack, great anti-light anti-air attack as well.  I never use them though due to how slow and expensive they are.

Cyclone: the new LotV mech unit that can lock on to a target and deal serious damage while on the move.  It's pretty good in the train mission, and has some applications, but are a bit more expensive than goliaths.  I don't use them, but they aren't conceptually bad.

Wraith: instead of Vikings he gets these air superiority fighters.  They get to cloak, and can also be upgraded with better air-to-ground.  However you won't be making these for their ground attack anyway, and I think goliaths are more easily accessible for anti-air.

Science Vessel: your mobile detector and caster in one.  Very useful for healing, which can be upgraded to be casted for free too.  Also can get defensive matrix to protect high value units.

Hercules: a huge dropship from the WoL campaign.  Can carry a lot of units, and is perfect for transporting siege tanks.  A nice perk, but not really necessary.

Perdition Turret: short range AoE flame thrower turret.  Great against zerglings and zealots in the early game.  I usually make 2 of these at a choke point to start and salvage them later.

Devastation Turret: single target long range ground-to-ground turret.  Better against Protoss, and somewhat against Terran early waves.  I make 1 at a choke point and salvage later.  I sometimes almost make 1 near my expansion to clear out rocks.

Missile Turret: I would only make these if I need detection at certain areas against a Terran enemy.  Defending against air units usually is not a thing in co-op.

Initial Traits and Abilities
- Drakken Laser Drill: A giant turret you get for free, being able to attack a single target anywhere on the map where you have vision.  Can be upgraded as you level up for additional abilities in the form of linear AoE that is also map length, or a nuke-like attack to quickly decimate an enemy position.

Level Upgrades
1) Vehicle Specialist: your factories and starports are built 20% faster, and there is no gas cost for factories. In case you didn't realize, Swann is a mech Terran player.  He can't even make barracks at all.

2) Combat Drop (240 second cooldown): Call down 4 A.R.E.S. units anywhere you have vision, lasting 60 seconds.  They can be used to defend early on the moment they are available, and can clear rocks at expansions too.  They also stun any enemy they land on when you call them, so aim properly.  A power spike in essence since it's an ability to speed up whatever needs to be done, whether it is defending or expanding.

3) Betty and the Gang: improves all of your turrets in some manner.  Halves the costs of perdition turrets, gives +3 range to devastation turrets, and some AoE to missile turrets.  All quite nice in a single package.

4) Pulse Cannon: initially, you can upgrade your laser drill to increase its DPS and gain the concentrated beam ability.  This lets you upgrade it again to buff its DPS once more and gain the ability to nuke a large area.  Just another perk for your pew pew laser.  Not a huge buff, but nice to have another wave clearing ability.

5) Vespene Harvester: allows you to spend 100 minerals to place a drone on a friendly gas extracting building, giving you and your ally an additional 2 vespene every 6(?) seconds.  An immense power spike, as with this ability, you swap from being gas starved to mineral starved.  The ability is used by your CC with no cooldown, so you should have 1 for each gas harvesting structure (8 total assuming 2 bases each from you and your ally).

6) Thor: allows you to build Thor.  I've seen these in play multiple times, but they are still just as slow and clunky as ever.  I'd personally go with goliaths for anti-air and tanks for anti-ground; there are specific upgrades for those units that make them a lot less unwieldy to use.

7) Factory Cache Upgrade: unlocks additional unit-specific upgrades for goliaths, cyclones, and tanks that are researchable from a tech lag.  A power spike; the goliath one in particular makes them all-around useful in every situation, and the siege tank one buffs its primary damage target by a lot.

8) Improved SCVs: allows you to use multiple SCVs to build structures faster (like how Humans in Warcraft 3 could do so, but to no additional cost to you), and repairing uses no resources.  I don't play Swann that much, but I can see some builds taking serious advantage of this to get expansions up very quickly.  An upgrade that makes life just a bit easier.

