lang="RU">Even if you
think you're the champion of
the
Terran and the bane of the Zerg, going online to some forums and seeing
strategies will confuse even the most hardened player if they've never
seen the
terminology before.  Starcraft 1 had its fair share of this,
but over the
course of the many years of following it most of it could be figured
out fairly
easily.  With Starcraft 2 around the corner though, we here at
Ten Ton
Hammer don't want you to be in the dark when watching the best players
and hearing
seemingly foreign commentary, so here's a good start towards filling
out your
vocabulary.


For All Players



APM - Actions Per Minute.  Generally refers to your ability to
control
your units, build more of them, and continually manage your economy and
expand it. 
Most players will barely break 100, semi-pros hover a little under 200,
and the
pro level of Starcraft 1 is anywhere from 250-400.  Even if
this is
calculated through the general clicks and button presses you make,
don't make
random clicks or spam to raise this stat.  You're only kidding
yourself.  We'll elaborate on this in later articles.



Macro - Macromanagement skills.  This refers to the beginning
of the game
and managing your workers and production well.  Powerful macro
play will
keep your resources on hand below 500 and keep your unit production
facilities
running 100% of the time to build your army.



Micro - Micromanagement skills.  This term refers to your
ability to
control the fights as they break out.  If one of your Roaches
get wounded
and you can pull it back or burrow it to prevent its death, that's
micromanagement.  Focusing down the units that are the biggest
threats, or
the units your squads are most effective against, is all
micromanagement. 
Micromanagement enables you to take down superior armies with less
forces or
losses.



Worker Saturation - There's a point where you get no extra income from
extra
workers mining minerals or gas at a base.  It varies from
placement to
placement, but it averages to 2 per mineral patch, 3 per vespene
geyser. 



Rush, or All-Ins - Sacrificing your economy building to get out
offensive units
faster and catch your opponents off guard.  Common rushes
involve Reapers,
Hellions, Zealots, and Zerglings.  Some of these involve
building your
production facilities right on your opponent's doorstep. 
Doing this is
called a style=""> Proxy, described below. lang="RU">



Proxy - Putting up production facilities or a pylon outside your
opponent's
base, or inside them.  The key to a successful proxy is hiding
it, and a
hidden proxy is often quite difficult to stop.

lang="RU">Expo - Short for Expansion.

lang="RU">Timing Attack or Timing Push - These
attacks center around knowing the vulnerabilities in the build of your
opponent, or the strengths of your own build.  Say your
opponent is going all out with defense and rushing to Battlecruisers.
 If you know it takes 10 minutes to feasibly finish the
Starports and Fusion Core necessary to begin production, you know that
the time to attack is right as he's spent all of his money on the tech,
and you've spent the money on the army, givng you the advantage should
you strike then.  A lot of these center around
upgrades--Terran infantry are much fiercer with the first weapons
upgrade complete, and Zealots can kill a Zergling in two hits instead
of three once their first upgrade finishes.

lang="RU">

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Terran Specific


Bio - Refers to anything involving marines and marauders. 
Reapers and
ghosts are biological as well, but don't factor into match-ups as the
bread and
butter infantry.



Bioball - A clustered horde of infantry, generally at least 2:1 or 3:1
in ratio
of Marines to Marauders.  Main strength is tearing up melee
before it can
reach them with Stimpacks.



M3 or M&M&M - Marines, Marauders and
Medivacs.  The staple Terran
army of high damage with stimpacks, combined with mobility and healing
in the
Medivacs.



- Spacing out your Siege Tank lines so that one melee charge
doesn't
negate all of your long range firepower, or cause them to kill each
other all
at once.



Leapfrogging - Using two groups of siege tanks and using only one in
siege mode
at any given time, while the other moves forward and sieges up, then
un-siege
the one behind it. Repeat until in your opponent's face!



Orb - Orbital Command.  Generally the building most players
forget to make
the most of, it's your MULE station for extra resources.



