Ever seen a list of numbers with buildings and units next to them? These lists, known as build orders, often confuse players new to Starcraft or RTS games in general. Build orders lie at the very heart of StarCraft 2 strategy and are essential to nearly all aspects of the game: economy management, unit timings, and macro. Build orders dictate whether you will be rushing, cheesing, harassing, or macroing. It’s for this reason that scouting your opponent is so vital to winning; depending on what buildings you scout you can more easily counter whatever will be coming your way.
Although the general format of build orders may look confusing at first, it’s quite easy to decipher. Because there is no internal timing system in the game for players to see, timings are denoted by a player’s current supply count located in the top right corner of the screen. Let us look at the “cheesy” 6 Pool build order:
6 Spawning Pool
5 Drone
6 Drone
7 3×2 Zerglings
10 Overlord
10+ Zerglings
Since you start out with 6 workers in StarCraft 2, following this build order would require you to not construct any Drones until you build your Spawning Pool (building a Drone before the Spawning Pool would increase your supply to 7). Because building as Zerg requires a Drone to morph, you would be dropped to 5 supply count. You should then build two more Drones at 5 and 6 supply. At 7 supply, your Spawning Pool should be completed and you should morph three larvas into Zerglings (3×2 denotes that 2 Zerglings are produced per larva). Once done, you will be capped at 10/10 supply, so an Overlord will need to be produced. Since the 6 Pool build is an “all-in” strategy, the build order recommends to simply keep producing Zerglings at and after 10 supply.
For a complete list, check out this StarCraft 2 Strategy Guide.
Terran:
Zerg:
Protoss:
Still struggling to improve? Check out the Diamond Gamer addon which walks you through StarCraft 2 strategies and build orders while you are still in game!
