StarCraft: Brood War/Zerg Mission 10: Omega

This mission is quite difficult, although arguably not as difficult as Zerg Mission Eight "To Slay The Beast." You are surrounded on all side by enemies - Two Terran foes in Mengsk and DuGalle, and a powerful Protoss enemy in Artanis's forces. On the brighter side, however, you start off with a considerable amount of minerals, and your base is not wholly indefensible in spite of having three entrances. This walkthrough will show you the most straightforward method for winning this mission.

The first thing to be done on this mission is to get your starting drones mining, and building the next generation of drones at your two hatcheries and 1 hive. This first group should go to mining; a continuously strong stream of resources is crucial to this mission, and ultimately you want at least 2 drones to each mineral patch, along with four drones on the vespene geyser.

With the second group of drones built, send part of them to collect resources while sending the others to build sunken colonies at each entrance to your base. You'll want at least two at each entrance before the Three Enemies come knocking at your door (and they will, and fast, although their first attacks won't consist of more than a couple of marines, firebats, ghosts, zealots, and maybe dragoons).

One thing I noticed is that after this first wave, there usually is a lull for a couple minutes in attacks. Don't depend on it, but use it to your advantage if it occurs. You need to get at least six sunken colonies at each entrance to your base, in addition to one on the southeast "prong" of the fork that the platform you start on makes around the northeast entrance to your base. You also need to build more spore colonies; they tend to be strongest in groups, so every other or every 2nd spore colony, I strong suggest building four more right next to it. That should be enough to handle the immediate air threat you will face (namely, Mengsk's annoying groups of 10-12 wraiths, the UED's battlecruisers, and the Protoss's scouts).

One trick with base defense on this mission is to research Burrow at your hatcheries, get a group of 12 hydralisks, and burrow 1 such group out in front of your sunken colonies at each entrance. Place an overlord nearby (incidently, start researching the Fast Overlord upgrade ASAP) for detection. When Mengsk sends a ground force including tanks, or the Protoss send a reaver with their ground attacks, you can unburrow the hydralisks and quickly kill the tanks before either helping to finish off the rest of the force, or re-burrowing them. Oddly enough, they tend to be far more effective than lurkers, since the computers will immediately scan for lurkers if they attack, whereas they won't scan for burrowed units even if you just attacked them with such units.

Make sure to keep an eye on your base throughout this entire mission. Mengsk generally has three different types of attacks in this mission: 2-3 tanks with about 12 ghosts, 10 marines, and 6-12 firebats; air attack groups of 10-12 wraiths; and nukes. Mengsk is particularly fond of nuking your spore colonies, so make sure to IMMEDIATELY have detection on the ramp leading from the West (from his base) so that you can kill the ghost before the nuke drops.The Protoss attacks will generally be stopped by a good set of sunken and spore colonies, but you will need to deal with the occasional reaver, and a very nasty combination of Corsairs casting Disruption Web on your spore colonies while groups of scouts attack them later in the game. DuGalle, if you let him live long enough, will send two types of attacks: mixed marine/goliath forces (and these get EXTREMELY nasty late game if you let him live long enough) and battlecruisers. The cruisers can be handled by the spore colony clusters, but you will need to be careful with them, and with anti-ground base defense on the northeast entrance to your starting base.

While the above defensive matrix is being set up, you need to get at least one more hatchery at your main base, so you can build forces of 12 units at a time (More is even better. Just remember that the more hatcheries you have, the faster reinforcements can be built and sent). Start researching the upgrades for hydralisks, and build a second Evolution Chamber so that you can research Zerg Ranged Attack Upgrades as well as Carapace upgrades. At the same time, I would definitely recommend you start building queens

At the same time as that, start churning out hydras 12 or more at a time. Hotkey them into groups of 12, then take them to the northeast entrance, the one that faces the UED and into which they usually funnel their ground attacks (ENORMOUS groups of marines with goliaths). Burrow them down the ramp, in order to save space. I strongly suggest that you prepare at least 7 force groups of hydralisks (12 each, for a total of 84)for your first wave of attack on the UED.

Do you have your groups? Here's where the fun begins. Unburrow your units, and sent them in the northeast direction towards the heart of the UED base (which lies in an alcove near the top-right corner). You will have to move your force groups north and then to the right in a kind of hook shape, although you can avoid this if you simply have your hydra groups use the 'attack' command to attack anything on the way to the heart of the UED base.

The UED will put up some resistance, but hydralisks really are their bane. They have pathetic anti-ground in the form of marines and ONE siege tank, and are heavily oriented towards air units, which massed hydras chew up quickly. He also has ghosts, which are more annoying, but which don't really put a dent in your overall strength; the safest way to deal with ghosts in this attack if you can not get a surviving overlord up to your force, is to simply ignore them. DuGalle's base is actually split into two parts: a smaller part on a planet about 1/3 of the map to the west of the northeast corner of the map, and the heart of his base, which can be reached in the northeast corner. You might want to split off one or two forces from the main group, and send them up onto the smaller plateau to destroy structures and enemies; it helps divide the UED's defense.

Your first attack may not be successful, but don't fret about it. Simply replace hydra groups as they die with brand new ones at your main, and send them up constantly. Keep attacking until you've destroyed all of his unit-producing structures, at which point DuGalle appears, announces his surrender, and then all the UED buildings and units become neutral. At this point, you have probably built up a stock of resources but have no income flowing into because the main base's resources ran out. Build 1-2 expos in the former UED base areas; the UED leaves behind an enormous amount of minerals and gas for you to use in your war machine. Just make sure to include an overlord and at least 8 hydras at each of the expos. Mengsk is fond of sending his large wraith attacks at your expos.

So whose next? The Protoss, of course! The Protoss are somewhat bizarre in that if you attack their main base from the southwest, the Protoss will simply crush even an enormous force (for example, I tried to attack that way, and lost 8 forces of 12 hydras each. ). However, they are vulnerable to a back attack, so what you need to do is rebuild a giant hydralisk force. I suggested that you get 8 or 9 force groups, which shouldn't be too onerous.

Once your attack is ready, send them south from where the UED was, in a general attack towards the south-eastern corner of the map. The Protoss have two relatively small bases in the way, but these will be annihilated in the sea of hydralisks you bring. Don't forget to sneak in some overlords, as well; Artanis uses groups of dark templar. Your first attack force, like with the UED, probably will not be enough to wipe out the main Protoss base from the back, but you can do damage while continuing to build huge waves of hydralisks to replace them. Once you destroy all of the Protoss production structures, Artanis appears, gives his speech, then all the Protoss go neutral as well.

Finally, you have to deal with Mengsk. Mengsk is extremely difficult simply because he has an almost impervious ground defense. If that doesn't sink in, keep in mind that I tested it by sending two 100 fully upgraded zergling forces at Mengsk, and he utterly annihilated them. You need to go air.

If you haven't done so already, get the spire and start upgrading. I suggest a second spire solely for pushing air upgrades as well. Once the spire is built, turn it into a Greater Spire, and start pumping out guardians and devourers. You will need a lot of the former.

You will ultimately want to have at least 12 guardians and devourers. Killing Mengsk requires patience, so begin at the very top of his base, then slowly creep down with your guardians with this force. Make sure to send re-inforcements, and above all relax; this map has so much money there is almost no chance of you running out of it barring some utterly horrific resource management choices. Start at the very top, because that is where Mengsk keeps his main production structures.

Once you've wiped out Mengsk's unit producing facilities, he will appear and make a speech about how he'll be waiting for Kerrigan to screw up. At this point, if you followed the order correctly, you have won the Campaign!