I can never resist anything dealing with Starcraft/Broodwar strategy.
Gosh its been a long time! This is going to be long.
When i was still in practice, the following allowed me to hit 1250 on the broodwar ladder
Theres a small number of strategies that were dominating the starcraft battle.net scene as of about 4-5 months ago. Every game is assumed to be played on the Lost Temple, since it is the most widely played map (other than newbies playing BGH), and the majority of tournaments are played exclusively on an edited Temple, designed to add observer slots.
Terran:
Terran vs Protoss:.
Heavy Metal Terran --> Designed for use against Protoss
The Terran walls-in his ramp with 2 depots and one barracks. Check Battlereports.com and search for heartcutter, you'll learn all you ever wanted to know about pre 1.08 terran. The barracks are lifted to allow a scouting scv, and later troops through. The Wall-in doesn't allow anything bigger than a marine through it, almost completly negating any early protoss rush.
The Terran goes dual factory tech. From here it can be handled one of two ways. Two factory vultures which transitions into tanks/early expand, or simply two factory tanks. Vultures are strong because the toss loses his ability to expand without obs, and also cannot use Dark templar, since vulture mines can attack the DTs without detection. Upgraded vultures raid the protoss main and expansion, at best killing probes, at worst, laying a minefield outside the Protoss main base.
This is containment, all starcraft strategy is based around it. While toss slowly wastes tons of money breaking out of a mine/tank/turret containment, the Terran has already expanded 4 times and the Protoss is hopelessly outresourced. Game over.
1.08 Metal Variant
In patch 1.08 the Terran dropship recieved an increase in speed, and the strong protoss players had learned how to effectively counter early game metal. Terran does the standard wall-in, and does 1 port/1 fact build, later adding a second factory shortly before expanding. Terran can either perform a vulture drop on the protoss main base, or drop tanks over the Protoss expansion cliff, which prevents protoss expansion, and is very costly to take out. Why a vulture drop? Vultures are cheap, and kill probes in two shots.
Deep Six, and Deep Six Cajun style
Popularized by the man, Heartcutter. Deep Six fakes terran heavy metal by doing the standard wall-in. Toss sees this and figures terran is going tanks/vults and begins building dragoons.
Zealots are vulture bait, and both tanks and vultures can dance around zealots taking little, or no damage, so no good toss will build zeals vs a terran until they have had their speed upgraded, or they are dealing with predominantly terran tanks. Woo, long winded.
Anyway, Toss sees the wall-in, panics, and builds dragoons. Terran busts out with 6 rax (barracks) marines, and medics, and turns the goons into puddles of blue goo. Protoss has no templar, because they're very uneffective against terran factory units.
Deep six Cajun style, is a less effective, difficult to use variant, centering around ghosts. You wall-in, rush to ghosts/nukes, dropship ghosts all over the map, and nuke/lockdown everything thats protoss. Its difficult to use and you have to have godly micro to pull it off.
Terran vs. Terran.
Standard two depots one barracks wall-in. Wrath rush. Or do a tank/wrath combo. Try to get air superiority and take the islands. You're in for a long game.
Terran vs. Zerg.
3 barracks marines add a factory, after expansion add as many barracks and factories as you can support, and make the zerg work for it. Always marine rush vs. zerg.
Protoss:
In response to Heavy metal terran, Protoss will typically do a 2 gate goon build. Instead of trying to force his way up the ramp, protoss parks his goons just outside the terran main base. It takes a long time for Terran to push the toss out since he has to siege and unsiege each of his tanks, pushing them ever closer to the frontlines. By The time terran has accomplished this, the Protoss has taken 3 expansions and is fast teching to carriers with dragoon support. Game over for terran.
It should be said, the no late game protoss can beat a late game terran at higher skill levels. Nothing beats late game terran. Toss better move fast, because once terran has a couple of expands and 20 some factories, its impossible to cost effectively beat.
