Heroes of Newerth: DotA hero equivalents

Here is a chart of hero equivalents of HoN and original DotA.
It's very useful for dota players who want to convert to HoN. Abilities of the heroes are basically same with different names and graphical presentation.

Starcraft II: Terran tactic - Barracks > Marauders

1 Rax Marauder build can be characterized as a very aggressive opening in Terran versus Protoss game. The Terran uses his Marauders and SCVs to crush the opponent. From this oppening you can transfer into a fast expand or mid game Siege Tank push. This build tries to exploit Protoss's zealot oppening or punish him for fast expansion.

The Advantage of this tactic is plenty of space for micro, which is crucial in here. If you micro correctly, you can sacrifice your SCVs as a shields for Marauders and by that fool enemy units AI, all of that gives your Marauders valuable time to deal as much damage as possible.

The set up is following:

Starcraft II: Guide for beginners

Before you read the guide: this a very basic view on the game mechanics, if you're an advanced starcraft player you're probably already familiar with these things.

Gathering Resources

The first thing you need to know and respect is that when playing against another player,
you have to play fast! I always try to be a step ahead and not to get slowed by unecessary things. For example, you will not pick your nose at the beginning of the game watching your SCVs, drones or probes just standing around. As quickly begin to train more gathering units and send them all to collect minerals or gas.In StarCraft 1 it was very important to send each single worker to extract minerals by hand, Starcraft 2 has addressed this fairly efficiently, but it is good to break one worker away when it's being spawned and send him to one of the further ends of the mineral line so that your workers won't get bunched up together in the middle.
Another often neglected thing is a sufficient number of mining workers!For each of your bases (for most of the maps that's 8 mineral patches plus 2 gas geysers) you should have 30 workers. This number is not just random, but depends on the ideal saturation of each crystal and gas geyser, you want to have 3 workers on a single mineral patch and single geyser, that's most efficient way of gathering these resources,
it's a simple game mechanic.So with 8 mineral patches and 2 geysers times 3 workers on each we get the number 30.Of course it is not the end of the world if you've just on 25 workers, the important thing is to have sufficient number of workers before expanding further into the map.Always try to achieve high number of wrokers as soon as possible, but don't ignore the training of combat units. Whether you should focus on training gathering or combat units depends in most cases on how does your
pponent behave.So if for example you're playing as zerg and you see that your opponent is expanding and you choose not to rush him that gives you the opportunity to expand yourself, because you don't have to defend an early rush.

Advancing in technology

Again, the speed is what matters.You can't afford to spend half an hour thinking what is the right structure to built.This may be very hard for beginner to determine what is the right technology and combination of units to get. What you need is to simply play the game to recognize all the units and structures. This would be really huge article if I had to cover every single unit available in game and I wanted this to be just a quick overview.
Below is a tech tree for each individual race showing exactly the order of structures and technologies:

The Zerg

 The Terran

The Protoss













Also don't try at all cost to race quickly to top tier technologies such as Carrier, Ultralisk or terran Battlecruiser. I know many "recreational" players tend to fortify themselves in the main base untill the point they have fifteen Battlecruisers when they're ready to purge the map.
Believe me, in the game with opponent slightly above average they wouldn't even get to that point. Have a little confidence in your basic units (marines zerglings and zealots) and try to make the most out of them. You will see that game in which you meet with opponent from the beginning in minor battles is much more fun than playing a single 2 minute battle after 30 minutes of building massive army.

So When should I start training the army and how many units? This depends on lot of factors, but generally you want to start making at least some combat units as soon as possible to succesfully defend your base against potential rush or any initial aggression from the enemy.
As a protoss for example this could be a single stalker to prevent any reaper rush. But as I said all of this depends on your and your opponent's play style. Generally, you should always be able to face the opponent's army as efficiently as possible (you can not play the macro game if the opponent decides to rush you and keep the pressure on).

Starcraft II: Maps - Scrap Station

Scrap Station is currently one of the most played maps on the Battle.net.
The map itself is a space platform built on an asteroid floating above Braxis Alpha.

• The map supports a maximum of 2 players.
• Map size: 128x128  
• The starting sites are protected by very wide chokes. 
• There are two natural expansions on each side of the platform, a bridge blocked by destructible rocks connects these two expansions.
• There's also one high yield expansion at left bottom corner of the map.
• Four additional regular expansion, two of them being on an island complete the map.
• This map is known for it's short air rush distance. (In beta phase of the game there was possibility of stalkers blinking to the top island, as of  beta patch 17 it is no longer possible)

Here you can download replay pack with chosen high level games played on Scrap Station.

