Fastest Map Possible: Destroying Mineral Gatherers
Author: TeraByte
For money maps: Yes
Difficulty: Intermediate
Comments: 5 (Watch for comments!, Add to favorites)
Views: 3248
In Fastest Map Possible, all scvs/drones/probes are gathered in one spot, making it easy to take them all out in a few blows of splash damage. Obviously, because the main/mineral gatherers are so important, it is usually heavily protected. Protoss players will surround their main with photons, terran, turrets, and zerg, spores/sunkens. This makes it difficult to get to their main. The Sair-Storm method will be discussed:
Units: Corsair + shuttle + high temp (with storm):
How to do it: Make approximately 2-4 corsairs. Make a shuttle (shuttle speed upgrade is highly recommended). Make a high templar (storm must be upgraded). Taking the corsairs AND the shuttle, move them to the opponent's main, going right through their defenses, drop your high templar, and storm the mineral patch. This will kill all the mineral gatherers around the mineral patch.
How it works: Because of auto-fire and starcraft AI, photons, turrets, spores marines, dragoons, hydralisks, etc. always attack corsairs before shuttles. With 2-4 corsairs moving with your shuttle, the enemy AI will only fire at the corsairs first, before your shuttle, leaving the shuttle almost always unscathed.
Biggest problem: zergs make sunken colonies, which will attack your high templar when you drop it. To overcome this problem, either drop somewhere where the sunkens cannot reach your high templar, or drop a dragoon/zealot/archon FIRST, distracting the sunkens while you drop your high templar (they can both be in the same shuttle) and storming the mineral patch.
Tips to improve the strategy:
1. Gather your corsairs and shuttle together as close to the enemy's base as possible, before going in. For example, if your opponent is on the other side of the map, do not send your corsairs/shuttles in from way inside your base. This is because corsairs tend to move faster than even upgraded shuttles. However, if they are gathered just beside the opponent's boundary of their base, the slight difference in speed should not hinder the strategy to a great extent.
2. Use hotkeys to control your shuttle, and your high templar. The faster you can drop and storm, the better the strategy will work. Hotkeys help a lot in this. For example, if you hotkey your shuttle CTRL 1, and then hotkey your high templar CTRL 2, when your shuttle is at the right position, just press 1 (selects shuttle) - click high templar (to unload it) - press 2 (selects high templar) - press t click mineral patch (storms mineral gatherers).
3. Super pro at microing? Upgrade disruption web for corsairs, and use disruption web on anything that attacks only ground, such as nearby tanks and sunken colonies, so your high templar does not get attacked. Using disruption web on photons and turrets and spores also works, but it is not necessary in this strategy.
This strategy is usually meant to sacrifice everything you send into the opponent's base. However, it is worth it. A few corsairs, one shuttle, one high templar, is nothing compared to the destruction of all the opponent's mineral gatherers. Do this often enough in a game, and your enemies will find themselves frustratingly low on minerals in a money map.
Units: Corsair + shuttle + high temp (with storm):
How to do it: Make approximately 2-4 corsairs. Make a shuttle (shuttle speed upgrade is highly recommended). Make a high templar (storm must be upgraded). Taking the corsairs AND the shuttle, move them to the opponent's main, going right through their defenses, drop your high templar, and storm the mineral patch. This will kill all the mineral gatherers around the mineral patch.
How it works: Because of auto-fire and starcraft AI, photons, turrets, spores marines, dragoons, hydralisks, etc. always attack corsairs before shuttles. With 2-4 corsairs moving with your shuttle, the enemy AI will only fire at the corsairs first, before your shuttle, leaving the shuttle almost always unscathed.
Biggest problem: zergs make sunken colonies, which will attack your high templar when you drop it. To overcome this problem, either drop somewhere where the sunkens cannot reach your high templar, or drop a dragoon/zealot/archon FIRST, distracting the sunkens while you drop your high templar (they can both be in the same shuttle) and storming the mineral patch.
Tips to improve the strategy:
1. Gather your corsairs and shuttle together as close to the enemy's base as possible, before going in. For example, if your opponent is on the other side of the map, do not send your corsairs/shuttles in from way inside your base. This is because corsairs tend to move faster than even upgraded shuttles. However, if they are gathered just beside the opponent's boundary of their base, the slight difference in speed should not hinder the strategy to a great extent.
2. Use hotkeys to control your shuttle, and your high templar. The faster you can drop and storm, the better the strategy will work. Hotkeys help a lot in this. For example, if you hotkey your shuttle CTRL 1, and then hotkey your high templar CTRL 2, when your shuttle is at the right position, just press 1 (selects shuttle) - click high templar (to unload it) - press 2 (selects high templar) - press t click mineral patch (storms mineral gatherers).
3. Super pro at microing? Upgrade disruption web for corsairs, and use disruption web on anything that attacks only ground, such as nearby tanks and sunken colonies, so your high templar does not get attacked. Using disruption web on photons and turrets and spores also works, but it is not necessary in this strategy.
This strategy is usually meant to sacrifice everything you send into the opponent's base. However, it is worth it. A few corsairs, one shuttle, one high templar, is nothing compared to the destruction of all the opponent's mineral gatherers. Do this often enough in a game, and your enemies will find themselves frustratingly low on minerals in a money map.
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Out of 5 voters, most think this strategy is Good!
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| 1, Ahzz (Section Moderator) | |||||||
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good. this is exactly what every fastest map player should do; destroy their workers. For protoss, its storm. for zerg, lurkers, for terran, tanks/science vessel irradiate. You even provided an more effective way to blast through their defenses. |
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| 2, kirbythegod | |||||||
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im not in full agreement....vs.zerg on fastest destroying their workers is futile, they can replace them all with a few clicks, its more important to take out their tech or base. | ||||||
| 3, springyspandex | |||||||
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The strategy is good, but yes against a zerg player they can mass 50+ workers at once so its kind-of useless unless its early into the game. I like Reaver dropping better, All you need is about 6 reavers 3 shuttles and u can take out the main hatchery/cc etc.. It's almost a guaranteed win because it slows it down permanently and no one has enough defense to stop reavers in the back anyway unless they expect it. |
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| 4, TeraByte | |||||||
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Definitely true, this strategy is ineffective against zergs late game. Early game, however, can still slow down a zerg. I did not mention that you can use the 6 reavers and 3 shuttles accompanied with corsairs because I am used to playing people who spam spores/sunkens/photons/turrets around their main, so much that there is no room to drop reavers. Or, if there is, there are so many photons/sunks the reavers die in no time. But you are right, taking out the main, if possible, is the best possible way to go. | ||||||
| 5, lammas (Section Moderator) | |||||||
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Early game zerg has to be playing quite poorly if he has 1500 minerals which he can instantly spend on 30 drones, so I think this is strong even vs z. Late game ofc its diffrent and tera said. | ||||||
