Starcraft 2 Golden Tip: Infested Terrans to the Rescue
oh man has anyone ever done this well at Starcraft before????
Howdy again, gamers! “Tremendous” Tim here with another Starcraft 2 dispatch from the Gold league, bringing you my expert advice on how to dominate players with incomplete skill sets!
If you’ve been following Locally Pwned for a while, you know that my New Year’s Resolution this year was to graduate two leagues in Starcraft up to Platinum. While I quickly soared up through Silver and into Gold, it’s been a bit of slog recently, as it’s apparent that I have deficiencies in my game, but I have no idea what they are or how to work on them. A bit of a conundrum, as you can imagine.
But I do know one thing that’s killing me in games — slow unit production. You see, with Zerg (my main race in the game), the Queen’s larvae inject ability is pretty much key to winning games past the 8 minute mark. This requires (for me, at least) taking your screen back your bases and commanding your Queens to larvae inject your Hatcheries, Lairs or Hives every 40 seconds or so. And being a bit forgetful in the game, that duty will often go unfulfilled late in the game, especially if I’m engaging my opponent in a battle on the other side of the map, meaning I often don’t have the larvae to rebuild my army after one of the aforementioned battles.
So what’s a Zerg player to do? When in doubt, Infestor it out! Yes, using the Zerg’s only useful caster unit effectively — specifically, for this post, its Infested Terran ability — can help make up for my sluggish unit production, especially when on the attack. You can’t go wrong with free units, as you’ll see in my description below. And don’t be afraid to click on the images provided for a better look at the action, as that don’t cost you nothing.
what brave little soldiers
1. Above, you can see that my army size isn’t anything to be writing home about. However, you can see that I have four Infestors along with my many Zerglings and Roaches, so my army’s potential size is actually much greater. Think of it as those little capsules you could put in water and they would grow into foam dinosaur shapes you had when you were a kid, only instead of water, you add the T key on your keyboard.
VILLAINS! SCOUNDRELS!
2. Looking here at the size of my opponent’s army, you can see that he should have enough to hold me off, assuming he properly reinforces this group. He actually has his units upgraded higher than mine, so I imagine he’s not afraid to engage the army I’m moving toward his third base. And of course, that will be his doom.
it’s like Easter, only instead of candy, those eggs are filled with death
3. I wait until we have our horns good and locked in battle before I unleash a torrential rain of Infested Terran eggs from the sky, trying to position them so they’ll absorb some attacks from my Roaches and Zerglings while also blocking the escape path of some of my opponent’s units. Once my Infested Terrans hatch, I have an army that is just as large as it was at the beginning of the skirmish, if not even larger. When done as effectively as shown here, you can not only take out an opponent’s base, but you can even level a good chunk of his army. Just pure win across the board, honestly.
the Infested Terrans enjoy their victory for another ten seconds until they burst into grape jelly
Protip: Words of caution with this strategy, though — Infested Terrans are temporary units, meaning they will explode into goo after 30 seconds, regardless of whether they’re attacked by your opponent. So, if wise, your opponent will pull his or her army back and wait for your Infested Terrans to run out, then attack your original force that includes Infestors with no energy to cast Fungal Growth or Neural Parasite. They’ll be expensive dead weight, so be careful how you engage with this strategy.
That’s all for this tip from the Gold league! Any thoughts on this strategy, or any tips of your own? Share as always, I’m all ears! And if you want more of my Starcraft 2 musings, follow me on Twitter @tlangeton, as long as you don’t mind the occasional Packers/pro wrestling/food related tweet. If that’s not enough Gold league Starcraft for you, you can track my progress on the ladder here at sc2ranks.com, where it lists all of my embarrassing stats under my Battle.net handle TremendousKB and laugh at my ridiculously high global and regional ranking.
Tim is a copy editor for the Wausau Daily Herald. His Playstation Online handle is eye_dubya_pwn, if you want to inflate your friends total. Contact him at tlangton@wdhprint.com.
