SC2 Week: Meet the Siege Tank

There are 48 units in StarCraft 2. Through next Friday, we're highlighting seven of our favorite pieces of sci-fi military equipment in Blizzard's follow-up. Our second featurette focuses on the Siege Tank.

• THE SIEGE TANK

Race: Terran

What it is: A sturdy, offensively and defensively useful ground unit that doubles its range when deployed

Build cost: 100 minerals | 100 gas

Build time: 45 sec

Produced from: Factory

Supply: 3

Real-world analog: Mobile artillery

Armament: Two 90mm cannons (in assault mode); 120mm shock cannon (when deployed)

Best against: Mobs of infantry

Worst enemies: Immortal (Protoss), Carrier (Protoss), Mutalisk (Zerg)

Advantages: When deployed, overpowering against Zerg swarms and other grouped units

Disadvantages: Helpless against air units that can target ground; transformation cooldown takes nearly four seconds

Quote: “Ready to roll out!”

Who it's for: Aggressive players that value map-control --the ST's deployability, combined with their incredible range, makes them great for establishing footholds at expansion bases and scouting points. In the early and mid-game, a handful of Siege Tanks can comfortably repel anything thrown at it.

Available upgrades

Siege Tech (100 minerals, 100 gas) - By default, Siege Tanks can't anchor into the ground. After a Terran player has researched this tech, he'll be able to deploy Siege Tanks.

Our take

The sturdy rhinos of StarCraft, Siege Tanks are brute force of the Terran land armory. There's a gritty satisfaction to wheeling a dozen STs up to an enemy's doorstep, anchoring them into the ground into siege mode, and watching your team of sturdy turrets blast anything that tries to repel them away with swathes of splash damage--they're one of the few units in StarCraft that's granted the ability to deal damage in a radius. Defensively, Siege Tanks are incredibly effective when they have the high ground. Without an infantry vanguard, they're vulnerable--especially in deployed mode, as their cannons adopt a minimum range in that posture that leaves them helpless against units in melee range. On offense, Siege Tanks probably best-applied in the mid-game, when players' economies have reached a stage where they can invest more resources in cranking out cheap infantry or upgrade to mechanized units. Within the mid-game window, a handful of Siege Tanks can overrun a Zerg or Protoss player that hasn't upgrade to the next tier of units.

(Thanks to the StarCraft wiki for being a helpful source of fact-checking on our data for the Siege Tank.)