9) Armory Cache Upgrade: unlocks upgrades to increase the range of all of your vehicles by 1, and self-repairing.  The former can allow Goliaths to outrange static defenses if you also have their unit-specific range upgrade too I believe, as well as the ability to snipe the Pirate ship in the Rifts to Korhal mission with no resistance (it's "aggro" range is less than the goliath's anti-air range fully upgraded!)

10) Tech Reactors: instead of deciding to make reactors or tech labs, you can now build these from the WoL campaign.  At 75 minerals and 75 gas they are a bit more expensive than the obsolete add-ons, but well worth the ability to dual-train any mech unit.  I'd say it's enough to be considered a power spike.

11) Engineering Bay Cache Upgrade: allows you to research more structure upgrades from the engineering bay, like the auto-repair or shriek turrets for bunkers.  Just gravy upgrades really; I rarely even make an Ebay.

12) Immortality Protocol: allows you to "rebuild" destroyed tanks and thors on the battlefield for a gas cost.  The rebuild time is pretty fast too.  Feels more like a convenience, but you do save on minerals, and works well with your vespene drones as a gas dump.

13) Starport Cache Upgrade: allows reserachable upgrades for your wraiths and sci vessels.  Double air-to-ground damage for wraiths isn't anything really noteworthy as it's naturally weak, and the sci vessel can gain the defensive matrix ability.  It's ok, but not necessary; the free-healing upgrade doesn't require this level unlock and is much more useful in my opinion.

14) Six for the Price of Four: just like it says, your combat drop will have 6 A.R.E.S. instead of 4, making it 50% more powerful.  Not much to say really.

15) Mechanical Know-How: increases the life of all of your mech/starport units by 20%.  A power spike for sure.  Just a straight buff, not much to it.

Pointers
- You are given the ability to make different turrets for a reason.  Usually you can handle the defense of the initial waves with them, and salvage them later so you can build an army, unless you're doing the Temple mission and you need them for the whole duration.  You can also build 1 devastation turret to clear out rocks at expansions and salvage it later

- You can build your expansion CC early and just float it to its proper location once you clear the rocks.

- Goliaths will be your main general purpose unit.  They can handle any threat coming their way, and become way better once you get their upgrades.  I wouldn't even bother with wraiths for anti-air, as they are more expensive to make than goliaths and come from starports, which do cost gas to build.

- Tanks are only really good on defensive missions or the train mission.  They also help a little bit in the Lock and Load mission when you need to leave some troops behind to defend your locations.  You can use the Hercules dropship to show off if you want.

-  A few science vessels are perfect for healing support and detection.  Anywhere from 6-10 should be enough.  They cost 200 gas per sci vessel though, so keep an eye on your gas count.

- My standard build is 14 depot 15 factory 15 gas, then build my 2 perdition turrets and 1 devastation turret at the choke point when minerals allow.  I don't make hellbats in general, and only being making goliaths after starting their upgrades.  At around the first wave of enemies is when I consider making an armory to upgrade the laser drill (while it is upgrading it still functions as normal).  If you have an ally that can cover defenses even better (Karax for example), you may be able to skip on the choke point turrets and expand even quicker.

- Once you get access to tech reactors, you should not need more than 3 factories and 1 starport.  Earlier though, you could go with 4 factories.  Goliaths can be reactored out, but you need one factory with a tech lab to get their upgrades.

Artanis (dem templar builds)

Overview
Artanis is a Protoss commander who specializes in mostly "classic" Protoss units with the help from the Spear of Adun.  He has a couple of neat aspects through traits and leveling that make him an excellent support commander.  You'll have access to all parts of the Protoss tech tree, though some units will be missing or replaced by something else.

Units
Aiur Zealot: Your standard zealot from multiplayer.  At a certain level he will get a large axe to swing around, and an upgrade for some AoE damage.

Dragoon: Large, range unit.  It is similar to the ones from the LotV campaign: slow, fairly high damage (especailly against armored units), and upgradable attack range and health.  If you need a lot of anti-air you can mass up these, though many times there is a better option...