Protoss Vs. Zerg
Ouch, talk about Imbalance. Toss has a very difficult time vs. zerg. Zerg takes his first expansion very early in the game, forcing the protoss to zealot rush and try to take it out. Its safe to say 85% of the time this doesn't work. Now the Zerg is doubling the protoss income, and the Protoss can't expand until he has about 2 templars, each with mana for two psi storms. Expand before then, and zerg will take you out with hydras. Even if you do get your expand up, and zerg doesn't attack, that means the zerg probably has 4 expansions (or more!) to your two. Good game.
Protoss generally fights zerg with a mix of speeded (very early +1 forge upgrade) zealots, dragoons, templar, and archons. Why the early +1 zealot weapons upgrade? With this it only takes 2 hits to kill a zergling instead of 3.
Vs. Other Protoss. In a Protoss vs Protoss battle, the game will most likely only go two ways. Both players will start with a 2 gate dragoon build, thats a given. Whether they decide on dragoons/reavers or dragoons/templar depends on the player. I always went Goons/Templar, and tried to overpower my opponent quickly. However doing this, you have to leave dragoons at home to deter a reaver drop, significantly lessening the effect of any early attack. It comes down to player preference, reaver/goon is stronger in the early game, while goon/templar is stronger in the late game. Looking back on past games, i'd say the best way to play it is with a dragoon/reaver, first expand, transition into templar.
Zerg
My weak race, i despise the zerg, both playing as and against.
Zerg vs Terran. You're in for a tough game. One base lurker rush, 2nd hatch at ramp. A one hatch lurker rush is faster, though i prefered the slightly slower 2 hatch. Lurker push your way to the terran main while expanding as fast as you can. A good terran doesn't even need detection to fight lurkers though.
The marines are parked outside the zerg base. Lurkers come out, marines focus fire on one lurker, its dead before it burrows, the marines retreat before the other lurker spines hit them. This goes on until the lurkers are dead or the terran is pushed back to his main base.
Another, though less popular option is to muta rush the terran. Three hatches, your initial one, one at your ramp, and one at your expansion. If terran tries to tank push with marine support through your first expansion, you can counter this with mutalisks and win the game.
Zerg vs. Protoss.
Have fun, this matchup is easy as pie. Early expand, 3 hatch hydra build, get hydra speed and dance around the zealots. By the time toss can safely expand, you own the whole map. Good game.
EDIT2: I left out zerg vs zerg. Theres two ways ZvZ is played. Theres Korean "style" if you will, and American style. Korean is played with a mutalisk/zergling combo. You attack with a mixed group of mutalisks and zerglings, sending in the mutas slightly before the lings. When faced with hydra opposition the hydras will attack the mutalisks, which will absorb damage, while the zerglings cause the real havoc.
American is hydra/lurker. Its not as mobile and harder to use. It has difficulty dealing with cliffed guardians, and is vulnerable to queens, since its harder to spread out hydras than it is with mutalisks. One good ensnare can turn the tide of a battle.
Its worth mentioning that when attacking with mutalisks, you always focus fire on one target. Because the muta attacks ricochets off the first creature, hitting two others. The first attack does 9 damage, the second 3 damage, and the third one damage.
A good way to tell if you're winning a zerg vs zerg match is if you find your opponent suddenly defending with hydras instead of his own muta/scourge/ling combo.
Important Game Concepts
Macromanagement. This is what wins games. You keep your money as close to 0 as possible, while mass expanding and building dozens of whatever your prefered production building is.
Micromanagement. Getting the most use out of your units as possible. Dancing, focus fire, blocking, every little trick falls into this category. A macro player will always beat a micro player. A player with excellent macro will be good. A player who is good at both will be great.
"Dancing" It refers to moving ranged units away from melee units before the melee units get a chance to attack. Ex: your hydras attack zealots, the zealots move up to attack the hydras in the front, you move the hydras away from the zealots while they chase them. All your other hydras are getting free shots until your enemy figures out whats happening.
