EPTIntroduction
After much consideration, I've decided that Starcraft (and Starcraft 2) are extremely similar to Magic: The Gathering. The two games share many of the different concepts for strategy, mechanics, and the metagame. If you've never played Magic: The Gathering, you might not get too much out of this article, although it's possible that it will provide you with some some insight into essential concepts from both games. Did Blizzard copy ideas from MTG and inject them into the framework for Starcraft? Somehow I doubt it, but in my mind, the similarities are extensive.
Metagame concepts: Johnny, Timmy, and Spike
Back in the early 2000s, Wizards of the Coast invented three archetypes to describe types of players in Magic: The Gathering. The original article describes Johnny, Timmy, and Spike, three different personalities with their own unique play styles. Ironically, I find these archetypes to also perfectly describe Starcraft players. http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr11b
Johnny: Johnny is the "combo" or creative player. This player has decided that the game is a form of self-expression where he can display brilliant knowledge of otherwise little-understood game mechanics. Johnny is almost always innovative, uncovering quirky, overlooked interactions between cards (in Starcraft, interactions between units) that result in mind-blowing wins. He doesn't always win, but when he does, it's usually in a totally unexpected and hard-to-counter way. Additionally, the most unique "cheese" strategies probably fall under Johnny. In professional MTG circles, Asian pro-gamers tend to be predominantly Johnnies, although that's not a hard and fast rule. Incidentally, the same thing applies to Starcraft.
Timmy: Timmy is the power gamer. He plays to have fun, and whether he wins or loses, he always chooses the biggest and flashiest plays over the most strategic ones. Timmy likes to play big: huge armies, huge creatures, and powerful "junk" plays that take forever to set up, but are overwhelming once they get online. In Starcraft, Timmy likes to turtle, he likes to macro to 200/200, and he almost always favors 4v4 over 1v1. Broodwars players remember those huge control groups of Carriers that newbies loved to send out: a purely Timmy move. But don't get the wrong idea. Timmy isn't a total noob, in fact, just the opposite; he understands the macro game perfectly, but he wants to have the most fun possible with the game.
Spike: Spike plays to win, plain and simple. He will always choose the most powerful strategy in the metagame; in MTG, Spike always had that insane $500 deck that steamrolled the local tournament every week. He copied it off the Internet, and he doesn't care about innovating: if it wins, it works. Sometimes Spike can be an asshole about winning, playing mind games with his opponent that fall just short of cheating. But Spike can also be like a martial arts guru: very few people can beat him, but he's a quiet guy, at peace with his superiority. He visits blogs, strategy sites, watches videos, and playtests constantly. In the pro-gaming scene, the Starcraft community (and the MTG community) is full of Spikes.
Mechanical Concepts
Color = Race: Magic: The Gathering is defined by its 5 colors. Each color represents not only an element, but a personality and archetype. Red is the color of scorching fire, unforgiving fury, and might-makes-right; White is the color of zealous justice, but also peace and holiness; Blue is the color of the mind and pursuit of knowledge, but also politics and trickery; Black is the color of ambition and ruthlessness, as well as corruption and decay; Green is the color of verdant growth, animal instinct, and primal wilderness. Although Starcraft only has 3 races, I would imagine that each one can be represented by a color combination from Magic. The Zerg would be Black/Red/Green, for example.
Life Total = Buildings: The ultimate goal of a game of Magic is to play cards that reduce your opponent's life total from 20 to 0, thus winning you the game. (There are other more obscure methods of winning, such as locking down the game to the point where your opponent just quits, but for the sake of comparison, we'll stick to the life total.) In Starcraft, pretend that your number of buildings is equal to your life total. When you hit 0, you lose. So you have to do everything possible to prevent your opponent from hitting your buildings, and that usually means blowing up his stuff, denying his economy, or blocking his attacks in some way. You can also just build more buildings, which is the equivalent of gaining more life in Magic, but if you have no method of protecting yourself, it only delays the inevitable.
Creatures = Units: This comparison should be obvious. In MTG, you attack your opponent with creatures, and that's the predominant way of winning the game. In Starcraft, you attack with units. Many creatures have special abilities that go beyond simply dealing damage, like Flying or Regeneration; the same can be said of units in Starcraft.
Lands = Workers: In order to play cards in Magic: The Gathering, you need Lands. Each color has its own land that produces "mana" (or resources) that can be spent on playing cards. In Magic, a land is an actual, physical card, and it can be destroyed or removed from the game just like anything else. If you remove your opponent's lands, you're probably going to win the game, because he won't be able to do anything. (He's often described as "land screwed" or "mana screwed.") In Starcraft, your workers are like lands in Magic. Sure, they're plentiful, and having more of them is generally better, but if you spend too much time getting workers and not enough time getting anything else, you're going to get overrun.