Mech - This refers to builds that are centric around multiple factories
and a
mechanical ground army.  Large quantities of Siege Tanks with
Hellions in
front and Thors for light anti-air and punching holes in those tough
enough to
endure your first tank barrage make up this strategy.  As of
beta patch 5,
mech builds are generally non-viable due to the weakness of Thor
anti-air
versus large targets, and the amount of time it takes to produce the
army.



Wall-in - Terran Specific only because they do it so well.  On
any map
with a ramp or chokepoint, 1 barracks with add-on and 2 supply depots
is more
than enough to prevent any scouts from coming in and preventing melee
forces
from overrunning your marines early on.


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Zerg Specific



Speedling Builds - These revolve around getting Zerglings with enhanced
movement speed as fast as possible.  You put 3 drones in your
first
vespene geyser and pull one out every time it returns at 92 gas (so you
get 96,
then 100 gas, enough for the upgrade).  From there you can
deny your
opponent scouting, early expansions, and more with the map control you
get from
fast zerglings before counters hit the playing field.



Cracklings - Zerglings with both movement speed and attack speed
upgraded. 
Not as fierce in terms of raw damage output and attack speed as they
were in
Starcraft, but they benefit greatly from the improved pathfinding and
surrounding AI of Starcraft II to make up for it.



Burrow Micro - This refers to avoiding deaths of your units by timing
your
burrow to go off just before your unit dies.  This is only
effective when
your opponent has no detectors, or with Roaches since their burrowed
regeneration rate is so massive that they can actually tank quite a few
lesser
units while underground and detected, mostly due to their high innate
armor of
2.



Muta Stacking, or Muta Stacks - A well controlled group of mutalisks
that stays
mobile, harassing any and every target they can find undefended in
their
opponent style="">’ lang="RU">s
base.  Lone anti air defenders, workers, supplies and
overlords, and tech
buildings are all high priority targets of this type of
raiding.  style="">

style="">

 

lang="RU">The term comes from an old Starcraft trick
that had you controlling a large group of mutalisks with a unit far
away from
your base, typically an Overlord, that caused the Mutalisks to all
gather on
top of each other and create one ominous Mutalisk that the actual
number count
of them is a mystery.  This still exists in Starcraft 2, but
they will
stack quickly, and unstack quickly when attacking.  One of the
neat
methods of determining how big an enemy stack of Mutas is, is by
looking at the
strength of the shadow cast by them.


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Protoss Specific



Zealot Bombing - This is the fine art of loading up a Warp Prism with
Zealots
and dropping them slowly next to vulnerable units who are in range of a
large
line of Siege Tanks.  This is a lot less common in SC2 due to
the Terran
dependence on infantry and the general inferiority of Mech builds.



Cliffjumping/Cliffwalking -These refer to strategies with Colossi
making great
use of their ability to walk up and down different levels of terrain
without a
ramp.  Typically it's used to harass workers and other
undefended areas,
or buy time against melee hordes to keep frying them with lasers.



1gate, 2gate, 3gate - These are specific to Protoss builds, and it
refers to
how many Gateways you or your opponent get quickly.  You can
tell a lot
from how fast your opponent is teching, and can react accordingly if
they're
teching quickly or slowly.



Proxy Pylon - A proxy in general is most often pulled off by Protoss,
who can
do anything from one mere Pylon hidden in the back of a base, behind
tall grass
or smoke, or placed below a cliff.  From there you can warp in
a variety
of units, from a horde of Zealots to overrun from within, High Templar
to
Psionic Storm all of the opponent's workers, or Dark Templar to take
advantage
of a lack of detectors or assassinate workers without making a ruckus
on the
radar.

lang="RU">

lang="RU">

lang="RU">Did you get all of that?  It's
only the beginning of the
game's lifespan,
and more vocabulary and definitions will arise as the game
evolves.  We'll
keep you posted and informed, so you're never clueless when watching
the finals
of a tournament.... or participating in one!


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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