Theres also storm dancing. You forecast (pun intended
) where your opponents templar is going to cast his psi storm, and move your troops away from that spot. Most often used with hydras, carriers, and dragoons. Marines are too slow.
Probe Harassment. Probes are sometimes used to build a pylon at the terran ramp before he can finish his wall-in. This opens up the terran to a zealot rush before he can get enough metal to defend. Pretty effective.
Probes sometimes also build a pylon where the zerg would expand. This is very obnoxious and can be considered cheese. Zerg can't expand, but then will usually just go 3 hatch zerglings out of one base and overwhelm the toss.
Expansion. The most important. Don't stop expanding until you have a nexus/command center/hatchery at every main/natural.
A main is a main base, on temple they are located at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00. A natural is your expansion directly outside your main base, this term is used on all maps. Your mineral only natural is your second expansion outside your main base on temple. This expansion location only has minerals, and no vespene gas geyser.
Theres no shame in building 40 barracks, or any other production building for that matter. The more the merrier.
Tank push. Terran sieges his tanks. Unsieges the tanks in the back and moves them to the front. Doing this the terran leapfrogs his tanks ever closer to his destination. Make sure you space the tanks, so when zealots/zerglings attack, the tank's splash damage won't hurt your own units.
Gulley push. On the Lost Temple map, this a tank push from one of the valleys between your opponents main base. Float a barracks or engineering bay over the cliff to allow the tanks to see up, and reduce his outlying buildings to rubble. As you progress, load tanks into dropships and siege them inside your opponents main, under the cover of the tanks inside the valley.
Turbo Newbie. This is a term used to describe a terran sieging his opponents expansion cliff and denying him resources. Its quite difficult to take out, and the number one reason why protoss will usually expand to another main base, and not his natural when playing against a terran. Theres no cliffs to abuse at a main.
Carrier vs Goliath, or Carrier vs Dragoon combat. The pathing on both dragoons and goliaths is terrible. Always attack from over a cliff. Most of the time the enemy will just walk around, unable to decide which target to fire at. Also if you see a carrier getting damaged, retreat it to the back of the line, and let it join the fight again. This applies with all units, from zealots, to marines, to battleshps, to guardians.
Edit: A couple of more things.
Orbing: The terran casts defense matrix on 8-12 marines. This allows this small number of rines to defeat upwards of 10 lurkers while only taking a few losses.
The Maynard maneuver, or Maynarding: Named after the player Maynard who created it. Transferring probe/scvs/drones from one full mineral line, to a new expansion, where less crowding will go on between workers. When a player expands, he generally transfers half of his peons form his main base to his expansion and begins building replacements at BOTH Nexi/command centers/hatcheries. Speeds mineral gain up significantly
Control Group: 12 units, usually under one hotkey.
EDIT3: Cloning: Selecting a group of units and holding shift+click on the unit outline box that appears in the bottom of the screen. Say you're sending your first workers to mine minerals. Select all four, and send them to the same mineral patch. While they're en route hold shift and click on the outline of one, and click a different patch, repeat this until you've done it with the other two. This way all of your peons will arrive at different patches at the same time. Never send your peons to the same mineral patch, only one can mine at a time, and it slows down your early game considerably.
Theres also cloning lockdown, scourge, etc. Say your fighting carriers as zerg, select 12 scourge, shift+click groups of four and send them towards 3 or so carriers.
Lockdown works the same way, select group of ghosts, tell them to all lockdown the same target, while they are en route, shift+click a ghost to attack a different target. Once the ghosts arrive, multiple targets will be locked down at once.
The unbalanced matchups are widely considered as: PvT (early-mid game early, if terran is still alive, Protoss dies painfully). and ZvP, for reasons previously mentioned. Zerg Vs Terran is the most balanced inter-race matchup, though i give terran the edge. So basically it's P > T > Z > P
Suprisingly, all of this didn't take that long to type, i know SC/BW inside and out. Time to go laddering.
*runs away crying, waking the neigbors* 
