We’re StarCraft 2 Players first and foremost. We love the game and spend a hell of a lot of time playing it. At StarCraft2Strategy.com we spend just as much time though trying to improve our game and take it to the next level. One of the best ways to pick up additional StarCraft 2 skills it learn from the pros. Many have published their own guides to this end and they are phenomenal tools for improving your game. Problem is that there are a ton of them out there and many aren’t worth the bandwidth to download them. Here’s our top 3 picks from the 11 guides we reviewed:

 

So we set out to independently review the top guides on the net. We spent our own cash and got our hands on 11 of the most publicized and used StarCraft 2 Strategy guides. We’ve kept our reviews up to date and this page was last published in December of 2011. Unlike other StarCraft 2 “strategy” sites, StarCraft2Strategy.com wasn’t built around trying to sell you something. We’re real gamers who play StarCraft 2 every day and above all we just want to have fun and enjoy the game. So check out our thoroughly tested and independent reviews below and stop by the forums to mix it up with us when you have a chance.

 Scroll Down for all of our reviews in detail

 

November 2011 Update

 

We just out our hands on the new 7Probes SC2 Training Course and it is absolutely amazing. While all the guides reviewed below were released around beta or just after the retail game hit the shelves the 7Probes Strategy Guide was just released less than 2 weeks ago and is right on top of strategies being used on the ladder right now.

Now get this, after speaking with these guys they’ve also committed to having a full walkthrough, on Brutal, of the upcoming Heart of the Swarm expansion available to their members free of charge! This is the first guide on the market to commit to this and while so many members areas in many of the guides listed below have been stale for months this team is fresh and prepared to meet the needs of players today.

So why not grab this amazing guide now with the assurance of getting all the support you’ll need for Heart of the Swarm? I mean… you are going get Heart of the Swarm, aren’t you?

So we logged into their members area and starting tearing apart their strategy lessons for review. Wow. These guys have their shit together. There’s really nothing you don’t get.

All units covered in great detail, positioning tactics and map control, economy, micro, macro… all that. No joke, the best scouting strategies and advice we’ve seen to date.

For the same price many of these outdated guides are asking this course is jam packed; 25 lessons, multiple modules per lesson, 83 videos, and the only guide out there committed to bringing you full Heart of the Swarm walkthroughs on Brutal inside of the first 2 weeks the game is released. Be among the first to have the newest portraits and achievements unlocked.

The level of detail is amazing. You like to mass stalkers, right… stalkers are great, but just how effectively are you really using them? Ever imagine you could win matches much sooner with less units simply by knowing microing techniques that out-range your opponent every time? Same goes for Roaches and Marauders. Valyrian covers aspects of the game we’d never even thought about in an easy to understand and digest format.

We’d already mentioned that his scouting guide was the best we’ve ever come across and while they are many great lessons in the package another standout was Lesson 10: Decision Making Techniques & Planning Your Next Move. When and where to be aggressive, harass, macro up. How to counter the same from your opponent. What assumptions to make and when. Key moments in every game that often pass us by when we should be reacting and killing it right there. It brought a new level of psychology to the game for us for sure.

Above all other guides we’re recommending this one and since it was just released mere days ago you can jump on top of some of these fantastic strategy elements before you competition gets a hold of them. Plus your guaranteed access to Heart of the Swarm strategies, guides, and walkthroughs as soon as the expansion is released. At the same price many of the older guides are still charging this is tremendous value. Feel free to compare this against our other reviews below.

StarCraft2Strategy.com Top Pick

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Here at StarCraft2Strategy.com we took the time to review all the various StarCraft 2 Strategy Guides out there in hopes of providing you with one that answers the questions you seek and helps you improve your game the most. Please check out our reviews below.

StarCraft 2 Secrets by T Dub

Price: $37
Guide Type: PDF
Pros: Deep content; more than most, units exceptionally well covered, good flow from beginner to pro
Cons: Could be more pictures and scenes set, heavy word content
60 Days Money Back Guarantee: Yes
Rating:

Review

You get both a StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty Campaign Guide and the primary StarCraft 2 Secrets guide.

The Campaign Guide is very thorough detailing every mission, mission objectives, rewards, key locations, achievements, and of course the level walk-through itself. The Campaign Guide clocks in at 57 pages worth of content and is very professionally laid out.

