Aggressive Expansion

Among the primary skills for any good Starcraft player is aggression. Not against your keyboard, mouse, or other people in the room, but against your in-game opponent. Starcraft favors the bold and you can’t be bold sitting back on two bases behind your siege tank line.

Occasionally, you get lucky and your opponent wanders his entire army into your defenses, but you can’t rely on the mistakes of others. You need to move out of your base. You need to force your opponent back. Then you take the map. Then you take his ladder points.

A friend of mine is struggling to learn the game, so I told him “never stop being aggressive”. At that point, he promptly ran all of his units into the heart of his opponent’s base. Everything died and he lost soon after.

“You said to play aggressive!” he complained. I had told him as much, and in my mind it was good advice. I don’t necessarily equivocate aggression with attacking your opponent's army. An attack is aggressive, but so is harassment. So is a counter. Even your placement on the map can act as aggression on your opponent.

Creep-blocking an expansion isn't quite "aggressive". It's more passive-aggressive. Effective, though.

 A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about good times to take bases. In that article, I was vague on the topic of aggression and why pressuring your opponent is helpful. Now it's time for some specifics.

Direct Attack:

Walking into your opponent’s base and killing everything in sight is a good basic strategy. It forces your opponent to stop what he’s doing and focus on staying alive. You can kill off workers, destroy tech structures, and maybe even take out a Town Hall (Nexus, Command Center, Hatchery). If you do enough damage, you can force your opponent to deviate from his preferred strategy. It’s a clear and effective means of aggression.

I'm in your natural, killing your dudes.

 Notice I never said a direct attack will win you the match. It has that capacity, of course. In fact, a direct attack is often necessary to force your opponent to surrender, but I need you to remove that information from your head. Newly aggressive players have a tendency to keep attacking after they start.

They push forward with a constant stream of reinforcements in the hope they can end the match right then. It’s unnecessary. Doing damage and scaring the hell out of your opponent is enough. Pull back and macro up while your opponent struggles to rebuild.

Harassment:

Your preferred method of harassment is immaterial. Mutalisks work well, as do Dark Templars. Marine drops are also good. As a general rule, harassment can be performed with any kind of unit that your opponent can't catch. Invisibility does the trick, but so does speed. Get in, do your damage, and get out. Then go back in and do more damage. Keep yourself alive, but keep those harassment units active.

Every moment they’re not doing anything is a moment that your opponent gets to do exactly what he wants. Even if you’re not doing much damage, you’re getting information and keeping his army at home. With the enemy army pinned behind their own mineral line, your base and any new expansions will stay perfectly safe.

Blink Stalkers are great for harass. Just when Terran thinks he has a handle on the army in his base . . .

 

the army isn't there anymore.

 Now for some less obvious ways to stay aggressive and pressure your opponent.

Occupying Space:

If this doesn’t sound aggressive, you’re not doing it right. Holding space is best done with the aid of slow, powerful units that attack at range (the longer the range, the more space is “yours”). Every race has at least one unit of this type. The idea behind space occupation is simple: you go to the part of the map where your opponent doesn’t want you to be and you stay there for as long as you can safely manage.

This space outside your natural is now mine. So sayeth my tanks.

 The center point between your base and your opponent’s base is a good place to start. Owning the center of the map puts you in position to attack any of your opponent’s expansions, and forces him back onto his half of the map. If he tries to go around, you can just push forward and destroy everything. If he tries to eliminate your army, then he’s going to have to engage on your terms in a spot of your choosing. Choose the spot wisely and you can draw him away from his high ground and structures, eliminating some of his defensive advantage.

Keep in mind that the center of the map is not the end point for your army. If your opponent is just letting you have the middle of the map, don’t be afraid to move forward into a more threatening position. No matter where you are, the general rules of occupation remain the same: make it as difficult as possible for your opponent to circumvent your army, and move forward whenever you think you can get away with it.

Extended thermal lances force zerglings way back into their own territory.

 Occupying space isn't a direct attack (though it can become one). Keep in mind that the point is to hold your opponent in place, not to necessarily do damage. The more space you control, the safer you are to expand on your side of the map.

Counter Attacking:

I make a distinction between Counters and Harassment, though they will sometimes look the same. The difference is more about your mindset than anything else. Harassment nibbles away at an enemy's infrastructure and patience. Counter Attacks strike at his heart and force him to react.

Counters are the opposite of Occupying Space, but are equally aggressive. Instead of dictating where your opponent can’t go, you move your army to where he can’t defend. This strategy works perfectly with fast units that can out maneuver your opponent's army. Not coincidentally, fast armies in Starcraft II--like Blink Stalkers or Zergling / Baneling / Mutalisk--usually don’t fare so well against slower armies in head-on battles. A well timed Counter Attack is the most efficient means of exchanging damage with a more powerful force.

Where the “Occupy Space” army moves like a glacier, crushing everything in its path, your Counter Attack army must be like water. When you feel the pressure of your opponent bearing down on you, simply get out of the way. Stay away from the middle of the map and keep poking at the edges of his territory. Then, when your opponent moves even the slightest bit too far away from one of his bases, you move in and destroy everything in sight.

Mutalisks are remarkably effective when there are no stalkers around.

 Avoiding your opponent doesn’t seem like an aggressive move, but I assure you it is. Placement of your army is everything, and sitting all of your forces next to your natural expansion means you can’t successfully counter. Even if you know your opponent is on his way out of his base, your units are too far away to do damage. You could try to run your units around your opponent’s army, but then your attack will only be further delayed. Even with Speedlings, it's just not effective.

In order to successfully Counter Attack, your army has to be poised to strike at any moment. That means your army should be as close to your opponent as possible. The closer you get, the more likely you are to be attacked, but that doesn’t matter. Your army is fast and you can just run away.

When used aggressively, the Counter Attacking army has the same effect as the Space Occupying army: Your opponent is reluctant or even afraid to leave his base. While your opponent stays defensive, feel free to take another expansion and grab the upper hand.

Expanding:

For my final answer, I give you a blatant cop-out and a bit of circular reasoning. Sometimes, you’re not in a position to directly pressure your opponent. Maybe it’s the beginning of the game and you don’t have any good units for occupying space. Maybe your army is too slow for harassment. Thus, you’re forced to stay on your side of the map, but putting down an expansion is, itself, an aggressive move.

Even though expansion don't cause damage to your opponent, any adversary worth his salt knows exactly what an expansion means. It means if he doesn't respond, he could lose in a painfully easy fashion. Like every other aggressive move, an expansion will force your opponent's hand. Be prepared. If you fail to expand, you have wasted time and precious resources, but if you succeed, you have money and the upper hand.

Then, when you have the upper hand, you stay aggressive.