[G] A Comprehensive Look at Team Strategy

I know many people complain that 3v3 and 4v4 are nothing like 1v1 and large team games are only for cheesers. However, you need to understand that the game is not perfectly balanced in team, but that does not mean you cannot win in most circumstances. I am going to break down many different topics on strategy in the following sections that will discuss the roles each race plays as well as map choices. Almost all 3v3 and 4v4 team games will have a great deal of aggression in them and your team generally should be the aggressors, so please read carefully and watch any videos to learn how to improve your team game win percentage.

Remember it is not uncommon for your team to be forced into a base trade situation or to lose 1 player to a more aggressive team. As Day9 has said in one of his Daily's, just die slowly so your allies have time to get involved. Teams that sacrifice economy early on to get units out quickly, will find themselves behind in the mid game assuming you can keep most of your team alive. It is also quite feasible for the player who lost his base to micro drops, cloaked units, or air units to do maximum damage while his partners gather themselves for a push.

The 10 pool is an extremely standard opening in team that you should disassociate with the term cheese. 10 pool allows you to get zerglings out early, but more importantly allows you to get speed before any other zerg players. 13 gas, 14 pool is the standard 1v1 opener for zerg and will also be used in team. 15 hatch will be used on rare occasion in 3v3 and 4v4 team games.

You should 10 pool when you have at least 2 zergs on your team and the other team is guaranteed to have an open base. For example on toxic slums, if the other team has at least one zerg, then you will want to 10 pool to try and take him out early and do significant damage. However, if the other team has all 4 players as protoss or terran or 3 players that are protoss and terran and 1 that is random, you should do a 14 pool or 15 hatch. The reason behind this is because smart players will block their ramp, and therefore keep you from taking one of them out. If you both 10 pool, you will put your team behind significantly in supply and economy and they will simply push and win.

The main purpose of zerg in teams is to obtain map control, punish greedy openings, and give your team the economic lead. This will either involve zergs doing early pool builds or more economically sound openings against non-zerg teams.
There are really only 5 basic openings that you should ever do as zerg in team. You must also be aware that these openings vary both based on your allies races and your opponents races. You should either do a 10 pool, 12 pool, 11 overpool roach build, 14 pool, or 15 hatch opening. I will explain the builds completely below as well as the situations in which you should use each build.

The 10 pool is a highly feared/hated build in 3v3 and 4v4 games. This build will get you ling speed earlier than any other build while still enabling you to follow it up with a reasonable economic play. You will want to do this build if the other team has at least 1 zerg or several random players that could potentially be zergs. This is considering that you have at least one other zerg on your team. If you are the only zerg on your team, then you should do a 14 pool or 15 hatch.
When your lings pop out, your terran or protoss allies should have scouted your opponents and revealed a suitable target for you and your zerg partners to attack. If there is a protoss who did not build his gateway on 12, meaning he chrono boosted workers before building his gateway, then he is a suitable target. If a zerg did a build other than a 10 pool, then they are a suitable target. I personally prefer going to protoss players because they pose the bigger threat later in the game and if the other team has 1 less zerg than your team, it is much easier to fight them without interference from workers or queens.

When you are attacking another zerg, you must never engage when he out numbers your lings. In most cases you will have speed before the opposing zerg, which means it is best for you to wait until speed if the numbers are even. However, if you and an ally greatly outnumber the zerg, then do your best to take out the other zerg while losing as few lings as possible. If you kill most of his lings, but he manages to get a spine up in the mean time, just return a minute or two later when you have speed. You would be surprised how many players unwisely have their lings chilling far away from their hatch when you return with speed. Not to mention that their allies will often try to help, so killing those units in the open with your lings will make it much easier to return to finish off the zerg. Once you do have speed, you should be able to easily wipe out the zerg even if he has a spine crawler up. Another option is bringing a drone along and building a spine crawler in range of his hatch, but out of range of your opponent's spine crawler. I frequently do this to opposing zergs because it is a good way to almost always guarantee a kill without needing your allies to get involved.

Just remember that if you take out a zerg on their team, it is a good idea to make a few drones afterwards. You will have to judge how many you can get away with, but I generally recommend only making 5-10 because you will still need units to defend what usually involves a counter attack at 7-9 minutes in. You should also spend that time hiding lings around the map to spot for expansions and when your enemies move out onto the map for a push.

Attacking protoss bases will go a little differently than fighting at a zerg's base. A protoss who does not open gateway forge, will almost always be vulnerable to be killed off at the start of the game. The reason is because even if he plugs the hole into his base with a zealot, he will not get a stalker or sentry out in time to kill the lings before they kill his gateway and/or cybernetics core. This means the protoss will lose his production building and have no way to help his allies other than suiciding drones into your speedlings. You will also be able to take out protoss players who do a gateway and forge build if they are close enough to one of your zergs. For example, on the map toxic slums if one of your zergs and a protoss on their team spawn next to each other, you should be able to kill his forge before the cannon finishes. This will give you around 5 seconds to kill the cannon before it completes. The reason you will want to target the forge instead of the gateway is because the forge has 400 hp/400 shields, which is 200 less life than a gateway, which is 500/500. Idealy it would be nice to kill the pylons powering the cannon, but smart players will have it powered by 2 pylons, which means targetting the cannon will be the best decision. The cannon has 100 less total health anyways.

Some games when you 10 pool, you will get extremely unlucky. For instance, it is a good idea to double 10 pool against 3 or more random players if the other team does not have a zerg. There is a high probability that one of them will be a zerg and you will be able to take them out reasonable early in the game. So you might be left with trying to break into a terrans base. If you are ever against a team with 3 randoms, I recommend one of your zergs leaves his drones in gas after he collects 100 for speed. That way if the other team does not have any zergs, one of you will be able to throw down a baneling nest and bust down a terrans ramp. Usually terrans are not the best choice to take out early game because they can lift off and many maps have islands, which means you really didn't kill anyone on the other team. However, there will be games where this will happen.

If you ever have a team full of zergs, 3 or more, you should all get a 10 pool. One of your team's zergs should get a baneling nest before he gets speed, so you have the potential to bust into an opponents base immediately after you take out a zerg or protoss on their team. With 3-4 zergs on your team, you will almost always be able to kill of 2 of the 4 players on the other team if you execute your aggression properly. Even if the other team gets hellions against 3-4 zergs, you will almost always have enough lings to surround the hellions and keep the aggression going. My suggestion if you scout a gas first terran is to baneling bust him first to remove the threat of hellions from the game. This will extend the useful life of your zerglings, since hellions will not be a threat early game. Especially if you have 3 or more zergs on your team, I would recommend killing the terran opening hellions before you even bother with other zergs or protoss players. Blue flame early in the game can really ruin your lings cost effectiveness.

Now you might be wondering why I am not suggesting you go double 14 pool or double 15 hatch against 3 random-4 random players with no zergs present. The reason for this is if they were to get 3-4 zergs, I can guarantee they will 10 pool you. So if you do not 10 pool, even against 2 zergs, one of you will die and you will be a man down all game. That is why you should 10 pool against multiple random players.

There is one other circumstance where you will want to do a slight variation on the 10 pool build. It is called the 11 overpool build. You should use this build when you are the sole zerg on the team and there could potentially be 2 or more zergs on the other team. For example, if there is 1 z, 2 t, and 1 r, then you should 11 overpool incase the other player gets zerg. The 11 overpool build will have you get a spawning pool after you drone to 11 and get an overlord. This build is slightly less economical than a 14 pool build, but the bonus is you will be able to have a spine up by the time 10 pools get to your base. This doesn't mean you will live for sure, but it beats the hell out of doing a 10 pool against a 1 z, 2 t, 1 r team that turns out to only have 1 zerg who 14 pools. A 14 pool will shut down a 10 pool, like a 10 pool will shut down a 6-8 pool build. The 11 overpool build will at least allow you the option of getting a queen early to keep up in larva production and the safety of a spinecrawler if need be.

Hopefully by now you understand when and how to be aggressive against opponents using the 10 pool. However, what seperates the top masters players from those in diamond and lower is how they transition after a 10 pool build. Just because you kill off a zerg on the oppossing team does not mean you will be able to win the game when your allies get involved. There are three primary transitions you will do after the initial push that hopefully takes out an opponent.

1. Continue with ling production

If it is obvious that with a little help you can break into the remaining players bases, then you will want to continue making lings to help your allies with their strategies. 6-7 minutes in the game is usually when your non zerg allies will be able to do some kind of bio, or 4 gate push to help you win the game. If you and your teammates decide that you could take out another player, then continue ling production to ensure your allies have plenty of support to keep losses to a minimal.

2. Start making drones and potentially expand

For example, if the other team had 1 zerg who you killed and has 3 terran or protoss players remaining, you will want to make a few drones to improve your economy. Many protoss players will get a forge early to defend against your 10 pool, and they will usually follow this up with void rays or dark templar. Both of these problems have the same solution, get an evolution chamber around 6 minutes and get 1-2 spores in your base. If you make a few extra drones after killing the zerg, you will be able to fit these buildings in easily and eventually macro up later in the game. On occasion you will be able to drone and expand at the same time, but the more competent your opponents are the more likely you will only be able to make 5-10 drones and not expand.

3. Switch to roaches or some other tech

If the other team got hellions or banelings, then you will most likely need to get roaches to continue to help your team. I will normally make 5-6 drones after I take out an opposing player with my allies and use the extra drones to build a roach warren and 1 spine or 2 spines. If I did not react quickly enough to the hellions, I will be better off getting 2 spines because they will finish a lot earlier than my roaches could ever get out. If I get roaches and 1 spine, but the hellions are already heading across the map towards my base, then I will lose all my drones and get a few useless roaches to pop out after they all die. You will learn what you can get away with as you play more, but if you kill the zerg off and you know you cannot kill another player immediately, then drone up and stop making lings.

Also, be sure to keep in mind that banshees and Dts will hit your mineral line around 7 mins, so you need to have an evo chamber up no later than 6:30. I usually try to build mine at 5:45-6 mins just to be on the safe side. One spine and one spore is all you'll need for DTS and 1 spore with a queen is all you need to defend banshees. If someone commits heavily to banshees or DTS, then get more spines or queens depending on the situation.

Okay, now that I have covered the 10 pool I will now divulge into appropriate times for the 14 pool and eventually the 15 hatch builds. The 14 pool is the most economical build that gets you lings out before an expansion. It is the standard build in 1v1, but should not be used as frequently in 3v3 and 4v4.

You will want to use the 14 pool build when the other team can only have 1 zerg. If the other team could have 2 or more zergs, it is extremely risky to go a 14 pool build. Even though your lings will get out right when a 10 pool build reaches your base, you will have half as many lings as they do. Two 10 pools will at the very least kill at least 2-4 drones, and all of your lings. If you're lucky you might get a spine crawler up and lose 2 drones, but that will basically put you even in drones with the other zergs. Then you will be behind in speed research, which will come back to haunt you. Anyways, if the other team only has 1 zerg, then the 14 pool build is probably your best bet. You will be able to expand on 21 and out produce the opposing zerg if he does not 14 pool as well. Of course, if your allies are sharing a base with you, then a 14 pool is much more viable than if you are in a separate base.

If you're fortunate enough to have another zerg 15 hatch when you go 14 pool and the expansion is in the open, feel free to mass lings and cancel his expand. If you manage to take out his expand he will certainly be behind in production if you expand on 21 and you will have speed well before he does. This will give you a good opportunity to take him out early. If you're against another zerg who 10 pooled, just play conservative by making a lot of lings and waiting to engage him until you have speed. He will get speed about 30 seconds or more before you, so if you're caught in the open, he will be able to take out all of your lings. Once you get speed, you will easily be able to outproduce the 10 pooler, then it is just a matter of finding the right opportunity to take him out. Banelings are also a good choice because he is unlikely to be able to afford any tech choice other than banes himself.

You will have three primary transitions after opening with a 14 pool.

1. Keep making lings, drones, and tech

I will do this if I have no fear of hellions or banelings. Those two units, however, will force me to invest in spines or go with another option of getting roaches. I personally like to tech to infestor and switch to muta, or tech to muta and switch to infestor. Infestors are great against bunched up low hit point units, as well as gateway units. Mutas tend to force players to get units such as blink stalkers, marines, mutas, and hydras, which infestors are particularly good at killing. You can tech to whatever you are comfortable with, just remember that there is almost always an opening in air defense that mutas can exploit and there is almost always uses for infestors. Area of effect abilities and attacks are especially potent in 3v3 and 4v4, so you cannot really go wrong with either, unless blink stalkers or phoenix are already on the field, then don't go muta.

One great idea you can do with infestors is killing expansions and workers when you're not in a fight. Sending 2 burrowed infestors near a newly constructed expansion can easily get you 10+ worker kills and no losses. Also, infested terrans can take down expansions pretty quickly in large numbers. This may require 5 or more infestors, but energy is free, so exploit it all you can.

2. Switch to roach after expanding

If you are against banelings or hellions, then this may be your best option for continuing to contribute to your team. You obviously can switch to another unit composition later, but if you are against banelings and hellions, roaches are your only tier 1 option to help your allies. Normally if I am forced into roaches, I will get infestors at tier 2 to help with bunches of gateway units, masses of lings, or bunched up bio armies.