High Templar (HT): a slow moving caster that is iconic to Starcraft.  In coop, they do have a standard attack, and still have their feedback and trademark psionic storm and archon meld abilities.  Psi storm in particular is even more useful here due to certain upgrades.

Archon: the result of merging 2 HT.  They function just like you'd expect from multiplayer, but as you level, they are upgraded to retain the feedback and psi storm abilities, making them an excellent unit all around.  You can use these units to cover any anti-air problems as well.

Immortal: lore-wise, they are dragoons that have been refitted for strict ground-to-ground combat.  They act just like their counterparts in multiplayer.

Reaver: trainable after you level up.  A ground siege unit that hearkens back to Brood War.  The scarabs though are better, as they can scale cliffs, and their damage upgrades align with ground attack upgrades from the forge instead of being a separate researchable upgrade.

Observer: because you need a detector.

Phoenix: air-to-air superiority flyer.  Only 1 mission may entice you to build a large fleet of these, and it's quite fun to watch them graviton beam almost everything in sight by merely flying over them.

Tempest: long range capital ship.  Or so it wants you to believe.  It's range is somewhat deceptive, since it can be rather short based on whether the target is air or ground.  I only built these once, and they aren't bad, but they feel more gimmicky.

Initial Traits and Abilities
- Pylon Power (60 second cooldown): allows you to put a pylon energy field anywhere you have vision, minus the pylon itself.  You can only have 1 deployed at a time.  This lets you reinforce your army quickly and is a staple of any engagement.

- Orbital Strike (50 energy, 60 second cooldown): call down attacks that do 50 (or 100 against armored) damage per strike.  You get to call down 5 strikes.  Works like in the campaign version.  Pales in comparison to Karax's version though, but it can help against initial waves.  The HUD is annoying since you can't see or use the minimap.

- Shield Overcharge (50 energy, 300 second cooldown): places a 100 damage shield over all friendly units and structures that lasts 20 seconds.  Can be upgraded to provide an additional 100 damage protect when you level up a bit.  Great for starting an encounter or saving a base.  Just don't forget you have it!

Level Upgrades
1) Swift Retribution: units you warp in do so almost instantaneously.  Reinforcing a position has never been easier when you combo this with your pylon power skill.  No need to worry about pylon placement near gateways or nexi either.

2) Guardian Shield: friendly units that are going to take fatal damage instead are rendered invulnerable for 5 seconds.  This effect can only proc once a minute.  An immense life saver useful with all heroes; a power spike for sure.

3) Superior Warp Gates: all buildings that can warp in units can store 3 charges.  Useful in tweaking certain build orders.  Not that useful if you are constantly on point with macromanaging your production.  I wouldn't complain though; if you max our your army, the stored charges come in handy.

4) Twilight Council Upgrade Cache: this used to be a major issue with zealots gaining axes and lowering their DPS.  Blizzard has fixed this now, so "axelots" are superior to standard zealots.  Whirlwind gives them AoE to handle swarmy units, and dragoons get a HP buff along with their normal range upgrade.

5) Reaver: REVA REVA REVA REVA REVA REVA REVA REVA ok that's enough.  Instead of colossi, you get these BW iconic siege units instead.  Not totally amazing, but are great as ground-to-ground support DPS.

6) Templar Archives Upgrade Cache: more upgrades for your HTs.  Psi storm restoring shields is more of a perk, as it already does not do damage to friendly units (unlike in multiplayer).  Also, allowing full energy HTs at warp in is useful for quick AoE.

7) High Archon: Allows archons to use feedback and psi storm.  Unless you really wanna get the most out of your energy with psi storm, you can safely make archons from HTs and retain all of their casting abilities.

8) Warp Harmonization: allows your Robotics Facilities and Starports to use the warp-in mechanic.  I'd consider this a power spike as well.  Note that they will automatically be mapped to your warp in hotkey; you just have to tab to them.

9) Reaver Upgrades Pack: upgrades for reavers - extra carrying capacity and larger splash radius.  The latter you should definitely invest in if you build reavers.