The StarCraft 2 Secrets guide clocks in at a walloping 249 pages and has a ton of very good, very applicable info. It covers basic strategies and tactics such as Economy, Build Orders, Hot Keys, Scouting, Expanding, and Spamming. It then dives into very specific race based strategies thoroughly covering every StarCraft 2 race. Common threads are abilities unique to each race, common builds, and how to effectively counter your opponent’s possible race compositions.

The secrets that this guide touts are the advanced micro management tactics you can employ with specific units as well as high level economy and macro control. There’s also a wide variety of build orders many of which don’t get a lot of play and are very strong. Most importantly though is the good advice and strategies presented for effectively countering certain army compositions giving you the edge in a lot of match-ups.

The last section we actually really enjoyed where Tony goes into detail about every single unit in the game and discusses what their “dream matchups” are for other units they completely dominate. So whereas the previous countering section details defensive tactics this section covers the units on an all around basis allowing you to think more offensively and have a deeper understanding of where any given unit type fits within a match.

Bottom Line: Priced right for the wealth of content you receive; professionally compiled eBook. For a deeper understanding of all the game’s units this guide has something for everyone and I guarantee there’s a few builds in there that you haven’t seen or thought of yet.

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Ultimate StarCraft 2 Guide

Price: $27
Guide Type: PDF
Pros: Has a glossary terms, covers game pacing
Cons: Hard to navigate, no table of contents
60 Days Money Back Guarantee: Yes
Rating:

Review

The guide is moderately priced when compared to other guides and the author covers topics such as game pacing, practicing, replays, and tactical retreating which a lot of guides don’t cover. You can tell he’s an experienced player and his lingo jives with an actual player and member of the community whereas some guides seem sterile and a little detached even if they’re presenting solid strategy.

However, it was tough to really get into this guide because of the presentation. It’s 76 pages long and there’s no navigation or table of contents (aside from listing the high level sections) to help guide you. The text is a somewhat larger font, white against blue, which becomes hard on the eyes to read after a while and makes it difficult to skim through sections you may not want to read.

The guide is thorough in covering the multiplayer universe though and gives a solid overview of the game and mechanics for each race.

Bottom Line: Buy it if you want to check out the glossary and learn some terminology that can make you seem like an old hat in your first match. Also useful if you’re having pacing issues in your game and need to learn how to stagger your builds appropriately. If either of those 2 things doesn’t sound like you then don’t waste your time. You have 60 days to get your money back so there’s no risk either way.

Go Get It Now

 

StarCraft 2 Mastery Guide

Price: $37
Guide Type: PDFs + Members Area (Written Content, Videos, RSS Feed)
Pros: Solid guide, lots of members area content, individual race guides
Cons: No campaign guide
60 Days Money Back Guarantee: Yes
Rating:

Review

This was definitely one of our favorite strategy guides/resources that we reviewed. The main PDF (version 2) is 129 pages of well organized content with unique categories such as “Out-thinking Your Opponent”, “Finishing Off a Terran Player”, and “Converting a Loss to a Win”. All and all the written strategy guide was very complete, clean, easy to read, and professionally compiled. The guide in and of itself is worth 80% of the cost.

The members section had alot of great extra content. Updated individual guides for each race, a general strategy video section, videos for every type of match-up (PvP, TvZ, ZvP, etc) and a bunch of posts detailing various strategies. It would take you countless hours to get through everything in the members area.

Since StarCraft 2 has been out for a while now, well over year and longer if you got the beta, what you’ll find on many of these member area sites is that the content has gone stale. Since there hasn’t been any major updates to gameplay aside from the odd unit balance here and there as Blizzard patches things, this is usually perfectly acceptable as the content that has been posted is still very applicable. We feel this is the case here as well but we’d be doing you a disservice if we didn’t mention that the members area on this site has fallen behind in updates. While we didn’t subscribe to the RSS feed we imagine that there aren’t any posts being fed that way either.

Bottom Line: Buy it… and return it if you don’t think you got your money’s worth. We felt this was one of the very best StarCraft 2 Strategy guides that we reviewed and truly believe it can significantly improve the gameplay of any player who takes the time to really digest all the information, practice the builds and strategies, and really juice it for all it has to offer. Even if you have another guide or decide based on these reviews to get another guide this one is well worth it in addition as it features alot of unique content and perspecitve from an alternate author who is a very solid player.

