Starcraft – How to beat medium AI in 5 minutes

When playing on a small map, you should be careful and scout your starting location. When you see a probe coming, try to kill it with two SCVs (micromanagement needed, you will have to round it up). If it starts building a pylon, send about 5 SCVs to destroy it, since without the pylon all buildings are useless. You should have at least one or two SCVs gathering minerals at all times and build more while getting rid of the rush. Then build barracks asap and you should be fine.

So the strategy is like this:

1. if you suspect a canon rush, scout your base
2. once a probe comes in, send 2 SCVs to kill it, micromanage the hunt
3. if the probe starts building a pylon, go for the pylon with more SCVs
4. always have at least 2 SCVs gathering minerals and build more
5. Build Barracks ASAP

Barring scouting some kind of all-in rush coming from the terrans, you should probably be expanding before the 26 food mark. Personally I would recommend 14 pool, 16 hatch, and getting two gas geysers up at ~21 food. If you want to play it safe though you can go 14 gas, 14 pool and get the hatch around 24. If you want to be a little risky for more economic gain, go 14 hatch 14 pool. The larger the map/distance between you and your enemy the safer the fast expand is. I would generally recommend getting speedlings with your first 100 gas, and a baneling nest with your next 50. Banelings are never a bad thing to have vs terran.

As for mid-game, muta-ling is generally superior to hydra-roach in team games, as the bigger maps makes the mobility and map control provided by the mutas and speedlings more powerful.

If you are falling behind, you likely are not building enough drones early. Drone hard early game, keep lings at the towers and one outside their ramp to spot when you need to start pumping units like crazy. With two queen boosted hatches you can get a lot of lings out by the time they walk across the map.

Personal Credentials: 1200+ diamond 2v2 team with both of us playing random.