Starcraft 2: Team Member Guide

Written by Shokz of Shokz Starcraft 2 Mastery Guide.

Playing on an arranged team has its advantages compared to playing random team games. Your team is able to discuss strategies before games, and break down what you did wrong and right after each game to improve your play.  Playing with teammates takes the control out of your hands and makes your rely on your team adding a degree of difficulty compared to 1v1, although knowing how to work together will give you the edge over other teams and help you be victorious.

Communication

Voice communication is the first thing you should setup before each game, the ability to communicate during the game with out typing will save you time and make sure your team is on the same page. Using Voice chat gives you an advantage from the start in each game as you and your team can quickly coordinate attacks, defend each others base and know what each other is doing at all times. Having good communication is key for any team.

Blizzard has built an in game voice chat system into Starcraft 2 but to be honest it is absolutely garbage and the quality is horrible and I’ve never been able to get it to work properly.

The voice client my friends and I always use when we play Starcraft 2 is Skype. Skype is a free VOIP client which allows you to communicate with other Skype users for free. With Skype you can create a conference call that allows you to communicate with up to 4 other Skype users at once, which is great for when we play 3v3 or 4v4. The sound quality of Skype is crystal clear and is becoming one of the fastest growing voice client among gamers since friends can just login to their Skype account and start communicating.

The other two popular voice clients are Ventrilo and TeamSpeak. These are both great clients although require you to have a server which your friends and you can connect to. These two clients are often used for Clans with a large amount of users or Guilds, although if you’re just playing with your friends in Starcraft you shouldn’t need anymore than 5 users in the voice chat at one time.

Another great Voice Chat program is called RaidCall.  RaidCall, gives you the option to work with many clan members, or to make a free channel, which can host your voice communication. Unlike Ventrilo and TeamSpeak, the servers are free to make. Also, unlike Skype, you will experience little lag, as the server is not your own computer.  We recommend you and your clan use this service over all others.

Start of the Game

At the start of each game after you’ve sent your workers to your minerals make sure you and your teammates click the icon in the top right corner and share unit control with your team. Sharing units with your team mates is very important and should be done every game at the start of each game, this allows everyone on your team to have control of all the units on the map which will be used later on in the game.

The first couple minutes of the game you and your partners should talk about your strategy and what you plan on doing based off the map you are playing on. This is where you and your team want to discuss what units you plan on doing and how you will want to attack, also if you are going to rush or macro till late game.

Early each game have one team member take a worker and scout your opponents, you need to know which races they are and possibly see what builds they are going early game.

The Micro and Macro

Playing with multiple players adds a lot of variables to the game, you and your partner(s’) timing have to be in sync and constantly working together. In any game you’ll find that one player is better then another in certain aspects of the game such as microing and controlling units, while the other player may be better at macroing and building up his base and army. On every team you want to have one player who handles all the Micro and another player who handles all the Macro.

The Micro – The player who handles the Micro is the player in charge of the army. It is their job to attack and Micro the units while attacking. The reason why you have one player control the attack is that if one player is controlling all the units during the battle he will be able to Micro them all around correctly without having to rely on their partner moving their units in the correct position.

The Macro – The player who handles the Macro is in charge of the base up keep of all their allies. While the Micro player is attacking they need to make sure that their allies mules are drop, Spawn Larva is being used, and Chrono Boost is being used during battle. They must also defend off the bases against any attacks while your ally is in battle.

The key to the Macro player is making sure while his ally is busy in battle, that he helps him stay on top of his Macro while he is busy controlling the battle.

Team Chemistry

Playing with other players in arranged team matches is just like any other team, the more you guys play together the more you’ll get to know how one another and will develop a chemistry among each other. It is important that you play a lot of games to develop this chemistry and after a while you guys will start doing things together with out even having to say anything. As your team chemistry starts to develop you’ll notice that the games become easier when playing with one another and most importantly your winning percentage will increase.

Although it is important to listen to one another and be able to take criticism, after each game it’s a good idea to discuss with your partners what you guys did right and what you guys did wrong and how you can improve your play next time.

Tips

• Share Units with your allies at the start of the game
• Have one player in charge of controlling the units during battles
• Have each player know their role and what they are good at
• Share resources with each other if needed
• Discuss with your team how you guys played after each match
• Learn to take criticism from your teammates and learn from your mistakes
• Practice your strategies on 1v1
• If you want to read more of these advanced strategies, purchase Shokz Starcraft 2 Mastery guide.

Starcraft 2: Team Member Guide, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

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