Which Starcraft Race Should I Play
StarCraft has been called the greatest real-time strategy game ever and it's certainly one of the most critically acclaimed. StarCraft features three powerful, yet balanced races: the Terrans, the Zerg, and the Protoss. You play as each race fights to the death for the fate of the universe. Meh, terran being the strongest race and protoss the weakest only applies at the very top of SC pros, outside of the 30 best players in the world the races are very well balanced level 2. For all who want to play starcraft 2- brood war players, starcraft 2 beta players, those who just started with starcraft2. This game has lots of possibilities, there are many things to look out for. To master and really be good in starcraft2, you need to get your fundamentals right: 1. beginners Race Selection. I suggest picking a race. Blizzard Entertainment's real-time strategy game series StarCraft revolves around interstellar affairs in a distant sector of the galaxy, with three species and multiple factions all vying for supremacy in the sector. The playable species of StarCraft include the Terrans, humans exiled from Earth who excel at adapting to any situation; the Zerg, a race of insectoid aliens obsessed with.
I’m a hypocrite: I have compiled a lot of information to help players learn StarCraft, and yet I’m a strong believer that the best way to improve is not to read, but to play. Unfortunately, there are many different ways to play, so here are the major options in progressing towards live multiplayer games. These are roughly in-order but can be skipped.
I'm not terribly familiar with Myer-Briggs personality typing, but I will give this a shot based on reading the link provided! For purposes of this answer, I'll assume that you have average hand speed (actions per minute) and are average in every.
Basic Tutorial: totally green
If you have never played a RTS (like Age of Empires, WarCraft, or Dawn of War), you may consider starting with the tutorial to familiarize yourself with the UI and controls. Warning: it’s pretty pedantic, so it’s not actually that much fun. Even so, it should take you maybe 10 minutes to get through all of it.
- Start the game and sign-in
- Click on “Campaign”
- Click on “Launch Tutorial”
Campaign: enjoy the game
The single-player campaign is great. The story is very engrossing, and the campaign alone is probably worth the value of the game. Blizzard also designed missions to teach you mechanics and how to use units. Unless you’re raring to play multiplayer, I recommend you play through the campaign first.
- Start StarCraft and sign-in
- Click on “Campaign”
- Click on “New Campaign”
Training: get into Multiplayer
Once you can play through an entire mission or game of StarCraft, you’re ready to hop into multiplayer. The basic setup for multiplayer is that you and 1 other player are plopped on a map with a basic structure and 6 buildings, and over the course of 5 minutes to over an hour, you try to defeat the other player. Although you’re clicking the same buttons and building similar units to the campaign, there’s a very specific set of strategies that you should be familiar with.
To master that, Blizzard designed Training missions, which pit you against progressively more difficult computers. The best part about it is that the game will coach you through the whole game by instructing you what to do next so you can see how a typical game flows. You can play through 3 stages with all 3 races to get a handle on how the game works.
- Start StarCraft and sign-in
- Click on “Matchmaking”
- Select “Training”
- Pick a race and hit “Play”
- Work from Stage 1 up to Stage 3
Versus A.I.: getting comfortable
Once you understand how multiplayer games work, it’s all practice and learning strategies from here. To shelter you from the trolls of the internet, Blizzard added a “Versus A.I.” mode, where you can play 1v1 against the computer. The computer adjusts its difficulty depending on whether you win or lose, so it should be a decent challenge at all times.
- Start StarCraft and sign-in
- Click on “Matchmaking”
- Select “Versus A.I.”
- Pick a race and hit “Play”
- Keep playing as long as you like!
Unranked and Ranked: the big time
If you own the game, you can now join Ranked and Unranked games where you are matched with humans of similar skill to play games. The only difference between them is that Ranked games place you in a league so you can see how well you’re doing. This is it! Enjoy!
- Start StarCraft and sign-in
- Click on “Matchmaking”
- Select “Unranked” or “Ranked”
- Pick a race and hit “Play”
Other resources
Blizzard also has designed a few other challenges for you to play around with. They’re a ton of fun but are also instructive.
The Challenge Missions will teach you about army compositions, controlling individual units, and dealing with common game scenarios.
- Start StarCraft and sign-in
- Click on “Campaign”
- Click on “Challenge Missions”
- Play them all!
If you own StarCraft, you can also play StarCraft Master, a series of 30 mini-scenarios where you use all sorts of tricks and fancy micro to do seemingly impossible things.