Mana = Minerals/Gas: As previously mentioned, in Magic: The Gathering, lands produce mana, which is the resource that you spend to play creatures and other cards. Mana is an abstract concept; there's nothing in-game that actually represents mana, and so it isn't something that can be attacked or destroyed on a regular basis. Similarly, in Starcraft, minerals and gas are your currency resources, produced by workers who mine for you. They're represented by a counter in the upper right corner of the screen; minerals and gas are very important, but there's nothing your opponent can do to take them away from you. (For simplicity's sake, ignore the fact that in Magic, mana goes away if you don't spend it on anything.)
Turns = Supply: In a general sense, turns in MTG are merely a way of keeping track of who performs what action, and in what order. As a result, turns are like a timeline of events, by which we can determine things that happened (or should have happened) during the game. You can say, "on turn 6 I played this huge creature, and then I won the game by turn 8." Starcraft gives us the concept of supply, which on an abstract level is very similar to taking turns in a card game. You can't accomplish very much if it isn't your turn. Likewise, if you haven't reached a specific amount of supply, you're "supply blocked" and have to wait until you get more. Players in Starcraft tend to keep track of game time and events in terms of supply, just like with turns in Magic: "at 13 supply I built a hatchery; at 28 supply I pushed out to scout a little bit."
Card Advantage = Macro: In pro Magic: The Gathering circles, a particular term called "card advantage" has become popular. Basically, card advantage is simply the mechanical aspect of having more stuff (more cards) than your opponent and thus, in a favorable position to win the game regardless of what else is going on. There are many different ways to gain card advantage: there are cards that simply draw you more cards, for example. But there are also effects commonly referred to as "2-for-1," where you get two or more benefits out of a single investment. Card advantage is almost identical to the Starcraft concept of macro, or simply making sure that you have more stuff than your opponent at any given time. Note that this advantage doesn't guarantee you a win, but it definitely helps. (Note that in Starcraft, destroying a full dropship, or blowing up a Lair, would be considered a solid "2-for-1.")
Strategic Concepts
Decklist = Build: In MTG, obviously it's impossible to play without a deck. The deck represents on paper your entire strategy for winning, and it contains all the tools necessary to do so. But a deck doesn't do anything by itself; it has to be played, and executed correctly in order to succeed, and you have to be in the right state of mind. In Starcraft, a build isn't to be confused with a build order: the build itself, like the decklist in Magic, is simply your formula, your foundation for winning. You start with an overall idea, and then create a specific order for executing it.
Mana Curve = Build Order: All non-land cards in MTG have a cost, a "mana cost," in order to be played. A good deckbuilder designs his decklist with a specific timing for which cards are meant to be played, based on the amount of resources he predicts will be available. In Magic, a player knows what he wants to do on every turn, and he knows on approximately which turn he wants to make his game-winning move; if his timing fails, he usually loses. Starcraft follows the same principle with the Build Order. A Starcraft player has a specific plan on what he wants to do on 8 supply, 12 supply, 20 supply, and so on; his gameplay progression follows a natural curve that climbs, peaks, and descends logically. (In MTG, a player's intended mana curve can be thrown off by bad luck, whereas Starcraft depends less on luck and more on reaction time; but the concept is the same.)
The Stack = Micro: "The Stack" is one of the most complicated things to understand for someone who doesn't play magic. Basically, whenever you play a "spell" (a non-land card) in Magic, your opponent has a chance to "respond" with his own spell (there's more to it than that, but that's the basic gist of it.) The opponent's spell "stacks" on top of yours, and everything on top of the stack happens first. This is very similar to the concept of unit micro in Starcraft, in that you have to essentially micro-manage responses to your opponent's plays until there's nothing left for you to do; you've either stopped his advance with your own micro, or you retreat. This balance of plays and responses is an essential part of strategy in MTG, and part of what makes the game so complex, due to the many possible interactions between cards. Similarly, the unit-to-unit responses and counters in Starcraft make it stand out against most other RTS games.
Alpha Strike = All-In: Whenever you've gathered enough forces in Magic, backed up by card advantage, you typically unleash what players call an Alpha Strike. This strike is meant to be a game-winning attack that is extremely difficult for your opponent to counter, at least without irreparable losses to his own forces. Much like an "all-in" in Starcraft, if the attack fails for whatever reason, you're often left with very little on the field and your opponent can easily mop up.
If you have any other ideas, feel free to add them!
