In previous articles detailing some of the tricks and tips still floating around out there for everyone’s favorite game of interstellar domination and fabulous prizes (a new car!), we’ve focused mainly (or entirely) on the slithery Zerg and the stalwart Terrans.
But no more!
Today, the Protoss shall have their due, in the form of this annoying little trick which is frustrating to your opponent, and hilarious to you.
Step 1: Build yourself a probe.
Step 2: Grab your enemy’s attention with an ill-conceived attack or a lengthy Protoss mating dance. Just make sure they’re looking away from their base.
Step 3: Fly your probe into their base, in front of one of their unit production buildings. Bringing more than one probe might help here. And really, why use only one probe when you can three-probe it?
Step 4: Build a few pylons right next to where the units are going to come out. Once produced, they won’t be able to move or be moved by your opponent. Bring in a few heavy hitters and you can wipe out a whole lot of enemy units, hopefully before your human competitor notices. Ideally, they’re going to think that a massive army is building in their base while you pick off their units one by one. Enjoy your empty base, sucka!
But since we’re Terrans at heart here, we’d be remiss to leave out a bit of Terran-related wisdom as well.
This trick, surprisingly, does not use a tank.
Well – it doesn’t have to, anyway.
This is a fun way to play around with the Terran flying buildings, as if flying around buildings wasn’t fun enough already. Here’s how it goes.
First, choose a building that can fly and make units. Start making a unit and, at the same time, lift the building off of the ground. The unit production will be suspended until you land.
This means that you could start building say, a tank, fly the building to where you wanted it, and then let the tank spawn, even without a machine shop nearby. Not a particularly good use of resources, but fun to see.
Another option is to cancel the unit being built. This will put the building into the “on the ground” graphic, but it will still actually be flying. What’s that? It’s the purloined flying building – hiding in plain sight.
Lastly, but certainly not least, you can put the building into a “limbo” state. Land the building but, during the landing sequence, cancel the unit. The building will automatically finish landing, but be disabled. It will be on the ground, and show up as a ground-based structure, but won’t function.
On the plus side, it will appear functioning to your opponent, but won’t be attackable except by anti-air units. Units will also be able to walk through the building, and it cannot be infested. This could be a fun surprise – drop a building right on the enemy’s doorstep, or at a crucial location, and then disable it. Watch in glee as they make a futile attempt to blow it up while you sack their base and burn it to the ground. Terran diplomacy at its finest.
Both of these tricks came from Teamliquid.net, and as far as we know, work with the latest patches of both StarCraft and Broodwar. Trust us, we’re doctors. We have probes, after all.