3. Go banelings and eventually tech

If I am against a single zerg opponent, this is a good way to force the other zerg into roaches or banelings. If you get banelings he will not be able to drone up, which can work to your teams favor. The banelings are also quite strong against gateway units and marines. If my opponents have open bases and an easy way for me to get lings into their base, then I often prefer going ling baneling and use mobility to my advantage. Your main goal will be to use lings to distract your opponents while you attempt to kill their workers with banelings. Against many terran opponents, this might be your best opening.

Alas, I have not forgotten about the 15 hatch. After all this build has a place in 3v3 and 4v4. You will not get to do 15 hatch builds often because there will almost always be a zerg on the other team or at least a few random players. However, in the circumstance that there are no zergs on the other team, or there is a place where you can make an expansion inside your base, such as on district 10, then 15 hatch is quite viable. However, you can only 15 hatch against zerg opponents if your allies are able to block the ramps into your base. Even a single hole can mean game over. If you know you are against all protoss and terran players, then you and any other zergs on your team can 15 hatch safely if they want to.

This is sometimes the strongest strategy because it forces the other team to push. If the other team does not push early in the game, they will fall far behind because your mutas, infestors, and/or your own teams push will crush them when they attempt to expand. For example, if you and another zerg on your team expand and the other team does not attempt to stop you. You will easily be 15-20 supply ahead by 8-10 minutes into the game. You will also be mining at least 20% more than your opponents, which gives you a huge advantage.

When you open 15 hatch you will likely make one of the same transitions I discussed in the 14 pool section. The only difference is you will have speed a lot later, so I would recommend playing mostly defensive until you have speed complete. If you are against mostly protoss opponents, i will recommend you make mostly lings with a few roaches to stop any gateway pushes. Against mostly terran opponents, you are best off sticking with pure ling and baneling. Just remember that even though your 15 hatch can get your team ahead, if you fail to stop droning, your allies will suffer or you will lose your expansion. Most protoss pushes come around 6-7 minutes and most terran pushes come around 7-8 minutes in, so keep that in mind. I cannot give you an exact amount of drones you should make because that is all going to depend on your allies and the specific game you are in.

Regardless of the build you decide to use, just remember that zerg has immense macro potential late in the game. Since most of the time you will be multi tasking harassment with economy, you can always use the share resources button to get rid of excess minerals. If you are going a heavy muta army, but fear that your lings will not be very useful, then send your extra minerals to a terran on your team. If you got too much gas, then share it with someone going collosus, templar, or mech units. Likewise, if you are teching to mutas, don't be afraid to ask for extra gas when your spire completes. I can tell you that gas feeding is extremely powerful in team games, especially when a zerg comes out with 20 mutas at 10 minutes instead of 8-10 because his allies fed him gas.

Before I move on to the other races I will list all of the build orders for zerg that I have mentioned above. These are fairly simple to follow.

1. Proper 10 pool build:
Drone to 10
Spawning pool on 10
Extractor on 9
Drone to 10 again
Overlord when you have the minerals, usually when your gas finishes
3 sets of zerglings when the pool finishes
Pull workers off gas starting on 92 gas
Queen on 16 or 17 with the extractor trick
Overlord

I see a lot of players mistakenly make a drone after they make their spawning pool. The result is they have zergling speed 15 seconds later, which often lets me exploit that advantage, since speedlings will absolutely demolish regular lings. If you need banelings, just get the baneling nest before you get speed or after you get speed depending on how early you need the banelings.

2. Proper 12 pool build:
Drone to 10
Double extractor trick for 2 more drones (hence the 12 pool)
Spawning pool on 12
Overlord
Extractor on 11
2 drones
3 sets of lings when pool finishes
Pull workers off gas at 92 (unless going banes)
Queen on 16

The 12 pool build is very similar to the 10 pool build and if you are even on zergs, this is actually the best build you can do in team to ensure map control. The queen gets out roughly the time 10 pool zerglings would get to your base. Your speed is almost as fast as a 10 pool (within about 10 seconds). You will only briefly be behind in lings, until your first inject larvae pops out. The other nice thing about this build is if you are against a bunch of random players and you decide to early pool, you can get the fastest possible banes without saccing all of your economy. If your team is even on zergs, I recommend doing this build.

3. Proper 11 overpool build:
Drones to 11 using the extractor trick
Overlord on 11
Spawning pool as soon as you have 200 minerals
Continue making drones for as long as you feel safe
Extractor on 13-14
Spine crawler as soon as your spawning pool finishes
Queen once you make the spine crawler
Roach warren after the queen if you want to go roaches

I use this build frequently if I am out numbered by other zergs. If you spawn close to other zergs, you will have to defend your spine crawler briefly until it gets up. However, at the very worst, the spine will be 80% done by the time lings make it to your base. If you know a zerg spawned near you and did a 10 pool opening, cut drones sooner and save some larvae for lings of your own. That will buy you all the time you need to get the spine crawler up. Against a team with 2 zergs and 1 terran who does hellion this is a very strong build in 3v3. You can easily follow it up with a roach timing push when your allies have stim or 4 gate finished. I have beat many top teams by doing this build when we did not have 2 z and 1 t ourselves.

4. Proper 14 pool build:
Drone to 9
Overlord on 9
Drone to 13
Gas on 13
Drone to 14
Spawning pool on 14
Queen when spawning pool finishes
Speed when you collect 100 gas
Expand on 21

You should take notice that the build has you get gas before the pool, not after. This is because you want to get ling speed as soon as your spawning pool finishes. The timing should work out if you do the gas on 13 and get your drones in the geyser on time. If you were going to follow up your speedlings with banelings, then obviously you should get a baneling nest after you get ling speed. Even if you make all lings once your pool finishes, you should be able to afford the queen, speed, and an expo by 21 supply. Just remember this build should only be used when you are only facing 1 zerg opponent.

5. Proper 15 hatch build:
Drone to 9
Overlord on 9
Drone to 15
Hatch on 15
Drone up to 17 at most
Spawning pool on 14-17 based on opponents build
Gas after pool

There is some variation that you can do in this build based on your opponents builds. For instance, if there are several terrans who are all opening with 2 barracks builds, then you should drone to no more than 15. However, if your opponents are doing passive openings then you can drone up to 17 without fear. This build will force your opponents to be extremely aggressive with tech play or a timing push. If they allow you or other zergs on your team to 15 hatch and drone up like crazy, then you can count on a win most of the time.

Well I think that covers the facets of zerg fairly well. Now it is time I explain to you how you should play the other races in team. I'll start with protoss, which in my opinion is the hardest race to play properly in 3v3 and 4v4 because of their early game vulnerabilities.

You will be scouting after you place your pylon on 9 supply. Your goal is to determine how many of each race there are and the specific builds your opponents are going. The most important thing you need to determine is how many zergs there are and what builds they are doing.

In the case of 2 zergs or more doing 10 pools or any other early pool builds you should do a gateway on 12 and forge on 13-14. You will need the cannon to properly hold off early aggression. It is possible to get away with a gate cyber build, but only if you are cross map and the ramp can be blocked with 3 buildings (a gateway, cybernetics core, and pylon. You will be able to get away with 2 chrono boosts on your workers before your gateway finishes, if you do more, you won’t have enough minerals to both get a cannon and continue worker production. I recommend placing the cannon before your 2nd pylon if you are short on minerals because every second counts. You will want to chrono boost your first zealot to plug the 1 hole you have into your base and put him on hold position. He will be able to hold the line until your cannon gets done, at which point you will be safe for a short period of time. If you believe the lings will get in your base before the zealot is out, then just leave a probe at your ramp ready to plug the hole with a pylon. You can always cancel it once the cannon is done and the zealot is out.

Now what would happen if you didn’t take my advice and decided to go gate cyber when you spawned next to a zerg on toxic slums for example. What will happen is by the time your cyber finishes it will have lost all of its shields. This means even if you chrono boost out a sentry, he is going to kill your cyber, get into your base, and ruin your day. Unless he is the only zerg, then you should be able to hold it. However, in the case of 2 zergs or more, you will lose your base and your team will be down a player in the first 4-5 minutes of the game. This means their team is free to drone up afterwards, expand, or go kill another person on your team.

If you happen to be against a 6 pool, then you need to completely block your ramp because the zealot will not get out in time to plug the hole into your base. Make sure you place your cannon asap and both pylons should be powering your cannon, otherwise he will kill the pylon powering the cannon, then proceed to ruin your day. I would also recommend pulling about half of your workers to block the entrance to your base when one of your buildings goes down. This will ensure you kill his lings without sustaining any significant damage. It will also prevent him from getting into your mineral line and keep you from mining. It's better to lose a few probes than to be harassed constantly by 6+ lings still chilling in your base. Afterall, your cyber core will be late, so you will have nothing to chrono boost except zealots and probes.

Even though holding off the 2 zergs won’t be an issue most of the time, if they have a terran partner who goes hellions or marauders, you are going to have some real problems. That zealot you used to block your ramp will die very quickly to hellions, then the lings are free to stream into your base and finish you off. There are only 3 real options against mass speedling hellion that protoss can do.
3 gate stargate (described below)
Blink stalkers (because this is the only cost effective way your stalkers can live against lings, since hellions make zealots and sentries useless)
DTs to give your team a little map control (also described below)

The blink stalker build will be effective at countering opponents to kill their mains, defending and taking out hellions, and breaking even against zerglings. I think this is one of the few effective ways to deal with ling hellion that does not compromise your allies.

Now many games you will not face 10 pools because the zergs opt to go a 14 pool build, or there is only 1 zerg, or there are no zergs. In those games I will list the recommended builds and the reason I recommend the following builds.
What if the zergs don’t do 10 pools and build a 15 hatch instead? In that case you should do a timing push with a 4 gate or you can do a gate forge opening and cannon the expand out of sight.

If you see only 14 pools, just play it standard like you would in 1v1 ladder.
If you face 2 or more protoss, I can almost guarantee one of them will go DTs in 4v4. So you either need to do the fastest 4 gate possible and push before he gets DTs, go DTs yourself, or you need to do a 3 gate robo build.
I personally prefer 3 gate robo as a standard against 2 protoss or more because if they don’t go DT and they decide to go 4 gate instead, your immortals will wreck their stalkers and you will have a significant tech advantage. Also, if your team is doing a timing push, but has no mobile detection, you will have the advantage of having observers on the field to ensure you punish the other team for going DTs. The tech advantage lies in the fact that if they go blink stalkers, you already have the solution by having immortals in your army. If they try and get colossus, you will have 2 colossi with range before they get 1 onto the field if they opened with a 4 gate.

Normally if they do DT or 4 gate, I will expand while we counter push and get a forge to put 1 cannon at my expansion and in my main. The cannon ensures that I do not have to return to my base to defend against DTs, which means we can take advantage of their lack of units instead of being pinned in our base. After that I’ll get colossus with range, +1 attack for my units, and add a twilight council for charge and blink when I have colossus range researched. I prefer getting charge before blink in most cases because you are going to have more zealots since most of your gas will go to colossi production. You will need 3 gas to afford constant colossi production and get range. Once you have both bases fully saturated and 4 gasses taken, you should have 5-6 gateways, 1 robo, 1 forge, and 1 twilight council.

In all cases you will want to complete your warp gate research as quickly as possible, so I recommend always chrono boosting it from start to finish.
1. Gate Forge opening vs 2+ early pools:
Pylon on 9, scout as well
Gateway as soon as you can afford it (about 12)
Chrono boost workers 2x, gas on 13-14
Forge on 14-16, depending when you scout the zergs
Cannon on 16 if 10 pool scouted, otherwise get pylon on 16
Chrono boost zealot when gateway finishes
Cyber when you can afford, then proceed with build as usual

You may want to cancel your gas if you spot a 10 pool early. This way you do not have to risk losing a gateway or forge early in the game. Gate forge is about the safest build you can do without delaying your cyber more than a minute. On maps where you share a base with an ally, you usually won't need to do this opening.

2. Proper 3 gate into robo, blink and stargate builds:

I recommend doing 3 gates before you try and go for any tech choices because most games you need the units early.

Pylon on 9
Gate on 12
Chrono boost workers 2x
gas on 13-14
2nd pylon on 16
cyber when your gate finishes
3rd pylon after stalker and warp gate are started
2nd and 3rd gateways when you can afford them
2nd gas after 3rd gate
robo, stargate, or twilight after 2nd gas

Blink or immortals often leave you with few other units to help your allies early and that can cost your team the game. That is why it is important to get 3 gates before you bother going for higher tech units. If you are on a team play map and share a base with your allies, by all means you can tech to those units much quicker. However, on most of the maps and in most situations it is better to be safe than sorry.

3. Proper DT build:

You will need a cannon if you suspect the other team is getting DTs as well or banshees.

Pylon on 9
Gate on 12
Chrono boost workers 2x
Gas on 13-14
Pylon on 16
2nd gas when you can afford it
Cyber when you can afford
3rd pylon when you can afford
Twilight council
2nd and 3rd gateways
Dark Shrine
Forge if you suspect cloaked units

Try not to get more than 1 sentry or 2 stalkers if you do this build because that will cut into your gas and delay your dark shrine.

4. Proper 4 gate build:

Pylon on 9
Gate on 12
Chrono boost workers 2x
Gas on 13-14
Cyber when gate finishes
Pylon immediately after cyber
Probes to 19 (16 on minerals, 3 on gas)
2nd gateway
3rd pylon (idealy proxied)
3rd and 4th gateways
Chrono boost warp gate non stop

Do not get a sentry with this build if you want the fastest warp gate possible. However, if you have a lot of terrans on your team and the push will come later than 6 minutes because stim usually doesn’t finish until 6:30 to 7ish minutes, then feel free to grab a 2nd gas once you build your 4 gates. If you do the build properly you will have warp gate finished around 5:40 and your units warped in around 6 mins. It also helps to have a proxy pylon when warp gate is finished so you can take out an opposing player before cloak or DTs normally get out.

