Zerg Infestor - Expensive and risky, but VERY effective against some opponents

If you don't play StarCraft 2 you probably don't have any idea what the heck I'm talking about but it is a rather advanced tactic in multiplayer that can seriously turn the tide of a battle involving expensive units.

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Lately I've been getting a bit frustrated against this one guy I play on a regular basis who always manages to amass a rather large battlecruiser grouping and if you've ever played either SC1 or SC2 you realize how much of an awesome offensive and defensive force these units can be.

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Battlecruisers are one of the most fearsome units in the game. Capable of attacking units in the air or on the ground, they can lay waste to almost anything quite quickly. When the Yamoto canon power is researched they are capable of one-shot killing any any anti-aircraft base unit and most of the individual units in the game, especially squishy Zerg units.

So you have two choices as zerg, you can attempt to overwhelm the skyward units by amassing a MASSIVE amount of aerial units yourself and of course remembering to target only one BC at a time but then I discovered this other tactic that will work against the less experienced human opponents.

The Infestor

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Most players tend to avoid this unit because it doesn't have much in the way of direct offense. It doesn't have any actually. However, once you research the Burrow upgrade this unit can move while underground and unless the enemy had a detector unit with them, they will not be able to see it. It move just as quickly underground as it does above, so there is no real reason to ever expose this unit.

When faced with a large group of battlecruisers who are traveling without a detector (which is common when facing a zerg opponent since they don't have many cloaked units) the Infestor can cast what I consider to be one of the most valuable spells in the game

Neural Parasite

When Neural Parasite is cast (and this can be done from a great distance) the unit it is cast on becomes controlled by the Infestor for 11 seconds. This is massive because now the battlecruisers (or any other unit) will start firing on its own people. In a group of 10 battlecruisers this can end up destroying at least 2 of them because the enemy will have no choice but to destroy their own unit and in some situations they wont even notice it happened and will not effectively target it.

In one game I had 3 infestors that were burrowed at a base and when his battlecruisers came in (which i knew he would do) I used Nural Parasite on 3 of this battlecruisers and this resulted in him losing 7 total ships because in the confusion my turrets were able to do some damage as well.

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It is important to note that once you use this against an enemy player, they are unlikely to fall for it a second time because all they have to do is scan the area or bring an some sort of unit that can detect with them and then the jig is up for Infestors, who are all but defenseless once spotted.

After utilizing this tactic against my enemy (he's actually my friend IRL) he was a bit more selective about how he decided to engage me. You can't use the same tactics every time if you are going to excel at this game, and that is what makes it so great.

Starcraft 2 is available to download and play for free from the Official Starcraft / Blizzard website