10) Solar Bombardment (450 second cooldown): rain lasers in a large area, starting at its center and slowly growing outward.  Each laser does only 15 (30 versus armored) damage, but with 200 shots, you're bound to get a lot of mileage per use.  Best used to wipe out a powerful wave or fortified location.

11) Tempest: mentioned above.  More of a niche unit in coop missions.  I wouldn't recommend them since they aren't the fasting units around, but then again, none of the units Artanis has are fast except for the Phoenix.

12) Fleet Beacon Cache Upgrade: more upgrades for your starport units.  Phoenix can lift 2 units with graviton beam, and Tempest can get the disintegration ability.  The double pickup is rather funny to see when you mass Phoenix, and disintegration is great against very high HP targets.

13) Shield Overcharge: doubles the amount of shields you and your ally get when you use this ability.  There's a lot of shielding to go around now.  A moderate spike in power I'd say.

14) Solar Onslaught: doubles the amount of lasers fired when you use this ability.  More of a gravy skill; it's already powerful, and now it will clear whatever is in the area.

15) Glory of the Daelaam: grants you the supply cap of 200 right from the start.  A massive power spike if you ask me.  You can make Artosis pylons and save thousands of minerals from not having to keep up with pylon production for supply (btw if you don't know what an Artosis pylon is, just image one pylon powering as many buildings as possible).  Whole build orders can change due to this, and the saved minerals can go to earlier zealots to clear expansion rocks or to quicker gateway production, or whatever.

Pointers
- Artanis makes a great support commander with all the shielding skills and lasers he can call down.  Use them early and often to defend against initial enemy waves.

- You can start with 13 pylon 14 gateway.  Assimilator can be started as early as 15, but not necessary.  Most of the time I try to get to at least twilight council tech to get upgrades for zealots ASAP while also trying to take an expansion.  Most of these costs are minerals, so gas can wait a little bit.

- Most working compositions are zealot/dragoon or zealot/archon.  Both are a little slow, but the latter usually wins out since high archons can psi-storm all over the place and are not as mineral intensive as dragoons.  Reavers can be incorporated later if you have spare resources.  Better to plan out which comp you will use, so you can only spend resources on applicable units.

- Phoenix are best used in the Void Launch mission, and Tempests are great for offensive missions in general.

- Even if you don't go for reavers, having the robo bay for observers is necessary at higher difficulties, especially if your enemy is Terran.  You can psi storm cloaked units, but they are still very aggravating to deal with if you only have psi-storm available.

- For early defense, you can have a pylon or building draw in initial waves, and then use your orbital strike to kill them.  Helps if you are fast expanding and only have minimal defenses.

Kerrigan (Warcraft 3 like gaming)

Overview
Kerrigan is a Zerg commander that has a direct role in coop as a unit, similar to how the campaign in Heart of the Swarm.  You build up an army like usual, but she is a unit you control and is the cornerstone of your forces.  She can't solo everything like in the campaign, but there is a noticeable drop in power of your forces if she is killed.

Units
Kerrigan: Hero unit you control.  Automatically hatches from your main hatchery after a certain amount of time elapses from the start of the mission or after being killed.  Possesses abilities for direct combat:
- Leaping strike: self-explanatory; she leaps towards a target area for big damage.  You can do two of these in a row at full energy.
- Psionic Shift: dash through a straight path, damaging everything in your way.  Preferable against masses of weak units, like marines and zerglings.  Again can be used twice in succession at full energy.
- Assimilation Aura (120 second cooldown): creates a large aura around her, where any enemy unit that dies within it will leave behind resources you can pick up.  The amount of minerals or gas left behind varies based on what unit was killed.  Quite useful for boosting reinforcements after an engagement or starting up an expansion or upgrades sooner.
- Immobilization Wave: gained after reaching a certain level (will describe later).
She also has several passive abilities that are either researched while in a mission or gained through leveling.