I know some of you are thinking, “What about stargate? You never mentioned stargate, I use it all the time in 4’s.” Stargate builds have one specific purpose in 3v3 and 4v4. I use them to punish teams of 2 zergs and 1 terran that do hellion ling pressure at the start of the game. You should do a 3 gate stargate build that involves 2 gas and 3rd pylon before you build your stargate. If there is one weakness to double 10 pool and hellion, it is the fact that they cannot deal with air very effectively. The zergs already have a queen and can get spores, so usually they can defend against 1-2 void rays. However, terrans who go hellion, often forget to get an engineering bay or make any marines. The result is you can level their entire base with void rays while you mass up gateway units inside your base.

This build works a lot better in 3’s than it does in 4v4, because most players in 4v4 will have at least one player getting stalkers, marines, or some form of anti air.

Now I still have not covered if the other team has no zergs and what you should do as protoss. If the other team has no zergs, your team has 2 options essentially. You can either do a 3 or 4 gate timing push and take advantage of split bases, or you can expand first and try to deny their expos for as long as possible.

If you are going to expand against terrans, you must remember that this is team and not 1v1. If you decide to do a 1 gate expand, you will get messed up or your allies will. 3 gate expand or 3 gate robo expand are the only solid options in team that won’t auto-lose your team the game against terran. I normally wait until I start a forge before I try to expand. The last thing you want to do is get stuck defending an expansion when your team needs to be pressuring your opponents. If the other team has a lot of terrans, they will likely do one of the following strategies.

A timing push with marines, marauders, and 1 or more of terrans getting tanks.
A Slow expand and map control play where most of them get tanks and set up expands.
Banshees or drops to keep you in your base while they set up expands.

The earliest any terran push will come, besides a proxy, is about 5:30 into the game. That is if they are doing a mass marine play where each of them gets 4-6 barracks and masses marines or if they do hellion. If you have zergs who go banes, blink stalkers, and/or hellions with blue flame, you should win in the long run against such a play.

During a normal game your scouting will be able to determine exactly what kind of play terrans are going for. I will try and explain the best strategies to execute based on what you see.

1. A timing push with marines, marauders, and 1 or more terrans getting tanks

You will be able to determine this by the number of marines they get at their ramp, add ons, gas count and timing, and the lack of bunkers. Terrans who are going for a 3 barracks (with add ons) push will usually get a tech lab on their first barracks at or before 3 marines. Also, if you see marauders, you can be assured it is a stim timing push. Some players open it with a reaper, then get stim and doing a timing push after. Anyone getting a reaper is doing an early stim play and will do a timing push. This means you have until about 6:30 to expand, tech, etc. before the terrans will be on your side of the map.

As protoss I recommend doing a 3 gate robo build, 4 gate push to hit before stim finishes, or 3 gate with forge and blink expand. The 3 gate expand play is a good option if the other team has 1 or no zergs. As long as you make units non stop, you should have enough to defend a timing push with stim as long as you’re with your allies.

2. A slow expand and map control play where most of them get tanks and set up expands.

Terran has the ability to turtle up and expand pretty safely, of course the expansion comes much later than the other races. When terrans do this play, you are best off expanding yourself and/or keeping them contained with DTs and units at their front to slow their expand. They will eventually be able to take their expansions anyways, but the purpose isn’t to outright win the game against this turtle style of play, it is to get map control. The map control you obtain will allow you to take a 2nd or 3rd much sooner and/or have a tech advantage to keep them contained on 2 bases at the most. Then it’s just a matter of getting colossus, brood lords, and other such units to eventually finish them off.

The biggest mistake I see teams make against teams who play this way is try and all in them when they know the terrans have bunkers and tanks set up. The only thing that ends up happening is you’re really far behind in tech and economy and as soon as drops, cloaked banshees, and hellion drops start, your team loses map control and they push and win.

3. Banshees or drops to keep you pinned in your base.

The way you’ll know if terrans are doing this is if they do not get a tech lab on to their barracks, they get 2 gas before a factory, or have a bunker at the front and very few units and no marauders. If terrans do this, your plan as protoss should be much the same if they do a slow tank expand. Get a 3 gate robo or 3 gate forge build and expand. If they have banshees or use drops, you are probably not going to be able to set up a contain on their base for nearly as long, so you should just keep an eye on when they try to take an expand and play defensive.

Now this does not mean you will play a passive macro game, it just means you are going to delay your push as a team until the terrans attempt to expand. If they go banshees or drops, they are not going to have as many tanks, which means when they do try and expand, you will have much larger armies and take 1 or more of them out.

Your other option against a tech play to banshees or drops is to take advantage of the lack of units they have. This means you do a very early 4 gate push or an immortal and 1 observer push to break down their bunker and punish them for teching. You will have to determine which style fits your team best and a lot of that will come down to what races your teammates are. If you have a lot of zergs on your team, just have them 15 hatch and use your economy to get so far ahead of the non-zergs you can shut them down mid to late game with superior armies.

When you do an aggressive push, you do need to be ready to counter the drop, so this might mean setting up a cannon or two in your mineral line, leaving a few units in your mineral line, or having an observer on patrol to detect drops. I think the defensive and delayed push is the better play, but both can work if you execute them properly.

Terrans have 5 basic openings that will work consistently based on different circumstances. Your strategies are going to rely heavily on your allies’ builds and decisions. I typically do a blue flame drop play, banshees, hellions with/without marauders, 3 barracks (2 tech lab, 1 reactor), or a 1-1-1 style build with primarily marines and tanks.

Okay, so what circumstances do I choose each of these builds? I can tell you right now, I will almost ALWAYS do a 3 rax build against 2 or more protoss for the simple reason that you need the mobility and dps to assist your allies. If you do a 1-1-1 build and the other team 4 gates one of your allies, you will not get there in time, will be caught in the open siegeing, or will siege and they’ll fight out of range of your tanks. I lost enough games doing this playstyle to know it is not the most effective. 1-1-1 is a decent build against protoss in team, but 3 barracks bio does a way better job in terms of mobility. Having a lack of mobility in team will cost you many losses. Plus, tanks tend to just melt your allies lings, while stimmed bio can keep up with more mobile units.

Ok, so if I don’t get a 1-1-1 against 2 or more protoss, when do I get it? I will do a 1-1-1 build if I have at least 1 terran partner going 3 barracks and the other team has a lot of terran or zerg players. A timing push with 1-1-1 is solid against zerg and terrans because tanks are a key unit in both those match ups and it can help you set up contains. This means if you are siegeing a terran player, it keeps his teammates from helping without taking significant unit losses.

Many games it will pay off to be extremely aggressive. If your team has 2 zergs and the other team is not completely walled in, then the best strategy and most feared in 4’s is mass blue flame hellion. I will explain the specifics of each build order below, but the basic idea of the build is to get blue flame researched as early as possible while massing essentially only blue flame hellions.

This is an extremely potent unit when mixed with the mobility of speedlings. Your basic role for the team is to roast up any light units, especially workers. If you have two teammates who are zergs and they 10 pool, any zerg on the other team will be forced to early pool or lose his base. This pigeon holes the other team into getting lings, which hellions just so happen to roast up quite easily. That is why mass speedlings with hellions are such a pain to fight in team games. If the other team has a protoss or any zergs, they are almost guaranteed to lose a player against 2 10 pools and a hellion player. Protoss players who do not get cannons will guaranteed lose their base because blocking their ramp with a zealot might work against lings, but it will not work against hellions. Even a sentry or two might not be enough.

Blue flame hellions combined with lings will beat almost all tier 1 unit compositions if the lings can get a surround. Marines, blue flame hellions, and zealots which are about the only reasonable counter to mass speedling hellion are easily overwhelmed early in the game. Even though your allies might lose a lot of lings to hellions, you will be able to roast up his hellions just as quick, without losing any of your own hellions. Blue flame hellions will also do nicely against marine marauder because once the marines are gone, lings absolutely demolish marauders. The same is true against early game protoss armies. Zealots and sentries die extremely quickly to blue flame hellions and stalkers die quickly to lings.

Lings and hellions can also take out terrans early if they do not have a bunker. Even though lings themselves cannot break into terrans without banelings, you can use hellions to roast up the marines and the scvs that try to protect their wall. Once the wall breaks down, it’s all over for the terran if they don’t have tanks or bunkers. Even if they do have a tank or a bunker, you can still destroy all of his workers and put your team up another player. If a bunker is up, then you should use banes to break the wall so you don't sacrifice a bunch of lings.

Now some games, it is not going to make sense to go hellions because the other team has all protoss or terran players. In this case, going exclusively hellions means you have very little way to stop a timing push with mass marauder, marine, stalker, zealot, and sentry. Even though stalkers and marauders are not particularly great against lings, if you have enough of them, it’s hard for lings to surround them. That is why you will want bio, or a mix of bio and other units against a 6-7 min timing push. Marauder hellion is also a good choice if you still like the early map control from the hellions.

Against a team of mostly terrans and protoss, I usually do a blue flame drop or banshees. I am not attempting to kill of any player, but rather give my team and I the opportunity to get ahead in expansions. The threat of drops and banshees means they have to invest time and infrastructure into defending their base when they move out.

I typically do a hellion drop play when there is only 1 protoss because I am only going to have marines, blue flame hellions, and a medivac to defend against a push. That combo of units is not good against stalkers, so if there is a lot of protoss and I suspect a 4 gate push, it would be idiotic of me to use that build. What normally will happen is I’ll roast a few workers, he’ll warp in 2-3 stalkers to defend, they’ll push, and my partners will die because I only have 8 or so marines to help defend. However, when they only have 1 protoss, a hellion drop can completely cripple a terran player who did not leave sufficient units behind to defend against the drop. The blue flame drop is great against terran opponents in team because marines and hellions are good against everything but tanks. However, if an opponent goes tanks, he is going to have primarily marines, which means once you roast his marines, your allies can easily destroy the tanks. You obviously do not need to drop a zerg player with hellions, but sometimes it will catch the zerg off guard and get you a few more unit kills.

Banshees can either be extremely useful and win your team the game or be useless and cost your team the game. Of all the strategies you can do in 4v4, I think banshees are the riskiest. A blue flame drop is not vulnerable or limited by a turret in the mineral line, however, banshees are. Banshees are however, much better against teams with protoss if you want to go for a tech play. If a protoss player forgets detection, it is game over for him, whereas a blue flame drop will be cleaned up before I can completely cripple the protoss. Cloaked banshees are also a great way to punish teams that did an early pool build because most zergs will not have enough spores to defend all sides of their hatch. So even if you can’t pick off their workers, you’ll be able to kill their hatch with 2-3 banshees. Banshees are a bit of a coin flip unit, so use them at your own discretion.

Now that I have covered all of the different scenarios that you would opt for each build, I will explain the build orders for each.

1. Proper 3 rax bio build:
Depo on 10
Barracks on 12
Gas on 13
Orbital command on 15
2nd depo when you can afford it
2nd and 3rd barracks when you can afford them
Tech lab on first barracks AFTER 2 marines (you won’t have enough gas for stim if you get it sooner)
Tech lab or reactors on the other 2 barracks
3rd depo once you you build all of your add ons

On some maps you will have a large ramp that requires 4 buildings to block it off. If you scouted early pools from zergs, then the only modification you need to make is to get your 2nd barracks and 2nd depo before you get an orbital command or gas geyser. If there are 2 protoss on the other team I will always get a engineering bay around 6:00 into the game because of DTs. If I have no fear of DTs, then I will build a 2nd command center when I can afford it and delay the engineering bay for a few minutes. You should also notice that I said you can get either 1 tech lab and 2 reactors or 2 tech labs and 1 reactor in this build. If you want a lot more marines and just a few marauders, then the 2 reactor build will give you a few more units, but if you want all the unit upgrades, then you will be better off with the two tech lab build.

2. Proper 1-1-1 build:
Depo on 10
Barracks on 12
Gas on 13
Orbital command on 15
2nd depo when you can afford it
Factory when you can afford it
2nd gas when you can afford it
Reactor on barracks
Starport after factory is done or 2nd barracks then starport (your choice)

Normally when I do a marine and tank push with a raven, a few Vikings, or banshees I will start siege mode as soon as I can and add the star port after I begin research of siege mode. You do not want to delay siege mode research if you are trying to do a timing push with your allies because delaying your push even 1-2 minutes could mean your opponents have just enough time to get the proper counter.

3. Proper mass blue flame hellion build:
Depo on 10
Gas when you can afford it
Barracks when you can afford it
Factory when barracks finishes
Orbital command on 16
Reactor on barracks
2nd depo
2nd factory at 100 gas
Switch factory with barracks and build tech lab on the barracks for the 2nd factory

Now the one thing I did not cover with this build is proper transitions afterwards. Even though many games will end before you can do a proper transition, some games will not. I do 3 transitions depending on how the game is going.

a. Thor and Mech follow-up:

I usually go mass mech when I do the hellion build because it is super strong against terrans and zergs. Thors, hellions, and tanks beat every unit composition terran and zerg has except for battle cruisers and brood lords. Most games will never get to this point, so you can see that mech will give you game long viability. Just be sure to use this option only on smaller maps where mobility is not an issue.

b. Banshee follow-up:

Banshees are a great way to continue a contain that was started by hellions. The only time I would not recommend this follow up is if there are doing a timing push and your allies do not have any real meat in the army to stop the push. Banshees are a bit fragile and against a push with lots of stalkers or marines, they will not hold up like thors or tanks and marauders will.

c. Marauder follow-up

If you want the early hellions, but you are fearful of a roach push, 4 gate, or some other kind of counter attack, then marauder hellion might be a good option. The only real difference in the build is once you build the reactor for the factory, you just build a tech lab on the barracks and start a 2nd barracks when you can afford it. You will be able to afford stim, concussive shells, and constant marauder production with just one gas. Against a team of few terrans, this is a solid transition.

