Saw a lot of people in the recent Starcraft 2 topics talking about how they started to play again and were having a hard time finding good matches on Battle.net so I made this topic to held people coordinate gaf-matches and provide tips for people who may be playing the game for the first time.
The Very Basics
Before you worry about build orders, unit counters, macro/micro and all that jazz here are some basics to live or die by:
1. Try to keep your resources close to zero. You should always be having something in production, even if you're battling half the map away. Whether it be upgrades, new units, new buildings or peons. Resources not being used are going to waste.
2. Always be building a peon. (scv, probe or drone) You can queue them up if you'd like, but try not to as it wastes resources that could be better spent elsewhere. Make sure to assign the peon to minerals, gas or building as soon as they pop out. For most maps you'll want either 3 or 4 peons on gas at most since any more, depending on the distance to your CC will just yield diminishing returns
3. Don't let yourself catch up to the supply limit (unless you reach 200) try to stay ahead of your production by getting that next pylon/supply depot/overlord/base out before you reach your current max.
4. The best defense is a good offense. Unless you're playing on a "fastest map ever!" you should only have between 1-3 static defense buildings in your base (canons,sunken,spore,turrets). Units are mobile, can be used for defense and attack so your resources are more often than not better spent on them.
5. Scout. Scouting should provide you with useful information about your opponent. Including where their base is, where they are expanding, where an attack may come from and once you have the hang of the game what kind of units they are building. You should be scouting so you are better prepared for whatever they may throw your way.
6 Detectors. Invisible units can be killer to any player if they don't have any kind of detection out on the field. Terrans have turrets, comsat stations and science vessels, zerg have overlords, and spore colonies, protoss have observers and canons. If you have no detection at all you leave yourself open to all sorts of devastating attacks so make sure you have some form of detection around the 5 minute mark.
7. Expanding. Don't wait until you run out of resources before you attempt to expand. Unless you are on a "fastest map ever!" you'll likely need to expand atleast once before any game is over. Most maps have a "natural expansion" which is right near the starting point for your main base. This is the best option for any beginner to expand to. Its easy to move units between the two bases to held fend off attacks than if you were try to expand half way across the map.
Maps:
In terms of popularity these are the 3 main maps that were once the most popular on bnet, though see Zzoram's post for the more popular competitive ones today:
Lost Temple was at one time THE competitive map for starcraft ladder. It still is a very fine map for 1v1, 2v2, or ffa's. It has a single narrow ramp as the entrance/exit to each main base, and an easy to secure natural expansion at the base of each ramp. The ramp provides a good defensive position against early ground attacks.
The Hunters and Big Game Hunters was/is the most common map for larger sized games. Natural expansions with shared entrance/exits leads to very intense back and forth fights.
Fastest Maps Ever! takes the balance of starcraft and throws it out the window. Because of the vast amounts of minerals stacked, and number of vespene geysers you will very rarely find yourself worrying about resources. There are only 8 bases so there is no concern over expanding, its basically just build a ton of static defense structures, a bunch of production buildings and massing whatever unit you like. Terrans are severely gimped on these maps so i wouldn't recommend you pick them or go random vs human opponents. Other than Mass Carriers, BC's or Muta's the best tip I can offer to win these matches is to take out your opponents starting nexus/cc/hive, this will drastically reduce the amount of minerals/gas they can gather so they will be unable to rebuild on the starting location.
Trouble Hosting:
If you are having trouble with people joining a game you are hosting and the error message they receive is something about extra high latency try the following:
1. Find your computers IP. To do so click Start then Run. Enter "cmd" and press enter. It will take you to a dos looking screen. Type in "ipconfig" and remember the computer ip that comes up.
2. Next access your router's settings. If you are using a linksys router, type in 192.168.1._ where the blanks is either 1's or 0's.
3. In the Applications $ Gaming tabs open ports 6110 to 6119 and 27959 to 27961, select both on the drop tab, and enter your computers default IP for the address and make sure to check off enable. It should look similar to this.
4. Make sure to save before you X out of the browser, and if you currently have Starcraft open, restart the game before you should be able to host.
Match Coordination:
IRC
There's an irc that already exists for coordinating WFC games that has 7 or 8 regular starcraft players, didn't want to make a SC specific one since I can't really gauge interest and game specific ircs tend to be short lived and die. Hope we can build a small community that will grow once we all get into the Starcraft 2 beta! (/hope)
Server: Globalgamers.net
Channel: #gaf_wfc
If you don't have an irc client here are two browser versions. You could also use mibbit.com, just select globalgamers.net from the drop tab, add #gaf_wfc in the channel slot and choose a nick.
I figure steam would be much more convenient than sitting in a battle.net channel or trying to scan a battle.net friend's list.
Milabrega - ProtoMila on Steam
Channel: Neogaf
Battle.net account names:
Milabrega - MilabregaGaf