PiG Daily Articles

Welcome to the PiG Daily strategy article! The PiG Daily is a show by Jared "PiG" Krensel that focuses on StarCraft 2 strategy and becoming a better player. We've joined forces to create an article series that summarizes his dailies into short, digestible articles that provide insight on builds, tactics and game sense. By combining with Spawning Tool, this series will bring you the most comprehensive learning experience for build orders and strategies.

How to use Spawning Tool

We highly recommend using Spawning Tool in order to follow the basics of these builds. The PiG Daily and our strategy articles will serve as supplementary guides to understand the subtleties behind each decision.

On this episode, we take a step back and offer some advice for beginners.

Link to the Spawning Tool Build

A Zerg Build for Beginners

Learning so many builds for the different matchups can be difficult for newer players, and learning zerg is tantamount to learning how to adapt. However, this is a very safe and solid opening for beginners that works in all 3 matchups. It allows you to build a good economy and expand to 3 bases quickly. From there you can branch out to any composition you want.

As a beginner, your main focus should be learning the fundamentals of macro: constantly building workers, spending your money and not getting supply blocked. I talked about this in detail in Daily #16:

From here you can adjust and learn as you go. Choose which tech and upgrades to focus on. Learn how to build your economy from here naturally and enjoy figuring out the many details that will turn you into a great player!

Notes on Improvement

• Information is one of the most vital resources in the game. Practice always sending lings to scout your opponent (and make sure to look at what you see!) and control the watchtowers across the map. This gives you early warning of attacks, or insight into your opponent's build.
  
  
• Learn to control your first two overlords. They should head straight across the map and spot the areas around your opponent's base. Focus on trying to find your opponent's tech choice, which usually goes down before the 4 minute mark. Make sure to keep your overlords alive to keep your macro smooth.
  
  
• Learn proper overlord placement. Finding a good high ground near their ramp is great for spotting buildings at their wall and incoming attacks.
  
  
• Practice spreading your overlords around your bases. They can mean the difference between catastrophic damage and perfectly defending a drop.
  
  
• Don't mindlessly build drones. If you see an attack coming, build units! But make sure to keep your macro going, especially larva injects.
  
  
• Excess attention and APM should be spent spreading creep, not spamming hot keys.

Scouting and Staying Safe

• At lower levels, you shouldn't expect your opponent to play as crisp and clean as the pros. Timings can therefore be a little variable, but here are a few baselines that you can keep an eye out for.
  
  
• 3:00 - If your opponent hasn't expanded, then he's probably going to 1-base all in. Stop building drones and start building an army.
  
  
• 4:00 - By this time, your opponent will have chosen his tech route or composition. Sacrifice an overlord to find out what he's up to.
  
  
• Always send a zergling to their front. Most of the time, that's where there army will be hanging out. You can get a feel for how much stuff they have and react accordingly.
  
  
• As a beginner, there's no need to try anything too fancy based on what you scout. At this level, it's all about learning when to drone and when to build an army. Learn how to control the map and see as much as you can.
  
  
• If you're constantly worried about flying units or invisible units, just drop a few spore crawlers per base every game at 4:00. This is the earliest that good tech rushes can hit, so try not to play in constant fear. You can get away with getting detection even later if you scout properly and know what's coming.

Remember that there’s no absolute guide that will just make you win every game - your opponents are also intelligent people using all of their brain power to overcome you. Always look for areas to improve, always look to understand and experiment new units, styles or ideas in Starcraft. If you keep this critical and learning-focused mindset you’ll fall in love with Starcraft very fast. Gl learning the best and hardest game in the world!