Your army composition is probably the single most important thing in 4v4. A team of 4 armies that is only 70 supply each will in most cases beat 3 armies of 90-100 supply. Causing the other team to fight separately, will give you many opportunities to team up on individual players. The great thing about lings and fast moving units like hellions, lings, and blink stalkers is that you can quickly team up on one player, then retreat before their allies can help. Proper 3v3 and 4v4 play will often be based around this type of strategy, which will buy your team time and more of a supply lead.

The army compositions that are extremely potent in 1v1 and 2v2 are not always potent in large team games. On maps such as Ulaan Deeps in 3v3, it can be an extremely poor idea to go marine tank against a team of all protoss and zerg players. Even though your army might seem like the ideal composition to deal with a mixed zerg and protoss force, your tanks lack mobility. Tanks most certainly have their place in large team games, but mobile units such as hellions and bio are far more useful early in the game. I have learned this the hard way by losing or prolonging games because I decided to go with the “ideal” composition instead of just making mobile units that could quickly reach and support my allies.

You will also find that area of effect abilities or units become exponentially more potent as the games goes on. Collosus in the mid to late game are even better in team than they are in 1v1.

Map selection is more important than most people give it credit for. I have played with people who do not down any maps even though their race composition was not ideal on several of the maps. In the following section I will discuss what I believe are unfavorable maps for each race. Map selection does come down to personal preference and play style, but there are a few maps that should always be downed if you are a certain race.

If you would like the entire analysis of each map discussed by race then keep reading, otherwise you could check out this video I made that summarizes how most maps are played and the most viable strategies on each.

I think the maps that are least favorable to zerg are maps with a giant shared base. These types of maps where players can easily wall off their front make a lot more work for your zergs and can protect their entire team. Normally as a zerg you would want to punish an opposing zerg for making drones up to 21 without making any units or take out players who tech hard. Maps that have very few or small ramps are the ones that you should be downing based on my recommended play style. Also, maps with few or hard to defend expansions that are on the front side of your base facing towards the enemy are also not favorable to zergs.

1. ZERG 3V3 MAP SELECTION:

Arakan Citadel – I believe this is one of my least favorite maps as zerg for several reasons. If the other team is all terran and protoss, they can easily block the ramps into their base and set up tanks/cannons on the high ground to protect 2 expansions. The natural expansions on this map inside your base have rocks that must be taken out, which means you are forced to expand in a location that is far from your base and vulnerable. It also doesn't help that terran and protoss players who love to tech always select this map. If there is one map you should always down as zerg, this is it.

Cinder Fortress – This is a good map for zerg for two primary reasons. The expansion locations are all fairly close to your base or they are easily defended. Each team also has 2 rocked expansions that make for a great 3rd you can take in a long macro game. If there is a single zerg on the opposing team, it is very difficult for their team to block the entire ramp. This means you will almost always be able to bust into your opponents base and do some damage. Once you're into their base, you can very easily do damage to all 3 players.

Dig Site – Another good map for zerg because the ramps are fairly large and there is no way for allies to block the ramp into a zerg partners base. The rush distances are really short on this map as well. You can also easily set up overlords near ledges the long ledges into each base, which makes it easy to warp in protoss units directly into your opponents base. There are two expansion spots that are fairly easy to defend. The gold expansion and the one in the middle of all 3 players, however, the expansions on the ouside are all fairly difficult to defend. Overall though, this is a good map for zerg and I recommend you keep it up.

Frontier – This is probably one of the best zerg maps in the pool because every single base has two entrances. Terrans and protoss players will not be able to wall their ramps, in fact, walling one side will leave their workers extremely vulnerable from the other entrance. This map also has a lot of expansions that are close to the original spawning points and the expansions are easily defended.

Green Acres – This map is awful for zerg for the simple reason that the only entrance into the shared base is fairly easy to wall off with 2 players. The expansions are also difficult to harass because they sit in the middle of all 3 players and a few well placed tanks, bunkers, cannons, or turrets can easily keep opposing players safe. The rush distance on this map is also quite large, which means doing an early pool will lose some of its effectiveness. Unless you plan on doing a tech strategy that involves feeding one of your allies for muta, void rays, or something else, I would definitely down this map.

Temple of the Preservers – This is a decent map for zerg, except for the fairly long rush distance and small ramps. All of your opponents are in separated bases, so a 10 pool strategy can be quite viable. This map does have some significant down sides though. For starters, one of your allies bases has a very close air distance to the enemy, which means counter drops or air harassment can be a real problem. Also, only the player who is farthest from his allies has an easily defended expansion. The other expansions are out in the open at the base of the ramp making it hard to defend pushes and save your expansion. There is also a corner island expansion that terrans can take advantage of quite easily, giving your opponents a significant economic advantage with little risk of harassment. The gold expansion can also be shelled by siege tanks from the high ground, which means only a terran ally can truly take advantage of this expansion. As you can see there are a lot more disadvantages than advantages on this map for zerg. I personally dislike this map as zerg, so I almost always down it.

The Bio Lab – Many players hate this map, but I feel it is a solid map for zerg if you play it right. The rush distance is a little long, but all the bases are seperated. Another nice thing about the separated bases is that they all share the same common area for expansions. This means getting a contain with lings can give your team a significant lead in map control. The expansions are also quite easy to defend because they are in such close proximity and there are lots of them on this map. Since the map is fairly large, zergs can take advantage of their mobility and take a 3rd base at the gold or the corner blue mineral fields safely. Lastly, the ledges along the outside bases are quite long, which makes it easy to hide an overlord there. This can allow you to gather intel on your enemies with ease or help a protoss player warp in units. This is a good map for zerg, I recommend keeping it up.

Ulaan Deeps – This map is similar to temple of the preservers except the bases run north to south instead of east to west. This map is much better for zerg than temple of the preservers for a number of reasons. The rush distance is quite short, which makes it very easy to get to your opponents base before they are ready. The separated bases also make it difficult to defend, especially the top base on the left side of the map and the bottom base on the right side of the map. This can mean a guaranteed kill some games. The expansions are quite easy to defend since two of them are in a narrow choke between two of your teams bases. Additionally, you can position overlords at the center cliff on this map giving you sight of the center expansions and if your opponents are moving out along the bottom or top of the map. This is one of the better maps for zerg, definitely keep this up.

2. ZERG 3V3 MAP RECAP:

To recap zergs map choices in 3v3, remember that maps with wide ramps, short rush distances, easy to take expands, and separated bases are the best for zerg. In 3v3 I tend to keep Frontier, The Bio Lab, Dig Site, Temple of the Preservers, and Ulaan Deeps up. While, I prefer to keep the shared base maps down of Araken Citadel, Cinder Fortress, and Green Acres down. All of those maps are easy to block off and have long rush distances.

3. ZERG 4V4 MAP SELECTION:

There are a lot more zerg favored maps in 4v4 because most of the maps are more open and have larger ramps into bases.

Deadlock Ridge – This is a good map for zergs despite the long rush distance. The ramps into the bases are not very large, but you can easily get map control and keep your opponents contained. This will at the very least delay their expansions. If there is a zerg near the ramp, it will be very difficult for their partners to block the ramp. If the other team happens to be all protoss and terran players, then a 15 hatch can be easily defended because 3 of your teams expansions are behind the entrance to your bases. There are also easy 3rd bases to take on this map, which is also advantageous to macro oriented zergs. The three xel naga watch towers also give vision across almost the entire map, so this will make drops very easy to spot. The large rush distance can also work in your favor against timing pushes because you can get another round of units out by the time they reach your side of the map. I keep this map up as zerg.

District 10 – This map is pretty good for zerg although the base is shared making it difficult to ling harass your opponents if they wall off. There is, however, back door rocks that can create a large entrance into your opponents base. If your team has a lot of protoss or terran players, they can easily break the rocks down for you, giving you a giant entrance to run lings aggressively throughout your opponents bases. Even though the map is fairly easy to wall off, there are a lot of expansions on this map, most of which are easy to defend. There even happens to be an expansion in the back corner of your teams base that is nearly impossible to harass. This is a really safe spot for a zerg player to 15 hatch if his allies can wall off or if he is against no zerg opponents. If you are confident in your macro, then this is a good map to keep up.

Extinction – I have mixed feelings about this map. On one hand it is awesome for 10 pool openings because the rush distance is ridiculously short between the front bases. On the other hand, if the other team has more zergs than you, it can be a real headache to defend. Wherever there is a zerg player, their ramp is wide open, so if the other team has more zergs, they basically have a free entrance into your base allowing them to exploit any weaknesses in base lay out. If your team is fortunate enough to have as many or more zergs, then this map can be great because there are 5 easily defended expansions. If you have at least 2 zergs on your team, you should probably keep this map up, if not, I would recommend putting it down.

Fossil Quarry – This map is great for zerg and the reasons why are much the same as on Extinction. The ramps are pretty darn big, which means you can almost always get inside your enemies base. Once you get inside, you can pick and choose who to harass. This, of course, can be problematic if you have less zergs than the other team because you will be stuck chasing down lings inside your wide open base. The expansions are also fairly open to harassment and pushes, especially if they break down the rocks to the outside of the xel naga towers. I personally like this map because the xel naga towers give you a ton of vision on the center of the map and you can normally see when your enemies expand.

Lava Flow – This map is also fairly good for zerg, although the rush distances to enemy bases is longer than most of the maps. The ramps into each base are also large making them easier to break into. This map does have one tactic that is very difficult to counter if you have a protoss partner. Overlord cannon rushes can be extremely potent against the players in the center of the map and in the bottom left and top right bases. Cannons can be placed on the low ground and with the help of an overlord can shoot into the mineral lines of your opponents. Economically this map is also quite good for zerg because all of the expands are close to your main and facing away from your enemies. The gold expansions are also not covered by rocks, which makes them easy to take if your team is able to gain some map control. This map is a real pain for non zerg players, so keep it up.

Outpost – This map is not particularly great for zerg because of the shared bases. This can be a real problem because if they break in one side, they will likely lose both players. The ramps into each base are really far apart from your allies, so if your team has fewer zergs, you could have more problems defending early pressure. Timing pushes are extremely hard to defend on this map if your team gets split up, but the same can be true for your opponents. Most of the expansions are safe to take, but terrans with siege tanks are a real pain on this map because just a few siege tanks can easily defend or contain one side of the map. This is the spot where the ramp and the wall around your natural expansions meets. Terran and protoss players tend to keep this map up, which means you are likely not going to be able to break into their base early. I personally down this map because it is too much of a coin flip, especially if the other team pushes first.

Sand Canyon – This map has safe natural expansions and two additional expansions that are easily defended by your xel naga tower. So economically this map is good for zerg players since your expansions are not exposed directly to enemy players. Just like lava flow the ramps are large and players are all separated. The rush distance from the bottom and top bases is also short, so early pool builds are even more potent on this map. Plus the xel naga towers give a huge advantage in map control to the teams that occupy them. This makes it very easy to team up on your opponent's allies who are trying to move up or down the side of the map. If your team has plenty of zergs or random players, you should probably keep this map up.

Toxic Slums – This map has one of the shortest rush distances between bases, which makes it very easy to harass your enemies with lings early game. There is also a pretty large distance to travel to defend your allies, so fast units like blink stalkers, speedlings, and hellions are especially potent on this map. The only offensive down side to this map is the ramps are really small and can easily be blocked. This map also has well defended expansions, which makes it easy to take a 2nd base. Although terrans are probably the best race on this map. Mass reaper plays can be extremely deadly to the players who boarder their opponents. There is a cliff next that can be scaled and used to harass players closest in proximity to the enemy. Medivac drops are extremely annoying to deal with on this map because of the short air distances between bases, plus they can use the space between the top left corner and bottom right corner bases to abuse vision and make their units unengageable. Lastly, the corner expansions in the top left and bottom right are only really accessable by terran players and if you do manage to take out a terran's base early, they will often just fly to one of these bases. As you can see this map can be good for zerg, or very very bad. If you have competent terran and protoss allies it is a good map, but without them, I think this map does not favor zerg.

4. ZERG 4V4 MAP RECAP:

Zerg in 4v4 is either a blessing or a curse. If you have lots of zergs, then 4v4 will be great for you, but if you are the lone wolf zerg, then you are going to live a hard life. Just like the 3v3 maps, the ones with separated bases are the best maps for zergs, especially those with large ramps. Most of the team fortress maps are not the best for zerg, but do offer plenty of macro opportunities. I usually down the following maps as zerg: Deadlock Ridge, District 10, and Outpost.

