Even the strongest army needs support, and the Zerg is no
different.  You can punch your way through early game armies
and through inferior opponents with brute force, but once the enemy
begins using support, you need to as well to not forfeit the advantage
they provide.

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style="font-style: italic;">Overlord scouting is essential
to victory.  No unit goes to waste for the Zerg!

Overlords / Overseers



Cost – 100 minerals, and then 50 minerals and 100 gas to upgrade to an
Overseer



Build Time  – 25 seconds for an overlord, 17 seconds to evolve
it into an Overseer.



Combat Stats – 200 HP, 0 armor, no attack.  Flying/armored
armor types.  Very slow movement speed, can be upgraded to
moderate speed.  Does NOT detect invisible or burrowed units.



Early Game
– The moment the game starts, you should send your first Overlord in
the direction of your opponent, or at least one of their possible
starting locations.  Generally, you should send it to the
closest one due to the anemic movement speed.  
Against Protoss and Zerg Players, you can keep the Overlord around
until their Cybernetics Core or a little while after the Spawning Pool
finishes.  Obviously you’ll have a bit more to worry about
when scouting Terran, since a Marine or two will end up in a costly
loss early.



Your first two Overlords must survive.   Sending them
on scouting missions provides valuable information, but a 100 mineral
setback is too painful to suffer.  In addition, you’re not
running around with a lot of extra supply early on, so losing an
Overlord is your ticket to not producing any other units besides
overlords for some time.  Get your Overlords in, get your
information, and get out!



Once you have some Overlords to spare, you can put them at strategic
locations and let them die if discovered.   Such
spots include over high terrain in the middle of the map, high terrain
over expansions, choke points, and other expected routes or points of
interest to your opponent.   If all of those points
are covered, you should position them outside your base in a line to
generate creep to speed up your troop movements.



Once your creep highway is underway, you can also bring up a queen to
start a Creep Tumor if you haven’t done so already.  Doing
that gives you the ability to move the Overlord wherever you want and
survey elsewhere.



Mid-game Overseers
– At any given point after a lair, you should have at least one
Overseer around.  Every race has some kind of stealth trickery
that can ruin your day, and Overseers are the fastest stealth detector
in the game once upgraded.  If you’re caught off guard,
Overseers evolve extremely fast compared to other stealth detectors, so
you won’t be caught for long unless your Overlords are out of position
as well.

Changelings are stupidly powerful scouts against most
players.  Since detection is so rarely used against Zerg
players, your Changelings must be detected and killed
manually.  Players at higher skill levels often spend little
time focused on their standing army, and you can often sneak a
Changeling in without any fuss.

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Pound for pound, the toughest unit
in the skies.  While there may be more HP on other units, the
Corruptor devastates them with its abilities and bonus to massive
attack.

Corruptors / Brood Lords



Cost – 150 Minerals, 100 Gas, 2 supply.  Brood Lord evolution
– 150 Minerals, 150 Gas, 2 additional supply.



Build Time - 40 seconds for Corruptor, 34 seconds to evolve into a
Brood Lord



Combat Stats

Corruptor – 200 HP, 2 armor, 14 damage with a +6 bonus against
Massive.  Armored/Flying armor types.  Gains 1 attack
versus both normal and massive per upgrade.  Can corrupt a
single unit, causing it to take 20% bonus damage for 30
seconds.  Can only attack air.

Brood Lord – 225 HP, 1 Armor, 20 damage attack.  Attack sends
out Broodlings that can be attacked and attack very quickly for minor
damage.  Can only attack ground units.



Corruptors –
While they’re the toughest unit in the skies for anti air for their
cost, they’re also the weakest pound for pound when defending
them.   Corruptors are your weapon of choice to
demolish enemy Phoenix squads, and are viable fighters against
Mutalisks as well.



Corruption is a powerful ability but requires a steady hand and good
targeting.  Air units love to stack up, and you can corrupt
the same target over and over again with misclicks.  In
addition, you need to make sure you are still focusing your
fire.  Casting Corruption will cause the Corruptor to target
the nearest enemy unit, and reset any commands they were doing.



These will beat Vikings and Void Rays in small confrontations, but the
moment volleys of fire are being exchanged or a Void Ray reaches its
final charge the Corruptor will fall instantly. 



Brood Lords
-  Brood Lords are an overkill unit.  You either win
the game with these, or the game ends in a counter attack shortly
afterwards.  Approaching these from the ground is a fool’s
errand for your opponent.  If your opponent hasn’t built a
Stargate/port/Spire, Brood Lords can deal the finishing blow in a
hurry. 



Evolve these in position to immediately attack.  If you’re
moving them across the map, you’re doing it wrong!  Strike
immediately, and use terrain to your advantage if your enemy’s forces
are ground-based. 

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style="font-style: italic;">Scary as hell, but big beacons
to be shot at in battle.  Keep them in back!

Infestors   

Cost – 100 Minerals, 150 Gas, 2 Supply



Build Time  – 50 seconds



Combat Stats – 90 HP, 0 Armor, Armored armor type.  Has no
attack.  Can move while burrowed once burrow is
researched.  Very slow movement while burrowed, moderate
movement above ground.



Infested Terrans
- After having this ability shuffled around several times, it returns
to the Infestor once more to vomit eggs everywhere.  The
Infested Terrans have been buffed to the point of threatening, but are
still horribly slow.  At the same time, you can’t deploy them
directly to the front lines unless the combat is heavy or they’ll be
destroyed before they can do any damage.  These can make good
worker killers, or for denial of the area at least until the Infested
are dealt with.



 Neural Parasite
– The goal with this ability isn’t necessarily to take the
unit.  The goal is to have the Infestor survive long enough to
destroy its cost in units, while denying your opponent the kills it
would have gotten with said unit.  Positioning is everything,
as it is with many Zerg units.  You either want to do this way
behind your front lines, or way behind the enemy’s back
lines.  The longer the Infestor survives, the more value this
ability has.  Rest assured that the Infestor WILL die after
doing this.



Fungal Growth
– Half the damage of a psi storm, and holding units in place during it;
what’s not to like?  



Remember that this reveals stealth.  It’s an extremely
powerful counter to clusters of Banshees and Dark Templar trying to
sneak by.



It also demolishes air units of any type since they like to cluster up,
and use their mobility to their advantage.  Disabling both of
these strengths makes them fodder for the rest of your army.

Now that it’s instant, it’s even easier to target than ever. 
Fling it around the moment you engage an opponent and if they decide to
run, they decide to lose a chunk of their army.  Fungal Growth
is a tool that forces encounters.


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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