Starcraft 2 Ghosts

Probably one of the most underused units in the Terran arsenal are its casters; Ghosts and Ravens. The highest level of gamers obviously use these units when they're required or they include them in their build, but for the lower level platinum level and below players including these units into your build feels like a very large leap from the norm. If you are going for Marine's and marauders and all of a sudden you want to include ghosts it can really throw off your game. That barracks that you're so use to producing from to get the "proper" amount of Marines and Marauders is now being used for the ghosts.

Lets look at some stats about ghosts:

• Cost: 200 Minerals 100 Gas
• Build Time: 45 Seconds
• Upgrades: +Infantry Attack/+Infantry Armor, Mobeius Reactor(+25 Starting Energy), and Cloak.
• Classification: Biological, Psionic.
• Damage: 10
  vs. Light: 20
• Range:6
• Weapon Speed: 1.5
• Targets: Air and Ground
• Each Infantry upgrade increases the attack of a ghost by +1 normal/+2 light
  With 3 attack upgrades a ghost does 13 damage, and 26 versus light.
  

Abilities:

• Snipe - costs 25 energy and deals 45 Damage to biological units as well as ignoring armor.
  
• Cloak - Makes the unit invisible to enemies unless they have detection. Drains 0.9 energy per second.
  
• Nuclear Strike - Calls down a nuclear missile at a target location, deals 300 damage(+200 vs Structures) in a large area.
  
• EMP Round - Removes 100 shields and energy of units in the target area and reveals cloaked units for a short time.
  

Now that we have the basic boring stuff out of the way! I feel it is necessary to point out how good and versatile Ghosts are.

Snipe has not yet had its usefulness fully explored in the pro scene, in my opinion. It is basically a miniature Yamoto cannon with a very small cost.

Some Tips:

Cloaked ghosts have the ability to remained undetected from any unit with detection. Overseers can be sniped, ravens are light and take extra damage from the ghosts attack, and observers can be uncloaked with EMP, as well as being light and receiving that extra damage. If you don't want to waste your ghosts energy uncloaking a observer you always have scans at your orbital commands!

EMP does work on your own units, if you're scared of having your thors "feedback'd" by high templars and can't get off the emps on your enemy, ghosts can EMP the thors to remove energy without hurting them.

Ghosts kill workers in two shots, two cloaked ghosts in a mineral line will rain havoc on it.

Banelings die in one shot from snipe. Ghosts are a very effective counter to baneling busts as seen in Day[9] Daily #298. (Embedded at the bottom of this post) Be warned this daily is before the 3.1 patch changes to ghosts where their costs were changed from 150 Minerals/150 Gas, to 200 minerals/100 Gas.

Ghosts can snipe every zerg unit. Having just a few in your army will soften up the enemy before you have to engage directly. Ghosts can EMP every protoss unit, doing the same thing although shields regenerate faster than zerg health regen.

Nukes have seen more use in controlling the enemy rather than direct damage in pro level games. Placing a nuke on a choke point forces the enemy to avoid that choke point and can give you control over where the enemy is going to be.

You can EMP buildings, such as Orbital Commands, but be warned it only removes 100 energy, so if they haven't been using it it will take two EMPs to get rid of

Are you going to incorporate ghosts into your Terran play? Anything useful you've discovered in your games? Leave a comment!