The maps that are hardest for protoss are those with large ramps and short rush distances. Protoss is in some ways the most vulnerable to early game pressure. A double ten pool at your front can be an automatic loss if you do not have a stalker, sentry, or cannons up in time. Protoss does have a very strong late game in team because of all of their area of effect abilities and because their army is very mobile. I guess you could say as a joke that there is no map that is favorable to protoss, but there are definitely some maps that you should down in team. That is mostly because protoss is not really useful before they get warp gate done, so even if they are safe their allies often times are not.

1. PROTOSS 3V3 MAP SELECTION:

Arakan Citadel – I guess I should take back the part where I said there are no maps favorable to protoss on ladder. Arakan Citadel has some nice advantages for protoss players. The entrances to your base are pretty easily walled off by only 2 players and there is a large rush distance across the map. This means that warp ins and early game pressure work in your favor as protoss. Many tech plays that protoss players love are good on this map. There are lots of cliffs, so going voids rays or phoenix is viable, Dts are viable, especially if you can have a partner reveal the high ground cliffs overlooking your enemy's base, warp prisms are also very useful because the cliffs make for easy entrance and exit. The safest expansions have rocks that need to be cleared, but by the time you should expand you can have them cleared anyways. The other expansions on this map are defendable with a few cannons and blink stalkers and collosus can take advantage of the cliffs. As a protoss you should keep this map up.

Cinder Fortress – This is a decent map for protoss because your allies are in the same base as you. The rush distance on this map is pretty long, so that will usually give you enough time to make a proper wall. The expansions are all easily defended even though the bottom left and top right expands will probably need a few cannons. The long rush distance works in the favor of protoss because you can easily hide a proxy pylon on this giant map making the travel time for your units extremely low. This map can be hard for protoss if you have only 1 zerg ally because trying to block the large center ramp from other zerg players can slow you down immensely.

Dig Site – This map does have large ledges making it easy to hide a plyon to warp into enemy bases. However, the rush distance is pretty short and the ramp is large as well. The expansions also will require you to have cannons to properly defend. Your partners are pretty close by, which makes defending a little easier. I still feel this map is not good for protoss unless you have a zerg partner or two. If you're searching without zerg partners, I would probably down this map.

Frontier – This map is terrible for protoss. This is probably the single worst map for protoss in all team game formats. The double entrance means you could not block even if you wanted to. If you're playing against 2 or more zergs, you are basically forced to do a gateway forge opening. Hellions are nearly impossible to defend on this map because even if you put a cannon in your mineral line, they can simply sit outside the range of it and harass your workers. If you are fortunate enough to survive until warp gate is finished, you will probably have lost a partner because you were not able to help early game. The only advantage for protoss on this map is that the center base on both sides can sometimes be cannoned without them noticing. Besides that, horrendous map for protoss that you should not think twice about downing.

Green Acres – I do not typically pick a race because I play random, but this is a good map for protoss. I almost always down this one because my partners and I like to be aggressive and you cannot do it on this map. The ramp can easily be blocked and everyone’s base is so close together that there is little chance of teaming up on one player. Two of the expansions can be defended with ease and are nearly impossible to harass making it safe for protoss, zerg, or terran players to expand early. There are also a ton of cliffs, so collosus, air units, and blink stalkers will be even more effective on this map. Warping units directly into an enemy base is not too difficult either with a little vision or the use of a warp prism. This map is a good one to keep up if you are protoss.

Temple of the Preservers – The map does have a small ramp and fairly long rush distance, so early pressure is easy to defend. Terran players can be a menace on this map though if you are on the left or right side of the map. Terran players love doing drops on this map and your base is only about 1 screen length away from theirs. This does make void rays and phoenix more useable on this map though. There is another significant advantage for protoss on this map because you can build a proxy pylon on your side of the map in the bottom right and the top left that can reach into your opponent's base. This means you do not even need to build a pylon on their side of the map to do warp ins directly into their base. The expansions are also wide open, making them easy to harass. Plus, the corner expansion behind your teams base is an island, which only really favors terran. As a terran player you should love this map, but as protoss I would maybe consider downing this map.

The Bio Lab – This is a good map for protoss for three primary reasons. First, your base is close to your allies, so you can help defend them quite easily. Second, the expansions are also easy to defend since they are right outside your main base and close to your allies. Third, since the rush distance is fairly large and the map is quite big as well, you can easily hide proxy pylons. The large ledges along the outside bases also make warping units directly into your opponent's main a devastating strategy. I would recommend keeping this map up because Frontier and Dig Site are far worse for protoss.

Ulaan Deeps – This map is pretty hard for protoss throughout most of the game. This map has one of the shortest rush distances except for maybe Dig Site. The bottom base on the right and the top base on the left side of the map are also really far apart, so defending your allies or getting help from your allies can be a real problem. The good thing is the ramp can be blocked with a single force field, so that can give your allies some time if you're facing timing pushes. The expansions are pretty easy to defend, but if they get to your expansion in any of the positions, you will lose all of your probes because they will have to go through the enemy to get back to your main base. The top right and bottom left bases are a little more vulnerable to warp ins with an overseer, but if your team does not have 2 zergs, I would probably down this map as protoss. Otherwise one of you will get separated and teamed before they can be helped. This is the third map I would down as protoss.

2. PROTOSS 3V3 MAP RECAP:

To recap, maps that have large rush distances, small ramps, close proximity to allies, and easy to defend expansions are the best for protoss. Ulaan Deeps, Dig Site, and Frontier are in my opinion the three worst maps for protoss in 3v3.

3. PROTOSS 4V4 MAP SELECTION:

Deadlock Ridge – I really like this map as protoss. The ramps can potentially be blocked by one player and if you spawn with a terran or protoss partner, you can easily get away with a gate cyber opening. This will ensure you are not vulnerable to 4 gate pushes because the zergs on the other team delay your cyber timing by forcing a gate forge opening. The rush distance is long, so you should always be able to have a zealot out in time to plug the hole into your base. This will also give you a little extra time to prepare for timing pushes, especially if someone on your team can spot when they move out of their base. There is also not a lot of distance between the two ramps, so you aren't as likely to be split up when a push comes than you would be on outpost. The bases each player starts in are fairly large and with help from an overlord you can easily find a spot to warp directly into your opponent's base.
Economically the map is also really safe because 3 of the expansions are behind the ramps to your main base and even the ones out front can be protected with a few cannons. Protoss also can easily control the top left and bottom right corner expansions by hiding pylons there. Protoss players can contribute a lot to their team on this map, and frankly, this might be the best protoss map in the map pool.

District 10 – This is a nice map for protoss assuming two things: 1. You have 3 or more people to wall OR 2. You have more zergs than the opposing team. Most teams with 2+ zergs will down this map, but if you have a zerg on the end with the smaller ramp, it can be a real pain to try and block for them. If your team does have 3 or more terran/protoss it will be easy to block off on this map. That will leave you to mostly worry about the destructable rocks. However, if you camp some marines or a stalker there, you do not have to worry about them falling until 7-8 mins into the game, which is more than enough time to prepare a defense.
This map is great for players who like to get 2 bases up, since most of the expands are closer to each other and very easy to hold. You will find that controlling the xel naga towers will be critical in defending properly on this map. Most of the 4v4 maps are not favorable to protoss, but since you share a base with your allies, this is about as good as it gets. Keep District 10 up.

Extinction – This map can be either really bad or really good for protoss. The nice part is there are a few safe expands inside your base, the bad side is the rush distance is the shortest of all the maps. The wide ramps also pose a problem against early rushes because they cannot be blocked with a single force field. Also, if you have any zergs on your team, there will always be a way into your base, which will make blocking your ramp worthless. You will find that later in the game the narrow walk ways between bases is great for splitting forces with force fields.
I would only recommend you to keep this map up if you have multiple zergs on your team or you have a team with only protoss and terran. It is very easy for opposing teams to exploit a hole into your base, so choose your vetoes well.

Fossil Quarry – It will take 4 players to block the ramp properly on this map. Not to mention that the ramp is ungodly far from the innermost bases. The expand areas are pretty far apart from each other, since only 2 expansions are on either side of the ramps. This means it will be difficult to defend both sides at the same time unless you can control the center of the map. This map favors the aggressor, so unless your team has a great strategy to be aggressive, I recommend keeping this map down.

Lava Flow – The ramps on this map are wide, your bases are seperated, and the ramps are really far from your nexus. If you've followed my logic up to this point, I am sure you can figure out what I think of this map for protoss. There are two cheesey spots you can cannon on each side of the map, but if you aren't cannoning your opponents, then you better have more zergs than them. In general keep this map down, unless you are playing with at least two zergs.

Outpost – I generally keep this map up as protoss because the ramp is so small. You also share a base with an ally, so if you have another protoss or terran partner in your base, you will have 0 problems walling off effectively against early game rushes. The rush distance is pretty average between the closest points, but the cross map rush distance is pretty far. With proper scouting, you should not have problems defending properly on this map. The nice part about this map is if you get to the mid game, the shared expansion area makes it easy to defend. Overall a pretty nice map for protoss.

Sand Canyon – The short rush distances, long walks between your allies bases, and large ramps make this map ideal for zerg, but poor for protoss. The only real plus side to this map is that the expansions are tucked away in the corners, so if you survive the early game, they are fairly easy to defend. However, if you have less zergs than your opponents' team then you will probably find yourself stuck in your base until 1-2 of your allies die. You will almost always have to do a delayed cyber build by getting a forge or 2nd gateway early, which means you will be extremely vulnerable to hellions, quick marauders, or 4 gate builds that will hit before your delayed warp gate finishes. This might be the worst map for protoss in 4v4. Obviously, you should keep it down unless you have a team full of zergs.

Toxic Slums – This map has an extremely short rush distance between the boarder start locations on each team. Even though this does pose a problem, this map is not too bad for protoss. The ramps are small enough to block with 1 force field and there are narrow chokes separating your enemies bases from yours. The expands are all tucked away behind your ramps, which makes them much easier to defend.
There are a few strategies that are really problematic for your opponents if you execute them right. The travel distance by air is extremely short, so collosus can easily trek the cliffs between the boarder bases. Blink stalkers are also really strong on this map because with an ally’s overlord or an observer you can blink between bases and harass your opponents almost non-stop. This can contain one player on the other team giving your allies a chance to do some work on the other side of the map. Warp prisms are also really useful on this map because you can take the island expansions and warp in harass all of your opponents. Despite the short rush distance and separated bases, this map is decent for protoss, so keep it up.

4. PROTOSS 4V4 MAP RECAP:

To recap, maps that have large rush distances, small ramps, close proximity to allies, and easy to defend expansions are the best for protoss. In my opinion, fossil quary, lava flow, and sand canyon are the worst maps for protoss in 4v4.

Terran is a very versatile race. In some ways, there aren't really any maps that are bad for terran since they can wall off on maps that have large ramps. If you have any zerg or protoss allies, you can pretty much count on the other team going after them first. The only real weakness of terran is that they are not very mobile if their army isn't 100% bio or hellions. Also, if your allies get in trouble early game, small groups of bio without upgrades are extremely vulnerable to hellions, lings, and stalkers in the open field.

1. TERRAN 3V3 MAP SELECTION:

Arakan Citadel – This is a decent map for terran because it doesn't take much to wall off the front. The map has an in base expansion, which is great for terran because you can build your command center in base, then float it over to the expansion once you clear the rocks. Tanks are also extremely strong on this map because of the position of the xel naga towers. You do not need to win the air war to make tanks useful on this map because the xel naga towers provide more than enough vision to easily defend your shared base. Terran is also very powerful on this map because of all the ledges that they can abuse with drops and banshees will have an easy time escaping if they come under fire. The only down side for terran on this map is if they are unable to take one of the expansions in base, then their expand will be fairly vulnerable. Besides that, there is no reason to down this map unless most of your allies are zerg.

Cinder Fortress – The nice thing about this map is your allies are very close to you, so having a slow moving army is not a hindrance. The expansions are all quite easy to defend, especially the middle expansion with the destructible rocks. Enemies who try and fight up that choke will be in a lot of trouble against tanks and bio. If you have 2 zerg partners and open hellions, all you'll need is one opening in your enemies defenses to be able to punish them. If you have terran or protoss partners, you'll have the luxury of being blocked off and keeping your opponents mostly in the dark about your strategy. This is a pretty good map for terran, I would recommend keeping it up.

Dig Site – This map can be good for the same reasons it can be bad. If you happen to have 2 zerg allies, it's a great map because you don't have to block the large ramp. However, if you are against a bunch of zergs who are making 10 pools, then you are basically forced to delay your orbital command so you can build 2 barracks and 2 supply depos to block your ramp. This means if you wanted to get hellions to deal with your opponents lings, you are going to have a heavily delayed factory. Despite that minor disadvantage this map has a gold island expansion in the corners that is perfectly suited for terran. I would keep this map up, unless you are with 1 or more protoss partners.

Frontier – This map is great for aggression if you are planning on going bio or hellions and have as many or more zergs on your team as your opponents. However, if your team has less zergs than the other team, you are going to have some serious trouble on this map. Since every base has 2 entrances, there is no way to block off against ling aggression, which forces you into making a bunker. You will also have a hard time defending your allies without hellions because until you get a large bio ball, lings will tear you apart in the open. The other down side is you cannot easily hide tech because you are not going to be able to wall off. In most cases I will down this map unless I am playing with 2 zergs or 1 zerg and 1 random player.