Zergling: basic cannon fodder unit that is hatched in pairs.  You'll be relying on them early on, and even later as a quick means of bolstering your forces.  They die quick, but they can do a large amount of DPS when unchecked.  They can get upgrades to make them very powerful as your level.

Queen: a unit that provides macro mechanics and base defense.  They function like their multiplayer counterparts, but also gain enhanced creep tumors after a certain level.

Hydralisk: your main source of anti-air other than Kerrigan herself whenever you choose to compose a ground army.  They can also serve as the backbone of your forces.

Lurker: an assault unit that burrows to attack.  I don't think they are quite the same as their multiplayer counterparts, but they are still pretty good at defending positions.

Mutalisk: your flying general purpose unit.  Can morph into broodlords once you get a greater spire.  I seldom make these, as base harassment is not something you do on these types of missions.  They are pretty fast though.

Ultralisk: large, hulking melee assault units.  They can take quite a punch, and do free AOE damage with each attack.  They can also be the main backbone of an army late in a mission when supported by hydras or zerglings.

Brood Lord: long range air-to-ground flyers.  They are best for besieging bases, but you rarely do that in these missions.  In missions where you need to capture and hold an area they could be useful, but they come in at the end of the tech tree.

Overlord (OL)/Overseer: here for completeness sake.  A source of detection mainly.  Just make a couple of overseers to follow your forces around.


Initial Traits and Abilities
- You get to control Kerrigan herself; that's about it.  She'll gain extra powers as you level.

Level Upgrades
1) Mutating Carapace: gains temporary life as she attacks.  Reminds me of her passive ability from Heroes of the Storm.  Also allows her to auto-resurrect if killed at your main hatchery.


2) Immobilization Wave (300 second cooldown): Kerrigan leaps into the air, then stuns all enemies in a large radius.  It's a pretty good ability which is gained very early in leveling.  A perfect way to begin an engagement, especially after leaping into the fray.  I would consider it to be a power spike, but I would have liked it even more if it wasn't for another certain commander who has the same skill, but is map wide and can be used more frequently...

3) Ravage: doubles Leaping Strike's damage and range.  Kerrigan can cover a lot of ground quickly with this, and it allows her to OHKO more units.

4) Spawning Pool Cache Upgrade: allows research for 2 new zergling upgrades.  +10 life goes a long way for a zergling, and the armor removal is really good for late game engagements.

5) Unlock Lurker: allows you to morph lurkers from hydralisks after morphing a lurker den from a hydralisk den.  I personally don't use lurkers, but I know they can be very useful in defensive missions.

6) Hydralisk/Lurker Den Cache Upgrade: grants the ability to research +20 life for hydras, the frenzy ability for hydras (think stimpack with no downside), and a +3 range upgrade for lurkers (12 range is crazy).  A good power spike for those hydra based compositions.

7) Malignant Creep: gives friendly units an attack boost while on creep and 200% more health regeneration. It also allows creep tumors to spread creep faster and farther - it is quite noticeable.

8) Omega Worm: allows a nydus network to create enhanced versions of nydus worms which do not cost anything and deploy units faster.  It also allows allies to use them.  Very useful in missions where you need to be at different places quickly, but not absolutely necessary in any mission.

9) Kerrigan Cache Upgrade: unlocks traits for Kerrigan that can be researched in an evolution chamber.  She can gain a "chain lightning" effect on her basic attack, and reduce cooldowns by 20%.  A big power spike even if the former ability was not included.

10) Fury: Kerrigan's attack speed increases as she does consecutive attacks.  You gain a 10% speed increase each time, with a max of 60%.  You lose it if she does not attack for 5 seconds.

11) Spire Cache Upgrade:  Allows mutalisks to do double damage to armored targets, and a big buff to brood lord speed.  Nice, but not necessary.  The former helps against capital ships quite a bit.

12) Zergling Evolution: Raptor: your zerglings are not permanently enhanced to jump cliffs and leap towards targets.  Essentially, they can charge and scale cliffs now.  Oh, and addition damage.  Power spike for sure.

