Using Ghost Effectively in Different Match-Ups

As a Terran player that played Starcraft before, one of my favorite units was the Terran Ghost. It was consider under used by many players, even in Starcraft 2. The reason that they might be consider under used comes from their cost and they are also difficult to use in many situations and engagements. What’s interesting is the Ghost has many useful supporting abilities and offensive skills that could help your engagements toward different races.

Their cost is 200 minerals and 100 gas and 2 supply. With a total of 100 hit points. They are quite weak in general, but Ghost can be a good counter used against, High Templar or Ravens and Infestors. But this is where learning how to use each of the Ghost abilities is important, because Ghost are weak against Marauders and Zerglings and Stalkers. So keeping track of your Ghost helps keeps them alive longer to help your future engagements. Losing a expensive unit that is hard to use, might not be consider cost efficient, but having the ghost abilities support can really change the outcome of your engagements.

 

Ghost Abilities and Usage

The ghost has three abilities at its disposal. The ghost can use “Snipe”, “Cloak”, and “Emp shot” and finally my favorite ability the “Nuclear Strike”.

The Ghost “Snipe” ability is helpful dealing with bio units, like High Templar and Infestors and even brood lords. Dealing 25 (50 vs. Psionic) damage, that also ignores armor. The snipe ability is already researched and can be used on units that might be retreating that are quite slow or even in engagements, where your units might not be able to attack from. A totally of 25 energy and 10 range, it’s quite handy when you’re dealing with High Templar’s that are trying to use Psionic Storm on your bio units. You could even use it on workers, to rack up that worker kill count.

Sniping High Templars as They Retreat

 The Ghost “Cloak” ability is what helps keeps the ghost alive. This is important, much like the banshee “Cloak” skill, this helps keeps the Ghost from being targeted and killed. The Cloak skill is also helpful in making the Ghost sneak past enemy lines and useful in helping with the “Nuclear Strike” skill.

The “Emp Shot” ability is what makes ghost a fearful being. As the Emp Shot drains 100 shields from Protoss units and also 100 energy from spell casters in the area of effect when used. It takes a total 75 energy and has a range of 10. This is the skill that will make Ghost worth getting, because it helps deals with those High Templar and Infestor and Ravens, also helps reveals cloaked units for a short time, but not burrowed units.

Emp shot can also helps you’re match-up against Protoss units, lowering the enemy Protoss units shields, gives you an edge. Emp shot also works on buildings, so you could use it on Terran players command center, to drain it’s energy from scanning and continue with your business of dropping a nuke.

Using Emp Shot in my Engagement

The final skill that the Ghost can use is the “Nuclear Strike”, which deals a total of 300 damage + 200 vs buildings. This is mostly the reason, people might get ghost, for its nuclear strike skill. It takes 20 second for the Ghost to arm and deploy the nuke, once it’s target a location. But during this period of time, the Ghost cannot move and is frozen in place, which makes it very vulnerable to attacks. This is where cloak will be important or support from your army or having a Medivac’s helps the Ghost. Having a Nuclear Strike hit a location that is crowded with units or even workers, makes it an scary skill.

Nuking the Enemy Worker Line

Using Ghost Effectively

The problem with using Ghost is their nature of being quite a weak unit, it’s better to have support around the Ghost, to make them effective. So you would want to put it in the back of engagements, while your other unit’s takes the beating, while you’re using the ghost abilities to target down key units with Snipe and Emp Shot. Landing the Emp shot first is key, because of the energy drain of units and shield drain. So having the ghost being cloaked can help you accomplish this task. Also to note, Emp shots reveal cloaked units, so if the enemy Protoss has an observer on the field, this skill will help you deal with it. Even if you’re Orbital Command Center is out of energy for scan, consider the Emp shot a scan to deal with those Dark Templar’s.

You want to try to pair the ability off with one another. An example of this would be “Emp shot” and then finish up with “Snipe”. Also you want to always keep a Medivac around you’re ghost, as it’s going to be the key of its survival in escapes and healing in many cases. Targeting key units is important, examples of this would be Emp shot a group of Infestors and sniping them right after or even Brood lords that might be retreating or attacking. You would want to be entering each engagement cloaked, to decrease the chances of Ghost being targeted down.

The next important thing to know about Ghost, is their Nuclear Strike skill, this would help you harass and even scary the opponent into pushing out. In order to accomplish this task, you would want to have a Medivac dropping the ghost in key locations and targeting them with nukes. The nuke can be used as an offensive and defensive ability. In offensive methods, would be to target the opponent’s worker lines or army.

In defensive methods, would be to target the opponent’s army, while you’re in an engagement or even a key location, to keep the enemy from approaching and staling time for you to build-up you’re army or holding key locations. Timing is important in this case, because it takes time for the Ghost to arm the nuclear strike, so keep in mind that the ghost is also vulnerable to attacks, so support from you’re army or Medivac can provide protection and healing for the Ghost. Dropping nukes on the enemy army or econ is a good harassment strategy.

Nuking During my Engagement

The Ghost is a overall good supportive unit, but they are quite hard to master in certain situation. It’s not really wise to over commit in making ghost, because they aren’t good by themselves, but better with support of other units. An interview in the GSL code S ro8, the first match between LiquidTaeja and FXOLeenock on Cloud Kingdom, where Leenock was using his Infestor and Brood Lord army facing off with Taeja Marine and Viking, Tank army. Taeja had the lead most of the game, but was in the end overwhelmed by Leenock’s 12 Infestors and Broodlord army.

In the end, Taeja was able to take the series 3 -1 over Leenock. It was during the winner’s interview, when Gomtv Snowbird asked Taeja, why he didn’t use ghost in his match-up with Leenocks during his first match. That Taeja explained that, if he were to commit to using Ghost against the Infestor and Brood Lord match-up, Leenock would transition to Ultralisk and make the Ghost useless in that situation.

So try not to over commit with using ghost, as they are good supportive units, so having a few on the battle field, is good enough to help change the tide of battle between certain match-ups you might face. Hope these tiny tips can help you improve your Ghost play style and help improve your game in certain match-ups between different races.