Green Acres – This is a great map for a team oriented terran player. If you are going tanks, even if it's after a banshee opening, you will be able to easily defend the two center expansions on this map. The cliffs on this map are ideal for a player who plans on using drops and/or banshees. Reapers can also be a good strategy on this map if you can conceal them and then leap into their main base as they move out to attack. The ramp can also be blocked by 2 players without much trouble, so even if you were to face 2 or more zergs on this map, you will easily be able to repel their aggression. This is a good map for terran, especially because of the shared base and close proximity to allies.

Temple of the Preservers – This map has a few features that are good for and bad for terran. The separated bases are usually a bad thing for terran, unless of course your team is being the aggressors. The bottom left and top right bases are vulnerable to terran timing attacks with tanks because they can set up on the opposite side of the rocks and lay siege to the entrance of those bases. Since the rocks are there, there is no option for the opposing team to engage the terran army before it is sieged up. Drops are also especially potent on this map because of the ledges and close by air bases on the right and left sides of the map. There also happens to be an island expansion tucked in the back corner that can provide a nearly risk free expansion for terran if they are unable to take an expansion on the front side of their base. Overall this map is designed well for terran, so keep this one up.

The Bio Lab – The separate bases make it hard to defend your allies initially, but once your team takes your expansions, it's pretty easy to defend as terran. The long ledge along the outside bases is nice for drops, siegeing opponents, and banshee harass, but it can be difficult to spot an overlord and pylon. Terran has the added benefit on this map of being able to block the ramp in the right position on the top of the map with only 2 buildings. This makes it very easy to deny scouting and make the other team suicide an overlord, wait for observers, use a reaper, or use a scan to gather info on you. If you are afraid of being punished for having separate bases you should probably down this map.

Ulaan Deeps – The small ramp makes this map very easy to block, but the bottom right and top left base are far away from their allies. This can be a real problem if you do not go a mobile bio ball or hellions. However, this map can easily be split in half with tanks in the mid game. Tanks can also easily make contains in very annoying spots on this map, such as cutting off the the bottom of the map from the top. You can set up tanks on the ledge in the middle of the map to siege the expansion for the center player. If you are with zerg or terran partners this map is pretty solid, otherwise I would down it.

2. TERRAN 3V3 MAP RECAP:

The decisions you make for maps in 3v3 are complicated. The maps are either really good or bad for terran depending if your team is the aggressors or if you are with mostly non-zerg partners, then the fortress type maps are best. In either case I usually keep Temple of the Preservers up because of its favorable features to terran. If you are with 2 zergs or 1 zerg and 1 random, then you should veto araken citadel, cinder fortress, and green acres. However, if you are with an entirely non-zerg team, then I would probably down vote Dig Site, Frontier, and Ulaan Deeps.

3. TERRAN 4V4 MAP SELECTION:

Deadlock Ridge – If there are many zergs on the other team and you share a base with a zerg, you could find yourself in trouble. The ramp is large enough that it will take 2 players to block it off properly. The good part is the map is pretty long, so it will take a while for any ling pressure to reach your base. Once you reach the mid game you will find that it is very easy to defend your allies expansions because three of the expansions are located in the back corner of the map. Even the expansions out front are not too hard to defend, especially if you can get a tank and a bunker set up there. Warp ins are hard to spot on this map and that can cause your team to be contained longer than you would like. The long rush distance will also punish your team if you move out for a timing push and the other team drops your base or attacks with cloaked units. The size of the map is the worst part, but still this map is decent for terran.

District 10 – The shared base, close proximity to allies, and the easily walled ramps are great for terran. The inside expansion and easily defended naturals are also an added bonus. The watch towers are in perfect position to essentially split the map if you use tanks. The long ledge makes it easy to drop the enemy, another nice advantage for terrans on this map. The back door rocks will also open up the enemy base making it very easy to do ling and hellion run bys if your team happens to have several zergs. There aren't really any disadvantages to terran on this map, so you should keep it up.

Extinction – This map can either be really great for terran or really awful. The down side of this map happens to be the shared base. If there happens to be a hole into a base on your team, your whole team will have difficulty defending early pressure. The good part is you can wall in below your ramp to the 3rd bases that are rocked in and make the ally on your side better protected. You will also have a really short distance to push on your side to get to the enemy base, which is great for tanks. Tanks also make it very easy to cut this map in half and leap frog to the enemy base. There is also short distance by air and a very large area to land, except you will likely be spotted by the xel naga tower or an expansion on the front side between your starting locations and the enemy starting locations. There is an easily defended island expansion in the back that is perfect for terran.
This map also features a few cheesy strategies that only terran can execute. One strategy is making a reaper early in the game and going on top of the ledge overlooking the front bases. You can deny mining at one or two of the mineral patches or hit a players buildings who is trying to wall in the back side. A similar strategy is floating a barracks up there to make marines, but that is far less efficient than the reaper. This is one of the few maps that a planetary fortress rush can be executed on and not looked down upon as a bronze level strategy. If your team starts on the bottom left side of the map, you can land a command center on either of the top ledges overlooking the mineral lines and deny mining. So as long as the other team does not have more zergs than your team, you should have no problems doing well as terran on this map.

Fossil Quarry – This is not a very good map for terran because of how wide open it is, the large ramps, and all the expansions are facing your opponents. If your team has even one zerg, it will be nearly impossible to block the ramp completely before the opposing team reaches your side with lings. Since the map is so wide open, it will make it easy for the other team to catch your units out of position. Tanks are pretty poor on this map and because of how wide open it is, bio is going to have a hard time dealing with banes. I would recommend downing this map as terran.

Lava Flow – I really dislike this map in general because the ramps are large and the center base is so vulnerable to cannon rushes. If the other team is aggressive with lings, you will be forced to wall off with 2 depos and 2 barracks, which means if you get cannoned as well, you will not have the minerals to build a bunker immediately. That could end up being just enough to lose you the game. The fact that you are separated from your allies only compounds the problem, since it will be difficult to defend them from early pressure. The only plus side of this map is that there is an island expo that can be nice for terrans on your team. You should definitely down this map as terran though, unless you are playing with a bunch of zergs.

Outpost – Terran has a few nice advantages on this map, the first being the shared base with a fairly small ramp. The second being the effectiveness of tanks in defending and cutting the map in half. The third nice advantage is banshees and drops will be hard to scout and defend against because your opponents are unlikely to spot them on the outside of the map. The only real downside for terran on this map is the ramps between the two bases are fairly far apart, so it can be hard to defend your allies in time. Besides that, there is no reason to down this map, unless your partners are zergs and they want open maps that allow for hyper aggression.

Sand Canyon – This map is similar to Lava Flow in many aspects. The ramps are large, the rush distance is shorter, and you are all in separate bases. If the other team obtains map control, it is hard to defend your allies because you are likely to be spotted trans-versing top to bottom and then you will likely be ganked. The expansions are tucked away in the back corners which does make them easier to defend. If your team happens to be the aggressors this can be a great map for terran, but if not you will have lots of issues on this map. Cannon rushes are also common and difficult to spot sometimes, which can cause you to lose a base or mining time. I usually down this map as terran, unless I am with a few zergs.

Toxic Slums – Even though separate bases generally do not favor terran, if you happen to be on the top left or bottom right side of the map, it will work in your favor. Drops, reapers, and banshees can take advantage of the close air positions making it a headache for the other team to defend. Also, a 1-1-1 build is extremely potent in the corner positions because after you open with banshees, you have less than a screen length to travel to siege up and hit your neighbors buildings. Tanks can also help your team split the map in the mid game near the xel naga towers and have an easier time defending your expansions. If you are going to leave a map up with separate bases, this is the one you should keep up.

Terran map selection summary:
To recap, maps with large ramps and separated bases are the worst for terran because they are not as mobile as the other races without hellions. There are not many 3v3 maps that are bad for terran, but you should down Arakan Citadel, Dig Site, Frontier, The Bio Lab, or Ulaan Deeps depending on the races of your allies. If you have mostly zerg allies, then down the maps with shared bases, if you have mostly non zerg allies, then down some of the maps with split bases. There are a few maps in 4v4 that deserve a more clear cut thumbs down than in 3v3. I would recommend downing Fossil Quarry, Lava Flow, and Sand Canyon because of the large ramps primarily.

4. TERRAN 4V4 MAP RECAP:

Terran is generally the safest race in the start of the game because they can easily wall off most maps and get bunkers without deviating from their tech path. However, maps with large ramps force terrans to get a delayed gas, which can matter in some games. Therefore, you should down maps that have large ramps. Extinction, Lava Flow, and Sand Canyon are usually the worst maps for terran. However, if you are doing hellion openings and have 2 or more zergs on your team, then by all means keep those maps up. As a terran you should usually defer the map vetoes to the races that are vulnerable early game.

There is a reason I recommended several different builds for each race. Some maps are great for certain strategies, while they are bad for others. Maps with separated bases are awful for tanks, but great for hellions. Maps like toxic slums are great for blink stalkers, while Fossil quarry is not the best map for them since most of the terrain is open. You should play the map the way it appears to be played. You should be able to recognize maps that have 2 major attack paths, but are on opposite sides of the map from those that have a wide open area in front of your enemies fortress.

Maps like outpost and toxic slums are much better for split attacks because the rush distances on the sides are pretty short and your enemies are fairly far from their allies. Also, this prevents the opposing team from simply counter attacking on the other side of the map and base trading. On wide open maps like fossil quarry, district 10, and Deadlock ridge it makes more sense to push as a team. The same applies to 3v3 maps. I will be posting a video with this section to summarize the different maps and strategies specific to each of them.

The strength of races obviously depends heavily on the map. However, I have found that teams with 2 or more zergs are generally very strong. Teams that have only one zerg, tend to have a weakness because that one zerg can easily be taken out, unless the bases are shared and they can be walled in with their allies. I have also found over the many games I've played that teams with entirely terran and protoss are not always bad. In fact, teams with only terran and protoss players often have very strong pushes. However, it is usually good to have at least as many terrans as protoss because protoss is vulnerable until warp gate is done, whereas terran can bunker without delaying their tech.

One of the most important aspects of team games that many people simply forget about in the heat of the game is resources. You might always find yourself floating a few hundred minerals, but gas starved, or trying to keep up with unit production, but being a little short on minerals or gas for another upgrade. In 3v3 and 4v4, resource trading can make a huge difference in the outcome of the game. Imagine feeding a protoss player gas, so he can open 3 gate, but also get collosus with range. Or imagine feeding a zerg partner when his spire completes and he is able to get out 12 mutas instead of 6. It is subtleties like this that can turn the tide. I will elaborate more on gas feeding strategies when I begin talking about 2v2. The vast majority of games I play in 2v2 as a non-zerg team involve gas feeding for a stronger push.

I think the number one mistake I see among team players is expanding at the wrong times, especially too early. Team is vastly different than 1v1 and even though force fields, spines, or bunkers might keep your expansion safe in 1v1, it will not keep your allies safe in team. So instead of getting 1 base ahead, you might end up sacrificing 1 or 2 team mates just for your fast expand. As terran or protoss, you are generally going to need a minimum of 3 production structures to produce enough units to safely expand without sacrificing an ally. As zerg you will be able to expand on 21 supply (around 4 mins in) in games against a team against equal or less zergs. In the case of your opponents 10 pooling, you probably will not be able to expand until much later, but you can saturate your main in the mean time.

The best time to expand is when you are pressuring your opponents. Expansion timings will differ per race because terran can build a command center in their base and float it to an expansion, while zerg can expand during early ling pressure. As toss and terran I normally place my expansion at the time we move out from our base. I usually build a forge and bunker at the same time, so I can provide a little defense against small counter attacks. Do not fret if you feel you are expanding late because placing an expansion at 8+ minutes into the game might feel late for 1v1, but it is pretty standard for team.

There will be times when you expand a little earlier and this will be related to scouting info your team gathers. If the other team has a player teching to banshees, dark templar, void rays, or phoenix, then it will open a window for your team to expand much earlier. As long as you get detection by 7:00-7:15 in the game, you will easily be able to defend against these tech strats and gain an economic lead. Unlike 1v1, you should not focus on taking a 3rd quicker than your opponent from this stage, but instead you should mass up and deny their expansions which may be several minutes later. There will typically be a 2-3 minute window where you will have larger armies and their static defense at expands will not be set up. Just remember that if you are trying to deny their expansions against air or cloaked units, you will need static anti air defense like turrets before you move out. You will also need at least one ally with mobile detection, such as an observer, overseer, raven, or a significant number of scans if your team is mostly terrans.

I have lost many games because I expanded prematurely or tried to do too much, such as expanding without turrets and trying to deny my opponents expansions.

The strength of cannon rushes and proxies comes in their ability to get offensive units or buildings into your base before you are prepared. The main weakness of such plays is that their main base is often undefended as a result. However, before you can even think about counter attacking you need to first survive the cannon rush or proxy. Check out the video at the end of this section to see how to defend proxies effectively.

Zerg's Perspective:
As zerg you will need at least 1 spine crawler to ensure you can survive proxies, in the case of cannon rushes just go for roaches asap. Roaches are the best way to kill cannons off early game as zerg because lings and banelings aren't nearly as cost effective. If you were fortunate enough to do an early pool build like a 10 or 12 pool against the proxy, then you can be a bit more aggressive. However, you should do your best to conserve your units until you have ling speed because often your terran or protoss partners will not have any units out to assist you this early. If you went a 10 pool and spot the cannons right away, you will often be able to kill the cannons before or just as they finish.