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Introducing the games.

• Starcraft II 

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game, it's a sequel to the award-winning 1998 video game StarCraft. Released on July 27, 2010, StarCraft II is split into three installments: the base game with the subtitle Wings of Liberty, and two expansion packs, Heart of the SwarmLegacy of the Void.

Set in the 26th century in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy, the game is built around three species: the Terrans, human exiles from Earth; the Zerg, a race of insectoid genetic assimilators; and the Protoss, a species with vast psionic power. Wings of Liberty focuses on the Terrans, while the expansions Heart of the SwarmLegacy of the Void will focus on the Zerg and Protoss, respectively. The game is set four years after the events of StarCraft: Brood War, and follows the exploits of and Jim Raynor as he leads an insurgent group against the autocratic Terran Dominion. The game includes both new and returning characters and locations from the original game.

• Heroes of Newerth

Heroes of Newerth, or "HoN", is an action real-time strategy video game based on the Warcraft III scenario Defense of the Ancients. HoN, like Defense of the Ancients, is widely recognized as a competitive game and tournaments with money prizes are regularly organized and held for it.

Pre-game, players are divided into two teams of one to five people: the Legion and the Hellbourne. Players on each team choose one of 69 different heroes, each with various abilities and advantages to form their overall strategy. Both teams are based at the opposite sides of a map. Each base is defended by towers placed in the lanes belonging to the team. Every thirty seconds a wave of computer-controlled units(known as "creeps") is sent from the base to defend lanes and attempts to push into enemy territory. Victory is achieved when one of the teams manages to push into the base of the opposing team and destroy their "main" structure, the Sacrificial Shrine for Hellbourne or the Tree of Life for Legion.

• Warcraft III

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (War3 or WC3 or RoC) is a real-time strategy computer game. It is the second sequel to Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and it is the third game set in the Warcraft Universe. An expansion pack, The Frozen Throne, was released on July 1, 2003.

Warcraft III contains four playable races:Humans and Orcs, which had previously appeared in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, and the Night Elves and Undead, which are new to the Warcraft mythos. Warcraft III's single-player campaign is laid out similarly to that of StarCraft , being told through all four of the game's races in a progressive manner. Multiplayer mode allows for play against other people, via the internet, instead of playing against computer-controlled characters as is done in the single-player custom game mode. Due to the dual storylines of the previous Warcraft games, the story can only be understood if using the proper storylines of one of the campaigns in the previous games, being the Orc Campaign on Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and the Human Campaigns on both the Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal.
The game proved to be one of the most anticipated and popular computer game releases ever, with 4.5 million units shipped to retail stores and over one million units sold within a month. Warcraft III won many awards including "Game of the Year" from more than six different publications.

• Defense of the Ancients

Defense of the Ancients (commonly known as DotA) is a custom scenario for the real-time strategy video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, based on the "Aeon of Strife" map for StarCraft. The objective of the scenario is for each team to destroy the opponents' Ancients, heavily guarded structures at opposing corners of the map. Players use powerful units known as heroes, and are assisted by allied heroes and AI-controlled fighters called "creeps". 
As in role-playing games, players level up their heroes and use gold to buy equipment during the mission.

The scenario was developed with the "World Editor" of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and was updated upon the release of its expansion, The Frozen Throne. There have been many variations of the original concept; the most popular being DotA Allstars, which eventually was simplified to DotA with the release of version 6.68. This specific scenario has been maintained by several authors during development, with the current publicly anonymous developer known as "IceFrog" developing the game since 2005.

Since its original release, DotA has become a feature at several worldwide tournaments, including Blizzard Entertainment's BlizzCon and the Asian World Cyber Games, as well as the Cyberathlete Amateur and CyberEvolution leagues; Gamasutra declared that DotA was perhaps the most popular "free, non-supported game mod in the world".


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Hello everyone!

I've decided to make a blog dedicated to gaming strategy and tactics.
I will be focusing mainly on Starcraft 2, Heroes of Newerth and Warcraft III, I might expand this list in the future.

I hope you will enjoy your stay here and that you'll find some useful information as well.