13) Ultralisk Cache Upgrade: unlocks extra traits for evolution at the ultralisk cavern.  Burrow charge lets them get to their target without derping around your army, and the life drain trait helps with sustaining them.

14) Ultralisk Evolution: Torrasque: grants ultralisks the ability to respawn free of charge after death automatically after a certain time period.  This can only happen once every so often, so don't send them on suicide missions.  This just helps with maintaining ones that fall while in battle.

15) Queen of Blades: simply makes Kerrigan a lot stronger since you can use abilities more often with faster energy regeneration.  Also makes it easier to get the achievement for Leaping Strike kills.

Pointers
- If you liked the feel of how HotS missions played, you shouldn't have much trouble adjusting to Kerrigan's playstyle.  You have a Hero unit surrounded by your normal army tearing through your enemies with some skills from the HotS campaign and other new ones.

- A standard opener can be 13 OL 15 gas 15 pool.  The spawning pool builds quicker than in multiplayer, and the early gas can go to ling speed.

- Usually you'll have to make a few sets of lings to clear out rocks at your expansion site, and either help with initial defense or clearing the rocks of your ally's expansion.  They can help Kerrigan later in the mission.  She can usually tackle the 2nd and possibly 3rd wave of enemies alone.

- Once you get to Lair tech, be sure to have 1 or 2 overseers at some point, especially if you have a Terran opponent.  For some reason they love to have banshees or ghosts sneak into your base can cause havoc.  You could also have spore crawlers, but if you are getting nuked they may not be in range to detect them.

- For the most part, you should rally your army to Kerrigan, but keep in mind what path they take to get to her.

- Coop is a great place to practice creep spread.  Once leveled, your creep spread is easy and can spread very fast around the map, or at least to main parts of the map.

- Do not forget about her long-cooldown abilities.  Both are very key to survival, as one gives you resources to expand your tech/army, and the other can save a bad engagement, or initiate a good one.

- IMO she doesn't have any OMG power spikes as she levels like other commanders, but there are some levels that make life a bit easier, notably at level 2 and 12.  Both help with initial defenses.

Co-op James Raynor (hold that A button!)

Overview
James Raynor is a Terran commander who specializes in infantry units.  Most Raynor players will opt for the "bio" Terran style of play, relying on marines and medics to handle anything that the mission throws at them.  While he does have access to the Factory and Starport (and even has level upgrades tailored to them), he works best with infantry, and is designed with that in mind when looking over his traits).

Units
Marine: standard, general purpose infantry unit.  Usually the unit of choice.  Trains quickly and are easily massable since you can produce these from barracks with reactors.

Firebat: anti-light "melee" specialist.  Could be good versus Zerg, but I'd stick with marines.

Marauder: anti-armored specialist.  Could be good versus Terran/Protoss, but I'd stick with marines.

Medic: healing support unit.  These are what make your infantry sustainable.  Keep in mind their costs though; they requires a tech lab as well at a non-trivial amount of resources.

Vulture: speedy factory unit.  Can deploy spider mines for setting up traps for incoming waves.  Sort of gimmicky though.

Siege Tank: the classic mech factory unit.  Can switch between a mobile tank mode and a stationary siege mode which grants increased range, damage, and splash damage.  Unfortunately Raynor's specialty is in infantry.

Viking: long range air-to-air unit that can transform into a ground-to-ground unit.  Sort-of the replacement of the goliath from Brood War.  May have some uses in missions where you need anti-air.

Banshee: air-to-ground starport unit.  You get an ability to summon several of these for free quickly.  For now, there aren't many situations where you'd need to train them.

Battlecruiser: capital class all-purpose unit.  Can be trained once you reach level 5.  Comes with some abilities, though the most useful one is the warp ability to jump to different locations when needed.  I never train these to be honest, but they probably also come with the yamato cannon.