Protoss's Perspective:
Defending proxies and cannons is a little bit trickier as protoss because in the case of cannons, you won't have units out early enough to defend them. Also, protoss isn't fortunate enough to have creep to keep the cannons away from their main. If you scout an opponent with no pylons, barracks, or other buildings on their ramp or by their starting location, then you should suspect a proxy or cannon rush. Most of the time you will have already placed a gateway down by the time you can determine if it is a proxy or not. The way you deal with a cannon rush and proxy will vary depending if you are alone or in a shared base.

In the case of a cannon rush your gateway will normally be finishing about the time their first cannon is placed. The best defense is to spot the first cannon going up asap and pulling some probes. If you are getting gas, you should take all but one or two out of gas to ensure you can make units while still using probes to fight. It will take 5 probes to ensure the cannon does not finish and 4 probes can usually kill a cannon by the time it finishes if they are attacking it from the moment it is planted. So you should be spending your time with at least 4 probes on each cannon. You will return most of your workers to minerals once you chrono boost a zealot out and should then attempt to get a stalker asap. Once you have a stalker out, you will be able to snipe cannons from a distance and prevent them from finishing. So as long as the cannons cannot reach your mineral line and keep you from mining, just keep producing stalkers and you will eventually be able to take out all of the cannons.

In the scenerio where one or more players is doing a proxy with/without a cannon rush, then you will need to get a forge after your gateway to ensure your safety. Proxies will have too many units out too quickly for you to defend without a cannon. Ideally you will want to make a wall to prevent the proxies from getting into your base, however, if the base is shared or you cannot keep them on the outside, then you should build your cannons by your nexus. Once you have cannons positioned to defend each side, you should rush for a 4 gate or another build that will enable your team to strike back quickly.

Just remember that even if you are doomed, you merely need to survive long enough to send your allies some money. Proxies and cannon rushes usually mean the opponent's sacrifice economy for quick units, so after a few minutes your team will be able to out produce or get higher tech units.

Terran's Perspective:
In most cases terran's have it easy when it comes to proxies or cannons because they get ranged units out the quickest and if they have to pull workers they can keep their economy going with mules. Also, the ability to repair buildings and build bunkers quickly will provide them defense in most cases. If everything goes south they can often just lift off to an island or into the safety of an allies expansion.

Anyways, if you spot proxy marines or zealots you should immediately try to wall your ramp if there is one to prevent them from walking by into your mineral line. As soon as you know it is a proxy, build a bunker at your ramp once the wall is complete and pull 4+ workers to keep everything repaired. If your base is open or there is no way to finish the wall in time, then you need to build bunkers by your command center and lift the barracks into the defensive range of the bunker. It might not be a bad idea to get 2 bunkers to ensure both sides or your base are protected.

Cannon rushes require a little finesse if you cannot wall before they build cannons or pylons in your base. If you cannot get marines there in time to prevent cannons from being placed in firing distance of your mineral line, then you will need to pull 4-5 workers per cannon just like you would as protoss. After you get a marine or two out, you should get marauders as soon as possible because that is your most cost efficient way to take down cannons early game. As soon as your barracks is done you need to build a bunker in the direction the cannons are coming from. As long as you can continue repairing the bunker, it will protect you from cannons. Use your marines and marauders to prevent any new cannons from being in firing range of your income.

Counter attacking:
Drops, banshees, Dts, void rays, blink, reapers, ling run-by’s, and hellions are all strong follow ups to proxies and cannon rushes because they all have the mobility to get around defenses and hurt the enemies economy. If you are one of the players who did not get attacked initially, you should be attempting to counter attack or clear up the proxied buildings. I will often go for mass marines with hellions if I started getting gas because that combination will take care of any early lings, zealots, or other marines pretty efficiently. It will also mean that if they start switching to marauders, stalkers, or roaches you can still fight them with an army that isn't purely hellions. Protoss's best option is either mass stalkers with blink or if you are against several zergs, then you might be better off just teching to air and try to take out bases that way. Dts are also a solid choice because often at least one player will forget detection or if they attempted to expand behind the cheese, they will not have detection up at their expansions. Zergs should either do lots of counter attacks with lings if they did an early pool build, or switch to mass roaches because roaches counter cannons, zealots, and marines very easily in the early stages of the game.

Unlike 3v3 and 4v4, you will have many more opportunities to play macro games in 2v2 if you choose. In most 3v3 and 4v4 games there is just too much going on at any time to keep track of it all and come up with the perfect counter. That is why your team needs to make a plan at the start and more or less stick with it throughout the game. In 2v2, you will usually be able to gather all the scouting information necessary to process it and make a good decision. Many 2v2 games will come down to a timing push by one team and the other team attempting to defend their expansions.

As a random player, I have had to learn all 2v2 match ups and come up with the best strategies to get the win. Most games with a zerg partner will involve defending your zerg partner’s expansion or applying early pressure with an early pool or baneling based strategy. Games without a zerg on your team are typically going to involve very reactionary play dependent on what the zerg on the other team does, if they have one or two. Zerg is the only race that can safely fast expand in many team games without costing your team a loss on the majority of maps. The great part of having a zerg partner is it forces your opponents to play conservative because early pool strategies are common and will punish early expansions or greedy tech strategies. It is also nice to have a zerg partner against a team without a zerg because the zerg on your team can 15 hatch safely and give your team an economic lead. By doing a hatch first strategy, you force your opponents to do a timing push or risk falling so far behind that they cannot gain map control or catch up in supply.

Some of the best 2v2 strategies revolve around resource feeding, especially gas feeding. As a Protoss and Terran team it is difficult for a protoss player to safely tech to colossus, get range, and still have enough units to be safe against 4 gates and other early timing pushes. In a normal 1v1 game a tech to colossus with range might take the protoss player 10 or more minutes to get 2 collosus and range. However, with gas feeding, you can feasibly do this by 8-9 mins in the game making your timing much stronger, especially against early expansions. Many of my 2v2 games without a zerg partner involve such gas feeding based strategies with timing pushes because it often by-passes the limitations of other non-gas feeding strategies. For instance, if you were against a terran and protoss team and you knew the protoss was going DTs and your team was two terrans, you wouldn’t be able to push out without a raven because your push would eventually get shut down by DTs. You also know that you need tanks because without them, the other terran can set up a few tanks and completely shut down your push. Gas feeding will allow you to do the 1-1-1 build to get a raven without having to delay siege mode. This can effectively allow your team to shut down the other team when they attempt to expand by hitting when they are their weakest.

Unlike in 3v3 and 4v4, almost all race combinations are strong in 2v2. Terran and zerg is in most cases mildly stronger than the other race combos because they have so much versatility. However, depending on the map they are not any harder to beat than a double protoss or terran team. In general the maps will dictate which races are strongest and the types of strategies you should go for. Teams with a zerg will usually set the pace of the game and how aggressive they will be. You will need to understand that cheesing every game in 2v2 will not get you to masters, especially not top masters because top masters players will easily be able to stop most cheese. The more I play 2v2, the less I lose to cheese because I have had a lot of games to figure out what you can and cannot get away with in 2v2.

I will be discussing 2v2 strategy based on the perspective of each of the possible race combinations. However, before I get into more strategy discussion, I will first break down the 2v2 map pool and help you understand the strong points for each race.

Discord IV – This map is really awful for teams with a zerg. The rush distance is ignoramus, the ramp can easily be blocked by one player, much less 2, and the only early expand location is really far away and vulnerable to attack. For those exact reasons this map is nice for terran and protoss, but especially terran. The Xel Naga tower overlooking the gold expand makes it nearly impossible to break a siege line to harass or destroy a gold base. There are rocks that can open a back door into your base, but if you go tanks on this map, you can even prevent them from being broken down. This map is great for defending, which is why non-zerg teams will excel on this map. If your team has a zerg, put this map down, but if your team definitely will not have a zerg then keep it up.

High Orbit – This map is not as bad for zerg as the previous, but it only has one expansion that is defendable. The ramp on this map is tiny considering that two people share the base. One player can block the ramp on this map with 3-4 buildings. This map has a familiar feature that Discord IV also has, a gold base with a Xel Naga tower overlooking it. So as you can imagine terran players are a real pain to deal with on this map. Terrans often set up a planetary fortress at the gold on this map and cut it in half making it nearly impossible to attack their main base when it protects the only major path to their bases. This map also favors terran because they can drop on one side of your base and the travel distance to defend the drop is much farther than the medivac has to fly.

This map is decent for protoss because the rush distance is pretty long and you can pretty easily warp in on the high ground of your enemy’s base. Blink stalker harass is also quite strong on this map because the vast majority of the map is comprised of cliffs. However, the fact that there is only one expansion that is safe means if you are stuck taking any other expand on the map as protoss, it will be very easy to harass. So if your team does not have a terran, I would probably just down this map.

Lunar Colony V – I have really enjoyed this map ever since they put it in the ladder map pool. It is very balanced for all the races from my experience. The main bases are easy to defend because there is only one entrance, but the expansions can be vulnerable if one team gets to greedy. However, since there are not a lot of chokes, it is fairly possible for one team to take an early expand and be able to defend it. Likewise, it is quite possible for another team to put together a very strong one base push. I have found that mobile units are the best on this map in most situations, although early pushes or defenses with tanks are also quite viable. I usually keep this map up, but if you are not comfortable with your macro, then you might want to down it if your team is double zerg because it can be hard to break the front.

Scorched Haven – This map is great for teams who want to be aggressive, especially teams with at least one zerg player. Since the bases are separated, strategies that revolve around early lings with 4 gate, hellions, or banelings are all quite strong on this map. The first expands for both teams are pretty safe assuming you can survive long enough to take them. Once terran players get tanks on this map it is very hard to finish off a team with a terran. If your team does not have a zerg I highly recommend downing this map because teams who are exceptionally good at exploiting the separated bases will make your life hell.

The Ruins of Tarsonis – At first glance this map seems like it would be great for zergs because of the back door rocks, the fairly large ramp, and the close by expansions. However, I find that this map favors protoss and terran teams because of the ramps leading into the natural expansion area. Tank pushes and Sentry pushes are really strong on this map because of all the cliffs and narrow chokes around the center of the map. In my experience there are better maps in the map pool for zergs, but teams that have at least one terran and especially terran and protoss teams are especially potent on this map. Just be sure to watch your back rocks early in the game because when they go down, you will have real problems with ling run-bys.

Tyrador Keep – I have found that the destructible rocks give you a misleading feeling of security. Even though one player can easily block the front, once the destructible rocks go down, it is very easy to break into the enemies base. This is one of the better zerg maps in the 2v2 map pool because you can safely 15 hatch against any race combination, assuming your partner is a terran or protoss. The ramp is small enough to block by one player, but they will need to get a late gas, which can be problematic against really fast 4 gate or bio/roach timings. Once the destructible rocks are down, zergs become a real nuisance on this map. Also, there is plenty of dead space behind each of the bases to allow mutas to continuously harass mineral lines and buildings.

The map is not all bad for terran and protoss players though. Timing pushes with tanks, colossus, and blink stalkers are really strong on this map. Both tanks and blink stalkers can abuse the cliff around the natural expansion on the inside of the base. This makes it impossible to mine minerals if there is a unit to give sight to the high ground. All races can easily defend the inside or outside expansion, so overall this map is decent for all the races. However, if I was not with a zerg I would probably consider downing this map.

Magma Core – This is probably my favorite map in the 2v2 map pool. I believe all races have their strengths on this map. Zerg can just as easily take the gold expansion as their first if your opponents are cross map. Teams without a zerg can defend their main fairly effectively, but will have a hard time taking expansions besides the blue expansion immediately below their ramp. Mobile armies, banshees, drops, warp prisms, high ground warp ins, and ling run-bys are all very strong on this map. The reason I like this map so much is because of the variety of strategies each team can use on this map. I usually keep this map up regardless of what combo of races I’m playing.

The Boneyard – This map has one of the shortest rush distances in the game assuming that both teams spawn next to each other. For this reason, this map is usually bad for protoss teams that do not have a terran partner. It is not really safe to block the front of the base off as one protoss alone and if two protoss do it together against early pool aggression, they either have to get a forge or risk dying early. This map is amazing for terran because the ramp is easily blocked and contains a pocket expansion. Also, a terran player can easily take the gold expansion and use the xel naga tower to maneuver their units to defend the expansion and ramp to their main base. A planetary fortress with tanks on this map is nearly impossible to break because the xel naga tower always ensures the defenders tanks hit first. This can also make pushing from close base spawns even harder to deal with because the terran can leap frog from the xel naga tower to your ramp very quickly.

The map is decent for zerg because of the pocket expansion, but if you do not get cross map opponents, you will struggle against teams with a terran player. Besides that, it is pretty easy to hide an expansion in a corner of the map somewhere and zergs can often get up to 3 bases on this map. The middle of the map is pretty wide open and zergs usually are good at holding watch towers and gaining map control, so not a bad map for them. I would down this map if you do not have a terran on your team.

Double zerg teams have two primary strategies to choose from based on their strengths as a race. They can be super aggressive early in the game by doing some type of all in or one of them can expand while the other gets a 10, 12, or 14 pool. The reason zerg is more or less limited to all ins or an early expand is because one base tech plays with zerg are incredibly easy to stop since they have no way to deny scouting.

All in builds are strongest on maps with large ramps, teams with only 1 zerg, and/or maps with separated bases. Zergs and/or terrans are the easier races to do all in builds against because zergs are vulnerable to early banelings and spine crawler rushes, while terrans supply depots are very easy to kill with a few banes. On maps like The Boneyard, my partner and I are likely to all in a team with a terran, especially if they do not spawn cross map. The best way to do an all in against a terran team is to both do a 12 pool build, but one player gets banes and skips gas until later. You will get a lot of quick games this way because if it fails, which it often won't, the game will be over shortly after. Usually as long as you have enough banes to break down the wall and kill a bunker quickly, you will be able to end the game without much of a hassle.