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Shokz StarCraft 2 Guide

Price: $37
Guide Type: Members Area / Website
Pros: The most content of any guide/resource out there
Cons: Site hasn’t been updated in a while, but that could easily change (edit: new updates as of 11/13/2011)
60 Days Money Back Guarantee: Yes
Rating:

Review

Shokz StarCraft 2 Mastery Guide is likely a guide name you’re already familiar with because the guy advertised it relentlessly and it was quickly picked up as a go-to guide. So we plunked down the $37 to check it out for you and let you know what all the hype was about. We’ve reviewed a lot of guides for StarCraft2Strategy.com and Shokz guide lived up to the hype as quite possibly the most content rich StarCraft 2 strategy guide out there.

The guide is 100% driven by the members area. There’s no PDF to flip through or navigate and everything’s laid out cleanly right in front of you. The formatting is very consistent and easy to follow from section to section and it includes both a Wings of Liberty campaign walk-through as well as all the multiplayer content you can shake a stick at. One thing that’s covered that we didn’t see anywhere else was their APM guide.

Another thing we really liked about the guide was the privileges given to users to rate various guides, sections, and strategies. No other author opened themselves up to that sort of scrutiny so you can quickly see if a given tip or trick was well received by other players in the StarCraft 2 community.

We also like the integration of text and video. As strategies are described and explained they’re also embedded with videos showing how each element should play out. We found this to be tremendously useful when trying to absorb a new strategy.

Again, we wouldn’t be giving you a fair shake if we did not tell you that this site too has also not been updated in a while. We don’t believe that’s a diminishing factor since all the content is still very applicable to ladder play happening today but don’t expect a very active site if you’re signing up today. We’d be surprised if the community didn’t stir to life again when Heart of the Swarm is released so it’s worth staying tuned.

EDIT: New updates have been released as of 11/13/2011 and HotS walk-throughs have been promised. Also, Shokz updated his ranking in the Grand Masters ladder

Bottom Line: Buy it. Even in conjunction with other guides we highly recommend it’s always good to get multiple perspectives and pick out individual authors unique advice. Shokz guide was the most complete experience for us and was jam packed with strategy elements that can improve anyone’s game. Shokz was able to advance through the new Grand Masters ladder when it was released and has incorporated his strategy to making it to this ladder into the guide. Heart of the Swarm updates have been promised as well.

Go Get It Now

 

Joana’s StarCraft 2 Guide

Price: $8
Guide Type: Members Area / Website
Pros: Best priced guide for content provided out there
Cons:
60 Days Money Back Guarantee: Yes
Rating:

Review

This one is a much easier decision to lay the money down for. At only $8 you get a full fledged Wings of Liberty Campaign Guide and a Multiplayer Guide broken down by each race. This guide is definitely your biggest bang for your buck.

What you get is access to Joana’s member area. If you play World of Warcraft you probably know Joana from that universe. He was the first player to hit Level 50 back in the day on WoW and he offers a WoW Leveling Guide if you’re interested. Inside the member’s area are 5 main sections containing the guide.

The Basic section covers everything you’d need to know and more to get started in the StarCraft 2 universe. It covers terminology, Macro and Micro tactics, structures, scouting, hot keys, and much much more.

We were impressed with how much content was in the campaign guide; especially in the later levels when you need extra advice. You get access to Brutal Difficulty videos for every level of the campaign along with the written text in the guide itself.

Each Race Guide has it’s own menu for easy navigation and is jam packed with build orders, various strategies, and a breakdown on each unit. You also get specific guidance on specific race matchups, team games, and FFA strategies. Unless we missed it along the line we’ve yet to see any FFA strategy advice.

Bottom Line: Buy it. If this guide was an expensive as some of the other guides it would’ve earned a 4.5/5. However, at $8 you’re getting twice that much value in content and the presentation is superb, very professional. Since Joana is an active player we fully expect updates for Heart of the Swarm and since you already have access to the member’s area we reckon that content will merely be added.