Initial Traits and Abilities
- Call down the Hyperion (360 second cooldown): summon your overpowered battlecruiser anywhere to support your armies or punch a hole in your enemies' defenses.  The first time you summon it should probably be used to assist against an initial attack wave.  Afterwards it can be used to either supplement an attack, or a quick OH CRAP moment if you have units out of position.  Comes with the classic yamato cannon for sniping high HP targets, point defense drones that resemble the ones Ravens can deploy (but last a lot longer), and can jump to any location on the map.

- Orbital Command or OC (150 mineral upgrade from Command Center (CC) ): I'm listing this here because you cannot upgrade your CC with Swann.  It is also missing the supply drop ability.  But otherwise, it's just like multiplayer.  The MULE calldown gets buffed when you reach a certain level too.

- Bunkers/Missile Turrets: listed here for completeness sake.  Swann cannot make infantry, so that's one distinction.

Level Upgrades
1) Infantry specialist: your barracks are build 50% faster, and you train infantry units 20% faster.

2) Air Strike (240 second cooldown): allows you to summon 5 banshees anywhere you have vision.  They start cloaked and last for a good duration, though at some point, they run out of energy for cloaking.  They still provide excellent DPS to support your armies or stop an advancing wave.

3) Nano Projectors: allows you to upgrade Firebats to increase their attack range by 2 and Medics to increase their healing range by 2.  Medics are already essential, and this helps keep them behind marines and not run into danger.  Quite the useful upgrade.

4) Infantry Cache Upgrade: researchable upgrades for firebats and medics, similar to ones encountered in the Wings of Liberty campaign.  The heal speed buff is very nice, and the firebat ones are gravy.

5) Point Defense Drone: allows the Hyperion to place PDDs near it.  You get 4 charges each time you summon the Hyperion.  They function just like the ones the Raven produces, and last a very long time too.  Seems more like gravy more than anything else; the Hyperion itself is very buff and you don't lose anything from the Hyperion "dying" except it leaving the battlefield sooner if its HP drops to zero.

6) Unlock Battlecruiser: allows you to build Battlecruisers from starports.  Not that useful save for a couple of niche builds that employ these, and need their ability to warp around to defend key positions.  I wouldn't normally build these unless you are playing with someone you know and is aware you are going for these end-tier units.

7) Engineering Bay Cache Upgrade: researchable upgrades for bunkers.  Nothing really new or really useful here.  Adding a free turret and extra HP for bunkers is ok, but not game changing.

8) Orbital Drop Pods: units trained from a barracks/factory no longer spawn at the barracks, but will "drop" into the rally point of the barracks/factory.  Sort of similar to how Protoss can warp in anywhere, but you don't need to be in a pylon radius.  Makes reinforcing your army a heck of a lot easier, that's for sure.

9) Factory Cache Upgrade: buffs for widow mines from vultures and siege tanks in siege mode.  Again, you specialize in infantry, but if you decide to go with mech (e.g. goofing around with a Karax ally), the siege tank upgrades are so-so (faster transformations and better armor in siege mode).

10) Improved Calldown: MULE: using the calldown MULE ability will summon 2 MULES instead of 1.  This is a major power spike, allowing a huge increase in mineral income, and will allow you to support constant production out of more barracks.

11) Armory Cache Upgrade: why are they giving him these upgrades?  Extra range on mech units, and the ability for all mechanical units to have afterburner like speed for 8 seconds.  Again, for those who really want to go mech with this commander.

12) Orbital Depots: construction of supply depots is now near-instant (they "call down" depots instead of building them).  Another big power spike.  This saves worker mining time, and allows for some adjustments in build orders as loss of mineral mining is kept to a minimum.

13) Starport Cache Upgrade: upgrades for the banshee (linear AOE) and vikings (general AOE).  Once more, upgrades for a niche build.

14) Hyperion: Advanced Targeting: Giving +2 attack to all friendly units near your Hyperion is a gravy upgrade.  You don't have the Hyperion all the time, but this just gives an extra push to any army you bring it to.

15) Mercenary Munitions: a straight up DPS buff to your infantry units.  Not much to complain about, but nothing amazing.

