Starcraft

Ok, ok, the title makes this strategy seem useful, but some of this strategy will be so unimportant to your playing or you probably knew all this stuff already. (of course, unless you are a very serious gamer). I began to write this strategy after I played a series of games where people didn't know how to even react to the simple zerg units, like the scourge. This will be a strategy on how to defeat the zerg units.

=Scourge=
Ok, early in the game and you have 3-5 mutalisks(or corsairs). You send them to harass and find yourself being chased by 2 scourges. Even experienced players panic and just give a long run, thinking that you can hopefully outrun it. This way, you may be able to fend off one scourge, but at least one will hit and almost completely kill a mutalisk. During this chase you forget all about your plans and economy so you are already a step late. How do you stop this? The simplest thing to do is lead them to a photon cannon/spore colony. If you don't have one, your ally might. But, if you don't have any anti air defence, use complicated micro.

First, send your mutalisk to the opposite corner of the map, and select divide your mutas into groups of halves, and number them group 1 and 2. (or 2 and 3 and so on) With group #2, move at a slightly different angle than your first group. This way, you will be able to see which group the scourges are chasing, unless the player is a noob and just did a random attack. Attack the scourges with group # 2, and run asap, and if the scourges still do not chase your #2, attack again and run asap. With 3 or 4 attacks, all the scourges should be dead. This sounds so much easier on paper. This definitely requires practicing.

=Guardians=
Because Guardians are Hive-Level units, I am assuming you are at the highest Tech Level as well.

Guardians are so easy to defeat because they are so slow. But, because Zerg players know this very well, guardians are protected by a massive fleet of mutalisks and devourers, and have a tag team of cracklings to stop any ground targets, not to mention all the queens broodling away.

If you are zerg, the best thing to do is plague them and cast dark swarm on your hydralisks so that they will not be hurt and repel the guardians. Because the zerg does not have any restoring units such as the medic, a few minutes later you can rush in with mutalisks and kill 3 guards per hit. After 3-4 attacks to different guardians all should be dead and you should be able to get out of there with a huge victory.

If you are terran, you should have valkyries by now because you should have noticed that the enemy was going massively air. But just anti air units are not going to do. The most anti zerg the terran has is irridiate. Use it over and over until the entire zerg army is covered in the green gas. Afterwards, just hold out with all your valks and goliaths until the irridiates do maximum damage. Another thing to consider, is using the optical flare on the overlord which takes away its vision and detection abilities, and then massively murdering the air units with wraiths or ghosts (whichever you have).

If you are protoss, guardians shouldn't be much of a problem unless they just have too many of them. Possible counters: Maelstrom then psonic storm works wonders, but just psonic storm can reduce their army to bits. But they do bring 1-3 queens to broodling as much as they can, so you need to be careful and bring the templars out one by one. After they have discharged, make them into Archons. What can Archons do to a group of guardians? Well, your storms probably have destroyed their hp into the 10s range, so Archons with their massive splash should get rid of them, and especially with a shield battery nearby it should be a piece of cake. Another great counter is Arbiters. Use the statis field and freeze the air defence (most zerg players group them separately and bring out the air defence only when their guardians are in trouble), then eat away at the guardians with your corsairs. After the statis field goes away, Maelstrom them right away and zap them with templars. I know, this strategy requires Arbiters and the Dark Archon, but if you happen to haves these elements, all zerg air are useless.

=Lurkers*=
Well, Lurkers can be repelled pretty much by any means necessary like observers and tanks, but I'm going to be writing about countering them in the early stages of the game where observers haven't come out yet. Of course, the Zerg always has observers so we are not going to talk about that.

If you are Terran, lurkers are a piece of cake. Just the comsat station can make way for you to kill them, but a better idea is to comsat them, cast optical flares on all of them, then attack with your rines. Because they will be blind, they won't be able to attack back to your marines. So, you can beat them without losing a single unit.

If you are Protoss, well, things are a bit different. You have no way of even seeing the enemy until observer comes, and templars haven't come out yet, so the only action you can take is containment. The range upgraded goons are the key to using this. Place your goons in a circle around the lurkers so that they can't hit you yet, but if they try to move closer your goons will hit them. You need to have at least 10 goons to be able to kill a lurker as soon as it comes out. Then you can hit when your observers come.