Go Get It Now

 

Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide by StrategyMasters

Price: $14.95 + $10/mo
Guide Type: Members Area / Website / Forum
Pros: Lots of content from both web admin and pro players (interviews, YouTube)
Cons: Based on a community that seems largely inactive
60 Days Money Back Guarantee: Yes
Rating:

Review

For you initial payment you get 30 days of access to their members area. There’s a ton of good content, casts, and videos in the members area once you figure out how to navigate it. Tip: Don’t use the buttons at the top to browse to each race, use the menu on the left. We really like the clean layout and lack of noise or clutter.

They’ve got a lot of really good, really specific, articles and strategies which helps you sort through things one at a time with an easy reference point. We actually learned a new Zerg build we hadn’t seen before.

However it gets 3/5 stars because it’s really set up around it being an active community. We were hoping to get more out of the Forums and unfortunately they’re pretty quiet. The posts themselves didn’t have dates but based on timestamps on comments we saw they seemed pretty stale. It might be worth checking out as a Heart of the Swarm Guide when the expansion comes out to see if the community springs to life but it’s hard to recommend with high marks at present.

Bottom Line: There are some really good strategies worth checking out. So what you might wanna do is check it out for the first 30 days at $14.95 and cancel your subscription after that if it turns out the community stays inactive.

Go Get It Now

 

HotKeyIt – StarCraft 2 Strategy Guide Videos

Price: Free, For Videos / VIP Forum $27/mo
Guide Type: Forums / Members Area / Website
Pros: Exclusive Pro Videos, Coaches
Cons: Monthly fee is a little steep
60 Days Money Back Guarantee: Yes
Rating:

Review

So we went for the 1 month offer at $27. You can get 3 months for $73 which will save you $12. For that we were given access to their Pro Video Section. We found over 80 exclusive videos in there created by their pro and semi-pro staff. These are legit players competing on the StarCraft 2 tournament circuit for cash and prizes so dammit if the videos weren’t exceptional. There was a nice filter section to sort by video poster, lesson type, or video series. Also important is that the videos were being updated and added to regularly. E.g. a new video was added yesterday. This is one subscription service that has not gone stale.

For their monthly fee you’re supposed to get access to their VIP Forums… we couldn’t find these?? Their free forums are actually active though! Yay!

All and all we felt the videos were well done, varied, and extremely useful strategy guides.

Bottom Line: Subscribe if you’re a visual learner and want to get your hands on some truly quality professional StarCraft 2 strategy videos. We recommend going for the single month at $27 to be sure you’re comfortable with your investment and are happy with the videos. From there you can decide if you want to continue your subscription.

Go Get It Now

 

Nooby’s Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide

Price: $29.95
Guide Type: Members Area / PDF?
Pros: Unique build orders
Cons: No pics/videos
60 Days Money Back Guarantee: Yes
Rating:

Review

When we signed up our confirmation page had a download link for the guide itself, which was broken. So we’re docking 1/2star for that, if Nooby fixes the link we’ll award it back. From there we had to sign up for the Member’s Area. The registration link landed in our spam folder, not Nooby’s fault but if you do get this guide be sure and check your junk folder for the registration link if it doesn’t show up.

After we finally got logged in we still couldn’t find the PDF, we’re not sure if it exists in that format since their seems to be a full strategy guide presented in the Memebers Area Navigation.

The Members Area has 4 main sections; General Strategy, Terran Strategy, Protoss Strategy, and Zerg Strategy. The General Strategy section was fairly brief though all the basics are definitely covered. Subsections include Harassment, Kiting, and Scouting. The navigation is solid and straight forward as well so no deduction there.

The Race Sections are all build orders, no general strategy is given. In that though the Build Orders are very detailed and complete. We found 2 Protoss and 2 Zerg builds we hadn’t seen before anywhere, and we look everywhere.

We have to deduct an entire star though (and another 1/2 for the price) for the complete lack of images and videos. Text is all well and good, but this is a video game and as such people generally appreciate visual markers and references.

The Units Wiki is pretty sweet and it’s free so head on over to Nooby’s if you wanna check that out.

Bottom Line: If you’re looking for some unique build orders you might want to check it out. You can always get your money back inside of 60 days. Otherwise, we can’t strongly recommend it.