Pointers
- If you like to build large squads of infantry, this commander is for you.  Focus on building up a large army of marines and medics for all-purpose DPS.  At 2 bases, you should be able to support 8-10 barracks, with 3 of them having tech labs for medics, and the rest with reactors for marines.

- You may build a factory just to gain access to an armory for the sole purpose of unlocking upgrades for your engineering bay.  I personally don't think you need Starports for anything unless you want to go BCs for some reason.

- The standard opening is 14 depot and 15/16 barracks, then refinery whenever you get 75 minerals while still producing SCVs.  You don't have to rush an add-on; you can always have 1 regular barracks building marines slowly while you make additional ones so you can have some standing force for defense or to clear the rocks at your expansion.  2 workers per mineral patch is still optimal - the worker counter still uses the 3 worker/patch notation, so you should technically only need 14/21 workers on minerals per base (the other should be 10/15).

- As you start making your barracks, I would start with having your first one producing marines almost non-stop until your 2nd or 3rd one has completed making their add-ons and are working on upgrades.  Stim and combat shields are just as useful as ever, and you want them ASAP.  The medic range upgrade can wait.

- You can build your expansion's CC before clearing the rocks.  Since you can always simply lift-off and land your CC closer to the mineral line, it would be wise to send an SCV to the expansion and start building before clearing the rocks out.  Early expansions in general in co-op missions are recommended.

- Based on who your ally is, you may or may not need to spend extra resources building up an army early.  All Protoss commanders have some calldown ability to help against initial waves.  Zerg commanders do not get their hero until the second wave, so you may need to coordinate as to how much army you both need.  Swann has turrets to help with initial defenses, and should build a couple at your choke point.

- Reserve a hotkey for any building that can produce units, including your OCs.  When it's time to build, simply press the hotkey for that building(s) and then press the appropriate key for unit production.  I always have all my OCs on one hotkey and all of my barracks on another hotkey.  Macro'ing is simplified into pressing 5SS and 6EEEAAAAAAAAAAA... (I hotkey OCs to 5 and barracks to 6; you can use any control group number you wish of course.  S for SCVs, E for Medics, and A for marines).

- Though I still have a habit of doing so, it's preferable NOT to use the F2 key to select your entire army.  I know the LotV and HotS campaign teach you to do this early on, but it's better to manually add new troops to your control groups.  To add units to an existing control group, select the units to add, hold the SHIFT key and press the control group key.  If you use the F2 key too often, other units you have positioned elsewhere will be included in your commands.  This can be very problematic with position, especially if you control any army that has casters or other special units (observers, vipers, etc).  F2 is more of an OH CRAP key when you need everything to come together.

Welcome!

So I decided to make a blog about my times with LotV.  I've played SC way back in the Brood War days (I'm talking 1998 and onward here).  I didn't follow the BW scene in Korea super-closely, but was familiar with the top players at the time.

Eventually in 2010 SC2 came out, and it was fun to relearn the game over again.  Battle.net 2.0 was very barren and not that user friendly IIRC; it just functioned for automatic match making.  Chatting was quite painful.  Then Heart of the Swarm came around, and I continued on.  Finally we're at LotV and the end of the SC2 story.  Multiplayer will continue on for god knows how long no matter how many "ded gaem" people say elsewise.

Based on the title of this blog you can guess that I main Zerg.  I only really play Terran/Protoss against the AI for level achievements.  I did play Protoss for 1/2 a season during HotS, but didn't like how I was tied to pylons for gateway production all the time.  I also felt dirty doing 2 base all-ins :P

At this time I'm a high Platinum 1v1 player.  I usually wind up in this position each season.  Once or twice I have broken into Diamond, but it never stuck.  If I ever start at gold (or even silver when matchmaking was all whack), I can climb back to plat.  So I guess that's where I'm supposed to be.

Since LotV I did want to check out the Allied Commanders game mode the most.  I was able to max out all the commanders' levels, so I'll probably start with my review on each of them before continuing on about Zerg play in general.