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What race should a newbie pick?
 

Was doing some thinking and came to this conclusion - If you are a newbie starting off in Starcraft 2 and have absolutely no preference for race and just want to start playing the game, pick PROTOSS.

A brief examination of the different races shows why Protoss is the easiest race for a new player to pick up. This is NOT the same as saying that Protoss is the easiest race to play - at the highest level, it's really quite different, and there are differing opinions as to which race is the so-called 'easiest' to play. But I'm talking about at the newbie level, at the basic level - Protoss is the easiest.

Let's first look at what I believe is the most difficult race : Zerg.

Why is Zerg the most difficult to pick up? In most scenarios, if you were to play a proper drawn out game (no cheese, all-ins), a Zerg player needs to go a fast -expand build to sustain his (weaker) army (weaker in terms of supply-wise - e.g. 200 vs 200 army) and economy. It is very macro heavy which may be hard for newbies to pick up.
In addition, getting a fast-expansion will mean learning HOW to defend it, which poses additional difficulties.
Most of all, it requires a delicate understanding of when to get Drones, and when to get an army. It also has the most crucial 'economy mechanic' of Inject Larva - If you miss it too often, you can't get a good economy AND army up. (I'll explain why it's not so crucial for the other races below)
On top of a more difficult macro style to master, zerg engagements require good flanking and positioning, whereas the other 2 races generally can engage in a ball (of course, avoiding chokes etc, is impt)
Of course, this does not even include other mechanics like spreading Creep Tumors, when to get Overlords, etc (since it takes up larva too)


How about Terran? Well, as mentioned before, its economy mechanic of MULE/Scans are much easier to handle than Zerg - even if you miss a few MULEs, you can always drop 3-4 at once, or even use the energy for scans. It doesn't help you get more resources (just FASTER minerals) and is probably only crucial in clutch situations (perhaps after losing a base, and trying to catch up) so having some energy stocked up is good (for scanning cloaked units, for instance)
Why I deem it harder than Protoss is because it has much more different production buildings - 3 types in total for a typical game (e.g. a newbie friendly build like MMM), whereas Protoss typically only uses 2 (warpgates and stargate/robo)
(Be clear that I'm talking for new players here - of course higher level players mix up their units more)

In addition, the whole 'queuing' up of units is something that new players will struggle with - It is common knowledge to more experienced players that you shouldn't queue up too many units at once, and while Toss don't face this problem with Warpgates, Terran have to handle multiple Barracks/Factories/Starports well.
Also, choice of addons? How many to get? Which addons? Protoss have no such headaches.

And while Terran armies generally can fight in a ball, there are many occasions where you'll WANT to spread out your army in an engagement, such as against Banelings, Colussus, etc, which are very very typical responses against a Terran army. This requires more micro and more skill and harder to learn too. (Which drives players to do a mech build which is newbie friendly but very gas intensive and needs multiple bases to handle, etc)


Now let's look at Protoss and their 'economy mechanic' of Chronoboost. You generally shouldn't miss too many chronoboosts in the early game even if you're new as there's nothing much happening- thus you will get your harvestors up and easily outnumber other races since you can produce them faster at the start.
As the game drags on, even if you miss them it's ok, you can use them to chronoboost out units and upgrades! Which is what you WILL be using them for in the mid-late game anyway.

Production? Warpgates make production easy as pie. There's no need to even rally units, just warp warp warp warp. At the bronze-silver levels, I can easily win all games with just gateway-robo units. No problems at all.
Micro? Just move in a tight ball, and engage as such (of course general rules like Zealots in front, sentries away from fire, should be adhered to as much as possible, but this isn't that hard to manage) And with Sentries, you can just spam Forcefields to cut the other army in half at chokes, etc. Not that hard to learn, but crazily effective.

It's so easy to play Protoss! Gosh. I still love my Zerg though.

Not convinced? Leave a comment