If the other team has only one zerg player, then that player will be extremely vulnerable to an early spine crawler rush, especially if the map has seperated bases. If you and your partner do double 10 pool builds and bring a drone along, much like in the 3v3 and 4v4 strategy section I discussed above, you will almost always be able to kill the zerg off. Once that is done, playing a 2v1 comes down to managing resources and not overdroning.

Of course, in most cases you are better off having one player do a hatch first build and the other player do a 10 or 14 pool to support them early on. Against a non-zerg team you should do the 14 pool 14 extractor build to support them because you won't have to worry about early lings. However, against a single zerg you should have one player do a 10 pool to ensure that you maintain map control. The player who does the 15 hatch can freely drone to around 5:30 to 6 minutes into the game and in most cases should go for roaches. Assuming you do not overdrone and keep good map awareness you will find that you can hold off most early pushes, after which you will gain a significant economic lead from your hatch first build.

Zerg and Protoss teams are usually the most aggressive combo out of necessity. It is difficult to defend with a zerg and protoss team because there is no way to make a partial wall and spreading creep extensively will interfere with the protoss's buildings. Zerg and protoss teams do have a few advantages though. A mass ling with 4 gate strategy is extremely potent if the other team is teching too hard, especially if the zerg uses an overlord to spot the high ground. Using this tactic, a protoss player can easily put a pylon near a ridge leading into the enemy base and warp in units right into their main. This is what makes zerg and protoss teams so deadly on many maps because a few warped in zealots can wreak havoc on a mineral line while you are busy fighting at the front. You can also use overlord spotters to warp in DT's if a team has the front of their base blocked off.

Zerg and Protoss teams of course do not always need to be aggressive and should play defense against teams without a zerg. Trying to all in a team without a zerg is pointless when you can get ahead economically with a hatch first build from the zerg. This will force the other team to expand later and risk not catching up or be forced to try and all in the zerg expansion. A 3 gate opening with lots of lings, roaches, and/or banelings will usually be enough to hold most pushes.

Zerg and protoss teams will have trouble against certain compositions of units, such as marauder hellion because both of those units counter protoss's gateway units and zerg's early game units as well. Siege tank pushes from double terran or terran/protoss teams will also be difficult to stop on maps with many choke points. Zerg and protoss teams favor maps with a lot of open space that they can use to exploit their mobility. Blink stalkers are the best combination in most cases against terran/zerg teams, while robo tech is usually better against teams with 1 or more protoss.

This is in my opinion the best combination in 2v2 because of the variety of strategies this combination is capable of. Often, you will force players to build a certain way just to ensure they do not just straight up die to certain strategies. Terran/zerg teams are capable of being aggressive in almost every situation and can usually take map control over other race combos, except double zerg in the first few minutes of the game. The ling and hellion strategy that is popular in 3v3 and 4v4 is also quite potent in 2v2 most games. Of course, you should not do this build every game because it is not particularly useful against teams without a zerg on a map with a shared base.

Against teams with 1 or more zergs I recommend doing ling hellion builds and I will elaborate on which you should choose based on your opponent's choices. Against a double zerg team, the terran should always do marauder hellion and the zerg is best off going with a 12 pool build to ensure he could potentially survive a spine crawler rush. This composition will work very well against both 15 hatch openings and early pool builds by the opposing zergs. Hellions with good micro will be very efficient against all the lings on the field, while the marauders will ensure that roaches are no match, especially with your partner's lings on the field. Marauder hellion will also be powerful against protoss/zerg teams because marauders or hellions do bonus damage to all of protoss's early game units.

If you are against another terran/zerg team then you should blue flame hellions most games before you transition into something else. On maps with a pocket expansion, the best choice is to let your zerg expand and go roaches, and mass bio from 3 rax. You will need to open a double barracks build with a delayed gas if you do this choice to ensure you do not let lings slip in your base early. It is also advisable to get a bunker early, because without a gas you will not have marauders out in time to defend against hellions trying to break down your ramp. If you were to try and repair your wall without having a bunker there, they could freely roast all of your marines and workers. Just be sure your zerg partner does not over drone or you may be in trouble if the other team gets banes and breaks down your wall.

If you are going against non-zerg teams then I recommend the zerg to do a hatch first build and the terran should get three rax bio in most cases. Tanks are not that great with a zerg partner early in the game because your partner is likely to be ling heavy and your tanks will kill his units as often as they will kill yours. Also, it is very easy for teams to ignore the tanks and fight outside their range of cover, which will leave you with a bunch of unupgraded marines against a much higher tech army. Tanks are a useful unit, just wait until you expand before you bother adding them in when your partner early hatches. Zerg units have great health for the cost, so take advantage of this and the fact that bio units have great damage early in the game. If your zerg partner macros well, you should almost always be able to hold early game pushes with a good mix of marines and marauders against non-zerg teams. Just be sure that if you do this build you prepare yourself for cloaked units, which is why I recommended in the build order section for terran to get an engineering bay around 5:45-6 minutes into the game. If you do this, you will enjoy many wins against tough opponents.

Double terran teams can be extremely potent on maps with a short rush distance, such as The Boneyard. Siege tank contains are really cost efficient in most cases and often when I play as a double terran team, one or sometimes both of us will get tanks. Terran also has the luxury of the best defenses in the game, so they can often survive early pushes much easier than other race combinations. There are such a wide variety of strategies that two terrans can do that I will only be covering the most common ones. Much of their strategy is based on an early scout of the opponent's and whether they are expanding or not.

One of my favorite strategies is a double 1-1-1 build, in which one of us will skip the star port so we can save the 100 gas and just feed the player with the star port some extra gas. With a double 1-1-1 build, the only thing you need to do is win the air war to have a shot at winning the game. The 1-1-1 is potent vs all races and combinations of races and is particularly strong against non-terran teams. Teams with other terrans can often stall and buy the needed time for their partner to help them win the tank war or counter attack while his siege line prevents you from advancing. The only time this build isn't that great is on the map Scorched Haven because smart teams will isolate one player. The 1-1-1 build is also not the best against blink stalkers, collosus, or drops because the tanks are slow and the marines are usually unupgraded for a long period of time.

In most cases it is better for each player to get a different set of units to ensure that you are not vulnerable to one particular strategy. Against protoss/zerg or double protoss teams you are usually going to be better off having one player get 3 barracks bio, while the other gets tanks. You will need tanks for the banelings if you are against a zerg and the tanks are quite strong against stalkers. The tanks will allow your team to leap frog once you get close to the enemy base and the marauders mixed in will ensure that you have more firepower against other armored units. This combo will be great if you either want to expand yourselves or you want to take down an enemy after they expand. Against a team with a zerg, they will commonly 15 hatch against 2 terran opponent's so this is a great way to play the match up.

If one or both of you plans on expanding, which I only recommend doing on High Orbit, The Ruins of Tarsonis, Tyrador Keep, and The Boneyard, then one of you should be doing a tech based strategy to punish the enemy for moving out. Whenever you expand in team you should find some way to still apply pressure to your opponent, because if you do not, then you will surely be out expanded or die to a push before you are prepared. I would recommend one player to get tanks and play defense, while his partner should tech to cloaked banshees, hellion drops, or bio drops. Top tier teams always play aggressively even when they are expanding and the strategies I listed will keep the enemy contained for fear of losing their economy or production. In the case of cloaked banshees it will cause the enemy to invest in infastructure to get detection, while the drops will force them to keep at least some of their units at home. In both cases it will make their push later and/or weaker, which will allow you and your partner to expand in many cases.

Against terran/zerg or double zerg teams there are two options that I feel are the strongest. One involves one player getting hellions, while the other player gets bio. Your only fear in this case is banelings, but with mass hellion, you should have no problem roasting them up before they engage your bio. Of course, if the zerg decides to go roaches with his terran partner, then the hellion player can just get marauders in addition instead of getting tons of hellions. If you enjoy being highly aggressive then bio with hellion is probably the strongest composition for your team. However, one player getting bio and the other going 1-1-1 is also really strong against either of these race combos. I would recommend having the bio player gas feed once he has gotten the upgrades on his tech lab because he will start having excess gas at that point.

Against non-zerg teams you should do the same as in the tech and expand section or play it safe and have one player get lots of bio, while the other gets tanks. Games with no zergs often involve 2 bases for each player and lots of tech or drop aggression, so do not feel pressured to try and do a 1 base all in vs. these team combinations. If they are greedy about expanding you should punish them with a one base push, but in most cases you should just expand when your team has siege mode.

Terran and protoss teams have the strongest 1 base compositions in the game, which makes their 1 base pushes very potent. The weaknesses of many of their units are complimented by the strengths of the other races units making this team combo very synergistic. One of the most common pushes my partner and I do with this combo is a 1-1-1 for the terran and a 3 gate robo with immortals for the protoss. The protoss should feed some gas to the terran, so he can still get a star port without needing to delay his siege mode research for very long. This combo will work against all races, except potentially against a double terran team because they will be able to out produce your partner in tanks.

The tanks ensure that you can out range colossus and leap frog your way into your opponent’s production buildings. The immortals and gateway units will keep colossus or blink stalkers from being able to engage your tanks. The marines and zealots will tear up lighter units like zealots, marines, and zerglings. As you can see this push if executed properly can be very strong. Another benefit of having a terran partner as protoss is that he can bring a few scvs to repair your stalkers and immortals. Of course, if you know the other team is teching as well, then you could go collosus and tanks, but usually you need an in base expansion for one player to have enough gas.

Of course, you do not need to do a 1-base push every game, nor should you. In fact, it is often a better idea to use tanks to secure expands, while one player techs to some form of harass units. I recommend banshees, blink stalkers, or DTs to apply some pressure to your opponents. Just be sure that whichever partner is not teching, gets enough units to be able to defend a push. If both of you tech, there is a good chance you will leave yourself vulnerable to a push like the one described in the first paragraph.

The other best choice is going for a very aggressive and mobile force against a double zerg or zerg/protoss team. In this case the terran player gets marauder hellion while the protoss gets either a 4 gate or 3 gate robo. If you want the earliest push possible against a greedy zerg player, then the 4 gate with marauders and hellions is probably your best choice because zergs and protoss won’t have higher tech counters that early in the game. However, if you are fearful of not being able to hit until DT’s could be out, then you might be better off getting a robo for detection and pushing with 1 or 2 immortals. This composition will not work well against smart teams with terrans. If you were to face 2 protoss on a team, then you would probably be better off just having your terran player go 3 barracks stimmed bio and have the protoss do colossus or immortals. In either case, you will need detection with 3 barracks bio because it will not have stim done in time to kill the protoss players before they get DTs out.

I used to hate getting double protoss in team in the past, but that was before my partners and I started gas feeding frequently. You will have a great deal of trouble expanding safely in 2v2 as protoss because most maps don’t have two expansions in the same area. Protoss early game needs force fields and chokes to help defend against early pushes and many of the 2v2 maps have expansions that are far apart from each other or are out in the open. You will usually be better off expanding behind a push of your own or having one player tech to DTs or blink to try and counter attack to buy time. However, if the other team expands, then teching and attempting to keep up in expansions isn’t always the best idea.

Smart teams with one or more zerg players will expand against double protoss because they know that protoss cannot apply early pressure to deny the expansion. At the very most you might be able to pylon block one expand, but most maps have several other spots that are equally good for expanding. If the opposing team does an early expand, regardless if they have a zerg or not, you should do a 1 base push. When I get double protoss my partners and I usually have one player go for colossus after 3 gates, while the other gets either 4 gates, 3 gates and 1 robo, or 3 gates with blink. The player who goes for colossus should be fed gas to ensure that he can get 2 colossus and range asap. The player doing the gas feeding should go immortals if you are likely going against tanks, should go blink against a terran and zerg team, and should get 4 gate against double zerg teams.

Sometimes teams will take advantage of protoss’s weak early game by attempting to cheese them with proxies or early pool builds. In this case if you share a base one player should open with a forge first, while the other does a normal gate into cyber build. The early cannon will shut down all types of cheese including early pools and proxies of any kind. Double protoss teams will struggle without early cannon against a highly skilled team that abuses early concussive shells and lings. Afterall, you should not worry about falling behind in tech against cheese because early pool builds will be far behind economically, so you will generally come out ahead if you get a canon up early and defend it properly.

Another option that is a strong alternative to a colossus feed is DTs against a double zerg team. If the DTs fail to do damage because the zergs have spore crawlers, you can easily just run them back to your army and morph them into archons. You should have either archons or colossus against double zerg teams because mass ling with roaches will be able to shut down most early protoss pushes. Most of the maps do not have narrow chokes, so force fields won’t always do the job against double zerg teams.

I just wanted to say thanks to those who took the time to read the guide, whether in whole or just partially. I also appreciate anyone who has taken the time to watch the videos I made to go along with this guide. As I get time I will continue to work on improving this guide for my viewers and I will also continue to upload more videos to help you guys out. Good or bad, I would like to hear back from the community, but if you have bad comments to make please be constructive. I know not everyone will agree with my tactics or my analysis of the game, but you must understand everyone is entitled to their opinion. I am merely trying to communicate what I have found to be the most effective strategies based on my experiences.