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Starcraft 2 Diamond Blueprint

Price: $29.95
Guide Type: PDF + Videos
Pros: Campaign guide has birdseye maps
Cons: Limited strategy advice, useless videos
60 Days Money Back Guarantee: Yes
Rating:

Review

So we started pouring through the PDF guide and it opens up with the basics of the game covering Macro, Micro, and the Armor and Damage system. Those sections could’ve had better sub-headers to make them easier to navigate.

From there the guide jumps into the Wings of Liberty Campaign. We were a bit shocked when we realized this was the first time we’d see each level/mission laid out in map form. For whatever reason we can’t remember anyone doing that before and we though it was pretty cool to give a birds eye view of each mission like that with some (albeit crude) navigation lines and important areas highlighted on the maps.

The Race sections just cover units and some very basic Race X vs. Race Y strategies, which honestly weren’t very good. A few build orders were also covered, though nothing to write home about.

The writing overall was OK, we found some mistakes in wording (some copy+pasting that wasn’t updated to reflect a new race) and the layout could’ve been cleaner.

So what about the videos? Absolutely useless for anyone who’s played the game just a couple of times. If you know nothing about the game then the videos can help introduce you to the Battle.Net interface and how to load games and navigate the campaign but there is no strategy elements or advice provided in the videos. They literally introduce you to the game and the interface elements.

Bottom Line: One of the better written campaign guides but no value beyond that. So for the price it’s hard to justify recommending this one. Awarding 2.5 stars because of the campaign guide and general race content provided, 67 pages worth. If you’re having navigation problems in the campaign it’s worth checking out.

Go Get It Now

 

DiamondGamer.com Starcraft 2 Add-on

Price: $47
Guide Type: Add-on / in-game
Pros: In game advice, real-time strategy notes
Cons: Takes some getting used to
60 Days Money Back Guarantee: Yes
Rating:

Review

So this one is in a league all by itself as it’s the only (that we know of) in-game strategy add-on for StarCraft 2. Basically it’s a little window, with transparency options, that sits on your screen while your in a game. You can load up different build orders easily for whatever you’re trying to build. It organizes the builds by race X vs. Y for whatever your match-up is. We liked the fact they have a whole category dedicated to Cheese. Oh noes!

You can also pull up units, based on what race you are, from other races to see what unit compositions are best to counter with. Definitely useful for a beginner player if you keep getting pounded by a specific unit type and you’re unsure of what to transition to.

It also has the ability to watch strategy videos inside of it which we didn’t find very useful. It’s main functionality is keeping build orders and unit counters up.

It does take a little getting use to, some extra macro if you will, in having an extra screen in game with you. Most gamers have larger monitors anyways but if you have a 17″ screen or smaller I wouldn’t highly recommend it. We actually got the most use out of it as a practice tool in “Very Hard” or “Insane” matches against the computer as an extra aid in builds and counters, plus you can pause in a customer AI game.

Bottom Line: We’re giving it 4.5/5 stars because there’s no other app out there that we know of where you can keep your build orders right inside the game with you. Most useful as a practice tool and more practical with a larger screen. It’s not practical to toggle back to your desktop everytime you want to reference the next element in your build so having the DiamondGamer add-on is very handy.

Go Get It Now

 

Wrap Up

 

We reviewed a bunch of guides and dropped our own cash for you guys to study each guide thoroughly and provide you with honest accurate reviews. Every guide has a little something different then the other guides and so every guide was useful and valuable in some ways. Most all of them offered a 60 day money back guarantee so if you’re as crazy as we were you could download them all and simply return the ones that you didn’t want to keep.

In the end though a couple rose to the top:

 

StarCraft2Strategy.com’s Top Pick: 7Probes SC2 Training Course

 

Joana’s StarCraft 2 Guide is an exceptionally good guide at the best price in the entire pack. Shokz StarCraft 2 Guide received high marks for providing the most content we reviewed and T Dub’s StarCraft 2 Secrets was our favorite downloadable PDF series.

StarCraft 2 Mastery Guide was our other very top scorer with a great Members Area and the add-on from from DiamondGamer.com is unlike any other strategy resource available for StarCraft 2.

Visual Learner? Definitely check out HotKeyIt – StarCraft 2 Strategy Guide Videos for pro casted videos.

All and all we hope we’ve given you some good resources for improving your game. It should go without saying that we will continue to provide free strategy advice right here on our site so check the home page often and stay active in our forums.

-StarCraft2Strategy.com Team