Beginner Zerg Builds for ZvT – StarCraft: Remastered
Locating a build to learn the basics of StarCraft: Remastered can be hard. Despite StarCraft: Remastered coming out in 2017, Brood War has been around for a while now. The balance for Brood War has been settled for nearly 20 years, and in that time, people have come up with plenty of different strategies across all of the possible matchups, including Zerg vs. Terran (aka ZvT). Deciding on the right one when you don’t have much knowledge about the game can be difficult. It might be tempting to pick a “cheese” build to go for easy wins, but if you want to learn the basics of ZvT and the Zerg race in general, it’s probably better to pick something that’s more standard and safe.
Liquidpedia, a long standing source for reliable StarCraft: Brood War builds and information, is an excellent resource to get you started and we recommend you take a look here at some of the ZvT builds they suggest. Out of the many they have, we recommend the following opener build: 9 Pool Speed. The reason we recommend this is because it’s a solid build that you can also practice in the ZvZ matchup as well. It gets out speedlings for you to pressure with pretty early, which also protects you from any potential cheesiness from the Terran. A greedy Terran can easily be punished, and/or a Terran that isn’t properly microing their Marines can be caught out in the open by the Zerglings and quickly shredded. It’s crucial that you scout what the Terran is doing so you can decide if you want to transition into Mutalisks, Lurkers, or something else entirely like eventually getting Defilers if they are going mech (Factory) instead of bio (Barracks).
Below you can see the opener in its entirety (credit to Liquidpedia). As much as you may want something that can you follow all the way until the end of the game, recall back to our beginner tips & tricks. Having a set plan that takes you all the way to the end game is difficult and not very realistic, unless you’re playing a No Rush 20 Minute game or something like that. You should have an opener like the one below to get you going, but after that, scout your opponent and react to what they have decided to do and figure out a plan for beating them. The Liquidpedia page for the Zerg vs. Terran matchup in Brood War has more advanced tips for how you should transition plus other openers in case you want to try something different than what we recommend.
Note: The numbers is your supply in which you should begin building this unit/structure. Remember you should be constantly building workers to increase your supply until you have your bases saturated.
- 9 Spawning Pool
- 8 Extractor (remember Drones are used to create buildings)
- 7 Drone
- 8 Overlord
- 9 Drone
- When Spawning Pool finishes: 6 Zerglings
- As soon as you have 100 Gas: Upgrade to Lair
- As soon as you have 100 Gas again: Grab Zergling Speed
Go scout, and determine what your next move is based on what you see.
Good luck, have fun out there in StarCraft: Remastered. Go make Kerrigan proud.