- Start StarCraft and sign-in
- Click on “Arcade”
- Search for “StarCraft Master”
- Select the map and play it


I'm Mafab, a former diamond Starcraft Terran player, and am currently working on my iGCSE. I've always been interested in gaming and have bought SC2 on release and have played it for a few months, lurking TL and watching Day[9].
Backstory:
+ Show Spoiler +
Starcraft 2 Best Race
At some point in 2011 I have gone to the dark side. I started playing League of Legends. A game, which I thought I would play on and off, as my friend introduced me to it. It wasn't gonna take the place that Starcraft has kept hold on for the past few month as the main game I'm playing, was it? Well, it did. LoL has been a great enjoyment, and over the time I grew better and eventually managed to be part of the second highest league, diamond. But now that I have reached this, it feels as though there is little for me to play for. I had 2 options in LoL:
1) Competitive 5v5s, which are very stressful and organising the people to play with can be a pain in the ass. I tried this for a while, joining the LoL squad of the german clan 'Sgeht', which is known more for it's Starcraft team. However, it was just way too difficult to manage people who evidently were unorganised and didn't aspire anything in the scene. I thus decided to discard this idea.
2) Going for challenger in solo queue. This was a viable option, but I never really enjoyed solo queue that much due to all the toxidity going on there, and it to me just seemed as though I hit a wall that I couldn't pass, going up to Diamond III, but dropping right back down to Diamond V.
After all of this I felt frustrated with the game and looked for something in my harddrive, when I realised that I would love to go back to Starcraft. So here I am, going back to the game that I once loved, but discarded when I found an alternative.
Now, I'm here to present you my progress in relearning my old skills, my journey of getting back to 200 APM from about the 100 that I came back with, and playing more crisp again in general.
To start off with however, I realised that I don't have a favourite race anymore. I used to love both Zerg and Terran equally, maining first Zerg and later Terran, as Marine micro inspired me. Protoss back then just didn't seem like a fun race. But now that I've come back, I noticed that I really hate TvT and would only get angry playing this boring slugfest of a matchup. It's awesome to watch, but it's awful to play for me. Additionally, I found out that my previous dislike for the Protoss race is pretty much gone, and with inspiring play from players like Dear, NaNiwa and MC I opened up to the race, which I previously ignored.
This would make an easy choice, but the same applies to the other races. Maru's game 1 against Dear in the Season 3 finals alone would be enough to win me over, not to mention many of Polt's or Mvp's games, which just amaze with strategic genius. If it wasn't for the aforementioned, this would be my choice.
And then there is Zerg, the race I started off playing the game. I absolutely love the Ling/Bling/Muta style, which was popular back in the day, but got driven into obscurity by the popular Broodlord/Infestor style, which I despised as both Terran and Zerg, as it was such a slow and boring style. But now that it came back, Zerg is also an option worth considering, and with players such as Soulkey or Life amazing me with great runbys and general fun play, I am also very fond of this race.
Now as you can see, this is a problem for me. I really enjoy fast games, multitasking and putting my opponent to the limit (basically, I try to play a game like the aforementioned Dear vs Maru game 1). This would again reduce the selection to Zerg and Terran, as Protoss is usually slightly slower. But I also enjoy the interesting strategic options of Protoss, and have come to realise that it too can be played with great speed, which has been demonstrated by Trap, Dear, MC or HerO, just to name a few. And thus I'm at a point where I don't know which race to pick, which is partially why I'm here:
I need to choose a race and have no idea which one to take (note that I do not want to play random, as I would prefer to focus on one race):
Poll: Which race should I play, after what you read about my playstyle?
71%
Zerg (2)
14%
Protoss (2)
14%
14 total votes
Your vote: Which race should I play, after what you read about my playstyle?
(Vote): Terran
(Vote): Zerg
(Vote): Protoss
And now to the juicy bit, my progress. I have been set to silver after my huge break and am now still on my road of getting my skill back to what it used to be around a year and a half ago, and I'm making steady progress. While I'm not playing with any build orders, due to not having chosen a race yet, and getting my mechanics back up, I am improving steadily.
My stats so far are:
As you can see, I play all the races a with great success, boosting my MMR back up to a gold-platinum level.
Now, I will keep this blog updated, posting about my progress, adding a few notable replays and general things, which I want to talk about.
If you have any suggestions or ideas to help me, I would like to hear them! I'm open to constructive criticism, and would love to discuss things with you in this thread.