Help, My Dad and Starcraft - Page 4

01:00 - 02:00 The first part of the game is forced, both players need to produce as many mining units as possible.

02:10 - 04:00 Players needs to build a Barracks and a Factory, without these buildings a player cannot produce good attacking units.

02:50 Mind is deviating from the normal opening game by prioritizing getting early gas. This will enable him to get out a few more Tank-units in beginning and gain a temporary spatial advantage at the cost of producing fewer units later on.

04:30 - 05:30 Fantasy is getting an expansion, he will produce fewer attacking units while this expansion is being built and therefore need to defend. If he succeeds in securing the expansion, he will be able to produce double the amount of units.

In the meantime Mind is delaying his own expansion further in favour of another building. With the Starport Mind will build the Wraith. This unit will consolidate his spatial advantage.

06:00 - 07:30 Mind has a superior army and goes out to secure a better position on the battlefield. Fantasy has to stay with his units at his expansion to defend because of Minds flying Wraith.

09:00 - 10:00 Fantasy has more units than Mind thanks to him building an earlier expansion. It is hard for him to utilizing his extra units though, they have a very limited space to manouver. Minds fewer units is much better placed.

10.30 - 11.00 Fantasy tries to break out to the center of the map but fails and looses more units than Mind.
11.00 - 11.30 Fantasy also does a flanking attack but his droppship was shooten down before it could do any damage.

11:30 - 15:00 Mind is winning. He continues to strengthen his contain to make sure Fantasy is completely blocked in.

15:00 Mind has built another expansion. Fantasy has also built a new expansion, but Minds is better since it contains gas, which is needed for producing more tanks. Soon Mind will produce more tanks than fantasy.

16:00 - 20:30 Fantasy use droopship flanking tactics to try and get back in the game. Minds contain holds.

20:30 Mind moves in with his superior army and destroys Fantasys expansion.

23:00 Soon Fantasy will get checkmated. He gives up, GG.

In both chess and starcraft this is the most essential one. The one with the most units are usually ahead (if your dad is a good chessplayer he probably has better understanding of this element than you do). Some units are more valuable than others and you want to kill off valuable enemy units while protecting your own.

Units are better placed attacking the enemy miners (compare to King in chess) than in some far-away corner, some units are better suited for some operations than others. Controlling the map helps by getting better placed units and making expanding easier. Chess is also a game where build orders is very important.

How much time you have to consider different moves and strategies is very important elements in both chess and starcraft. Usually contenders seek to make their own play easy and their opponent difficult and time consuming. Chess being turn-based doesn't make much difference in this case. Be carefull with using this argument however, some chessplayers are really put off by cheesy strategies which aims to confuse or trick opponents. I do not know your dads standpoint on this issue.

Chess is a game of complete information, in other words, scouting is both impossible and unnecessary. I have two suggestions to deal with this:
1. There is chess-variants incorporating incomplete information. Get him to play a few games of dark chess for him to grasp the concept - http://play.chessvariants.org/erf/DarkChss.html
2. Begin by showing him games where incomplete information or scouting does not impact the outcome of the game (do not show him a buildorder ZvZ win).

In chess there is plenty of opportunities to loose units, but only one way of getting a stronger army yourself (you can "morph" a pawn into the superior queen).
This resource gathering system will take a little explaining. You could try to simplify it by comparing getting an expansion base in starcraft to gaining an additional queen in chess.

In chess both players start out the same and has the same possibilities (except for white moving first). In starcraft there is three different races and starting locations, making the game potentially unbalanced from the start. Avoid this problem by showing him a mirror matchup, preferably on a symmetrical 2 or 4 player map.

Both of these are ways of making your overall army better in the long run at the cost of temporarily producing less units. No need for a detailed explanation here.