StarCraft 2 – INDIA

Zerg

An alien race as cunning as they are ruthless. Led by the Queen of Blades, the Zergs consume their enemies and use their own biological adaptation and planned mutation to create weapons and armour.

Unique features:

• Units that burrow beneath the surface
• Quick units which move in swarms such as the Zerglings and Mutalisks
• Creep spread that covers Zerg bases with a nourishing biological substance.

Key Units:

• Zergling
• Mutalisk
• Ultralisk

Protoss

Brave and skilful warriors who have dominated their part of the galaxy for millenniums, Protoss also boast super strength and advanced technology.

Unique features:

• Units with recharging shields
• Formidable units such as the Colossus and Carrier
• Warp Gate technology for building units

Key Units:

• Zealot
• High Templar
• Carrier

Next, you must complete three simple steps:

• Build a base
• Amass an Army
• Deploy your forces according to your chosen strategy

StarCraft 2 players must be able to both look at the big picture and concentrate on the details. You need to juggle your economy, whilst micromanaging your forces and resources.

You can then choose one of four ways to play:

• Story Campaign – good for beginners and fans of the narrative universe
• Versus Mode – good for those who want to compete against friends
• Co-Op Missions – good for beginners and those who want to play with friends/be social
• Custom and Arcade Games – good for players who want to get creative and explore

The official StarCraft website is full of hints and tips to help you get started, plus information about the game’s backstory and the lore of each of the three races.

Available Bets in India

There are a variety of betting options readily available for you to choose from on StarCraft 2, this include:

Outright

Outright bets involve predicting the overall winner of a big tournament such as the WCS Global Finals, just the same as you might for which team will win the football World Cup.

As with traditional sports such as cricket, these markets are usually open well in advance of the tournament starting.

Money-Line/match-winner

Essentially the same as outright, as you are still betting on the outcome, but this time it is for individual matches and isn’t usually available until close to the date of the match.

Certain sites may only offer outright betting for the big tournaments, whilst others will regularly carry match-winner markets. In addition to the match winner, some bookies offer map-winner and correct score markets.

Handicap

Handicap bets are bets where one team is given a starting advantage. Handicaps are typically +1.5 or -1.5 so a team with a +1.5 handicap only needs to lose by one game, or win outright, in a best-of-five match.

Best Sites to Bet on StarCraft 2 in India

StarCraft 2 is firmly established as an esport game, and any esports bookmaker worth their salt will no doubt offer markets on both tournaments and matches.

This means you should have more sites to choose from, and can make your selection based on other aspects of each site.

For example, look at the welcome offer and the payment methods to see if they meet your wider betting needs.

Does the site have good customer support?

Ultimately it depends what matters to you most when choosing who to place your bet with. We’ve looked at a variety of factors to compile various esports bonuses across the site. To access simply click ‘see offer or play’.

You might also want to look at other popular and competitive esports betting offers such as:

• CS: GO
• Call of Duty
• Fortnite
• League of Legends

Legality status of online gambling in India

Placing a Winning Bet

First of all, as StarCraft 2 is such a fast-paced game, it is best to learn as much as you can about the various strategies and rules before you commit to placing a real-money bet.

Once you feel you know enough about the game to make predictions based on that knowledge, it’s time to turn your attention to the teams and players involved. Here a few tips to help you place a winning bet on StarCraft 2

• Study the current form of both teams
• Also, where are they ranked in the world?
• Head-to-head stats – some teams beat better opponents due to psychological factors
• Changes to the team roster or schedule? – this could affect performance
• Any issues with the players? – news sites and social media are a great source of personal problems which could affect a player’s performance or unsettle a team

Tournaments

As one of the first and biggest esports in the business, it’s not surprising that StarCraft 2, and particularly StarCraft 2 has spawned several international tournaments, with prize pools reaching up to $700,000 for the WCS Global Finals.

Here is a list of the biggest international StarCraft 2 tournaments that have taken place over the last couple of years:

• WCS Global Finals
• WESG Main Event
• IEM Season
• GSL
• Intel Extreme Masters World Championship
• WCS World Championship
• DreamHack SC2 Masters

Best StarCraft 2 Teams

The current highest-ranked StarCraft 2 teams in the world, according to Go Su Gamers, are as follows:

• Reynor
• Serral
• Maru
• Trap
• Stats
• Cure
• TY
• Clem
• Rogue
• INoVation

History of StarCraft 2

First released by Blizzard Entertainment in 1998, StarCraft is a real-time strategy science-fiction galactic war game set in the early part of the 26th century.

Created by Chris Metzen and James Phinney, StarCraft went into development in 1995 and debuted at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) the following year.

Expansions such as StarCraft: Ghost, StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm followed, with the final instalment of StarCraft 2, Legacy of the Void being released in 2016.

StarCraft was well-received across the world, but particularly in South Korea, where it developed a huge following. It became the best-selling PC game of 1998, selling more than 1.5 million copies and went on to top 9.5 million copies sold over the next decade.

StarCraft won numerous Game of the Year awards and became one of the forerunners of the pro-gaming scene which would go onto become esports.

Indeed, StarCraft 2 seems to have been designed at least in part to become an esport game, as its predecessor had naturally.

Perhaps that was the problem, as changes to the original, in particular, it running on Activision-Blizzard’s new Battle.net 2.0 platform, were not welcomed by the players.

A Team Liquid Poll at the time reported only 5% of players were happy about the move. Further rules and regulations designed to give Blizzard more control backfired and resulted in StarCraft ‘unofficial’ tournaments being cancelled.

Still StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty garnered rave reviews on its release in July 2010 and a whole new generation of esports enthusiasts took notice. In the early 2010s, StarCraft 2 was the undisputed king of esports, but it didn’t last.

Tournament oversaturation, as well as a lack of high-quality players outside of Korea, meant audiences, especially western audiences started to lose interest in what had once been a global game.

At the same time, other games such as League of Legends and Dota 2 had begun their rise to the top.

Sensibly, Blizzard chose to look at StarCraft’s own issues, rather than focus on what the competition was doing. Introducing a region lock was one of the ways the company looked to restore StarCraft as a global game, and the results were almost immediate.

Mere months after the region lock came into effect; Frenchman David “Lilbow” Moschetto won the WCS Season 3, becoming the first foreigner to win a premier tournament in which South Koreans competed.

A year later, American player Alex “Neeb” Sunderhaft beat an all-Korean field to claim the 2016 KeSPA in Seoul, becoming the first foreign player to win a StarCraft tournament in South Korea for almost two decades.

Retired foreign players such as Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn started to return and Blizzard helped to provide a house/training centre in Seoul where foreign players could train and compete against the best players in South Korea.

With the 2015 release of StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, Blizzard brought back many of the elements fans missed from the original game.

In 2017, the game went free-to-play, bringing a whole new influx of new players from areas with low incomes such as Brazil and Russia.

Regional language streams followed, making StarCraft more accessible and Blizzard launched War Chest, similar to Valve’s seasonal Battle Passes where players could make in-game payments and unlock rewards.

25% of the profits from War Chest went to StarCraft’s professional gaming scene, helping to revive its place among the esports.